The True King Above Kings

Welcome to Catholic Stuff. You should know the J10 initiative. I'm ready. Long live Christ the King.

Hit that soundtrack, this one. Long live Christ the King. Long live Christ the King. You're getting silly.

I am getting silly. This quote. I don't know. You collect mixed things in here.

I never knew that either, actually. I didn't know that before. I'm not responsible for the laugh track. This is Father Mike.

This is Father Sean. And welcome to beautiful snowy Winter Park, Colorado. Frazier Snowman Ranch, Snow Mount Ranch of the YMCA of the Rockies. I told Father Sean that once when we were kids that I was left here at Snow Mountain Ranch, ymca, the Rockies.

Now, my parents might deny that, but I'm pretty sure it's true. I don't. I don't know exactly. I was small, but you made it.

You were probably scandalized and probably scribed for life, but. And traumatized. I don't really. I've always been kind of independent.

That's true. I was. When they came back, I said, didn't you know that I would be in the Snow Mountain ranch house about my father's business? About my father's business?

Yes. I love it. The business is probably roller skating or watching some movie. Dude.

Father Mike. Hey, dog. Congrats. Okay.

We've just. We've just started, basically. Cool. Is that right?

Okay. Can you use your other room? Yeah. Shower.

Go for it. It's just across. Whatever. Get out of here.

So you finished your Iron Man? I did finish the Iron Man. I called it triathlon. You weren't supposed to say Iron Man.

Congratulations. We just had a very brief interlude from Father Nathan Goble. Shout out. He loves.

He came in wet from a huge hike outside in the snow and. Oh, he was fishing. He was fishing. We hope that he.

He was ripping some lips. You know what I'm saying? That's right. Ripping some lips.

I'm the worst fisherman. No, no, no, no. I take it back. I can fish out of a boat for, like, bass and other deep sea fishing sea creatures, but I can't stand by the river and fly fish.

And I just have never learned. I tried to teach myself, but that's one of those things that humbles you because you can't. You don't really. Yeah.

I finished a big triathlon race in Tempe, Arizona. I feel very proud. 13 hours, 48 minutes, 49 seconds. Wow.

How did you know that? You remember. You have a good memory. I do have a good memory.

I also looked it up. I was. I was following live as you were racing thanks, buddy. It was awesome.

It was cool. There were a lot of prayers out there in listener land, so thank you. Catholic stuff. You should know.

I really appreciate it, but the real hero was biking for babies. Anna Mahoney, Anna Maloney, Anna Mac, honey, whatever it was, she was awesome and it was very timely. After two and a half mile swim, 112 mile bike, and then I was about three miles into the long run and I met this young woman who was praying the rosary and she prayed the rosary with me and I just felt rejuvenated. You were praying out loud as you're running?

Yeah. Well, both of us were at a pretty slow pace at that point, but, yeah, kind of regaining. You start, get your legs again and your heart comes back. The heart turns out, yeah.

Well, that's awesome. That's cool. So she did biking with babies. Yeah, she had a biking for baby shirt on and she.

She said that she works for them. I think she works for them or else she was competing for them. So I want. I'm so grateful for that.

You know, trained for five months and did this big race. And I think that was one of the profound graces. So I want Catholic stuff. You should know this is very selfish, but I'll admit it.

If you want to get me a Christmas and send it into the spiritual ether, then make a donation to Biking for Babies. There you go. From Catholic stuff sent you. We had a couple of parishioners who did the.

A couple of different routes this summer. And it sounds awesome. And then a couple seminarians did it. Right.

Michael Sparks. But it sounds. Yeah, I mean, it sounds super cool. I have no idea what it is.

You've never heard of it? I've never heard of. First started just with one route. Right.

To kind of. And the reason why I call banking for babies is that they're raising money for kind of pro life pregnancy centers, essentially. And it started with one route. Where does it end?

I want to say it ends in Indianapolis, Chicago, somewhere in the Midwest. She's from Nashville. She told me. So I don't know where it ends, but it first started kind of Midwest, maybe like, I don't know, maybe you start Omaha and then you bike five, six days, like 500 miles total.

And then you get into. Yeah, I'm totally botching this. I'm sorry. Sorry.

So their events are not riding all year long. They're doing events. Correct. It's one event, big event in the summer.

But there's team jerseys. Martinberg did this. Well, I talked to him long time ago. Steven, Tony, another person, he did it.

I just fly jersey. Actually, they opened the store back up, so I had to fly jersey. I had to get one. I'm like, dude, this is surrounding me and I never knew.

