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Dec. 24, 2024 - Bannon's War Room
47:51
Episode 4149: Christmas Eve Special Cont.
Participants
Main voices
b
ben harnwell
17:36
p
patrick k odonnel
10:31
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Speaker Time Text
unidentified
Welcome back.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Well, I'm absolutely delighted to have you on the show today.
Someone I've known for many, many years.
I've never spoken to him on the show before.
I think he's been on with Steve.
Robert Moynihan, the editor, long-standing editor, 40 years or so, of...
Of Inside the Vatican magazine.
Bob, welcome back on to the show.
So you've been there, I think, longer than anyone else watching all these affairs in the Vatican.
I do have a question I'm going to come to towards the end of our chat with you about Your observations, as such a long-standing observer, I just want to ask you what your reflections are on the way people are perceiving the present pontificate.
But before that, as it's Christmas, Christmas Eve today, we're obviously focusing our In an Advent way, specifically focusing our expectations on the nativity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ tomorrow.
Bob, I wanted to ask you if there's anything in the past year, looking back on it, whether you can say, I think this was the action of Jesus Christ in human events, both in the public sphere and then also, if you wouldn't mind, if there is anything in your own personal life.
unidentified
Well, I want to wish you and everyone a blessed Christmas, Christmas Eve.
During this past year, it was pretty clear that our country was suffering under a type of strong delusion, which the media supported and many of our institutions supported, our universities, and the misunderstanding of the nature of man,
the nature of sexuality, the nature of our identity, and the As we came through the year, I think a key moment was when Robert Kennedy Jr. threw his support to Donald Trump, and he said that he was a Democrat as a young man,
and his father, who was the assassinated president, I'm sorry, his father was the assassinated Senator Robert F. Kennedy, running for president in 1968, and his uncle was John F. Kennedy, the president.
Who was assassinated in 1963. And he said, my parents and my family was Democratic, but I'm going to support Donald Trump because the Democratic Party has clearly become an ideological totalitarian party that doesn't listen and imposes its thought on the American people.
I thought that was a remarkable thing for a man to do who was from that tradition.
And after that and the election results, it seemed as if the country was departing from a kind of lock on its collective mind.
In my own life, I think there was the death of a dear friend for whom we prayed, and I continued that prayer during the past year as a kind of nightly prayer.
And that slowly distanced me, I might say, by From the everyday life that all of us lead.
And I started engaging, in a sense, in a nightly prayer with eternal things.
And I think it's human nature to try to live fully in time and succeed and keep our health and love our families.
But deep inside of us, there's a longing for what is above, for what is eternal.
And that's happened to me in the past year in a way, I think, more deep than ever before.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
But when I first came to Rome back in 2011, a cynical old priest He said to me, and you're probably going to know the joke, he said to me, do you know why there's so much faith in Rome?
I said, I don't know.
Why is there so much faith in Rome?
And he said, because everyone who comes here leaves it here, and then they go off without it.
That's not happened with you.
You've been in Rome, I think, for your 41st year, and listening to you talk, it's clear that you're Faith is as strong as it ever was.
I know that your father was a great influence on you in having a living, vibrant Catholic faith.
Tell me your observations.
You've been here 41 years.
I think when you found it inside the Vatican magazine, one of your first visits was to go and see John Paul II and present him with your first copy.
You've seen a lot of things.
Give me your reflections after four decades in this town.
unidentified
Well, at Christmas time, we're speaking about the incarnation of the Word of God.
That's something spiritual, invisible, and eternal, entering into time.
The Church is obviously in time, and it's passing now through 2,000 years with human beings who have faith, but sometimes are very imperfect and very corrupt.
But once you realize that you have to stick with what your parents, and really for me, my grandmother, she stopped me one time when I was a teenager, and I visited her in Haverhill, Massachusetts, and she said, have a egg and toast, Bobby.
And we talked about various things, and she said, one thing I want to tell you, because I was heading off to college, She said, never lose your faith.
So in a way, it's not my own choice.
