Youtube Interviews
In this interview, host Adam Wright welcomes guest Father Paul Hoesing. Father Hoesing dives into the significance of processions in worship and how they symbolize the shared, public nature of faith. While some people want to confine religion to the private realm, Father Paul stresses the integrated vision that Catholicism holds, where one’s relationship with Jesus impacts how they live in the world.
Father Hoesing highlights the importance of actively engaging with the world using our hands, feet, mind, heart, and soul to impact others. Through public displays like processions, our personal relationship with Jesus becomes a reality in the public sphere. He explains how our interactions with people reflect our relationship with God and shape our prayer life.
Father Hoesing discusses the supernatural aspect of religious processions, explaining how the mere presence of God can have a positive impact on the surrounding environment, even in busy or unexpected locations.
He also notes how the pandemic made people question their reliance on temporary forms of entertainment and distraction, prompting a desire for something permanent and lasting. Father Hoesing emphasizes the importance of living out faith and participating in religious processions to express this lasting presence amidst a transient world.
Overall, this interview sheds light on the Eucharistic Revival and the importance of participating in public processions and having a spousal relationship with Jesus.
Adam Wright:
One of my favorite words is the word convergence. I love to say, “Oh, there’s a convergence of things happening.” For instance, we are now in the month of June where we celebrate the Sacred Heart of Our Lord. But we also celebrate some great feasts like Trinity Sunday and Corpus Christi, the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Another happy convergence is that we are in the Eucharistic Revival as this happens. And even more so adding on to it, there are Eucharistic preachers throughout the country, and among them is Father Paul Hoesing, who also happens to be the president-rector of Kenrick-Glennon Seminary right here in our backyard. We are fortunate enough to sit down with Father Hoesing today to talk about some of these wonderful things. Father, thank you for being with us today.
Fr. Paul Hoesing:
Thank you, Adam, for having me. Appreciate it.
Adam Wright:
I love the feast of Corpus Christi. I think back to when I was a little boy, my grandma would always sign me up. She was good friends with the head of the altar servers, and he would say, “Mary Jane, can your grandson serve for the procession?” Every time she said, “Adam, you should do this. You should do this.” And I’d go to seven AM Mass in the early reaches of Sunday morning, and then we’d go for the procession throughout the neighborhood. There’s just a lot of fond memories associated with this feast. Help us understand: why are we even having a feast? I mean, when we think of daily Mass and Sunday Mass, isn’t every Mass a feast of the body and blood of our Lord? Why do we even have this feast coming up?
Fr. Paul Hoesing:
Well, it was the vision of a mystic in Belgium, Leige, to be precise. Her name was Julianne, and she had this vision that, the moon had a black mark. And she went to the bishop at that time, Jacques Pantaleon and said, “We need to have a feast for the body and blood of Jesus.” And Jacques Pantaleon would become Pope Urban, and he was the one who instituted the feast in the middle ages. And that really allowed the church to appreciate, after a millennia, what it means to have the body and blood of Jesus in every church. So we’ve been celebrating Corpus Christi for over 800 years as a way of recognizing what a gift we have. The gift is the presence of Jesus who takes up space and time and changes every one of our churches from, as Evelyn Waugh remarked in his Bride’s Head Revisited, “The family had a chapel and they removed the blessed sacrament. And when they did that, it was just a strangely decorated room.”
Adam Wright:
Wow. Now you are one of the Eucharistic preachers for the Eucharistic Revival and in every conversation we’ve had with different members of the revival, whether it’s Joel Stepanek or sister Alicia Torres, who talked about a beautiful program for learning more about our Eucharistic faith. One thing is consistent in every conversation, that while this is a national at the national level, at the diocesan level, at the parish level, really at its core for all of us, it’s at the me level. For Adam Wright, it’s the Adam Wright level, for Father Paul Hoesing, it’s the Father Hoesing level. How can this feast be a point where we can really deepen that revival in our hearts, deep in our relationship with our Lord, present in the Blessed Sacrament?
