Question of Faith
A weekly question of faith answered by Cleveland Catholics. Fr. Damian Ference, Vicar of Evangelization and Deacon Mike Hayes Director of Young Adult Ministry in the Diocese of Cleveland co-host with frequent guests from the Diocesan Office who join in the conversation. Sponsored by Briefcase Marketing--check them out at https://www.Briefcase.marketing
Question of Faith
Are We Supposed to Bow at the Name of Jesus?
What significance does bowing hold in the liturgy, and is it a practice that's still alive in our modern services? Join Deacon Mike Hayes and Father Damian Ference as they uncover the historical roots and current observance of bowing at the name of Jesus. They navigate through the intricacies outlined in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM) and compare how different religious communities like the Benedictines and Dominicans incorporate these bows into their worship. This episode offers a thorough examination of the reverence embedded in these gestures and their varied expressions across different contexts.
But that's not all! We also switch gears to lighter, yet equally engaging topics. From the quirks of daily routines and coffee preferences to amusing tales of drinking coffee in El Salvador, this episode celebrates the rich diversity within communities. Hear nostalgic reflections on family dinners and a father's enduring love for coffee. As if that wasn’t enough, the excitement ramps up with behind-the-scenes preparations for the upcoming Fest, an event filled with activities, a softball league update. This episode has it all—liturgical insights, heartwarming stories, and a bit of community fun.
On today's Question of Faith. Are we supposed to bow at the name of Jesus? This is Question of Faith. I am Deacon Mike Hayes. I'm the Young Adult Ministry Director here in the Diocese of Cleveland.
Speaker 2:And I'm Father Damian Ferentz, the vicar for evangelization.
Speaker 1:Today we get a question written in talking about why do people no longer bow at the holy name of Jesus, that they had noticed that people no longer do that, and so I was a little curious because I was like, hmm, we're supposed to bow every time we say Jesus? I'm not aware. I've noticed at Mass that we kind of do it from time to time, but not like every single time, and then when I pose the, we start texting about this. And what did you tell me?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, even yesterday in our little hallway conversation I mentioned that I hadn't always done this, but somewhere along the way I picked it up and there's two different types of bows within the liturgy, types of bows within the liturgy. So one is a profound bow and then the other is more of a nod of the head, just a simple reverential bow. And I started doing that probably I saw other priests do it. I guess that's often how it happens At Jesus's name, and maybe I heard someone preach on it at one point. But we were then discussing and when did this come out and is it actually in the ritual? Is it actually in the rubric?
Speaker 2:So last night I was doing some research. I pulled my Roman Missal off my shelf in my room where I have all my liturgical books, and I went through the germ and I couldn't find it mentioned anywhere there and I thought, gee, I thought it was here. So then I did a deeper dive and I think and I didn't get a clarification on this, but I did email or text one of my friends. He's in the Houston Diocese, he's a liturgist down there and I did find Article 275 of the Germ and I think this was an updated. The Germ is not G-E-R-M, it's G-I-R-M, the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, which is what guides us in our celebration of the liturgy Right.
Speaker 1:You shouldn't be germphobic in that instance.
Speaker 2:I'll be here all week. 275 says this A bow signifies reverence and honor shown to the persons themselves or to the signs that represent them. There are two kinds of a bow a bow of the head and a bow of the body. A bow of the head is made when the three divine persons are named together and at the names of Jesus, of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of the saint in whose honor mass is being celebrated. So if you ever pray the Liturgy of the Hours, you will notice that at the end of each psalm or canticle we say glory to the Father and to the Son of the Holy Spirit, and people bow their heads slightly at that time, although if you're praying with Dominicans or Byzantines, they do like full body bow at that time.
Speaker 1:That's what I do actually when I pray in, when I pray by myself every day, I just kind of bow my head.
Speaker 2:I guess it depends what community you pray with, because if you prayed with the seminary and you did that. You get made fun of, but if you prayed with the Benedictines, that's what they. So you do what the community does.
Speaker 1:I was going to say, yeah, when the monks bow, I bow, and it was Benedictines I was doing it with.
Speaker 2:Right, and the Benedictines do do that, and so do the Dominicans and so do the Byzantines. So I wonder, and this general instruction of the Roman Missal is for the mass itself, not the liturgy of the hours, correct? But you would be familiar with people bowing their heads when invoking the glory beam. Then the other one here is so at the name of Jesus. So when you say Jesus is named, you bow your head. But in the Eucharistic prayer we also mentioned the Blessed Virgin, and then, like today, we're recording on the Feast of Peter Chrysologus, and so if you said Peter Chrysologus in the Eucharistic prayer, if you added his name, then you would bow your head slightly at that time. So that actually is. I think Father Sean Ralph mentioned that to me and this is where it comes from Article 275. So now the question is the priest does that, but is everyone supposed to do that at that time of the Day of the Jew? Maybe they do.
