Latest / Arena Ablaze Podcast / 10,000 Miracles? The Power of the Holy Face with Father Carney

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10,000 Miracles? The Power of the Holy Face with Father Carney · Arena Ablaze Podcast

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Welcome into the arena. This is the arena blaze podcast and I'm your willing host
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Marco Sandoval. I am joined as always by my fellow son of muck Todd Powers. How are
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you doing today Todd? We'll see. Today we're joined by Father Kearney, the
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priest walking the streets of Wichita and preaching on the devotion to the
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Holy Face of Jesus. Worldwide. Worldwide. If you find value in this conversation
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please like and subscribe to receive alerts when we release new content. Also
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please leave us comments and suggestions. We appreciate any feedback we can get to
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take the conversation in a direction that is most beneficial. Our true
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algorithm is the Holy Spirit and let's begin by renewing our total consecration
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to Jesus through Mary that we may do everything with in through and for Mary
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as her instrument so that she can lead us to more perfectly do everything with
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in through and for Jesus. Amen. I Todd Powers, a repentant sinner, renew and
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ratify today in your hands, O Immaculate Mother, the vows of my baptism. I renounce
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Satan and resolve to follow Jesus Christ even more closely than before. Mary, I
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give you my heart. Please set it on fire with love for Jesus. Make it always
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attentive to his burning thirst for love and for souls. Keep my heart in your most
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pure heart that I may love Jesus and the members of his body with your own
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perfect love. Mary, I entrust myself totally to you, my body and soul, my goods,
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both interior and exterior, and even the value of all my good actions. Please make
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of me of all that I am and have whatever most pleases you. Let me be a fit
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instrument in your immaculate and merciful hands for bringing the greatest
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possible glory to God. If I fall, please lead me back to Jesus. Wash me in the
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blood and water that flow from his pierced side and help me never to lose
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my trust in this fountain of love and mercy. With you, O Immaculate Mother, you
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who always do the will of God, I unite myself to the perfect consecration of
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Jesus as he offers himself in the Spirit to the Father for the life of the world.
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Amen. In the name of the Father and Son of the Holy Ghost, amen.
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Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
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Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, amen.
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Our Lady of the Holy Name of God, pray for us. St. Martha, pray for us.
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All our patron saints and guardian angels, pray for us. In the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Ghost, amen.
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Amen. Thank you, Father.
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You're welcome.
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Yeah.
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So we'll start with the manual of the Archconfraternity of the Holy Face.
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And last time we started with the six conditions to discern becoming a member of the
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confraternities of the Holy Face. And for those who would like to get one of these,
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I recommend you go to our website, The League of St. Martin, where we've been publishing these for about five years now.
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And we've probably sold over 5,000 of them.
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And we looked at the table of contents and there's a preface there, which we're not going to go over because I'll let you all read that.
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But that preface basically talks about when this was a confraternity, they had written a booklet for it.
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But this confraternity was elevated to an archconfraternity.
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And so they wanted to tell the people before what was going to be in this book.
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And so we'll do that over the course of time.
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So those of you that are following along, we're going to go to part one, page one.
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And these are official documents and observations.
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And this is very important to know because we as Catholics have to realize that the Church was given to us by Jesus and he gave us a structure.
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And it's called the Constitutional Hierarchy of the Church.
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And that means the Pope is the prime leader, then we have patriarchs, cardinals, archbishops, and bishops.
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And so we're ruled by a bishop in our Diocese of Wichita.
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So this part one starts with an official document and observations.
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And it says,
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And so he gave this document for the priests so that they could preach from the pulpit about this.
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And so he said,
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So let me pause there for a minute.
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That little chapel that he started was where Venerable Leopold used to live.
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It was his private home.
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And I was there a couple years ago.
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And you can literally walk from the cathedral and walk from the chancery to his house.
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So his house was converted into a place where priests would say Mass.
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Because Dupont, because he performed 6 to 10,000 miracles, there were people coming to his house in droves.
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Like some days there would be 300 people visiting him.
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So the bishop saw the pilgrims coming and a need to establish this as an oratory when he passed away in 1876.
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So this is page 2 in the first section.
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So the bishop resolved here to make this an official prayer of the Church in his diocese,
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which is very important.
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When devotions come, they have to be proved by the local bishop, who is the one in charge of that.
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And he usually gets a committee of theologians and priests to say yes or no.
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Is this devotion actually from God or is it not?
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So what he did is he established three measures.
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The first one, that there shall be established unto her as a confraternity of the Holy Face.
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And so this was done in 1884.
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And so we'll talk about that next time, I hope, how in 1885,
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the man who was in charge of this confraternity, who was the chapter of the Dean of Canons,
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Father Janvier, was one who would petition the Holy Father the next year in 1885 to make it an arch confraternity.
