 And you all know that's not true. It's so good to be here. It's so good to be together and to really feed upon the word of God, which is the bread of life. As we begin our time this evening, I want to make you aware of one of the reasons why I was absent this morning for most of the session, because there is, how shall I say this, a secular cable station on our campus today filming for a documentary on renewal in the Catholic Church in America. And I was interviewed for more than an hour and a half. I thought I gave them about 35 minutes, but I ended up giving them a whole lot more. I won't identify the secular cable network, except that it has three letters. And I won't tell you which ones they are, because that'll give it away. They might even be here tonight, but I want to thank them for their hard work in coming out here, and I really hope that they continue seeing what is going on in our midst. A lot of the questions had to do with what's been happening in the Catholic Church for the last 50 years, because as you know, we're getting ready to celebrate the great jubilee of Divine Mercy, starting on December 8th of this year and going all the way through the end of the liturgical calendar for 2016. And why that particular date, because that will mark the 50th anniversary of the conclusion of Vatican II. And so a lot of the questions had to do with the decline in the apparent secularization of many Catholics in America. And I think that's interesting, but at the same time, you know, while questions emerged about Laudato Si, which came out last month, I wanted to point out to them the fact that there really is an easy way to see the continuity, not only from Pope Benedict II, Pope Francis, but from Vatican I to Vatican II. I can recall being a Protestant in a doctoral program studying the documents of Vatican I, then the documents of Vatican II, and I had a feminist theologian who was trying to spin it in a way that showed the rupture, that Vatican II marked a revolution. And the more closely I read in her doctoral seminar and another doctoral seminar that was led by a former priest, the more I came to the conclusion that no, it's really the same faith. Okay, Vatican II is more personalistic, it's more pastoral in tone, it's soaked in scripture, but when I read Vatican I or Vatican II, it's the same Catholic faith. I said for me as a Protestant, it feels like a brick only with Vatican II, it's like a velvet covered brick, but it still hits as hard. So there is a way to understand what God is doing in history that represents his faithfulness and continuity. And I would say that's especially important for us because of how so many people get their news not from the gospel. That's where we ought to get the news, the good news, but so often it is these media outlets that have a way of reducing everything down to sound bites or to some sort of spin that might advance a political agenda. But as you know, ever since March of 2013, Pope Francis has carried the baton in a way that is distinctively his own style and yet it's clearly in continuity with his close compatriot, Pope Benedict XVI, who is now the Pope Emeritus. One of my favorite documents that he published at the very beginning of his ministry is the Light of Faith, Lumen Fidei, which came out on June 29, 2013, the same day as the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, who were, as you know, the two principal evangelizers of the first century. And it's a fitting date, I think, for the Church to receive an encyclical from the hands of the two principal evangelizers of the 21st century. For in fact, in the introduction, Pope Francis talks about this encyclical as being unique because it is the work of forehands, not just two, his own two, as well as his predecessor's Benedict. And when you look carefully at the document, you can feel the depth and the beauty of the truth and the continuity. And you can see how fitting it was for those two men to do it together, just like Peter and Paul did it together back in the first century. They were both remarkable men back then, model Christians, model evangelizers. They were, however, very different from each other in personality, in temperament, and style, in pastoral methods, and theological approach, and everything else. And yet, the differences did not lead to a diversity or conflict, but really complementarity. And not only back in the first century, but also in the 21st century where we see that same kind of continuity, we see the same complementary, we see the same collaboration. And back then, it launched one of the greatest human transformations in history, and I would propose to you that it's happening again. John Paul, as you know, developed this theme of the new evangelization, and he clarified what he meant. It wasn't as though the church had stopped evangelizing for centuries. No, the church continually sends out evangelizers in every age to those people who've never heard of Jesus, but the new evangelization is needed now to re-evangelize the decristenized, the secularized, not only those in Eastern Europe who suffered as his fellow Poles did from the Communists, but also those who have been secularized through the materialism of consumerist capitalism. But I think it's really significant that in this document, The Light of Faith, Pope Benedict and Pope Francis sound this note about what the crisis of our age is. And it's a crisis whereby people have forgotten the faith and really neglect the idea of truth. They say in Article 25, in contemporary culture, we often tend to consider the only real truth to be that of technology. Whatever makes life easier and more comfortable. And then they go on to say that in the end, we're left with relativism, reminiscent of what then Cardinal Ratzinger described as the dictatorship of relativism. And then they identify more specifically the root of the problem and why it is that the question of God is no longer even relevant. We can speak, they say, of a massive amnesia in our contemporary world. The question of truth is really a question of memory, deep memory. I really like that section because it identifies what really has become not only common, but almost universal. And that is the loss of memory, the loss of deep memory or what they characterize as massive amnesia. Now, when we're talking about memory here, we're talking about an idea in the Christian tradition that goes beyond what we usually mean by the term memory. When we use the word memory, we often just reduce it to what enables us to recall what we wore yesterday or what we had last night for dinner. But in the Christian tradition, memoria is much more than just a sensible faculty whereby you remember past events and this sort of thing. Memoria is something that is much more deeply embedded in our soul. For