Latest / Claymore: Become Who You Are / #494 Dear Young People, "In You There Is Hope!"...but to discover it you must seek the truth more passionately than the generation that proceeded you

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#494 Dear Young People, "In You There Is Hope!"...but to discover it you must seek the truth more passionately than the generation that proceeded you · Claymore: Become Who You Are

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Become who you Are podcast, a production of the John Paul II Renewal Center.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: I'm Jack Riggert, your host.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Glad you're with me.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Dear young people, in you there is hope, but you must more passionately seek the truth than the generations that preceded you.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: This is a series that I started last week for young people.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: I'm going to continue it for a while, until I get everything out of my heart, my system, because there's an injustice being done to young people and I want to leave a legacy where we can reach them, speak the truth and really they are the hope of the world.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: And, if nothing else, when this catastrophe that's surrounding us today really comes down even harder on them than it is already, at least they'll know that they are the hope and that they can change, because there's something more powerful than the city of man that we see around us.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: It's the city of God and we wanna take them into that bigger story.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: So buckle up and get ready for today's episode.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: I don't spend a lot of time debating adults anymore.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: It just wastes my time.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: It's like talking to zombies.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: You know what a zombie is right?
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: A body without a soul who are looking what?
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: For the blood of people who are still fully alive to drink and who do they focus their bloodlust on today.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Alive to drink and who do they focus their bloodlust on today?
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: The focus is on young people, the most vulnerable and defenseless among us, who look to us to protect them, but too seldom do they find it.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: This is an injustice, and you know what?
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: I want to spend the rest of my life, my productive life, reaching out to them.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: They need to hear the truth and they need to know that there's a path to the truth.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Pope Benedict XVI said that when, at first, you take God out of your life, everything seems to go on as it did before.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: This is true, isn't it?
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: We skip Mass one week, then the next week, then COVID comes Mass one week, then the next week, then COVID comes.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: The weak shepherds who also have lost their faith.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Of course, they close down the Mass, just full of evil, and use the words of compassion and trying to keep us safe.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: What a scam.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Huh, don't pray for a day.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Then it ends up being don't pray for two days, three days.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Now I'm too busy with my divorce.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: I don't have time to pray anymore.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: I can barely keep up with everything right now.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: It's a mess.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: It's a good thing that abortion is a right, because I have to finish school.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: There's no way I could raise a child.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: It wouldn't be right to raise a child.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: I was told the vaccines were safe.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Why did I have a stroke?
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: You know, I know somebody that crashed his truck into a tree, no prior problems, had a stroke.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: What happened?
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Still doesn't know, has no clue.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: He's going to go, probably for his next booster shot.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: I still got COVID, he said, after they promised me I wouldn't.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: I almost died from COVID.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: Right, and does it dawn on you that the shots didn't work?
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: Nope, nope.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: What's happening?
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: I heard somebody the other day say out loud to a couple of us you know, my kid's school has so much violence this year, so many fights.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: There was a shooter that actually didn't come into the school but posted the people he was going to shoot.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: This is from a local school where I have relatives going to school and they caught him.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Probably give him a slap on the wrist and tell him to be nice, right, it's amazing what's going on today SEL, social emotional learning there's an expansion.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: I was at a local school board meeting SEL.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: They're going to expand.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Because of all these other things going on, we take God out.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: And now what are we doing?
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: We're bringing these amateur therapists in, you know, and they're going to deal with all this stuff.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Right, it's a recipe for disaster, of course.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: And what is SEL for, you know?
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: It's the whole child initiative.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: You know, we've expanded so that these amateur therapists can be a parent without worrying really about the child staying up all night with them with their nightmares, holding their heads when they're throwing up from the flu, taking them to the doctor, you know, worrying about them all.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: No, I can just deal with them here and get paid very handsomely for this and then bring my ideologies.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Ooh, I'm so smart, I'm going to have meaning and purpose for my life now.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: But because they no longer have a stable family, these children there are so many discipline issues, so many children growing up without fathers or both biological parents in their house, and we see a lot of bullying, lack of kindness.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: So let's bring in DEI SEL, crt to teach them what the family was supposed to teach them, of course, about how we treat people, about kindness.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: And what are all these these letters?
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: Do they divide us about kindness?
