Latest / Claymore: Become Who You Are / #478 The Solar Eclipse Finally Has Mass Media's Attention and Looking Up To The Cosmos In Awe and Wonder!

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#478 The Solar Eclipse Finally Has Mass Media's Attention and Looking Up To The Cosmos In Awe and Wonder! · Claymore: Become Who You Are

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Become who you Are podcast, a production of the John Paul II Renewal Center.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: I'm Jack Riggert, your host, and I'm so glad you're with me.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Today's episode the solar eclipse finally has mass media peering into the sky in awe and wonder and and, and.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: And.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: It's amazing that today is also the solemnity or the celebration of the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the great bridegroom.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: And I want to put those stories together because that's what our tradition has done all through the ages, all through the ancients, and it goes all the way back to the early Greek philosophers.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: It's amazing, the awe and wonder, and there's a little spark.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Huh, we felt a little spark, or we saw a little spark with some of the mass media people finally pairing up in the sky and actually got a little emotional.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: You know, and I have to accept that some of those tears from our brothers and sisters, employed as the talking heads of mass propaganda, those tears and emotions were really maybe their hearts wakening up a little bit.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: So we have to pray for them, we have to pray for one another.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: That the solar eclipse, another sign in heaven, all of creation, is a sign, some reflection of God into the world, the mystery, the awe and wonder of God, but that reflects the mystery and awe, in a little way, of our own world, the mystery, the awe and wonder of God, but that reflects the mystery and awe, in a little way, of our own hearts, the mystery of truth, the mystery of love and freedom and all those things.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: So let's see if we can put a little bit of that together.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Before I go on with this episode, I just want to say to you I know I've been a little erratic.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Easter is a busy time for the John Paul II Renewal Center, for me out speaking and doing different things, and I hope that you had a chance to listen to that series about spiritual warfare with Father Ryan Browning.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: If you didn't, maybe get on the exercise bike or take a walk.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Spring is coming here.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Take a walk and listen to that.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: It's really really good.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: It's a way to really pay attention to your heart.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Because this is what they did in awe and wonder with the solar eclipse.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: They just paid attention to their hearts a little bit.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Now many of them will just go back to their jobs again and maybe not think about this for a long time again, and it's really a tragedy when that happens, but some of them maybe, will spark in the movement of the heart and then they want to be aware of that.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: They want to be able to understand that movement of the heart and then to accept the truth, accept God, the truth, love and reject that which is really of Satan, the anti-creation, the one that wants to disengage or separate our hearts from the mysteries and the awe and wonder all around us.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: So buckle up and get ready for today's episode.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: You know the solar eclipse.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: If you got a chance to see it, especially if you saw the totality they were calling it of the eclipse, it really is spectacular.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: Now I'm in the Chicagoland area and we got about 93% of it.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: So it was powerful movement, but it didn't darken a lot.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: I did see some darkness come over the area that I was in.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Well, I shouldn't say darkness, I just saw a shadow or lessening of light, I should say, and it was noticeable.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: But we didn't get the full Monty, I guess, right, the full picture of it.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: And some of these people, some of these talking heads of mass propaganda, they were really moved, I think, and again, we hope that they do right.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: We invite everybody into this story to wake up the awe and wonder in the human heart and it was a spectacular sight.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: But for someone like me, and maybe many of you, you know, I spend one or two minutes most mornings looking at the sunrise, the spectacular colors, the cloud formations, and they're always different.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: And the same thing at night If I get a chance, if I'm not out speaking someplace, or even afterwards sometimes I'll get a chance, certainly in the summertime, when the sun hasn't totally gone down yet and you see again this spectacular array of colors and lights and clouds, and it's never the same.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: I think there's so many artists now up in heaven, and you think Michelangelo and Bernini and some of these incredible artists, and I almost think they're all saying to God you know, it's my turn, it's my turn to paint something up in the sky and you got to see that.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: And then sometimes I just sit there in silence and just awe and wonder.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: I want to read you something because of the incarnation, but before I get to the incarnation, I want to read you something from Psalm 19.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: If you get a chance to read Psalm 19, I'm just going to read a little bit.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: The heavens are telling the glory of God, and a firmament proclaims his handiwork, day to day pours forth speech and night to night declares knowledge.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: There is no speech, nor are there words.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Their voice is not heard, yet their voice goes out through all the earth and their words to the end of the earth.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: In them he has set a tent for the sun.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: So that's nighttime, he's got the tent for the sun and then the bridegroom, which is the sun, a sign of the sun.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: And I'm not reading anymore and I'm just adding a little commentary here.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: I should have said that, right.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: But so we get to this point where the sun is ready to rise now, like the bridegroom, coming up, and that's what it says here.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: So in them he has set a tent for the sun which comes forth.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: The sun now comes up over the earth like a bridegroom, leaving his chamber like an athlete, running its course with joy.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Its rising is from the ends of the heavens and its circuit to the end of them, and there's nothing hidden from its heat.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: So here's the sun rising again in the horizon, and this is the bridegroom, this is the creator, and the creator is saying hello, I'm here again and I'm warming the earth.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: I'm here for you again.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Wake up and watch for me.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: Be filled with awe and wonder and let it allow that to sink into your hearts.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: I go on with verse seven.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: The law of the Lord is perfect.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: Reviving the soul.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: The testimony of the Lord is sure.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Making wise the simple.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: Making wise the simple those of us that are humble enough and obedient enough to sit in there and know that we're just a little tiny speck here, as those people and I heard some comments like this from the mass media, people saying, I realize we're just a little speck, we don't have control over this, we don't have power over this awe and wonder and finally they're getting rid of some of their hubris, right, their pride, and getting out of those screens.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: And this is what we need to do so often, right?
