The Michael Knowles Show - Merry Christmas： Let’s Talk About The End of the World - Michael Knowles & Bishop Barron EXPLAIN

00:00:00.000 It's Christmas Eve. We've reached the end of Advent. Christmas is upon us. We're all looking

00:00:06.900 forward to this very, very joyful, not only day, but joyful season. And so, I thought this would

00:00:12.480 be a great opportunity to talk about the end of the world. And joining me is my friend,

00:00:18.360 His Excellency, Bishop Robert Barron. Bishop Barron, thank you so much for coming on the show.

00:00:23.620 Michael, always a pleasure to talk to you.

00:00:25.580 This has become an annual tradition, Your Excellency, where we come on and you educate

00:00:31.660 everyone about some of the misconceptions and popular themes of Christmas. And I said,

00:00:36.800 you know, this year, I don't know, maybe I'm just feeling a little salty or something like that.

00:00:41.100 But I want to get into some of the darker aspects of the Christmas story because you're actually

00:00:47.640 involved in this too. I was reading a book by Hans Urs von Balthasar, the 20th century theologian

00:00:53.120 that you cite quite a lot. I was reading A Theology of History, where he points out something

00:00:57.620 basic that hadn't really occurred to me, which is at Christmas, we commemorate the incarnation,

00:01:03.500 you know, the baby Jesus in the manger and the animals and the magi and that. But also,

00:01:08.720 we're not just commemorating something that happened. In a very tangible way, we're looking forward to

00:01:13.600 the second coming. And we see images of this and figures of this. And that's going to be about

00:01:20.260 as dramatic as the first, frankly, maybe more so. So could you talk a little bit about these,

00:01:25.100 I don't know, the less saccharine aspects of the Christmas story?

00:01:29.800 Yeah, good. I'm happy to talk about these kind of edgier sides of Christmas because the constant

00:01:34.160 temptation, of course, the danger is we turn Christmas into a kind of harmless midwinter

00:01:38.800 festival. And in fact, it's about something, and Balthasar got this, I mean, earth shattering.

00:01:44.140 One way to look at it is Advent, we look back, we look around, and we look forward. So the Adventus,

00:01:51.720 the coming of Christ, it happened 2,000 years ago. We remember that. Also, it's happening now

00:01:57.900 because at the heart of Christian spirituality is Christ being born in us. You know, when Paul says,

00:02:03.360 it's no longer I who live, it's Christ who lives in me. Or think of the little flower in that wonderful

00:02:08.840 little scene in her book, her autobiography, when on Christmas Eve, the Lord is born in her in this

00:02:16.520 decisive way. So that appeals to anyone, any Christian now. But then also we look forward,

00:02:22.440 as you suggest, to the second coming, when Christ, the Adventus definitivos, you know, when he will come

00:02:28.140 definitively at the end of time. So all three are part of a healthy Christian spirituality.

00:02:34.440 You know, all three are a little bit unnerving, too. When he came 2,000 years ago, it said Herod

00:02:42.240 tried to murder him, and all Jerusalem trembled. See, we overlook that in our sentimentalized 0.81

00:02:48.660 Christmas. Christmas is a pretty dire business. You know, the new king has come, what did C.S. Lewis say,

00:02:55.400 slipping clandestinely behind enemy lines, right? Because the enemy was poised. Think of that scene from

00:03:02.120 the 12th chapter of Revelation, when the woman is, you know, in labor, and they said there's a dragon,

00:03:08.400 a red dragon right there, whose purpose is to devour the child. Well, that's the prince of the

00:03:15.940 dark powers, whose minions include people like Herod the Great, who were trying to kill the baby.