It's the obedience I have to her.
And the faith is simply a belief that something good, that something holy, something higher than ourselves, is conveyed by the message of Christ.
And I would probably say the key The scriptural passage that has always been important to me is this one.
We hold this treasure in earthen vessels, vessels of clay.
So what is the treasure?
The treasure is the news of this Christmas and then the life of Jesus and then his crucifixion and resurrection, which opens up a possibility for human hope from time toward eternity.
And this is the treasure, this message, this proclamation.
And we have it, but it's in an earthen vessel.
It's a vessel of clay.
It's mortal human beings, and we see that in many Vatican officials.
We see it in many ministers.
People who wish to do well, but somehow fall short.
But this is only, for me, a further Proof, in a way, that everything that occurs is somehow under the hand of God.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Bob, stand by.
I'll be coming back to you in just one minute's time.
I'm going to ask you what your words of counsel might be to Catholics who are being ever so slightly scandalized by the present pontificate.
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Bob, you know, this is something that we've covered on the show sort of repeatedly since I've been here over the last three years.
There are messages coming out of the Vatican that scandalise, by the way, scandalise not only Catholics, but also Evangelicals, also Protestants.
In the four minutes that we have left, what words can you offer?
unidentified
You've been in Rome 40 years, right?
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Whatever, half your life.
What can you send back to America about what you're seeing here, to give a word of sustenance?
unidentified
I think we are engaged, of course, in a continual spiritual battle.
We're trying to find the true, the good, the beautiful, and to adhere to the apostolic teaching, to continue to hand over to the future.
We're part of a long tradition.
There are people who have infiltrated and arrogated to themselves a kind of trendy thought which wishes to change church teaching.
But there are many who will stand firm, and I believe they will prevail.
We have the promise that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church.
But our struggle is not actually with flesh and blood.
Our struggle is with powers and principalities in high places.
We are engaged in a spiritual battle, and it requires a spiritual commitment.
We must not always depend on the easy conclusion because the final test of true love for others and for God is not the easy solution.
It's what is finally for the good of the other.
And often if you do not propose for the other a high standard, You show an insufficient love for your neighbor.
The church is, as the picture behind you shows, Ben, it's a city that's been here for 2,777 years, founded in 753 BC. As you walk through the city, you're walking where emperors walked.
Where Julius Caesar walked.
You're walking where barbarians walked as they conquered the city and put it to the flame.
You're walking where saints walked.
Saint Peter was here.
Saint Paul was here.
Both of them were executed here.
That's why the church is here.
Because the graves of the two apostles, to the Jews and to the Gentiles, to all the nations of the earth, Are here in Rome, one Peter in St. Peter's Basilica, the other Paul just outside the city.
And that tradition and the scriptures that were written is part of the fabric of this city.
That's why behind you, Ben, you see a church steeple and there's actually several in the image behind you.
Yet there's also a classical image of a Roman chariot in the sky.
This fusion of imperial and papal power has distinguished Rome, but people here can find simple faith.
And in the end, I think Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict, and often Pope Francis himself, who nevertheless has been confusing and unclear.
And I expect to be having a brief meeting with him in another few days here in Rome.
And I'm going to...
I'm going to say, Holy Father, you have confused and disturbed and perhaps scandalized many people.
Why don't you make one final effort to speak and issue a clear call?
And therefore, I'm wishing also to Pope Francis, who's 88 now, a Merry Christmas, and also to Archbishop Viganò, who has been excommunicated, but I'm wishing him a Merry Christmas because he's been such a beacon of truth.
And let's hope that the jubilee year ahead, the new year ahead, will continue to bring the truth of Christ and true joy to humanity.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Dr. Robert Moynihan, I wish we could just spend the rest of the show churning over what you just said.
Quickly, 20 seconds, where do people go to get inside the Vatican?
unidentified
We have a website, InsideTheVatican.com.
I have a letter that I sent out.
There I am the other day with Hans Zimmer.
There I am.
Well, I'm not with Archbishop Viggin, but he's an old friend of mine.
