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Where can I learn more about St. Stephen, the proto-martyr?

How does devotion to Mary’s Immaculate Heart not take away from Jesus?

Does John 6:37 contradict the Catholic view of Salvation?

Why are Catholics allowed to marry non-Catholics including non-Christians with a dispensation?

How can others outside the Catholic faith be saved if they have never had the chance to hear about Christ?

A Protestant friend says the Bible dictates that Eucharist was a full meal, and not just a bit of bread and wine, so how does the Catholic Church respond to this?

<p>This episode tackles common Protestant objections, including John 6, the nature of the Eucharistic meal, and how non-Catholics can be saved.</p>

Is the Eucharist a Full Meal? the Eucharist, Marriage, and Biblical Salvation Explained

<p>In this episode Trent breaks down his conversation with Tim about feminism and highlights agreements and differences that weren’t discussed enough in their conversation.</p>

The Feminism Dialogue Debrief

I heard the words “Be aware” just prior to witnessing an attempted kidnapping; how should I interpret this?

Is there significance in everything?

In Gen 24, Abraham asks his servant to place his hand under his thigh when making a promise. Why is placing the hand under his thigh considered important to the oath?

How would you respond to the claim of the deuterocanonical books (second canon) not being canon?

What does the Pope mean by “All religions are paths to God”?

Is Rabbonic Judaism a response to Christianity? What are we to think of this religion as Catholics?

I grew up in a Protestant Church, fell away, and am now warming up to Catholicism; how do I approach my parents who are Anti-Catholic?

Is forgiveness more of an internal process or an external process?

<p>Jimmy Akin tackles deep Catholic questions on mysterious warnings, biblical oaths, the deuterocanonical books, forgiveness, interfaith views, and navigating faith with anti-Catholic family—offering thoughtful and theologically sound insights.</p>

Are All Religions Paths to God? And More Questions

<p>In this free-for-all-Friday Trent reveals the famous &#8220;last meals&#8221; of death row inmates.</p>

FFAF- My Favorite “Last Meals”

<p>Catholics will often take for granted the answer to this question: did Christ abolish the law or not? The Catechism of the Council of Trent, in its section entitled “The Third Commandment,” answers just how it is that Christ abrogated the Law of Moses in the context of explaining why Christians no longer observe <em>the Sabbath.</em></p>
<blockquote><p>The other commandments of the Decalogue [other than <em>the day </em>on which the faithful are to worship] are precepts of the natural law, obligatory at all times and unalterable. Hence, after the abrogation of the Law of Moses, all the commandments contained in the two tables are observed by Christians, not indeed because their observance is commanded by Moses, but because they are in conformity with nature which dictates obedience to them.</p></blockquote>
<p>That’s all well and good. But it doesn’t answer the question often posed by skeptics:</p>
<p>Jesus seems clear in Matthew 5:17 that <em>he did not abolish the law</em> when he said, “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them.” And yet, what do we find in Ephesians 2:14-15? “For he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, <em>by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances</em>” (cf. Rom. 7:1-4, Heb. 10:9-16).</p>
<p>Looks to me like a contradiction in Scripture!</p>
<p><strong>But in fact, there is no contradiction.</strong> Jesus speaks of “fulfilling the Law” in Matthew 5 in the context of the Sermon on the Mount, where he is acting as the new Moses, teaching <em>the new Law</em>, which was a central part of Jesus’ earthly mission (see 1 Cor. 9:21, Gal. 6:2, Heb. 7:11-12). Jesus makes very clear that the old law <em>was going to be abolished</em>, or “pass away.” The question was, when?</p>
<blockquote><p>Do not think that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them.<sup> </sup>For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.</p></blockquote>
<p>Two things are abundantly clear. First, the Greek word for “<em>pass </em>(<em>parelthei</em>) from the law” means to “disappear,” “go away,” or “pass away.” So Jesus’ intention was for the law to be abolished, eventually, or for it to “pass away.” Second, the “when” of the abolishment would only fully come to pass when the law was <em>fulfilled</em>.</p>
<p><strong>The first way through which the old law was abrogated</strong> came through Christ teaching a new Law that <em>perfected </em>and thus <em>fulfilled </em>the old. But that would mean that the <em>fulfilling</em> of the old and the establishment of the new <em>law of Christ</em> would be accomplished over time. Christ would teach aspects of the new law all the way up until he would ascend into heaven (see Matt. 28:16-20).</p>
<p>The second way Christ “fulfilled” the Law was <em>by living it</em> . . . perfectly! But even there, at times, we see Jesus giving definitive interpretations of what the Law truly means in the process of his living the Law. Such was the case in Mark 7:1-23, when Jesus encountered “the Pharisees . . . and some of the Scribes,” who were angered by Jesus and the apostles failing to wash their hands (Greek, <em>baptizontai</em>, or “baptize” their hands of ritual impurity). Was Jesus failing to live the Law here? By no means! Notice that when Jesus responds, he not only answers “the Pharisees and some of the Scribes” as regards the truth of the Law concerning “the washing of hands,” but also dispels their underlying error of failing to understand what defiles a man in general. He gave the Pharisees, the Scribes, the apostles, and all of us the definitive teaching of “the Law” concerning what is perhaps the most important truth of the moral life:</p>
<blockquote><p>Do you not see that whatever goes into a man from outside cannot defile him, since it enters, not his heart but his stomach, and so passes on?” (Thus, he declared all foods clean.) And he said, “What comes out of a man is what defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man” (Mark 7:18-23, see also CCC 582).</p></blockquote>
<p>Here is the key to understanding: whether we are speaking of Christ’s teaching or living the law, all would not come to complete fulfillment until <em>at least</em> his death on the cross. Hebrews 9:15-17 clarifies:</p>
<blockquote><p>Therefore, he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred which redeems them from the transgressions under the first covenant. For where a will (or “testament”) is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established.<sup> </sup>For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive.</p></blockquote>
<p><strong>One could argue that Christ continued to give us his new law</strong> <em>in toto</em> until his ascension. As far as the Sermon on the Mount goes, Jesus was clearly speaking there during the transition. He was <em>still alive</em> when he preached it. But the inspired epistles are coming at this decades later, when the New Covenant Church had been teaching for decades the <em>abolishing</em> of the Old Law in its proper context. Why? Because <em>all had been fulfilled. </em>The teaching of Christ was essential to the creation of the New Covenant, but for it to fully “take effect,” as Hebrews 9:17 says, “the death of the one who made it must be established” (v. 16).</p>
<p>“But what about CCC 2053?” says the skeptic. Here, the <em>Catholic Church </em>teaches,</p>
<blockquote><p>Following Jesus Christ involves keeping the commandments. The Law has not been abolished, but rather man is invited to rediscover it in the person of his Master who is its perfect fulfillment.</p></blockquote>
<p>How do we respond as Catholics?</p>
<p>The <em>Catechism</em> is saying the same thing the Church&#8217;s Lord and Master said. The Law has not been “abolished,” but Christ in his “person” is its “fulfillment.” But notice, the <em>Catechism</em> says Christ “fulfills” the law in a way that we are called to “rediscover” the commandments of the Old Law in the person (and teaching) of Christ. That is another crucial point. The old law was not abolished in the sense of <em>correcting errors</em>. There were no errors to correct. It was abolished in the sense of being <em>fulfilled</em> and <em>superseded</em>. Enter the <em>new commandments</em> or new <em>law of Christ</em>, some of which we see expressed immediately after Matthew 5:17, in verses 21 through 45, where <em>five times</em> Jesus refers to different aspects of the Old Testament in terms of “you have heard it said . . . but I say.” For the sake of brevity, we’ll consider just his first example:</p>
<blockquote><p>You have heard that it was said to the men of old, “You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment” [referring to Exod. 20:13, Deut. 30:15ff]. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment (Matt. 5:21-22).</p></blockquote>
<p>This powerful teaching would lead St. John to famously declare, “Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him” (1 John 3:15). Here we see an example of how Christ does not destroy the law for the sake of its destruction; rather, he builds upon the good while replacing it with the better.</p>
<p>Thus, the Sermon on the Mount cannot be understood apart from its context of Christ giving us the new law that would both fulfill and supersede (or abolish) the Old Law. Jesus was emphasizing the <em>fulfillment</em> part of the equation because he was in the process of fulfilling it. He does not want to be seen as introducing lawlessness. If he were to say just, “I am abolishing the law,” that would have been reckless as well as incorrect. The Law and the prophets had not been completely “fulfilled” by that time. As the master teacher, Jesus emphasized the fulfillment of the law until such time that it would finally and fully be accomplished on the cross. Then, through his spirit (see Heb. 10:9-16), he would reveal that “all [things are] accomplished” and the Old Law has <em>passed away</em>.</p>

