 Right welcome everybody. It's lovely to have you all here You've been a very great audience already. Just you're so good at sitting and listening and And I'm sorry in a way. It's going to be more sitting and listening because I know that this would be Such an interesting thing to discuss together, but we're slightly too large a group to really have a lot of interaction. So well done in advance for For entering into it so well the theme of this Presentation is really about what you're doing which is really because I'm a teacher and We can always think that how do you become a better teacher? You just have to learn to prepare more and to get yourself ready But in fact all learning takes place through the person who's receiving it No learning can take place through a teacher. It has to be the mind of the receiver. So what you're doing is It's the key thing and Really the role of the teacher is to help you think about how you receive and that's what we're really going to be focusing on this Seminar or presentation is called receiving the word and handing it on to others Right and that's the order in which we need to do it And for most of us we're either parents or grandparents or we have needed to hand on the word in some form or two others And we felt called to do that for some of us We might even be paid for doing that Which is no most of us are not it wouldn't that be wonderful? But for some of us like myself, I can't believe I'm paid for doing this teaching role Which is a wonderful thing some of us may be catechists in the church or religious education teachers I see there are some clergy here. So there are some of us who think Handing on the word to others is what I know is what I have to do But for all of us that is what Christ asked for isn't it somehow we need to hand it on but to do that We have to receive it And so we're really going to focus on how do we receive well So as I say just thinking about what you're doing here, which is receiving well the word which I hope God will give us all Is what this the focus of this is? So should we start with some prayer? So in the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit Amen And I want to ask you heavenly Father for your blessing on this time and first of all we just give you thanks because You have blessed us with every blessing We know that you have called us not only to hand on your word But first of all to receive your love and your blessing and we're so grateful to you for All of the things which you place in our lives, which are signs of your love. We just want to give you thanks for that Lord And we know you want to speak to us today just as you want to speak to us every moment of our lives So give us ears to hear what you would have us here and Lord give me the words to say what you would have me say So that we may be a blessing to one another and Lord we're focusing especially on the blessed Virgin today. So Mary we ask for your special prayers That you'd wrap your mantle around us and really facilitate that work of understanding So that we have the ears and the tongue That we know your son wants to give us So Mary pray for us All saints and angels pray for us St. James pray for us In the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen So I teach here full-time. I've only been here four years It's a wonderful place to be I came with my wife my four children four years ago And I came from a place in England. It's called Shropshire Which is the Shire where Tolkien based Lord of the Rings So lots of the features of Lord of the Rings if any of you are fans of that book or that trilogy of films I have weathertop very close to where I used to live and I always call myself a hobbit not because I have furry feet but because We're like hobbits and that's an unlike Americans in that we don't go very far There's a very interesting little piece of the first film where Samwise Gamgee is About to set out in his adventure and he comes to the edge of a field and he stops and just announces that he's never been further than The edge of the field before and so Frodo helps him take one more step. I Have a very good friend and colleague here who is dr. Alan Shrek who's who's been very kind to me over the years and he came to stay with our family in England and wanted to do some walking So I took him to a local hill and he went into an inn to stay for the night And he was just making conversation. He asked the innkeeper So are you and your wife from round here and the innkeeper? He's so we're all hobbits and he said oh, that's a good question. That's a very good question He said now speaking for myself I'm from round here, but my wife now. No, my wife is not really Come over here and he took dr. Shrek to the window and he pointed to a hill just outside the wind He said my wife's from over there and so suddenly Dr. Shrek realized because you know When Americans come to visit us they do Scotland one day then they go to France the next day You know to me and they don't realize that we hobbits have been about ten yards and we planned We planned a long time when we packed our picnic and we checked the weather and we did all these things before we went ten yards So for me to come to America That was just amazing Most of my family don't visit me because they don't fly You see it's it's in you probably can't conceive of Americans who don't fly because you just go everywhere like that But they they don't fly they don't take boats because boats are a bit dangerous So we take a train or a bicycle or you know get around but it's a small island Anyway in a place I used to work someone you'll be very interested to know was where John Henry Newman when he became a Catholic First lived he was given a home by then Bishop Alathon to live in so it's called Mary Vale house That was his house for about the first two years until he set up the oratory So I used to love going because I knew he'd be canonized I've been touching every bit of the furniture that he touched I've slept in his bedroom So if I'm now about a third-class relic if anybody wants to cut off bits of my Coat or you feel free when for when the canonization takes place So John Henry Newman so a great person. I don't know how many of you have read him, but a really wonderful person Most of my family are converts So I myself Was a Baptist raised a Baptist I became an Anglican in due course and I thought I would enter the Anglican ministry and I went to an extremely liberal University where they they sent seminarians called King's College London. He gave a superb formation If you were ready for it, let's put it this way most of the people Who were priests or others who were lecturing us didn't necessarily believe in the gospel anymore so they belong to a group called the Sea of Faith and the Sea of Faith is a group of clergy who no longer believe in God and It's kind of like if you want to belong to alcoholics anonymous, you know what I mean? It's one of these support groups It's like a 12-step program for remaining in the church when you no longer believe in God They were the people who were lecturing