[ music ]. . hello. and on be-haye of the arch die owe seats of spris, welcome to mosaic. with pee is father kevin kennedy, a priest of the archdiocese and a pastor of the church our lady of fatima, quite a string of adjectives. to get better acquainted with a woman who is fair to say has proved to be the most fascinating woman in human history. she walked this earth more than 2,000 years ago but still as current as the latest news. she is in the news at this moment. may 13th, 2017, is the 100th anniversary of the day when three children

from fatima, portugal had a conversation with a lady who said she had come from heaven to talk to them. pope francis will visit fatima to cannonize the little shepherd of the saints. our archdiocese is preparing for a deeper relationship with this lady, at the rosary rally, where we will conis hecrate ourselves to her immaculate heart. we get to learn more about mary, the mother of jesus, and the mother of saul. ,, ,,,, ,,

. [ music ]. . hello, and welcome back to mosaic. with me today is father kevin kennedy. father kevin, you are he the pastor of a

church, our lady of fatima, russian by byzentine. our viewers will want to know what is a russian byzentine church. >> this is what a priest will wear in his church, and the churches were established when some russian orthodox christians sought full communion with rome in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. they were accepted by saint piusx, x.

i am ordained a roman catholic priest of the archdiocese but i can celebrate in the russian byzentine right and serve this community which has inherited that original movement from the 20th century. many of the parishes were latter destroyed during soviet communist persecution so those who escaped did so in veras parts of the world, often entrusted to the jesuit. the jesuit order, the society of jesus, were often trained jesuits in rome to serve byzentine catholic christians. and so our parish was actually a jesuit parish from his inception in 1950. >> you are a catholic church in

full communion with the church of rome. >> yes. >> you practice the byzentine rights which is different from the latin rights. >> yes. >> you do your services in english. >> we moved from slovonic to english 20 years ago. >> if i wanted to receive the sacraments at your church that is all right. >> like in any other catholic church the litturgy will be different. the number of russian byzentine catholic churches is so small that the holy sea has entrusted them to the arch bishop of san fransisco, he was appointed me to be pastor of this parish and i'm the first priest to hold that title. most of the pastors were jesuits in the past. and we're fully catholic and so

to receive the eucharist and the sacrament of confession you're receiving it from that catholic priest. it is encouraged for roman catholics to familiarize themselves with eastern catholics and to at least once in their life attend an liturgy in the eastern and in our case byzentine tradition. >> i've done so and i find it interesting and the music is beautiful. >> very beautiful. >> and the homilies are good because they're delivered by you. >> thank you. [ laughter ]. >> i've seen your work, it's very good. >> thank you. >> let me ask you about the name of this parish, our lady of fatima, and the next word is russian. >> the parish was formed in the 1950s when there is a great deal of focus on fatima particularly as they

concerned to some degree russia and the future of russia and humanity. faol o greatus our oclady of russia specifically. this was during the soviet era, and so a russian byzentine catholic church was named after the mother of god with that title, our lady of fatima, and that was a particular focus for the the russian apostolate at that time. >> let me talk about mary. she's very much in the news. if we can show a slide that -- photo that i, myself, took. i was shopping in the safeway, i turned around, there's the magazine rack and whom do we see along with oprah, it's mary. this particular publication is a reissue of a life magazine special issue

from 1996. it's been updated and beautifully did. my next slide, this is current books, new books about mary. we have the life magazine, we have a couple of very interesting books from our local catholic press. and i'm finding mary fascinating and i'm reading about her. i want to ask you to help us all understand who is she, what does she do, and please take it away. >> i remember when that life magazine cover first came out in 1996, and then there were other articles in the year 2000, the jubilee year within the catholic church. she is a jewish woman. she's venerated by christians, she is mother. there is something about maternity, universal motherhood that appeals to

people of various faith traditions. in our common humanity, there is a nee our psychological makeup, our spiritual makeup, for what she embodies, for what she represents, for what she brings to people, which is the love of god. that heart of god expressed especially through the heart of a mother, a mother's love. >> and i think as pope francis said recently without mary there's no christ. without mary no jesus. >> right. >> and mary is our path to jesus. >> yes. >> interesting and we'll talk more about that. we're going to show some icons of mary that are very important in the russian byzentine catholic world and we'll explain her powers and her efficacy. rejoin us when we return. thank you.

antine catholic world and we'll explain her powers and her efficacy. rejoin us when we return. thank you.

,, . [ music ].

. hello and welcome back. we're talking with father kevin kennedy about mary, the blessed ver gin, the mother of god, the autokas, god bearer. please tell us what we need to know about mary's role in christian salvation, the plan of salvation. >> mary is all about the incarnation which is the enfleshment of god. god becoming one with one of his own creation. in classically franciscan theology, certainly in greek, byzantine christian theology, the incarnation is seen as broader than just redemptive, just salvation. that it is seen as the original creative plan of god. the whole purpose of creation is that god would create in order to bring creation to himself. in order to bridge the gap

between the divine and the human, god would be part of his own creation, would be enfleshed, join with us, and allow us to participate by grace in god's own life. not by nature but by grace. st. paul teaches this when he says all was created for him, for the incarnation for christ. all was created through him. he is before all else that is. he's foreordained and foreshadowed in the god's original plan as part of creation. uniting the divine and the human. >> and this has been a mystery that i learned in third grade but never could really understand. i don't know -- >> no one understands it. >> but a beautiful image and understanding of what our human

life is for is to move toward god and to become sharers in god's nature. >> right, right. >> because he's being, and he's love, we're something else. we're becoming and damaged. >> he takes that damage and he unites it to himself to bring healing and enlight enment about life's purpose and a transformation through himself to god's own life by the power of his spirit. so healing, enlight enment, transformation is the whole work of god's grace within our souls. >> mary is who? >> she makes it possible. when there was a bit of decline in mary and devotion in the 1970s, especially, i remember someone asked a jesuit

theologian why is this happening because we've made of the incarnation is and straks abstractions, and they don't need something real. she is the one who forms his heart from her own heart, that blood is hers that physical -- that sacred humanity joined to his divinity, the only son of the father, only the mother of the lord and god the father can say of jesus, this is my beloved son. >> which is interesting if you have protestant trends, they may think that mary is wrongly worshipped, a distraction from god and jesus, but you think you have some icons you can show us that say

something different. >> the icon of the sign which is an ancient russian icon on the screen here is a visual that depicts everything that i'm speaking of in theological terms, depicts it visually. you see that the lord in his humanity, in his divinity, is in mary. in her heart, in her womb. she was conceived first in her heart and then in her womb. st. john of damascus, an early christian and byzantine father of the church, he died in the early 8th century, said the same thing, that she is the christ bearer. the god bearer, because this is the one who is god enfleshed for us. and so therefore she's not digressing from or taking away from or in competition with christ, he is

in her. otherwise, the incarnation isn't real. there's another make believe christ other than the real christ. he comes to us in and through her. so she is opening her arms in a praying, called the orons mode, and that gesture shows us she is a creature, she is praying, she not herself god, but she is the mother of the one who is god made flesh for us. >> to show the next slide, i think it's called mary help for sore oust. >> this is the russian icon entitled joy of all who sorrow. >> this strikes me as quite beautiful, and this is her enduring career as a mother with children all around her saying, mom, i need something, mom, i need this, and that. is that what i'm seeing? >> that's exactly what it is. this is the icon much the joy of

all who sorrow. the full title is joy of joy, unexpected joy, joy of all who sorrow. it is the title of holy virgin russian orthodox cathedral and we have that same icon in our sacristy at our lady of fatima. this is the eternal role of our lady that she brings us to god because god chose to come to us three jesus in and through her. she has a role in this relationship of love with all of those who have been formed by christ into his body. she is a mother. so she listens to our petition. she doesn't take the place of christ but she, in a mother's role, cares for us, prays for us, protects us, strengthens us in this union of love with her son, she brings us into that circle. not outside of it, in the same

relationship of love. >> thank you. in our next segment, we will talk about her relationship to these shepherd children at fatima and what that all means. please rejoin us.

