Transcript of #337 Cardinal Burke - The Old Testament

Cardinal Burke.

Yes.

Welcome to the show.

Thank you, Sean. I'm glad to be with you.

Thank you for coming.

I've, uh, this is extremely surreal for me.

So we took a long shot and, uh, I didn't, I didn't think there was a chance we would get you here. And, um, here you are sitting here and, um, It's an honor. It's an honor to do this. So thank you for making the trip.

Not at all. I respect very much what you're doing and you're reaching out to a great number of people and with important messages for them. And so I'm happy to be some little part of it.

Well, let me start you out with an introduction.

Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, you're an American cardinal widely respected for your expertise in canon law and church governance. You previously served as Archbishop of St. Louis and as a prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, the church's highest judicial court. Pope Benedict XVI elevated you to the College of Cardinals in 2010. You are known internationally for your defense of traditional Catholic doctrine, the sacred liturgy, marriage, family, and the sacraments. You are also the founder of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, Wisconsin, which you established as a place of pilgrimage, prayer, and spiritual renewal.

Thank you. And Cardinal, I was hoping you could lead us in prayer. Let's say a prayer before we get started here.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Almighty God, we ask you to guide us in our conversation, to remove from our minds all distractions, and from our hearts any wrong affections, that we might understand more perfectly your will for us and have the courage to carry out whatever it is you ask of us. Ask all this in the name of your only begotten Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who is with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

Amen.

We ask especially the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe on our conversation today, and also St. Lawrence, whose feast, the deacon and martyr, whose feast we celebrate today. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

So like I said, I've been really nervous about this. And I'm gonna be honest, it's been— I'm gonna be a little vague here. But I did a psychedelic experience about a month ago, a little over a month ago. And I've done these a couple of times. And the first one I found to be very healing. It actually took me off alcohol. I've been 4 and a half years now off of alcohol.

No wonder.

And, um, and then I went to do it again, and I believe I was shown hell, and there was nothing there. There was no sense of God or Christ or anything good. It was vacant. And all I could feel in my body was extreme fear and extreme anxiety. And this went on for an hour and a half.

Wow.

And before, actually, I did one 2 days before that, and I met demonic entities. And we'll kind of keep it at that. I don't know exactly what that all meant, but I did get a clear message from God a few days after I returned home.

Things have been very odd around the house, around my family.

Supernatural things have been happening. I've been through 4 exorcisms with 2 different priests. It's not going away, and I feel this strong urge to use my platform, my channel, my audience— not my audience, but deliver my audience, um, an understanding of the Bible and everything that's in it. I've had picture frames fly off the wall. I've had manifestations happen inside of my body. I've had all kinds of weird stuff happen. And last night it all kind of resurfaced. It'd been about a week since anything had happened, and it all kind of resurfaced. And around 12:45, every smoke alarm and the smoke detector in the house went off, went off numerous times. All night long, I felt these manifestations come back into my stomach and into my body. And I started having the same nightmare over and over again last night about— it was basically nightmares that were extremely vivid trying to rip my family apart, me and my wife and my children. And I think that this is happening because something doesn't want me to do what we're about to do today.

I would think so too. The devil absolutely hates anyone who brings the truth to others. And of course, the Bible is all truth. finally, fully in our Lord Jesus Christ. But the Word of God leads us to him. And that's what the devil can't stand. And our Lord himself told us, he said, the devil is a murderer from the beginning. So he does all kinds of things to try to destroy people. Attack the family principally is one of his principal attacks. But attack individuals. And then our Lord went on to say, he said, he's a murderer from the beginning, a liar and the father of lies. And so the more you come to understand the truth, the more you're attracted to the truth, the more you seek the truth in our Lord Jesus Christ, he's going to give you trouble. And he likes especially, I find, to get into electronics and those kind of things to frustrate us, to— to divert us, discourage us. I often say I think his principal temptation is discouragement. If he can convince you that what you're trying to do is not possible, or it's just going to bring you harm, and so you abandon it, then he's achieved his purpose.

And so it's very important for you to have courage, which I know you have, and not let him work this kind of, rightly called, Devilment. In other words, his little tricks and so forth to lead us astray.

I used to look for signs that were good, that made me feel good. I had, without going into too much detail, I used to see the number 444 all the time. And I would take that as I'm on the right path. I'm doing something good. Supposedly that that number means your guardian angels are looking out for you. Sometimes I think that maybe those signs have led me astray, or maybe were deceptive. And but these ones that I'm getting now is as horrific that is that experience was, and and as much as I want all of this. To stop. I'm also thankful for it because it has immensely strengthened my faith in Christ, and it absolutely lets me know that I'm on the right track here.

Yes. You know, it's interesting what you just recounted to me about the vision of hell. When Our Lady appeared to the 3 children in Fatima in 1917, the world was in a terrible state, the First World War, and the rise of communism. And she appeared to these little children to call for reparation for sins, for devotion to her Immaculate Heart, and through her Immaculate Heart to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. And she, and then of course the Holy Eucharist. But she gave the children a vision of hell. And in order for them to understand fully what is the alternative. In other words, we either convert our lives to Christ, we either turn to God, purify our lives of everything that's not of God, or we go in that direction. And of course, as you said, it's empty. There's nothing good there. There's nothing that's lasting, that's beautiful. nothing true. And so it's a terrible thing to have such a vision, but it can be a real grace too, because we never forget that. And then when we're tempted to veer from the way of Christ, then we remember that and we want to get back on the right path.

I've had things speak to me through white noise machines. I've had 2 pretty severe allergic reactions right after communion. I know you've been spiritually attacked probably much, much, much more than I ever have been or will be. How did it stop?

The only answer there is to persevere. St. Paul says to stay the course, fight the good fight, stay the course, keep the faith. And sometimes these, well, it never really ends until our Lord finally takes us home to himself.

Right.

Throughout our life, we Well, he told us, he said, if you will follow me, take up your cross daily. And that's what we have to do. And that means also fighting our own inclination to evil, fighting the evil influences that are around us that want to draw us away from life, which is in our Lord Jesus Christ. And so it's, I say this, that as long as we're striving with all our heart to love him and serve him, then we remain at peace even amongst the so many lies that can be told about us, harm done to us by others, and so forth. But we remain serene because we know that we're with our Lord and that that's all that ultimately really matters. We can suffer many hardships, both in our bodies and mentally and spiritually. But if we can offer it all with Christ, even can we imagine someone, God the Son in our human flesh, what his passion meant for him or what all the lies that were said during his public ministry. Sometimes we hear our Lord say some pretty hard words because he liked those words. where he told those who were denying who he was, invoking their own Jewish faith, but not understanding that he was the fulfillment of their faith.