Speaker 1:It just says a bow. It doesn't signify necessarily. In the liturgy it says a bow of the head is made when the three divine persons are named together.
Speaker 2:So that's the glory. Be to the.
Speaker 1:Father, son, holy Spirit, right and at the names of Jesus, of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the saint in whose honor mass is being celebrated. So just a bow of the head not a more profound. Benedictine bow there.
Speaker 2:Right, and then why don't you? Because mine's a screenshot, so I don't have the rest of B, but we might as well make the distinction between the head bow and the body bow.
Speaker 1:I have the same screenshot you have.
Speaker 2:Oh okay, it says a body bow. We can read enough of it. A bow of the body, that is to say a profound bow, is made at the altar during the prayers and in spiritual humility. So cleanse my heart. So there are certain points at the Mass where the priest bows more deeply towards the altar in that way.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, Actually here.
Speaker 2:Hold on, I've got it. You got it, yeah, in the Roman canon. So that's when, in the first Eucharistic prayer, when he talks about taking this sacrifice through your angel's hands, the same kind of bow is made by the deacon, deacon Mike Hayes, when he asks for a blessing before the proclamation of the gospel. In addition, the priest bows slightly as he pronounces the words of the Lord at consecration. And that's true, there's like a little head bow, but it's not. And that's the thing I think. Sometimes people overdo it and then other people underdo it.
Speaker 1:It's the golden mean of Aristotle and Thomas there I would say I notice that people don't reverence the word as much.
Speaker 1:So when I go to proclaim the gospel, I ask the priest's blessing and I bow my head then and then he gives me his blessing, I make the sign of the cross and then I go over, and when I go then the gospel book's on the altar and so I go over to get the gospel book, but before I do I bow to it and then I pick it up and I hold it up and I process over. If we're incensing the book at Mass, the acronym that we use is BIB. Put your BIB on Bow, incense, bow. So we bow, we incense and then we bow again. So those are all the bowing at the gospel things that I have to do. That we were taught.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that's 277. So before and after an incensation, a profound bow is made to the person or object that is incensed, except for the altar and the offerings for the sacrifice at Mass. Then here's the thing too. The seminarians get excited about this Three swings of the thurible are used to incense the Most Blessed Sacrament, a relic of the Holy Cross, images of the Lord, the offerings.
Speaker 1:Two swings are for relics and images of saints. Basically, jesus or God is three. Everybody else is two. That's great. And when we incense the people because God is present in the community, that's three not two.
Speaker 2:Cool, interesting. These are things I should review more often than I do, yeah same with me.
Speaker 1:It's good that we're doing this same with me.
Speaker 2:Well, it's good. It's good that we're doing this. So, whoever wrote this in, thank you. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:And I do notice that you know there are. There are certain places that I go every once in a while where there seems to be a lack of reverence, like people come in, they don't genuflect when they pass the tabernacle, they don't bow at the altar if the tabernacle is not behind the altar. All those kinds of things. Those are things that we're taught. I had a very good deacon in my parish who taught us all those things.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because I can remember and I remember you sort of catch on after a while. You know I'd see the older altar boys come in and our tabernacle in my home, parish in.
Speaker 1:Yonkers was on the side, and the two guys would come in and even if they were on the other side of the church, right, and they came down the side aisle on the back and the tabernacle's opposite them, they would actually turn and genuflect toward the tabernacle and then walk into the sacristy, and so we kind of caught on to that, and then at the altar we would just do a profound bow. We wouldn't do a genuflection.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because you don't genuflect to the altar, but if the altar is in line with the tabernacle, then you do right yeah.
Speaker 1:And the other thing is there are people like me who have some physical disabilities, like my knee doesn't always work Right and so, therefore, you know, some days I have to bow. You do what's possible Right. You do the best. You can Do your best right. Your mantra, Father.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it even says somewhere I was reading the germ last night like a good priest that's what he does before bed and it said that people are supposed to kneel during the Eucharistic prayer. But if you're unable to, when the priest genuflects after each elevation you're supposed to do a profound bow at that point, right?
Speaker 1:So I do that now as a deacon. When the epiclesis happens, the deacon's supposed to kneel. Now, if there's nothing for me to hold on to, I'm probably going to fall.