. let's talk for a moment about what's going on currently. the aaddoration at fatima, shoe children are being canonized. tell us about fatima, its meaning and purpose. >> fatima is an event that took place beginning on may 13th, 1917 in portugal, and it is a prophetic event.

it's a richly symbolic event. it brings us back to that icon, the joy of all who sorrow. our lady comes at a time when the world was about to be plunged into sorrow with two world wars, with those who suffered under naziism, suffered under soviet communism. the wars that have continued and the divisions within humanity. and she comes as a messenger of god. she comes as a messenger of peace. she comes to bring us into that same circle that we saw christ in her heart in that previous icon of the joy our lady of the sign. to brings us into the circle of god's love, of healing being of enlightenment, of transformation. she directs us to her heart because that is the place where the lord's heart was formed. >> m-hmm. >> and that here we have a union

between the divine and the human, here we have a means of the grace won for us by christ, to be shared by the power of his spirit. our lady is in a special way a spirit bearer. they are her graces, they are the graces of god. but she listens to her children and by bringing them to her heart, she brings them in a special way to that intimacy with the very heart of god. where the graces of the world needs for peace, for reconciliation, for conversion, for changing our lives from things that are self-destructive to things that are life giving, especially spiritual for us. and so she tries to awaken us to the same message that begins the gospel in the lord's historical ministry, repent, the kingdom of god is at hand. repentans not in a negative sense but in

a positive sense of changing direction of awakening to god's presence in the world, god's love in our hearts, and moving towards him rather than away from him. that's the central message of fatima. >> and let me ask you this, our archdiocese is in a project of the consecration to the immaculate heart of mary. currently we're trying to katichise to learn about this. perhaps you can toll tell us what this means. >> consecration is simply to dedicate, surrender one's self to god. and mary is the vessel for his presence. as i said earlier, regarding the incarnation, she is the new ark of the covenant, a new covenant.

and so the first -- one of the first saints who spoke of consecration was actually the byzantine father of the church to which -- to whom i referred earlier, st. john of damascus, and a homily given for the feast of the dormiti dormiion. may we come to consecrate ourselves to her, to dedicate and entrust ourselves to her, that if we do so, we're in that radiant circle if her heart where christ jesus is found. >> let me ask you this as a layman, a pastoral question, i'm a catholic until i began studying up on the virgin mary and the consecration i don't know what my relationship with her was. how would you advise me to have a deeper, truer relationship with her,

what would i do? >> the same way you get to know anyone, you talk to them, share with them, she's more real than anyone -- she's full of life and love of joy. she's the joy of all who sorrows, she listens and she aaccompanies and awak something in us that yearns to find meaning and value, talk to her, prayer as st. theresa said is a heart to heart conversation with god who we know loves us. we can pray to the saints. she's the queen of all of the saints and the one with eternal mediation brings us to the heart of god. god and flesh for us. she doesn't distract from christ, she brings us to him in an immediate and powerful and very fast way because when you say mary she says jesus. >> yes, and many of her icons show her pointing the way to jesus i

believe. >> that's one of the great icons. she who points the way. >> we have in our communication department made web pages where you can get to know mary. i found in making the pages she opens up worlds of beauty and meaning. go to our web pages and look at those, you'll find the world's greatest art and music featuring mary. she's inspired this kind of devotion and glory. let me show our last slide of the day and it's a very famous icon. it's evidently the oldest mary icon in the world. dating, perhaps, from as early as the second century but from before the 5th and this is called the advokata, somewhere in rome, old painting on wood. let me read to you what the author says this about, michael hessman. he says even a first glance tells you that she is more than a cracked

partially worm eaten portrait. once you have looked into the almond shaped eyes of this woman's face, you will never forget them for they penetrate into your heart and know the thoughts, fears, and hopes. thank you for joining us on the program about the blessed virgin mary. >> thank you, thank you. . [ music ].

. [ music ]. . welcome to bay sunday. i'm kenny choi. mother's day is seven days away and if you still haven't fird out what to get help is here. ambassador katherine haul and jennifer hall is here, they are mother and daughter and brought some mother's day inspired wine pargs that will make great gifts. welcome to bay sunday, ladies. >> thank you, so much. >> thank you, it is so nice to be here and talk about my favorite holiday of the year mother pea day. >> mother's day, an important one, because we want to honor those special moms in our lives. great way to celebrate mother's day. >> we have our