The Beauty of Our Catholic Heritage - Reflecting on Catholic Philosophy on the Holy Eucharist - Pt. 1

Fr. Jacob Hsieh is a Nobertine priest of St. Michael's Abbey and a teacher of Latin, religion and chant.  In this episode, Father begins a series on Catholic philosophy and the Holy Eucharist.

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Transcript

announcement: 0:34

Welcome to the beauty of our Catholic heritage. Our host is father Jacob che a Norbertine father of St. Michael's Abbey in Orange County, California. Father Shea has a great love for our churches heritage, the beauty of our Catholic heritage with father Jacob Shea

Fr. Jacob Hsieh: 0:53

Welcome back to the beauty of our Catholic heritage, here with father Jacob Shea. Let's begin in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Glory of you, to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. St. Joseph, pray for us, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. We are beginning a series on Catholic philosophy and the Eucharist. This is going to be an explanation of the Eucharist using the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas and Catholic philosophy. Here, we have to be super excited about learning philosophy and theology. These words sound really big and scary. But really, every single person in this entire world has a desire to know the truth. And what is philosophy. It's finding out the truth about everything that is created. What is a theology finding the truth about God. And so everything in this world is about finding the truth, and then loving the truths. Everybody has this desire, nobody wants to be lied to. Everybody wants to know the truth. And we want to know about this beautiful world that the God who loves us so much has created and given to us that he's died for us. And then we want to learn why he did that for us. We have to learn who he is. And in the whole process, we find that he has revealed the truth about himself, and that we are going to be called his friends because he has told everything about Himself to us imagine that every single thing. That's what he said, We cannot even imagine that God would do that. But he has, and he wants to call us friends. And he does call us friends because he has revealed everything to us. And since we know everything about our friends, God says, I call you friends now. So we know everything about God, he has shared his inner life with us. We want to know this truth about who he is. Thus in his life, everything that makes us happy. When we have friends, when we have marriages, when we are finding our vocation, when we are doing anything in this life. We're always searching for truth, and the beauty of truth, and loving the truth, and really making our lives filled with the truth. And this is what truly makes us happy. If we don't do this, then we're doomed. If we do not find the truth, we will never be happy. We are created for the truth. No one can escape this. Either they find the true truth, which is kind of redundant, but either they find the truth, or they're lost. And this is what the devil wants. He wants us to make us make up our own truths. And really, that's not truth. But it's falsity. And this is the danger that so many people in this world including ourselves, we deceive ourselves, we lie to ourselves, we think that, Oh, I've found the truth, I've made the truth or worse yet, I determined my own truth. And what happens as a result is we make up our own lie that we believe is truth. And then we lose God. And we just live in that lie. And many times we can live in that lie for years upon years upon years, and some people, hopefully that will be us. Some people, they will never find the truth. Some people will find it perhaps at the end by the grace of God and come to the true faith. But some people actually never find the truth. And this is because they really just live in their lie. And God is always trying to show us the truth. That's why he's made our human nature. That's why no one has an excuse, really, that they didn't find the truth because God has written the truth on our human nature. That's why we have to look at our human nature. Everybody knows what sin is. Everybody knows what it is. is to do right and wrong. And this is why God has written his beautiful truth on our human nature. That's why it's called natural law. And so all of these things just show us that we are human beings made for the truth, the angels are made for the truth. And this is why we cannot listen to the Father on lies, that is Satan. If we live in the truth, we find happiness, if not, we are doomed to despair. Thus, we must really be Catholic philosophers, and Catholic theologians, all of us have a desire to know the truth. And this is what Aristotle says Aristotle, who is the student of Plato, who is the student of Socrates, who is the father of philosophy. And here we apply this beautiful truth that all men by nature, desire to know the truth, we apply that in the natural realm, but also the supernatural realm. All men desire to know truth, by nature, about all creative things, all men by nature, desire to know the truth about God, and about supernatural things. There is this innate love within us that we know that there's something beyond this world. And we want to get to that. And then, with grace and Revelation, we get a clearer idea of what that supernatural truth is. And that's the Trinity, obviously, in the Incarnation, redemption, the truth about the sacraments, and then everything that we learned about those things gives us such happiness. And so we see that everybody must be a Catholic philosopher, and a Catholic theologian in some way, of course, you know, some of us, we don't have time to go to the university, or go to graduate school and study philosophy and theology. But actually, here, it's okay. Because we just need to read the Bible, and a lot of Catholic philosophy and theology is already in there. And also just read the teachings of the saints. And a lot of it's in there. Now, if we go full throttle into St. Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle, and Plato and Socrates, right, all of that might be a little bit difficult. And for some people, it's not according to their state in life, to go full throttle into everything, but we need to know a little bit about it. And also to know why it's so important. And if it is, our vocation of God calls us to a life of study and a life of being a student, or a life of being a teacher of philosophy and theology, then, of course, then we go full throttle. But that's not to say that we can't know a little bit about philosophy and theology, and even more than that, that we should, because everybody must give an account of the faith. And in order to do that, in order to defend the faith, right, in order to really explain the faith to other people to catch souls. You got to use philosophy, and theology. And so here we must see what is Catholic philosophy, and Catholic theology. And when we really find that we are learning, Catholic philosophy and theology, then we really are seeking after God even more. Here, we see that I want to know more about God. And so the more that I want to know about God, you see that even when you say this, your heart is filling with this great desire, this love this devotion, what I don't understand, I want to find out more. And so the pursuit of truth really increases our charity. We seek to understand what we hold by faith. We seek to explain by words and clarify our thought. Those things which we express and hold by faith. These are the beautiful things that we do as Catholics because God has given us the answers already. For example, I am the Trinity This is what God says to us or I have sent my son or the son person He needs from the father or the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son or the son has risen from the dead. Right. So I believe in one holy Catholic, and apostolic Church, all the things that we say in the Creed, all of these things that we say in the creek, they are the truths and answers given to us, then we begin to understand what these words mean. And each word is so powerful, pregnant with meaning pregnant with such significance inside of them. This is the glory of God that He has given to us when we speak. And when we think all of these things reflect Him. And thus, we see that when we begin to understand things in this beautiful, beautiful way, all the world opens us opens up to us even more. And here we gain humility, and love. In the process of studying philosophy and theology, more, we gain deep humility, that's the way it's supposed to be. Now, some people, they study philosophy in theology, and they're like, Oh, I no more than other people, right? Of course, in some way, they do no more. But if you truly study philosophy and theology, as St. Thomas did on his knee, then you will gain great humility, I will great gain great humility and love. And so we have to pray that we pursue the truth in philosophy, and theology, always on our knees, that is praying, always in deep humility, and deep love, trying to understand the truth that we thirst for. This is why when you pursue truth, you do it with pure love, you fallen in love with the truth, it is so beautiful, that you must find it with all of your heart, right? And we can explain it like for example, your fall in love with the first girl or the first guy that you see. Or maybe like, you know, obviously, this is just analogy. But here you see that person, then you want to get to know that person, then you date that person, you caught that person. And then of course, right here, we don't date like the world's number, this is something that you know, I really told my students and this is even you know, something which is you can say a little bit even laxer, perhaps. But here I told my students, right if you cannot go to Mass every Sunday, right? You cannot even start dating, right? This is very important here. A lot of this world they just think oh, yes, date whenever you want to write no, you obviously date in order to find a good match for marriage? And what is the purpose of marriage to get the spouses and the children to have it right. That's the purpose of marriage. Here, this whole world has messed up this whole notion of marriage, and he wants to redefine marriage. Right. But here, obviously, here we're talking about, you know, when you find this person, right, you want to know more about them. You want to know about their virtues, you want to know about their personality about how they have prayed, right? This is what you really should know. Right? When you're courting somebody, right? seriously dating somebody for marriage. And so the same thing is with God, right? You first see, wow, God has done all these miracles. He's done these marvelous things. You know, there was some moment in your life where you just realize, wow, God is amazing, right? Then you're like, oh, I need to know more about him. I need to learn about him. I need to really study about him and know who he is. All of these things. Really make us delve deeper into who God is. And so this is a V, love pursuit of philosophy and theology, we are seeking after wisdom. This is why for example, except pIans yet and Latin is feminine. here because we are going after the beauty of wisdoms B and C. And so, here we must see the beauty of philosophy and theology. Now, let's not be scared, right, the philosophy and theology big words, but anybody can understand it. philosophy and theology always work through common sense. Common Sense, common sense, common sense. If you cannot explain it in common sense, regular words, then you don't understand it. This is very important. So in philosophy and theology, you always have to use concrete examples, use common sense speak in short, intelligible sentences. It's very important. You don't say like, oh, the more that you speak, the more words that come out of your mouth just like flowing like a waterfall. The more you speak, oh, then you understand philosophy theology. No, here, when you say philosophical things, or theological things, they must be short, sweet, concise. And this is actually the way that St. Thomas speaks. And the way that Aristotle speaks, every word means something. No word is excessive. No word is unnecessary. Every word means something. This is very contrasting, to, for example, all the junk that is just all over the internet, right? Just excessive words. Excessive was excessive