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Transcript

10/2/26 Infinitely Small · Omnia Christus

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we already talked about angels the other day on the Feast of the Archangels.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: And we always like to talk about angels because everyone likes to talk about angels
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: and think about angels because they're nice.
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  SPEAKER_00: But I think it's worthwhile focusing on another aspect of this gospel
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: that we have today, something that we don't like to think about so much.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that's this strange idea that Christ is propounding here that God is small.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: God is small.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's weird, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we think that isn't God big?
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  SPEAKER_00: He's God that sort of,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: Biggest thing that there is,
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  SPEAKER_00: certainly that was,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: the attitude of,
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  SPEAKER_00: it would seem,
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  SPEAKER_00: the Israelites in the Old Testament,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: our God is bigger than your God and our God can beat up your God,
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  SPEAKER_00: because they still live in kind of a context
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  SPEAKER_00: where they saw their God versus other gods,
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  SPEAKER_00: rather than coming to that realization,
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  SPEAKER_00: which happened in the Babylonian exile, that God is actually the God of everything.
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  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't just the local God, but it was very much their spirit and their attitude.
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  SPEAKER_00: Our God can beat up your God and this sort of thing.
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  SPEAKER_00: And Christ comes to tell us something radically different Uh,
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  SPEAKER_00: than that and,
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  SPEAKER_00: and actually rather strange and it fits well,
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  SPEAKER_00: this gospel fits well with the feast of St.
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  SPEAKER_00: Therese that we had yesterday because that was her principal light,
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  SPEAKER_00: this idea of, of becoming small and becoming like a child.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: But actually that was Christ's whole purpose coming to this world was to show us
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: that God is small to become the smallest of all, right?
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: God became a single A single ovum, fertilized ovum.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then he became an embryo.
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  SPEAKER_00: He became as small as it is possible to be and was incarnate in
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  SPEAKER_00: the smallest country, in the smallest family, in the smallest town.
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  SPEAKER_00: It says in the letter of Hebrews that he emptied himself,
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  SPEAKER_00: taking the form of a slave,
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  SPEAKER_00: becoming like us in all things, humbled himself even unto death.
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  SPEAKER_00: He died.
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  SPEAKER_00: He became dead.
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  SPEAKER_00: Smaller than any living thing, actually dead.
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  SPEAKER_00: All of Christ's life is this becoming small.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's the whole message of the gospel, is that we need to become small.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's the whole key.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Becoming small, the practice of becoming small.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's what Christ came to show and to teach us.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: And like I say,
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  SPEAKER_00: it's exactly the opposite of what we want to hear and what we think
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: because our whole project in life is to become big.
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  SPEAKER_00: So how can I become,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: great and make a name for myself and do something and get more stuff and
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  SPEAKER_00: a bigger house and people will look up to me.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not, I mean,
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  SPEAKER_00: we kind of maybe associate that with men or sort of the masculine temptation,
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  SPEAKER_00: but I think all of us, I mean, why do we do all the things that we do?
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  SPEAKER_00: Backbite others,
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  SPEAKER_00: put others down,
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  SPEAKER_00: slander, gossip, try to raise ourselves up, try to look good in the eyes of others.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: We're trying to become big.
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  SPEAKER_00: We're trying to make ourselves big.
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  SPEAKER_00: We're trying to make ourselves into something.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm something.
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  SPEAKER_00: Wow, look at me and those other people.
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  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you know, they're not so great.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then there's Christ.
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  SPEAKER_00: Who's coming to make himself small.
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  SPEAKER_00: And throughout the gospels, this message echoes over and over again.
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  SPEAKER_00: The mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds becoming yeast.
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  SPEAKER_00: You can't even see yeast.
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  SPEAKER_00: It like floats around in the air.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's what we have to become more like yeast in the dough.
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  SPEAKER_00: We are supposed to be small.
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  SPEAKER_00: The last will be first.
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  SPEAKER_00: The first will be last.
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  SPEAKER_00: John the Baptist says, I must decrease so he can increase.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's our whole project.
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  SPEAKER_00: Our whole project is exactly the opposite of what the world says
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  SPEAKER_00: and what we're naturally inclined to do,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is to try to make something of ourselves.
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  SPEAKER_00: We have to go exactly against that and become little,
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  SPEAKER_00: become small like Christ says, they become like a child.
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  SPEAKER_00: Only that way can we enter the kingdom of heaven, only by becoming small.
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  SPEAKER_00: The rich man can't pass through the eye of the needle,
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  SPEAKER_00: the camel can't pass through the eye of the needle,
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  SPEAKER_00: it's too big, it has too much stuff.
