Latest / Claymore: Become Who You Are / #462 The Sacred Romance: Embracing the Sacred in Nature, Love, Beauty and Longing

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#462 The Sacred Romance: Embracing the Sacred in Nature, Love, Beauty and Longing · Claymore: Become Who You Are

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Become who you Are podcast, the production of the John Paul Tour Renewal Center.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: I'm Jack Rigert, your host, and I'm glad you're joining me.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: This is the Sacred Romance, a spiritual awakening.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: This is the second in a series that I'm doing every Monday for Lent.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Buckle up and get ready for today's episode.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: I was in Anchorage, alaska, and I was doing a parish mission up there.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: I was and I also was giving a talk on moral relativism and I extended out a little bit because they wanted me to do a two-day women's retreat for the, for the Catholic women in the city of Anchorage, alaska.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: So I was excited about that.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: The retreat house was a large lodge in the mountains, not too far, about an hour and a half or so, I think it was out of Anchorage, alaska.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: And when we got there it was a really cool looking place with the windows around, big windows looking out into nature, you know, crackling fireplace etc.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: And when I got there they said, jack, you know there's room for you here in the lodge where everybody else is staying, or we have a speaker's cabin, a small cabin out on the lake, and I said that sounds interesting, let me take a look at that.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: So I took the keys, went down, it was maybe a quarter of a mile away and it went down through the forest and then out on this lake and it was gorgeous.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: It was just a small one-room cabin but it was perfect for me with desk and you know desk and a table and etc.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Etc.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Very simple and it was beautiful.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: It was around.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: It was with a snow-capped mountains, very rugged looking mountains, pristine forest, wild animals, moose grizzly up there, wolves, bald eagles, and you know it's just gorgeous.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: And I'm an old backpacker and a nature guy.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: And so I come back up to the main lodge and I said, yeah, I'm going to stay there.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: That's awesome.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: And I was going to do a series now as a retreat master.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: You're going to do a series of talks and so you have plenty of time to get in some really deep things, to really get people's heart unified with with God, and so I give a talk in the morning and then the afternoon I go down to the cabin and I was going to go inside and I look back and it was just gorgeous.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: This lake was gorgeous and it reminded me that small b beauty of nature, like sacramental.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: All of nature is a sacramental sign.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Small b beauty of nature.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: When you dwell on it, when you meditate it, when you sit in it, it lifts you up.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: It's just a reflection.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: God created things to be a reflection of something of himself.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: And as I was mesmerized by this beauty, I sat there and it would brought me back to this time when I was in high school.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: When I was in high school, I was a junior in high school.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: A little bit of a confusing time.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: In high school the sexual revolution was in full bloom.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: I really did like nature Even back then.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: I used to take some long walks and stuff on on some trails close to our house.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: I had done a little backpacking already and by that time, by the time, I was a junior and anyways, I kind of set this up.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: So, small b beauty of nature, bringing you into big b beauty settles the heart, brings you up into God himself.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: I'm at a party and I was there with a beautiful young woman.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: Her name was Marlene it might be real main name might not be and while we were there we found a room, an empty room in the house, and so we got pretty passionate and during this passion I realized that this young woman, a virgin, would want to give herself or was willing to give herself to me at that time.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: And you know you get caught up in the moment, and so we're kind of passionate and I and I kissed her and at one point I lift back and I open up my eyes and I look at this woman and I see her face.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Her face was glowing, it was, it was something it was, it was hard to explain, was just glowing.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: This beauty was just glowing.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: And I look down to the rest of her body and it's just glowing, something mesmerizing almost, and it just stopped me in my tracks what I saw there and the grace that I received there.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: And it's happened since, you know, just to see the beauty of a woman in general.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: It's, you see, this, this, the mystery and beauty of a person, almost of their soul, filled with God inside.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: You know, you can just see that this is not a body done, not like an object, not body parts.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: There's something glorious and powerful in that was just glowing off of her.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: So, anyways, I stopped, I pulled back, I was, I was in a different world than her at that moment.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: I just was mesmerized, I was lifted almost into a different place and she was still very passionate and I was not a good communicator in those days.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: I didn't have John Paul, I hadn't studied them yet, I didn't have his vocabulary, and she said you know what's wrong?
