Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: The best insight, instant feedback, accountability. The all new talk radio Freedom 106.5.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: Let me welcome to our program. Father Jesse Meng. Good morning to you.
[00:00:12] Speaker C: Good morning. Thank you for having me.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: No, we're here to discuss something that's pretty interesting. It's 33 days to eucharistic glory. It says here that the movement is meant to infuse more love and joy and peace into our society.
Let's begin by telling us exactly what is this? Is this a new initiative? Is this something that has been around for a while?
[00:00:37] Speaker C: That's a great question, to be honest. Our catholic archdiocese here in Trinidad to be the first of any of the local churches in the world of the catholic church to do this. And it's a 33 day journey to where we are following a book of a man called Matthew Kelly, who's an australian who now lives in America, and he donated 30,000 books to our country. And we're running it through our parishes, our schools, whereby we are meditating on this beautiful mystery of Jesus teaching about the Eucharist, about the bread of life. And it's all moving towards a consecration on Corpus Christi. Consecration meaning a deeper surrender to the worship of God, a deeper surrender to the Eucharist. And what as Catholics, we understand to be Jesus himself, you know, his presence, his abiding presence while in heaven, yet given to his church. So it's where I explained on some of the other radio programs, it's kind of where we plug in as Catholics into these power source to the higher dimension, the energy of God. It's where heaven meets earth, you know, in the mass. So the mass is what we believe is the what the Lord, before he died, he instituted the last Supper. You know, people here know understanding last supper. So first Catholics, the mass is the last supper. Now, where we meet Christ, where we mystically, supernaturally meet God, to be filled up with the life, to go out and to live.
[00:02:01] Speaker B: There are people who may not be of the faith, who may not understand what eucharistic means. So let's explain that to them.
[00:02:06] Speaker C: All right? So Eucharist, first of all, is before Jesus died, he had this last supper. He gathered his apostles and he, at the same time that was happening, the Passover was happening. And the Passover was the jewish festival that remembered when Moses led the jewish people through from Egypt into the desert, right? And the jewish people, when the Passover was celebrated, they thought that they, even for many later generations, when they did the Passover, it was as if they were with Moses. It was like if they time traveled if you wish to be with that people in that mystical event.
So when Jesus did the last supper at the same time and he said a special word, do this in memory of me, he meant that with all the jewish context of, like, when you, my disciples, celebrate this, I will be with you. I will lead you through the ultimate Passover, which is to move from sin, from darkness into light, to go close to the Father, to God. Right? So the mass of Eucharist is then also, there's crazy teaching. As Catholics, we believe that the Eucharist, the bread and the mass becomes Jesus himself, which is the abiding, loving presence, which is him.
So it is a wild teaching, but we believe this is rooted in scripture. And so ultimately the three day journey is to raise our awareness, our faith that the Eucharist is Christ, and that about meeting him, about being in love. For Christians, you know, essentially Christianity is about love.
Our morality is all geared about love. It's about helping us to grow in truth and grow in love. And so this journey is essentially about how can we plug ourselves more into the divine love of God so that we could change our homes, our society.
And I'm in charge of leading this project with the diocese, the Catholic Church here. And I'm amazed at how people are experiencing tremendous things of God on this journey. So, you know, like, people are, their home lives are changing already because they're having a conversation as a family. You know, it's kind of bringing them back into dialogue because, you know, we could risk in our society today to be so fragmented. Everybody on the phone, everybody in, you know, doing good things. But we forget sometimes to have those proper relationships.
[00:04:21] Speaker B: Well, if ever there's a country that needs divine intervention, it's this one.
[00:04:25] Speaker C: Well, that's what people keep saying in.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: So many different elements of our, of our society. I mean, we're talking this morning on the front pages. We have crime. You have all of these other issues that they occupy people's minds. And many times in people trying to deal with these things, there's a sense of hopelessness. There's a sense of, well, throw your hands up in the air. You know, what to do. How do I deal with some of the things that are confronting us? But let's get back to the nitty gritty of this. Is this a literal, physical journey or is this a spiritual journey that we're talking about, or is it both?