Is that wild? It's super cool. But rumor has it is they want to get a branch going in Denver where you'd start in Colorado in Denver or maybe end in Denver or something like that, which would be cool. Like maybe starts in Omaha and in Denver.

If that ever happens. I totally do it. Hey, Animal, bring it over. Animaghony, Hannah.

It is something that Denver needs. All right, well, so that was. That was powerful. There was a moment when I said I was swimming and my arm went numb.

It was cold water. Sharks came to get you? And no, I just kept, you know, pulling that paddle and my arm became paddle. And then I prayed.

Peter, John and James, pray for me. Come and swim beside me. And I made it. That's awesome.

I just kept swimming. And then there was one last one that. Where I was in a lot of pain at various places. And I said, come on, rap.

Your mom gave birth to seven kids. What are you crying about? Or I say, come on, rap. Your sister's given childbirth in the last number of years, and this is nothing compared to childhood.

Let's go. And then I realized afterward the prize for completing it is a dumb medal. The prize for childbirth is a child. That is true.

Something like more profound to look forward to, maybe in childbirth. Well, congratulations to all of you who have gone through childbirth. Yes. A childbirth.

You get a person. You do get a person. That's true. Yeah.

I don't think I'm. You've had a person. You give birth to a person. This is.

This is why I'm celibate, because I don't think I could take care of a person. Yeah. Oh, totally. It's amazing.

No, it scares me too. What a huge feat. I think you gotta worry about that, right? You had a huge training block.

A lot of training. There's a lot. I did a few of your training bike rides with you. And then there was one day I was out for a walk around Harvard Gulch and this rando stranger hits me in the arm like, who the heck is that?

And he runs away. I'm like, that's probably my crowd. Oh, yeah. I'm not stopping.

I was hurt. I was like 13 miles in and I had to run home. Yeah. And that's like you said, you're on like 20 mile run that day, which is.

Yeah, that's. Well that's life. You know, if anybody out there wants to do these, these triathlons just start small, build up. I didn't know how to swim three years ago, four years ago.

Well, not like I didn't know how to swim, but I didn't know how to swim like that. Endurance swimming. You know how to swim like Michael Phelps. Like two, two laps in the true fitness pool.

Well, here we are out in the backcountry. We just. We just did a great trekking trip in the snow. Father Sean Conroy here is an expert at backcountry skiing.

And I try to be. Never gotten an avalanche yet. And exploring. He's a great explorer.

We meant to hike like seven miles on the trail, and his stepfather, Sean Conroy decides that we should, you know, bushwhack. Oh my gosh, take an alternative route. And so we were climbing over trees and doing all kinds of fun stuff. According to the gps, we were right on this side trail.

There's down trees, we're hopping over trees, cutting under trees. It was fun. We only did four miles, but it's harder. It was great.

And there's. Because they're pine trees and we're hiking through them and they're covered with snow. If you clip the wrong branch, the whole tree falls on your head. All the snow from the tree.

Yeah. And that's a lot of snow. And then it went down my back. So then like my whole back was just.

It's really like it was just soaking wet by the end of the day. Yeah, that's adventure, baby. But it's also snowing all day. It's still snowing now.

I mean, what a beautiful. I don't know if we're gonna get back to Denver tomorrow. We have to stay tonight. I don't think.

I mean, I didn't drive. Father Joseph Lajoie drove me up. Do you trust him to drive over the past or the past? I don't know.

I'm always kind of like, you know, make your confession, be ready. But I don't know what's on the other side. That have to be, ah, other stuff. Thursday is busy at the parish.

It's Thanksgiving on Thursday. Oh, it's Thanksgiving. I mean, it's busy. The offices are closed.

You have. You have mass? I didn't think about this coming Thursday. You're totally right.

All I have is 9am Mass. I'm not responsible for. All three priests are gonna. Are gonna.

Well, one and then the other can celebrate. It's gonna be a big great time for our parish. We already packed, like, 200 bags full of Thanksgiving meals. Nice.

And then we get gift certificates so people can get turkeys. And I like to imagine all of those hundreds of families having this nice dinner. You know, yams and cranberries and stuffing. Stuffing and turkey.

And then you take an afternoon nap as you're watching football. Oh, man. I'm the stuffing guy at home. Oh, man, I do love Thanksgiving.

I love cranberry sauce. Could. Could live and eat cranberry sauce. But I don't know.

