Anything that leads us away from God becomes an idol in our life.

Dennis Sousa

WHO IS DENNIS SOUSA?

Mr. Dennis Sousa is the Director of Faith Formation at Saint Philip Church in Greenville, RI. He earned his M.A. in Theology from Providence College. Dennis has served on various oversight committees and advisory boards within the Diocese of Providence and is a widely sought-after speaker. He currently lives in Scituate, RI, with his wife Jennifer and their daughter Grace.

What is the 1st Commandment?

In this episode, Mr. Dennis Sousa talks about the 1st commandment. He explains:
-What is the first Commandment? Does God lay these down Himself or is it an invention by people as some claim?
-How do we practice the 1st commandment and put God first?
-How do we sin against this commandment?
-What happens when we don’t follow the 1st commandment?
-What are some of the uncommon idols in our life and when we identify them what do we do?

Our Hearts Were Made for Him

It’s amazing how God works. In December 2021, I sat down after many days of Christmas prep to plot this years direction for the podcast. Personally, there were so many things happening and my own faith journey had been revived but I was tired in ministry. I was asking for direction from the Lord. And one of the things I heard was the commandments. I have learned now to just best get on with the instructions when He gives them.

So I started planning the 1st commandment. I turned everywhere online. And couldn’t find someone who knew this well enough to teach others. I looked on YouTube and lo and behold Dennis did an entire YT video on the subject. That was a year ago. As I was listening to him explain how he did the videos, I went “God is so fantastic.” He ordered our steps knowing fully well down the line what was needed for the year to come. And so if you’re wondering if you’re sowing and there’s no fruit, don’t fret. God is in control and He’s bringing it altogether in due time.

Our hearts are like idol making factories.

Dennis Sousa

The 1st commandment is simple. “I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt not have strange gods before Me.” Sounds simple too. But it is far more than that.

I love how Dennis used the Baltimore Catechism to teach this. Like I said during the podcast, it’s my first time actually seeing it taught this way. Dennis talks about how we sin against God and His 1st commandment by sinning against faith, hope and charity. There’s so much to unpack here that you have to listen to what he says. In the end, it just shows that our hearts were made for God.

Why the 1st commandment is so important?

Dennis talks extensively what happens when we don’t order our lives around God. We know this ourselves. Our lives fall apart but I love how he uses the example of his daughter and himself. And how God lays down not just the 1st commandment but all ten simply out of love. Like a child is asked to hold onto their father. Yet, we choose to hold onto our idols and let go of God. Do you have any idols that are holding you back? How did you smash them?

I’m super happy about doing the the commandments this year. It has put a new spark into my ministry as I take on the new year.

Episode Transcript

Pamela: Welcome to a new episode of “The Christian Circle Podcast”, and today, we have a new guest. We have Mr. Dennis Sousa, and he’s gonna be talking to us about the 1st commandment. So this year, we’re looking forward to doing the ten commandments. And hopefully, we’ll be able to continue each of them through the months ahead. But for this 1st commandment, we have Dennis, who’s gonna talk to us about this since he put out a video on this exact same theme. And you can see him on YouTube online. So, Dennis, tell us a little bit about yourself and your ministry.

Dennis: Sure. Thanks so much, Pamela. And it’s great to be on with you, and thank you for having me. Now, like you said, my name is Dennis Sousa, I have been married to my wife, Jennifer, for 20 years. We have one daughter, her name is Grace. She’s 18 years old, and she’ll be heading off to college this upcoming fall. I hold a Master’s degree in theology from Providence College. And I’ve been the Director of Faith Formation for St. Philip’s Church, which is a Roman Catholic parish in Greenville, Rhode Island for the last 10 years. And here, I’m responsible for all the Faith Formation from the little ones of our parish all the way to the adults. So, I do things like baptismal prep, RCIA, you know, in Faith Formation, regular faith formation for the children and young people.

Pamela: So, you put out a video on YouTube, and I think that was related to your work about the 1st commandment. So just to go down back to basics, you know, for anybody who doesn’t know, what exactly is the 1st commandment? And is it something that God is laying down Himself? Or is this like an invention that people, you know, some people will claim all these…

So just give us some context about what the 1st commandment is?

