The Fullness of Time: Christianity Fulfills More Than Judaism

[00:00:00] Foreign. [00:00:13] We often hear that Christianity is a fulfillment of Judaism, which is true, but it's also the fulfillment of two other ancient cultures. [00:00:22] And God used all three in the fullness of time to bring about the fullness of the true faith. [00:00:29] That's what I want to talk about today on Crisis Point Hole. I'm Eric Sammons, your host, editor in chief of Crisis magazine. Okay, so in John 19, verse 20, we read, actually verses 19 and 20. [00:00:42] This is during the crucifixion of our Lord, we read. Pilate also wrote a title and put it on the cross. It read, Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. [00:00:53] Many of the Jews read this title for the place where Jesus was crucified or was near the city. [00:00:59] And it was written in Hebrew, in Latin and in Greek. [00:01:04] I want to focus on that part about the fact that it's written in Hebrew, in Latin and in Greek. [00:01:11] Those three languages are not arbitrary. In fact, the early Church Father saw very mystical meaning in the fact that those three languages are found on the cross. [00:01:24] In one sense, it represents the universality of the Church. Remember, the church was named Catholic. Catholic means universal. And St. Augustine in particular noted that the three languages represent basically the known world. [00:01:39] They represent the Israelites, they represent the Greeks, they represent the Romans. And so this is a representation of the fact that Jesus is merged. Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. [00:01:51] It's really saying that he is the king of the whole world. He is the universal ruler, and he's founding a universal religion by having these three languages on the cross, on his throne, so to speak. Because remember, the cross is the throne of Jesus Christ. And so on that throne are inscribed these three languages that represent the universality of the entire world of his throne. [00:02:17] But it also represents the fact that Christianity is a synthesis of Hebrew, Greek and Latin cultures. [00:02:27] We often talk about the fact that Christianity is obviously the fulfillment of Judaism, that is, through Judaism that Christianity was born. [00:02:38] But it's not just Judaism. It's also the Greek culture and the Latin culture. [00:02:43] And what it tells us is that God prepared the whole world for the coming of His Son, not just in Israel, not just in Jerusalem, but in Athens and in Rome. [00:02:56] All these things were coming together at the same time. So that when God sent His Son, the religion that His Son would found, Catholicism would explode, would flourish, would take over the world. And that's exactly what happened. So, yes, Judaism was fulfilled in Christ, but so was Greek philosophy, Greek culture. [00:03:25] So was Latin culture, Latin law, Latin organization, order. All those things were all fulfilled in Jesus Christ, not just Judaism. [00:03:36] We see this in the writings, like I said, of the fathers and the doctors of the Church. Let me bring up a quote here from St. Augustine. [00:03:43] St. Augustine says, for these three languages were conspicuous in that place beyond all others. [00:03:51] The Hebrew, on account of the Jews who gloried in the law of God. [00:03:55] The Greek, because of the wise men among the Gentiles, and the Latin, on account of the Romans, who at that very time were exercising sovereign power over many and almost all countries. [00:04:07] So it's breaking down that the Jews, we have the law, the Mosaic law, the Greeks, we have wisdom, their philosophy, the wisdom of the Gentiles, that is natural wisdom, and the Latin, who on account of The Romans, as St. Augustine says, were exercising their sovereign power. So the power, the political power, so to speak, was exercised by. By the Romans. And so all these were now fulfilled in Christ, in Christianity. [00:04:39] Later, St. Thomas Aquinas, in his commentary on this passage I just read, he says the Hebrew tongue signified that by the cross of Christ those who were devout and religious were to be converted and rule. [00:04:54] And so were the wise, indicated by the Greek language. And so were those enjoying power signified by the Latin language. So we see again, we have the religious, the wise and those in power were all signified, and all would come under the cross of Christ. [00:05:11] St. Thomas Aquinas continues. Or the use of Hebrews signified that Christ was to rule over theological teaching because the knowledge of divine matters was entrusted to the Jews. [00:05:22] The Greeks signified that Christ was to rule over knowledge of nature, for the Greeks were engaged in speculation about nature. [00:05:30] Latin signify that Christ will rule over all practical philosophy because moral speculation was especially flourishing among the Romans. And so all thought is brought into captivity and obedience to Christ, as we see in 2 Corinthians 10:5. [00:05:45] So you see, both Aquinas and Augustine, they see a real, a real mystical meaning in the three languages found on the cross because they represent the three great cultures of the ancient world that really represent all of human knowledge. Both knowledge we receive from God, divine revelation, knowledge that we