CATHOLIC Apologist SHOCKS Protestant Apologist on the HOLY MASS

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-07

[00:00:00]Maybe it's just me, but why is it that every Catholic service I go to, I never hear a word about grace?

[00:00:06]>> Frank Turk, the well-known Protestant apologist, recently shared that his reason for leaving the Catholic Church was that he never heard a Catholic priest preach about God's grace in their homes. Specifically, the message that God has already paid the price for us and that all we need to do is place our faith in him. Now, this is an anecdotal experience, of course, and it doesn't constitute an argument either way.

[00:00:28]However, the fact that this was his reason for leaving is telling as it reflects how poorly catechized so many Catholics are. So, with that in mind, let's hear directly from Frank before we go any further. But I can tell you in the hundreds of masses I've gone to, I have never heard the gospel from the homaly, from the sermon until the last mass I went to, and that was my father's funeral when the priest came out and said, "I spoke to Frank the other day and he's accepted Jesus, so he's in heaven right now." He didn't talk anything about sacraments. He didn't talk anything about doing good works. He said he's accepted Jesus. So I said, Jimmy, why is it, maybe it's just me, but why is it that every Catholic service I go to, I never hear a word about grace in the sermon, you hear it through the mass, right, which is liturgy, which after you say it enough times, it just becomes, oh, I'm going through the motions, right?

[00:01:35]And so what Jimmy did is he actually did a response video where he said, 'Well, the gospel is all throughout the mass.

[00:01:43]Said, I emailed him. I said, Jimmy, that's not my question.

[00:01:46]Because repetition can cause people to tune out. Why do the priests never talk about grace?

[00:01:55]I still haven't gotten an answer. Now, as you can realize, this is a very bad argument. Frank Turk is essentially saying that simply because he never personally heard a Catholic priest in his parish preach about God's grace in a homely, he has concluded that the Catholic Church as a whole fails to teach it. That is a massive leap in logic. It's like going to a doctor for fever and because he never once mentioned about the mole on your back or brought up your blood pressure, you conclude that the doctor does not know anything. That's absurd, isn't it? Your doctor was addressing what was in front of him at that moment. He wasn't ignoring everything else. He was simply treating you according to the need of that particular visit. And a Catholic priest operates exactly in the same way.

[00:02:37]He preaches according to the needs of his congregation and the demands of the liturggical calendar, not according to one person's individual checklist. So which means a Catholic priest will preach on penance one week, suffering the next, then grace, then faith, then prayer, then forgiveness. The homely cycles through the full riches of the Catholic faith over time. That is precisely how it is designed to work.

[00:02:59]Just as a teacher doesn't teach the same lesson every single day, a priest does not and should not preach the same topic every single Sunday. But to truly respond to Frank's argument, we first need to understand what the holy mass actually is. Because once you understand that, the argument falls apart completely. Let's hear what Bishop Baron has to say.

[00:03:17]>> How do we best understand the Eucharist?

[00:03:19]Well, in its proper lurggical context, within the context of the mass, we hear first that Jesus went up a mountain with his disciples. Now, mountains in the Bible are invariably symbols of the encounter between human beings and God.

[00:03:39]Whether it's even the Garden of Eden is a mountain because the rivers are flowing out from it.

[00:03:45]Whether it's Mount Si where the law is given, whether it's Mount Zion where the holy city of Jerusalem and the temple are found, mountains are places of encounter. We go up, God comes down, and the two meet in this heightened place.

[00:04:01]What's the mass?

[00:04:04]But the mountaintop experience parks along the mass is the place where we go up where God comes down so to speak and the two of us now commune. It's a place of heightened awareness, heightened consciousness, heightened experience.

[00:04:22]Think of the story of the transfiguration. Similar thing and we go up a mountain and there the encounter with God takes place. So the mass is a mountaintop experience.

[00:04:35]>> Now isn't that something? As Bishop Baron explains, the Holy Mass is first and foremost a meeting between you and God. A real personal face-to-face meeting with the creator of the universe. And Bishop Baron describes it as a mountaintop experience. And what a description that is. Think about what happens on a mountaintop. You leave the noise of the world behind. You rise above the chaos, the distractions, and the busyiness of everyday life. and you find yourself in a place of clarity, of stillness, and of awe. That is exactly what the masses. Every time you walk through those church doors, you are ascending that mountain. You're leaving the valley of the world behind and stepping into something higher, something holier, something beyond the ordinary. And here is what makes it even more extraordinary. It's not just you talking to God in the mass. God is actually coming down to you. He's stepping into the world, into your moment, into your struggle, into your joy, and he's meeting you right where you are. Just as Moses encountered God on the mountain, you encounter God at the altar. And if that alone doesn't move you, let's keep listening because Bishop Baron is just getting started.

[00:05:40]>> We then hear that Jesus sits down with his disciples. Now we're going to miss this or say it's just a little tiny detail but see sitting down in the ancient world was the attitude of the teacher.

[00:05:55]Teacher would sit in his in his teaching place. Think of the bishop in the ancient church in his cathedra in his chair. That's where he would teach. The disciples would be then arranged at his feet.

[00:06:11]The mass is the mountaintop experience.

[00:06:15]What's the first part of the mass? We call it the liturgy of the word where Jesus speaks.