Speaker 2:If I try to do that.
Speaker 1:So I'm getting better, I'm losing weight and doing all kinds of things. So I'm getting a lot better. I'll be able to do it eventually, but right now, when the apoclesis happens, I do a profound bow at the apoclesis, because that's when I'm supposed to kneel, and then when he makes the sign of the cross, I stand back up so I don't look like the hunchback of Notre Dame, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, that's why a lot of priests will do the profound bow rather than genuflection because they can't. Yeah, they physically can't do it. Yeah, what? In 2011, 2012 school year, I was helping out on weekends at St Basil, the Great Parish in Brecksville, because Father Joe Mamich was there as parochial vicar. He was made pastor at St Joe's. He was made pastor at St Joe's and my knee was hurting so bad that I couldn't genuflect without pain and that's what got me to go to have surgery, which was very major surgery. I didn't get knee replacement, I had something called osteochondritis desiccans. My growth plate dried up and died and fell off my bone. So I had to get all that fixed. I got a cadaver bone in there. Now it works really well. God bless the person who donated.
Speaker 1:The other thing too is every pound of every.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did write a letter to my donor.
Speaker 1:Oh, very nice.
Speaker 2:Every pound of weight that you lose. So every pound that you have is four pounds on your knee. So yeah, you drop a few pounds, you notice less pain in your knees, so I just lost about 15 pounds since ordination, right yeah.
Speaker 1:And so that's 60 pounds. That's not on my knees anymore. And let me tell you, I feel it, it matters, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I noticed you're doing morning walks with your rosary.
Speaker 1:I am yes, I did that. Yeah, I do morning prayer on the first mile up and then I do the rosary, and that doesn't take quite the mile. Yeah, rosary, and that doesn't take quite the mile. I do that on the way back and then usually the exam. Sometimes I'll do that a little bit later, but sometimes I'll do the exam and the rest of the way.
Speaker 2:And by noticing, I should say notice on Instagram.
Speaker 1:I'm not stalking you, come on now. I saw you hiding behind the garbage cans.
Speaker 2:Hey, what's Deacon Mike doing now? Is he doing good deeds?
Speaker 1:It's like any time I went up to the seminary, when you used to be over at the seminary all of a sudden I'd get a text message from you. What are you doing? Are you getting out of your car?
Speaker 2:Yeah, because the former classroom during renovations was a workout room and I was on the elliptical most afternoons. When you were there on Wednesdays, I'd be like hey. I see you what.
Speaker 1:That's creepy. It's like I don't text back Like not creepy at all.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Just kidding, I don't see anything anyway. No, that's cool.
Speaker 1:And then I also noticed you're doing.
Speaker 2:A lot more protein, a lot more greens, yes, that's yeah, that's for sure, that's. That's been the big, the big difference Um and I can eat more when I do that.
Speaker 1:You know, that's kind of the key. You could eat more vegetables.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and start if you're concerned with weight or health or nutrition. Like, eat a huge salad and then you fill most of your belly up with that and then eat stuff after that because you won't have enough room to put a bunch of other stuff in.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, try to eat well, I've been trying to do like a little bit of intermittent fasting. So if I stop eating at 10 o'clock in the evening which is a little late actually then I won't eat again until 10 or 11 o'clock the next day.
Speaker 2:That's what I do. I have two cups of coffee in the morning. My first meal is usually 12.30 or 1.
Speaker 1:No thanks on the coffee.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's so good. You know, I was thinking the other day I was on a little priest getaway with my priest support group and someone in the priest support group who has a very sweet personality, is very kind and warm. He brought flavored coffee with caramel and all and and I thought I could never drink that. Like, give me straight black coffee. And that's how my personality is. I like strong, strong beer. I like strong, spicy food. So you take in and then it comes out. So we're all different. And I mentioned this last night Actually, no, yesterday afternoon at dinner. How good it is that with the clergy and the laity and religious, how it's good that we're all different because you wouldn't want everyone to be the same. So you need some people who are choleric and others who are sanguine and others who are phlegmatic and others who are melancholic and makes the world go around. You know, Absolutely One body, many parts.
Speaker 1:We're all different. I think I may have mentioned this on the show before, but if I have, stop me and we can just edit it out, stop Just kidding.
