Latest / Claymore: Become Who You Are / #602 Men of Claymore, Happy Friday! "This is My Body, Given for You!"

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#602 Men of Claymore, Happy Friday! "This is My Body, Given for You!" · Claymore: Become Who You Are

• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Men of Claymore.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Happy Friday.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: This is our usual Friday update.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: I hope you're doing well, Don't forget, before I forget, to tell you this is our normal Friday update for Claymore, if you haven't already done this.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Claymore is a discipleship for young men, especially Gen Z, and it came about just when we think that marriage, the family, our faith is coming down, our whole country was coming down and it seemed like it was going to self-destruct.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: And here's these young men that said there's got to be something more.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: There's got to be something more.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: And so we were meeting more and more of them.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: It's in our hearts, it's in the human heart, especially for young men.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: What is the truth of things?
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: How should I live?
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: And there's so many questions, you know, answering the big questions who am I?
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: What's the meaning and purpose of this life?
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Ooh, the mystery of a man and a woman.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: What is that all about?
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: And so they grew up in the most toxic culture imaginable.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: They've been lied to about just about everything, brought up in a hookup culture, exposed to hardcore pornography when they were kids, so stealing their innocence, twisting it and obliterating their moral imaginations.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: They see a woman.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Now you take away the beautiful mystery of femininity of a woman and you turn it into lust and selfishness and these guys are saying there's got to be something more.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: They see the country falling apart.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: They sense the evil, especially right now, with Elon Musk exposing all this waste.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: They start to vote for Donald Trump and they say why are you voting for Trump?
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Some of them didn't know.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: They just said, hey, there's got to be something more.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: And we see the evil around us and the people that are just extorting money, leaving us with more and more and more debt.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: So, anyways, one thing after another, and they're looking for a path, looking for a plan.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: How do I find love?
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: How do I find happiness?
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: How should I go forward?
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: And so that's what this is all about.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: If this is your first time and you want to get more information, go back to our introductory sessions, the first one.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: I'll try to find that link and put it in the show notes introductory sessions so you can go back and look at it Again.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: This is on our website Claymore Battle Plan.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: All you have to do is go to our website, jp2reneworg, go under resources, hit Claymore and you'll be able to pull this outline off and, in essence, it's going to get your heart back, because the first thing, the evil one, wants to do, is steal a man's heart and then twist and distort what it means to be a man with a woman, marriage and a family.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: Take our faith out, take God out, right, and tell us that we're just here by accident, you know, and then finally attack the nation because you have all of these individual people with no moral base and nothing but trying to grasp and take and they get into government, they get into power, they get into the big corporations of the world and they just want to suck everything out of you.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: That's the battle that's going on today.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: It's a battle of the human heart between truth and lies, between good and evil, between beauty and all that wants a profane beauty.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: So, anyways, we start to stand up and we say, hey, no more of that.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: So print out that battle plan because it's an outline of getting your heart back.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Some exercises there for spiritual battle On Fridays.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: What we do is we have this, the podcast, and the podcast has really meant you watch it.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: There's Q&A questions in there.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: We're starting to put in there now, and it's made to help disciple another person too.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: If you got a friend, a buddy or somebody invited you and then you can look at this podcast on Friday, answer those questions.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: So we're going to be continuing to go into John Paul II's work.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: As he laid this out, he answered those big questions that I brought up.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: He answered those questions who am I?
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: What's my purpose?
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: Why are we created, male and female?
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: The power of Eros, this power of the beauty when you see a woman, or trying to understand where the evil is in the world.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: And for me, I'm going to put my glasses on and have a little coffee.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: I got up early to do this for you, before I took off.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: But I remember this as a young man, high school, and this is Gen Z.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Gen Z goes from high school to 27 years old.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: So I really want to share some of the things that I went through.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: What you find out is that these are universal.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: All these things we go through are universal.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: I remember reading this.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: I was always interested in scripture, even when I was a young guy, and that's why part of the spiritual formation is reading scripture every day.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: You'll find it in there.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: I want to take the time to go through everything right now, but here it is.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: It was from John 17, verses 14 through 19.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Just maybe afterwards, read that, father.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: This is Jesus.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: I have given them your word and the world has hated them because they're not of the world.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Even as I'm not of the world, I do not pray that you take them out of the world, but you keep them from the evil one.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: This is what we're sensing, even if we don't understand this, and this is why these Gen Z men are coming up.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: Okay, what's going on here?
