Hi, my name is Father Mike.

Schmitz, and you're listening to the Bible in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's voice and live life through the lens of scripture. The Bible in a Year podcast is brought to you by Ascension. Using the Great Adventure Bible timeline, we'll read all the way from Genesis to Revelation, discovering how the story of salvation unfolds and how we fit into that story today. It is introduction to the Messianic fulfillment, and it is our fourth Messianic checkpoint. We finally have reached the Gospel of St. Luke. That means today we get to be joined by Jeff Cavens. Once again, so grateful for this. But before that, I just want to let you know that today's sponsor of this episode is Hello. It's the largest and fastest growing app in the world, with millions of Catholics using it to grow deeper in their relationship with God. You can listen to all Bible in a year episodes on Hello. You can also add background noises like rain or Gregorian chant. You can adjust the speed so it goes really fast or even really slow. You can track your streak and even journal your takeaways. Hallow also offers thousands of meditations to help you deepen your prayer life and find peace in God.

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Yes, we are. You know what? It literally feels like just yesterday that we began all of this. Here we are, we're in the New Testament. It's the final Gospel of the four. Oh, what an adventure. Let me ask you, Father, because no one interviews you. What do you think so far about all of this?

Oh, I think this has been an incredible journey. One of the things that keeps coming back every time I record an episode, and also every time I listen, because I do listen as well, I'm not just the President. I'm also the client. I'm not the President, but you know what I'm saying? Who is that guy? Do you know what I'm talking about? That commercial for the Shaver?

No, I don't. But perhaps we could talk about Luke.

Maybe we'll talk about Luke. Okay, back to our... I will not only read this, but also listen. One of the things that strikes me is... I did the Great Adventure Bible timeline that you had created, and I'm so grateful for that. I've told so many people, even in the last week, I've told people that while I was an undergrad major in theology, and then I went to five years of seminary, so nine years total studying theology, studying philosophy, and studying scripture, when I went through your Great Adventure Bible timeline, that was the one class, essentially like a class, where I thought, Oh, my gosh, that makes sense now. All the little pieces that I had gotten in all these other classes and all these other schools, all of a sudden it all made sense. Today, when we were hitting the Gospel of Luke, this is the Gospel that you use when it comes to The Great Adventure, a Bible timeline. It's not the Gospel of Mark or Matthew or John, but it's the Gospel of Luke into acts. I just thought, Here we are. Finally, after all these days, after all this time, we're back here and in this place where we get to see the fulfillment of everything we've been listening to up till now.

Right. You mentioned the Great Adventure Bible study that comes in an eight-part version and a 24-week version, which is the long journey through the entire Bible. It's a great thing to do after Bible and a year. If people are looking to go deeper, then start a group. Start a group in your church, in your home, and go deep into scripture. At the same time, keep going through the Bible in a year again. Soak yourself in scripture. What's happening nationwide, I would say worldwide right now with Catholics and the Bible, is historical. Catholics are studying the Bible more than ever and sharing Christ with people more than ever. It's just a great time to be alive. But, yeah, Luke, people always ask, What's your favorite Gospel? I usually say Matthew until I come to Luke. Then I say, You know, it's probably Luke. But one of the reasons I like Luke so much is that originally Luke and Acts were one book, and then they were divided up for the purpose of keeping John as the fourth and the Synoptics. Matthew, Mark, and Luke, with Synoptics meaning they all seem to come from the same source, same view, it was divided up.

But he states his purpose in writing the Gospel very, very clearly at the beginning. He says he wanted to compile a carefully researched history of the life of Jesus. It's like a biography, really, of Jesus. He's got the pedigree, too. Not only was he a physician, but he was a companion of Paul. He was, this is a good trivia question, Father, who is the most prolific author in the New Testament?

I would guess Paul?

Ah, Luke.

Is it really?

Yes, it actually is. But you said- Because he had more chapters. Yes, you gave the answer, though, that most people would... Paul has more letters. Busted. But back to seminary.