Speaker 1:Exactly so. I go to El Salvador with a group of students and you know, in El Salvador you have to drink coffee. People offer it to you. You have to drink it, just to be polite, right? And I don't drink coffee on the reg, at least. You know, I don't even like. If I go into a Starbucks or, you know, a Panera or anything like that, and they're making coffee, it almost turns my stomach, right. I don't even like the smell of it. What's in there then? Water, oh, sea water, I see.
Speaker 2:It's a coffee mug though.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but in El Salvador I had to do it. And so my students were like, and they knew I didn't drink coffee. So they were like Mike, what are you going to do? And I was like, well, I guess, when you got it, you got it. And so I walk over to get the coffee from the woman who was hosting us and one of my students touches me on the shoulder and I turn around and I said what? And she goes your life is about to get so much better. And I drank it and I will say I really liked it in El Salvador, right, and you know, and had it that whole week we were there or so, and I came back and said, well, all right, maybe I can be a coffee drinker. So I said, well, let me go to Starbucks and see what happens. So I ordered just a regular coffee. I don't think I ordered anything fancy and I took one sip of it and was like what is this swill you are giving me now? It was completely different from what I had in El Salvador.
Speaker 2:And then I went to. Tim Hortons was a big thing in Buffalo, a Canadian company, red and white label.
Speaker 1:Yes, correct, that's exactly right. I can see it in my mind's eye. So I went and tried that that was a little better, but I never quite caught on to it. So I did order some Salvadoran coffee and brought it to my house, and that was 11 years ago, I think, and I think the bag is still in my house.
Speaker 2:Oh, put it in your garden. Yeah, I think that's what I did.
Speaker 1:I actually think that's what Marion did with it. I think she used it for something else. I don't think it's there anymore.
Speaker 2:So my dad absolutely loved coffee and started drinking it at a very young age, and I always remember him drinking coffee all through the day, and even at night he could drink coffee, and when we used to go out on Fridays we'd go out to Bob Evans for dinner or some cheap American restaurant as a family and my brother and I were all ready to go, and then my dad would say one more cup of coffee.
Speaker 2:We'd be like, oh my gosh. So I think that was part of my aversion to coffee growing up. Not to mention that my dad was legally blind and, after my mom died, lived by himself for almost 14 years and would make a pot of coffee and because he couldn't smell and he was legally blind, he would just reheat that pot for about three days and it didn't look good to me and it didn't smell good. So I think I had an aversion to it. My mom, when I was sick, would make me tea and honey tea. So as an adult, in college and grad school and even as a young priest or younger priest, I was a tea guy and a tea and a honey guy.
Speaker 2:And maybe a year or two after I finished at Catholic U, I was in my mid thirties and my friend Rich McCarthy, who married a woman named Rosaria Rinaldi. Her parents came from the old country. It's a great name, yeah, rosaria McCarthy. Now, anyway, I went on vacation with their family and there was no tea and the only thing they had in the morning was coffee. I'm like, oh my gosh, I guess I'll have to drink coffee. It changed my life.
Speaker 1:It was so good.
Speaker 2:I haven't gone back Like. I still have some tea from time to time and it was. I didn't put anything in it. My dad used to put cream in it. People put sugar in it. I don't want it to taste like candy and I like it and I've been drinking it ever since and it's good. But Father Garris, who's often on our show, eric Garris he is what I would call a coffee snob. He has to go to Rising Star Coffee or the hipster coffee place in whatever city he goes to. I have a few other friends like that and I love my friends, but I could settle with the Keurig, although I have another priest friend who drinks cheap coffee, keeps it in the freezer and that wasn't as good. So I'm probably a mid-range coffee guy. How did we get on this? I don't know, but this coffee tastes really good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have it black when I have it with a couple of sugars or Splenda or whatever you know, one of those things I don't put any milk in my coffee With tea. My mother was a big tea drinker and my father too. To an extent. My father would drink coffee, but they were more. You know, we're Irish, yeah, they were more.
Speaker 1:You know we're Irish, you know it's a tea kind of thing, you know like the British a little bit you know, that's the only thing we have in common probably is tea, and my mother would put milk and sugar in it, and my father would do the same. My sister, however, she really wants a cup of milk with a little bit of tea in it. Oh, that's also pretty Irish, isn't it A little? Yeah, I mean, I would do. You know, I wouldn't do half and half exactly, but I would put more milk in than I would in coffee.
Speaker 2:I don't put any milk in coffee. That's disgusting in my opinion. Well, I like honey in my tea.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do too.
Speaker 2:Although Father Steve Breck, one of my dearest friends, texted me the other day and said you're not supposed to use a metal spoon with honey. For some reason it's supposed to be a wooden spoon or one of those things that makes sense yeah.