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: And so the testimony of the Lord is sure.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: Making wise the simple.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: The precepts of the Lord are right.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: Rejoicing the heart, rejoicing the heart, this is what they felt, didn't they?
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: They felt that, rejoicing in the heart.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: So the succession of day and night is caused by the appearance and disappearance of the son, isn't it?
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: But the son is a creation of God's and is under his care.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: See, the psalm poetically describes how God allows the son to rest at night in a tent of the sort that nomads use.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: So this is the psalms.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: This is maybe a thousand years before Jesus or so, right.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: And so we have this nomadic people, and now they see this and they experience this, and the sun comes up and rises in the morning like a hero husband.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Now, poetry aside, the Psalms shows how, in fact, our human understanding, which shares in the light of divine intellect, right, so we were different than the rest of creation.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: You know the deers and the animals, the birds they were even mentioning.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: You know they sense something going on with the solar eclipse and the drop in the temperature, but they don't all have their solar glasses on like us, do they?
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: And just staring at awe and wonder, because?
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Because we'd be giving this roi in Genesis 2.7.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: God took this biology that's all around us and this creation, but he blew his own spirit into us.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Right, that gave us reason and intellect and free will.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: And so we're different than the rest of creation and we're made to look up at the stars and the moon and the sun and say, wow, wow, what is going on here?
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: And we use our reason to seek the truth and our free will then looks for, you know, in being complimented by and brought to the light of truth, searches for the good, and then a free will chooses the good right.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: And when we choose the good, we go out into the world and we do good and we become good.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: And that's when our hearts start to rejoice, because creation comes forth from God's goodness.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: It shares in that goodness and we share in that goodness.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Remember, every time God created something, in Genesis, he said it's very, very good.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: But the crown of creation, of course, is us, for God willed creation as a gift addressed to man.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: This is given to you.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Go out and explore it and discover it.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: And in the beginning, before sin, we had that divine spirit within us and we were sharing this with God.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Right, it's an inherent, it's destined for us, it's entrusted to us, and so this is where we're going with this.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: And so I go on a little bit before I get to the solemnity, and I'm just going to read you a little bit from Job, if you remember the story of Job, and it's a long book, right, and Job, it's a fascinating story, and Job is pondering and he's kind of dialoguing, going back and forth with God, trying to understand this, and finally God just stops and he says now you stop and listen to me now just for a minute, because you've been talking all this time.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: And he says to Job did you create the universe?
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Did you write the story?
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: You know we came into a story.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: You know, for all those people in mass media, they came into a story.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: Quit trying to reinvent the story.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: All you're doing you're searching for the larger story so that you can make sense of your own identity, your own meaning and purpose, why we're created, male and female.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: How do I find happiness and joy here in union and communion with the creator?
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: And this points us to love.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: Love in the truth and then truth in love.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: This is what our hearts are looking for.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: You know, there's a point in Job where God speaks.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: In it says this gird up your loins like a man.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: Now I will question you and you shall declare the answer to me.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Tell me if you have understanding.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Who determines its measurement?
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: Surely you must know.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: Or did you stretch the line upon it?
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Or what were the basis?
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: What were the basis of this universe sunk into?
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: Do you know how I did this?
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: Who laid its cornerstone?
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: When the morning, stars sank together and all the sons of God shouted for joy.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: Or who shut the sea with its doors Right.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: So who took the sea and separated the land from the sea?
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: When it burst forth from the womb, the womb, right, it's coming, I'm creating it.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: When it burst forth from the womb, the womb, right, it's coming, I'm creating it.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: It's coming forth from me.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: And now I shut the door of the sea.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Right, I made the land separate again from the sea, the light from the darkness, when I made clouds its garment and prescribed bounds for it and said thus far, you shall come and no further.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: And here shall your proud waves be stayed.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: Huh, and then he goes on it's so, so beautiful.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: Well, this is getting us all set up, huh.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: And now I'm going to move to the solemnity of the annunciation of the Lord.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: Right, the annunciation heralds the beginning of our celebration, when the bridegroom himself, jesus Christ, the bridegroom himself who wants to wed himself to us, to his people, to his bride, the church.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: And how is he going to do this?