I mean, he said to them, you follow Satan. You're not following the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You're following Satan. And so, I think we can't ever hope that we won't have to suffer, that we won't have to endure hardships. And you've had some unusual experiences which no doubt are connected by the richness of the life that you've led, even in its pretty difficult aspects. those attacks that will continue to come, but we gain serenity. And the Eucharist, of course, is the principal source of that serenity. It is Christ himself who comes to nourish his life in us. And also a great help is the sacrament of penance and confession, where we meet our Lord through his minister, But the encounter is with our Lord himself. For instance, now they want to try to force priests to reveal what's said in confession. Rightly, priests could never do that because the conversation of the penitent is with God. The priest is just an instrument, and the priest has never any license or permission to ever reveal anything that is said to God through him. And so, but that sacrament, It's also called the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the Sacrament of Peace, but it is a powerful help to us to know that we can open our lives to God in a very concrete way, confessing our sins, and then knowing that in his mercy he forgives us and gives us grace to begin again.

And I suppose one way to say it is every day is a new beginning for us. We set forth again on the way. This life is a pilgrimage. That's why pilgrimage to holy places has always been a major devotion, because it reveals to us that this life is not our real home. Our real home is with God in heaven. This is for us to be on the way to him, our pilgrimage of life. And so we set out every day anew and try to stay on the path. And Pilgrimages are not easy, and neither is life, uh, but our Lord is with us. He's promised us that. He doesn't lie. He said he would be with us in the Church until the last day, and we stick with him, and then we, we are at peace.

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This is happening. I just found out this is happening to somebody else on my team this morning. I know it's happened to you from the very top of the Catholic Church. Why does he allow this to happen?

This is the question that everyone asks, and I think we have to look to our Lord himself. Why did the Father permit that evil people should unjustly condemn him and then put him through the cruelest passion and death that was imaginable at that time, horrible? Why did God the Father permit it? It was for the purification of sin and for the offering of life completely to God. Nothing that is not of God should be any part of us. And so when we accept these sufferings, unite them with those of Christ, There's a purification that takes place in us, and all of us need that. And at the same time, our hearts expand to be more Christlike, to let his love enter more fully into our lives so we can bring his love to the world, to others, do our best. We live in a culture, a society, which is so terribly misguided. people are doing horrible things to themselves and so forth. Some people give up on it. No, we have to try. You mentioned the word family before, and that is essential. We have to, in our families, in our homes, make Christ the King, have Christ rule in our lives and in our families, and that will transform those around us.

It transforms society itself. And the other thing is, we have no right to see the direct results of our giving ourselves more fully to Christ, but we know that if we do, it will bear its fruit, maybe in a time when we'll already have gone to the Lord or will have died. But that is the kind, that's what grace is. It continues its work. And we know that we will have done then what our Lord asked us to do. And I mean, when he was hanging on the cross, he died on the cross, a soldier pierced his heart with a spear. They thought that they finally put an end to this troublemaker, to this insurgent or whatever they wanted to call him. But in fact, and that's a great symbolism of the piercing of his heart, this blood and water that flowed out were signs of the life of grace. By that, death, he brought the life of grace of the Holy Spirit unceasingly and immeasurably into the world. And who is better known today, who is more important today, who is better known, who's more loved than our Lord Jesus Christ? Our Lord Jesus Christ, they thought by that ignominious death that they had destroyed.

And that's one of our principal objects of devotion, a crucifix. And people would say, that's a— what would you— how could that be the symbol of your religion, this, our Lord with all these wounds and dying or dead on the cross? And it's because that is the way. The cross is our only hope. That is our way to really become of God and to live in his company and his communion.

Thank you.

Well, but you shouldn't be surprised either that others on your staff, especially to the degree that they're united with you in this spiritual combat, which it really is, it's a warfare. And it's not by accident that in the scriptures oftentimes our Christian life, our life in God, the metaphors are either of athletic athletic challenges or of war against the good against evil. And so it shouldn't surprise you that others will be. And that's important for us too, to encourage one another so that people don't get destroyed by that or go off and say, well, I don't want anything more to do with that.

I've never asked my audience to do anything for me personally, but I'm going to ask him today to please pray for me, my family, my team, and for you.

Well, thank you very much. And I can assure you, I, as one, will— I have been and will continue to pray for you and for your family and for this work that you are doing.

Thank you. Thank you. I was hoping you could pray over us.

Yes.

Thank you. So let's move into the Bible.

Yes.

The first episode of this new journey, an overview of the Old Testament.

Well, what is the Bible? The Bible is the word of God given to us in human language. That's the— and that's why the Bible is treated with the greatest respect St. Francis of Assisi said if he found even a scrap of paper that had a verse of the Bible from it, it should— if we find such a piece of paper, we should treat it with the greatest respect. And why? Because God inspires human authors to write what he wants us to know. And our Lord himself quoted the scriptures from the Old Testament. And of course, the Gospel writers were inspired to—

Write.

to write his teaching, the story of his saving work, and then of the church in those days after his ascension as the church was in its first days of life. So the Bible is the word of God given to us through human authors. And the books of the Bible, we have 45 books in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament. The Old Testament, sometimes they say there are 44. Some people put 2 books together, but it doesn't, it's not a— It's not a book. not really important. So we have 72 books, all inspired by God, that over the centuries the Church has recognized as truly the Word of God and therefore should be treated as most sacred. The Bible came to birth in the Church, first in the Old Testament through the covenants that God formed first with Adam and Eve when he expelled them from the Garden of Eden after their sin. He promised to send a Savior, the Son of a woman who would crush the head of Satan. Of course, that is our Lord Jesus Christ and our Blessed Mother. And then that covenant was renewed with Noah after the flood.

It was a covenant renewed with King David, and of course found its fulfillment in the Incarnation And God the Son taking human flesh in the Virgin Mary. God the Son is called the Word in the Old Testament. It's understood in the Trinity that God the Son is the wisdom of God, the Word of God. He reflects the mystery of God to us. And this is seen then in most unbelievable way in the mystery of the redemptive incarnation, that God the Son took our human nature, united it to his divine nature to be the fullness of all that God was trying to reveal to us in the Scriptures. And so we can, so it's important to understand the inspiration of the Word of God and that nothing in the Bible can lead us astray, that every word that's in the Bible, even the most minute details and in some way can lead us closer to God. And that the scriptures are those that the Church has recognized over the centuries that are handed down to us. Before we began the show, I was happy to give you the latest English translation of the edition of the Bible produced by the St.

Paul Center and Ignatius Press. St. Paul's Center is in Steubenville, Ohio. Professor Scott Hahn, who is a great student of the scriptures, together with others, put this translation together. And it's wonderful because it has these notes that help us to understand words or events that might be confusing to us otherwise. But we should every day devote some time. If God gave us his word, and of course in its fullness in our Lord Jesus Christ, and when we ought to, we ought to read his word and to make it part of ourselves. And of course, all the books of the Bible are important, but the most important are the Gospels because they tell us the story of the Word becoming flesh, of the revelation of God reaching its fullness in the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ into our midst. And so we have to give a special attention to the Gospels. And of course, at every offering of the Holy Mass, a passage of the Gospel is proclaimed first. A reading either from the Old Testament or from the New Testament, but then always the Gospel. And then what actually happens in the Mass is that, so we have this passage from the Old Testament, find its fulfillment in the Gospel, or if it's from the New Testament, St.