Speaker 1:Somehow it affects the honey, but yeah, the yeah, I mean the metal reacts with the honey.
Speaker 2:I love. I love honey and I put it on a metal spoon often. One of my friends made me coffee recently and put honey in the coffee and that tasted good, I don't think I've tried that. Yeah, well, well all sorts of things to try. But anyway, we talked a lot about I mean, I'm not going to bow my head to coffee, I was just going to say that Don't bow your head to coffee, by the way.
Speaker 1:So just to get back to this question. I mean I tip my head back when I drink it Opposite Just to get back to this for a second.
Speaker 2:So like every time you say the name Jesus, you're supposed to bow, so like if we're singing. Well, in the liturgy, that's what the germ says. So I don't know, I've gotten in the habit of just doing a slight bow, it's kind of natural. Now it's more like breathing, and I don't think it's disruptive or weird, you know, it's just kind of like oh, that's Name of Jesus. Bow his head, especially since his name is so often used as a cuss word. It's a nice and that is a nice way to remedy it. If you're with a group of people and they're saying things like you know, and saying the Lord's name, you can just bow your head slightly.
Speaker 1:It's a nice way to remedy that, because his name has power and it's good to reverence it, yeah, and I think we want to avoid, you know, virtue signaling or anything like that we're not doing this to make ourselves look good right, we're doing this because the name of jesus is holy.
Speaker 2:Jesus's name, yeah, because we love him exactly yeah, I went to holy name high school, so you know we got to honor his holy name exactly hey, uh, speaking of things that are holy and good, um, the fest is coming up.
Speaker 2:Yes, the Fest is in its 24th year now, wow. It started actually as a local presentation of World Youth Day 2000, which was in Rome. I was there and the Holy Father said if you can't get there, you ought to do something in your diocese. So Father Stack Bob Stack, who was the vocation director at the time got something going at the seminary and it started small. There were a few thousand people and now it's somewhere between 30,000, 35,000 people who make their way to the seminary property at the Center for Pastoral Leadership the first Sunday of August. So it's coming up this August and you said you're going to be there early setting up Our whole crew from Parish Life will be there, bishop Molesik will be there. Life will be there, bishop Molesik will be there. You should be there too, because although it's not a church, the back fields of the seminary property are transformed into a cathedral that night for a big old mass with probably about 4,000 or 5,000 people who stick around, as long as it doesn't rain, exactly like last year, yeah.
Speaker 2:Was it last year? It was last year, oh my gosh, yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm still wearing your clothes out. It was fun, but it was rainy yeah.
Speaker 2:Hopefully it doesn't rain and we have mass and then fireworks.
Speaker 1:Young adults. We have a mixology table at the fest this year, Like alcohol drinks?
Speaker 2:No, it would be non-alcoholic drinks.
Speaker 1:I'll still go as per Father Steck Well that makes sense, yes, and then. So we'll be doing that. Bishop Molesik will be coming over, I believe, to join us for that, for some heavy appetizers as well, and then youth have a special dinner with the bishop that I think you had to sign up for. So if you haven't signed up for it, check on that, and then I'll be presiding at the Exalt at 3 o'clock Nice. So that'll be nice. A little praise and worship, a little benediction.
Speaker 1:Confessions are heard all day, so go in get in line, it'll be great, exactly, and then our Parish Life team will be there at our booth. Stop by. If you saw our really cool Ohio t-shirts. We will be having a version of that t-shirt for sale. That's great, so come on by and buy a t-shirt.
Speaker 2:I'll be at the Tolle Legge tent for a little while too. That's our little summer institute for rising seniors. We just had our reunion on Sunday at the seminary, so shout out to all you who made that. It's a really great event, or great ministry.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And mass, and mass.
Speaker 1:And mass.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it should be wonderful.
Speaker 1:So and bands all day.
Speaker 2:And it's free, it's free.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh and FD, we have softball, so it's time for this week's softball update. We haven't had a softball update in a while. Let's take a quick look at the standings. The Westside Whitecaps in first place at 4-1, but they have a make-up game soon. That'll make these standings a bit more clear. Chosen Ones and Big League Chew are at 4-2, so they're a half game out of first Catching Flamingos in a similar place. Three games up, two games down. Fourth place Fighting for the final two playoff spots the Parma Peacocks and the Blue Scapulars are at 500, three up and three down. St Joe's, strongsville Vikings and the ETA Mighty Doves are at two and three. The St Vitus Lions at two and four. It's anybody's game already out of the playoff hunt. But man, they are a hard luck losing team. The Grapes of Wrath are at one and five, but they lost a ton of close games. Nothing to be embarrassed about there.