example, when Saint Augustine identified the analogy of the Holy Trinity within the soul of each human who was made in the image and likeness of God, he identified it in terms of memoria, understanding, and will. That memoria is sort of like the father in the trinity of the soul. And as you read him in the Confessions, Book 10, or in his work on the trinity, you begin to get a sense that by memoria he means something much more and that this is exactly what Benedict and Francis are referring to. Because without memory, I couldn't remember what I wore yesterday or what I ate last night. But I mean, without memoria, I couldn't finish the sentence. I wouldn't recall what it was I set out to say when I began with the initial words. Without memoria, I wouldn't even know why you're here or why I'm up here. But I do. I know who I am and I know who we are and I know why we're here because memoria is really what places us in the world and in relationships. It's the means by which we don't just recall past events, but who we are in the present. And so as Kimberly mentioned, in just about 24 days, we're gonna be celebrating our 26th anniversary, right? No, our 36th anniversary, just testing you. And we do that as a family and not only the haunts, but all of us celebrate this sort of thing because when we celebrate a birthday or anniversary, we're not just remembering, we're commemorating. It isn't as though when we celebrate a birthday, one particular day of the year, we forgot that the kid was born all the other days. No, it's a celebration, it's a consecration. It is sort of a way of reinforcing who we are in these commitments that we call covenant relations. And that is why it is important for us to overcome massive amnesia and recover deep memory because we've gotta figure out what do we do in order to strengthen memory? What do we do in memory of him? And it's not just in the new covenant where we hear the words of institution. It's in the old covenant where we hear the decalogue. You know, the decalogue, the 10 commandments were divided up into two tables. The first three deal with our relationship to God. The last seven are relations with our fellow humans. But the third in the first table is remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. And it goes on to describe how you remember it. It's not just by waking up Saturday morning and circling that particular day on the calendar in the week. No, it's commemorating, it's prayer, it is worship, it is gathering, it is thanksgiving, it is praise because on that day we don't just fulfill our contracts, that's what the other six days are for. On that day, we renew a covenant. And in the process, we renew our own identity as being more than creatures, we are children of God. In the old covenant and in the new, we have this significant activity that we call memorializing, commemorating. It's not just recalling what happened in the past, it's also recognizing what is present. Who is present in the Eucharist? I'm convinced that this is part of the problem. This might be the biggest part of the problem when it comes to all of the recent findings regarding the loss of faith among American Catholics. And I was also interviewed about this earlier today. And I would say to you what I said to them, and that is for many American Catholics, they're sort of like nine-part American and one-part Catholic. And that might sound patriotic, but in fact, it's not. The greatest gift we can give to this land that we love is our faith lived out more fully because nothing will bless this country and all the others as much as that. And yet the statistics are disturbing. The percentage of adults who identify themselves as Christians has declined almost 8% in the seven years from 2007 to 2014. The percentage of adults who now identify themselves as atheist, agnostic, or quote, nothings, unquote, has increased 6%. And you can also see that 51 million Catholic adults today is three million fewer than in 2007. But not just among Catholics, Christian affiliation across the board is drastically declining, especially among young adults. Only 16% of adults aged 18 to 24 identify themselves as Catholic. And of all the denominations in religious groups, Catholics have experienced the biggest loss through religious switching, as the survey calls it. 31.7%, almost one third of American adults say they were raised Catholic, but 41% no longer identify themselves as Catholic. And 12.9 are former Catholics while only 2% of American adults have converted to Catholicism, although those numbers are increasing. Now, in many ways this is alarming. In many ways this seems like, wow, a new turn. And so I wanna read to you a quote, listen carefully. At the present time, more than in any preceding age, Roman Catholics are seen to lapse into infidelity while Protestants are converting to Roman Catholicism. And so if you consider Catholicism within its own organization, it seems to be losing. But if you consider it from the outside, it also seems to be gaining. And this isn't difficult to explain for the people of our day are disposed to unbelief. But as soon as they have any religion or faith, they find themselves drawn towards Catholicism. They feel a sort of admiration for its discipline and the great unity of worship and of doctrine. An organization attracts them and then it goes on. I've hardly any doubt, but that the same spirit of the age which appears to be so opposed to the faith would become favorable and suddenly witness a sudden advancement. I'm inclined to believe that our posterity will tend more and more to a division into only two parts. Those who relinquish Christianity entirely and those who return to the Catholic Church close quote. Who am I quoting? Not the Pew research findings, but Alexis de Tocqueville who wrote in 1840, Democracy in America. As a classical liberal of the 19th century, he came over here from France to study our culture. He saw something unique. But what he describes 175 years ago could have been written yesterday. We tend to think that the crisis that we find ourselves in is so ingenious of it's completely unique when in fact it really is the same old same old. It's been this way for a long time. Now I realize, and I heard it again this morning in the delightful conversation that I had with the fellow named Bill, pray for him. He's just, we really struck it up and I really hope to stay in touch. But the point that he was making at the beginning was to set up a contrast between what it was like in the 50s and the 60s when the seminaries and the convents were all filled to overflowing. And when Bishop Fulton Sheen was winning Emmys, when JFK won the White House, when we seemed to kind of arrive as American Catholics, it was sort of like Camelot. A kind of Arthurian legend that was actualized in her own