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#456 A World at War; The Rightful King Has Landed · Claymore: Become Who You Are

0:09
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Become who you Are podcast, the production of the John Paul 2 renewal center.
0:13
Speaker 1: I'm Jack Rigoranger, host.
0:15
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you're with me.
0:16
Speaker 1: Today's episode is titled A World at War and the rightful king has landed.
0:23
Speaker 1: You know, we live in a very disturbing time, right, even those with their, with their heads buried in the sand, oblivious to the darkness that surrounds them, they have a sense that something's going on.
0:33
Speaker 1: We see this in their reactions, their motions and the vitro that comes out.
0:38
Speaker 1: You know, watch the women at the view sometime, you know, I mean, it's just spewing vitro left and right.
0:43
Speaker 1: It's crazy.
0:44
Speaker 1: And the audience clapping like seals, you know, over, you know, things like killing our own children and trans rights and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
0:53
Speaker 1: You know we have a president that the free world who can't find his way on stage.
0:58
Speaker 1: I mean, it's, it's, it's laughable that that we can actually elect someone to the present that just, you know, has this moral vacuum in his heart, has, has, no, he's just getting blown around by the spirit of the age.
1:10
Speaker 1: And then, if you look to the church, you know you have Pope Francis of the Vatican just spewing confusion.
1:16
Speaker 1: You can't get any more confusion than what's coming out of them.
1:20
Speaker 1: And so we're in a battle, isn't it?
1:22
Speaker 1: You know, in these forces of good and evil and this is this this battle is embedded on all sides of us.
1:29
Speaker 1: So it's important for us to be able to understand and to discern what's going on ourselves, to cut through the noise and the darkness, the lies, the falsehoods, and find a personal solution to evil.
1:41
Speaker 1: For the solution doesn't begin with politics, it's always, always, always begins with the individual human heart, and the individual human heart that that hears Jesus turning around to the, to John the Baptist, two disciples in the first chapter of John, and he turns to them and says what do you seek?
2:02
Speaker 1: What are you looking for?
2:04
Speaker 1: And they said to him rabbi, which means teacher, where are you staying?
2:07
Speaker 1: They're interested, right?
2:09
Speaker 1: And he just turns to them and he says Come and see, come and see, come and see the person, come and see the person.
2:16
Speaker 1: This is a, you know.
2:18
Speaker 1: It comes down to your individual human heart and the answer is this encounter with this individual person.
2:24
Speaker 1: You can't make this up, you know, it's amazing, awe and wonder of this battle that we came into.
2:30
Speaker 1: And then Jesus helps us answer those big questions, doesn't he?
2:34
Speaker 1: You know who are you?
2:35
Speaker 1: Who am I?
2:36
Speaker 1: What's the meaning of purpose to life?
2:38
Speaker 1: Why this restlessness in my heart?
2:40
Speaker 1: Why were we created male and female?
2:42
Speaker 1: How do I find, in the midst of all this craziness, joy, peace, even happiness?
2:47
Speaker 1: And what about love?
2:49
Speaker 1: Huh, it all comes down to that one word love, the God of love, who created you in love, by love and for love and for the purpose of of loving others.
2:58
Speaker 1: In this world of hatred and violence and vitro, you know, we have to be able to discern what love is, what truth is.
3:05
Speaker 1: Well, how do we do all that?
3:07
Speaker 1: Ah, buckle up and get ready for the rest of today's episode.
3:21
Speaker 1: My good friend CS Lewis in Mayor Christianity, in a chapter he titled the Invasion, said this One of the things that surprised me when I first read the New Testament seriously was that it talks so much about a dark power in the universe, a mighty evil spirit who was held to be the power behind death and disease and sin.
3:43
Speaker 1: The difference is that Christianity thinks this dark power was created God and it was created good and something went wrong.
3:51
Speaker 1: Christianity agrees that this universe is at war, but it does not think this war is between independent powers, like dualism would say.
4:01
Speaker 1: It thinks it's a civil war, a rebellion, and that we are living in a part of the universe occupied by the rebel, occupied by this evil force.
4:12
Speaker 1: When we look around the world, isn't that what we see?
4:14
Speaker 1: He goes on to say this this is enemy occupied territory.
4:19
Speaker 1: That is what this world is.
4:21
Speaker 1: Christianity is the story about how the rightful king has landed you might say, landed in disguise and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.
4:32
Speaker 1: When you go to church, you are really listening into the secret wireless from our friends.
4:37
Speaker 1: That is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going.
4:41
Speaker 1: He does it by playing on our conceit and our laziness and our intellectual snobbery.
4:48
Speaker 1: I know someone will ask me do you really mean, at this time of day, to reintroduce our old friend, the devil hoofs and horns at all?
4:56
Speaker 1: Well, what the time of day has to do with it?
5:00
Speaker 1: I do not know and I am not particular about the hoofs and the horns, but in other aspects my answer is yes, I do.
5:07
Speaker 1: I do not claim to know anything about his personal appearance.