Did Jesus Abolish the Law of Moses or Not?

<p>In this free-for-all-Friday Trent reveals how some of the modern things we use every day are actually hundreds or even thousands of years old.</p>

5 Inventions That are Way Older Than You Think

I’m an Eastern Rite Catholic. Every year in Holy Week we receive the sacrament of the anointing of the sick. My Roman Rite friends have said if you can only receive it if you are seriously ill. They’ve also said it can wipe away mortal sin. But that is...

How can there never be instances where lying is okay?

I’m having trouble with the doctrine of eternal conscious torment.

Why do we have to accept the teaching of the magisterium even when it’s not infallible?

what do you think of equivocation?

<p>&#8220;How do we respond to sola scriptura?&#8221; This question opens a discussion on the challenges of infallible testimony in the context of biblical canon, particularly in light of Protestant perspectives. Other topics include the sacrament of anointing of the sick in Eastern and Roman Rite practices, the morality of lying, and the doctrine of eternal conscious torment.</p>
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How Do We Respond to Sola Scriptura? Magisterium and Truth

Fixing William Lane Craig’s Biggest Mistake

<p>In this adorable free-for-all-Friday Trent shares the results of scientific experiments that show us how babies understand the world and the best ways for us to communicate with them.</p>

How to Talk to Babies

<p>To lure parents who want their kids to be competitive in a high-tech society, some Catholic schools promote themselves vigorously as providing a top-notch STEM education. But just how compatible is the STEM mentality with Catholic ideas about formation and education? Dr. William Fahey, President of New Hampshire&#8217;s Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, joins us to explain why the Catholic educational tradition is better for students than STEM training.</p>
<p><em>NOTE FROM HOST: Dr. Fahey and I both used the word “Medicine” instead of “Math” as the last word in the STEM acronym. This use is uncommon, and I should have been clear in the interview that STEM is almost always taken to mean “Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.” The acronym STEMM is sometimes used by those who want to include medicine. “STEMM” is also the name of a heavy metal band from New York.</em></p>

The Unchristian Roots of STEM Education

How do which parts of Esther are original Hebrew if we don’t have all the original Hebrew texts?

Why did God pick St. Michael the Archangel to defeat Satan?

From the Churches mentioned in the Bible, are any still remaining?

Is the battle 2 Maccabees 10:29-38 (5 magical men leading the Jews) to be taken literally?

How do you explain sanctification and justification in light of the book of James?

What are the differences between the Catholic and Greek Orthodox canons of scripture?

In the Bible, you hear of apparitions of Jesus or Mary. Have there been apparitions of other people from the Bible?

If someone who received the gospel of Jesus and believed, should the Church immediately baptize him since we have a similar example in the Ethiopian eunuch?

Why do we say “the Hebrew texts” when Hebrew is a more modern language?

<p>Jimmy Akin answers key Catholic questions on biblical texts, St. Michael’s role, surviving biblical churches, the Ethiopian eunuch’s baptism, differences in Catholic and Orthodox canons, and biblical apparitions beyond Jesus and Mary.&#8221;</p>

Should the Church Baptize Immediately? And More Bible Questions

<p>In this free-for-all-Friday Trent shares an excerpt from his discussion with the channel &#8220;Catholic Christian&#8221; about how some Catholic Youtube channels lack fruits of the spirit online.</p>

FFAF: The Dark Side of Catholic Youtube

<p>In this episode Trent sits down with author Leila Miller to discuss the many ways divorce parallels the evil of abortion, including in the ways some faithful Catholics try to justify it.</p>

Uncanny Similarities Between Abortion and Divorce

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There’s a lot of misinformation surrounding the Adriana Smith abortion case.

<p><strong>Episode 131: 6th Sunday of Easter | Year C</strong></p>
<p>In today’s episode, we focus on two details in the first reading and one detail in the Gospel reading that are relevant for doing apologetics. The details in the first reading, which is taken from Acts 15:1-2, 22-29, relate to the topic of the magisterium and the role it has in relation to theological and disciplinary issues in the Church. The second detail, found in the Gospel reading, which is taken from John 14:23-29, relates to both Jesus’ divinity and humanity.</p>
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<p>Readings: <a href="https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/051825.cfm">Click Here</a></p>
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<p>Looking for Sunday Catholic Word Merchandise? Look no further! <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/catholic-answers-merchandise/?q=sunday">Click Here</a></p>
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Did the Early Church Have a Magisterium? Plus Jesus’ Divinity & Humanity

Jerome made a comment on Titus 1:7 that the presbyters were basically the same as bishops, then there was a development that made the distinction between them, and also the papacy. How would you respond to that?

Why do we have to learn God’s love language but he doesn’t have to learn ours? It seems like it’s a one-way relationship.