lifetime. And this continued up until the assassination in Vatican II and its aftermath. But I said you've gotta be careful when you make comparative judgments because what is your standard? If your standard is the 1950s and 60s and you're regarding that as the norm because that's the way it normally is and was you're really falsifying history because as a matter of fact when you compare what was going on in America after World War II with the GI Bill with the great success of all of these immigrant Catholic parents who had raised large families and lots of kids who went off to war and came back and got schooling, it was like we've arrived and America's welcoming us. They're giving us awards and primetime television and even the Oval Office. And in the process, not only did we end up acclimating ourselves to an increasingly secular American culture, but we also tend to forget that that was an extremely unusual period, not only in American Catholic history, but in church history for the last 2000 years. When you go back and look at the church and what it underwent in terms of persecution from various secular forces with an American culture in the 1870s, 80s and 90s, or the 1920s and 30s through the 40s, you'll recognize that this is really the norm and that the 50s and 60s were really an unusual period, truly the exception. We have to recover memory, deep memory, and overcome our amnesia, but that's not enough. What we have to do is to reinforce that spiritual memory whereby we become more aware of the presence of Christ, where sin abounds, St. Paul reminds us, grace abounds, all the more. And we know that from our own experience when the darkness gets deeper, the light shines much more brightly. And so we will have opportunities to lament, to complain, to criticize, to wring our hands and fight the temptation to despair, but on the other hand, we are also going to witness opportunities to grow in hope and to see God work in new ways. Now in addition to those statistics that came out from the Pew Research Center, I wanna share with you some other ones that I got from a good friend of mine, Steve Wood, who is the founder of St. Joseph Covenant Keepers. He pointed out to me some statistical studies that were conducted by the Southern Baptist Convention recently. And the results are truly remarkable because I think they really pertain to who we are as Catholics in America and what we're doing with the new evangelization and what it's gonna take to turn this train around as it were. One set of findings are as follows, that if a child is the first in a family to become a Christian, to experience the grace of conversion, there's a 3.7% probability that the rest of the family members will follow. But that quadruples, if the mother is the first in the family to become a Christian or experience the grace of conversion, there's a 17% probability that the rest of the family will follow. But get this, if the father is the first in the family to experience the grace of conversion, there is a 93% probability that the rest of the family will follow. Wow. The study shows that the one overwhelmingly critical factor is the religious practice of the father. Dads really end up determining not only the faith of the family but the worshiping habits of their children for a lifetime. And thus for eternity. The second set of statistics. If a father doesn't go to church, no matter how devout and faithful his wife might be, only one child and 50 will worship regularly for the rest of his or her life. Yet, if the father goes to church regularly, regardless of the mother's practice, between two thirds and three quarters of their children become churchgoers for the rest of their lives. If the new evangelization is gonna succeed, brothers in Christ, it is going to be up to us and not just to our sisters in Christ. If the new evangelization is gonna flop, you will know why in advance. There's a crisis in manhood. There's a crisis in fatherhood. It comes long before a crisis over the legal definition of marriage. And of course, we're all so aware of the confusion that has come as a result of the Supreme Court and of all the politicians who have suddenly seen the light. Just parenthetically, I think that politicians are a lot like diapers. They need to be changed frequently and for the same reason. And yet, Kimberley is running for Steubenville City Council. Thank God for her and all of you who are gonna take a stand in the public square for what is right, for what is true, for what is good, and for what is beautiful. But as we know from the word of God and we know from our own experience the truth of what St. John Paul said that civilization passes by way of the family. But he wasn't the only one. Pope Benedict said the following. The crisis of fatherhood, which we are living through today, constitutes the heart of the human crisis that is threatening us. This is not a man who's given to hyperbole or exaggeration. Let me say it again. The crisis of fatherhood, which we are living through today, constitutes the heart of the human crisis that is threatening us. I am convinced he has put his finger on what might be the single most important factor for us to discover again who we are. Not only who we are in our families, but who we are in relationship to Almighty God. And I want to talk a little bit about this because the passage for this evening is taken from the book of Romans chapter eight where we read in verse 37 and all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. But who is it that has loved us? Well, in the first part of Romans eight, verses one to 36, what you find is a unique emphasis in this epistle upon the fatherhood of God. And not only the divine sonship of Jesus, but on our status as children of God, not merely creatures who have sinned, not just criminals who have been pardoned, not just convicts who are being rehabilitated, but prodigal sons and daughters who are being brought back home into the fullness of a family that goes beyond Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This is something that I have found has taken me a lot of time to really appreciate because over the course of the last 30 or 40 years in my own study of scripture, I have tended to emphasize the continuity between the old covenant and the new. And especially with the idea of covenant because God is making and keeping a covenant with his people down through the ages of salvation history in a beautiful way, going back to creation where the marital covenant wasn't man-made, it was God-given. It's the primordial form of what it meant to bear the image and likeness of God, let us make man in our image after our likeness, and he made them male and female. And of course he made the animals, the horses and the cows male and female, but nothing is said about their gender