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: You know you don't like me, you don't like this, you don't think I'm beautiful, and it was all of those things.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: It was the opposite.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: I was mesmerized by her beauty, but I just had a hard time dealing with words.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: We almost got into a little, you know, like an argument.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: You know, like you know you don't care for me, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: So, anyways, we go back to the, we go back downstairs.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: There's no way I was going to move ahead here.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, I didn't know what was going on, but there was a line that I wasn't going to to cross.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: It was too powerful, too beautiful, and I wasn't ready for that.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: And I knew that.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: And so, anyways, after, after my junior year in high school, I decided to go out West.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: I decided to take an extended trip out West, see what it's like in the Rockies, maybe even make it to the ocean in California, and just see if I could make sense out of this crazy world.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: And I and I left home for a while, was talk back to to.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: It was talk back into coming home and back to Illinois and finishing high school probably a good idea.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: My senior year, the very day I graduated, I had my car packed up, I was ready to go.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: I didn't even wait for that evening I got in the car and I left and I moved to Denver, colorado.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: I knew somebody in Denver and I thought that would be a good start and and I'd stay there for a while, then maybe go to California.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: I was doing a lot of backpacking in those days and I just love to be out there.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: You know, one time I remember being in the back country of the Rocky Mountains following a steeped animal trail through the trees and the brush, and tell I came to a clearing just above the tree line and as I was there, it was hot and I just remember it was a pretty arduous journey, you know, pretty tough.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: You know, if you've got 40, 50 pounds on your back going up an animal trail which isn't just like a little paved trail, you have to really watch where you're going.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: Of course there's snakes, different things up there and wildlife up there you gotta watch for.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: And just getting a little tired and as I was getting tired.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: I spotted a short distance away up the mountain.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: A little clearing came and I spotted a lone tree standing up what I hoped to be the top of the mountain, because it started to thin out.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: You get above tree line and so I said, wow, that might be the top of this mountain.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: So I headed up toward it and once there I just stood in awe and wonder of the scene before me.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: Across from where I was was a valley dipping down below me and that up on the other side rose a stunning snow cap mountain, even higher than the one I was on, and cascading down from its summit, looking like liquid silver, glistening in the sun.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Just the way the sun was hitting.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: It was a waterfall dropping thousands of feet below and the songs of birds were everywhere.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: And as I was listening to the water and then the birds, now it focused my attention and I saw just below me all the bees and the butterflies were moving among the wildflowers and this beauty just in full bloom.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: And then, perhaps a thousand feet below them, was a herd of elk and the calves were running and jumping, while the adults grazed nearby.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: Stunned by all this, I took off my backpack and I sat down against the tree to take it all in.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: It wasn't long, perhaps a few minutes, when I sensed that the beauty of the scene before me was drawing me in.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: I began to experience then, a deep ache within me that moved up and almost seemed to be in my heart, and that ache was this desire to share the beauty before me.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: And I began to imagine Marlene sitting in front of me, my arms around her.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: No loss, no selfishness, no wanting to use, just to have my arms around here, and she's leaning back into me, becoming one with her beauty and the beauty of the scene before me.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: It lifts your heart up.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: My good friend CS Lewis describes it like this we want so much more, something the books on aesthetics take little notice of, but the poets and the mythologies know all about it.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: We do not want to merely see beauty, though God knows, even that is bounty enough.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: We want something else which can hardly be put into words to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it and to become part of it.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: Today we wanna talk about that desire.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: You know this is not trivial desire, some superficial want.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: This is about the atomic energy of our souls and put into the human soul that universal ache and longing we feel deep in our hearts for something more.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: And where is this hunger for something more coming from?
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: Why do we have it?
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: What are we supposed to do with it?
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: More important, is there anything to fill it?
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Does that something more that we're looking for even exist in this world?
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: Is there any hope for finding it?
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: In short, is there any hope that we can satisfy our deepest desire for happiness and love that brings lasting fulfillment?
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Or is this world just a bait and switch?
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: When you see so many unhappy marriages or relationships that never feel like they fully fulfilled you, I could tell you story after story about that, but I'm not gonna take the time today.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: People that come to me after talks and just say you know my husband's not doing it for me, my wife's not doing it for me, but you know what?
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: They never were supposed to completely satisfy you, no matter what your situation are, you know human beings have discarded their, pushed away their passions and desires, or pushed away God, the source of those passions and desires.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: So we live like cut flowers, disconnected from our roots and our story, but yet something inside of our hearts, this burning, yearning, desire for something more, exists among all the people that I know.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: The Greek philosopher, plato, called this interior flame Eros.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Eros is the Greek God of love and was identified by by the Romans.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: Remember the little guy, the angel With the arrow?