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: It's the awe and wonder of how he does this, and Mary's obedient fiat.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: That's what the annunciation was when the angel announced to Mary right, humanity is then wedded to divinity.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: So we had that Ruah in Genesis 2.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: 7, and then we had original sin come into our lives, right?
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: We kind of blew out that spirit and sin and death entered the world.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: Well, the bridegroom, this isn't plan B.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: The bridegroom was always to be wedded to his people, to all of us.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: And so here's the bridegroom coming back into the story.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: And we are Christians because of what God announced to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: Since it cannot be bought, in order for this salvation to enter into us, what do we need?
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: What do all of us need?
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: We need a humble, a docile heart, an obedient heart like Mary's, to sit in awe and wonder, right?
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: So here's what happens.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: Huh, so the Lord spoke.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: Now, this is from Isaiah setting this up.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Yet the Lord spoke to Ahaz saying ask for a sign from the Lord, your God.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: Let it be as deep as the netherworld or as high as the sky.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: But Ahaz answered I will not.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna tempt the Lord.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: Then Isaiah said to him listen, o, house of David, is it not enough for you to weary people, the king, must you also weary my God?
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Therefore, the Lord himself will give you this sign the virgin shall be with child and bear a son and shall name him Emmanuel.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: What does Emmanuel mean?
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: God is with us.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: God is with us, the word of the Lord.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: Then we go on to the gospel of Luke.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: This is chapter one, verses 26 to 38.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: The angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph of the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: And coming to her he said Hail full of grace, the Lord is with you.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: But she was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: And I pause here again.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: She pondered in her heart See, this is what God is asking.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: Ponder in your heart what sort of greeting this might be.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: Then the angel said to her Do not be afraid, mary, for you have found favor with God.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus, which means God with us.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: Right, god, the Savior is with us.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: Huh, jesus saves, god saves.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High and the Lord.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: God will give him the throne of David, his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever and of his kingdom there will be no end.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: But Mary said to the angel but how can this be, since I have had no relations with a man?
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: And the angel said to her in reply and I pause here for a second he is going to bring this Ruah, this Holy Spirit, back into us.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Well, how does this happen?
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: Well, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, mary.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: The angel says to her, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: This, wow.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: He blows the Spirit into her, this gift of life.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: Therefore, I go on.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: Therefore, the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: And behold, elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived the son, in her old age and this is the sixth month of her who was called barren, for nothing will be impossible for God.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: And then Mary said this behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: May it be done to me according to your word.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: Then the angel departed from her.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: That's her fiat.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: May it be done to me according to your word.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: This is what I always tell people.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: When you wake up in the morning, before you look at that little screen, that little phone screen, just get down on your knees and just open up your heart.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: We don't know we're entering into the mystery and we say let it be done to me according to your word.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: We kneel there with our blessed mother right and just start your day like that.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: It's amazing.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: There's a little commentary here, and let me see who the commentary.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: The commentary is by Father Perrin.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: Father Perrin, I really love him.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: He died in 2002.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: He was a French Dominican priest.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: He said this in a commentary Mary has heard.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: She believes she is aware of the mystery which has been revealed to her.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: All eyes in heaven and on earth are turned in her direction.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: Mary senses the expectation of the archangel, or rather of the God who sent him.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: She hears the groanings of humanity resounding in her heart, that humanity which is enslaved by sin and burdened with sorrow.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: Her soul expands with the breath of hope which for centuries has given life to her people.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: She is, as it were, buoyed up by the desires and hopes of all the patriarchs and the prophets that went before her, but at the same time she's astonished the prospect of such a destiny and its fearsome responsibility.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: And Mary answers behold the handmaid of the Lord.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: Let it be done to me according to thy word it was, if she said, if Mary said to God I am completely yours, use me for whatever your heart desires.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: See God's heart, huh desires us, desires to love us.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: He created us in love, by love and for love.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: We blew this out, this ruah, the spirit of God.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: We were like cut flowers, living there in sin and death.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: Now the bridegroom comes back into the story.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: To what?
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: To give us this breath of life again?
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: Jesus himself takes on a body, a human flesh.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: He takes on, in a sense, all of our humanity, weds it right in his own body with divinity, and then he pours this out to us on the cross, right In humility.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: Can you imagine the humility of God who hangs on a cross pouring this out to us?
