Latest / Claymore: Become Who You Are / #647 Claymore (4) "In The Beginning, Awe, Wonder and a Cosmic Explosion of Love!"

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#647 Claymore (4) "In The Beginning, Awe, Wonder and a Cosmic Explosion of Love!" · Claymore: Become Who You Are

• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Become who you Are podcast, a production of the John Paul II Renewal Center.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: I'm Jack Riggert, your host.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: This is our special Friday edition of Claymore Miletus Christi.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: This is our discipleship program, really our journeying together for young men, old men, young men, all the people that love them, especially dedicated to the young men that we're meeting that are looking for something more.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: So this is the Claymore Battle Plan.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Hopefully everybody has downloaded this.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: You just go to jp2reneworg it's all in the show notes, hit resources at the top.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: You're going to see the Claymore Battle Plan come up.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Print that out.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Make sure you have a copy of this.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: You don't have to print that first page.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: You can start with the second page, which is just that simple Claymore sword, and we put that on there so you can print it out without using a lot of ink Underneath that first page.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Pay attention, your life is not an endless series of open doors.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: This is from John Paul II.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Listen to your heart.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Don't stay on the surface of things like the whole world, but go to the heart.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Go to your heart, go to the heart of things and, when the time is right, have the courage to decide.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Have the courage to decide.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: What does he mean?
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: You know, when I was a young man 20, 21, 22, I had left home early, as everybody knows already from this, and I'm searching for the truth, I felt an urgency then.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: I feel an urgency now.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: And what is John Paul saying?
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Pay attention, your life is not an endless series of open doors.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: We have a window here and we waste so much time on all kinds of stuff Everybody knows, especially with these social media stuff blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: But what are we doing?
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: This is the Claymore battle plan to say, look, you're going to go out into the world.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: You know, by the time I was 25, I was married.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: By the time I was 26, we had our first child already, I was building businesses already.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: The whole thing started to happen like a blur.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: What I didn't understand then, totally I was searching for the truth.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: I wanted to know the truth, but I didn't understand what was going on in the culture with the sexual revolution and this twisting and distorting of the culture.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: It's really a breakdown of our society all across the world, especially Western civilization.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: It's a breakdown of the human heart.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: It's a breakdown of marriage and the family.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: It's taking God out and the whole thing is crumbling and these young men, all of you listening, are understanding that.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: And so, when you start to open your heart up, john Paul is saying look, let's get this foundation in so that when you go out into the world, whatever you're doing, starting now, you have a foundation so you can relax.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Forget about this anxiety, this depression, the suicidal thoughts.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: We're in a battle here.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Right, it's the three core things, and that's why it starts with the sword huh, three core things.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Every man knows that life is supposed to be an adventure.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: We're supposed to be out seeking the truth.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: What is love right?
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: Answering those big questions of the human heart.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Who am I?
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: What's the meaning and purpose of life?
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: Why were we created male and female?
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: How do I find happiness here on earth?
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: How do I find love that satisfies forever?
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: And these are the timeless questions that came down.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: This is the first time in history that we're not asking ourselves these questions.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: We don't have time, we're living on the surface of life.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: The second thing is an understanding of marriage and the family, because you have to understand this is the building blocks of every society.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Without marriage and the family, without children, you don't have a society and everything breaks down in the family.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Without children, you don't have a society and everything breaks down.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: You see that in the inner city I'm outside of Chicago we see these inner city kids, these minority kids that don't have solid families.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Most of them are fatherless.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: It's amazing how many kids don't have fathers, don't have any leadership, any role models.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: So you see them looting stores, beating people up.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: You see it on the news all the time.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: You know why would they do this?