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So we'll talk about that some other time.
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So whenever a confraternity is established or an arch confraternity, it needs to have statutes.
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What do we do? What are our goals?
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And so we'll look at that over time.
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And thirdly, that the said confraternity or association being thus canonically established
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shall enjoy all the indulgences and other spiritual graces, etc., etc., etc.
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So he signed this in 1884 on the 25th day of the month of October.
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So this is an important way to start a devotion, is to see that it has the check marks for canon law.
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So next time we'll talk about the brief of the Holy Father according to special indulgences to the confraternity of the Holy Face.
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So you're going to see documents going back and forth between the Archbishop and the Holy Father,
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who at the time was Leo XIII.
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Until next time, we'll look at this again.
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Bravo.
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One of the things that I find so interesting about it is it took a long time to get it established.
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And Jesus was appearing to Sister Marie de Saint-Pierre and asking her to continue to work
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and to try to get the devotion out there.
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And she passed away, and same with Leo de Pont.
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They struggled for a long time to get it established.
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So just a word on that, if you will.
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Yeah, I will. So just to get historical facts together.
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So Sister Marie de Saint-Pierre passed away in 1848,
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and Leo de Pont was talking to her for the years that she received the devotion from Jesus to the Holy Face,
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from 1843 to 1848.
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And so Sister was silenced by the Archbishop of Tours at that time, and she was obedient.
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But God had different plans.
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So her work was put into the archives of the cathedral,
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and de Pont then promoted this devotion for the next two to three decades.
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So from 1848 to 1876 is when he died, so do the math.
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And what he did is he prayed the prayer since Sister had to be silent.
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And on another point too, Our Lady also began to appear at La Salette,
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and she was continuing this devotion within a few days after Sister Marie de Saint-Pierre was told to be quiet.
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And so I was told by Dr. Horvat, who runs Tradition in Action in California.
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She used to be in Kansas City.
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She has friends who have gone to the archives in the Vatican, and they've looked at La Salette.
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There's files and files of revelations that haven't been given to the public yet.
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So there's some really interesting things in those files that I hope someday will come to light,
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because Our Blessed Virgin Mary is our Mother.
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She wants to help us along the way of holiness.
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So going back to Tours, we had de Pont promoting this devotion for, as I said, two or three decades,
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and there were 6,000 to 10,000 certified miracles during that time.
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So God had other plans.
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And so a few archbishops came and went, and finally this archbishop here who wrote this letter
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saw the value of this devotion.
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He brought those secret revelations from the archives out to the public.
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He put them in front of some Benedictines of Solem.
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They were dogmatic theologians, and they said to the bishop,
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these are great, there's nothing wrong with them.
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And so that's when this devotion became official.
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So it's like building a cathedral.
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Back in medieval times, you would take centuries to build one,
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because you would pour the basement, and then families would work with their sweat and blood
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and give money to build these churches.
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And that's what happens is these beautiful monuments take such a long time to build,
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and so God's the mastermind behind these projects.
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So this Arch Confraternity, I'm trying to go through this manual very slowly
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to show you that this has the slow underpinnings that are necessary to make a canonical devotion.
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So if that makes any sense.
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I don't know if you have any questions about that.
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The overwhelming amount of miracles.
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Could you just shed some light on that process?
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I read Leo de Pont's book, and essentially he had an image that had been touched
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of the Holy Face to the Holy Face, and he had an oil lamp that was always burning,
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and he used the oil, the prayers and the oil.
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And if I remember right, part of what got the devotion moving forward
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was the healing of a priest that had been a friend to one of the bishops or something like that.
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That's one of the miracles that I always forget to talk about.
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Yeah, so in 1849, there was a miracle that happened in Rome.
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So the Val Veronica is in Rome, it's in St. Peter's Basilica,
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and it's on one of the four major pillars that hold up the cupola.
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And so it's on the second level of a pillar, and the Val Veronica is housed with two other relics,
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the Spear of Longinus that pierced the Sacred Heart of Jesus,
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and a large part of the True Cross.
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So the Freemasons had made an attempt twice on the life of Pope Blessed Pius IX in 1849,
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and so the Pope exiled himself to Gaeta to protect himself from these enemies,
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and he commanded all the churches of Rome to make public reparation.
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So the canons of St. Peter's decided to take the Val from that niche,
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no one can see it from the floor, it's hidden, out publicly for three days,
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which was unheard of.
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It was very rare that they would take it out for any length of time.
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In the medieval times, the only way that someone could get this Val out,
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there were six patriarchal families, each of them had a key,
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and all six keys had to be there in order to open this from the vault.
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And each of the persons that was holding the key was surrounded by 20 guards.
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So this relic has such great value, we underestimate its value today.
