Latest / Claymore: Become Who You Are / #557 Getting Real with Jack and Mark Schmitt: "The Quest for Truth and Authentic Love"

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#557 Getting Real with Jack and Mark Schmitt: "The Quest for Truth and Authentic Love" · Claymore: Become Who You Are

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Become who you Are podcast, a production of the John Paul II Renewal Center.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: I'm Jack Rigg, your host.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Hey, thanks for joining me today.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: St Catherine of Siena said that if you become who you are, that you would literally set the world on fire.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: And St Athanasius, an early church father and a doctor of the church, said the son of God became man so that we might become God.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: You know I make a wild guess at this, but I bet you, most of us, are a bit disconnected from this divine life that these saints are pointing us to.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Yet Saint John Paul II said there's an echo of the story of this divine life that we're created for, inscribed in each human heart, in your human heart, and if you put on the proper lens if I put on the proper lens we can get in touch with this echo within us in such a way that we have that aha moment.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: See, that's the genus of St John Paul II's theology of the body.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: It connects our lived experience of life to the gospel in such a way that our life takes on a whole new meaning and helps us answer those big questions that our whole culture is so confused about today meaning and helps us answer those big questions that our whole culture is so confused about today.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Who am I?
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: What's my purpose?
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Why were we created, male and female?
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: How do I find happiness here on earth?
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: How do I find love that satisfies forever?
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Hey, mark's worked with me in the past.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: We met a long time ago.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: We've been on a good journey together.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Journey of the Heart, mark.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Good to be with you.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Good to be with you, jack, good morning.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: We have found through our work that sometimes it's good to let young guys young men.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: So Mark's married with three children, one just recently.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: How old Mark Is the little one?
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: She was born on Halloween, so about two and a half weeks or so.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, beautiful Congratulations.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fun times.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: So we've been on a good journey.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: So what we're going to do today is we're going to flip the switch, flip the script script maybe would be a better way to say that and I'm going to let Mark take over and he's going to ask me some questions.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it's good to go like that and we'll see what happens.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: So, mark, I'm going to throw this in your corner to not confuse everybody.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: I haven't lost my job as the host, but I'm going to be the guest in some sense today.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: So, mark, we're going to throw it back in your corner.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Perfect.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Well, good morning, jack, and it's great to be with you all.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: You know, jack, we've been great friends for a long time and it's powerful to look back at kind of my reversion seven, eight years ago here now and to think you know what a catalyst you were in all that.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: You know, I really wouldn't be here today without you, know, the witness that you were in my life.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: And I think that's kind of behind the heart of wanting to kind of flip the script here and talk with you.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: And what initially comes to mind, I wanted to kind of frame our conversation this morning with a quote from Pope Paul VI.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: He says, you know, modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers it is because they're witnesses.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: And as I hear that, I think of something that struck me in the very beginning of my kind of journey back to Catholicism, and you know very much part of that was JP2's Theology of the Body and he had this idea that you know our subjective experience should confirm an objective reality.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: You know, this idea, this objective truth that God loves us, he sent His Son to die for us, and that he's inviting us into relationship like we should be able to encounter that love.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: Right, that's a real truth that should change, that should change our life.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: And I think when we, when we have that merging, always grounded in the objective reality, you know, we become these witnesses, we become these on fire witnesses, and that's what I, you know, I look to you, jack is a great witness, and so I think it's important for people to see, you know, you know there's these beautiful ideas, but what does this do for my life?
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: How does this transform things?
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: And so you know today, you know, I think it's to kind of peel back some layers and just hear from you from different vantage points of kind of your past, but also practical things.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: You know about what is, what does your life look like?
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: You know, behind the scenes, on a day to day, what is?
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: How have you seen grace operate in your life?
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: And but, but I think to start is, you know just a little bit about you know your childhood growing up.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: You know what was.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: How did you view?
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: You know what, what was the faith given to you as a child?
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: Did you grow up Catholic?
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: Did you?
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: What was your view of God?
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: What was faith, life in your home life?
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Catholic.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: What was your view of God?
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: What was faith like in your home life?
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, before I dive into that, I want to step back just to kind of go above the trees, because what you said is important.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: What makes a difference whether you're a child growing up or an older man like me or a younger man like you, is that John Paul would say it's when the experience of the individual human heart, our inner life, say, it's when the experience of the individual human heart, our inner life, our inner experience, meets the experience of the world, the outer world.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: And then we put those things together, we're trying to figure out what is the truth about this, how should I live?
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: And it touched the gospel in a certain way that opens up the human heart to the idea that we're supernatural creatures, that there's something touching us there.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: It's interesting that what you said because it's Jesus himself who was the first witness it's true what Pope Paul VI said, that it's witnesses.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: Because what happens especially for young people today, mark and you know this is that they don't like anything imposed on them.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: And when I speak to young guys about even in high school, they'll say my worst class is theology.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: I don't like theology class.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: And I say well, why don't you like theology class?
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: And they say because the teacher's imposing their opinion on me.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: So they look at math different.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: They look at science class, different English.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: They don't think about those things, even though the English teacher is giving them certain books that they don't know if they're true or not true, or imposing or not imposing right, but it doesn't seem like it.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: Science can be taught wrong and sometimes it is, in today's time, right, but they accept it.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: But when it comes to God, there's something happening, there's something in the air, right, in some way.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: The teacher's presenting this as my opinion.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: I'm imposing this on you instead of proposing, proposing what's true, good and beautiful.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: Jesus didn't do that.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Jesus actually proposed, he was actually a witness.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: I remember in John, chapter 1, john the Baptist is watching Jesus come down.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: So he's baptizing in Bethany, near the Jordan River, and he sees Jesus coming.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: He says the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, and he yells it again and two of John the Baptist's disciples we find out they're Andrew, the brother of Peter, and then John, the Evangelist, who actually wrote this start to follow Jesus.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: Jesus senses this, of course.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: He turns around, he goes what do you seek?
