[Music] first us we begin with the resurrection so that as the story is of course we know that Jesus died on the cross three days later rose from the dead and that event of his rising from the dead is what begins the life of the church so that Mary Magdalene the disciples the apostles experienced the resurrection they experienced Jesus who they knew to be dead previously they saw him die on the cross they knew he was dead the scriptures tell us that it was three days that he was in the Tomb and of course that means to tell us that he was really dead and then he rises from the dead and he appears to them Mary Magdalene uh the first person to announce the gospel the good news goes to the apostles and tells them he's not dead he is risen he is alive and he appears to them in that upper room where the Last Supper had taken place so that's the beginning of the church and it's that experience then that brings them to tell others about their experience of Jesus so by starting with the resurrection it it converts them in that sense we know that as the scriptures tell us for the most part he was abandoned at his death and so when he comes back in a resurrected form in a physical body at one point he eats at one point he can be touched he speaks to them and yet he appears and disappears so it's a resurrected physical body so then as we know it proceeds in the scripture right away they go into hiding even though Jesus appears to them time and again he appears to the two disciples on the road to Emmas and that we have different accounts of that they pretty much are worried that they too would be arrested and put to death until about 50 days later at Pentecost well of course 40 days later at the time Jesus then ascends back to the father so then they're back in the room back hiding on what we call Pentecost 50 days after the resurrection um the Holy Spirit comes upon them and with the gift of the Holy Spirit then they go out and as the Acts of the Apostles tells us 3,000 were added to their number so that's the beginnings the beginnings of the church then we have St Paul and many people know the story of St Paul first he was um persecuting the Christian Christians and although they weren't called Christians yet persecuting the followers of Jesus and then uh the church begins to go from one town to another as the Jewish people who were gathered for the feast all right back gathered for the Feast of the Passover became converts became Christians what we call Christians they go back to their own towns and that and so St Paul the other disciples go out and and we know that it takes about 50 years or so to for the church to spread 50 years or 30 years after Jesus we have the first scriptures we have the writings of St Paul and then it is in those writings of St Paul that the followers of Jesus are first called Christians and that but the word Catholic does not come about until about 125 ad and so Ignatius of Antioch is the one who calls the Christians Catholic so he begins to refer to them as Catholic meaning that it's the same religion from place to place so whether you're an Antioch or Damascus or Jerusalem they're all that one same [Music] religion for Catholics the nature of God is that God is one so we're a monotheistic religion and coming out of the Jewish understanding of God and so we talk about the unity of God God is one there is no divisions there's nothing that that can make God separate and that but God God is so God always was God is always the same so there is no beginning and there no end to God so the essence of God is Oneness without beginning or end and yet of course we're also trinitarian so God is three persons Father Son and Holy Spirit spirit and people sometimes think that that means three people so it's three persons not three people and so the essence of God is father son and spirit always is this is from the beginning and so and then when we think about it theologically then we talk about the sun is generated from in at the same time although there is no time of of the essence so there's so that the father generates the son not creates not makes but generates the Sun and then the father and the son spirate the spirit so there's this relationship of father son and spirit which is the essence of God so it's it's not like Father first son second Spirit third it is from before for time in eternity the Oneness of God when we look at God as God is made manifest his creator Redeemer and sanctifier we look at Jesus the Redeemer we look at the Holy Spirit as the sanctifier and then we thought think of the father as Creator and yet because God is one they each always is Creator Redeemer and sanctifier we can't divide them and yet we see them made manifest in different ways so it's a Oneness of of unity and yet at times we speak of them as kind of different um aspects or understandings or movements or manifestations of God but we cannot think of them as separate so especially as three people it's Oneness and being always there is that Essence that is the Oneness which is man is in the Trinity so what we say is the father is God the son is God the spirit is God each is God God is one so we speak about heaven we speak about eternal life so we've got this life here and when we finish this life we either get heaven or hell so and for us there's Purgatory so when we speak about heaven it is a Unity with God so in terms of Heaven it's seeing God face to