and forming me Now I say that because even though it was a good formation I've had the most skeptical formation probably anybody could have had in terms of the scriptures in terms of doctrine Philosophy only began we just did philosophy from Descartes Kant the empiricists Wittgenstein onwards. We never did the classical philosophers. We never did medieval philosophers So when I came out my mind was so warped And yet I've been fighting the system throughout because I knew I believed and like many others of my fellow students We knew we believed but we weren't able for the professors and so if I think for about 10 years I was trying to recover where I where I should be And this has been really important to me for the job I'm now in which is being a catechist So I'm now a professor of catechetics for handing on the faith to others Because one of the things which it really taught me was where most people are I Come from so I've received a protest and upbringing Then a very skeptical modern upbringing Philosophically in terms of scripture exegesis everything else Jesus probably didn't exist. Do you know what I mean? Everything from there onwards with all the scholarship behind that view And I had I've eventually found my way into the Catholic Church And it took me probably another 10 15 years to do that But God in his grace gives you everything you need and you never know what's needed in your life Do you and one of the things it's taught me is really just where people like myself will be coming from and The way in which your mind has to be reformed and it's taken me a long time To do that even when I became a Catholic and I began teaching I was teaching at Oxford as a Catholic for seven years I taught around all the subjects. I didn't really believe in Do you know what I mean? Even though I wanted to be a Catholic it was on my own terms And so I would teach the things I knew I believed and the things I didn't I just ignored So I'm very well aware of when popes challenge catechists and say don't mutilate the gospel because I know I've done that and It was only in a way through God's grace He brought me to a point of where I recognized there were too many things I was disagreeing with that even as a Catholic that I had to undergo a kind of second conversion and That's really what I went through and I went through it with the help of a number of things one was the Catechism of the Catholic Church. I Know we call it a catechism and for most people a catechism is for children and This is an adult catechism Obviously, but one that's Replacing one an updating one that was written 400 years after 400 years before So it was it was actually an incredibly intelligent presentation of the faith and I realized as I read through the pages I didn't necessarily recognize this as the faith. I thought I had So I've come on a I've come on a very kind of multi-layered journey from Protestant Baptist Skeptical Anglican Catholic but very badly formed Another conversion Catholic realizing I needed ongoing formation And I think what that's given me overall because I've loved the Lord through it all But I've realized The challenge there is today to have a Catholic mind And I don't say I have it now. I've married an Irish Catholic a cradle Catholic She has an instinct for the faith that I've had to learn So there are certain things you do my children I've been watching because they've been growing up as Catholics And I'm delighted in a way to see they've my wife's really been just giving them the instinct all the time Because I am a kind of a searcher type So this is wonderful because too few people Continue in ongoing formation in the faith and one of the things I so love about these conferences is the commitment Which you all make to be here to learn because I know in a way the cost Center Augustine one of the things I've loved and I think this is true Center Augustine of Hippo said in terms of learning the faith When he said this is my experience when we meet something we don't necessarily know The mind has a defense reaction to it we always think we want to learn But in fact what the mind loves is to have somebody telling you something you already know He said that's where we all like to be as soon as there's something which we don't know if it can be fitted into where we are Okay, that's just another bit. I fit it in. It's like the best the the piece of the jigsaw but What if it's something that really overthrows or challenges what I think of Yeah At that point he says what the mind does is first of all says that's not important You can get by without that. That's a bit of learning. You don't need because the mind does not want to be upset He said if that doesn't work the mind does something else and it says that's just stupid and I realized How often in my learning, you know when you read a couple of pages and you're going through and you We had dr. Harm mentioning Leviticus. Okay, you know you read through the Bible Leviticus is just strange There are two ways of looking at that because I've just looked at a lot of the faith. It's just really strange You can think that's just strange or you can say okay There's a couple of things here. First of all Somebody thought it was important to write all that down. What's their mind doing writing all that down and secondly if that's sacred scripture and They well first of all they love it. They loved that All the details they thought were important and God wanted all of those things written down I don't have that kind of mind yet I'm not thinking that definition of how you conduct that sacrifice is important at all I don't think that list of tribes and who belongs to that tribes is important And suddenly you think to yourself Lord, what do you need to teach me? So that I see the importance of that Do you know what I mean? You see the gap The nice thing about that because I think the really nice thing about it is as soon as you start thinking like that learning becomes exciting because You start enjoying the moments When you're facing something that you really don't understand or are not interested in you suddenly see where you zone out And where you zone out you stop thinking I'm bored to thinking Where is my mind compared with that given that I need a Catholic mind? Okay, why do I not like lists of tribes? You see I'm just raised in an ordinary English Environment that's very individualistic very like America. We don't do lists of tribes. I have about four aunts I'm not like my wife Whom everybody she meets is a cousin Undefined, but they're all cousins somehow. Do you see what I mean? She loves lists of generations and who the cousins are and where they live and what they've done and how they're all involved and There's something wrong with my English approach. I can see it's just the way I've been raised But suddenly you think what do I need to do to get into that mindset because what the church says is isn't it? We need a biblical worldview And often we don't have a biblical worldview and often as I read the Catechism I realized they don't have a Catholic worldview. There was so