We're one of those weird families, if I'm honest. And my parents listen to this podcast. They're gonna be mad that I say this. We're one of those weird families at be like, 3pm like, it's not lunchtime or sac dinner time.

And then Saturday weird time. Oh, jeez. But that gets time for everybody to, you know, gather and be ready for dinner. And then.

Yeah. Because they're hungry at, like, 8pm Again. Oh. Or like 9pm after the turkey hangover, whatever you call it.

Yeah. Isn't there, like, a name for that? Yeah. Whatever it is, there's like a chemical or whatever.

Turkey. Turkey mine. Turkey. Turkey mine.

Is that. It is. No, you just made that. You should have said, yes, I would convoy the.

Maybe because you let the in laws go to their respective houses, and then you gather it. You know, there's like, two celebrations. All right, whatever. What's your point, though?

Well, that you do it late, you do it in the afternoon so that they can do it late morning. Sure. And then, you know, those people are stuffed, but they get a little break. No pun intended.

They're stuffed. I get it. All right. Hey, look how beautiful.

All right, Father Michael, we're in front of a big picture window. We have to be vested for mass in 25 minutes. Let's go. Okay.

What do you think about world peace? World peace. I saw a bumper sticker once. I heard a story once of this lady who had a bumper sticker that said, I pray the rosary for world peace, or pray the rosary for world peace.

Thanks, lady. And this person comes up to her and goes, clearly, your rosary's working. There's a lot of world peace out there, isn't there? And she just immediately responds, well, imagine what the world would be like if I wasn't praying the rosary.

Oh, that's sweet. I was. I was thinking, imagine what the world would be like if you weren't here. Boom, Russ.

But I'm so. Yeah. World peace. I love world peace.

We all want world peace. We all want It, I think it's a very tricky reality, even biblically. And you're a biblical scholar. Father Mike, War is all over, right?

Religious war. And this idea of God has promised a land to the Israelites and the Israelites are called to go and take that land. War is in different places and I don't know, war is not necessarily the absence of. You're talking about in the Bible.

I don't want to say that's contemporary. Yeah, yeah. That's not. That's not contemporary.

But there's still really this wars going on today. I think as American people is why we struggle to understand the Israeli conflict as well as the Ukrainian, Russian conflict, because those are very, very religiously based and our country isn't. We don't really have religious warfare. Yeah, no, that's right.

Those are cultures that are profoundly informed and formed by religion, among other things. Although I would argue that almost in every case the reality of war is more often than not about socioeconomics and politics than it is about religion. Everything from the Crusades to all the conflict in, you know, post Reformation Europe and even, you know, among nation states today, it can happen to be that these are different religions or the people that are fighting have different religions as part of their, you know, identity. But I don't think more often than not, I suspect that it's not the religion itself that is promoting those wars.

Sure. When you could argue otherwise. But I think there's a silly new atheist thing where look, what, all of religion has only caused wars over. No, no, there's been war ever since the beginning.

And religion tries to temper that at times. Other times it actually can feed into it. But I would argue that more often than not, my impression is that it has more to do with money and power. Sure.

But I don't know, you could disagree. The. You have to think about it more. I think going back to your question though, like world peace, I think it's something that the reason I wrap war is because oftentimes we say the absence of peace is war.

I don't know if I'm convinced of that. But like world peace doesn't necessarily mean that there's going to be war again. Yeah. Okay, so that'll take us up.

Or does it? In this quick one, world peace doesn't mean there'll be war. I do think absence of war is a goal, but it's not the definition of peace. Maybe that's like what you're saying is we could all just agree not to fight with weapons, but I'll Hate each other still.

Yeah. Which is not peace. You're not at peace. And you remember, like, Solon, who says that the line between good and evil cuts through the human heart, and he was living in the midst of Bolshevik Russia.

And so he knows, like, most people attribute these things to big national wars or wars between, you know, different kinds of people with ideologies or with backgrounds or different races and all these things, but he says there's war in the heart and people can be at peace even while they're in the midst of conflict or whatever. Yeah. Okay. We just celebrated the last Sunday before Advent starts.

Let's go. Let's go. Long live Christ the King. I thought you were doing a laptop.

Yeah. Long live Christ the King. So the last Sunday of the liturgical year is Christ the King. Sunday.

That's right. As you know. Christ our Lord. How does it go?

Christ Jesus. Solemnity of our Lord Jesus Christ. King of the Universe. King of the universe.

