Latest / The Uncensored Catholic / Show 156: The Adoration or Worship of God, the First Commandment

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Show 156: The Adoration or Worship of God, the First Commandment · The Uncensored Catholic

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They all welcome today's show. We will start as usual with radio replies,
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and today we're going to cover a couple of really really common Protestant arguments against
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the papacy, specifically against Catholicism. The questioner asked the priests or states,
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I should say posits is the correct word. Christ said, come to me,
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all ye who are burdened. But Catholics cannot go directly to come.
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They must approach through a complex hierarchy. This is like probably the most common
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Protestant charge, actually, And they answer, the priesthood is a form of
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secondary mediation appointed by Christ. To ignore his provision for the church is to
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ignore Christ. We do not say that Catholics cannot directly approach Christ. They
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may unite themselves to Him by private prayers whenever they wish, But in many
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matters they need also the other means appointed by Christ and commit and committed officially
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to the administration of priests. Remember too, that this identifies himself with his
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church and meant what he said when he declared to her, he who hears
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you hears me. That implies doctrine. That implies the doctrine, he who
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comes to you comes to me In fact, when Saul was persecuting the church,
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Christ appeared to him and said, not Saul, Saul, why thou
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persecute the Church? But Saul, Saul, why thy persecute thou? Me
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person says Catholics call their priest's father, Yet Christ said, call no man
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father upon earth. Well, I did a whole show on this. It's
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a pretty ridiculous charge. Actually, they answer, your rigid interpretation would forbid
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your calling an earthly parent father. Yet God himself in the Commandments, terms
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one of your parents' father and tells you to honor him as such. Your
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texts means simply call no one your father, as if you had no other
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father with rights over you. That is, you must realize that all paternity
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is of God, that you owe your being and all you have, including
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your earthly father, to Him. Nor can any claims of an earthly father
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avail against our duties to God, our heavenly father. Meantimes, Catholics do
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not call a priest's father in the same sense as that in which they call
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God their father. A priest, by God's providence and by the authority of
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the Church, his father in the spiritual sense, just as natural parent,
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as a natural parent is a father in the earthly sense. By administrating baptism,
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he iss spiritual life to the soul. He nourishes that life by conferring
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the sacraments. He warns, teaches, helps with his advice, corrects,
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and does all in the spiritual life that an earthly father does in the temporal
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order. So much so that Saint Paul attributes a true paternity to himself when
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he's saying, I admonish you as my dearest children, for in Christ Jesus,
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by the Gospel, I have begotten you first Corinthians four fourteen. And
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the person says, well, anyway, I want no pope or priest,
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and they answer, you go to Christ on his conditions or on your own.
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Christ decided that priests were necessary to his religion, gave to his church
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the sacraments of orders, and the authority to his priests. You profess to
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believe in Christ, yet you regard his appointments as a nonsensical farce. Very
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very true, very true. I think that is really one of the best
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answers we can give to Protestants when they deny the priests, who when they
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don't deny the papacy, when they deny the sacraments, and it's you know,
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Jesus said, if you love me, you will keep my commandments.
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So you love Jesus, why won't you worship as he commanded? Why won't
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you go to church on Sunday and receive the Eucharist? You love Jesus,
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why won't you be baptized? Many Protestants will not. They say it's symbolic
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and they act with offense toward it. You love Jesus, why won't you
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accept his teaching on marriage? It's indissoluble that divorce is not allowed. All
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Protestant churches allow divorce, and as does the Orthodox Church. I mean,
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there's a lot of people saying, you know, the Orthodox Church, the
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Eastern Orthodox churches are you know, more traditional and we should convert and know
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the Orthodox Church also allows divorce in direct opposition to the teachings of Christ.
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They even have what they call a trial marriage. If you love Jesus,
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why will you not go to his priests for confession? When he said in
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the Gospel of John, those who sins you forgive, they are forgiven.
