Latest / Claymore: Become Who You Are / #459 "A Spiritual Awakening": The World Is Passing Away. (for the first week of Lent)

Transcript

#459 "A Spiritual Awakening": The World Is Passing Away. (for the first week of Lent) · Claymore: Become Who You Are

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Become who you Are podcast, the production of the John Paul Tour Renewal Center.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: I'm Jack Rigert, your host, and I'm glad you're joining me.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Lent is starting this week and it can't get here fast enough.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: There are many, many currents of evil and it's really a good time to be in Lent, a good time to get deeper into prayer, fasting, almsgiving and turn our hearts back to Christ.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: This Lent reflection and I'm going to do one at least every Monday is called the Spiritual Awakening.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: The world is passing away.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: It comes from the first letter of John, where John says for all that is in the world, a lust of the flesh and a lust of the eyes and a pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: And the world passes away and the lust of it.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: In our present age, we could feel this battle that's been going on since the history of man, between building up the city of God or the city of man, and we feel this acceleration.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: As I was meditating on this, this episode, I started to think back.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: You know, I sense this coming, and many of us did well before 2020, before this COVID pandemic was unleashed and already you know the evil was starting to press in on us, but COVID did something and it accelerated it.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: And I look back at my early episodes there and I was already sensing this and then, very soon, covid would come in.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: And I look back, it was just providence that I started a podcast when all my calendar got canceled and I couldn't go out for really about a year you know, churches being closed, etc and God had me start that already, talking about all these different things.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: There is no human solution to what we see around us today.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: There's only a divine solution, and Lent is just a good way, a beautiful way, to turn back our hearts to Christ.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: So buckle up and get ready for today's episode.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Time is running out in the United States and the country as we know it is passing away.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Soon we are no longer going to be that beacon of light and hope to our brothers and sisters all over the world, who always look to the United States to help restore the dignity and freedom that was often stolen from them by the ruling elites of their respective countries, the same political rulers of this world whose lust for power had plundered the wealth of entire countries in modern times and throughout history.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: This is where we seem to be headed, and it's going to be a big change for those of us accustomed to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Someone who saw this many, many years ago was John Paul II, two years before his ascendancy to the chair of Peter in 1978, then Cardinal Carol Wojtywa, who became John Paul II, spoke these words in an address in Philadelphia.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: He was here for the bicentennial of our country.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Once again, to put this in perspective, this is 1976.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: Well, what was on John Paul's mind of one of many things was Roe v Wade was passed in 1973, which legislated the murder of children in the womb, and he knew that the very foundation of our nation, the United States, was being handed over to Satan and the powers and principalities.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm thinking about St Paul, what he wrote in Ephesians 6, that he said in verse 10, Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Put on the whole armor of God that you might be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts, hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Therefore, take the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and, having done so, to stand.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: And then he goes on to say how.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: So here we are, this, building up either the city of God or the city of man.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: And here's what John Paul said Again.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: You think about this.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: He was a cardinal at that time giving a talk.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Nobody even knew who he was.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: He said this.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: I do not think that wide circles of American society or wide circles of the Christian community realized this fully.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: We are now facing the final confrontation between the church and the anti-church.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Think about what he just said there the church and the anti-church.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: The smoke of Satan is in the church and he sees the battles already going on in the church of the gospel versus the anti-gospel.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: The confrontation lies within the plans of divine providence.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: It's a trial which the whole church must take up.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: It's a trial not only of the church but, in a sense, a test of 2,000 years of culture and Christian civilization, with all its consequences for human dignity, individual rights, human rights and the rights of nations.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: We must be prepared to undergo great trials in the not too distant future, trials that will require us to be ready to give up even our lives and a total gift of self to Christ and for Christ.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: Through your prayers in mind, it is possible to alleviate some of this tribulation, but it is no longer possible to totally avert it.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: How many times, he said, has the renewal of the church been brought about in blood, and it will not be different this time.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: This great confrontation that John Paul II warns about is being fought precisely at this time in history when many in the church's hierarchy and the lady have grown apathetic and have lost their voice or, worse, even opposed her.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: It's amazing, isn't it?