And I'm wishing him well in the new year.
And I've actually...
These hands have shaken the hands of John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis, and Archbishop Viganò.
So I tried to bring everyone together.
And you can find me at InsideTheVatican.com.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Dr. Robert Moynihan, you're basically a walking third-class relic.
Thanks for coming on the show.
We'll catch up again with you soon.
Have a very many Christmas, and we'll be back after this short break.
unidentified
When Christ our Savior was born on Christmas Day, to save us all, and save us from where we were gone astray.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Welcome back, folks.
Well, my next guest, Jenny Holland, is a writer.
She writes for Spike.
Now, I've had some professional dealings with her over the past few years, and I'm thrilled that she's agreed to come on the show today because I think she's got a personal story that I'm actually going to be interviewing her today.
Jenny, welcome onto the show.
I think what I find...
Let me just read this short passage out of an article that you put out last year.
Because I think this is really fascinating, your backstory.
This is from one of your articles.
During the last month, I sought refuge and calm for my overstressed brain in a very unexpected place.
So unexpected, in fact, that I'm reluctant to say it out loud.
I began to say the rosary.
As I write those words, I feel a huge resistance and embarrassment, like I'm sharing the most personal thing I have ever shared.
Why is it so uncomfortable for me to state this fact, you ask?
Okay, so I can guess why a lot of people don't like talking about the interior aspects of their faith.
But the fact that you are doing would still be intriguing, but that's not what got my interest.
What got my interest is that you're formally agnostic.
You're formally agnostic, and yet you're moving towards one of the most famous Catholic devotionals that there is.
And in parallel to that, your background, and I know from reading your writings, your father was quite sort of anti-clerical.
Your grandfather was a deacon.
Perhaps there's some intergenerational rebellion going on here.
But in addition to that dynamic, you yourself, on a political sense, are moving from the left over into the magosphere.
And these two things are going on at the same time.
Tell me a bit about that, because I think that's a fascinating story.
unidentified
Thank you.
Well, actually, the funniest thing about it is that I'm far from alone.
You're right.
I started out actually not agnostic, but atheist.
My father was an atheist.
My mother was an atheist.
They were both brought up in very strict Catholic environments, but rebelled in the 60s in the Boomers' sexual revolution.
My father was a science-loving, rationalist, liberal.
Now, he's been dead 20 years, unfortunately, but I just inherited that worldview.
And at the time, I'm talking the 1980s and 1990s, it seemed to be working okay.
In fact, it seemed to be working very well.
Now, I don't have to tell you, Ben, or your audience how spectacularly the liberal project seems to have failed catastrophically and dramatically, I would say, in the last even five years.
It's just gotten really remarkable.
So people like me, sort of Gen Xers who used to be sort of indie kids and or hippies, which I never was, but radicals and just generally sort of progressive rebels, even though that's sort of a contradiction, are now middle-aged and are really kind of appalled and are now middle-aged and are really kind of appalled and revisiting and really deeply questioning all those secular assumptions that we grew up with.
And what we're finding is that the answers really do strongly point to faith.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
How does your social circle, your friends and family even, how are they accompanying you on this journey?
unidentified
Not exactly accompanying me, but what I have found is new friends who have almost exactly the identical experiences I do and very similar backgrounds.
And I'll give you a really interesting example.
My birthday was 10 days ago and I was stuck in London.
I was coming back from Italy and I got stuck in the storm and my flight was cancelled.
And I was invited over to the home of a former lefty like myself, same age as me, a philosopher and her husband.
And they, again, very left wing, alternative lifestyle backgrounds.
And the entire lunch, which was lovely, was spent talking about God.
And before we ate, we all we sat and prayed.
And I've never done that before in my life.
That's the first time in my life, in my adult life anyway, that something like that has happened.
So there's a very, really noticeable change happening amongst people who used to identify as left wing indie types.
It might be small.
It's probably the minority, but it's it's perceptible.
Well.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Do you think it's growing?
unidentified
I do think it's growing.
