A loose transcript:
Have you ever been in a situation in which you were really upset about something, but you had up until a certain point kept the emotions under control until you have a conversation with someone and they start asking you how you’re doing and as soon as you verbally admit that you’re having a tough time, all of the emotions overflow to the surface and you begin to cry. Now, I’ve never experienced that myself, because I don’t cry, but the reason that that loss of control happens is because when you verbalize those thoughts, they become incarnate in a way that gives them more consequence and they, in turn, become way more difficult to control. Thoughts that only ever remain thoughts have limits but when we embody those thoughts with words or actions, they dramatically grow in strength and significance. This is absolutely true of our spirituality. Our spiritual or religious practices can be of a kind that are limited to internal thoughts or immaterial reality such as praying in your head or holding your religiosity as tightly guarded secret. But if you pray out loud or participate more actively and physically in community worship, you’ll find that your religion will take on a new and more vibrant role in your life. That’s why Catholics are encouraged to express the things we believe with physical and verbal significance. When we celebrate Sunday liturgy, we are singing, and responding with our physical bodies. We stand together, we kneel together, and we respond together as though we are a single organism expressing an otherwise unseen spiritual reality. That’s why Catholicism is a sacramental spirituality. The sacraments like baptism and communion are physical signs of spiritual realities. When we participate in them, our spirituality overflows into our physical lives and affects us in ways it wouldn’t if we avoided such practices. And God agrees. That’s why he became man. Why his word became flesh in the person of Jesus. God’s immaterial being became material so that we could encounter the unseen spiritual reality of his existence.
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