I love it. I love it. And one of the readings that we had was from the book of Daniel, Daniel, chapter seven. Hey, so I just want to point out this maybe a way of thinking about the kingdom of God and comparing it against the values that we think maybe these will bring world peace.

So you have these various kingdoms that come along, and the. The story of Daniel, several of them. Daniel 2 tells the story of seven, later, Daniel nine, maybe nine through 12 of these kingdoms ruling the earth. And in succession, one kingdom takes over the next kingdom, and then another kingdom comes to power.

And it explains world history this way, which might be a way that you explain world history these days, is who is in charge. And who is in charge causes a lot of conflict these days. Right. You know, who calls the shots?

Who has the power? Who has the money? Who has the influence. So the picture from the prophet Daniel is, well, you kings are going to have your time, you empires are going to have your time, but the kingdom of God is coming, and there will be a different king with a whole different way.

All of these kingdoms, these empires, purport to bring about peace in the world. That was part of either the propaganda for the sake of power, but I actually think that that value, that desire, has been perennial, that throughout human history, we've wanted conflict to end, but it's a falling world. Right. So there's different solutions proposed, and Daniel is not only saying you guys kind of suck, but that your solution is inadequate.

And the. No fishnet. Did you catch any? Oh, no, Father Nathan did not catch anything.

Okay. So different solutions proposed, and they all Fail. I think Prophet Daniel is not only saying, hey, you've made yourself enemies of Israel, our people, the people who God has chosen, and so you will fail. I think he's saying something broader that would have been culturally known at the time and would have been understood.

So oftentimes it's read as you make yourself an enemy of the people of God and you will be crushed and you will be destroyed. Which is a way a lot of Jewish people reading it. Right. I mean, wasn't the expectation that the Messiah would put an end to the Romans and put an end to all those who were enslaving the Jewish people and take over?

Yeah, the Messiah would be a king who comes along, leads an army, a revolution, and topples the reigning powers. Whether that was at Jesus's time, like Herod and his kind of institutional power, or Rome ruling from afar, or even the other kind of tribal dangers that are coming from further east of where they're at. So, yeah, maybe that was it. That's not the only way that Jews of Jesus time understood the idea of Messiah.

But even in Daniel, that's where we get the language of Messiah. In Daniel 9, the. The Messiah is somehow representative of God who brings the kingdom, but it doesn't say that he necessarily leads an army against these others and wins the fight. But there's this kind of sort of obvious consideration that this might be the way.

So I want to propose that there are various categories represented by these kingdoms that we should consider. The first of them, if. If the three kingdoms that are there that are leading up to this time when the kingdom of God will come and crush all the other kingdoms and will rule the world. And three of them have been.

Three proposals have been the Persians led by Cyrus the Great, the Greeks led by your boy Alexander the Great, and then Romans with Augustus. And so Cyrus, his. His international politic, his policy was to rule. If you take over the world, you want to bring peace.

You take over the whole world, and then you build roads and bridges and harbors so that you unite all of the economy of the world and everything can function more smoothly. And if everything functions more smoothly, there's more money, there's more trade, there's more efficiency, and everyone has enough. So the idea being the reason for conflict, the reason why there is no peace, is that there's not enough resources for everybody. And if we just had economic growth universally, then we would have peace.

That makes sense. The economic kind of vision for world peace. Yes. Yeah.

If you have what you need, then you're not going to be ravaging someone else to get what you need. Right. I mean, it's very poignant for, like, nomadic people who are, like. Even Native Americans are stories of, like, they would just go and take from the other tribe as opposed to, like, going and hunting and killing themselves.

Because maybe they had the resources that it was just so much easier to go and pillage this other tribe and get the resources they need. Yeah. And in our contemporary world, it's an obvious solution for some. Everybody's still trying to do world peace.

We're still building empires. You got folks like Bill Gates who says, you know, poverty is the problem, so reduce population and do that in any way you need to. Even gross ways. I do not respect him or his foundation.

Evil ways. Not just gross, like evil ways. Yeah. So reduce population, produce more, and then produce more goods and help economic growth in kind of every place where there is not.

So you're going to take Third world, you're going to give out loans. That's a big part of, like, the dream of the. What's the name of that weird German who's promoting this kind of think tank for. Don't know the future.

Okay, all right. Big project where they're. Soros. Yeah, he's involved.

There's a. Yeah. Super rich, powerful people. They get together and they draw plans for the future, how the world can improve.

And usually it's improve economically. We'll have peace. Daniel says it's not gonna work. I suspect.