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: And what do all these letters do?
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: They divide us.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: They divide us into further and further and further spots where we all become oppressors and the oppressed victims looking for the one, the victimizer right, the one that's oppressing us.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: But everything, but everyone involves.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: You know, at the end of the day, it just involves a diabolical system of oppression, of pushing us down and pushing us apart.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: And the people in charge?
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Oh, we have control and power.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: And again, we're making a lot of money in the meantime, including all these people with their millions and millions of dollars funding all of these crazy alphabet things.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: The blind leading the blind, the blind leading the blind.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: You know, anybody in their 60s that's, 60 years old should have realized by now that we've all been lied to practically for our whole lives and since we rejected God ourselves, we don't know the truth if it hit us in the head like a two by four.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: You know, I hear I'm a good person.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: That's why I'm a good person.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: That's why I'm I'm behind abortion.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: Stand for women's rights.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: I'm a good person.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: That's why I'm behind the LGBTQIAS plus insanity, because love is love.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: That's what my priest even said the last time I was at church a few months ago.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: You know, he even blessed the same sex couples and Pope Francis told him to do it.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: And this bishop is present there and he's smiling, gives him a plaque for kindness and compassion, forgetting that it's the eternal life of the flock that we should be concerned with, not with their hedonistic, temporary pleasures like zombies as they could suck the life out of somebody else.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: That's really something.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: What's happening right?
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Two men in their 50s I just saw on X.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: They just bought a baby and they're celebrating and, of course, people are celebrating with them.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Here's a little baby, a tiny baby, taken from its mother and given to these two men in their 50s.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: You know, my stomach is sick.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: They're so far removed from the essence of who we are as people, as persons.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: They can take a little baby and they're so selfishly focused, right, so blind, that they don't see a problem with that To buy a baby.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: I bought a baby from a woman who gave me her newborn baby and now we're going to take that baby home.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: That baby will never know her mother, that baby will never be able to be breastfed by her mother, never feel her head on her mother's chest.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, the blind leading the blind and then the blind congratulating them.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: Huh, everybody's stuck, but truth wouldn't know it if it hit me in the head.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: Good, I'm a good person.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: Nah, only God is good.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Jesus said Don't fool yourself.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: But of course that's actually what so many people have been doing.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: At first, when you take God out of your life, everything seems to go on before, but then it doesn't.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: And then we have what?
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: The abortion, the abortion hoax, the border hoax, the energy hoax, the climate hoax, the trans hoax, the comprehensive sex porn in schools hoax, the COVID vaccine hoax, the Biden pandemic of the unvaccinated hoax.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: Remember what he said?
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: Huh, we're going to have a winter of darkness for the unvaccinated.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: You know, just pushing, pushing, pushing this so everybody can make their millions and millions of dollars.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: And people that voted for Biden I mean, this was a corrupt, morally corrupt individual and everybody knew it ahead of time.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: Just the platform he stood on alone, just to go out and murder babies and to render them sterile and affirm them in their mental illnesses.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: And how about Ukraine?
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: The Ukraine hoax?
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: The Biden is a Catholic hoax, the bishops are Catholic hoax.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: Inflation hoax there's no inflation, everything's fine.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: Huh, stolen small business tragedy.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: Take the weight of small business, break them down because they're independent.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: So we can go on and on and on and on with this.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: Couldn't we, you know?
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: Am I dreaming?
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Are we actually living under a totalitarian regime?
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: It's a soft totalitarianism that you don't see on the surface totally yet, but we sense it and it's building up, building up, building up.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: It's ready to explode.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Takes minor children from their parents who oppose gender transition services, and this was pushed down by the Biden administration.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Even in Montana, even in Montana, a state in Montana, the parents said this.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: They showed up at our home these are officials from Montana showed up at our home to service with papers to take our daughter out of our care.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: The mother of a 14-year-old girl said they told me the reason was that we were unable or refusing to provide medical care.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: That's just not true.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: The real reason, according to the parents, was that they opposed their daughter's desire to transition herself into a boy.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: What a crazy thing, huh?