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: He's obedient to the father, you know that's the same thing he asks of us just to be obedient and to be humble and to have our hearts be open and listen to your own hearts right.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: These are sublime words whose simplicity contains more wisdom than the whole angel.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: It is an act so great and so decisive that its consequences will be endless.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: Be it done to me.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: According to thy word, the humble virgin whispers and the word.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: Jesus Christ was made flesh, the bridegroom, and he dwelt among us and continues to dwell among us today.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: And this living word embodies the grace of redemption and all the sanctity of the church.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: It will mean for all people unending union with him and his father.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: And where do we receive this today, this union and communion?
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: Where do we receive it?
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: At the mass.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: See, when you go to mass and I try to go at least four or five days a week, depending on my schedule, of course, but at the end of the day it's the mass.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: This is what's happening at every single mass.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: So the awe and wonder of the solar eclipse I mean, what happens is it just has me in awe and wonder at the bridegroom, the great bridegroom, coming in and pouring himself out to us, right, it's so beautiful.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: So things are not.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: I want to get a little philosophical on you.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: You know things are not always as they appear.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: I read an introduction to philosophy by a man named Philip Pecorino some time ago and I'm going to read a little bit from him and I add my own kind of commentary in here as I go.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: So you know, things, again, are not always as they appear.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Aristotle thought that philosophy begins in wonder.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: And Aristotle, plato, socrates these are 400 years before Jesus, and they were always pondering these things.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: Already, this is in our heart, right, we have this echo of the story and our reason again wants to search for the truth.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: We're seeking what's true, what's good and what's beautiful.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: Wonder is something children do quite well.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: It comes natural for them, unfortunately, as a lot of us, as we grow older, we stop wondering and stop questioning and stop attempting to look at things in new ways or non-traditional ways.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: We are rewarded for our acceptance and our conformity to what is accepted by most people, for our adoption of whatever's popular.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: Isn't that what happens today?
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: We stop attempting to look at things in new ways or non-traditional ways.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: You know, the people of today think they're so progressive, but they've just fallen into this very, very old story.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: Right, you know, this is from Genesis 3.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: No, you will not die.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: You will be like God.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: You know, you will be able to decide what is good and what is evil.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: But we came into a story.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: That's what I think that this mass media, these people, these commentators, these talking heads looked up at the sky and they go wow, I'm not so big, I'm feeling pretty small.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: So some of us stop wondering altogether, don't they?
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: They keep looking at these little phones.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: They got caught up in these stories, but not everything we believe is true, is it?
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: Philosophy begins, in a sense of wonder.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: It begins when we wonder about what is otherwise is taken for granted or assumed to be true.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: Wonder, though, is a marvelous thing that we should cherish and hold on to as long as we can.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: It's one of the hallmarks of youth.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: Small children are filled with wonder.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: Jesus Christ then said to them blessed are the children, for they shall inherit the kingdom of God and to enter the.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: This is what Jesus was saying Be humble, be obedient, listen, listen, listen.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: What is it about the mind of a child that merits such high value?
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: It's curiosity, inquiry, open-mindedness.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: Something's wrong with this culture today, isn't it?
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: Something's wrong when we look around us.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: You know, gk Chesterton said you want to start out with the fact.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: Start out with the fact of sin, of death, of violence.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: Right Now, here's a story for you to ponder.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: You know, when I'm speaking to people, sometimes I'll say to them, you know, depending on where they're at, I'll say you know, let's stop here, let's pause for a second.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: You know you're wondering what we're talking about with Jesus Christ and with our faith, and what's the great desires of our heart?
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: Not everything seems, as you know, as they appear.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: I said, are you sitting still?
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: And I'm asking all of you right now, are you sitting still, as you're listening to me?
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: No, you're not.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: You know, the solar eclipse will tell us that something is happening Right now.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: We're sitting on the surface of a gas-fired planet, aren't we?
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: We're spinning on our axis at 1,100 miles an hour.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: Our Earth right is moving around a nuclear fireball called the sun, which is what?
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: 60, you know, at 67,000 miles an hour.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: We're revolving around it.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: That nuclear fireball is what?
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: How far away?
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: It's 93 million miles away.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: And the whole universe, the whole thing is exploding out at 448,000 miles an hour.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: Give or take a couple miles an hour.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: And what are we doing?
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: We're posting what we ate for breakfast on Instagram.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: Why, today, did the moon, which is 400 times smaller than the sun, why did it cover up?
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: Right, why did it cover up the sun?
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: Because it's 400 times closer.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: It's not everything is what it appears.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: At night, when there's no clouds, you can look up through the evening sky and what is it that most would say they see?
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: Nearly everyone would say that they see stars and the moon if it's visible from their position at that time.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: Right Now, when asked what are those stars, most people know that they are suns as our own and that they're giving off light as our own does.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Many people would be able to answer that the suns as our own and that they're giving off light as our own does.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Many people would be able to answer that the suns are emitting light as they turn hydrogen into helium and a process that emits an enormous amount of energy, a good part in the form of photons of light.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Name do most people give to what they were looking at that night?
