04-16-26 Spirit Mornings Show

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You know I'm excited, I'll tell you why I'm excited because of you that's why I'm excited.

This is Spirit Mornings with Jen Brown and Damien Montez on the Spirit Catholic Radio Network.

Jen, I can tell you why I'm excited. Not only was your microphone turned around,

it's Thursday as Damien likes to say Friday Eve. Yes. And prayers for Damien Montez and his family

as we continue through on throughout the morning show. And thank you for joining us this morning.

Jen, how are you doing today? Yeah, I'm doing good. Thanks for everybody. Yesterday we had

we had a great time at Archangel's Catholic High School in Humphrey, Nebraska. And so that's

the newer school that's been there for two years. Actually the school's been there a while,

but the new school that they have Archangel's Catholic High School. So thanks to all the people

who got to talk to you and Ashley for putting great together a great lineup of folks for us to chat

with. Some people jumped on that weren't scheduled to be on and they were a little shy on the microphone

a couple of times, but other than that, we had a grand time. Some of that is the fun of live radio,

though. And you know, we've had those moments before. I remember when I was in college, you know,

we'd go on the microphones and we throw different people on there. Some are not, you know, of course,

radio professionals. Many of us, of course, were not at college level. And you could tell, but

that's okay because some of that is the enjoyment of live radio. Not everybody is a professional

speaker. And that's just fine because God gives us all kinds of different, different gifts and

talents. And some of us are better suited than some things. Some of us are in others. I'm not a

great NFL lineman. Jack, Jack, my son, Jackson, much better than I am at being a lineman. I could

never approach one. I would absolutely be smashed, but that's okay because again, God gives us gifts

in every different facet. 10 pounds, 23 inches when he was born and just kept going. And now

it's 300 pounds and six foot five. I don't remember how much I weighed when I was born, but I'm

about 155 as of this morning. And so yeah, I don't think that would be my best chance, probably.

That are like a puncher. Oh, that's I forgot about someone who doesn't get hit a lot.

That'd be good. Yeah. You know what? I did want to reach out. Today, I was listening to

Sister Mary Lucy. And I love spending my mornings here at the office listening to the

Rosary with Sister Mary Lucy. And she was talking about the incarnation.

No, she was talking about the transfiguration. And Peter James and John's, we all know that

they're there. And Peter's like, Oh my gosh, he sees Jesus and so white. And he's like,

we have to stay here. We have to build a tent. We have to stay here. So he sees Jesus in a form

that is like so beautiful and so enlightening to him. Yeah. And the next prayer that Sister Mary

Lucy says is, may we know Jesus in a way that helps us in a difficult time? That's what she talks

about. So may we know this Jesus that is so bright and enlightening to us that we want to stay

with him, right? So we want to build a tent to stay with him. So I'm going to bring Damien's

family into this. It's not anything that is not out there in public tonight will be the

visitation for his father. And then tomorrow will be the funeral for his father. So his father

fell sick a couple of weeks ago during the kerathan. We were all praying for his dad. And he passed

away over the weekend. And the visitation is tonight. The funeral is tomorrow. So that's why

he's been out all week. And so we just pray that this family can have, you know, the Jesus that

is the light of their world. And they can lean on him. And I pray that for you as well, like

that you find the Jesus that enlightens your world. And you lean on him in troubling and trauma

and difficult times. It just jumped out at me this morning, Jeb when I was praying, the Rosary.

And it's right out of scripture. And I hope that happens for you as well. And that's why

it is so important for us to be constantly kindling that relationship with our Lord. I look at it

like a fire. You know, if you've ever created a fire and maintained a fire to keep it going,

it's something that constantly needs to be nourished and fed. I got to keep throwing the sticks

into the fire to keep it burning. And I feel that that's our relationship with the Lord is

you have to put those sticks in. And that's by communicating with them in prayer.

That communication, sacraments, all those things go into mass. They all feed into that. And when

you do those things, you're kindling that relationship. So when those moments of suffering come,

that relationship is strong. And the fire is burning bright. Like you said, Jen,

and you have that that relationship with him that you can go to him in those moments,

and he can help you tremendously. And I would like to say a prayer for Damian's father on the air

as we prepare for these final moments before we lay him the rest. And the name of the Father

and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Eternal rest grant on to him, O Lord. And let perpetual

light shine upon him. May his soul and the souls of all the faithfully departed through the mercy of God,

rest in peace. Amen. The name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

His father's name is Damian as well, but he went by Dan. So went by Dan his whole life.

So may Dan rest in peace. Visitation is tonight and continue to pray for Damian Bantes and his

family in this difficult time. And they lean on the the brightness of Jesus in their lives.

And we call on you as you're listening this morning, our family here at Spirit Catholic Radio.

You're a part of that. We're 100% listener supported. It's because of you listening right now. So

please join us in prayer and praying for Damian's father and know that those prayers, those prayers

mean something. And you know, if you got someone close to you that you either may lose soon or

have lost recently or just in years past, know that they're in our prayers as well. Because we're

constantly praying for them. And you know, that's one of the beautiful things about our studios. It

shares well with the chapel, the word and carnival. We're able to go there every morning and pray and

meet together. There's staff and send your prayer intentions up there as well. So thank you so

much to your listener for supporting us throughout all these years, both in your prayers and financial

commitments. Yeah, I tell people that the morning show actually starts in the chapel of the

morning to card it. And I'm like, not like the microphone goes in there and not like we start

things in there and then move into the studio. Yeah. No, we start with prayer. That's how this

radio program starts. We do a live two-hour show without a net. So we have to rely on Jesus.

So we start in there before the show, before we even turn on the microphones, we go to the

chapel of the wording carnit. We kneel, we say our prayers with Jesus, put our, I put my face at

the foot of the cross. And I just say all for you, Jesus, this is your radio station. This is your

radio program. So we hope that whatever we are saying illuminates you, illuminates you Christ,

so that while you're listening, you can utilize that sometime in your life. It reminds me of the

first day of the job, 4 a.m. Blizzard meeting Bruce at the door and we're going through all the

programming stuff. And then it was about maybe six o'clock when you showed up, Jen. And

Bruce goes, all right, now prepare. We're going to have a litany of saints soon to come.

And I wasn't sure exactly what he was talking about. And he goes, well, we're going to pray in

the chapel before we go live. And that was back when we were doing the show about 640s when we'd

start. And so I think it was about 630 or so as when we headed back into the chapel there. And

we get to do the prayer and then you begin your litany of saints. And that was when my eyes were

opened because I knew we had a lot of saints in the church. And I thought I knew all of them.

I really did. I thought, okay, I know like 50-ish saints. I'm like, that's pretty much all I'm

like, maybe there's one or two out there I don't know. And then you expanded my horizons greatly,

Jen, because your ability to not only list the saints, but also to call them from the heart. You

don't need a piece of paper or anything like that. You're able to name. I they're with us.

I promise you, dear listener, you could hedge money on this bet. And Jen would be able to list

off 100 saints without fail. Oh my gosh, I don't know about that. I think you could, Jen,

for sure 50. I think you could do 50, 100%. But 100 maybe pushing it, I mean, that's where the

betting comes in right. We're going to see if she can actually do it. But I think you'd be pretty

close. The overunders. I don't know. Well, thank you. Well, it's them. It's all of them. They do

that. They do it. They bring it to the heart. They do it. But yes, it is beautiful. We have this

chapel. That's where the prayers start. And then they lift us up and carry us through. And they,

they find you. They find you. Do you listen to her and spend time with you and help you through

good times and bad times, joyful times and sorrowful times. And so we lift up our dear friend,

Damien Montes, on this difficult day. It's 709 Spirit Catholic Radio Weather this morning.

Looks like today's the day. Today really is the day. About up or 40s, mid,

lower 50s for fair conditions to start out this morning. But we're going to move into sunshine

with a little bit of a breeze. I mean, reaching the mid 80s throughout most of the state,

western side of the state in Nebraska, about 76 for your high. Otherwise, this is pretty good

weather, Jen. So now you are up to date. Thanks to Spirit mornings. Yeah, a little breezy in

western Nebraska. So we need to hold on to our hats today. Yes, there was a red flag warning.

I think it's going to end today for the western side of the state. So yeah, we continue prayers

there and all the fires that you guys have been battling out there. We're with you there as well.

Even if we can't fly helicopter and drop water over the top, yeah, which Jeb would love to do.

I would love to do that. That'd be the second choice of an occupation to be healthy. We'll get

a microphone out there and you can do the weather broadcast from up top in the. I've done that. Yes,

I've done airborne traffic before. That is so cool to me in my radio career. So yeah,

but been in radio 33 years here at Spirit Catholic Radio 13 of those years. Did they have you in

a helicopter for that? No, we were in a wing under sundowner plane. It held four. You could put

a fifth person in there if need be, but it helped for people comfortably. And then we had all of

our equipment in there because there was three different people doing traffic reports. Oh, really?

Yeah, so it was me and two other people doing a traffic report for all the different stations.

And then one pilot. And then the pilot, yeah. So you were relying on that pilot? We had three

emergency landings and we had a change. Really? Yeah, we had to change air air. What where do you fly

into traffic control air traffic control? Not the control like we had to change. So we were out of

the North Oma airport. We had to change airports. And then we went to Miller Airport. So yeah,

we had to change everything pilots and everything. I could imagine that was a little stressful

while being on the air at the same time. Oh, yeah. Well, it was we could talk about the weather

because the weather was bad. I don't know if you might have been able to ask for prayers on

a secular station, but that's the beauty of Spirit Catholic Radio. We can pray all the time. We

can share our faith out loud. And that's the beauty of it. Now, after we hear Father

the girl, yeah, we're going to share about what has been going on the brascal legislature

all done this year with a session, but maybe we'll get a recap of what's been going on from

Tom Venzer. That's coming up next. A reading from the letter of Saint Paul to the Romans.

If Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin while the Spirit lives because of justice.

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, then he who raised Jesus from

the dead will bring your mortal bodies to life also through his Spirit dwelling in you.

The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Good morning to you on this Thursday of the second

week of Easter. My name is Father Loris Grell and I come to you from the parishes where I serve

as pastor St. Mary's in Wymore, St. Mary's in Odell, and St. Joseph's in Barnston.

I remember a little girl, a parishioner who I visited many years ago at children's hospital.

She had taken up sick on a Friday evening just before we had stations of the cross.

She suffered a severe medical trauma at only about two years old. As I saw her hooked up to

tubes and machines at children's, it was left to me to hold her parents hands and ask them to

trust in God. The child seemed as if dead, but the story has a happy ending through the skills

of the medical team and by God's grace, after being hospitalized for months, the child survived.