5:11
Speaker 1: If anybody really wants to know him better, I would say to that person don't worry, if you really want to you will.
5:18
Speaker 1: Whether you'll like it when you do, is another question.
5:23
Speaker 1: This battle between good and evil that you see out in the world always begins in the battle of the individual human heart.
5:29
Speaker 1: A body and a soul is what we are made of, and a body and a soul our default position, born into this world at war, is sin and death.
5:39
Speaker 1: That's just the reality.
5:41
Speaker 1: Sin is clear as a potato, gk Chesterton would say, on a plate in front of you, and that extends out to this evil that we see in the world.
5:49
Speaker 1: And death that's by TikTok, tiktok.
5:54
Speaker 1: This is a reality for all of us.
5:56
Speaker 1: This is the great, definitive justice that God has planned.
6:00
Speaker 1: In a way, nobody really wants to die.
6:04
Speaker 1: My grandmother, iris, she was just incredibly beautiful redhead and as she was getting ready to die at the age of 93, she said Jackie.
6:16
Speaker 1: She said I'm not afraid to die, I just would rather not be there when it happened.
6:20
Speaker 1: And isn't that the truth?
6:23
Speaker 1: There's something really tragic about the separation of body and soul, the death, and we know that.
6:28
Speaker 1: And so what's the answer to that?
6:31
Speaker 1: Well, only the body and the soul, plus supernatural grace, plus the Holy Spirit infused in us.
6:38
Speaker 1: This is the only thing that breeds life back into us, that we can overcome sin in our own hearts and also ultimate death.
6:47
Speaker 1: Because when we have a body and a soul filled with natural grace, supernatural grace, this takes us back to the beginning before sin that I've talked about so often, that John Paul's in the beginning it was not so before sin.
7:02
Speaker 1: So this gives us this filled with supernatural grace, this wow that's breed, backed into us by the passion, death and resurrection and ascension into heaven of Jesus Christ, gives us the potential listen to this the potential for human freedom, the potential for human flourishing.
7:21
Speaker 1: And now what happens with that potential?
7:23
Speaker 1: Now we have to act and this is really a battle of the human heart.
7:28
Speaker 1: Either I reject God, reject that supernatural grace, and just go along, get blown around by the spirit of the age and actually, you know, just grabbed by evil itself.
7:37
Speaker 1: This is a very powerful force or or I actually understand the power of God within my heart but I don't do good and I will also fall through apathy, laziness etc.
7:50
Speaker 1: Into evil.
7:52
Speaker 1: So if there's no grace in my life, for an example, and I choose to act in evil, I do evil, say abortions, theft, violence, vitro, whatever it is I become evil, I am evil, I'm an evil person.
8:10
Speaker 1: Now, if I choose to act and choose the good, I do good things into the world, I become good, I am good.
8:20
Speaker 1: So if understanding my true identity is a child of God, I open myself to his love, I'm filled with grace in the Holy Spirit, life, st Paul would say.
8:31
Speaker 1: In the Spirit, I accept the redemption of Jesus Christ Again, the rightful King who came back, you know, behind enemy lines, to restore us, to breed, back into us in this act of oblation to the Father, his sacrifice.
8:45
Speaker 1: He chooses don't forget our flesh.
8:46
Speaker 1: He chooses humanity, in the sense he chooses all of us and unites us in his body, offers the sacrifice to God and then, at the mass, what does he do?
8:56
Speaker 1: He pours this out.
8:57
Speaker 1: This is my body given for you, pours this out so that we can unite ourselves in one flesh in the Eucharist.
9:04
Speaker 1: This is powerful, so that we have the power to do good.
9:07
Speaker 1: I become good, I am good.
9:09
Speaker 1: This is the solution to our lives, to our individual lives, to our marriages.
9:14
Speaker 1: This is the secret to happiness, is to be filled with divine life and love and to become divine life and love in the world.
9:21
Speaker 1: In this way, we witness, then to the redemption of the body, while still waiting, of course, its full glorification, its ultimate consummation, the beatific vision.
9:33
Speaker 1: We're not quite there yet.
9:35
Speaker 1: So we live in this tension, in this world, don't we of already, but not yet.
9:39
Speaker 1: That's why St Paul would say you know, I would really like to get out of here, I'd like to go, but God keeps me here because I have to spread the gospel.
9:48
Speaker 1: There's past Sunday's readings and I'm going to touch on them.
9:51
Speaker 1: Talk about all of this.
9:53
Speaker 1: If the first reading is from Job, and you'll hear of this restlessness and this drudgery of life and trying to find meaning.
10:01
Speaker 1: And then we'll go to St Paul quickly, and again he's called to preach the gospel to us, and then to the gospel of Mark, and you hear Jesus, you know, you know going about, and he's healing the sick.
10:13
Speaker 1: But he's also what he's driving out demons, the very reality of that.
10:19
Speaker 1: Sometimes we think Jesus is driving out demons.