I’ve been inquiring about Catholicism for a long time, and I agree with a lot of Catholic points. But I worry about a lot of liturgical abuse happening in the Church and that the Vatican doesn’t do anything about it. Any thoughts?

If you are in friendship with God, but then commit a mortal sin and get hit by a train on the way to confession, do you go to Hell because you didn’t confess? Also, I have been told that Catholics are not required to confess to a priest, they can confe...

Questions from Non-Catholics

<div>At Mass every Sunday in my parish, able-bodied lectors and Extraordinary Minsters of Holy Communion (EMHCs) do not kneel at the consecration. Is this allowed? And one priest keeps saying, at the consecration, “which will be poured out for you and FOR ALL.” Is this permitted as well?</div><div><p>Let’s consider your second question first because, while both are errors, the second is the more serious matter. No priest or even a bishop can change the translation of the holy sacrifice of the Mass from “for many” to “for all.” Only the Apostolic See, with the confirmation of the pope, can do that. Canon 846 of the<em> Code of Canon Law</em> states, “The liturgical books approved by the competent authority are to be faithfully observed in the celebration of the sacraments; therefore no one on personal authority may add, remove or change anything in them.&#8221;</p>
<p>It is true that “for all” was once permitted in the vernacular Mass translations of the Latin rite of the Catholic Church, but this was officially changed as a part of the process of the Church’s offering a more faithful translation of the liturgy—more faithful, that is, to the official Latin text of the <em>Missale Romanum</em> promulgated by Pope St. Paul VI and later revised by Popes St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI.</p>
<p>In answer to your first question, the <em>General Instruction of the Roman Missal</em> (GIRM) 43 clearly provides, “In the dioceses of the United States of America, they [the faithful] should kneel beginning after the singing or recitation of the <em>Sanctus</em> [Holy, Holy, Holy] until after the Amen of the Eucharistic Prayer, except when prevented on occasion by reasons of health, lack of space, the large number of people present, or some other good reason. Those who do not kneel ought to make a profound bow when the priest genuflects after the consecration.”</p>
<p>Notice that, in normal circumstances, the priest alone is presumed to be standing (he has to be in order to genuflect). Of course he is, because everyone else was standing for the prayers of the faithful until the end of the <em>Sanctus</em>. The priest (or priests) alone are to be standing at this point; all other members of the faithful are to be kneeling. There are no exceptions for lectors and EMHCs unless, as noted, there is some extraordinary circumstance(s). Even deacons are to kneel (GIRM 179).</p>
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Should Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion kneel at the consecration?

<p>Join The <em>CA Live Club</em> Newsletter: <a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub?email">Click Here</a></p>
<p>Why did Jesus have to suffer and die on the cross? On this Good Friday episode of <em data-start="335" data-end="358">Catholic Answers Live</em>, Cy Kellett speaks with Joe Heschmeyer, author of <em data-start="409" data-end="451">The Early Church Was the Catholic Church</em>, to unpack the meaning behind Christ’s crucifixion.</p>
<p class="" data-start="505" data-end="732">Joe explains how the cross is not divine punishment but the ultimate act of love—God offering Himself for our salvation. Drawing from Scripture, the Church Fathers, and the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, this episode explores:</p>
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<p class="" data-start="736" data-end="772">Why there’s no Mass on Good Friday</p>
</li>
<li class="" data-start="773" data-end="810">
<p class="" data-start="775" data-end="810">The meaning of Christ’s sacrifice</p>
</li>
<li class="" data-start="811" data-end="860">
<p class="" data-start="813" data-end="860">How the cross heals our relationship with God</p>
</li>
<li class="" data-start="861" data-end="915">
<p class="" data-start="863" data-end="915">The spiritual power of praying before the crucifix</p>
</li>
<li class="" data-start="916" data-end="979">
<p class="" data-start="918" data-end="979">Why Good Friday is both history’s darkest and brightest day</p>
</li>
</ul>