I don't want to be a cynic, but I suspect it's probably not gonna work. We've tried these things. Although that's not to say that we should stop trying to elevate people from poverty and find medical help and all these things that'll kind of lift us from that kind of suffering. Second, the Persians, they're saying, okay, that's not gonna work.

And in fact, it failed as an empire. The Greeks come along and they say, you know, what people need and what's gonna bring peace is you occupy them and entertain them. So the Greeks, gladiators. Yeah.

Well, no, no, no. Those are the Romans. The Greeks had Olympic Games. Not the violence.

They had Olympic games. You know, you go. You have fun. You go to the gym.

Literally, gymnasium. They would build gymnasiums everywhere they went. And at the gymnasium, you do sports, you do philosophy. It's kind of a university.

And then you have theater and culture, theater and music. And between these three, if you entertain people, you make them fit and healthy, and then you. You stimulate their mind and you Pursue the intellectual life. If you have this balance, the world will be perfect.

So they spread and it was called Hellenism, where the Greek influence spread throughout the world. And a lot of cities just took it. It's not like they had to be conquered. It wasn't about economic flourishing, it was just about if we all have these entertained masses, then we'll all get along pretty well.

And if we get together for the Olympics and we go, stronger, faster, what is the other one? Higher, higher, faster, stronger, yeah. Fortius, Sidious, Altius, then we'll be at peace, you know. Does that sound familiar?

Yeah, for sure. I think the Olympic Games and. Yeah, for sure. This idea that entertainment, even today, you know, if you're connecting to the modern period, we don't build cathedrals.

The biggest buildings in the town are not cathedrals. Right. One of the things I loved when I went to Rome is that still to this day, St. Peter's Basilica is the tallest building.

That's a rule, that's a law in Rome. You can't believe anything taller than that. It's really cool because then when you're anywhere in the city, you can look across the skyline and see, oh, that's St. Peter's Basilica.

I know that's west, you know, Stipuli on the west side. Right. But the biggest buildings we built today are Rocco Stadium or Avalanche Stadium. Right.

And they're all right there and they fit, I don't know, 80,000 people. Right. And it becomes a form of worship now. But it's that idea of entertainment will entertain people so they're not distracted to go to other things.

They're here and they exist in the society which brings a certain peace. Yeah, right. And I mean, what do you. What are people looking for on podcasts?

What are they looking for on information? It's usually science and kind of self help. A lot of times it's about exercise or it's about eating. And there's a sense that this will bring you personal peace.

But even communal, like, we can all get along over the sports stuff. We can all get along over entertainment. So you've got Persia, it's all about economy. You've got Greeks, it's all about entertainment.

You've got basically what, New York, Wall Street, Hollywood and la. And then you got another big influencer, which is Washington D.C. the power center. Thought you say Vegas.

Well, that's true too. They're kind of a weird combo. But the Romans came along and said, okay, Greeks, that's fun, but it's not actually going to stimulate people enough. Those societies actually ran into the problem of becoming decadent.

They no longer worked hard, and that failed economically. They also didn't actually get along with each other because they became tribal. It was like Raiders fans against Broncos fans. But then you ramp it up to the point where they can actually hurt each other.

But the competition comes from a sort of misguided unity and a sort of insular interest. It's just a selfishness about, how am I feeling? How is our society doing without thinking of the other? Okay.

Finally, the Romans come along and they conquer Greece because Greece is also weak. And they bring about what Augustus said was the Pax Romana. They conquer the whole world, and then with the force of violence, they control all the people, and they put in a rule of law. So the Romans are famous for two things, violence and the rule of law.

And if everybody's in line, then everything goes well. You know, if everybody's afraid of breaking the law, of harming their neighbor, you know, you're not going to break into your neighbor's house. You're going to respect that. You're going to respect law.

Crime is reduced. And now you have this kind of power center that ensures that there is no violence and unrest. However, the people are all slaves. There is no freedom.

You all answer to the law of Rome. You all cower under the fear of Rome and pay your taxes, and nobody pushes back at anything, and there's no freedom. So ultimately, this kingdom falls. The kingdom is not adequate.

It doesn't make the people thrive. It might keep everything numb or stable, but it's not the same thing as peace, you know, ruling by the sword. I think, like, as a contemporary parallel, I would just point to some of the international politics and the way that we describe peace in the world. It's like a stalemate with everybody's nuclear weapons pointed at each other and just said, don't shoot that.

We won't shoot you. And then we'll be at peace. We'll trade and we'll respect each other. At least you know your borders, and then everything will be fine, you know, or this, like, ideological rule by strength.