10:21
Speaker 1: We say, ah, you know, they probably had some psychological problem that Jesus was healing.
10:25
Speaker 1: You know, that may be true, but when he says he's healing demons, he's healing demons.
10:31
Speaker 1: You know, don't forget, before Jesus came into the world, you know, evil just had its run.
10:36
Speaker 1: Now evil has its run today, but it has its run because we've rejected Christ, you know.
10:43
Speaker 1: But the King, the rightful King, has landed and it's up to us which way we want to go.
10:48
Speaker 1: Here we all stand before the tree of the knowledge and good and evil.
10:50
Speaker 1: So let's put ourselves with Job now.
10:53
Speaker 1: This is from the Old Testament, of course, and here's Job with his restless heart.
10:58
Speaker 1: And Job is just a fascinating book.
11:00
Speaker 1: It's a long book, so he writes this in from Sunday's first reading again.
11:06
Speaker 1: This is Job, chapter 7.
11:08
Speaker 1: Is not man's life on earth a drudgery?
11:11
Speaker 1: Are not his days those of hirelings?
11:13
Speaker 1: He is a slave who longs for the shade, a hireling who waits for his wages.
11:19
Speaker 1: So I have been assigned months of misery, and troubled nights have been allotted to me.
11:24
Speaker 1: If in bed, I say when shall I rise?
11:27
Speaker 1: And then the night drags on, I'm filled with restlessness until the dawn.
11:32
Speaker 1: My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle.
11:35
Speaker 1: They come to an end without hope.
11:37
Speaker 1: Remember that my life is like the wind.
11:39
Speaker 1: I shall not see happiness again, the Word of the Lord.
11:44
Speaker 1: Here we hear that restlessness in Job's heart, and it's for all of us, don't we have this restlessness?
11:50
Speaker 1: And there's this tension again that we live in because we sense.
11:55
Speaker 1: John Paul would say, we have this echo in our heart of what it was like before sin.
11:59
Speaker 1: It's instilled in all of us that God plants that echo in our heart and natural law that's been given to us.
12:06
Speaker 1: We know what's good, we know what's evil, we know the truth, but we don't sit in the truth, we don't ask God to come into our hearts anymore.
12:16
Speaker 1: And so St Paul is going to say in the first reading I mean the second reading, which is the first letter of St Paul to the Corinthians, this starts in chapter 9.
12:26
Speaker 1: And he's talking about you know, don't forget that St Paul was persecuting Christians.
12:32
Speaker 1: He gets knocked from the horse.
12:33
Speaker 1: He has an encounter with Jesus Christ that changes everything.
12:37
Speaker 1: And now he says his brothers and sisters, if I preach the gospel, there is no reason for me to boast, for an obligation has been imposed on me and woe to me if I do not preach it.
12:48
Speaker 1: And then he goes on.
12:49
Speaker 1: Although I am free to regard in regard to all, I have made myself a slave to also as to win over as many as possible.
12:56
Speaker 1: To the week I have become weak.
12:58
Speaker 1: To win over the week, I have become all things to all to save at least some.
13:04
Speaker 1: All this I do for the sake of the gospel, so that I too may have a share in it.
13:08
Speaker 1: He's been called, he's been called.
13:11
Speaker 1: He feels this redemption that God came.
13:14
Speaker 1: He changed this heart and now he says I have an obligation to do this because I want to share in it.
13:20
Speaker 1: He said, you know.
13:22
Speaker 1: Basically, jesus said look it, you know you want to make up for.
13:25
Speaker 1: You know your own sins, you know the evil in your own heart.
13:28
Speaker 1: I'm going to change your heart, but then you have to act, like I said in the beginning.
13:32
Speaker 1: So again, body and his soul, he was filled in with good, the grace and the power of the redemption of Jesus Christ, filled with the Holy Spirit.
13:40
Speaker 1: And now he has to act, he has to do good.
13:42
Speaker 1: And this is what he's sensing, even though he's like, oh my gosh, I'd like to get out of here.
13:47
Speaker 1: You know, enough is enough.
13:48
Speaker 1: I want to see that be a tific vision.
13:50
Speaker 1: But God has given him an assignment, he's given us all an assignment.
13:54
Speaker 1: See, this is our time to act, to do the good, to bring the gospel of life back into this world.
14:00
Speaker 1: And as we look around the world, we, you know there's so many people, I know, that sense evil now in the world and are coming to the understanding of God.
14:09
Speaker 1: It's amazing because we, we, we just we're.
14:12
Speaker 1: We're face to face with evil and sin and the power pressing down on us and we seek this something more in our hearts, this is in our own hearts.
14:20
Speaker 1: And so a reading from the Holy Gospel, according to Mark.
14:24
Speaker 1: This is from chapter one on leaving the synagogue, jesus entered the house of Simon and Andrew with James and John.
14:30
Speaker 1: Since mother-in-law lay sick with a fever, they immediately told him about her.