much. I didn't have Now John Paul St. John Paul Says that one of the reasons and he says this in a work on catechetics, which of course is my area Which is what I'll be talking to you about But it's how do you basically make a disciple? Catechetics is how do you make disciples? Not of yourself, but of Jesus. How do you help them to connect to Jesus? And John Paul says when we do that We have to go to the place where the greatest learning took place because what you face when you're trying to help somebody become a disciple whether that's yourself or anybody else is You need to go to the place where the person who learns best can help you and then he says It's I think it's in number 72 or 73 the paragraph of Catechese trident a catechesis in our time He said no one has been taught to the depth That our lady was taught Which is a really interesting because I do you often don't think about her somebody who learns a lot But our lady is presented to us as the one who really knows how to learn well and Therefore knows how to be she's always called the first disciple She's the one who was well cataclyzed you see so What I want to really focus on in our session today is what does our lady teach us About how to really learn? Well, and we're going to learn this from this what the scriptures tell us about our lady So I'll give you another phrase this is from John Paul catechesis in our time Just talking about how we learn and you'll just listen to this and you hear our lady written all over it So he says this is what we do in catechesis We are developing Understanding of the mystery of Christ Who is the word? So that the whole of a person's humanity is Impregnated by that word Isn't that beautiful That's what catechesis is about Starting as a child going on through adults We want the whole of our humanity to be Impregnated by the word of God That's what he said. It's like well. We know who was impregnated by the word. So we know John Paul is So on board thinking everything is done through our lady and As I really learned the craft of catechesis according to the church's mind I saw that if you're involved in catechesis you learn everything through our lady That's basically how you do it and that's what the scriptures ask you to do Right, so I want to look at that. I was reinforced for me in two ways So I just wanted if you like justify my reasons for saying that first of all as I began studying the catechism and In the catechism and you probably all have a catechism look up at some point the it's called the index of citations So at the very back of your catechism, there are 30 pages of references to the scriptures Now one of the things I do because I get paid for this and I'm a bit like a trading spotter You know by mentality is I counted all the references to every book every chapter I followed them all up. I worked out where they all fit it where they fit it in the four parts and I kind of analyzed everything So I spent months working on those scripture because I wanted to know how the scriptures were being used in Catechesis in the church's document, which they say is the model for how you do catechesis And you know what I found are the two most important passages in the whole of the catechism Prologos and John which is all about the incarnation and The annunciation which is all about the annunciation which is all about the incarnation Okay, so in other words when you do catechesis and when you think about how you're learning the church is saying You can learn most about what happens in Handing on the word somebody else so that they're impregnated Precisely by understanding those two passages So that was one thing I discovered Second thing I realized is when you start thinking about what revelation is So we know just think of Hebrews chapter 1 verses 1 to 3 Right God has spoken in many in various ways. He's spoken through the prophets Okay, he continues to speak and eventually he comes to want to speak Everything he wants to say in Christ And you'll find this in the catechism in number 65 if you want to look that up They quote that passage from Hebrews and then they said, okay If you want to think where is the fullness of what God wants to say to humanity given in terms of revelation It's obviously given in the word of Christ Christ is the fullness of of God so when Christ is revealed Everything that God wants to say is given and They have a wonderful quotation from John of the cross. I shall just read you that because it's so beautiful So this is John of the cross on that point he says in giving us his son His only word it's obviously the father For he possesses no other He spoke everything to us at once in this sole word and He has no more to say Because what he spoke before to the prophets impart He has now spoken all at once By giving us the all who is his son Okay, let's just think about that so everything that God wants to say is Given in his son That's what we all believe. Yeah There's nothing else he wants to say. He didn't hold anything back It's not just a bit of his revelation. He gives and when he gives his word the word became flesh It's not just in the form of a message anymore. It's actually a person That's the fullness of what God wants to say So when did he say that? When did he say fully what he wanted to say and when was it received? Absolutely fully So it was completely learned at that point Well, we can precisely date when that happened. Can't we we can pinpoint it? We know exactly when that happened Okay, that moment When Mary in response to the angel received Christ at the incarnation and Said yes to that is the moment she received Bodily and the father's all says she received it in her mind first then she received it She received the fullness of everything God ever wants to teach any of us Theologically foolproof isn't it? It's no way around that one That's why John Paul says Mary is the one who learns More than anybody else because she learns Everything that the divine wants to give us She had to learn it in the sense of receive it so completely that he took flesh Because he said everything at once at that point That's interesting isn't it? so Got to think how this links to catechesis so we date the whole of history It's either before the moment everything was learned or after everything before is before Christ and Before Christ is before the moment of learning the entirety of God's revelation Everything after that is an anodomini is now the year of the Lord So our lady's pivotal and whatever happened there At that moment somebody was very good at teaching and somebody was extremely good at learning Then I noticed this I've been saying the Angeles for years and Of course the Angelus is about the Incarnation And it ends with the word became flesh and dwelt among us and then the final prayer really puzzled me I'm just going to say it so you can just hear the words. We actually pray say Because they directly impact us So we say don't we pour forth we beseech the oh Lord thy grace into our hearts That's we To whom the Incarnation Sorry to whom the message of an angel or I've forgotten