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: And Jesus turns back to the Father and says they are not of the world.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: So we're in the world, but not of the world.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: We're sensing something different, right, even as I am not of the world, jesus says sanctify them, and here's the key.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: Here's the key.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: Remember, I said you know what is the truth of things.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Sanctify them in your truth.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: Your word is truth.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world and for their sake I consecrate myself that they also may be consecrated in the truth.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: I read that and I read that again and I read over and over again.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: You know, I am the truth, I am the way, the truth and the life, and you see the prophets pointing to them, searching for the truth.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: What is this world all about?
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: And as I was seeking it, I was reading different philosophers.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: I was an amateur philosopher.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: Then I got my master's degree in philosophy, slash theology, john Paul II studies.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: And so as a young man, I said I got to go out and seek the truth.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: Before my graduation in high school, I had already packed my car, I skipped the parties.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is how burning this was to me.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Don't forget even my generation and I'm one of the boomers we were brought up in the sexual revolution.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: It was already a twisting and distorting of this.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: We saw the government already.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: This know, this is nothing totally new.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: It just accelerated and got worse.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: It got worse to the point where you don't have to be that sensitive to say, as a young man, to say something's wrong with this right.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: We've lost the mystery, we've refused the mystery, which means we refused God, which means we refused love itself, because love itself is a mystery.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: And so this is happening to the human heart.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: So I said goodbye to my family, my friends, I got in my old car and I headed west and almost immediately I loved the excitement, the sounds, the freedom of just saying I'm going to go out and I'm going to explore the world.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: These were the days before cell phones, so when I got out in my car to leave, I was driving away and there was nobody to text, nobody's going to be calling me, and so it was a much different place.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: And I really suggest this find this place of quiet every day for a few minutes.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Go through your spiritual exercises and just absorb that, even if it's a few minutes at a time, you know.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: Go through your spiritual exercises and just absorb that, even if it's a few minutes at a time, that silence.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: So I went out to search for the truth and then I've told some of these journeys and I'll continue to tell some of my journeys Today.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: This is titled this is my Body Given For you.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: This is my Body given for you.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: You find out that Jesus Christ was who he said he was.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: You know this in your heart.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: It's amazing because over time you just start to say yes, I'm following him and my life is better.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: It's answering my questions, my anxiety level is coming down, I'm starting to understand even who a woman is, and I want to talk to you about that today.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: Nothing more powerful in a man's heart than when he understands that, this eros, what the Greeks would call eros, this almost intoxicating power.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: When you see the beauty of a woman, that imposes itself on you.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: You know he's just like I didn't ask for this, but oh, she is so beautiful.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: What is that all about?
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: It's very important to talk about this.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: First because when you understand that marriage and the family, and the beauty of femininity and masculinity coming together and it points exactly to our faith and these are linked together.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: They're not two different stories.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: I have faith.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: I'm reading Jesus over here in the Bible, and then I'm talking about marriage and the family and the beauty.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: Something's happening in my heart when I see the beauty of a woman or when I'm tempted with pornography or whatever.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: Well, this is a linked story.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: So it's important, as John Paul would say to young people, as you start to unpack even what it means to be in politics and how you bring laws into the world.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: We're going to get to all of that, but before we do that, you got to get the space because you got to understand.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Ooh, everything that's in my heart.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: There's a reason for it and it fits into this big plan and again, it's like that.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: Catholic social teachings like this pyramid, nothing like it.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Marriage and the family, your faith in God, you know Christ and the church holds this whole thing up and they infuse each other.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: They're linked together and then you bring this good into the world and it's and your arrows, your power, your, your desire to love and be loved when you in, in what happens to your heart when you see a woman again.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: These are all linked.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: God gave you these passions and desires, and, and those passions and desires are the same passion and desires that this is my body given for you.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: When you look up at a crucifix, this is what Jesus did.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: He's the bridegroom that came down from heaven, climbs the marriage bed of the cross to pour out his life for what we call.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: The bride is the church and the church is all of us.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: So we receive this love and then we give back and it's like a wedding, it's like a wedding feast.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: Well, this is the same intense desire.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: We got this because we're created in the image and likeness of God.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: So I want to talk a little bit about that, but I want to do it through a story of somebody that I, a young girl that I met.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: Start out with the scripture here John 10, 10.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: When we read John 10, you've probably heard I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: Right, you've heard that before.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: But here's the whole verse.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: First it starts out the thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: I have come that they have life and have it abundantly.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: I am the good shepherd.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: So this girl's name was Katie that I'm bringing up today and I said to her I said, katie, who's protecting your heart?