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: We were told that letting her transition and live as a boy was in her therapeutic best interest.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: And because we weren't willing to follow that recommendation the court this is in Montana.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: That recommendation, the court, this is in Montana the CFS Child and Family Services got custody of our daughter for six months, the mother told the news outlet, our family has been destroyed over this.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: You know, the Montana family's tragedy is only one of the mind-numbing stories reported every single day by the hundreds, and they demonstrate the once-enduring values of our American society have been turned on our head and I'm not going to take the time to go through those, but they're just one after another, after another.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: The world is unraveling and that train wreck is just outside your door and more.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: It's already happened in your interior life.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: If you're blind to this and if you don't sense this sense, an urgency to seek the truth and go out and protect your children, then it's already happened to your interior heart, because it's impossible not to see otherwise.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: But the reason why so many people are oblivious to the evil outside?
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Because it mirrors the evil in their own hearts, and I'm sorry for saying that but it's true.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: It's like you're like the frog sitting in the proverbial pot.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: You didn't even notice that your heart had become evil.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Now our nation, with all its promises they gave such a good life to so many, is being taken away.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: And why should it not be taken away?
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: Because we did nothing Like zombies, we got lazy and apathetic.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: We were sucking on our ancestors' blood, their work, their tears, their sweat, but because we threw out God and we never understood, and still don't, between the link between God and the good life.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: When you disconnect from God, you can't have the good life, because people are not good inside.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Without God, evil will come into their hearts and it's selfishness at first, these little things that you start to do and you start to put up with evil.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: Abortion is a right.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: Same-sex marriage, marriage is meaningless.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Love is love without any meaning or purpose behind it.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: You know, alexander Sholtsonitsyn, the great Russian writer who spent eight years in the Soviet gulag, said the strength or weakness of a society depends more on the level of its spiritual life than on the level of its economic or industrial progress.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: If a nation's spiritual energies have been exhausted, he said, it will not be saved from collapse by any perfect government structure, by any industrial or business development.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: A tree with a rotten core cannot stand.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: When he was allowed to leave the USSR, he came to the United States, where he was given a hero's welcome, but he soon lost favor, as he pulled no punches and warned us what would happen if he continued down the path that we were on.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: He wrote in the Templeton addresses in the 70s more than half a century ago, he said while I was still a child.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia, and they said men have forgotten God.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: That's why this all happened.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: Since then I have spent well nigh 50 years, he said, working on the history of our revolution.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: In the process I've read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up and murdered 60 million of our own people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat men have forgotten God.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: That's why this all happened.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: Once he started to speak like this of course the world elites weren't going to be putting up with that I tried to really kind of shut him down, ostracize him.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: Ultimately, after the wall came down in 89, sometime after that, he went back and lived the rest of his life in Russia.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: And so the same thing happens, of course, to Jesus.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: Jesus comes into the story and of course they come after him, they want to kill him, right?
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: And Jesus said to them this is John 8, verse 34, truly, truly, I say to you everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: The slave does not continue in the house forever.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: The son continues forever.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: So if the son makes you free, you will be free.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: Indeed, I know that you are descendants of Abraham, yet you seek to kill me because my words find no place in you.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: I speak of what I have seen with my father and you do what you have heard from your father.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: Whoa, he's talking about Satan.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: This is our hearts.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: You know, this is what I was speaking about earlier.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: We, you know, we, slowly sit in that pot until we become evil.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: We allow evil.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: Jesus goes on to say if God were your father, you would love me, for I proceeded and came forth from God.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: I came, not of my own accord, but he said to me.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: But he said, but he sent me.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: Jesus says but he sent me.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Why do you not understand what I say?
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: It is because, listen to this.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: You cannot bear to hear my word.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: You are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: Now, don't forget.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: He's speaking to the religious leaders of those days, who think they're righteous, who think they're doing everything fine.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: These are the righteous of today.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: Huh, oh, it's a right.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: It's okay to kill children, it's okay to render them sterile, it's okay to mutilate their bodies, it's okay to show them porn in school.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: It's okay to sexually abuse them.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: No, no, it's not, no, it's not.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: And if you voted for a morally corrupt man like Joe Biden that's pushing on this this is on your heart, but you won't even know it.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: You'll be blind.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: He was a murderer from the beginning.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: It has nothing to do with the truth, because there's no truth in him.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and a father of lies.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: But Jesus says because I tell you the truth, you do not believe me.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: Which of you convicts me of sin?
