Transcription
Hello everyone. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending on where you're joining us from. Welcome to the School of Mary live cynical series. We're blessed today to have with us Reverend Father Joseph Leo Ionuzi, who's actually just just touched down a few hours ago from uh from Italy into the United States. And we're just wondering, Father, if it'd be okay to do this because of the uh, you know, the time difference and the fatigue of uh of travel. So, but he says no, he wants to do it. So, God God has uh fueled Father with the zeal and the strength to do so. So, if uh anyone does see Father uh join, please give me a heads up because you'll probably see him join before I do. That'd be great.
So, we begin as we always do with prayer. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Oh Mary, my mother and teacher, I enroll today in your school. Please teach me to live in God's will moment by moment. Form in me a soul who loves, who obeys, and who glorifies God in all things. Let every heartbeat be a lesson in love and every moment a classroom of grace. Amen. Fiat. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
So, just a joy to come together. Grateful to have awakened today both physically as well as spiritually. And truly blessed to be alive at this time. Truly blessed to be alive at this time. Has anyone seen Father? Okay, just let me know if you do. Um, like I said, um, Father was um, he departed Italy yesterday. He called me from the plane and um said that um tonight 8:00 would be okay. Not quite sure where he's in what time zone in the States, but um, he assured me he would be here. So, we pray and again, we understand if um, if he doesn't, but um, I know he'll make every effort to do so.
Um, for anyone who's not familiar with uh, Reverend Father Joseph Leo Anuzi, um, probably the single point in uh, the School of Mary's um, transformation was because of uh, Father's work, specifically his doctoral dissertation. And if you don't have that, please go on Father's uh website, uh, Living in the Divine Will, and um, get a copy of that. I mean, it's just absolutely fantastic. He um, you know, first of all, it's got the English translation that has abrogation already has approval by the Holy See. Um, not not for the entire 36 volumes, but for the passages that he cites and for the footnotes that he gives us. And he takes it methodically through um, different themes and different aspects from the beginning of this uh, this journey to to the end. It's really fantastic, fantastic uh um resource. Um, again, it's in hard copy, soft copy, and even in ebook. So, all price ranges. And again, Father's not in the in the book selling business. Uh, what he's asking as far as remuneration, uh, monetary exchange for the book, books are just simply to recoup what he's put out to print them and so that he may print even more. So, um, that's just a wonderful thing that we're waiting for.
You know, great time also to have Father, you know, as we entered into this um, season of Lent and we had Ash Wednesday. And we know that Ash Wednesday wasn't just simply the beginning of Lent. It was the invitation to return. And uh, think about that phrase, the invitation to return. God has given us the greatest invitation to return. Uh, we call it here at the School of Mary, because we call it a kindergarten of the Divine Will. We say it's the greatest schoolyard do-over in the history of mankind. God is actually allowing us to call time out to regroup to decide whether we want to go back or not. And then he's giving us the means, the wherewithal, and the directions on how to do that, which is phenomenal. Actually, I mean, again, the saints envied these times that we're in right now. And as we look at the world in of itself on a whole and we say, "Wow, how can this be?" I mean, we're headed right down the tubes. But, you know, as our Lady said at Fatima, uh, the of her immaculate heart will begin, continue, and end when all hope will have appeared to have been lost. And that's pretty much close. Think about what our lives would be at this moment without the gift of living the Divine Will. I I can't even imagine. I can't even fathom it. Uh, of course, we'd always be close to the church, but we'd always be looking at uh, like I used to do. I used, well, that that's not right or that's not right. No, that everything is right. You know, we have to support the church. We have to support the papacy. We have to always support the Pope. Um, and um, you know, I was doing some homework on some schisms, too. You know, anyone who um, who's thinking about a schism um, think about history. Any schism that's ever affronted the church has lost. The church has always prevailed.