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: As I was going through a number of articles looking for something I might want to use in her.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: There is just so many.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: I follow a number of outstanding journalists who not only report the news but understand this deeper level, at a deeper level, these evils that have been unleashed on the world, these direct attempts to control, manipulate and destroy human beings.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: The story that's being played out today in this created world has always been a battle between good and evil, between God and Satan, between the city of man and the city of God.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: So what is at stake in this battle between the city of God and the city of man.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: It's man himself.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: We are the treasure.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: The battle is ultimately being fought over the individual human heart, human beings created in a mago day in the image and likeness of God.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: And if there's an enemy who hates God and there is he cannot defeat God where would he attack?
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: He's going to attack the mago day, the image and likeness of God in the world.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: This is humanity.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: That's why it's only people who have faith in God who really understand the story and what's going on in the world today.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Bishop Sheen said this so well.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: He said only those who live by faith really know what's happening in the world.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: The great masses without faith are unconscious of the destructive processes going on because they've lost the vision of the heights from which they have fallen.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: We've normalized the fall, haven't we?
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: You think about?
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Today there's a direct attack on human beings, on human life Abortion, violent crimes, euthanasia, and then the attack on young life.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: And you think about this with these gender ideologies, the COVID vaccines, etc.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: Etc.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: You know, with these gender ideologies alone, if you think about an attack on human life, you're given young people puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, rendering them sterile, even mutilating their bodies.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: We have these endless wars, don't we?
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: With the military industrial complex killing millions and millions of people?
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: The pharmaceutical industrial complex?
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, we're still pushing COVID vaccines on even young people Many of them were being injured by this and we've weaponized this.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: Mankind has weaponized this virus, yes, with this gain of function, but it still does not pose a direct threat to healthy children and to teens.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: We have the fear of climate change, the fear of the next pandemic.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: These are socialists and globalists.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: They go after and they try to weaken who?
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: The middle class?
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: This is an old story, isn't it?
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: It's like a hydra, a many-headed serpent draining the lifeblood of the very foundation of marriage and the family, those that build up society.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: You're taking the wealth away from the middle class, transferring it to what the world elite, so that you can control them better.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: This is an old socialist, marxist city of God out city of man in.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: This has gone so far as to start to to play so much fear in young people that even if they do get married, they don't want to bring children into this world.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: They're afraid of that or they're told that to do this they're going to add to climate change, etc.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: You think about the Bill Gates and the Klaus Schwab's of the world out to save humanity.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: They save, but they never talk about saving individual human beings.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: This is a collective attitude.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: John Paul II again talked about socialism so well to try to put this in context and he said the fundamental era of socialism is anthropological in nature, it's about mankind.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: Socialism considers the individual person simply as an element, the molecule within a social organism, so that the good of the individual is completely subordinate, subordinated to the functioning of the social economic mechanism, a person who's deprived of something he can call his own.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: The possibility of earning a living through his own initiative comes to depend on the social machine and those who control it.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: Think about this, klaus Schwab you will own nothing and you will be happy.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: Look at their taking the land away from who?
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: From farmers.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: Look what they did in the COVID lockdowns.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: They didn't go after the big box stores and the big corporations.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: Who they go after?
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: The individual small business owners.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: This makes it much more difficult for him to, you know, for men and women to recognize their own dignity as people and henders progress toward building up an authentic human community.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: John Paul wrote that in 1991 when he saw all the dangers about this, and we have the same thing going on in the church, right.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: We have the church sowing this confusion within the Vatican itself.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: Think about the Vatican itself.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: Pope Francis actually mandated against Catholic teaching.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: You know where we say we leave it up to the individual conscience.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: And he mandated vaccines.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Why would he do that?
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: We did that in Chicago for a time.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: You know Pope Francis endorsing people like Father James Martin and not allowing the dubia cardinals to come to him when they had questions about some of the things that he wrote.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, you can't make this stuff up, right.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: And then you have Catholic politicians like Joe Biden and Durbin and Pelosi and so many others who support abortion, sowing confusion again, right.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: Yet the figureheads in the church, the figureheads in politics they're not the only problem, are they?
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: They're just the manifestation, the visible evil at a much deeper level in the individual human heart.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: You know, if we got rid of so-called Catholic leaders in politics or even changed the Pope, would the evil go away?