Paul drawing us more deeply into the mystery. And then we have the Mass. in which Christ descends from his place at the right hand of the Father to the altars of our churches and chapels and makes new sacramentally his sacrifice on Calvary. And so whatever is taught to us in the Scriptures becomes reality for us as our Lord is present on the altar and then comes to nourish us through the sacred host.

How were the books chosen?

They were chosen by the priests, by the faithful who read these books and realized, recognized that this was not ordinary writing. Sometimes there was a controversy about one book or another, and then the authority, either in the Hebrew Jewish faith, the authorities decided which books were to be recognized as the Word of God, and others, perhaps good books, but not the Word of God. And you may know that there's a little difference between what's sometimes referred to as the Protestant Bible and the Catholic Bible. There are 7 books that were part of a Greek translation of the Old Testament called the Septuagint. And some branches of Judaism don't accept those as revealed. They accept them as holy books, but not as revealed. But the Church has accepted them, even though they were written in Greek and not Hebrew originally. The Church has accepted them as inspired. And there are some very beautiful books there, and we can understand why the Church understood it was the Word of God, the Book of Tobit, for instance, and also 1 and 2 Maccabees, where it's a wonderful teaching on eternal life, the importance of praying for the dead, and that through our prayers we can make expiation for the temporal punishment that the sins of the dead need yet to remit.

And so, but in any case, it was through the— in the Church, through the ecumenical councils and so forth, that the books were defined as truly the Word of God. So we can rely upon that.

Do you know how many How many books did they sift through to formulate the Bible?

I don't actually. I have to confess, I love the scriptures and I, of course, studied them intensely. I'm not what they call a scripture scholar in the sense of an expert, but one thing that is very, how should we say, typical of the scriptures is how many times the books of the Bible make reference to other books of the Bible. One sees the unity in the whole of the scriptures. And there is a wonderful unity there. And there are things, for instance, that can seem to us less important. For instance, In the book of Deuteronomy and Leviticus, the law of God. And God is giving very detailed instructions about worship, how the worship should take place, what the vestments of the priests should be, and so forth. And people can think of that as less important, but it's not really because God is manifesting himself to us with his right that we worship him in the way that he teaches us. So we don't end up worshiping ourselves or worshiping some demons. And so all of those things have their importance. And of course, there are other things that are more immediately obvious. For instance, our Lord makes reference to the book of Genesis, how God made man and woman.

God made man male and female and what he intended, that a man should take his wife and wife take her husband for life, that the marriage is indissoluble. What God has joined, man must not put asunder. And so that's a Of course, very fundamental, essential teaching. But there, so we see a whole variety in the scriptures, but each part has its importance. But I know a number of books, for instance, there are other gospels than the ones that are in the scriptures. And they can be read with profit, but they— They aren't part of the— the Church did not understand that they should be part of the canon, as we call it, the canon of the scriptures.

What is the canon of the scriptures?

Canon of the scriptures is the list of those books of the Old Testament, 45 or 44, and then the 27 books of the New Testament that are declared by the Church to be divinely revealed to be the word of God.

What time span does the Old Testament cover?

Well, from the beginning, from creation. It starts with the Book of Genesis, right up until the coming of our Lord. The prophets foretold his coming and spoke about it, and then John the Baptist is the last of the prophets. Now, he did not leave us a book, But he's the last of the Old Testament prophets. He points to our Lord Jesus Christ and said, behold the Lamb of God.

And how do you think that— before we move strictly Old Testament, how do we How do you think that— how many authors are there?

Oh, that some of the books are written by the same author. There'd be more or less 40 or so authors. The first 5 books called the Pentateuch or the Law, those are often called the Books of Moses, that Moses wrote them all. We don't necessarily think that Moses wrote all 5 books. But, and so there could be the exact number of authors, I wouldn't be sure, but a number of authors.

Well, I guess what I'm getting at is several different authors over thousands and thousands of years.

Yes.

And it formulates one story.

Yes.

It references itself over 62,000 times. But how do we know this is the Word of God? That it's been— because it's been written by man?

Because our Lord himself teaches us that. He says that he has come to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, is referring to the Old Testament, and he tells us to do not think Don't think that I've come to destroy the Law and Prophets. I've come to fulfill them, and insists on our attention to the very detail of the Word of God. And then our Lord acting through his Church has verified for us that these exact books are divinely inspired.

And then One last question before we move on just to the Old Testament. Why does the God of the Old Testament seem so much different than the New Testament?

Well, because God hadn't yet taken our human flesh to redeem us. He was bringing the people along, and we must not forget, those people were not unlike ourselves. He refers to them as stiff-necked. Remember, we get various stories in the Bible, but take for instance, when God brought the people out of slavery in Egypt and they were in the desert on their way to the Promised Land, Moses was called up by God to receive the 10 Commandments. Down below, what are they doing? They're molding a golden calf out of— taking their jewelry to make a calf to worship. And you imagine, God brought them out of slavery, brought them— is bringing them on the way to the Promised Land, and they turn to idols. So God is bringing the people along. And finally, and so the God of the Old Testament rightly can seem a bit harsh to us, but he had to purify this people in order that they would be ready to receive the Savior. Our Lord comes. And of course, he is God himself, divine nature united to our human nature in the one person of God the Son. And of course, that gives us all hope.

That gives us assurance. People haven't ceased to be sinful. The effects of original sin continue. But we know now that we have the grace of Christ to help us to overcome the temptations to sin, to overcome the temptations to evil, to pursue that which is true and good and beautiful. And so it, should I say, brings out all of the joy and positive aspect of God as he's revealing himself in the Old Testament. And so God isn't different. It's simply that he has brought his plan to its fullness.

Let's move into strictly the Old Testament. What does testament mean?

Testament means covenant, and all the books of the Bible are an expression of the covenant that God made with man. Covenant, an agreement, a sacred agreement where God promises to be our God, to save us. And we, accepting that covenant, pledge ourselves to be his loyal sons and daughters. And so every book of the Bible, beginning with the story of Adam and Eve, with the creation, God confides to Adam and Eve The stewardship of the earth. He's created this beautiful world, but he creates this creature. The scriptures, the book of Genesis makes it clear. One creature, one earthly creature is created in his own image and likeness. What does that mean? It means that God intends us to be in communion with him, that we share in his own life. And he says, let us make man in our own image and likeness. And so from that moment, there is a bond between God and man. Now, Adam and Eve sinned. The serpent came, tempted Eve, and then she tempted Adam. They both fell for the lie that the serpent told them. God had only asked them not to eat the fruit of a single tree, and that was a sign of trust, and they broke the trust.