14:36
Speaker 1: He approached, grabbed her hand and helped her up.
14:38
Speaker 1: Then the fever left her and she waited on them.
14:42
Speaker 1: When it was evening, after sunset, they brought to him all who were ill or possessed by demons.
14:48
Speaker 1: The whole town was gathered at the door.
14:50
Speaker 1: Listen to this those who were ill or possessed by demons.
14:55
Speaker 1: The whole town was gathered again at the door.
14:58
Speaker 1: He cured many who were sick with various diseases and he drove out many demons, not permitting them to speak because they knew him.
15:06
Speaker 1: Not permitting those demons to speak because they knew him.
15:10
Speaker 1: Jesus wasn't, you know, ready at various times to to reveal, to fully reveal himself to people.
15:17
Speaker 1: He had his, he had his reasons.
15:18
Speaker 1: Rising very early before dawn he, jesus, left and went off to a deserted place where he prayed this, you see, in Jesus, over and over and over again, even sensing into his own heart he needed to be filled in order for him to act and go out into the world.
15:34
Speaker 1: He had to receive, he had to receive, he had to receive.
15:36
Speaker 1: This is prayer, where, where God touches our hearts on a very deep level.
15:42
Speaker 1: This is where we sit and silence and pray.
15:45
Speaker 1: Jesus did this himself, and then Simon and those who were with him pursued Jesus and, on finding him, said everyone is looking for you.
15:52
Speaker 1: He told them, let us go to the nearby villages that I may preach there also for this purpose I have come.
15:59
Speaker 1: So he went into their synagogues, preaching and driving out demons throughout the whole of Galilee.
16:06
Speaker 1: The gospel of the Lord.
16:08
Speaker 1: It's amazing, right?
16:10
Speaker 1: So this is the battle and this is the rightful King who goes in, who does what he comes in in in love and truth, truth and love.
16:18
Speaker 1: Whenever you read Jesus, you know it's amazing what happens to your heart.
16:22
Speaker 1: You're going to feel a couple different things sometimes, sometimes in, in, in, in.
16:27
Speaker 1: I see this in people that are, that are just filled with evil.
16:30
Speaker 1: They'll look at the gospel.
16:31
Speaker 1: They're not going to even touch that, they're just repulsed by it.
16:35
Speaker 1: And you just say, whoa, this is an evil force.
16:39
Speaker 1: You know, body and the soul, the fault position is sin and death.
16:42
Speaker 1: Unless they're reconciled to this, this is their eternal judgment.
16:46
Speaker 1: They, they, they.
16:46
Speaker 1: You choose this on your own, can you imagine?
16:49
Speaker 1: And then you do evil things in the world.
16:52
Speaker 1: Just watch this again.
16:53
Speaker 1: We, you know, let's, let's kill our own children in mass and if they make it out of the womb, let's render them sterile with these gender ideologies.
17:01
Speaker 1: You know, it's amazing the pornography that we're pushing on these kids.
17:05
Speaker 1: It's just injustice.
17:07
Speaker 1: Then the marriages that are unraveling and et cetera, et cetera.
17:10
Speaker 1: You know, all this stuff, right, goes all the way up to the wars that we're getting into now and again in the confusion coming out of the church.
17:16
Speaker 1: The evil is accelerating.
17:18
Speaker 1: We know this.
17:19
Speaker 1: And so in the meditation from Sunday was Father Louis Boyer.
17:24
Speaker 1: He was a French priest.
17:26
Speaker 1: He died in 2004.
17:27
Speaker 1: So not that long ago.
17:28
Speaker 1: And he in this meditation I'm going to read you part of it recognizing our need for Christ's healing.
17:35
Speaker 1: And in there he says the divine word shows us what we're involved in.
17:39
Speaker 1: Whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not, we are the prisoners of nefarious powers that transcend us.
17:46
Speaker 1: They have gained possession of us through the cowardice and compromises which sin involves and whose significance we had not suspected, or rather, before we had even begun to suspect it.
18:00
Speaker 1: We are already the stake in our struggle between the Creator Himself to rescue us from this slavery and to lead us into the glorious freedom of His children.
18:12
Speaker 1: Again, what he's saying here is that these nefarious powers are here.
18:19
Speaker 1: We came into the story, all of us were born into a story, and this is a story between good and evil.
18:24
Speaker 1: But when given over with no choice let's just say we don't choose God then we're given over to this evil force.
18:32
Speaker 1: We just become one with evil.
18:33
Speaker 1: That's just the body and the soul.
18:35
Speaker 1: The false position is sin and death.
18:37
Speaker 1: Now Jesus, the rightful King, has landed.
18:40
Speaker 1: And what does he do?
18:41
Speaker 1: He understands and this is what Father Boyet says, we understand that the stake in this struggle, the stake, what's the stake?
18:50
Speaker 1: What's the prize?
18:51
Speaker 1: And the struggle between the Creator and this evil force, it's us, it's you, it's me, we are the stake.