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: No, it's embedded deep within the individual human heart.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: You know, bishop Sheen again talks about politicians and he says the nation gets the kind of politicians it deserves.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: He said if a time ever comes when the religious Jews, the Protestants and the Catholics ever have to suffer under a totalitarian state which would deny them the right to worship God according to the light of their conscience, it will be because for years they thought it would make no difference what kind of people represented them in Congress and because they abandoned the spiritual in the realm of the temporal.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: The great Russian writer and poet Alexander Shotsanitsyn, who had embraced Marxism for a little while, and his youth ended up in the gulags for eight years in Siberia.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: At during his time in the archipelago, shotsanitsyn slowly but forcefully rejected the Marxism of his youth and embraced Christian faith.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: This conversion was not achieved, however, without a great amount of personal suffering and even a greater amount of personal reflection.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: He ended up saying this Marxism claims that some groups and classes of human beings are good and others bad.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: So to perfect itself, humanity must isolate and eliminate the bad people.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: Dwell on that for a second.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: Isn't that what socialism and collectivism does today?
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: We got to get rid of the bad people, the Christians, those who force their ideologies on us, like you can't have abortions on demand, you can't bring porn into the schools, etc.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: Etc.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: See, this for them is what limits freedom.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: But of course they're building up the city of man.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: Shotsanitsyn then came to realize that, instead, the dividing line between good and evil lies within every single individual human heart.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: The Marxist position thus argued that humanity, again, would be perfected through the inevitable progress of world history.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: But if the dividing line is within all human hearts, however, then only limited improvement is possible in this life and degeneracy is always equally possible.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: The Marxist position is to be rejected, it seems, because it overlooks the reality of original sin.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: What John Paul II pointed out so often was the initial, the foundation.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: Liberation for mankind is liberation from sin, from sin and death.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: Only Jesus can do that.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: You know, we are travelers on a journey that has a destiny.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: Our life is an adventure, with battles to fight and people to love, and thankfully we have Jesus Christ.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: The word, the gospel of life and love, is our signpost, pointing to all that is true and good and beautiful, especially the beauty of love.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: In addition, we have been given a very special saint and prophet to help us decipher the signs of our times, and his name is Kiro Wotiva, known as John Paul II.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: What has become increasingly clear is that the battle is intensifying, isn't it?
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: What many fail to understand is the real battle again is not between left or right, between black or white, but between our Lord and Satan.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: The forces led by Satan have as their primary goal the destruction of humanity.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: Today, satan is utilizing the global elite and the secular government rulers of the world, and even some within the church who align with him, to attack humanity at its very foundation, primarily marriage to family and the most innocent among us, our children.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: But of course, it expands from there, promoting so-called progressive ideologies that have removed God from the culture, such as socialism, communism, globalism on the one hand, and we have in that gender ideologies, same-sex marriage, abortion on the other.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: The present-day rulers of this world seek to undermine the very meaning of what it means to be human.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: We are now at a moment in history where we're experiencing the most violent attack on the middle class and on marriage and the family, the very foundation of human life, ever seen in history.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: Sister Lucia, a Fatima visionary who gave her many messages, well, she met with John Paul II on at least three occasions and she wrote this a time will come when the decisive battle between the kingdom of Christ and Satan will be over marriage and the family.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: This is the time, said Cardinal Kefara, in which we find ourselves in today.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: The power of Satan is nonetheless not infinite.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: He's only a creature, a powerful one from the fact that he's pure spirit, but still a creature, and he cannot prevent the building up of God's reign.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: This is in the individual human hearts.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: The problem in our post-Christian Western culture is that it's often the human person who's cooperating with Satan to prevent the building up of God's reign.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: Although he was made by God in a state of holiness.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: From the very onset, john Paul said, of his history, mankind has abused his liberty at the urging of the evil one.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: Men and men meaning what men and women?