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: What do you seek?
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: What are you looking for?
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: And they said to him Rabbi, which means teacher, where are you staying?
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: And Jesus says come and see.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: Come and see.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: No theology class, no moral teaching.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: Come and see.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Come and see.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: No theology class, no moral teaching.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Come and see.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: I'll be the first one to witness to you what life should be like.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: Just come and see and you will know.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: And it's such a beautiful way to do it because the human heart was made for that.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: So you don't have to push this.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: The truth doesn't have to be defined for people all the time.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: You know, just propose it and let them walk into it, right?
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's.
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's, that's beautiful.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: And I, as you say that, that kind of that jogs the memory because I remember, you know, I remember hearing, you know, when I kind of first started studying theology of the body, that idea you know, we're JP2, do not, do not impose, always propose.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: You know, and maybe it's John Paul II or heard it kind of around his teaching but that idea that the truth is credible in itself, you know, if you just present it in its beauty, you know it speaks to the human heart.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: And that you know, that was myself of as I read.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: I can still remember sitting down reading that book, from cover to cover, theology of the Body for Beginners, that one Saturday morning, and just it touched my heart in a way that I knew that it set my heart on fire.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: It changed the entire course and direction of my life because it spoke to my heart.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: I knew it wasn't an imposition, it was proposed to me and it spoke to my heart and I, just, everything in me, knew that this was true, good and beautiful you know.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: So let me let me ask you there now.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: Now, stay with that for just a second, because the same thing happened to me the first time I started to read Theology of the Body.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: Now I was I was already pushing 38 years old when I came back into the church.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: I was gone for 20 years and it was really that search for the truth again and my life's experience.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: I hit a wall and say, okay, I can't go any further here, how do I live.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: And somebody handed me a book on Theology of the Body and it was amazing what touched me.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: So do you remember?
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Because I just had this conversation with a young lady, a young girl who's a big theology of the body person, who may be doing some things with us, and she was on fire and she's a mother of five.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: A young mother of five got five little ones and she's on fire.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: And I asked her I said so what was it when you first started to read John Paul II's work?
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: Because she said her.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: I said so what was it when you first started to read John Paul II's work?
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: Because she said exactly what you said.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Something touched her and she contemplated.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: She didn't know exactly what she was.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: And I said, well, I'm going to be on a Zoom call with her later today to work on some things.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: And I said, well, when you come back, try to remember exactly what it was.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: And she just remember it was.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: You know, she she's trying to put her hands on it, but she just remember it was so powerful.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: But she couldn't tell me one thing.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Do you remember anything specific?
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: Or because, uh, it's a good question?
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: yeah, no, it is, it is.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: I.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: I do remember a specific moment.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: I remember underlining this and it was the.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: It was when he's talked about how he started to unpack what true love was.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: And so he, he unpacked it as this total, selfless gift of, of laying down your life, of an emptying of yourself.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: And so he posed this question.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: You know well.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: Well, what's the opposite of love then?
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: Right, and you know the common response is hate.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: And and he says, the opposite of love is actually selfishness.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: And that struck me because up until that point in my life, lived a very selfish life, until that point in my life, lived a very selfish life, you know, just was in all facets.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: You know, I just felt like I it was, it was about me, it was a very inward looking life, using, using people, and and I just knew, I knew what I was doing was wrong and I knew that's what was missing, I knew that's what was underlying this anxiety, this kind of this angst of just something is off.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: I just I was not free because I was living such a selfish life.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, he says, you know, if you man finds himself by making a complete gift of himself, you know.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: So, the more you give yourself away, the more free you are, and that was the light switch for me.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: That was the idea that I need to completely change the course of of my life, because it's been very inward looking and I need to now go out.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: I need to learn how to pour myself out, because that's how I'm going to be free.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: If I'm made in the image and likeness of God, who is love, and love is a total, selfless gift.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: That is what my life needs to reflect if I actually want to be fully alive, fully human.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: And so, yeah, that's been the journey.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: I haven't mastered it yet, but at least I feel like I'm in the right direction.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's self-sacrificial love and it doesn't sound good to people at first, but it's catchy because we know there's a certain point of your life that you, that you know, did it work for you.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely, I mean, I look back it's, it's you know the light I kind of compare it to at times.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: you know, it's like you're doing a hard workout, like a CrossFit workout or something you never regret those workouts afterwards You're, you're like I'm glad I pushed myself, this was a good suffering, this was a good thing.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: And it doesn't mean that life is just constant suffering all the time when you do this.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: But you learn to kind of embrace what's true and willing to lay down your life for what's true, what's good, and and then your, your suffering, has meaning, right and so it's, and it's guided by the person of Christ as well, because you see how much he suffered and you see him laying down this path.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: And so I look at my life, where you know what theology of the body, and coming back to my faith, I wouldn't be married, I wouldn't have my three kids right now, I wouldn't have my community, and out of all this I would say that constancy throughout the past, you know, eight years of my life, what is underlying, what wasn't there before, was a genuine peace.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: You know there's a genuine peace, even if life is difficult, you know, I think we all like it doesn't mean life isn't difficult anymore.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: We have plenty of challenges that come.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: But what's interesting, when you start to walk with the Lord and you let Jesus guide you, is even when you're suffering, your heart is at peace and that is a beautiful thing.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: That was never there.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: You know all throughout high school, college after college, there was just this angst in my life.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: So yeah, and everybody seems to have that today.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: You know, it's amazing.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: So the opposite of love would be using someone in a sexual term.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: Right, it would be lust.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: And if you think about how young people are growing up, today I had a conversation with a 20-year-old young guy.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: He's a good-looking dude, he really got his stuff together.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: He was home from college, we were having lunch and I said to him, just for fun, I said hey, any cute girls on on campus where you're going?