I think she is now approaching her teenage years, fit as a fiddle. The faith of her parents

was rewarded by her miraculous healing. St. Paul today is saying in Romans 8 that our bodies

are still subject to death and decay, but the great good news is that our spirits are subject

to a thrilling new life in Christ. If we live according to Jesus' love, love, and repent if we

do fall again into sin, our original divine adoption from our baptism will be brought to completion

when God resurrects the bodies of the saints on the last day. God is truly our Father,

and the blessed resurrection of Jesus from the dead completes us on the last day to be His sons

and daughters. Live as a son or daughter of God today, alive for Christ Jesus. Alleluia,

God bless you. God bless you as well. Bobby Grille was talking about the last day and all but the

last day is almost done with Nebraska legislature. We're going to get an update on that from Tom Vence

or next. Let's check out the Spirit Catholic Radio Network Spotlight community. Superior Nebraska,

St. Joseph is the parish, Father Adam Sparling. Sparling is the pastor. They're in the diocese of

Lincoln listening to 91.5. They're known as the Victorian capital of Nebraska. The Victorian

capital. Pinkies up. There we go. It's 714. And we're going to talk with Tom Venzer, the executive

director of the Nebraska Catholic Conference next. Starting your day the right way. This is Spirit

Mornings on the Spirit Catholic Radio Network. Again, speaking with Tom Venzer with the Nebraska

Catholic Conference, he is the executive director and we just had a legislative update. So tomorrow

marks day 60 of the 60 day legislative session. What work is left for the senators on their last day

of the legislative session, Tom? Good morning. Before I jump into that, I want to know if we have

the Victorian capital, if we have an illicit beef and capitol. That's really important.

Then I will I will research that for you, Tom and get back to you in two weeks when we have you.

Yeah, let's report report back in two weeks. Wonderful. Okay. Well, good. Yeah, so yeah,

tomorrow is the last day of the Nebraska legislature. You know, they started back in January. They

had a 60 working day session. And so basically, honestly, oftentimes in the last several years,

the legislature has not gone to the final day. They've usually terminated all their business prior

to day 60 or day 90, but this year they needed day 60 to kind of wrap everything up. So what

we're going to be seeing tomorrow is really going to be just a lot of formalities. So this is the

end of a two year legislative session. And on the last day, there's a whole kind of litany of

procedural formalities that the legislature has to go through. So for example, any bill that is

still alive, they actually have to kill it. They have to do what's called doing indefinite postponement

so that those bills sort of life is terminated for good. They have to order that the journal is

finalized. So they have to do a bunch of things that are just sort of procedural in nature. But they

also, when the governor does vetoes, they often use the last day for veto overrides so that they

have an opportunity to vote against the governor's vetoes. But right now, we don't have any of those.

So there will be no veto overrides tomorrow at this point. And then also something maybe on the

last days provided farewell speeches. So you've got senators in there who've served. You've got

about a dozen of them that have served eight years. There's one senator that's uniquely situated

where he served ten years because he was appointed for a couple years prior. And they will give

their farewell speeches. So that's always kind of a, you know, kind of a last day of school farewell.

And it's very beautiful because they reflect on their many years of public service. What it meant to

them, the sacrifices that they made, the good things that they think they've done. And then they

write off into the suns that, you know, legislator's will go back to their district, to their district.

They'll sort of go back to living kind of a normal life. But oftentimes senators will spend a lot of

their interim, a lot of their break time from this session to the next session. They're going to

obviously get some R&R that they definitely deserve. But they'll have a lot of meetings in their

district. So if your, you know, if your senators coming back to the district and you're interested

in meeting with them or talking with them, the interim is a great opportunity before they have a

little bit more flexibility in their life to get together with constituents to hear them out.

But they will also begin the process of researching legislative bills for next year, right?

They've only got eight years in the legislature at max. And so they need to get on to the work

that they need to do for the next session. So senators will begin already researching bills that

they want to bring for next year. So that'll be kind of what goes on in day 60 and beyond here

at the Nebraska legislature. All right. Lots of stuff for them to tackle tomorrow. But let's talk

about the good news and some of the amazing bills that's in Nebraska Catholic conference helped

get passed this last year. Yeah. So, so some of the good news of some of the bills that we did get

passed. We basically, so some of the good bills are that we had about a hundred bills that we

worked on. So we worked on a lot of bills over this two year period. We supported about 69 bills.

We opposed 21 bills. All of the bills that we opposed that had major bad things in them

were defeated. So that is really good news. So the good news is oftentimes passing things,

but the other good news is a defeating bad legislation. And so we've done this now for several

years, maybe even 10 years or more, where we have had every bill that we oppose. Basically does not

get passed into law. But out of the 69 bills we supported, 28 of those were passed into law this

session or so over those two years. We've passed 28 bills. So we're batting about 400, which in

legislative, in the legislative world. That's pretty good. You know, that's a very good

successful two year session. So some of the, you know, just highlights of some of the things we

did pass this year specifically or things like our prenatal plus program. There's, there was some

changes to that program. That's a program that basically helps low income mothers who are in need

of support during pregnancy and postpartum. We also got some tax credit programs passed for

domestic violence service providers. So we have capital charities, capital social services,

that do tremendous work in the area of domestic violence and helping women flee from that.

There'll be a tax credit program that helps them. There's also a requirement for mental health

care practitioners to have continuing education on domestic violence. Domestic violence is becoming

it's becoming sort of more and more of an issue. And we want to make sure our professionals,

like our mental health providers, you have a better grasp of domestic violence so that they can

identify it and help out treat it in those sessions with their clients. We passed legislation to

more rigorously penalize people who produce what's called CCAM, which is basically child sexual

abuse material that's being done online, especially as we see the proliferation of AI.

We're going to basically have laws that go harder after people who do that. Taxes on social media

companies to ensure that those companies who are producing all this social media and having negative

health outcomes, particularly on the mental health of young people that they're being sort of

taxed on that work. We've got other things in the education world, free school meals,

certificates on reduce meals, cybersecurity threats, assessments and frameworks for schools.

So there's a variety of things that we did get past this session that are very meaningful and

that we'll contribute to having a lot of good laws that are on the books.

Great. Again, we're speaking to Tom Venzer, executive director of the Nebraska Catholic conference,

given us a legislative update. Now let's take a moment to talk about some of that bad news,

which is that some of the major priorities of the Nebraska Catholic conference didn't even get

scheduled this session. So Tom, tell us more about what these bills were and why this happened.

Yeah. So in the Nebraska legislature, you know, we had over 1200 bills that were introduced

or for the legislature to deal with all those bills. It's not realistic. So what they do is they

have a thing called the priority bill mechanism. And this is a way that a senator says, hey,

this one particular bill, this one's really important to me. And that usually, I would say most

sessions that that guarantees that that bill is likely will be heard for debate by the full

legislature as long as the bill has been out of committee. But we have three major bills that

were designated as priority bills by different senators. And they've got out of committee,

but they didn't get scheduled. And that was really, really, really disappointing. I can't tell you

how disappointing that was because for a couple of these bills that I'll talk about in the moment,

they had been designated as a priority bill, very early on in the process. And there was

ample time in the schedule for the speaker of the legislature to schedule them, but they never

did get scheduled. One of those bills was LB512, which was the Chemical Abortion Safety Protocol Act.

This sort of protected women from a profit hearing abortion industry, right? We know the abortion

industry is out there really not for the health and welfare of the mom and certainly not to help

the welfare of the baby who always is deceased by the end of an abortion. But basically,

this bill would have required screening for the health and safety of women. It would have

required certain follow-ups to ensure that we have reporting on abortion complications,

which we currently have very little to know data in Nebraska about that. And so then the abortion

industry is able to say, oh, everything's fine and well. There's not complications.

When we know that's not fundamentally true. And so this bill would have been a major cost to

the abortion industry, and it would have helped protect the safety and welfare of women.

And basically, that bill got out of session, got out of committee, Senator Rick Holtcrop

designated it as his priority bill back in February. It's been out of committee since last March

in 2025, and it didn't get scheduled. And so that was really, really disappointing because we were

very close to having all the votes on that. And having a vote on that bill would have given

us a chance to actually try to get all our votes together. So that was a major pro-life bill

that sort of failed because of lack of scheduling. There was another bill, too, LB730.

This is a bill from Senator Kathleen Caleth in the Omaha area. And she's been going really

hard on opposing transgender ideology and all the terrible things that that's doing,

particularly to minors, but just in general to our culture. So LB730 would have

ensured that schools and governmental entities would designate bathrooms and locker rooms by sex

and ensure that those facilities are protected from the opposite sex. But basically, making sure

that men are going to men's restrooms and locker rooms, women are going to women's

bathrooms and locker rooms. And it's common sense, right? But this is the type of legislation we

have to pass in the culture that we currently exist in. So she had that bill ready to go, ready to

be debated, and it did not get scheduled. So that was super disappointing that such a common

sense bill did not get scheduled for debate, and that was her priority bill. Now, notably,

she tried to amend that bill onto a different bill during debate. And she was getting,

she was going to be successful to get that bill amended onto another bill. But what happened

was when she attempted to do that, the sponsor of the other bill decided to withdraw their bill

because they did not want her bill to be successful. So through procedural tactics, Senator Caleth

all those got that bill attached to another bill in successfully passed. But the other senators

said, no way I'm not letting my piece of legislation be the vehicle by which that bill gets

goes forward. So that was part of the politicking of the body this session. So those were a couple

major bills that didn't move forward because they simply didn't get scheduled, which was terribly

disappointing. Tom Benzer, can you explain the way that this happens? Because you're talking about

these senators and they you're talking about they are using terms like my bills when it's actually

they're elected for the people. And and then who is scheduling this? So if there's ample time

for it to get scheduled, then why is it not getting scheduled? If this is something that a huge

majority of people want to see happen, safety protocol for women, getting a chemical abortion,

whether it is the woman getting the chemical abortion, she would want that safety protocol,

or for a pro-life person, I would want the safety protocol so that less people would get

get the chemical abortion. So what is the protocol in getting it scheduled if it comes up for debate?

Why is it not getting scheduled? Yeah, so that's a great great question. So at the end of the day,

the schedule of the Nebraska legislature is determined and is determined by the speaker of the

legislature. That is one of his main functions, which is to every day, you know, put out the schedule

for the next legislative day. So he has sort of total control over over how he manages sort of the

flow and the workflow of the legislature. And so there were a number of bills this year, probably

about 15 or 17 bills of senators that did not get scheduled for debate, even though they were

prioritized and many of those were out of committee. And so with some of these bills, like we just

talked about the chemical abortion safety protocol act, the bill to ensure that, you know, people are

using bathrooms and locker rooms based on their sex, you know, those were likely not scheduled

because those were going to be bills that were going to require four to eight hours of debate time,

and he just probably didn't want to take up that much debate time with bills that were also

going to be very controversial. And so, you know, the job of the speaker sometimes, he feels like

he needs to ensure that there's a good flow, that it's not overly controversial, that senators

are getting along, that they're getting work done. And so that's likely why he did not schedule

these bills. Also, sometimes when those bills, it's not clear if they have all 33 votes that they

need. Sometimes the speaker will say, hey, I'm not going to put it up for debate if you don't clearly

have all your votes. But the problem with that is, is sometimes you need to take the vote to

actually put pressure on people to get them to actually determine how they're going to vote or not.

