Well, good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us live here at the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy. I'm impressed. We got a few people here today, even though we had a blizzard last night, and the snow was coming down like crazy. I didn't think we'd have anybody here, but it's great. We have a nice group of people here to join us. And so today we're doing a brand new talk on our Blessed Mother. I've done many in the past, but never have I done a talk before, even on a homily, never on Mary's fulfilling of the Jewish, well, pretty much the Jewish origins, the Jewish roots of Mary. A lot of the

work like Dr. Brandt Petri does, I'm going to be quoting him. He does amazing work on this.

But how she fulfills the Old Testament. Fascinating stuff. So we hope you can stay with us. Let us pray in the name of the

Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with

thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners.

Now and at the hour of our death, amen.

Our lady, mother of mercy, pray for us.

In the name of the Father and of the Son

and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Ah, there's something I did want to add

because I got a lot of your questions about this and it's kind of, it kind of makes me smile,

is a lot of people that astute Catholics were saying, Father, we could eat meat yesterday, right? It was Friday. Now, normally,

as Catholics, you can eat meat on any Friday outside of Lent, but you've got to give up

and do some form of other penance. That's the part people forget. So in America, you outside of Lent, now Fridays in Lent, there is no meat,

but outside of Lent, Fridays you can eat meat if you give up and do some other form of penance,

but not us as religious. We don't eat meat on any Fridays unless it is the octave of Easter because each day is a solemnity. And that you don't eat,

you don't do penance on solemnities. Now, a lot of you wrote to me, and it was interesting because

you, if you think your family has dysfunction, well, you could look right at our Marion family.

We had a huge disagreement last night at the dinner table, and there were two factions within the

Marion community because the question was, can we eat meat yesterday because it's in the octave of Christmas?

So, of course, right?

We can eat meat because it's in the octave of Christmas.

...