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10/5/26 Neighboring · Omnia Christus

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Lots of people,
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  SPEAKER_00: the number one reason why they don't come to church,
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  SPEAKER_00: or specifically the Catholic Church,
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  SPEAKER_00: is because they say they don't like organized religion.
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  SPEAKER_00: I don't like organized religion.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, you should come to the Catholic Church, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: Because we're totally disorganized.
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  SPEAKER_00: This will be a great place for you.
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  SPEAKER_00: You're going to love it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Don't like organized religion?
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  SPEAKER_00: Great.
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  SPEAKER_00: But they don't like organized religion because they don't like rules.
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  SPEAKER_00: I love Jesus.
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  SPEAKER_00: I love God.
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  SPEAKER_00: He makes me feel good.
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  SPEAKER_00: But all those rules,
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  SPEAKER_00: that whole rule thing, you know, I want to live my life the way I want to live it.
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  SPEAKER_00: God's a nice side feature,
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  SPEAKER_00: but at the end of the day,
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  SPEAKER_00: I have my own things that I have going, and I don't want those to be messed up.
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  SPEAKER_00: I don't want God to mess up my freedom.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm in America.
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  SPEAKER_00: Fourth of July.
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  SPEAKER_00: Don't tread on me, God.
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  SPEAKER_00: So we can be like that.
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  SPEAKER_00: We can be like that.
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  SPEAKER_00: People can be like that.
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  SPEAKER_00: It can be very typical, especially of Americans, that we don't like things imposed on us.
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  SPEAKER_00: We don't like rules.
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  SPEAKER_00: We don't like kings, all that type of thing.
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  SPEAKER_00: We're free.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so that's why I said, well, Catholicism, especially, lots of rules.
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  SPEAKER_00: But I think that's a mistake.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's a mistake to look at the church like that.
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  SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ didn't come with a whole rulebook.
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  SPEAKER_00: He said, hey, here is the rulebook.
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  SPEAKER_00: No.
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  SPEAKER_00: No.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the Gospels aren't a rule book.
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  SPEAKER_00: Those people want to make the Gospels into a rule book.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's not a rule book.
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  SPEAKER_00: If you look at the Gospels carefully, they're the story of a life.
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  SPEAKER_00: Four stories, same person, a life.
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  SPEAKER_00: We are given the story of a life.
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  SPEAKER_00: We're given an example to follow.
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  SPEAKER_00: We're not given a bunch of rules.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's really fundamentally important.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because relationships produce rules.
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  SPEAKER_00: Rules don't produce relationships.
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  SPEAKER_00: Think about that.
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  SPEAKER_00: Think about it in your own life.
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  SPEAKER_00: Right?
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  SPEAKER_00: It's not like you have a bunch of rules.
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  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I have all these rules,
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  SPEAKER_00: and then with these rules,
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  SPEAKER_00: I have this other person,
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  SPEAKER_00: and we have all these rules,
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  SPEAKER_00: and then somehow that's going to make us love each other.
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  SPEAKER_00: No, of course not.
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  SPEAKER_00: That would be weird.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's people like that.
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  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
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  SPEAKER_00: That would be weird.
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  SPEAKER_00: But when you love someone...
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  SPEAKER_00: Then there's rules that come from that.
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  SPEAKER_00: You're like, well, I'm not going to date other people because I'm dating you.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to hang out with other people.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to do other things.
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  SPEAKER_00: There's things that I am not going to do in my life because of you.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm saying yes to something.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then there's other no's that come from that.
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  SPEAKER_00: But the no's are in service of that big yes.
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  SPEAKER_00: Saying yes to someone and to something.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's what the gospel is.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's what Jesus Christ is bringing us.
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  SPEAKER_00: This is the example of a life that we're supposed to imitate.
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  SPEAKER_00: When we imitate this life,
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  SPEAKER_00: when we walk along with Christ, we understand his relationship with God.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, then there's sort of rules that follow from that.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to do these things anymore because these things are bad for others
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  SPEAKER_00: and they were bad for me.
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  SPEAKER_00: And now I understand this because I've encountered this life.
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  SPEAKER_00: I've encountered this person.
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  SPEAKER_00: Who's changed me, who's helped me to understand what it means to be human.
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  SPEAKER_00: That is where the rules come from.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's where all these rules that we have in our faith come from.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so we can get back to the beginning,
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  SPEAKER_00: back to this first question, this first question that Jesus doesn't answer, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: Because they ask him this question and he flips it on its head.
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  SPEAKER_00: The whole gospel is is trying to show us who our neighbor is.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's trying to show us what love is, what it means to love someone.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Pharisees, they're just thinking about rules.
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  SPEAKER_00: They're like, well, who is my neighbor?
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  SPEAKER_00: You know,
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  SPEAKER_00: because I've got this, this,
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  SPEAKER_00: and I have to do this,
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  SPEAKER_00: and you have to do this for your neighbor,
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  SPEAKER_00: but then if they're not your neighbor, you do this.
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  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus is like, forget about that.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's a crazy way to live.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of the way that the law works in the Old Testament with the Jewish people.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's what we read when we read the Old Testament.
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  SPEAKER_00: They're kind of crazy people, almost like babies in a certain sense, just learning morality.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so God had to put a lot of rules on them and impose them.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's the way it is with little kids too, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: You can't just be like, oh, I'm going to affirm my child's freedom.