Sometimes you have people who are notorious for telling you, well, I'm not quite sure where I am

on the issue. And you need a vote to basically sort of figure it out. And so, so those are some

of the reasons why a legislative bill sometimes is not scheduled. But again, in this circumstance,

like you said, these are bills with broad support across the public. I mean, we're talking 60, 70 plus

percent support across the general public. And yet they don't get scheduled in the Nebraska

legislature. And that's really disappointing because it very much feels like the pro-life voice

wasn't heard. It doesn't feel like the voice of those who want to protect kids from kids in the

general public, from transgender ideology. It feels like our voice wasn't heard because we didn't

get a chance to get scheduled. And well, overall, I think this really seems like a good legislative

session, even if some of the things didn't get scheduled. And some of the bigger priorities of the

NCC didn't cross the line. But that's okay because, you know, we'll get around to it next time.

Turning it away from the Nebraska legislature, though, I want to draw our attention

to the national and international stage. No, don't time. Running short on time here. Okay.

Well, we'll get that next week. So we talked about it last time, but it's worth talking about it

again. The primary election is less than a month away. And already people are starting to do early

voting. What advice do you have, Tom, for Catholics for the upcoming primary elections?

Yeah. So with the primary elections coming up, here's what Catholics need to do. First of all,

participate. Be a person who votes. Don't neglect that responsibility. Don't neglect that duty

in that right privilege of voting. So participate in the upcoming primary election. Primary

elections, especially in the midterm, there can often be really, really low participation rate.

So let's make sure that we as Catholics are helping to have a high voter participation rate

in the upcoming primary election. Second of all, pray, pray about your votes,

pray about the candidates, pray about the issues of Catholic social teaching and how you can best

apply those and to be a good faithful steward of your vote and to be a good disciple of Jesus Christ.

Next, study the candidates and study Catholic social teaching. So take a look at the candidates

that are on your ballot. You can go find sample ballots. You can figure out who the candidates are

that are going to be on the ballot in front of you if you don't know that today. And then,

you know, check out their website. You know, call them, email them. They usually have forms

on their website. See what they're all about. You know, go to voter guides. There's a lot of

organizations that do voter guides. We typically do one. We just weren't able to pull one off

this year for the primary, but hopefully we'll have that for the general. But study, you know,

study the candidates, know where they stand. Look at voter guides from organizations you like.

Look at voter guides from organizations you don't like because that can be very informative

in terms of how other organizations see candidates. But also study your Catholic social teaching.

Look at the document. I have forming conscience for faithful citizenship from the USCCB,

from the US bishops. Faithful citizenship, US bishops, and look at that document.

And that will really help guide you in terms of the major issues of what we need to know about

and how we should be thinking about this Catholics. But ultimately, after you study,

go back and pray a little bit about those candidates and about how you can apply Catholic social

teaching to those topics and issues and people so that you can vote well and you can participate and

you can be part of that primary election process that we're going to be seeing here in a matter of

weeks. So that's the advice I would offer, you know, with pray, study, pray, participate.

Yeah, pray, study, pray, participate. I love that line of action there, Tom Venzer. It's been

really nice catching up with you as usual on the latest of the Nebraska legislature. We'll get a

update in a couple of weeks where we can wrap up things even more as tomorrow is their last day.

To learn more about the Nebraska Catholic Conference and what they do, please visit their website.

It's very easy to get to. It's ne as in Nebraska, necaflex.org or check out their social media pages

on Facebook and Instagram. Tom, thanks for all the work. We pray for you and those that are

working hard at the Nebraska Catholic Conference. Have a blessed day. You gotta bless you all. Take care.

Spirit mornings on the Spirit Catholic Radio Network at 733. We're going to keep our eyes on Nebraska

coming up next Nebraska students stepping up in a big way to care for others in their community

and the impact. It's pretty incredible. That's next. Be sure to invite your friends and family

to encounter Jesus. Tell them to listen to the Spirit Catholic Radio Network. See the program

schedule at spiritcatholicradio.com slash programs. Dr. Marcus Peter and Deacon Harrell

Berksivers are bringing their this is the hour tour to Nebraska. Each event is free and runs

nightly from 6 to 8 p.m. with stops at St. Michael in Hastings on April 23rd, St. Joseph in New

York on April 24th. Mary R. Queen in Omaha on April 25th. St. John the Apostle in Lincoln on

April 26th and Blessed Sacrament in Grand Island on April 27th. Details can be found at spiritcatholicradio.com slash hour.

I have a pleasure to introduce you to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic

for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with the liberty and justice for all. We are the students

in Rock Valley Catholic High School. You're listening to the Spirit Catholic Radio in counter Jesus.

The Eucharist is the beating heart of our faith and you've got questions. Why does the Eucharist still

look and taste like bread and wine? The Eucharist still looks and tastes like bread and wine because

while the substance of the bread and wine changes into the body and blood of Christ,

their accidents or appearances, what we can see, touch, taste and measure remain. This is all part

of the mystery of transubstantiation. It allows us to receive Jesus in a way that is suited for us

as human beings without having to consume him in his natural glorified form. It requires faith

to believe that what appears to be bread and wine is truly the body and blood of Christ.

We hope this answer ignited your understanding of the divine mystery of the Eucharist,

the true body and blood of our Lord. A gift beyond measure.

It's now time for the Spirit Morning's Good News Update on Spirit Catholic Radio.

Brought to you by We Feels, Eatery and Bakery on 89th and Maple Anoma with a drive-through

option. Find them online at WeFieldsCatoring.com. A group of students right here in Nebraska is

making a real difference and showing what it looks like to serve others with a heart.

It was at Creighton Prep in Omaha. Students recently led a coordinated effort, service

effort focused on supporting local families in need. It was actually through donation

drives and hands-on volunteering. They gathered food, clothing and essential supplies for

community organizations across the Metro. In the student leaders that helped organize the effort

from the ground up, they planned collections, they were rallying their own classmates,

they even delivered items directly to those who needed them most. Faculty that were involved

in the project said that what stood out wasn't just the generosity, but also the initiative

that students were taking. They saw a need and they took responsibility to meet that need.

It's a larger part of what our culture of service at that school, where students are regularly

encouraged to put their faith into action, not just in these big moments, but also in everyday

choices to care for others. And that's what makes this story, of course, so powerful because

there reminds us that our faith isn't just something we say, it's something we should be living.

In the letter of James, we're told that faith without works is dead. And here we see faith in action.

Young people choosing generosity over convenience, service over self, and living out that call to

love your neighbor. And that's your good news update on Spirit Mornings.

That's so sweet. I love that spirit of service that students are living when they're younger

and they will continue to live that out. It will serve them well, no pun intended, but it will

serve them well in their later life and when they are grown people when they're older, so praise

God. I had a moment like this, my senior year of high school, and I forget what the project was

called, but anyways, at Darling Catholic High School in Des Moines, the seniors would always do this

project where you would essentially raise money, you would get into little groups of like four or

five classmates, and then you would raise money and purchase gifts to supply a family who otherwise

wouldn't have Christmas presents for their kids. And we would then meet personally with that

family and get the presents under the tree and help the parents get it all set up. So when the

kids come in Christmas morning, they can, you know, find these presents. And I remember looking

at the items and you would get a specific family, you know, the names of the kids and what they

were, they had what they wanted and what their sizes were and things like that. And so of course,

you gather the needs first, but then, you know, if there's some money left over, hopefully you're

able to get a few wants. And I remember one of the ones that one of the kids had wanted, there

was two young boys in our family that we had. And one of them had wanted this nerf gun. And I

actually had one of those nerf guns. So you want to get that for him? Oh, and I love that. I love

that nerf gun. I had a lot of fun playing with that growing up. And so yeah, we went and found

that nerf gun. And then the other kid had wanted an Xbox and all of us in our group, we all had

game together growing up. We all had Xboxes and play with each other. And one of the kids,

one of the kids in my group was getting rid of his old Xbox or excuse me getting a new Xbox,

he had a relatively new Xbox still that I don't know if younger brother had or something like that.

There was some backstory there. But anyways, he had this extra Xbox otherwise wouldn't be able to

afford it. Those can get pretty pricey. And so we packaged that one up and we saw the original

box and everything. We taped it all up and put it in a wrapping paper. We had a girl help us

wrap it because none of us were very good at wrapping it. So she helped us wrap it and then we

had already go. And we were so excited to see what the kids, the looks on the kids faces.

But we were kind of sad because we weren't going to be there Christmas morning to see it.

So we got there a couple days before. I think it was like December 23rd maybe. And we're

delivering these packages to the parents and the mother opens the door. The father, I think,

was out of work. And so she was, you know, of course, just so grateful. Tears, you know, the whole

thing. And she goes, come in, come in, please. Thank you so much. Thank you. They're going to

this is going to mean the world. And so we told her what was in one of the packages. And we said,

there's an Xbox in this one here. And she goes, I mean, she just couldn't believe it. She almost

dropped her knee. She was just like, so great. Right. Well, that's an expensive and expensive item.

Yeah. And the boys had actually come home early from school that day. They walked back from

school. School must have been close by. And so they had accidentally came upon us delivering

these presents. And they walked in. And they, you know, at this point, they still didn't know what

was in them. But they just saw the wrapped presents. And they all, they all, the two boys,

I think there was a young girl too, burst into tears. I mean, they just were. So you got to see

the reaction. Yeah. So like, they didn't even know what was in there yet. But the fact that they

were getting something meant the world to them. And it reminds me every day to be grateful for

the things that I have because I didn't have. And to me to serve the community, though, that's

what it reminds us like these young young men at Creighton Prep. And there's, there's groups all

over at different schools that do service. We talked about that with the librarian yesterday

at Archangels. She runs their service project. So they do that in schools all over. So it will,

they will continue in their lives. They'll remember what they did. The joy they got out of that

jab. The joy that you got out of seeing those kids and their faces. And it will continue to remind

you, you need to do that in your, in your 20s, in your 30s, in your 40s. It's a constant reminder

that I got to be grateful for the things that I have. And we all have because, you know, especially

our modern culture, go on social media, you're always being advertised, right? There's constant

ads for the things you don't have and the things you want and desire and don't need and don't

need oftentimes. So yeah, it's just that every day reminder, even the socks and the shoes you

put on every morning, be grateful for those things because some kids, some people don't even have those.