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: Katie was a high school senior, straight-a student and a star on our cross-country team.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: She was struggling with an eating disorder.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: Her older brother, ben, involved with Claymore, with us and Miletus Christi this apostle that we're talking about today had invited her to attend a presentation I was giving and the title with it, what has Gone Wrong With Love.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: And it was for young people in high school and up to their 20s and early 30s, really with a subtitle how Would a Young man Treat a Woman If he Really Loved Her?
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: During the social that followed that presentation, ben introduced me to Katie.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: She confided about her eating disorder, but she said that's not the only struggle I faced.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Some months earlier she had been in a short-term situation, a relationship, and she had been intimate with this young man the first time, and now she felt hurt, embarrassed, confused and even betrayed.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: She had learned about in school, about safe sex, how to use protection from stds and pregnancies, but no one had taught her how to deal with the ache that she now felt in her heart after that young man had used her for sex and I don't know that young man, I didn't meet him, but he stopped being interested in her after that and she couldn't believe that, you know, and her heart was just really in a bad spot.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: How many young people today, growing up in a world that celebrates pride for an entire month, saturated with the rainbow flags, all about sex, right, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex?
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: They have no clue that a raging battle is being fought for their hearts.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: This is a battle.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: Satan doesn't have his own clay.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: He can only take what God has created good, a marriage and a family, all of those things, authentic love, truth, truth and twist and distort it, and this is a twisting and distorting of our human hearts and our bodies.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: This is what Claymore is all about understanding that story, getting our hearts back.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Katie, who's protecting your heart?
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: Jesus reminds us again, the thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: But I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: So God has a plan.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: We have to understand the plan and the model, otherwise the thief will come and steal your heart.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Katie, something was stolen from you, I said your innocence, your moral imagination and your desire to know authentic love.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: Remember Satan doesn't have his own clay.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: He can only distort and defile what God has created good.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: But the eternal bridegroom comes so that you may have life and have it abundantly.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: You know, in today's time, I think it's really that refusal again of the world to see the mystery, especially the mystery of love, to step into the world.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: We're all full of noise and noise, and noise, and it's so important to get our hearts back and you'll know the truth, jesus said, and the truth will set you free, right.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: So the eternal bridegroom comes and he wants to restore your hearts.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: This is what we're starting to understand.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: When we voted for Donald Trump, we know something's wrong, but what is that story now?
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: So I don't lose my heart to this.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: I can make all kinds of personal mistakes and be in, you know, helping the country, et cetera.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: You see this battle going on with Elon Musk right now, but anyways, let me go on with here.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: Jesus is the good shepherd.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: Jesus, the good shepherd takes on a human body.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: He has a human heart and he proclaims in the beginning, all of the sin that we're talking about, it was not so.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: So he takes us back to Genesis and offers himself as the solution.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: This is my body, given for you.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: His mission was to give life.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: I am the bread of life that came down from heaven.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: He who follows me will have the light of life.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: Ooh, that's from John, chapter six and eight.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: You know, if you get a chance to read some of this, just sit with this for a little while.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: You know, we're called, man is called, and man meaning man and woman.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: When I say this is called to a fullness of life that far exceeds our earthly existence, for it consists in sharing the very life of God.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: We're created in the image and likeness of God.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Again, that fire, that burning love that you see, that would make Jesus hang on a cross for us.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: That's how we're created.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: We have this burning desire of God's love for us.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: This is what you see when you see a woman coming down the aisle that God is touching you with just this little spark of the type of love he has for you and he has for that woman too.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: Very, very important to remember this.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: God gave us these passions and desires.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: They're intoxicating.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: They can overwhelm our reason and if we're not careful with our free will, they can overcome our free will, to the point that we're told that we're going to use that person as an object for our selfish desires.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: This is what Katie was feeling, right, the supernatural vocation that we all walk into.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: We're all called to be one with God, no matter what we do in life, whether we get married, we become a priest, even if we stay single, it's to have this relationship with God.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: It's invaluable.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: When we do this, life on earth is a temporal phrase.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: We're just going through.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: You know, it's like a blink of an eye.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: I was your age.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: It seemed like yesterday, right.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: But life on earth is the beginning of an eternal journey.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: It's all one timeline.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: We're exploded on this stage for just a little while and we're off and running into the mystery of divine life and love.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: We don't realize that sometimes.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: You know, eternity doesn't mean tomorrow, eternity means forever.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: And so what do we do?
