Let's turn now to my colleague Matthew Goodman to give some comments on the presentations and the themes we've heard. I will then ask one or two questions of the panel, and we'll open it up for your observations and questions after that. Thanks, Mike. And thank you all for coming today. It's delightful to see such a big crowd. So I'm going to start by telling a story from my own personal experience working on regional economic integration. In 2011, as you know, we hosted, the United States hosted the APEC forum in Hawaii. And we were very determined to make the leaders' discussion among the 21 APEC leaders as interesting as possible. So we actually dispensed with the notion of funny shirts and casual settings around soft sofas around large rooms. And we actually built a special hexagonal table, hexagonal because 21 can't neatly fit, so we thought that would be a little off beautiful Hawaiian wood table. And we made it a real business meeting, and we got a couple of outside speakers to come in and speak, including the energy secretary, Mr. Dr. Chu, and Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF, and Fatih Barol from the International Energy Agency, Chief Economist. And they gave presentations. There was a challenge because they wanted to do PowerPoint presentations, a couple of them, Secretary Chu, among them. And we didn't want to put big screens in this room and sort of disrupt the feeling. So we actually obtained iPads for all the leaders. Now in 2011, this was still pretty cool, to be able to put iPads in front of leaders and to have them simultaneously move the slides so they were controlled centrally and the slides would move, and you didn't have to touch the thing, the presentation would move along. And there was one problem, which was that if you touch the iPad and tried to use it as an iPad to search the Internet or something, it screwed up the whole system. And so we had to tell President Obama to tell his fellow peers at the beginning of the meeting, there's one rule here, which is please do not touch the iPads because it will screw up the whole system. And we were about 20 minutes into the session, and one of the leaders, and I won't say which one, but it was none of the countries represented up here, picked up his iPad and found the access to the Internet and started playing with it, and it screwed up the system and we had to do a quick audible and fix it. So the lesson of that story for me is that I'm not confident that we're going to be able to establish rules in the Asia Pacific region that everyone is going to be willing and able to follow. But seriously, let me just comment on three things. One is TPP and RCEP and my own perspective and what I heard here and what it made me think about those two arrangements or two tracks of trade negotiations in the region. Secondly, talk about the free trade area of the Asia Pacific and how APEC plays an important role in that. And then thirdly, I'll talk a little about U.S.-Japan's role as all the speakers again touched on in one way or another. So first of all, I think that as most speakers indicated, I think TPP is really now the driving force for deep and comprehensive trade and investment liberalization and rulemaking in the Asia Pacific. I think most people now agree with that. And I think when you look at it as an American from an American perspective, but I actually think this applies to pretty much anyone in the region as they look at this, I think there are three big objectives or three big prizes to be had from TPP. One of them is obviously the economic benefits, the growth and jobs that are produced. And I want to just endorse something that Professor Errata said in his little footnote there, which should have been the first slide, not the footnote in one of his slides, about the impact and the benefit of these arrangements being opening one's own market. As we all learn in trade policy, the best trade policy is unilateral disarmament and opening your markets. That's where the real bang for the buck is, not opening other markets, although that's nice too. But so I think that's really the benefit for all of us is further market opening and the jobs and growth that that will produce. Secondly, it is rulemaking, and I think this is an important opportunity to both update and uphold the rules of the international trade and investment system that have served all of the members of the Asian Pacific region so well. And then thirdly, it's an important opportunity to bind the countries of this region or the economies of this region together in a way that really few other arrangements can do. I think a binding legal trade agreement could have a really dramatic effect in binding, particularly from a U.S. perspective, the United States into this region and really embedding us more deeply in the region, which I think is something that all countries want from an economic perspective. So there's a lot at stake here and a lot to play for, and I think TPP is absolutely critical for all those reasons, among others, from a U.S. perspective related to the rebalancing strategy, Freudian slip. I would say about our step quickly. I do think somebody called it Urata Sensei perhaps again in complementary, I do think it's complementary. I don't think it's inconsistent. It is not as broad or deep or doesn't seem to be headed that way, and I think it's not going to replace or substitute for TPP in the ways that I just suggested TPP was going to be important. I thought Dr. Lim's point about ASEAN being the facilitator but not really the driver of our step was quite interesting and I think it's interesting for the other Northeast Asian countries represented here. I'd be interested in your perspectives on what Japan, China, and Korea, as I saw Minister Kim earlier from the Korean Embassy, what Korea's role might be as well in driving RCEP. So that's sort of a question.  Again, from the beginning, TPP was envisaged as something that would incorporate all of the members of the Asia Pacific economic of APEC, and that includes China. So I think very much it's been an implicit assumption of TPP that ultimately China would be a part of this, if not of TPP itself because I actually think it's going to be quite difficult for most countries, especially a large country like China, to actually accede to TPP just because of the nature, really for political reasons because it's very difficult I think for a country like China to join a mega regional deal that it was not an original founding member of, which is different from its approach to WTO. But I think there could be a leapfrogging from TPP to some other broader agreement, let's call it a free trade area of the Asia Pacific, which would be a sort of TPP plus arrangement. So I do think that's critical and it doesn't make sense. All of the benefits that we've talked about here don't make sense unless China is a part of this conversation and part of these ultimately binding system of rules in the region. So let me just say a word about APEC because I really think APEC is, or the road to an F-tap or free trade area of the Asia Pacific runs through APEC. It is the APEC vision for free trade and investment in the region as of 2006 or 2007 when it was endorsed by the leaders. And interestingly this year China, as I think Dr. Zhang mentioned, has revived the idea of an F-tap as something very concrete and actionable that we should be moving towards. And I think that that shows how APEC is a very important part of this story, often underappreciated, as I said in an event last week for those of you who are of a certain age and American. You'll know when I say that APEC is kind of the Rodney Dangerfield of American foreign policy. It doesn't get much respect, but it's very important because this non-binding consensual approach to, well, removing the kind of underbrush of impediments to trade and investment is, first of all, very important. And it serves, APEC serves as an incubator for some really good ideas in passing. I think it was Dr. Zhang or someone mentioned the environmental goods and services agreement in APEC. This was something that the WTO had been arguing over for a long time over, actually over the definition of what an environmental good is. And in APEC, in our year, we said let's forget what the definition of an environmental good is. Let's just agree that whatever an environmental good turns out to be, we will not impose tariffs higher than 5 percent by 2015. And we'll leave it to the next host, which was Russia, to figure out what an environmental good is. And to everyone's surprise, Russia did a great job of actually brokering an agreement on, I think, 54, 56 tariff lines that would be treated as subject to this non-binding commitment. So APEC has a useful role in advancing ideas like this. It also played an important role, as you all know, in the information technology agreement many years ago, several years, many years ago, I guess, now. And this year, I think China has a real opportunity. Again, Dr. Zhang mentioned this about promoting a conversation about global value chains. This is really important because, first of all, trade really isn't trade. It really is global value chains. You don't make things in one place, put them on a ship and send them like cloth made in a little factory down an English lane, and put it on a masted ship and send it to Portugal in exchange for wine anymore. You think of an idea in one place, you procure parts from a lot of different other places, you assemble them in yet another place, and transfer them and sell them all over the world. And in this world of global value chains, it doesn't make sense. It's insufficient to only talk about issues that occur at the border, like tariffs and customs procedures and other things. Those are necessary to talk about in trade negotiations, but they're not sufficient. You need to talk about the ray of things behind the border that affect efficient global value chains. So that means investment rules, intellectual property rules, the role of the state and the economy, regulation, a bunch of other things. So that's what really TPP is designed to get at. And I think there's an opportunity in APEC to have a conversation building on good work that APEC has already done on the more of the border issues, the supply chain issues at the border, to have a broader conversation about liberalizing global value chains. And if China can broker such a conversation this year and then it follows into the Philippines year next year, I think this could be a way of helping to try and bring these different tracks together. They may not fully converge. I'm a little skeptical that these things are going to actually converge, but I think some of the lower hanging or the lower elements of the disciplines that are being negotiated in TPP, for example, could be brought together through APEC and making these arrangements interoperable. So I think that's the real promise of APEC this year and into the Philippines year next year. And then finally, on US Japan, so we are obviously critical to this conversation, obviously because we're the number one and number three largest economies in the world, but also because we have a very similar approach to all the issues I just talked about. I remember, again, going back to that APEC year at some point in the middle of the year when I was at the White House and I asked somebody at USTR or the State Department to prepare a