So, I've got four messages here. Father's here. Okay, great. I'm off the hook. Thanks be to God for that. Let me just find Father first and then we'll bring him in. It's amazing. He's got such stamina. Father, I want to make sure I take the same vitamins he's taking. I don't see him yet, though. Um, is it under Father Joe? Oh, there it is. Okay, I've got Father Joe. Ask Father to unmute himself. Hello, Father. I just ask you to unmute if you could please. Okay, Father, we're here. I just um, I just clicked on the ask to unmute. If you see that, maybe you can just open up your microphone. I can't see you either, but if we have to elect one, I'd love to hear you. I mean, I'd love to see you, too, but if we had only to choose one, I'd love to hear you. We all would. Okay.
So, we're waiting for Father to to unmute himself and to join us. But the good news is that um, he's awake. He's he's overcome the jet lag. And um, you know, while we're waiting for Father, let's let's um, let's begin with some Divine Will humor, if we may. I've got a little bit of a, I guess, a Divine Will joke you want to call it. Not a good one, but why did the monk bring an umbrella to the monastery? Why did the monk bring an umbrella to the monastery? Well, the monk brought an umbrella to the monastery because he heard the Divine Will reigns there. Yes, he did. He heard the Divine Will was reigning there. So he brought the umbrella, you know, raining the Divine Will like that mystical dew, like that accidental glory. But you know, if we think about it, that dew and that accidental glory, we don't want to put up any encumbrances. We don't put up any umbrellas. We want to get full hit with that as much as we can to be saturated with that because that's a Divine Will grace that we all need, require, and live by. Um, see, Father, if you're having difficulty on muting, maybe you may need to exit and come back. Unless you're not hearing me. Am I Am I Am I heard? Am I being am I audible? Can anyone hear me? I just want to make sure it's not me. Okay. All right. All right. One can hear me. But you don't want to hear me. You want to hear Father. I I know that. I'll do my best here. Okay. So, okay. Father's unmuted himself. Hello, Father.
>> Good evening. Good evening. How's everyone?
>> Good. Father, you sound a little tired and I I don't have to ask why. Are you settled in yet?
>> Well, I don't have a mic. I'm just speaking on the laptop.
>> Okay. Well, it's it's actually pretty good. You must have a pretty good laptop. Well, Father, thank you for spending the time to come here. I was telling the the audience that um, many times I've said, you know, Father, if we can, we can bypass this day because you just flew how many hours? I'm not sure if you had a direct flight or not.
>> Just I'll give a quick just a quick little presentation because let me
>> Yeah, sure.
>> background noise here. There's a boy over here. Let me see if
>> Okay, we have the video now. That's good. Can you hear that noise in the background?
>> No.
>> Very noisy.
>> No.
>> Goes on and off. I'll just let it run its course.
>> Okay.
>> So, can you hear me? Okay.
>> Yes. Perfectly fine. Thank you.
>> Yeah. I'll make it very brief because, yeah, I I went through four planes, five airports, all of which were delayed, and there was a little bit of an issue with the luggage, which has not yet turned up. So that's the reason I'm using this um laptop mic and nothing better. Very briefly, we could start with a prayer if that works. Okay.
>> Please, Father. Yes.
>> In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. As always, with trust and humility, we ask the Blessed Virgin Mary at the beginning of the season of Lent to accompany us as she accompanied her son spiritually in the desert. And I would encourage all of us beginning in March, the first day of March, to meditate on the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Kingdom of the Divine Will book. Because if you do so, you will finish the 36th lesson on Easter Sunday. So if you begin March 1st and you end April 5th, that's 36 lessons. What better way to prepare for the resurrection of Christ and of your own will than by going into the desert with Christ accompanied by Mary's prayers, by meditating on the lessons she gives us, the 36 days. So we therefore, with that in mind, ask the Blessed Mother to accompany us spiritually as she accompanied her son in the desert, so that when Easter comes, we may be found worthy for God to dwell within us, the Father to dwell, the Spirit to dwell, the the Son to dwell, and for Mary to make of us, through these 40 days of Lent, a perfect copy of her son Jesus Christ. We make this prayer through the the same Christ, our Lord. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
>> Amen.
