https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=gYmz179HLuw
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. So, recently I’ve made an important discovery. This is going to be very probably shocking to hear, but all available evidence indicates that it’s true. Sports are actually more important than religion. This is what I’ve come up with. It’s really a rather shocking statement, I’m sure, to hear from a man in my position, but the evidence is irrefutable. I’m going to go through that right now. So, let’s take a look at sports, and we’re talking about all kinds of sports, every sport that you can think of that’s played at a competitive level. In sports, there’s one thing that is almost always present, is that athletes are pushed for excellence. Athletes are pushed for excellence. We want to see athletes do their best. We have an expectation that when you go out onto the court, when you go out onto the field, or wherever it is you’re competing in, that you’re going to do the absolute best that you physically can. Moreover, when athletes are out on the field and they do something well, when they do something excellently, it’s celebrated by everyone. Everyone who’s there is like, that was a great job. That was you pushing yourself to the limit and becoming better. Great job. Great job. Now, let’s take a look over at the church. It doesn’t really seem like we have ethos of excellence. Who really cares if you’re following the Ten Commandments? If somebody’s following the Ten Commandments well, are they ever praised for it, or is it just kind of assumed? And who really cares if you’re following the precepts of the church? Well, it doesn’t seem like anybody cares really. There aren’t any consequences for doing poorly, and there isn’t much praise for doing well. It clearly seems that in terms of doing things excellently, sports are treated as more important than religion. Another distinction between sports and church and religion is that in sports, attendance is expected. If you’re on the team, you don’t just get to show up for the games, you got to show up for the practices too. And if an athlete is continually missing practice, there’ll be consequences for that. The coach is going to say, you need to start attending or you’re not going to have playing time because everybody else is here five days a week working hard and you’re slacking. You’re doing whatever you want. So missing practice is not tolerated. Now, how many people do we consider, uh, how many people don’t come to mass every Sunday? How many people are just showing up whenever they feel moved to? Well, that’s a lot of people. That’s a lot of people not coming to Sunday mass. And yet there are no consequences. There are no detectable consequences for them missing Sunday mass. Now Sunday mass, that’s, uh, that’s how we live out one of the 10 commandments, keep holy the Sabbath and not doing so is on the books anyway, considered a grave sin, but, um, we don’t care if somebody’s missed Sunday mass. So go ahead and receive communion, even though you’re probably not in a state of grace because, uh, I mean, that’s on the books, right? But that’s just some kind of medieval thing. So attendance is not nearly as important in church as it is for sports. Let’s take a look at another thing. Uh, caring for yourself, uh, things like diet, things like exercise, that’s incredibly important in the world of sports. Uh, you could think of probably one of the most extreme cases is the, uh, the wrestlers, right? They’re going to like cut 15 pounds in two weeks or something crazy like that. They go on an intense diet and exercise regime so they can get to their competition weight. Um, and even if you’re not doing that kind of thing, you know, I remember playing football and it was like, well, I’m, I’m trying to put on weight, you know, so I would go work out four times a week. I was eating like a horse. My parents can testify to that. Um, try to put on as much muscle as I could. Now you come over to the church and what are the days of church fasting look like? Well, you fast twice a year. Okay. Now fasting means you don’t eat it all that day, right? No, no, no. Uh, fasting, fasting really means that you have one regular meal and two snacks with it. Um, and then, you know, don’t eat meat on Fridays, uh, during Lent. Um, first off, I mean, how many Catholics in the world are actually following those precepts? And second off, compared to what athletes put themselves through, uh, that’s pretty weak sauce. You know, that’s pretty weak sauce. There’s not a whole lot to that. So in terms of diet, uh, it seems like we treat sports as more important than religion. Let’s talk about the uniform, right? Um, let’s say you show up to basketball practice in blue jeans and cowboy boots. Well, your coach is going to be like, where are your shorts and your basketball shoes? Um, and he’s not going to let you out on the court while you’re improperly dressed. And I think that would go for just about any sport you’re supposed to show up in your uniform. Uh, even got to have your, uh, your jersey tucked into your shorts in a basketball game, right? Otherwise, uh, the refs are going to, going to tell you to fix that. And if you don’t, you might even face consequences for that. Meanwhile, in church, you know, we used to have this idea of having the Sunday best, but that’s kind of gone. You know, I mean, you just kind of show up in jeans and a t-shirt, uh, if you want, um, you could do shorts in the summer and flip flops. Nobody’s going to say anything. Um, you know, and, and, and we’ll just be like, well, we’re just glad you’re here, you know, even though you kind of look like garbage right now. Um, you know, and then, but there’s one thing, you know, uh, you’re going to tell the teenage boy to take his hat off, right? And he’s going to be like, why? And, you know, I think he’s got a good point. Why should I take my hat off? You’re, you’re there in blue jeans and a t-shirt, you know, like what’s, what’s wrong with my hat? Um, and then we’re surprised when we see young people chewing gum in church, but, but really, uh, there’s no ethos of a uniform. There’s no ethos of, uh, dressing like this is important to you. So that’s just another piece of evidence that sports are actually more important than religion. Uh, in sports, there’s always a clear mission, a clear mission. Why are we doing this? Well, you’re doing this to win, at least on a good team, you’re doing this to win. And that’s what everybody wants to be on, right? Nobody wants to be on a lousy team, team, you want to be on a team that’s pushing themselves for excellence. We’re here to win. Now, why be Catholic? Why be Catholic? I don’t know, it’s a nice community. You get a feeling of, of belonging. Um, and what about salvation of souls? Well, you know, we don’t really do, uh, heaven and hell and judgment anymore. We’re more about building community and understanding and, uh, just giving a place for people to be here. And so, you know, all that, all that sin stuff is on the books. Um, but, but it’s really not