Fr. Paul Hoesing:
I think especially with a procession, it says something about our worship is not private. They want to talk about freedom of religion, and they want to isolate it to freedom of worship. “You do your thing in your church, and that’s fine, but don’t bring it out in the streets.” But the Catholic says, “No, there’s an integrated vision here.” What happens in my relationship with Jesus will affect how I live in the world, and the procession brings that reality to light and says “Jesus wants to live in the world. He wants your hands, your feet, your mind, your heart, your soul, to affect others.” And so the procession really makes that emphatic, that our personal relationship with Jesus Christ results in a public reality. And so we embrace that the public reality – then as I encounter people and I interact with people, there’s a feedback like, oh, now that I interact with people differently, I pray differently. I often like to tell the men here at the seminary, the way we relate to other people will often reflect how we relate to God. So if I’m defensive or shy, I’ll do that in my relationship with God. So to see how we relate with people, and see how that’s meant to inform our prayer and move us into a different level of prayer is really important. So for me personally, this Eucharistic Revival has really led me to understand more deeply what it means for me to say “This is my body given for you.”
Adam Wright:
Is there an element of this, as we talk about the importance of living out that faith by going on procession or participating in the Corpus Christi procession, that helps then edify our belief and our relationship in ourselves? I mean, I think specifically of my dean of students in high school who was very adamant that “Gentleman, the dress code is important because it helps form you as a man. It’s not just about you looking nice when people come into the building.” And I think of my earliest exposure to the seminary here 20 years ago, the rector of the college seminary at the time was known for being very strict with the college men about their appearance and their dress, and it was all going back to that. This isn’t just about how you present yourself, but this is about your formation. So how can our public witness, I suppose is the question, help form us?
Fr. Paul Hoesing:
Well, if I’m going out in the public, I’m expressing what I believe. What I believe about Jesus and the Eucharist should say something about His majesty, His goodness, His generosity. So if I go and meet the president, if I go and meet the pope, I’m going to dress in response to that goodness and generosity and reverencing of the office. If I’m leading Jesus in the Eucharist, I want to have that capacity for reverence and goodness being expressed in my public expression. I think oftentimes of the 30-day exercises, and we have seminarians on the exercises. They make these midnight holy hours. And the sisters will also be there making their midnight holy hour. And the men will show up in the first few weeks to their midnight holy hour, wearing something like sweats and a t-shirt. Meanwhile, sisters there: fully habited. And so the men start to realize, “Oh, I realize this is an intimate moment. It’s the middle of the night. No one’s really around, but it would be good to put on some slacks and a collared shirt if I’m going to pray in the chapel. And not be slouchy, not be sort of dismissive of the reality that I’m with people here. I want people to see how I reverence Jesus because he’s referencing and showing His goodness to me and being available in the Eucharistic presence.” So the women, the sisters, the consecrated women always raise the bar on a 30-day exercise. Express yourself in a way that allows people to see what you believe.
Adam Wright:
We talk often, the visual of people seeing us on procession, seeing us going into the church, seeing us come out of the church. What about the supernatural aspect of this? The presence of our Lord on our neighborhood streets. I think, in particular, of my neighborhood where one of the processions goes by the busiest brunch spot on Sunday mornings, of another parish in St. Louis where their procession often crosses over one of the major interstates, and they stop there for a moment. Given the tumult of the world around us, the political strife, and all these things that we don’t really have time to go into, how can just the presence of our Lord have an effect on our world around us?
Fr. Paul Hoesing:
A friend of mine compared the procession to what it was like to go through the Red Sea. The waters were deadly. When we enter into the world out there, there’s a lot of death, a lot of transience. So people eat brunch, to do it next week and next week and next week. It’s a lot of transience. A lot of death. And what happens with the procession is here comes life, and life everlasting. Life eternal. So when people see that procession with the Eucharist at its center, life now has an anchor. There’s eternal life in Jesus. Meanwhile, there’s all this death, the changing of seasons, the changing of times, eating and drinking, going about buying and selling. That’s all fine and good, but it’s not it. And that was a great kind of lesson, I think, for the pandemic, wasn’t it? All of our entertainment, all of our ways of escaping, all of our distractions that we relied upon: the malls, the arenas, the bars. They were shut down. So will I put my faith in these transient gods again? Or is there something permanent and lasting I can put my faith in? And that’s what the procession expresses in the midst of the world.
Adam Wright:
When you go out to preach as one of the Eucharistic preachers for the revival, what’s the core message? We use the word “kerygma” a lot. Like, let’s get to the core of this, the proclamation. What’s the core message you hope to proclaim?