00:03:21.860 So there's a dire aspect to it long ago. A dire aspect to it now, you bet. I mean, say, oh,

00:03:27.800 Christ will be born in me. What a nice thing. Well, this sinner doesn't like that. I mean,

00:03:33.600 sin in me rebels against Christ coming to be born in me. You mean, if he's born in me,

00:03:38.500 I've got to stop doing all these things I've been doing, and I've got to change my whole life. I don't

00:03:42.580 want that, so I resist him. And then the second coming, the ultimate coming. No, no, the sinful

00:03:50.380 world kind of likes the structures the way they are, and they don't want the things summed up now

00:03:55.680 in the risen Christ. So there's a dark edge to all of it. We want him to come, and we don't want

00:04:03.980 him to come. And to be honest about it, that's reflected in the scriptural text, reflected in

00:04:09.300 our own spirituality. Advent's a great time to look hard at that fact. Yes, I do want the Lord to come,

00:04:18.440 and I don't want him to come. And to come to terms with that resistance is part of the meaning of

00:04:24.680 Advent, I think. You know, one of my social media staffers here had an Advent picture that he was

00:04:32.000 going to put on social media, and he was writing what he thought were the four traditional themes

00:04:36.720 of Advent, hope, joy, I don't know, whatever the other two are. And I said, well, you know,

00:04:42.120 in my understanding, the four traditional themes of Advent are the four last things,

00:04:46.320 which are death, judgment, heaven, and hell. He sort of laughed about that. Seems like it's

00:04:52.740 kind of the opposite. No, really, they're not opposites. They actually go together.

00:04:56.400 But this idea that, yeah, it's the middle of the night, and there's this baby who is born in a cave,

00:05:05.440 placed in a manger, and you have foreigners coming who are following a star who are probably 0.71

00:05:11.480 Zoroastrian or something like that. And they're there because they know. They pass by Herod.

00:05:15.940 They see that Herod means harm. They leave by another way, so significant, that they encounter

00:05:22.740 Christ, and they go back by another way. And to your point, Your Excellency, we want the incarnation,

00:05:31.640 but we kind of don't. And it seems to me we want the incarnation on our terms, on our personal terms.

00:05:37.860 But what the incarnation is, as what the second coming is, is a global event, and the earth itself

00:05:44.180 will shake. Yeah, I mean, you're saying a lot there, and it's all right. Even like Luke's famous

00:05:51.440 account, which is in the minds of most people when you think about Christmas, but the church fathers saw

00:05:56.720 has this very dark edge to it. Why are Mary Joseph going to Bethlehem? Well, they're being compelled to

00:06:02.600 there by this great imperial act of Caesar Augustus calling for a census of the whole world. Well,

00:06:08.580 that was seen in the Bible always as an aggressive act. To take a census meant you could control,

00:06:13.460 manipulate, draft, you know, your people. So, this little couple is being kind of pushed around by

00:06:18.740 this great power. The wood of the crib, the fathers long associated with the wood of the cross.

00:06:25.580 The swaddling clothes, they associate with the burial bands around the body of the Lord.

00:06:32.420 He's placed in a manger where the animals eat because at the culmination of his life, he's going to give

00:06:37.280 his body and blood as food for the world. Even the shepherds and the angels, I made this point,

00:06:44.700 an angel in the Bible is a fearsome creature. It's a high creature from a higher ontological plane.

00:06:53.660 And so, when one angel breaks through, it's always a source of fear. But then we hear in that account

00:06:59.520 that there's an army of angels appear. Well, you're meant to remember at that point, oh, we began the

00:07:05.740 story with Caesar Augustus who had the biggest army in the ancient world. But the baby king has a bigger

00:07:11.420 army and it's signaling there's going to be a conflict. The story of this child is going to be

00:07:16.860 one of grace and redemption, all that, yes. But that involves conflict. There's going to be a battle,

00:07:23.220 a spiritual battle. It'll culminate on the cross. Very important for us to see that dimension of

00:07:29.940 Christmas, I think, lest we devolve into sentimentalism about it. The fact that Herod

00:07:36.020 and all Jerusalem are trembling with anxiety, that's a very telling thing. Our resistance to Christ,

00:07:44.880 and all of us sinners have it. We all feel it. If I'm really serious about Jesus becoming the Lord of

00:07:51.600 my life, that's a fearsome business. That means a lot of rearranging has to be done inside of me.