Honestly, I told you I didn't learn much in school, so that's my defense.

Well, Paul has more books, but Luke has more content there. It was originally one book, and I love the way he begins. He's writing to a guy called Theophilus, which literally means, Loved by God. He says, Oh, most excellent Theophilus. The question is always going to come up, Who's Theophilus? Nobody knows. There's a lot of guesses about it, even the guess that it belongs to generic Christians, people who love God. This is to you. So if we don't know who Theophilus is, we will read it as it's addressed to me, addressed to you.

Which is another great way to read the Bible in the first place.

Exactly. So what makes this Gospel different than the others? Well, it is part of the group of synoptic Gospels, but there are some things that make it different. For example, Luke really focuses on Jesus, the man, or as some people have said, Jesus, the ideal man. Now, we know that he is God and he's man, the hypostatic union. He's one person, two natures. That human nature is really brought out in Luke, the humanity of Jesus. It talks about him growing in wisdom and stature and favor with God. It talks about his temptation. He physically touches a leper, sweat like drops comes from his head in Gethsemane, and he even eats a meal after the resurrection. There's this real emphasis on the humanity of Jesus. Then as a Gentile, I've got to tell you that Luke was a Gentile doctor. As a Gentile doctor, he seems to notice things that the other gospel writers didn't write about, like the outsiders, the Gentiles, the unexpected person in the narrative like Zakeus, the tax collector, and the Good Samaritan, and the prodigal son. For those that feel like maybe you're an outsider and you're not a part, well, Luke's a good book because he's going to draw you in and he's going to share with you the outsider's view and how they became a member of the household of God.

I like that about him.

I also love that he has so many parables. I mean, there's parables in each of the Gospels, but there are are parables that are unique to the Luke that aren't necessarily found in the other three Gospels.

Right. In fact, there's 10 of them. There's 10 parables that are limited to Luke's Gospel. You've got the parable of the two debtors. Chapter seven, you got the parable of the friend at midnight in eleven, parable of the rich fool, parable of punishment, parable of barren trees, lost coins, shrewd managers, rich man in Lazarus, the persistent widow, and the Pharisee in the tax collector. You're right. In fact, in I think it's chapter eight. Yeah, chapter eight, he even gives the meaning on why he's telling parables that it is for the insider. It's for the people who are following him. They're going to get it. To the people on the outside, it's a mystery. But parables were, I should say, a very popular way for rabbits to teach in the first century. I think we mentioned this before, but what parables do is they draw everybody in like a stadium. Everybody's going to sit around and listen to it. But by the time he gets done, you're going to feel like he's only talking to you. Your next word is, Why are you pointing me out here? You drew me in. You fooled me. You're talking about me.

I think that that is, in fact, I even did that on one of my podcasts I mentioned, is Jesus talking about you? Is yes, he is.

The answer, yes, most likely. Right.

Well, a couple of other things, Father, that I think are really powerful in the Gospel of Luke is in chapter one, we have one of the stories of the visitation. The visitation is, of course, really important when it comes to the Rosary. But what Luke does, he is masterful, masterful. When he writes about the visitation of Mary visiting Elizabeth, he is showing you something on the surface. Yes, she's visiting Elizabeth. But if you really look under the hood here, you'll see that he is mirroring second Samuel 6. Second Samuel 6 is where David brings the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem for the first time. You have almost identical statements in chapter 1 where it says that in those days, Mary arose and went with haste into the Hill Country. Then in second Samuel 6, David arose and went to the Hill Country. Then the child leaped in her womb, little John the Baptist leaped in her womb. With David, he leapt before the Ark of the Covenants. That's really what the focus is. Then it goes on and Elizabeth says, And why is this granted me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?

David says of the Ark? How is it that the Ark of the Lord has come to me? Then the fourth parallel is that she stayed with Elizabeth three months. In second Samuel 6, the Ark stayed at the House of Obedeedom for three months. In other words, what Luke is saying is, Guys, she is the new Ark of the Covenant, and out of her womb comes the living word, comes the word incarnate and the Great High priests, the three things that were in the Ark of the Covenant. So he is masterful at this.