18:58
Speaker 1: So the stake and the struggle began by the Creator Himself to rescue us from this slavery.
19:05
Speaker 1: He comes into the world to rescue us from this slavery what's that slavery?
19:08
Speaker 1: Again?
19:09
Speaker 1: Sin and death and lead us into the glorious freedom of His children.
19:14
Speaker 1: Remember you, filled with grace, you have the potential for human freedom, potential for human flourishing, and then you have to act right, father Boyet says.
19:25
Speaker 1: Now our true position has been revealed to us for the first time in its full scope, and a crucial question that arises is whether or not, now that we know we are the stake, we're the prize in this battle fought by Christ on our behalf and continued by the Church to our own day.
19:40
Speaker 1: We are going to make it our own.
19:43
Speaker 1: We're going to take up the cross.
19:45
Speaker 1: This is why adopting the Christian faith means taking up the cross.
19:49
Speaker 1: We take up the cross of Christ and, in a sense, the Crusaders.
19:53
Speaker 1: You know, when we read about the Crusaders, they put this cross on their shields.
20:00
Speaker 1: They understood the battle between good and evil, and so this means, like in Paul, chapter 6, we have to arm ourselves with the appropriate arms, with the gospel, with prayer, the rosary mass, the sacraments, and because it's our job to walk into the story and do our little part with our freedom to declare the gospel and in this way, just like Saint Paul, we're called to do this because we have to bring the good into the world.
20:26
Speaker 1: This is why we're created to be filled with divine life and love and then to become life and love in the world and liberate this whole universe.
20:34
Speaker 1: The whole universe is hinged on that cross, that crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and across that act of oblation to the Father.
20:43
Speaker 1: Then he fills us and then we're to go out and be those lights in the world.
20:47
Speaker 1: We can hear the church, like the Apostle, showing us this prize, as she groans right with this ineffable size and suffers to pangs, as it were, like a final birthing.
20:58
Speaker 1: This is that was from Saint Paul and Romans.
21:01
Speaker 1: And then what happens?
21:03
Speaker 1: This new creature who is us, because of redemption, because of grace, because of forgiveness.
21:09
Speaker 1: We are no longer slaves of evil, but we've become the living body of Christ, we've become the temple of the Holy Spirit.
21:17
Speaker 1: This is crossing the bridge, opening the smaller story of your life to the transformational power of connection, and this changes everything.
21:27
Speaker 1: When we do this, when we open our hearts to Jesus Christ, it's a power.
21:31
Speaker 1: There's no way, you know, it's a story that you can't believe that the God of the universe knows who you are, created you in love, by love and for love, and came into the world.
21:42
Speaker 1: And if you were the only person, who would come into the world to rescue you?
21:46
Speaker 1: And so we can tell this story to our brothers and sisters who were in so much pain?
21:50
Speaker 1: Let me give you an example A friend of mine, his wife had died and feeling this anxiety and grief, and he went on medication.
22:04
Speaker 1: He was taken for anxiety, but there were so many unwanted side effects and he wanted to get off the meds.
22:11
Speaker 1: And when he came off him, though, he was so anxious, so nervous, so grief-stricken, you know, like just depressing, almost like the first reading in Job, and he needed to do something.
22:24
Speaker 1: He couldn't even sleep.
22:25
Speaker 1: After I talked to him, after three or four days with no sleep, he was just at the end of his rope and looked at me and asked me is there a solution?
22:38
Speaker 1: And I told him to pray the rosary, and I had to show him how to pray the rosary.
22:43
Speaker 1: You know many, many people that even grew up as a Catholic like this young, when he was a young man, did walked away from the church many, many, many years ago, I think about 30 or 40 years ago, and stopped going to church and so just showed him how to pray the rosary.
22:58
Speaker 1: And when I did, he said to me he goes, you're serious, aren't you?
23:03
Speaker 1: Do you really think this is going to help?
23:05
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, I really do.
23:08
Speaker 1: And so, anyways, I saw him some days later and he was well rested.
23:11
Speaker 1: He says you won't believe what happened.
23:13
Speaker 1: He goes as I'm reading the rose, as I'm saying praying the rosary, he said.
23:18
Speaker 1: He said a piece came over me and he said I fell asleep.
23:22
Speaker 1: And then I woke up an hour or two later and the rosary was still in my hand, right where I left off, and I just started to continue.
23:29
Speaker 1: And a little while later, instead of my mind going all over like it had been doing for days and days and weeks and weeks and months and months, he said it settled down again when I was meditating on the Gospels and praying to our Blessed Mother, and the gift came back and I would drift off to sleep.
23:45
Speaker 1: The second day I fell asleep after a decade or two and he said I slept for eight hours.
23:52
Speaker 1: It's amazing how much better I feel.
23:55
Speaker 1: But but not only that some of the anxiety, his has gone away and even some of the grief has dissipated.
24:03
Speaker 1: And Then I had to go on.
24:05
Speaker 1: I said, no, you need to go on.
