“BLACKCATHOLIC Fervorinos 5: Leave A Good Indelible Mark On the Souls of Others” Video Transcript
The following is an approximate transcript of my “BLACKCATHOLIC Fervorinos 5: Leave A Good Indelible Mark On the Souls of Others” video released on my Facebook page and spread to Twitter on July 3, 2023. The transcript below strives for a balance of both a word-for-word account and careful editing for better reading. With [notes], [additions], and omissions for clarity and flow. After this check out more of my BLACKCATHOLIC Fervorinos and their video transcripts.
* * *
How you doing? This is Justin the BLACKCATHOLIC, and I’m coming at you with another BLACKCATHOLIC Fervorino.
And if you’re new, BLACKCATHOLIC Fervorinos are simply brief pep talks to get your faith going.
And the title for this BLACKCATHOLIC Fervorino is: “Leave a Good Indelible Mark On The Souls of Others”.
Now when we receive certain sacraments we not only receive the grace of those sacraments but our very souls are literally changed, and we call this change an indelible mark being placed on the soul. Not to get too deeply into the sacramental theology that’s behind this, but whenever we receive certain sacraments (like baptism, confirmation, holy orders), a character, a certain character, is being placed on the soul that marks the soul in a permanent way that gives the soul special graces to live out the life that is according to that particular sacrament. So, again, when we receive the sacrament of baptism then we receive an indelible character being placed on the soul that marks our souls as baptized souls, and we can never lose this. So wherever we go (heaven, hell, purgatory) these indelible marks always remain on the soul. And so these sacraments that do leave unrepeatable indelible marks in the soul because they’re unrepeatable and can’t be removed – these we can say show God leaving His mark on our souls when we encounter Him in the sacraments.
Now as followers of Jesus and members of His Church we leave marks on other souls when we encounter them. These marks may not be permanent, unrepeatable marks on other people’s souls, but nevertheless we do leave something, and we call these things first impressions. And I think that’s a good name for it, an “impression”. Just as God leaves an impression (an indelible character on the soul) when we encounter Him in the sacraments, when we encounter others we leave an impression on other people’s souls as well.
And so what’s the type of impression that we leave? Well, we leave the example of a follower of Christ on other people, and we give these people an impression about how a Christian supposed to be and act in the world, and in essence we give an impression of Jesus in the world because it’s Jesus that we receive when we receive the sacraments. We receive the mark of Christ. So what I want to encourage you today is to be a sacrament in the world that leaves a good “indelible mark” on the souls of others.
Now what I mean by that is simple – leave a good impression, like a sacrament, on the souls of everyone that we meet that shows us what a baptized soul is, what a confirmed soul is, [and] what a holy orders soul is in terms of priest, deacon, or bishop, and to be the sign of God’s grace in the world.
And so that leaves us with this question for all of us who have walked the life already and are still walking this life:
What indelible mark, or impression, have you left on the souls of others as followers of Jesus?
I guess we can take that, and moll over that.
And so this is Justin the BLACKCATHOLIC, and this has been a BLACKCATHOLIC Fervorino.
Peace.
[Postscript:
More on Indelible Marks: Catechism of the Catholic Church No. 1272-1274, 1297, 1304-1305, 1581-1584].
* * *
Note: All images used in the video of my BLACKCATHOLIC Fervorino were used under Fair Use or Public Domain. All credit for images goes to their original creators.