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me?
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: He who is of God hears the words of God.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: The reason why you do not hear them is because you are not of God.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: And here's the danger.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: And this is why I want to speak to young people, because if you live like a zombie long enough, you no longer know that you're even a zombie.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: You're just looking.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: You're bloodless, looking for ways to fill those infinite desires of your heart in any way possible.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: You can become very, very evil.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: In chapter nine there's a small section there on spiritual blindness.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: Jesus had just cured a blind person and then now the religious leaders of the day are after him.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: Now, this blind person, they want to throw him out.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: It's amazing what happens when you're blind.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: Jesus heard that they had cast him out, the blind man.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: And having found him, it said do you believe in the Son of man?
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: Now here's Jesus coming into the story.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: He wants to reach out to young people today who were blind too, probably because their parents and the culture is pushing this on.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: They get to water down faith, the kumbaya sitting around in bonfires and playing games instead of actually hearing anything about the faith.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: And he answered.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: The blind man answered and who is he, sir?
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: That I may believe in him?
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: Jesus said to him you have seen him and it is he who speaks to you.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: He said, lord, I believe, and he worshiped him.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: Jesus said For judgment, I came into this world that those who do not see may see and that those who see may become blind.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: Those you know, the ones that see, may become blind, the ones that think they see the pride, the proud of the world.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: Now we have pride month, a whole month of pride.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: This is the first deadly sin, isn't it?
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: And we're waving these pride flags around.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: It's amazing how far we've fallen.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and they said to him are we also blind?
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: Jesus said to them if you were blind, you would have no guilt.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: In other words, if you didn't know, you wouldn't have any guilt.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: But now that you say we see and you see me, your guilt remains Truly, truly.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: I say to you your guilt remains Truly, truly.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: I say to you he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, that he is the door right but climbs in by another way, is a thief and robber.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: To him the gatekeeper opens.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: To the person that comes at the door with humility, the gatekeeper, who is Jesus, opens the door, opens the door of your heart, because he says this the sheep hear my voice and he calls out the sheep by name and leads them out.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: So again, jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you I am the door of the sheep.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: The thief, listen to this.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: He's talking about Satan.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: Again, satan is alive and well in this world.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: The thief only comes to steal, kill and destroy.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: I am the good shepherd.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: I know my own and my own know me, as the father knows me, and I know the father and I lay down my life for my sheep.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: What a difference between Jesus and all these people I mentioned earlier in this podcast, all for bloodlust, using and abusing people.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: Jesus does the opposite.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: He pours himself out.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: When you look at the crucifix, this is what you see.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: You see the heart of God, god who is love, who is truth, pouring himself, emptying himself, a total self-gift for us in humanity.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: Okay, in you there is hope, young people, in you there is hope, john Paul II said for you belong to the future, just as the future belongs to you, for hope is always linked to the future.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: It's the expectation of future good things.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: How could that be huh In this crazy world of evil?
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: Well, it is true, because God is in charge and ultimately that's where we're going.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: Delecti amici it's an apostolic letter that John Paul wrote to young people right before he started instituted World Youth Days in 1985.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: And Delecti Amici means dear friends, and he says in you there is hope.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: And again, for hope is always linked to the future.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: As a Christian virtue, it's linked to the expectations of those eternal good things which God has promised to man and in Jesus Christ.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: And at the same time, this hope, as both a Christian and a human virtue, is the expectation of good things which man will build using the talents given to him by providence.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: The things that we'll build now in the world build good things, good structures, good lives, and these are talents that God has given us.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: In this sense, the future belongs to you, young people, john Paul said.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: Just as it once belonged to the generation of those who are now adults, and precisely together with them, it has become the present reality.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: Listen to this now.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: Just as it belonged the future to the generation who are now adults, it has become the present reality.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: The present reality we see is because the present, the future or the generation that were young, that are adults now and parents and grandparents were apathetic.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: We took it just like zombies.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: We weren't filled with God.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: We were bloodlusting for our vacations and our little golf outings and our yacht trips or our cruise trips and whatever we can do.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: Get a vacation home, do this, do that, don't worry.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: Don't worry.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: This is just a good life.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: Suck everything you can out of this.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: But what happens over time?