>> As you can tell, I'm back here at the uh place where I started some uh, I don't know, 20 years ago when I started to occupy this little cabin in the woods. There's a lot of snow here. When I came um, there was about 4 ft of snow. It's up to my almost up to my chest. So I knew I'd go through this. Every winter I come here, I had to shovel. So naturally, I borrowed the name of shovel. I started to shovel.
>> You better be careful, Father, because you're not 23 years old anymore shoveling.
>> Yeah. I shoveled my way into the house. Yes, that's right. I'm past 16. Past the I already have le, as they say, one foot on a banana peel and the other in a grave. But I was able to do so and it didn't bother me at all. I I I'm surprised that I didn't even breathe hard and it took me maybe I don't know, half hour to get through it as well as to clear a little bit of the driveway. But um, uh, that's why you see the background here. I'm not in Italy now. I'm back in the States. I'll be here for a few weeks, be traveling and uh, uh, and there's therefore, I there's a little bit of jet lag there naturally when you travel 6 hours, 48, it's actually 48 hours, 6 hour time change. Um, but I'm doing okay all things considered. And uh, what I'd like to address very briefly is the state of the church today. And the reason I want to talk about this is because it was occasioned by an event this evening. I went to the post office because when I left six months ago from visiting this place, I had my mail forwarded to someone who could tend to it in the States. Well, I manned five parish churches in Italy. When I came back, I asked them if I needed to renew this um, forwarding of the mail and they said, "Well, it expired this morning, today." So, I timed it perfectly. I didn't know. Nonetheless, while I was at the post office and leaving, I ran into a priest here in Michigan, senior priest. He runs a community here. And the first thing he said to me represented the sad state of the church today. He said, "Are you still promoting Louisa and the Divine Will? Do you still believe in that?" I said, "It doesn't matter what I believe in. It matters what the church teaches." And I said, "Are you so unenlightened as not to know where the church stands on Louisa? You've known about it for 20 years." He had no clue. This shows you how much confusion is reigning in the church today. This priest is in his 80s and he doesn't know where the church stands on Louisa. So I had to inform him. I said, "It's no secret that the Vatican has given the green light for the cause to go full steam ahead. Found nothing bad in her writings to stop the cause." He looked at me like he so was looking at a deer in the headlights. He had no idea what was going on. And this told me here you have a leader of a community not even aware of where the church stands on Louisa and thinking the church is against it. Like how can you be guiding souls and misinforming them about the Divine Will? This is not an isolated case. There are and I said to him, I said, "Today the church is reigning in more confusion than ever before." And I said to him, "There are priests and laity schismatically separated from the teaching of the church." Yes. And this is unfortunately the case today. You have in today's so world of social communication and now the dawn of AI taking over the social communication, this uh emphasis given to bloggers who create their own, whether it's a blog or a, I don't know the technical names for it, podcast or some sort of live venue where they give a talk or they even record it and post on their website and they try to amass a lot of followers. That's the the whole idea because the more you get, at least this is YouTube's policy from what I understand, the more money you make. I didn't even know people made money off of YouTube, but I found that out recently. So a lot of you have a conflict of interest here. People are not therefore willing to preach the truth to the expense of their own wallet. They're now mixed with a a conflict of making money while preaching the truth. You can do both.
>> And we know that never worked in the past.
