Hi.

My name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast. Between now and January first, we'll be releasing special bonus, like pre-launch episodes that will help us get ready for this journey of the Catechism next year. Today is our first major, I think, our first significant pre-launch episode that we have. With me is Jeff Cavens, who is going to be our special guest that introduces not only the whole Catechism and the foundation of the faith approach, but also this first pillar of the Catechism later on when we officially begin our journey. As you probably know, the Catechism has four pillars. Each one of those pillars gives me a special conversation with someone special, helping us to understand scripture and tradition and how those are inextricably connected, that connection between scripture and tradition. Again, without anything further, I'm just so excited to have him on the beginning of this new podcast. Jeff, welcome.

Hey, it's good to be with you, father. Here we go again.

It's fine. I know, back again. How good is this? As we're starting, we thought the best thing to start this new podcast is with the two original people from the previous podcast, and to be able to have just your words. I know that you and I had filmed all those introductions to the different time periods every time we had a new time period for the Bible in a year, but you also were guiding so many people on almost, I think, daily, if not weekly basis. And just your daily contact, points of contact with the people who are the Bible in a year, listeners, I think translates into you being essential for this beginning of the Catechism in a year.

Well, I appreciate that. Yeah, we had a great relationship and continue on with that relationship with hungry people out in the world who got a hold of the word of God, and they're making that a regular discipline in their life now. We're hearing wonderful things about the Bible in a year. The next step is the Catechism in a year, something that people probably never thought they would go through or never heard of.

Yeah. I think something really powerful and beautiful, for me, at least personally, is this second year of the Bible in a year, I've been listening myself, and it's been just really helpful for me to just be able to take in. It's one thing to read out loud scripture. That's powerful. That's remarkable. But there's also something about taking it in and just allowing it to form my heart and form my mind by just receiving scripture. But as you said, the next step seems to be that here's the Catechism, because the New Testament here and the letters of Paul and Acts the Apostles is here's the age of the Church. I guess maybe I ask you, how connected would you say this Catechism in the year is, or how important is it to have the Catechism in the year after the Bible in the year?

Well, I think it's incredibly important. Not only is it incredibly important for the lives of the faithful and growing in the faith, but even the way that we're presenting it mirrors the logic of the Church, and that is that there's a primacy to scripture, and it's God's word, it's inspired, it's inerrant. And over the last year, for many people, they have been going through the entire story in chronological order as a complete story. So God's plan of sheer goodness is out there. Then now comes the Catechism, which really completes this fullness of God's revelation, the word of God. As Catholics, and the Catechism actually says, we're not people of the book, we're people of the word, and specifically the word, the living word, Jesus Christ. So one of the first things that we learn in the Catechism is that the revelation of God, divine revelation comes to us in sacred scripture and sacred tradition. And the question always comes up, Well, I get the sacred scripture, but Jeff, is there something I could read about this sacred tradition, a tradition with a big T, not a small T, like we open presents on Christmas Eve.

That's our tradition. But the big tradition, Jesus is God, Mary is the mother of God. And the answer is, Yep, it's called the Catechism. And so the two complement each other really well. And then you add in the Magisterium, which is the Holy Father in union with the bishops, and you got a tripod. And on a tripod, you can sit, you can rest, you can depend on that. It's not a one-legged stool, it's a three-legged stool. We're completing that sense of revelation for people with real certitude. It gives them a foundation to live on. I'm really excited about bringing them together.

I think even you're saying that the reality that we have the deposit of faith, the divine revelation is sacred scripture, sacred tradition, and the magisterium. That for some people, that might be a big surprise just to hear us talk about it like that and to recognize that, Oh, so divine revelation? Yes, of course, it's sacred scripture and sacred tradition and the magisterium. If someone's hearing that for the first time and they went through the Bible in a year and they would say, Well, wait a second. I'm comfortable with the sacred scripture being divine revelation. What would be, even though it's just a minute or a brief maybe apologetic or explanation of why we need those three legs of that stool to be able to sit upon.

Sure. Well, when we look at the New Testament and we read it, we realize that nobody was really told to write, even though people wrote, and that was the word of God. It's the inspired word of God. But Paul even says that to follow the traditions that he has handed on to you. From the very early points of the church, there has been this sense of the faith, the definite article, the faith, as you said, the deposit of faith. Faith. Those are really, really important because not only do we have now the story, the basic story of Salvation history, but we want to turn our attention to, well, how do we live in this story? What does the church really look like? What do the people in the church do? What's permitted? What's not permitted? What's holy? What's not holy? How do we actually worship God? Everything that happened in that early church, if they did not pass it on to the next generation, then it would be gone. It would be anybody's guests 100 years from now. What do we do now? I don't know. What should we do? We got iPhones now. What should we do?

