Latest / Claymore: Become Who You Are / #498 Living Out the Theology of the Body In Marriage and Beyond!

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#498 Living Out the Theology of the Body In Marriage and Beyond! · Claymore: Become Who You Are

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Become who you Are podcast, a production of the John Paul II Renewal Center.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: I'm Jack Rigg, your host.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Hey, thanks for joining me today.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: St Catherine of Siena said that if you become who you are, that you would literally set the world on fire.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: And St Athanasius, an early church father and a doctor of the church, said the son of God became man so that we might become God.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: You know I make a wild guess at this, but I bet you, most of us, are a bit disconnected from this divine life that these saints are pointing us to.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Yet Saint John Paul II said there's an echo of the story of this divine life that we're created for, inscribed in each human heart, in your human heart, and if you put on the proper lens, if I put on the proper lens, if I put on the proper lens, we can get in touch with this echo within us in such a way that we have that aha moment.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: See, that's the genus of St John Paul II's theology of the body.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: It connects our lived experience of life to the gospel in such a way that our life takes on a whole new meaning and helps us answer those big questions that our whole culture is so confused about today meaning and helps us answer those big questions that our whole culture is so confused about today.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Who am I?
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: What's my purpose?
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Why were we created male and female?
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: How do I find happiness here on earth?
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: How do I find love that satisfies Paul II?
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: Recorded on August 25th 1982.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Welcome to our Wednesday session of Theology of the Body.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: I'm Jack Riggard with Linda Piper, my co-host for the show.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Linda, how are you?
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: I'm doing great, Thank you.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: Finally some nice weather after the storms that moved through, so I'm feeling good.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, good.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about good weather in the form of couples here and the storms that come in.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Once again, linda, john Paul is leading us using Ephesians 5 and getting back to husbands love your wives, wives love your husbands, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her At the end of the day.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: I don't think we believe this, linda.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: I think that when I look around the culture, people don't understand the supernatural makeup of a human being and supernatural makeup of of marriage itself, that we're a body and a soul, but God breathed his divine life and love into us.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: We're different than the rest of creation.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: If we just sat there and looked around, we'd know this.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Right, you, you brought up the weather and the sun.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: We just sat out there for 15 minutes.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Right now, we'd say we're different than the rest of this.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: And I did not create the universe, I did not write this story.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: I came into a story and it's up to us to discover why and the why comes down to love.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: It's a love story, it's always been a love story, and that we're created, male and female, to reflect God's beautiful Trinitarian love in the world.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: And when the brokenness came in Jesus, the bridegroom.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: This is not plan B, right, linda?
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is still plan A.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: He comes in, takes the form of a body, goes up on a cross the marriage by the cross and pours himself out to us and to the last drop and shows that this is the way he loves his bride.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: It's only when we step into that story, that redemption, and become part of that bride, that Christ can shower his love on us so that we can turn around and love our spouses and form families this way.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: And ever since we decided we don't want to do that anymore, we've seen incredible dysfunction which will not turn around.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: It will not turn around in Western civilization until we recover what we're going to be talking about today.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, jack, it's so true and it's so obvious those of us who have at least stepped into the story enough to try to understand it and try to live it, versus those who have not.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: If we're in a love story and we're understanding that, we recognize very early on that what this authentic love is all about, as we see Christ pouring himself out for us, is that we need to receive it.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: But guess what?
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: It doesn't stop there.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: We need to turn right around and, being in his image, pour out that love to others, and that's why Pope John Paul II thought that the analogy of spousal love in marriage was the really best way we had of understanding it.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: And when you see some marriages where husband and wife do understand it, it's like sparks go off, because we see a love there that includes a lot of suffering, if you really know their story.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: And yet the great joy and that hope of you, know the sanctification that is husband and wife leading each other to the ultimate marriage of the Lamb, and so I hope that we can unpack that a little bit today to make it practical.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: I remember a video of an old man pushing his wife and the old man was in pretty good shape.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: He was like a former rugby player.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: You know, he was a strong guy.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: Old man was was in pretty good shape, he was.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: He was like a former rugby player, you know, he was a, he was a, he was a strong guy, but he was in his 80s, um, but still strong.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: But he's pushing his wife in a wheelchair and as he's pushing her, they're interviewing him about his love for his wife and he was just pouring his heart out, uh, how much he loved his wife.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: And then, uh, they said can I ask your wife a couple of questions?
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: And he said, uh, you can, but she won't say anything.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: And they said what do you mean?