00:07:59.440 The good news, this is Dorothy Day had this great insight that the messy, stable, stinky, smelly, 0.94

00:08:07.260 full of animals. How wonderful, she said, because it means that Christ can be born even in a messy

00:08:14.000 soul like mine. Quite right. But once he's born in us, he wants to clean things up. He's the Lord

00:08:23.800 Jesus, not a nice exemplar from long ago. He's an active spiritual presence who's rearranging me from

00:08:32.940 the inside out. Well, that's a fearsome prospect. And then we say, may the same Lord Jesus be the Lord

00:08:40.160 of culture and of society and of politics and everything else, that's a little unnerving.

00:08:48.600 And we're meant to—the Christmas stories themselves convey it. Even like the wise men you

00:08:53.940 mentioned, you know, the magi, the beautiful quest to find, you know, Christ. Yes, and it's an all

00:09:00.320 science, all philosophy is looking for Christ ultimately. But, you know, T.S. Eliot's famous line,

00:09:06.560 the hard coming we had of it, the difficulty of crossing the desert to get there. And then

00:09:12.280 Herod, who's trying to kill the baby and trying to deceive them, they open the treasures of their

00:09:20.860 hearts before the Lord. But then, as you say, they go back by a different route. Fulton Sheen said that,

00:09:26.440 you know, no one comes to Christ and goes back the same way he came. So, it's always a change. It's

00:09:31.620 something even wrenching about it. The Christmas stories are beautifully clear on all that.

00:09:37.340 And they resist sentimental interpretation.

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00:10:29.560 hallow.com slash Knowles. To your point on Christ as the lord of politics, too, ultimately. Obviously,

00:10:36.520 there are principalities and powers and spiritual wickedness in high places, but ultimately,

00:10:39.900 Christ is in command of everything. And you see politics play such a role in the Christmas story.

00:10:46.960 I'm not the first to observe that at the time that you have Caesar Augustus on the Prince of Peace

00:10:53.040 on the throne in Rome. You have the true Prince of Peace being born within the Roman Empire.

00:10:58.360 You have Caesar Augustus being called Filius Divi, son of the divine, because of the comet that heralded

00:11:04.140 the death of Julius Caesar. And you have Filius Dei born in Judea. All of these parallels.

00:11:13.060 Even the fact that Caesar Augustus claims authority over the whole world because he can institute this

00:11:19.460 tax. Same with Christ. And so I wonder how we make sense of the role of the Christian in this polity,

00:11:29.320 knowing that the political forces are so evil so often and are so often arrayed against the truth.

00:11:36.240 I think there's an impulse to just run away to the desert and go be hermits or something.

00:11:39.460 But I don't think that's exactly what we're called. How do we think about it?

00:11:42.920 No, you're raising a really good and complex question, but you can see the seeds of the

00:11:47.380 answer in the scriptures themselves. So, yes, the wickedness of Rome, and there's no question

00:11:52.860 in their minds about that. And from Caesar Augustus to Pontius Pilate, I mean, they notice that to be

00:11:58.440 sure. At the same time, the church fathers and Paul himself notice something that is precisely the

00:12:05.140 orderliness and the relative peacefulness of that Augustan period, the sort of Pax Romana that was

00:12:12.220 beginning at that time, and the technological advances of Rome, most importantly, the Roman

00:12:17.600 road system. All of that made the spread of Christianity possible. If we were back in the chaotic time, 0.99

00:12:26.480 you know, with Mark Antony and Octavian fighting and Cleopatra and the Battle of Actium, if that was the

00:12:31.960 period, it would have been chaotic. But at the time, there was the beginning of this Roman peace,

00:12:38.140 however corrupt it was, and yes, indeed it was, but there was a relative peace that enabled the

00:12:44.680 Christian message to get out. Moreover, that it happened, as you say, in a corner of the Roman Empire.