face it's being with God but of course there are other people in heaven also so it's a it's not necessarily like a reunion of other people but there is that sense of knowing and experiencing other people there's a reality of knowing what's happening on Earth so so it's a living presence now part of it is that with Catholics we believe in kind of the first resurrection and second Resurrection meaning that when a person dies their soul or their Essence is in heaven but it's only after the second coming of Jesus at the end of the universe that the body is reunited with the spirit or the soul and of course there's all kinds of what would that body look like and how old would you be and so you might think like in one tradition you would be 33 years old because that in the Greek mind and in the those ancient peoples 33 was the perfect age you were kind of physically developed spiritually developed you know you were kind of a grown person in a man so you'd be 33 years years old and some people well you get to pick whatever age you want to be in that so it's you know what would the physical body look like and yet there would be a physical body as Jesus is physical body you won't no need to sleep you don't need to eat and yet it's a presence that's not completely unlike the one that we have here because it's a recognizable physical presence so there would be that's what heaven is we have those people who go to heaven and then hell is on the other end and so those people again a PL state of being or a place that is devoid of God and so as we think of hell it is where we know God exists we know that we could have loved God but we chose not to so hell is not like a punishment from God but it's the result of our choices in this life when we when God who is love when Humanity who is love moved in our lives we chose to move away from that so it's in a very deep way knowing love and rejecting love love and so many theologians would say that it's you know impossible near to impossible to choose hell how many people can really know love and and reject love and yet we know that it is possible for people to be in hell to choose away from everything they know to be good and true and reject all of that by their own choice so that's why we Catholics have Purgatory so in purgatory is for those of us that in this life are not fully ready to see God face to face you know it' be like if I said to myself or to someone okay this is it you're going to see God face to face right now and you might say well let me give me a second you know I'm just not ready to see God face to face I want to go and you know ask forgiveness from my brother or I want to you know I need to make up for this over here and that and so I think of purg is the timeout the great timeout so in purgatory a in the afterlife as we're not ready to see God face to face we we kind of deal with our own stuff that we need to kind of be purged of our own ego our own selfishness the times that we rejected love and we could have you know reached out and that and it's and it's basically you know just kind of being set free from those entanglements of the world to be ready for eternal life and so it's um Purgatory then everyone who goes to Purgatory goes to heaven at the end of the universe there's only Heaven and Hell there is no Purgatory then the Catholics believe in the communion of saints so the communion of saints is is that all the people are related so the people in heaven the people in purgatory and the people here on Earth so the people here on Earth can pray for the people in purgatory to kind of be interceded and and that and the people in purgatory and the people in heaven can pray for us here and that and so we believe in intercessory prayer and so intercessory prayer is that one of the Saints or the people in heaven people who I know personally who I would pray and ask them to intercede for me and pray for me and that so there's all kinds of uh things often U like the one that might be most known to people is St Anthony St Anthony is the St Anthony of pwa is the one who finds lost things and so people say a prayer to St Anthony and they find what was lost and I have numerous stories that without a doubt the intercession of St Anthony I found what I was lost there was just I could go on for a while on that one that so so there's a communion of saints there's a Oneness of ourselves with the people in heaven the people and Purgatory um so so Heaven is eternal Bliss eternal life and it's it's our home that's where we're heading to so our home is not here our home is meant to be with God in [Music] heaven for us it's the Old Testament and the New Testament there the Canon is 46 books in the Old Testament 27 books in the New Testament and from the Old Testament there's the historical books well of course there's a pentat the first five books then the historical books the prophetic books and the wisdom literature so those 46 books are used by uh Jewish people more or less the penet more and depending on the different traditions and that so the Old Testament most likely was written about 800 years before Jesus to about 200 or so years before Jesus and that and describing the Hebrew people the Israelite people the Jewish people and then um we come to the time of Jesus and now of course there is no New Testament so the New Testament the first book of the New Testament comes about around 30 years after Jesus so