But even from that moment, they of course lost God's friendship, but he promised already that moment, he made a covenant with them that he would send He said to the serpent, I'll put enmity between you and the woman, between her seed and your seed. He will crush your head. In other words, the Son of the woman. And that indicates to us, too, the central importance of the Incarnation, that God united himself, his divine nature to our human nature, in the womb of a woman. And that's why the Blessed Virgin Mary is so important in our faith. because she is that instrument through which God came into the world. She's not Mother of God in the sense that she's Mother of His divine nature, no, but she is His mother when He unites His divine nature to our human nature. And then throughout the Old Testament, then, this covenant is renewed. We know the story of Noah and the Ark. We know the story of of King David. Abraham, of course, too, of course, is very important. The promise God made to Abraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the sands on the shore.

Why did he pick Noah?

Noah was faithful to God. There was People were acting in a very sinful way, but Noah and his family were striving to follow the law of God. And so God told him what he planned to do and instructed him to build the ark in order to save. God would never destroy what is good. And so this faithful family, Noah and his family, And then they took some of all the animals with them. So God, in punishing the people by the flood, punishing them for their sins, at the same time saves the goodness of his creation represented in Noah and his family.

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How did he know? How did anybody know the law of God?

Because already then God was speaking to them through the patriarchs, through their religious leaders. We know about some of the figures from the scriptures themselves, but God was revealing himself, speaking to them. And so they knew and they trusted. I mean, Noah could have said, well, that's crazy, and not built the ark and so forth. But no, he prayed and he understood that God had this plan to save the people and that he was part of it. Same way too that God instructed Abraham to leave Sodom and Gomorrah to go away and to a land where they could live in fidelity to God. And Abraham trusted, and his faith was always rewarded. The same way, too, Abraham and Sarah are living in the land of Ur of the Chaldees, and they have these 3 visitors come. And to visit with Abraham, to renew the covenant with him. We always understand the 3 visitors to represent the 3 persons in the Holy Trinity. But, and there too, God promised Abraham he'd have all these descendants, but he didn't even have a son. His wife was sterile.

Sarah.

And the 3 visitors said, no, your wife is going to conceive a child. And she overheard this. She was preparing some hospitality for them. And she laughed in the sense that she was way beyond the age of childbearing. And they reprimanded her. And she did indeed. have a son. Abraham, Isaac. And God tested Abraham by asking him to sacrifice his son Isaac as a sign of his fidelity, of his obedience. And Abraham is heartbroken, staking his son up to offer him in sacrifice. The son has on his back the wood which he was to be immolated. We see it as a sign of the cross. And at the moment when he was going to do what he understood God's will, God intervened and said no. And Isaac was saved. And of course, he had Jacob and then the 12 sons of Jacob, and the story goes on, so to speak. But there's In all of it, we, you know, the 12 sons of Jacob, the sons are envious of their brother Joseph because he was, the father had a special affection for him. So they sold him into slavery in Egypt. And then comes the famine and they have to go to Egypt to try to get some food to live on.

In the meantime, their brother Joseph who had such extraordinary gifts, the Pharaoh of Egypt recognized them, and he was practically the governor of the whole country. And so these brothers come, and Joseph's talking to them, and they don't know, they don't recognize who he is. But he finally breaks down because he— and then he says to them, you know, you intended to do something evil, But God used what you did to save you. And then he gave them the food that they needed to survive. And so he becomes a figure to us too. We see that how God is always at work and is always bringing good even out of evil situations. He's always at work to accomplish his salvation he wants for us.

How does the Old Testament line up, especially the creation? Does it line up at all with theories like the Big Bang, dinosaurs, things like that?

There can't be— whatever is scientifically proven can never be in contradiction with the Bible. And so there, that isn't a major concern of ours. Sometimes people, for instance, people say, well, evolution proves that the Book of Genesis is false. Well, that isn't true. First of all, evolution is a theory. This is not scientifically demonstrated. And the story of creation is First of all, it is the Word of God. We know it's truth. We interpret it according to the form of literature which it is. But what it tells us is that all of creation, the order in it and so forth, comes from the hand of God. It's not some kind of accident that took place. And that in that creation, There's one creature who is radically distinct from the others because no creature evolves with a soul, which we have, with an intellect and will, which we have. And all the scientific studies that are done, it's clear that this is a distinct gift which only God himself could give. I remember when I was a young man and studying philosophy, there was a theory that there were— people have always tried to discover that some animal had intellect and will.

And I remember there was a— some people were saying that the bee, because the bee goes out and finds the nectar, comes back to the hive and communicates to the other bees where it is. And they go and it's a kind of an instinctual behavior. But what they discovered was that even if there were no other bees there to communicate with, the bee did this. It was just instinctual behavior. went. And so there wasn't intelligent communication. There was some kind of communication, but not intelligent and willful communication. I remember there was a famous book written at that time by, he was a Jewish philosopher, but I believe he became Catholic, if I'm not mistaken, a man by the name of Marnor Adler. And he wrote a book, The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes. And so the difference of man is that we are essentially related to God. And that makes all the difference. We could say in a certain way, the whole of the Old Testament is showing us this truth. And get back to your original question, that's why it's called a testament. It's the Old Covenant. The first covenant, which finds its fulfillment in Jesus Christ, the new covenant, the New Testament.

And really, it's one covenant. It's always God's relationship with us from the moment of creation. He chose man for this very particular relationship with him.

How many covenants are in the Old Testament?

At least 4. It's the same covenant, but our Lord keeps renewing it. The first gospel or the first announcement is with Adam and Eve. You have Noah. You have Abraham. And then you have the Mosaic Covenant and David. That's 5. I think 5 would be the right, correct number.

Who was David?

David was— the people, at a certain point, they saw that the people around them had kings. And before, our Lord had always governed the people through judges. They were people endowed with special wisdom by God to lead the people. For instance, Samuel. And there were also Judith, others. And so God gave them a king, Saul. And Saul's—

David.

Excuse me.

Saul.

I'm getting mixed up. Yeah, Saul. In any case, but the king was corrupt. So David became king when he destroyed Goliath, the head of the Philistines who were coming to destroy the people. He killed him with a slingshot. He was a young man, but he— so he became very popular with people. So he succeeded that king, and God promised him that it would be through his descendant that he would save the people, that it would— and that the people would become great in all the earth. And our Lord Jesus Christ, through St. Joseph, is a descendant of David. The Gospel of Matthew begins with a genealogy that shows all the generations from Adam and Eve Right. Down to our Lord himself. And so, David himself sadly fell into sin too, but he repented of it and our Lord forgave him. But through his line, our Lord was born in human flesh which, of course, as God, he is from all time, his divine nature.

And back to Abraham, I believe you mentioned that the covenant from Abraham was the promised people, God's chosen people.

Yes, yes. We, in fact, We've referred to ourselves as sons of Abraham because of his faith in God's promise of a son, that God would continue to generate the family. And Abraham trusted in God's promise against— there's no reason for him to. to trust no human reason, no earthly reason, but he trusted. And so Abraham is a very important figure to us. And of course, it's through Abraham that we arrive— through the genealogy and so forth, we arrive at our Lord. And it is our Lord who makes Fulfills the promise that the children of Abraham are as numerous as the sand on the sea. In other words, through our Lord Jesus Christ, all men are called to be saved if only they accept from him the gift of faith and follow him.