think of on our own, natural knowledge, so to speak, wisdom, philosophy. [00:06:15] But also, as he said with the Latins. Let me bring it up here again. [00:06:18] The practical philosophy, basically, how to rule the politics. [00:06:24] So all of all of our human knowledge is brought under captivity, into captivity under Jesus Christ. And that's what those three languages on the cross represent. [00:06:35] So I think there's, there's something to this even more that I wanted to kind of talk about here today, which is the Idea that Christianity is really the synthesis of three religions. Now I want to be clear what I mean by that when I say the synthesis. I'm not saying Christianity is a human made religion, of course, that just cobbled this and that, because some religions do that. I mean, like Mormonism kind of grabbed a few things from here and there. [00:07:02] But Christianity is a synthesis in the, in the real way of God preparing different peoples and say, okay, now we're going to find fulfillment in these, in one religion. [00:07:14] In Galatians 4, verses 4 through 5, we read, but when the fullness of time was come, God sent his Son made of a woman, made under the law that he might redeem them who were under the law that we might receive the adoption of sons. [00:07:33] So this idea of the fullness of time, this is something also the church fathers love to talk about, that everything was prepared for Christ's coming and this was the fullness of time. Why didn't Christ, for example, come a thousand years after Adam and Eve or right after Abraham? Why do we even need Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses and David? Why did he take so long after the fall before he came? [00:08:03] And what we see is everything was coming into place. It's like a good teacher who let's say you have a year long course and it's building and building and building towards the end. So that by the end, every thread that he taught during the, the course of the year is brought together into one. [00:08:24] And that's really what God is doing is divine pedagogy, so to speak. He's bringing everything together into one over thousands of years. Because remember God's eternal when he says something is soon to come, that could mean a thousand years, it could mean tomorrow, we don't know. And so he's not rushed in the sense of like, okay, we gotta, we had the fall, let's move things along here. Let's get, let's get salvation going. No, he had his own time frame. And, and so what he did was after the fall, I mean, we wrecked everything with the fall. Remember that? Everything was wrecked. [00:08:59] I mean, the fall destroyed so much of all the goodness of God. Now it didn't truly destroy it and eliminate it, but it really malformed everything. [00:09:10] And so God had to make everything work together in his divine providence for the preparation for His Son. And we see that most clearly, of course, in Israel. But again, the whole world was prepared. And so I want to mention the specifics in which how each, the Hebrew, the Greek and the Latin all prepared the world for the Coming of Christ. Now, the Hebrew is the most obvious. [00:09:36] Israel, the state of Israel, the Jewish people. [00:09:41] This is where we have divine revelation. [00:09:45] God only spoke to one people, and that's the Hebrew people. [00:09:50] It's only through the Hebrew people that God directly spoke and revealed himself directly. [00:09:57] So we see the Greeks and the Latins, they came to a knowledge of the world and even of God in some way. But it was through reason. It was through their own power, which, by the way, Vatican one says we can know the existence of God through the use of reason. [00:10:19] But the Hebrews, they received it from divine revelation. God told them directly who he was, I am who am he, told Moses, and also how to follow him. The law, the Mosaic Law, the Ten Commandments, and the entire Mosaic Law. [00:10:38] And so really this divine revelation, that's what Israel gave to the world. [00:10:43] And specifically it gave to the world. Monotheism. [00:10:48] Monotheism didn't really exist until the Hebrews. [00:10:53] And so the truth that there is only one God that came to us through the Israelites. [00:11:01] And what else the Israelites gave us was this expectation of a Messiah. [00:11:08] The he. I'm sorry, the Greeks and the Latins, they didn't realize that that one was coming who would save the whole world. We get that only from the Israelites. Genesis 3:15, the fact that the seed of the woman will crush the head. [00:11:25] The good, the Proto Evangelium, the first good news. [00:11:29] And there was this expectation among the Hebrews that the Messiah would come. [00:11:35] Another thing that really comes to fruition fulfillment in Christianity is the liturgy. The liturgy comes from Israel. It builds upon that. In fact, the first half of the. The sacred Mass of the sacrifice of the Mass is basically the synagogue surface of ancient Judaism. [00:11:57] And so we. Our liturgy. Now, what's beautiful about our liturgy is it also takes from Greek and Latin cultures. And I'll mention that a little bit more in a moment. [00:12:08] I think, though it's obvious to. I think anybody who's been a Christian for any length of time knows that Christianity is a fulfillment