there's that time period of 30 years when the scriptures that are read by the Christians by the followers of Jesus are the Old Testament scriptures and then we have first the letters of St Paul and then the gospel stories of Jesus are written several years after that anywhere from UH 60 AD to 90 or even 100 AD and that so part of the Canon a part of our understanding of scripture is that the Catholic church is not a biblically based church so the scripture comes out of the church not the church out of scripture because of that time period of before there was the New Testament and also that the Old Testament was written again as I said 800 years before Jesus and the Israelite people go back 1,800 years before Jesus and so the people of Israel were before it was a WR a written tradition the Christians or the people of Jesus are a people before there's a new testament before there's a a scripture then this the we have the the scriptures as most people understand the Bible and that and Catholics have more books than the non-catholics or the Protestants there's the dudal canonical books and part of that is whether they written in Greek or Hebrew and and how that kind of comes about um um but we also have tradition and so the tradition is part of the Canon so it's scripture and tradition form the Canon so this is the our foundational documents and so when we speak about tradition it's the way that we have done things and it's the way that the church has been formed over the years to just to give you an example of what we mean by tradition is that we worship on Sunday all right so we know that Jesus rose from the dead on the first day of the week not Saturday but Sunday all right so which would be the eighth day but we know that the third commandment is that we worship God on the Sabbath or the seventh day so how do we go from worshiping on the Sabbath to worshiping on the the first day from the seventh day to the first day partly we see that is when he rose from the dead but tradition then tells us that the early church gathered as the act the apostles tells us on the first day of the week and so from that first day of the week Gathering plus the Commandment to worship God we say the Commandment is to worship God on Sunday and that's the tradition it's not in the scriptures but it's in Tradition and it's F Foundation to who we are as Church [Music] I think in order to understand priesthood and hierarch in the Catholic church we go back to the last supper and so in the Last Supper Jesus said to the disciples do this in remembrance of me so that what he did is broke bread with them gave it to them and said this is my body this is my blood and so this this Sacrament or this presence of God this manifest St ation of God in the Eucharist is that how do we preserve that and follow that through in the church as it as it develops so again as we know that in the early church they gathered on Sunday on the first day of the week for the breaking of the bread they read the scriptures the Old Testament they read um and then they had the breaking of the bread um and there were presides people who did that presiding they did what Jesus did and it's so that that presider at Eucharist becomes the priest the Elder is the presider and so it takes some time for this to develop so in the beginning it would have been the head of the household who would have been the presider because the the church the Christians the followers of Jesus there were no churches of course they gathered in people's homes and usually they uh when times of persecution they were gathering in secret and so when they gathered they would have the breaking of the bread and the head of the household would be the one that would be the the leader or the presider and as then the communities began to grow they appointed overseers and so the overseers would be the ones that would oversee the community and the word Overseer in Greek is episcopo and so that Episcopal or Bishop comes out of that word overseer like the word presider becomes the word priest and it is um especially in the early Church in that early those early decades that because the sacrifice that could no longer take place in the temple in 70 AD the temple is destroyed but especially the Jewish followers of Jesus would would say that the priest is the one who goes in the temple to offer the sacrifice but Jesus is the new sacrifice that takes place of the old sacrifice so as Hebrew says there's the Eternal high priest and so the notion of priesthood being in a person takes some time to develop as they put these understandings together but we know right away in the Acts of the Apostles there were deacons and the deacons then to help the apostles in taking care of the of the community so these are the kind of underpinnings of what we have today in holy orders there are like three parts there's the Deacon the priest and the bishop so every priest was a deacon and every Bishop was a priest and so then in that kind of levels each has more responsibility and each is kind of has more Authority so we can start with the deacons the deacons are the are have the responsibility of preaching at the Eucharist they have responsibility for baptisms they have the responsibility for burying the dead and um so those responsibilities going belonging to the Deacon can also be done by a priest but a priest in addition to doing those responsibilities oh I forgot marrying