kind of matrix of where the other 20 economies were on the various initiatives that we had proposed. And Japan, when you went down the list, was strongly support, strongly support, strongly support, strongly support. I mean, Japan was almost totally aligned with us on all of the things we were trying to do on the rulemaking side of the House through APEC and through these other arrangements. So I think it's very important for the US and Japan to be aligned in trying to work on these issues. Unfortunately, we have some old issues, not the new rules, which we still have to work out, but I'm confident that we will and we will eventually reach agreement. And that will, as somebody said, drive a broader, I guess it was the congressman who said that it will actually lead to a broader TPP agreement if we can get agreement between the US and Japan. Final point I'll make is just to echo something that Ishii Gesant said at the very end of his comments that it's important for everyone, not just in the US and Japan, but I think around the region to take a strategic perspective to these issues. And to me, as an economic policy person looking at the Asia Pacific, here I have my own Rodney Dangerfield complex because the word strategy is often thrown around, including at this institution, which has the word in its name, as a, in a traditional sense of high diplomacy and security issues. And that's of course what strategy does center on, but in economics there's strategy too. And I think that actually TPP and RSEP in its own way and certainly APEC are very much a part of the economic strategic engagement that the US and Japan certainly give to Asia Pacific regionally economic integration. And I think that's the perspective we should bring to these conversations and look in terms of how these arrangements promote growth and well-being for all of us instead of just looking sort of narrowly at parochial interests, which unfortunately we too often do. So that's my appeal or my reaffirmation of what Ishii Gesant said that strategic perspective is very important here. So I'll stop there. Thank you, Matthew. We've been meeting like this with Jethro for about a decade. And these are always interesting zeitgeist checks. Three years ago, I think it's three years ago Ishii Gesant, three years ago when we had this meeting, many of the Asian participants were criticizing APEC, saying it's irrelevant. It's, you know, the Rodney Dangerfield thing. It just doesn't deserve any respect. Arguing that RSEP was far more important than TPP. We even, and this was last year, took a vote of the audience and a majority of the audience said, the question was which will be completed first, RSEP or TPP? A majority of the audience said, RSEP, Matthew and I got an angry email from a senior person in the administration because there was an article saying CSIS experts predict RSEP will be finished before TPP. Last year, Professor Zhang made a very strong case that TPP is win-win for China and with RSEP. I think he was not only reporting on the views in China, I think he was in the process of changing the views in China. So it's a real pleasure having him here. And overall, in terms of the strategy, there's much more convergence. Every time we do this meeting, there's much more convergence. There are very, while there are in many ways rising geopolitical or military challenges, on the question of economic architecture, there's much more convergence of broad views. And you can see it clearly in the survey we did recently of a lead opinion in Asia. But what I wanted to ask the panelists was, even with that convergence, I still cannot visualize and maybe you can't either, but try. Let's assume we have a successful completion of TPP with 12 member states and a successful conclusion of RSEP. How do you marry those? I assume the answer is not everybody who signed on to TPP gets to then reduce their or increase their tariffs to get back to the RSEP level. On the other hand, as Hank Lim pointed out, maybe there needs to be some flexibility in how the non-TPP developing countries, including China, get into TPP. Maybe you create some new framework, APEC perhaps, that is used to arbitrate between the two. But could you speculate for a minute on how RSEP and TPP coexist, converge, merge, if we complete them both, some years down the road? Matt, you want to go first? Why don't you ask the... Okay, Professor Urrata and... Maybe my message wasn't clear. I thought I made my statement or my view toward these two frameworks. I proposed stages approach to regional economic integration in East Asia or Asia Pacific. First step, first stage is to join RSEP. I'm thinking about developing countries like CLM, maybe India too. So they join RSEP and then they assume they successfully grow economically and they can reach a level that they can accept some of the very high standard which TPP imposes. Then they join TPP. So they coexist and in my view, objectives of these two initiatives are quite different. Maybe... I like to know your view about this. RSEP, maybe the eventual goal is like to set up an East Asian community. We talked about this. Whereas TPP, eventual goal is FTAB and FTAB maybe go on to next generation WTO. So these are two different frameworks in my view and they coexist and the countries can join both or one first and then second and so they can be a member of two frameworks and that's how I look at these two. So to get this precisely right, so individual countries, when they're ready to sign on to TPP standards, do that. There's no special exceptions made to try to get everyone in from RSEP at once. You basically, when A country's ready it does what Japan or Australia or any current TPP member is doing and gets in. We have to consider one thing. TPP, it has an open accession closed whereas RSEP, you have to be a dialogue partner of RSEI I guess. So in other words, there's some condition which you have to satisfy to join these frameworks and for RSEP it's more closed than TPP and so for RSEP, if I understand it correctly, has to have a more open accession closed than individual countries can choose to join or not. So but again, individual countries choice. Professor Lim. I think I agree with Professor Urata except I want to add a few points from the Southeast Asian perspectives. At this stage, at this stage the ASEAN centrality is very important. Now the ASEAN centrality should be interpreted in very different way, but the way as it is constituted officially by the ASEAN secretary is that the ASEAN take initiatives for creating the ASEAN. Secondly, also supposed to be initiating the substance. Thirdly, the ASEAN countries as Professor Urata mentioned that they are dialogue partners, but the accession clause is already there and reaffirmed by the principles and the negotiations as agreed by the ASEAN economic ministers in 31st August in Simrib, Cambodia in 2013, at 2012. So these are very important issues that for ASEAN. Now but the next stage where it goes, you know, how it would evolve, well all ASEAN countries in the APEC I think play a role in it. You know, I don't vision any other road map where the FDA AP at this time where the all ASEAN member states and all the major Asia Pacific, they are ASEAN dialogue partners, U.S. dialogue partners, Russia also, not in a whole, but actually from sectoral move into a whole dialogue partners. So now another very important point that need to be emphasized is that the ASEAN centrality in the AEC moving into, it actually is moving elevated from after ASEAN free trade area into the AEC, into the ASAP, and on from there on. So the idea of regional integration. Now regional integration, there are two different things in the trade politics and trade negotiation. Trade negotiation is not so much of a life and death. Okay. That's why in the AEC, you don't, you don't, you know, in, in, in, in discussing about the various, the call it the ASEAN economic blueprint, which was agreed in Singapore in 2007, right from 2007, eight, nine, right up to 2015. It is not a trade negotiation. It's not the traditional way of it. It is a regional integration. So that's why the AEC, the ASEAN economic community, can be, can be best interpreted as a coordinated effort for domestic reform. So in a sense that trade facilitations and cooperation, and this is all, in my views, the characteristics of APEC. That's why I mentioned it, I think, last night that the, we have to watch, monitor, and the way we, we feel that China will say a lot in this year APEC summit in Beijing. So I, I, we feel from Southeast Asia that China is going to use these APEC instruments very much and how to integrate. At this point in time, nobody knows the, the, the next stage and the evolutions of moving, how to convert it and all these things, because it's, it's the principle of, of, you see it, the ASEAN, also high principles and a lot of the things are similar. But it's the politics, the trade politics and trade policies are two different things. One is trade negotiation, U.S. insisting on rules and regulation, of course. Transparency, predictability, reducing cost. But the international trade has changed so much, like Math mentioned. It's not only just exporting and importing, but it is divisions of labor and trade in, trade in, trade in function. It's not trade in goods and services, trade in function. So you have certain rules and I have certain rules. Everybody will gain. So I think that's the way it will evolve. But exactly how, where it will, I think it's difficult. But the way at this point in time is APEC seems to be the most likely platform or framework to go. So on the security side, ASEAN centrality makes sense to the major states, because it's a kind of neutral ground on which to begin to discuss security issues. But on the trade side, it's not as obvious to me. Can you clarify, at least for me, there are members of APEC who are not ASEAN dialogue partners. Is that correct? Canada, Mexico, Chile? Well, Mexico is not, I think it may be sectoral, but it's not a whole dialogue partners. The Canada is a dialogue partner to ASEAN. So what else APEC members? Chile is a dialogue partner, and Chile in the TPP as well as Singapore-Chile bilateral agreements. So I think it's not a big challenge, mostly overlaps with the APEC membership. So the structure of RCEP, the standards of TPP, these are things that will have to be sorted out. But probably definitely cannot be sorted out until TPP is real and complete. RCEP is real and complete. So we'll have to be flexible and see as we go forward. We've had several proposals. Matt, do you want to weigh on this again? I know you like the APEC framework for this, but... Yeah. No, I was just going to say, I mean, as I said in my remarks, I'm not sure that RCEP and TPP ever converge. Again, I see Jeff Shaw and other smart people who've thought about this, and I'd be interested when they ask a question if they could pronounce on this as well. But I think the standards and the rules are going to be sufficiently different. It's going to be very hard for them to actually just merge and converge. But I do think, so I think that ultimately if we're going to have a broader arrangement, whether it's F-TAP or, you know, it's going to have to be F-TAP plus because you've got to get the other three ASEANs who are not in APEC, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia into the conversation. You have to get India into the