So are the descendants of Abraham the Jewish people?

Yes, the Jewish people are the descendants of Abraham. And we ourselves, as Christians, we call ourselves spiritual Semites. Semite was another term used for the Jewish people. Because God chose the Jewish nation, the Hebrews, to present him to the world. God chose Hebrews, a Hebrew, the Virgin Mary, to be the first tabernacle, the first place in which he came to dwell in our human flesh. And so it is the vocation of the Jewish people to present the Savior to the world. And that is what our Blessed Mother does. That's what St. Joseph does. And so we have a great reverence. Of course, we share the Scriptures with the Jewish people. Now, one has to understand the difference between the Jewish faith and what might be other political realities, and I don't intend to get into that at all. But the Jewish faith is contained in those books of the Old Testament, and that's part of our heritage. An essential part of our heritage is the Old Testament fulfilled At what point did—

I mean, if we all came from Adam and Eve, at what point did the split happen? Or was it just the descendants? There was no split until Abraham, and then it was his descendants. Was that the split?

From Adam and Eve, there are 2 genealogies in the in the Gospels, one in Matthew and one in Luke. And the one in Luke draws out more. Basically, there are infidelities, numerous infidelities in this long, long history. But basically, from Adam and Eve to John the Baptist and the coming of our Lord, there is no split. It's a constant handing down from one generation to the next, and that's how— and that really is from the time of Abraham.

Okay. The 10 Commandments. What is the significance of those?

They're of tremendous significance. So God— the people were in slavery in Egypt. And God sent them this tremendous leader, Moses, who brought them out by God's hand out of the land of Egypt. The famous story of the plagues. God had Abraham— Moses, excuse me, went to Pharaoh and told him that God wanted his people free. And Pharaoh equivocated. He said he would, then he wouldn't. And there were various plagues that God sent. And the last one was the Passover when the angel of death came and the firstborn of all the families was— those families that did not have the blood of the Paschal Lamb on their doorposts were killed. And at that, Pharaoh let them go. So they came to the Red Sea, and God by a miracle dried the Red Sea so they could pass through it. And Pharaoh at that point decides that he made a mistake letting them go and sends his armies after them. And at that, the sea returns and all of Pharaoh's army is destroyed and the people are free. So they're out, they're in the desert. And then God, in his desire for their salvation, to bring them in the Promised Land, he calls Moses up to the height of Mount Sinai.

And there Gives him 10 Commandments. And they're basically, this is the order of our relationship with God, with one another, and with the world. So the first 3 commandments all have to do with our relationship to God, that we worship him alone, we don't have idolatry, that we honor his holy name, we aren't blasphemers, that we keep holy his day, even as from the story of creation, the 7th day is a day of rest, of giving thanks to God for all of creation. So then the next commandments have to do with the family. Honor your father and your mother, and by extension, our relationship in the wider community. The virtue of patriotism, that we honor also our homeland as a place that makes it possible for families to exist and to prosper. Then the commandments not to commit, not to kill, not to commit adultery, not to lie, not to covet your neighbor's wife or your neighbor's goods. And those commandments remain for us today. Our Lord himself, when he had the Sermon on the Mount, this is found in this very significant passage in the Gospel according to St. Matthew, chapters 5 to 7.

Our Lord gives a Sermon on the Mount beginning with the Beatitudes. But in that Sermon on the Mount, he confirms the 10 Commandments, that he has come to fulfill them, not to eliminate them. Some people say, oh, now we have the love of Christ, therefore we don't have to worry about the 6th Commandment, for instance, do not commit adultery, all the sins connected with the abuse of our human sexuality. But our Lord makes it clear, no, Those commandments are as true today as ever, only that they should find their perfect expression in pure and selfless love. And so the commandments, it's called the Decalogue, they are considered to be the rule for our lives, the rule that leads us to lead a good and holy life.

Have there been any mistakes found in the Old Testament? Any discrepancies?

There's a couple of passages they talk about having to do with natural phenomena. I'm an old man and I'm not remembering exactly the passages. One was about the movement of the sun and so forth. But they aren't mistakes in the sense that the passages involved weren't meant to be teaching earth science. And so, no, we can say there are not mistakes in the Bible, no.

How much of it does line up with science?

It all does eventually. If you understand the Word of God correctly, interpret it correctly, and if the science is true science— we always have to keep in mind that sometimes somebody can come along and say they're a scientist, but they tell you things that are not true. So it has to be things that are scientifically demonstrated. There won't be any contradiction.

Okay. Let's take a quick break.

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One more Okay, Cardinal Burke, we're back from the break. I wanted to kick this segment off with why were some of the books removed for the Protestant Bible in the Old Testament?

They were part of— they weren't, not for all the the Jewish people. Some accepted these 7 books, some did not. And the principal reason, in short, was that the whole Old Testament was written in Hebrew except for these books. And then— let me go back. The whole Old Testament was written in Hebrew. Then there was There was a translation into Greek done by, they say, 72 scholars. It was called the Septuagint. And it's the Word of God, but translated into Greek. And in that edition of Septuagint, these 7 books were included. But they don't—

They don't.

they don't have a Hebrew original. They were written originally in Greek. And so for some of the Jewish people, they excluded them because they didn't have a Greek original— excuse me, a Hebrew original. But the Church said, no, they don't have a Hebrew original, but these are divinely inspired books. And so they were included in what is now what we call the canon. As I was saying before, the official list of the books of the Bible, these 7 books are also included.

Okay. Okay. I wanted to dive a little bit more into the covenants.

Yes.

The covenants with Noah, Abraham, David, and Moses. And I wanted to start with Noah, and if you could explain it as if it's somebody's first time ever hearing this. Yes.

Well, this is early on in the Book of Genesis. Not— there was, of course, Adam and Eve, and then the first generations, and then comes the time of Noah. And the Scriptures tell us that God looked upon man and the way he was living, and he was doing everything but what God wanted. And the Scriptures say that, not literally, it shouldn't be interpreted, but that it made God sorry that he had made man. In other words, not that he Would ever be sorry for having created this wonderful creature. But because man has free will, he can go away from God. And at that time, clearly, people were living and doing very immoral things. Well, we shouldn't be so surprised because we have a lot of things going on today in our world that are Are pretty terrible. And, uh, uh, are there similarities? Yes.

What are some of those similarities?

Those similarities would be, uh, violations of our, of our human nature as male and female, violations of the, uh, transgenderism. That would be a clear example. They didn't they didn't have the capacity to do all these terrible surgeries and so forth to try to, well, to mutilate somebody, try to make a man into a woman and vice versa. But there are other, I guess some way to put it, unnatural relationships.

Okay.