>> You can do both. And this unfortunately is the case in the secular world. For example, you have some of these rock stars or musicians that have 180 million followers every day or 200 million and they're not even preaching anything about Christianity. And these followers have more than viewers for CBS, Fox, CNN, NBC. They have more viewers than the television networks. Why are people? This tells this here tells me what people are attracted to inside the church and outside of the church. They're not attracted to the light. They're attracted to sensationalism. They're attracted to the latest trending news that hits the press that causes a buzz in the social communication field. Listen, therefore, the media is the most powerful weapon for good and evil today. Here is the danger with that. Satan is the prince of this world. Jesus tells us most of the media is in the hand of evil people. I mean, this is not a surprise. I'll just I'll give you an example to prove my point. When was the last time you saw on mainstream news syndicated press a Eucharistic miracle, a bleeding statue proved by the church, a good message of the Pope? All you'll find is negativity. That's the devil. The devil promotes depression of ice. He promotes the anti-commandment ethic. And he does this on purpose through his his um handlers, whatever you want to call them, his his gophers. And when I say handlers, not handling him, but handling the media. Um, this is important because it's rolling into the church. And I saw that in the conversation I had today with a senior priest in charge of a community. A community. He's misinformed on Louisa and he's guiding people. I'm like, you should be ashamed of yourself. How can you say you're preaching the truth which is communicated by God to us through the church and misinforming your own flock? How can you do that? And again, as I said before, I'll repeat it again. This is not isolated. I heard this on EWTN. I heard several people condemning Louisa. How could they do this? They're called a Catholic television network and yet they're contradicting the magisterium. This tells you how much the church is reigning in confusion today. So where does this leave the sheep, people like you who are caught in this tremendous confusion? Now, before we before I give you the simple answer to that question, I want to share that the cause of this is multifaceted. It's you cannot simply point the finger to one person or one organization or one institution. It's spread all over and it's hitting us from all angles. But the one orchestrating all this of course is the devil, master of confusion. Whenever we are divided, Satan has power. His dictum is divide and conquer. It's always been the same. And Father Ramorth reminded me of this. Satan is the most predictable being in the in the universe. He doesn't change. He always uses the same approach. And that is why exorcists or priests that are instructed in their theology and on how God allowed Michael, a lesser angel than Lucifer, to defeat him, know the way to victory over Satan. It's not a secret. It's it's take for example, mixed martial arts form of two combatants. One has a forte, another has a forte. No one's a master in every art. So you may have wrestling, jiu-jitsu, karate, taekwondo, boxing, grappling, and the list goes on. When you know your opponent, you study which is his best, most mastered art. He can't be best in everything. He has have to have a strong inclination to one over the other. So one's a better wrestler, one's a better striker. Well, if you know he's going to constantly strike all the time, you sharpen your striking technique. That's how you're going to beat him. Satan is like that. He has one strong heart and he doesn't change and it's always divide and conquer. When you see the church reigning in confusion today, we have a society in the name of tradition separating from Rome. Now, it's happened in the past. It's happening again. We have individuals attacking the Roman Pontiff. It's happened before. It's happening again. But what makes this different now than before is that this is being carried by AI and the internet social media platform where the news travels at light speed and this harms people very badly more than ever before. Okay. So there are many causes to this confusion today. But those most responsible for the confusion are the priests, including the bishops, and then the priests. Beginning with the bishops, then the priests. And I've heard bishops today, recent weeks, in favor or against the Pope or the Magisterium. You say to yourself, if the bishops are divided among themselves, how can the laity be united? This is the state of the church today. But it shouldn't be a surprise to any one of us because the Lord, if you know your scriptures, forewarned us about these end times that we're living in. He's even given us approved prophetic revelations that this Magisterium has sanctioned but that very little um that very little attention is given