The beautiful thing about the tradition is that, Apostolic tradition, which is in the first pillar, talks to us about how this deposit of faith is passed on to modern man and even to all of our friends watching right now, from Jesus to you. That is this sacred tradition. So the Catechism becomes literally a gold mine of the minds and the hearts of all of these saints in the past, and to know that, man, I can hear this, the positive faith, as all the generations before me heard it, that is golden.

Yeah, and that makes so much sense. The way you describe it like that, there's that sense of, like you even mentioned, we have the story. We have the story. We have the story and sacred scripture. Almost it's like this sense of, so who did we just hear about? What did God do? What had he revealed about himself? What had he revealed about the relationship he wants with us? What had he revealed about how we're called to live with each other? All of those things, would it be proper to say, like synthesized and communicated to us through sacred tradition, among other things?

Yeah, I think so. And the two work with each other. Right. Scripture works with the tradition, sacred tradition. Sacred tradition is mixed in with the word of God and the story. I guess the best way I could say it is in Japan, if all places, they make these knives. And these knives are called damascus steel knives. Interestingly enough, damascus steel knives. And what they do is they take many kinds of different steels, like a couple of them, they mix them together, they press them, they twist them, they press them, they bend them over, they press them, and they come out with this amazing kitchen knife. But it's actually one knife, but it's made out of two steels that have been brought together in such a way that you really can't separate them. I think that's the Bible. That's the sacred tradition that we read about in the Catechism.

That's awesome. In its stronger than it would be on its own.

Exactly.

Yeah. And even in some ways you mentioned practical. This is how we live, all the ways that Christians had lived from the very beginning, how they worshiped from the very beginning. That would be lost because it's not all detailed in sacred scripture. If I could ask, what do you think people can expect? If they were, okay, I pressed play on this first pre-launch episode. I'm waiting for January first. What can they expect from this journey? What would you say is the purpose of doing this next year on the Catechism in here?

Well, I would say, first of all, that the way you approach the Catechism, you have to look at that. You have to do a little bit of a preflight check here. Before you get into the Catechism, you have to ask yourself, Well, what is the catechism? How do I approach it? Because I think a lot of people will look at that big book, whether they have the beautiful New Ascension Catechism or the Green One or the Brown One from the past, they'll look at it and I'll say to themselves, Well, man, that looks like an encyclopedia. Now I have a source that I can just look up topics and read a little bit about transsubstantiation or Theotokos, Mary is the mother of God. I can look these up, and that's going to be a really good help on my desk. That's not the way we approach the Catechism. The way we approach the Catechism is not like an encyclopedia, but it's an invitation to a journey into intimacy with God, and it's carefully laid out that way. In fact, Pope Benedict, before he was Pope Cardinale Ratseinger, he spoke about this and how just the way it's even organized is a teaching tool in itself, and that God has this amazing story in the first pillar, the creed.

Then in the second pillar, the sacraments and liturgy, which Bishop Cousins is going to be helping you with, that is really this invite to get into it. Then the third pillar is the life of Jesus, the moral law. It's your script, if you will, and how to live it, or what we'd say, how to live the faith, and then prayer in the fourth one. It's more than an encyclopedia or a dictionary. It is a roadmap to intimacy with God. That's the way you have to approach this, is that you're going to meet someone and you're going to meet all of his family, and you're going to go, you're going to have dinner with them, and you're going to hear what he wants you to do and how you're empowered. It's like taking the story of the Bible, and then it's almost like 2.0. It's like, whoa, this is really coming into full focus now, and it's very, very exciting.

Yeah. One of the things you had mentioned there is our approach, how we see this next step of pressing play, this next step of January first and just listening, is going to really dictate a lot. I like how you mentioned that this is going to be very different. One of the things I've discovered, it's not like I discovered it, I learned from myself is when going through the Bible, there's the story. I know that you have been so critically, I don't know, honestly, just helpful. Helpful is too small. You've been so critical in helping us understand, Here's the story. You press play on any given day, and you might miss some details, you might miss whatever the nuance is, but you know you're part of the story. The catechism is slightly different in that sense that there's not a narrative, but there is a person. I think that that might be some difference here is that, okay, so I'm not going to be invited into a narrative. I'm not necessarily invited into just listen to someone else's story, but there is. I love that use the term invitation rather than encyclopedia, that sense of its invitation to here's who God is, here's what faith is, and here's the relationship he wants to have with you, and also here's how he's calling us to live.