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: I said, well, you know, she has Alzheimer's.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: She's had it for the last 10 years.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: She doesn't know who I am.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: The husband said it.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: She doesn't know who I am.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Every day I get up in the morning, uh, and brush her teeth and clean her up and make her breakfast and take a spoon and feed her.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: And and he said, she always asked me who I am and what I'm doing there.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: And he said, uh, and they said well, you know, how can you do that every day?
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: And he said he said I'm so in love, I'm so in love, you know, this is the love of my life.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: And he said I, I, I, this is what I do.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: And and he goes, I, I, I, I would not want to do any other thing, but take care of her.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: I'd look at, I'd rather not have her have alzheimer's right sure but he said, now that she does, there's nothing in the world that I'd rather do than take care of this beautiful woman who loved me so much, you know, through our life.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: And so this is what we're talking about here, right?
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: This total, self-sacrificial love that will bring joy somehow.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: How does it bring joy, right?
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: When he went through what he does, I mean, cuts up her food, you know, I mean, you know, almost has to smash some of it, right?
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: And so she doesn't.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: I mean it's just amazing what he does, and does it with joy, right.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: But he would be the embodiment of what we mean, or grandparents or themselves pouring themselves out in that very way, given all the different difficulties and brokenness that we experience in life.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: It's a great story and contrasts that to those who we may know who have said you know what?
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: I didn't sign up for this, this is not what marriage is or what I'm getting out of this or any way of expressing it, and really our culture is kind of wallowing in that way of thinking.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: You and I had talked earlier about the I, I, I and it's.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: What am I getting out of this?
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: What's in it for me, kind of thinking, and that's really where we've gone off the rails.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: When we think about this, this is we get back to.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: We're standing before the tree and do we become a person of love?
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: And to understand what love is, just look up at a crucifix.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: This is my body given to you, this is my blood poured out to you.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: So, Christ, what does he do?
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: He pours it out, he initiates the gift.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: Right, he initiates the gift of love just like a bridegroom, just like a husband would do in a normal relationship.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: Get down on your knee.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: I mean who gets down on their knee?
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: The woman or the man?
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: The man does right.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: The man generally goes out and asks her for the first date or tries to break it, and it's very unnerving sometimes, right, but that's his job to initiate the gift.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: But he gives himself away to her in a receiving way, so open to receive back when she's ready.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: And if she's ready, she'll receive him in a giving way.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: And so this is a reciprocal, spousal love, but it has to begin somewhere.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: So we call Christ the head of the church, and the church is his body.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Without the head we have no church, and this is such a brokenness that we see in so many Protestant churches that have got away from the understanding of our sexuality as male and female.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: As the bridegroom with the bride, who want to put a bride up on the altar and don't understand this analogy of Christ is a man, and not that he dominates, but he initiates the gift and then gives this and pours himself out.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: Well, a woman has to receive that and in the church we all, sacramentally, we all take that position of a bride to receive.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: That's what that means, right?
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: So even as I am a man, I'm there to receive from the bridegroom in a spiritual, sacramental way, and it's so beautiful, and I receive in a giving way.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: And Christ gives to me in a receiving way open to receive my love back.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: This is what strengthens us, linda, and this is what we take into our marriages and relationships.
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: Right, jack, because if you don't receive in a giving way, you're not going to be capable of being the initiator in your marriage.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: That grace has to be there in order for you to be able to do that and your wife then to receive from you, and that reception is giving as well back to you, and without it, we see what we see today.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we don't trust one another, because we've been hurt so many times.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: You know when uh, you know.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: Let's just take this as an example.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: You know, when a woman say on a, you know, learns in college or the culture to, to, to allow men to use her to, becomes a participant in many, many say you know, uh, with many having sexual relations with many men, you know she's being used over and over again.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: So when she finally gets married there's no wedding switch.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: Linda is there.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: There's no switch at the altar that says, okay, now I'm a new person.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: You go into those relationships without trusting one another and then you wonder why they don't work.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: And in here you know you mentioned I, so I, I, I, so I want to be filled, I want to be happy, I want you to fill me.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: Or we go back to the first analogy of the older man who pours himself out to his bride and doesn't see himself as an I, but as a we.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Right that I humble myself, to give myself to my wife, and that first decision is one to follow Christ.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: And this is what will happen Then.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: This is from Ephesians 5 again that Christ may sanctify her, meaning all of us, this church, having cleansed her by the washing of the water with the word.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: This is baptism, right, this is the cleansing of baptism, getting us ready for the nuptial bath, for our wedding day.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: That he might present the church to himself, his bride now walking up the aisle with the white wedding dress on, and splendor and beauty, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: So, even so, husbands, to love your wives as their own body.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: So he goes on, and this is what we do.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: This is a pilgrimage we're on and the pilgrimage is to holiness, the universal call to holiness, sanctification.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: It's only when we choose to be persons of love and then, like you said earlier, to turn around and make that action.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: So it's not enough for me to receive, like you said, I have to act and I have to become a person of love.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: This is where kind of the rubber meets the road, right.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is the hard part to humble yourself enough not only to receive God, but then to pour that out and be a person of love to the world, who is full of hate sometimes and doesn't want to even receive love.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: And there's a lot of evil running around, isn't there today?