24:08
Speaker 1: He says what do you mean more than the rosary?
24:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, you need to go to confession and then receive the Eucharist.
24:13
Speaker 1: You have to, you know.
24:15
Speaker 1: You know Jesus with the divine mercy.
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Speaker 1: He's on the cross and what came out?
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Speaker 1: Water and blood.
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Speaker 1: Well, the water is baptism, and then confession to wash us.
24:24
Speaker 1: To wash us.
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Speaker 1: We need this washing and then we receive him in the Eucharist to become one flesh with God.
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Speaker 1: This is to be filled with divine life and love.
24:32
Speaker 1: You're serious again, aren't you?
24:35
Speaker 1: Do you really think this is gonna help?
24:37
Speaker 1: Yep, I know that this cradle Catholic, who had stopped going 40 years ago, was thirsting, was feeling this echo, was feeling like Job did, and then St Paul comes in and I just becomea Little tiny, little tiny st Paul to him, you know, bringing the gospel into his life.
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Speaker 1: This is what we're all called to do.
24:57
Speaker 1: You know, most of us are living like cut flowers, disconnected from the source of life, and we spend our time anxiously worrying about how we're gonna live and Desperately trying to fill the infinite desires of our heart with finite things.
25:10
Speaker 1: Looking, looking, looking, looking.
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Speaker 1: As John Eldridge wrote, human beings are ravenous.
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Speaker 1: A Famished craving for life haunts every person.
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Speaker 1: We crave fullness.
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Speaker 1: It's in our design.
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Speaker 1: We are created for unceasing happiness and joy in life, but ever since we lost Eden we have never known a day of total fullness.
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Speaker 1: We are never filled in any lasting way.
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Speaker 1: Human beings are like cut flowers we appear to be well, but we're cut off the vine and we become ravenous.
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Speaker 1: Until we return to God and actually Abide in him, until we experience God as our daily source of life, we are desperate creatures, lustful creatures, you know.
25:51
Speaker 1: We look to marriage or the hope of marriage, a child, our work, some food or drink or adventure, the next dinner out, the new car, anything to touch that ache inside of us.
26:01
Speaker 1: We are ravenous things.
26:03
Speaker 1: That is why Jesus warned us about consuming lust.
26:08
Speaker 1: Saint Augustine describes it like this our hearts are restless, lord, until they rest in you.
26:14
Speaker 1: Saint Augustine had the same story.
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Speaker 1: Psalm 42 states like the deer that yearns for running streams, so my soul longs for you, oh God.
26:24
Speaker 1: These are timeless truths that come down to us.
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Speaker 1: How do I know?
26:27
Speaker 1: You have to step into the story and just like when Jesus was healing people.
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Speaker 1: He actually healed them.
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Speaker 1: So they, they felt this in their bodies.
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Speaker 1: But what he was underneath, what he was always looking for, you see, would say now go out and sin no more.
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Speaker 1: He was healing the body, soul, so that you were open to grace, on to receive grace.
26:46
Speaker 1: This is what Jesus was always talking about.
26:48
Speaker 1: So we see this manifested in people.
26:51
Speaker 1: People are insane today.
26:53
Speaker 1: They're going insane.
26:54
Speaker 1: You see some of these watch the Libs of tic-tac, some of the videos from some of these these poor young people that are so confused about their identities and stuff.
27:02
Speaker 1: They're just going off the rails.
27:05
Speaker 1: Psychiatrists and author dr Gerald may begins his book addiction and grace this way after 20 years of listening to the yearnings of people's hearts, I in can.
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Speaker 1: I am convinced that all human beings have an inborn desire for God.
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Speaker 1: Whether we are consciously religious or not, this desire is our deepest longing and our most precious treasure.
27:25
Speaker 1: Carl Jung, the famous father of psychoanalysis, said among all my patients in the second half of life, that is to say over the age of 35.
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Speaker 1: There has not been one whose problem in the last resort Was not that of finding a religious outlook on their lives.
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Speaker 1: It is safe to say that every one of my patients fell ill Because he had lost that which the living religions of every age had given to their followers, and not one of my patients has really been healed who did not regain his religious outlook.
27:58
Speaker 1: That's an incredible saying, you know I, you know.
28:01
Speaker 1: I studied in psychology 101, huh Freud and Carl Jung.
28:05
Speaker 1: I don't remember that from there, huh, but that's in his book, modern man in search of his soul.
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Speaker 1: Finally, dr Carl, manager the dominant figure in American psychiatry for six decades, said that if he could convince patients in psychiatric hospitals that their sins were forgiven, 75% of them could walk out the next day.
28:27
Speaker 1: It's amazing, huh.
28:28
Speaker 1: It makes us mentally ill.
28:31
Speaker 1: It seems that we should have all caught on to this cosmic story by now good versus evil, light versus darkness, love versus lust and seek the better way that's been revealed to us.
28:40
Speaker 1: Yet somehow we miss the larger story and we get caught up in that much smaller one of our own making.