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: Most or many of all, maybe even all, would say space.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: I'm looking at space, outer space, but space nonetheless.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: That's what they're looking at, see.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: This is the story that many of us have come to believe.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: We look out into space and see many suns.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: We know, however, that these little specks of twinkling light are very, very far away.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: We understand that, in fact, we're taught that they were so far away that the distance cannot be measured as we normally do, for the numbers would be too large To make it easier.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: The distances that the suns and the galaxies are from the Earth are measured in light years.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: A light year is the distance that light travels.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: In one year, light moves at over 186,000 miles per second.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: Per second, that's some velocity, right.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: So the light we see, that we associate with a star at night, has been traveling for some time to get to your eyeball.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: One star is 70 million light years away.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: A galaxy that we now have discovered with these powerful telescopes might be 350 million light years away.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: Another star might be 125 million light years away and another 23 million and another 450,000 light years from Earth.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: Another galaxy may be 5 billion light years away.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: Years from Earth.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: Another galaxy may be 5 billion light years away.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: Now, since it takes quite a while for the light to reach Earth, by the time it does arrive at your eyeball, the source of light might not even exist anymore.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: A star may have gone into a nova or a supernova, or even burnt out or been merged into a black hole.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: A galaxy may have merged with another in a cosmic collision.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: Now it may come as a shock to some of you to realize that when you look out into the evening sky, into what you're thinking of as space, outer space, that what you're looking at is actually a composite of different periods of time.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: You are looking at a collection of pasts, things that were done in history that may not even exist anymore.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: What you are looking at the exact configuration or arrangement of those points of light.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: Well, that configuration of stars some are galaxies does not even exist as it appears to our eyes, has never existed, has existed as an actual arrangement of space as it appears to your eye and never will exist, as some of those stars have gone into nova or black holes again and no longer exist, even when you're seeing the light from them.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: In the present situation, right In our present time, what you and all human beings are seeing is an illusion perhaps right, we can call it an illusion, because it's not really there anymore.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: It's an illusion of a simultaneous present for all of the sources of light that are striking the eyeball of the human observer.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: The relative location of the stars and the galaxies you are viewing are not real and have never really been that way.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: You are looking at where things were different times ago in history.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: What you were experiencing as seeing is the interaction of light rays from different times in the past.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: The experience of those of us on earth is totally unique to us.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: Nobody has ever seen it that way that we're seeing it right now.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: Can you imagine that?
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: And when the generations come after us, they're looking into a sky that is different than the one we did?
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: This awe and wonder of God and this explosion out to space again, the Big Bang?
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: Things are not always as they appear, so I want you to think about that idea.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: Consider how many things you may believe that may not be true.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: Think of all the ideologies today.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: A man can be a woman, a woman can be a man.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: A man can now give birth to children.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: I mean all of these things.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: We get them all jumbled up.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: We have to sit in awe and wonder, know that we came into a story that God's revealing to us.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: Think about how many things you believe may have other ways to be examined, viewed or explained other than in the manner you have come to accept is the only way, or the one true way, or as the truth.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: We are going to look at the Greeks, because they believed for a long time in stories that they took to be true and upon which they based their lives About the time of Socrates.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: Then many Greeks were coming to question and even to disbelieve in those stories that were passed down to them the stories of how we were created, etc.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: Stories that were passed down to them, the stories of how we were created, et cetera.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: And when they no longer believed in those stories anymore because things were changing and moving, they were at a loss of how they wanted to live their lives, in particular what they used to see as the basis for a good life, for moral life.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: It was a changing.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: Is everything just relative now?
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: So see, they were already questioning all these things.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: So how do I find the truth?
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: How do I know the good?
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: This was so, because the moral guide that most were using was rested within these stories that are now being questioned or rejected as not being true.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: So we have been.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: So the whole reason I bring this up we have been giving revelation by God.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: You know, some things we can see with the naked eye.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: We see a creation, we see what we see, you know, and just like if we were sitting still, we think we're sitting still, but we're moving.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: So it's the awe and wonder.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: So how do we live, right?
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: Well, we have revelation to come in, and revelation aids us in that.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: Well, we have revelation to come in, and revelation aids us in that, and we start to open our hearts and our lives to Jesus Christ, who is the way, the truth and the life.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: And then, when you step into that story, then your heart will tell you is this true?
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: I remember myself I was an amateur philosopher as a young guy, always trying to search for the truth.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: This is again that childlike kind of view.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: I actually left home early because the sexual revolution and the things that I was seeing in the wars and the Vietnam War and all these kind of things, I just said, you know what is the truth.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: And so it was Socrates, again, who said you know, philosophy begins in wonder.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: Thomas Aquinas said this.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: The reason, however, why the philosopher may be likened to the poet is this both are concerned with the marvelous.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: Open your heart to the marvelous.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: This is why Jesus Christ tells stories when he comes in, because our life unfolds like a story, doesn't it?