Or relationships that violated the unity and the indissolubility of the marital bond, adultery, Or just sexual activity outside of marriage, because sexual union is expression of the bond, the exclusive bond of marriage. And to have sexual union with someone who's not your wife, this is a grave sin. So God saw this. what was going on. And of course, other things too. People— dishonesty, abusing people for one's own gratification and so forth. It could be also done in economic affairs and so forth. So God saw all this, but he saw that Noah and his family were We're living rightly. We're living in truth according to the way God made us. And so he called upon Noah to build the ark and to save, as I was saying before, what was good, the good that he had created. Now, Of course, this was before the 10 Commandments. Noah comes before Moses. But this is— I would like to make a point here, if I may, and that is that God made us in his own image and likeness with intelligence and free will. And he wrote on the human heart— we use that image— his law. In other words, if he made us in that way, he made us to live in accord with our true nature and not in accord with idolatry or sinfulness.

And so we call that the natural law. And that its expression is found in the Ten Commandments. But that every man, even if he doesn't know the 10 Commandments, if he is in communication with his heart, with his deepest being, he knows, for instance, that human life is inviolable. He knows that human sexuality is intended to form the bond of marriage and for the family. And he knows that God is to be worshiped in, as our Lord says, in spirit and in truth. And we see this, that people eventually, when they're told about the faith and so forth, they understand that this is the truth about themselves. And so, in any case, Noah and his sons, they were living according to the natural law, to that law that God had written on their hearts. hearts. And so God called upon them to build the ark and to save his people. And so the people of God continued, even though this flood destroyed everything, including all the people who continued, even when Moses was building the ark and so forth. They continued to carry on, as we say, as if there were no tomorrow. And And they were all killed by the flood.

So the natural law is God is to be worshiped.

Yes.

Human life is invaluable, and sexuality is for procreation in the family unit.

That's right.

And so what did God promise Noah?

God promised him that he— his descendants— that he would have descendants and that they would have life and that And that they would enjoy his friendship forever. And in fact, he kept that promise.

He did keep that promise. What about the covenant with Abraham?

There we have Abraham was living in the land of Sodom and Gomorrah, and What was Sodom and Gomorrah? Sodom and Gomorrah were 2 cities, and the people there began to live in a godless way. And especially, there was homosexual activity. They were unnatural attraction between people of the same sex. And then when they would even abuse people who would come People would be passing through, offer them hospitality, but with the intention to abuse them sexually, to have relations, unnatural relations with them. And so God told Abraham to leave Sodom and Gomorrah. And with Lot, Lot. And so they fled and God led them into the land of Ur of the Chaldees. The present situation in Iraq is so sad for us because that's where they went. You know, the Chaldeans became the Chaldean—

Chaldea.

today is Iraq. But then there, God promised Abraham a son, which he didn't have. Lot was his nephew. And that from that son would come a people, a people greater in number than anyone could imagine. Imagine. And so, as I was mentioning, Abraham's wife, who was far beyond childbearing age, she thought that this was some kind of joke, if you might say. But no, it wasn't. She did. She had a son, Isaac. And Isaac had a son, Jacob. The covenant keeps coming through. And then Jacob had 12 sons. And it was— anyway, the whole genealogy continues. And indeed, from Abraham comes this, what today is the Church, all those who have come to life in Christ. Christ through baptism and who become more numerous than we can imagine. Now, there are still a lot of people who do not yet know Christ. And there are sadly people who have known Christ and then have gone away from him. And so the Church is essentially missionary. in the sense that she's constantly wanting to bring Christ, to bring that to fulfillment, that promise of God to make a great nation, that Christ, who is the King of the universe by his saving work, would reign in the hearts of all men.

How did he appear to Abraham?

He appeared as 3 visitors, mysterious visitors. Often there's a famous Russian icon of the 3 visitors to Abraham. And they say there were 3 angels. In some way, they represented the Holy Trinity. And they came to Abraham. He showed them hospitality. And he recognized them as truly unusual visitors. And it was through them that God promised him the And who was Isaac.

How did he appear to Noah?

With Noah, the scriptures simply say God spoke to him. They don't— I don't recall that it was more than that, that God spoke to him and didn't say that he appeared to him in the sense in some kind of particular way, but in some way he He communicated to him what he needed to do.

Did he fulfill his promise to Abraham?

Yes. We see in the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, we refer to, in fact, we refer to God as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jacob, because through that line came then David, who was of the House of Judah, and then through the House of David came our Lord.

Are you seeing similarities in today as they did Sodom and Gomorrah as well.

Yes.

The days of Noah.

Yes. It's very clear to us, or to me, I should say, and to others as well, that in this rebellion that has set into society really centuries ago, but in our day is represented By the idea that I am the author of my own being, that I have a right to decide whether I should live or not, you know, if I— and that I have a right to change the identity which was given to me at my birth. And then in all kinds of other ways in which evil is exalted as good. And then the evil actions of men are exalted as good and in defiance of God's law. And we see it, a good example is atheistic materialism, communism, and to deny that the law of God by enslaving people to an ideology which is contrary to the Christian faith. But we see it too in the whole homosexual agenda, to say that you can have a marriage There are countries, the country of my own ancestors, Ireland, they put in their constitution that you can have marriage between 2 people of the same sex. I say this is a heresy not only against the faith, what the scriptures teach us, but against reason itself.

It's clear that God made man for woman and woman for man. And that he didn't make us to have genital relationships with a person of the same sex. But we see various phenomena in this whole transgender business too. Someone gets an idea that he He's a woman captured in a male body.

So he—

this is where too I have to say we need to think about medicine. Medicine is the art of healing, of curing. It's not to be used for other ends. But sadly, the medical profession has then— taken up the work of really mutilating people so that they can somehow realize this idea that they have that the sex assigned to them by nature is wrong and they want to change it to what their idea is. It turns out, of course, No one can be happy that way. And now already we hear of the cases of people who've had all these surgeries and so forth making lawsuits against those that mutilated them. And as I say here too, it's a question of this just isn't reasonable how anyone could that you could change your sexual identity. It's just— and certainly God, from the creation of Adam and Eve, he said, let us create man, and then it says male and female he created them. And so God creates us either as a male or female. We should be very grateful for our sexual identity and Strive to live out the particular gifts that come to us from our sexual identity.

And we know that men and women also in their way of thinking and so forth have very distinctive gifts. And that's what makes for a good marriage. It makes for good family life. And those are the things we ought to— for instance, instill in our children. And the qualities of a gentleman, the qualities of a lady, as we say, which is something we all recognize as a real gift and something very beautiful in human life.

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Let's move to David. What was the covenant with David?

Well, David, of course, was king. God saved the people from the Philistines, from their enemies, through King David. And as he was dying, he had committed a terrible sin with the wife of Uriah, one of the great generals of his army. He had one day seen her bathing and was overcome with lust. And so he— Uriah was out fighting a battle and he had sexual relationships with her and they conceived a son.

And Of course.

And then he had Uriah killed because he didn't want Uriah to discover what had happened. And so the Lord punished him for his sin, but he repented and God promised him before he died that That through his family would come a king who would rule forever. And that, of course, that king is our Lord Jesus Christ.

