Paul on the Cross, Pt. 11

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:30]I'm Father Mitch Pacqua and welcome to Scripture and Tradition. Today we'll look at St. Paul's indebtedness to Christ and the death he suffered as Paul's means of justification and also how he wants the Galatians to do the same by giving up their choice for following the precepts of the law and its outward expressions. Now, of course, we invite you to watch our show anytime and catch all the previous shows by going to EWTN.com.

[00:01:06]And there you can search for scripture and tradition and watch all the past programs.

[00:01:13]If you have a question or comment especially related to today's topic, we invite you to be part of the show. Or you can do like these nice FE folks have done and be part of our studio audience or you can call in during the live broadcast which is on Tuesday at uh 200 p.m. And you can uh call us if you are in North America at 1-800221-9460.

[00:01:48]1 800221-9460.

[00:01:53]If you are outside North America, that won't work. But you can call in to country code 1, area code 205271 2980.

[00:02:06]So it's 1-2052712980.

[00:02:12]You can also email a question or comment to scripture and tradition.com.

[00:02:27]Now, we are continuing on in a Bible study that I wrote. It's called uh St. Paul on the power of the cross. You can get this over at ETN's religious catalog. It is ewtnrc.com.

[00:02:48]And if you go there, it is item 84075 84075.

[00:02:58]And if you already have the book, we are starting on page 72.

[00:03:04]So let's get into that.

[00:03:08]This is uh the beginning of Galatians chapter 3.

[00:03:15]And let's take a look at the text and then we'll go into it more detail. He starts off, you foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you. It was before your eyes that Christ Jesus was publicly exhibited as crucified. The only thing I want to learn from you is this.

[00:03:39]Did you receive the spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard?

[00:03:48]Are you so foolish? Having started with the spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?

[00:03:57]Did you experience so much for nothing?

[00:04:00]If it really was for nothing, well then does God supply you with the spirit and work miracles among you by your doing the works of the law or by your believing what you heard?

[00:04:16]All right. So this is um starting out kind of rough. Uh you can see of all of his epistles he is the most upset with the Galatians of all the communities to whom he wrote. Uh he he goes and re rebukes and chastises different individuals sometimes communities for a few things but he is not so mad at them as he is at the Galatians as we see here. He starts off with this, "Oh, foolish Galatians." This is uh what's known as evocative. You know, when you're calling to somebody, it's like as if he's crying this out, you fools.

[00:05:04]You know that he's he's very very upset.

[00:05:07]Um, and he's so frustrated that he sees their uh foolishness as perhaps being caused by some bewitching them. You know, this is um very difficult. And uh these are the people before whom Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed.

[00:05:35]And the word that he uses there indicates that they had drawn some kind of a picture of Christ crucified.

[00:05:46]So he it's got the Greek root grapho in it. Uh and he they made some sort of image so that we this is you know, a a little bit of a clue that the early Christians had crucifixes in this very early stage. again probably uh about uh 55 or 56 uh uh AD that Paul is writing this then uh and if they knew that Christ was crucified for them, how would they go for these wrong opinions that came from his opponents? Now, after sort of using a letter uh to yell at them and call them foolish, he asks a series of five rhetorical questions.

[00:06:43]Now, he knows the answers to these uh when he he says, "Let me ask you only this.

[00:06:52]Did you receive the spirit by the works of the law or by hearing with faith?"

[00:06:58]Well, the answer is obviously they receive the Holy Spirit by hearing of faith in Jesus Christ. So, that's one thing. Are you so foolish? Well, they'll probably not want to answer yes, but he does.

[00:07:16]That's for sure. He definitely thinks that they are being so foolish.

[00:07:21]Having been gone with this spirit, are you going to end with the flesh?

[00:07:24]Remember what the issue at stake is.

[00:07:28]They were taking on themsel that well some teachers had come to them and had gotten convinced them that they needed to be circumcised even though they were already baptized and that circumcision was a necessary part of becoming a Christian. So when he says that you're ending with the flesh, he meant that quite literally and he'll use that a number of times in this uh epistle, you know, m making reference to that. Um and so and then did you experience so many things in vain? And again, they would I I can't help when I'm listening to this thinking of some of the rhetorical questions my father might ask right before he would discipline me, you know.