Why Did Jesus Die on the Cross? The Love and Logic of Good Friday

<p>As Christian Europe tore at her own throat during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), the Ottoman Turks missed a golden opportunity to strike their centuries-old enemy.  Why?  They were themselves absorbed with war in Persia.  Moreover, they were beset by a turbulent period of harem intrigue and governed—or not—by a string of ineffectual and self-indulgent sultans, one of whom was deposed and two of whom were murdered.  The last of these was Ibrahim I. He was deposed <em>and</em> murdered.</p>
<p>Known as “the Debauched,” Ibrahim was famous for his vigorous and unusual harem enthusiasms, although at one point he had the whole lot of them drowned in the Bosporus—280 ladies in all—when he discovered that he was not the only man enjoying their affections. A liaison one night, however, with a Russian concubine produced the son that would reverse Ottoman fortunes.</p>
<p><strong>Mehmed IV was what we would call today an “outdoorsman.”</strong> He preferred hunting to war, but unlike his recent predecessors, he made decisions and stuck by them. Indeed, history remembers Mehmed for two decisions in particular. The first was to give control of the empire to the Koprulu family, which produced a series of grand viziers who restored internal order to the empire, recaptured many of the Aegean Islands from Venice, and extended the boundaries of the empire northward through battlefield victories in Transylvania and Poland.</p>
<p>Best known and last of these grand viziers was Kara Mustafa Pasha. Kara Mustafa Pasha was the source of Mehmed’s other famous decision: in the summer of 1682, the grand vizier persuaded his sultan to violate the Peace of Vasvár and lay siege to Vienna.</p>
<p>A century and a half had passed since Suleiman the Magnificent had tried and failed to take the fortress city on the Danube. Mehmed was determined not to fail, and more than that, he was convinced, like all sultans before him, that the Ottomans were, as conquerors of Constantinople, the true heirs of the patrimony of the Roman Empire. The Hapsburgs in Vienna were impostors who needed to submit to the rule of Islam.</p>
<p>By the autumn of 1682, the Ottoman army had crossed the Bosporus and proceeded to Adrianople. There the sultan wintered his army, and as they trained for war, he read and reread the abundant accounts of earlier Turkish campaigns into Eastern Europe. Along the road-of-march to Belgrade (in Ottoman hands since 1521), bridges and roads were repaired. A draft or “ban” was proclaimed for auxiliaries throughout the empire, and Arabs, Bosnians, Bulgars, Greeks, Macedonians, and Serbs poured into the White City to await the arrival of Mehmed’s force, led by his 12,000 janissaries. Among the sultan’s army were Protestant soldiers loyal to the Magyar Lutheran Imre Thököly, who looked to the Islamic east to back his dubious claim to the throne of Hungary.</p>
<p>Less detestable than Protestants allying themselves with Islam against Catholic Hapsburg rule, but considerably more savage and fearsome, were the Sultan’s mobile shock-action cavalry: the Tatars. Descendants of the bloody convergence of Sarmatians, Scythians, and Mongols, these natural horsemen were the stuff of nightmare.  Like the African corsairs who raided the coastal fishing villages of Italy in the sixteenth century, the Tatars were the front line of the Ottoman slave trade. Rape, pillage, plunder, and arson composed their <em>modus operandi</em>, tales of which made their way as far as France and England. To the villagers on the Christian Ottoman border in Hungary and Poland, however, the Tatars were no mere story to frighten ill-behaved children. They were a terrifying reality. To the Polish, Lithuanian, and Austrian soldiers who had faced them in battle, they were extraordinary archers capable of a rapid rate of fire and deadly accuracy from their short bows and all from the saddle of a galloping pony.</p>
<p><strong>In March of 1683, as the army left Adrianople amid great fanfare,</strong> a sudden squall blew the sultan’s turban from his head. All his men, from the highest-ranking officer to the lowliest conscript, recognized the bad omen. Superstitions aside, spring storms swelled rivers, and the usual fords required pontoon bridges to cross. At Belgrade, Mehmed handed the Flag of the Prophet (a facsimile, because the original had been captured by the Venetians <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/the-battle-that-saved-the-christian-west">at Lepanto</a> a century before) to his grand vizier, Kara Mustafa, and with it command of the Ottoman host.</p>
<p>Mehmed remained in Belgrade to hunt and play. The real ruler of the Ottoman Empire pressed north for Buda, sending his siege cannons on barges up the Danube. Buda had endured Turkish occupation since 1541—another conquest of Suleiman the Magnificent. The Church of Our Lady there to this day bears in one alcove the decorations of the building’s days as a mosque. Was it a misguided ecumenical gesture, or is it a reminder of what may come again to a West grown soft and inattentive?</p>
<p>By the second half of June, the Turkish army, now greater than 150,000 strong, had arrived in Buda. There the grand vizier announced to his war council his plan to take Vienna. “It is for thee to command and for us to serve,” answered the governor of Damascus. Following the Danube west, the Turks pressed on for Vienna, raiding and burning along the way.</p>
<p>Leopold I, holy Roman emperor, could no longer deny that Vienna was the Ottoman objective. The man who had guided his country through the Thirty Years War ruled an empire pinched between a France under the Sun King determined to expand eastward and the Ottoman Empire resurgent. The condition called for a less vacillating character than the emperor, who permitted himself to be talked into abandoning Vienna.</p>
<p>Two men of sterner stuff he left behind: Count Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg, to command the garrison in Vienna, and Charles Sixte, duke of Lorraine, to command the imperial army in the field. It bears noting that the heroic figure for whom the Siege of Vienna is most remembered, John Sobieski, arrived in the eleventh hour. Both Starhemberg and Lorraine, severely outnumbered, acquitted themselves well throughout the two-month siege, masterfully resisting the Turks and prudently delaying a decisive engagement until the Polish and Saxon reinforcements could muster.</p>
<p><strong>The Turks arrived at the walls of Vienna on the twelfth of July.</strong> On the thirteenth, an emissary from the grand vizier rode to the city’s walls with an invitation to surrender the city and submit to Islamic rule.</p>
<p>Starhemberg declined.</p>
<p>On the fourteenth, the Turks began to bombard the city’s walls. The walls of Vienna had been much improved since the medieval days when they were first constructed, paid for by Richard Lionheart’s ransom. By the seventeenth century, the city’s defenses included all the designs developed in Italy during the Renaissance: mutually supporting bastions and ravelins, scarp and counterscarp, glacis and curtain wall. Tightly packed earth faced with brick and gently sloped both absorbed and deflected the rounds from the Turkish bombards. But the walls were not everywhere strong, and the Turks located on the south side Vienna’s weak spot, between two bastions that fronted the imperial palace.  Toward this point in the wall, they began a process at which they were very good: the steady digging of parallel trenches to close on the city’s defenses, followed by mining—the digging of underground galleries to be packed with explosives to tumble the walls from beneath.</p>
<p>By August, the combination of mining and artillery fire had taken its toll of the city’s outer wall and seriously damaged the palace bastion. Musketball-to-arrow, pike-to-cutlass, and hand-to-hand encounters in the ditch and on the ramparts grew more frequent and more fierce. Viennese counter-miners clashed with Turkish sappers in torchlit underground tunnels. Flamboyant and fearless, Starhemberg, a pistol in each hand, was ever in the thick of these contests, yet he knew that without relief, the fighting would soon be street to street and house to house.</p>
<p>In the plains and woods surrounding Vienna, Charles Sixte, with his small force of 10,000 horse and no infantry (critical for seizing and holding terrain), did his best to limit the depredations of the merciless Tatar raiders. Dozens of villages south of the Danube were put to the torch, their women raped and their men slaughtered.</p>
<p><strong>As grim as events appeared, hope was within sight.</strong> Four days after the start of the Turkish bombardment, John III Sobieski, king of Poland, marshaled his army of nearly 40,000 in Warsaw and began the 435-mile march southwest toward Vienna. A similar force under John George III, elector of Saxony, came southeast from Dresden. A third force came straight east from Munich under Maximilian II Emanuel, elector of Bavaria. They united near Krems, some forty miles upriver from Vienna.</p>
<p>The Holy League, under command of Sobieski, now began its difficult passage through the Wienerwald, known to us as the Vienna Woods, the 30-miles-long and 20-miles-wide expanse of thickly wooded foothills that dominate the terrain southwest of Vienna. Moving the artillery over steep slopes and rugged ground cut with ravines was particularly difficult, but by the eleventh of September, the Christian force had reached the Kahlenberg ridge. Looking down on the plain below, they saw the countless brightly colored tents of the Ottoman host stretching north toward the city walls.</p>
<p>Sobieski also saw that the south slope of the ridge was of the same difficult terrain as the rest of the Wienerwald and was crisscrossed with the high stone walls of vineyards and farms. The descent to the plain below would be as painstaking as the climb, but also under attack from Janissary skirmishers.</p>
<p>Before dawn, Sobieski assisted at Mass in the ruined Church of the Camaldolites, offered by Bl. Marco D’Viano. Gathering his force, he commended their mission and their souls to the care of the Blessed Virgin.</p>
<p>The descent began.</p>
<p><strong>As the sun rose on the morning of September 12, the Ottomans saw,</strong> according to their own account, “a flood of black pitch flowing down the hill, smothering and incinerating everything that lay in its way.”</p>
<p>Taking one ridge at a time, the Christians fought their way down the hill. Little could the commanders do but exhort their forces to press ahead in the confusion. The Saxons on the left of the Holy League line were the first to engage the forward-deployed Ottomans, but by ten, the whole Turkish army was arrayed for counterattack. For several hours, the battle traded advantage, the Holy League ever closing on the city.</p>
<p style="text-align: left">By late afternoon, Sobieski’s army had reached the plain, and he was now positioned to exploit his greatest asset: the famed Winged Hussars. Drawing up these courageous cavalrymen, their feathered plumes streaming off their backs, he led them himself, lances couched in a full-tilt charge at the center of the Ottoman line.  Shouting “<em>Jezus Maria ratuj!</em>”, they charged and reformed, charged and reformed, charged and reformed. The Polish horsemen followed their intrepid king deeper and deeper into the army of Islam, smashing what remained of their resistance, setting the followers of Muhammad to flight, relieving the siege, and carrying the day.</p>
<p>“We came, we saw, God conquered,” Sobieski wrote to Innocent XI.</p>
<p>The Polish king—taking a privilege that ought to have gone to Emperor Leopold—entered the city feted with parade and feast. Writing to his wife, Sobieski described Vienna’s gratitude: “All the common people kissed my hands, my feet, my clothes, saying, ‘Ah, let us kiss so valiant a hand!’”</p>
<p>The event was the last great Ottoman effort. Their borders receded. Within three years, Buda was back in Christian hands.</p>
<p>One year after Sobieski’s victory, Pope Innocent XI—also dearly remembered for his explicit condemnations of usury and of “mental reservation”—extended the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary to the universal calendar of the Roman Rite to honor the great victory that Our Lady granted the Christian West. When it fell out of fashion three centuries later in 1969 to recall the heroics of Christian soldiers against the enemies of Jesus Christ, the feast was removed from the liturgical calendar. In 2002, however, Pope St. John Paul II restored the feast. It is hard not to imagine that the Trade Tower attacks of the preceding year were to the fore of his thoughts when he did, but that we do not know.</p>
<p>We do know that Islam is an age-old enemy of the Christian West, and that the West, the United States included, emptied of Christianity, is also emptied of meaning. Catholics in our time, and this month in particular, have a duty and a privilege to honor Our Lady, and to honor the heroic Polish king and his warriors under the walls of Vienna—at least by not pretending that the Crescent is not again resurgent and intent on trampling the Cross.</p>