that important anymore. Just, just come so you feel welcome. So that doesn’t really seem like much of a mission to me. Um, so that’s just another piece of evidence that sports are actually more important than religion. And then finally, uh, we’re in a very strange time right now with this plague going through society. Um, and I’m amazed there’s still a sports section in news broadcasting, still a sports section in news broadcasting. And you may think that even though almost all sports have been shut down, that that would be shut down too, but no, it’s important. ESPN is still broadcasting. There’s still a sports page in the paper. It’s a little shorter, maybe, uh, but people really care that it’s gone. Now you think of the proportion of people who are really upset that let’s say major league baseball isn’t being played or the Olympics are going to be canceled or postponed. And the number of people who are truly upset that they can’t go to church anymore. I just wonder, I just wonder what those, those numbers look like. Just wonder what those numbers look like. How many people are more hurt by the loss of sports than they are by the loss of religion. So I think with these six pieces of evidence, um, we have to admit that sports are actually more important than religion because if religion was more important, then why would we be treating it that way? Why would that be our attitude towards it? So if you’re wondering why we’re losing, yeah, we’re losing. I think we have to look at the evidence, declining church attendance, declining sacramental participation, the amount of Catholics who are sinning and not facing any consequences to it. We have to say that we’re losing right now. We’re losing priests. We don’t have priests like we used to. We’re not drawing young men to the seminary. We’re losing young people, especially, they get to a certain point in their lives and they don’t don’t really care about religion anymore. I think it has to be obvious that we’re losing lots of sinners to hell. The reason for all of this is because many of us in the church don’t believe what Jesus Christ taught. We don’t truly believe in what Jesus Christ taught. And so you can make a distinction between types of belief. There’s merely a kind of mental belief, right? Where, you know, maybe I say these things like, oh yeah, I believe that’s true. But that’s not really an efficacious belief. See, real belief is always going to manifest itself in action. Something that you’re really convinced of is going to manifest itself in action. The United States of America is convinced that the coronavirus could become a very serious problem. And we’re taking drastic action to compensate for that problem. If we really believed that Jesus Christ is who he says he is and that a relationship with him, where we’re in his good graces, where we are following his law is important, that should manifest itself in the way we act. So we should act like Jesus Christ is who he says he is. We should act like he is the only way to heaven. I am the way, the truth, and the life. The way, not a way. No one comes to the Father except through me. Do our actions show that we actually believe that? We have to believe and act like Jesus Christ established the Catholic Church as the true church on earth and that every other church, though it claims to be Christian, is missing something. It’s missing the fullness of the Catholic faith. And that while non-Christians very often have a percentage of the truth, that they have true and good things about their religions, without Jesus Christ it’s not the fullness of what they could have. If we’re going to be Christians, we should believe that mortal sin is a problem. That grave sin, knowingly and willingly committed, separates you from God. That it separates you from the life of grace and that it actually turns you from a friend of God to an enemy of God. On your part, obviously, not on God’s part. God is still loving you. We have to believe that sin leads to hell, an eternal separation from God. That God respects your choices against him. He respects your free will and that he will acknowledge the results of your free will, which is you willingly separating yourself from him. We have to act like receiving communion in a state of mortal sin is in fact another grave sin, the sin of sacrilege against the most holy body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have to act like the church’s teaching on marriage and sexuality is binding and true. In short, we have to act like what we believe is important. Jesus says, you are the salt of the earth, but if salt loses its taste, what can make it salty again? It is good for nothing and can only be thrown out to be trampled under people’s feet. Now Jesus here is asking a rhetorical question. If salt loses its taste, what can make it salty again? The answer is only God can do that. Only our Lord Jesus can do that. Only he can restore the savor that we’re supposed to have as Christians, as Catholics. That’s why we pray. That’s why we pray. Every day, that contact with God every day is what keeps that saltiness in us, what keeps that that flavor of God in us. It’s what can restore it to us if we’ve become mixed with things that are not of God. It’s that habit of daily prayer that restores this. This is why we fast. This is why we don’t just do the minimum of what the church asks us, but we take on more, especially during the season of Lent. That’s why for the Men in the 40 Days program, I’ve held up a cold shower every morning. Well, that’s certainly a type of fasting, a type of mortification. That’s important. That’s important because there’s no way you can say, I’m taking this cold shower, but for any reason, but for our Lord, because it wouldn’t be something you would do unless you were a Christian. And so this Lent, this Holy Lent, if you remember one thing, remember this. This is what it is. If you want to see changes in the world, changes for the good, if you want to see changes in the church, if you want to see changes in your life, there’s only one way to do that, and that’s to get salty. So this is our last 40 days session. The disciplines will continue through Holy Saturday, and then on Easter Sunday, you can treat yourself to a hot shower and maybe a nice big breakfast. Otherwise, it’s been good to get to know the men in this program, the men that we had. Obviously, the past couple of weeks have been a little harder, but certainly I’ve been able to reach you, even if you haven’t been able to reach me. And yeah, I hope even though our Holy Week is going to be very different this year, that you still find it as an occasion to draw near to our Lord, to walk with him in his suffering and death, and to rise again on Easter Sunday with him, and to find yourself stronger in the faith, more convicted of the faith, and more willing to act in the faith. Now let us pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. At the Savior’s command, informed by divine teaching, we dare to say, Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. God bless everyone.