00:12:51.540 But to say Roman Empire was to say much of the known world in the West at the time, which enabled Paul,

00:12:57.660 once he sees the risen Lord, to go from Damascus to Jerusalem, back to Tarsus, and then all through

00:13:03.860 Asia Minor, and then finally to Greece, and then finally to Rome itself. What enabled that? Well,

00:13:08.980 the fact that it was all part of one great empire. The Acts of the Apostles ends with Paul under arrest

00:13:14.500 in Rome, kind of a house arrest, but yet declaring the kingdom of God to everybody. Well, see, to say

00:13:21.180 Rome would say the center of civilization at the time, and that's where the Christian faith was planted.

00:13:26.280 So that's the positive side of it, that they took advantage of the sophistication of ancient Rome

00:13:34.040 and of the relative peace of ancient Rome to propagate the gospel, even as they were intensely

00:13:39.620 aware of how corrupt Rome was. Now, fast forward a couple centuries, and you've got Augustine's great

00:13:45.180 city of God, and it's a similar dynamic, right? Augustine is a Roman, really, to his bones. He's born in

00:13:52.120 a Roman culture, loves it, laments, in many ways, the fall of Rome. Of course he does. At the same 0.69

00:13:58.900 time, noticing, well, you know, the reason you fell, it wasn't because of Christianity. It was

00:14:04.100 because of all kinds of vices that were grounded in the false worship of ancient Rome. So Augustine

00:14:10.260 has that typical sort of love-hate, reverencing what was worth reverencing in Rome, even as he was

00:14:16.180 critical of it. And calling for Christ, indeed, to be the lord of the political arrangement,

00:14:23.820 which is not, say, theocracy. That's a, you know, we can have a long discussion about that.

00:14:27.500 Yeah, yeah. Those are different things.

00:14:28.160 But it does mean that morally and spiritually, there's a lordship of Jesus over every aspect

00:14:34.200 of life. And Augustine would have called that the city of God, right? But it's that point about

00:14:38.760 the ambiguity, the good and the bad within the Roman polity. Yeah, I love the distinction you

00:14:45.060 make, too, because today, people who don't know any better, or maybe they do know better and they're

00:14:48.960 just being cynical, they'll say that any government that is in any way infused with religious principles

00:14:54.320 is a theocracy. Theocracy is government by clerics. It's like hieracrats, you know? And a government

00:15:01.300 that is infused with religious principles is just known as a government. It's just what all governments

00:15:06.140 do, whether they're religious or irreligious. A very important point on, especially for our own

00:15:13.380 day, where so many people, you know, we love our country instinctively. We currently, those of us

00:15:18.340 in America, are living in the global empire. There's certainly a big parallel to Rome. It goes all the

00:15:22.720 way back to the Federalist Papers. That was kind of the point. And yet, we recognize this manifest

00:15:29.440 corruption all around us. I think it leads some people to say, well, if I'm going to be a true

00:15:34.760 Christian, I need to get out of politics. I need to get out of history and the particulars. And yet,

00:15:40.040 I can't help but notice particularity entering into history and even into political society

00:15:46.760 is at the very heart of the incarnation story. Right. And, you know, there are some people

00:15:51.720 throughout our history who were called to that kind of hermetical life and radically away from

00:15:58.020 society. I think in the fourth century, and I include Augustine here in his younger days,

00:16:01.920 almost every great figure in the fourth century wanted to get out of town and go to the hills.

00:16:07.340 And this is Jerome. This is John Chrysostom in his early days. Augustine, certainly. Many were

00:16:14.660 inspired by Antony of the Desert because the biography written by St. Athanasius had just come

00:16:21.760 out. So, there are people called to that. In fact, the whole monastic tradition, in a way,

00:16:26.580 enshrines that move. But that's not everyone. Not everyone's called to that. In fact, most people

00:16:32.580 are called to an active involvement in the world. I think, Michael, I speak as an American and as a

00:16:37.600 Catholic bishop, the genius of the First Amendment, I think, is it holds that tension very creatively.