It's just incredible to see that and to realize that this isn't just... You have to squint and copyright to the side to see this. This is a clear recapitulation. This is a clear fulfillment of the old Ark of the Old Covenant is now fulfilled in this new arc of the New Covenant. It's remarkable, incredible.

I would just say to all of our friends here that are going through this, number one, yay, you're in there, and that's really, really good. Yeah, great job. The second thing is that when you read the New Testament, always keep in mind the Old Testament because all of scripture is Christocentric. But when we really get down under the literal meaning, what the author wanted to say, we are looking for what's called the allegorical sense or how does this relate to Jesus and his family, his mother and so forth, his kingdom? This is one of the great examples of it. In light of everything that's happening in the world right now, I think it's also interesting that Luke, more than the other Gospels, has such a tremendous emphasis on the role of women in the Bible. You've got, of course, the Blessed Virgin Mary, you've got Elizabeth, Anna, they're prominent figures. You've got Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna, and they're mentioned as people who supported Jesus financially in his ministry. There is such a role here for women. For example, Anna, the Prophetess, upon seeing Jesus becomes really the first evangelist to shout out the good news of deliverance in his name, and she's like a prophetess.

Women play such a great role in the Gospel of Luke.

Which is, again, as you said, so heartening and so encouraging, or even those who accompanied him, those who supplied for his needs, that sense of there's a number of women who are mentioned, as you mentioned, Susanna, Mary Magdalene, and not only that, but also this recognition that Luke is also interested in those who are on the fringes, those who are... I mean, just like Jesus was interested in those who were on the fringes, Jesus was interested in going to those people who would not be normally comfortable or wouldn't be necessarily accepted or acceptable when it came to the normal religious practices. That's one of the things that keeps coming back to me again and again, that if Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophets, and here's John, the last of the prophets, but here's Jesus who is truly a prophet as well. He's identified as a prophet that he's going to have some prophet-like words for people, and he does have prophet-like words. We spent 90 days going through the prophets here on the Bible and here, and so we know what prophets often sound like. They don't always give encouraging words. They do sometimes.

But they also give words thatare just these are the words of truth that need to be spoken so that people can hear and repent. Jesus offers those words here in the Gospel of Luke as well, which is just... It's good for us to hear because I think sometimes we have our particular, maybe we'll say, version of Jesus, and that version of Jesus can maybe just agree with everything I agree with. He doesn't like the things I don't like, and he likes the things I do like, as opposed to really listening to the real Jesus here in the Gospels.

Yeah, you mentioned people on the fringe. I think all of us could say one time or another, we were on the fringe. I was on the outside looking in. As we mentioned earlier, Zadeus, good Samaritan prodigal son, it's a place of hope. It's a point of hope. For people who have sons and daughters who are far away from the Lord, and that's probably one of the most popular or numerous questions I get, and I sure you do too, and that is, My son left the church. My daughter left the church. What do I do? Well, Luke's a good gospel for that being Luke's a good gospel, period. Luke's a good gospel because you've got people who are like your son, like your daughter, like Zakeus, in Good Samaritan, prodigal son. In a moment, their lives changed. They changed and they returned to the father's house. They came and had dinner with Jesus, and they entered the drama like the Good Samaritan, the unpredictable, the one that wasn't going to be a part of it. I would encourage people in that as well. Another theme, Father, that really sticks out in this Gospel is the picture of Jesus in prayer.

Jesus in prayer, more than any of the other Gospels, He prays at the beginning of His ministry in chapter 3, and it's closed in chapter 23. He prays all night before selecting the apostles. He prays when he's exalted. He prays when he's humiliated. The Lord prays when he is confessed and before Peter denies him. You can go on and on. Then as a result of this, in chapter 11, the disciples basically are begging him, teach us how to pray. We want to pray like you pray. I think that after our friends are going through the Gospel of Luke, take note of that. You too ask God, teach me to pray. Of course, he does in the Gospel, but I think it's always good to use the example of Jesus in prayer and that in our own lives.