differences because that's just biological. But for us it's more. There's a theological mystery in what it means to bear the image and likeness of God going all the way back to creation. Let us make man in our image after our likeness, and he made man male and female. Genesis one. Then in Genesis two, the two become one flesh. And in the process we know that when the two become one, as we discovered 32 years ago, the one they become is so real that we had to come up with a name. I think it was Michael Scott Hahn for our firstborn. And we became three in one, and our oneness was deepened, but so also was the mystery of what it means to bear the image and likeness of God. That's why St. John Paul II says, one cannot truly protect the family without getting to its roots, its profound reality, its intimate nature is the communion of persons in the image and likeness of the divine communion of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. So what does it take in order to recover fatherhood? Well, it's not just going to be legislative, it's not just gonna be political, it's not just gonna be sociological. It's going to end up having to be theological, but not in some abstract conceptual way, but in how we come to experience God as a father. Because throughout the old covenant, he's making and keeping these covenants with the married couple in the garden, and then with the four married couples aboard the Ark of Noah, they formed a household, the covenant kept them one, or the tribe of Abraham who was a chieftain. And when God renewed that with Abraham, he had a tribal family that he was fathering in a sense. And then when the 12 tribes arrived at Sinai, he is now fathering a national family. And when we move from the old to the new, we move from the national family of the Jews to the international family, the word for which international was Catholicos. The Catholic nature of the church of Christ is precisely what is new. It's international, even more, it's universal. It doesn't just include all countries, it reaches all the way from earth to heaven, and includes all of the angels and the saints who are in the presence of God who form this family up there, and there aren't two families, there's one. But this is where I've discovered discontinuity, because as much as I've emphasized the fidelity of God the Father who is faithfully keeping his covenant even when we break it, the fact is when we move from the old to the new, when we discover how the new fulfills the old, there is a profound discontinuity that isn't always seen easily or frequently, or recognized for its significance. For example, in the Old Testament, God is referred to as Father 17 times in the whole Hebrew Bible. In contrast, the term that we translate as Lord that comes from the Hebrew tetragrammaton that we often see as Yahweh, that Hebrew word for the Lord occurs almost 7,000 times. And then the more generic term for God, the divinity, is Elohim, and that occurs approximately 2,600 times. 2,600 times, almost 7,000, in contrast, Father is 17 times. In the Old Testament, we're worshiping the God of our fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but he's not our Father God, not one time. It's mostly figurative or metaphorical. But when we move from the old to the new, when we begin reading Matthew, when we read Jesus' very first public sermon, the Sermon of the Mount, he refers to God as Father 17 times, the grand total in the entire Hebrew Bible. And that's just his first sermon. And he never addresses God by any other term except for Father, and that is over 170 times, and we have nearly 300 references to God as Father. The salutation or designation of God as Father is used more frequently than any other term, except for Theos, but the word Father expresses the nature of God as Jesus has revealed it, because only when the Father sent the Son do we discover that the God of our fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, was a Father long before Abraham existed, from all eternity. In the Old Testament, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. We are the flock that he cares for, but when the shepherd became the lamb of God and take away the sins of the world, then suddenly we entered into a solidarity and a family bond through the new covenant that surpassed the highest hopes and the wildest dreams of the holiest Jews back in the first century. This emphasis upon fatherhood for us is sort of like what's new. I mean, let's move on to something that's interesting. It's sort of like wallpaper you don't notice or white noise that puts you to sleep. But in fact, it's what God Jesus killed as we read in John 5. This is why they sought to kill him because he not only healed on the Sabbath, but he called God Father, thus making himself equal to God. And yet, it tends to bore us. And I would propose that until we come back to the recognition that Jesus didn't simply launch a revolution in the history of world religions by calling God Father in a way that has never been before or since, it isn't just a kind of rhetorical revolution. It is a transformation of our relationship to God. He is the creator of all things. He is the law giver and judge. But only with the incarnation of the eternal Son do we discover that all of the laws go back to the love of a father who is more perfect than any kind of father we've ever known. And this is where the analogy works because on the one hand, throughout the Bible, God gave his people father figures like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob so that they would come eventually to know him for who he is. But he gave them all fathers with flaws like he's given to us so that we would never settle for anything less than the only perfect father, Abba Father. This is what Paul is describing in Romans 8. That the spirit of sonship, that the father sent the son to give us is what enables us to cry out in prayer Abba Father. Not just Pater, the Greek term for father, but Abba, which is the term of endearment used by children. It's like, Papa, what my own grandchildren now call me, much to my paternal delight. God has immeasurably greater delight when we recognize, Lord, I am sinful. I am inadequate. But my sin and my failings and my inadequacies are no match for your love, for your mercy, for your infinite adequacy, where you can make up for all that I lack and you can give me all that I need. This is why the centerpiece of the Sermon of the Mount is the our father. And when you look at the seven petitions and how they're divided up into three that relate to God and the last four, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. It's not as though we're asking for help to make his name holier. No, it's the other way around. We now bear the name of God, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, and we're praying that all those who bear his name might become holy as he is. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. Why? Because the king of the universe is Abba Father. And we don't pray to change his will. We change so, we pray so that he will change our will and conform our mind to the mind of Christ. And only then is it safe to pray those last four petitions which are, give us, forgive us, lead us, and deliver us. And if you look at the Greek, it's somewhat startling because all four of those verbs, all four of our requests are in the imperative. They're basically formulated in terms of a demand. Give us this day our daily bread. Notice it's daily bread, it's not steak and lobster. Give us what we need, not just what we want. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive all of our brothers and sisters who trespass against us. And lead us not in a temptation, deliver us from evil. We can make demands of God because of what Christ has done. And it's not as though Jesus is sort of prying open the lid of this divine Father so that a few mercies can be eked out with the help of his mother. No, everything the Son does, he's imaging the Father. And so the love of the Son for the Father is the same as the love of the Father for the Son. And that isn't a what, it's a who, we call it the Holy Spirit. And he's been poured into our hearts. And there in Romans 8, where we are more than conquerors, Paul refers to the Holy Spirit 17 times like Jesus calls upon God as Father in the Sermon of the Mount. More occurrences there than in all the other 16, the other 15 chapters of Romans. The work of the Father in and through the Son is now being performed by the Holy Spirit in our hearts who causes us to cry Abba, Father. The way that Jesus alone prayed. But what's the only time Jesus ever prayed that way? In Gethsemane, in the Gospel of Mark, we read in chapter 15. 14 and 15 describes not only the institution of the Eucharist but the prayer in Gethsemane where he cries out Abba, Father. There's a passage in the book of Hebrews that I think refers to this. In Hebrews 5, we read in verse 7, that in the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears. What's the only occasion we read about that? Well, in Gethsemane. And he prayed to him who was able to save him from death and he was heard for his godly fear. And then in verse 8, we read something startling. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. Though a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered, yeah. Not in his divine nature, but once he assumed our nature. Once he took what is ours in order to give us what is his, he becomes the son of man so that we can share what it means to be a son of God. Once he does that, then he enters into our weakness and our mortality. Not our sinfulness, but our capacity to suffer. But our capacity to suffer is not all that meaningful. Why? Because suffering without love is worthless. But as he shows us love without suffering, it's just rhetoric or warm fuzzy feelings. What really proves the genuineness of love is the willingness to suffer. And what really transforms suffering into sacrifice is the love by which you suffer. So that he's not losing his life on Good Friday at the hands of the Romans, he is giving his life on Holy Thursday when he takes bread into his own hands and says, this is my body which will be given up for you. He isn't the victim of Roman violence at Calvary. He's the victim of divine love, father's mercy, which he embodies when he says, this is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new covenant poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. That's not just a meal. That's not just the last supper. It isn't just eating one last time before I accept my fate. No, in the Eucharist we've gotta recognize what Jesus was really doing because what Jesus was doing in the Eucharist is a whole lot more than just eating one last supper or accepting his fate. He was transforming his physical suffering and death into a spiritual sacrifice of life-giving love. The Eucharist is the mystery and revelation of God's love and action. It's not just words. It's not just rhetoric. It's not just ritual. The reality is there as the Passover, the new covenant. I've said it before, I'll say it again. If the Eucharist that he instituted was just a meal, then Calvary was just an execution because in the old covenant every Jew understood that the only place a sacrifice could take, could be offered was inside the walls of Jerusalem, inside the Jerusalem temple on top of an altar. And if Jesus is sacrificed far from the temple outside the walls where there were no altars, no devout Jew would have seen that as a sacrifice, not until they recognized that the old was now fulfilled by the new and transformed by the Passover of the new covenant that we call the Eucharist. We have got to see what God the Father has given to us. He's given us more than a memorial meal. He's given to us his own son. The Eucharist is what transforms the execution of Good Friday into the consummation of the sacrifice. Just as Easter Sunday transforms that sacrifice into a sacrament because we can now do this in memory of him and make him present because he's no longer bleeding on the cross. He's no longer buried in the tomb. He is present on our altars. He is present in our tabernacles. He's present on my tongue and yours in Holy Communion. It's one thing to give a token or a sign of love. You know, like a spouse might hand off a wedding ring, but that's just a sign. The proof of real covenant love, the proof of marital devotion is echoed in the words that Jesus speaks to his bride. This is my body which is given up for you, but not really, just symbolically. Kimberly, I don't think that would have satisfied you 36 years ago. We give ourselves to each other, not more than God does, but much less. And in the Eucharist that we are about to witness in this hour of adoration that follows our time together now, we are going to be ushered into heaven. God the Father is going to renew a covenant with his sons and daughters. He's gonna remind us of who we are and he's gonna also show us where he plans to take us. This idea of divine paternity is the key that will unlock all the doors. And if Jesus spoke this way more than anybody else, I think it's significant that never in his public ministry could he ever teach us to recognize that God is our Father except for that one prayer. But throughout the Gospels, in every year of his public ministry, he only employs the language of fatherhood to refer to his own relationship as the son. Not until after the resurrection in John 20, we read in verse 17, where I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. And now through the death and resurrection of Jesus, the new