Welcome to the Catholic influences podcast where we go deeper into Sunday's gospel rating to help you influence the world for Jesus. I'm Danny Sullivan and I'm father Rob Galea. And this podcast is presented to you by fig ministry.
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Welcome to the second advent , um , podcast, the second week of advent, which is Danny . What's our theme this week? Last week was hope. This week is prophecy , prophecy . And so we're going to talk a little bit about prophecy and how that influences our preparation for advent. Our preparation for for Christmas, a beautiful time, a time of presence , receiving, giving, but above all time for
preparation. Why know how to know what word you wanted me to say? And preparation for Jesus. You've got to let me finish. I just like to have long pauses in between words very along with the crickets.
I want to use sounds. Effects. Okay. So this, this advent , um, is a , a beautiful time of challenge for us, a time where we , uh , continue to prepare, continue to swim against the current, to become saints. And hopefully I hope this week you've had a little bit of an opportunity to become a little bit holier and maybe , uh , I don't know. God works in our lives and ways and it's worth reflecting.
Journaling even this time, these next few weeks of how we have in certain ways become Holy and Holy . It doesn't mean necessarily more perfect but more dependent on Jesus, more in love with God, more recognizing more that we are in need of God's mercy in our lives, his grace in our lives.
That's a really good idea. Um , that journaling and you know, kind of rec black , being able to write down this journey so that you can reflect back on it later. Maybe, you know, am I get to the middle of next year and you notice that you've stepped back, but then to go back and read your thoughts about why, why you wanted to change, why I wanted to transform, why you wanted to become more like Jesus, to kind of reinvigorate yourself I guess, and encourage yourself later on if you need. That.
Journaling has been so good for me as well because there are times where I feel I can journal the times where I feel closer to God. And those are the moments where I look at that journal and I reflect on that journal . I listen to , um , I read about what God spoke and what I listened to the heart of God. And I see also they'd say unpacking as as I go on in life as well.
So journaling is not only for that moment, but also for the future to see what God says and discerning the voice of God because you actually recognize that it is the voice of God. When you look back and you find that God has answered those prayers, that God has fulfilled those things. How prophetic and prophetic. Yeah , exactly. So the voice of God is all these prophetic. It's all now. The prophecy is not about smooth .
Fulfilling the future from a to be prophetic is not about, I'm trying to discover what the future says, but to be a prophet is someone who's able to listen to the voice of God and then speak it out. That's what the profits were. They weren't ones who told the future and sometimes because they listen to the voice of God. Today it did include the future but it is not about fortune telling.
It's about hearing the voice of God and and speaking it out and we are all, each and every one of us called to be profits . We're all profits so we're all, we're all called to listen to the voice of God and then to speak it out.
I'm just thinking now that Katie [inaudible] , she did one of our episodes in season one of the Catholic influences podcast and she spoke about like being a prophet Tess and what that meant and I just am thinking about that now and how powerful that was that yeah, we are all called to just listen to the voice of God speak that truth. And that's our Judy as Christians.
And that's kind of what the gospel looks at this week is John the Baptist being a prophet and speaking the truth that he had heard from God .
And I think it also to come back to that point of, as you just brought up now as well, it's, it's not just a priest that's gotta be a prophet . It's not just male suddenly to call to be a profit . But it's each and every one of us, wherever we are. And prophetic is not necessarily standing on a Pew on talking, not on a Pew, what you stood on a [inaudible] . It's not sending on in the sanctuary and talking, but it's in our families with our friends.
It's even through social media where there's so many places where we can be this and this much needed prophetic voice and , and that's what John the Baptist was. He was a much needed a voice in the desert, a desolation. Finally some water. Finally, some of the presence and the voice of God.
So this week's gospel rating is we're still in the gospel of Matthew and we will be for all of advent. So it's Matthew chapter three verses one to 12
John the Baptist appeared preaching in the desert of Judea and sane . Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. It was off him that the prophet Isaiah had spoken when he said a voice of one crying out in the desert. Prepare the way of the Lord make straight his paths. John wore clothing made of camel's hair and had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey at the time.