to. So, one wonders what obligation does the hierarchy in the church have when it comes to listening to God's message if it's sanctioned by the church and promoting it when it's not really doing that. It's promoting the scripture that's beautiful. It's promoting, you know, the liturgy, which is beautiful. It's promoting moral teaching, which is beautiful. But if God is coming with or with a Blessed Mother or both with a message today for this generation, then I think we should give it some importance. And this is where the church is lagging deeply. If people say, "Well, that doesn't seem right. God always guides the church." Yes, he does. But guidance doesn't mean controlling. Take for example, St. Francis and St. Martin Lu St. Martin Luther, St. Francis of Assisi and Martin Luther, both contemporaries, both living the same problems of the church of their day. Both taking different paths to cure the church. The church needed to be rebuilt and reformed at the time of Francis. If it didn't, God wouldn't have said to Francis, "Rebuild my church." So even though the Holy Spirit guides the church and it will never be led into heresy, which it never has been, it may fail in its moral direction. It may fail in its pulse on the times, not reading the signs of the times, but it will always preach the truth. It will never fail in that. But it may miss the message for this generation or that generation. So what does God do to pull the church into his sacred heart to remind it that this must be given more importance than you're giving it? He raises up prophets. Francis was a prophet. Louisa was a prophet. Fina was a prophet. Margaret Mary was a prophet. They all called the church back to its priority which it failed to acknowledge. And the church is doing that again today. When I say the church, I'm not just talking about the hierarchs. They take the most responsibility because they are the ones who hold the keys of knowledge and if they don't teach you, you remain in ignorance like the priest I met today. So the laity also have a role in this. They have a role in promoting, evangelizing, spreading the good news and um, therefore, we now have been given a message in these end times from Faustina, the beginning of the times of mercy, to Louisa. Even though she preceded Louisa chronologically, her message is coming out after Faustina's. So we have Faustina's message which began with mercy and then came Louisa's message, even though she was born before Faustina, for Divine Will for these end times. And then we have other messages. We have Medjugorje that's still going on. We have the True Life in God ecclesially approved prophetic revelations for this generation, and the list goes on. So in this confusion where you have bishop against bishop, priest against priest, which was prophesied at Akita, Japan, on this in this time when a fire is about to fall from the sky, as also prophesied in Akita, Japan. We have to, this is the answer for the sheep. What are they supposed to do in this confusion? This is the answer, the simple answer. They are to not deviate from their allegiance to the Roman Pontiff, the office of the papacy. Number one, the bishops in union with him. Number two, the magisterial teaching authority. Number three, sacred scripture. Number four, I'm not listing them in the order of priority. I'm just listing them, nonetheless, but I'll prioritize them in a moment. Um, sacred tradition, number five. But at the top is scripture. That's the normative fountain of our revelation. And all post-biblical revelations, including Fatima, Lord, Lord Fatima, Akita, Medjugorje, True Life in God, Louisa, Fina, even Garabandal, whom I believe in, was not officially approved. Garabandal, I believe, though it's not officially approved. Um, none, they're not condemned either. Um, these are all measured by scripture. Scripture determines whether or not they're true or false. So, if they contradict scripture, they're no good. So, nothing can match scripture, not even Louisa's writings, when it comes to the normative expression of our faith, which scripture is. That's number one. Then we have that which is found in scripture explicitly, the sacraments, you know. So, here we have holy orders. Jesus instituted them when he called the apostles, made them bishops, sent them out, made Peter the first Pope. Here we have the sacred or the hierarchy, which is important, which is the basis of the church in addition to scripture. Okay. And then we have sacred tradition, which doesn't contradict sacred scripture. But remember, tradition is not something simply old or in the past. That won't enable you to discern the shepherd's voice. Just living in the past is not good enough. The Spirit is alive. God's word is alive. And that's why the Second Vatican Council calls sacred tradition a living tradition. That means it's constantly dynamic. If it was relegated to the past, there would be no new gift, no new gift to the Divine Will. There would be no new articulations