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: It's a civilization breakdown.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: It came because it broke down marriage in the church and they took God out of their lives.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Nobody's passed this faith down to these kids, so they're aimless and you see this coming out.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: You know it's dangerous just to walk into certain parts of the city.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: You see what just happened in Cincinnati, where a couple of people just got beat up, almost died over this breakdown, and we're seeing this all over the place.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: And so this battle plan is comprehensive.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: So I just want to briefly go through it.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Everybody should download this, read that battle plan, because it's an outline of the three necessary societies.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: So think about it as a triangle, just quickly for people that are new.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: Like a triangle, like a pyramid in front of you.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: What holds this up is first the human heart that understands who they are, their identity, meaning and purpose in life.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: That starts with you and I, our human heart, to understand and answer those timeless questions.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: You have to understand how marriage and the family come together.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Again, when you have a breakdown of that, which we do again now, you start to see this crumble and this image of marriage and the family, of who we are, has to be connected to Christ and the church.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: I am the way, the truth and the life.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: When you take God out, marriage and the family starts to crumble because it's no longer filled with grace.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: When you take a disconnected heart, a human heart, my heart, your heart, disconnected from God, who is again the way, the truth and the life, you live on the surface of things and you never go deep, like John said, to the heart, to understand this foundational piece.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: So this is the foundation your human heart, marriage and the family on one end of this triangle, christ and the church on the other end.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: They are linked together and they hold up everything else.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: They hold up your life, your heart, your happiness is going to depend on that.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: And then what do we do?
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: We go out into the culture.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: That means go out into our job.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: The way we act, the way we do things in life and in the world, we bring that goodness, that love, that beauty that the world is missing.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: We are tasked to bring that into the culture, into your job, again into the gym when you go to the gym, into society, into politics.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Think about the politicians that we have today.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: Right here in Illinois we have a Governor Pritzker and this Mayor Johnson.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: These guys are clueless when it comes to this.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: They have no moral compass.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: It's all about grasping and taking.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: You listen to them and your stomach gets sick and you go.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: What kind of leaders are they?
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: Well, they're not leaders, of course.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: They're takers.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: They have no clue of all the things we're talking about.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: They have no foundation.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: They've taken God out of their lives and just listen to them and just more money, more taxes, more me, more that.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, I don't want to get into that anymore, but you start to see this triangle again, right, unless you lay this foundation, you don't know how to act in the world.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: And we see these politicians that can push abortion.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: You know the murder of children.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: Marriage is meaningless To Governor Pritzker.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: You know it's all about anything you want.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: When marriage means anything, when it has no definition anymore, it's meaningless, it means nothing.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: It could be anything, it's really nothing at the end.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: So this comprehensive battle plan, my whole point, is that we're laying the foundation for this whole thing, and so read that, go over it.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: One more quick point it starts with the heart.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: Then John Paul would say again, that's where the sword this whole thing starts, this understanding on the battlefield of a man's heart between being a person of love or being a person of lust, a self-giving person that's bringing true, good and beautiful into the world, or somebody that's grasping and taking.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: And this is the battle that goes on in each human heart.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: So part three of this are five aspects to this individual formation that all of us need to know as men, and I'm just going to touch on the spiritual formation, that first part, because we have to get our hearts back first.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: And at the same time we're getting our hearts back, we do good things in the world.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: So that's not like you just have to do this first and this, this no.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Once we get our hearts back, you start to understand relationships between you and say, a woman or just your neighbor, and then you understand, this has to be linked to Christ in the church, and so how do you start to lay those formations down?
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: Well, it's all outlined in here, but here's just the first thing you do in the morning.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: So, so important, before you look at that phone kneel with our blessed mother.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: Let it be done to me according to your word.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: And there's a scripture from Luke in there.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: And so read that, go back and read that.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: It's all in the battle plan.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: Just read that little snippet from Luke.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: And that's when the angel comes over our blessed mother and she opens her heart up and says, okay, let it be done to me.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: I don't get it, I don't understand it all, but let it be done to me according to your word.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Isn't that what we do?