[00:06:26]The first reading from the Old Testament. Well, that's the logos of God speaking through patriarchs and prophets and psalmist.

[00:06:34]The psalm, our response to the word of God. The second reading whether from Paul's epistles or from John's epistle or Peter it's it's the word continuing to speak the gospel now in a very heightened personal way the logos Jesus himself speaks to us.

[00:06:55]The homaly is meant not to be the private musings of the priest but rather a continuation of an application of the divine word.

[00:07:06]The first part of the mass, the liturgy of the word, that's Jesus sitting down.

[00:07:11]We arrange ourselves, so to speak, at his feet and we listen to him. It's the first part of the mass.

[00:07:20]I just love the explanation by Bishop Baron. He makes the structure of the liturgy come alive. You see, the first reading is from the Old Testament where God spoke to his chosen people and then right there in between we get the psalm.

[00:07:32]The psalm is not just another reading.

[00:07:34]It is our response. Then the second reading continues often through the apostles deepening and fulfilling what has already been spoken. And once you see that rhythm, God speaks, we respond and then he speaks again. The whole mass stops feeling like a routine and starts feeling like a real living conversation.

[00:07:50]Finally, the priest standing in the person of Christ preaches to the congregation. This is how the liturgy of the word is beautifully and intentionally structured in the Catholic Church. And here is the point. If any one of those readings touches on grace, the priest is naturally going to preach about grace. The readings themselves determine the homely. The church does not leave it to chance. She has a carefully ordered liturggical calendar that ensures a faithful are nourished with the full breath of divine revelation over time. So to turn around and say as Frank does that he never once heard a Catholic priest preach about grace is quite frankly disingenuous.

[00:08:25]Let's keep listening.

[00:08:26]>> What's the second part of the mass?

[00:08:29]after the liturgy of the word, but the liturgy of the eukarist, the climax of which is the representation of the sacrifice of Christ. Yes, indeed, Passover is near at every mass.

[00:08:46]Every time we attend the mass, there's the slaughtering of this Passover lamb, Jesus himself, offering his body and blood for the salvation of the world.

[00:09:00]But listen now to the description in John.

[00:09:04]Jesus sees the great crowd gathered and he said to Philillip, "Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?" Andrew said to him, "There's a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish."

[00:09:20]Could God feed his people without any cooperation from us? Yeah, sure. He's God. He do whatever he wants. But one of the great master themes in the Bible is God delights in drawing forth our cooperation.

[00:09:36]At every mass, Christ speaks to us. We listen. At every mass, the great sacrifice is made.

[00:09:45]And at every mass, Christ feeds his people. That's the liturgy of the Eucharist. Christ feeds his people with his body and his blood.

[00:09:56]But he invites us to present to him the little that we have so that he might take it, elevate it, multiply it, transsubstantiate it so that we might be fed with the bread of life. You there's a moment at mass and and I want all Catholics now to pay special attention.

[00:10:19]The moment at mass when after the prayers of the faithful, everyone sits down. Usually a little music is played and then the ushers go around and they collect a a monetary offering from the people of God and then that that little offering of of bread and wine and maybe a little water are brought up to the altar.

[00:10:39]Sometimes I think for many Catholics that's like a little pause in the action. So, we've had the the first part of mass and now we're just kind of pausing for a moment while the ushers, you know, collect the the money and then we're going to resume mass once all that's over. No, no, no, no. That's an intricately important part of the mass.

[00:10:59]Why? It's Christ calling upon us to give him the little that we have. So, there he looks out.

[00:11:08]There's the great crowd. I have to feed this crowd with the bread of life. But first he says to his apostles, "Well, what what what do you have? What can you find?" And they find this little offering.

[00:11:20]And so we at every mass offer to Christ the little that we have, these monetary gifts and this little offering of bread and wine and water.

[00:11:34]But then he transfigures it.

[00:11:38]He elevates it so it becomes food unto eternal life.

[00:11:46]>> Now the final part of the mass, the liturgy of the Eucharist. And this is where everything changes. This is where God offers himself to us as food. Not symbolically, not metaphorically, but truly and really offering himself to us.

[00:11:58]And this is precisely why Christ himself said, "Unless you eat the flesh and drink the blood of the son of man, you have no life within you." Those are not mild words. Those are some of the most striking words Jesus ever spoke. And this is why the Eucharist is the highest form of communion that exist. Think about it this way. When you eat food, what happens? That food becomes part of you. It is absorbed into your body, into your blood, into your very being. You and that food become one. And that is exactly what happens in the Eucharist.

[00:12:27]When you receive the body and blood of Christ, he doesn't remain outside of you. He enters into you. He becomes part of you. He's absorbed into your very being. You and God become one. Which is why there is no closer communion than that. No prayer, no sermon, no song can bring you closer to God than that moment you receive him as food. That is why this is the highest form of communion.

[00:12:48]So when you step back and look at the mass in its entirety, the liturgy of the word, the living conversation between God and man, and the liturgy of the Eucharist, where God gives himself completely to you, to reduce all of that to nothing more than a preaching on topics is truly doing a disservice. And it stems from nothing other than a lack of understanding and poor catechization.

[00:13:08]I hope this video is helpful. Let me know your thoughts in the comment section. God bless you.