Dennis: Sure. So, according to Sacred Scripture, the 1st commandment is, “I am the Lord your God, you shall have no strange gods before me.” And so, by the 1st commandment, we’re commanded to offer to God alone supreme worship.

And, you know, for Catholics, we do this by practicing our Catholic faith, which simply means living out the ten commandments, living out the five precepts of the church, making acts of faith, hope, and love, as well as by adoring God and praying.

Now, to answer your question about whether God reveals this to us, or whether it’s an invention, you know, say, by men, or the church, I think this is a really important question. Because I don’t think one really needs to be a detective to see that we’ve had a huge loss of supernatural faith today. And I’m not talking here simply of, you know, a secular culture, but actually the loss of supernatural faith of those in the church.

And, you know, we definitely become infected by the spirit of modernism, which Pope Pius XII warned us about back in the early 1900s. He had called it the synthesis of all heresies, you know, unfortunately, we didn’t listen to his warnings. So, the commandments, they’re not manmade, it’s not a manmade invention, you know, as some people claim, but rather, it’s God who’s revealed the commandments to us.

So according to the dogmatic constitution on Divine Revelation, it says that sacred scripture is divinely revealed truths that have been committed to writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The Church teaches that the books of both the Old and the New Testaments in their entirety, so all 73 of them, that we believe is Catholic, they’re sacred in their canonical because they’re written by men under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And so, God who acted and through these men communicated everything and only the things that He want.

Okay, so then, finally, to answer your question on the context in which God reveals the commandments, you know, He does this in the context of a relationship, you know, out of a love relationship with His chosen people, the Israelites.

And so, we see in the book of Exodus, God having just delivered the Israelites out of the land of Egypt, where they had been slaves for 400 years.

And He did this with miraculous signs and wonders. You know, for three months, God had been leading the Israelites through the desert, nurturing them, you know, miraculously feeding them and giving them drink. And then finally, after several months of traveling through the desert, they arrive at Mount Sinai. And so, Scripture tells us that the Lord called Moses from the mountain. Then we see Moses go up to speak with God and He says to him, you know, God says to him, “Go tell the sons of Israel what I did to the Egyptians, you know, they seen what I did and how I bore them on eagle’s wings, and I brought you to myself. Now, if you only obey my voice and keep my covenant, you’re gonna be my own possession among all people.”

And so, we see God establishing a covenant with Israel. And just like in any relationship, there are both rights and responsibilities or duties that govern the relationship. The laws that God gives us and not only for our own protection, but also so that we can fully thrive, you know, that we can become who God created us to be, which is holy.

So this is the context that God reveals the commandments to us. Just quickly, we need to keep in mind that God commands us the same way that a loving father does, right? This fact really hits home for me personally because I think back to when my daughter first started to walk, and at the time, we lived on a really busy road with, you know, cars would fly up and down our road. One day when we were outside, she made a beeline for the road.

And now, I had commanded her to stay away from the road, not because I wanted to infringe on her freedom, but because I loved her and I wanted to protect her, you know, I wanted to keep her safe. I wanted to train her, you know how to use her freedom properly. And so, this is why God gives us the commandments to live by. And this is why the 1st commandment deals with our relationship with Him, and our worship with Him because it sets everything else in our life in its proper order.

Pamela: It’s kind of good you mentioned it because

a lot of people are quite against following any of the commandments because they feel that this is so restrictive, it is so obstructive in many ways.

So I’m glad you mentioned that.

Dennis: Yeah, it’s really, you know, it’s one of those things, and I think, you know, part of that is obviously human nature. But I think also, it’s a really a reflection of where we are in society today. And I think that if we can change the way that we look at what God reveals to us, and why He does what He does, in that, you know, that context of a loving relationship, I think it really helps see the commandments in its proper light.

Pamela: So this is something that Jesus also says is important, right, loving God, that’s the first thing. Soin today’s world, like, how do we practice this 1st commandment?