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: We called him.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: What they called him, I should say Cupid.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: It's from the Latin word coupier to desire.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: The human yearning we're exploring today can certainly be experienced as a kind of arrow that wounds that heart, making a bleed in a desperate search for satisfaction and fulfillment.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: That's what I was experiencing there, with my back against a tree, be a little bee beauty, lifting me up into big bee beauty, into the infinite, this infinite source of love himself, into God.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: And then to think about Marlene in front of me, it's like bee plus beauty.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: You know, I mean just this transcendent power of union and communion with another person that you care about and you love, and then to share this beauty before you.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: It's almost too much for your heart to take.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: But Eros now in general, the way Plato talked about it, shouldn't be limited merely to romantic love or sexual desire, though it certainly has connotations to that effect.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: But Plato described Eros as a longing for all.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: Listen to this True, all that's good, all that's beautiful and of course that includes love.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: The sad thing is, most of us don't know where to direct that fire inside, so we end up getting burned and burning others, and when that happens, the temptation is to blame the ache itself.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: We want to squelch it somehow, to snuff it out.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: That's what happens in just too many Christian ideas about this is to say I got to push that desire down.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: You know, like a married woman who sees another man and feels something within her heart and says, oh, what is that?
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Rekindling?
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: And the opposite.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: You know, a man that's.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: You know, I talk about this a lot going down the aisle of Jewel or Costco and you see this woman and, oh, you know, it does something to you.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: And so that we have this John Paul would say this perennial call of masculinity to femininity.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: Well, it all reminds you that we're created a Mongol day in the image and likeness of God himself.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: If we understand these burning desires, we're, they're not made to squelch it, to squelch down.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: And even if you try, there's no escape from the burning desire within us for all that's true, all that's good and all that's beautiful, and each of us lives with this unextinguishable expectation that life is supposed to make sense and supposed to satisfy us deeply.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Even the most jaded atheist feels cheated if he doesn't experience meaning, purpose and peace and a word happiness in this life.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: But just where does this universal expectation for personal fulfillment come from?
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: It isn't something we dream up or manufacture on our own.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: Rather, the burning yearning for what is real is incorporated into our design.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: This burning can lead either to the torment of pain or the torrent of love.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: It will either consume us or it will consummate us.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: The yearning of heroes that we are incomplete and that we were in search of another to make sense of ourselves.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: And and although that yearning originates deep within our souls we talk about it as in our hearts, it's also manifested in our bodies.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: Our very bodies tell the story of incompleteness, more specifically, those parts of our bodies that distinguish us, distinguish us as male and female.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: So I take you back to that scene, with my back against a tree, looking out.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: My initial reaction to that ache that welled up into my heart had me imagining Marlene, and then moved on to the impulse to get up.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: Leave the beauty of the scene before me, hike back down the mountain.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: Maybe I would drive to the city and seek or find someone that my heart was aching for, someone to fill that ache.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: Isn't this a common reaction?
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: We sense beauty, we desire it.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: Then we go out and grasp for ways to fill the ache.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: We seek a person or some material object or activity to fill that ache, and if that doesn't work, we numb it by browsing through Instagram or Facebook or the medicine cabinet.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: This lent.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: I suggest another way to stay in that ache.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: Look for opportunities to enter into silence, then.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: So find a place to gaze up.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Allow your heart to be pierced by beauty.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: Gaze out at the sunset or up at the stars at night.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: Take a walk in the woods or imagine the most beautiful place you've ever been.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: Read scripture, let it touch your heart and be still for 10 minutes.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: Then don't look for other ways to fill the ache, but invite him, god, who desires to fill your heart, to enter.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: As I sat a while longer, my back against that tree, I slowly let go and slowly stopped grasping, taking a deep breath.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: I closed my eyes, I opened my heart.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: Into the ache.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: He came Love and beauty himself, bringing with him a deep sense of presence and peace.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: This lent allow yourself to stay in the ache.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: What I'm suggesting here is something very, very powerful.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: I work with a number of, or I have worked with a number of, young people who have been addicted to pornography and other things.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Let's take an example of a young guy that's addicted to struggling with pornography.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: In this two-dimensional world, take out God.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: Take out what we're describing here as small b beauty, lifting you up to the source of all that beauty, all that's true, good and beautiful, and filling your heart.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: Let's exclude that.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Let's push God out.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: This is what's happened to the world today.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: So we live in a two-dimensional space, then a horizontal space, let's call it.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: And what happens?