Maybe that invitation to living the story, your invitation to being a part of the story in these four pillars.

Right. Just like scripture, you can read scripture from a stadium, you can read scripture from the stands and have your popcorn and something to drink. You can follow along or you can be on the field and you can be a part of this amazing plan of sheer goodness. The same with the Catechism. You can sit up in the stands and observe and so forth. There will be people that do that because they're curious and they haven't made a commitment yet. But it's a good thing that they're in the stands and they're watching and listening. But there will be a lot of people who say, You know what? I want to get in this. They want to get on the field and they want to go on this journey. As they go on the journey, they will understand more and more about the full deposit of faith. And dare I say There's going to be probably 100 times over the next year where they get just downright gitty over this. This is so cool. I would have never understood all of this had I just read books and things. This is a tool, and it's an invitation, as we were talking about.

It's going to be so exciting because God thirsts that you would thirst for Him. As you take that step, January first, hit play, and you start to engage yourself, God is saying, This is what I wanted. This is really what I wanted for you. I wanted you to be in this because I've got so much to show you. You've already gone through the plan of sheer goodness in terms of the Bible. But now I'm going to bring you into another chamber and disclose myself in a beautiful way to you so that you not only will be closer to me, but you'll be like me, but you'll be more equipped to go out and do the work that I'm doing.

Yeah. One of the things that I keep coming back to is how whenever I teach R-CIA or people becoming Catholic or they're getting baptized, those classes is we're going to go over a lot of information, we're going to go over a lot of data. But the point isn't just, it's not to stop at the information, it's transformation. The point isn't to stop at, I know a lot of new things. God's inviting us to become a new thing, a new being, a new creature with a new relationship. I think, as we know, we can't love what we don't know. One of the things that catechism is such a gift is that, well, the Bible, of course, is God revealing himself here in scripture, in, of course, that story. But here in the Catechism also is through the church. Here is this revelation of here's who God is. Here's how he's calling us to follow him in a complicated world. That's this Catechism. It's not small. I mean, it's a good chunk of change because this world is pretty complicated. Here's a question is, and I don't know if you want to get two in the weeds on this one.

This is the most recent published edition of the Catechism. What's the history of this coming to us as it is now?

Sure. Well, it was back, I believe, in the late '80s. John Paul II, he had this idea that the people of God need to go deeper in knowing God and started to put together the plans for developing that first modern catechism that we have. When he put it together, a lot of people were thinking, Well, this could be for the bishops and the priests, deacons too, and religious. He made it very clear. This is for everybody. It is absolutely for everybody. I think it became one of the greatest gifts in modern history to give this to us. If you look at the background on it a little bit, there's a backstory to this. That is that this Cardinal, Carol Whitea from Poland, when he was a Cardinal there, he came up with this idea about this new evangelization. He didn't launch it at that point. He waited till he was the Pope, which he didn't know he was going to be, but he became the Pope. Now this is the time that we're going to launch this. But while he was working in Vatican 2, he was responsible for working with a document called Gaudium et spes.

Gaudium et spes is the Church in the modern world, the first of its kind. He had a vision for the Church and teaching the church and how the church will live and how the Church will survive in the modern world, how the Church will permeate society. He wrote that wonderful, worked on that wonderful document. Then now he finds himself as Pope, and he gives us this incredible gift of really a synopsis of the faith that is written in a way that is accessible to everybody, not just PhDs and theology and moral theology, but for me, I'm not brilliant, but I can read it and I can understand it. My wife and I talk about, if we were stranded on an island, what two books would you bring? Well, Bible and the Catechism. Yeah. Those are the two.

It's a continuation. You know how you had developed the Great Adventure Bible timeline, and we had the handout for the Bible timeline. It was so helpful to be able to see, okay, here's when people of Israel are in the north, here's when they're in the south, here's what was happening in the world at the time outside of that revelation. On the back of this, this foldout, there is the Catechism timeline. It talks about the different professions of faith, the ecumenical councils, the church documents, the people documents, our pentifical documents. We realized that this isn't the first time the church has given us here's a summary, or here is some way in which you can hold in your hands in some ways what we believe. There's all these different church councils that we've experienced throughout the course of history in this foldout. This whole category is a result of thousands of years of people praying and reflecting and understanding the Lord.