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: And so, going back to what you said about a woman having been used, if you think about why any woman would allow that and you dig deep enough, I think you're going to find underneath it all is a woman looking for love, a woman looking to be loved, and unfortunately, our culture has so twisted the meaning of our sexuality that we've just reduced it down to having sex means somebody loves me.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: And you know that is not the way it works, because if we go even deeper into our analogy here, you know go back to Genesis that one flesh union is the deepest union and relationship that man and woman can have, and we have flipped that over.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: That.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: It's like it's nothing, it's just this passing pleasure and really doesn't even mean anything.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: So we have to take a hard look at that and understand how it's been totally twisted and turned around.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: And if, as you said earlier, we're to be on that journey of sanctification as we think of that analogy with Christ pouring himself out for the church to be a spotless bride, well what does that mean to us?
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: We have to just sit and kind of like you say, dwell in it and meditate on it a little bit.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: Because how does that work in a marriage?
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: It's only going to work if it can only be that one person who has poured themselves out in love with just one other person in this one flesh union with just one other person in this one flesh union.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, when you step into the story and I think this is the only way you're going to know this you have to just really step into the story.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: And I think what you said you have to sit outside.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: Again, I think the best way to do this nowadays sometimes is just to go sit outside or take a walk and look at the clouds, look at the sun, just see how small we really are and try to figure out what is this right?
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: And, like you said, you know that woman that's being used.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: She's searching for love.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: Well, what is love?
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: You know, and this is the awe and wonder that all the way back to the ancient Greeks, we were trying to explore what's true, what's good, what's beautiful, especially the beauty of love, the transcendentals.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: We stopped doing that, Linda.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: And so we profaned it.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: We're still at the tree in Genesis 3.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: I want to be like God I'll decide what love is.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: I'll decide I, I, I, I.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: I gets back to that I.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: So that's that anthropocentric center.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: So what does that mean?
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: So that means human beings are put at the center.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: I am the center of the universe.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: Well, that's preposterous if you think about it.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: And so, of course, as Catholics, we're theocentric, which means that this Trinitarian love story is at the center.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: And then I receive from that Trinitarian love story.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: I've actually created in and through that love story to become a person of love.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: When you step into this story, you find something in awe and wonder there.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: You'll never know that existed.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: And John Paul says in here too that you have to be looking for the eschatological meaning to all this, like where is this all going?
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: And it goes to Christ in the church, the lamb and the bridegroom who gave himself up like a lamb.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: So it's the marriage of the lamb in the last book of the Bible.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: This is where we're going, and so this is what the saints and the mystics do.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: Well, we're all called to be saints, we're all called, in a way, to be mystics, and that means to step into this love story in a full way, and it's only through that action of faith, my fiat, my yes, that it's like the gate opens up and if you sit outside of it, you'll never know, but the dysfunction will continue around you.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: It's just the way it is.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: That's how you find out.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Sin and death is all around us, linda, and the only way to overcome this is to step into an eternal love story.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: It's just the reality of human existence.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and one thing we have to recognize as a part of that when we're questioning what is love, is the understanding that love involves suffering.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: And if we can't, you know, wrap our brains around that, then we're never really going to get to that point of understanding what that authentic love is, because it certainly involves suffering, both to myself personally you know, physical ailments and those kinds of things but also in relationships that I have with people.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: And you know I think it was last time I talked a little bit about my son having his stroke at the age of 49.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: And there's a lot of suffering there.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: 49, and there's a lot of suffering there, and yet his wife taking on the challenge of what she needs to do for him and for their family, and my husband and I as his parents, and so forth, you know there's a lot of suffering involved in that love.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: And if we don't have that grace, you know, of understanding that this is, christ has demonstrated that for us in pouring himself out that love doesn't mean just all you know, balloons and peaches and cream and all those things that we want to just think, but beneath it all, as you said earlier, jack, is a deep sense of joy, as with the man taking care of his wife, that this is where that supernatural body and soul really is, because I know in the depths of my soul that this is how we demonstrate love, as Christ modeled it for us.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: And going back to this audience, and when the Pope is talking about how Christ, the love of Christ, for the church, this would be in paragraph six.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: Here St Paul talks about this so as to explain the way in which this love expresses itself and to present at the same time both this love and its expression as the model the husband must follow in regard to his wife.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: And when you know, that just kind of jumped out at me is, again and again and again.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: We have that model, but it's not easy.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: It's going to involve suffering, and yet it's the only way we can reach that point where we then go out and can model it in our marriages and to the world.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and well, here's the inevitable we get old and we die, we get sick, we get old and we die, and you know this is where it ends.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: You know Death is where it is Body and the soul without.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: What we're talking about here is the default position is sin and death.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: If you want to move past that, then you step into a larger story and you're filled with grace, you're redeemed and brought into a larger story and in that story you're given the grace to become a person of love, voluntarily.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: In other words, instead of fighting all of these things that you're talking about, I now offer them all up sacramentally.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: I become the sacrifice, just like it was on a cross.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: When we read Jesus Christ, he says over and over again that you're going to have to carry your cross and follow me.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: Well, he said well, I don't want to do that, so I'm not going to follow you.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Hey, dude, you're going to, you're going to carry a cross.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: Now, do you want Jesus Christ to help you with that cross and bring you into eternal life or not?