So you have to say a little prayer for the generosity. Here's something cool. We're going to be

reminded of how there are pilgrims, pilgrimages very close to us, even in the state of Nebraska

that we could go visit. And someone has compiled that and put it all together. So after we hear,

oh, let's do a quick check of weather though. Yeah, we can do that really weather.

Start with some fair conditions all across the state, sitting about around 50. But we are

going to heat on up to mid 80s today. We have sunshine with the slight breeze throughout most of

the state of Nebraska in the western side of the state of Nebraska. Reach in a high of 76,

a little bit breezier out there. There is that red flag warning still going on, but it should

end at some point today. So yeah, continue prayers for those wildfires. I hope those are all

under control. It sounds like those are all been kind of wrapped up, but continue prayers for those

that suffered losses because those will impact for a while. And now you are up to date. Thanks

to spear mornings. There's a beautiful movie, new movie interview the executive director and the

director, the executive producer of the movie Our Lady at the Center. You'll hear the interview

tomorrow. We are going to have an encore show tomorrow so we can attend the funeral of Mr.

Montess, Damien Montess's dad. And so it'll be an encore show tomorrow. You'll hear this interview

about Our Lady at the Center. The movie will be airing in Lincoln on April 26th and Lincoln at

1230 in the afternoon at the North American Martyrs. And then at 6 p.m. and Hastings at the

Hastings Museum. If you want information, you can find it at the Catholic Diocese of Lincoln

website. So go check that out. Beautiful movie about the Our Lady of Loving apparition. So check

that out today. If you can, it's 744. And at Saint of the Day, it's Saint Bernadette,

a Subaru. One of my favorite saints. Yes, I know. I know. I know. They're all your favorite.

But I do know you really love Saint Bernadette. Oh, I just love Saint Bernadette. If you get a

chance, watch the movie, classic movie, Song of Bernadette today. It's free on YouTube. You can

find it free on YouTube. Song of Bernadette, here's more about Saint Bernadette.

This is Francisco Media's Saint of the Day for April 16th. Today, we celebrate Saint Bernadette

Subaru. Tiss, tiss, what is the problem with that poor ignorant girl who claims that the

Blessed Mother has appeared to her poor Bernadette indeed, the uneducated French peasant who first

reported visions of Mary and Lord's France at 1858 was disbelieved by clergy and dismissed

by townspeople. But she wasn't shaken. She insisted that Mary had appeared to her 18 times

over six months. And she reported the Blessed Mother identified herself as the Immaculate

Conception, a title given to Mary by Pope Pius IX, only four years earlier.

According to young Bernadette, Mary called for the conversion of sinners through penance.

She also urged people to visit the place of the apparitions and ask that a church be built

on the site. Since then, millions of people have bathed in the springs at Lord's and many have

reported miraculous healings. Bernadette joined the Sisters of Notre Dame at Navarre. There she lived

as Sister Maria Bernarda until her death in 1879 at age 35. She was canonized in 1933.

There's more about the saints along with inspiration and Catholic resources at our website,

saintoftheday.org. From Franciscan Media, this has been Saint of the Day.

Saint Bernadette, pray for us again if you get a chance to watch the movie Song of Bernadette.

Please do watch that movie today. It is free on YouTube, but black and white film.

Jennifer Jones, she won an Oscar for her portrayal of Saint Bernadette in that movie.

It is movie making at its finest. Back when it movie making, it was an art. I don't know what some of

the movies are coming out today. You know, it's kind of turning back. There's more beautiful

Christian movies coming out and people are realizing we don't want that evil nasty stuff and

they're making beautiful movies once again. But that one, you can watch it with the whole family,

Song of Bernadette on the Feast Day of Saint Bernadette of Subaru. Today we're celebrating

Superior Nebraska. They're known as the Victorian capital of Nebraska. Strong connection to the

Victorian area architecture. They're the home of Knuckles County Museum, Historic Railroad Hub,

and local winery as well. That is Superior Nebraska. Saint Joseph is the parish and Father

Adam Sparling is the pastor. They're in the diocese of Lincoln. They tune into 91.5 and that is our

spotlight community Superior Nebraska. You can listen at 91.5 or you can tune in anytime anywhere

streaming all the time online at spiritcatholicradio.com or download that app and take us anywhere

you go. The app you could download for free at spiritcatholicradio.com. It's 747 and we can talk

about the 250 years of the United States in corporation with North American martyrs next.

This is Spirit Mornings on the Spirit Catholic Radio Network. His name is Brian O'Neill,

writer, editor and publicist. St. tombs.com and we're going to talk about finding pilgrimage sites

near you. Brian, welcome to the morning show. Hey, thanks for having me. How are you?

Doing wonderful. So for listeners who might be new to the idea of what exactly is a pilgrimage

and how is it different from just visiting a church or a shrine? A pilgrimage is something that

you make with intent to pray at a certain place. It could be a holy place. It could be a shrine.

It could be the tomb of a saint or a possible saint and trying to get their prayers and ask

for their intercession or the prayer at a certain place asking for God's mercy and help and all

that sort of thing. So that's what kind of a difference is just popping into a church and

saying a Hail Mary, although I guess there's nothing wrong with that obviously.

Well, you have a new personal project out, Brian, and it is about where we can find these

pilgrimage sites very near to us, maybe wherever we're at or if we happen to go on a vacation

somewhere, we can look them up and see how close we are to them. It's saints tombs.com. Tell us

about saints tombs.com. It happened because I went to Rome and came back and found out that

the church I visited has had many saints buried there at these places. And I thought, you know,

I could have gotten all these graces if I had known to pray at these people's tomb. And so I

sent about researching where every saint and potential saint I could find was buried. And then

I came across shrines and I came across other holy places and I started putting them in a list.

And this happened back in 2003 that it started, but websites have only been up since February.

And it's designed so that if you're in Bellevue, start be counting Nebraska. You can make pop

into the Arleady of the Lord's Grotto. Or if you're in Greta, there's the Holy Family shrine.

So there's about five places in Nebraska you can go and check out if you go to saints tombs.com.

But you can also see if you're going on a pilgrimage to someplace else in the world,

we're just visiting someplace else in the world. You can make a pilgrimage. So there's 133 countries

listed. So that's about just about every country in the world has someplace that you could go into

a shrine of or to or something of that sort. I'm sure you have Boys Town Omaha. Well, we just had

some exciting news because we have a venerable now with father Edward J. Flanagan right there in

the center of Omaha at Boys Town, USA. So that was pretty exciting for us a couple weeks ago.

And I updated him right away from server to God, the venerable. So you'll see that under Omaha.

Love that Brian O'Neill again, writer, editor and publicist with saints tombs.com. Love this. I

think a lot of people do think of places like Lords and Fatima when they think of pilgrimage sites,

but there are a lot of hidden gems closer to home that people might after an overlook. And that's

what saints tombs kind of does. So Brian, what makes a place a true pilgrimage site? I think we

should talk about this because not everyone's familiar. Is it history, reported miracles, personal

intention, or something else? It's the, you know, so for instance, in there's a place in

Pennsylvania, all of them, and they have the shrine of our lady, you know,

say that and done so. And it is, you know, it's the shrine. It's designed to draw people there to

pray to our lady under that appellation. And, you know, it's a pilgrimage site is something that is

designed to draw you in. St Joseph Church, which you just mentioned in the lead up.

They, you can go there, sit praying before the bus is sacrament, your prayers are kind of

erred, obviously. But it's not a pilgrimage site as such. A pilgrimage site is something that

actually has something of the draw you there in order to make, you know, in order to pray for

a particular intention or what have you. Now, Brian, we talked a little bit before we started

chatting with you that the 250th anniversary of the United States is coming up. And we want to

celebrate that. And you, I know you, because you're a publicist. And so I talk with a lot of the

authors that you're that we have a chance to get on and talk here on Spirit mornings with.

But you, this is a personal project, Saints Tooms, but you're also an author of some different books.

What are the North American, who are the North American martyrs? And what would it be,

what would happen if we would visit that area of the country?

Well, the North American martyrs properly called are the Jesuit priests who came to New

France, which is up in New York and lower Canada, back in the 1640s or so. And they're served to

the Indians there and were martyred by some of them. So you would find the shrine in order to

dedicate to them. They would have the relics of some of these North American martyrs. But keep in

mind, the first North American martyr put into the loss of life for the faith on what is now

U.S. oil. Well, the dining father, one day, Padilla, who lost his life in the border of Kansas

and Nebraska. It's a lion's Kansas. So if you ever drive the lion's Kansas, you'll see where he

was martyred and where he was buried. He died in 1542. The first so-called North American martyr

died in 1642. So there are hundreds of people who have been martyred for the faith on U.S. oil

and dozens who have lost their lives for the faith overseas. But important places like the

Server of God, Francis Ford, who was Bishop of China in China and the Communist Burgerton.

And you have a book, an entire book dedicated to 150 North American martyrs that you should know

martyrs that died on U.S. oil or that were born on U.S. oil. Is that correct?

That is correct. And it's North American, so it's Canada too. But mostly it's people in America.

In fact, most people don't know that the last person murdered for the faith on U.S. oil

happened in the 1930s. And you can read a story in 150 North American martyrs. You should know,

his name was Father James Coil. He was shot point white by a KKK member.

And was that in Alabama? That was in Alabama, Birmingham, Alabama on August 8th.

Yeah, and he was going to marry. I've been to the place where he was murdered and I've seen

the footage of his funeral where hundreds and hundreds of people showed up for his funeral because

they were protesting what happened to him.

Yeah, and he was because he had married a racial couple. And the father of the bride was not too

happy about it for the mildly. Yes, people came out because people came out because that wasn't

right because they're because because of the love of this priest and because of the love of those

families. Yeah, exactly. And there's stories of people persecuted by the Japanese, by the

Chinese, by people here in our own country, by the North Koreans, by the British.

There was a Catholic woman who was burned or not part of me home because they thought she was

awake because she couldn't do what to do for the violence, the power of the and the glory at the end

of the our father. She couldn't do that because she was Catholic and Catholic. She didn't say that

as part of the our father. So I was one of the reasons they decided to choose a way for name

that they had a good ego over it. She was embossed and she was basically put to death by

Reverend Cotton Nature if you've ever heard of him. Again, we're speaking with Brian O'Neill,

writer, editor and publicist, living in Lansing, Michigan. And he is the designer of the website

Saintsunes.com, learning about 150 North American martyrs that you should know. You've also

written another book, Brian entitled 39 New Saints You Should Know. And Jen loves all of our

saints. We just got done talking about this earlier on in the show. And today's saint of the

day is St. Bernardette. We go off of Francesca Media's website for that information. But anyways,

you've written this book with 39 new saints that we should know. Could you share with us one of

those saints that we should know? Her name is Mama Rosa. Blessed Erosia, for that reason,

she was a woman who was going to be a religious, but a man in the town went off. They cared

of sick relatives. And while he was away, his wife died and leaving two small children to raise.