So that covenant was fulfilled?

That was fulfilled too.

And how about Moses?

Yeah. Moses, likewise, Moses himself became upset with the people. And the famous account of the people were always complaining about things. And so they complained that they didn't have any water. And our Lord told them to take his staff and strike this rock, and that water would come. And Moses, before he struck the rock, Right. He made a rather angry speech, and then he struck the rock twice. And God saw that he didn't reflect the holiness of God in the way he responded to the people. And so he— Moses did not enter the Promised Land. It was through Joshua that the people entered the Promised Land. He was able to, from Mount Nebo, he could view the Holy Land from afar, but he didn't enter the Holy Land. Now, Moses was a very good person, but God in his plan for our salvation requires that we imitate as perfectly as possible his holiness, his qualities. And so Moses rightly accepted that he had failed in that regard. But Moses was a great figure. There's a wonderful tribute to him in the scriptures. And so there too, God kept the promise. He brought the people into the Promised Land.

And of course, that Promised Land eventually is the Church.

Are there any covenants that God did not keep or has not fulfilled yet in the Old Testament?

It's not possible that God would make a covenant and not keep it. We say of God that he is ever faithful, his love is enduring, and so it never fails. And we can And the scriptures testify to that. Okay.

In Genesis 3:15, God promises that the offspring of the woman will crush the serpent. What conflict does this set in motion, and how far does it run through scripture?

Well, it runs through the whole of scripture.

Sure.

Satan succeeded in tempting Adam and Eve. And he will, of course, he doesn't rest, he doesn't sleep. He continues to tempt man to turn against God, to think, basically for man to think that he is God. And we see manifestations of this immediately. For instance, the Tower of Babel. People thought that they could build some kind of physical structure uniting heaven to earth on their own, not according to God's plan. And so in the whole Scriptures, we see that people are waiting for the fulfillment of this promise through the whole Old Testament. And the prophets speak about For instance, connected with Genesis 3:15 is Isaiah 7:14, where God promises that a virgin will conceive and bear a son who will save the people. And that, of course, is a prophecy in Isaiah, but it's the prophecy of Of this man born of a woman who crushes the head of Satan. And that opposition continues. Our Lord comes. He's incarnate in the womb of Mary. He's born at Bethlehem. He carries out his public ministry, which is fundamentally a confrontation of the goodness of God with the evil of sin, the powers of darkness. And so our Lord comes and he crushes Satan's head by his suffering and his death, his resurrection, and ascends to the right hand of the Father and sends the Holy Spirit in the Church.

And so that victory is won. Now, what remains is that the victory which Christ achieved in his human nature nature is to be achieved in each one of us. St. Paul uses the image, he said that he rejoices to fill out in his body what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ. Now, there's nothing lacking in the sufferings of Christ. He's the Redeemer perfectly. But what is lacking is that each one of us incorporate the life of Christ into our lives and that we resist The temptations of Satan until our Lord comes at the end of time and restores everything to the Father. And so this is so important for us to realize that we're all called to cooperate with Christ in his saving work, and to— that that saving work should be the story of our lives. And And even as in Genesis 3:15, this was through a woman, we also, through our devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, understand what our Lord is asking each one of us to do according to our vocation in life, according to our particular gifts. And the image of this is in the wedding feast at Cana.

Our Lord and our Blessed Mother were invited to a wedding feast at Cana. And at the wedding feast, through some miscalculation, they ran out of wine. And the wine stewards were extremely distressed. And it was our Blessed Mother who took them to Jesus, her Divine Son, and said to them, do whatever he tells you. And of course, they do. He told them, fill these water jars, and the water was transformed into wine. So we take that, what she said there, for each of us, we're trying to do whatever Christ tells us. And in doing that, we cooperate in his saving work, even as our Blessed Mother cooperated. By saying when the Archangel Gabriel appeared to her to tell her that she was to be the mother of the Redeemer, she didn't understand at first. She said, how can this be? Because I know not man. She was married to St. Joseph. They were fully married, but it was a virginal marriage. They had not come to live together. And they had intended, we know this, that they had intended to lead their married life Respecting her vow of virginity. And St. Joseph accepted this. So she said, I know not man.

She was married, but she knew not man in the sense she had no sexual relation with Joseph. And the angel tells her not to fear, but to trust God's word. And she says, fiat, let it be done to me according to what you've said. had. And so, we— she became the mother of us all by that fiat. And then, of course, she— that let it be done. Fiat is the Latin for let it be done to me according to your word. And then throughout her Our Lord's public ministry, Our Lady is always at His side, but most importantly, as He's dying on the cross, She's at the foot of the cross with St. John the Evangelist. The other apostles, sadly, were cowards and had run away. They didn't want to risk being arrested and punished. But St. John was there. there. And our Lord, just moments before he died, he said to Our Lady, Woman, behold your son. St. John, of course, represents us all, the Church. And then he said to John, Behold your mother. And so she, we see that our Blessed Lady's role in the redemption, which Christ alone, of course, accomplishes, but that that all of us have some part to play.

Our Lord is calling upon us to be, as it's in the 3rd letter of St. John, cooperators of the truth. All of us are called to be co-workers of the truth. That, by the way, was the motto of Pope Benedict XVI. He chose that cooperatores veritatis, cooperators of the truth, as his motto for his I have a question.

If God promises that the offspring of the woman will crush the serpent, but the serpent is Satan, Satan is obviously alive.

Yes.

And working.

Yes.

How has that prophecy, that promise, not prophecy, how has that promise been fulfilled?

Because we receive divine grace. We receive from Christ himself the sevenfold gift of the Holy Spirit to combat Satan. And that wasn't true until he came. Yes, people received grace from God, but not the gift of the Holy Spirit as it's given been through baptism and through the sacraments and through our whole life in the Church. And so, yes, Satan is still around. He'll always be in hell. But eventually, our Lord will come to restore the whole Church, become the heavenly Jerusalem, the heavenly Church. And then, of course, Satan won't be able anymore to tempt and bother anybody. But up till then, we have to, as St. Paul says, fight the good fight, stay the course, and keep the faith. God keeps his covenant with us. He gives us divine grace. We need to keep our covenant with him and cooperate with that grace.

Well, God, the blood of the Passover lamb saves Israel from death. What does this point forward to?

Well, this I was mentioning before. When the people were, were enslaved in, in Egypt, God wanted to set them free. And he chose Moses because they were killing all the first— the Egyptians were killing all the firstborn of the Israelites because they were becoming so numerous and they were becoming very powerful. And so, but Moses was saved. The daughter of Pharaoh discovered him and his mother hid him in a reed basket. And in a marsh. And she found him and took him and raised him. And of course, this was all in the providence of God. He became then a great leader. And God, through him, asked Pharaoh to set the people free. And God sent various plagues to show that he wanted his people to be freed. And Pharaoh would— the plague would come, for instance, The water turned— all the water turned into blood. There was a terrible plague of locusts and so forth, destroying the crops, their source of food. And Pharaoh would say he was going to set them free, then he wouldn't. Well, finally, the last plague was that God took, through the angel of death, The firstborn of all the Egyptians died.