conversation. And so it's going to have to be something broader. But I think you're going to have to start over with the base of these agreements and try to negotiate something at a higher standard. Now, from a U.S. perspective and probably from the perspective of anybody in TPP who's gone through the difficult domestic political process of getting this through, it's going to have to be TPP plus. So they're not going to be able or willing to negotiate down to lighter standards or less liberalization. So that's a challenge in practice. But, and then meanwhile along the way, as I said, I think if China can broker a conversation about how we start making interoperable these arrangements, at least at the levels of where we don't, for example, if you're in Malaysia and you're in TPP RSEP and you have third country trading partners, you don't want to have three different customs forms for those different participants. You want to, there's an incentive to try to come up to common approaches. That's a pretty simple example. But further up the chain, there may be things that we can do that are more interoperable and help bring these things together. But full convergence seems unlikely. I agree. I think this is a very complicated issue. Personally, I think, you know, that today actually both TPP and RSEP are facing these, you know, uncertainties and certainties. For example, for TPP, the certainty is that more than 80 percent contents already complicated, already complete. The problem is that the rest of 20 percent, most of them belonging to tough mission. And TPP is touching, today is touching so a lot of issues behind the border, such as, you know, IPR issues, environmental labor issues, this type of issues for some of developing countries, very difficult to get solutions. Even if in developed economies, also there are so a lot of problems. So I just wonder, even if some of developing economies, they can accept those high standard, those rules and regulations, the problem is that how to implement those rules and regulations for developing economies, I think that's a big issue. Especially look at China, actually in the past 35 years, we already have a series of reform and opening up. But we have to confess that today facing with those issues behind the border, we need to do a lot of, you know, homeworks. We need to reform further. So for some of small economic entities who are belonging to TPP, so actually there are a lot of, you know, thoughts on their ability to implement those high standard set by TPP. Regarding RCEP, I think that for some of developing economies in the region, actually especially for China and Indonesia, we feel that quite comfortable, you know, to join this type of negotiation compared with TPP because, you know, TPP is more comfortable for developed economies. The problem is that for RCEP, now I think that the most urgent thing is that there is no negotiation template. There is no, you know, negotiation framework. And the full rounds of negotiation, the progress quite slow. So I deeply thought that if by the end of 2015, RCEP can make, you know, a result or consensus, so that's the challenges. So my suggestion is that maybe for China, we actually indeed, we will respect other centrality. On the other hand, I think that China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Asia, we should work together and we should produce our template, negotiation templates as soon as possible. That's most urgent. In the future, how to make them merge, make them be merged, I think that maybe it will take time. Just like I mentioned, the possible, you know, scenarios in the future. Because TPP will have, you know, a series of rules and regulations, also RCEP will produce a lot. So this type of situation, one possibility is that maybe TPP and RCEP teams, they can work together to discuss in order to produce a new set of rules or regulations. Maybe that's the way. On the other hand, you know, just like Ulata mentioned, some of economic entities, they can draw in TPP. That's also possible. But another, you know, I mentioned three possible approaches, but I think that maybe fourth possible, maybe we can, you know, actually we can put a set, you know, TPP regulations as well as RCEP regulations. Just based on those bilateral and trilateral, you know, simple traditional free trade agreement. And then maybe if APEC platform could be transferred, you know, to Asia Pacific Aptap, that's also another possible, you know, approaches. I mean, very briefly, in the future, you know, the study on roadmap of Aptap is very important and very critical. I hope that all APEC economic entities can sit together and to explore the possible, you know, merge approaches. Thank you. It's complicated but exciting, but first we have to figure out the tariff on Japanese pork imports. So one thing at a time. Let me open it up for... Yeah, sure. And then we'll take questions. Yeah. Special and in response to Professor Chang's points need to be clarified. I was invited to the ASEAN Economic, Senior Economic Official Meeting in October last year when Brunei Darussalam was the chair of ASEAN Summit. Now, special differential treatment doesn't mean that you lower the quality, the high standards and all these things. It is just giving more time for them to implement it, agree and implement it, giving more time. So it's plucking out all the low-hanging trees first and the fruits and then later on in the higher fruits. So this must be clearly understood. So special differential treatment, you know, because Professor Chang is difficult to implement, for example, for Vietnam. Vietnam would agree that high standards in ASEAN and all this, but giving more allowance of time, okay, so that would reduce the distortions in trade integrations. The second point is that the ASEAN, because a lot of apprehensions that maybe the ASEAN, the ASEAN will not be able to finish it. So this is how we suggest ASEAN and it's being duly considered by the ASEAN Senior Economic Official, SHONG, S-E-O-M. Now Myanmar is the chair. They have also quite a number of SHONG meetings already in Myanmar as well as in Malaysia and Vietnam. There is a possibility that it, based on installment stages, in the sense that by 2015, the good sector all will be completed. But service sectors and investment sector will be the second phase. So it means, but you must agree to pay a deposit first. So the deposit is in the good sector. So service sector, it means installment. So every, but installment in the sense that you agree the principle, but the delivery and the actual agreement all will come later. The second point is that you must also agree on the schedules. It may not necessarily as one single undertaking that from beginning to the end, which ASEAN does not agree. And the asset is not a single undertaking, but in TPP is a single undertaking. So not necessarily a single undertaking, but it must have a schedule.  So it's being seriously considered. So I personally, hopeful that asset by 2015 would agree. Quite a lot of things may not be the whole things, but good sector will be complete. Installments on service investment and free capital flow will come into it. So now the issue is that the, how to agree on the schedules. So when Myanmar now is chairing the ASEAN, so the show meeting, the senior economic official meetings, which is the technical working groups to put up proposal to the ASEAN economic ministers on asset on AEC. So it seems to be that the asset recommendations that being discussed when in the Bandai Shri Bergawans in October went, which I was invited to give some suggestions based from the area studies on the asset. So there is such a possibility that the asset would be concluded along this line. One, they would agree on goods, service sector, all based on installment. Thirdly, based on the schedules and the working groups on competition policy, intellectual property rights, SPS and TBD, the technical value to trade. Thanks very much, Sherm Katz, Center for Study of the Presidency. This is a friendly question, Dr. Lim, about ARSEP. You said, because I believe in it and I think many in this room do, you said at one point that the, that ASEAN is not providing the substantive initiative for the negotiations. And you also suggested that perhaps some of the non-ASEAN members could take that initiative. Let me suggest a third possibility which gets to some sort of political, cultural and economic things you may be able to enlighten us on. And that is that the ASEAN members themselves should be taking the initiative. For example, you have such a very basic thing as whether it is positive list or negative list. In Geneva at the WTO, for example, we would generally imagine that would not be the Secretary Director General who would be taking the initiative on that, but some of the members of the WTO themselves. So what I am trying to tease out is your evaluation of the readiness of the ASEAN members to really get going on the business of ARSEP. Well, a few things, a few things, thank you for your questions. Indonesia is moving toward more of inward looking. So Indonesia is by far the largest ASEAN member states. Indonesia is not so open and outward looking. So a month from today, on the 9th of July, there will be presidential election. There are two candidates, presidential candidates. One is the governor of Jakarta, the Joko Widodo, and the other one is general, former Army generals, the Prabowo Subianto. Both are nationalists. So Indonesia is moving toward inward looking. So it is a bit difficult. Singapore has ideas about the negative list instead of the positive list on moving toward the ASEP further in substantive. But as I understand it, this again is private views, that ASEAN is very difficult for Singapore to move the substantive discussion unless it used to be Thailand and pass it on to Thailand and Thailand carry the balls. But Thailand now is in turmoil. Government is not in action under military control. So it is difficult to find a partner where it is part. Malaysia is going to be the ASEAN chair next year, but you have to wait until next year. This year is Myanmar. So again, Myanmar is not that ready to undertake this role. So the way it is arranged in ASEAN is that you have to work closely with the ASEAN chair, who is going to organize the ASEAN summit, ASEAN minister meeting, and senior economic officials. In fact, actually, I think Professor Urata and myself and Professor Peter Drystels and Professor Chang Yun-ling from China all will meet in Singapore on the 20th June on the sidelines of the ASEP meeting in Singapore on Friday to discuss all these initiatives, how non-ASEAN members all can promote the substantive issues and push forward the ASEP. So there are quite a number of things being explored. And I think China, Japan, and Korea also seems to be giving some encouragement. And Australia is taking the lead in moving along your suggestion. Yes, right here in the middle. Thank you very much. I am Vikram Nehru. I am from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. And thank you all for your excellent discussion. Michael, you raised on now on two occasions the whole issue of security. And it seems to me that there are these two parallel tracks going on. The first is increased economic integration. And the second is increased dissonance on security issues in the region. And this divergence between these two tracks potentially is really unsustainable. So the question that I have to the panel and to the loan discussant is to what extent will the security questions impact the economic integration issues, both ASEP and TPP? Will the impact be different for these two tracks? And to what extent is increased economic integration a good security strategy? And to what extent could it potentially actually have an impact? Can increased integration actually make countries more vulnerable to security trends in the region? Thank you very much. I think one impact is the trade negotiation that no one's really, I think no one has mentioned, which is the China-Japan-Korea trilateral, which is in abeyance in large part because of these political and security challenges. But let me open the floor and see other examples. Yes, China-Japan-Korea, so-called CJKFTA negotiations. As I understand it, they are moving forward regardless of political problems with China, political problems with Korea.  