Fr. Paul Hoesing:
I have to say I’ve been crafting the message specifically for priests, because I checked the box that said “willing to speak with priests”. And of the Eucharistic Preachers, I think I’m of one of seven that is really speaking to priests. So the core message I want with priests is how deeply Jesus desires to give His life for each one of us and to receive that love. Then to be awakened in our own way, personally and particularly in how I give my life to others. So when I say those words, “This is my body given for you” there’s something spousal there. There’s something deeply healing there. And I think we live in a world where it’s very difficult to see a spousal life lived faithfully. And if priests are not living that spousal life, it’s hard to inspire couples. It’s hard to have children. It’s hard to have spiritual fatherhood unless I have that spousal life with Jesus and His church. So that’s the message I’m really moving into, because it’s been important for my own life, from the moment I was ordained. This is the anniversary of my ordination today. 21 years. That’s the passage I chose for my holy card for my ordination. “This is my body given for you.” It’s deeply sacrificial. It’s what soldiers do. When they lay on the grenade. It’s what men do when they lay down their lives at their wedding day, and it unfolds for the rest of life. So I want that message, “this is my body given for you” to animate hearts in a new way.
Adam Wright:
I think that’s a beautiful message for all of us. Dare I say not just for the priests, but for all of us. Father, I want to thank you for taking this time to be with us, to help kindle a little bit of Eucharistic Revival on our radio show today. Could I ask you to close our time together with a prayer?
Fr. Paul Hoesing:
Sure. Let us pray. Jesus, you give us your body and blood, your soul and divinity. At every Mass, let us become receptive to you and your love, and may your love transform our lives to bring you into the world incarnate through how we live and move and have our being. This we ask in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Adam Wright:
Father Paul Hoesing, thank you so much for being with us on Roadmap to Heaven today. Friends, if you’d like to know more about the Eucharistic Revival, including next year’s Congress and what’s happening at the parish level right now, you can visit eucharisticrevival.org. And as always, for more information on vocations, speak with your diocesan vocation director, I’m sure they’d love to have some more men discerning the call to the priesthood here at Kenrick-Glennon in Seminary, or in whatever Seminary your diocese goes to. In the meantime, we’re going to take a break here on Roadmap to Heaven. Don’t go anywhere.
Adam Wright:
One of my favorite words is the word convergence. I love to say, “Oh, there’s a convergence of things happening.” For instance, we are now in the month of June where we celebrate the Sacred Heart of Our Lord. But we also celebrate some great feasts like Trinity Sunday and Corpus Christi, the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Another happy convergence is that we are in the Eucharistic Revival as this happens. And even more so adding on to it, there are Eucharistic preachers throughout the country, and among them is Father Paul Hoesing, who also happens to be the president-rector of Kenrick-Glennon Seminary right here in our backyard. We are fortunate enough to sit down with Father Hoesing today to talk about some of these wonderful things. Father, thank you for being with us today.
Fr. Paul Hoesing:
Thank you, Adam, for having me. Appreciate it.
Adam Wright:
I love the feast of Corpus Christi. I think back to when I was a little boy, my grandma would always sign me up. She was good friends with the head of the altar servers, and he would say, “Mary Jane, can your grandson serve for the procession?” Every time she said, “Adam, you should do this. You should do this.” And I’d go to seven AM Mass in the early reaches of Sunday morning, and then we’d go for the procession throughout the neighborhood. There’s just a lot of fond memories associated with this feast. Help us understand: why are we even having a feast? I mean, when we think of daily Mass and Sunday Mass, isn’t every Mass a feast of the body and blood of our Lord? Why do we even have this feast coming up?
Fr. Paul Hoesing:
Well, it was the vision of a mystic in Belgium, Leige, to be precise. Her name was Julianne, and she had this vision that, the moon had a black mark. And she went to the bishop at that time, Jacques Pantaleon and said, “We need to have a feast for the body and blood of Jesus.” And Jacques Pantaleon would become Pope Urban, and he was the one who instituted the feast in the middle ages. And that really allowed the church to appreciate, after a millennia, what it means to have the body and blood of Jesus in every church. So we’ve been celebrating Corpus Christi for over 800 years as a way of recognizing what a gift we have. The gift is the presence of Jesus who takes up space and time and changes every one of our churches from, as Evelyn Waugh remarked in his Bride’s Head Revisited, “The family had a chapel and they removed the blessed sacrament. And when they did that, it was just a strangely decorated room.”