What is the practical way of doing this and putting God first in our lives, like, seeking him first and everything following after?

Dennis: You know, I think if you asked a hundred different people, you’d get a hundred different answers to this question. And, you know, and honestly, this is really why I like the answer that the Baltimore Catechism gives. You know, it’s very simple and to the point. And what the Catechism says, it says that we practice the 1st commandment by making acts of faith, hope, and love, and by adoring God and praying to Him. And so, let me break that open a little bit.

So as Catholics, we believe that in the sacrament of baptism, not only are we cleansed of the original sin, not only do we become adopted sons and daughters of God, not only do we receive the seven sanctifying gifts of the Holy Spirit, but we also receive the theological virtues, or sometimes called the supernatural virtues of faith, hope, and love. And so, as a result of receiving these virtues, we have certain responsibilities when it comes to the worship of God.

Like I said before, any relationship has rights and duties. So, first, the theological virtue of faith, it requires us to do three things when it comes to the first commandment. Very simply, it requires us to find out what God has revealed and we primarily know this through sacred scripture, sacred tradition, and through the magisterium. To firmly believe what He has revealed, and then to profess our faith openly whenever it’s necessary.

And now the theological virtue of hope. This requires us to firmly trust that God will give us eternal life, and also the means of obtaining it. So basically, His grace, which we primarily received through the sacraments. And then finally, the theological virtue of charity compels us to love God above all other things, because He alone is infinitely good. And then, like you said, what Jesus taught us, to love our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God. So in a nutshell, we worship God by making frequent acts of faith, hope, and love, and by adoring God, which we especially do in Eucharistic Adoration and prayer, both prayer of the church and personal prayer as well.

Pamela: So I actually like the concept of the Baltimore Catechism because that’s the first time I’ve actually seen the commandments, you know, done that way, especially the first commandment. Everybody will just list down, like, things how we sin against, but they’re so particular about these main virtues and how we sin against them.

So how do we actually sin against God and violate this 1st commandment?

Dennis: Yeah. It’s another great question because I agree with you that the Baltimore Catechism a lot of these words that, you know, we see in the Baltimore Catechism, it really, we seldom hear those words.

And so, you know, as I talk about the sins against this commandment, I’m really gonna use what the Baltimore Catechism is saying to us, and I’ll break down some of these words a little bit. Because again, like I said, we often don’t hear these in use today, or if we do hear them, we’re not quite sure what all of them mean.

We’re gonna set this up the same way that I answered your last question in the context of, you know, the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love when it comes to the first commandment. And so, we sin against faith in the worship of God, by first, apostasy, okay? This simply means that when someone completely leaves the church or, you know, they leave the church to profess a different religion, or they, you know, they leave for no religion at all, they become, you know, an atheist, and we’ll talk about that in a moment. So that’s apostasy.

There’s heresy. What this is, is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth of the faith that we must believe, or it could even be a stubborn doubt concerning a truth that must be believed.

So, you know, rather than submitting and having the attitude of faith, which seeks understanding, someone has the attitude of pride Then there’s incredulity. And this simply is the neglect of a revealed truth. You know, not bothering to learn or inquire about the teachings, all the teachings of the Church, or simply the willful refusal to assent to the revealed truth. There’s schism, and this is the refusal to submit to the Pope or of the communion with the members of the church that are subject to him. Then we have voluntary doubt and involuntary doubt.

Just the difference between the two, voluntary doubt this is someone who disregards or refuses to hold as true what God has revealed. Then involuntary doubt, this refers to like a hesitation in believing or a difficulty in overcoming objections connected with the faith. And this, if deliberately is cultivated, this doubt, it actually leads us to spiritual blindness. Then we have atheism. And this is simply rejecting or denying the existence of God.

Agnosticism, and actually agnosticism, this has a couple of forms. And in certain cases, an agnostic refrains from denying God. Instead, he advances the idea of the existence of a transcendent being, which is incapable of revealing itself, or that it has no practical impact on our world.