00:16:44.640 We don't want an established religion. So, the anti-establishment clause, right, that Congress 0.98

00:16:50.480 shall make no law regarding an establishment of religion. That would be a sort of theocracy or a

00:16:55.820 sacred public square, as Richard John Newhouse. You know, he didn't want the naked public square,

00:17:01.780 which means a public square denuded of religion. But at the same time, he said, I don't want a sacred

00:17:06.540 public square either. One that's just, you know, where, as you said, the clerics are running things,

00:17:10.820 or it's, or an officially Catholic country or Jewish country or whatever. No, we don't want that. 0.98

00:17:15.720 But at the same time, the First Amendment, but the free exercise of religion, which doesn't just

00:17:21.400 mean private worship. It means a public exercise of religion where I can preach and teach, seek to

00:17:27.440 influence society on the basis of my religious convictions. Right. That's not a violation of

00:17:33.440 the establishment clause. On the contrary, that's an enactment of the free exercise clause. And I think

00:17:39.180 part of, we'll give Madison credit there, the great genius of that First Amendment is that

00:17:43.640 it holds that together very creatively. Now, in our history, in our jurisprudence,

00:17:49.080 we often get that wrong. We'll oscillate between those two things. In my lifetime,

00:17:54.460 we oscillated away from free exercise, it seems to me. Yeah.

00:17:58.020 You know, toward an over-reading of the anti, of the non-establishment clause.

00:18:02.380 So, I'd say let's go back to the First Amendment and all of its healthy tension. That's a good space to

00:18:08.760 be in. And the roots of that are indeed in the Bible and the Church Fathers.

00:18:12.040 Yeah. So much of, I don't know, modern life, I guess, seeks to just get rid of that tension.

00:18:21.240 Maybe it's not modern. Maybe it's just an impulse in fallen man generally. I notice it's more

00:18:25.020 prominent in women. My wife and I talk about this a lot, this desire to resolve kind of apprehension

00:18:30.320 intention. But men have it too. And yet, you know, we have the story. We know how the story begins.

00:18:37.540 We know the turning of the story, which is in the incarnation. We even know how the story ends. And

00:18:43.000 yet, we're in this suspended time of history where we're supposed to do something, you know,

00:18:48.580 and we're trying to figure out precisely what to do. So then, for the people who are considering

00:18:54.880 Advent to be penitential, they're considering death, judgment, heaven, and hell. You know,

00:18:58.580 they're taking this time seriously. And they're looking ahead to the second coming, which will

00:19:02.740 come sooner than some people think, probably. You know, we don't know the day or the hour. It can come

00:19:08.080 by surprise. Not even the son, but only the father knows. What should we be doing, you know,

00:19:14.080 as the hours of Advent wane into the Christmas season, which is a day, it's not a season.

00:19:19.220 What actively should we be doing to prepare ourselves? We should live as the church. So,

00:19:24.520 Jesus says, you know, you're Peter. Upon this rock, I will build my church. The gates of hell

00:19:29.260 will not prevail against it. The church represents the sort of planting of the seed of the Christ's

00:19:34.620 life in the world. So, Christ comes, the incarnation. By the incarnation, we're saved. I'll say that now

00:19:41.620 as a Catholic, not just the cross. That's the culmination of it in a way. But by the whole of the

00:19:46.740 incarnation, we're saved. What's the perpetuation of the incarnation across space and time? Again,

00:19:52.260 this is a Catholic perspective. It's called the church. So, it's through the official teaching

00:19:56.500 of the church, through the sacraments of the church, especially the Eucharist, through apostolic

00:20:01.440 authority, and all these, through the great saints. The Christ life is perpetuated. Go back to the Acts

00:20:08.280 of the Apostles, the ascended Christ, who ascends not to go away, up, up, and away, goodbye, Jesus. It's not

00:20:15.700 that. It's more like a general taking a point advantage on the heights so we can survey the

00:20:22.440 whole field of battle. The ascended Christ sending his spirit into the church now to remake the world.

00:20:30.760 See, the incarnation is all about God's remaking of his creation. We don't play a Platonic game.