[00:04:58] Speaker C: Well, it's kind of both. In a sense. It's a spiritual journey. It's like a pilgrimage, you know, so I said 30,000 books have been given out, and people are meeting each other in the grocery and say, hey, boy, hey, girl. You read today. You like the theme of today? Because every day is a different theme. So it's a prayer journey, but also big part of it has been coming together for conversations. So I live in St. Finbar's church in Diego Martin, and we have a big conversation on a Monday night. We have about 200 people coming, and we're just talking about the Lord, talking about what God has done in our lives, just keeping it light, you know, and just listening to each other, you know, actually getting in touch with each other. What has God done for you? Because we. The thing is, we get so much bad news, right? But the truth is, what I've been blown away with this is that how much God is at work in supernatural ways, like people. One lady told me, young woman told me, I'm doing the book, father Jesse. And I felt my room filled with this awesome presence of God, this joy. Another man told me just recently that he was. Had bad eczema. And he was almost like a leopard. He was in pen, his skin was terrible. And he went before the Eucharist before, because we keep, we believe. We keep the Eucharist after the mass, the consecration, we keep it in a tabernacle, a place where we call, like, the holy of holies. And we believe that is actually Jesus presence. It's him with us. And so he went before that, and he bowed down and he was in pain. He said, lord, please, you know, and he felt this tangible. Somebody embraced him physically. I know those days, as the days went on, all his eczema was healed, and he's never had it. Now, years later, I could go on and on. People have been telling me all their stories, but ultimately, you hit the nail on your head. How do we change our nation? It's prayer. Prayer is what opens the heart. Right, and allows contact with God. The higher energy, the higher life, God himself. And he's the source of all goodness, and he lets him into the core of our being. How are we going to change the nation? We have to change the heart of the nation, right? And Trinidad is a very resilient place, very beautiful people. I believe that we have. We are beautiful people. We are spiritual people, actually. We have so many fates, you know? Yes. You know, people are doubting stuff. Myself, I doubted for years. I had stopped believing in God for many years. I disliked the church, you know, and dislike the catholic church in particular because of things I read, but I never stopped to look at the saints and they read way more holy men and women, you know, and even priests and bishops. You've had bad popes. Okay, yes, you know, we are bad CEO's. You have good CEO's. But there's been so much good too. You know, like the hospital system, the education.
Like these nuns and priests, they did things that nobody else wanted to do. You know, like they gave their life to serve in love and to walk with people in their grief, bury their loved ones, listen to all their darkness and confession, listen to their sins, to unburden them. You know, there's so much good. And without that function, society, I believe, would be in a worse place.
[00:07:52] Speaker B: I know that the Catholic Church is involved in a lot that does not necessarily get the kind of attention and exposure and media attention and all that. I know there's a catholic news that highlights some of these things. And the Catholic Church is working a lot when it comes to migrants, and I think you're involved with the migrants. So the Catholic Church plays an integral role in Trinidad and Tobago in a lot that we do. But this journey that you're talking about, spiritual, the physical and all the other elements of it, if there are people who are listening in for the first time and they don't know for one reason or the other, but they want to get more involved for some reason, they feel an association with what's going on, how can they do that?
[00:08:42] Speaker C: Yeah, so that was a great question. We have a. We have a Catholic. We have a website called catholicti.org, which is like our kind of national church website. And there is like a one stop shop there. They could go on. They will see 33 day journey, and then they will click on that and they will see how to join a journey. So basically we have an audio version of the book every day.
[00:09:01] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:09:02] Speaker C: Right. Because now everybody has one of the 30,000 books and they have an audio version of the book they can listen to. Today's day, 23 days, not too late to just join the journey. I make video reflections through Trinity TV. And that has been. That's aired and linked through that. That website. It's been showing on TTT news in the morning as well. So the videos are going out. That's just me musing on the readings. So we have this book as a daily reading. It's like two pages. And then I make my own musings on that to add a little few things and open it up. So that's basically the heart of the journey. And once a week on Trinity TV, we've been interviewing people, different people, different walks of life, different different states, different states of life, and, and talking about the law, talking about, you know, how this journey has transformed them, how the eucharist has played a central role in their life and given them life and energy and, yeah, so, so catholict.org is where they could join the journey.
[00:09:57] Speaker B: Why 33 days?
[00:09:58] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a great question because we believe that Christ died in his 33 year, 33 years. So, so the idea is that one day to honor every year of his life, and also the idea that it takes repetition to give birth to conviction. It's when you really mold over and chew on something in your heart and mind again and again. Does it really go deep into your heart? You know, we have a lot of notions in our mind. How does it get into our heart, into our being, into our passions? So that's our journey. And that's what the journey is. So let's do this all together. Let's have this common language, let's have this common talk. Let's raise the faith of our church, because in the gospel, we see anytime Jesus transformed anybody's life was, he said, your faith touched me. So when you touch me by your faith, this power of God goes out to you. And so I see that all the time I've seen how faith in my own life, how faith is not just blind belief, it's our contact with God.