So basically, if there is a God, He set the world in motion and now has no other pertinent. In other cases, the agnostic, he makes the judgment about God’s… he doesn’t make a judgment about God’s existence at all, rather, you know, he may declare that His existence is impossible to prove, or even to affirm or deny. Finally, under faith, there’s indifferentism. And I know this is a lot, and this is what I mean, like, when I first started reading the Catechism, it was like, “Oh, my goodness, I didn’t realize there was so much to this.”

And indifferentism. I think we see this, this is probably one of the most common things that we see today. It’s the belief that one religion is as good as another. You know, it’s just different ways of worshipping God, we often hear. And I think that, I mean, if we think about that, it almost seems offensive. But this isn’t, you know, something that, you know, I personally hold, I mean, I do, and I hold it because God has actually revealed it. S, like, these are the things that God reveals. I don’t even have that opportunity in myself to really reject that, or I am basically becoming my own God in this area if that makes sense. And so then, so that was the sins under that, you know, falls under the category of the theological virtue of, you know, faith.

So then we have hope. And in this category, we have like sins of presumption. And there are two kinds of presumption, you know, either a man presumes upon his own capabilities, you know, which basically means that, you know, a person believes that they’re able to save themselves, apart from God’s grace, or they presume upon God’s mercy, basically, you know, presuming on His forgiveness without really conversion.

So, you know, an example of this, you know, the first type might be a man who either never or hardly ever prays, because he doesn’t think he really needs God’s help, you know, he’s strong enough on his own.

And then the second type would be a man who doesn’t carefully avoid committing sin because he presumes on God’s mercy, that God will give him the grace necessary for salvation, regardless of, you know, his interior disposition. Then finally, under this theological virtue of hope, there’s despair. You know, again, we’re seeing this in the world today where, you know, we just lose hope we, you know, refuse to trust that God will give us the necessary grace to save our soul. Or that, you know, something that we have done is too grievous for God to forgive. The bottom line is, is that there is no sin that God is not willing to forgive if we but ask for it, right?

And then finally, we have the sins against the first commandment that [inaudible 00:15:30]. And these really deal with the hatred of God and the hatred of neighbor. Until we have the first one being envy which is resenting another success, or, you know, wanting what they have and to see them deprived of it. You know, it’s not just simply wanting what somebody has, but wanting what they have, and to see them deprived of that thing that we want.

And then there’s sloth, which is laziness in the things of God. This can be both spiritual and physical. And a spiritual sloth, which, you know, sometimes we refer to as acedia, it goes so far as to refuse the joy that comes from God and to be repelled by His divine goodness.

There’s scandal. And so this is just simply setting a bad example which may lead someone else to either sin or leave the church. And again, we see this happening a lot, unfortunately, in the church by, you know, unfortunately, even church leaders. We have the sin of indifference. And this is when someone neglects or refuses to reflect on the things of God in His Church.

We have ingratitude, when we refuse to acknowledge all the blessings that God gives us in our life. And then lukewarmness. And this is a hesitation or negligence, on our part, in responding to the divine love. This can imply, you know, a refusal to give over oneself to the prompting of charity.

And so these are all the sins against the 1st commandment that have to do with charity. But there’s even, you know, a couple of additional sins, if you can believe it, against the first commandment.

You know, things like sacrilege, when we profane or treat with a lack of respect, you know, either the sacraments or other liturgical actions, you know, or persons, places, or things that have been consecrated to God.

And then finally, there is superstition. This is another prevalent one that we, you know, deal with in our society. And this is attributing to a creature or a charm or power that belongs to God alone. You know, so for example, when people make use of charms or spells or crystals, or put their faith in dreams, or fortune-tellers, or horoscopes, or they go to spiritists, or people who say they can contact the dead or tell the future.

This is all superstition, and gravely offensive to God and dangerous for that matter, as well. So these are all the ways that we sin against the 1st commandment. I’m sorry for being so long-winded on that, but there was just so much that was really given to us.

Pamela: And when you think back when it’s like, let’s say, you’re preparing for a confession, this is so much the first commandment itself, there’s so much to sit down and think about it when you actually come to make your examination right.