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Those who sins you retain, they are retained. If you love Jesus,
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why don't you attend the church that he founded, and we can prove that
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he founded it. If you love Jesus, why don't you listen to the
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only teaching, the only authority on earth to which he gave the authority,
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his own authority to teach in his state and to actually perform the sacraments and
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to do everything that he did on earth after he ascended to heaven. That's
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what he gave to the Holy Catholic Church through the Apostles, through apostolic succession.
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That is really one of our most convincing arguments. When they say,
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you know, I don't need a priest. I can go directly to God.
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Well, yeah, you can pray directly to God. But in the
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Bible it says you need to be baptized. You can't baptize yourself, you
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know. It says you need to be well confirmed. It says the apostles
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laid on hands and the people received the fullness of the spirit. That's confirmation.
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You can't do that to yourself. The Bible says about confession, you
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need to go to a priest for confession. You can't give yourself a Euchrist.
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And Jesus said, truly, truly, unless you eat of my body
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and drink of my blood, you have no life in you. That is
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really you know, all the Protestant arguments fall up heart when you get to
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the heart of it. If you love and worship Jesus, why won't you
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worship as he asked, as he'd commanded, Why won't you follow his commandments?
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Why won't you go to his church? Why won't you follow his teachings
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and accept the authority of the priests that he gave? And we can go
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And I did in my book Confirmation, Auto Autobiography of Faith. I give
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a chapter in verse for every one of the sacraments, all the authorities and
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duties of the priests. And you can just open your Bible and say to
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your Protestant friend who believes that you're not even allowed to read the Bible,
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Look, here's what the Bible actually says. Now, let's read this in
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context. And the conclusion finally being that there is no true church but the
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Catholic Church. And if you're going to actually follow the teachings of Christ,
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you have to become Catholic, and you have to accept all the teachings of
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the Catholic Church. There's no way around it all right. So now we
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are going back to we are going to continue with Father Sparragu's exhaustive Catechism of
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the Catholic Church. Exhaustive explanation of the Catechism, I should say, and
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we have gotten to the ten commandments, and we are starting with a first
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one, the first commandment of God. On Sinai, God said thou shalt
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not have strange gods before me Exodus twenty two through seven. That is to
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say, thou shalt worship the True God. Only thou shallt worship no false
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gods. In the first commandment, interior and exterior worship is required of us.
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It is the commandment our Lord referred to, which our Lord referred when
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he said to Satan. It is written that the Lord, thy God,
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shalt thou adore, and him only shalt thou serve Matthew four ten. And
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the first commandment God enjoins up us to worship Him and forbids idolatry in every
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false form of worship. The adoration or worship of God. We are accustomed
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to show respect to anyone who is superior to ourselves in any point in power
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and experience and knowledge, et cetera. We also reverence kings age should men,
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men imminent for learning or science, and the like. The greater the
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man's superiority to ourselves, the greater is our esteem or our reverence for him.
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Now, as God is infinitely superior to us, we owe him the
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utmost respect, worship and veneration of which we are capable. This highest worship
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we call adoration. We ought to adore God because he is infinitely exalted above
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us, and because we are entirely dependent upon Him as our creator. Let
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us meditate a while upon the infinite subliminy sublimity of God. Consider versus omnipotence
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that is displayed in the beauty of the star spangled firmament. That means you
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know the night sky when you look out, the heavens show forth the glory
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of God. That's some psalms. Consider also the eternity of God. One
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day with the lords is one thousand years tewod Peter three eight. Think of
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the wisdom of God, the arrangements of whom providence, of whose providence are
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so wonderful in creation, and who can turn even what is evil to good.
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Oh, depth of the riches of wisdom and the knowledge of God.
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How incomprehensible is his judgments Romans eleven thirty three. Think of his fatherly care
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even for the most insignificantness of his creatures. At the time of our Lord's
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birth, he showed grace to the poor shepherds and heathens. He chose for
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his mother a lowly virgin, unlearned fishermen. For his apostles to the poor,
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he had the Gospel preached, etc. Who is as the Lord,
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our God, who dwelleth on high and looketh down on low things? It's
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from Psalms as well. How infinite is the distance between God and man.