Jerusalem, all Judea and the whole region around Jordan were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the Jordan river as they acknowledged their sins. When he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, you brood of Vipers. Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?
Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance, and do not presume to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father, for I tell you, God can raise up children to Abraham from these stones. Even now, the ax lies at the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. I am baptizing you with water for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is mightier than I. I am not worthy to carry his sandals.
He will baptize you with the Holy spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand. He will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into his bond, but the Chaffey will burn with unquenchable fire.
Okay. So there we have this beautiful scripture verse and here we're talking about the voice in the desert. And I'd like to focus particularly on the prophetic because this week we are talking where the second week, first week is hope, second week is profit, third week is joy, and the fourth week is something else. Love, love. Okay, so the, the prophetic, let's focus on this and let's see how the prophetic voice does actually make us Holy.
Hearing the prophetic voice, but also being this prophetic voice. Again, let's come into context of this. The the Jews were , um, aware of the fact that there was no prophetic voice of profits, hadn't spoke for almost 400 years. So they got used to the, the fact that God was not going to speak any more . Maybe they thought, no, that's it. God has spoken. God said everything he had to say, but all of a sudden this voice comes out of the desert.
Now the desert is not because it was a a desert out in the, in the middle of a, of a desert physical desert, but the desolation, the desert of the voicelessness of God of God, having not spoken to us for so many years, so for 400 years, no voice, and all of a sudden there's this prophetic voice that comes and it's a prophetic voice of God that speaks to the people and they start to recognize, wait, hold on. This is God. This is the voice of God.
And just looking at this scripture, we see the full things that the voice of God is saying through John Thall prophetic things that God is saying through through John's voice.
I'm curious, and you may or may not know the answer, but how did the people of Jerusalem Nori that John was a prophet, that he wasn't as someone kind of spouting these ideas about how were they so certain that he was speaking with the voice of God?
Well, first of all, not many West certain, there were a lot that weren't uncertain . People were saying that he, it wasn't him button. Then all of a sudden he starts to gain this reputation. You know, when people start to speak, the community descend to get at came through the signs and the wonders, but it also game . Um , why people, you know, Jesus asks, so who is, he's the, the Elijah, he's the voice. So people are the web people. Everyone was talking about him.
Well , maybe because of his oratory, the way he spoke, maybe because of the signs and wonders. But as a community, slowly not out of nowhere. And I've, after the years people started to descend the voice of God. And again, this is us when we want, especially credibility. And it takes a years to build credibility. It takes years to become that prophetic voice that people trust. But at the , as trust starts to grow, hate also grows with it. Okay? So a real profit is hated as well as loved.
And so then this is one of the ways people started to recognize, wait, hold on. This might have been the voice of God because he was loud . He took, he was credible. His life reflected and what he was, what he was claiming. And then he , um, he was hated as well. He was beheaded and hated by those whom he spoke the truth to . And so let's talk about four things that came from the voice. Uh , this prophetic voice of , of John the Baptist. The first thing is that he denounced evil.
He was just merciless when denouncing evil and he wasn't liked because of that. And he, you fearlessly rebuked evil. And sometimes, you know, in our lives, if we want to get rid of evil, we need to do it fearlessly. We need to do it radically. You know, we want radical change in our lives. We need to make some radical decision decisions to get rid of evil in our lives. It's not easy.
And sometimes the church does us a disservice, you know, in that it's afraid that sometimes the church is careful not to offend, not to offend people. But the thing is we need to, when we see evil, we need to denounce evil, evil in this world, even if it's feels like it's not politically, politically correct. And this is why the church is hated many ways. We are the church is the voice that speaks against abortion, that we are the voice that speaks against evil, sexual evil and political evil.