Under Mary’s Holy Name: Victory in Vienna

<p><strong>Episode 114: Year C &#8211; 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time</strong></p>
<p>In today’s episode, we focus on six details in the readings for this upcoming 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C. The first detail is the whole of the first reading, taken from Nehemiah 8:2-4a, 5-6, and 8-10. It’s not necessarily a detail that comes up in apologetical discussions. But it does serve an apologetical purpose insofar as it gives biblical justification for the Catholic Liturgy of the Word. The next three details come from the second reading, taken from 1 Corinthians 12:12-30. The relevant apologetical topics are the intercession of the saints, the salvific efficacy of baptism, and the Holy Spirit’s distribution of spiritual charisms. The last two details are found in the Gospel reading, taken from Luke 1:1-4; 4:14-21, and the apologetical topics there are Luke’s credibility as an historian and Jesus’ Messiahship.</p>
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<p>Readings: <a href="https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/012625.cfm">Click Here</a></p>
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<p>Looking for Sunday Catholic Word Merchandise? Look no further! <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/catholic-answers-merchandise/?q=sunday">Click Here</a></p>
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Saints, Baptism, and Jesus’ Messiahship | Year C

<p><span class="ui-provider bdj bdk bdl bdm bdn bdo bdp bdq bdr bds bdt bdu bdv bdw bdx bdy bdz bea beb bec bed bee bef beg beh bei bej bek bel bem ben beo bep beq ber" dir="ltr">Protestants sometimes describe the Reformation as a sort of return to the early Church, away from what are claimed to be corrupt Medieval Catholic practices. But is that really true? Let&#8217;s take a closer look at six major controversies in the earliest days of Christianity,/ (including the fights against Docetism, Gnosticism, Novatianism, Donatism, and the persecution of Christians by the Romans). The results might surprise you!</span></p>

6 Early Church Controversies Protestants Can’t Explain

How do we look at inherited genes when it comes to mental illness and spirituality?

How does the Church feel about electric shock treatment? Is it helpful for people with depression?

I have a son with schizophrenia, and I’ve been looking for someone to help connect the spiritual and physical.

Is there a spiritual component to OCD, if so can someone heal from it?

I’ve had mental problems that the doctors have said there is no solution for. What do you recommend?

How does generational trauma end?

<p>&#8220;How does mental illness connect to spirituality and healing?&#8221; In this episode, we explore the intricate relationship between mental health and faith, addressing questions like the role of inherited genes in mental illness and spirituality, the Church&#8217;s stance on electric shock treatment for depression, and the spiritual aspects of OCD. Tune in for a thoughtful examination of these important topics.</p>
<p><a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub">Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter</a></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit </span><a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</span></a></p>

Discussing Catholic Psychology with Dr. Greg Bottaro

<p>Michael Lofton, from the Reason and Theology podcast, gives us a primer on the words that many people think are the main divider between Orthodox and Catholic Christians. Does the question about whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father &#8220;and from the son&#8221; really divide churches?</p>

Why Is the Filioque a Big Deal to Eastern Orthodox?

Answering Destiny’s Post-Debate Abortion Questions

<p>In this episode Trent sits down Fr. Matt Lowry of the Northern Arizona University Newman Center to find out the best ways to help Catholic college students grow in their faith, including the most important thing parents can do with their children.</p>

How to Help College Students Stay Catholic (with Fr. Matt Lowry)