And the relationship between security issues and economic issues, of course, if you... I'd like to see more economic integration or interaction between two countries, say Japan and China, will lead to a better security relationship. But I don't know, that's what I hope. And as I understand it, the closer they get together, it makes more damaging if they get into trouble. So I hope that that kind of way of looking at the relationship is correct. And at the same time, political tensions lead to or discourages economic relationship. And here, what is interesting is that the number of Japanese tourists to Korea and China has been declining, as far as I understand it. Whereas tourists coming from China and Korea to Japan, whatever reason, are increasing. So Japanese, I guess, tourists are much more affected by political relations than Chinese or Koreans. And that's just a fact that I understand correctly. But again, what I'm trying to say is that more problems in political or security relations can lead to declining the relationship in economic matters. And that's why we don't want to see any political security conflicts between, say, Japan and other countries. Actually, from an economic aspect, you can find that the trend is convergence due to global economic globalization and the regional economic integration. But if you look at political aspects, definitely security issues will be another direction. That is divergence. So I think that I'd like to remind you that every, even if bilateral FTA, or multilateral FTA, that's not a pure economic issues, but also will be an impact by political issues, diplomatic issues. So personally, I hope that CGK FTA could be in progress. That FTA cannot be disturbed by political reasons. But in fact, I think that maybe the progress also will be an impact to some extent. But how to evaluate, I think, is not easy. But generally speaking, I think that in this region, from a medium and a long run, CGK FTA is a very critical bilateral FTA for its Asia economic integration, as well as for Asia Pacific economic integration. Thank you. Just to start. So I think the CGK example is clearly one where the security issues are having an impact on the policy initiative in that agreement. I think on the two main tracks, there isn't much evidence that the security issues are slowing down the economic policy impetus to integration. Nor is there much evidence that it's speeding it up, which is another possible outcome in the sense that if it were so true, I mean, to be a little oversimplified, but that the TPP members wanted to get this done, somehow, to establish more solidarity in the face of some of the challenges that some of the members are facing from China, then, you know, it's not clear to me why we haven't reached agreement yet. I mean, we're obviously still negotiating over some really hard economic issues, and that's what I think is slowing it down, not the political security issues, and nor is it speeding it up in particular. I do think on the ground, though, that clearly Japanese investment in China has the marginal flow of investment has slowed pretty dramatically. And so I think it is having an impact on integration at that level. But as a policy matter, I don't see much evidence either direction other than CGK, which is sort of a special situation. We're also, I think, asking about the macro sort of long-term impact of these two trends, and putting on the historians hat for a moment, there are historians who argue that, for example, it was convergence with the gold standard in 1931, and then the collapse of the British pound that caused displacement and militarism in Japan. So it wasn't because it was convergence, but convergence created an expectation and winners and losers in the economy, and then it was exacerbated when the global economy hit a crisis. Or even before World War I, there are historians who argue that, in fact, it was economic interdependence that weakened the British power that made deterrence and maintenance of a balance of power harder, that somehow it was economic interdeterrence that sowed the seeds. Possibly, but I would still bet on these economic integration efforts, reinforcing peace and stability, in part because legitimacy for every regime and country other than North Korea, including now Myanmar, depends heavily on economic performance, also because the democratization examples in Asia are all about growing middle classes. And so I think we're right to bet on economic interdependence and these economic frameworks having a positive impact, but nothing is guaranteed. Nothing is guaranteed in life. In 1928, Thomas Lamont, the head of J.P. Morgan, gave a speech at the time of a very famous speech saying, war with Japan is absolutely impossible because of the economic ties between the countries. So you can't bet 100 percent on it, but I think it's a good trend line overall. Yes, over here. Now we're in trouble, a real economist. Jeff Schott with the Peterson Institute. I think the combined comments of the panelists have given us some good insights on the question of convergence. And unfortunately, Mr. Lim, I think your arguments have shown why RCEP is going to be on a very slow track. In fact, everything you've said has indicated that, but it also has indicated a reluctance to move quickly on policy reform in many areas of economic interchange. You mentioned the focus on goods and pushing off decisions on services in other areas. If you want to look where convergence is taking place already, look at the countries that are looking at economic integration arrangements as a means of complementing domestic reform. China is in the forefront of that. Korea has done that for the past decade because through chorus and through its FTAs with Europe and is now engaged in a very important negotiation with China. Japan is doing that, albeit grudgingly, in the context of the TPP negotiations. Those are the countries that are setting really the standard for economic integration in the region and are providing really the impetus for other countries to consider accelerating domestic reform. And I think that's why you're seeing so many countries looking into or studying very closely the possibility of engaging with TPP. Already seven of the 16 RCEP countries are in TPP, and four others are studying it at various stages given the political cycles in their country. So I think I'm more in line with what Matt and what Professor Orata have said. RCEP is really a complementary initiative that is almost a preparatory school for deeper integration, and that it's unlikely that there'll be a convergence of the RCEP and the TPP, and yet there will be a need to use the cooperation of countries, and this is one of the things China is considering this year in APEC, to help advance and accelerate the economic development so that there is inclusive growth throughout the region. But it seems to me that TPP will be the standard, and the challenge for TPP countries is how do you ensure a smooth transition so that you can bring in more and more countries in the coming years, and you can then deal with the non-TPP members in a way that encourages their readiness in the future. I think that's the challenge that APEC countries have this year. Before I respond to that, first on the securities and things while ASEAN. In addition to the ASEAN economic community, actually we have another two pillars. One is the ASEAN social cultural communities, and the other one is ASEAN political security communities, so the three must go together. Second point is also even though the ASEAN economic community sometimes is misleading, means no money, because you compare to a European community. But ASEAN, that's why conflicts in Southeast Asia tend to be under control, in a sense that they would like to have a sense of community, even though with small C, not the big C like in the European case. So security is very much in the minds of many ASEAN policy makers. The second point is on the South China Sea, the spready islands. As you know, 2022 Indonesia initiated this DOC, Decorations of Contending Parties in the South China Sea, but it is voluntary non-binding. China also agree, but it's not good enough. You must have some commitment. So because security issues, the ASEAN China FTA, which came into full operation into 2010, but it's not good enough. Although ASEAN's Asian peoples are more pragmatic, more materialistic than Europeans or others. Economic benefits, tangibles all are very important. Although the impulse of war, impulse of resolving conflict through armed struggles and all these things is still there, but you must understand also the sociocultural characteristics that material, tangible benefits are very, very important. So as a result of it now, we're moving into the COC, Code of Conducts. And China was very reluctant at first, but through ASEAN centrality and all these things. So China has agreed in Myanmar in May, the first ASEAN summit. China has agreed to proceed from DOC to COC. So in a sense, there is, you need a framework in addition of economic interaction, economic cooperation, economic integration. You need a framework whereby security, peace and possible conflict can be not to avoid but can be minimized and can be managed. But it is not happening in Northeast Asia. Partly is because they are big powers and secondly is also ASEAN reached beyond to Northeast Asia. But at least in Southeast Asia, that's possibility. Framework has been put in place and being considered and initiated by ASEAN country. And that is the issue of the economic cooperation and integration with the security framework. There are quite a lot of contending disputes between Indonesia and Malaysia on Simbadan, on Sigitan and all these, they resolve it. Just last week, Indonesia and Philippine also agreed on the disputed islands, Singapore and Malaysia on the Raffles Lighthouse. It's very close to Malaysia, but for over 120 years under the Singapore Lighthouse Raffles and all these things. And the International Court of Justice has agreed to, they say it belongs to Singapore and Malaysia, agree, accept it. So in Southeast Asia, it seems to be the ease of framework, although it is still fragile and tentative, but it is much better than in Northeast Asia. So at least that's the issue more manageable. We're going to break now for lunch. Lunch is back over there. If you could grab your lunch, bring back. We'll hear from Wendy Culler from USTR. And let's thank the panel for a very excellent discussion.