You know, and everyone else is saying, Hey, stay out of this. The mind your own business. A woman has the right to her own body. The church has no right to say, but the thing is when the church sees evil, it has a responsibility as John the Baptist, this prophetic voice to speak out about it, to speak out with wisdom, but to speak out fearlessly. And then the second thing, let's talk about the second thing is that now he summoned people to righteousness.
He didn't just renounce evil, but now, okay, now become a Saint. Now become righteous. Don't become the person that God has called you to be and calling God to higher things. And again, the church is not there to tell us what is right and what is wrong. But you know what? Ultimately the responsibility of the church is to point us to the Christian ideal. You have to say, Hey, this is the idea.
I know it seems on achievable, but still, if no one is going to shout out the ideal who is, you know, and we're , we're going to be stuck in mediocrity. We're going to be stuck in and this, this place where we think, ah, okay , good. Avoiding bad and doing good is enough. No, it's not enough. We were called to be saints. We're called to be champions. You know, not just people who get through the race, but people who win the race. And this is what I'll call to holiness.
The third thing, let's talk about the third thing that John came from God, but he came from God out of way out of the desert. You see, this is he spent time, he spent time with God. He came to two people only after he had gone undergone years of lonely preparation with God. You know the, if someone's going to be a preacher or someone who's going to be a prophetic voice, they , they need to, to come into the presence of people out of the presence of God.
And how much time are we spending with God, listening to the voice of God, crying out to God and saying, God, please speak to my heart. And that what I hear be what I can boldly speak out. And the problem is when we mess up is when we start to hear our own voices and we start to hear our own ideals.
And I think an interesting point there is that when you spend time with God and when you, you know, in prayer and conversation in that relationship, you become more aware of who you are. And I think that that's something that John the Baptist really like, he knew his humility before. You know what he was saying, he kind of pointed to this, you know, Messiah figure that was coming. And he knew that , um, you know, because he had spent time with God.
But then because of that, and this brings us to the fourth thing he pointed beyond himself as, right. Because he, he'd spend time with God. He knew who he was and he knew who was coming and he could point to that. He could point beyond himself. Yes.
And that brings a an idea of clarity as well because he spent time with God. He was clear about where he was pointing. And again, the church sometimes seems confused and unconfident because we don't know where we're pointing. We don't know to whom we're pointing, we're pointing to the social justice were pointing to teachings were pointing to this and it's not clear. The only thing that we have that is clear that is certain is Jesus. Jesus. You know, and this is what John the Baptist did.
He didn't point to himself even to the point of losing his security, his disciples, his followers. He says, behold the lamb of God, the one who takes away the sins of the world and what him proclaiming that made him lose his security. He lost his disciples, his best Workman, and they disappeared and followed Jesus. But it brought him joy because that's what he was about. He was about Jesus, not about himself. And this is the fulfilled life. This is, this is what Jesus says.
I've come that you may have life and have it to the fall and it's when we let go of our life. When we let go of our securities and we offered them to Jesus and we point to Jesus, this is where we have life to the full . So John the Baptist was all about this. It was all about preparing the way for the King. And this is what advent is about. It's about preparing the way for the King in our lives where we can become saints, where we can become Holy. And it's okay if you're not Holy.
It's okay if you're messed up. It's okay if you don't have it . You're not there yet. But know the ideals. Know what your vocation is, know who you are, know what you're called to, but also know what you're not. Okay. No , you, you don't have the power to be a Saint by your own strength. And that's why we need Jesus a thousand times. We may fall thousand times, we get back up again because of who is on our side.
So now we're going to look at our prayer st and activity of this week that we're going to as a big Catholic influences family around the world. I'm used to just journey closer to this I guess ideal that father always been speaking about and that the church points us to this ideal of Jesus and how we can become more Holy. So our Saint of the week, I feel like this is an obvious one. He's a goodie Saint . John the Baptist had a goodie. Thank God this is , this is a bit bias .
Yeah. Well I feel like the church is asking the Holy spirit is pointing his toy. If we chose someone else it would be a bit weird. Yeah . Um , st John the Baptist as vulnerable ended very start . Like he , he was beheaded. So it didn't all end that well for him on earth. Um, but obviously bigger things, which is nice, but also like the first time that we hear st John the Baptist in scripture, not by name, is the visitation.