It’s extensive.

Dennis: Absolutely. I mean, again, I just got tired listing all of those things. So really sitting down and, you know, and doing a really good examination of conscience, you know, what we find that through looking at something like that, and really, the best examinations of conscience are ones that really follow the ten commandments.

Pamela: Usually, we know that I mean, you know, Jesus says himself, “Apart from me, you can do nothing.”

But what happens when we don’t follow the 1st commandment, when we don’t love God first and God only?

Dennis: Yeah, this is the practical side of it. Right? So, what does it have to do, like, what actually happens when we don’t do this? And so, you know, first, we have to really remember that we were made by God and for God. So essentially, what we’re really talking about here is that you and I, we were made for worship, right? And if we don’t worship God, what’s gonna inevitably happen is that we’re gonna worship something or someone else in His place.

You know, and we see this prevalent in the world today. And, you know, anything that leads our heart away from God, it really becomes an idol for us. And scripture is really clear about how fickle the human heart is. You know, my own experience confirms what Scripture is really saying, that my heart is pretty fickle, and it constantly wants to set up idols for itself if I don’t practice my Catholic faith, or if I’m not vigilant in guarding my heart.

So, you know, like your question what you asked was, you know, maybe what are some of these idols? And so in my life, you know, they’ve been things like sports or, you know, taking too much time for leisure, you know, giving into my passions, on my appetites. You know, even my ministry has become an idol at times or even my own will. And so, you know, God knows the human heart. So, right from the get-go in the first commandment, He prohibits us from making any graven images, because that’s what our ancestors did at Mount Sinai.

So God’s basically saying, “I know what you wanna do, you know, you’re gonna wanna turn your heart toward other idols because of your fallen human nature. But don’t do this.” So this has to be the first thing that we remember, you know, really to root out idols from our heart, because our hearts are idol-making factories. And I guess to put this simply, right, to put this simply, is that if we don’t have worship of God as our first priority, our lives are gonna become disordered. And where there’s disorder, there’s chaos, you know, there’s discord. But if we have our lives ordered properly, we’re with God, because He is a God of order, and where there’s order, there’s peace. And so I encourage all your listeners, Pam, that if they want peace in their lives, where they make the worship of God their first priority.

Pamela: So, let’s say now people are listening, we have identified, you know, this is an idol in my life.

So now there is, what are they gonna do? What are they supposed to do?

Dennis: There’s different things. So we see in the Old Testament that God has the Israelites tear down the idols, to smash them, right? But, you know, what does this look like practically? Because, you know, even so, what are some uncommon idols that we deal with? And I think that for everybody, this could be a little different, but maybe one of the ones that we don’t really think about is, you know, our relationships, especially with our loved ones, right?

We don’t smash our loved ones or something like that, what do we need to do in those relationships? We need to order them properly, right? You know, and I think when I first met my wife, and so there might be some listeners right now saying that, you know, “How could my husband or my wife really become an idol for me?” I think when I fell in love with my wife, you know, I wanted to spend all my time with her, right? And when I wasn’t with her, I was thinking about her. If we’re not careful, sometimes this leads us away from keeping God first. And so, what did I need to do?

I really needed to put God back in the center of my life. I really needed to bring Him actually into my relationship with, you know, my wife, or my girlfriend at that time. And this actually, it became a really beautiful thing, it made my relationship with Jennifer that much stronger, and it ordered our relationship with one another properly. And it really brought God into the center of our relationship together, and what really led us to get married.

You know, and I even noticed this again, years later, when my daughter hit her teenage years, you know, she had become kind of an idol in my life. And for, you know, any of you parents out there, you know, that these teenage years can be a little challenging. You know, especially in guiding our children to embrace the faith that we’ve raised them with, you know, to help them live it, apply it to their lives. Especially because they’re growing up in a time when everything in the world seeks to tear that from them.

Well, I had spent so much time worrying about every decision that she was making, or not making for that matter, that I almost became consumed by it, right? And every time she made a bad decision, I let it steal my peace. And I began to notice then, that I was really trying to do everything on my own. I mean, it wasn’t that I wasn’t praying for her or offering my own sacrifices for her. But what I noticed is, I really didn’t surrender her to God.