Adam Wright:
Wow. Now you are one of the Eucharistic preachers for the Eucharistic Revival and in every conversation we’ve had with different members of the revival, whether it’s Joel Stepanek or sister Alicia Torres, who talked about a beautiful program for learning more about our Eucharistic faith. One thing is consistent in every conversation, that while this is a national at the national level, at the diocesan level, at the parish level, really at its core for all of us, it’s at the me level. For Adam Wright, it’s the Adam Wright level, for Father Paul Hoesing, it’s the Father Hoesing level. How can this feast be a point where we can really deepen that revival in our hearts, deep in our relationship with our Lord, present in the Blessed Sacrament?
Fr. Paul Hoesing:
I think especially with a procession, it says something about our worship is not private. They want to talk about freedom of religion, and they want to isolate it to freedom of worship. “You do your thing in your church, and that’s fine, but don’t bring it out in the streets.” But the Catholic says, “No, there’s an integrated vision here.” What happens in my relationship with Jesus will affect how I live in the world, and the procession brings that reality to light and says “Jesus wants to live in the world. He wants your hands, your feet, your mind, your heart, your soul, to affect others.” And so the procession really makes that emphatic, that our personal relationship with Jesus Christ results in a public reality. And so we embrace that the public reality – then as I encounter people and I interact with people, there’s a feedback like, oh, now that I interact with people differently, I pray differently. I often like to tell the men here at the seminary, the way we relate to other people will often reflect how we relate to God. So if I’m defensive or shy, I’ll do that in my relationship with God. So to see how we relate with people, and see how that’s meant to inform our prayer and move us into a different level of prayer is really important. So for me personally, this Eucharistic Revival has really led me to understand more deeply what it means for me to say “This is my body given for you.”
Adam Wright:
Is there an element of this, as we talk about the importance of living out that faith by going on procession or participating in the Corpus Christi procession, that helps then edify our belief and our relationship in ourselves? I mean, I think specifically of my dean of students in high school who was very adamant that “Gentleman, the dress code is important because it helps form you as a man. It’s not just about you looking nice when people come into the building.” And I think of my earliest exposure to the seminary here 20 years ago, the rector of the college seminary at the time was known for being very strict with the college men about their appearance and their dress, and it was all going back to that. This isn’t just about how you present yourself, but this is about your formation. So how can our public witness, I suppose is the question, help form us?
Fr. Paul Hoesing:
Well, if I’m going out in the public, I’m expressing what I believe. What I believe about Jesus and the Eucharist should say something about His majesty, His goodness, His generosity. So if I go and meet the president, if I go and meet the pope, I’m going to dress in response to that goodness and generosity and reverencing of the office. If I’m leading Jesus in the Eucharist, I want to have that capacity for reverence and goodness being expressed in my public expression. I think oftentimes of the 30-day exercises, and we have seminarians on the exercises. They make these midnight holy hours. And the sisters will also be there making their midnight holy hour. And the men will show up in the first few weeks to their midnight holy hour, wearing something like sweats and a t-shirt. Meanwhile, sisters there: fully habited. And so the men start to realize, “Oh, I realize this is an intimate moment. It’s the middle of the night. No one’s really around, but it would be good to put on some slacks and a collared shirt if I’m going to pray in the chapel. And not be slouchy, not be sort of dismissive of the reality that I’m with people here. I want people to see how I reverence Jesus because he’s referencing and showing His goodness to me and being available in the Eucharistic presence.” So the women, the sisters, the consecrated women always raise the bar on a 30-day exercise. Express yourself in a way that allows people to see what you believe.
Adam Wright:
We talk often, the visual of people seeing us on procession, seeing us going into the church, seeing us come out of the church. What about the supernatural aspect of this? The presence of our Lord on our neighborhood streets. I think, in particular, of my neighborhood where one of the processions goes by the busiest brunch spot on Sunday mornings, of another parish in St. Louis where their procession often crosses over one of the major interstates, and they stop there for a moment. Given the tumult of the world around us, the political strife, and all these things that we don’t really have time to go into, how can just the presence of our Lord have an effect on our world around us?