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: This is the world that they've left behind for us.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: Responsibility for this present reality and for its shape in many different forms lies first of all with the adults.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: I would say to young people today, and I do say to young people today is this the world that you would want?
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: Is this the world that you want to create?
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: There's only one way to overpower evil, and that's to turn and reject evil and turn to God.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: Those are the only two things.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: If you're lukewarm, jesus said, I'll spew you out, not just because you don't care, but because you'll be taken over by evil and he's not going to bring you into his heart.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: How could he, if you're full of evil?
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: So to you belongs responsibility now, young people, for which will one day become reality together with yourselves, but which still lies in the future.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: When we say that the future belongs to you, we're thinking of human impermanence, which is always a journey toward the future.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: This is something else, you know, that people don't realize.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: We're all on a journey and this world gets over with.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: The world that you find yourself in at this moment took shape by the young people who came before you and are now grown up.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: How did they do Again, are you happy with the world and if not, what will you do differently?
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: I ask, do you have hope?
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: Not all young people do today.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: My heart goes out to them and to you.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: These are confusing times in which we're growing up.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Recently, after a presentation to high school students, I asked them if they had a specific topic they wanted to address in our afternoon session.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: The topic they requested mental illness.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: They wanted to talk about anxiety, depression, even suicidal thoughts that so many of their peers were experiencing.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: The bottom line was that they were experiencing an inner tension between what they felt in their hearts and the messages they were receiving from the world around them.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: And these young people are not alone.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: Statistics show this.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: This is the most depressed and anxious generation of young people that the world has ever seen, and the rates of depression and anxiety have grown incredibly in the last couple of years.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: This comes from the American Psychological Association.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: So what do you think is going on here, young people?
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: To answer that, I suggest that we begin at the beginning.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: There was a precise moment in time that you made your glorious entrance into the stage of human history.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: You exploded onto this drama.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: This is a fact.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: But to understand yourself and get a handle on your meaning and purpose for your life, you also need to know the larger story that you're intimately linked to, one that has been unfolding for many, many generations.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: Pause for a second to think about this.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: You came into a story.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: Did you create the universe?
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: Are you the author of the larger story that you came into?
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: No, and this is what confuses so many.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: They never seek to understand the larger story and they wonder why they stay confused their whole lives.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: You came into a story and you have a role to play, an important role, especially to the people around you.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: But it's within the context of the larger story that's already been infused with meaning and purpose, that has been unfolding long before you arrived.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: If you have taken or I would say this if you have never taken the time just like the generations that have come before you so many of them or put any effort to study and try to understand a larger story.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: It would be like getting to a movie 35, 45 minutes late.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: You sit and take your place and say, in the movie theater, with your popcorn and your drink, but you already missed the beginning of the story and of course, you haven't seen the end of it and you're trying to understand the plot.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: Isn't this like your life?
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: Sometimes good things happen, sometimes beautiful things.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: Maybe later you'll fall in love, you'll get that job you always dreamed of.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: Maybe it happened to your parents.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: But then tragic things happen.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: You fall out of love, somebody falls out of love with you.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: I've heard so many older people.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: That job that I love so much, oh, I don't know if I could do it one more day.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: What happened?
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: I have to keep doing it, though.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: I have to rent the kids, the new car, I had to get the latest phone, so I just bury my head and go on.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: Henry David Thoreau said that most men live lives of quiet desperation.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: Socrates, 400 years before Jesus, said an unexamined life is not worth living.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: And yet we do it, we do it, we do it.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: And here the plot gets really interesting.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: The whole universe was created good, but an opposing force sought an anti-creation.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: And the main target in this battle of good versus evil is the human heart.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: The battle is for your heart, it's for all of our hearts.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: It's an ancient battle.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: You came into the story but you never got the memo, and there's a reason for that.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: You're growing up in a culture that screams forget about God, the church and the Bible.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: There's no creator.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: We're all here by accident, just random atoms hitting atoms, hitting atoms.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: Isn't it amazing.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: We live in a world with an advanced.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: We've made an advancement in technology and science.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: We actually know that we're not just here by accident.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: We could tell by the way the universe is expanding.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: We could look into a microscope and see the incredible power and the beauty of a single cell.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: Yet we live in a world without meaning or purpose or truth, other than what?
