Death and Passing Away
Experience a morning of Catholic fellowship, prayer, and spiritual growth as men gather to explore theology, support one another, and deepen their relationship with God through faith, reason, and community.
MC: Mark Schissler
Presenter: Matt Anderson
Deacon: Rick Freedberg
Brought to you By: The Knights of Columbus
Jackson Michigan & Surrounding Area Catholic Parishes
Queen of the Miraculous Medal: https://queenschurch.com/
St John the Evangelist: https://saintjohnjackson.org/
St Mary Star of the Sea: https://stmaryjackson.com/
St Joseph Oratory: https://saintjohnjackson.org/new-here/st-joseph-the-worker-oratory/
Our Lady of Fatima: http://www.fatimaparish.net/
St Rita: http://www.stritacatholicparish.com/
St Catherine: https://stcatherinelaboureconcord.org/
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I'm going to start today, we're going to sort of have to go with the flow because our normal administrators are not here. Joseph and Adam are tied up with some other things. Joseph on a missionary trip and Adam probably with children and such.
But thank you guys for braving the weather and being here this morning. We've got a newbie. Oh yes, I was going to get to that.
So, any gentlemen here for the first time? Who invited him and would you stand and introduce him for us? Well, I know him. Yeah, I invited him last night. It's Dan, I met him last night.
Okay, alright, thank you. And he does rosaries. So, it's David, Dan, Dan.
Okay, good to meet you, thanks for being here. I need to talk to you because I hear you do rosaries. Yeah.
And we have a beautiful rosary ministry, so we'll talk later. Alright. Alright.
Alright. Yes. This is Kevin Lang.
He graduated with me from Plymouth High School 45 years ago. Wow. Came over today all the way from Plymouth.
Thank you, Kevin. Thank you. Well, you guys, Kevin and David, you found out where the food is.
If you need a bathroom, they're over there on the corner. So, any announcements for the week? Mike? Yeah, we've got a practice Sunday. And the proceeds will be going to Reed Manor.
I'm sorry, Reed Manor. And anywhere I come, we serve from 9 o'clock in the morning until noon. So, all the money proceeds go to Reed Manor, help them, those people, and the choir.
So, Mike, most people know, but for those who don't, what parish are you with? St. John's. St. John's, okay. Any other announcements? Yes, Matthew.
Lumen Christi hit their fundraiser goal yesterday. So, that's a blessing in front of the community. And that's three or four years in a row that they've hit it.
It's a tough order. They set it at $100,000 every year. And it's a week-long.
Praise Jesus for that. Any other announcements? Yeah, scrap metal drive is today, too. Good news for the Catholic community.
Good Shepherd Catholic Radio has a new general director, and it's Jerry Jarzankar. Oh, wow. That's great.
A really nice round of applause for him, because what we're seeing with the station is, many times, it's these gentlemen that have worked their whole life and are looking forward to enjoying their retirement and are dedicating a huge amount of time, of their retirement time, to help spreading the word through the station. So, another round of applause for Jerry Jarzankar. Any other announcements? Steve.
So, I've been setting myself apart to warm other people. I'm giving you the mic, so you have a minute and a half. You know, I thought it was Thursday.
I didn't. I looked at my thing. Anyway, I made it on the 16th.
I've been trying to add other parts. I did have a tool, so I stole it. I was going to work on it, but the brakes on my pond, I need to fix them.
I just need a place where I can safely maybe do that, or if anyone misses that kind of fun, he wants to help me do that, and I'd really appreciate it. You're helping a lot of other people. Mostly, I'm trying to get to Wayne County back and forth, and that Express 96 is really something.
So, that's out there, but you know what? Even if no one else needs it, I'm learning how to ask for help from you, and I'm getting there. Anyway, thanks. God bless you, Steve.
Thanks, Steve. And for the men that have come to the Corps for a couple of years, probably a year or two back, we would meet the first three Saturdays of the month, and then the fourth Saturday was a way of doing ministry and helping each other. What Steve just brought up is the way we're all here to help each other.
He needs help on that mechanical element of doing the brakes on his car. If anybody likes doing roofing, Riley has a big project. He's working on roofing.
I don't know if he'll accept help, but if anyone has the talent or resource, it would help. Again, we're all here to help each other, so thank you for that. One last announcement.
Thank you to the men that showed up for the rosary ministry last week at the Jackson County Medical Care Facility. We had a record number of residents that attended. It's amazing because the number of attendees is going up because first we started with registered Catholics at the facility, and then a Bible group heard about it thanks to Mike and Maynard.