And so she took over raising them until he came home. And when he got home, they said,

Rosa, we know you want to be a religious, but this didn't need to wife. And these girls more

importantly need a mother. And so they got married. They had ten of the children besides that.

Three of their children entered into the priestly or religious life. She took care of orphans

after World War One. She's just an amazing woman. How can you not love someone named Blessed Mama Rosa?

Yeah, I know. I love her already. Yeah. Sounds like a great life. Great life. She had a fantastic

life in Christ. And she lived for him. And she was basically alert that she knew scripture like the

back of her hand. So she is someone to look up to and emulate and follow as an example.

Publices editor and writer Brian O'Neil, you can find his books anywhere books are sold or

asked for them at a Catholic bookstore near you. Make sure you visit the website.

St. St. St. tombs dot com. St st. tombs dot com because there might be a saint near you that you

didn't know about. Have a blessed day, Brian. You should thank you all. Bye. Bye. Take care.

It's eight o'clock. And we have a prayer dedicated to Saint Bernadette Subaru next.

Thanks for listening to Spirit Catholic radio.

This is Father Larry Richards. I'm a priest of the diocese of Erie. And you are listening to the spirit

Catholic radio network.

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This is Spirit Mornings with Gen Brown and Damien Montez on the SpiritCatholic Radio Network.

Again, it's 8-0-1 on Spirit Mornings on the SpiritCatholic Radio Network and for those of you

who haven't heard Damien all week and heard him away a couple of times in the past two weeks

as Father fell ill two weeks ago. We were asking for prayers for him and he did pass away

over the weekend and he is funeral. We'll be tomorrow. So we're just asking for prayers for the

entire Montez family and we know that you're wonderful prayer warriors and you will do that. So

our prayers for our dear friend Damien as they're dealing with this difficult thing of the

visitation tonight and the funeral tomorrow. We just wrap him with hugs and just lots of love.

Hope perpetual light will shine upon him. Mont Damien Dan Montez is his dad's full name.

Beautiful. Yeah, continuing prayers for him. It's obviously a tough time and Damien's a pretty

jovial guy so he does a good job of not necessarily trying to hide it but he just does a good job

of being like-hearted and everything on the air. So you might not ever encounter that in the moments

that led up to this but all of us go through it and handle things in a different way and we

cope in different ways and so just pray for Damien and his whole family like Jen said because

it certainly is hard even even if it's not outwardly shown. He says I have Jesus and that is what

is getting me through this. That's his line this whole time. He's just I have Jesus. I'm leaning

on Jesus and that's what's getting me through this. And certainly we've seen that too just at his

time here at Spirit. We've seen Damien grow tremendously in his faith and all that stuff and

he's grown closer to our Lord and I think that has certainly helped him in these moments but

you know we need we need prayers as well. As we all draw closer to Jesus and we all have Jesus.

Here's something interesting. Millions and millions of people have come to the spring that Saint

Bernadette uncovered for the healing of body and spirit. She fell no relief from her illness though.

She died. Bernadette, so we moved through life guided only by blind faith and things she did not

understand as well as we almost do from time to time. It's hard to understand why people have to

go through suffering and why the people that we love the most have to leave us maybe suddenly

or even at the age of 75 or 95. It's hard to understand that but with blind faith we lean on

Jesus. Let's pray. Name the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Oh, Saint Bernadette, who as a meek and pure child did 18 times at lords contemplate the beauty

of the Immaculate Mother of God and received her messages and who afterwards wished to hide

herself from the world and the combat of nevers and to offer thyself there as a victim for the

conversation of sinners obtained for us the grace of purity simplicity and mortification that we

may also may attain to the vision of God and of Mary in heaven. Amen. Amen. In the name of the Father

and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. Saint Bernadette pray for us. Again if you

can watch the movie Song of Bernadette beautifully made movie about the life of Saint Bernadette

and the Immaculate Conception our mother who came to visit her so that more people could be healed

and a site built for her son, for her mother's son, for masses to go on, for prayers, all kinds of

things happening there. Millions and millions of people visited. So cool. And so check that out.

Song of Bernadette. It's 805 Spirit Catholic Radio Weather.

Start out in the upper forties, low fifties with fair conditions. But don't let that

bacteria because we got sunshine today reaching mid 80s throughout most of the state of Nebraska

with a slight breeze. Western side, uh, sitting around 76 for your high today and that red flag

warning still continuing, but should end at some point today. Uh, so continue prayers for all those

that are impacted by those wildfires. And now you are up to date. Thanks to spare mornings.

I've shared this before, but it was a while ago. So last August, I had the opportunity to go watch

my son coach football. And he coached at that time for Iowa State and Iowa State Play Kansas State

in the big, uh, big, big time game that they do every year in Ireland. They do this game.

Very beautiful stadium. Very fun. Airlingus Bowl is what it's called. I went and I was like,

I'm not going to Ireland without visiting our Lady of Knox Shrine, which isn't, as with

just a Marian apparition shrine. I flew all the way to Ireland. I went to Mass at the huge cathedral

at our Lady of Knox to be kneeling down in front of the presence of our Lord to have a pre-say,

the great, oh man, that's a part portion of the Mass. He said, the next thing you're going to say

is the most important thing you're going to say all day. You're going to agree to everything that

the Catholic faith believes in. You're going to agree to it and then you're going to come up and

you're going to say amen and receive Jesus. And so I flew all the way to Ireland to to understand

Jesus more. I went to a Marian apparition to understand her son more. I remember exactly what

the priest said. I remember exactly kneeling there. I remember that moment. I was drawn closer to

her son. That's what these apparition sites are for. Mary appears all over the globe, Ireland,

France, also our Lady of La Vang in Vietnam. You can go watch the movie about our Lady of

Vang, the apparition in Vietnam on April 26 in Lincoln. So she appears all over to draw people

closer to her son. That is her appointed. That's what she does. That's what mothers do. Amen.

They do to direct people to their son. Your mom so sweet just now was listening to you this morning,

heard you tell in the story. And she texted you the name of that thing that you were trying to

say. I couldn't remember the name of the project we were doing around Christmas time to help

families in need. And it is called Christmas baskets. Thank you. Mom. Yeah. My mother. That's

yeah. Very beautiful. That's what moms do. So there is our Lady at the center. A new movie about

the apparition at Vietnam and how she draws people closer to her son. It's 808 Spirit mornings.

Let's hear morning prayer from Father Grel and then the Good Book Club. A reading from the letter

of Saint Paul to the Romans. If Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin while the spirit

lives because of justice. If the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you,

then he who raised Jesus from the dead will bring your mortal bodies to life also through his spirit

dwelling in you. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Good morning to you on this Thursday of the

second week of Easter. My name is Father Loris Grel and I come to you from the parishes where I serve

as pastor St. Mary's in Weymour, St. Mary's in Odell and St. Joseph's in Barnston.

I remember a little girl, a parishioner who I visited many years ago at Children's Hospital.

She had taken up sick on a Friday evening just before we had stations of the cross.

She suffered a severe medical trauma at only about two years old. As I saw her hooked up to

tubes and machines at Children's, it was left to me to hold her parents hands and ask them to

trust in God. The child seemed as if dead, but the story has a happy ending through the skills of

the medical team and by God's grace, after being hospitalized for months, the child survived.

I think she is now approaching her teenage years fit as a fiddle. The faith of her parents was

rewarded by her miraculous healing. St. Paul today is saying in Romans chapter 8 that our bodies

are still subject to death and decay, but the great good news is that our spirits are subject

to a thrilling new life in Christ. If we live according to Jesus' law of love and repent if we do

fall again into sin, our original divine adoption from our baptism will be brought to completion

when God resurrects the bodies of the saints on the last day. God is truly our Father and the

blessed resurrection of Jesus from the dead completes us on the last day to be His sons and

daughters. Live as a son or daughter of God today alive for Christ Jesus. Alleluia, God bless you.

Alleluia, God bless you. Father, well, thanks for that morning prayer. It's 8, 10, and our

Spirit Catholic Radio Network Spotlight community superior in Nebraska. I don't know if the name

superior doesn't do anything with me in the Victorian capital of Nebraska. It's got to have

something to do with it, right? A strong connection to Victorian architecture. The Knuckles County

Museum is there at Railroad Hub, a winery and Lady Vestys hometown. Do you know who Lady Vestys?

No, I don't either, but her hometown, Lady Vestys, her hometown is superior, Nebraska. St. Joseph,

the parish, Father Adam, Sparling, the pastor, diocese of Lincoln. They listen on 91.5.

You know, I think we do have a resident fact checker. In fact, we were asking for answers to

another question, a pronunciation of a town. I think of his sign hour in Nebraska,

senior Nebraska and Father Broviac was our, yeah, he checked in with me on an email. So Father

Broviac, if you know why superior is name superior and why it's the Victorian capital and

who Lady Vestys. Lady Vestys. Lady Vestys. It's fun to say. I'll tell you that much. Yeah, Lady Vestys.

It's from superior Nebraska. Father's got a long history in Nebraska and he knows a lot of

this stuff. So Father Broviac, if you're listening this morning, go, go figure that out and set us an

email so we can share that with the listeners next week. It's eight 11 and we are going to

open those Bibles next. We have from the teacher at Dominican University in Chicago.

She is Dr. Rebecca Davis Matthias and she's going to help us open up Ezekiel chapter one

versus one through 14. It's now time for the Spirit Mornings Good Book Club on Spirit

Catholic Radio. As we open the Bible, let us learn how God's Word can provide reassurance.

The Book of Ezekiel.

Now it came to pass in the 30th year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month,

as I was among the captives by the River Kebar, that the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God.