Fr. Paul Hoesing:
A friend of mine compared the procession to what it was like to go through the Red Sea. The waters were deadly. When we enter into the world out there, there’s a lot of death, a lot of transience. So people eat brunch, to do it next week and next week and next week. It’s a lot of transience. A lot of death. And what happens with the procession is here comes life, and life everlasting. Life eternal. So when people see that procession with the Eucharist at its center, life now has an anchor. There’s eternal life in Jesus. Meanwhile, there’s all this death, the changing of seasons, the changing of times, eating and drinking, going about buying and selling. That’s all fine and good, but it’s not it. And that was a great kind of lesson, I think, for the pandemic, wasn’t it? All of our entertainment, all of our ways of escaping, all of our distractions that we relied upon: the malls, the arenas, the bars. They were shut down. So will I put my faith in these transient gods again? Or is there something permanent and lasting I can put my faith in? And that’s what the procession expresses in the midst of the world.
Adam Wright:
When you go out to preach as one of the Eucharistic preachers for the revival, what’s the core message? We use the word “kerygma” a lot. Like, let’s get to the core of this, the proclamation. What’s the core message you hope to proclaim?
Fr. Paul Hoesing:
I have to say I’ve been crafting the message specifically for priests, because I checked the box that said “willing to speak with priests”. And of the Eucharistic Preachers, I think I’m of one of seven that is really speaking to priests. So the core message I want with priests is how deeply Jesus desires to give His life for each one of us and to receive that love. Then to be awakened in our own way, personally and particularly in how I give my life to others. So when I say those words, “This is my body given for you” there’s something spousal there. There’s something deeply healing there. And I think we live in a world where it’s very difficult to see a spousal life lived faithfully. And if priests are not living that spousal life, it’s hard to inspire couples. It’s hard to have children. It’s hard to have spiritual fatherhood unless I have that spousal life with Jesus and His church. So that’s the message I’m really moving into, because it’s been important for my own life, from the moment I was ordained. This is the anniversary of my ordination today. 21 years. That’s the passage I chose for my holy card for my ordination. “This is my body given for you.” It’s deeply sacrificial. It’s what soldiers do. When they lay on the grenade. It’s what men do when they lay down their lives at their wedding day, and it unfolds for the rest of life. So I want that message, “this is my body given for you” to animate hearts in a new way.
Adam Wright:
I think that’s a beautiful message for all of us. Dare I say not just for the priests, but for all of us. Father, I want to thank you for taking this time to be with us, to help kindle a little bit of Eucharistic Revival on our radio show today. Could I ask you to close our time together with a prayer?
Fr. Paul Hoesing:
Sure. Let us pray. Jesus, you give us your body and blood, your soul and divinity. At every Mass, let us become receptive to you and your love, and may your love transform our lives to bring you into the world incarnate through how we live and move and have our being. This we ask in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Adam Wright:
Father Paul Hoesing, thank you so much for being with us on Roadmap to Heaven today. Friends, if you’d like to know more about the Eucharistic Revival, including next year’s Congress and what’s happening at the parish level right now, you can visit eucharisticrevival.org. And as always, for more information on vocations, speak with your diocesan vocation director, I’m sure they’d love to have some more men discerning the call to the priesthood here at Kenrick-Glennon in Seminary, or in whatever Seminary your diocese goes to. In the meantime, we’re going to take a break here on Roadmap to Heaven. Don’t go anywhere.
In this interview, host Adam Wright welcomes guest Father Paul Hoesing. Father Hoesing dives into the significance of processions in worship and how they symbolize the shared, public nature of faith. While some people want to confine religion to the private realm, Father Paul stresses the integrated vision that Catholicism holds, where one’s relationship with Jesus impacts how they live in the world.
Father Hoesing highlights the importance of actively engaging with the world using our hands, feet, mind, heart, and soul to impact others. Through public displays like processions, our personal relationship with Jesus becomes a reality in the public sphere. He explains how our interactions with people reflect our relationship with God and shape our prayer life.
Father Hoesing discusses the supernatural aspect of religious processions, explaining how the mere presence of God can have a positive impact on the surrounding environment, even in busy or unexpected locations.
He also notes how the pandemic made people question their reliance on temporary forms of entertainment and distraction, prompting a desire for something permanent and lasting. Father Hoesing emphasizes the importance of living out faith and participating in religious processions to express this lasting presence amidst a transient world.
Overall, this interview sheds light on the Eucharistic Revival and the importance of participating in public processions and having a spousal relationship with Jesus.
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