Speaker 1:This past weekend. A great show. The Whitecaps got past Big League Choo 5-4, a nail-biter all the way Westside with a big four-run fifth it was the bottom of the order coming up big for the Whitecaps this time. Bobby Bolin, a leadoff single he took second on Franco Alonso's sacrifice. Fly to deep left field After a ground out. Emily Allin came up big with an RBI single, followed by the Byrne brothers, patrick and Joe, getting on base, one on a hit, one on an error, and then Rachel Fisher popped an RBI single to make that score 5-1. Some defensive games as well, all in Alex DiMichel, tom Bruno and Bobby Bolin, all with spectacular plays in the field this week. Big League Chew wouldn't go away. In the sixth they scored three runs, all on errors, but they cut it close. But the Westside still prevails 5-4.
Speaker 1:The ETA Project Mighty Doves snuck past, catching Flamingos 12-9. A four-run sixth inning was the difference there. Four straight hits. Joel Garvin, matt Garvin, david Smith and Dan Wallace led the way. Mj Riddell two hits and three RBIs.
Speaker 1:And a losing cause for the Flamingos the Blue Scapulars all over the Parma Peacocks 9-2, seven runs in the first two innings for the Scapulars. They led wire to wire. Nick Krooner oh my gosh, three-run homer. He's hitting an amazing 9-23. That's 12 out of 13 at bats. Somebody get this guy out. The St Joe's Strongsville Vikings got past the Chosen Ones 11-9. Kristen Tubbs three hits and an RBI on that one. A seven-run third inning made the difference there. Zach Molzon two RBIs for Chosen Ones. And hey, the Grapes of Wrath. They got their first one of the year 7-5 over the St Vitus Lions. Anthony Mancini a monster all day, three hits, two RBIs. Ashley Hanna added two RBIs as well for the Grapes of Wrath.
Speaker 1:Off this week for the Fest, back next week for the final regular season games. That'll start on Friday night, the 9th. It will continue through Sunday as usual at St John Bosco Parish. I'm Deacon Mike Hayes. This is your Softball Update. A lot of fun. Good times, so come on out. Good times and then readings at that Mass for the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Lots of talk about manna this week, first reading and in the Gospel. Both refer to the manna in the desert. It's funny. Whenever I think about this, I always think about when you say the dewfall and the Eucharistic prayer.
Speaker 1:So, one of my friends went camping one time and instead of staying in his tent, he decided that he was just going to sleep outside, just on the ground. There were no animals around or anything like that. But when he woke up the dew from the grass was like all over his sleeping bag and everything else. He was like, oh, now I get this. He got up and he did morning prayer and he kind of really got into it a little bit more because he understood what it meant with the dewfall.
Speaker 1:So manna was like the dew on the grass, that's it.
Speaker 2:I love that the Eucharistic, national Eucharistic Congress ended and then the next five weeks we're reading from John's Gospel, the Bread of Life discourse. There's so much to unpack here. I think the fact that God wants to feed us and that he wants to feed us with himself is awesome, and it's a mystery that never gets old. And so you know, this past weekend. Are you hungry? Yeah, I'm hungry. Well, what do you want to eat? I want to eat God, like I want him to be my sustenance. Okay, so I'll make myself available to you in a weird way that we call the Eucharist, and it's beautiful and it's holy and it's wonderful, and it's a mystery that you could never fully wrap your mind around. But the more you enter into it, the more it enters into you and the more it makes you like Jesus, because the Eucharist is Jesus and he makes himself present to us. So I'm hungry and I love the gift of the Eucharist and it never gets old.
Speaker 1:Jonathan Rumi read from the Bread of Life Discourse at the National Eucharistic Congress, which was a lot of fun to see.
Speaker 2:We'll put that in the show notes as well.
Speaker 1:And yeah, so we'll see you at the fest, I hope. And if you have a question of faith, you can send that to me, mhays at dioceseofclevelandorg. We're here each and every Tuesday for you and send your questions in hey rate and review our podcast, if you would. That really helps other people get to know who we are and gets the show a little bit more out there. And so do that on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We're everywhere. Okay, all right, so see you at the fest.
Speaker 2:See you at the fest. Pray that it doesn't rain and wear your sunscreen.
Speaker 1:Yes, indeed, and we'll have this and a whole lot more next time here on Question of the Year. I'll see you next time.