[00:08:24]And in this case, did you experience so many things in vain? Well, no, not really. I I didn't mean it. That kind of thing. Um, and does he who supplies the spirit and works miracles do so by works of the law or by hearing the flesh? He concludes it with the question that came from the beginning. And it's of course the Lord does these miracles by their faith. That's that's what he's looking for. So he these five rhetorical questions are meant to hammer home uh how upset he is and just make it really clear. Again, uh Mr. Pacqua used to do the same thing to his son. So that's what's going on here. I don't think I was the only kid out there who received such rhetorical questions to explain yourself.

[00:09:21]Now he goes to the next section where he gives uh his argument against trying to make yourself righteous by works of the law. Let's read that. That's in chap Galatians 3 6-14.

[00:09:40]He says, "Just as Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness, so you see those who believe are the descendants of Abraham."

[00:09:55]In the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, "All the Gentiles shall be blessed in you. For this reason, those who believe are blessed with Abraham, who believed.

[00:10:20]All who rely on the works of the law are under a curse.

[00:10:26]For it is written, cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all the things written in the book of the law.

[00:10:39]Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law. For the one who is righteous will live by faith, but the law does not rest on faith. On the contrary, whoever does the works of the law will live by them.

[00:11:00]Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, "Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree."

[00:11:13]in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we might receive the promise of the spirit through faith.

[00:11:25]Okay. Now couple things to keep uh clear. This is sort of a little sidebar point that uh you should understand.

[00:11:36]When St. Paul is quoting the Old Testament.

[00:11:43]He is quoting an already existing Greek translation of the Old Testament.

[00:11:52]This translation had been begun in the 250s BC. So it's a good 300 years before the St. Paul that the uh books of the Bible were translated. Now it seems they only translated the first five books back around the 250s BC. This was done at the request of King Tommy II who was ruling Egypt in Alexandria. He was a Macedonian uh descent man. His father was from ma Macedonia and uh he was not a native Egyptian.

[00:12:38]Remember Alexander the Great had conquered Egypt and Tammy had started a great library, the greatest library of the ancient world and he wanted a copy of every book in the world to be in his library in Alexandria.

[00:13:01]And he wanted Alexandria to become the intellectual center of the world. So he asked for Jews to translate their uh Bible into Greek and they did. And then over the next hundred years after that the rest of the Old Testament was translated. So it took a good long time and uh that that's very important and it's good to realize that the Septuagant uh was the Bible of the apostles not only St. Paul because we see that the New Testament quotes from the Old Testament 360 times.

[00:13:58]Of those 300 times it is using the Septrogant translation.

[00:14:07]So they're just citing that. Sometimes they're citing it by memory the way a lot of us do. Sometimes it's by re I suspect it's by reading. Uh so a couple times a little loose but they are definitely quoting only about 60 times especially in the book of revelation do we see the new testament authors doing their own translation. I think also in the Gospel of John, he does some of his own translation too, but they um but for the most part they use it. Same way that you and I will typically quote the Bible in English.

[00:14:50]You don't have to re-ransate it. It already exists in a variety of translations.

[00:14:56]So most of us use that. That's what the New Testament writers used. The reason I want to mention that is this means that the Septuagant was the Bible of the early church. That's what they read when they read the Old Testament in the liturgy and when they were preparing the New Testament. And that becomes significant later on because the rabbis from the Pharisee party did not use that.

[00:15:34]And uh eventually somewhere in the second century they came to decide that there were 39 books in their Old Testament.

[00:15:46]Whereas the Septagant had 46.

[00:15:51]And the church has thought that since the apostles used the septuagant, this is going to be our Old Testament with all 46 books.