also is one things that the deacons do um that those responsibilities that priest adds to that in the sense that the priest is the one who celebrates the Eucharist the priest is the one who does the anointing of the sick and the priest is the one who hears confessions then in addition to that the bishop is the one who confirms and the bishop is the one who ordains but the bishop has the responsibility of governing in the dicese and uh kind of seeing that the whole thing comes comes together but it comes out of of this early church deacons presider and overseer then the Bishops themselves form what we call a magisterium they are the teaching Office of the church their job is to Faithfully pass on the Faith from one generation to the next and as forming the teaching magisterium they form councils now an example of the councils that they form an ecumenical council would be in the Acts of the Apostles the Council of Jerusalem so when the question was should we allow people to come in and not be circumcised the apostles those people who were the episcopo the overseers they were the ones who debated it and made a decision and that and so then over the centuries there have been various councils that have answered various questions the Council of NAA the Council of Constantinople and and in our own time the second Vatican Council and each council is the Gathering of the Bishops with the Pope under the pope to make decisions that affect the whole church and that so that's that teaching magisterium and that that special office that they hold priests also are teachers priests also um govern and help guide the church priests are Sanctified and they get this role from the bishop and then deacons also help with that in some way so I think in terms of authority and hierarchy it's the Bishops together with and under the pope so what we know is that each Bishop in his own dicese is autonomous and it's together that they form the college and yet it's with the Pope and under the pope and so the pope has Universal Authority Universal teaching Authority whereas a bishop in his own dasis would be the same Authority but in a local community like a DI called a dicese the three roles of the bishop are to be the teacher the sanctifier and the one who governs and so these three roles are for the building up of the church I talked a little bit about the magisterium and the teaching the sanctifying is praying with and for the people and the governing then is the part of guiding the church with the rules and regulations and making sure that it all goes together and financially keeps running and all that it's a running of the church and that so that's each Bishop especially in his own dicese has that responsibility the pope then has that responsibility for the whole church so he is the one who is the teacher the sanctifier and the governor of the whole church and of course no one does it alone so what has developed over time is the college of cardinals so the Cardinals it's not a separate sacred order but it's an honor that the pope gives to certain priests or Bishops most of them are Bishops but some can be priests so the College of Cardinals and I think right now there's 130 and it's right around that number more or less and the pope can appoint as many as he wants or Let It Drop as few as he wants and that but the College of cardinals helped the pope especially in the governance of the church so on the level of in Rome there are different uh die Castries or offices that run the run the church and so Cardinals staff those with of course the people that help them and that but also Cardinals are archbishops in various parts of the world in so we know that for example Pope Francis was the Archbishop of uh buenos Aris in Argentina and who came from there to be was elected to the pope and again the College of cardinals one of their roles when the pope resigns or dies is to elect the new pope and that and usually the pope comes from their number but doesn't have to the pope can come from anywhere and anyone could be elected I suppose it would certainly be a baptized person but there's no limits to who could be elected the pope and uh so again the church is called uh in terms of authority and hierarchy the pope with the College of Bishops forms that unity and that governance of the church that sanctifying and teaching and then everybody helps so the priests help with the governance help with the sanctifying help with the teaching the deacons help the Le help certainly there are more women teaching than anybody else and so it's all kind of works together to to form this church which is meant to draw other people to be a sign and a witness of God at work in the [Music] world when we speak about rights we speak about sacraments and for Catholics there are seven sacraments and a Sacrament is a a sacred moment um in the the Orthodox they use the word mystery which would be the same seven sacraments they're outward signs uh given to us by Christ um for grace and grace is the free gift from God so Grace uh we talk about sanctifying Grace meaning that it makes us holy it's the outward pouring of God's presence in us that makes us Sanctified makes us more holy makes us more like Jesus makes us more like Christ Christ so every Grace G every Sacrament I mean gives sanctifying Grace but they're also then what we call actual Grace and actual Grace nicely helps us to be holy so God gives us Graces