On the fifth day of the month, which was in the fifth year of King Jehoyakim's captivity,

the word of the Lord came expressly to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzai, in the land of the

Caldeans by the River Kebar and the hand of the Lord was upon him there. Then I looked and

behold a whirlwind was coming out of the north, a great cloud with raging fire engulfing itself

and brightness was all around it and radiating out of its midst like the color of amber

out of the midst of the fire. Also from within it came the likeness of four living creatures

and this was their appearance. They had the likeness of a man. Each one had four faces

and each one had four wings. Their legs were straight and the souls of their feet were like the

souls of calves feet. They sparred like the color of burnished bronze. The hands of a man were under

their wings on their four sides and each of the four had faces and wings. Their wings touched one

another. The creatures did not turn when they went but each one went straight forward. As for

the lightness of their faces, each had the face of a man. Each of the four had the face of a lion

on the right side. Each of the four had the face of an ox on the left side and each of the four had

the face of an eagle. Thus were their faces. Their wings stretched upward. Two wings of each one

touched one another and two covered their bodies and each one went straight forward. They went

wherever the spirit wanted to go and they did not turn when they went. As for the likeness of the

living creatures, their appearance was like burning coals of fire, like the appearance of torches

going back and forth among the living creatures. The fire was bright and out of the fire went lightning.

And the living creatures ran back and forth in appearance like a flash of lightning.

From the Word of Promise Audio Bible, this is The Spirit Morning's Good Book Club.

Ezekiel with you, I'm excited about this, but let's describe this profound vision that is going on.

Sure. I thought that maybe we could do some exegesis and then some historical context, especially

as we get into the book of Ezekiel, which is a fascinating study. So if you notice here in the

first verse where it says in the 30th year that that actually is the fifth year of exile and the

fifth year of exile means that the Babylonian empire conquered Jerusalem and they did it in stages,

so three stages basically. And the first stage started in 597 and then it went to 586 and then 582.

And so Ezekiel actually was brought back into exile there in 586. And the interesting thing was that

that usually when they conquered another nation, the Ezekians would actually the Babylonians conquered the

Ezekians. And so they would take their occupied peoples and then put them say, and what like we see here,

it's right there next to the river of Chabar. And actually it was a section of area called Nippon.

And so they did that because Nebuchadnezzar II had a real incentive to build.

He was doing a lot of architectural advancement for Babylonian. And so he needed help to do that

and obviously slaves. So that's what the Jewish population were all about. They brought them in

to actually, so he could create his empire, make it grow, flourish. He actually created this beautiful

arch. They had eight gates around Babylonia. He used all the sturdy wood in town. Absolutely.

All of it. All of it. Yes. And so they built this fabulous gate called the Gate of Ishtar.

And it had, it was magnificent, you know, something like that we would see in France today.

You know, just gorgeous, blue-tiled. It had symbols of dragons and lions. Again, the symbols of power.

And so it was pretty ominous, you know, anybody in the world there who saw it just was basically

flabbergasted. You know, it was one of those moments where you just go, wow. They didn't have that

term back then. Wow. They didn't have P.T. Keane. You know, they have all those kind of funny,

funny phrases we use, a far out or anything. But it was that, that awesome. It's kind of like the

first time you go to a big city and you see this skyscrapers, your mind is blown about how

impressive this is. So the people at this time, especially, I mean, they had never seen anything

like this. Exactly. Exactly. So it was awesome. In that sense, awesome. So in taking a look at all

of this very descriptive language, again, because they didn't have words like, you know, we just

talked about, you know, far out and totally awesome things like that, that Miseko was trying to

describe taking implements of nature, you know, to really wholly inspire not only his fellow Jews,

because the Jews were pretty depressed, you know, that here they'd been conquered. They've

been enslaved. And so when Ezekiel comes then, he actually started his ministry at age 25.

Back then, you started becoming a prophet, you know, because he came from the, here it is,

the priestly family of the Zadakites. And what they did was they would start out in their training

and all the study of scripture and everything and then they're preaching and all. At about age 25,

so by the age of 30, they were then considered a priest. And so it took those five years. Well,

here Ezekiel is taken when he's 25. So here he is in the middle of, you know, trying to become a

priest. In exile. In exile. And so he's pretty depressed. He can't, he has no longer a temple in

Jerusalem to worship that, you know, to actually give all the prophetic edicts of the Lord and share

those. And so they're very, very depressed. So here he comes and he's in a pagan land, you know,

foreign land. And he's trying to, in essence, be in touch with God. He goes down to the river

there of Chivar. And, you know, he opens himself up and basically says, you know, Lord,

what are you going to do with me now? Since I can't do anything for you. Help me out.

Exactly. And this is what happens. Yes. This, this vision is what happens. And he, and then also,

when he's just describing the vision, he's using nature to help describe this vision as well. So

can we understand those? So then Rebecca's, we get into the, into the vision of Ezekiel in this

chapter one, the vision of the chariot or whatever he's describing. Is it like the Holy Spirit,

like the mechanism of something like a spirit that is going to help them? Yes. And then like,

like all of those mechanical things that he's explaining around the mechanism is like helping it

move. And it's going to help his people. Yes. Yes. He's reminding the people, you know, that God

is still in control. That basically when he talks about the chariot throne, you know, that God is

still on the chariot. God basically rules everything. Everything comes through him. And so he,

he is aware of everything that's going on. So he's telling his people, you know, you don't have

to worry. I mean, it looks like we're really in a bad space, you know, but we've actually been

through this before. You know, Jerusalem was conquered 44 times, you know, throughout history.

And 23 times it was pretty much sacked and all. But basically, there were two main

destructions of Jerusalem totally during his time, you know, in the Babylonian exile, and then also

in 70 AD. So it was just really interesting that he, you know, is so much in touch with God, he

wanted to just console the people and actually bring them into that sense that, you know,

you don't have to worry, really. God isn't. We have, and he describes it, you know, so beautifully

here, you know, where he talks about the rolling wheels, you know, that this is God continuing

throughout human history, continuing with his purpose. He's moving forward. You know, he's not,

in any way, that this setback seems to be such a horrible destruction. It's actually in God's

plan that he wants to, you know, bring that awareness to the people. And it's just such a beautiful

way that he allows God to not only comfort his people, but to give them a purpose, you know,

that this, you're going to get through this. God is right with you every step of the way.

In that sense, that God is so far, it seems, and yet he is also simultaneously right with you.

So close. So near. Yes. And so that is who God is out of his love for us. And that's why

I have to put our trust in the Lord. It's a good book club on Spirit mornings. We're speaking

again with Dr. Rebecca Davis-Mathis. She's a teacher at Dominican University in Chicago.

I want to get into this a little bit, Dr. Rebecca, because when we're putting together the audio

for this yesterday, these four living creatures really stand out. What is the importance or significance

behind these creatures? They are the cherubum. And actually in the ancient Assyrian and Babylonian

time there, they represented like almost like gargoyles, you know. And so they would have, I could

always the face of a human, but other bodies, other creature bodies with eyes and wings and

everything else. And that was mainly as a symbol of a guardian. So, you know, you'd see them on

tops of built. We see them. It's still, you know, to Chicago today and see them in all over

New York, New York, every right. So, you know, it's like a guardian of that building, that institution.

And the institution then not only was guarded, but it was a recognition that this is a centralized,

you know, traditional space. You're going to be safe here. So, but you have all these other

spirits in a sense guarding, you know, that this tradition, this institution. So, here's a question

for you. Maybe a little quiz. And we have the, with these cherubums, and each of them, they had

like a human face on the right of the face of a lion, on the left of the face of an ox, and each

had the face of an eagle. Well, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Very good. Okay, okay, you got it.

That was going to be the quiz. But now here we go a little deeper now. Okay, okay, a little deeper.

Now, Mark, the gospel writers. So, we always see the Old Testament, you know, manifest it in the

new and so, so what, what, the ox then would represent which gospel writer? I'm trying to think

of what, when I look, Mark is the man. Mark is the lion. Mark is the lion. Okay, you got the man

right, but who is connected with that? Matthew, Matthew, and then Luke, Luke would be the eagle,

ox. Oh, yeah, look at the ox, yeah. And then, now, why is that? John is the eagle, right, mainly because,

you know, the ox, you know, that beast of heavy burden, and Luke wrote the most, right? So, you know,

so he actually gets into certain issues, you know, with Jesus and the story. So he's like, like,

the ox, and especially he was writing for the Gentiles. So, you know, very, you know, appropriate,

especially being yoked with the Lord. If I was sitting in a church right now, all I'd have to do

is look around because I would be able to figure that out because you will see those symbols and you

will see those writers in every single church. And so you would probably be able to deduce the

answer in any church that you see. So next time you're in a church, look around and you'll see

those symbols. Exactly. The pre-creatures we just talked about. And in conjunction with the writers.

That's right. And you'll think of Ezekiel as well. Yeah, you will. So Ezekiel was the first one

to put that together. But then we see some of these same images appear again in the book of

Revelation. And actually, before that in Isaiah, you know, so here we have, you know, Ezekiel,

setting up a program, you might say, of, you know, how we relate to God through these beautiful

and very striking stunning images. And another thing that stood out to me as we're reading

these 14 verses is that God was still in control. Like these writers, they didn't get to veer off

and do what they wanted to do. They did what God was directing them to do to share with the people.

Did you get that feeling? Amen. Like they men. They stayed the course. They didn't turn and do

something else. They stayed the course that God was directing them to do. Exactly. Those wheels

that kept, you know, the wheels within the wheels. That's exactly what you're talking about.

Again, God's purpose, God's purpose first is still rolling on. The other thing too, that in

verse four, when here Ezekiel says, as I watched a great storm when came, you know, and then from

the north, well, the north was always associated with this judgment, you know, that the Lord was

actually judging Israel. Why are they in the mess that they're in right now? It's mainly

judgment of the Lord. In other words, what was going on with Israel? We know that they had the

divided kingdom. You know, there was Judah, there was Israel in the north with the 10 tribes,

and then Judah with the other two in the cell. And so he was seeing that there were all kinds of

idolatry that was happening within those kingdoms. And so the Lord was quite concerned, you know,

how am I going to bring them back together? How am I going to show them that I am the Lord?

They have to only trust in me. And so what he does is he allows them, these kingdoms, you know,

to ravage them, Israel and Judah. So basically what happens is that when Jerusalem falls and those

stages, you know, that the Lord's judgment is being pronounced upon his people. Now what are the people

that he loves the most? What are the people feeling at this time? Are they losing confidence in the

Lord as they're being ravaged through these wars? Absolutely. Because they are, they are taught to

trust the Lord in everything. And yet they're seeing all of these, you know, assaults on them.

And actually they're scattered now that they can't even, they don't have a temple even to worship

here. And so they're asking God, what are you doing? What are you doing? You know, we had this trust

with you and you've broken it. And yet he's reminding them that it was they who broke the trust

with him. And he is always with them. And so he's putting them through this process of purification.