[00:16:02]And you don't see Christians going to the Pharisee cannon until the time of Martin Luther, Martin Luther, and then John Calvin. And then in the 1627 edition of the King James Bible, they all went to the Pharisee cannon, whereas the Catholics and the Orthodox kept the same cannon that the apostles used from the Septuagan. So that's why you see that. And it's good every so often some of St. Paul's points uh might sound a little bit different than the Hebrew text just because he's using the suppant. Okay. All right. Now, let's take a look at the passage. This passage quotes a lot from the book of Genesis and from Deuteronomy. has one quote from a prophet Kabakok, but the other quotes are all from the first five books of the Bible. Why?

[00:17:12]Remember that he is being criticized by the Jewish Christians that came to Galatia.

[00:17:23]They said, "Paul should have told you, you have to be circumcised. You have to follow the Jewish law.

[00:17:33]And what Paul is going to do in this passage is use Old Testament texts only from those first five books of the Bible. He cites the Torah and he uses the Torah for all of his arguments.

[00:17:56]And in that way he is undercutting his opposition by using the Torah they claim to be fulfilling and saying no you are not fulfilling it. This is the real meaning. So keep that in mind. So couple ideas that he wants to to get at. Um in chapter 3 verse 6 he quotes Genesis 15:E6 where it says and he that is Abram and he believed the Lord and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.

[00:18:39]Now this is again from the septu again. In Hebrew it says uh he believed the Lord and it was accounted to him as righteous. It's a passive but it means that the Lord is the one who accounted it to him. It's a slight difference but here Abraham is the great figure of the book of Genesis. He's the father of Israel. And especially in the Pharisee party, they believed that God's grace comes to them from their descent through Abraham.

[00:19:20]So this was a very important thing. But what is he doing? He's showing that in Genesis 15, Abraham's faith was accounted to him as righteousness.

[00:19:37]Now, here's another element. This word righteousness in Greek dika, this is the same word that is translated as justification.

[00:19:53]So he believed and God counted it to him as justification.

[00:20:01]This means that he was justified by faith. And Paul is saying the Lord justified Abraham by his faith in Genesis 15.

[00:20:15]And that is two chapters before the Lord told Abraham to be circumcised and to circumcise his sons.

[00:20:30]So that means that justification by faith preedes the commandment to be circumcised as a sign of the covenant with God.

[00:20:45]And that puts a priority in St. Paul's mind and he basing this on Genesis that the priority is on having faith and receiving God's justification by faith.

[00:21:01]And that's before circumcision was even mentioned to Abraham.

[00:21:08]That's why you can be justified without being circumcised. That's Paul's argument here. Okay. Now, that's the first step in his argument and it's the the first of four. We'll come back after a short break and give you the other three steps. So, please stay with us.

[00:22:07]All right, just want to let you know that Father Miguel Maria, the missionaries of the eternal word, is leading a pilgrimage to Sicily, uh, CZ in Rome October 10th to 23rd. If you want more information, go to visitationpilgrimages.com or call them 2563471475.

[00:22:31]And then also I'll be leading a pilgrimage of walking in the footsteps of Pope Leo the 14th. It'll be a pilgrimage to Peru, Chiclio, where he used to be bishop as well as shrines of uh St. Rose of Lima and St. Martin Deorus. That'll be August 3rd to the 9th. If you want more information, go to the website givetrater.com.

[00:22:56]give truewater.com.

[00:22:59]All right. So, we were going through this passage in uh St. Paul uh letter to the Galatians chapter 3. And I'd like to take a look at verses 8-9 in a little bit more detail.

[00:23:17]Because we see that Paul emphasizes by again citing scripture that having righteousness or justification and receiving God's blessing come from faith.

[00:23:40]This is something that was done by Abraham in the book of Genesis.

[00:23:47]Whereas then he will see that he also quotes from uh Deuteronomy and points out that if you break the law, you get a curse.

[00:24:01]So let's take a look at that. Um first of all uh being uh he already mentioned that by faith it was accounted to Abraham as justification or righteousness from Genesis 15:6.

[00:24:21]He now goes on to deal with the blessing that uh Abraham got by his faith. Again this is chapter 12 of Genesis.