00:20:36.980 Christians are not Platonists who would say, well, the fallen world, or Gnostics, just bad,

00:20:40.920 matter is bad. It's a mess. Let's get away from it as quickly as we can. That is not biblical

00:20:47.160 spirituality at all. Biblical spirituality is the God of creation has never given up on his world,

00:20:53.720 and he wants to save it. He wants to heal it. He wants to restore it, and then to raise it to the

00:20:59.800 highest pitch of perfection. The incarnation is the means by which God is affecting this great

00:21:07.440 healing of the universe. The church, the mystical body of Jesus, now continuing that work in the

00:21:14.460 world. Now, as we wait for the final culmination, we call that the second coming, that lovely Greek

00:21:22.780 term, it's in Paul, but the fathers loved it, anacephaliosus. Cephali means head.

00:21:27.740 Rolls right off the tongue.

00:21:28.600 It does. It's a lovely word, anacephaliosus. And it's why it's rendered in Latin as re capitulatio,

00:21:35.780 caput head, right? So, what sums everything up under the headship of Jesus, that's anacephaliosus.

00:21:43.240 That's re capitulatio, recapitulation. St. Irenaeus loved that idea, but it's right in Paul.

00:21:49.360 Aquinas loved it too. That's the second coming, if you want, is this moment of all things coming

00:21:55.760 together in their healed, redeemed form under the headship of Jesus. So, to your question,

00:22:01.660 what do we do in the meantime? Well, we live as the church. We live as the city of God,

00:22:07.780 operative in the world, waiting for him. We're not going to make this happen, but we, under the

00:22:13.920 prompting of his spirit, live according to his purposes. That's what we do in the meantime.

00:22:20.960 One last question on this point, because you make a great observation about the new age,

00:22:25.760 Gnostic religions that are some way like the old age, Gnostic religions, you know, that say 1.00

00:22:29.900 matter is bad, the physical world is bad, time and history are bad, and so we just have to

00:22:34.820 get away from the ick, you know, and abstract ourselves into the ether or something. 0.99

00:22:39.620 And that's certainly not Christian. It's entirely contrary to the incarnation. 1.00

00:22:44.280 But what about the tension also between universality and particularity? Because I think

00:22:50.140 there's also this desire, especially in the modern world, to universalize everything and say that

00:22:56.440 particularity, particular nations, particular individuals, particular religions, particular

00:23:01.560 anything, is an error, you know, and everything just has to be kind of universal and gray, you know,

00:23:09.860 whether we're talking about sex or peoples or ideas or anything like that. And in Christ,

00:23:15.860 we have the universal king of everything and a particular man. How do we make sense of that?

00:23:22.960 Yeah, it's one of the great philosophical questions, and they call it the scandal of

00:23:26.360 particularity. The more recent forms go back to the Enlightenment. And to be fair, you know,

00:23:31.760 the wars of religion ravaged Europe, 17th century. Most of the great thinkers, and it's Kant,

00:23:37.520 Hegel, it's Schleiermacher, it's Leibniz, it's Spinoza, most of those great people wanted to deal

00:23:43.940 with that problem. And they, okay, look, the religions are fighting, and, you know, this

00:23:47.680 particular form of Protestantism against another form of Protestantism, they're all against Catholicism, 0.92

00:23:52.620 and blah, blah, blah, we're all fighting, fighting, fighting. Can't we find, read Rousseau on this too,

00:23:58.620 can't we find some universal form of religiosity that goes beyond the particular battles that can all

00:24:07.160 bring us together? That whole idea of, can't we come together? They did it through an appeal to the

00:24:12.720 universal. So look at someone like Schleiermacher, who's the founder of modern liberal Protestantism.