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: How do we find the light on this journey right.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: We're enlightened by the promise of divine life, which reaches its fulfillment in eternity.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: So this is the crisis of our time.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: We've disengaged like cut flowers from our faith, from our mystery, from the understanding of who we are.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: But we're a body and a soul, and that soul needs to be infused with wisdom, knowledge, understanding.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: And this is what we're doing here with Claymore right.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: So today, this proclamation that Jesus said it talks about I am the way, I am the life.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: I'm going to show you the path.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: It's more urgent than it ever has been.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: We face unprecedented threats against human life.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: Think about this, especially with the weakest and most defenseless.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: If you're Satan and you want to destroy humanity, think about this.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: New dangers emerge at alarming rates.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: Abortion is now a right.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: It's not just taking a life.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: I have the right to kill a child.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: Euthanasia, extending out to children now if they're sick, pornography, infiltrating schools, gender ideologies, sterilizing and mutilating young bodies you can't make this stuff up.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: The statistics are staggering 60 million adult survivors of sex abuse in the United States alone.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: One in four women that you're going to meet out in the world, one in six men, has been sexually abused as a child.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: Our society has become wildly sexualized, making the world increasingly dangerous for children, and as those children grow up to be young adults, it devastates the human heart.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: The attack on marriage and their family has redefined them into meaningless.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: Marriage doesn't matter anymore, it's not between even a man and a woman anymore.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: Having a child.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: I don't have to be married to have a child.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: I can have two dads, two moms.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: A woman can just decide to be single and raise children, all these different things.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: But we're not asking what is the best for a child, because we know leaving children to grow up without a mother and father is devastating to them.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: We're now in an age of moral relativism.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: There is no truth.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: Think about this.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: We started out with the truth.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: What society tells you?
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: There is no truth, only your truth or my truth, your opinion, my opinion, and it doesn't work.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: It's not practical.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: And it's a world that's normalized the fall, normalized sin.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: It says it's okay, do whatever you want, right, but the human heart, it's looking for more.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: It doesn't function well in a world without meaning and purpose.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: People are treated today as mere instruments of pleasure and pain.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: Pornography, addiction and the contraceptive mentality directly attacks the marital act as a reciprocal, self-giving love.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: We give love to one another.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: Instead, we're twisted into a hedonistic pursuit of self-satisfaction.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: All these things, john Paul II would say, are poison to human society and a dishonor to God.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: When you separate from God, you see that things go wrong down here.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: That's just the way it goes.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: And Jesus said in the beginning it was not so.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: So the Pharisees once asked Jesus about divorce and he responded by pointing them back to Genesis, the first book of Genesis.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: So this is Matthew 19, when they ask him.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: And Jesus said to the Pharisees and he's saying to all of us have you not read that he who made them from the beginning, made them male and female and said for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh, join in marital union.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: So they were no longer two but one.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: See that sign, that sexual intimacy that Katie had is supposed to be a sign of I come here freely, totally, faithfully, fruitfully, forever.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: I'm here forever.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: This is a sign, a language of our bodies to say we're united forever.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: We have become one.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: But we don't do that anymore, we don't understand that, so we get hurt, right.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: What, therefore?