to help us to take that Holiness that God gives us and to put it into practice um and there are other kinds of Graces too but those are the the two ones that the one the two that are most operative most of the time then those seven sacraments are baptism confirmation and Eucharist those are the sacraments of initiation so B baptism is the most important and for us all sacraments are the movement of God none of the sacraments has anything to do with our Merit we can't earn them in any way and so baptism is God's choosing us to be members of his body body members of the body of Christ it's a free gift from God so often at a baptism I'll tell the parents well it looks like you drove your child here and we have baby baptism looks like you are bringing your child here to be baptized but in fact of all the children born at this time God is choosing this child for the gift of baptism and so God chooses and in that baptism we are washed clean we are incorporated in the body of Christ we're made members of the church we become one with God in that moment so then after baptism comes confirmation and Confirmation could come at any time so it can be immediately after baptism or so often now it's when people are in eighth grade or ninth grade but confirmation is the gift of the Holy Spirit hearkens back to the time of Pentecost I already mentioned Pentecost is that time when the church got started the Holy Spirit came upon them and sent them out into the world so Pentecost confirmation is that gift of the spirit we receive the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit wisdom understanding knowledge counsel piety fortitude fear of the Lord fear of the Lord meaning awe so in the gift of the spirit is to to animate us to to to help us to sanctify the World by our going out it makes us to as those missionaries out into the world but we have baptism confirmation and then Eucharist is communion so Eucharist then gives us the food and drink that we need to be the missionaries as we're called to be as disciples discipleship missionaries and the food and drink to be those missionaries and so every time we take communion then we are made closer and closer to Christ so those are the three sacraments of initiation then we have two sacraments that are meant for he healing and forgiveness and so there's a sacrament of reconciliation or confession and the sacrament of anointing of the sick so the sacrament of reconciliation or confession in this Sacrament which we call confession this the confession again because it's God's movement this confession is God confesses God's love for us so when we're Sinners and everybody's a sinner the Pope everybody's a sinner so we come before God and God says I love you there isn't anything that you can do that can stop me God from loving you that reconciliation that confession that God says I love you and so we then come before God with our guilt and you know embarrassment and pain we bring that to the priest and God forgives and then we are meant out of that to be reconciled to others too if we've hurt someone to be reconciled with a community with the rest of the world with God and so that's that sacrament of rebuilding that body of Christ that no matter who we are we're all Sinners we need that then the anointing of the sick is for those who are sick or elderly and I think when we speak about sickness I think there's at least two aspects there's the pain and the suffering the pain is the physical pain and the suffering is kind of that mental spiritual anguish that elderly people and very sick people experience so the anointing of the sick is working on the spiritual side on that suffering side that when a person suffers to give that calmness to give that kind of um acceptance that we need when we just get old or when we just are have that sickness that looks like death is very close and that so that anointing of the sick is not for the physical healing healing it's not a it's not a lay on of hands to you know I'm Healed but it's working on that spiritual part that suffering part but we know that often enough that that healing of the spirit can have a physical effect that people get better when their spirit is healed so those two sacraments and then we have two sacraments for the building up of the community we have marriage and holy orders when we have the sacrament of marriage the sacrament of marriage the two Ministers of the Sacrament as opposed to all the other sacraments are the husband and wife the husband ministers the sacrament to his wife and the wife ministers a sacrament to her husband the two become one as scripture says and so in this in this relationship which starts well let's go back to Natural marriage we know that men and women since before time we're coming together as husband and wife so there's a natural marriage that takes place of husband and wife and then that natural relationship then has a sacr is put into a sacramental understanding and so the sacramental understanding is that in this relationship of ministering husband and wife they are Jesus that's the presence of God it's the real presence of God in that relationship then that is made manifest has an outpouring in the children so the essence of sacramental marriage is the relationship of husband and wife and the outpouring into the child the real child that comes out of that relationship even though we know that some people can't have children