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: That's the question.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: Sometimes we think, okay, well, I'm going to avoid the cross.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: Well, dude, you're not going to avoid the cross.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, you know the guy on his fourth marriage that's got, you know, five or six or seven kids from different marriages.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: You know he's given them all a cross to carry right and so, and then he's carrying this cross too, of dysfunction that he sees around.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: You know he could be searching, searching, searching, but at the end of the day there's he's creating havoc behind him.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: Now the other person who opens himself up to the bridegroom receives that love and walks in and says, yeah, this is who I am.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: I am voluntarily giving myself away.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: I am choosing.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: Freedom is for something I choose to be a person of love.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: What does that mean?
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: To give myself away?
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: You might as well do that and leave a legacy behind you.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: And again, it gets back to that I, what we're talking about.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: To some people right now, listening, can sound like why do I want to do that?
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: That's why I want to make this clear that that look at this is part of this life.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: You know, we say it in uh, you know, uh hail, holy queen, mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: Do we cry?
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: Poor, banished children of Eve.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: Do we send up our sighs?
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: You know, think about it this way, linda.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: We're a ship, right?
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: Our life is like a ship, going through to our destiny, our destiny, and this is a test.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: Right now we're tested.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: Do we become persons of love or not?
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: How do I make it right to the prize that St Paul talks about?
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: How do I make it to this like athletic event?
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: He says we all got to run the race.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: Who's going to win the race?
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Well, the one that wins the race is the one that surrenders themselves, humbles themselves to the eternal bridegroom.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: So true, I was thinking earlier about some of these ideas and going back again to this whole episode with Harrison Butker, and you know his commencement speech and so forth and I stumbled across another article where Patricia so why don't you, why don't you just refresh if anybody hasn't by now?
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: everybody probably has heard of him, but why don't you?
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: Just give it just a half a minute rundown.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, one of the main points he was talking about is, um, his wife and um, how he felt and I'm going to paraphrase this because I don't recall the exact quote, I don't have it in front of me, but her life began so they met in middle school I guess seventh grade or something and that her life began when she became wife and mother and that she has embraced her role as homemaker.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: And it's really that that, I think, caused much of the brouhaha that we had, because that term homemaker just kind of sounds, you know, like putting salt in the wound for many, many women.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: And I thought about that, jack, and I thought you know what is it?
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: Well, if you know, people probably think the term has different meanings.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: And if you think it's just somebody who just stays at home and washes dishes and laundry, I know, yeah, of course we're going to have some negative reaction to that, but I was trying to put myself in his position.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: What was he meaning by that?
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: Now, put it in the context of what we've just been talking about.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: When she embraced her vocation as homemaker, her life beginning as wife and mother, he was saying this was the moment when she understood this pouring herself out this, becoming a person of love, so to speak.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: It was in development, I'm sure, throughout their relationship, but at the moment that it happened, where she becomes his wife and then becomes a mother, he saw that.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: What a beautiful thing for a husband to say that her life began Well.