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: We're kneeling with our blessed mother, we're opening our hearts.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: So right away we're opening our hearts and say, yes, I don't understand at all, but let it be done to me according to your word.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Then there's a little phrase in there do whatever he tells you.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: That's from our blessed mother.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: That's from John 2, verse 5.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: That's the wedding feast of Cana, where they've run out of wine.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: Wine is that symbol for divine life and love in the world and we ran out of wine.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: We've done the same thing.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: Our whole culture has run out of wine.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: Jesus comes in.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: He changes water into wine.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: He brings it in abundance for all of us.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: So do whatever he tells you.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: So now I start to listen.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: What is God telling me today?
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Second thing, very, very, very important Temptation is not a sin.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: We've talked about it before, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: But don't stuff those temptations down and don't indulge them, especially when it comes to things like pornography and things.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: But that's not the only temptation the temptation not to go to work today or stay in bed too much.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: There's an urgency to this.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: If you just pick away a little bit at this, your heart will change.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: Over time you start to understand these concepts that we've been teaching and talking about and little by little, when you're reading scripture every day, when you're doing all these things, you're walking into the story just a little bit every day.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Don't give up on that.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: So temptation is not a sin.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: Every temptation that's in my mind, in my heart.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: Today, I just open those things up and say here's the temptation, it's all yours.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: Come into my heart with this.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: So temptation, then, is not an obstacle to becoming the man you want to be.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: It actually becomes an invitation to prayer.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: It actually becomes the path of walking you into that story.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: All right, the next thing is this app that we're talking about here.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: There's an app and again it's in the battle plan it's from the Marian Brothers.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: It's the Divine Mercy app.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: So just look for Divine Mercy app from the Marian Brothers.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: There's a lot on that app, but the one I listen to every day and the one I'm suggesting to you to listen to every day, there's a small snippet from the Diary of Sister Faustina, and this is the divine mercy.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: God said to Sister Faustina and John Paul said pay attention to this.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: This is the time of mercy.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: Jesus hanging on the cross, he wants to shower you with mercy and with grace.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: He came into this story to help us and he wants to just fill us up.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: And so you listen to this little snippet.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: It's a dialogue between Sister Faustina and Jesus.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: So what I do in the morning, this is all printed out, but I hit the audio and I just close my eyes and I listen to this dialogue.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: You can read it, but I've listened to this dialogue and then at the end you can scroll down a little bit.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: There's a little prayer that you say every day.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: You do this over time.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: You see the relationship that Sister Faustina has with God, calling us into that relationship, and how he wants to shower us with grace.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: Very, very important to do.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: And it's free, free app.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: And then the next thing, the third thing that you do you get up off your knees and you love the next person.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: You see, you know if that's your spouse, if it's the clerk at the local store when you go grab your coffee, whatever that is, you know you become a person of love.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: You have to put this into action and this is the whole thing we're going to be talking about today.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Today it's called In the Beginning, all Wonder and a Cosmic Explosion of Love.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: We're going to talk about that first thing the heart, what that means, what is truth, what is love and how it's connected to marriage and the family, and the beauty of this and the sacramentality of our bodies.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: We are body and soul to bring this love into the world.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: We were created to do all of that.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: So when I'm unpacking this, I just want you to see like this whole picture that we're aiming at here.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: All right, I went on a little bit long, but I needed to do that, I think, just to set this groundwork again.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: So I want to bring you into the story and I'm not going to rush this.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: The beauty of apps, the beauty of all of this is, you know, you can listen to part of it right now and then part of it later on, and then you're going to discuss it with others and let this sink in.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to take you through this In the beginning awe, wonder and a cosmic explosion of love.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: It starts out with Jesus saying this For the hardness of your heart, moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: So Jesus here is taking us into the beginning.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: You're going to hear, and that's before sin into the world.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: Here's the model he's saying.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: He says you have to know the beginning to get your heart back.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: What was God's plan for you?