that I'll start again Okay, that we to whom the message of an angel Help me out Thank you Thank you Shouldn't have forgotten it should I This is all on tape. Sorry everybody as you're listening to this you carry on whenever you're listening to it You've got the points. Okay? We Suddenly you realize You weren't there Gabriel never spoke to you So the message of an angel was never given to you actually and Suddenly the church told tells you That it was to you the the message came and that by his passion and cross you're gonna be brought to the glory of his resurrection By learning just the same thing So what does that suddenly tell you About yourself. What does this tell us? Well, suddenly the church is asking us to pray as though we're like Mary Suddenly we've been transported and Suddenly the angel Gabriel wasn't just speaking to Mary The angel Gabriel has spoken to us That's it, isn't it? Otherwise, why would we be in there? We should have said our lady That our lady to him the message of the angel was made But we don't we say we Now this of course is what you kind of it's kind of common once you're a Catholic you suddenly realize gosh This is how the church always thinks The church always says that Mary is the mother of the church and in St. John Paul's Document on catechesis in the time he calls her our mother and our model Suddenly what happened to her is supposed to be the model of what happens to us When we receive the word So how the church sees it and I began to see it in the catechism and in all the documents It became clearer and clearer just like that John Paul being impregnated by the word is That whenever we do any catechesis with anybody and catechesis means Something very particular it means handing on the divine words Whenever the divine word is handed on in any situation to another What is going on is Exactly when it's not exactly it's by analogy What went on at the incarnation? Now that is a unique thing. We know that Christ only became incarnate once and That when we're a we're a mass and we're listening to the word proclaimed the incarnation doesn't take place in us again We know that We know there was a before and after in the whole of history around the one unique event But that is the model for how the word Enters and impregnates every person's humanity In a spiritual way so that Christ is born in us and So that he can be handed on to others and that model of what happens at the incarnation and Remember they the church teaches the spiritual reception as the primary thing so that Mary physically receives him But first in spiritually that spiritual reception is what takes place whenever the word is handed on The beautiful picture you now see on the screen I hope you can all see it and do move forward if you can't because it's so gorgeous It's by a painter called brother angel Fra Angelico and He painted many annunciations So if you were to I don't know if any of you have a copy yourself of the enunciation I have a large copy of that in my home You can get lots of beautiful ones, but for understanding the work of catechesis. He tried to paint exactly what went on at the enunciation and Exactly what goes on whenever the word is proclaimed in that painting So occasionally we'll just look at that painting and just see things from it Yeah Fra Angelico, you know lots of people who are more modern and look at pieces of medieval art Say well, it's not very real realistic I mean she really would have been born in a very poor place and that doesn't look like a stable or even a house in Nazareth or anything like that He wasn't trying to paint Literally the realism. He was trying to paint exactly What really happens spiritually? So if you like what is going on as We begin to do any catechesis or as you hear the word of mass is that painting That is what's really going on and that's what he was trying to paint for us So we might just look at some of those elements So the enunciation is the center What I want to do then is just to look at the handout I gave you Which is the account of the enunciation and just see what we can learn from it About how the word is received and how it's handed on from this So I'll just read through as you note anything at all if you've got a pen or a pencil If you begin to note anything at all which you think is important Just underline it or mark it about How is we've got two figures here and clearly one of them is handing on the word And imagine if you were given that assignment by God to be Gabriel at that point Everything depends on whether or not you can hand on the word well at this key point Because at this point it's got to be handed on so amazingly That our lady can learn how to receive it fully for the sake of the salvation of the world So I mean Gabriel is a pretty amazing person Okay, so we're going to look at what went on here just read through it mark up anything you see and I'll just begin to go through some of the key things In the sixth month The angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth To a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David and The Virgin's name was Mary and he came to her and said hail full of grace. The Lord is with you But she was greatly troubled at the saying and Considered in her mind. What sort of greeting this might be and the angel said to her do not be afraid Mary For you have found favor with God and behold you will conceive in your womb and Bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus He will be great and You will call and will be called the son of the most high and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever and Of his kingdom there will be no end and Mary said to the angel How can this be? since I have no husband and The angel said to her the holy spirit will come upon you and The power of the most high will overshadow you Therefore the child to be born will be called holy the son of God and Behold your kinswoman Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son and This is the sixth month with her who was called baron For with God nothing will be impossible and Mary said Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord Let it be to me according to your word and The angel departed from her now what an amazing passage is one we've heard so often and For yourselves, you know when I read that through every time I read it through I'm more interested in some bits than in others So do what I now do notice the bits where you just thought not quite so interested Because that's where learning needs to take place Where did you find it not quite as important for understanding what we're learning? What I've learned is once you start doing that It's so incredible the learning because you make breakthroughs you never thought of it becomes the most exciting form So I want to hop a bit between the teaching and the learning as we walk through this because there are these two figures Aren't there one is teaching one is learning If you were a group of catechists and those of you who are parents of course at the prime catechists So for all of you who are the prime catechists