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: Have set themselves against God and sought to attain their goal apart from God.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: Hence, as an inevitable consequence, while human progress is a great advantage to man, it brings with it a strong temptation, for when the order of values is jumbled and bad is mixed with good, individuals and groups pay heat solely to their own interests and not to those of others.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: Thus it happens that the world ceases to be a place of true brotherhood and in our own day, the magnified power of humanity threatens to destroy the race itself.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: This is in God, in Metspez, number 37,.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: If you want to go on and read that, when he's talking about marriage and the family, when he's talking about you know, basically gender ideology and this twisting and distortion of our sexuality, thinking about abortion and other things.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: He said this in Evangelium Vite it's an illusion to think we can build a true culture of human life if we do not accept and experience sexuality and love and the whole of life according to their true meaning and their close interconnection.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: So said John Paul II.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: The sexual embrace is the foundation stone of human life itself.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: The family, and in turn culture itself, springs off from this embrace.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: In short, as sex goes, so goes marriage and the family.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: As marriage and the family go, there goes civilization.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: The family is the domestic church.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: It's the first and vital cell of society all throughout history.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: The solution to this problem of evil, well, it's the reason the Son of God appeared to destroy the works of the devil.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: This is done in 1 John 3, 8.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: Here's the last message that John Paul II left for us on April 3, 2005, and he would die that year.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: To humanity, it says, which at times seems to be lost and dominated by the power of evil, egotism and fear.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: The risen Lord offers as a gift his love that forgives, reconciles and reopens the spirit to hope.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: It is love that converts hearts and gives peace.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: How much need the world has to understand and accept divine mercy.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: Lord, who, with your death and resurrection, revealed the love of the Father, we believe in you and with confidence, repeat to you today Jesus, I trust in you.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: Have mercy on us and on the whole world.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: That's from Saint Faustina In Gabriel Amorth's book.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: He wrote a book on Satan.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: He was.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: He died now, but he was a world-renowned exorcist and the exorcist for the Vatican for many, many years.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: And he points out this.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: He says at the beginning of the Gospel it marked there are four phrases that summarize the entire work of the Lord and that nurture and give meaning to our existence.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: That puts us on this narrow road that Jesus talks about.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: And here they are.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: This is the time of fulfillment, jesus said.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: The kingdom of God is at hand.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: Repent and believe in the Gospel.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: Analyzing them, father Amorth said we shall understand the sense of the incarnation and the resurrection of Jesus.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: This, he would say, is the solution to the three rules of Satanism.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Rule number one from Satan, you may do all that you wish, he tells us.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: Number two no one has the right to command you to do anything.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: Number three you are the God of yourself.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: This comes from you know Genesis 3, where Eve is tempted.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: The devil says to her Did God tell you not to eat from the trees of the garden?
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: And Eve said to him, and I'm just paraphrasing Eve said to him no, god just said you shouldn't eat from the one tree in the middle of the garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and life.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: And Satan says to her no, god knows that you may eat of it, for when you eat of it you will become like God, who knows what is good and what is evil.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: In other words, you may do, number one, anything you wish.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: No one has the right to command you and you are the God of yourself.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: But we came into a story.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: We didn't create the universe.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: This, the world was already ongoing when we stepped into time and history.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: Our job is like Sam Gamgee in the Lord of the Rings.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: He's on this arduous journey, this faithful friend and servant of Fodor's, and he's about halfway through this arduous journey, with another half to go to save the world.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: He wonders out loud.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: I wonder what sort of tale we've fallen into.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: I wonder what sort of tale we've fallen into.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: This is what we should be asking ourselves.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: And we know what sort of tale.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: It's a tale of God who created us good in love, by love and for love.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: The city of God.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: And then the fall we're.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: Satan tempts us and we start to build the city of man.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: And this is the battle that's been going on all this time and again the prize is mankind, the Amal Goday, the battle between Jesus, who comes in to save us, to redeem us and save us, and Satan, who wants to destroy us.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: In John chapter 10, jesus talks to them and he says in verse seven so Jesus again said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: All who come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep do not heed them.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: I am the door.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: And this is John 10.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: 10.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: You know, in John 10.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: 10, you often hear I come that they may have life and have it abundantly.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: But the whole verse goes like this the thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: And then he goes on and 11, I am the good shepherd.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: And then I turn to Mark, chapter one, and we're going to end up with those.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: We're going to get into those four phases that Father Amorth just spoke about, but I'm going to go a little bit before that.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: So this is the first chapter of Mark, verse nine, the baptism of Jesus.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: In those days, jesus came from Nazareth, of Galilee, and was baptized by John and the Jordan, and we came up out of the water immediately he saw the heavens opened and the spirit descending upon him like a dove and a voice came from heaven you are my beloved son, with you.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: I am well pleased.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: The spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: This is the Holy Spirit.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: And he was in the wilderness 40 days, tempted by Satan.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: This time, unlike our first parents, jesus, the second, adam comes in and he overcomes the temptations.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: And then it goes on.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: In verse 14, jesus preaches the gospel in Galilee.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: Now, after John was arrested, jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel of God saying the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: What do we do?