It was so true, and especially even the example of the apostles or the disciples saying, asking, teach us how to pray. Like you pointed out, we have a bunch of students here who I think some of our focus missionaries must have taught it to them because I guess I know that I myself didn't personally teach us unless they got it out of the scripture itself. But whenever I say, Hey, would someone lead us in prayer? Or even I'm just meeting with someone and say, Would you lead us in prayer? One of the first things that comes out of their mouth is oftentimes the words, Come Lord Jesus, teach us how to pray, or, Come Holy Spirit, teach us how to pray. I just think, Oh, that is so good. That instinct that asks, just like the disciples asked Jesus, Lord, teach us how to pray, that every time we begin those prayers, just so powerful to be able to be reminded that we're in that place. We're in that place of beginners, in that place of learning and knowing that it's the Holy Spirit who teaches us how to pray because we don't know how to pray as we ought.

Yeah, and even pray for your enemies. Yeah, pray for your enemies. Another point that's interesting here is in Luke 8, Luke 8, Jesus makes a statement that is really eye-opening. They said, Your brothers, your mothers here, and so forth. He says, My family is comprised of those who hear my word and do it. These are my brothers, my sisters. For me, that is so powerful to know that I am drawn closer in a familial way, a family way to Jesus by not only hearing His word, but by doing His word. I would say for all of our friends who are going through Bible in a year, do you want to get closer to Jesus? You want to feel like kin? Well, do His word, listen to His word, and do His word. It's not just listening and doing, but it is moving closer to Him.

That's a really great point, especially how many people ask the question, How do I get closer? How do I feel closer to Lord? The answer is, well, it's not just a feeling, obviously. But like you're saying, those who hear the word and act on it, those who hear the word and do it are family, regardless of feeling, regardless of emotion, regardless of all those other subjective factors. Objectively speaking, Jesus is saying. It's just like how in the Gospel of John, he says, If you love me, you'll keep my commandments. Again, that sense of, You'll do what I do, what I ask you, do what I say.

Right. You have Chapter 8 and his family. Then in chapter 9, it even moves in further down the road into from family to discipleship. He talks about in chapter 9, the price or the cost of discipleship. That cost, that price of being not only family, but being a disciplined follower of his is that you have to pick up your cross and follow him. That's not 24-carat. That is... Although they're nice, but that is the cross. How he lived, you live. He suffered, you suffer. The obstacles that you face, you're going to face. How he was treated, you just might be treated that way as well. When you're talking about your students in college. That is a great truth to take to heart.

Well, yeah. Then he even reiterates that in chapter 14, where he says, If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. He goes to bear, doubles down. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. That sense of being able to come back to this truth. I remember when I first read this as a teenager, and it just struck me. I was like, Well, these three things: deny yourself, pick up your cross, and follow me, as the conditions for this, I saw the header on that little subsection of the Gospel. It struck me as, Okay, this is what has to be part of my life if I'm going to be a disciple of Jesus. I can't say that I was overjoyed about it, but at the same time, it was very clear. I think that gave me a lot of consolation, the fact that this is very clear. Deny yourself, pick up your cross, and follow me. Because those last words, the first two, right? Deny yourself, pick up your cross, important, obviously necessary.

But the third piece being, and follow me, is just to be wanted by the Lord, to hear him say, I want you to follow me. I think it helps the first two become palatable, at least capable of doing that.