Learning how Gabriel handles himself is one of the most amazing things to do Because how do we hand on the fullness of revelation? Not just a bit, but the whole thing and for all of us whether we're parents or not Or catechists or not or priests or not We're all Mary aren't we? Because we're all called to try to receive the word And the order for us as teachers and learners is always the learner than the teacher, isn't it? some of you may know there's a quite a well-known saying of Bernard of Clairvaux and He said there are too many people In the church who are trying to hand on the word to others who are like channels rather than And so what he meant by that was you know how you just think you just hand it on You just whatever you hear you just hand it on he said if we do that not only do we ourselves not benefit From it and we should always be the first beneficiaries of our own teaching But at the same time the teaching never comes really from us out of the depth from which it needs to flow And he said would that more of God's people were like reservoirs and again, this is why I Just think this is so important. You're coming to be a reservoir and that If I'm Gabriel at this very moment, and you're Mary the role of Mary and the church is the most important and It takes a lot of hard work to become a reservoir that receives well and He said what should happen is when something is given we receive it until it naturally spills over so we often talk about how do we come better evangelists and better catechists and What Bernard says is it should be entirely natural? There is no need whatsoever to train for this in one sense Most of what happens is we prevent ourselves from becoming the catechist or the teacher we could You know if I meet a stranger somewhere and they ask me what I do my first instinct is to tell them I'm a teacher and Not to reveal any more than that You know if you're sitting there somebody on the plane and you suddenly say if I were to say to them I Am a person who thinks that belonging to Jesus Christ is the most important thing in life, and that's what I do I try to help others do that You have so given yourself away that there's no going back and the person will ask to move their seat And I have had somebody occasionally who's asked to move their seat Because occasionally I'm brave enough to say what I do But on the whole if you're a reservoir it comes out In other words you don't I taught my children to sing grace before meals They didn't realize they're not supposed to do that in a crowded restaurant They never learned not to proclaim what was natural and it was only their father who hid when that happens Do you see what I mean or had to go for a moment you know to me so on the whole Being an evangelizer or a catechist should be spilling over from the reservoir shouldn't it if we've really received the Lord It's just natural There's nothing more we need. We just don't stop. We don't put a an artificial boundary on it So that's what in a way whether you're a God That's basically we just have to learn to receive well, and if we receive really well Christ becomes the center of our lives and we will overflow. It's as simple as that So but let's have a look at what Gabriel does and what our lady does So the first thing If you're Gabriel whenever you are saying the word word. And this is something a lot of the Catholic faith is just believing what we know is true. Okay so we believe that God governs everything so there's no accidents so in our life he's providentially overseeing things. If you are here and you meet somebody you know that God has allowed that to happen. And he's allowed it to happen and we know this is also true because anything that's allowed is because of the good that can come from it. So every single encounter to this extent is meant to be in the sense that God allows it for the good that can be drawn from it. If there wasn't that situation God never allows that to be. So not only are we meant to be here at the conference but God actually has deliberately wanted each one of us to be in relationship to each other for the good that can come from it. For all of us and we know that's true because that's what the faith teaches. So whenever we're in a situation and somebody as it were we have a word to give or we're a parent with our child and we have a word to give we are sent from God at that point. Catechesis the word catechesis means to echo and as you know an echo is not the original sound. I've never been to the Grand Canyon but when I go to the Grand Canyon I presume it's the most catechetical place you could ever be and I'm going to try and give an amazing echo and see what happens. So an echo works through depth doesn't it? A good echo that's why you have to be a reservoir you have to be you have to have depth. John Paul said for the for the third millennium he said the phrase I want every single Catholic to have in their mind is called Duke in Alton. It's from Luke chapter 5 verse 1 put out into the deep. He said that's the phrase I want every Christian to have. He said there will not be any Christians who do not have prayer lives that have not taken over the whole of their life in the third millennium because that's the situation we're going into. Unless your prayer has taken over your life you cannot survive any more. So we're going into the deep and a catechesis is always given from the deep to a deep to another deep because John Paul said you don't catch people in the shallows you only ever catch them in the deep and a lot of catechetics for a long time didn't think I'm sent from God for a particular mission they just thought we just need to have a good time and make it enjoyable but that doesn't catch anybody for Christ it needs to be the reservoir overflowing from that. So not trying to be over serious is not about being serious it's a matter of actually being realistic about the importance of Christ in our lives. So sent from God that's who we are now look at this look at this then description where is the person sent to to a city of Galilee named Nazareth to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name is Joseph of the house of David and the virgin name was Mary it's incredibly precise and one of the things again the church says it's the other side of the coin that the person to whom you're speaking I know we're all in a group now but from God's point of view you're not a group we know that you're not a group at all God knows each person so completely we know from Ephesians he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world and that's what the church calls the personal vocation so he chooses each person is unrepeatable and I always think I always tell my catechists to tell people about the the incredible teaching of the guardian angel because if we're going to be addressed by an angel here angels the church said are created at the beginning of time so if you look at the catechism 325 to 327 on the teaching of when are angels created in relation to the human person what does God do first he creates two orders of being he creates the