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: These young guys that hear a talk that I do and they'll open up I talk to priests all the time that hear this in the confessional.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: These poor guys are struggling, struggling and they want to get out of this addiction.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: So what are they trying to do?
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: Push it down, push it down, push it down.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Don't look at that, don't think about that.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: Well, what happens?
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: It's called the starvation diet and after a little while, what happens?
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: You get really hungry.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: And these powers, these passions, these arrows that we're talking about.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: You know you can't just push these down.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: What happens then?
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: You know the culture again is there.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Hey, come here.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: I know what you need and it's called the fast food diet.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: And the marketers and the psychiatrists and the psychologists and the therapists and everybody they know your feelings and emotions more than you do.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: You know the professional marketers of the world.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: They know how to push your buttons, don't they?
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: The social media people know how to push your buttons, so they pull you into a fast food diet.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: So you go from trying to starve yourself, or at least pushing it down, trying to be good, to indulging, trying to be good to indulging, and you go back and forth and into this addiction.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: So what we're suggesting here is to see it in three dimensions, to say those desires, and 3D.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: Those desires have been put there by design to actually lead you to your destiny.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: Don't be afraid of your yearning, burning desires.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: God gave those to you.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: The problem is we're trying to snuff them out and we indulge them instead of opening those great desires to the one who put them there, and are calling you into a larger story, what I'm describing here.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: The saints and the mystics knew all about this.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: There is a book called the Song of Songs, erotic Love Poetry, right in smack in the middle of the Bible and of that small book.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: The saints and the mystics wrote more commentary on that book than all of the other ones combined.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: And it's this romance, it's this erotic love between a man and a woman.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: But what they understood is it gave them the vocabulary to express how they felt in their relationship with God.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: There's a part in there, a line in there, that goes like this Song of Songs, chapter 4, verse 9, you have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: You have ravished my heart with one glance of your eyes, my sister, my bride, so powerful.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: Why does this man that's just enamored with and in just this eros he could just feel it oozing out and he's pursuing a woman and he calls her my sister, my bride?
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: Why does he call her sister first?
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: How would we react to our sister when a boy comes the first time?
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: I remember my son has two sisters, one on each side of him, and he was very protective when some boy came over.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: He wanted to make sure that they knew that if anything happened they'd have to talk to him.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: We want to protect our sisters.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: At the end of the day, what we have to protect the women in our life from so often is ourselves, our own lust, our own selfishness.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: What he's doing is he's calling her sister first.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: He says there's a common heritage, that we have a common father, we come from a common creator and that, first of all, I'm going to call you sister, I'm going to protect you, I'm going to sacrifice for you, I'm going to get to know you as a friend and someone we could laugh with, etc.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: And only then, only then, will we enter into being my bride, right where I will take you for my bride Such a beautiful way.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: Saint Augustine now.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: Saint Augustine, he was a passionate guy.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: He was a worldly, worldly young man, very bright, but he was passionate.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: He really struggled with lust and selfishness, but especially lust for, for women, and he never did marry the woman that he lived with for 15 years.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: His only son was born out of wedlock.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: And so he hears Ambrose, saint Ambrose preaching at one time in a, in a city that he's in, and something touches his heart.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: So what is that?
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: What is that?
