This is a clip from “God Goes Big”
Transcript
00:00 – Host (Host)
Whoever perverts the sayings of the Lord for his own desires. This one I focused on. I was like, oh, I definitely have to include this one. So listen to this one. This is by St Polycarp.
00:10
Whoever perverts the sayings of the Lord for his own desires and says that there is neither resurrection nor judgment, such a one is the firstborn of Satan. Wow, let us therefore leave the foolishness and the false teaching of the crowd and turn back to what do you think he said? Let us leave the foolishness and the false teaching of the crowd and turn back to what I have news for you. He does not say the church. Let us leave the foolishness and false teaching of the crowd and turn back to the word which was delivered to us in the beginning, the word. I think he is talking about scripture, I think he is talking about tradition, but I think he is talking about Jesus Christ. Let me dig up a few more for you. No one can have God for his father who has not the church for his mother. Aha, we found something about the church. St Cyprian of Carthage. No one can have God for his father who has not the church for his mother. But even in this context, what is Cyprian saying in his framing here that the path to God is the church. The church is the means to God, or to Jesus you might say the church is the means, not the end, not the object, but the path. So even when Cyprian talks about the church here, he’s orienting it to God, to something higher. God hates those who praise themselves. St Clement of Rome Patience is hope with the lamp lit, love that one also.
01:54
Tertullian, you cannot put straight in others what is warped in yourself. St Athanasius, are you seeing the pattern? Are you seeing the theme? And this is true of the church fathers, the writings in the New Testament, paul and others, and in the New Testament you will see treatment of the church, but mostly you will see from scripture, from the church fathers, from other saints. They’re talking about holiness. They’re talking about holiness. They’re talking about principles and ethics and how to live a good and holy life and so on. They’re talking about holiness. They talk very little about the church. There are some one predominantly, who’s always talking about teaching the authentic Catholic faith. Right, where this is their mission, they teach the authentic Catholic faith. And I see that a lot everywhere when people are talking about the church.
02:54
“Authentic Catholicism, real Catholicism, the authentic faith…” You wanna talk about, authentic? You can’t get more authentic than Jesus Christ. Why? Because Jesus Christ is who we were supposed to be before the fall. So Jesus Christ is the authentic. In fact, he is authenticity. So if we’re talking about authentic faith, authentic church, authentic anything, it is Jesus Christ.
03:22
Now, the authentic faith or authentic Catholicism, yeah, that’s important, but it’s important because it converts us to holiness, it makes us more like God. Scripture says that. So the authentic faith, the authentic church, all that is important, but I feel for many people, it has become the point. The church has become the point. My friends, I’m a very old school Catholic. I’m not trying to devalue the importance of the authentic faith. What I find disconcerting is that the practice of the authentic faith, or the church, has become the point for far too many Catholics, where we have just replaced holiness with orthodoxy and as long as we’re orthodox, we’re A-OK. That is not true. That is not true. How many of Jesus’ contemporaries in the gospels were orthodox but not holy? And Jesus does not pat them on the back, he admonishes them.