material order he creates the angelic order all of the angels are created together and then after billions of years he creates the human person so all guardian angels are created billions of years before us and the guardian angel the church teaches has the specific role of looking after one individual person and so the guardian angel has been waiting I don't know how guardian angels wait or what kind of time zone they're in but we're we're told again they're not eternal they're created being so they're in some kind of time but guardian angels have been waiting in their time zone the church doesn't define it but you know lots of people talk about it until each one of us was born our guardian angels because the church is teaching again is God doesn't reuse guardian angels and so it's an incredible teaching of an angelic being who's obviously a higher kind of being than us waiting until the moment this is specific as our lady that they can guard guide govern and enlighten each one of us and that's there that's their job in life and once you realize because I really like that because it helps to make precise God's choice of us I mean he chose us before the foundation of any creation so in the mind of God we go back into eternity don't we even though we're only created now from God's point of view we go back before the foundation of the world the guardian angel is given to us at the beginning of the foundation of the world the way in which God has planned this moment and every moment to be the place where you can receive the goodness he wants to give and the way in which that has been providentially made possible has been something thought about from the foundation of the world so it's it's I think that this particularity here really helps to see Gabriel's just doing something which is common to every one of us which is why catechesis we can learn from that okay so he was sent to Petrock Willie at a particular time in the aerobics room right in July 2019 and he was married to these four children and this is the moment he chose to speak that is what God does and that's what the guardian angel is overseeing and making sure is taking place and catechesis is never an accident that picture is so literally true you could never paint the spiritual glory of what takes place when the word is handed on because it's not a subject God's revelation isn't like a subject like mathematics or geography it is the divine life itself because we know his full revelation is himself God is communicating himself and who he is and finally it's the whole literally of himself which is going to be given to us and what we just received at mass is exactly the whole of himself how do we ever learn that how do we ever learn that we've just received in the host what our lady received there's a lot of learning to do isn't there so we really you know we beg our lady just to help us see how do I learn to receive Christ so I really appreciate him well thank you for thank you for the angel thank you for giving me an angel to remind me of that just of the fact that I have been thought of by you in that incredible way so let's see now how the angel addresses her and we know our mayor our lady is immaculately conceived so our lady is unique just as this moment is unique the incarnation he came to her or as the Greeks that came into her in others he entered into her world he entered into her life he came into her he doesn't when you're giving the word you don't stand at a distance from the person in other words you know when you're a parent and you want to say something to your children about the faith you want them you want to get inside and under their skin so you can communicate it well that's what the angel does he came into her situation he came into know and to empathize and to know who she was that's the way he speaks so it's a kind of a style of catechesis look at the angel in the picture Frangelico paints it as the angel who's the higher being now bends the knee before our lady he comes in he stoops and that's the kind of that's the way in which a catechist always approaches somebody they're teaching because the person they're teaching is the person they're supposed to be serving on behalf of God at that moment and they need to be very respectful of that point okay and says hail full of grace the Lord is with you which we might think is just kind of our and our lady thing you know what I mean that the angel will not say hail full of grace to us what's the church is teaching on the life of grace the life of grace baptism what happens to us we're given that the the life of grace in our soul we're not immaculately conceived but we're given the life of grace fully whenever you're in other words whenever you're speaking to somebody who is a Christian who has been baptized unless they're immortal sin and in which case all they have to do is go to confession and receive absolution and they are then full of grace we know that that sacrament is the restoration of baptism in the soul every person you speak to is full of grace it's true isn't it I mean we don't know I don't know you know we can only know our own soul and God knows that with us but that is the state the Christian should be in the first paragraph in the Catechism on how do you live well as a Christian it's in number 1691 begins with Saint Leo the Great it says Christian recognize your dignity that's the very first sentence and what you really want to say to anybody to whom you're communicating the faith is do you know what your true self is you because often you say we should speak to people whether where they are well where they are is in the life of the Blessed Trinity that's where they are most of the problems of receiving the word is that people do not think they are living in the Blessed Trinity that's most of the problems they've never really thought okay that's where that's where I am now that you've been rescued from the kingdom of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of light do not return to your former base condition by sinning that's 1691 you've be you've been brought into the kingdom of light now that's where you are you may not feel you're in a kingdom of light that's completely irrelevant you are a composite of spirit and body and often your body you've got a bad appetite you don't mean you're feeling down today that is a psychological feeling where are you really spiritually what you need to claim for yourself that you live in the heart of the Trinity that you're there and when somebody addresses you they're addressing somebody who is full of grace full of the life of God and I don't experience that but that's not a problem because sometimes I do and I ask God to let me in his mercy feel it sometimes and as soon as I do of course the gloves are often my life is changed and I'm like a reservoir spilling over so my life changes at that point but I need to ask the Lord just to let me occasionally experience what it's like to live like that because that's what I'll be like living in a life of eternal loving happiness forever yeah and that's where God's