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But what happened on the third day, for three hours,
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the Val, which was covered by a very thin piece of silk or linen
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to protect it from the elements,
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that blank piece of fabric began to look like a movie picture,
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and there was a light coming from it.
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And we have to remember, the first movie film,
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the motion picture, was later in that century,
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in the last part of the 1800s,
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who was the first person to be filmed on camera?
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Pope Leo XIII.
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And so there's no coincidences that in Rome,
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this miracle happened decades of a motion picture
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before we had real motion pictures.
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So for those movie people and photographers,
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this is good trivia for you all to know.
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But nonetheless, when this miracle was happening for three years,
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the Canons thought it was a mirage,
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so they asked the notary of the Vatican to look at it.
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He notified it. He certified it.
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And they rang the bells, and the Romans saw what was happening,
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and for three hours they were oohing and aahing.
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It was a talk of Rome for months.
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So artists drew what they saw,
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and they began to engrave these
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and touch these copies to the Val,
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the Spirit of Longinus, and the Holy Cross,
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and there was a wax seal on one of them,
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a red wax seal from the cardinal, and then a stamp in blue,
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said gratis.
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And there's other different types of stamps,
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but these got sent out all over Europe,
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and one got into the hands of Venerable Leo Pont
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through the Carmelite of Tours monastery,
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and he put it in his drawing room.
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And he had an oil lamp burning day and night,
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and so people would come to him for cures.
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And one of the third cures was a priest
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that was a friend of a bishop.
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And I don't remember the whole story, but the first cure,
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this lady had a pain in her eyes for months,
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and they knelt down and prayed the Litany of the Holy Face
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and some other prayers.
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The pont said, take some of this oil, rub it on your eyes,
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and she was cured instantly.
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And then soon after that, a high school boy came in in crutches.
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They did the same thing. He left without crutches.
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And so this happened on and on and on for 6,000 to 10,000 miracles
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in the course of about 30 years.
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Now, let me put that amount of miracles into context.
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Venerable Leo Pont was only a layman.
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And one of my favorite wonder workers of all time
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is St. Vincent Ferrer, and he was a priest.
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And he would preach in the open air in the 13th century.
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He had lots of gifts, the gift of tongues,
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where his voice would be translated into the language
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or the dialect of the people hearing him.
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And there was a procession of 10,000 penitents
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who would follow him throughout Europe.
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And so there was a person called the Miracle Bell Carrier
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who would ring the bell about three times a day after each miracle.
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And so people knew that he was a saint.
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But yeah, Venerable Leo Pont has performed just as many miracles
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as this priest who, St. Vincent Ferrer, is so popular.
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And so the pont has been put into the secret archives
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as far as the canonization process is going.
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And during the canonization process,
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the devil's advocate said,
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what is this man going through the process of canonization?
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He owned a slave.
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Well, what happened, he grew up in Martinique,
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and it was a French colony, and French slavery was a lot different
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than the slavery that we know in the Americas.
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So it was a lot more benign.
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And this slave wanted to go live with him in Tours
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because she was a servant.
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So I think that someday, hopefully in my lifetime,
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de Pont will become declared as a saint at our altars.
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So I'll stop talking.
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It's so interesting.
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Is it safe to assume that that's a lot of miracles
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under anyone's standards?
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But most of the miracles that we hear about in modern day
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happen so long ago when Christendom
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was the standard government of most states of the world,
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and faith was abundant in the world.
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Am I wrong to think that one of the reasons
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we don't see miracles manifested,
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hardly at all in modern society,
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is because we now live in a godless society.
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I was just in Quebec City in Montreal,
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in North America, one of the earliest places
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of Catholic culture and Catholic faith.
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Church after church abandoned,
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just left alone with graffiti, nonbelievers.
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Almost everybody I came in contact with
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either used to be Catholic or don't practice.
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In a godless society is that we have a lack of miracles
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because of that.
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Is that safe to say?
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Yeah, it's safe to say for many reasons.
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One is we don't have enough generosity from people
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who are called to be saints today,
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so God doesn't give us miracles.
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The greatest example I like to use in my opinion
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is Saint Joseph Cupertino.
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He would fly all over the place.
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One priest friend of mine told me,
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that's because the people that lived around him
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were so generous to God and they believed.
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I believe it was Blessed Elect Archbishop Fulton Sheen
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used to talk about how every 400 years
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the Church would go through the cycle of birth,
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death, passion, death, resurrection.
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So we're at the end of a 400-year cycle,
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it seems like, because we're going through the passion.
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And so God takes away the miracles in the Church
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because the Church is the mystical body of Christ.
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Christ is the head where the body is,
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so where the head has gone, the body must follow.