words, nonsense words, excessive words, they just like plow, you're just trying to plow through all of the, you know, junk and the fluff in order to get to the very simple thing that the article or the thing that you're reading on the internet is trying to say. Right here we see that philosophy and theology, it's very dense. And, for example, I could read three paragraphs of Aristotle, and that would take me one hour to read. Because each word means something, each sentence means something. And it takes a long time to digest because the words are so full of meaning. And you've got to understand how the words are signifying what the words are saying, how the sentences fit together. And this is why if you read one chapter of Aristotle, which could be three paragraphs only less than a page, it will take you an hour to understand it, or, for example, an article of St. Thomas, which is sometimes a page or page and a half. It is very short compared to novels and stuff like that, that you read, like 1000 pages long or something. But here, a page and a half of St. Thomas can take you three hours to read, for example, when I was studying St. Thomas and the Summa Theologica, which is the summary of all theology, right? It's all theology put into one book, basically, of a really, really big book. But here with St. Thomas Aquinas, when I was studying this in seminary, what does it really look like when you're studying in seminary? One article, I was trying to average an hour per article, you know, and so for homework, sometimes we would have to read eight articles. Okay, so that means eight hours of study, to finish this chapter, you can say question, St. Thomas has a question. For example, what is is God infinite, right? Or what does it mean for God to be infinite? Okay, so then in that question, right, there's going to be eight articles. In each article we'll deal with what is infinity? Can infinity be applied to God? Right? Can infinity be applied to any other things besides God? You know, all these things? Or for example, does God exist? Right? So what is existence? Me Right? Here? Is God infinite right here. We talked about that already? Or, for example, is God good? What is the word good mean? Right? So all the they have these questions, inside each question are all these different articles. So we'll kind of get into that, especially with the Eucharist. Here, we see that inside each article, right, there's so many different things that you have to grapple with. So that's why it took me an hour to read, sometimes I was trying to get it done in 30 minutes, I was reading in reading it in the Latin. But you can see that serious study, if it takes you an hour to read a page and a half, because you're really grappling with each of the sentences, then you can really see how beautiful this is and how wonderful this is. And for example, an article of St. Thomas would be worth more than a trillion dollars, right? Or more than a Tiffany diamond or more than than a Lamborghini. Right? We cannot express the worth of these writings of the saints. And this is so important to understand today. This the value of each of these sentences of St. Thomas Aquinas, each of these articles of St. Thomas Aquinas talking about what does it mean for God to be good, right or what is the incarnation? What is the Eucharist? All of these beautiful questions. How do you describe the Eucharist? When you say the substance of Christ's flesh is now there, for that the substance of bread has turned into the sobs. sense of Christ's flesh, that the Eucharist is the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ's right. What do these words mean? It's so pregnant. And this is why you we have such reverence for the faith, right, such such reverence for every single word of the Creed, I believe in one God, the Father almighty, what is the word Almighty mean? Creator? What does creator mean of heaven and earth? What is heaven mean? What does Earth mean? You have all these pregnant words, they mean so much. And so this is the beauty of faith, we are trying to understand these words as much as we can, by human reason and human reason, aided by revelation, that we realized that, okay, there's a point I can get to that I have to stop, basically. But we go all the way up to that point, right, and humility, and love. And then in heaven, everything will be open to us so that we can fully understand everything. This is the beauty of philosophy and theology and Catholic philosophy and theology. Now, when I say Catholic philosophy, obviously, there's really only one philosophy. When I say Catholic theology, there's only really one theology and that is the philosophy that has been discovered and used by the Catholic Church, and the theology used by the Catholic Church and found and discovered by the Catholic Church. So there's no such thing as modern philosophy, you know, or Protestant theology, right? There's only one philosophy, and only one theology. Just like there's one true church. There's only one true philosophy, and one true theology. So if you hear, for example, Cartesian philosophy, or Kantian, philosophy, these are all the crazy modern philosophers, or how Galeon philosophy, right? This is a really bad, right, that is going to influence Karl Marx and communism eventually. So hopefully, we can get to those topics. But philosophy is very influential. And it really just, you know, if you have bad philosophy, it affects everything. A lot of what people believe today, for example, my choice, my body, right, all these crazy slogans that people put out, they don't understand what the heck they're saying. Right? If they really, if you ask them, you know, what is a body? Right? And they can't even explain that philosophically. And for example, what is a choice? Right? They can't explain that. And plus, when they say, my choice, my body, right? It's very easy to refute them by saying, Well, is it really your body? Did you create your own body? Who gave you if you said, it's your body? Did somebody give you that body? Right? And then they're just like, oh, I don't know, right? So it's really very important to see that philosophy is very powerful if you practice it, and use it well. And of course, use it according to the tradition of Holy Mother Church, that she has taught us, right. Everything that I'm saying, has come from St. Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle. And so this is all a big, beautiful introduction, in order to understand our Catholic heritage with regards to truth. We don't make up the truth, it's given to us. And there's so many smarter people than we are. And these are the saints, right? These other sites, that God has enlightened their mind by the power of the Holy Spirit, or the power of the Holy Ghost, right in order to guide them through the difficulties of philosophy and theology. That's why we are so blessed to have the true philosophy. The true theology, there's only one just like there's one church. Are there many philosophies in heaven? No, obviously not. There's not Buddhist philosophy. There's not, you know, Hindu philosophy. There's not any other philosophy. There's only one philosophy in heaven because you can't disagree in heaven. Are there many theologies in heaven? For example? Is there Protestant theology is there, you know, whatever other Muslim theology, you know, obviously, not because you can't disagree with me. There's only one theology. What is that theology? Well, it's the true one. And that is the one given to us by Holy Mother Church, especially through St. Thomas Aquinas was called the angelic doctor, which Pope Leo right the 13th and attorney potteries in in a cyclical right has named right he does St. Thomas Aquinas is the teacher of the church. He is the teacher, the angelic doctor, so I'm not making this up is not a preference that I choose St. Thomas Aquinas, right? Holy Mother Church and said he is the teacher. This is why every philosophy and theology that is studying in seminaries should be primarily St. Thomas Aquinas, right in This is exactly how everything was done before, but then suddenly kaboom. Right? That was a big change. And we just studied St. Thomas on the side, you know, or even at all, I don't even know some people leaving and study St. Thomas Aquinas, you know, in seminary is crazy. And so this is very important to realize that with regards to the beautiful thirst for truth, and the beautiful thirst for exactly the truth that was found out by Aristotle, and then purified by St. Thomas Aquinas and seen through revelation, right, all of these different things right to St. Thomas Aquinas really maximize the potential and Aristotle and found out everything and Aristotle. Then we see that St. Thomas, he uses the language of Aristotle, in order to explain the Eucharist and this is where it all is so important. The language that we use in order to explain God, right with regards to the sacraments with regards to theology, that language is heirs to to alien language, it is the language that comes from Aristotle. It's all common sense language. So for example, you see in the Creed, con substantial with the father or the son is con substantial with the Father. What does that word mean? Con substantial, con substantial comes from the word substance and then co in front of it. So it means of the same substance con substantial. Where does the word substance come from that word comes straight from Aristotle and we're going to see what that means, especially with the Eucharist. So, here with the Eucharist, what important word do we have that has the word substance in it? Trans substantiation trans sub standard ch tion right? You hear the word substance inside Transubstantiation? What does that mean? Trans means change of, and then substantiation, change of substance. So when you have the substance of the bread, becomes or changes into the substance of Christ's flesh. Well, what does the word substance mean? How do we know? Well comes straight from Aristotle. And this is where Aristotle in philosophy is so much amazing and so beautiful, it is the best way. And really, you can really say the only way, the most precise, the most efficient way in order to ascribe reality. Substance is such a powerful word, and so precise in such a useful and efficient word, in order to describe the reality of creation. And so as you see, we're going to talk about substance especially with regards just Transubstantiation. We cannot even understand right, these formulations of Catholic dogma and doctrine, unless we understand these beautiful words so rich and so pregnant, of Catholic philosophy and theology. Let's let's ask St. Thomas in the series to enlighten our minds and really delve deeply into the beauty of philosophy, true philosophy, and truth theology, right? The only Philosophy The only theology, and may we always, always be humble in this pursuit. We don't understand everything. That's okay. We just said Jesus enlightened my understanding, I'll eventually understand it in heaven, but hopefully here as we really seek for the truth, we asked St. Thomas to enlighten our minds gratis, humility, patience, these things take time. Patience, patience, patience, but we see already how beautiful and how amazing studying philosophy theology is for the human soul. This is what we fill our soul with, not with tick tock, not with Instagram, right, not with anything that passes. But the beauty of truth. innominate Patrick said for the ESPD to sanity, amen.

announcement: 29:50

You've been listening to the beauty of our Catholic heritage with father Jacob che. If this program has been a blessing to you, please encourage others to listen as well. For more information, visit spirit filled hearts.org That's spirit filled hearts.org May God be with you this day and always It's the feeling you get when you see a familiar face and a crowd of strangers. It's the way the embrace of a loved one feels after a hard day. That feeling is comfort. And it's what we provide to families who turned to O'Connor mortuary in their moment of need. More than just providing quality funeral service. We provide the necessary guidance and support to help Catholic families and people of all faiths and cultures process grief and heal their hearts. We are here to help every step of the way. For compassionate comfort and a time of loss call O'Connor mortuary in Laguna Hills, you can reach us at 949581 4300 That's 949581 4300 O'Connor mortuary is a sponsor partner of spirit filled radio