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: Yes, we live in the fall.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: We live in a twisted and distorted culture.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: You're waking up to that.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: So now Jesus himself is going to take us back to the beginning.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: This is the model, this is the way it is All right.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: So let me just I'm going to read a little bit from this.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: I'm actually writing a book, a handbook, to go along with this.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: But don't forget, you know these transcripts are right.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: On any app that you have you can look at this whole transcript, the discussion on this.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: The little snippets will be in the show notes themselves.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: As explored previously.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: The burning desire if you look back at Claymore, we did a reset, so it's number one, two, three.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: This will be Claymore.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: Number four, if you go back to the first couple, as in the previous chapters we talked about this, the burning desire for what is true, good, beautiful, for what is real is woven into the very fabric of our being, of who we are, so cutting through the moral and sexual confusion of our age.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: Understanding that is less about acquiring newer information and more about reconnecting with the deepest yearning of our hearts, our hearts, in other words.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: It's not just information, it's in our DNA.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: So, at its core, this yearning is a longing for love and to be loved.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: Its essence is always love.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: Even more profoundly, our bodies tell this story in our incompleteness.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: A man's body, a woman's body.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: You know, my wife and I have all the same organs.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: We both have five fingers, five toes.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: You know, two lungs, a stomach.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: All those systems work independently.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: I don't need my wife for any of those systems.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: There's only one system that my wife and I have to come together in order for it to work.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: It's our reproductive system.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: We're going to ask you to join us by helping us get the word out.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: So if you can make sure you subscribe and then hit like, no matter which platform you're on, remember that the Become who you Are podcast is on audio and any music or podcast app.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: We're up on Rumble YouTube.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: You can find us on X.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: When you do subscribe, hit the like button.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: A couple things to share with people Love Ed.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: Love Ed is just such an important apostolate, so it's within our apostolate, the John Paul II Renewal Center.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: This helps parents give the talk to their children.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: We're trying to push back on all these gender ideologies and the porn culture and give children the truth and do it through their parents, and we help them do that.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: The other one is really taken off too.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: It's Claymore Miletus Christi, soldiers for Christ.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: That's where you see the sword behind me.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: That's the big sword.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: That's our logo for Claymore Militants Christi, soldiers for Christ.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: That's where you see the sword behind me.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: That's the big sword, that's our logo for Claymore, that's a Claymore sword.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: And this is for young people, especially young men, gen Z, high school, all the way through, let's call it, until they're 30 years old or so.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: They're starting to really understand that something nefarious, very toxic, is going on in the culture, and so they're stepping into the church and we're discipling them.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: So we want to help get the word out about those things and, lastly, try to consider at least consider financially supporting us.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: Everything's in the show notes hey, god bless you.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: Thanks again.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back to today's show.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: All those systems work independently.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: I don't need my wife for any of those systems.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: There's only one system that my wife and I have to come together in order for it to work.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: It's our reproductive system, and our body says that You're incomplete.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: A man's body doesn't make sense without a woman.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: A woman's body doesn't make sense without a man.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: Well, this is a sacramental sign, and this is what we're getting at today.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: It's really, really important to let that sink in.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: So, seeking another to complete this narrative of our existence.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: Our bodies even tell the story.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: Our hearts are yearning what To be?
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: Persons of love, to be united with another person, and this is a sacramental sign.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: This truth is most vividly expressed through our creation as male and female.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: So our world has normalized sin, normalized the fall, but Jesus again is going to redirect us to the beginning before sin entered human history.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: So in Matthew's gospel, the Pharisees tested Jesus.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: They're coming up to Jesus.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: Listen to the story now.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: This is Jesus speaking to us.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: If we're there, let's just put ourselves there.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: And they ask him a question Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: Can I get rid of my wife for any cause?
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: Jesus, instead of limiting himself to their line of questioning, points to God's original design for marriage and he answered have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and he said this.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: For this reason, he takes this right out of Genesis, chapter one and two.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: So he's pointing back to the beginning.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: This is the beginning of scripture, before sin into the world.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: For this reason it says in scripture a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one, so that they're no longer two but one.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: What, therefore?
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: God has joined together, let no man separate.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: And they said to him.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: Then this is the test right.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: Well, why did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and put her away?
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: Why did Moses allow divorce in the Old Testament?