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: Not just like a science project or a math problem.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: You know, your life unfolds like a story and it's a story of searching for the truth and, ultimately, for love.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: What is love?
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: The creator who loves us, who's spectacular has this incredible imagination that brought us into a story and wants to reveal all these things to us, but especially that he's a father.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: He's a father and in the Trinity, a communion, and he sends his son, the eternal bridegroom that we were always supposed to be wedded to, that divinity, so he can bring us into this awe and wonder of himself.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: You know, all of creation again is a reflection of something of God, right?
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: I remember my friend, jimmy Patrick, when I was a young guy, when I was just describing, had come home from Vietnam without his legs and the sexual revolution, I can call it the sexual confusion, was in full swing.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: Then the tension of my parents they were struggling financially and trying to save their business.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: They were gone a lot.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: Their relationship started to be stressed, of course, and talk about divorce or maybe leaving one another, and it left me wondering about the meaning of life and love.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: I went through that myself in my own marriage for a while.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: So I wondered how love, once so beautiful and promising in my own life and in my parents' life and other people's life, how could it turn to dislike and even at times to forms of hatred?
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: Something got twisted and distorted.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: At 17 I was the oldest of five boys and again I felt confused, I felt boxed in, I felt anxious.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: I remember this so well.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: So I started to work a lot.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: I figured, you know, I'm going to leave, I'm going to discover the world.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: But I got to have an occupation.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: I got to put some money away.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: I was literally working after school and high school from three o'clock to 11 o'clock, a full eight hour shifts most nights, as a chef's assistant in a large hotel kitchen.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: After school.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: My family needed the money at the time.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: I wanted to save some money and besides the world of work and this is so important the world of work brought me a sense of satisfaction, of creativity in these big kitchens you can create meals and banquets and the camaraderie of living in this community, with men and women that were all putting these parties together and hotels for people to stay in.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: It was really something right, this community, and it also brought me, besides a sense of satisfaction and escape from my troubled mind.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: I would get so involved in the world of work.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: Yet I began to wonder is this all there is?
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: And we realized that this world of work and being creative is one thing you know.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: And to pay the bills and support ourselves.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: But then we have to know what is the truth?
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: How should I live?
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: Because we're not only making a living, we want to make a life, and this is what God wants for us.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: You know, I was thinking about the pain and horror of war, love that had been reduced to a feeling and then further reduced to sex.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: Marriages that got twisted and turned into meaninglessness.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: Same-sex attraction or same-sex marriages would come in later on, right and you go.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: What is going on?
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: Joseph Piper, a philosopher, wrote more and more, at the present time, common good and the common need are identified and what comes to the same thing?
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: The world of work is becoming our entire world today, isn't it?
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: We've decided now to give up that awe and wonder and just try to make a living and try to accumulate materialistic things, but then we see the world falling apart.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: We haven't realized, we've given up on the idea of how to live a life right.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: So this world of just being taken up by work and materialism and consumerism threatens to engulf us completely till, at last, they make a total claim upon the whole of human nature.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: Isn't this what we're seeing today?
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: A world in which there's no room for philosophy and awe and wonder in any true sense of the world.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: Hopeful at that age that I could discover answers, I left home at the first opportunity with no other plans than to find a space to be and think, and preferably by the mountains or the oceans.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: Well, I knew somebody in Denver, colorado, that might put me up.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: So I threw my backpack, my hiking boots, some extra clothes, my 10-speed bike in the back of my old station wagon.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: I sold everything else and gave everything else away and drove away.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: William Blake wrote this poem how sweet I'd roam from field to field and tasted all the summer pride, till I the prince of love beheld, who in the sunny beams did glide.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: We're searching, we're searching, we're searching.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: Plato, as everyone knows, virtually identified philosophy, this awe and wonder and eros, this desire in our hearts, this power, this energy within us.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: Eros, as we associate with the erotic today, is really in the ancient philosophers.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: Was this eros a movement toward what's true, what's good and what's beautiful and of course, especially the beauty of love?