[00:10:51] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, that's. Faith is very important on so many levels. And there are people who, from all walks of life, latch onto anything that is faith based. My mother, God bless her, I speak about her often because she left so many, many, many messages and so on. She was one who loved prayer. She loved God in all forms. And we were Hindu. And I remember going up to Mount Saint Benedict as a child, and I remember going up there and lighting the candle and sitting and praying with Father Bruno and getting a little mint after and all those things. And I've been exposed to everything that you can think about, Islam, even Baptist, everything. I've been exposed to it. And everyone takes you or wants to take you to that place where somehow or the other, there is this intervention that helps you treat with what is confronting you and that you get over it. And I know that this journey is a powerful one for people who are of the faith and who subscribed to it in the manner in which that you are saying that people have. And the testimonials that you've said to us already you've been getting says that. Well, you know, it's working in the way that it's supposed to. But after 33 days, and this might be a tough. I don't know if it's a tough one, but after 33 days, not just what happens, but how do you know if it's been, if it's been successful, if it's achieved the goal?
[00:12:23] Speaker C: So that's it. So the archbishop has asked me to live out a rule ongoing. So I'm not in a parish per se. I live in a. Live in St. Vincent Miles parish. Other brothers are fully involved in the parish. My job is to go around and trying to work with so many of our beautiful people in the church and even outside the church to continue this journey. And a big task is to really promote prayer, contemplative prayer, help people in their meditation, help people meet God, help people plug in, as I like to plug into the source. So that's going to be my journey and trying to see how we could keep the conversation going. So we're looking at that because people, something really amazing has happened. I'm just blown away, to be honest. I'm traveling around the country, going to different parishes, holding different conversations, and amazed by how hungry people have been for this journey. And, you know, people, like, people have been looking for an excuse to talk about their faith and about God, because sometimes it's taboo in some places of society. You know, you don't bring your faith there. Let's leave. Let's not mention Jesus. Upset my day. But this has been an opportunity to talk, and you'd be surprised who has been talking. I've been amazed, you know, who've been wanting to share the light, share their faith, and, you know, let's talk about the Lord. You know, let's talk about God. You know, I have some very close muslim friends, so we talk about God, we talk about, you know, about. There's a lot of common ground we could talk about, you know, there are differences, but we could talk about common ground.
[00:13:53] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think it's the commonalities that provide the platform for strength and for us as a nation working as harmoniously as we have, one of the things that we often take for granted is how well we get along. Yeah, you are one or two people in between Chuck and a little bacchanal, and you can't get away from that. But by and large, the kind of violence that we see in other places because of religion, we don't have that here, and let's hope that we never have it because we've been able to exist harmoniously for. For a very long period of time, all the various faiths. I mean, we had.
We had one instance where the Muslims were fasting for Ramadan, the Hindus had the naratam, and the Christians had Easter, and everything taking place at the same point in time. And those are things that we really should pat ourselves on the back and say, job well done. So as our interview comes to an end, and I know that you may have other obligations, tell our listeners once again how they can get involved in what's taking place.
[00:14:54] Speaker C: Perfect. Yeah, we. Please, you can go to catholictt.org, and there you'll find where you can get the audio versions of the book, where you could get the daily video reflections, where you could follow any news about this journey. It's never too late to join a journey. And you don't have to be Catholic to be on the journey.
The readings of the book have a lot of wisdom in it about life. And I think it's. It would be beneficial to anybody. And while respecting wherever you are in your own life, you know, and one thing I'd like to say about, just to end with that, you know, politics sometimes hijacks religion to do its dirty work. And I think, and you see that in some countries, like you said, where religions. But if you look at the actual religions themselves, like the gospel. Gospel, there's nothing in the gospel that would promote violence. It's the opposite. But so we have to be. We have to make sure that our politics doesn't hijack our. Our religions to do its work, you know? And. But the power of what you said so beautifully there about Trinidad and Tobago, we are a model, and we could focus on the negative, or you could do what you just brutally said and let's talk about what we do. Well, you know, we look at carnival. Everybody's on the road. Everybody, you know, but how can we go on a road, keep going on a road together to do something awesome.
[00:16:12] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's gonna have to be a flamingo. Thank you so much for being with us here this morning.
[00:16:16] Speaker A: The best insight, instant feedback, accountability. The all new talk radio Freedom 106.5.