So in contemporary kind of politic and social discourse, you have the woke thing that takes away freedom and censors a lot of stuff, like cancel culture. You know, say the wrong thing and you'll get canceled. Would you test it for violence? I do, yeah.

And ultimately, it's the kind of intimidation and force that does make people shut up and sometimes shut up about things they shouldn't be talking about. You know, some people are disrespectful and violent with their words and there's. But the solution might not be we have peace when everybody's quiet because nobody offends each other. So that's an example among several.

You get that example. I mean, you, you know this one? No. Yeah, for sure.

But I think my question then would be to, to say, okay, like, where does it go wrong in the sense that all three of these are good. Like there's a goodness to the person, there's a goodness to the great truth and entertainment. There's a goodness with the Rome. You know, like violence when it's harnessed is actually good.

Like this is why you have a police force to keep like strength, power. Exactly. To keep crime down so there can be a peace and then a rule of law. If it's not a rule of law, then there's anarchy, which isn't helpful for anyone.

So like, where does it go wrong? Cause all three of these have a goodness to them. Yeah. Or is that what you're getting to?

Well, it's just that you can't put your faith ultimately in any of these. So I, I think the prophet Daniel is in some way a cynic. He's cynical about the hopes of the worldly powers, that these proposed solutions that were actually tried. That's part of the genius of this timeline, is that these things are not just ideas.

They actually failed in Daniel's time or they were failing. And so yes, they're all good. You know, a society needs to have a balance of all these things. It needs to have ambitions for healthy society that takes the best of all of these methods.

But we've seen the weakness of each. And so Daniel says, you're not going to find world peace that way. But don't give up hope. Don't give up hope.

These are not the only ways. There's one more way. And the kingdom of God is coming to take all that and baptize it and transform it with a different kind of king. So instead of a king who rules with the power of Cyrus, of Alexander and of Augustus, you can have the one who is enthroned on the cross and crowned with thorns and mocked for being a king because his rule is self sacrificing love.

And he says, this is the solution, this is world peace. And I'm going to start a movement. And even though I'm not there to force everybody into it, or to conquer places, or to trick people with economic intrigue or entertainment, that's going to win Their interests. Somehow, very mysteriously, he's going to win over with love, person by person, the world into this kingdom of God, which will be a kingdom of peace.

And that's the hope that we have, that we express with this final moment of the liturgical season is in the end, this all belongs to Jesus. And it's happening. I mean, 2,000 years later, a third of the world is Christian, not perfect, you know, not peaceful in every way, but largely improved and with a sense, at least Christians of I do want to love my enemy and I was good at it, but I do want to love my enemy. I want to forgive, you know, I want to live in peace.

I want to see my own serenity and receive that from the Holy Spirit of God. All of these things that are really not the world's way. And the world in some way despises this and sees it as weakness and silliness, just like it did with Jesus. But it's winning and it's.

It's turning the world into a place of peace so we don't have to despise those other things. I mean, it's good that there's politics. It's good that people want us to do civil service. You know, it's good that people want to entertain and like, you know, a musician who's a great musician wants to offer their talent to entertain people.

That's great. And then, you know, the economic flourishing, we should be giving loans to third world countries, trying to help people out to, you know, improve economically here in abroad. Yeah, yeah. I think it's.

You're spot on. And I think. Right. The purpose of the feast and Right.

Is it was instituted in 1925 by pies, the right. So in between the two world wars. And he wanted to give us hope, to remember that the kingdoms of this world will rise and fall. But there's one kingdom that will always, always remain forever, and that's God's kingdom.

And to your point, God conquers not through force, but he conquers through self sacrificial love, which is the crucifixion. And the crucifix is hung everywhere, you know, to the point where now it's more of a. Like a decoration, if you will, like a wall decoration than it is like when people see the crucifix. Now, normally, what would happen is like, you would.

If you really think of what that is, like, you should be frightened. Just like, why would I stare at that? Why would I turn away? And then, you know, we look at it now, it's just like this is who we worship.

Yeah. Praise God. Long live Christ the King. Amen.

Have a kind of a short one. I'm sorry if you got bored with the lecture. I mean, it was just a lot of talking, but we had to do a quick one. We got Mask coming right around the corner here.

We're up here with 20 brother priests, and it is glorious and amazing and peaceful in its way. God bless y', all. Cath.podcastmail.com. thanks, everyone.

Thanks, Google. Sam.