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: In regard to the similarity of philosophy, then, in poetry there is this little known and curious saying of Thomas Aquinas, which occurs in his commentary on the metaphysics of Aristotle.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: He's looking at Aristotle and he says this.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: He says the philosopher, he says there is related to the poet and that both are concerned with wonder, with marveling and with what which makes us marvel.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: I remember one time when I was living in Denver, I was hiking in the Rockies.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: I had my backpack on and I was going through a steep animal trail, through trees and brush, until I came to a clearing above the tree line.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: I had really, I was hot, I was tired and I almost was going to go back down.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: I remember.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: And then the tree line started to thin out and in a short distance away I spotted a lone tree standing along which I hoped was the top of the mountain.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: It seemed like it and I headed up toward it.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: Once there, I stood in awe and wonder at the scene before me, across the valley below me.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: Now I was at the top of that particular mountain and across the valley below me rose an even taller, stunning snow-capped mountain that I was looking at at the other side.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: Cascading down from that summit on the other side looked like liquid silver, glistening in the sun, but it was a waterfall, with the sun just hitting it and it looked just beautiful, silvery, shiny, dropping thousands of feet below.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: The songs of birds were everywhere, bees and butterflies were moving among the wildflowers in the valley below Along, with a herd of elk, maybe a thousand feet below their calves, running and jumping in joy, it seemed, while the adults grazed nearby.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: I remember I took off my backpack, I sat down with my back against that tree to take it all in.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: You know, I didn't find all the answers to my questions that day, but I sensed, in that awe and wonder and beauty before me, it opened a door that I was invited to enter into.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: And I remember feeling this ache within me.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: I wanted to be filled.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: At first I was going to head back down and see, maybe it's a person, maybe it's a woman, that I want to fill that heart with.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: I'm seeking love, I'm seeking something more.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: But this time I just sat back and I just stayed in that ache.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: And here's where God.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: I had that God movement, that God moment.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: It's almost like the people looking at the solar eclipse.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: You know they have that God moment, but you got to stay in the ache.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: Stay in the ache, stay in the ache.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: You know, for me it often happens that when something is revealed that I need to pay attention to me, and sometimes it's like a hammer, for God knows that I need to pay attention to me, and sometimes it's like a hammer, for God knows that I need a hammer.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: We all need a hammer on our heads.
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: Sometimes, again, science is not static, but changing as new discoveries are made, which is awesome.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: What we thought or we knew was true 25 or 50 or 100 years ago is not true anymore.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: I love science, but science will never give you purpose.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: It'll never tell you what's right or wrong, tell you how to live.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: You know, we had the Big Bang, and the physicist Ernest Rutherford commented 100 years ago that a theory that you can't explain to a bartender is probably no damn good, he said as one who spent time behind the bar myself as a bartender.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: I was relieved to hear that Not so long ago, at the beginning of the 20th century, most scientists assumed the universe with no beginning and no end.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: That's, even Einstein thought that and put his static theories of the universe together.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: Now the majority of physicists and cosmologists believe today that the universe began as a single moment, commonly now referred to as what the Big Bang, that an explosion occurred and the universe has been expanding ever since.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: This disrupted a lot of science at the time.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: Now we know this.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: There was a time that we could measure before time began.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: There was a time before time.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: Said before time began, there was a time before time.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: Said in another way, time had a beginning.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: Now, the existence of the Big Bang begs the question of what came before that and who or what was responsible.
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: Something was created from nothing.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: Now, if the scientific world said this is impossible.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: You can't have something from nothing.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: But yet here we have nothing and it exploded into a whole universe.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: I love the way that the well-known astrophysicist Robert Jastrow put it in the last paragraph of his book God and the Astronomers.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: At this moment, he said, it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: We got to this point.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: We can't go any further.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: He scaled the mountains of ignorance.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: He's about to conquer the highest peak and he pulls himself over that final rock and he is greeted by who, a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries telling the same story.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: He goes on to say the essential elements of both the astronomical and the biblical accounts of the origin of the universe are suddenly the same.
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: The universe commenced suddenly and sharply, at a definite time and a flash of light and energy.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: Isn't this something that true science, right science, will never refute anything about our true faith.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: It never has and never will.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: And when we think it did, as we discover more, we find out it didn't.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: I want to talk now about St Faustina.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: We just had Divine Mercy Sunday yesterday.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: It's amazing, all of these things happen the solar eclipse, the incarnation on the same day, and yesterday the Divine Mercy, the bridegroom who came in and asked Sister Faustina to be his secretary and say that I want everyone to know about my mercy, that I love them, that I want them to come back into the story.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: And in her diary, on number 1600, it says oh my Jesus, if you yourself do not soothe the longing of my soul, then no one can either comfort or soothe it.
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: Your every approach arouses new raptures of love in my soul, but also a new agony, because despite all your approaches to my soul, even the most exceptional, I am still loving you from a distance and my heart dies in an ecstasy of love, because this is not the complete and eternal union, although you commune with me so very often, unveiled, as it were, face to face, and I know you, I experience you nevertheless.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: You therefore open in my heart and soul an abyss of love and a desire for you, my, my God.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: And this bottomless abyss, this total desiring of God, cannot be completely filled on this earth.