So a Bible study heard about it, and there are various denominations, and they said, hey, can we come and partake and listen to the rosary? So we said, of course. And then last time we had three people that just saw the notice on the bulletin board, and they said, hey, that sounds interesting. I'm going to go check it out.
So we had a good number of people. But for the gentlemen here that helped and have been helping, thank you very much for the rosary ministry. Again, it's the second and fourth Saturday of the month, so it's not today.
We're in the third Saturday. But next weekend we'll be doing Saturday morning at 930, and it only takes about an hour. By the time we get the residents, bring them in, do the rosary, get them back to their rooms, it's a beautiful time to bring joy to the people that are so often isolated from their community and especially their church.
So thank you for your time. Without further ado, our guest presenter this morning. Mike's got something.
Oh, Mike. Yeah, speaking about the rosary, we can use the help. And it's very blessing because I got a new girlfriend there.
Oh! How many, Mike? She's got a little baby. She says, this is Mike. This is our kid.
She's my girlfriend. What are you talking about? Anyway, the thing I'm saying is if anybody's got time, it's a blessing. People love it.
They're old. It's just a blessing. And if anybody can go, it will be worth your while.
And then point to Mike brings up, and I was talking about people are so isolated. It's the smallest thing. It's just a nice word.
It's a touch of the hand. It's amazing how little it is to us but how meaningful it is to someone there at the center that people are coming to see them and talk to them. You got people that don't have families and they come and they act like, you know, it's a blessing.
And when you go get them and they got nobody, they just want to talk and talk and talk, and talk, and talk, and talk, and talk. You're talking to my new girlfriend. You're good at that, Mike.
Yeah. Okay. That's one of your cars.
So without further ado, I'd like to introduce our guest speaker. Many of you know Matt Anderson. He asked me to keep his introduction short, so it all began on a cold, stormy night in a small town in Michigan.
Who would have ever expected he'd be what he is today. But without further ado, Matt Anderson. Thank you.
Thank you, Mark. Alright, let's go ahead and begin with a prayer. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Amen. Oh Lord, as we gather together this morning, we ask you in your mercy to pour forth your grace upon us during this Easter time. Help us, Lord, to especially explore your mystery of faith and reason today.
Help us, Lord, to understand that you invite us into the innermost mysteries of the Trinity, both now and as an invitation to eternity. We ask this, Lord, as we pray through the intercession of your Blessed Mother. 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.
Our Lady, Queen of the Miraculous Medal, pray for us. Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us. Our Lady, Star of the Sea, pray for us.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. Well, good morning, gentlemen. It's a pleasure to be with you this morning.
Joseph, when he asked me to give a talk, he asked me to speak on the subject of theology, which, as many of you know, is near and dear to my heart. So normally, when I was in the classroom, I was given 45 minutes. We won't take that long this morning.
But I'd like to do three things this morning when it comes to theology. I'd like to look at, first off, what exactly is theology? We start with the definition. Second, look at the why of theology.
Not just why we should study theology, but in a larger sense, why does God even allow for theology? Because that itself can actually be a debated topic. And then third, just some practical how. How can we incorporate theology, which sounds like this ivory tower concept, into our lives? So those are the three things that we're going to focus on.
The what, the why, and the how. So first off, the what of theology. Theology comes from two Greek words, theos and logos.
It means the knowledge or the science of God. It's very similar to biology. Biology comes from two Greek words, bios and logos, the science of life.
So when we're looking at theology, we are looking at the study, the science of God. And in the 11th century, St. Anselm defined theology this way. He said it was faith-seeking understanding.
I want to look at each one of those terms, faith-seeking understanding. Unlike other sciences, which start with our natural observation of the world, theology starts with faith. So what do we mean by faith? What does it mean to believe something? What does it mean to believe someone? Well, belief ultimately is rooted in trust.
We don't actually have to believe things that we see for ourselves. For instance, nobody in this room right now believes that CORE is happening at St. Mary's Star of the Sea on Saturday morning. Because we're all here, we don't have to believe it, we can see it for ourselves.
So belief always has to deal with something that we can't see for ourselves. So how do we know it then if we can't see it for ourselves? Well, it's because we trust someone who has seen it. For instance, I believe right now that life is going on in Paris, France.
I can't see it for myself right now, but I believe it. Why? Because many people have told me that there is a Paris, France. I've never been there myself.
And that life goes on there on a day-to-day basis. And so I trust those people. And so when we look at faith from a religious standpoint, faith starts when we begin to trust Christ and trust the church that he established as an authority.