Yeah. Well, I think if he asked you and me and our friends who are listening to follow him, I imagine that following anybody else on Instagram or anything else would not be that important anymore. I've got the one that I'm following here. He's my king and he's my Lord. I know that you love this chapter two, and that is chapter 24 towards the end here. Yes, I definitely do. The Emmaeus Road experience is the, and get this, it's the only Gentile writer. The Gentile writer is explaining the inner workings of the Mass, the liturgy of the Word and the liturgy of the Eucharist. I love that story. Of course, recalling it, you have Clopas and somebody else, they're walking away from Jerusalem. They don't know that Jesus has risen from the dead. Their heads are hung low. By the way, my friends, if your head is hung low, maybe you're not recognizing that he has risen from the dead. He is Lord. He's on the throne. You have them walking away, and then Jesus joins them. I love it because people say, Well, does God have a sense of humor? Yeah, He does. Here's these people walking away, and it's like, Hey, what are you guys talking about?

Are you the only one that doesn't know? Are you deff? About what? About Jesus, Nazareth. Then what does he do? He sits down and gives them the Bible study of all Bible studies. When our friends get to this one, chapter 24, this is it. This is the this is the CD set I wish I had, because he goes into the Old Testament and he explains throughout the entire Old Testament. He explains why the Messiah, the son of man, had to suffer. I think that's interesting. Of all the themes that he would spend that entire day teaching on, he teaches on suffering, which I think goes back to Luke 9, the cost of discipleship. Anyway, he goes... I'm not going to tell you the end of the story.

I'll spoil it. You don't want to spoil it. You want to ruin it for us.

Yeah, but he has a meal with them in the breaking of the bread, which is the same really as the liturgy of the Eccles. Their eyes are open and they see him. That is such a beautiful message for us today in the Eccles, just like in Luke 24, you want your eyes opened? Go to Mass. You want to see life the way it really is? Go to Mass. You want to know the truth? Go to Mass. It'll transform you like it did this couple that was walking, and then they returned to Jerusalem. Everybody that's listening right now and you are walking away, I would encourage you to go back and meet Jesus in the Euchrist.

Yeah, it's just so. Every third summer, we put on a camp for junior high students. Every third summer, we just walked through Luke 24. The whole week is this journey with Cleopas. We call her Mrs. Cleopas because maybe there was Mary, the wife of Cleopas. Maybe that's who he was traveling with. People think so, yeah. The person is unnamed. But that sense of, like you're saying, that we experience a brokenness in our lives. We are dejected. They were so disappointed. We had hoped that he would be the one to redeem Israel, and just that we had hoped. Not we're hoping, not we're going to hope, but we used to. We had hoped. Now there's hope no longer, and gosh, and Jesus has this incredible surprise for them. It's not merely the surprise of one-time meeting, a one-time being able to encounter Him and see him again, but it is this surprise that they will reenact and they will relive every single Sunday, every single Lord's Day, whenever they are encountering the Mass again, which was just for us too, that sense of in our hopelessness, in our brokenness, what does Jesus do? He shows up, breaks open the word, and then the word made flesh is given to us in the Echrist.

Yeah, so good.

I love it. Then finally, I guess I would say that looking at the differences in the four Gospels, except for just a little mention at the end of Mark, Luke is the Gospel that really brings us into that mystery of the ascension of Jesus. He goes into some detail there. In fact, that's where ascension got their name was... There it is, right there.

That ascension- I always want to say, That's the name of the company.

That's where they got it.

That's the name of the YouTube channel. What the heck?

Well, that ascension actually acts as a bridge from the gospel to Acts because he originally wrote it all together and then the church split that. But the ascension is the bridge there.

Yeah. I'm so excited because right from that chapter, we launched right into Acts. It's seamless. One day it's Luke 24, the next day it's Acts chapter 1, which is so good. Love it. Well, Jeff, are there any... This is so good because as we're launching into your favorite Gospel, we can keep our eyes or ears attuned to all these elements. The element of here's women in the Gospel, the element of the Nativity, because that's where we get so many of the Nativity stories, or not all of them, but many of them are coming from Luke, that pre-Nativity, the actual Nativity. But also you mentioned the extra parables that Luke has given us, that extra teaching, that high call for discipleship and ascension. But if we were going to have one way of listening differently to Luke's Gospel than we listen to the other three, what's one thing you would say, okay, put this filter on your ears or listen for this piece of something that you might not have heard or we want to that's even more emphasized Luke's Gospel?