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: And Jesus said to them listen to this.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: Because of the hardness of your hearts, moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: You know, moses just gave up.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: They came into a sinful world.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: And he just says okay, well for us.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: Christ came back into the world to restore this and give us the grace to overcome this.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: So here it is.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Over five days this is from Genesis, chapter one.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: Right From the very beginning, over five days, god's creative work unfolded until the Garden of Eden emerged.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: Just go back and read that.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: A breathtaking stage set for divine drama.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: So you picture this God's creating.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: How?
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: Picture a lush forest teeming with wildflowers, majestic animals, the songs of vibrant birds, a scene bursting with awe, wonder and beauty, prepared for a wedding feast.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: He's got it all ready.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: On the sixth day, it's as if God draws back into himself and takes a selfie.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: He's got everything ready for a wedding feast.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Now he draws back into himself.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: What is revealed is an eternal exchange of love.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: That's what the selfie's revealing.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: The father pours himself out into the son.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: The son receives that love and returns that love.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: And from their mutual self-giving the Holy Spirit proceeds.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: The two, father and son, are one.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: And from that mutual self-giving the Holy Spirit proceeds.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: The two, father and Son, are one and from that proceeds the Holy Spirit In the divine act of self-revelation.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: God created humanity in this image.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: So God is not a sexual being, he creates our sexuality.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: What to express that Trinitarian love in the world?
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: And he says this let us make man in our image, after our likeness.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: Let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air and the cattle, and over all the wild animals and all the creatures that crawl on the ground.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: God created man in his image, in the divine image.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: He created them, how Male and female.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: He created them.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: God blessed them, saying be fertile, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: The first commandment.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: We think about the 10 commandments.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: Well, those came after sin.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: The actual first commandment before sin is what Be fertile, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: Go have, join in sexual union where the two become one, open to life, become three.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: This is a tiny creative reflection of what Of Trinitarian love in the world.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: That's how love gets in the world.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: St John Paul II beautifully articulates this truth and he says this the human body, our bodies, with its sex, masculinity, femininity, seeing the very mystery of creation, is not only the source of fruitfulness, of procreation, as in the whole natural order.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: So an animal can reproduce while we procreate.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: And what's the difference?
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: Well, it contains, john Paul said, from the very beginning, the spousal attribute that is, the power to express love, precisely that love in which the human being becomes a gift and through this gift, fulfills the very meaning of his being and existence.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: Let me just think about this for a second.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: God's got everything ready.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: He's got the animals, he's got the plants, got everything.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: But how is he going to get love?
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: That's the spousal attribute he gives us.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: We bring love into the world.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: And what is the sacramental sign of that?
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: Each one of us becomes a person of love.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: So I make God's visible in the world.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: People will say to me Jack, you know where's God.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: You know we are supposed to be making God visible in the creative world.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: That's why he created us to bring truth, goodness, beauty, love into the world.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: The fullest sign of that is Trinitarian love and that's what happens with the family.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: That's why the family is that societal core and when that breaks down, you break down this whole attribute of love.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: That's why, when I said that about the kids in the inner city, these young people, they're lacking love from their own family, young people.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: They're lacking love from their own family, they're lacking the source of love from God.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: So they go out and they become violent.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: You become irrational.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: You just beat people up, just to beat people up.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: You see how this works, you know, and then all of society starts to come down.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: This truth became vividly real for me after I was married, when my wife gave birth to our first child.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: So, holding our daughter in my hand for the first time, gazing at my wife who had just given birth, I was overwhelmed by the mystery of this new life.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Think about this when the two of us boom, the two became one.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: A third came into being.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: Reflecting on this moment.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: Later, on the births of our other children, I began to grasp what it.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: Reflecting on this moment, later, on the births of our other children, I began to grasp what it means to be the image of God in the world.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: In the sacrament of marriage, my wife and I gave ourselves fully to one another, and from that mutual gift of love, god brought forth a new life.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: We became co-creators with him, co-creators of a new eternal being.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: But what was that?