covenant has ushered in a familiarity, an intimacy, an intense degree of communing the likes of which even the prophets couldn't really fathom or appreciate. Father is not just one characterization of God among others, it is the sum and summit of what it means to be in Christ. What it means to share the spirit of sonship. What it means to form now not the family of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but the family of God the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit. What kind of family can God Father, if we believe in God the Father almighty? I know the kind of family I've tried to Father for the last 32 years, I have tried to keep it united in love, in discipline. And I have failed a lot. You can just ask my kids who have never complained about the fact that their Father goes to confession weekly. I need it, I need the medicine of mercy. They do too. But the fact is if I were an all powerful Father, I would not Father several families, that's what scoundrels do. I wouldn't Father several different denominations, much less 35,000, which are numbering now. I would Father one worldwide family and that's what God has done. As a Father through the Son, he has kept his promise on this rock, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And so we read in Romans 8, for as many as are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God, for you have not received a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear. You've received a spirit of adoption, in which we cry out Abba, Father. The same spirit bears witness to our spirit that we are children of God. It's not just what we're called, it's who we are. And if children then heirs, heirs of God on one hand and coheirs with Christ on the other, provided we suffer with him in order that we may be glorified with him. Now wait, Paul, what are you talking about? Verse 17 is sort of the hinge in which this whole discussion turns because he's been talking about God the Father sending the Son to give us the spirit of adoption, to make us sons and daughters, to make us brothers and sisters, to form a divine family, provided we suffer with him in order that we may be glorified with him. Paul, you've gotta be kidding, suffering. Wait a minute, you know, and this is where Romans 8 is what you could describe as contested territory. It's debated because for many Christians outside of our tradition, what Paul is talking about is eternal security. One save, always save. It doesn't matter what you do because you're saved through faith alone. But in fact, Paul is talking about something slightly different, something that is subtle but substantially other than eternal security. He's talking about the assurance of hope. But he recognizes that in fact, when he introduces the notion of suffering, he's introducing something that he knows to be difficult. He knows that we're going to stop him and say, wait a second, suffering. That's what I dread. And I'll be honest, I was just talking the other day with my dear friend Michael Barber who was here for the biblical conference and we were kind of commiserating about all the suffering we've had to go through. Like me, he's married to a gown named Kimberly. And she's gone through five Caesarean sections. My Kimberly has gone through six. And we were talking about all the suffering that we had to undergo. And how when the day arrives, oh, we gotta get up early. And I always ended up driving her to the hospital, you know? And it was always more than one overnight. So I'd probably, I was the one who carried the suitcase. And the paperwork, oh, the paperwork which she ordinarily filled out. But then I would be taken into the surgery, the ER. And I had to get into scrubs and I felt awkward. There was no chair to sit in. Oh, that suffering I had to endure. All that sacrificial love I got to witness. Love is what turns pain into passion. And the covenant is what transforms love into something that is life-giving. Not just at the natural level, but even more at the supernatural level. And so what Paul goes on to say is this, I know that once you hear that you gotta take up your cross, that Jesus didn't do it so that you don't have to. Jesus did it so that through the spirit of Christ, you can now do what you could never do on your own. He says in Romans 8 verse 18, I consider that the sufferings of the present time are not even worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. In other words, if you're looking at the cost, instead focus on the benefits because it's disproportionate. It isn't even worth comparing whatever temporal sufferings afflict us to the eternal weight of glory that awaits us. But if the incomparability argument doesn't work in the very next verse, he advances a second line of argument. For all of creation has been subjected to bondage, to decay. In other words, if you don't like to suffer and who does, if you wanna run from suffering, guess what, you can run, but you can't hide because there is no place in this world where there is not suffering. And if God has designed it that way, not to get even with us for our sin, but to get us back home through our suffering. Because Christ has opened the door whereby suffering becomes a sacrifice when it is united to faith, hope, and love. Just as the Eucharist transformed the execution into the consummation of his own self-giving offering, it isn't just for him, it's also for us. When we receive the Eucharist, when we worship him and his love through the Eucharist, we prepare ourselves to carry whatever crosses he gives us. Jesus didn't just bear a cross, he bestows one on every one of us every single day that we're alive. And whatever suffering we face isn't even worth comparing to the glory, but if we compared and come up bad because we did our math wrong and we decide to avoid it, there is nowhere to hide. It's gonna track us down. The third and final argument, Paul gives us in Romans 8, verse 26, describing how it is that the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. When we're strong, we don't need help, but when we're weak, God sends the Spirit, for we don't even know how to pray as we ought. When I am strong and healthy and happy, I know how to pray. I can do three or four rosaries in a day. I can just pray and study the Bible and just pass the time away. But when I'm afflicted, when I'm suffering, when I'm sick, when I have to go to the hospital to be with my wife who's giving birth to us to say, yeah, I won't go there again. But when we actually do suffer, what Paul reminds us is that God the Father sends the Spirit of the Son so that the Spirit intercedes for us with size too deep for words. He transforms our size and our moaning and our groaning into prayers that penetrate to the very heart of God so that as the only perfect Father, he