That's what it means to have faith. And theology starts with faith. It starts when we become disciples of Christ and trust that he, God, might just know better than us on how things are.
So that's the first element of theology, faith. But then once we trust God, we then have within us this desire, seeking, that awakens within us to know more. It's very similar to a young couple that begins dating.
And what is a young couple that begins dating? What's that period like? Well, they're always talking to each other. What do you think of this? What do you think of that? They want to get to know each other more. When we begin to know Christ, we begin to trust him.
We begin to have this desire to know him more. And that's where the third element of that definition, faith, seeking, understanding, comes in. We hear the words of Jesus.
We trust them. Because we love Jesus, we want to know more about what he has said. Let me give you an example of how this works in the history of the church.
Jesus would refer to himself during his ministry as the Son. No one knows the Father except the Son. The Father and I are one.
Jesus called himself the Son of God. So, in the history of the church, it began with faith. Jesus says he's the Son.
I trust him on that. But then after that, there was this desire to say, well, what does that exactly mean? What does it mean that he's the Son? Because, for instance, normally with a father and a son, the father is first and the son comes later on. Does that mean that God existed first and that Jesus came later on? And so there were these questions about what does it actually mean for there to be the Son? And human beings began to seek to understand, when Jesus said he is the Son of God, how does that actually, what does that relationship look like to God? And eventually, that's how we get the creed that we say on Sunday.
No, he doesn't come after God. He is light from light. True God from true God.
Begotten, not made. And so this was a 300 year process of faith. I trust that Jesus is the Son, seeking understanding.
What does that mean? Now, here's the thing about that, though. Now I want to move on to the why of theology. That sounds like a really complicated process, doesn't it? Indeed, this whole process could have been very, very simplified if God had just explained everything, right? And it's important to note that he could have.
God knew everything. God knew the questions that mankind would have. He knew the questions.
He knew when he said that I am the Son, that there was going to be debate and misunderstanding about it and confusion. And yet, he didn't just give the church the answers. He allowed the church to seek for a deeper understanding.
Why? Why would God allow theology? Indeed, one of the big differences between us and some branches I'll be very careful with that some branches of our Protestant brothers and sisters is that there are some branches of Protestantism that believe in what's called theism. They believe that, no, you shouldn't really seek any more understanding. Just believe.
Just have faith. Things like science, things like philosophy are ultimately bad. They're ultimately corruptions of the faith.
You hear this from Mormons as well, frequently. They'll talk about the philosophy and theology as corruptions of the faith. And so why would God actually allow this? Again, here I am at 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning telling you about theology.
God could have done this way better than I could. Right? God could have arranged it as such that anytime a group of men gathered in the history of the church to learn about him, he just automatically appeared. I mean, he's present in the Blessed Sacrament upstairs right now under the appearance of bread.
If he can do that, he can appear at any meeting and give the presentation himself. So why does God allow me to give the presentation? And the answer is very, very simple. God gave us our intellect.
He wants us to use it. Why? Because even though he could do something, he wants to invite us into what he could do. The same thing happens, for instance, with healing.
God could heal anybody. And indeed, there are, again, certain branches of Christianity that believe that you should just kind of pray everything away and let God heal everything. As Catholics, we don't believe that.
God could heal everything, but he wants us to heal it through medicine. He wants us to discover cures through science. He wants us to be involved in the work that he is doing.
In other words, he's inviting us into what he does. St. Therese of Lisieux would compare this this way. She said that it's like a father and a small child.
And the child, let's say, wants to have a bonfire. Many of us who are fathers are very new to this experience. Right? Dad, dad, can we have a bonfire? Can we have s'mores tonight? Right? And so the child wants to have a bonfire.
And so the father builds a bonfire. Right? And then for anybody who's a father, what is the first thing that happens when you build a bonfire and there's little kids around? Can I throw something in it? Right? I want to make something burn. Can I get a stick? Right? And so the child throws something into the fire.
And does the child's contribution actually make that much of a difference to the fire? No, not really. Maybe a little, but not really. Right? But St. Therese of Lisieux says what happens is this.
The father looks at the child and says, that's so beautiful. You want to contribute. Let me stoke the flames even more.
And the father pours on more logs so that the child feels like, I've done a lot here. Right? God invites us into what he does. And so when we look at something like theology, okay, theology is one of those terms that, again, we can so often have this understanding of like, oh, it's kind of high, high in the sky.
No, God is inviting us in theology into a deeper understanding and into cooperation with him because he wants us to use our reason. We start with faith, and then he wants us to explore. He wants us to go deeper.