Right. Well, I think there's a couple of things. One is to listen to it from the viewpoint of a disciple, of somebody who is serving the Lord, following the Lord. When you come across the various themes that you just mentioned, for example, the role of women, revisit that as a disciple. Jesus in prayer, revisit that as a disciple. Of course, in Luke 9, take up your cross and follow me. That's the heart. But listen to all of his teaching, the Good Samaritan, and certainly listen to the parables as a disciple of the Lord. The second thing I would say is always keep in the back of your mind that Acts used to be a part of this. There is a direct relationship between the life of Jesus and the life of the early church. You'll notice that the early church in Acts actually is repeating many of the things that Jesus did. So if you're listening or reading Bible in a year right now and something hits you and you think, Oh, that's pretty interesting about Jesus. I wonder if that could be found in Acts as well. Because he's giving you this, as we said at the beginning, a complete and carefully researched history.

That is a parallel history between the life of Christ and the life of the Church in the Book of Acts. Sometime, you know what? You just might want to read all of it right through. Luke and Acts just read it through and get exactly what he originally wrote.

Yeah, just save up a bunch of weeks of Bible and the air and just press play. Go for a really long walk. Yeah. Well, I'm so grateful. This is so good, especially it tees us up for the next, I think it's maybe nine days or so that we get to walk through, maybe even 10 days we get to walk through the Gospel of Luke, and to take it all, like the other three Gospels, to receive them all at once. I think a lot of times, if we're used to coming to mass, we're used to coming to church, and we get little pieces, we just get little snippets, which is good, a great way to have those bite-size chunks. This is, once again, one of those great gifts where we get the whole story presented to us as a whole story. I think that there's something about that that just... I know for me, the thing I look forward to is it just reveals the heart of Jesus in places that I normally would miss because I would just maybe... I would be either deaf to them or be blind to them, or I just would ignore them.

But this presents his whole heart, if that makes sense. I really love being able to take in these Gospels as a whole, just chapter one to the end of the book. That's what we get to do, and I'm so grateful. Jeff, do you have any last words for us before we let our friends go?

Sure. I just encourage you, my friend, keep going on and on. As I've said before, and I think, Father, you've heard two people say, Oh, I love the Bible in a year. I'm two weeks behind. And to that I say, That's all right. Take a later flight. You're going to get there and keep going. The idea is not to be on time, but to be faithful and continue and continue. You will be so glad that you did. This is going to be a year that stands out in your life like no other year. In fact, I would venture to say, You're going to mention this to your kids. If you don't have kids, someday you might, you're going to mention this. You might mention it to your grandchildren. Better yet, you might go through this with them. This is the story, the true history, and it is just a historical point in the church's history and the Bible.

Yeah, so good. Also, I just think you mentioned that there are more Catholics listening to the Bible right now than, I don't know, ever before, but maybe ever before. But also part of this community are our non-Catholic brothers and sisters who are journying with us. That's such a gift to be able to have this whole community of the Bible in the ear who are, again, our non-Catholic brothers and sisters also listening to the seven books that they didn't even know existed, the Deuteronomical books, as well as just the ability that we can, as believers, as followers, as disciples, as disciples of Jesus, to be united in listening to God's word like this. We don't always have unity with everything, but this has been an incredible opportunity for us to be a united community in so many ways. I'm really grateful for you, Jeff. I'm so grateful for all your teaching. As I mentioned at the beginning of this particular episode, so grateful for the Great Adventure Bible timeline, which taught me so much, but also for the community that has joined us and is journying with us. As you know, I am praying for you every single day, and I know I hear people tell me that they're praying for me and for you, Jeff.

To our friends, I am praying for you. Please pray for me. I continue praying for both of us. My name is Father Mike, and I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.