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: The two, my wife and I, became one, became three.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: There was a time where, again, in the beginning, wonder and that's what I meant by the cosmic explosion of love came out in the form of a child that reflected the love of my wife and I and this Trinitarian love in the world.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: This is reflecting, again, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit's love.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: You know, as a boy, I remember hearing about the Trinity and struggled to understand that.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: And God is a mystery, and love is a mystery.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: God is love.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: God, though, is a communion of love between the Father, son and the Holy Spirit.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: I start to understand that, but holding my newborn child, I saw that her existence was that fruit of love, again between my wife and I, made possible by God's gift of life.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: So I start to understand.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: Ooh, we are the expression of Trinitarian love in the world.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: Again, love does not get into the world unless we bring it in.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: This is why Satan attacks our sexuality, this is why pornography, this is why we're using child sex, trafficking, all of these things that we're doing to one another, rape.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: We're taking the sacrament and twisting and distorting it and everything starts to break down.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: So John Paul II went on to state his whole thesis about this.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: Like the whole summa of this, and if you allow it to sink in, it not only revolutionizes the way we understand the human body and our sexuality, it changes the world.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: And he says this the body, our body, my body, your body, the body and it alone, john Paul said, is capable of making visible what is invisible, the spiritual and the divine.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: It was created to transfer into the visible reality of this world the invisible mystery hidden in God from time immemorial, and to be a sign of it.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: Well again, what does that mean?
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: Just to run through it?
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: Well again, what does that mean?
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: Just to run through it?
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: Though God is pure spirit, invisible to us, he stamped his mystery into our very bodies by creating us, male and female, in his image.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: This image reflects the Trinity, a divine communion of three persons.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: John Paul explains that humanity images God not only through our individual existence, but through the communion of persons formed by man and woman from the beginning, this communion of the two coming together, blessed with the gift of fertility, open to life, reveals the spousal meaning of the body, a call to become a gift for one another in the one flesh, sexual union.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: This is right from Genesis 2, verse 24.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: In this way, marriage constitutes a primordial sacrament, understood as a sign that truly communicates the mystery of God's Trinitarian love and love to husband and wife and, through them, to their children and to their children and the family to the whole world.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: That's salvation.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: Living that out makes this visible, god visible in the whole world.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: When families understand this and you have all these families, these building cells all through history that understand this you change the whole world.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: It's amazing.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: And when you get a twisting and distortion of that, how awful it is.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: And again you see the breakdown of that.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: I remember Bill Gates going to an African nation and he's explaining to the tribes there about contraception, about not having so many children and you'll be able to be richer, that way You'll have more money because you won't have to spend it on kids.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: And they looked at him and they didn't understand it.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: And through an interpreter, bill Gates say what don't they understand?
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: And what the tribal people said?
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: They said that our children are our treasure.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: You know you can take the money, you know we can be a little poorer because our children are our treasure.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: They get that.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: But we in the Western world we want to undergird that, we want to take that away from them.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: We want to push contraception and abortion and these LBGTQ things.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: It's a sin, it's twisting and distorting.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: You can see what somebody like the Governor Pritzker's here in Illinois, the Bill Gates of the world, even if they think they're doing something good, right, we're going to reduce the amount of people in the world they say we're going to give people contraception so that you can be free.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: You know you don't have to have children and if you really understood it, you go.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: What are you talking about?
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: You're taking love out of my life, out of the world's life, etc.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: And so, as I wind down here, this is really the mystery again of truth and love, the mystery of divine life in which man really participates.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: We get to participate in this.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: This is why it's so important for your spiritual formation to link yourself with God, because we have to be filled with God's love in order to be persons of love.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: You cannot give what you don't have.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: So I have to go back to the source.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: Jesus would say the branch has to come back onto the vine right.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: So again, through our bodilyness, our masculinity and femininity, we become a visible sign of truth and love in the world, which has its source in God himself and was already revealed in the mystery of creation.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: Think about creation again, all of creation.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: The sun coming up in the morning, the mountains, the majestic mountains they're all small B beauty, reflecting something of God himself, big B beauty in the world.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: But the fullest sign of that are the sacramentality of our body.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: Our bodies are those sacrament we said.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: The primordial sacrament is marriage.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: What does that mean?
