Protection from evil： Mary's promise in the Brown Scapular
Summary
The Brown Scapular is a sacramental in the Catholic Church that disposes us to grace. It was given by Our Lady in 1251 to St. Simon Stock, who was going through great trials in Islesford, England, and with promises from the Mother of God. She said that whosoever wears the brown scapular would not suffer the eternal fire. And she also promised that those who wear it would have protection against danger.
Transcript
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A lot of you might have seen Catholics, pretty well-known Catholics sometimes,
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wearing these like string things around their necks.
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And sometimes when their top button's undone, you'll see this little square kind of brownish thing.
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Well, it's called a scapular and it's very popular.
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And it's actually very good protection against evil.
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So for today, that's probably absolutely necessary.
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We have someone with us, a Father James Schultz, who's going to talk to us about this.
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He's involved with a company that's helping to promote the use of the brown scapular.
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Father James Schultz, thank you for joining us.
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Let's begin, as we always do, at the sign of the cross.
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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
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It is, I guess, common talk among Catholics, but there's a lot of non-Catholics who watch
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What is the brown scapular anyway, and where did it come from?
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The brown scapular was a sacramental in the Catholic Church.
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It was given by Our Lady on July 16th, 1251, to St. Simon Stock, who was going through
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great trials in Islesford, England, and with promises.
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And she asked, you know, as part of becoming, if you will, a part of the Carmelite Order,
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that whosoever wears the brown scapular would not suffer the eternal fire.
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And there's other promises that we'll talk about as well that are important.
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If I can get you to unpack that a little bit, you said it was a sacramental.
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The Church gives these little, like, holy water, and they dispose us to grace.
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So, they prepare our souls to receive grace from Almighty God.
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Why can't we just have a sort of relationship with God?
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Because He's there, and shouldn't that be enough?
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And that's part of being the human, you know, body and soul.
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You say that this Saint Simon Stock, you mentioned 1251, I think.
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He was a religious, a member of a religious order, the Carmelite order, you said?
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Here is this monk in religious life, and he receives a vision from the mother of Jesus,
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She said that whosoever, you know, dies when the brown scapular shall not suffer the eternal
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And she also promised that those who wear the brown scapular would have protection and danger.
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And she also promised that they would have peace and special protection.
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But you're right away going to get hit with, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
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She said those who wear this will not suffer eternal hellfire.
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Isn't it such that you have to love Christ and to follow his commandments and to be baptized
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and to live the faith in order to go to heaven?
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How can you avoid hellfire, which means you'd go to heaven, with just wearing something?
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Isn't that like, that sounds pretty superstitious, does it not?
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You have to invite the mother of God into your life.
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From the cross, she said, you know, behold your mother.
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So she wants us to, and this little cloth is like a swaddling clothes, like it's a piece
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And you're inviting her and you're allowing her into your life to be a part of your life,
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a sign of her there with you, a sign of the Immaculate Heart as well.
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And we don't figure out exactly how she works exactly, you know, when she's going to work.
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But we know that she, the church has, you know, approved this and supported it.
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And everybody used to be getting it, First Communion.
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That's why we call it pulling it out of the attic.
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And that there's millions of stories all over the place, you know, of her helping souls.
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I mean, there's a story, just in this book, A Sign of Her Heart, of a man who was given,
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in his 1940s, he was given a scapular by some Carmelites, I believe, outside of New York City.
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And the 1940s is in a hospital, and the nurse calls for a Catholic priest.
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And he comes, and the Catholic priest says, well, why'd you call me?
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So we just have to let, our job as Catholics, part of the family message,
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is to let, we're just trying to listen to what she said to do.
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The other thing she wants is the triumph of the Immaculate Heart.
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God, she said, if I may God wish, is to establish devotion to my Immaculate Heart.
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And so it's a very powerful sacramento that the church, with a huge promise, St. Claude
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Columbier, he just was an apostle of the scapular.
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He thought it was one of the greatest things that is offered to us.
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But you ask yourself, 60,000 people die every day.
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How many do you think are wearing the brown scapular?
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How many children need to be protected and taken care of and brought under her mantle in a special way?
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It's like the same thing the other day I had a Jewish friend say to me.
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Because you're in them, you're driving them, you want to be protected.
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So there's a lot of things about this scapular.
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It is, the term scapular is a mantle or a piece worn by regular religious.
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So nuns and monks, they wear a scapular, but it doesn't look like the scapular that we're talking about.
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It is, although it is worn front and back, it's that little piece or sometimes broader piece of cloth that's by the Carmelites worn front and back.
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And it hangs down, goes down to the floor on either side.
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And I think the scapular from Our Lady was also intended to be that perhaps for laity because it, too, is a little piece of cloth front and a little piece of cloth at the back as well.
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And so when you wear it, you wear it as a devotion to show your devotion to the Blessed Mother, to the Mother of Jesus.
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And always done in imitation of her and therefore acknowledging God as God and not.
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I think there's a lot of people who somehow think that Catholics are devoted to Mary perhaps because of the title of Mother of God, as if somehow she's more important than God.
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What is the Catholic take on Our Lady in relation to God in terms of her importance compared to God's importance?