<p>In this episode, Trent examines what John MacArthur said about the history of the Catholic church during an interview with Ben Shapiro.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Transcript:</strong></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Welcome to The Counsel of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Trent Horn:</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Hey, everyone. In today&#8217;s episode of The Counsel of Trent podcast. Oh, by the way, I&#8217;m your host, Catholic Answers apologist Trent Horn. I want to reflect on an older episode from Ben Shapiro&#8217;s podcast where he interviewed the Protestant apologist John MacArthur. MacArthur made a lot of claims in that interview. But one part of it that really stuck out to me were his historical swipes against the Catholic Church. That&#8217;s what I want to talk about today.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Before I do that, though, just want to let you know I&#8217;m getting over a cold, so that&#8217;s why I might sound a little off in this episode. If you could hit the subscribe button, I would really appreciate it. It helps other channels to get to know us if our subscriber count grows. Maybe one day get on Ben Shapiro&#8217;s Sunday Special myself. Who knows? Anything you could do to help out would be appreciated.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">At one point in the interview, Shapiro asked MacArthur, &#8220;Do you think the Enlightenment was a good thing or a bad thing?&#8221; In response, MacArthur gave a rambling answer that focused instead on the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Church. In the process, MacArthur shared typical anti-Catholic historical myths. He began by saying, &#8220;We need to look at the big picture and remember the following.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">John MacArthur:</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">When Christianity comes and the church is founded, the church flourishes in the 1st century. By the time you get to the 3rd century and you get Constantine, you have organizational Christianity, institutional Christianity. They decide that everybody&#8217;s going to be a Christian, so they baptize all the babies. Everybody is a Christian. You have essentially state-sponsored Christianity.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Trent Horn:</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This is a pretty typical argument. Many Protestants like to claim that the 4th-century pagan converts to the church caused a great apostasy. They all adjoined the church for political expediency. They brought in their pagan beliefs that ended up contaminating the church with so-called manmade doctrines that contradicted God&#8217;s revelation. This led to a repression of the pure Gospel for centuries until the Reformation, I guess. Not only does this tired claim lack a basis in fact, it&#8217;s an assertion that can be deployed against Protestantism.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">During the Reformation, most Protestant denominations were state-sponsored churches. In many cases, it was politically expedient for a person to become a Calvinist in Geneva or an Anglican in England. But mere association with a secular government does not disprove a church&#8217;s teachings. Whether Catholic or Protestant, the teachings need to be evaluated on their own merits. MacArthur is also wrong about the historical origins of infant baptism. In the 3rd century, 150 years before Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire, origin said the church has received the tradition from the apostles to give baptism even to little children. Even the Protestant theologian R. C. Sproul says that by the middle of the 2nd century, infant baptism &#8220;is spoken of as the universal practice of the church. It appears to be occurring everywhere.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">John MacArthur:</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Essentially, state-sponsored Christianity. That launches a thousand years of the Dark Ages, where religion and relationship to God is not personal. The church&#8230; It&#8217;s a surrogate for God. You connect to the church. You don&#8217;t connect by faith. You don&#8217;t connect in your heart by loving the Lord. Christianity&#8230; That was dead cold, and the Gospel was lost. Truth was lost.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Trent Horn:</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">I can&#8217;t stand the term Dark Ages. It&#8217;s politically loaded and imprecise. MacArthur doesn&#8217;t even use it in its common academic sense to refer to the centuries following the fall of the Roman Empire and the Germanic barbarian invasions in Europe. He imagines that period extending over a millennium to include most of pre-Reformation Christendom.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Traditionally, of course, Christians believed the time before the 5th century was dark because the world was shrouded in pagan darkness. For the next 10 centuries, the light of Christ spread all over the world because of the dreaded institutions the Catholic Church provided, like the university or abbeys and monasteries.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Even before the period of Christendom, during the Patristic age, Christians encountered God through the church he gave us. Saint Cyprian of Carthage wrote, in the early 3rd century, &#8220;You cannot have God for your father if you do not have the church for your mother.&#8221; Saint Ignatius of Antioch exhorted believers at the beginning of the 2nd century to &#8220;follow the bishop even as Jesus Christ does the Father.&#8221; But MacArthur claims that this age of church authority was the result of the church&#8217;s suppression of Bible reading.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">John MacArthur:</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Christianity&#8230; That was dead cold, and the Gospel was lost. Truth was lost. But it had massive power over people. What kept that power was&#8230; Don&#8217;t put the Bible in their language. Don&#8217;t let them read it. The church is the only interpreter of the Bible. They can&#8217;t interpret scripture. If anybody tried to do the interpretation on their own, they would be murdered. We know the story of William Tyndale. He translates the Bible into English. They chase him all over the place until they finally kill him. What was his crime? Translating the Bible into the language of the people so that every &#8220;plowboy&#8221; in England could read the scripture. That is a crime that brings down that false system.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Trent Horn:</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In reality, Catholics had been allowed to publish vernacular translations of the Bible for centuries before Tyndale published his English New Testament in 1534. Two late medieval examples include the 1466 German Mentelin Bible, Guyart Moulins&#8217; 1297 French Bible, and the Peshitta, a 5th-century Syriac Bible that had been used in the Eastern Church, while the Western Church, at that time, was blessed with St. Jerome&#8217;s Latin Vulgate. Even though it was in Latin, that was a vernacular translation because people read and understood Latin. It was read aloud in churches and could be understood by the masses.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The church did not oppose the idea of vernacular Bible translations as such. It opposed the idea of private individuals making their own translations of the Bible on their own authority because they might mistranslate the word of God and lead people away from the faith. In fact, the church still prohibits this. Section 825 of the Code of Canon Law requires permission to create a formal Bible translation.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The church took seriously its duty to protect the integrity of sacred scripture, which is something that any Protestant who loves the Bible should appreciate since most Protestants wouldn&#8217;t tolerate a New World Translation of the Bible that Jehovah&#8217;s Witnesses use to be a part of their Bible studies.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The church rejected Tyndale&#8217;s translation because he rendered words in a way that undermined church teaching, like translating &#8220;ecclesia&#8221; as &#8220;congregation&#8221; instead of &#8220;church.&#8221; The notes and prologues in his Bible also contained attacks on things like the papacy. The Protestant authors David Price and Charles Ryrie say of Tyndale&#8217;s translation: &#8220;Unquestionably, anti-Catholic outbursts are sufficiently numerous to make a strong impression on any reader.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">It was the state that later executed Tyndale for his heresies that threatened to undermine its authority. The church only disciplined Tyndale by publicly removing his priestly vestments. Heresy, at that time in history, was considered a crime against the public order, which led to executions of both Protestants and Catholics throughout the Reformation.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Catholic author Matthew A.C. Newsome writes the following, &#8220;Ultimately, it was the secular authorities that proved to be the end for Tyndale. He was arrested and tried, and sentenced to die in the court of the Holy Roman Emperor in 1536. His translation of the Bible was heretical because it contained heretical ideas, not because the act of translation was heretical in and of itself. In fact, the Catholic Church would produce a translation of the Bible into English a few years later, the Douay-Rheims version, whose New Testament was released in 1582 and whose Old Testament was released in 1609.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">There&#8217;s more I could say about this interview, especially about MacArthur&#8217;s oversimplification of the relationship between the growth of industry and Protestant countries versus Catholic countries. But MacArthur&#8217;s answer to Shapiro about the Enlightenment&#8230; I want to focus on that because he says that, basically, a personal relationship with God is the ideal mankind should aim for and that this ideal was lost in the early Catholic Church, recaptured again during the Reformation, and then lost again during the Enlightenment.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">But it&#8217;s a complete falsehood that Christians had no personal relationship with God until the Reformation. Has MacArthur not read Saint Augustine&#8217;s confessions or the writings of the mystics and the saints? MacArthur is right about the importance of having a personal relationship with God. He&#8217;s just mistaken in thinking that this is mutually exclusive with receiving the sacraments and having a hierarchical institutional church. He&#8217;s also mistaken in thinking that a personal relationship by itself guarantees salvation.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">A Christian could claim that they have a personal relationship with God but radically misunderstand God&#8217;s nature. They might not even be a Christian, like a Mormon who denies the Trinity, or they might have a personal relationship with God but dramatically misunderstand how God gives us grace through infant baptism, as MacArthur misunderstands, or misunderstand God&#8217;s commands about morality or sexuality. The Bible even says that there are passages in it that are confusing, that people twist to their own destruction, 2 Peter 3:16. That&#8217;s why it would make sense that God would give us the church, the pillar and foundation of truth, as 1 Timothy 3:15 says, to lead us into a personal relationship with Him.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">All right. Well, thank you guys so much for watching. I hope that you all have a very blessed day.</span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">If you like today&#8217;s episode, become a premium subscriber at our Patreon page and get access to member-only content. For more information, visit <a href="http://trenhornpodcast.com">trenthornpodcast.com</a>.</span></p>