of Israel. So I'm not going to belabor that point, But I just want to make sure that it's clear that first and foremost, Israel comes from. [00:12:25] Sorry, Christianity comes from Israel. It directly is born out of Israel from the divine revelation, from the monotheistic faith, from the messianic hope of the Israelites comes Christianity. [00:12:39] But we also see it comes from Greece, from the Greek culture, a few different ways. First of all, we have just the common language. What is the New Testament written in? [00:12:51] It's written in Greek, Common Greek coin, a Greek it's called. [00:12:56] And this language basically was the, the lingua franca of the Roman Empire, of the known world. This is how everything was done among the common people. It was in Greek. Yes, in, in Rome, in, in the official government of the Roman Empire. Latin was the language, but Greek was the language spoken of, spoken by the people. [00:13:20] And so therefore this allowed the possibility of a world religion. [00:13:27] Because if you think about it, if everybody's speaking a different language, like from the Tower of Babel, it's very difficult to have a world religion because you're gonna have to translate everything all the time. And you can't really have this common language. But not only a common language, which we see in Greek, in the Greek language, which, like I said, the, the New Testament is written in. This is what they preached in. When St. Paul was going around the Roman Empire, he's preaching in Greek. [00:13:54] And so. But also we have the common culture, Hellenism. [00:13:58] Because the fact is, is that the Greek culture was the first real culture that kind of took over the world. Because when Rome took over Greece and took over and the Roman Empire grew, it actually adopted the Greek religion and. Well, not the Greek religion. Yes, a little bit, but the Greek culture, it adopted the philosophy. And that's the other thing that we get from Greece is the philosophical works of the great Greek philosophers. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, all these great philosophers who basically use their minds to contemplate the world around them, to contemplate nature. I mean, if you look at the. A philosopher in the ancient world was not like a philosopher today. A philosopher today has a very limited amount of knowledge, a very limited focus, subject matter, focus. [00:14:56] But in the ancient world in Greece, the philosopher, he was contemplating everything. [00:15:03] Astronomy, biology, physics, the whole world, including what we would now call restrictive philosophy, what man was, anthropology, all that. [00:15:17] And we see in the philosophy of the Greeks. I mean, when Christianity began and took over the Roman Empire, a lot of it was based on Greek philosophy. Of course, it's based on the teaching of Jesus Christ. But if you look at the writings of St. Paul, you look at the writings of the early church fathers, they use this Greek philosophy, in fact, the creed, the Nicene Creed, the great declaration of what we believe about the Trinity would not have happened if not for Greek philosophy. It's the Greek philosophical terms we needed in order to explain in some way the Trinity. Because you have the persons and nature of God, you have the three persons, the one nature, in the hypothetic union of, in Jesus Christ of God and man. You have the two natures, human and divine. You have the one person, divine person, Jesus Christ. Well, these terms, nature and person, those are Greek philosophical terms. [00:16:20] And so the Church adopted those and used those in her teachings. [00:16:27] It's how we understand the Trinity today, through Greek philosophy, obviously through divine revelation. Greek philosophers could never figure out the Trinity. You can't figure that, that out by reason alone. [00:16:38] But to explain it and to understand it more deeply, we needed Greek philosophy. So they melded it into the Christian faith. [00:16:46] And then, of course, we see the impact of Aristotle, particularly in the Middle Ages. [00:16:51] I mean, read Thomas Aquinas, just any amount of Thomas Aquinas, and he's going to quote what he calls the philosopher, which means Aristotle. And so Aristotelian philosophical works were huge in the Middle Ages. [00:17:07] And the Church saw these, the great theologians, the doctors, fathers of the Church, saw the writings of Aristotle as a great basis for understanding the world. Because as they said in the Middle Ages, grace builds upon nature. [00:17:22] Well, you can't understand grace until you first understand nature and what it's built upon. And so Aristotle, more than anybody, helped us to understand nature. Now, did Aristotle get everything right? No, of course not. [00:17:36] Aristotle had many mistakes in how he understood nature, but his basic insights into human nature and how the world works were what the Church used to understand, how God works in the world. [00:17:52] And also, like I mentioned, we have the Stoics. [00:17:56] I've been studying Stoicism recently over the past few months, and it's very interesting because when you read the lives of the Stoics and you read what they taught as a Catholic, you can't help but think, wow, they got so much right and so much wrong. [00:18:15] I mean, the