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I mean, any good mother, she knows that he's the Son of God.
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But God is so willed to bring her into salvation history as a mother, you know, and to mother of each one of us.
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So she's, again, like the wedding feast of Canaan idea.
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She wants us, and God wants us to come to her for help as we do for the saints and also especially for her.
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One image is like, I think it was from St. Louis to Montfort or something, where you have an apple and you want to give it to the king, but it's all bruised.
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So you give it to the queen, which is Our Lady, and she puts it on the gold platter, and then she presents it.
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And it's harder for him to say, no, it's harder for him not to accept it.
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I think there's something also about having a great love of your mother.
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You just have to, how great are those two hearts, you know, and how much love they have.
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And so being a good son, I think he just wants her to be, you know, to be treated well and to be respected and honoured.
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And she's been given that wonderful role for us.
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De Montfort, in the beginning of his book, talks about because Mary's a creature, like all of us are creatures and not the creator or anything like that,
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talks about the comparison of a grain of sand compared to God, Mary's not even a grain of sand.
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But then the reality is God chooses to start his greatest work by Mary.
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And he, being the perfect son, wants to honour his mother.
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Okay, so we have these amazing promises that of protection and also he who wears the scapular won't be eternal fire or whatever, however that goes exactly.
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I'd like to hear a couple more stories, if you have them, just about the protection that's afforded with the brown scapular.
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My sister's a Dominican and she was at the Comet there, for example, probably like two years ago.
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And a man was working on the roof and he fell down like 50, 60 feet and landed in some bushes and nothing, nothing was broken.
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And he was wearing his front scapular to, you know, a simpler one would just be somebody who works in my parish was just riding around on a scooter.
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And one day she didn't wear the brown scapular.
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She ended up, you know, crashing and going into the, I think, the hospital and now she wears it every day.
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But just little things like that are just, we will never know.
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I mean, I can tell you the stories, but we'll never know until we get to heaven, please, Lord, what things she has done for us.
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We'll never know all that care or silent love that we've received, car accidents I've heard about, things like that.
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So that's the one about protecting from danger and then the salvation of souls.
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I mean, there's a story, for example, in the Spanish war where there were seven guys that were condemned to death and the priest tried to go see them.
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And they said, you know, get out of here, Father.
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Then he came back the next day and he brought cigars and he brought cards and he brought so forth.
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And they said to him, well, come on in, Father.
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And he started hanging out with him for a few hours.
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They went to confession and then they, you know, executed the next day.
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So, yeah, so there's like stories all over of every day happening of her and stuff.
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We'll never know, like I said, we'll never know fully until the police alert get there.
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I think if you listen to Sister Lucia, she said the rosary and the scapular are inseparable.
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And she said that Our Lady wants everyone to wear it.
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So I think it's just being a mother to her children.
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One day when we get to heaven, she's going to be queen.
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Everybody's going to have to acknowledge that she is queen.
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And in fact, it's something also that I think is very consoling.
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Today, especially in our day and age, the times that we're living in are probably some
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of the most concerning, at least in terms of the insecurity.
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Now, we're not yet facing overt persecution as they are in certain countries in the world,
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particularly in Islamic countries and in China, for instance, where Catholics are literally
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Here, though, you can sense that that's in the air.
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It's already come crushing to a number of people.
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The Houck family, who I was with a few weeks ago, are experiencing real persecution in America,
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for crying out loud, for being, you know, pro-life activists.
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And we're seeing this now travel around the country.
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There's evil around everywhere because of what's going on in our culture.
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Heaven affording us a way to be in touch, if you will, with our mother, I think is really
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A lot of people think to themselves, boy, if I could only have a hug from Our Lady just
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That, at least for me, has been a great consolation.
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When I wear the scapular, I know she's there in a way because it is a physical reminder.
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You know, I'll tell you, Father, it works the other way, too, though.
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And when I started to go off the rails, I fell into sin in a big way.
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I'd probably been wearing a scapular since I was, I don't know, five, maybe.
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Never noticed it because after a while, you don't notice it anymore.
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And then when I was, you know, in my early teens there, sinning, I all of a sudden was
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And, you know, after two or three times of that, I took it off because I, it was a reminder
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And since I wasn't, I had to take it off, which was quite something.
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You know, I never thought of it before, that it meant anything, never felt it before.
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But all of a sudden, when I was living a life of sin, I couldn't stand it anymore.
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So I wonder if that doesn't have some play in terms of the eternal promise as well, having
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There's definitely stories of people that have been, I didn't want to get into anything
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negative, but there are stories where people have rejected it, you know, or had the opportunity.
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And I mean, to finish the story about the seven men, I didn't quite finish it.
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The story ends the next day where six of the seven went to confession, but one did not.
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And then at the execution the next day, they found one scapular from that man who did not
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go to confession 50 yards away from his, where he was after the execution.
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So it's not like, you were right about saying, this is not like the end all be all, get out
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of jail free, just wear this and do whatever you want, or this is the cell.
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You know, it's just huge gift from our lady, from the church, from our Lord.
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And we are supposed to live a good holy life with it.
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That's not to say that, but I mean, just so many things.