placed me and from the foundation of the word he wanted me there so that's the angels addressing us is how we address anybody who's going to be receiving the word and she was troubled and I think in a way it troubles us because the Christian life troubles us by its hope as much as it does by anything else because by the truth of what it says about who we are we cannot remain the same none of us can stay where we are once we know the truth okay our life has got to change I've got to live like that then if that's the truth and I'm going to live forever and God has placed me there then my life needs to change I need to begin living like that do you see what I mean and taking it seriously and thanking God for that every day and calling upon him when I needed so she's troubled she's considering in her mind what this greedy might be key thing is the church never asks us just to have faith she wants us to understand catechesis must be about helping somebody understand we've been given a mind so that we have a Catholic understanding that's why you come to the conference lots of what we receive here it's a it's a high level actually isn't it what we're receiving here is demanding we get some of it when Scott Hahn speaks to us we get about one word in every 20 years and he never slows down he seems to have an extra pair of lungs just for speaking so whatever that's like so we need obviously we're trying to understand and that is what our lady wants us to receive it's not a matter just of saying I have faith the natural thing we do is we try to receive through our understanding that's what God wants us to do he wants us to because it's that secure then all of these truths which I'm saying there are different there are different things because you might say to me okay what you just said about guardian angels okay I think I'm getting it I understand it that's the first thing my mind has grasped its truth I've got it so now where do I need to go with that okay so the understanding look at the second thing our lady says how can this be since I have no husband the second thing that our minds needs to become convinced of is actually not about understanding it's about whether or not the message really is for me how can this be I've taught so many people and when I see them zone out in a talk and I you can always tell you when you're talking to somebody and you can see that they're not disagreeing with you but they're no longer going to listen you know that moment you can see it and you think what's happening there and the person has decided what you're saying is not for them for some reason and for most people who you try those of you I mean talking to your children it's not for them because whatever you've just said how can this be I am not on the same page as you I don't disagree with what you're saying but I have no desire for that I do not want that I'm not interested in that I have no husband okay in other words I have no natural means of getting to the place you've just spoken about and therefore what you've said has saddened me in a way it's saddened me because it would be beautiful if it were true I once had somebody who I knew who wasn't a believer used to sing in the local church choir and she one day she had a bereavement somebody very close to her and she said to one of the other choristers do you know what I wonder sometimes I think if only all the things I would sing were actually true and of course the other chorister realizing the Gabriel moment right said well of course they are true and that's all the person needs sometimes all you need to do rather than say yes wouldn't it be nice if it was you just say okay you suddenly are open to the thought that you wish it were true you just sung about all these things and it is true and that person found their way in through the RCA into the church and you never know when you're being called to be the Gabriel moments for someone but the question is typically maybe I don't understand how can this be she's troubled more often is how can this be because if you knew my family situation or if you knew my life you'd realize mmm that's something that's unlikely in other words you see the natural you don't see the supernatural moment so what's Gabriel's response he doesn't try and say okay we'll get your husband that's best thing though let's get you something useful for this he says the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the most high will overshadow you therefore the child to be born will be called holy the Son of God the answer is to when people say how can this be is not that I will sort your life out and this is where the catechist or the teacher or the parent has got to have faith because at this moment that's why Gabriel needs to know he knows the power of God I mean Mary just sees a human situation which is a problematic one Gabriel's Gabriel is gazing upon the face of God all the time if you're in the reservoir you just know okay okay God will sort this out God has this in control he's actually the creator of you he allows this situation he never allows anything to happen in your life he can't sort out he doesn't have problems he's not frightened of your sins as you think he doesn't think you are a very difficult person and very complex okay he's actually created you and he knows what to do with the situation and the word that's used here is precisely the word that's used for the overshadowing of the Ark of the Covenant for that when it says the hope the power of the most high will overshadow you at this point God will be so present to you that he will be fully present in you so that what is in you will be the most holy thing God himself will overshadow you the Holy Spirit will come upon you and of course that's where our lady then hears that what the angel says for nothing is impossible with God that's the kind of the key thing he says to her nothing is impossible with God which is meant in two different ways first of all God can do anything in somebody's life and secondly it is impossible for him to do nothing in any situation and again the church teaches this in every situation we're in it would be impossible for God not to be working for our good he doesn't he can't not do that that is his nature so for God nothing is impossible and that in catechesis is the point somebody is brought to notice the angel doesn't give her a five-point plan he doesn't say okay what you now need to do okay you hear what's just about to happen because the angel simply announces God's intentions the angel doesn't say that she needs to do anything at all and in catechesis one doesn't proclaim the gospel that this is now the moral requirements of what you need to do the angel announces the good news of Christ's action and the Holy Spirit's overshadowing and Mary says okay and then the angel leaves her because what the what God wants the person to do is for him to tell the person Mary will find that out often when we're trying to we're trying to impart the word we try to make the plan for the person and the Gabriel doesn't do that because Gabriel knows that once