of the truths that were not explicit in scripture, like the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption of Mary. So, you can't just limit yourself to just tradition being old. Tradition is today. It builds upon itself, but it keeps developing. This is known as the development of doctrine. Cardinal John Henry Newman's book about this, and it's also articulated in the church's councils. It's documents by many um saints, theologians. Okay. Then we have after scripture, the hierarchy, the um, the sacred tradition. We have the Magisterium, which is a teaching office that's instituted by Christ. Remember that. Most people don't realize this. In Matthew's gospel, Jesus says, "Just as the scribes and Pharisees occupy the seat of Moses, obey them in everything they tell you, but do not pra follow their example. They don't practice what they preach." So, this authority was not present at the time of the scribes and Pharisees. Though they had their own teaching office, it wasn't the Magisterium because there were no sacraments yet. The Magisterium is made up of those who have the sacraments. So the Spirit was not yet sent forth at the time of the scribes and Pharisees. They had their own teaching office, which was a preparation for the new teaching office that Christ would institute to guide the church. This is found in the Acts of the Apostles in John 16:12. In the Acts of the Apostles, they have the first council of in Jerusalem, of which St. James was the presider, and it states that the Holy Spirit guided them in their decisions. That's the Spirit leading them through the community of bishops, priests. That's how the Holy Spirit works. But also the laity, that's called sensus fidelium. If the bishops and the priests do not listen to the laity, they're not listening to Christ. There is this symbiotic relationship when it comes to the Spirit's movement through the people of God, which includes hierarchs and laity. The Spirit always works through all of us equally, but the final decision resides with the hierarchs. That's how God established it in the Old Testament and in the New. Now, suppose the hierarchs are wrong on a certain issue. Again, what I said before, remember, God gave the guarantee in Matthew 16 that the church will never be led against doctrine. Never. And it never has and it never will. The gates of hell will not prevail against it. That's what that means. Because it's founded upon the office of the papacy. Christ said, "On this rock, the papacy, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it." But the church may not have a pulse on the times in which the Spirit's speaking to us. So that's why God sends prophets to remind it, even lay people reminding the bishops, reminding the priests, look, you're not giving enough attention to this issue, it needs attention. And this is why the bishops and priests have to listen to the laity. And if they don't, they're offending the good Lord because they're keeping the laity in ignorance. So, we are in these end times caught between tremendous confusion and tremendous outpouring of grace at the same time. Only those who have a docile spirit will be attuned to the Spirit's voice, which is the voice of Christ, who sent his Spirit to reveal to us all the truth, which is happening today. And when I talk to different people in my travels, I can more or less, I'm not saying God has given me the gift of St. Prep of introspection, but I can sense from my experience and from the way they talk whether or not they're attuned to the Spirit's voice. And unfortunately, there is quite a bit out there that are not. Whether it's laity or priests, I'd say two-thirds are not attuned to the Spirit's voice from my pastoral experience. Two-thirds. And um, I mean, it's reflected in the statistics if you think about it. How many go to church on Sunday? About one-third, maybe less than that. It's only a quarter, actually. So, it's no surprise, right? And uh, we have to therefore not allow the evil press, the evil one behind it to feed negativity to us, and we shouldn't feed into that. So if we see things that make us lose our peace, we should turn it off. The Blessed Mother said in Medjugorje, "Get rid of the newspaper." She said that the newspaper, this was before the internet came. This was in the 80s because it clutters your mind. She didn't say get rid of it all together. She said when on these days you're doing your fasting Wednesday, Friday, when or you can do it according to your aging condition, when you can in different ways, don't allow the television to clutter your mind. Don't allow the newspaper to clutter your mind because this intimacy with God is essential to keep our peace. You know, Father, not to interrupt you, but that that message of Our Lady was also very familiar to Father Gobbi. Same, you know, don't turn up the television, don't read the newspaper. Very similar there because she said the the news is not going to be accurate. It's going to confuse you.