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: My truth or your truth.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: But there's something that does not function well in a world without meaning and purpose the human heart.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: Jesus just unpacked this.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: You came into this world and you believe the liar and the father of lies.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: So where do you come from.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: You must decide.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: Either one of these two statements are true You're either an accident of history and therefore completely at liberty to do whatever you please with your life.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: You can indulge it, trash it, end it even.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: You can become a man.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: If you're a woman, a woman becomes a man.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: You can mutilate your body.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: But if this statement is true, your life is what?
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: Ultimately meaningless?
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: There's no meaning and purpose other than the one you invent for yourself.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: Good luck with that.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: This is what we're seeing all around us.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: Men have forgotten God.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: Now number two you haven't forgotten God and you understand that you're a created being.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: And if that's the case, you've been created for a purpose.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: Now, what do we do?
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: We start to seek.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: What is the truth?
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: What does it mean to be good so that I can choose the good with my free will?
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: See, if you haven't opened your heart and mind to this fundamental question of our existence, you'll never have peace.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: You always have a void that will never be filled.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: You must decide one of those two things Psychiatrist Dr Gerald May wrote After 20 years of listening to the yearnings of people's hearts, I'm convinced that all human beings have an inborn desire for God, whether we are consciously religious or not, this desire is our deepest longing and our most precious treasure.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: The longing, our most precious treasure.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: Because it opens us up, opens us up, opens us up to the larger story, so we can understand the flow of the story.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: He goes on to say this gives us meaning.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: Some of us have repressed this desire, burying it beneath so many other interests that we're completely unaware of it.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: Or we may experience it in different ways, as a longing for wholeness, completion or fulfillment.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: Regardless of how we describe it, it's a longing for love.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: It is a hunger to love and be loved and move closer to the source of love.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: This yearning is the essence of the human spirit.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: It's the origin of our highest hopes and our most noble dreams.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: He said, as Dr May wrote the human heart senses this desire for an encounter with something and for something more than this world has to offer.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: It's a hunger that, at its core, is to love and be loved and move closer to the source of love.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: This is about learning.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: This is not about learning more information.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: It's about learning the story that resides in our very DNA.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: This is why John Paul II said the real drama of the church that likes to call itself modern is the attempt to correct the wonder of the event of Christ with rules.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: Listen to this the real drama of the church that likes to call itself modern.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: He's being quasi-facetious here.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: Right, the modern church I want to modernize, it's the attempt to correct the wonder of the event of Christ with rules.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: Instead.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: Pope Benedict XVI shared, in other words let me just unpack that a little bit more this is not about rules and regulations, and this is what you should do or not do, or you can't do.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: This is an encounter with Jesus Christ.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: See, this is what makes the Catholic and the Christian faith different than anything else.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: It's an encounter with the person Pope Benedict XVI shared.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: The widespread idea which continues to exist is that Christianity is composed of laws and bans which one has to keep, and hence is something toilsome and burdensome that one is freer without such a burden and burdensome that one is freer without such a burden.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: I want to make clear he said that being carried by a great love and a revelation is not a burden.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: It's like having wings that allow us to fly.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: Being Christian is not an ethical choice or some lofty philosophical idea, but the encounter with an event, a person which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction for your life.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: This gets back to Jesus.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: Huh, I am the gate, I am the shepherd, I will lead you.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: This is exactly what the Gospels show us at the beginning of Christianity An encounter with the person of Jesus Christ, albeit in different forms.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: On this point, though, they say it in different ways, the Gospels, but on this point they all agree it's all about an encounter with Jesus Christ.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: The next day, in John 1, the next day, john the Baptist was baptizing near Bethany, in the Jordan, near Bethany, with two of his disciples Andrew, we find out, is one of them, peter's brother and John, who likely gives us this eyewitness account, because he says in there, and this was the 10th hour, about four o'clock in the afternoon, and John the Baptist looks up, and he looks up at Jesus as he walked past at some distance and he says behold the Lamb of God.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: The two disciples of John hear this and they began to follow Jesus.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them these are the first words of Jesus that we read from John.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: What does he do?
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: Again, he doesn't give you rules, he doesn't give you regulations, he's seeking what.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: What did he just say?
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: He says this what do you seek?
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: This is what he says to me, to you, to young people what do you seek?