The special assistant to the BIALSA state governor on special duties, Arthur Oogwa Chinedu, says he is in support of calls for Igbo presidency in 2023. Chinedu says the Igbos have all it takes to reposition every sector of the country and calls on all political parties to zone their presidential slots to the southeast. According to him, it is not fair that Igbos have not occupied the country's number six in power since it started practicing democracy in 1999. However, he says as a member of the PDP, he will support whoever emerges as a party's candidate, whether a South Easterner or not. In terms of marginalization, nobody will hide it from anybody. It has been locked. It's a very long ago. But in terms of leadership today, a broader geopolitical zone is not provided leadership in this country. And if anybody will be sincere to himself, who have been clamoring for this, it is time that they give leadership to the southeast or Igbo structure. So that's every block of us and joys from the west. If you might want to be sincere to us, past president, we talk about the president, our will of unity, talk about who is on ground today is from the night. And looking at the whole scenario, you will understand that the Igbos have not been there and it will be fair to us. You get notified about fresh news updates.


What's the word y'all? One of the league's most dangerous players might be even more dangerous going into the 2021-22 season. And that's scary. It's scary because I'm just in the same division on a team that's trying to be competitive and his dude has already won two MVP's. He's won a finals MVP and he will not stop getting better. And the preseason, Giannis has been doing things a little bit out of character. One of the things people have said about Giannis for an entirety of his career is that he's got no bag. Or if he does have a bag, it's this beat. He ain't got no duffy. He ain't Harry Irvin. But people always talk about his bag being non-existent or very small. And in the preseason, for a lot of NBA players, it's a place for them to try new things and do things they normally don't. And, well, let's just react. Let me just show you what the heck is going on. I talked about this in yesterday's video. When I wake up, I go on to write it and see what's going on in the world. It's a terrible place, but a great place at the same time because I haven't been watching many preseason games. We talked about the fact that the Charlotte Hornets lost by 50 the other night. So yes, I ain't been tuned in, but I probably should have been tuned in to this one because Giannis is looking a little bit different. It's a time to try new things. And if this isn't Giannis, we're getting the season. We might want to get his man historic MVP award. Royce Donia on him, pull up, jump shot, cool. Now, I'm not going to be wanting to overreact from the fact that he shot five for eight from the field on jump shots, but it's stuff within this that's interesting. This move right here, if we're going to say every NBA player has a signature move, this is what I'm saying Giannis' signature move is. It is the turnaround mid-range jump shot. He's done it for a couple of seasons, and this might be the year's pose to really, really break out as his move. A little steal from Drew Holiday. What we got? Eric Pascal, shout out to my homie, man. He look good in that New Jersey. He got a good close out, but Giannis is built differently. I don't know, ladies and gentlemen, this might be scary for the league, man. This might be scary for the league. This is, I'm pretty sure, a miss, but he found the open spot, a mid-range jump shot, and he took it with confidence. Let's see what you got, Eric. Little pick from Chris. Size up, size up, mid-range jump shot, cash. Listen, man, Giannis might be poised for another MVP. He sees the open look in the corner, takes it in his bottoms. Are we ready for this? Now again, we know overreacted from the fact that he shot well in the pre-season game, his pre-season, but I'm looking at when I'm watching that is the fact that he was taking shots in rhythm, and it was significantly faster than the jump shots he had been taking over the course of the first couple years of his career. And if that is the case, if he's getting it all faster and he's shooting it better, gee, geez, hand this man another MVP award. Now it's not just from the field, this is the same game versus Utah Jazz, and you're gonna notice something significantly different. You will not be here in crowds, count to 10 on Giannis, because he has improved the speed of his jump shot. It is a spin, it is a dribble, it is an exhale, and it is a release. Now Giannis has said in the past that part of the reason why he doesn't shoot the free throw well is like cognitive, it's all in his mind, and his new free throw routine can help him, I believe, stop thinking about the fact that it's a free throw, because the man was sitting there for more than 10 seconds on a lot of the occasions to miss a free throw. So we'll see what his free throw percentage looks like this year, we'll see what his three point percentage is like this year, but the reason why I love Giannis and this has been on the record for a very long time, this is not me joining the bandwagon, I've been a fan of Giannis since his very first season. Maybe not, I wouldn't call myself a super fan though, I know there are super fans out there, but I didn't see that Giannis was gonna be one of the best players ever, his rookie season, but I definitely saw the fact that I liked him. Y'all know I'm a dude that likes projects. Seku Dumbuya was one of my favorite players in his draft class, that boy just got flipped around like, you know what I'm saying? I like project players, so when Giannis came into the league and I didn't know much about him, but other than he was a scrawny small forward that I put at point guard in 2K, I liked him a lot. And the reason why he has continued to get better and better and better and better and better is that he's never satisfied. And that's something, and I'm not taking it from Giannis, but that's something that I can relate to on one way or another, whether it be my own personal life in the world, I can never be satisfied. This man just came off an NBA Finals where he won MVP, submitted himself as one of the greatest players of all time. What is he ranked? It doesn't really matter. He's like 26, 27 years old. He's got a long time left. But the fact that he won a Finals MVP, he had already won two NBA, NBA MVPs and the defensive player of the year. He's a Hall of Famer right now already. He can retire tomorrow. He's a first ballot Hall of Famer. He could have been a dude that's like, ah, I've done what every NBA player strives to do. I won a championship, but I also won it as the guy. I dropped 50 in a closeout championship game. I could take a month off of practice. I could come into next season a little bit out of shape. Not with a guy like Giannis, man. I don't remember the exact timetable because I'm thinking about things that happen in like real time, but he did not take a ton of time out of the gym. I remember him on Instagram Live going to Chick-fil-A and getting a 50 piece. I remember him taking the Larry O'Brien over to Greece. And then the next thing I saw of him was he was back in the gym. And one of my favorite tweets, oh my God, this is crazy. I'm like, hey, I'm fanboying out about Giannis. Give it to me. I mean, you're gonna see stuff like this very often, but there is a tweet that Giannis dropped. And I got to find it real quick because I'm pretty sure I quote tweeted it. So I just got to stroll through my tweets. And as I do this, I'm realizing how often I tweet and my excuse is that it's a part of the job. Part of my job is tweeting, you know? Okay, so I didn't actually quote tweet it, but I did retweet it. It is a picture that say they asked me what I'd do it, what I'd do it for. I obviously quoted in the song. And it's a picture of his son. I think his name is Liam. And he got the pictures flipped. It should be him on this side, what I do and what I do it for. But I related to this so hard, even though my future child is not here yet. This is like the mindset that I think everybody should live by. This man won an NBA championship. And went right back to the gym because he's thinking about his kids, bro. And then he had another kid this off season, congratulates to Yanis and his wife. I'm actually gonna quote that tweet on my burner account and do the same thing, you know? Shout out to Yanis. Now, what are the chances that Yanis goes in and wins another MVP? I don't think it's as low of a chance as a lot of people are saying. If you look at the Vegas odds, Yanis is down at fourth, which is still pretty high, but the Milwaukee Bucks will continue to be a very, very good regular season team. And there has been a gap from the last time Yanis has won MVP. You're like, Kenny, why does that matter? Because Volta's fatigue is a very, very real thing. LeBron should have way more MVPs than he actually does. But again, Volta's fatigue exists. People get tired of the same player dominating and dominating and dominating and I think so we have the two MVP years, then we got no award, but also an NBA championship which boosts Yanis up even more because the last memory saw him taking over a game and dropping 50. And if he keeps that momentum up, I think it is a possibility that Yanis comes in and wins his third MVP award. And it's also, you're seeing growth with it. For example, like I said, LeBron deserved to win way more MVPs than he actually did, but LeBron wasn't necessarily getting better. He was just already the peak of the athlete. LeBron was doing the same thing and that same thing was good enough to have him at the top of the league for a decade. Yanis won two MVP, won an MVP award, then the next year he got significantly better, right? He won another, he won a second MVP award, then he won an NBA championship. And now if this footage where we're watching and all of this is gonna correlate and go to the NBA regular season, he's even better than he was with the two MVP awards. Insanity. And I think that could be good enough for him to win it again. Would I bet my money on it? No, I just, I don't know, I don't know. Voting on, look at me, just like backtracking. Voting on like season long things is, I can't do