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: See, this is our story.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: We live in this temporal space.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: We just come in for a little while.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: We're giving this Ruah, in the beginning, the image and likeness of God.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: We've given reason and intellect and our free will so that we can discover what God wants us to discover, because he gave us free will.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: Free will can be a dangerous thing, right, because we can reject all that's true, good and beautiful.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: Among all the great mystic saints, st Therese of Lisieux, who died only at 24 years old, wrote of this folly with particular expressiveness.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: She said this she goes oh my Jesus, pardon me if I am unreasonable and wishing to express my desires and longings which reach into infinity, pardon me and heal my soul by giving her my soul what she longs for so much.
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: Jesus, jesus, if I wanted to write all my desires, I would have to borrow your book of life.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: Therese was afraid of being overwhelmed under the weight of her bold desires, which were greater than the universe, she said, and caused her the greatest martyrdom.
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: And yet she was convinced that God would not allow her to experience such bold desires unless he wanted to grant them.
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: I am certain.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: Then she said that you will grant my desires.
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: I know, oh my God, that the more you want to give, the more you make us desire, with such confidence and desire, satisfaction ardent thirst itself, she wrote, becomes the most delightful drink of this love.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: So when you stay in the ache, when you wonder, when you wonder, stay in the ache and invite God in.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: And so the seeking itself, when we embark on it wholeheartedly, offers a rich kind of satisfaction in this life.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: So long as we're on earth, we live in this tension of what the theologians called the already but not yet of redemption.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: The living bread, jesus Christ, has already come down from heaven and we already have access to it, here and now, through the life of prayer and the sacraments, especially Holy Communion.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: But the sacramental life is not yet in its final form, it's not yet the ultimate arrival, christ, our life has already come to us, but he tells us that it's for our own good that he goes away.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: He goes away, he goes away.
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: Carol Hauslander, a mystic and a poet, wrote this she goes, he goes away that we may seek him.
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: The sense of loss, the awareness of insufficiency makes us long for him, as it makes us willing to go out from ourselves and find him where he is.
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: That's why it's good for us that he goes away.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: She said, the emptiness we feel, the gnawing void, must be there so that he can fill it.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: And we must be aware of it, says Hauslander, in order that we may want him to fill it.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: See the wanting, she said, for him to fill it becomes our most ardent desire, our most ardent hope.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: Hope directs desire according to the divine design enabling us to reach our destiny.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: St Paul speaks about this in Romans when he proclaims that hope is the redemption of our bodies.
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: It's what saves us as Christians.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: Right, so beautiful, huh, I'm going to end there.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: So I would just say to you again go out.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to end there.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: So I would just say to you again go out, contemplate, sit in silence, look at the stars, look at the moon, you think about the solar eclipse, you think about this ardent desire in our heart to love and to be loved, and God has the same desire for you.
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: We can encounter him.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: This is a small period of time that God wants us to use our free will to accept eternal life I am the way, the truth and the life or to reject him.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: In a sense, we all stand at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: I would say again, just like we were just talking about here open your heart to that ache and invite God in First thing in the morning, before you look at that phone, let it be done to me according to your word.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: And then what's going to happen?
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: Right, when you start to move into God's heart.
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: Satan wants to rob us of that, doesn't he?
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: He wants to take us away.
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: He wants to rob us.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: He'll send temptations down.
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: This time, this time, do not indulge those temptations.
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: Do not push them down and pretend they don't exist, but open, open, open all of those temptations to God.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: You know temptation's not a sin.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: Jesus himself was tempted.
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: This is that ache, you know.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: Say I'm tempted, I want to fill my heart with all kinds of different things, but this time I'm going to stay in the ache and open it to you.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: I invite you into my heart.
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: And then, when we receive that love, just that tinkling, that joy, that we feel that consolation, that if you listen to my work on spiritual warfare with Father Browning from the last couple of weeks, you'll start to understand that.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: You'll listen to that, you'll start to understand that and then you will accept God and you will reject all the other voices, right, and we walk into consolation.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: And then, number three, you have to become Now, take that little inkling of love that God poured into your heart and then become this.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: This is so important to become a person of love, to love the next person you see, to love your neighbor.
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: Right, this is not brain surgery, it's the two great commandments Be filled with the source of divine life and love God.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: Love God and then go out and love your neighbor.
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: Often it's in that act of loving other people that you see their joy, you see the face of Jesus that St Teresa, mother Teresa of Calcutta, would often say we know.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: She went around and was serving the poor and the sick and the tired and she would say I would see Jesus in those faces, right, I became a person of love, and then it's returned to you that way.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: So it's just a beautiful thing, right?
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: This is our story.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: This is the larger story that we came into.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: We will never find purpose and meaning in life, we will never find a way to be filled unless we walk into that larger story that we were created for.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: Hey, god, love you.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: Great to be with you today.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: Talk to you soon, everybody, bye-bye.