So in a sense, I wasn’t really being a parent, I was rather trying to be, you know, God in her life. And so, finally, I offered a very simple prayer to God. I said, you know, “God, she’s yours. You just entrusted her to me for a time, I give her back to you, you deal with her.” And you know what He did, God handled it. And so, this is really what I mean.

Some idols need to be routed out when we’re made aware of them, or God convicts us of them. And others simply need to be just ordered properly, and our relationship with others often they simply need to just be ordered properly.

And now something that I have found very powerful in my own life, is really praying for the intercession of our Blessed Mother. You know, asking her to reveal the hidden idols that we have in our lives. You know, it was through her intercession that I really discovered that my own will had become an idol in my life, you know, really doing what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it. So this might be helpful for your listeners who have already put their spiritual houses in order, and they’re looking to go deeper and really root out any idols that they might not be aware of.

Pamela: This is like a lifelong journey, right? Identifying…because we are constantly, like, turning to new ones as we progress.

Dennis: And that’s, you know, that’s what I meant by, you know, our hearts they’re like idol-making factories. If we’re not careful, we’re, you know, we’re always creating new ones, right?

Pamela: So one last question is, and we hear this all the time, especially because, you know, people go through such difficult times, even though they’ve done personally nothing wrong, does God really want a personal relationship with us, and why?

And what does that relationship look like?

Dennis: Sure. And I do, I get this question a lot. And absolutely, and one of my favorite scripture verses comes from John chapter 10. It’s when Jesus is saying that, you know, “My sheep know my voice, that I call them by name, that they won’t follow the voice of the stranger.”

And I really love this verse because what this means to me is that we can really know Jesus for ourselves that he wants to intimately know each one of us. And he wants to reveal himself to us, you know, personally, and that he really speaks to us. I mean, we need to take the time, you know, to listen, to really listen in prayer.

And where do we primarily learn what his voice sounds like? You know, we do this from reading Sacred Scripture, most, especially the Gospels. But it’s when we really read the gospels, or better yet, when we really pray the gospels that we encounter the word made flesh for ourselves. You know, it’s in that intimate prayer that we come to know Jesus personally. So, each of us, we really need to develop a daily prayer life. And all the saints, they all say that we need at least a half-hour but that all of us should be working up our way to an hour every day. And how do they arrive at that, you know, basically a holy hour. Well, from the Gospels, right? When Jesus was in the garden during his agony, he says to His disciples, “Could you not watch for even one hour with me?”

So each of us need to have and cultivate a daily prayer life. And then I’d say frequent reception of the sacraments. You know, as Catholics, we believe that Christ not only instituted the seven sacraments, but he gives himself to us in the sacraments.

I mean, what could be more intimate than God giving Himself to us body, blood, soul, and divinity, and this is open to everyone, right? This is an offering for everyone.

So a life rooted in prayer and frequent reception of the sacrament is what a relationship with God looks like to me. And what I received from this relationship, it spills over into every facet of my life. No matter what’s going on, whether good times or bad, God sustains me through it all.

So the moral of the story is that if we get the first commandment right, you know, our lives are gonna become ordered. And this order, it leads to intimacy with God, and a sure hope to be with Him forever in heaven.

The things that happen in life, you know, the disappointments, the heartbreaks, the trials, we can then see all of these through the eyes of faith that God orders all things in our lives for our salvation. And really believe this, you know, it’s what I stake my life on. So, yes, God absolutely wants a relationship with every one of us. No one’s excluded from this, you know, even I’m not sure if it who Paul was said in one of the letters that, you know, God wants the salvation of all, right? And so no one’s excluded from this.

Pamela: And Scripture does say, right, “Seek first the kingdom of God, and everything will be added unto you.” Unfortunately, we don’t remember that.

