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10/17/26 Unforgivable Sin · Omnia Christus

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  SPEAKER_00: I have had people come to me and they were particularly worried about
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  SPEAKER_00: a certain passage from the Gospels and it was the passage that we have today
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  SPEAKER_00: which says that whoever blasphemes against
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  SPEAKER_00: the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven This was actually taken up in one
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  SPEAKER_00: of John Paul II's encyclicals called Dominum et Vivificantem,
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  SPEAKER_00: Lord and Life Giver, about the Holy Spirit.
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  SPEAKER_00: And he deals with this in some length.
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  SPEAKER_00: And he says, he's against the backdrop of what has been said so far.
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  SPEAKER_00: Certain other words of Jesus, shocking and disturbing ones, become easier to understand.
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  SPEAKER_00: And he actually gathers together the different versions from the different gospels.
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  SPEAKER_00: This is the passage that is in all the synoptic gospels.
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  SPEAKER_00: Matthew says,
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  SPEAKER_00: Whoever says a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven,
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  SPEAKER_00: but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven either in this age
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  SPEAKER_00: or in the age to come.
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  SPEAKER_00: Mark, all sins will be forgiven, the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter.
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  SPEAKER_00: But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness,
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  SPEAKER_00: but is guilty of an eternal sin.
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  SPEAKER_00: He gathers all those together to comment on them.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I have had people come in very worried and concerned saying,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know, maybe accidentally I blasphemed against the Holy Spirit and then what?
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  SPEAKER_00: Right?
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  SPEAKER_00: Because then I'm never going to be forgiven.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that is not what the scriptures are talking about today.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I think that is extremely important for us to understand
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  SPEAKER_00: because someone could read something like this and especially if they tended
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  SPEAKER_00: to be maybe somewhat,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: obsessive compulsive or something or very concerned with With cleanliness
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  SPEAKER_00: and getting everything right.
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  SPEAKER_00: No, no.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I accidentally, in my mind, blasphemed against the Holy Spirit.
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  SPEAKER_00: No, absolutely not.
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  SPEAKER_00: If you're worried about whether you blasphemed against the Holy Spirit or not,
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  SPEAKER_00: then you most certainly did not.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because what it's talking about is it's talking about the ability that we have
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  SPEAKER_00: to reject forgiveness.
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  SPEAKER_00: The ability that we have To choose our own way,
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  SPEAKER_00: the ability that we have to reject relationship with God even forever if we want.
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  SPEAKER_00: But if you are worried about that,
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  SPEAKER_00: you most certainly have not done that because you desire the presence of God.
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  SPEAKER_00: You desire communion with God.
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  SPEAKER_00: You desire to be with God.
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  SPEAKER_00: So I think that this passage here,
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  SPEAKER_00: when people hear it, Depending on their temperament, it can be very disturbing.
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  SPEAKER_00: But what Christ is talking about is the ability that we have to reject forgiveness
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  SPEAKER_00: if we want to.
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  SPEAKER_00: God is loving.
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  SPEAKER_00: God is good.
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  SPEAKER_00: God respects our freedom.
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  SPEAKER_00: God will never force anything on us.
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  SPEAKER_00: He'll never force us to do anything that we don't want to.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so if we don't want Him, He's not going to force Himself on us.
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  SPEAKER_00: That is all that this passage is saying.
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  SPEAKER_00: We can walk away from God if we want.
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  SPEAKER_00: God never walks away from us, but he's always waiting there for us if we want to come to him.
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  SPEAKER_00: So that really is, I think, all that we need to know.
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  SPEAKER_00: And if you hear this passage and you're worried or concerned, well, don't be.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because if you're worried and concerned, you're fine.
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  SPEAKER_00: God is always there ready to welcome us if we want to come to him.
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  SPEAKER_00: And if you're worried about whether you might have offended him or not, then you're good.
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  SPEAKER_00: You just say, Lord, I want to be with you.
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  SPEAKER_00: Help me out.
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  SPEAKER_00: This passage does point to something else which John Paul II talks about in
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  SPEAKER_00: that same document where he says we live in a very different time than the time in
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  SPEAKER_00: which this passage was written and in the time in
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  SPEAKER_00: which these thoughts were being spoken of because at
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  SPEAKER_00: that time people were very concerned with sin and with guilt and with how to be free
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  SPEAKER_00: from that and that's not the age in which we live anymore.
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  SPEAKER_00: The world really doesn't have any conception of sin.
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  SPEAKER_00: So what should we do?
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  SPEAKER_00: Should we go around and harangue people and try to convince them of sin and instill
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  SPEAKER_00: in them a sense of guilt?
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  SPEAKER_00: No, that should not be what we're doing at all.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sin can only come from a knowledge of what it is an absence of.
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  SPEAKER_00: Just like if I was going to go and convince people about darkness,
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  SPEAKER_00: but I never used light, they wouldn't know what I'm talking about.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sin is not something, it's the absence of something.
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  SPEAKER_00: Just like darkness is the absence of light.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's not anything, it's the absence of something.
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  SPEAKER_00: So only if you know about that thing,
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  SPEAKER_00: Which darkness is the absence of, does it make any sense to talk about darkness?
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  SPEAKER_00: Only if you know about that thing which sin is the absence of,
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  SPEAKER_00: can there be any conception of sin?