And the night that this happened, the Israelites were instructed to— with very strict instructions— to slay a lamb and to eat this Passover meal. Passover, the the angel of God passes over the houses of— and to sprinkle, to slaughter the lamb, to sprinkle its blood on their doorpost. And in all the homes where the blood of the Paschal Lamb was sprinkled, the child was saved. And so we see this as a very strong symbol of what our Lord has done for us by his saving passion and Death. And we eat his flesh, we drink his blood in the Holy Eucharist. We are saved by his blood from everlasting death. And so the Paschal Lamb is a very strong sign of that. And then the people, through the blood of the Lamb, they escape from Egypt and eventually arrive in the Promised Land.

Are there any other prophecies in the Old Testament that came true other than the birth of Christ?

They all center on that. All of them are directed toward the Savior, the Messiah, the Anointed of the Lord. These are all names for our Lord. They're all centered on that. But there may be some aspect or another that's reflected in one of the prophets, but it's always— everything is directed toward the coming of the Savior and that the people ought to be prepared. They ought to, by their way of life, be ready to welcome the Savior at his coming. And of course, John the Baptist expresses this most perfectly Because he's the last of the prophets and he's preaching to the people repentance for their sins and that they should make the language from the prophet Isaiah, make a straight pathway for God to enter their lives. And that, of course, is what happens when our Lord comes. But even as the prologue to St. John's Gospel tells us, Yes. Our Lord came unto his own and his own received him not. In other words, our Lord came to save us, but many people who knew him, who met him, rejected him. And in fact, ultimately they convinced the Roman government to put him to death.

But that notwithstanding, He saves those who turn to him with faith, who embrace him with love. And so we will find, to get back to your point, all the prophets have very rich messages. I often think of the one in the prophet Zechariah when he says, strike the shepherd and scatter the sheep. In other words, this is how the devil works. He corrupts the shepherds, and then the sheep are scattered. And don't we see that in the whole history of the Church too, where those called to high office in some way betray that office and therefore cause damage to innumerable souls? And there'll be other prophecies. The prophecy of Amos is very rich in the instruction about fidelity in the marriage bond and so forth. And so there's a whole richness in the prophets, but it's all directed toward the coming of the anointed, of the Savior, of the The seed of the woman that crushes the head of Satan.

The only woman that could ever have a seed.

Yes, it's because the seed is the Holy Spirit. She was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, and so it was the seed of God that— that's the miracle of the Incarnation, is that she gave the human nature But the divine nature, the union was accomplished by the Holy Spirit, by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. But interesting, not to get away from your question, but what's beautiful too is how God prepared everything for the conception of our Lord Jesus. Yes. Sometimes people say today that Mary was the first unmarried mother. And that's not true because she was perfectly married to Joseph before the angel Gabriel arrived. law, there were 2 stages to marriage. And the first stage was the contract of marriage. And from that moment on, the couple were husband and wife. But then there was a period of time before the husband would lead the wife into his home and the marriage was consummated. But the consummation didn't make the marriage. The marriage was already there. It simply was the consummation of it through the conjugal union. So Mary, when the Archangel appeared, was married to Joseph. And that's why in the Gospel of Matthew, for instance, when Joseph finds out that Mary's with child, he thinks to divorce her.

Well, he wouldn't have thought that if it were a question of that they weren't married. So they were perfectly married. What's the point I want to make is that God God made so his plan to save us that the Savior, God the Son incarnate, would be born into a family with a husband and wife. And St. Joseph is called the virginal father of Jesus. He's called the putative father of Jesus. But Jesus was in the home of Mary and Joseph, and that's where he grew up and so forth. And so you You see how God is, his providence at work, and he's blessing the family from the very beginning of his saving work. And so I always like to make that point because many people don't understand that. They think that in the Gospel it says that Mary was betrothed to Joseph, and people think that that's engaged. No, betrothed was married. It wasn't just engagement. There was a legal bond so strong that, as I say, St. Joseph would have thought that he had to divorce Mary.

Wow.

I did not know that. Yeah. It's very important. And there have been all studies done on the Jewish practice of marriage, and this is just perfectly the case. And so we should, that should be a special inspiration for husbands and wives. And we always say that the husband should imitate St. Joseph, not that every marriage should be virginal. That wouldn't work very well in terms of the propagation of the human race, but that the husband, like St. Joseph, should have a very chaste love for his wife. In other words, that it's pure and solely for her good, and that it's not mixed in with any infidelity.

Can you describe, this is a little off topic, but can you describe the Holy Trinity?

If I could describe the Holy Trinity, I would be God himself. This is, this, we say that this is the great mystery. the 3 persons in one God. Our Lord himself refers to his relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit. And we see in the whole of scriptures that God is— there are 3 persons that share the same nature. And different images have been used to try to help us to understand that. I think the If you ask me for a description, it would simply be this, that the nature of God is so rich that it is embodied in 3 distinct persons. And so they're perfectly one. There's only one God. There are not 3 gods. But that the fullness of God has this expression in the Son, who is the the Word, and who comes to save us. And then in the Holy Spirit, who the Son and the Father send to us, into our hearts, into the Church, so that we can be alive in God, that we can live in God. They say that St. Patrick used the shamrock To teach this, that it's a single stem, but it has these 3 leaves.

There are other images too that are used sometimes, a triangle, a single unit, very solid, but with 3 distinct. Those are all images. And we can never I mean, only God can reveal the fullness of his nature to us, but he has in various ways shown us who he is, the 3 persons in one God.

Well, Cardinal, we'll wrap it up, the interview. So what is the overall message of the Old Testament, and what should people take from it?

The overall message of the Old Testament is God saves us through Jesus, a name which means God saves. But the whole Old Testament is a preparation for this incredibly wonderful, indescribably wonderful act of God's love that he comes himself in the person of his only begotten Son to dwell with us, to be one with us, first during his public ministry, but then And then as he was ascending to the Father, he ascends to the Father to send us the Holy Spirit so that we can continue to enjoy the grace of salvation until the end of time. And the Old Testament just encourages so many beautiful things in the Old Testament. And we need to read it to understand how great is the mystery of God's love. You know, I think of the story of the Exodus we've talked about. We've talked about King David. A book even like the book of Tobit, this wonderful story about the care for the dead and so forth. They're all bringing out different aspects Thank you. You're welcome.

Can we end with a prayer?

Yes. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. 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.

Amen.

Good.

Cardinal, God bless.

Well, God bless you too. We've done— we've worked hard this morning. Yeah.

We'll start again tomorrow with the New Testament.

Very good.

All right.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

Thank you for doing this. I'm sure it's going to reach countless souls. And so, God willing, it'll lead them to, to start to read the Bible and come to know our Lord through the Bible.

I hope so.

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