The foldout you're referring to for all of our wonderful friends is going to be one of the greatest gifts that ascension worked very hard on this foldout. It's very similar, same size as the Great Adventure Bible timeline, which you know you pull that open. Wow, there's the whole story. That is amazing. In the same way, what you're saying, Father, is there is a timeline chart for the Catechism in a year, and it goes through the entire history of the Church. The key on the left-hand side is what we believe, how we worship, how we live, how we pray, which we can talk about in a moment. It goes all the way from Jesus to today so that you can see the entire history of theology, but the whole history of God's family growing and evolving and becoming what it is today. Then on the other side, you have color-coded. I was kidding you before, Father. I thought it looks like the baby brother of the Bible timeline. It is.

Definitely the baby brother of the Bible timeline.

The baby brother here. It goes through all four pillars in a glance. I've already showed this to people, and they look at it. You know what's beautiful about it? It's all I got to do is open it like that. You know what they say? They don't say to me, What is this? How do I do it? They look at it and go, Oh, Wow. Oh, wow, there it is. That's what I like about it. In early church, a lot of times people couldn't read, so they had these frescoes and pictures on the walls, and people walked in and went, All right, I got this story. I think the same thing is going to happen here.

Over the course of these four sections, there's this line from Catechism 17:21 that says, We are made to know, love, and serve God in this world and to be happy with him forever in heaven. But it's over those four parts of the Catechism. Jeff, if you don't mind, some people might know. Yeah, of course, I know the four pillars of the Catechism. You mentioned them already because there's the Foundations of Faith approach that again, Ascension has developed to be able to communicate what is at the heart of these four different pillars that maybe someone might have heard like, Oh, yeah, pillars. They're Catechism. I get it. What are they and how do we go through them?

Yeah, I'll just grab this right here and go through that with you. You mentioned that the Catechism is divided up into four pillars. And taking something that we were bringing over from the Bible timeline and the Bible in a year is that when people approach the scripture, it looks like just a big pile of names and places and valleys and mountains and sacrifices and law. It's like a big pile. As Frank Sheet said, great apologist from England, and he said that's one of the problems we have, is that it's just a big pile. We dealt with that in scripture, and you went through the Bible in a year in the same order. Same thing with the Catechism and everything that we believe. You're 13 years old, you walk into the church, there's an altar, there's a nun, there's candles. Whoa, there's the priest. What's he doing up there? Bells are ringing and everything else. What do we do with all this? Well, the Catechism takes all of that, and this is going to be a great tool, mom and dad, great tool for your kids, trust me, is that it breaks it down into those four pillars.

The first one, which is this beautiful, marine blue, it's what we believe. It's the creed. It's the largest section. We're going to be going through that just days from now. It's what we believe. It's the creed. It's the story in miniature. We'll get into that more when you and I get together and really introduce that. But it's what we believe. Then you move on to the second pillar, and it's how we worship. It's when we get into God's amazing plan of sheer goodness, how we worship. That's the second pillar. That's a beautiful burgundy color. Then green, how we live. You see the progression there? It's what we believe, how we worship, how we live, and that is the life of Christ. Then the fourth one is how we pray. That's a beautiful light purple, how we pray. Those are the four pillars. The foundation for living is worded in such a way as to where it's very practical. It's very doable. Even the titles here are like a beautiful invitation to everyone of, Hey, this is what we believe. Hey, this is how we worship God, and this is how we live, and this is how prayer is brought into it.

When you take those four pillars, then that becomes a real foundation for you to live your life. You've been a priest for a long time now.

Yeah, almost 20 years.

I know. You know how many people have come up to you saying, Is there anything for our children? Is there anything for our children? This is going to be a beautiful tool in the hands of parents as well as anybody to talk to their kids about, Mom, why do they do that in mass? What's that all about? Glad you asked. Let's talk about that. But let's talk about it in the context of the whole faith.