Okay? And so finally, to conclude, the how. How do we do theology? How can we, as laymen, actually partake in this invitation that God is making of us to understand more? We'll go back to that definition that we started with, faith-seeking understanding. Right? If we're going to do theology, we have to do all three of those.
Start with faith. Right? Again, theology starts with trust of God. And all of us, because we are sinful human beings, all of us struggle with trust.
All of us have different aspects of the message of Christ and the message of his church that we struggle to trust. It might be the church's teachings on forgiveness. It might be the church's teachings on immigration.
It might be the church's teachings on contraception. It might be the church's teachings on the proper use of money. There's all sorts of church's teachings that we hear and we're like, Mmm, really? I don't know about that one.
Let's start with trust. Let's start with, if Christ has revealed this and his church teaches this, maybe, just maybe, he knows better than we do. And that's challenging.
That's hard for all of us. Because all of us have those little parts of the faith where we're just like, Oh, I don't know about that one. And so if we're going to do theology, start with that.
Pick something that you struggle with and say, You know what? I'm going to change. I don't know. I still don't get it, but I'm going to trust.
Right? So that would be the first part of the how. Increase our faith. Second, seeking.
We have to have greater desires. And you can teach desire. Sports and young people are a great example of this.
Sports require an incredible amount of sacrifice, difficulty, pain, suffering. And yet we can teach people to desire the goodness of victory and the goodness of sports so much that they're willing to go through all of that pain and suffering in order to get it. We can increase desire in our hearts.
And so we have to increase our desire for knowledge of God. And all the saints say that the key to increasing our desire for God is prayer. It's carving out time for regular prayer to be with God so that he opens our hearts to love and desire him more.
All true theology is done in prayer. Third and finally, understanding. In every area of our lives, business, fitness, finances, if we want to get better, that's the first thing that we do.
We seek out sources that can teach us. Our faith, our relationship with God is no different. So why you're all here this morning is because you're seeking out something that will bring you closer to God.
And so if we're going to have a greater understanding, we have to seek out those sources that will help us to study, that will help us to learn. And I can tell you, studying the history of the church, we are living in a golden age of sources for lay people. Never in the history of the church have there been as many good sources of classes and understanding and books about the church as we have right now.
And so to just name a few if you're not familiar with them. These are some of the ones that if you want to go deeper in theology, you want to go deeper in your faith, I'd recommend. I'd recommend the Augustine Institute, which has some incredible online talks and courses.
Word on Fire, Bishop Barron is doing absolutely amazing work with teaching people about the faith. Books wise, I'd recommend Frank Sheed's Theology and Sanity. It's a great one to begin with.
Pretty much anything by Fulton J. Sheen, soon to be blessed, is well worth reading and very, very approachable. And if you've never really studied your faith before, one of the places that I see most people begin the study of their faith is apologetics. Is learning how to answer objections to the faith.
And so I'd recommend Catholic Answers, The Handbook of Catholic Apologetics. These are all great sources to begin to study your faith. So to conclude then, I'd like to just kind of give you a simple story that I think kind of summarizes the point of theology.
In the 12th century, the great theologian St. Thomas Aquinas was traveling to Paris. And he was with a group of his brothers. And as he was traveling, of course it's the 12th century, they're walking along to medieval Paris.
And they come up over a hill. And they see medieval Paris at sunset. They see the sun hitting at the great cathedral of Notre Dame.
They see the city kind of lit up in the glow of God. And one of his brothers turned to Thomas Aquinas and he said, you know, Brother Thomas, isn't God's creation so beautiful? And St. Thomas Aquinas turned to him and he said, yes, it is beautiful. But I would trade it all, I would trade all of Paris for the sermons of St. John Chrysostom.
That's weird. Right? That is absolutely weird. Why would Thomas Aquinas do that? Because he had discovered that knowledge of God is more valuable than any of the goods of this earth.
It wasn't just a nerdy thing with him. It was him having rightly ordered desires. So thank you very much for your time this morning.
And God bless. Thank you, Matt. Very, very, very, took a lot of notes.
Hope you guys caught a couple things. Before Deacon Rick sent us off for a small group with a prayer, I got a challenge for you. Matt said a number of really impactful things.
Just pick one of those things that you heard from Matt and share that experience with someone today. Just one person, just bring it up in casual conversations. There were so many to choose from, from what he shared.
But just pick one of those elements and bring it into your conversation. It's a simple first step, so try that. Deacon Rick, would you bless us for the prayer before we go to the small group?
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