Hello, welcome to Form Now. We're in part five of our five-part series, a Bible study on the luminous mysteries.

My name is Dr. Ben Acres. I'm the executive director of formed, and joining me today is a friend and colleague at the Graduate School of Theology at the Augustin Institute, Dr. Mark Giesheck. Thanks for joining me, Mark.

Hey, it's great to be here, Ben. And before we get started, I want to talk and thank you for your support of the Mission Circle.

The Mission Circle is a monthly donation group where you can give money to help us have conversations like this and have shows.

And we hope this has been helpful to pray the luminous mysteries.

The luminous mysteries were given to us by Pope St. John Paul II.

In 2002, he suggested them to us. And they exist

in between the joyful mysteries of Jesus' early life and the sorrowful mysteries of his passion.

And so we're on number five, and that's the institution of the Eucharist. Mark, why is this a

mystery of light? Yeah. Yeah, I actually don't like the word luminous very much in English because it's really based on

the Latin word for light, which is lumine, and it doesn't really mean a whole lot to us,

I think, right?

So mysteries of light, I think, is a slightly better way of talking about these, because they

remind us of all of the kind of connotations

of light. Jesus says, I am the light of the world. And so John Paul II names them mysteries

of light because light indicates revelation, right, divine revelation. It's not primarily about

creation, right? Let there be light. And it's not primarily about physics,

if you will. It's not about photons or whatever. It really is about spiritual enlightenment,

right, about the Lord shining the light of his son, the light of the world, on our hearts,

that we might come to enlightenment, right? To true enlightenment that we might come out of the darkness of sin and the darkness of the world, on our hearts, that we might come to enlightenment, right?

To true enlightenment that we might come out of the darkness of sin

and the darkness of ignorance into the wonderful light of his presence.

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