Rebutting John MacArthur’s “Catholic Dark Ages”

<p>Christians often ask the saints in heaven for their intercession—to be their heavenly prayer partners.</p>
<p>Normally, they’re thinking of the human saints who are up there, but occasionally they’ll ask their guardian angels or one of the other angels like St. Michael or St. Gabriel for prayers.</p>
<p>Either way, they often think of the idea of heavenly intercessors as something new, something that came in with the Christian age.</p>
<p>But, as we’re going to see today, that’s not true!</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>What Angels Do</strong></p>
<p>Scripture describes angels performing a variety of functions. One is that they serve as messengers between God and man. In fact, that’s what the term <em>angel</em> means. It means messenger.</p>
<p>Scripture also shows them guarding God’s throne. It shows them worshipping God. And it shows them carrying out his will on Earth.</p>
<p>So angels have a lot of functions, but one function that there was a widespread Jewish belief in was intercession.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Second Temple Literature</strong></p>
<p>The Second Temple period in Jewish history stretched from when the Jewish people rebuilt the temple after the Babylonian exile through its destruction by the Romans.</p>
<p>It covers the period between about 515 B.C. and about A.D. 70.</p>
<p>The literature of this period robustly attests to Jewish belief in the intercession of angels with God on behalf of men. This is seen in multiple books from the period.</p>
<p>For example, the book known as 1 Enoch contains a section called the book of the Watchers, which was written sometime in the 200s B.C.—or possibly even before that.</p>
<p>At one point in the book of the Watchers, the angels Michael, Sariel, Raphael, and Gabriel are up in heaven looking down at the situation on Earth just before the Flood, and they see all the violence and bloodshed that’s taking place.</p>
<p>Then they go back into God’s heavenly temple and discuss the situation.</p>
<p>And entering in, they said to one another, “The earth, devoid of inhabitants, raises the voice of their cries to the gates of heaven. And now to us, the holy ones of heaven, the souls of men make suit, saying,</p>
<p>‘Bring in our judgment to the Most High, and our destruction before the glory of the majesty, before the Lord of all lords in majesty’” (<em>1 Enoch</em> 9:2-3).</p>
<p>So this text portrays the humans down on Earth asking the angels of heaven to intercede for them with God to do something about all the problems they’re facing.</p>
<p>The angels then <em>do</em> intercede with God about what’s happening on Earth, and he sends them to address the problems. The root of the problems is a group of fallen angels called Watchers, and so one of the things God does is send Michael to take the fallen Watchers and chain them up until Judgment Day.</p>
<p>This is like in 2 Peter 2:4, where Peter refers to how</p>
<p>God did not spare the angels when they sinned but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of deepest darkness to be kept until the judgment (2 Peter 2:4).</p>
<p>It’s also like in Jude 6, where Jude says:</p>
<p>The angels that did not keep their own position but left their proper dwelling have been kept by him in eternal chains in the deepest darkness until the judgment of the great day (Jude 6).</p>
<p>Back in 1 Enoch, once these angels are chained up, they contact the human patriarch Enoch and ask him to go intercede with God for them. But when he does so, God is not sympathetic to them, and he tells Enoch:</p>
<p>“Go and say to the watchers of heaven, who sent you to petition in their behalf,</p>
<p>‘You should petition in behalf of humans, and not humans in behalf of you’” (<em>1 Enoch</em> 15:2).</p>
<p>So we see how this passage also envisions one of the proper functions of angels as interceding for mankind. They’re meant to be <em>two-way</em> messengers: They both carry messages <em>from God</em> to us and messages from us <em>to God</em>.</p>
<p>Another book from the Second Temple period is the <em>Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs,</em> which is a set of speeches given by the twelve sons of Jacob to the tribes that descend from them.</p>
<p>In the <em>Testament of Dan</em>, the patriarch Dan tells his descendants:</p>
<p>Draw near to God and to the angel who intercedes for you, because he is the mediator between God and men for the peace of Israel (<em>Testament of Dan</em> 6:2).</p>
<p>And in the <em>Testament of Levi</em>, Levi tells his descendants:</p>
<p>There with [God] are the archangels, who serve and offer propitiatory sacrifices to the Lord in behalf of all the sins of ignorance of the righteous ones. They present to the Lord a pleasing odor, a rational and bloodless oblation (<em>Testament of Levi</em> 3:5-6).</p>
<p>This highlights the function of angels as priests in God’s heavenly temple. One of the functions of priests is to intercede with God for the people. Here, the archangels are offering bloodless sacrifices to God on account of the sins that God’s righteous people commit in ignorance. So the archangels are interceding with God for the righteous.</p>
<p>In a book known as the <em>Life of Adam and Eve, </em>the Greek version of which is also known as the <em>Apocalypse of Moses</em>. In that work, Eve is recounting to their children what happened when she and Adam were kicked out of the Garden, and she says:</p>
<p>Your father wept before the angels opposite Paradise, and the angels said to him, “What do you want us to do for you, Adam?”</p>
<p>Your father answered and said to the angels, “See, you are casting me out; I beg you, let me take fragrances from Paradise, so that after I have gone out, I might bring an offering to God so that God will hear me.”</p>
<p>And they came to God and said, “Jael, eternal king, command that fragrant incenses from Paradise be given to Adam” (Greek<em> Life of Adam and Eve</em> 29:2-4).</p>
<p>So here the angels intercede with God on behalf of Adam, and he grants their request! God then orders that Adam be allowed to take fragrant substances from the Garden of Eden so that he can offer incense to God in the future.</p>
<p>Later, Adam dies at the age of 930, and Eve says to her son Seth:</p>
<p>Look up with your eyes and see the seven heavens opened, and see with your eyes how the body of your father lies on its face, and all the holy angels are with him, praying for him and saying, “Forgive him, O Father of all, for he is your image” (Greek <em>Life of Adam and Eve</em> 35:2).</p>
<p>And God forgives Adam! So—across all these works of Second Temple Jewish literature—we see a widespread belief that angels intercede with God on behalf of man, which is only natural since one of their other functions is to serve as priests in God’s heavenly temple, and interceding for people is what priests do.</p>
<p>By the way, I’ve done <em>Mysterious Worlds</em> on some of these books, so you can check them out for more information.</p>