>> Yeah. Yeah. And this is a thing in Lent that's very, I think, timely because when we think of fasting, we think meat on Friday. That's it. But fasting is really in God's eyes, this kind of disciplining ourselves from things that rob us of quality time with God, who in that quality time gives us peace. And if you start to sense that you're losing your peace, stop whatever it is you're doing that's causing that. I'm not saying throw it away. Pause it. Pick it up later. But sometimes we're flooded with things that take away the quality time of God with us, whereby we start to lose the sensitivity to the Spirit's voice. After a while, we got. Now, one more thing I want to segue to what I just said. Now, it's being revealed through these Epstein files that kids are being killed, consumed, which is horrific. And this is a global event that's going on throughout the world. We get very distracted with negativity. You know what it does to us psychologically? This bombardment, it desensitizes us to sin. So when we find out about the gravity of what's going on, it's like it doesn't really bother us. We've gotten to that point where we're so desensitized that no one take wants to take any action. If this happened a hundred years ago, the people would be in arms with pickforks with pitchforks with whatever they had, rebelling against it. They marched to the government. Today it's like, oh well, how did we get from that to this? It's because of slow progressive desensitization. And this has been deliberate on the part of those, you know, behind the curtain, so to speak, giving us all these conveniences that do distract us if we don't discipline ourselves and make quality time for God. We are living in the days of great confusion. But despite all this, God is in control of everything, which almost sounds impossible, but he is. And we will know that if we pray because prayer gives you such a deep peace, an indelible joy on the inside that you have a conviction within you that no matter what happens, you're not worried about the outcome about your personal life because you're in a spiritually safe place. It's only those who are not in a spiritually safe place that begin to worry, start to lose their focus. So don't allow these distractions to get the upper hand, and don't allow these distractions to lead you away from the hope that the Holy Spirit is giving us today through the outpouring of the gift of the Divine Will. Our strength comes through hope. And the devil wants to rob us of that hope with all this negative evil that's being promoted left and right in every airport, in every television. That's what he's doing on purpose. He's trying to distract us and lead us away from them. And this is where we have to discipline ourselves and draw ourselves away from this news, even if it's true, and focus on intimacy with God. This is what the prophets did. Francis lived in a crazy time. And how did he combat it? Unlike Martin Luther, who left the church, he stayed in the church but reformed it from within through prayer, repentance, through contemplative union with God. That's how he defeated the um abuse of simony of wealth in the church in his time through prayer, through intimacy with God. And that's the formula we should all adopt. Certainly, if we can do something in the body, well, that's good. But it should always be preceded by prayer and intimacy with God. Okay, that's my message for today. Um, that was about a 30-minute talk.
>> A whole lot. Father, I just have a really quick question. I think that maybe on all of our minds, you know, from a lay perspective. Um, how do we, how do we reach that that equilibrium of, you know, yes, we have to be boisterous. Um, we know that that things are, you know, beyond our our physical control, it's our concern, but you know, not our control. When do we temper, you know, that that transformation that that I think the Divine Will emulates, which is, you know, a transformation from external effort to sort of more of an interior surrender. That's a difficult balance because sometimes we want to say things to certain uh, you know, again, with love and with charity. Other times I I feel like I want to pull back and maybe just pray, just give it to God. And you know, that's a very delicate decision there.
>> That's a collateral effect. You don't even have to worry about that. If your prayer life is steadfast, that everything is second nature. You don't have to plan that. So let's say something comes up, you don't know whether to pray or to do something. You just naturally go about it. Why? Because God is not so much focused on the results as we are. He's focused on our intention. If our intention is to be one with him at all time, and let's say I act when I should have not acted, I won't worry about that because I don't lose that peace and that presence of God. And I know that even if I do make a mistake externally in the result, God is not offended because my intention was always to please him.
>> So that is just a collateral effect of prayer.
>> Okay. I'll take maybe one or two questions if you if anyone has anyone like to um to chat a question to Father News. If you just do it to the general population, Father can just, you know, choose which one to he has time for.
>> I came back to the house and my clocks were on the wrong hour because nobody was here to accept.
>> But thank God you joined on time. I did that. Something really quickly though, Father, when you mentioned about, you know, the Pope and you know, you mentioned about the schisms. You know, one of the deepest schisms is the East-West separation. And that predominantly was about the Pope's uh, was it the infallibility or was it the or didn't?
>> No, it didn't have to do with that really.
>> No, not really. The 1054 split between the East and West was due to several factors. One was called proselytism, where the meaning the Catholic Church was moving into their property, taking faithful over, and the Orthodox were moving into the Catholic territory, taking their property. Now, Orthodox, Catholic, there were this distinction of names did not exist until after 1054. But proselytism was basically stealing our parishioners from us. That was the number one issue. Then there was the theological issue of filioque, whether or not the Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son or just the Father. That's been resolved. And then of course, there was the third issue was papal infallibility, but that was not the biggest issue because it was hardly ever used. I mean, papal infallibility, you can count on one one hand it's used in 2,000 years. So, yeah. Okay.
