Right. It is amazing. And that's why I think we need a revolution in the church of retrieval of Lectio Divina, of reading the scriptures prayerfully. I know it's a hackneyed cliche that Catholics don't read the scriptures. need to recover is the realization of the complete depths and riches of our tradition with regard to reading the scriptures in the light of Christ, in the light of the Spirit. And man, use the church fathers. Wow. Yeah,

don't just say you like them, right? And we do a lot of pretending and, again, getting them off of someone's Facebook or whatever, but those can be good starting points. And I'm spoiled because I have logo software and I have them sitting right there on my computer and they're all linked and all that, but it really is true. And it makes me think of how Liturgy of the Hours excise the end of Psalm 137, where the guy hates his enemy's guts and wants to kill their babies. But part of that is we need to be praying and reading these obscure and dark passages, partly to my mind, to see where we came from. So there's the, thank the Lord we can eat bacon and we don't want to kill babies. But more importantly, as we go through those emotions and experiences in our own lives, I think it's why the Psalter is so important. The pride of place that that has in the church's prayer life is it runs the entire gamut of the human experience. You want to curse God sometimes. You want to scream at God. Where are you, Lord? How long? Sometimes you want to praise the Lord. Sometimes you want to this and that. It's all there. And there's the consolation that comes that this was deemed to be worthy of inclusion in the canon of Scripture that God inspired this text. That's

right. And we need to pray these Scriptures. I mean, we pray the Scriptures in the Liturgy of the Hours, but I think because those are Psalms, we tend to think, well, those are meant to be prayed. That's why they were written. They were written as songs and worship, blah, blah, blah. But no, the entirety of the scriptures are intended to be read as a form of worshipful praise, are intended to be read through the lens of our spiritual, Christological eyes. And I'm as guilty as the next person. I think it's a professional liability, Matthew. I'm sure you'd agree that when you're a theologian and you read Hebrew and you read Greek and you understand the historical critical exegesis and you get the redaction criticism and text reception and the linguistics and the literary genres, you can lose the forest for the trees so easily.

Very easily. I was teaching spiritual theology to our diocese's permanent diaculate candidates. I had refused to teach that class for several years going after having done it for several years, because I just didn't feel like I was in a place to teach it. But then I guess I eventually realized, first of all, no one's ever fully in a place to teach that. And second of all, someone had to teach it. So therefore, it was God's will, you know. But anyway, it was like those things. I felt that way, right? Professional liability to just academify everything. And so that's an existential thing that I think we'll all deal with. But I think Ratzinger, again, is the model. He is willing to pivot back and forth and say, okay, this is an exact quote. He'll say, we can happily set that issue to the side. Now, the scholar in me says, but, but, but. But he's trying to meditate on the life of Christ. So he just says, forget that, guys. That's interesting. But he doesn't get hung up. And I think that's a model for all of us whatever the Catholic internet sensation is do not get hung up on that issue sure research it but get down to the person of Jesus

get to the person Ratzinger was close friends as you know with Hans-Oes von Balthar, and Balthasar, I mean, his entire theological aesthetics, he says, we cannot treat the figure of Christ as presented to us in the scriptures as a body to be dissected at an autopsy and then left dismembered and so on. You will never see the living form of the person, and therefore his entire aesthetic was about developing, in German a gestalt a form the form of christ emerges and that emerges in reading the old testament as well as the new you read it the old in the light of the new and this is what rod singer is about as well which is why hey reading jesus of nazareth you know his his biography of jesus or his you know his it's just it's fantastic stuff because Jesus comes alive. At any rate, we've kind of, we've been at this about a little over an hour. Do you have anything you want to add? Any last words?

I'm pretty happy with that, Larry. Go Chiefs. Let's see here. I've managed and avoided thinking about the election as much as possible and sparing my students from that, trying to give them a little respite to just contemplate God for a couple of hours. Yeah. But no, no, no. It's just great to talk. I don't have any like that's great i want to you know i

will leave this uh yeah on on election day that is i will leave this in light of our whole conversation that as christians our eyes are eschatologically attuned to the kingdom that is to come and and to not invest our politics with messianic eschatological tonalities uh you know this is the latest election. And I'm 66 years old. And every single election is the most important election of our lifetimes. No, no, it isn't. I guarantee you, no matter who wins today, in four years, I'll be saying this is the most important election of our life. And that's because we invest our politics with this almost messianic quality to it. And And it's, I think, something inherent in the American psyche related to American exceptionalism, that somehow, some way, what goes on in American politics has almost cosmic significance. And newsflash, it does not. You know, it's important. It is. It's important, but it's a lot of cosmic significance. So this too shall pass. Hey, Matthew, Dr. Ramage, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's always, always a joy. Hopefully our paths will cross again soon someday. I hope so

too, Larry. See you around.

Okay. Thanks again, everybody. Bye-bye now.