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  SPEAKER_00: The problem with our world and the reason why we don't really have any understanding
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  SPEAKER_00: of sin or why when we hear the word sin,
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  SPEAKER_00: we immediately sort of reject it and think about,
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  SPEAKER_00: you know, sort of some sort of condemnatory old guys, you know, haranguing people.
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  SPEAKER_00: Is because we don't have a conception of the sense of God, of his loving presence in our lives.
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  SPEAKER_00: We live in a world that is uniquely lonely,
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  SPEAKER_00: in a world that is cut off from itself,
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  SPEAKER_00: in which we are all cut off from each other,
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  SPEAKER_00: in which we're isolated, in which we're caught up and lost in ourselves.
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  SPEAKER_00: We know at a very deep level, but that's not right.
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  SPEAKER_00: I know that something's wrong with my life if I'm living in that way,
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  SPEAKER_00: but I don't know what it is.
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  SPEAKER_00: And what God is calling us to and the whole point of the scriptures and
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  SPEAKER_00: of everything is relationship.
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  SPEAKER_00: Relationship with God.
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  SPEAKER_00: And our relationship with God flows through our relationship with those around us,
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  SPEAKER_00: our relationship with the world,
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  SPEAKER_00: with the beauty of the world,
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  SPEAKER_00: with being immersed in it,
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  SPEAKER_00: with allowing it to flow into us,
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  SPEAKER_00: with going out of myself, with being caught up in wonder and awe.
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  SPEAKER_00: Those moments of my life that are the most exciting,
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  SPEAKER_00: the most amazing,
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  SPEAKER_00: the ones that we look back on,
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  SPEAKER_00: they're moments in which I almost completely forgot about myself.
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  SPEAKER_00: Think about the experience of a child in going to some sort of a Chuck E. Cheese's or whatever.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's like those experiences, you almost even forget who you are.
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  SPEAKER_00: If you're a runner,
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  SPEAKER_00: when you get into the flow, when you're running, you become one with your actions.
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  SPEAKER_00: You get out of yourself.
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  SPEAKER_00: You even forget almost yourself entirely.
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  SPEAKER_00: You're so caught up in what you're doing.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's the highest expression of what it needs to be human is to be going out
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  SPEAKER_00: of myself,
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  SPEAKER_00: to be completely caught up in wonder,
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  SPEAKER_00: in awe, in my art, in the excellence of my activity and my relationship with others.
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  SPEAKER_00: And my amazement at the beauty of the world.
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  SPEAKER_00: Those are the good things in life.
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  SPEAKER_00: And they're all about getting us out of ourselves, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: When I'm stuck inside myself,
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  SPEAKER_00: inside of this little world where I'm just buzzing around here,
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  SPEAKER_00: oh my gosh, me, myself.
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  SPEAKER_00: That is what hell is.
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  SPEAKER_00: And what God is trying to do is he's trying to get us out of that.
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  SPEAKER_00: And you're made for so much more.
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  SPEAKER_00: You're made for joy.
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  SPEAKER_00: You're made for glory.
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  SPEAKER_00: You're made for wonder.
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  SPEAKER_00: You're made for awesomeness.
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  SPEAKER_00: All of that is going out of yourself.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so that's why it doesn't really make sense to talk about sin.
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  SPEAKER_00: We have to talk about fullness of life, relationship with God.
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  SPEAKER_00: That is what Christianity is all about.
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  SPEAKER_00: And only when you have a relationship with God or relationship
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  SPEAKER_00: with others do you understand what the lack of that is.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's what sin is.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sin is just the lack of that relationship.
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  SPEAKER_00: We have to talk about that relationship.
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  SPEAKER_00: We have to live that relationship.
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  SPEAKER_00: We have to look for that relationship.
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  SPEAKER_00: And in doing that,
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  SPEAKER_00: in living that,
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  SPEAKER_00: in being that,
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  SPEAKER_00: then we'll understand and we'll sense within ourselves like, oh, I'm not doing that.
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm getting caught in myself again.
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  SPEAKER_00: This old addiction to myself where I'm just, you know, caught inside.
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  SPEAKER_00: That is not good.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's sin.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's what God wants to come and save me from.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's what he wants to take me out of.
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  SPEAKER_00: This addiction to myself.
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  SPEAKER_00: God is turning towards others.
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  SPEAKER_00: God is turning towards the world.
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  SPEAKER_00: God is turning away from myself.
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  SPEAKER_00: Today in this Eucharist, as we receive Christ, let us ask him to give us that grace.
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  SPEAKER_00: Christ himself, his life was broken open, poured out for us.
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  SPEAKER_00: He wants to help us to break open our lives,
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  SPEAKER_00: to leave that miserable,
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  SPEAKER_00: useless place in which I'm just caught up in myself,
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  SPEAKER_00: to break out of that,
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  SPEAKER_00: to let the wonder and glory and beauty of the world break into me.
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  SPEAKER_00: The beauty of those around me,
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  SPEAKER_00: the beauty of relationship in all of its complexity and sometimes dysfunction,
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  SPEAKER_00: to be fully alive, to be fully present in this world.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's what it's all about.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's not about sin.
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  SPEAKER_00: If I'm, if I'm worried and concerned about sin, I'm doing it wrong.
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  SPEAKER_00: The solution to this sort of thing is let go, forget about, forget about sin.
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  SPEAKER_00: Remember God, remember others, remember life.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that is where salvation is.