28:46
Speaker 1: And the result is always the same a broken, anxious heart.
28:50
Speaker 1: And in the midst of our brokenness and we're all broken in one way or another a Along come some very good news the path to healing which leads to love and happiness can be found.
29:01
Speaker 1: That path is a narrow road.
29:04
Speaker 1: I call it crossing the bridge.
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Speaker 1: Sometimes the idea is it's opening the smaller story of your life to the transformational power of connection With Jesus Christ, our yes to him, our fiat.
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Speaker 1: It changes everything.
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Speaker 1: It just does you walk into the store.
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Speaker 1: You can't make this up, but it's.
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Speaker 1: The truth of reality is when we encounter Jesus Christ in our heart.
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Speaker 1: It's the only way to really understand this.
29:27
Speaker 1: This is not information.
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Speaker 1: This is the DNA that flows within us, that were created in love, by love and for love, and we were created filled with divine life and love.
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Speaker 1: Sin was our choice to reject God.
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Speaker 1: We were disconnected.
29:42
Speaker 1: So it's the bottom line.
29:43
Speaker 1: Sin separated us from that tree of life, and so our default position, because we breathe out that divine life and love.
29:51
Speaker 1: So again, it's body, soul.
29:53
Speaker 1: We breathe this out and the fall position is sin and death, and it'll drive you crazy.
29:58
Speaker 1: As dr Minutcher said, we will go insane.
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Speaker 1: It's though we're searching for the truth, and just like Job, you know, in this restlessness, and it's like we stand at the bank of a deep, fast-moving river that we cannot cross, knowing that eternal life is on the other side, but our human brokenness won't allow us to reach it.
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Speaker 1: We need a bridge over that abyss.
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Speaker 1: We need to take that narrow gate and leads to a bridge.
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Speaker 1: Well, that bridge is the crucifix, and In St Catherine of Siena's dialogue with God the father, he describes his son as this living bridge.
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Speaker 1: This way, wherefore I have told you, he says to st Catherine of Siena that I have made a bridge of my word, my only begotten son.
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Speaker 1: And this is the truth.
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Speaker 1: I wish that you, my children, should know that the road was broken by the sin and disobedience of Adam in Such a way that no one could arrive at eternal life.
30:53
Speaker 1: This truth, that is, that I have created man in my own image and likeness in order that he might have Eternal life and might partake of me and taste my supreme and eternal sweetness and goodness.
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Speaker 1: But after sin had closed heaven and bolted the doors of mercy, the soul of man produced thorns and prickly brambles and my creature found himself Rebellion against himself.
31:20
Speaker 1: Listen to this when we rejected God this is what he's saying.
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Speaker 1: It's not like you just were rebelling against God my creature frowned in himself Rebellion against himself.
31:33
Speaker 1: We turn against ourselves, not only in our own hearts.
31:36
Speaker 1: You know this body, soul, anguish that we feel inside, but we start to turn against one another, our brothers and sisters.
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Speaker 1: This is the evil that's in the world.
31:44
Speaker 1: Huh, the father went on to say this, the Saint Catherine and the flesh immediately began to war against the spirit, and this is spirit with a capital S.
31:54
Speaker 1: So the Holy Spirit that filled this up, we breathe out and he says and losing the state of innocence, losing the state of innocence became a foul animal and all created things rebelled against man, whereas they would have been obedient to him had he remained in the state in which I placed him.
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Speaker 1: He, not remaining therein, transgress my obedience and mirrored it.
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Speaker 1: Eternal death and soul and body.
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Speaker 1: See, we breathe out.
32:26
Speaker 1: We've rejected divine life and love.
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Speaker 1: Eternal life and love.
32:30
Speaker 1: This was our decision, adam and Eve's right.
32:33
Speaker 1: Well, we, we inherited this.
32:35
Speaker 1: So when we came into the world, we were exploding on the stage of this world, we were in this battle again.
32:40
Speaker 1: But Christ, jesus, christ, the rightful king, had landed in there.
32:44
Speaker 1: He had he had, he had broken it, he had broken through, he had taken on sin and death, he had overcome sin and death, he had restored that tree of life and it's open to us.
32:54
Speaker 1: But we stand at that bank.
32:55
Speaker 1: We have to decide.
32:56
Speaker 1: Yes, you can't make this story up.
32:57
Speaker 1: It's incredible.
32:58
Speaker 1: They all.
32:59
Speaker 1: I wonder what it means to be a human being.
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Speaker 1: God the father went on to say this and as soon as he had sinned in in, man hits in a tempest.
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Speaker 1: Tempestuous flood arose which ever buffets him with its waves, bringing him weariness and trouble from himself.
33:18
Speaker 1: The devil in the world, everyone was was drowned in a flood because no one with his own justice alone Could arrive at eternal life.
33:28
Speaker 1: It was therefore necessary to join human nature with the height of my nature, the eternal Deity, so that it might be sufficient to satisfy for the whole human race, so that human nature should sustain the punishment and that the divine nature, unite it with the human should make acceptable the sacrifice of my only son.