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: God has joined together.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: This is what Jesus said let no man put us under, let no man separate.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: That's how important this is.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: Jesus, the author of life, directs us back to the beginning, to the book of Genesis.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: He says in the beginning, and he points back to the book of Genesis and this is Genesis 2.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: And the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to till it and keep it.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: We're supposed to take care of this world here, right?
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: But the first commandment is that when God put Adam and Eve in the Garden, he says go forth and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: The first commandment was to come together.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: Come together as a sacrament, the two of you, and open to life.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: Then the Lord God said to man so he creates Adam.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: Adam in the very beginning, puts him in the garden, he says, hey, keep until this garden.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: But then he says it's not good that you're alone, I'm going to make a helper fit for you.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: And then he puts him into that deep sleep like an ecstasy, and then he creates Eve.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: Man was placed in the Garden of Eden, a place of wonder and awe, given dominion over creation.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: He discovered in his solitude, that he was different than the rest of creation.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: He had reason.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: What makes us different than the rest of creation?
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: Reason which go out to seek the what, the truth.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: This is what you're feeling in your heart, because you were created this way, different than the rest of creation.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: We know this and you're out to seek the truth.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: This is in us.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: If we don't start to seek the truth, if we don't look for the truth, we'll never find what life is all about.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: We'll come to the end of this life's journey and look back and say what was that all about?
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: That's what that Claymore sword is.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: It's going to boom.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: Go right in for the truth.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: It's going to go right into the battlefield of the heart, because Satan doesn't want you to know this stuff.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: So we go to Jesus, we go to his mentors, his disciples, like John Paul II, and we say give it to us.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: Give us the truth, don't water it down, give it to us.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: So we have this rational, we're a rational creature.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: We have within us not only reason that seeks the truth, but we're given free will.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: And free will, when it's understood properly, will be like a motor to the truth, to the good.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: I see the good.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: I see the good in that woman.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: I want her good, I want what's good for her and reciprocally then what's good for me.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: So we join together in marriage, we open our lives together and this again is a reflection of the bridegroom on the cross and his love for his bride.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: So this is linked.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: Again, we're the sign of this on earth, right?
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: So Adam in the garden realizes he's made for something more, for a relationship with God, a partner in the absolute.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: When he's first created, he's walking around the earth and you read this in Genesis and they're speaking to one another in the garden, and then God turns to him and says this love story that you and I are feeling, you are to express this in the world.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: And then he creates woman.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: So when woman saw Eve for the first time, can you see the mystery again?
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: The mystery of this unbelievable pull of Eros, this power that overwhelms you, intoxicates you, and he sees her for the first time.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: Ooh, he says this at last is the bone of my bone and the flesh of my flesh.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: The phrase at last signifies that his search was over.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: She was his equal, his partner.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: Her body revealed her as a person, also with a rational nature and, like Adam, a partner with the absolute.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: She knew the absolute too, capable of love.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: So you have to be free.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: You have to be free.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: You know the animals come together and they create right.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: God gives them that power to create.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: But love is something different.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: Love is something of a choice, a free will.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: You have to go beyond just nature, beyond, like Katie just coming and becoming intimate with some young guy she barely knows.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: That's not love.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: Love is the decision of the will.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: And that's what they didn't know and they weren't talking.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: It's really sad.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: The answer, as I finish up here, is Jesus Christ hanging on the cross.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: Having rejected God, modern man has been severed from the source of truth and love.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: That's what happens when you separate yourself from Jesus Christ, from God, from the Trinity.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: He is living in disconnection, it seems, from his very spirit.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: We feel this turmoil inside of us, don't we?
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: The anxiety, depression, all kinds of things.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: This in turn has severed him from reality of things.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: What is the truth of things?
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: You see this.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: It's amazing how this works.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: I mean, my faith has never been this strong, because you realize that without your faith, without this understanding, without this relationship with God.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: This is just a confusing mess down here, full of evil and self-destruction, and so we've been given a really, really big gift, right?