I mean, I suppose there's some sort of selection bias possible.
But if you really...
I mean, I think the world is falling into two groups.
The people who are really unable to break free from their group consensus.
And I know more people like that.
And for whatever reason, I'm not one of them.
I broke free from my group's consensus, which was like the sort of blue New York Democrat thing.
And the people who can't help but see what they see.
And once you see what you see, the questions that it raises really are stark.
I mean, for me, first of all, it was the COVID response and the vaccine mandates and the transing of children.
And I thought, well, I thought back to my father and his love of science and his love of Isaac Newton and all of these really sort of foundational figures of the liberal.
And I thought that no longer is working.
Those rules have failed us.
Science became this religion in and of itself and had the same flaws as sort of a dogmatic, repressive religion had.
That was a real shock to me, that the secular liberal world did not avoid the cruelties and the barbarisms.
I took it as faith that the secular world would avoid those things.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
You divided the world into two groups.
Is it fair to say that you're suggesting that those two groups are those who recognize that that agnostic, atheistic, prevailing culture is failing and those that don't recognize it?
unidentified
I think there's a sliding scale.
I think you start out by thinking, oh wow, these lefties sure are crazy.
And then suddenly you find yourself praying the rosary within a few short years.
So it depends on where people are in that scale.
But that was certainly my trajectory, unexpectedly.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Wow.
And your long-standing historic friends, how are they seeing this?
unidentified
That's what I don't discuss.
I don't discuss it with them.
I think politics and just general life has kind of moved me away from them anyway, not deliberately in any dramatic way, just people are middle-aged and have their lives and live far apart.
So I'm not entirely sure.
I do often think of my grandfather, though, who died, I think, about 16 years ago, and what he would think of this new version of me.
And I'm sure he would be delighted because, like many greatest generation, all of his children, he had 10 children.
He was a very devout Catholic.
He became pretty much atheist and even hostile to the church.
So I often think about what that tragedy must have been like for him to have this very sincere face that was not picked up by his many children.
But I think there is a turning now.
I really do.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Jenny, in the final three minutes that we've got of this part of the show, I want to ask you something.
Looking over the In the course of the last year, is there anything that you could say you think, this, I think, was the action of Jesus Christ working in the affairs of man?
And is there anything within the personal realm that you might say the same sort of thing about, that you'd share with the warring posse?
unidentified
Yes.
I mean, I feel like an interloper if I try to speak about, say, Jesus or anything that's about the Bible.
I don't feel like I've earned that right.
But I will say that praying the rosary almost every morning, I mean, there's been a week or so here and there where I haven't done it, throughout this year, I have noticed the level of calm that it has brought into my life It's absolutely extraordinary.
Crises happen, right?
Things go wrong.
People do things that upset you.
It made me so much less reactive.
It gave me an ability to take a deep breath and be at peace even when things were going quite terribly wrong.
I can only attribute that to that Sense of having a higher power to whom I can hand over my troubles.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Wow.
Wow.
Tell me, in the two minutes then of left, you write for Spike, but you also push out some great stuff on your Substack column.
Just quickly, on social media, what are the things that you'd point to people towards?
And what sort of things do you write about on Substack?
unidentified
So on Substack, I write mainly about the culture wars.
So that includes a lot of these sort of spiritual questions that are coming up more and more for people like me.
I write a lot about the American media.
I used to be in the newspaper business.
I worked for the New York Times for three years when I was in my 20s.
I like to excoriate them and say mean things about them.
So Substack is really where I do the bulk of my work.
I interview people like I interview you, Ben.
And I write for Spike on a freelance basis as well.
But definitely go to my Substack.
It's a very active community.
A lot of people like me, Gen Xers, who are falling out of their leftist religion and falling into true religion.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
And on Substack, how do people find you there?
unidentified
So it's my name, JennyEHolland.substack, or you can Google saving culture from itself on Substack.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Fantastic.
And Getter, Twitter, what have you?
unidentified
Getter is my name, JennyEHolland.