When Mary goes, like during this time of preparing for the birth of Jesus, she's young and pregnant. She doesn't probably know what to do. And she goes and visits her cousin and like Saint John the Baptist, he leapt in his mother's womb and Elizabeth swim. And that was like the first instance of someone recognizing the greatness of Jesus. So he's a good site . We're going to go, we're going to talk more about him throughout the week on social media.
So Catholic influences underscore at Instagram. Follow us there and we'll , yeah, we're going to delve into this and have a bit more of a discussion about him, but our activity for this week,
exciting sounds like pick one. Okay. Uh, now
let's go for the challenge and see the challenge. Active interest . I don't . Okay. Um, I don't know if it's a challenge, but this is something that maybe out my generation, your generation might do it is sending Christmas cards. What a beautiful way to reach out to someone and let them, you know, no worry that we're excited about the upcoming birth of our savior. And it's really hard to find like Christian Christmas cards. So I guess that's a challenge. Trying to find some on our website.
I could, I know someone that could design them actually. Um, but like, and right . One's your family to your friends and just, you know, as you ride it, pray for them, pray that their hearts can transform in this time as well. And you know, it's not just a novelty Christmas card but really make it a prayer for who you're , who you're sending it to.
And it's, I think such a beautiful way, you know, we're so used to emails and Facebook messages and texts and stuff, but to get a physical letter in the mail is just so special that you would go out of your way to buy that card and write in that card and send it to someone is a really nice way to just show someone that you are thinking of them and praying for them and that their specialty.
Yes. I , I'm , I must admit that I haven't sent a Christmas card, I think for many, many years.
I'll tell you my address. You can just give it to you at work . Yeah. You can leave on the desk. I don't, I don't think I've ever sent a Christmas card, but my auntie makes you better to do it. I'll do it this way. Come was like my auntie and mom make handmade cards. So every year I get this stunning handmade card that has taken hours of work. And then I'd like take a photo and I'm like, thanks for the guy and then throw it away.
No, I've kept them all actually, which is a irrelevant segue to the last part, which is the prayer for the week. Irrelevant, irrelevant segue . I get that now. Okay. So this is a prayer. I'm all book the link on the website, which is like an advent prayer to remember God's promises. It's been adapted , um , from Kelly Ballery but we will read this out, but we'll pray this together.
Um, it's a really beautiful prayer and I think, you know, with this, with this week focus of prophecy to just to remember the truth in this prayer as well.
So let's bring the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy spirit. Amen.
Lloyd admin is here, but so is family tension. Advent is here, but so dysfunctional relationships. Advent is here but so are old habits. Advent is here, but go on to people we love. Advent is here, but old baggage still exists. Advent is here, but fears surface. You say, I see all that and I can handle all that. You say, do not fear for I am with you. Do not be dismayed. For I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
You say pieces, what I leave with you. It is my own peace that I give you. I do not give it as the world does. Do not be worried and upset. Do not be afraid. You say, tell everyone who is discouraged, be strong and don't be afraid. God is coming to your rescue. What looks unscalable you boost me over what seems unbearable. You bring me through unbelievably what can't be managed. You say, let down your guard and I will guide you in the name of the father and the son and the Holy spirit.
Um , Oh man. Social media. I'm a Catholic influences underscore and at FRG ministry, that's an unfilled profits making organization. If you're in the United States and like to support us, we're more than happy to give , send you more information or to send you a link. And that's FRG ministry, international.com if you'd like to donate over day . Also , um , snail mail, PO box 96, Strath Dale , uh , Victoria, Australia three five five zero. Where else can they contact us, Danny ,
uh , on the website, fig ministry.com, forward slash podcast, email, email, podcast and fig ministry.com.
There you go. So we hope to be in touch. I hope you will be in touch and we look forward to speaking to you again next week on the third week of advent. God bless
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