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: And he goes like this he goes.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: He goes Jack, copy paste, copy paste, copy paste.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: And I go what are you talking about?
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: Copy paste.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: He goes they're all the same.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: I said what do you mean?
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: They're all the same.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: He said look at they.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: They're a little different.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: They got a little different quirks or personalities, but at the end of the day they want, they all want, to just party.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: They're all empty in a certain way.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: And he says you know, I mean, you know, it's nothing wrong with partying once in a while.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: But and he said, and then they all want to have sex.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: And he said it's like nothing to them.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: And he said and I said well, it sounds like a perfect, the perfect night out you said this before you and I have talked about it.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: Sounds like the perfect night out.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: You've said this before you and I have talked about this.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: It sounds like the perfect night out for a 20-year-old guy.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: And he goes it's not.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: It's not.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: He said I want to find the girl, I want to find a special girl in my life that I can talk to, that I can be friends with and what a different perspective man.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: And he goes, jack, he goes.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Think about this.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: He goes I might be the 20th guy that these girls had sex with already, and they're only 20 years old.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: He goes are you going to marry someone like that?
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: He said it's getting harder and harder to find.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: So anyways, here's the point.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: We sense this.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: Not everybody senses this, but Generation Z men, right.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: These are guys from, say, 27-ish excuse me, down to maybe 13 or so, right, but you know they're coming.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: This is the first year some of them voted and they voted for Trump.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: And the reason they voted for Trump, when asked, was they knew something's wrong.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: They know something is wrong.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: They could sense it, that there has to be something more, and you know what challenged them.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: It's that challenge that you were describing that we want to be self-sacrificial.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: They saw Trump get shot and get up and say fight, fight, fight.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: They saw someone that was a hero.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: They saw someone that had courage and it started to move them.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: And what happens?
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: I remember John Eldridge wrote this book, wild at heart for young men, many, many years ago now, and he said there's three core things of every man that that we know life is to be an adventure.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: We know it's going to be a battle and at the end of the day, we find out what that's for.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: And it's for beauty, especially the beauty of love.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: And so here, here's what happens.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: God is loving, said well, yeah, okay, you know, but no, he really is.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: And if you really want to understand what that looks like, look up at a crucifix.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: The, the, the god who took on a body, models again for us.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: Come and see, come and see.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: And he pours himself out.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: And it's amazing, when you start to pour yourself out to others, you lose your anxiety, you humble yourself.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: You don't have to have these high expectations.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: I wonder what Mark thinks about me.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: I wonder what my wife thinks about me.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: I mean, we do that in a certain way, but at the end of the day.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: Look, I just have to be a person of love.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: When, when I wake up in the morning, three things I tell people don't look at that phone before you get down on your knees and just kneel with our blessed mother at the annunciation and say be it, done to me according to your word, I'm opening up to the supernatural, to the person of.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: Second thing is we know temptations are going to come.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: Temptation is not a sin.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: Jesus himself was tempted.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: So now, as a young man especially, think about this.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: Every temptation is an invitation to prayer.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: The temptation comes in.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: I just say, ah, you Satan, you son of a gun, I just open it up.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: Open it up all day long.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: Right, so you're praying.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: You could be praying all day.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: If you're into porn, if you're into things that you're tempted all day, you see these visions come in.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Now you release them.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Release them as an invitation to prayer.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: I pray for that image, I pray for that woman, I pray for whatever.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: This is right.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: And now you're praying, you're opening yourself up all day.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: And the third thing is just go love the next person.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: You see, whether it's your spouse, whoever, I don't care if it's the cashier at the store.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: Love the next person you see and don't worry about the response.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: Just be a person of love.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: Those three things will change your life, because you're asking for grace, you're opening yourself up to healing, you're not letting temptations bog you down and you're becoming a person of love.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: This is not brain surgery, is it Mark?
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that's beautiful.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's a great practical.
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: You know, just each day having that, you know I loved.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: You know you think of Mary, of just what a witness she was and how perfect of the model she is, and I just love, love that idea of, of getting down on her knees and, using her own words, you know the perfect prayer.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: You know our mother, just get done to me according to your will.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: So stay with that thought for a second.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: You know what happened to our blessed mother there when she said that she was literally impregnated with God?