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We love God because we know him. We adore Him because we cannot comprehend
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him. That's said by Saint Gregory of Nauseionsen. We are entirely dependent upon
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God. We belong holy and solely to him. The members of our body,
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the powers of our soul, or his gifts to him. We owe
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our being, and by him we are redeemed. Since He has given us
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all that we have, it is just that we should serve Him and worship
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him alone. The considerations of divine benefits bestowed upon us teaches us to adore
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him. We must moreover consider that we cannot exist without God's continual help.
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If he deprives us of food, we cannot live. If he takes away
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our life, we die. If he takes from us the light of the
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Holy Spirit, we become spiritually blind. If he were to permit the devil
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to have too much power over us, we should fall into mortal sin.
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What is true of man is true in all other creatures. They also are
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entirely dependent upon their creator. Thou art worthy, O, Lord, our
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God, to receive glory and honor and power, because thou hast created all
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things. It's Apocalypse of Revelations four eleven. Come, let us adore and
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fall down before the Lord that has made us. For he is the Lord,
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our God. We are the people of his pastor and the sheep of
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his hand. Also from Psalms. The adoration we pay to God consists in
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this that we acknowledge, both in our hearts and by our actions, that
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He is our Lord and we are his creatures and his servants. To worship
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God is to acknowledge our own misery and his greatness. He who worships God,
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says David, My substances is nothing before thee says with David, I
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should say, my substances is nothing before thee. Our adoration of God manifests
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itself first by interior reverence and then by external signs. We call those persons
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pious who worship God in truth. We worship God interiorly by acts of faith,
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hope, and charity. By faith we give our assent to all the
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utterances of the most High and the True God. We adore God as the
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perfect Truth. By God, we expect all good things. By hope,
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we expect all good things from the Almighty and most bountiful God. We adore
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Him as the source of all good. By charity, we occupy ourselves exclusively
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with God. We adore Him as our final end. Augustine says that the
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worship of God necessarily commences with the correct knowledge of God, for it is
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impossible to know Him without venerating Him. And who that knows the omnipotence of
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God and has be beneficients towards mankind can do other workwise than place hope in
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him. Who that is conscious of, the conscious of the many benefits God's
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lavishes upon him, can fail to love him. It is is it possible,
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asks Saint Thomas of Villanova for a creature to know God without loving him.
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Reverence for God the worship of God are inseparable from the love of God,
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for we adore what we love. Love and adoration are as closely connected
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as fire and flame, said Saint Francis de cel. Thus, the worship
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of God consists of three things, faith, hope, and charity. By
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acts of these virtues we are to manifest our reverence for Him. Exterior worship
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is nothing more or less than the expression of faith, hope, and charity.
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We adore God God exteriorly by vocal prayer, sacrifice, genuflections, prostrations,
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folding of hands, striking of the breast, etc. Sacrifice is the
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surrender or destruction of some visible gift of God, in order thereby to honor
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Him as our sovereign Lord. By sacrifice we attest our belief that God is
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the Author of all, being, the supreme Lord of all, to whom
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accordingly we owe our allegiance. The oblation of visible objects is a sign of
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the interior spiritual sacrifice, whereby the soul surrenders itself to God is her final
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and blissful end. By kneeling down or prostrating oneself as Christ did in the
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Garden of Olives. We acknowledge our own insignificance before God. Class of the
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hands signifies that we are fettered. It means tiede i e. Hopeless,
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striking the heart, the publican, and the temple, that we are deserving
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of chastisement. We ought to pay God exterior worship because we are bound to
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render him the homage of our bodies, and because it serves to increase our
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interior devotion. Furthermore, external worship answers to a need inherent in our human
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nature. Body and soul are both God's work. Consequently, both are under
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obligation of manifesting their subjection to Him, and omniscient God does not indeed need
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our outward signs of reverence because he sees the intention of the worshiper. Yet
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these outward tokens are useful because they inflame the interior affections and augment the fervor
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of interior worship. And since these external ceremonies during prayers are only a means
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to an end, that of intensifying interior devotion, they can be dispensed with
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if they prove a hindrance to interior worship. For instance, if one is
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greatly fatigued, one may sit to say one's prayer prayers. Nay more,
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one may pray while walking about or standing, if one finds that thus one
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can pray more devoutly. That's true for me. I prefer to to pray
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my rosary as a walk especial. You want my dog every day, that's
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my daily rosary time. When I kneel at tend to get sleepy and my
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back cramps up, and it's I pray far better when I'm actually walking or
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taking a hike fishing, I do a lot of praying my fish. When
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I'm doing work outside, I say a lot of prayers. I'm definitely more
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of an one that's more comfortable with being active while praying. Do not weary
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yourself with protracted kneeling, or it will occasion distraction. It is enough.