[00:24:34]um where it it says that um Abraham believed God and therefore all the nations of the world would be blessed in him so that his trust in God remember before chapter 12 and before Abraham then called Abram uh before he was called by God.

[00:25:05]He was practicing paganism. In fact, his name Aram means exalted father. Probably referring to the moon god who was called sin. And his wife Sarai is probably uh means princess probably referring to Ningal who was the wife of the moon god.

[00:25:31]And even the name Lot uh which means covering you know being covered over hidden may refer to the covering of darkness in which the moon shines.

[00:25:43]And there a couple other names in the family that refer to um the the moon worship because they probably worshiped the the god of the moon.

[00:25:54]But the Lord called him and he believed in the voice of the Lord that called to him and that he uh and chose to move away from his hometown as with his father from Ur to Karan and then God called him in Karan in what's now in Syria he came and followed the Lord so that he could be a blessing to all the family. So blessing comes by his faith.

[00:26:24]Whereas what we see is that in the law it says and this is quoting from Deuteronomy chap 27 verse 26.

[00:26:39]Cursed be anyone who does not uphold the words of this law by observing them. and the people shall say, "Amen."

[00:26:50]So here in Deuteronomy 27:26, we see that if you fail to do all of the laws, you are under a curse.

[00:27:07]And the, you know, keeping all the laws is very difficult. You know, there there's there's a lot there. So people would be you know um you know dealing with that fact. He also cites Habacook.

[00:27:25]I mentioned him. He's one of the prophets. So he's not in the law. He's in the prophets section of the Old Testament. But he quotes Habacook 2:4 to where Habacook says the righteous man lives by faith. So the man who's who is righteous or who has been justified. You can translate those words with either sense.

[00:27:49]Um uh he he's by faith. Whereas in Leviticus 18 verse 5, he shows that it's not faith but doing the precepts of the law. That's what's necessary according to following the law. So this is a very important principle.

[00:28:12]And he then comes to the fourth step where uh he uh talks about how Christ became a curse in order to save us from the curse of the law. Now again to make this principle he has to quote from the law.

[00:28:39]That's that's key. And here he is citing Deuteronomy chapter 21 verse 23.

[00:28:50]In that verse it says of a man who's been hung in a tree. All right. So if you've been p if you got the death penalty and you were hung in on a tree it says I quote his corpse must not remain all night upon the tree you shall bury him that same day for anyone hung on a tree is under God's curse. You must not defile the land that the Lord your God is giving you for possession. So first principle in that verse is that if you get hung on a tree, you are under God's curse.

[00:29:38]And of course, the cross is made from wood, so it counted as a tree.

[00:29:44]And you have to bury the body. This is what the point of the law because a man hung on a tree is cursed. Remember what happened to David's son son Abselum when his hair got caught in a tree and his uncle uh stabbed him with a spear in the heart and and killed him because he was a rebel against David.

[00:30:14]So he was cursed by hanging the tree.

[00:30:16]But then you have to cut him down from the tree and bury him because you can't leave a cursed man hanging up in the tree. That will pollute the whole country. You have to bury him in the ground. That's that's what they were concerned with in that law. Now how is St. Paul applying this to Jesus? This is a very important thing. Remember how he had said in the first paragraph of this chapter that was not Jesus Christ portrayed to you as crucified?

[00:30:57]What does that mean? Jesus is shown to you. We're not hiding it. We're not we don't run from it. But Jesus was crucified. He was hung on a tree.

[00:31:11]And for that reason he became a curse.

[00:31:15]And that's why St. Paul writes here in verse 13, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law. That is the curse that comes from disobeying God's law.

[00:31:29]So if you break God's law, any of them, you're under a curse.

[00:31:35]Christ redeems us from that curse because we all fall short of the glory of God. Some we'll see him write in Romans three that he um saves us from the curse of having broken God's laws from having sinned against God by becoming a curse.

[00:31:58]That is when he was crucified he became a curse to save us from the curse.

[00:32:04]And this is how the blessing of Abraham will come upon all the Gentiles that they can receive that promise of the spirit to be redeemed from the curse by their own faith. Now, first I have to ask and I I did I thought about this a lot. How is it that by becoming a cursed hanging on a tree that Jesus saves us from the curse of breaking God's law?