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so here's what happens while you're kneeling there, you are literally impregnated with God.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so here's what happens while you're kneeling there, you are literally impregnated with God.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: That's what we're trying to do.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: That's what we're sitting, we're saying I'm kneeling with our Blessed Mother in an essence, right, I'm praying with her.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: Her Immaculate Heart leads always to the Sacred Heart of her Son and I'm literally impregnated with God.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: We are literally temples of the Holy Spirit.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: This is not just figuratively.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: I am filled with grace, and you will know that, because if you actually go out and try to love the next person, you see you're going to need grace over time, and so you start to receive that grace and it changes something.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: Here's what happens, mark, I am a self-determinating person.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: We all are.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: We're self-determinating.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: Through my acts, either good or evil, I become in a sense, I'm becoming myself, I'm creating myself in a sense John Paul would say so.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: Every time I act good, those acts are just not in the middle of a vacuum.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: I become the good that I do when I go out a little sacrificial love.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: I become a person of love.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: I am good.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: I am good as a person.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: Every single time I think about pornography and it's not just thinking about it, but I actually go to it right instead of offering up in prayer I become that lustful person.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: I become that selfless person.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: Little by little, by little.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: You do that for a short time and you become that person of lust.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: You know, and it's.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: It's really Well, jack, I you know, as you, you know I'm going to you know I'd love to hear from your perspective.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: You know you've been on this journey now for, if you said, 20 years, and this idea, you know what I would say is.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: Well, two questions is one what do you feel like first struck you with theology of the body?
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: But this idea of this selfless love, like how has that been for you living that?
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: Like what have you seen?
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: You know what have been the temptations and difficulties with that, but like what is, what do you feel like is the fruit of your life, of putting that into practice?
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: I remember.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's amazing.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: What it does puts it in perspective.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: I remember as a young boy we lived in Chicago.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: I was the old I'm the oldest of five boys, and so we had a two flat.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: We lived upstairs, my grandparents two flat, they flat.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: They lived downstairs and we walked, we would go out in in this little yard, right little fenced in yard, but behind it, behind the house, through the, through the yard, was a fence and that fence led into the alley, the alleys in the city.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: We lived in the city, so the alleys in the city were the artery to adventure.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: And now here's, here we are, as three little boys.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: Now think about this I'm, it's I.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: I remember distinctly because I was in second grade when this happened and and we would move from that apartment after that, after second grade.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: So I knew how I, I can tell how old I is, I, I I was then.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: So what is that?
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: Seven years old or so, something like that.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and my brothers are younger than me, so the two of the ones right behind me there's three of us are going out to the artery, to the alley.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: And think about this A seven, six and a five-year-old that can play in an alley in the city.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: Now they don't even let you go out in your own yard by yourself right Different times and let you go out to the in your own yard by yourself right Different times.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: And so there's a lock on our fence and it was just a little lock and you unlock it and go out into the alley Right.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: And as I was unlocking it, I heard these angelic voices and I look up and there they.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: There they were, and it was two twin sisters and they were beautiful and they're just a couple of years older than us, so let's call it fourth grade or so and they were coming down the alley and I just stopped.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: I heard those voices, I looked up and I go, ooh, just as a young boy that that age now, no lust, no selfishness, you're in the age of innocence, really, unless it's been taken from you.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: And I stop and I look up and I watch them come down.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: It did something to my heart.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: That beauty did something to my heart.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: And my brothers didn't ask why I stopped either, and they're younger than me.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: They looked up and I remember one brother actually waved just a little bit to them and they turned around, smiled and waved.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: They had, they had no idea what they were doing to our hearts, right, and they walked by.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: So again you get back to that.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: We were going out on an adventure, we, we, we knew it was a battle because we had our swords, our plastic swords, we had a rubber gun, guns.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: We were not going on unarmed out into this adventure.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: And now he had just seen the beauty.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: We had just seen the beauty.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: So we're all in one quick picture.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: It came, and I knew all this in second grade already.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: So now, every time we went out, go out, we found out that they lived a couple blocks the other way, uh, in a three flat, and they, they lived at the top of a three flat.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: So from then on, that whole summer, we would go and we would surround that three flat and we would give ourselves up.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: We were warriors and and and, because those were two princesses now entrapped by the evil night in in that tower, imprisoned up on top.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: And so we were there to rescue them.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: We would fight savages, just like heroes, just taking everybody on.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: We'd get into that, into that apartment, we'd go up this which was now in our minds, a spiral staircase.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: We'd fight our way up and we'd rescue those twin sisters.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: And the tragedy, of course, of it is they never knew they were being rescued, you know, but we did it dozens of times, and so this was the battle of the man's heart.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: Right At the same time, I wanted to be a missionary priest and I wanted time.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: I wanted to be a missionary priest and I wanted to go to Tanzania and the Congo.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: I wanted to go to all of these exotic places as a missionary priest and I remember distinctly because I would write snail mail in those days to all these different orders trying to get information, and I would wait for weeks sometimes for some pamphlet to come back or something, and I would.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: I would sit there.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: How old were you when you were writing this, Jack?