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  SPEAKER_00: Need to become small to get in, to enter through that narrow gate.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's not because lots of people are rejected, but it's because we make ourselves too big.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's because we have too much stuff.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: We have to try to follow Christ in becoming less, in becoming small.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it's all too easy in the church to apply our natural inclinations
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  SPEAKER_00: to Spiritual things into our own idea of what the church is supposed to be
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  SPEAKER_00: and building the kingdom.
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  SPEAKER_00: Oh, we're going to do great things for Christ.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to start this institution.
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  SPEAKER_00: We're going to have this capital campaign, or we're going to build this building.
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  SPEAKER_00: You know, whatever it is, we have all these big ideas.
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  SPEAKER_00: You know, I had big ideas before I was converted.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm converted to Christ.
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  SPEAKER_00: Oh, cool.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm going to do all these big things for Christ.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm going to put my name on this church, on this building.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to make something of myself for Christ now.
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  SPEAKER_00: But we're doing the same things.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's the same as the Vikings who converted to Christianity.
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  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, ah, we're Christians now.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now who can we kill in the name of Christ?
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  SPEAKER_00: And they all went down to do the crusades.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's not the message of the gospel.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's still our own human inclinations.
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  SPEAKER_00: And even though we're on fire for Christ now,
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: His point is we have to make ourselves small.
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  SPEAKER_00: We're so often still trying to make ourselves big, still trying to do something big.
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  SPEAKER_00: There's so much of ourselves in me.
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  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you know, people are going to think, wow, look at him, a great evangelist.
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  SPEAKER_00: You know, look at that great project that he has going there and all this.
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  SPEAKER_00: The only way that anything's going to happen through me to bring
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  SPEAKER_00: about Christ's kingdom on earth is through my becoming small.
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  SPEAKER_00: Through my becoming nothing,
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  SPEAKER_00: through my laying down of myself,
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  SPEAKER_00: through my taking up my cross,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is humility, which is nothing, which is God's will.
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  SPEAKER_00: I lay down everything,
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  SPEAKER_00: put everything in his hands,
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  SPEAKER_00: let go of everything that I have and end, and allow him to begin to work through me.
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  SPEAKER_00: So if the Lord does not build the house, in vain do the builders labor.
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  SPEAKER_00: In vain is your earlier rising or going later to rest.
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  SPEAKER_00: You could be killing yourself to build this house.
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  SPEAKER_00: And if it's not the Lord building it, it's all going to crumble, come crashing down.
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  SPEAKER_00: The house is built on sand, not on rock.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's the house that's built on myself,
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  SPEAKER_00: on my own efforts, on my own capacity, on my own strength.
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  SPEAKER_00: Today, the Lord is inviting us to reflect on that mystery of smallness,
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  SPEAKER_00: to become small, to become nothing.
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  SPEAKER_00: So that God can become everything in and through me.
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  SPEAKER_00: So that God can fill me.
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  SPEAKER_00: If I've let go and put all of my abilities,
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  SPEAKER_00: all of my works,
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  SPEAKER_00: all of my things in his hands, say, Lord, do with these what you will.
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  SPEAKER_00: He might give them all back to me or he might not.
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  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he told Zacchaeus,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know, go and, you know, give to the poor and salvation has come to this house.
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  SPEAKER_00: He told the rich young man, go and sell what you have and give to the poor.
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  SPEAKER_00: Each one of us, we have a different calling, a different vocation.
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  SPEAKER_00: But we're all called to lay everything at the feet of Christ.
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  SPEAKER_00: If he wants to give us back something of that,
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  SPEAKER_00: if he wants to use our talents and abilities, That's wonderful, let him do that.
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  SPEAKER_00: But it can never be me, it always has to be him.
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  SPEAKER_00: I have to put everything at his feet, seek to become small.
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  SPEAKER_00: Today we receive Christ in the Eucharist.
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  SPEAKER_00: He becomes so small,
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  SPEAKER_00: so little, so nothing, he becomes an insignificant piece of bread to be eaten.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's God, that's Christ.
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  SPEAKER_00: And he doesn't wanna just come into me.
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  SPEAKER_00: He also wants to make me into what he is.
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  SPEAKER_00: He wants to help me by coming into me in his Eucharistic presence.
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  SPEAKER_00: Help me to become small,
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  SPEAKER_00: to become insignificant,
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  SPEAKER_00: to become nothing so that the everything that is God can truly shine through,
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  SPEAKER_00: fill my life and shine through my life onto the lives of those around me.