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  SPEAKER_00: No, my child's going to go crazy.
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  SPEAKER_00: They need rules and strictures so that they can learn how to exercise their freedom properly.
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  SPEAKER_00: But as you grow up, those rules have to be pulled back little by little.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's what God's doing with the Jewish people until Jesus Christ comes
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  SPEAKER_00: and he wants to give them the fullness.
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  SPEAKER_00: He wants to say, stop thinking about all of those rules.
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  SPEAKER_00: Stop thinking about, well, you know, if this person's my neighbor, I do this.
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  SPEAKER_00: But if they're not my neighbor, I do that.
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  SPEAKER_00: And you have that example in the gospel, the priest and the Levite, and they're walking along.
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  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, it's a person, but they're bloody.
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  SPEAKER_00: And if I touch blood, then I can't serve in the temple.
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  SPEAKER_00: So I have to pass by on the other side.
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  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to contaminate myself.
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  SPEAKER_00: And they're thinking in rules and they're missing right in front of them their relationship.
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  SPEAKER_00: Right in front of them they're missing what they're called to do because they've got
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  SPEAKER_00: so stuck in their little rule paradigm.
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  SPEAKER_00: And this Samaritan comes along and the Samaritans were kind of heretics.
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  SPEAKER_00: Right?
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  SPEAKER_00: Because they had stayed in Israel when all the Jews got deported.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then they'd kind of mixed together with the pagans.
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  SPEAKER_00: They had this weird kind of like half Jewish, half pagan religion.
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  SPEAKER_00: So the Jews came back.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, gosh, what are you doing?
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  SPEAKER_00: Like, this is totally messed up.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it was kind of messed up.
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  SPEAKER_00: So this guy who was kind of a heretic, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: He's not following the rules.
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  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't fit into the system.
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  SPEAKER_00: But he comes along and he sees someone in need.
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  SPEAKER_00: And he says, I need to help this person.
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  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus is like, that's the point.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's the point of this whole thing, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: What are all those rules for?
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  SPEAKER_00: Why are you trying to go serve God in the temple and be pure in all this stuff
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  SPEAKER_00: when you're not helping the person in front of you?
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  SPEAKER_00: That's crazy.
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  SPEAKER_00: That is what the Gospels exist to teach us.
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  SPEAKER_00: We have to encounter someone who lives a life of love.
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  SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ is the Good Samaritan.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's what Pope Benedict talked about in Jesus of Nazareth.
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  SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ is the Good Samaritan who goes down He comes down to us.
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  SPEAKER_00: We're wounded.
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  SPEAKER_00: We're on the side of the road.
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  SPEAKER_00: We're broken.
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  SPEAKER_00: He comes down to meet us where we are.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then he brings us up.
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  SPEAKER_00: And in so doing, he gives us all an example of the way that we need to be.
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  SPEAKER_00: So that's the message of the gospel today.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's the message of discipleship.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yes, we have to follow the rules, but we have to remember where the rules come from.
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  SPEAKER_00: We can't lose that part.
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  SPEAKER_00: The truth and charity, they're not opposed to each other.
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  SPEAKER_00: They need each other.
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  SPEAKER_00: You can't have truth without love and you can't have love without truth.
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  SPEAKER_00: And this gospel is trying to help us to put those two things together.
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  SPEAKER_00: So as we encounter Christ in this gospel,
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  SPEAKER_00: as we encounter Christ in the Eucharist today, let us bring those things together.
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  SPEAKER_00: Let us follow Christ.
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  SPEAKER_00: Let us remember that the gospel is more than rules, more than head knowledge.
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  SPEAKER_00: Christ says to them, go and do likewise.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's what we're called to do.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not go and know what you're supposed to do.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's important because if you don't know what you're supposed to do,
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  SPEAKER_00: you're not going to do it.
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  SPEAKER_00: But he says, go and do likewise.
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  SPEAKER_00: Go and put that into practice.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it's our challenge this week.
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  SPEAKER_00: Every person that we see,
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  SPEAKER_00: doesn't matter who they are,
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  SPEAKER_00: doesn't matter how messed up they are,
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  SPEAKER_00: doesn't matter if they're a family member who's,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know, really off every time we see them, oh my gosh.
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  SPEAKER_00: Go and do likewise.
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  SPEAKER_00: Go and be a neighbor to that.
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  SPEAKER_00: Don't be a neighbor to that person on the street.
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  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter if you don't give them money.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're like, you know, this person, I know they're going to use it on drugs.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's fine.
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  SPEAKER_00: But acknowledge them as a human being.
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  SPEAKER_00: See them.
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  SPEAKER_00: Ask them what their name is.
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  SPEAKER_00: When I worked with the homeless down at Downtown Chapel,
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  SPEAKER_00: downtown Portland, we would ask the homeless to pray for us.
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  SPEAKER_00: I was so moved by that.
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  SPEAKER_00: You're used to people just kind of like brushing them off or giving them charity.
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  SPEAKER_00: And for us to go and treat them like a human being and say, will you pray for me?
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  SPEAKER_00: Gave them dignity.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's what it means to be a neighbor.
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  SPEAKER_00: So there's all kinds of opportunities around us all the day.
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  SPEAKER_00: Let's think about that this week and try to put that into practice.