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: Second grade second grade same time, the exact same time, and I wish I still had all those pamphlets.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: I can remember those pamphlets, how excited I was when they came.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: So here's the thing In my young mind, my innocent mind, I saw the beauty and I saw this attraction, right, and the power of that, and there was something to fight for, for that beauty.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: At the same time I I'm looking to be a priest, right, and so so I thought that was beautiful, that was an adventure, that was a battle worth fighting.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: And I never saw the paradox of that, that that at the same time I'm looking almost really toward you know the beauty of a woman and the beauty of that, that at the same time I'm looking almost really toward you know the beauty of a woman and the beauty of giving myself up for Christ in the church.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: And there was never a problem in my young mind with that.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: It was the same battles, the same beauty, just a different way to live.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: But those are our two great vocations, and I knew all that in second grade already, and so that's the power of this.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: So later on in life, don't forget so I grew up in the 60s and the 70s.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: The sexual revolution started after Vatican II, and I love Vatican II documents, but after Vatican II, a sense of evil came into the church and so many things were changed.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: We went from the Baltimore Catechism, which was giving us these answers to our faith, to nothing.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: So we grew up in a vacuum.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: To answer your question, we grew up in a vacuum.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: There was basically no teaching for us, no formation anymore.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: It became.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: Our nuns threw away their habits that were teaching us.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: Some of them were very liberal.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: They came out as very liberal and they were teaching us something totally different.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: Them were very liberal, they came out as very liberal and they were teaching us something totally different.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: The mass itself went from this power and beauty of the mass that we didn't always understand.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: In fact, we didn't understand when we were young.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: But I had received my first communion and then, sometime after that, a rock band came in and the sacred went out.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: And here's what happened to me.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: I thought, well, if the church doesn't really have the answers, if the church really doesn't know the truth, if the church really can just change tomorrow, throw out all the teaching that she had before, throw out the sacred liturgy, throw out all these things and bring in a rock band.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: If that's all the church is, I don't need the church.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: That's really what I thought by the time I was in my teens.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: I left the church because I thought, if the church was just bringing the culture into the church, I'm searching for something more, those early stories being the hero in the story battling of the heart.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: We're made for that.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: We're made for that.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: We're disconnected, we've been emasculized, our masculinity has been stripped from us.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: In certain ways, we've allowed that to happen, though, as as young men, but we, we lost the model.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: We lost the model.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: And so this is what JP2 does he brings the model back.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: He's not afraid.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: When he spoke to young people, he wasn't afraid to tell them the truth because he, he, he knew the truth would inspire you.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: He knew that when you heard the words of Jesus Christ Jesus Christ, he has the answer right and he would start to speak.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: And he didn't pull any punches.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: He would never impose, but he would propose.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: He said, in essence, he goes.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: The more the world deprives young people of what's true, good and beautiful, the more that emptiness, that void, that vacuum of modern secularism would rise in their heart like a sacred, like a fragrance, like a fragrance looking for the sacred.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: Now, you got to propose the sacred.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: You got to show them what that looks like, because now, ooh yeah, my heart, which has been hurt so many times in this culture, could be the experience of life again.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: Getting back to our earlier sentence, touches now the gospel, the person of Jesus Christ, not just in more information, because we'll find out, mark, that this is the DNA within us.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: This story runs in our blood already, and this is what's.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: This is what's exciting.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: When you start to read, you know things like theology, the body and other things so, as you, as you kind of so, so you, so you leave, so you leave the church in your teens and you come and you know, I think your story resonates with.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: So I mean it resonates with me because that was my story too.
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: Know, there was this.
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: You know to me the church, the way I grew up with it, it was never presented to me as these are the ones that had the answers you know, and so, yeah, you go elsewhere and most of the time I think where a lot of kids, when they're in high school, young adults, you know the way that their experience has been, is that it has been imposed on them.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: You know the beauty hasn't been proposed and that's the great sadness, you know, is that there's so many people that the full splendor of the truth has never been proposed to you know, and that gives motivation, for you know, and I think you're doing, you know, a phenomenal job at this of getting out there and speaking the truth.
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: But to kind of maybe touch on one point is so you have this time away from the faith.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: Do you remember what it was?
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: You know, so someone hands you this book.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: What was it that?
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: Do you remember a specific teaching or something like the moment when it kind of struck your heart Like when did you feel like, okay, maybe I need to go back and give the Catholic Church another chance here.
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: Maybe I've missed something?
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I already had come back into the church before somebody handed me that book.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: Initially, what happened was I left home as a young guy the day I got out of high school, the very day, I already was packed up, I had my car.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: I was disillusioned with the answers I was getting.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: I think what we forget is that we have reason and intellect, something different than the rest of the animals.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: We're not just another creature, we are a creature.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: We're this old definition of humanity that comes all the way from the ancients, that St Thomas Aquinas uses and the Church still uses we're suppositum humanum, which is really just a substance of a rational nature.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: And so what does that mean?
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: That means, you know, we're made of the same stuff, the same biology, as everybody else.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: But now we have ruah, right, we have this breath from Genesis, chapter two, verse seven.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: We have God breathes into us.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: So we have reason, intellect and free will, something different than all the rest of the creatures.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: So even in high school, I was searching for the truth.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: What is the truth?
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: See, this is the problem with the world today, and so often these kids are stuck in their phones and and they never sit in silence.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: I I would dwell on that all the time.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: How should I, how should I live?
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: I see this craziness around me, something's not working in my heart and I didn't trust anybody.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: I didn't trust anybody and the good news at that time is, you know, the Vietnam war was going on.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: All these changes were going on.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: We were, we were told you know, know, don't trust anybody over 30 or whatever.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: And then I you know that helped me in a way, because I said they don't have the answer.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: I got to go find the answer.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: So I left home to to go do it.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: I went on this crazy journey, got married.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: Then I'm just going to skip to this because the time got married had three small children at that time and my marriage was coming apart.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: And I go how does love turn into dislike, turn into almost a hatred for another person?
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: How does that happen?
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: How does this power and beauty of love right that I so desired?
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: I had this image of what that would look like.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: I was working hard, I was making money, I was doing okay financially, had built a big house with the swimming pools and blah, blah, blah, and I thought I got it, everything's going okay, and then my marriage started to come apart.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: Well, anyways, I was on my knees finally, as I was thinking about leaving home, as I was getting ready to leave and walking out the door.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: Actually, one day I didn't even know where I was going to go, I just had it.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: And as I was going, my son, who's a middle child, comes up to me.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: He's just a little boy.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: And he goes dad, where are you going?
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: And I said I don't even know, I don't even know.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: And he says can I come with you?