[00:32:36]Couple things to keep in mind. One, Christ was innocent of any and all charges leveled against him. remember how they had to bring in false witnesses to the Sanhedrin uh to accuse him of blasphemy and they couldn't agree among themselves and they finally said are tell us are are a jury by the living God are you the son of God he says uh as you say so he told the truth about himself but they took took not the false witnesses because they couldn't agree.

[00:33:20]They used Jesus true testimony and considered it blasphemy.

[00:33:26]And so then they condemned him. Then when they went to Pilate, they didn't say he said he was the son of God. No, he said he wants to be the king and he'll take Caesar's place. So they changed the charge again and they they basically forced Pilate to have him crucified. And in so doing, he became a man under a curse even though he had done nothing wrong. So he's innocent, but his crucifixion makes him a cursed just by the fact of being crucified and hung in the tree.

[00:34:09]How does that redeem us from the curse of breaking God's law?

[00:34:15]I use this analogy. I think it it's it's helpful.

[00:34:20]Those of you who are older, it's not true anymore, but back in the early 50s, the uh Jonas Sulk vaccine for polio came out and I hated the idea uh because I had to get shots. you know, I was a little kid, maybe four or five. Um, and we had to get shots, and most kids don't like to get shots at the doctor. We had to get three of them on different days.

[00:34:56]But what they did is they gave us dead polio.

[00:35:02]That's what was in there. And they increased the dosage of dead polio. And the dead polio vaccinated you from getting live polio.

[00:35:17]It protected you from getting the live polio virus.

[00:35:22]And as now they've improved all that and they've changed it, but that was the whole idea of it. Same thing that Louis Pasture had done with rabies. They give you seven doses of dead rabies to inoculate you against living rabies helps your body defend yourself.

[00:35:47]Now Christ on the cross who is infinite and who is innocent becomes a dead curse. His crucifixion means that he's dead and he is accursed by being hung on a tree while at the same time remaining innocent.

[00:36:11]And by becoming that dead curse, he inoculates us against the living curse of breaking God's law.

[00:36:25]And we get that inoculation not by getting a shot, but we get that inoculation by having faith that his death is able to save us from sin.

[00:36:42]This is Paul's theory. I I like to call this the inoculation theory of redemption.

[00:36:53]that the dead curse of breaking God's law has as its antidote the uh the curse that Christ in brought on himself by being hung on a tree and that saves us from the the living curse of breaking God's law so that we don't end up in hell And just to make sure that Satan cannot say, "Yeah, but you killed Christ. He died for your sake. You're still guilty." The resurrection of Christ from the dead removes the corpus delecti.

[00:37:41]There's no evidence of our crime because he's raised from the dead.

[00:37:48]He's glorified.

[00:37:50]And in this way he becomes a permanent one. And one last point I already mentioned Christ is infinite.

[00:38:00]And as such his curse of being crucified is able to save all people. There's no limit to the number of people who can be saved from the living curse of sin by the dead curse of Christ crucified.

[00:38:24]That there's no limit in time because he's God and there's no limit of place because he's God. He is everywhere and he is eternal and he makes that available to us for all eternity.

[00:38:42]And as St. Paul says the way to get to this is not by taking on circumcision, which then requires you to obey all the other laws, but rather by faith that Jesus has the power to heal us and inoculate us against the curse of sin. That's Paul's argument and it's one that we do well to consider from Christ our physician. All right, we'll take a break, come back with your questions and comments. So, please stay with us.

[00:39:57]Welcome back. Now, first I want to invite you to join me this Wednesday night at 8:00 PM Eastern time when I'll sit down with Professor Andrew Swaford to explore CS Lewis's insights on faith and the afterlife within a richer Catholic context. We'll also get to a deeper understanding of who Jesus Jesus truly was and how he shapes our lives now and in the world to come. So that's going to be a very good one to to start off with. So let's start off with an email. Uh this is from Clement who says, "Dear Father Mitch, how do you interpret the line in the Lord's Prayer that says, "And lead us not into temptation."