Yeah, JennyEHolland on Getter.
And on Twitter, it's SemperFemina21.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
SemperFemina, which means forever female.
unidentified
Yes.
For the non-Latinists following the show today.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Jenny, I'm very, very grateful that you came on the show.
Absolutely in the new year.
I'd love to have you back on and help digest the cultural events that are taking place.
Because often one needs a Sherpa to help with that.
Thank you so much.
unidentified
Happy to be that Sharper.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Thank you for sharing and thank you for sharing your personal testimony with us today.
Christmas Eve, Christmas Day tomorrow.
Merry Christmas, Jenny, to you.
back up this short break.
unidentified
Welcome back.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
So the final half of the show today, as we canter towards the end, is with one of the people I think is one of the, if not one of the foremost, if not the important military historians in the world right now, Patrick K. O'Donnell, who will actually be hosting the Christmas show tomorrow.
Patrick, thanks for coming on the show today.
I wanted to ask you, because this is sort of Christmas time period.
It's one of the things I've been asking all of the guests on this Christmas Eve special.
It's an element to do with the fact, you know, we're celebrating tomorrow the birth of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
I wanted to ask you two questions.
Can you point to anything in the public sphere where you can say, during the course of the last year, that you can say, I think this was the action of Jesus Christ acting in human events?
And whether there is perhaps anything in your own personal life similarly that you could look towards?
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼
I think that President Trump, in his salvation, the day that he was Nearly executed was the hand of God, the armor of God.
It was pretty obvious, evident, I think, there in my mind that he was saved for a reason.
And he is a historical figure of extreme consequence.
And he's here at exactly the right time in the right place.
And for me personally, things manifest themselves in many situations.
For me, my faith...
Steve asked me when I wrote my book, We Were One, which is on my experience in the Battle of Fallujah as a combat historian.
I was a volunteer combat historian, but I was in uniform and I was armed with a Marine rifle platoon through the entire battle and over a month.
And then I spent three months in combat in Iraq.
And it was a transformative event.
And Steve asked me, what was the most important aspect of that experience?
I said to him, my faith was reaffirmed.
And I went to Iraq, almost, I want to say, agnostic to some degree.
I had been through, you know, 12 years of Catholic school and had a deep faith.
I had a pretty good understanding of things.
And right before the battle, I received in the mail the items that I'm wearing on my neck.
One is a medal that was worn by a paratrooper in the 509 parachute who was part of the first combat jump of the United States in North Africa.
He fought through North Africa.
This is a 509. They were known as the Geronimos.
We're one of the most decorated Parachute units.
They received the presidential unit citation.
They were at Anzio and were hit by an entire corps, 50,000 Germans, including tanks, thousands of rounds of artillery shells.
And he was one of the men that survived without a scratch.
And they went from Anzio to southern France, and then they were part of the group that was trucked into Belgium to stem the tide in the northern shoulder against the Waffen-SS and Joachim Piper.
And specifically, they faced an epic stand against a SS-Panzer Grenadier division, a place called Sadsot.
And these are lightly armed men that just had grit and tenacity with bazookas and mortars and M1 Garands and BARs and grenades.
And they somehow stopped the SS there in the northern shoulder, which is the most crucial part.
The other medal is a scapula that I've worn since Fallujah ever since.
And it was worn by, if you're familiar with the story, the catcher was a spy.
This is Mo Berg, who is one of OSS's greatest spies behind the lines.
He was able to speak nine languages.
But he was part of the ALSOS program, which was—they went after Germany's secrets, nuclear secrets in particular.
The man that wore the scapula was his radio operator that went behind the lines with him.
And they were in some of the most perilous situations, surrounded by Germans.
In Rome, for instance, they hid in an attic.
He hid in an attic while the place was being searched by scores of SS and German troops.
Somehow survives this.
Multiple parachute drops.
He even went in on a small rubber raft on another mission, you know, individually.
And right before Fallujah, this arrived and he said, you need this more than I do where you're going.