Dennis: Well, and I think, you know, again, and this is something that we do have to remember that, you know, we always have three enemies, right? We have the world, the flesh, and the devil. And so when we look at that, there’s constant, you know, enemies that we really need to guard ourselves against, and Peter that says, you know, the devil is a prowling lion seeking to destroy our souls. And so we really have to be mindful of these things, be vigilant and really guard, you know, guard our faith.

Pamela: So, Dennis,

do you have any last words on the 1st commandment, any last tips? Any advice?

Dennis: Well, I think is really being, you know, to be mindful of the order of our lives, are our lives really ordered? And the first commandment is the first commandment for a reason, right? The first three commandments deal with our relationship with God, and then the second seven they deal with our relationship with our neighbor. And so, it’s putting first things first.

So it might be as simple as starting our days with a morning offering, being mindful of God’s presence throughout the day, taking time maybe in, you know, midday to offer another prayer and then, you know, doing a good examination of conscience, you know, before bedtime, and really, you know, thanking God where, you know, we recognize His presence in our day, and really asking for forgiveness for the times where, you know, we failed throughout the day and being merciful to ourselves. Because I think sometimes we are often our, you know, most critical judges, rather than, you know, taking it to God. And, you know, and I think even in our failures, it shows us just how much we need God’s grace in our lives.

Pamela: So if people want to read, “The Baltimore Catechism,”

Can they buy this book somewhere, or can they access it online?

Dennis: Absolutely. There’s PDF files online of “The Baltimore Catechism.” We actually use…our parish. we use the new St. Joseph Baltimore Catechism, and we use number two, which I find is great for children, young people, and adults. It’s got great pictures. It’s got, you know, all kinds of good information in there, and they can get that at Amazon or, you know, any Catholic bookstore. And so, yeah, they could get it pretty much anywhere right now.

Pamela: And if people wanna get in touch with you or read more about you and your work,

where can they find you online?

Dennis: Yeah, they can find us online. So we have stphilip.com, is our parish website, and the religious education office. All the contact information is there, the email address, the telephone number that will come right to me. And also we do have a parish YouTube channel, and Pamela that’s where you saw what I was doing, where actually, last year one of the ideas that I had during, you know, the quarantine, was to just take up and begin to go through the Baltimore Catechism. This is actually our primary faith formation program that we do. And all of these videos, they’re free, they’re online, they’re open to the public. This year, we started going through the 92 catechism, and we’re starting the year, we’re spending a whole year on prayer this year. So I welcome anybody out there to go check out what we’re doing.

Pamela: And this is the beautiful thing of ministry, right? You sow a seed, you don’t know how it’s gonna grow, but then suddenly a year later, and then somehow God uses it. And that’s how I found you because I was searching for somebody who would talk about the first commandment, and I was like I couldn’t find anyone until I found something on YouTube and I said, “Let me just listen to this guy.”

And that’s how I ended up inviting you.

Dennis: You know, it’s funny and how I ended up doing something like this on the Baltimore Catechism is that I knew the Baltimore catechism was something that a lot of people use in homeschool. And so I went out there searching, is there anybody doing any videos? You know, I go to YouTube for everything, whether it’s fixing when my dishwasher broke to learning how to do an oil change or something like that. I said, “Let me turn to YouTube and see if anybody’s doing of the Baltimore Catechism,” because I really wanted to go back to the basics of the simple things that, you know, our faith teachers, and there was really nothing out there.

So I said, “You know what, I’m gonna do one.” And so between, myself, my assistant at the time who is now our elementary and middle school principal, and our youth minister, we put these Baltimore catechism videos online. And we did a lesson a week for 52 weeks because some of the lessons were quite long so we broke them up into pieces. But yeah, that same idea, kind of looking to see what was out there and not seeing something, and then just deciding to do it and, you know, filling a need, I guess.

Pamela: That is amazing when He does these things.

Dennis: Absolutely.

Pamela: Well, so God bless your ministry, Dennis. And I thank you so much for saying yes and for coming to our podcast and talking to all of us about the 1st commandment. Thank you so much.

Dennis: Thank you so much for the invitation, Pamela, and thank you for all the work your ministry is doing.

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