it. I'm an impatient guy. I can't put a bet in October 14th and wait until April or June or wherever they give the awards to to reap my reward. I can't do that. I don't know how y'all be doing that, bro. I couldn't do it. But out of the options of Luca Doncic who obviously is gonna be amazing this year, I've set this on the show before. I'm not a huge believer what the Dallas Mavericks I don't really like Jason Kidd as a coach. And you have to be one of the top two to three Cs to win MVP award. I don't think Luca and them are gonna do that. It's a possibility. But right now, if I'm making my prediction, they won't. Joellen Bied has a storyline behind him dealing with the whole Ben Simmons stuff. If they don't have been Simmons and they still end up being one of the top seats, I can see that. Kevin Rand is dealing with the Carrier of a situation and he was in a conversation for MVP before he injured himself last year. And then you got Yana. So you got Steph Curry. So there is a little narrative part of every or majority of MVP, MVP awards. But I do believe Yana's got a very, very good chance to get that third MVP. And then now we're talking about him on another level of tier ranking when we talk about the greatest players of all time. To end up with three MVP awards, an NBA championship, and at the minimum two defensive player of the years. I don't think he's done get the, or one defense player of the year. I don't think he's done getting defensive player of the year awards either. That it's so insane that when Yana is done, again, we don't know what his career looks like. Hopefully he plays a very healthy, at least another decade. We don't really know. He has the potential to be like one of the greatest players of all time. I made this tweet a little while ago and I can actually find this tweet because I know I actually sent it. It's a clip of Kevin to rant all the way back in 2017. He was asked about Yana's. This is before Yana's won any MVP awards or any defensive player of the years. Everything is gonna look super blurry because it's Twitter. You can't even tell this is Kevin to rant.  But this, when Kevin to rant recorded this, Yana's had just made his first all-star game appearance and hopefully the audio sounds good. Let's see what we got. A pretty freak I think is a force and he's nothing, I've never seen anything like him in his ceiling or his prior. He could end up being the best player of the play that he really wanted to, so. He can probably end up being the best player to ever play if he really wanted to. And there's one thing that is true about Yana's. He really wants to be the greatest. It's the reason why he's always in the gym even though he just won a championship. So, man, I'm excited to watch Yana's this season. I'm excited about everything NBA related. I'll know this. If you enjoyed it, leave it a like and I'll see y'all tomorrow. Maybe, I don't know. There's no real schedule.


It's so good to be here, a real blessing. I was a regular here at this conference when I was a seminarian. We used to come almost every year. And then once I got ordained a priest, it got a little bit more difficult. It was a little more sporadic. And it's the first time I've been here as a bishop. So it's great to have come full circle. It's especially good to be here with you, brother priests, brother deacons. I was a seminarian once too, a very long time ago. It brings to mind a joke that I thought I would start with. Please forgive me if you've heard it. But a parish priest and his bishop died on the same day. In fact, in the very same hour. And they appeared at the gates at the same moment. And there St. Peter was. He flipped open the book of life, tracked down the names. Yes, Father Satsanchach. Come on in, welcome. Bishop, let's find your name here. Oh, look, there it is. A courageous and faithful bishop. Come on in, come on in. And so he said, well, now I'm gonna show you your eternal dwelling places. So they're walking along the streets of gold and they come to this absolute mansion. Diamonds in gold and beautiful, just majestic. And the St. Peter turns to the bishop and says, Bishop, welcome to your home, your eternal dwelling place. And the bishop is so grateful and he's so happy and he goes in. So now this priest, this simple, humble, parish priest is getting pretty excited because that place looked awesome. So they walk down the street of gold a little further and they come to another place, which is actually kind of humble. It's so beautiful, but it's much smaller and it's sort of in a group of another bunch of... And this priest turns to St. Peter and says, now wait a minute here. We're in heaven now. There's not supposed to be any favoritism. What's this? St. Peter turns to him and says, yeah, I know, you're right. But you see, we get hundreds, even thousands of you simple parish priests every week, but that's the third bishop we've seen at five centuries. With that little bit of humility, I'll move on. The title that I was given for this opening address as we heard is The Good News, Hope of the World. And I think, brothers, you would agree that the theme is well-chosen. Not only because it's the gospel, which is always appropriate, but also because of our context. There's a lot of disturbing things going on around us, isn't there? Things that could leave us very discouraged. I've spoken with a lot of priests and deacons who feel a sense of helplessness and hopeless in the midst of all that's going on. There's a war going on in Europe, something we never thought we would see again. And it could easily ignite more and deeper devastation in the world. There's saber-rattling going on in Southeast Asia. And it's dangerous. We live in a world of deep and political and social divisions that are tearing apart the unity of our modern democracies even. Things that seem so stable, suddenly in jeopardy. In the wake of the collapse of Christendom, we've seen the advance of aggressive secular agendas. A dictatorship of relativism dig deep. We've seen the ascendancy of new ideologies which are actually rooted in very ancient heresies and that are completely inimical to what God has revealed. To what God has revealed about the dignity of human beings, of justice and what is social justice, of the family, as the foundation of society. We're living in an era when the persecution of Christians in so many parts of the world is savage. And largely ignored. And even sadly, within Mother Church, the bride of Christ, so much confusion and division, so many people distracted and divided battling over issues. Issues that have their place, granted. Some of greater, some are of lesser importance but all of them far less important and far less critical than the commission that Jesus himself gave to us. Go into the world and make disciples, baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teach them everything that I commanded of you in the midst of all these disturbing realities and among all these things that can be so discouraging, so overwhelming and at times seemingly hopeless, where is our hope? What's supposed to be the rock? The immovable foundation, the source of our hope, we hear Jesus said, I have said these things to you that in me, you may have peace. In this world, you are going to have trouble, but do not fear. I have overcome the world. When you look at a text like this, I love to go to the amplified version and look at a few different translations because very often it's hard to capture in just a few words everything that the Greek words mean and what they entail. So here's a bit of an amplified version from a few different translations. I have told you these things so that in me you may have perfect peace. In the world, you will have tribulation, distress, suffering, but be courageous, be confident, be undaunted, be filled with joy, be filled with hope. I have overcome the world. My conquest is accomplished. My victory is abiding. He alone, Jesus and his work, what he accomplished and his message, that's our rock. That's our immovable foundations. Kingdoms rise and kingdoms fall. Kings rise and kings die. Ideologies come and ideologies go, but he's the rock that doesn't move. As St. Peter confirms, we are born anew to a living hope, born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. There are a multitude of proposed solutions to the situation of the world, social, political, psychological, martial, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And they have varying degrees of legitimacy and we can have varying degrees of natural optimism or pessimism about them, but our hope, which is much more than natural optimism because it unites us to God is a theological virtue infused into us by the Holy Spirit. Our hope is in Jesus and what he has done and is doing and is bringing to fulfillment. We and the whole world are under his providential gaze. He knows what he's doing. He alone is the faithful witness, the first born from the dead, the ruler of the kings of the earth, the judge of the living and the dead who has the final word on everything. His gospel is what we need. It's what we need to live to embrace. It's what we need to witness with our lives and to proclaim with our voices and to minister to the people that God has entrusted to us, that through his life, death and resurrection, he has annihilated and destroyed our sins and their power. He has destroyed in his own flesh, in his own soul, the alienation between us and God, the Father. He has opened the path again. He has made it possible to be reconciled that through baptism and faith, we are united to him. We become his body, his mystical body on the earth.   And he invites us to make a decision. He invites us to accept him through the mediation of Mother Church, of course, but to accept him as Savior, as Lord, knowing that our lives were lost.  