somebody is open to the word of God that's all that is necessary they trust the power and goodness of God and then their lives begin to change so that's that's the point so Mary's fiat Mary's be it done to me is if you like the perfect act of faith which Gabriel needed to assist and how does he help that and we're getting to I know we're running out of time gosh we needed hours for this and I'm really sorry we needed a lot longer so many things I want to say about this I'm not getting to but one of the things I want to just point out how Gabriel helps to get to this point is he alerts Mary to the action of God I was always really interested that the whole of the dating of the Annunciation is according to the pregnancy of Elizabeth I just thought that was such a remarkable thing that it's in the sixth month and I was used to think oh it's in June well it's natural isn't it why it might be June anyway I thought that for months I years I used to think it was June so it was a sunny day but it's not of course as you read down it's the sixth month is the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy so in the sixth month of that event so God dates his incarnation to the pregnancy of Elizabeth now why is that so important for the incarnation it's because as soon as Mary hears what happened to Elizabeth which is somebody in their old age and I love this as well because in England the new evangelization is a very nice phrase for the apostasy of a culture new evangelization means a culture has now turned away from the Lord and needs to be re-evangelized and that's the state of Europe most of Europe and so this is the new evangelization and in Europe Christianity is old Christianity is like Elizabeth she's Baron okay it's like an old tree stump and one of the things that it's really good to know and I always think about in England is what when do you plant an oak tree the sturdiest tree of all you always plant it in winter not in spring because you plant an oak in winter because that forces the roots to go deep and then you get a good sturdy trunk if you plant it in the spring it doesn't survive and England is a winter and what's being planted there at the moment is like Elizabeth it's the Baron one who needs to put down very deep roots so that she can receive and rejoice when Christ the young child is brought to her and the babe will leap in her womb and she'll give birth to something and that's what happens in cultures which are old they they think of themselves as old and that's how we can think of ourselves as we get old we think you know God's not gonna do anything now you're not pretty old okay one of my students when I first came one of my really nice one said do you know you're like the father I wish I had which was very moving for me and then last year one of them said you're like the grandfather right so I almost hit him but anyway so that's anyway that's what happens is as you get older do you know your soul is harder to save I think your soul is harder to save it's a harder thing you're not in the spring of youth you think you know everything in this sense you don't think change is going to be possible much now I'm very fortunate that my parents went through a kind of seconds conversion when they're in their 60s and that was such a moving thing for me to see that they themselves suddenly rediscovered the Lord they always believed in him but they rediscovered him so that he became such a living center of their lives they were an inspiration and you just you know when you're with people all the time you don't feel you can show them and you you they already know you and you a new person they have the innocence of children and the courage to become new at that stage they're like Elizabeth in her old age she was barren she suddenly got a child and when Mary sees that happening to Elizabeth she she's her fiat is there I'm the handmaid of the Lord so one of the things we get used to or we need to get used to as people handing on the faith is tell people where you see the Lord acting whether it's in your own life or in somebody you know I've just told you about my parents because what people what people respond to is they believe because God is working there and I can see it yes you've pointed that out I sometimes stand in the supermarket queue and I and I look at somebody a long queue and somebody at the front of the queue is arguing about a price and ask you for to be you know re-labeled or something and you suddenly watch everybody in that supermarket line becoming very patient and that's one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit and once you start looking for the Holy Spirit acting in people's lives it's just incredible where it is aren't you see you're all being patient at the moment look at the Holy Spirit came moving in this room producing his fruits of love and gentleness and patience and kindness and once you start looking like that and pointing it out to other people they can see God working as well and working as miracles and people's lives so that's one of the Gabriel does he witnesses is to the miracle as well we to be able to learn we need to learn to look for God's action then let life become the teacher for how he's moving in people's lives let us learn that well it's almost five o'clock I can't believe this is something I I was thinking I was getting through a lot more and tell you all about this wonderful painting as well Fran Jellico has painted everything spiritually that this passage is about he's got our lady in the position of the fiat she's there as the seat of wisdom the lit there's a little curl back on the carpet which represents the revelation that's being given to her there's a curtain being pulled back so she can see what this means for the whole of her life she's being given that insight and she's saying yes and there's the whole story of salvation down the left hand side of that painting from Adam and Eve all the way down to redemption so there's loads of there's loads there we can talk about which really also walks us through this and it's painting you can sit and meditate upon and ask our lady to help you learn how to learn so we just end with a hail Mary so Mary we just thank you for being with us we thank you for every moment of the day being with us never leaving us for one second we thank you for being a mother to us in our faith and for having been the one who learned so well everything that the Heavenly Father wanted to give you and to teach you and to gift you with help us just to realize the preciousness of our own lives that we've been chosen from before the foundation of the world that we come from the heart of God help us really to believe that so we become more like reservoirs for other people help us marry in the way that only you know how because you have learned everything God wants to teach and so we pray hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with thee blessed are thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus only Mary mother of God pray for us sinners now under the hour of our death amen thank you everybody