00:24:18.480 It's the feeling of absolute dependency. I don't care whether you're a Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Jew,

00:24:23.000 non-believer. We've all got that, don't we? Or in Kant, it's the categorical imperative. It's the

00:24:28.380 great moral imperative. Don't we all have that in common, no matter what our background? Look in the

00:24:35.520 20th century theologians, you know, people like Paul Tillich, is the breakthrough of the

00:24:42.440 unconditioned, that no matter where you are, everyone experiences something like that. So that's

00:24:47.940 the great fantasy, in a way, of liberalism, is to find this universal experience. But here's the

00:24:55.460 paradox, I think. Truth, yes, is always universal. I can't have Michael Knowles' truth and Bishop

00:25:02.380 Barron's truth. Truth is truth. Truth is universal. Two plus two equals four for everybody. Okay, so truth

00:25:08.080 is always universal. However, however, access to truth is often particular. And the modern mistake,

00:25:17.380 I think the Enlightenment mistake, was to say the route of access to truth has to be as universal as

00:25:23.620 truth itself. You know, so let's find it in this one great experience of absolute dependency or

00:25:30.400 something, where in fact, it's often the particular that is the route of access to truth. So I would

00:25:38.320 say, you know, Jesus of Nazareth, this very particular first century Jew who led a very peculiar life,

00:25:46.700 it ended in the most horrific way imaginable, and then a claim is made that is practically impossible

00:25:52.800 to believe. Okay, that's the particularity of Christianity. But we say the word, the word,

00:26:00.720 capital W, became flesh. The universal was given, we were given access to it by means of this very

00:26:10.200 particular fact, right? That's the paradox. And we try to resolve it. But when you say quite correctly,

00:26:18.280 when you try to resolve it too universally, it becomes this bland, gray religiosity. Or to give

00:26:25.160 it the contemporary, I'm not religious, I'm spiritual. See, that's an appeal to the bland.

00:26:30.860 No, no, you're as particular as the bloody cross of Jesus on that grubby hill outside of Jerusalem in

00:26:39.020 the year 30 AD. We're as particular as that. We're as particular as we ate and drank with him after his

00:26:46.700 resurrection from the dead. You know, that, I think, breathtaking line from Acts chapter 10 when

00:26:51.300 St. Peter, you know, blithely telling the story of Jesus, and then, oh, you know, we ate and drank with

00:26:57.060 him after he rose from the dead. He's not talking about some myth or some grand universal thing. He's

00:27:02.340 talking about this guy that we knew, this Jesus from, you know, Nazareth, you know, up in Galilee.

00:27:08.680 That's how particular he is, right? But he knows that's the way into the most universal truth.

00:27:17.120 Christians have to keep insisting upon that. 1.00

00:27:19.940 Yes. Even when I think about eating and drinking with him, you know, he broils the fish. And I think,

00:27:24.940 you know, in one of their bites of fish, there was probably like a little bone. And in one of their

00:27:29.500 bites, it was a little bit like it was, the particularity goes even down that far. Like when

00:27:34.760 you remember a good meal, though, there was more that was memorable about the meal than the fish.

00:27:39.640 And our access to truth, even coming by way of a particular teacher. It's not just that

00:27:44.860 teachers give us insight. It's, you know, Mr. So-and-so from the 11th grade. The idea that

00:27:51.580 we get access through a particular YouTube video, even. I'm not even being glib. Or where do we first

00:27:57.100 get our access to learning and truth? It's the particular mother who bore us. How fitting then that

00:28:02.780 truth himself would be born of a mother. Right. Remember in the first letter of John,

00:28:08.160 where he says, I want to talk to you about the word of life. Okay. The word of life. Boy,

00:28:12.520 this guy is at the highest philosophical level. Then he says, which we looked upon with our eyes

00:28:18.460 and our hands have touched. Now there's the Christian difference. The word of life became

00:28:23.540 available to them in this most particular way. This word made flesh, right? Whom they could see and

00:28:30.800 touch? Well, see, look at the church. That's why we worry about like building beautiful churches and

00:28:36.380 why we have sacraments that you can see and you can taste and touch and they're grubby and there's

00:28:41.700 oil. I think that after a confirmation when they have to bring a lemon over to me so I can wipe the

00:28:47.600 oil off my hands. And I've been smearing that on the kids' foreheads. That's the sacramental life

00:28:53.300 of the church. It's grubby in particular, you know. But that tension is super important.