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: And I go oh, here's this little guy.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: He looks up at his dad, who doesn't even know where he's going or what he's doing.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: He doesn't care, he just wants to come with me.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: And I go oh, I can't leave this little guy right.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: So I fall down to my knees sometime after that and I said god, do you have a plan?
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: And and I I always think god, the father's smiling at me, you know he's chuckling a little bit he says yeah, jack, I have a plan.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: You're not following it very well, but I have a plan.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: And so I got up off my knees and I got a call from my mom in Orlando, florida.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: The fourth brother down, danny, was dying and we had been back and forth a couple of times to see him.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: He was 29 at that time, nine years younger than me.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: I was 38.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: And so she calls and says the hospice people.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: I'm here with the hospice people in Orlando, florida.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: This is his last day.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: We're just letting them go.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: And I know you guys were just here, but just to let you know.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: So my brothers and I got on a plane and we made it there in time and we walked into the house and on our right was his kitchen and the hospice people were there and they go.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: Ooh, thank God his brothers are here, he's still alive.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: And then they told us, as we're walking to his room, they said don't expect anything, he's going.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: He's basically in a coma.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: It's going to be a little weird for you guys, because he's not breathing very well.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: He'll not breathe for a long time.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: Sometimes he'll take a deep breath.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: He said it's going to be a little weird for you guys, but here's what's happening.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: They told us what was going on.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: He hasn't eaten anything for three weeks.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: He hasn't even drank any water for three days now.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: So they're just letting him go.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: As we're in there in this room, we found out later on that, my brother Danny, we didn't even know this.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: He never told us as a young boy in our own parish was being sexually abused by a priest in our pastor in the church.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: For years he never told anybody he had gotten into drugs a number of times.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: That's how he ended up in Orlando, florida, in drug rehab.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: While he was in drug rehab for the third or fourth time, they said to him Danny, do you have same-sex attractions, do you think?
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: And it came out he got into a homosexual lifestyle at 25.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: At 29, he's dying of AIDS.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: And so we're in there talking, and as we're talking we see the tendons on his neck start to come up.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: And I point to my brothers, I go I don't know if that's normal, you know.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: And then I saw something really powerful happen.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: I saw my brother raised basically from the dead.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: I saw him fight his way, battle his way, and I touched his arm and I said, danny, you can hear us, can't you?
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: And with that, one eye blinked just a little bit and then I kept talking to him and the other eye opened, freaked us all out and he tried to get up and we tried to help him up and then he said let's pray.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: And his mouth was really dry.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: And I said Danny, did you say let's pray?
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: And he said pray to God.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: What we had found out that of the five of us he's the only one that had come back into the Catholic church.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: He was receiving the sacraments.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: There was a priest come in to the house when he could no longer get to mass anymore, and so he had come back in.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: He never said any other words.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: My brother fought to the surface of life to give us a quick message.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: I had just asked just a little bit before that God, do you have a plan?
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: When I got the call from my mom, I go yeah, thank you, this is your plan.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: Right, that my brother's going to die here?
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: Well, it was the plan.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: And there I got down on my knees and I started to pray.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: I won't go through that whole thing with you, but I had a powerful movement of the heart and so this led me back into the church and the problem was it got worse with my marriage because my wife didn't like me or the Catholic church.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: I was a non-practicing Methodist, I was a non-practicing Catholic, she was a non-practicing Methodist, I was a non-practicing Catholic, she was a non-practicing Methodist when we got married and she had all of these negative things about the church.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: So it actually got worse and I got back down on my knees and here's the end of the story, to answer your question.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: I got back down on my knees and I said you know, god, do you have another plan?
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: Because I said I get it, I'm coming back into the church, I'm receiving the sacraments, I'm feeling a powerful movement of my heart, but it's not doing her any good.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: What are you going to do about her?
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: And then he said very clearly, god the Father to me, I'm not going to do it, you're going to do it.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: I said I'm going to do it.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: I said she won't even talk to me.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: How am I going to do it?
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: And I start to complain and I said I know what you want me to do.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: You want me to love someone, self-sacrificial love, right, you want me to love someone that doesn't even love me back.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: And I look up at the crucifix right in front of me in this chapel and there's Jesus hanging there and I go, ooh, that's what he does.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: He loved me even when I didn't love him back.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: All I'm doing is becoming, I'm dying with him, and this is what I had to do.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: I had to die with him.
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: There was an intense battle that went on for weeks there.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: You have to die to Christ and then you rise with him and when you rise, the blue, the colors look a little bit better.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: The blue looks a little bluer, the greens look a little greener.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: I remember taking a step after I gave myself over to Christ and I was light.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: I was free for the first time since I was a young boy, free to do what, free to choose now, free to choose how I was going to live every moment of my life.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: Do I become a person of love?
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: Do I do good and become good, right?
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: And so this is a hard thing for a man to make these decisions, you know, to give up lust and selfishness and all those things.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: It's a burning battle.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: So I found out that the battle that we're fighting is not outside, first, it's not with my guns and my rubber guns and my sword.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: It is the battle of the human heart.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: You take a sword to your heart and you become a person of love, and that's what you have to do.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: And so, moment by moment, you know, I remember getting home and my wife was folding towels, you know, after this experience, and, and so I just started to fold towels because there's so much tension there, I remember touching her, her arm with my elbow and she moved away from me and she was.
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: There was so much tension.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: And you know, in the old days I would have said you know, I'm trying.
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: Why don't you just try and start another argument, not now.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: Just keep folding towels and praying, folding towels and praying.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: And slowly, slowly, slowly, it brought our marriage together and friendship and stuff.