And so everything after he saves me is his. How could it be otherwise? He's at the right hand of the Father receiving the Holy Spirit from the Father. We are told pouring him out like a waterfall on us to sanctify, to strengthen, to empower, to continue his mission. This is the karygma, the basic good news. Oh, in the Catholic Church, we have a terrible tendency of trying to build houses from the third floor down. We begin with all our sophisticated theology, which is great, but unless we've laid the foundation, it's gonna crash down. And this is the foundation, the person, the work of Jesus himself. We have a terrible tendency in the church to try to cataclyse and sacramentalize the unevangelized. We don't need more good ideas. We need good news. We need Jesus. To him alone every knee will bend and every tongue confess. Under the dominion of either his power in inescapable judgment, or the dominion of his merciful saving love, every knee will bend. Every tongue will confess. We, brothers, have been invited as friends to be with him. That's the first movement in the call, to be with him and then to be sent out in a privileged place in his saving mission. My own spiritual father in Christ, Father Bob Bedard, some of the old-timers here will remember him. He's a great man, a founder of the companions of the cross, my own spiritual family in the church, a pioneer of the new evangelization, new Pentecost, Marian movement. He expressed, in my opinion, what we so desperately need as ministers in our day and in our time. These are the words he spoke. We have been tantalized by Jesus. We have been fascinated by him, dazzled. We've been trapped and captured. We are prisoners of the Lord, but we are delighted to be in his custody. We would not want it any other way. We are able to say with St. Paul that we have repraised all else as rubbish. The Greek word there is skrubalon. It means human excrement. We have appraised all else as rubbish in the light of knowing Christ Jesus, that we are now racing to capture the prize for which he has captured us. We, especially us as ministers of the gospel, we need, as St. John Paul II, so many times called us to do, to start afresh from Christ. To shake off the slumber of routine, the taking it for granted that is such a danger to us who are professionally religious. We handle the gospel so often that we forget. It's dynamite. It is the power to save souls. It is the power to change the course of history. It's so easy to do, to get into the routine. We need to rediscover and re-encounter Jesus as living and risen Lord who is alive and on the move. As Father Bob said so powerfully, to be tantalized, to be fascinated by him again, dazzled by him, captured by him all over again. And this is the work of the Holy Spirit. Read the Catechism carefully. The first work of the Holy Spirit is to reveal Jesus, the reality of Jesus. That we would not just see a human face, but we would see the glory of God shining on the face of Christ. That we would not know him as merely some historical figure, great guru, prophet, whatever, from 20 centuries ago, but the risen Lord in our midst, acting, speaking, saving, reconciling, forgiving, consecrating, brothers, we need to scrape off the barnacles of going through the motions. We need to scrape off the barnacles of all our preconceived notions and our false shrunken ideas of what Jesus is capable of doing in our lives and in our parishes. We need to read the gospel in the Holy Spirit. How many times has the last three popes told us, please, dulexio divina with the scriptures. Study them historically, critically fine. Study them as biblical scholars fine, but we need to encounter Jesus in the scriptures and that requires the Holy Spirit. We need to begin by praying to the Holy Spirit and praying with the word of God, allowing it to penetrate us, allowing the Lord to speak into our lives and into our situations. We need to listen to the word anew. And if we do that, there is no doubt that we're gonna be amazed by Jesus. As more than a few scholars have pointed out, Jesus is hardly the domesticated, de-clawed, safe house cat that modern tastes have reduced him to.  He purrs on command when we need to feel better, but when he's kinda in the way, we toss him outside. Jesus is a lion. He is a rampant lion of the tribe of Judah. As St. Paul reminds us, this is an awesome thing to fall into the hands of the living God. He is untamed goodness, so pure and wild, so dangerous that to risk a real encounter with him is to be changed. There's a little tradition in my community, the companions of the cross, our founder used to tell us as seminarians, go out, sweat together, get to know each other, become brothers, do more than share a house, share a life. And so we would do these little adventures in the summers and our breaks, and one of them was going whitewater canoeing up in the Canadian North. And we'd spent two weeks in the bush and we'd have a ball, it'd be great. We would stink and unshaven, and nobody would wanna come within 50 feet of us when we got home, but it was a lot of fun. But you get used to the routines. Everybody does the same thing pretty much every morning. One guy'd go down and try and get fish, one guy starts making coffee, somebody's starting to fire. You get into routines. Well, on one of those particular trips that we were on, one of these priests, and he doesn't mind me stealing his story, I tell it all the time. He goes down as he always goes down. First thing, with the fishing pole to the river, and he's gonna catch us breakfast. And sure enough, he was down there one morning and he caught a couple of fish and dropped them at the side and he's fishing. And like every other morning, he hears another one of the brothers, Charles was his name, his father Charles, coming down the path behind him with the coffee mug to get some coffee boiling, get some water boiling for the coffee. And so he did as he did. Every morning, he greets him over his shoulder as he's casting. Morning Chuck, how you doing brother? No response. So thought, well, he didn't hear me. Little louder. Hey, Chuck, how you doing brother? Get a good sleep? No response. So finally, he thinks this is a little odd, so he turns around to discover that it was not Charles coming down the path. It was something that eats things like him. It was a big bear coming down to check out the fish, I would guess. Now, he says, usually at this point when he was telling the story, people would always say the same thing. What did you do? And his response is classic.  It's what the bear decides to do that matters. It sets the agenda. It has the power. See the analogy? If we've gotten into the place in our ministry that we think that we're managing Jesus, whoa. The lion might have a thing or two to say. I was told that it was Saint Augustine who said, you don't have to apologize for Jesus. He's a lion, just open the cage and let him out. Let him do his thing. The most common reaction to Jesus in the gospels is a little surprising. I work with university students who are used to quite a bit and I would ask him that question and inevitably they would say, oh, well, love. They would feel love from Jesus. I'm gonna say, well, that's probably true once they got to know him. But you know what the scriptures actually say? That the most common reaction to Jesus when people first encounter him is fear and awe. As Bishop Barron says, they come away amazed and afraid. C.S. Lewis was even stronger. He said, read the gospels. Nobody ever had a mild approval or mild disapproval of Jesus. It was either hatred or terror or adoration. These are the reactions and it's not hard to see why. He spoke with an authority and a command that people had never heard before. Mark tells us that he kept large crowds in the synagogues spellbound by his teaching. They hung on his words. People by the thousands would walk out into the desert and stay there for three days without food. Just to hear him speak. When the temple guards are sent out by the Sanhedrin to arrest him, they come back empty handed. And when they're upgraded by the Sanhedrin, what's their response? No man has ever spoken like this. He commands storms, drives out demonic forces with a word, heals blindness and leprosy. Can you imagine? He raises the dead. Tell me that fear and awe would not fire through a crowd like lightning. If you saw him say, get up and a corpse rises. We are told that power goes out from him. The word in Greek is dunamis, the root of dynamite. Goes out from him, heals people in droves. People left astonished. The apostles themselves sitting in the middle of the lake looking at each other going, what kind of man is this? And despite all the modern nonsense to the contrary, he knows exactly who he is and what he is about. Just read all the fantastic biblical scholars that the Lord is raising up in the church today, one of whom is here with us. Brent Petrie and Scott Hahn and then the list goes on and on and on. Read the writings. Anyone who is reading the gospels honestly cannot mistake the determined and clear mission that Jesus is on. From his baptism in the Jordan to his ascension, he is about the work of the Messiah. God's rescue operation in this fallen world and he does everything the Messiah was supposed to do. Only he does it in a way that is so far beyond their expectations that they can easily miss it. The Messiah is supposed to reconstitute and renew Israel. Well, they're thinking about that little patch of land along the sea, the Mediterranean Sea, 12 patriarchs in the holy land, but Jesus wants the world. So he's got 12 apostles who are sent out to capture the whole world and make it holy. He does reconstitute Israel. He chooses his chief steward, his prime minister, Peter, and gives him the keys, read Isaiah 22, 21. This is what the king did to the steward. He makes it clear that Mary is the queen mother of the kingdom of God, whose job is to intercede. Woman, what is this to you and to me? My hour has not yet come. What hour? The hour he takes up his kingship on the cross and then it will be the job of the queen mother to bring the needs of people to him. The Messiah was supposed to restore the temple of God, which was so important because it's where God met humanity. Oh, but they're thinking bricks and mortar. They couldn't see that he is the new temple. And when you put him down in three days, he will raise it up again. Ezekiel saw the vision of the new temple of God in the messianic era and out of the eastern gate flowed the river, which got deeper and wider as it went down into the Arabide to the place of desert and death and desolation and lifeless, bringing life everywhere it went. And there at the end of his earthly life, we see Jesus hanging on the cross and the eastern side of the temple is pierced and out comes the blood and water which renews the whole world. They're thinking too