>> Holly has a question. Father, when we see the picture of female altar service, what do we make of it? Well, remember the church is in this in these end times, this contemporary time, changing as it always has with every generation, discipline, not doctrine. Does the church have the authority to regulate, change, discipline? Yes, it does. It always has and it always will. What is discipline? What is doctrine? Doctrine never changes. And that is that which was revealed by God to us through scripture, tradition, and um sanctioned by the church as such, whether it's, you know, the resurrection, the uh, ascension, the assumption, etc. Discipline changes. What's that? The external form of our interior worship. So in the West, they can marry as priests only once. In the in the East, they can. In Catholics in the West, they cannot. Does that mean God has two wills? Of course not. So which is the right way? The way it was that Christ chose in the beginning. We should be able to make that choice. Jesus chose Peter as a married man. If he didn't want them married, he wouldn't have chosen a married man. That's obvious. Paul says in the scriptures, a bishop should be married only once. So it's biblical. So it's not contrary to the will of God for a priest to be married, provided that's his choice and it's okay. Now, the discipline of the church changed in the West only. So the priests have to be celibate in the West, but not in the East. Genuflecting in the West, they don't genu. In the West, we genuflect. In the East, they don't, they bow. Um, all women altar girl altar service. This is a discipline of the church. People complain because it doesn't inspire young men to become priests now that they're girls. I agree with that actually. I think it doesn't help the vocations for women, girls to be on the altar. Um, is it a pious, nice, generous thing? It was at the request of the United States Episcopacy that this happened. Just like communion in the hand happened at the request of the American Episcopacy and Rome said okay. But once it said okay for America, it spread all over the world. So these are these are not sacrileges. Okay, I want to be clear on that. It's not a change of doctrine. It's a change of discipline. Could it be perfected? Yes, I think so. But is it a sin? No, I don't think so. It's a sin when you do something with the intent of harm. I don't think these girls who are being asked to go to the altar by their parents are sinning. So, you know, we have to make this distinction between discipline and doctrine. Okay. Right. Thank you. Thank you, Holly. Shay. Uh, last question. Father, uh, from Dawn. Can we fuse ourselves into the Divine Will in our acts and have a beneficial effect on all humanity, past, present, and future, even if we are not yet living fully in the Divine Will? Of course. Jesus tells Louisa in volume 11 that whether you live imperfectly, perfectly, or completely in the Divine Real um, and it's not just volume one life, it's other volumes as well. You exert an influence over all things, but in different intensity. Take for example, a rheostat light in a room. For those of you who are not familiar with uh, rheostats, it's a little dial and if you turn it slowly, the light progressively increases in the room, illuminating all the objects therein. If I turn it a quarter or half or full turn, the things are progressively impacted by that light. Same with a soul who lives imperfectly, perfectly, and completely. But even with a quarter turn, everything is illuminated in to some measure. So even if a soul is not completely living in the Divine Will, but imperfectly, they still exercise an influence over all things, but not with the same intensity as if they were living completely.
>> So we're all like dimmers. I got I get that. Well, Father, thank you so much. I I would have given you a whole host of other questions, but I I know you're really really I really appreciate. I really gave you every opportunity to say no to today and you said yes. I appreciate it. Uh, Father, we're going to welcome you back. We're going to invite you back, but could you please close us in prayer?
>> Yes. Well, could you mind if I ask everyone to unmute and say goodbye before giving them a final blessing?
>> I always do that. Hold on. Let's do it right now. I always like to do that. Some say it's corny, but I say it's lovely. Uh, okay. Anyone and everyone can unmute themselves and say hello and goodbye to Father.
>> Maria, Fatherless, Fatherless.
>> See you again, Father.
>> Thank you all for joining me.
>> Peace be with you, Father.
>> Thank you. May the blessing of Almighty God descend upon you and remain with you always in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
>> Amen.
>> Amen.
>> Amen.
>> Thank you.
>> Always beautiful. Thank you.
>> It's him. It's on his end.
>> Thank you. Promise. Yeah.