Episode Transcript
[00:00:07] Welcome back. It's January 5th and Christmas in the Orthodox Church.
[00:00:23] In addition to Orthodox Christmas, the Feast of the Epiphany is celebrated in many dioceses this weekend.
[00:00:31] Have you heard of St. John Newman? He was so determined to become a priest that he walked nearly 600 miles from his native Bohemia to France and then sailed thousands of miles to New York.
[00:00:45] He had entered the seminary after college, but the bishop who was to ordain him got sick and the ordination was never rescheduled because Bohemia had enough priests.
[00:00:56] Undeterred, John, who had read about missionary activities in the United States, decided to sail for New York.
[00:01:05] After arriving, Bishop John Dubois welcomed him. The bishop only had a handful of priests to minister to 200,000 Catholics in New York and New Jersey.
[00:01:17] John was ordained in 1836 and sent to Buffalo.
[00:01:22] Father John eventually joined the Redemptorists, a congregation mostly made up of priests living in community and dedicated to preaching the Gospel to those on the margins of the church and society.
[00:01:35] Father John became the first to profess vows as a Redemptorist in the United States and performed missionary work in Maryland, Ohio and Virginia by the age of 41. He was named Bishop of Philadelphia in 1852. In that position, he had a hand in building 50 churches and began construction of a cathedral. Bishop Newman opened nearly a hundred schools, increasing the number of parochial students from 500 to 9,000.
[00:02:07] He died suddenly on this day in 1860.
[00:02:12] Saint Pope Paul VI canonized him on June 19, 1977. The first American bishop to be canonized. Saint John Newman is buried in Saint Peter the Apostle Church in Philadelphia.
[00:02:34] As it is Sunday, let's continue with our reflections on the Blessed Mother.
[00:02:43] Mary is our model, not because she is the mother of Jesus, something we can imitate, but because she became a true disciple of Jesus, something we can imitate.
[00:02:56] In Luke's Gospel, a woman in the crowd shouts to Jesus, blessed is the womb that bore you and the breast that nursed you. Jesus responds, blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and observe it.
[00:03:10] Family ties are not his priority. Discipleship is.
[00:03:15] Jesus repeatedly says that a true disciple is one who hears the word of God and lives it at the Annunciation. Mary is the first to do this. She hears the word of God and responds, may it be done to me according to your word.
[00:03:46] John's Gospel in the scene where Mary and the beloved disciple are at the foot of the cross, underscores Mary's role as a disciple.
[00:03:55] The dying Jesus associates her with the beloved disciple when he says to her, woman behold your son.
[00:04:04] Then he says to the beloved disciple, behold your mother.
[00:04:13] Her family ties to Jesus aren't the key discipleship is.
[00:04:19] Mary and the beloved disciple stand at the cross, representing all true disciples.
[00:04:28] Saint Pope Paul vi, in a lengthy document on Mary, cites Mary's discipleship as the reason why she is a model for us.
[00:04:38] She is held up as an example to the faithful for the way in which, in her own particular life, she fully and responsibly accepted the will of God because she heard the word of God and acted on it.
[00:04:54] She is worthy of imitation because she was the first and the most perfect of Christ's disciples.
[00:05:04] What she is, we are called to be.
[00:05:13] Spend some quiet time with the Lord.
[00:05:17] Sa.