small. The Messiah was supposed to be a warrior king who liberated God's people from the oppressors. But they're thinking Romans and Philistines and Babylonians and Assyrians. But he liberated us from Satan and death. He inaugurates the new exodus, beginning with his baptism in the Jordan. Why in the Jordan? Because this is where the exodus enters into the promise and he is bringing the promise to fulfillment. The new covenant he establishes promised by Jeremiah Ezekiel and others, he's the lamb of sacrifice, fulfilling the Old Testament sacrificial system in his own person. He's the great high priest standing now before the father, the slain lamb who has risen interceding on our behalf in the divine liturgy of heaven that we enter at every mass. Just thinking too small. This is Jesus and he is awesome. Even more astonishingly is his clear identity. He knows exactly who he is. Read the scriptures with a Jewish eye. This is what this modern generation of biblical scholars in the Catholic Church is bringing to us, helping us to unpack the scriptures in light of the Old Testament. And when you do that, it pops, it comes alive. He acted with an authority that only God can wield and speaks in the very person of God. He forgives sins. Only God forgives sins. He claims lordship over the Sabbath. Anybody here read the Old Testament? There's only one Lord of the Sabbath. There's example after example after example that can be used. But the one that strikes me most deeply is he takes the Torah, the very word of God, the last word on every issue and says you have heard it said but I say to you, fulfilling, perfecting the very word of God.  I myself will shepherd them. God spoke through Ezekiel, Jesus. I am the word, the name of God to Moses on Sinai. I am the good shepherd and on and on we could go. We know this, brothers. Everything about Jesus is beautiful and amazing. Not just the sensational things, but everything. Jesus, the king of majesty emptied himself to the condition of a slave and washed the stinking feet of the apostles. Probably part of the ordination ritual as it was part of the ordination ritual in the Old Testament but also the job of the lowest household slave. Think about that. He was often cold and hungry, lonely and tired and he was never even thinking about himself. He was just love poured out and there's a tenderness in Jesus. Read the scriptures with new eyes, brother. He raises the little girl from the dead and what does he say to her, talitha kum? That's a term of endearment. What he's saying is, sweetheart, and then his first words, get her something to eat. He was so focused on her needs. When he heals the blind man, outside, he takes him outside the village because he knows it's gonna be overwhelming for him. So as he begins to see things, he's not overwhelmed.  The rich young man, he looked at him and loved him. When he raised the boy at, was it name? Very interesting. It says that the boy was the only begotten of that woman. The only other time that phrase is used in the scriptures. And Jesus has moved deeply because why? Because he knows another woman who is about to lose the only begotten, the heart of Jesus. He even got frustrated, angry. We hear his seething indictments of the Pharisees and the scribes, but it's not hatred. It's medicinal. He loves them strong enough to confront them, to shock them into reality and repentance. We are told in the Acts of the Apostles that many priests and Pharisees followed him. How many did he save with those words of truth? And this courageous, fierce anger, this fierce love is all over the gospels. When John tells us in chapter 11 that Jesus was deeply moved at the death of Lazarus. I don't know about you, but I had in my mind that he was kind of half fainting, overcome with emotion. Well, I learned in Greek what it actually says is he was snorting in spirit to turn, to turn from that language. It's what a war horse does before it's about to charge, pawing the ground and snorting. As a smell of battle hits it. He's snorting in spirit at the death of his friend because death took his friend and now he's gonna take death down. Death, I will be your death. This is Jesus. Maybe one last thing as I'm running out of time. Usually they don't pull you off early when you wear a pointed hat, but here at Steubenville, they're used to bishops. We're like stray cats, so I could get in trouble. The generosity of Jesus. He scatters the seed everywhere.  Any farmer listening to that parable is gonna go, you threw seed on the road? You threw seed in the rocks? In the weeds? What are you thinking? Oh, but it's a symbol of Jesus and his infinite generosity because there's nobody he's not going after. He's putting on the guitar, but I still have 12 minutes and 33 seconds left here. When I get preaching, the brothers in my community know this, when I get preaching, when Bishop Scott gets going, they say, don't look at your watch, look at your calendar, but I promise I'm wrapping up. He scatters the seed everywhere because he loves everyone and he wants everyone. There's so many more examples here. 12 baskets full of leftovers when he feeds the 5,000. 153 big fish for his three friends on the beach. 120 to 150 gallons of the best wine for the wedding feast after they're already inebriated. That's 780 to 900 bottles. I love Jesus. And brothers, all of that, you know, is just a symbol of his real generosity, bone weary, trying to escape the crowds, not even able to eat after pouring himself out for weeks in ministry and his humanity utterly exhausted, trying to get away from the crowds and be alone with his disciples and the crowds find him. And what happens inside of him? His heart is moved with compassion because they were like sheep without a shepherd and he gives more of himself when he probably felt that in his humanity there was no more to give. And even that's just a foreshadowing of 2,000 years of pouring out his body, blood, soul and divinity in the Eucharist through our voices and our hands, loving, healing, shepherding through the sacraments. And this is just a few examples. If we think that he has given us all that he is willing to give, we don't know him. If he thinks he's taken us as far as he wants to take us in our personal lives, in our ministry, in our parishes, in our assignments, we don't have a clue who he is. He told Faustina, St. Faustina, that the mercy in the heart, in his heart was so full that it wounds him, it burns him and he yearns to pour it out but so few are willing to accept it. He told St. Angel of Filinho, make yourself a capacity and I will make myself a torrent. He wants to give us more than we could ever ask or imagine and all of this we know.  It's breathtaking. Just a suggestion, take Revelation chapter one verse two through to verse two for your personal prayer for your Lectio Divina tomorrow morning. There is Jesus amongst the seven labstands, amongst his body, his bride.  That's who Jesus is, all powerful. The ancient of days, all authority in his hands, all seeing, all knowing, the great high priest, the eternal king immovable, wielding the sword of truth, the sword of the spirit, the word of God, the power of the Holy Spirit that he pours out upon us. That's who Jesus is. Brothers, we need to start afresh from Jesus. We need to rediscover him and re-encounter him in the power of the Holy Spirit. We need to get rooted in the Word again and allow the Lord to speak into our lives, to speak into our ministry. He sits at the sidelines of our lives and he doesn't like it. He wants to be in the middle of the action, calling the shots, leading the way. He wants our permission to do what he wants to do. And not only does he want our heartfelt permission and it will get messy if we do this, you set the Holy Spirit free, it gets messy because stuff comes up, but he wants us to give him that permission to do what he wants to do in our lives, in our ministries. And he wants us to tell our people to give him permission too.   It says in 2 Chronicles, the eyes of the Lord scan the earth, looking for those whose hearts are open to him that he might raise them up. Let's be those men. Let's be those priests and deacons. It's only saints who reform the church. Why not you? Why not me? Let's be dazzled by Jesus again. Let's be captured by Jesus again. Let's be fascinated by Jesus again. Let's fall in love with him all over again, like we did at first. Shake off the slumber, shake off the routine, come afresh to Jesus, and let him speak into our lives. Amen. Brothers, I invite you to stand. I just wanna lead you in a short prayer of response to this word that I believe the Lord asked me to speak. We're gonna have a little bit of worship so that we can receive it fully. Lord Jesus, we come to you. We are weak and broken. We are sinful. We are quite literally cracked pots. And the grace that you pour in us too often falls to the ground unfootful. We're not much, Lord, but we're yours. We're all yours. Jesus, our confidence is not in our worthiness but in your goodness. Our hope is not in what we can or can't do, how we sinned, how we pray, how we measure up. That's not our hope. You're our hope. You're our hope.  Oh, Lord, send upon us anew. You're all holy, good, and life-giving spirit. Pour him out upon us like a waterfall because we want to be renewed. We want to be the men that you call us to be. We want to have stirred in us the love that pulsed in our hearts at first. We want that mad eros agape that burns in your heart that burn in our hearts. Holy spirit in the name of Jesus, reveal him to us anew. Each day as we come before him in his word, in the gospels, anoint our minds, anoint our hearts. Let us encounter the real Jesus. Let us see things that we never saw before.  Holy spirit, lead us into a deeper encounter with the risen and living Lord that we can come alive to him, especially in any areas, Lord, where we've taken it all for granted. We've handled your dynamite carelessly. Come Holy Spirit, come and fill us now. Fill us in the name of Jesus. Fill us with the good news, the good news, that renews, that revitalizes, that changes, that transfigures, that deifies. Come Holy Spirit, come Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus. I invite you brothers to call upon the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus, that he might come to us anew, come Holy Spirit.