And I've worn them ever since.
They're my most prized possessions.
I mean, you know, fascinating story is I went swimming with my daughter about 10 or 12 years ago and I Took the metals and the scapula off, put it in the locker, and left without having them.
And then, you know, I was alarmed.
Within 45 minutes, I realized that, where are they?
They're gone.
Went back, and they were missing.
They were gone.
And I left just a note with the front desk.
I said, here, if anybody ever finds these, please contact me.
Months passed, and...
I told my aunt, they're missing.
She said to me, pray to St. Anthony.
I did.
And I prayed to St. Anthony, and within three or four days, I got a call.
I said, I found the scapula in the metal, in the locker.
Would you like them back?
I said, absolutely.
It's extraordinary.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
How did that happen?
I mean, you checked the locker room.
It wasn't there, right?
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼
It was gone.
They were gone.
And they were missing for months.
And I left a note at the front desk that said, if anybody ever finds these, the scapula and the metal, please contact me.
And I left my phone number.
And I thought nothing of it.
Months passed.
I mean, I went swimming in May and it was July, she said, to pray to St. Anthony.
It's something that manifests itself in my life.
I've been very blessed.
Health-wise, some extraordinary things happened to me this year.
I shattered my leg.
Multiple things happened to me.
I was told that I had a tumor in my kidney.
Every ultrasound, every MRI, Everything.
The Cleveland Clinic said, you've got a tumor.
And I just prayed.
I prayed.
And the day that I went in, I went in for the biopsy.
And I went under and I talked to my surgeon, who's also a professor.
I said, you know, what's your experience on this?
It's in the canal, in the kidney.
And he said, it's generally cancerous.
And it'll have to be, we'll have to probably take the whole kidney out.
And I never forget, I woke up and I said, how'd the biopsy go?
And they said there was no tumor.
Couldn't explain it.
But I believe it's the power of prayer.
I believe it.
I was saved in Fallujah multiple times.
I can't even...
A presence that said to me, don't...
I mean, the first time was I was in a drainage ditch.
Well, we were running from two snipers that had a direct bead on me and the men that I was with.
And I'll never forget the bullets whizzed and snapped.
They were so close to my ear.
And it was the stories that all my World War II veterans told me.
And I'm crawling and running and it was...
600 meters, at least.
It was an enormous amount.
The bullets were landing so close.
And the president said to me, don't crawl any further.
And a bullet landed right where my head was going to be, only inches away.
And that was the first time.
And then it was multiple things after that.
We were clearing a house.
I said, pause, and the man in front of me, a Marine in front of me, was shot in the head.
It saved my life.
There was a machine gun on the other side.
I mean, I can't...
I just know that there is Jesus, and there is God, and my faith is unshakable.
And it provides you with a sense of never being alone, and you can pretty much tackle anything.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Wow, that's a beautiful testimony.
I don't personally have anything, I've never been under fire like that, but I can imagine the comfort and the assurance that having felt very closely the presence of God in those moments, those life and death moments that have endured through time, for several minutes, I had extraordinary things too.
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼
I had many people around me that were scared.
Rightfully so because of what we went through.
But I had a sense of this presence.
I felt the world around me and all my senses were heightened and a sense of peace that I cannot explain.
Because that place, Fallujah, was a kind of a vortex into another world.
And it was an extraordinary situation where, in some cases, I'm talking about my book, We Were One, where many of the men predicted their own deaths.
And they knew they were going to die.
And it was a, there's a lot of extraordinary circumstances there.
But I came away from it Very much stronger in my faith reaffirmed.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Patrick, we've got sadly two minutes now before we head into a break.
Could you just tell me something That feeling that you had when you're under fire, when you're sort of commando crawling and that constant sniper fire, do you feel in your heart the connection between that presence of God, of Jesus Christ watching over you, putting his hand over you and watching over you, much like he did, as you said correctly, about President Trump in Pennsylvania?
Do you feel the connection, the spiritual connection between that presence and Christmas Day, the birth of Christ, did you feel in your heart that connection through time?