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If the posture of the soul before God is one of lowly adoration. Man
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is so constituted that he must needs give outward expression to his inward feelings.
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When a man is on fire within, the flames burst out externally. So
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when a man adores God in spirit, he manifests his devotion by outward signs.
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Otherwise he would belie the impulse of his nature, where he'd suppress all
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demonstration of the adoration he pays in thought and heart. We ought never to
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render external adoration of God without having awakened within us the corresponding sentiments of devotion.
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He who kneels down, clasps his hands, strikes his breast without thinking
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of what he is doing is a little better than a hypocrite. How many
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people go through the usual ceremonies in the House of God merely from habit,
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without thinking what they are doing. We must not act like this, and
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we must not act in this like acquaintances who meeting casually repeat a formula of
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greeting without meaning a word of what they say. You know, I swouldn't
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say, hey, how you doing, So the person says, hey,
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how you doing, nobody answers, and nobody really cares how the other person
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is doing. Honestly, you know, it's just habit. The ceremonies we
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observe when worshiping God ought faithfully to express the feelings of our heart. Christ
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said to the Samaritan woman that God must be adored in spirit and in truth
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John four twenty four. That is exterior worship ought to be the expression of
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our spiritual worship and correspond faithful to the feelings of our heart. Those individuals
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who make a greater demonstration devotion than their interior sentiments warrant or like people who
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dress above their station and give themselves out for richer than they really are.
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Vicious people sometimes make an hour profession of piety, by which they seek to
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conceal their evil life. In this they resemble those who seek to disguise some
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unpleasant odor by the use of powerful perfume, or those who, having a
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bad complexion by nature, employee cosmetics to give it a fictitious beauty and attractive
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brilliance. Why I'm reminded of Joe Biden carrying his rosary wherever he goes.
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Okay, I'm just saying I'm not judging the man, but you know,
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seems seems about right to me. The ancient Egyptians used to embalm dead bodies
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to preserve them from decomposition. So Satan abuse those who are spiritually dead.
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By the way, at the time of this writing eighteen nineties, it was
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not common or at all encouraged for Christians to be inboalved I don't know why
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we've gotten back to that. It's absolutely not necessary for a Christian burial.
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It does nothing but add to the expense for the family. If you're considering
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your last wishes, you may want to talk to a priest about what is
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required for a Catholic burial and you know, funeral and everything. As Father
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Spirago said in I think a previous chapter, I think we've already been through
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that, it's actually not good, it's actually sinful to spend a lot of
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money on a funeral when and flowers and everything, you know, big ceremonies
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and a lot of show and expensive coffins and all that, because that's you
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know, we go into the ground we wrought. Jesus will rise us again
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at the last day. He will raise us again the last day. I
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should say that money really should be given to the family of the person who
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died that may need help with their expenses, or to the charity of the
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person's choice who died, or to the church. It's not right just to
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spend just like weddings, outrageous, outlandish, the expensive weddings. That's not
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what a wedding's all about. A marriage should take place in a church with
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a priest, simple ceremony, not a bunch of grandeur. You know,
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Let that money be put toward paying for the expenses of the first child.