Yeah. Even you're saying that in the context of the whole faith, going back to the pillars, sometimes you mentioned the encyclopedia, so sometimes it's just the reference book. Mom and dad, why do we do that? Or maybe even a person, an individual, even has that question, Why do we do this? I can go to the Catechism. Yes, of course, I can flip open to go back to the table of contents and I go to that paragraph. But then the way in which the Catechism was even given to us originally is in the margins. There's these small numbers in the margins, and those are meant to, well, they're not just meant to, they are references to other parts of the Catechism, other parts of the faith that deals with this particular topic that's being dealt with in each individual paragraph. It highlights the fact that it's not just a reference book. Here's one answer. It's a unity. It's comprehensive. It's got this synthesis and harmony to it that is remarkable. That's one of the reasons I love the ascension edition has, again, not a commercial, but this ascension edition having the colored code is that those numbers in the margins are also color coded.

Right now I'm in the creed, and I can stick in the creed, and I can realize, Oh, this reference here, this is from the prayer section. I can go over to prayer and say, That's how this is maybe lived out in my prayer life, or, This is how this is lived out in the moral life or in the sacramental life. It's just that highlights the fact that while there are four pillars, they're not distinct in the sense of just a reference book, but it now has, again, a synthesis, a harmony, a unity to it that is communicated to us so beautifully here.

Over the last 15 years or so, I was the director of the Catechetical Institute at the St. Paul Seminary. During that time, we had so many people go through the entire Catechism. At the beginning of the course, we'd always have to explain the parts of the Catechism, the apparatus, as we call it, so that they could navigate more easily and see all of the treasures in there. This new ascension Catechism has done an incredible job with that. You mentioned color coding, and you can see there the color. Every pillar has that color of the chart. Then in the back, it's a gold color. All the different helps of indexes and the glossary and all the church fathers and so forth. Just looking at it like the Bible timeline, in the Bible, you can look at any period real quickly. It's the same here. You can look at any pillar real quickly. One of the editions that I thought, I know it's not a commercial, I got to break on it a little bit, and that is they've got a ribbon for every period.

I know. Whenever I show people this, they're like, Oh, the ribbons.

Exactly. That's what I did. I was teaching seminary class the other day, and I showed them and they said, Are there ribbons? I said, Four. They're like, cha-ching. Yeah. They love that.

Jeff, I know that we're coming to the end of our time, but a quick... You just mentioned that for years you've been teaching the Catechism to ordinary people, not just to seminarians and not just to ordained people, not just for people working in the church, but also for anyone who just wants to know more. I'm guessing you probably have some practical tips, maybe some practical advice for people who are like, Okay, I think I'm going to do this. What would you say? What are the practical advice? Maybe also what are some of the stumbling blocks people might need to be aware of before they start?

No, those are all good questions, and they're vital. I think what I would say before you press the button on January first and you go on this incredible journey of intimacy with God, you have to, number one, realize that this is a learning process. Don't be hard on yourself. If you don't understand a word that Father says or you don't understand a concept, that's okay. This is a learning process, and we're going to work through that. So go into it with a hungry heart. Go into it as a son, as a daughter of God, and your heart is set up to learn. As you're going through it, think of a journey. Think of a journey. When you do run into a word or a concept that's, Wow, I don't know what that is, write it down. Just write it down. You know then that you have a place to come back and learn a little more about it. That's really, really important. I would also encourage you to get your own copy of a Catechism. The reason for that is that, as you know, Father, both you and I are big markers. We mark our Bibles and we mark our books.

I encourage our students at the seminary, and we've had over 6,500 graduates who went two years through the Catechism, is to begin to mark your Catechism if you would like. I use colored pencils. You can use other kinds of markers, but you can come up with your own sub-marking system, if you will, of paragraphs that are, Wow, that's really comfort. Maybe it's blue, Green, I need to grow in this. This is really good, or Yellow, Parenting. You can come up with anything that you want, but be free to highlight, to write in it because it is a journey. But most of all, I would say don't be discouraged when you run into words and things that are out there. It's a learning process. You're not going to get it all in one just like the Bible timeline. You didn't get it all in one go-through, but you're in the story. It's like our family. When we were kids, we went to Black Hills in South Dakota for a vacation a couple of times. I have some memories of it, but just a couple of years ago, our family went back there, all grown up now.