great thing about Stoicism is they really emphasize the importance of ethics, of doing good instead of just talking about it, but that the most important thing that we don't. That what happens in the world around us isn't really who we are, but what matters is how we react to it. I mean, that's fundamentally Catholic in its understanding that in our sufferings, in our joys, in every bit of life, what matters is how you react to it. [00:18:45] Not that it happened, because we accept that God allows suffering. He allows good things and bad things to rain upon us. And so what matters is how do we react to it. Now, it also got. And also the other thing Stoics got right was a focus on dying. Well, a focus on that your life is basically a preparation for a good death. [00:19:09] Now, the irony is the Stoics got a lot about death wrong in that many of the great Stoics, they committed suicide. [00:19:18] And so you see this real like, and they thought that was a noble death. And of course, as Catholics, we know that's not a noble death to commit suicide, but the idea of having a noble death is, I mean, the great martyrs are the example for us of dying well. [00:19:34] But we see how, if you understand how Christianity grew, it took from philosophies like Stoicism and baptized them. [00:19:45] It accepted what's good about them, embraced it. But then what it did was it threw out the bad of said, okay, yes, Stoics are right about this, but they're wrong about that. And some philosophies were more, more acceptable than others, like, obviously, like I said, Aristotle's and others like that. So we see though, that Greek philosophy, which is beautiful, Greek culture, which is beautiful in so many ways, it's this striving of man to understand God and to understand who we are and the world around us. [00:20:21] And Christianity is the fulfillment of that. So it doesn't reject Greek philosophy as something pagan and just to, to never be understood or even read. No, it says, no, we are going to read this, incorporate it and understand it and baptize it into our faith. So we see that, like I said, Christianity is the fulfillment of Judaism, of the Hebrews. It's the fulfillment of Greek philosophy, Greek culture. [00:20:52] And finally, Christianity is also the fulfillment of the Latin culture, the Roman culture. [00:20:59] We see how Christianity doesn't come about like it did without the Roman Empire, as the Roman Empire was obviously in many ways the enemy of Christianity in the early years, you know, emperors like Nero and others who persecuted the Catholics and killed so many of them, martyred so many of them. Yet it was the Roman Empire that gave kind of the foundation for the gospel to be spread. The Pax Romana. The Pax Romana is a perfect example of this, that you had a peace in the world during this time, a relative peace. Everything's relative. But they were able to. [00:21:42] The barbarians weren't invading. [00:21:45] You didn't have wars between different areas of the Roman Empire. [00:21:49] And so because of that, people were able to contemplate things like religion. And they could see that the, the Greek religion and the, the Roman religion, they really did falter. They didn't, they didn't really give answers to the deepest questions of life. [00:22:08] And so they could explore things. Having peace all around could allow people to explore things like this new religion coming out of this obscure area of the Roman Empire called Christianity. [00:22:21] And so this peace of the Roman Empire allowed people to contemplate Christianity and for it to spread. But even more practically speaking, just the fact that there was law and order in the, in the whole Roman Empire and that there were roads that you could travel, you could travel from, basically from England all the way to Jerusalem, you know, you cross the channel and you could go from Spain, France, modern day Spain and France all the way to Jerusalem, basically safely and securely. [00:22:52] And that allowed people like St Paul and the apostles to travel throughout the known world and to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ. [00:23:04] But you need law and order. If, if there were bandits on the road, anywhere you went, and you got attacked anywhere you went, you can't, you know, St. Paul isn't successful, neither any of the other apostles, St. Peter or St. Matthew, whoever, you need this law in order for this to happen. [00:23:22] Also the law and order just gave us a legal system. [00:23:26] What we find is, is that canon law, the Church's law of canon law, a lot of is based upon the Roman legal system. [00:23:35] And so not only having the order in which you could now spread the Gospel, but you also had this, a legal system that could, then the Church could use as a basis of its legal system. [00:23:48] So it could be an orderly society. Which of course the Church is meant to be another aspect of Latin culture, of Roman culture that the Church was able to fulfill and adapt. We hear this in Augustine and Aquinas is political power that during the time of Christ, we see of course, that Rome was the political power, Caesar was the power. [00:24:13] And Christianity could take that and expand it with the coming of the true king, the true emperor, the true Lord, which is Jesus Christ was of course in the Roman Empire, the Lord was the emperor. And in fact that's, if you understand this, you understand parts of the New Testament that we might not otherwise. When, when Paul says those who, who say with their lips that Jesus is Lord and confess, who say in their hearts that Jesus and confess him in their lips, they will be saved, what he's basically saying is, is we have one Lord, it's not Caesar. [00:24:51] The Romans call Caesar the Lord, we call Jesus the Lord. In fact, the term the, the Greek term which means good news, which we, where we get the word gospel that originally was used about the emperor coming into a town. So a herald would go out and proclaim the good news that the emperor, the Lord the Savior is coming. [00:25:17] Well, Christianity just adopted that language and said, okay, we have the real good news because the real Lord, the real Savior is coming. [00:25:27] And that is Jesus Christ. That's the true good news. [00:25:31] And so what we see is Christ is the true king, above all Caesars and above all worldly power. But it's modeled in a certain way on the Roman Empire. In fact, the diocese we have in the Church today are basically just the early Church taking the Roman divisions of the empire in the diocese and making them theirs. [00:25:56] And so we see how Christianity builds upon, fulfills the Latin culture as well. And it's, and its law and order, its peace, its political power, all these things were fulfilled in Christianity. And of course, this happens literally in the 4th century when Constantine the emperor constantly converts to Christianity and first tolerates it, but then Christianity becomes the religion of the Roman Empire. [00:26:27] And so what we see there is the fact that Christianity fulfills the Latin culture, the Roman culture, just as much as it fulfills Hebrew culture and it fulfills Greek culture. [00:26:39] All three were built upon by Christianity. I made this in this, this diagram. I didn't make it. AI generated. I want to be clear. I'm, you know, we talked about AI here before, but I had AI create Gemini just for those who are curious. Google's Gemini. We see how the Hebrew culture, for those who are just listening, I'll kind of explain the, the diagram. But those who are watching can, can go through it with me. We see the Hebrew culture with its religious roots of monotheism, the covenant and the law, the prophets, the Messianic hope, the moral framework of ten Commandments, all that feeds into Christianity. The Greek culture with its intellectual and philosophical roots, the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Logos. I didn't mention that. I should have mentioned that John, the introduction to the Gospel of John in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. And the Word was God. What is the Word? The Greek word is Logos. And another meaning of that term is reason. [00:27:38] What we see is human reason is personified in Jesus Christ. So everything those Greek philosophers were striving for and thinking about is now fulfilled in the Word because the Word is the person of Jesus Christ, the second person of the Blessed Trinity. [00:27:55] Greek culture also gives us, like I said, the New Testament language, Koine, Greek and certain theological concepts as we saw with the idea of the persons and natures in the Trinity. [00:28:05] And then finally Latin, the Roman culture. It gives us the legal administrative roots of Christianity, Roman law and order, the state structure and hierarchy, the Latin language, which is used in the Western Church and the Pax Romana, the infrastructure for the spread. [00:28:20] So it's this beautiful synthesis of these three Cultures of Hebrew, Greek and Latin all into one, into Christianity. And it really shows how much God was preparing the world for the coming of His Son. [00:28:35] It's also important to note that all three of them, I should say none of the three of them were completely accepted as is even the Hebrew culture, certain aspects of it were set aside, like a lot. All the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament were set aside. And of course, Greek philosophy was not the fulfillment of knowledge, it was inklings of it. It was certain aspects of human knowledge. Same with the roaming the Latin culture. And so what, what Christianity does is it, like I said, it takes the good and it rejects the bad or the unneeded of all three. [00:29:15] And also, just one little quick aside, I know in the Church today we have a division between the east and the west, between the Greek and the Latin. [00:29:25] Now, in the early Church, of course, the first thousand years, there was no division between east and West. So it was all fulfilled in one. This is one of the tragedies of the schism, the great schism between east and west is that that fulfillment of both the Greek and the Latin has been lost a little bit. It's not, you know, the Latin Church, the Western Church, the Roman Church, it skews a bit more towards the Latin side. And obviously the Greek Church skews more towards the Greek side. And really a true universal Catholic Church embraces both. It's like as St. John Paul II said, we breathe with both lungs. Now, of course, in the Catholic Church we have Eastern Catholic rites in churches, which is that fulfillment. But