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: Repent, he says, and believe in the gospel.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: If I skip ahead just to verse 21, we already see Jesus battling the demons in this world and they went to Capernaum and Immediately on the Sabbath he entered the synagogue and taught.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, not as described, and Immediately there wasn't a synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out what have you to do with us, jesus of Nazareth?
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: Have you come to destroy us?
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: I know who you are, the holy one of God.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: But Jesus rebuked him, saying be silent, to come out of him.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him and they were all amazed, so that they questioned among themselves, saying what is this?
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: A new teaching?
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: With authority, he commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: And at once his fame spread everywhere, throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: Jesus comes into the world, doesn't need to redeem us and save us, to rescue us from this enemy that had power over us.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: And we see this battle going on.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: Jesus, here, to restore the kingdom of God and Satan, who wants to destroy Humanity and destroy Jesus himself.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: When I turn to Matthew, chapter 6, toward the end of chapter 6, jesus starts to tell us why he.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: First he talks to us about, talks to us about fasting, and then he says do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth were more moth and rust Consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: We're neither moth nor rust consumes, and where thieves do not break in and steal, for where your treasure is, there Will your heart also be.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: What are you looking for, right?
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: The city of God or this, the city that's passing by in the lust of it?
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: He went on to say the eye is the lamp of the body, so if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: If, then, the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness?
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: And I get to back to Bishop Sheen Only only those who have faith Understand what's going on in the world.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: Those without faith have no idea how far they have fallen, right.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: He goes on to say no one can serve two masters, for either he will hate one and love the other, he will be devoted to one and despise the other.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: You cannot serve God and mammon.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: And Jesus tells us not to be anxious about all this, he said.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: Therefore, I tell you, don't be anxious about your life and what you shall eat or what you should drink, nor about your body or what you should put on.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: Is not life more than food in the body, more than clothing?
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: Look at the birds of the year.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: They neither soul nor reap, nor gather into barns and let your heavenly, and yet your heavenly father feeds them.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: Are you not of more value than they?
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: And which of you, by being anxious, can add one Cubit to his lifespan?
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: And why are you anxious about clothing?
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: Considered the lilies of the field, how they grow, they neither toil nor spin.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: Yet I tell you, even Solomon and all his glory was not clothed like one of these.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: But if God so closed the clothes, the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more cloth?
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: You, oh you, of little faith?
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: Therefore, do not be anxious saying what shall we eat or what shall we drink, or what shall we wear for the Gentiles.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: Seek all these things, and your heavenly father knows that you need them all, but seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be yours as well.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious enough for itself.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day this lent.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: We followed Jesus, and he tells us himself.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: He says ask, seek a knock.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: This is Matthew 7, verse 7 ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: Knock and it will be open to you, for everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and he who knocks it will be open.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: Or what man of you, if his son asks him for bread, would give him a stone?
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: Or if he asks for a fish, would give him a serpent?
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father, who is in heaven, give good things to those of you who ask him?