And what's going on today? So how do we relate to that today? With Ezekiel, with those people that

we broke trust with, they broke trust with God. We break trust with God all the time. And so how can

Ezekiel, these verses relate to us today? We have to take into consideration that, you know, God is

always there. In other words, that we can go to God, bring everything again to the foot of the

cross of Jesus, which hadn't happened yet, Jesus hadn't happened yet. But Jesus was still within

the story, you know, because of the redemptive power. So again, no matter what happens in our life,

you know, no matter how many trials we're going through, no matter how many assaults we get,

that actually if we bring it all to the Lord and trust him, he's got a bigger picture for

better good for you in mind. And so it's that trust that he's looking for, you know, how is he

building that trust relationship with you? And he does it again in a very dramatic way here,

just to give you an idea too, that, you know, here Ezekiel was recognized, you know, not only as a

great prophet in Judaism, but also in Christianity and even in Islam. So here we have, you know,

a wonderful prophet who's actually pronouncing, you know, how do we have this relationship?

Keep the trust with the Lord, no matter what happens. The other thing too, that

we speak of the grandeur in the majesty of God. And that's what the people needed to hear,

because they'd lost hope in a sense, you know, based on their circumstances, you know, that where

is our God? And I thought you were supposed to fight for us. They didn't recognize that he is

fighting for you. You don't see it in the way that you expect, you know, but he is still

fighting for you and wait and see to see what happens. So we do see anything we can say to ourselves

today, exactly. And that's in large part why they viewed Jesus as who was supposed to be to them,

this military leader that was going to come and conquer the enemies of Israel. That's it. So it's

going to start to way back. Yes. And it comes back to what you said earlier, which was if you can

kind of see past that, which of course, you know, it's easier for us today, but that purpose,

you said, wheels upon wheels, this is all part of God's plan, even, you know, like the assaults

that will suffer in our own lives, that's part of his plan because he's trying to teach us something.

That's it. And again, always to look forward, the purpose of always, again, you know, when we see

the imagery here, you know, that everything was to move forward, move forward, straight, straight.

I mean, he uses that term three times. And then, you know, we recognize here that for the grandeur

of God, just for instance, today, we notice that, that how many stars would you say that there are

there's a lot of fun billions. The biggest number I think of me too, me too. And actually,

they've actually noted that it's called a septrillion. And that means that it's three plus 24 zeros.

So that would be a septrillion. Okay, that's the estimate estimate, right? That's all we can do.

Wow. We've actually located 9,000 of them. All right. So you can see the difference between,

and just to give you an idea, one million seconds is 11.5 days. Okay, that's a million.

One billion seconds takes us back to the 1980s. Wow.

One trillion seconds takes us back 32,000 years. Remarkable. So if you think about septrillion

numbers, so God knows what he's doing. God is in control of every, and he's named every one of them.

Okay. So God is not just our God, but can be defined fully in descriptive words. And that's what

Ezekiel is struggling, you know, to bring to the recognition of his fellow Israelites.

Rebecca, as we continue through Ezekiel, this is the first versus first 14 versus what should we

be focusing on? Focus on the fact that what is Ezekiel trying to tell us here? He's got a story to

tell. There's so much more to come. And so he's building us a foundation of the grandeur of God,

you know, to make sure that you always look to the heavens first. Don't look within yourself,

you know, that's not until Jesus comes or Jesus and we're baptized. We have less sacraments

and everything else, but you know, right now, look to the Lord first and always, always trust in

that He has a plan, a plan not only for you individually, but for you as a people. Dr. Rebecca

Davis Matthias, thank you so much for being with us this morning. We appreciate that. And we hope

your students are wrapping things up with you teach online for the Dominican University of Chicago.

Yes. And our students wrapping things up? Well, I have their group research projects right now

to grade. Oh, yes. And then they'll be getting ready for their final exams on May 4th.

Well, prayers for those. And Dr., your insight to this is so incredible. And thank you for

sharing that with us because I do feel that even oftentimes, while we've heard the story of

Ezekiel before, it is a reminder that our, the majesty of our Lord is so great and grand

and we can forget that because we turn to the world and we forget how much that God plays a role

in everything that we do. What's the number, what's the number that they give the stars?

It is 32, I'm sorry, September, trillion, three plus 24 zeros is a 7 trillion.

Septrillion. Septrillion. He loves us. Septrillion. And by the way, Ezekiel and Ezekiel the rest

of the book is fascinating. You'll be really inspired by this. And we didn't think that some of the

prophets, you know, that we can't relate to them. Yeah. Just wait. Watch what's coming. Thanks for

back at. Have a great day. Thanks for being with us. Add to the Good Book Club. It's

heard Monday through Friday on Spirit Mornings on the Spirit Catholic Radio Network. You can tune

in anytime you'd like. Go to our website at spiritmornings.com and listen to this program that you

just heard this morning or listen to yesterday's or the day before we podcast every single show

at spiritmornings.com. The Good News Update at 834 is next. It's a Nebraska story. Some students

stepping up in a big way for others in their community. Be sure to invite your friends and

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Here's what's trending at spiritcatholicradio.com. Your favorite local Catholic programs like

cat in the cradle and that's real life are now available wherever you get your podcasts. Details

are at spiritcatholicradio.com. The Eucharist is the beating heart of our faith and you've got

questions. Why do Catholics believe in the real presence? Catholics believe in the real presence

because Jesus himself told us that the bread and wine becomes his body and blood. At the last

supper, Jesus took bread and said this is my body and then took a cup and said this is my blood.

The church has always understood these words literally not just as a symbol. This belief is called

Transubstantiation which means the entire substance of the bread and wine changes into the body

and blood of Christ even though they still look and taste like bread and wine. It's a great mystery

but we believe it because Jesus taught it. We hope this answer ignited your understanding of the

divine mystery of the Eucharist, the true body and blood of our Lord, a gift beyond measure.

It's now time for the spirit warnings, good news, update on spiritcatholic radio.

Brought to you by Wefield's eatery in Bakery located on 89th in Maple in Omaha with the

drive-through option, find them online at wefieldscatering.com. A group of students right here in

Nebraska are making a real difference and showing what it looks like to serve others with a heart.

It was at Creighton Prep in Omaha, students recently led a coordinated service effort focused

on supporting local families in need. They did this through donation drives and hands-on volunteering.

They gathered food, clothing and other essential supplies for community organizations all across

the metro area. And these student leaders actually helped organize the effort from the ground up.

They plan the collections, they're rallying their own classmates. Come on guys let's do this

and delivering items directly to those who need them most. The faculty involved in the project

said was stood out wasn't just the generosity that the students showed but also the initiative.

You see the students saw a need and they took responsibility to meet that need.

It's part of the larger culture of service at the school at Creighton Prep University where

these students are regularly encouraged to put their faith into action. Not just in these big

moments but also in everyday choices to care for others. And that's what makes this story so

powerful because it reminds us that our faith isn't just something that we say it's really

something we should be living out. And then the letter of James were told that our faith without

works is dead. And it's here we see faith in action. Young people choosing generosity over

convenience, service over self and living out that call to love your neighbor. And that's your

good news update on Spear Mornings. Way to go kiddos. Yeah proud of you. Beautiful. Keep up the good work

and it will continue to be something that you do. When you are older in your 20s, in your 30s,

in your 40s it'll all look different at those time frames. I love serving my small prayer group.

We serve at a a soup kitchen in council bluffs served last night and we had a great time. We have

so much fun. A new person served with us. He just moved to the area and so he just showed up on

this particular Wednesday night and by the end of the night he was part of the group you know

and then because we give each other a hard time and we know a lot of the people that eat on Wednesday

nights and go through the line. So we give each other a hard time and Anna the cook him. She was

catering to one of our guys that works with us. His name is Jim. He's in our prayer group. He's

a little older guy and she gave him a cup of coffee and we're like, Anna don't be spoiling him.

Now his wife Sonia is going to have to go home and spoil him too and she's like, oh sorry sorry sorry.

So yeah we just have a fun time and and it's just it's you know it's kind of just this glorious

joyful giving back in this you know some people would say a depressing situation but we're trying

to make it this you know beautiful situation and we smile and we tell them God bless you and

they say thanks for they say thanks for being here and we send it right back to them we're like

no thank you for being here. Thank you. We're always looking for role models Jen and I remember this

when I was a kid going with my grandfather to the food pantry and I did I had no idea like I

knew he did it but I didn't realize like how much he did it and his name was his nickname is auto

and that's what he kind of went by auto I should and we would get to the food pantry and

I didn't I didn't I had no idea so I just knew that he would go there and you know would help

out everyone sort out and do the different things that they've done. I remember showing up the

first time I get there and everybody that was at that food pantry knew him I mean hey auto I mean

as soon as he walked in it was just like okay this was a man who was here helping those he could

have been doing anything I mean really he was retired oh he could have done anything he could

be watching sports he could have been you know doing whatever he liked to do drink a beer on the

couch I don't know but here he was going to these food pantries and he had been there so often

that he was known as a regular there and you know it was through his acts of service that inspired

me to live out my acts of service and it was at that food pantry at the time but just in little ways

yeah you need to find a food pantry in your life I should find one and make auto proud yeah

one of the other things he did was he would go on the radio and read to the blind he was

he wasn't a radio professionally did he worked in a bank and I think he did a couple of

other things also served in the Navy but you have a photo of him in your office yeah I got a

photo of him at the radio station reading to the blind and that was one of the things he really

loved to do he always wanted to be in radio and never did it professionally but you can do that

you can do that you could do that there's a there's a radio reading book and you could do that

I can't read braille though no you could just read like your good news update you could read those

and give them to that radio service absolutely I should look into it easy button that you could

push a little fun fact for you Jen I know you know this but our listener may not the big the big

voice you hear on our station that records some of our spots you know a lot of our program line

was legal ideas his name is Craig he lives in Florida and he is legally blind and so he reads all

of those scripts that you hear on the network with braille that's how he reads it his wife converts

that yeah his wife converts it into braille we send it to her obviously digitally through email

you know sending all the way down to Florida and then yeah she converts it to braille for him and

then he sits there and reads those braille so like all the articulate ideas with the numbers and

the frequencies and the call letters all that's done through braille and he puts that together for

so beautifully and it's really remarkable you talk about the talents that God gives us

Gregor certainly has a talented voice maybe not the most talented eyesight but you know he finds

a way to use what God gave him in the most beautiful way praise God it is 842 we're going to hear more

about Saint Bernadette a Subaru next this is franciscan medias saint of the day for april 16

today we celebrate Saint Bernadette Subaru just just what is the problem with that poor ignorant

girl who claims that the blessed mother has appeared to her poor Bernadette indeed the uneducated