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's such a beautiful story.
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: I appreciate you sharing that and I think that kind of hits, you know, at the start of all this.
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: You know people want more than just theology given to them.
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: They want to see what does this do to my life?
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: You know, how does this transform it?
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: And I think when you look at that, I mean that's taking the love of god and that's that encounter and that's transforming your life.
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: I mean to be, I mean because the world, I think the older I get to, you just see how, with divorce and and people, this, this idea of this uninterested love, like jp2 talks about, where you're not concerned with how the other person responds, it's a total selflessness, like what you were just talking about.
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: There's a disconnect.
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: It's a hard thing for people to embrace that type of self-sacrificial love, but it's there, right, like you said, it's in our DNA.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: And so, while you're saying that, mark, I'll just finish.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: Your question was what was it about theology of the body?
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: Well, theology of the Body took all of those loose pieces that I didn't understand about the Church.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: So many questions.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: So I had come back into the Church.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: I knew I had a Eucharistic experience at the Memorial Mass that I don't want to take the time to get into now, but I knew that Christ was present in the Eucharist.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: I was 100% sure, and I'm 100% sure today.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's a powerful thing to know, to know that Christ is present in the Eucharist, and so I knew I was in the right place.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: I always read Scripture, even since I was a young boy continued to read Scripture.
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: It always spoke to me.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: The power of prayer, I mean.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: You continue to learn new things, right, and go deeper and deeper and deeper, of course, but at the end of the day, what happens is John Paul II's theology body put all of those loose pieces that I didn't understand about who I was, what marriage was, what the Trinity is.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: You know what is this love story, what is this battle, what you know, what is the actual truth?
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: You know what is what is good, what is what is beautiful.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, really, what is it?
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: You know that, that, and then you realize that it's innate in us that, as creatures, we have an inner life, right, we have a soul, you know, and, and that soul is an inner life being expressed through the body, but we're also, we have an outer life when we see the world around us.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: That affects us.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: If you think about it, mark Schmidt didn't just make all these choices himself.
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: You came into the world, but you didn't choose when to come in, how to come in, what parents you had, what upbringing you actually had, did you have siblings?
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, you didn't make all these choices.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: See, something happens to you, and we have to remember this as human beings.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: In this heart, in this experience, there's things that happen to you and it's all part of your inner life, and yet, yet you have self-determination.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: You have a soul, right, it needs to be connected to the spirit, to the Holy Spirit, because otherwise you think that you are, your feelings, your emotions, you're what happens to you.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: So I see that beauty of those twin sisters coming down.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: Something happened in my heart.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: I don't know what it is, if I was a teen, I could get into porn, I could get into lust, I could get into self, I could see those beautiful girls as bodies to be used.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: So how do I know that?
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: Right, these are things that just happen, those girls coming down.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: Something happened to my heart.
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: I didn't make it happen, it just happened.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: Now John Paul helps us understand what is that.
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: What is the power of love?
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: See, it's a movement, raw material that actually moves a man out of himself, a woman out of herself, into this orbit.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: But now, how should I live?
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: How should I live?
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: And John Paul just opens it all up, you know, and taking off from Christ's teaching.
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: You know, he doesn't make this stuff up, right?
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: He just expounds on Scripture.
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: What would you say?
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: You know, because I know we're coming up, you know here to the end of the clock, but you know I think there's so many people out there in this day and age.
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: You know you're talking about that young man who spoke with in college that that see the battle.
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: They see something's off.
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: You know they're.
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: It's almost like I I'm envisioning they're kind of at the edge here of this and they're going to go one way or the other.
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: You know they're, they're contemplating, they feel that battle in their heart.
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: What would you?
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: What's a practical step for someone?
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: If you see, you see someone struggling with that bad, what would you say?
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: It's like what?
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: What would be an encouragement to you for for someone at that?
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the main thing.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: You and I have talked about this so much, you know, first of all, be conscious of that movement of the heart, be conscious of it and and say, okay, what's happening to to my heart, and go into to prayer with that.
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: What happens is, you know, let's say it's, it's a sexual impulse.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: You know, because that's right, it's really a love story and our bodies are created in a way to attract.
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: I am attracted to femininity, femininity is attracted to masculinity.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, we're made that way.
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: So this is nothing unnatural.
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: Don't push it down.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: Remember, we talked about the starvation diet.
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: You know, too many times I'm trying to be good.
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: Oh, I don't want to think about this, I don't want to think about this.
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: So what do we do?
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: We try to be good for a while.
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: We get hungry and we indulge.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: Huh, we eat the fast food.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: So what you do here is what I said in the beginning you open up these temptations to prayer.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: It's an invitation now to ask God what is going on in my heart.
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: What is going on in my heart, what is that impulse and what does it mean for me at this moment to choose the good.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: What should I do at this moment and to start to be open to prayer.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: What'll happen to you is the prayer becomes really powerful.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: At first it's a little confusing, like I don't know what's going on in my heart.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: But you have to stop, you have to pause.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: You hit the pause button, you say yeah, I'm just not a person getting blown around by the wind, I'm a man, I'm a woman, I am self-determining again.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: I have power here, even though there's things happening in my heart, there's things happening all over the world that I didn't do.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: But I am given freedom to use my intellect and my reason to choose the good, to choose what's true and then what's good and beautiful, so that I become the good.
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: So, in this middle of this chaos, I can find this little bit of peace and understanding.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: Well, this doesn't happen overnight, you know, and this is a gift of grace that you have to ask for.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: So that's the first thing, mark, is you stop?