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So when the passion happened,
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there weren't very many miracles,
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and so there's not very many miracles.
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But one of the promises in this devotion
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is that there would be many miracles.
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And I need to start recording the miracles
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that are happening all over the world
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because people are enrolled in this arch confraternity.
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One of them is Sister Wilhelmina.
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She was enrolled in this confraternity back in 1973
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with the confraternity in the Carmel of Dallas,
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and I happened to give her communion
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for the last six years of her life.
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Sister Wilhelmina started the Benedictines of Mary,
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well, she helped start it, and these nuns,
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their abbey, their mother house is located in Gower, Missouri,
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and I buried her in the Missouri mud.
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And I was the deacon at her solemn requiem mass,
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and I saw her buried.
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Well, they took out her body because they wanted to put her
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underneath one of their altars, and they found her body
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and corrupt. And the bishop, Bishop Johnston,
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did an investigation with scientists, and they,
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under oath, swore that there's no way
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that this can explain that she is incorrupt
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because the material that was used for her habit
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was the same material used to line the coffin.
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Her habit was intact, but the material
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in the coffin was disintegrated because the Missouri mud
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is very good at decomposition.
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So that's just one of many miracles that I've seen in my whole life
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because of this devotion to the Holy Face.
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So I hope that this devotion will bring about
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the Church's resurrection someday,
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and maybe that'll be the triumph of the Immaculate Heart,
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the triumph of the Sacred Heart, and the triumph of the Church
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because one of the devotions within the Archconfraternity
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is called the Chaplet of the Holy Face,
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which meditates on the five senses of Jesus during His Passion,
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and the object of the chaplet
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is for the triumph of the Catholic Church.
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So think about it. Go back to Calvary.
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Mary was there. The people were there
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that were close to Jesus.
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They were praying, and there was blasphemy happening,
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and they were doing reparation. And then after Jesus died,
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what happened? Lots of miracles happened.
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For example, the sun didn't shine for three hours,
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and people were rising from their graves.
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So I'm no prophet,
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but I think that we're on the cusp of a change.
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And so as it gets worse, we know that we're getting closer
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to that resurrection.
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Excuse me, yeah, the resurrection of Jesus,
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the death and the resurrection.
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Wonderful. Well, this is kind of show-and-tell for me
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because I'm enrolled in the Archconfraternity,
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which is a wonderful thing. It was a little bit of a struggle,
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kind of like to get the devotion going,
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because it actually is out of Tours France,
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and I had applied for it and sent in for it
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and didn't hear anything for a really long time.
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And then I finally did hear, and I got my certificate
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but didn't have the right name on it.
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And I was very worried that I took forever to get the certificate.
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Now if I need to get it changed, it's going to take a long time.
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But I told them, hey, we got the wrong name,
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and they changed it immediately. So this is my certificate,
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which I love St. Therese of Lisieux,
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so when you were talking about St. Therese of Lisieux
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being one of the first members, it's dear to my heart.
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And then the other little show-and-tell item,
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we'll get there in the manual, but I wanted to show these little...
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I'll let you talk about it, actually, and show that.
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These are Hot Off the Presses by Mary Hahn,
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Holy Face Gifts on Etsy.
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We'll put a link in the notes so that you can get these.
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Yeah, it's been an act of Congress
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to try to get any medals in this devotion out that are proper.
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There's always something that seems to go wrong,
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and that's why Jesus told Sister Mary and St. Peter
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that the devil will do anything he can
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to stop this devotion at its inception.
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And so that means when it first came out,
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but we're going through another inception, we're going through a renewal.
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So this is a medal that Mary Hahn has done,
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and I'm a very thorough judge on these,
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and she has done a great job on something here.
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And just to show you how official that is,
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I don't know if the camera can see this,
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but on page 83, all of you that have manuals,
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you go study that.
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This is the official symbol of the Archconfraternity of the Holy Face,
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and it has a double cross.
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So does anyone know why that is such?
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I'll tell you if you don't have a clue.
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It's because Tours is an archdiocese.
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Now it's a very small diocese,
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but I talked to a canon from there
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who grew up there, Canon Monroe,
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in the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest.
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He said it's a historical diocese
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because it has so many bishop saints.
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St. Martin of Tours is one of them, and St. Gatien is another.
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And an archdiocese has a cross with an extra bar.
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Now does anyone know,
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is there a cross that has three bars,
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and who that would be for?
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It would have to be Rome.
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Correct. So whenever you see in paintings of popes,
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sometimes they'll be holding a cross
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that will have triple bars to show that that is the highest C,
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which is called the Holy C in Rome.
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Very nice. Wonderful.
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Well, I think that's all I have.
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That's a lot right there to unpack and think about.
25:53
That's beautiful, beautiful.
25:55
Thank you, Father.