[00:40:48]Well, um you know, it's always useful to go back to other parts of sacred scripture and let scripture help you interpret it.

[00:41:04]And where do else do we see this idea of being led into temptation come up?

[00:41:14]Try Matthew chapter 4 verse one and following.

[00:41:21]Or you can take a look at uh Luke's gospel chapter 3 when our Lord is tempted in the wilderness. But notice how it says there that the Holy Spirit led him into the desert in order to be tempted.

[00:41:46]Right? So check that out yourself. And the idea is this, that Jesus, our Lord, knew what it was like to be led into temptation. He knew how difficult it was. 40 days of fasting.

[00:42:07]And then this temptation comes when he's certainly feeling weak.

[00:42:14]And this is where he understands from the inside what it's like to be led into temptation. And again, I like to use an analogy.

[00:42:28]This reminds me of uh military people.

[00:42:34]The ones who have been in combat are not eager to go back to combat. It's not like say, "Oh boy, another fighting war. Let's go in there and we'll do it again."

[00:42:49]The people who have been in combat know what that's like.

[00:42:56]And that's why if you know combat veterans, a lot of times they don't like talking about their experiences except with other combat veterans who understand where they've been.

[00:43:11]And we just celebrated Memorial Day. And I'm sure some of you know veterans of other wars uh who are reluctant. Yes.

[00:43:21]They won't go around saying, "Yeah, it was really great. We just No. They they'll talk to other soldiers because they experience how awful war really is.

[00:43:33]Only the ones who think that, oh, the war is is great and all, they're the ones who've never been in battle. They have a romanticized version. Combat vets don't. So, this is something that's very important to keep mind. And that's what I would use as the example. Sometimes we'll be led into situations where we have to do battle with evil, but he prays that we don't because again, as a combat veteran of taking on Satan, he knows how difficult it is. Okay, that helps. We have a question from our studio audience. Sir, where are you from?

[00:44:11]>> I I'm from De Moine, Iowa.

[00:44:13]>> Oh, that's a nice town. I like De Moines. Uh, what is your question?

[00:44:17]>> Yes. Um, so the church teaches that um Catholics, Muslims, and Jews all worship the same God. I was wondering how this could be when they divi deny the full divinity of our Lord Jesus. Okay. And and also uh in Islam they they certainly didn't uh it says in surah 5 say not three.

[00:44:41]Some translations mistrans say not trinity. No it doesn't say the word trinity says say not three. And they think that we mean by the trinity god Jesus and the blessed virgin Mary. Okay. Or as they call call her Mary, mother of Jesus. Well, that's not what we understand.

[00:45:05]And you're right, they don't accept the divinity of Christ. Uh or and they don't see the role of the Holy Spirit. Okay, that's that's just a flatout fact. And certainly uh uh ancient Israel and modern Israel does not accept the divinity of Christ.

[00:45:27]But there are other elements that they do accept that a there's all three religions that trace themselves back to Abraham believe in one God which we confess.

[00:45:42]That's how we start off the creed, right? We believe in one God. Simple.

[00:45:47]They all all three believe God is the one and only creator.

[00:45:53]All three believe that God is the judge of souls and that he will raise people from the dead at the end of time and judge them either for heaven or for hell. That would be common to to the three.

[00:46:10]What we would say is yes, it's and and by the way, you you obviously Jewish people recognize that it's the same God who revealed himself to Abraham and Moses and David and all the way through.

[00:46:22]So do Muslims. Muslims believe it's the same God who who revealed himself to the prophets, including Jesus.

[00:46:31]But they it's not that they have a different God.

[00:46:37]We believe that they have a deficient understanding of God. And there'd be a few other points where we disagree with them. Um, you know, so it's not that it's a different God, but it is a different understanding of God. And we would make very clear we believe it is an incomplete understanding of God. But it is the same God. They just don't have the full revelation that we do. Okay, so that would be the the difference.