French peasant who first reported visions of Mary and Lord's France in 1858 was disbelieved

by clergy and dismissed by townspeople but she wasn't shaken she insisted that Mary had appeared

to her 18 times over six months and she reported the blessed mother identified herself as the

immaculate conception a title given to Mary by Pope Pius IX only four years earlier according to

young Bernadette Mary called for the conversion of sinners through penance she also urged people

to visit the place of the apparitions and ask that a church be built on the site

since then millions of people have bathed in the springs at lords and many have reported miraculous

healings Bernadette joined the sisters of Notre Dame at Naveire there she lived as sister Maria

Bernarda until her death in 1879 at age 35 she was canonized in 1933 there's more about the

saints along with inspiration and Catholic resources at our website saintoftheday.org from

Franciscan media this has been saint of the day Saint Bernadette pray for us i'll say it again and watch

the movie black and white movie song of Bernadette it's free on youtube you don't have to have

any download or anything to watch this movie and it's moviemaking at its finest and it's about

one of the finest things that you can see song of Bernadette and you can find it today free on

youtube superior Nebraska's our spotlight community saint Joseph is the parish father Adam

spiraling the pastor there in the diocese of Lincoln and they listen on 91.5 it is known as the

victorian capital of Nebraska so pinkies up when you go there jab it is eight forty four and

tomorrow on the spirit mornings we are going to have an encore show so that we can attend the funeral

of Damien Montez's father who passed away earlier this week so we're having an encore

presentation of spirit mornings tomorrow but you will have the good we will have mass prep and

the good book club as well tomorrow so look forward to that and thank you for bearing with us

and being patient with us and again please continue to pray for Damien and his family next

we are going to talk about something new it's now time for what's new and new on spirit mornings

love i did that gen great tease we're talking with the associate pastor at the newman center at

you and l father Alex sassy good morning to you good morning guys good to be with you good to be

with you as well father sassy if you could just give us a snapshot of the vibe at the newman

center right now with everything that just happened after glorious the easter vigil in so many

people coming into communion with the catholic faith yeah it's been a really exciting month and the

last couple weeks have just been so beautiful i mean obviously the end of length and then easter and

and really the holy week and celebrating the triton here is just pretty special because you know

most of our congregation like lives on campus or near campus so it's kind of like everybody is

together the entire week and the entire triton and we had 92 people that joined the church which was

just uh yeah it was it was just amazing and um and each of those individual stories you know you

could you could really spend the whole radio segment on those they're really really remarkable

conversions and just yeah it's it was just wonderful so since then the weather's been really nice

and the holy spirit's flowing and so the the vibes are high at the newman center these days which

is really good that's wonderful so is there any uh one particular story that really stuck with

the father sassy you know i think one that that's been really fun is we had one student who um came

to know the newman center he didn't really know much about christianity at all but he came to know

the newman center because he was competing or competing against one of our students that's here that

they ran for student government president at the university oh yeah and so they were actually

competing against each other well he lost and then he ended up endorsing her and because of that he

had to come around the newman center and like meet with her and all that stuff and well he got to know

all these people to the newman center and um started here at the gospel and uh he kind of jokily

proclaimed he's like well she wins i'll give my life to the lord you know it was like oh that's funny

and then and then she won oh i should probably look at this and uh he started looking at it and he

was like wow this is actually what i've been looking for this whole time like uh you know i

i finally feel like i found a home in this world and uh so anyway he was baptized at Easter and

this is a pretty pretty neat story of how student involvement on campus and the newman center's

representation on campus really leaves the conversion so that that is my that is a mind boggling

story because it's just how god works in the tiniest tiniest ways offsite off campus in in in a

political fashion in a government fashion right where this is happening he's seen something like

oh i'll do this and people like ha ha ha exactly and then the joke is all on us as he gives as he

is has his life is transformed beautifully in full communion with Jesus that that is beautiful

and that's just one of the probably many stories but what what are a few things like what are

a few things that the newman center has to offer like if the student has never walked into the newman

center before any newman center but that you and l the beauty just captures you i love your

territory the beauty just you could sit in there all day long and not be bored because you have

so much to look at so what's the easiest way like for somebody to get involved with the newman center

yeah great question i mean honestly a lot of people that were in oca or you know really any of our

ministries that didn't have any previous touch points with us a lot of times they just new people

in their class it in their dorms their roommates whatever that told them about it and some of them

just saw from social media and literally walked in the door you went to the front desk and said

hey i'm kind of interested in Catholicism can i talk to a priest so i mean it's it's kind of a whole

range but to answer your question i think you know really our first kind of stepping point for a lot

of people is usually getting people in a small group bible study we have about 100 of those and so

there's you know they're there are all times of the day and night and we just kind of joke that

this place gets taken over i think last time i was on i told you how there was a bible study in

the elevator one time but i thought the cap was pretty frightened by and still a lot of bible study

but you know we also have things that are less serious than that too i mean in the sense of you know

intermural with intermural teams so people can join intermural teams you know tonight we'll have

community nights we have mass at 9 9 10 pm and then after that there's going to be i think

today's yard games there's going to be you know like 50 yard games set up in our backyard so

we have a lot of easy invites for people to just come and enjoy our community and college

college type funds out thank fun things to do a college yeah i mean one of our most popular events

every year is in the fall when it's still really warm you know we do a like a massive slip and

slide out back and we literally just have we just have random college kids that just see a slip

and slide and they just come running and it's it's really fun and you know and and our students

are so good at welcoming people they don't it's not like someone shows up and they're like hey

let me tell you about the lord and you know kind of freaking out it's not like that it's really

we just have an abundant community here like it's it we're living the abundant life and people

want to be a part of that and when they're a part of that then they start asking questions of

why are you guys so happy like what is this you know yeah it's it's living out your faith in

the presence of everyone else father Alex sassy so as a pastor at the new minister and you and

l um you know and i think you talked about this a little bit but you know some people are

unfamiliar with newman centers and they just kind of think it's oh you know you tend mass or

Bible studies and uh what does discipleship actually look like on campus day-to-day father sassy

yeah so you know we really i joke this is this is not the correct way to put this but i always

joke it's a big pyramid scheme um sense of someone comes to experience the lord right and then

and they're walked with but well by somebody like let's say your friend your roommate took you to

the newman center you really have come to know the lord in a greater way just through daily prayer

returning to the sacraments all that kind of stuff well now your roommate is also starting to

like lead you in a bible study and he started to talk to you about your life and talk to you about

the choices that you're making and how do we actually live is holy and virtuous and and joyful

people in this world um you know that's what we call discipleship and so we train students how

it do that we train them how to have those conversations how to facilitate those encounters

and then they just begin to walk with you know their friends and the people in their door

and the people that are in there you know calc classes and stuff like that and then those people that

are receiving that eventually they receive kind of a a call to mission you know a wow i think

i need to start sharing the gospel too and so they start sharing it with people as well and so

that's practically what the discipleship looks like here it's it's um individual meetings or

meetings of a couple people at a time that they talk about different parts of the faith and how

to live them in a college setting associate pastor at the newman center at you and l it's

father Alex sassy you can go to husker catholic dot org and find out all the information that we've

been talking about about the newman center so father sassy what's been most life giving for you

as your priesthood on campus and then tell us a little bit about some of the changes that are

happening yes well um i mean there's many people in the diocese of Lincoln saw i'm going to be

changing assignments this summer it came out with the diocese of Lincoln clergy assignments

so i've been here for six years at the newman center and it has been just the best you know i

preached all the math is on sunday kind of saying goodbye to the students you know they only they

leave it like three weeks because of the school year and so i was really kind of saying goodbye to

them and and i told them you know the first time that i heard confessions at the newman center

i was a newly ordained priest i barely knew how to hear confessions and i was so scared and i went

and you know heard confessions for an hour and as i was getting ready for math i um i just had

this thought that you know all eight years of the seminary and everything i went through to get

ordained a priest the sufferings all of it all of that would have been worth it for that one hour

of confessions and what i what i didn't realize that but i've come to realize now is i'm like wow

no joke literally once a week since that time so for six years once a week i've had some kind of

experience in my life here at the newman center that has made me say the same thing you know so i

just feel like i've been drowning in mercy being here just because of the the the faith of the students

but also just the unique time of life that they're in like the Lord just moves quickly in this time

of their life to really change their hearts but i think my favorite thing has probably been

you know meeting individually with students and hearing their stories and

discerning with them you know what is the Lord calling me to and what kind of healing is he

may be inviting me into and how is it that Jesus wants to speak to me and so you know doing

spiritual direction of meeting with students has just been deeply life giving for me

um but my next step is i'm going to move to St. Gregory the great seminary and

Nebraska so a dots and seminary that we have and i'll be the dean of men and a teacher there at

the seminary and then i'll also continue working with the diocesively consumanarians and helping

to direct them and i'm sure that's the the next step and i'm sure your time at the newman

center is certainly uh got you well prepared for that next uh uh mission in life

i hope so father sassy you know in modern popular culture there's this misconception i think

oftentimes with the modern college student that they're out there partying and you know living in

immoral life what is one thing that you wish more people understood about college students today

and the faith that they have yeah beautiful question well i think you know the reason that they're

going out and you know you know partying and living it up and all of that i mean they're they're

just lonely like they they really want community they want connection they won't relationship and

and they're starving for it and i think especially a post covid world that we're living in i mean

the students that i'm currently ministering to you know we're in like seventh grade when

covid hit you know in eighth grade and it it really changed a lot of the way that people related

to them and they related to people and um anyway i i think that yeah they're they're really longing

for connection and relationship and they're so they're so willing to actually commit to daily

prayer i think that's a misconception i would like people to really understand about college students

we challenge the students like we want you to pray at least one holy hour a week but if you

what pray a holy hour every day and people that are walking to discipleship pray 30 minutes in front

of the blessed sacrament every day and the students commit to it and i'm not just talking like

15 students commit to it i'm talking hundreds of students commit to it and um and gosh when

you're spending that much time in front of the blessed sacrament and you're a young person and you

want relationship and the Lord is giving you an infinite relationship you can become a saint pretty

quickly and the students find once the mask is off of while the the party lifestyle and the college

lifestyle really isn't going to make me happy but Jesus might i mean it's it's all bets are off

at that point well if you're going to drown be drowning in mercy and praise be to god and let the

students have you can we get a quick blessing father absolutely to the intercession of our lady

may the blessing of almighty god the father the son the holy spirit come upon you and remain

with you forever amen amen we hope we say still get a stay connected with you at the seminary

father that would be wonderful yeah that sounds great thank you thank you that's father Alex

Cassie he's at the newman center at you and l go to husker catholic dot org for that information

tomorrow a encore show as we pray for Damien Montez and his family as he buries his dad keep them

in your prayers pray for us and we will pray for you we have mess and rosary coming up at 10 o'clock

stay tuned for that and may god bless you upon your day today as always we'll see you tomorrow

this podcast courtesy of the spirit catholic radio network to learn more about spirit catholic

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