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Yeah yeah, I mean it's expensive to have kids, right, medical bills
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and everything. If the people are very wealthy, again, give it to
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someone in need. Give it to a charity or an individual. It may
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be sick. You know, there may be a poor person in hospice getting
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ready to die who is really in dire straits, and you could pay for
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their funeral with the money you spend on your outlandish, ridiculous wedding. You
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know. It's like the old saying goes, the fancier of the kitchen,
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the worst the food. This is serious. I mean, as a cook,
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I can tell you the best kitchens are simple, basic, utilitarian,
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et cetera. Well, the fancier of the wedding, the more likely to
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end in divorce. And I think I've read several studies that would indicate that
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over time. I don't have any hand, don't ask me to quote them,
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but the more people spend on their weddings, the more likely and their
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honeymoons and all that, the more likely the wedding is to end in divorce.
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So where were we we were talking about embalming. Ancient Egyptians embalmed dead
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bodies to prevent them from decomposition. So satan inmbues those who are spiritually dead
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with the aroma of a spurious piety, that their moral corruption may not be
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apparent. I can think a few that would fit that description. Persons who
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make a pretense of piety may be elected by the Persons who make a preticipiety
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may be detected by their ostentatious displays of devotion and their utter lack of charity.
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They court observance of their religious practices, accompany their prayers with extravagant gestures,
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affect a downcast's mean or appearance, take a prominent part in all Catholic
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confraternities, and counted a crime not to go a confession on particular days.
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Meanwhile, they do not scruple to conceal a grievous sin in the tribunal penance.
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They live in enmity. They slander their neighbor, give no alms,
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and indulge in envy. Thus, these would be saints betray their real character
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as surely as a man betrays his nationality. The moment he opens his lips.
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Piety that is simply external does not last because it is not the outcome
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of material devotion, interior devotion. Planets and comets, says Saint Francis Desaul,
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are both luminit us heavenly bodies that closely resemble each other. But the
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comets soon disappear, while the planets shine on to all time. So it
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is with real and unreal devotion. Those who make a pretense of piety render
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religion contemptible and deter many right minded persons from devotional practices. For no one
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likes to be classed with the hypocrites. We ought to avoid all exaggeration and
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devotion and never emit the duties of our state of life. We ought to
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avoid every kind of exaggeration in the worship of God. True piety does not
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consist in a gloomy demeanor, downcast looks in a melancholy manner. True piety
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is cheerful. The soul that rejoices in the possession of God, that which
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is rich in virtue produces a pleasant impression on others. It is also a
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mistake to load oneself with with a great variety of religious practices. We should
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aim at simplicity in our devotions. A short prayer, prayer, A short
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prayer repeated one hundred times over is often worth more than one hundred different formulas.
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The duties of our station ought never to be neglected for the sake of
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prayer. For nothing is more pleasing to God than the right fulfillment than their
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right fulfillment. He performs the duties of his calling, says Saint Francis Desaul,
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with diligent care for the love of God is a truly pious and a
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man after God's heart. That piety which is incompatible with the duties of our
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station's false piety. True piety adapts itself to the duties of every state and
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calling as a fluid takes the form of the vessel into which it is poured.
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We must pay supreme worship to God only, for healone is the sovereign
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Lord of heaven and Earth. Our Lord said to the devil when he tempted
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him. It is written, the Lord, thy God, shalt thou adore,
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and him only shalt thou serve. If I am in the presence of
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a person of distinction, it would be showing contempt for him. Where I
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turn away from Him and devote my attention to someone greatly his. So it
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would not be right to allow any object but God to engross our minds and
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our thoughts. It is, however, no sin to reverence creatures in whom
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the perfections of God are reflected. We do not worship them with supreme worship.
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We only honor and venerate them for God's sake. Thus it is permissible
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to venerate the saints. Very well. Put, yes, when we venerate
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the saints, we are paying respect to the glory of God reflected in his
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friends, in those who loved him most. It is right and just as
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they say. And I think we'll wrap this one up here today. It
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probably take us three days just to get through the first Commandment. We'll get
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into some really fascinating topics in the next few days. We'll talk about spiritualism
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and mysticism and actually why the church forbids that for telling of the future and
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trafficking with spirits and all that. And this all has to do with,
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you know, the worship, right worship of God and not worshiping idols and
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false gods and participating in false religions and superstition. Even we'll get into superstition,
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so y'all will wrap it up with the words of Saint Padre Pia,
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Pray, hope and don't worry, and I'll talk to you tomorrow