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: He would go back over and over again, and then Saint Ambrose brings him into the church.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: He finally understands what that yearning, burning desire is all about.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: And he goes on to write that famous line to fall in love with God as the greatest romance.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: To seek Him, the greatest adventure, to find Him, the greatest achievement.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: See, god loves romance.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: He created it.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Sunsets, flowers, music, a kiss, all his idea.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: God is a lover who calls you into eternal love.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: He pursues you to the ends of the earth, seeking an intimacy with you.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: That seems too good to be true, but that is exactly the church's astounding claim and proposal to the world.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: It was fascinating when I came back into the church.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: I was gone for quite a while and one of the first things I do is I'm reading the first chapter of the Gospel of John, so John, chapter one, and then there are the first words that we hear Jesus.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Let me just take you into the story a little bit and talk about the first words.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: We hear Jesus when he comes into his ministry.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: So John the Baptist is baptizing, and he's baptizing in a place called Bethany and, as it's described in the Bible, it's just beyond the Jordan and he's baptizing there with a couple of his own disciples.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: One day he saw Jesus coming toward him and he said Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, and this is with an exclamation mark.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: This is he who, of whom I said, after me comes a man who ranks before me, for he was before me.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: I Myself did not know him, but for this I came baptizing with water that he might be revealed to Israel, and John bore witness.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: I saw the Spirit descend on him.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: So this is, this is when John.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: So Jesus comes and he has to be baptized.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: And John's Born witness.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: I saw the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, descend as a dove from heaven and remain on him.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me he, on the one whom you see in the Spirit capital S to send and remain.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: This is he who baptized with the Holy Spirit.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: And John says and I have seen and born witness that this is the Son of God.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: Again, he's baptizing in Bethany, near the Jordan, and he looks up and he sees Jesus and he says I do not know him.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: Well, he was, jesus, was a cousin of his, so if he course he knew him personally, he didn't know who he was as the Messiah until then.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: And it dawns on him and he sees this and he says the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: The next day, john was standing with two of his disciples, who we've come to know as John the evangelist, the one it actually wrote the book of John, the letters of John, and we have Andrew, who is Peter's brother, and so these are John the Baptist disciples first.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: And so, anyways, he looks up and he sees Jesus coming down toward the Jordan.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Again, he says the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: And what happens is the two disciples that were with John the Baptist they stay.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: They heard John say this and they follow Jesus.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them listen to this, listen to this.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: What do you seek, what do you seek?
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: And they said to him rabbi, which means teacher, where are you staying?
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: And he said to them come and see, come and see.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: And we hear it.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: A little bit later John writes down and it was about the 10 o'clock hour, it was about 4 o'clock in the afternoon.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: He's an eyewitness to this.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: He puts those details in.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: So, again, what is?
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: What is Jesus saying?
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: What do you seek?
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: Why are you?
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: Why are you following?
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: What is your heart burning for?
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: You seek what's true, what's good and beautiful.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: It's innate in you, so Jesus knows this.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: This is why Jesus is so confident when he turns to them.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: He knows our hearts.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: You know why?
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: Because you flow from his heart.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: Created in the amalgam day, created in the image and likeness of God, this is God's heart, god who pursues you to the ends of the earth, seeking an intimacy with With you.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: It sounds too good to be true, but this is, this is the very logic of our faith A man born of a woman who steps into the story, the eternal bridegroom, to come search for you, to bring you back into this story.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: This isn't our DNA.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: This is why I told you the story of when I was a junior in high school and a little beyond that, because I knew this already within me that I was searching for what's true, what's good, what's beautiful.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: How do I make sense out of this and asking those big questions already?
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: And you know who am I what is the meaning of purpose of my life?
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: Why were we created male and female?
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: How do I find happiness and joy and peace here on earth?
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: How do I find love that satisfies forever.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: These are questions that are perennial.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: You know, it's st Augustine felt like this.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: St Teresa of Avila, st John of the cross.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: You know, all through history we have people, these, these, these powerful Forces moving the human heart up, up, up.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: Somehow we've silenced that today, haven't we?
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: Somehow we've rejected God as it through technology and and noise all the time.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: And you know this, the so-called modern world that gives you these little dopamine fixes all the time and we stopped searching for these Deeper answers.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: So, this lent, open your heart.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: Open your heart and allow him in, allow him to bring answers, because he is the answer.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: What do you seek?
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: Come and see, come and see what, come and see me.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: Jesus says All right, that's enough for today, that we could go on and on with this, and I will.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: Actually.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: The next session I'm going to pick up next Monday, I'm going to pick up on this.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: It's just so beautiful and powerful, and I'll talk to you about some of the saints and the mystics that are bringing this deeper into the story.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: But for now, let me leave you with those three things that I that I speak about often.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: It's so important for lent.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: First of all, before you look at those phones in the morning.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: Just drop to your knees and say what?
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: Say let it be done to me according to your will, let it be done to me according to your word.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: Picture yourself at the annunciation, kneeling there with our blessed mother, who didn't know exactly what was going on.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: I have not been with a man.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: She said how, how am I going to carry the son of of god?
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: And she said you know?