00:28:58.780 And there's always the Gnostic temptation to resolve that problem, to flee from it, 0.92

00:29:04.720 to flee from particularity. We often want to flee from it, especially in our

00:29:10.060 sort of scandalized modern world. And yet, there it is. There's the Christmas manger.

00:29:17.560 Nevertheless, we're confronted with this undeniable fact of the pivot on which the world turns.

00:29:23.280 Your Excellency, that makes me a little less scared, though perhaps even more in awe of the

00:29:31.180 end of the world as we look ahead to it at the incarnation. I hope you've had a blessed Advent.

00:29:36.180 I'm sure you have. And Merry Christmas.

00:29:38.620 It's always a busy time for a bishop. You're running all over the place to liturgies. And

00:29:42.380 I was at a women's prison about a week ago doing a Guadalupe ceremony for the women there. So yeah,

00:29:49.020 it's an interesting time of the year. You know, I'm a mere layman. I'm not even a bishop. And I'm

00:29:54.520 already exhausted by Advent. All I'm doing is stuffing my face with cookies and wine. So that's...

00:30:00.000 Well, let's talk to your spiritual director about that.

00:30:04.560 Bishop Barron, thank you for being here. Wonderful to see you. Wonderful to see all of you.

00:30:09.080 We'll catch you next time.

00:30:10.120 God bless you. Thanks, Michael.

00:30:11.100 What was it like, Merlin, to be alone with God?

00:30:22.380 Is that who you think I was alone with?

00:30:28.520 Meriton, I knew your father. I am yet convinced that he was not of this world.

00:30:36.060 All men know of the great Taliesin.

00:30:39.160 You are my father, that the gods should war for my soul.

00:30:43.740 Princess Garrus, saviour of our people.

00:30:49.280 I know what the bull god offered you.

00:30:51.800 I was offered the same.

00:30:53.780 And?

00:30:55.280 There is a new power at work in the world. I've seen it.

00:30:59.420 A god who sacrifices what he loves for us.

00:31:02.140 We are each given only one life, Singer.

00:31:04.880 No.

00:31:06.020 We're given another.

00:31:09.160 I learnt of Yazoo the Christ. 1.00

00:31:12.160 And I have become his follower.

00:31:14.040 He's waiting on a miracle.

00:31:15.580 And I think you can give him one.

00:31:17.600 Trust in Yazoo.

00:31:18.940 He is the only hope for men like us.

00:31:21.880 Vader Britain never rests in the hands of the great light.

00:31:24.880 Great light?

00:31:26.020 Great darkness?

00:31:27.460 Such things mattered to me then. 0.62

00:31:29.920 What matters to you now, mistress of lies?

00:31:32.040 You, nephew. 0.73

00:31:38.460 The sword of a high king.

00:31:42.500 How many lives must be lost before you accept the power you were born to wield?

00:31:50.080 So cling to the promises of a god who has abandoned you.

00:31:53.460 I cannot take up that sword again.

00:31:55.220 You know what you must do.

00:31:59.900 Great light, forgive me.

00:32:08.640 The time has come to be reborn.

00:32:11.680 Great one.

00:32:12.420 Great one.

00:32:13.020 Great.

00:32:13.040 Thank you.

00:32:25.240 Please do。

00:32:26.140 Thank you.

00:32:27.080 Thank you.

00:32:27.560 Tim Hulu.

00:32:27.700 Thanks.

00:32:28.880 Bye.

00:32:29.560 Bye.

00:32:29.760 Bye.

00:32:30.320 Bye.

00:32:30.900 Bye.

00:32:31.580 Bye.

00:32:31.820 Bye.

00:32:32.140 Tsch 1

00:32:34.560 Bye.

00:32:36.440 Bye.

00:32:38.140 Bye.

00:32:38.980 Bye.

00:32:39.500 Bye.

00:32:39.620 Bye.

The Michael Knowles Show - December 24, 2025

Merry Christmas： Let’s Talk About The End of the World - Michael Knowles & Bishop Barron EXPLAIN

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