looks down at his children and he loves us through those afflictions. He doesn't send us suffering in spite of the fact that he loves us, he sends us suffering because he loves us more than we love ourselves. And he knows that we're willing to settle for far too little but he wants us to gain nothing less than glory. No pain, no gain, no cross, no crown. But it is the love of Christ through the Holy Spirit that transforms this pain into the passion of Christ. This is not just Paul in Romans 8 either. I mean, if I had more time, I could just go through all of these passages in Paul and throughout the New Testament. A number of you were here for the Applied Biblical Studies Conference earlier this week, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. We went through Philippians. For his sake, I've suffered the loss of all things and count them as refuse to gain Christ. And there are so many other passages in that book. I'm to be poured out as a libation on the sacrificial offering of your faith. And then in Colossians, I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, for in my flesh, I complete what is lacking in Christ for the sake of his body. It isn't as though Jesus didn't suffer on the cross long enough. We gotta kinda make up the difference. It's that what he went through, he downloads so that we can go through it now so that his resurrection will become ours because Christ has been crucified for us. But what does Paul say in Galatians 1? I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. We find that in Hebrews chapter 2, verse 10, it was fitting that he, God the Father, in bringing many sons to glory should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through suffering. So that through death he would destroy him who is the power of death and deliver us who through our fear of death are subject to the one who has the power of death. So we are delivered from this lifelong bondage of the fear of suffering. This is crucial. I am convinced that we need to understand that there is life that's human. Then there's life that's divine. There's death that's physical, but there's death that is spiritual. First John 5.16 speaks about mortal sin, the sin unto death, Thanatos. Echoing Genesis 2, verse 7, where God said, the day you eat of it, you will surely die. That's actually Genesis 2.17. In Genesis 2.7, God breathed in the atom's nostrils the breath of life. Then 10 verses later said, the day you eat of it, you'll surely die. But when they ate, they didn't die a physical death, but they did die a spiritual death. It was like committing spiritual suicide because we love physical pleasure more than we fear spiritual death. This is a serious problem. We cannot solve it on our own, but we are not on our own. God loves us. From St. Julian of Toledo in the Middle Ages, everyone fears the death of the flesh, but few fear the death of the soul. We're destined to die, and yet we struggle to avoid dying, and yet we're destined to eternal life, and we don't labor to avoid sinning. When we struggle to avoid death, we labor in vain. In fact, the most we obtain is that death might be deferred, but not avoided. If rather we refrain from sinning, our toil would cease, and we would live forever if only we could incite more people, ourselves included, to be greater lovers of eternal life, or at least as much as they are lovers of this life that passes away. But this death that we fear, despite all our resistance, will yet be ours to possess. The question he's putting to us is this, why don't we struggle to avoid sin as much as we struggle to avoid suffering and death? We need to regain a memory, a deep memory, to recognize that when we commit venial sins, we are wounding our souls, breaking the bones of our spirit. When we commit mortal sin, we are snuffing out the life of God in our souls. This is the sin unto death. God the Father is more than capable of pouring out the spirit of Christ to resurrect us from the dead, each and every time. As First John tells us, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. He doesn't say if we confessed our sins 20 years ago when we first came to faith, it's in the present tense. We need to continue confessing because we continue sinning. And as Pope Francis reminds us, we get tired of repenting, but God never gets tired of forgiving us because he's the only perfect Father. This has got to stir up the embers within our hearts so that we can really be ignited by the fire of God's love and then take this cold world that seems to be going so bad and turn it around and enlighten others and inflame the love that has been lost by so many. I remember 30 years ago when I was contemplating the decision to enter the Catholic Church, I was a doctoral student studying under a Jesuit priest, a theologian, and Father Keefe was teaching us a course on religion and culture. We were going through Richard John Newhouse's book, The Naked Public Square, and he was going through his lecture. It was profound, but it was also sort of abstruse. He had his own way, but at one point he sort of interrupted himself and you could tell he wasn't expecting to. He just, he paused for a moment and looked out the window. He'd been talking about marriage and family and the Carter administration and how the White House Congress on Families couldn't even come up with a definition of what family was. And so he said, you know what? If it's up to politicians, ah. But he said, if Catholic couples who are married just lived out the grace of the sacrament, say for 40 years, I daresay the result would be a Christian society, the Catholic transformation of our culture, but I digress. And then he went back to his lecture notes and I didn't hear another word that he said. I just latched on to that. He's right. If we could just tap the treasure and the power of God in the sacrament of matrimony, we could transform our culture in a way that politicians couldn't imagine. Whether we get a majority block or not. It is the power of God's love that is released in our families. You know, that same semester, he also said something to us in that doctoral seminar. He said, you know, for those of you who are Catholic, I wanna encourage you to kind of stop the church from entering into a second marriage. And we didn't know what he was talking about. Then he went on to explain how back in the 30s and the 40s, the Catholic Church in America practically married the Democratic Party. It was pro-family. It was pro-labor. It was anti-communist and all of those things. And it wasn't until the 70s with McGovern and Carter and the pro-abortion policies that we kind of broke and severed that bond. He said, but don't think in entering a second marriage with the Republicans that you're gonna end up happier or holier. We're not Catholics in order to help the