[00:47:12]All right, there's another email. This one is from Josie. Hi, Father Mitch.

[00:47:17]Please help me respond to a non-atholic friend who says that the second part of the Hail Mary is unbiblical and Mary is not holy and she is not our hope. Well, um first of all, in the Hail Mary, we don't say that she's our hope. That is in the prayer the um uh Hail Holy Queen.

[00:47:40]Couple things I I would say. First of all, the Bible does say very explicitly in Luke 1, I think it's about verse 41 or so, that it's written there, all generations will call me blessed. Does your friend address her as blessed Mary?

[00:48:09]Does he or she uh address our lady as blessed? That's what the Bible says that we must do. And to be blessed, is that going to be something not just distinct but different from holiness? Are you blessed if you are not holy?

[00:48:36]Is that what your friend would be trying to say?

[00:48:39]I hope not.

[00:48:43]Thirdly, I would ask this. Does your friend believe that the blessed virgin because of her faith when she said, "Let it be according to your word." And her staying with Jesus all the way through his first miracle in John chapter 2 and all the way to the cross in John 19. And then being with the apostles at the for Pentecost and that her faith stayed through. Does your friend believe therefore that since she showed faith that stayed and lasted that she is in heaven?

[00:49:26]And if that's a big issue. Uh, and if he believes that our lady is in heaven, would she also not have to be recognized as holy because nothing unclean can get to heaven.

[00:49:47]And then finally if she if he does accept that she is in heaven then she is our hope because all of us hope to be in heaven too.

[00:50:04]Now does she make us go to heaven? Does she give us the grace to go to heaven? No. God gives us the grace to go to heaven.

[00:50:15]But the fact that she is there makes her a hope for us. Just like you know how many kids have a hope that they can be on in the NFL or the NBA or something.

[00:50:30]They have hope to be great professional athletes because they saw Michael Jordan or somebody else in in sports and they that's their hope to be like that.

[00:50:41]That's what we're saying about our lady.

[00:50:44]If he doesn't think that she's in heaven, well, we'll just let Jesus explain that to him or or our lady can explain it when he gets there.

[00:50:56]All right, have another email here. This one is from Dennis. Would it be fair to say Paul chose that tack of focusing on the cross after his lack of success at Athens when he chose to focus on the resurrection? Dennis, um, well, it it's hard to say. Um, I'm not sure that would be fair because Paul certainly had a very big focus on the resurrection of Jesus in First Corinthians chapter 15.

[00:51:42]That's I'm not sure it's the longest, but I think it's the longest chapter in First Corinthians.

[00:51:50]And that longest chapter is all about the resurrection.

[00:51:55]And so I don't think that would be correct. But he did, you know, shift a bit not because of the difficulty with uh preaching the resurrection uh at Athens, but because he was trying to use ideas from Greek philosophy and he realized that was not going to work.

[00:52:23]Okay.

[00:52:26]All right. Well, let's see. Let's try one more here. uh from Rick. Dear Father Mitch, I enjoyed your series on the book of the prophet Isaiah, King Cyrus, who was inspired by the Holy Spirit to release the captive Jews in 538, allowing them to return to their homeland. As a gentile, do believe that the soul of King Cyrus was given the opportunity of redemption through uh Christ uh God's divine mercy, right? Um I would not be surprised if he was among those souls to whom our Lord preached.

[00:53:02]Remember in first Peter chapter 3 verse 18 he went down to the prison. His the soul of Jesus his human soul went to the prison where all the dead who had died before his crucifixion were. and he preached to them. And I would not be surprised that Cyrus the Persian may well have been one of those people. I don't know because I wasn't there, but I wouldn't be surprised. So, you might have a good point there. All right. But I have another point after we run out of time. So, may the Lord bless you and keep you and cause his face to shine upon you and lead you in all of your ways by his peace. May almighty God bless you. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. And again, this network is brought to you by you. We don't do sell commercial time to anybody. So, we ask that you would keep us in between your gas bill, your electric bill, and your cable bill every month because that's the only way we can keep going and pay all of our bills every month. God bless you all and thank you for your support.