Wait, wait, are you asking me and then you're just going to answer your question? I already

gave the answer. Well answer it

then. Right. So this is... Yeah, I actually preached about some of this, not this directly, but priesthood in general this past Sunday because the readings were kind of lent itself towards that. How does St. Peter say it? He says, you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, quoting the Old Testament, but God choosing us to be his adopted children, his adopted people as a chosen race, a royal priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices is what St. Peter said in the second reading this past Sunday, the fifth Sunday of Easter year A for some context. I think... I love it. We're just like, we've got like a timeline. We need people to be charting out what we're talking about when we're talking about. Probably not. They're probably super annoyed right now. They're probably driving in their car. They're like, all right, just get to the topic. To the topic. But anyway, so right, the distinction between... Or not the distinction, the similarities between the baptismal priesthood and the ministerial priesthood is what I was drawing on, that everyone is a priest by their baptism, which means we're all called to offer sacrifices. If I were to elaborate on that homily, right, I would go into what about priest prophet and king, what about our kinghood and our prophethood, kingship, kingship and prophet ship. So everyone listening to this, I shouldn't say everyone, but if you are baptized, you are also a king, right, which means as a king you're called to govern. So by our governing, me as a ministerial priest, I'm called to govern in a way that shows the kingdom of God here on this earth, right? And every time we pray that our father, we say, thy kingdom come. God's kingdom is already raining on this earth. He came and established his kingdom here. And so we pray for this reality to continue to enumerate, continue to elaborate itself. But as a priest, I'm called to govern this kingdom, God's kingdom, through, as you mentioned, Deacon Jacob of education, teaching kind of that type of office. We see that govern ship, the governing aspect of the church, oftentimes through the pope, through the cardinals, through the bishops, through priests. But again, as your baptismal priest did, you are also called to govern the church in certain ways. Yeah.

And so God governs all creation. He is the principal governor. He rules. He is supreme overall that he has created. And he governs things based on their natures. So we are by nature rational beings. That's our highest, our highest faculty is our rationality, our

intellect and our will.

And so God governs us in relation to our intellect and our will. So he moves us to make right action in our will through right knowledge. So to govern a rational being, the proper way to govern is to teach. And through teaching, we move to proper action. Now the way we, you know, animals are governed through their instincts, through their senses, plants kind of through the sensory seeking light and water. As things get lesser and lower natures, they're governed in different ways. You as a priest, incorporating the office of Christ, the head, govern the church. Now Christ governed the church as shepherd and teacher, not as dictator. Now there's military obedience that is super important in the midst of a battle. If the sergeant questions the captains order in the midst of a firefight, everybody's possibly going to die because you just kind of have to respond in the heat of the moment to the order and fulfill the order. So there's a type of obedience that isn't always necessary in a dialogue or need to understand absolutely everything. But in the rational order, we are governed by being taught. And so God is trying to teach us. He teaches us through many ways, through divine revelation, through the natural law, through our own ability to come to know things through the sciences. And so as rational beings, we're kind of in dialogue with these four orders that I mentioned before. The highest of those orders is the natural order, natural law. I think Thomas describes it, Saint Thomas, as the order by which we behold things. Which one? The natural order. The natural order. So this is things as they are. Principally, what this ends up being is the study of physics and metaphysics. So we come to know things in their natures, in their essences, how they

are.