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: And then, once you're filled, he says so.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: Whatever you wish that men would do to you, so do to them, for this is the law, and the prophets Enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter it are many, but the gate is narrow, oh, and the way is hard that leads to life, and those to find it are few.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: And then he goes on to warn us in verse 15, beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: You will know them by their fruits.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: You will know them by their fruits.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: So every sound tree bears good fruit and the bad tree bears evil fruit.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: And he goes on to say everyone who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built this house upon the rock and the rain fell in, the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: And everyone who's he who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built this house upon the sand, and the rain fell in, the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell, and great was the fall of it.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: And when Jesus finished, he sings.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: The crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority and not as their scribes.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: This is Lenta.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: Coming into Lent, pray, fast, almsgiving, to find wisdom.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: St John the cross would say become a person of love, be filled with divine life and love of Jesus Christ, he said, and you do that by sitting in silence and in prayer.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: You have to fast.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: He said that mortifications is the third thing he would say.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: If you're looking for wisdom, so first of all be a person of love, sit in silence and prayer to connect with God.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: And number three mortifications are fasting.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Cause we have to detach from these things of the world.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: This is what Jesus was getting at.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: I, for Lent and I'm not suggesting this to anybody else I fast for 48 hours, a Monday and a Tuesday or Tuesday and Wednesday whatever days that I picked, it fell best on my schedule and just coffee and black coffee and water.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: That's it.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: It's easy.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: It's easy.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: I feel much better, I have a lot of energy and it's actually good for your body.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: But in that time you're offering everything up huh, everything up to God.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: Three simple steps to get you started.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: Also, when you wake up in the morning, before you look at that goofy phone, fall to your knees and say be it done to me, lord, according to your will.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: Be it done to me, lord, according to your word.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: This is the fiat.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: This is our kneeling with our blessed mother who said yes to God.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: This is the new Eve who, unlike the first Eve, rejected God.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: This, our blessed mother, said yes, be it done to me according to your word.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: This is what we're doing.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: We're kneeling with Mary first thing in the morning and with her we're offering our hearts to God.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: Second thing temptations will come.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: Now, just like Jesus was tempted for 40 days, temptations will come.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: What happens this time?
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: Use temptations as an invitation to prayer.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: Remember, jesus was tempted.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: Temptation is not a sin.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: Open those temptations up right away.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: When you're tempted, open them up.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: Open them up and offer them to God.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: Say, take this away, take this and then everything good to a good glass of wine, a good meal after a fast.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: Offer those and thanksgiving to your heart will always be moving up and then Jesus will fill you.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: Ask, seek and knock right, and then, filled with this grace, even if it's just a little bit, even if you're just starting your journey, go out and become a person of love.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: Go out and love the next person you see, be kind to the next person you see, and then, almsgiving, find ways that you can.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: You can give your money away.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: Detach even from money right, give it away.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: Don't forget confession and Eucharist.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: Look at that picture of the divine mercy from Sister Faustina.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: Jesus, I trust in you.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: And what comes out of Jesus's heart this is right from the lance that went into Jesus's side on the crucifix Water and blood Water is that washing of baptism and confession.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: And why?
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: Because I'm getting ready for the nuptial bath.
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: And then, when all the smoke and fog clears, all our great desires to love and be love, even marital love, even sexual marital union, points directly to Jesus Christ, the internal bridegroom in the Eucharist, that mass, and his desire to become one flesh with us in a spiritual communion.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: It's so beautiful, isn't it?
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: I am going to take this Lent more serious than I have ever taken any other Lent in the world.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: This is the time to really open up the evils of our day.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: There's no human solution for this.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: We're stuck.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: The only one that can do this, the only one that can change hearts, is Jesus Christ.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Offer to Him, step deeply, deeply, deeply, into this story of His, into the grace, into that act and that grace of redemption, a body and a soul that comes into this broken world.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: Without God's grace, the default position is sin and death.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: Only Jesus Christ who's active of redemption.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: And redemption is collective, it's for all of us, but salvation is individual.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: Allow Him in to change your individual heart.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: This is the only possible way you really know the concrete power of God to change your heart.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: And, like Alexander Schultz and Niedsen said, all the evil that you see in the world, it all comes down to the individual human heart and say, nope, not this time.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: I am going to step into the good, I am going to become good, I am going to become a person of love.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: Coming up next week, next Monday, I'm going to be talking about the sacred romance.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: It's such a beautiful, powerful story of opening up those yearning, burning desires that we have deep within us to God, what that looks like and the power that can bring into your life.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: We know this from the saints and the mystics.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: Don't forget on Wednesdays we unpack John Paul's theology of the body.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: This is a great Lenten time.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: Go back to the beginning of them if you want to, and start to listen to them once or twice a week during Lent.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: It's really a beautiful time.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: Or just pick up where we're at right now.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: That's fine too.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: Third, this Friday I'm going to have Nancy Charles on.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: Nancy Charles is this incredible convert that I met just a little while ago and she tells her story.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: It's just a beautiful story of brokenness and coming into the faith and the power of Jesus Christ.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: You know, jesus didn't come in for sin management, he came in for power.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: God bless you.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: Talk to you again soon.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: Everybody, bye-bye.