we know it's not the fullness of what we wanted in the sense of so many of our Eastern brothers and sisters are in schism and not part of the Catholic Church per se. [00:30:19] But the fact is we see the, the unity of all the Greek, the Latin and the Hebrew in the early first millennium especially. [00:30:31] Another thing I wanted to note one kind of final thing which I think is pretty cool about this idea. So, like I started with the three languages of Greek, Hebrew and Latin were are on the throne of Jesus Christ, that is his cross at the crucifixion, Pilate, who's mocking him in a sense, saying, jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, he puts in all three languages. But that really is the inscription on his glorious throne are in all three languages. But also, if you attend the traditional Mass, the traditional Latin Mass, guess what languages are used in the traditional Latin Mass? There's three languages used, the Latin, the Greek and the Hebrew. All three are found in the traditional Latin Mass. Obviously the Latin. I mean, most of the, of the, of the Mass is in Latin, but also we have the Greek, the kyrie laison. Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Christ have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy. That's in Greek. It's maintained the Greek since the ancient day, since the first days. That's not in Latin. So we have Greek that we say in the traditional Latin Mass, but we also have Hebrew. What do you think? Amen. That's a Hebrew term. Alleluia. That's a Hebrew term. Hosanna. That's a Hebrew term. [00:31:51] And so in this beautiful way, the traditional Latin Mass brings together these three cultures in a real liturgical way. [00:32:00] And it shows us in a very real sense the fact that Christianity is this sense synthesis of all three cultures. And so when we worship God, St. Thomas Aquinas says it's very fitting that we do so in these three languages. [00:32:18] It's very fitting that our worship of God would be in these three languages. And this is actually something I would say, just as an aside, that I feel is lost in the, the Novus Ordo Mass, which is essentially all the Latin has been removed and the Greek. Now, sometimes churches will say it in Greek. We'll say some Latin. The, the Amen alleluia are still said. [00:32:40] But like the idea, though, of having all these three sacred languages, that's another thing that the, the many church fathers and doctors have talked about is the fact these three languages are the three sacred languages, the languages of God. In a certain sense, we get them all in our worship of God. And that's beautiful. [00:32:57] I want to Read again. Galatians 4, verses, 4 through 5. But when the fullness of time was come, God sent His Son made of a woman, made under the law that he might redeem them who were under the law that we might receive the adoptions of son. [00:33:12] In other words, God's love for us is so great, so magnificent, that he literally shaped the history of the world so that he might adopt us as sons. Think about that for a moment. [00:33:27] For thousands of years, God shaped the direction of history in Israel, in Greece, in Rome, so that His Son might come to save us. [00:33:42] So when human history looks bleak, as you know, let's be honest, I think some of us would think it looks pretty bleak right now. [00:33:50] Remember that in divine providence, God directs all things for the good of those who love him. That's Romans 8:28. In other words, everything God remembers us, no matter what is going on, even when it seems like. I'm sure it seemed like a hundred years, maybe fifty years before the time of Christ, God had perhaps forgotten his people. [00:34:15] The Jews were not saying, hey, we want to be part of Latin culture or Greek culture. In fact, that was the big debate in. In Judaism in the time of Christ is the fact that the Sadducees were adopting Greek culture and others were adopting Greek culture. But the. The Pharisees were like, no, we have to be faithful to Israel. [00:34:32] And Rome, of course, was the oppressor. So there were the zealots in Israel who were trying to overthrow the Roman government. [00:34:39] So you see here that the three cultures are fighting each other, but in Christ, they come together as one. And so even if today it looks like things are bleak, divine providence still rules. And we're still. We're still under God's providence. And. And God is shaping history even now for our adoption as sons. Now, after, of course, the coming of Christ, it's different. [00:35:01] But the fact is, is that if God can literally plan the whole world out over thousands of years for the coming of His Son, I think he can take care of us today. Don't you? [00:35:11] Okay, I'll leave it there. This is just something I've been thinking about lately. I wanted to share it with you. I think about that, especially if you go to traditional Latin mass, think about those languages and about worshiping God in those languages and how it really shows that Christianity is a synthesis of all three of these cultures. And it really is. In the fullness of time, God brought them all together into the one true religion, which is Catholicism. [00:35:35] Okay, that's it for now. Until next time. God love you. And remember the poor. [00:35:45] Sa.