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Speaker 1: That sacrifice was offered to me to take death from you and to give you life.
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Speaker 1: So, the height of the divinity, humble to the earth and join with your humanity, and made the bridge and reformed the road.
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Speaker 1: This is God, the father, speaking.
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Speaker 1: Why was this done?
34:08
Speaker 1: He said, in order that man might come to his true happiness with the angels, and Observe that it's not enough, in order that you should have life.
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Speaker 1: My son should have made you this bridge, unless you walk there on.
34:23
Speaker 1: Do you see what he's saying here?
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Speaker 1: Look at, it's not enough that my son should have made the sacrifice that he should make this bridge.
34:31
Speaker 1: It's not enough, you have to walk on it.
34:34
Speaker 1: In other words, humanity has been redeemed.
34:36
Speaker 1: That's collective, that's offered to everybody, but you have to accept it.
34:41
Speaker 1: See, salvation is Individual, saying Augustine would say that God, who created you without you, will not redeem you, will not save you without you.
34:51
Speaker 1: See, each individual human heart has to say yes and then bring this goodness into the world.
34:58
Speaker 1: Jesus didn't come for sin management.
35:00
Speaker 1: Here's the thing.
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Speaker 1: He came with real power to heal.
35:02
Speaker 1: We heard that from the gospel today, enrollments 811 he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies, to his spirit who dwells in you.
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Speaker 1: This is our story.
35:14
Speaker 1: This is the now, for eternal life is lived at this moment, the moment we are exploded onto the stage.
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Speaker 1: We are eternal beings, eternal, eternal present.
35:25
Speaker 1: This very moment is eternity.
35:27
Speaker 1: We begin to live a resurrected life now.
35:31
Speaker 1: Eternity doesn't mean tomorrow.
35:33
Speaker 1: Eternity means forever.
35:36
Speaker 1: Saint Catherine of Siena said be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.
35:42
Speaker 1: Go to confession, receive the Eucharist, begin a life of prayer.
35:48
Speaker 1: The rosary read scripture every day.
35:51
Speaker 1: Just read scripture.
35:52
Speaker 1: Like I said for the Magnificat, even if you don't go to mass every morning, try to do that.
35:57
Speaker 1: But if you don't, at least read the scripture for that mass, for that day and you'll, you'll.
36:02
Speaker 1: You'll be reading Old Testament, psalms, new Testament, and there's a meditation in a Magnificat for 1995, a year.
36:09
Speaker 1: This is God's prescription to healing your anxious heart when you're searching for wisdom.
36:15
Speaker 1: Saying John of the cross said you have to become a person of love.
36:18
Speaker 1: Well, all you do all these things to be filled with divine life and love and to become a person of love and just like Jesus.
36:24
Speaker 1: The second thing is you have to sit in silence.
36:26
Speaker 1: You have to go to prayer.
36:28
Speaker 1: This connects your heart with God's heart.
36:30
Speaker 1: You have to do that.
36:31
Speaker 1: And then mortifications you have to fast, you have to do things that detach you from all of this, this stuff of the world that we came into the world.
36:41
Speaker 1: God gave us all these gifts, but we're not to worship them.
36:45
Speaker 1: Three quick things again.
36:46
Speaker 1: Before you look at that phone in the morning, fall to your knees and just you're at the tree, you're kneeling with our blessed mother and you say let it be done to me according to your will, let it be done to me according to your word.
36:59
Speaker 1: Then speak to me, huh.
37:00
Speaker 1: And then, as you're tempted throughout the day, temptations are not a sin.
37:04
Speaker 1: Temptations will come because the evil one wants to pull you down.
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Speaker 1: But God wants to liberate you, give you the potential for human flourishing, the potential for human freedom.
37:13
Speaker 1: But I have to say yes.
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Speaker 1: So every time I'm tempted, I say yes and I say like, like sister Faustina said, you know, jesus said to say Jesus, I trust in you.
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Speaker 1: So say that throughout the day, every time you're tempted, jesus, I trust in you.
37:29
Speaker 1: Third thing you have to go out and be that person of love in the world.
37:33
Speaker 1: You have to bring that goodness in the world.
37:34
Speaker 1: That means right away.
37:35
Speaker 1: First person you see the cashier, your wife, whatever it is Maybe it's a dog on the street.
37:41
Speaker 1: Be kind, start to bring this into the world.
37:45
Speaker 1: That's your three-step plan.
37:46
Speaker 1: Let me know how it goes.
37:48
Speaker 1: Call me in the morning.
37:49
Speaker 1: The great physician works on you.
37:51
Speaker 1: Let me know how it's going.
37:52
Speaker 1: God bless you.
37:52
Speaker 1: Thanks for being with me.
37:53
Speaker 1: Everybody, talk to you soon.
37:55
Speaker 1: Bye, bye, see you later, people you.