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: Okay, you could take that a totally negative way too, that what she, you know, wasn't a person or didn't have her own thing or those ways.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's I, I, I, I, I again.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: Exactly, but that isn't what he meant.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: I believe that.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: I'm not trying to put words in his mouth.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: That isn't what he meant, I believe, and I'm not trying to put words in his mouth, but I thought it was.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: You know, it was the best way he knew how to express.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: He said it in a very good way, actually, but you have to understand what you and I are talking about here, and you have to understand sacramental theology.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: You have to understand that our bodies are created to be a sacramental sign of God's love in the world.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: Yes, and I think he understands that and she does as well, and then he was able to put it in these terms, but he did get applause and the audience did give him a standing ovation.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: So to his Catholic audience it seemed like there were many who do understand it, at least on a beginning level, if nothing else, but to put it in the context of life, beginning yes, the only way we can find ourselves is to lose ourselves.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: That's another way of saying it.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: Christ told us that right saying it.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: Christ told us that right.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: So here she's, finding that you know, true life, authentic life, living this story is when she became that person of giving herself away.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: And yet look how our culture, just whoa, you've got to be kidding, you see.
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because of the I, I, I.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: So kudos again to him for recognizing that particular concept that's so important to our whole culture.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: For a woman to get into that vulnerable spot where she's going to say, give up her career for and don't forget this is for a time don't forget, this is for a time.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: I know many, many women that have gone back to work and had long careers after they raised children right, but there's a time.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: But if she's going to stop to have, say, multiple children, in order to do this, well, her husband has to understand her vulnerability vulnerable, uh, vulnerability, right and and to know that she's vulnerable and that he steps up to the plate and and and he makes sure that she knows that he's initiating the gift again.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: he's coming home and telling her the you know that that the importance of of of her to him and the importance of what she's doing and to be there for her, and so that's where this, coming as a woman walking around pregnant, you're very vulnerable, right To the world, even to needing physical protection at times, right, I mean, this is a vulnerable time Now.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: can you imagine abusive husband at that point, a drunk somebody that's cheating on you while you're getting ready to deliver a baby?
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: See, this is the difference between I, I.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: I so now, instead of sacrificing myself well, my wife's not in the mood right now.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: She's seven months pregnant and you go out and cheat or prostitutes, porn, whatever it is, or you become like like this, this nfl football kicker, right, that says no, this is, this is the pinnacle of of love and we're here for one another.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: I mean yeah this is a you know, if you don't see the beauty and the difference between the beauty and the profanity of this thing and what's happening today, and and, and, and so many of the communities today in the inner cities, where the men just walk away, they not only are abusive, but they just walk away and leave this woman with her kids, and I mean so.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: This is why women are worried today.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: When you explain what we're talking about here, most of them are dumbfounded.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: They have no idea what you're talking about.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: So that's where the negative are dumbfounded.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: They have no idea what you're talking about, so that's where the negative reaction comes from.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: They have no idea of the beauty that we're talking about Right and it shows just how much work we have to do.
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: But, you know, it's frustrating to me the way we're always looking at it for women as either or you know, career versus wife and motherhood, and it's both and for many, many women, and the understanding when you become wife and mother.
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: Now you know, in Butker's situation he's making a lot of money, face it, so there isn't that financial burden put on her as well, as many women do have that burden in addition to, you know, bearing the children and so forth.
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: But there's many women who have figured out that they can start a career in their area of interest and skill and do work for a while and then have children and make that decision to stay home with the children.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: Again, a lot of sacrifice and so forth, but the recognition that this is my calling, this is my vocation and my career may go on hold for a little while because that particular activity is not going to work for a while, but many women find that, wow, their experience of motherhood has made them so much more adequate in whatever that career was, because of all the things they've learned, the skills they've developed and the relationship, the human relationship with their children.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: All of those things just raise us up to a level that I, the way the two of us work together in this one flesh union and in this thing we call marriage, as we move towards that, sanctification To the women who don't have that.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: It's a very, very difficult run and you know I pray for women.
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: I've known who have had that struggle.
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: And we've got to understand this at the very core level if we're going to turn it around in our culture as the family being the, you know that, core cell of our society.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I, you know, I, you know, as we close here, I don't find it happening.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: You know, as we close here, I don't find it happening across.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: But for the people that want to and seek it, they will find it.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: The people that seek it will find it.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: Unfortunately, the culture is going to be pushing down on them and that's why it's so important, what we're unpacking today, to learn theology of the body, to embrace it and to share it with others, because that's the only solution to so much brokenness that we see and so much confusion around us.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: We're going to have to leave it at that.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: Linda.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Get down on your knees in the morning, right, open yourself up, say yes, let it be done to me according to your will, use every temptation that comes your way as an invitation to prayer and then finally take that grace and then turn around and be wonderful to your spouse, your friend, the store clerk, the next person you see.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: Hey, god bless you.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: Thanks for being with us everybody.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: Thanks, linda.
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: Thanks, Jack.