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: He said the holy spirit will come over you.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: And she said let it be done to me according to your word.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: So, so, this is what we're doing.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: We're just opening our hearts up.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: You know, mary's yes was so profound, so open, so pure, that she was literally impregnated with God.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: This is what we're called to do to to get to this point where we open ourselves up and allow God just to come in and impregnate us with God, you know, in a spiritual impregnation, of course, but we are filled with the holy spirit.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: We become temples of the holy spirit.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: Second thing is you're going to be tempted, and temptations not a sin.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: Jesus himself was tempted 40 days in the desert, right when he came into his ministry.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: So here's, here's the whole thing.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: When you feel a temptation, use it as an invitation to prayer.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: If you do that, if you allow, if you're not afraid, don't try to push it down and don't indulge.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: Open those up.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: This is what we're talking about.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: Open those up.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: Understand in three dimensions that those great desires have been put there by design.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: It to our hearts to lead us to Our destiny, what we live in?
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: A fallen world.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: It's not all your fault.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: You know the image of us.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: You were looking at pornography and the images are coming up.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: It's going to be very hard to clear your head.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: Open those up, don't be afraid to open those up to God.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: God knows they're there.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: You know they're there.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: You're just going to have to continue to open up.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: But you may be praying a hundred times a day and that's okay.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: It's lifting you.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: So when you, when you see the beauty outside, you're lifting and say thank you.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: When you have the Temptations and the distortions, you're also lifting them up and saying redeem me, save me, bring me into your heart.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: So that's number two.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: I'm going to add to that number two.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: I'm going to add fasting now on mortification.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: This is what the saints and the mystics always talk about Detaching.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: Detaching so that we can just be filled with this grace.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: This is what lent is all about.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: You're gonna hear a lot about fasting, for you can fast from food.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: Also, mortifications you can fast from.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: You know, say, say, social media, anything that's that's.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: You become addicted to that.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: You need to get out of the way Anything that's a barrier between you and this.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: This power of this grace that's gonna come in.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: You know, jesus didn't come in just to manage your sins.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: He came in with power.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: But in order to receive that power, that grace, to become one with that power, you're gonna have to push other things aside and open up the time for that.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: So beautiful, though very, very important to do.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: Okay, number three.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: So we've received now that grace.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: We, you know, at number one, with the prayer We've, we've opened this up to God.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: We say, yes, come into my heart.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: You know, if you ask him, ask, seek, knock, and then Temptations are gonna come.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: You know Satan doesn't want you to do this.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: Temptations are gonna come.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: You're gonna offer those up to to God and not be afraid of them.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: Open them up and over time it's gonna take time, it's gonna be a battle.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: It took you a while to get here.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Probably you're gonna take your while to get out, fasting and mortification.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: So now we're filled, even that, but not perfectly filled.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: Don't wait till you're perfectly filled, because this, this third step, is going to be part of this whole process to get you into healing.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: And what is that third step?
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: That third step Is to go out.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: Now I receive, now I go out, I have to become that person of love.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: I have to be, I have to proclaim the gospel.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: I have to go out and be kind to the next person.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: I see, you know, I have to go out and and and.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: When I walk down, say, the stairs my studio is upstairs I walk downstairs and I see my wife.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: I want to say something kind to her.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: Honey, you're beautiful, you know, speak from the heart, do good things out in the world and then, you know, give some money away.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: This is a time for alms to give away.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: Alms detach from money.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: You know God will.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: He knows what you need.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: You know, it's in scripture, over and over again, your, your heavenly father, jesus, says he knows what you need and he will provide those things for you.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: Last thing I'll just say and it all this all hooks together is St John of the cross would say you know, we have wisdom, we were seeking wisdom in this time to live.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: And so you become a person of love that's what we're describing here to be filled with with God himself, who is love.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: And they go out and become a loving person number one for John of the cross.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: And then silence, and that gets back to prayer again.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: In order to get to this point, you're gonna have to be a prayerful person and sitting silence, because this is that connection between you and God.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: He's gonna fill you up and again he would say mortification is the third thing.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: You have to fast, you have to go, you know you have to put yourself through where you detach from all of the craziness in this world that always wants to take your time.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: Take your time and Drag your your head someplace else.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: When you go outside and you see the stars and and you allow your heart to go up, you know if you are walking around with that phone and all you do is connect to all your messages and stuff, actually missing this Opportunity to connect with God himself and find that joy and joy and peace and meaning that we're all looking for and that Experience of God himself.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: Hey, god bless you Talk to you soon, everybody, bye, bye you.