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: So this in turn separates you from your own heart and especially from the truth of the human people that we see out there and the beauty and mystery of a woman from the truth of authentic love.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: Through sin, man, men and women have lost sight of the human person and its truth of love.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: Said another way to see the human person revealed by the of love, said it, another way to see the human person revealed by the body you see, the body of another person is to discover the extraordinary nature of what is ordinary.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: We think it's ordinary.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: You see a woman coming down the aisle of a Costco, but you know in your heart, this ordinary body of a woman is no ordinary thing at all.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: It brings you into the mystery and the awe and wonder of a man for a woman, a woman for a man, created in the image and likeness of God himself.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: But Jesus Christ, in his incarnation, he takes on a body, unites it to his divinity and walks through the main door to restore what we have lost.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: The thief, he said, comes only to steal, kill and destroy, but I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: Think about that.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: Jesus, taking on our human nature, in essence takes on all of our human nature.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: He unites it with his divinity right in his own person, and then he climbs the marriage of the bed of the cross and he gives up his whole life for us.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: So when we receive him at mass, when we read him in scripture, when we open our hearts in prayer, we're opening ourselves up to that place where God and Jesus in his own body.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: He's united our humanity with our divinity and he feeds us.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: This as in the beginning, you know, in the beginning we were not living in disconnection like a cut flower.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: So here's Jesus.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: Like he would say, the branches back on the vine.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: This is what's happening in this life, right.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: So again, when Jesus takes on a body in his incarnation, unites it to his divinity, he walks through the main door to restore what we have lost.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: St Paul summarizes and links this profound mystery when he says husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: He said for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh in marriage.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: He said, oh, this is a great mystery.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: And he points to Jesus and he says and the two shall become one flesh in marriage.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: He said, oh, this is a great mystery.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: And he points to Jesus and he says and I mean in reference to Christ and the church you know, it was Jesus who left his heavenly father and his earthly mother to become one flesh with us.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: Amid the confusion of the world, your deepest longing for love and union ultimately points to the Eucharist, to Christ's burning desire to become one flesh with you body, soul, blood and divinity.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: It's amazing.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: And I said to her, katie, if you ever forget who you are, how much you're worth, look at Christ on the crucifix and remember this is my body given up for you.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: This is the new covenant, the ultimate sign of love, the eternal bridegroom offering himself for his bride.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: There was reason for our hope.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: This is the antidote for the crisis that we're in right now.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: What a beautiful thing, right?
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: I'm going to end there for today.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: You know, there's really a lot to just sit on there, isn't there?
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: It's beautiful.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: If you want to get into Theology of the Body a little bit more, get Christopher West's book, an Introduction to Theology of the Body.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: That's where this teaching for today came out of.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: One more thing before you go praying with temptations.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: This is really, really good.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: When you go through your, your morning exercise, don't forget you're kneeling on on the ground first thing in the morning before you look at that phone and you're saying be it done to me according to your word, you'll see all this in in the claim or battle plan.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: And then you're going to say temptation is not a sin.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: Temptation, if understood well, is an invitation to prayer.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: Jesus himself was tempted.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: It's an invitation to prayer.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: Jesus himself was tempted.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: It's an invitation to prayer.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: So every time I feel tempted by whatever, despair, fear, the beauty of a woman, you know it's all these things lift me up.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: Now I open those things up to prayer first thing in the morning.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: Well, praying with temptation is a prayer that you can pray, and it's right on the website under Claymore.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: Click on that.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: Take that prayer with you and pray.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: And it's right on the website under Claymore.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: Click on that.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: Take that prayer with you and read it a few times.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: Maybe that'll be part of your morning ritual for a while.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: You can listen to a little reflection on divine mercy, this mercy that Jesus wants to pour out to all of us and bring this mercy into our heart.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: He said the biggest sinners out there have more right to my mercy than anyone else.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: He wants to give you this life.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: It's amazing and you can experience this in your own heart.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: And then the third thing in the morning to get up and love the next person.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: You see, that's it.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: Become a person of love, and whether that's your spouse, your kids or you're not married and it might be the gas attendant that know, when you fill up your whatever just go out and become a person of love.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: We have to bring the love back into the world, because it's a violent, evil place if we don't.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: Huh, hey, god bless you.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: Thanks for being with me.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: Say a prayer for me.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: I'll say one for you.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: Talk to you again soon, everybody, bye, thank you.