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: Or put another way, what are you looking for?
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: In its disarming simplicity, this question highlights the fact that Christianity stands in history as a response to a query, a universal quest.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: A quest for what?
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: A quest for the truth how should I live?
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: What's the best way to live?
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: What is good, so I can choose the good and have peace and joy in my heart?
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: And they said to him Rabbi, which means teacher, where are you staying?
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: And Jesus said to them come and see, come and see, follow me.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: This expression will remain in history as the one and only synopsis of the Christian method.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: Come and see.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: This is it.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: This is Christianity in a nutshell Come and see.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: This is what Jesus beckons us to do.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: When you begin to follow him and I remember this as a young man it changes everything.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: Follow him, and I remember this as a young man it changes everything.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: It took me a long time to actually realize that the story that Jesus was telling and where he was leading me and my own life were not two disconnected stories trying to find some cohesive way.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: No, they were telling one story.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: When you open your heart from your smaller story, enter into the larger story and be united as one, this changes everything.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: Christianity is something you can see.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: There's a place you can go.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: Jesus never imposed, uttered a single word of propaganda, never imposed an ideology, but with confidence in the ability of the heart, young people, for what?
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: For us to recognize what the truth.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: Come and see.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: Jesus, he says, has confidence in that.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: Why does he say that?
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: Again, young people?
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: He doesn't think he knows.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: He has confidence in the ability of the human heart, your human heart, to recognize the truth.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: Come and see.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: We have so many questions today.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: What is my true identity?
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: What is the meaning and purpose of my life?
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: Why were we created male and female?
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: You think we solved that.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: You know, uh, you know in early on in our history.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: No, you this is how goofy we get.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: Insanity has invaded the mind.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: I don't know who I am anymore.
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: I don't know the purpose and meaning of my life.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: I don't even know why we're created male and female.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: So how should I live so I can find happiness, peace and joy?
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: It's not going to be another therapist, it's not going to be the SEL program or the DEI programs, not even close.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: Does truth exist?
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: Does true love even exist?
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: If so, how do I find it?
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: Jesus responds to our thirst with an invitation so that we, like the disciples of John, could draw our own conclusions.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: Come and see, followed by ask and it will be given to you.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: Seek and you will finded.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: By ask and it will be given to you.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: Seek and you will find.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Knock, and it will be opened to you, for everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks will find, and him who knocks, it will be opened.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: That's from Matthew 7, 7.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: It's amazing, isn't it?
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: Jesus is so confident If you seek, you're going to receive.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: If you seek, you're going to receive.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: If you seek, you're going to find.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: If you ask, you're going to find, you're going to receive.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: If you knock, I'll open the gate for you To find the answers to the yearning, burning desires of the human heart.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: One must have the courage to take a path beyond the world's noise and false promises.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: Do you see this?
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: You have to step into the true story.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: The whole culture, the whole world around you wants to keep you from this story, but Jesus doesn't impose, he's not going to force it, he doesn't give you an ideology.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: He comes in and says what Come and see.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: He says enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is easy and this is the path that we've all been on.
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: This is why, I mentioned earlier, we became apathetic, we just want to live off of those who went before us.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: But Jesus says no, no, no, you want to find the truth, enter by the narrow gate.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: He is the gate, of course, the cross, the crucifix.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: We have to put our hearts into his divine heart.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: When he got hit with that lance, the water and the blood came out, the water of baptism and confession that washes us clean, get us ready for the nuptial bath.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: And then the blood.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: Right, this is the blood we seek, not the blood lust of selfishness and taking, you know, like a zombie.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: No, this is the blood that brings divine life and love, eternal life and love.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: This is the blood that God wants to give you.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: This is the blood you seek, not the blood of a zombie, for another human being, but only for the human being who's united on the cross to divinity, as one who brings you this divine life right.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: So enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is easy.
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: That leads to destruction, and that's what everybody's been on and Jesus goes on to say.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: And those who enter by it are many, for the gate is narrow and the way is hard.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: That leads to life, and those who find it are few.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: Perhaps we shall see this relationship even more clearly when, next week, we meditate upon Christ's conversation with the rich young man in the gospel.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: Until then, keep me in your prayers and I'll keep you in mine.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: Talk to you again soon.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: Bye everyone, thank you.