there's adoption but it's that relationship that we speak about and it is that relationship that is the is that the couple it it they're not for themselves the sacrament is never for yourself it's that outpouring of Grace that outpouring of love that the people are that they give of themselves to others that makes them this presence of God in the world it's a very sacred and you know it's a holy presence of God in this what we call the domestic Church in the family and that and that's why of all the other Human Relationships we hold up marriage because of this manifestation in many ways it reflects the trinity in that relationship of God that is love and that then in holy orders and this this holy orders I spoke before is for the ordained for the governing and for the sanctifying and and for the teaching and so that's for the building up of the body keeping the body of Christ going by you know somebody's got to set the rules and make sure that they're followed and you know and all of that the teaching and the and the praying and the sanctifying in a formal way so these then seven sacraments form the the essential rights of the Catholic [Music] church when we speak about men and women we go back to the beginning and God created the male and female and so in that story of Genesis there's a um a sense and an understanding that as God creates male and female that the fullness of God is in the male and the female together that there's a it's not one or the other but it's both together that make God most manifest or the fullness of God's revelation we talk about that in terms of the the term complimentarity that men and women are complement one another so that different roles different understand different ways that they operate in the world and if we're secular psychologists you know Men Are from Mars and women are from Venus and that so we see that there are differences between men and women some of the obvious differences between men and women are that women are the ones who bear the child and that and they have that special relationship to to their children that men as close as they are to their children is just different and that and so it's men and women and and so out of that there are different roles and different um places for men and women in the church when we start with the New Testament um and as I mentioned earlier the Resurrection the first person to announce the gospel is a woman Mary Magdalene and she is called the Apostle to the apostles so she's the one as the scriptures tell us went heard about Jesus saw Jesus goes back to them and makes that announcement so there's an understanding that all Christians all of us men and women are called by baptism to be those disciples those Apostles the missionaries the ones who need the Eucharist to be fed and so men and women are called to be the teachers the Sanctified the governors they're all men and women have roles in the church and some you know um so like a the the teachers in the church whereas you might say that the Bishops formed this magisterium well the women are probably the catechists by far over the men and doing more teaching or if we talk about sanctifying um who leads prayer more than than a priest would be the mom's at home you know so there so sometimes we get too formalized and we think oh that's the guy that's up there and we forget that there's so much ministry that's taking place day in and day out who's caring for the poor who's taking care of that neighbor who's doing this and doing that men and women are doing that all over the world all the time so formly speaking we talk about the ordained and of course in our church the ordained are men only coming out of the tradition of the Apostles that it seems that in the early church those first 12 those apostles were men and Jesus chose them in a special way to be his leaders and and kind of the carriers of the faith in no way to take away from the women the Bible talks about the people who took care of Jesus when he was out in his three years of of ministry so formerly speaking we have the ordained and those who are not but that's not all men only some men are called to the ordained Ministry the vast majority of men and all the women are called to the various the many ministries of the church and whether it's governing sanctifying or teaching all called throughout the world and doing you beautiful and marvelous things my understanding and the understanding of the church is that the opposite of true is not false so that because this religion Catholicism is true does not make the other religions false so it's not a dichotomy in that sense but then so what is it if it's not a true and false kind of understanding so if if we say that God works in the world we know that God works in everyone everywhere every time every place God can never be limited but the church in its fullness subsists in the Catholic church so this is for for our understanding the fullness of Revelation this is how God wants it to be God wants it to be in the way that that that we have it and remember that that it's not just the Roman Catholic Church that we're talking about the Catholic church has various rights so there's the Roman Catholic Church there would be the marinite Catholic Church there would be um the Coptic Catholic Church there's probably 22 maybe 25 different rights or or languages and ways of doing the ritual all the same sacraments in the