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: You know you ask, right.
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: You know, in Matthew 7, chapter 7, verse 7, you know seek, ask, knock, right, you're seeking.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: What is this going on?
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: I ask what is that?
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: And then I knock at the door.
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: Huh, I say you know, christ open up.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: And in the book of Revelation.
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: God, jesus, says that I'm standing there waiting for you.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: I'm knocking at the door too, but you're free, mark, schmidt and Jack are free to open the door or not.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: This is the narrow gate.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: We are all on this broad 3S highway to nowhere.
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: What is that?
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: You know Jesus?
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: Again, matthew 7, verse 14, it's beautiful, and he talks about the broad road and the narrow road.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: Right there, mark, that young person has a decision.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: Do I just keep getting blown around by the spirit of the age, the 3S highway, I call it, which is selfishness?
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: Everything's sexualized today, without meaning or purpose.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: And then I look to the state, to daddy state, to give all these rules and regulations to me so that I can live as I wish, or you walk in.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: And where does that go?
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: It's always utopia, right, they promise you.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: Ah, just follow us.
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: It's utopia.
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: The etymology of the word utopia.
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: You know what it is, the root of the word utopia?
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: Look it up in Webster's Nowhere, no place.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: That's what utopia means Nowhere and no place.
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: And people are just being fooled.
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: At some point in your life you say, nope, I got to have something more.
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: Now I open the narrow gate that leads me to this person of Jesus Christ and it's powerful brother.
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: And it kind of goes back to what you said from the beginning too, because there might be people that maybe there's still fear, maybe there's that confusion.
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: But I think, as we kind of tie this all back together, jesus makes this invitation where he says come and see, take that step, come and see and experience the freedom.
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: Experience Jesus.
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: He will radically change your life and it doesn't mean that everything's going to get easier, but you will find that said, you know.
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: I think he said in this day and age there is this rejection of the meta narrative, that that there actually is a story to our life, that there is a purpose, that there's meaning to it, that we were created for, for this infinite love, that God gave us the capacity for infinite love, for infinite happiness, that he wants more than just that.
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: We're just these beings floating around with no purpose, that are just, you know, can change anything not grounded in any truth, not grounded in the gift of our humanity, of our sexuality, all these different things.
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: And I think, coming and seeing even if that's a difficult idea of where you're at, I think there are so many people that are so disconnected from that story I think taking that step of come and see, because God doesn't want you to just know this love story.
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: He wants you to experience it and encounter it.
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: And I think you know that's at the heart of why you know.
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: I think it's such a powerful thing to hear, hear.
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: Your story is you know this love story, but you've also encountered this love story.
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: You're living this love story and the person of Christ he does.
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: You know, we've talked about this before.
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: You know, love is the highest form of the intellect, the ability to come into a loving relationship with the Lord.
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: That's available to each of us.
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: We just have to take that step.
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: So he says come and see, have humility.
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: We don't have all the answers.
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: He does.
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: He is the way, the truth and the life, not us.
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: We have to lay down our life and trust.
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: I think at the heart of all this, with the sin of Adam and Eve, where that started it, was that wound of a distrust.
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: I don't have a good father, I cannot trust him, and realizing that we can't, and realizing that when we surrender to his will, we're surrendering to a good father who is perfect, who loves us, who has a plan for our life, who desires us to thrive, to be free, and he's just inviting us to take that step.
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: Come and see, you know, and so you know, I'm encouraged by her.
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: I know we're going to close up here, but think about this, the absurdity of trying to live the other way.
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: So you know, when you say I could be like God and I can call what is good evil and what is evil good.
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: What absurdity.
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: Here's, jack, a little tiny speck in the universe, a little tiny speck.
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: Most of the things are happening to me out or out in the world that have nothing to do with me, that I didn't choose.
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: All I can choose is this little part, and I think I'm the creator of the universe.
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: I have the gall to think that I created the universe.
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: I wrote the big story.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: Well, good luck.
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: And there's a lot of people that do.
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: 90% of young people subscribe to what you were describing, to moral relativism.
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: There is no truth.
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: Well, it makes you know.
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: I think I don't remember exactly what church documents this is from, but it says something along the lines of man apart from God is incomprehensible.
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: You know, this idea that when you separate the foundation of all of existence, of our life, of God, who is the one who's provided our life, our humanity, the subjective reality, and we're just floating along, we become incomprehensible.
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: We become men who think they can become women, women who think they become men.
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: There is no truth.
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, look at what life is apart from God with all this.
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: It's incomprehensible, it makes no sense.
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: There is no grounding, there is no truth.
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: I mean, look at what life is apart from god with all this.
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: It's incomprehensible, it makes no sense.
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: There is no grounding, there is no foundation, and so you see it play out.
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: You know, that's another example of that, that ideology merging with the subjective experience.
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: We can all experience that chaos.
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: We can see that and say there's something off here, you know, and so I guess you know, we, we, maybe this for another another episode.
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: Hey, beautiful.
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: Hey, great to be with you.
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, great to be with you.
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: Hopefully you want to say goodbye to our audience before you sign off to brother, but go ahead Absolutely.
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: Oh, you all, you know, I think you know, keep, keep listening to Jack and all that the JP2 Renewal Center and this podcast is doing.
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: It's just, you know.
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: We need strong voices that are speaking the truth and and guidance to the truth, the good and the beautiful.
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: So it's great to be with you this morning and hope to be back again.
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: All right, hey, thanks everybody.
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us.
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: Bye-bye, thank you.