I saw things that I saw when I was 10, but I don't remember. Now, wow! Now I get it. That's the way it is with the Catechism too. Think journey, not encyclopedia. Think invitation, not I have to. Think of inheritance, not just knowledge. I think those three things are really important as you go into it. In addition, I would just say that Ascension is doing something else too, and that is I'll be starting a national show on YouTube for Bible in a year where we're going to be talking to some of the best scholars in the world about the concepts of Bible in a year and Catechism in a year. If there are concepts that it's hard for you to understand, well, Father, you're going to be giving those to us, and we'll say, Okay, let's go deeper on that. Let's unwrap that a little bit more. We got your back, and we're going to go through it. But that's just some advice that I would give.

That's awesome. I really appreciate. Not only the... Even that word, you had mentioned invitation before, but inheritance. I just love that. That sense of you don't have to unpack it all at once, that sense of not being hard on yourself, but just receive this. I think sometimes that's one of the reasons why I do audio stuff, why I take in information, audiobooks, podcasts, this thing. One of the reasons why love the idea of the Bible in a year, Catechism in a year, is because I sometimes get hung up on, as I'm reading with my eyeballs, I'm reading and I think, I don't get that yet, so I have to stop. As opposed to just, Nope, just keep moving. Let it keep washing over you, and it's going to permeate. It's like that rain. It's going to make its way through all the layers of earth. It's going to go. But you just have to be patient with yourself. I love that piece of advice. Also, I love the fact that you guys are going to be having that show that takes a deeper dive, because some days when we're recording the Catechism, there's four paragraphs.

It's just here's these four, more or less, bullet points. There's four things to hinge on. Yet other days there's more than that. Every day it's like, Oh, shoot, I can't get all the way diving deeply into this. The fact that you and other experts are going to be doing that, I just think it's just the word robust comes to mind. It's going to be a very robust year to be able to just walk through and let Lord lead us.

Yeah. If I could say one more thing first, if people are wondering, well, would non-Cathics be interested in this? Yeah. And to that I would say, Yeah, well, you said yes.

No, I meant like, Yeah, good question.

I wasn't.

Answering your question.

And you know why? Because I was. When I was a Protestant pastor in Dayton, Ohio, I was starting to be drawn to the early church fathers. I snuck into a Catholic bookstore called St. Mark's for all my people in Ohio and incognito, sunglasses and a hat. I went in there and there was this great big pile of this green book, this yellow book, I think it was back then. I looked at it and I thought, Huh, what's this? I opened it up to paragraph 133. Listen to what it said. The church forcefully and specifically, exhorts the Christian faithful to learn the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ by frequent reading of the divine scriptures. Ignorance of the scriptures is ignorance of Christ. I'm like, What? What is this? Is it Catholic? I went up and I bought it and I went home. That catechism was the fuel, literally, for my preaching for the next six months or so. It was amazing. But what I would recommend, and something you and I both worked on, and if people are interested in, is that you and I did put together an insight journal, simply a simple journal for writing down the gold, the insights in your life, live.

As you're going through the Catechism in a year, if there are insights that you receive that Father people gain from what you're saying, write it down. Keep it. Because those are important. You don't want to lose them, and maybe you can pass it on to the next generation once you're done. I thought I would throw that in and people can get that at Ascension Press. It's just a place where you can put some gold for the future.

Start up your gold. That's it. Passing it on to other people, the Insight Journal is so helpful. Jeff, this has been incredibly helpful as well for me. Even just talking with you right now gets me more and more excited to keep going with the Catechism. Thank you for your time today. Oh, my pleasure. For those listening, if you want to get your reading plan, you can download reading plan by visiting ascensionpress. Com/ciy, that's for Catechism in here. Just go to ascensionpress. Com/ciy. Or if you like texting, you can text the letters C-I-Y to the number 33777. Again, go to ascensionpress. Com/ciy or text the letters C-I-Y to 33777. Also, you can already subscribe. You can already follow whatever podcast. Even though day one hasn't yet dropped as of today, you can already start following and subscribing so that when it does drop on January first, you are ready to go. I think we'd just be able to close in prayer right now, Jeff, if that's okay with you, let's do it. Father in heaven, we give you praise. We thank you for this time. Thank you for everyone who has been able to join us today and listen to this pre-launch episode, this first one, as we just begin to open our hearts and open our minds so that you can fill our hearts with your love, with the truth of who you are.

It's to touch our minds and transform them so that we can live as your sons and daughters, live as the people you have called us and redeemed us and created us to be. May God be glorified, as we pray our glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. Name of the Father and Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. Again, once again, on behalf of Jeff Kivens, my name is Father Mike. I am praying for you. Please pray for me. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.