same hierarchy but it would be different languages so the Catholic church is much bigger than the Roman Catholic Church the so like right the pope is the head of the Latin or Roman right but is also the universal head of all the Catholic churches in the world so the fullness of Revelation the fullness of God's movement resides or subsists in the Catholic church but God is not not in other religions God is working through them also so in that sense H how does God work can God work through other people can God work in other religions can people be close to God is the Dalai Lama someone who is Holy someone who is close to God yes even though Buddhists and of themselves don't believe in God as as we would understand God and yet we would say that there's something we would say God works through someone as like the Dalai Lama but we wouldn't look to him for teachings about God they don't believe in God nor we look for him for teachings about the church you know and the and the governance of the church or the seven sacraments there' be no sacraments for him and that on the other hand on the very other end would be like an orthodox bishop or or um an orthodox leader so for us the the Orthodox Community has seven sacraments same seven sacraments they believe what we believe about the sacraments their governance is almost the same their teachings by far are the closest to the Catholic church we would say they're just wrong in a couple things and of course they would say that we're wrong in a couple things you know and that and we talk about episcopalians or lutherans would be close to us also and differences in understanding sometimes we have differences in the Canon of scripture and that sometimes there's governance issues and that so then as we move away from Christian religions into either a Buddhist religion or other religions then God works but not in the not in the same way not in the fullness and that so we would never condemn somebody outright and just say well you're not a Catholic or you're not a Christian so you can't go to heaven there's none of that so God is for everyone all the time so one of the ways that I uh look at the Catholic church and try to explain it to people it's like being a sign so the more that the Catholic Church lives being Catholic that we learn about forgiveness and compassion that we preach and understand love the more that we are who we're meant to be then that will be a sign to other people so anyone who loves is in God because God is love and so you don't have to be a Catholic to love anyone who forgives God is with that person you don't have to be a Catholic to forgive to be compassionate to be caring and yet all of those realities all of those characteristics are in and through God so God at work and so if we're able as Catholics to be more compassionate more loving more forgiving and be assigned to that in the world then we're doing our job we're helping people get close to God you don't have to be a Catholic to get into heaven but it helps I think what sets Catholicism apart is in that theological sense that we believe that the fullness of Revelation subsists in the church but I think most religions if not all would say that they're the ones that have the fullness of Revelation so rather than talk about it as kind of a theological separ ation I see kind of what sets Catholicism apart is the Eucharist so for us the Orthodox and the Catholics would have the same understanding of the Eucharist and so when for us what what is communion when we come together and and we take the bread and the wine what are we doing so for us in Catholicism the Eucharist is kind of three realities at once so it's the reality of the Last Supper it's the reality of the presid present moment and it's the reality of eternal life so it's one event three times in one moment and so when we go to communion it's as if in a real way we were at the Last Supper so when Jesus said to his the people gathered there at the Last Supper this is my body this is my blood we say that that's the real presence the body blood soul and Divinity of Christ he is I mean in some sense it's like cannibal ISM except it's not flesh and blood in the physical sense it looks like bread and it looks like wine but because it's transubstantiated by God that it is the Flesh and Blood body and soul and Divinity of Jesus of Christ so we're we're in communion with Jesus he's giving of himself to us in the Eucharist and when we receive the Eucharist we're at one with God that it would be in that moment if you were to die you just go straight to heaven in that sense that you are there with God and it transforms who we are as individuals and helps us and makes us by grace to be those disciples to be those missionaries that God's Grace has called us to be and so I think what sets apart Catholicism is our belief in the real presence that this is the body blood soul and Divinity of Christ Christ and so everything else comes around that everything else fits into that all of our rules and regulations all of our understanding of scripture all of our understanding of who we are as a people and how God works with us all of The Graces all of the Forgiveness everything that we do is in that focus and for us we celebrate Mass every day um you know it's available every day and especially then on on Sunday to come together as a community to celebrate the Eucharist I think is is what sets us apart