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼
Yes, I do.
I've often said that that experience, that peace that I felt when everything was blowing up around me and there was death everywhere, I hope to experience it again.
It was incredible.
unidentified
Wow.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Wow.
And so those, I carry just a miraculous medal.
I noticed that you, and I also have the scapula here as well, which I wear.
When the Virgin Mary appeared, I think in the 12th, 13th century, to St. Simon Stock and gave him the first scapula, which is just basically a very tiny cutout of a monastic habit.
That day has been called the most important day in English history and it really created the mendicant, kicked off the mendicant revival in England.
The relics of that through Protestantism I think continue to filter through and have a real impact in America today.
Just for the folks who are listening, for either Catholics or Protestants who aren't familiar with either of these devotionals, especially the scapula, the brown thing that you see Patrick wearing there, The Catholic belief, as the devotional here, the promises behind the Virgin Mary is that if you die when you are wearing this, because of the faith you have in Jesus Christ, you will be saved.
And that has been a great motor, I think, as part of the development and the thriving of the Catholic faith in Old Mary England.
back in two minutes after this short break.
unidentified
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ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
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So as we now approach the end of the Christmas Eve special, I was very moved, Patrick, by what you were saying before.
And I wasn't planning or thinking that the show would go into quite so...
A profound and intense reflection.
But seeing as we have done this and seeing as it is Christmas Eve, I'd like to ask you in the three or four minutes that we have left on this show, and I flag up once again that you're actually going to be hosting the Christmas Day special tomorrow.
Just tell me something for the folks who are listening at home.
Perhaps they're not as observant as Christians as they perhaps want to or as they would like to be.
Perhaps they don't have any faith whatsoever.
What would you say?
How can you, just in the closing moments, as we concentrate on the nativity of our Lord and Saviour, what can you say to make the incarnation of God real for people?
Drawing on your own experiences of having been touched and saved, not only in the spiritual sense, but also obviously in the literal physical sense.
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼
I think it's a very personal thing in many ways.
Your faith in Jesus and God is a personal thing, not necessarily It manifests in the acts that you perform, but it's in your own personal faith that you have.
And that's where, you know, my experience is I've developed a very personal and strong relationship with Jesus and God.
And that's been my experience.
I think God manifests Himself in different ways and different cultures, too, around the world.
And I think there's an opportunity there for everybody to have that personal faith, which for me is just a special and extraordinary thing.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
It was very beautiful to hear you talking throughout the show today.
And it's very profound, you know, when you listen to someone talking about how they're under fire and they hear something within themselves, we all hear that voice at times in our lives, probably not quite as an intense a moment as being under direct fire, but it's...
unidentified
It was many times, too.
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼
It wasn't just once.
Yeah, and I've learned to sort of recognize that.
And understand it and accept it.
And be grateful for it.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
This is something that's at the heart of Christianity.
When you go to church on Sunday, it's not just a cultural exercise of going through or a habit.
There should be.
Sometimes it can be a bit dry.
Mother Teresa wrote for many decades how her spiritual life was really quite dry on the inside.
But the point is that Christianity is a personal relationship with God.
And we know God because we know Jesus Christ.
That's, I think, the most important thing.
And that really is what the incarnation of God Himself as a baby in a manger is all about, right?
That God isn't some abstract, even though we might feel the presence of God, but God is not an abstract.
There's a person there that can be known and loved.
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼
Absolutely.
unidentified
Absolutely.
patrick k odonnel ▲ ● ▼
It's a profound and powerful thing.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Patrick K. O'Donnell, many, many thanks for coming on and sharing this testimony with you.
This is Christmas Eve, so I think now, even according to the pedants, we can actually wish one another Merry Christmas.
Patrick, Merry Christmas to you.
Warren Posset, Merry Christmas to you and to our production team in Denver.
And now Christmas to you two.
unidentified
Himmels.
direito na white is um
oh oh oh oh oh oh oh Christ in inter-istar
▲
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