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: That means that in the beginning, before sin, we didn't have the seven sacraments that Jesus instituted.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: Now, because he came into a fallen world and gave us those sacraments again to come back into this relationship with God.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: In the beginning, before sin, the way God wanted that sacrament, his love, to be revealed, was through, again, marriage and the family.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: So this is the primordial, the first sacrament.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: It's the only sacrament that we needed.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: All of creation is a sacrament, again, reflecting something of big beauty, god in the world.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: But we are the primordial sacrament.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: You know where the two become one, become three.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: That tiny created reflection of Trinitarian love in the world.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: So, together with mankind, holiness has entered the visible world.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: That's why in the scriptures in Genesis, we talk about naked without shame.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: Well, there was no sin in the world, you know.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: Nakedness means we could expose ourselves to one another.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: You know, adam and Eve coming into this beautiful relationship.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: Right, the world was created for us.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: The sacrament of the world and the sacrament of man in the world comes forth from that divine source of holiness, from God himself, and that we institute this holiness in the world.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: We were made for holiness and we were the sign of holiness.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: If we take this out, you see the breakdown that we have now.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: Okay, that's enough for today.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: So again, the discussion questions with Scripture and catechism references.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: I'll put those in the show notes.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: I'll just touch on this first question and, again, find someone to discuss this with.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: If you don't have anybody, contemplate it on your own, but it's so important for us to let this sink in, and we do this through prayer.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: So the first question discussion questions with your friend or whatever, over a beer or coffee or whatever.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: How does the creation of humanity as male and female reflect the Trinitarian love for God, and what does this reveal about the purposes of our bodies?
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: It's very important in today's twisted culture to sit on that question and I put some references in there from Genesis you could read If you don't have the catechism of the Catholic Church, get that catechism.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: It's so beautiful, it's amazing.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: But I put the catechism references in there so you can read this again God created man in his own image, in the image of God.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: He created them, male and female.
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: He created them being in the image of God.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: The human individual possesses the dignity of a person who is not just something but a someone.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: In this crazy culture, we love our things, our phones and all our gadgets and all that when we're using people.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: It should be the opposite.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: God gave us all creation to use for the good of ourselves and we are to love people.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: And then, in loving each other, we start to love creation and take care of everything, and then everything starts to fit together, regardless of what you see out in the world.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: We have to capture this ourselves.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: We have to become these persons of love.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: That's the way I get to answer those timeless questions.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: Again, I start to answer that question who am I?
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: What's the meaning and purpose of life?
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: Why were we created male and female?
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: How do I find happiness?
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: How do I find love that satisfies?
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: It's all in this little story.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: Hey, god bless you.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: If you have any questions, let us know.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: My email will be in the show notes info at JP, the number two reneworg, send me an email when you start to put these little cells together across the nation and other nations.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: This podcast goes out to many other countries.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: When you do send us a little note there, I'll see that.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: That goes right to me, that email, and we want to support these little cells all over.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: Sometimes we do Zoom calls with other men.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: You might want to be invited into that and start to meet some other guys around the world If we're in your area or you can invite us into your area and we'll do a live event there as you grow.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: There's a group of guys about 40 guys now Just start out with a couple guys talking and then it grows to another guy and another guy, another guy, and then they go out and reach it.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: This is the discipleship program that helps you help other men too.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: So if you meet somebody that's starting to ask questions, you could say hey, do me a favor, download the Claymore Battle Plan.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: We'll review it.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: We'll listen to this podcast on Friday, we'll discuss it together and you start to lead them into the story.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: Plus, it gives them an action plan, like I just said.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: You know falling to your knees and doing those three things in the morning, and then reading scripture.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: Hey, god bless you.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: Great to be with you guys.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: Let me know if you have any questions.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: Talk to you again soon.