Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to The Catechism in a Year podcast,

where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in scripture and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith.

It's always hard to say.

The Catechism in a year is brought to you by Ascension.

In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity and God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is day 144. We're on day two, actually second day of our second pillar of the catechism. And the first pillar of the catechism, the creed, awesome, incredible. We had to hear about what we believe about God and what that means about us, the church, our salvation, everything. The second pillar is on worship. The second pillar is on the sacraments. And to help me introduce pillar two, I have a very special guest with me, Bishop Andrew Cousins of the Diocese of Crookston, Minnesota, Bishop Cousins. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you. It's a delight to be with you, Father Mike. Are you familiar with the Catechism or the Catechism in here podcast? Yeah, I've been listening every day. And in fact, more than that, I got this idea when I heard that you were going to do this, that I should maybe try to get people in my diocese to join me. So I got a little catechism group. We got about 230 of us who are doing it every

day. That's awesome. I post a little catechism group. We got about 230 of us who are doing it every

day. That's awesome. I post a little reflection and other people put in their questions and comments,

and once a month we meet on Zoom to talk to talk it through. So I just thought this is a great

chance for those Catholics who really want to engage this and others too, to engage it together.

And I know for me, I know if I have to post something every day, it's

going to help me to keep going all 365 days. Keep that faithfulness consistently. You just know,

everyone, just keep pressing play. Speaking of pressing play on this day, this second, day 144, right,

it's kind of a longer episode. I remember my dad, who's also listening to the catechism. He said,

day one and day two, that wasism, he said, day three.

He said, day one and day two. That was fine. Day three, 45 minutes. What the heck? What's going on? And I was like, well, this is one of those longer episodes too. But we're doing this because we want to get a kind of a general overview of what is this next section, what's this next pillar of the catechism. And I really wanted Bishop Cousins to be to do this not only well a couple reasons.

One is, so when I went through seminary, it was fine, it was good. But after I graduated, after I was ordained, Bishop Cousins was, became a professor at the St. Paul Seminary. And one of the classes he taught was on the Eucharist. And I have these other, you know, seminarians now, they're priests in my diocese who would tell me all about this class that you taught and I was so jealous. I mean, I had to me, we'll call it holy jealousy. It was just jealousy. I was like, what the heck? I didn't hear any of this stuff and they would, they would come back from your class just being so not just educated but edified, not just not just kind of like with what we're talking about this whole time in the catechism not just with more data

but with a heart that loves the lord more and so i was like well if anyone who should introduce

this this pillar with me it should be bishop cousins the other piece is The other piece is, this year, is the Eucharistic

revival kicking off. And so, would you mind just sharing a little bit about that? Yeah, so I have the

privilege of chairing this National Eucharistic Revival, which is a, it's a project of the Bishops' Conference

of the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops. And I'm the chair

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