<p>I discussed <em>1 Enoch</em> in Episodes 323 and 324, which are at Mysterious.fm/323 and Mysterious.fm/324.</p>
<p>And I discuss the <em>Life of Adam and Eve </em>in Episodes 346 and 347, which are coming out in January.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>The Old Testament</strong></p>
<p>Of course, a person can object that the books we’ve quoted from aren’t in the Bible, so they’re not scripturally authoritative.</p>
<p>And that’s true! But they do testify to a widespread belief in angelic intercession in the Second Temple Jewish community, and that can shed light on biblical passages—both in the Old and the New Testaments.</p>
<p>So let’s take a look at that. Does the Old Testament contain any passages referring to angelic intercession in heaven?</p>
<p>Indeed it does!</p>
<p>First, in the book of Tobit, the angel Raphael reveals that he interceded for Tobit and Sarah and says:</p>
<p>And so, when you and your daughter-in-law Sarah prayed, I brought a reminder of your prayer before the Holy One; and when you buried the dead, I was likewise present with you (Tobit 12:12).</p>
<p>Now, Tobit is part of the Catholic and Orthodox Bibles—making it part of the Bible used by the majority of Christians—but it’s not part of the Protestant Bible, though even for them it would count as yet another work of Second Temple literature testifying to belief in angelic intercession.</p>
<p>However, there are also references to angelic intercession in books that are part of the Hebrew Scriptures and that <em>are </em>in the Protestant Old Testament. For example, in Job 16:19, Job refers to having an intercessor with God in heaven. He says:</p>
<p>Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and he who testifies for me is on high (Job 16:19).</p>
<p>Now—taking this verse out of context—you might think that Job is referring to God as his advocate in heaven, but he’s not, as the context makes clear. Job goes on to say that he wishes:</p>
<p>that he [the witness] would argue the case of a man with God, as a son of man does with his neighbor (Job 16:21).</p>
<p>So Job says he wishes his advocate would argue his case before God, which means that his advocate is <em>not</em> God. It’s an angel who is testifying or interceding for him.</p>
<p>Job’s friends also acknowledge that there are angels interceding in heaven. Later, in Job 33, his friend Elihu says:</p>
<p>If there be for him an angel, a mediator, one of the thousand, to declare to man what is right for him . . . then man prays to God, and he accepts him (Job 33:23, 26).</p>
<p>And it’s not just in Job that we find this. For example, Zechariah 1:12 reveals that the angel of the Lord intercedes for the Jewish people. The text says:</p>
<p>Then the angel of the Lord said, “O Lord of hosts, how long will you have no mercy on Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, against which you have been angry these seventy years?” (Zechariah 1:12).</p>
<p>So the angel of the Lord intercedes with God, asking him to have mercy on Judah after the seventy years of the Babylonian Exile. Once again, we find belief in angelic intercession.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>The New Testament</strong></p>
<p>And this isn’t confined to the Old Testament. It’s also in the New Testament. For example, in Matthew 18:10, Jesus himself says:</p>
<p>See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven (Matthew 18:10).</p>
<p>Now, you might think, “Oh! That’s nice! These angels always see God’s face. How nice for them!” But this would miss Jesus’ point.</p>
<p>What he saying is that the angels of the little ones have <em>guaranteed access to God so that they can intercede for the ones under their care.</em></p>
<p>That’s why Jesus says not to despise the little ones. If you do, and you mistreat them, their angels are <em>guaranteed </em>to tell God about it and intercede for the little ones, and it won’t go well for you!</p>
<p>This text isn’t about God doing something nice for the angels. It’s about the angels doing something that will benefit the ones they guard.</p>
<p>We also see angelic intercession in the book of Revelation. Specifically, we see it in chapter 8, where John witnesses this:</p>
<p>And another angel who had a golden censer came and stood at the altar, and a large amount of incense was given to him, in order that he could offer the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar that is before the throne. And the smoke of the incense went up before God with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel (Revelation 8:3-4).</p>
<p>So here we see an angel in heaven that is offering incense at God’s altar in heaven. This again points to the angel being a priest in God’s heavenly temple, because offering incense was one of the duties of priests. In fact, there was an altar of incense in God’s earthly temple in Jerusalem, where human priests ministered. Here, we’re seeing the heavenly equivalent of that.</p>
<p>Incense is used in the Bible as a symbol of prayer, because the smoke of incense rises upward to heaven like we want our prayers to rise up to God. Thus, Psalm 141:2 says:</p>
<p>Let my prayer be counted as incense before you (Psalm 141:1).</p>
<p>Revelation is drawing on that imagery, and so it says that the angel was given the incense <em>in order that</em> he could offer the prayers of “all the saints” on the golden altar before God’s throne.</p>
<p>In New Testament, the term <em>saint</em> is often used to refer to living Christians—people down on Earth. So what we see here is the angel—functioning as a priest in God’s heavenly temple—taking the prayers of <em>all</em> the saints—including the living ones down on Earth—and presenting them to God using the symbol of incense. Thus we read that:</p>
<p>The smoke of the incense went up before God with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel (Revelation 8:4).</p>
<p>Except, angels aren’t physical beings, so they don’t literally have hands. Instead, angels are created intellects. Everything they do, they do mentally. So this symbol represents an angel <em>mentally</em> presenting the prayers of the saints to God. In other words, he’s interceding for them—just as you’d expect of a heavenly priest.</p>
<p>We thus see abundant evidence for ancient Jewish and Christian belief in the fact that angels intercede for us. We see this in the Old Testament. We see this in the Second Temple literature outside the Old Testament. And we see this in the New Testament. In fact, Jesus <em>himself</em> indicates that they’re doing this.</p>
<p>Of course, prior to the time of Christ, with few exceptions, the angels were the only ones with God up in heaven. Humans generally weren’t yet admitted.</p>
<p>So what do you think’s going to happen after the Resurrection of Jesus, when <em>humans</em> get to go to heaven . . . especially the ones who are a <em>kingdom of priests?</em></p>
<p>That’s what we’ll talk about next.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
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<p>God bless you always!</p>

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