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I love the wedding feast of Canaan, inviting our mother in.
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We have priests that are putting it around people just, you know, before they die.
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My parish priest, my first one, his funeral was today, 11 o'clock.
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And I was able to see him a week before, or yeah, about a week before he passed, maybe
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And I was able to put a brown scapular around him.
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And I think that's, we just have to do what we can do to get that out there.
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There's a beautiful story of John Paul II, how he absolutely refused to take off his
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Yeah, it's difficult and arduous to keep away from your own sins.
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But heaven, I think, offers itself to the simple.
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It's wearing her garment as a sign of devotion to her.
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And for me, anyway, it's been an awesome constellation, very often.
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Anything you can tell us about your own experiences with the scapular father?
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I grew up in, I guess, a big family, a family of 13, and we were, I don't know, I felt like
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We had the rosary, and we went to public school.
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We just did everything, but we would, my mom would, you know, we'd have to wear this.
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We said the rosary every night, we'd wear the scapular.
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And sometimes, you know, you'd see the, you know, in the bathroom, somebody might have
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forgotten, you might take a shower or whatever, and then still somebody left it there.
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And it was just something, you know, very simple, yep, this is the promise.
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The only one I really knew about was whoever dies, we're in this brown scapular,
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So that's, and, you know, I remember being on the bus, telling a kid one time that,
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It was like a, you know, with a mass maybe once a year.
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But I always think, God bless you for that, and your good heart.
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So I gave it to him, and I think he wore it for years.
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But yeah, just like growing up, it was just part of our life.
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The big one is, okay, it goes in even after death.
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Whosoever dies, when the brown scapular shall not suffer the eternal fire.
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The second promise is that she promises protection in danger.
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You know, that story I told you about the 1940s, and the Carmelite nuns are putting it on people
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And when they become Catholic, I think that's when you can do the enrollment and so forth.
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And you don't, the sabotage privilege is another thing, but you just have to wear it.
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You know, you don't have to do any special prayer.
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I mean, you kiss it, it's the indulgence for that.
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So I'm still trying to figure those two out, special protection in peace.
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And the peace is like, it's not going to be a perfect peaceful world, because there's
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Where can people find out more about the brown scapular?
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The scapulars were expensive, I was buying for, I was doing like enrollments at the
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women's conferences every year, and they're expensive, you know?
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So somehow I found somebody online who sold the wool, blah, blah, blah.
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We started making scapulars that cost about, with a miraculous mental, 38 cents each.
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So we sell them at 50 cents, because we're charging for the postage.
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So you have 50 cents a scapular at our, I'm going to show up.
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If it's okay, I'll show up a little card I made with the address and stuff, but I just
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We've been making, one lady, for example, has made 8,000 by hand, sewing them.
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So we've made about 20,000 total, but we're running out.
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We have a lady that just asked for 1,000 for Uganda, a nun actually.
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We haven't even really started promoting the Bionosu.
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And so we started building a machine in Finland.
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And we are, so just being honest, we are looking for people to support us, benefactors, to help
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us to be, and we've been doing a gala up that are trying here.
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Some of the pictures are back here, up in Oswego, New York.
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It won't be as nice, I'm sure, but it will be wonderful.
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So scapularap.com is where you can get them, you can order them.
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And, you know, if you order 200 scapulars, it's $100, you know, and here's what they
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look like, you know, different lengths and so forth.
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And to be honest with you, we'll make 110,000 in a week, in a 40-hour week, but we might not
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be able to keep the miraculous metal on it just because of the machine.
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You could add it on later, but right now we just have to work on doing it.
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We are trying to get this out to millions of people.
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I know it's, in some ways, Mel Gibson and Mark Wahlberg had a scapular in that movie.
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We just want to be ready if people need it, and they do need it, but we want to be ready
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for getting it out there when we start promoting it more.
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And then Timothy's my brother, and he's really pretty much doing the work, and there's his
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So we are looking for benefactors to help us with this mission.
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The goal is to even make them free all over the world.
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And our machine is, I don't know of any, but this is a robotic, automated machine that'll
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So we think that's pretty fantastic, but we're in the process of, you know what I mean?
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How do people get it once they get the scapular?
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So you would probably just go to your local parish priest, get the enrollment formula.
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I have a parish ritual that I use, for example.
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Ask the priest if he would be willing to do it, and I'm sure he would.
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And, you know, just be enrolled in the early Mount Carmel takes a couple of minutes.
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I like to do it where I have a candle doing the dark and put it over people and say that
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It's like, receive this blessed scapular and beseech the blessed Virgin Mary, that through
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the marriage of me, wherever it's staying, may defend you, against all of us, and accompany
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That's the prayer we say as we put it over your neck.
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And, yeah, I would say the final thought is she is the cause of our joy, and she's just
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She's been so good to me, and I think she's good to everyone.
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Sister Lucy's message from Our Lady of Fatima comes as no surprise.
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The rosary was given to us by Our Lady from Heaven, and the scapular was as well.
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Thank you so much, Father, for joining us here on the John Henry Weston Show.
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God bless you, and God bless all of you, and we'll see you next time.
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