conservatives or to help this party or that. We are Catholics because we are God's children. And as Americans, we give to this land that we love the grace of Christ. That was 30 years ago, 25 years ago. Two things happened. I remember when we first moved to Steubenville, we were unpacking the van and I had the Saturday evening free. And so I drove up to the top of the campus hill and I noticed there was a tent packed with almost 2,000 high school kids and there was this priest, a Capuchin, who was addressing them. And at once I realized that's Father Benedict Rochelle. I had never heard him before but now I got my chance. And it was so cool because he had them laughing. He was inspiring them and he was just going on and on about the gospel of Christ and the Eucharist when suddenly he paused. And after a long pause, he looked out and he said, you know, in 50 years I am not going to be here but most all of you will. But he said, I wanna tell you something that in 50 years the only thing that will be left in our country won't be the Congress, it won't be the courts. I daresay it'll be the Catholic Church. That is the one permanent fixture that will endure. I remember sitting in the back of the tent thinking, what is he doing? I mean, talk about a prophet of gloom and doom and they're high school kids for Pete's sake. I mean, why ruin their night? And now 25 years later, I realized he might be right on target. He just went home. Last year I went to his funeral. What a gorgeous and beautiful mass that was. I got to pray by his tomb, but I daresay he wasn't just a kind of negative prognosticator. In another 25 years, who knows what will be left of this country, but the one thing we can be sure of is that Christ will be faithful to the promise. For the sake of his father, for the sake of our family, his family, the gates of hell will not prevail against the church because it is my church Jesus says and I will build it. We're going through a lot, but it's actually quite a little compared to what other Christians have had to suffer. When I got here in 1990, I remember hearing about the loss of our sociology professor, Umberto Belli. He was called to go to Nicaragua because of what had just happened in the elections there. You remember that Daniel Ortega was this Marxist and the Sandinistas were persecuting not only the Catholic church, but all Christians. And then there was this one woman, Violeta Chamorro, who decided to do what was foolish and impossible. She decided to run against Daniel Ortega. And everybody knew, all the experts predicted that it would be a landslide. And there's to make sure Ortega dawned like dungarees, blue jean jacket. He began to hold all of these free concerts at government expense so that they would get out the young votes. He put up billboards where he was in the blue jean jacket. Vote Dan. That's what the billboard said. And it was gonna be a landslide and everybody knew it. But the Catholics and the evangelicals and the Pentecostals got together. And I hear from Ralph Martin and from Professor Belli that they had nightly prayer. They began to fast. They began to implore the heavens for mercies because the suffering, the persecution against the followers of Jesus was only gonna get much worse than it had already been. And in fact, it got so desperate because they knew they would lose. They began to beg God for a sign that he hadn't forgotten them. And then the election came in 1990. And against all odds, against everybody's prediction, Chamorro won and not by a little. The Christians were elated. They couldn't believe that when Catholics and non-Catholics come together to pray, to study the Bible, to fast, to implore the heavens that grace is gonna be poured out upon their land. They were walking around in a state of spiritual shock for days. And I heard from Ralph Martin that a few of the leaders began to wonder. You know, with all the prayer and all the fasting, we asked God specifically for a sign. But here he answered the prayer but never gave us a sign until somebody noticed that dotting the landscape throughout the cities were these billboards that said vote Dan and it had the row and the lever number. It was row five and the lever number was 26. So somebody got the bright idea of turning to Daniel chapter five to read verse 26. Which reads, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end. You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. Brothers and sisters, God wants to heal our land more than we want him to. He is capable of healing our homes, our families, our marriages, our children, our in-laws, our grandkids. And he longs to do it. On the cross he was dying to do it and now that he's risen, he is pouring out the spirit. And all he asks us for tonight is a heartfelt yes. Lord, you can have me. You gave me your life. The least I can do is to return the favor and give you mine along with all my weakness. And that's what we do in Eucharistic Adoration. That's who is present. Talk about overcoming massive amnesia, restoring deep memory when we worship the risen Lord in remembrance of his sacrifice. Through the Eucharist of the New Covenant, we are going to release the power of God, the likes of which we aren't gonna know until our great grandkids read the new chapter in history that the Eucharistic Lord of Lords and King of Kings will rewrite. Remember, it won't really matter who wins the election next time the White House is up. If the Democrats keep it or the Republicans take it back, Christ will still be the Lord of Lords. He is the King of Kings. He is the Lord of history, including our own country and everyone else. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Almighty God, our Father in heaven, we take delight in learning your ways and seeing that you are not only a all-wise and all-powerful creator, a just lawgiver and a holy judge, but you are a merciful Father and that your love has been revealed through Christ, who is so rich in mercy even now that we can be enriched through his poverty, through his righteousness. And in the name of Jesus, we pray for you to pour out the Holy Spirit upon your whole family, upon Pope Francis, upon all of those who celebrate the New Covenant through the Holy Eucharist, but also upon all of our separated brethren, all of the brothers and sisters who love Christ, who are filled with the Spirit, who are looking to find a way to restore unity. Help us to see that you are the one who gives us that oneness as our all-powerful and all-loving Father. Help us to believe and hear us as we pray that family prayer that Jesus taught us. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, amen. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, amen. Saint James, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Thank you, dear brothers and sisters.