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9/15/26 Risky Love · Omnia Christus

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Today we celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: And this feast is interesting.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yesterday we had the Feast of the Triumph, the Cross.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: And today we have the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: So it seems that we're on a bit of a downer.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, I think as Christians, we know that that's not the case.
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  SPEAKER_00: So I just want to read a little quote from something written by the great Christian author C.S.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis.
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  SPEAKER_00: And he says, there is no safe investment.
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  SPEAKER_00: To love at all is to be vulnerable.
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  SPEAKER_00: Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken.
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  SPEAKER_00: If you want to make sure of keeping it intact,
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  SPEAKER_00: you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal.
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  SPEAKER_00: Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries.
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  SPEAKER_00: Avoid all entanglements.
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  SPEAKER_00: Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.
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  SPEAKER_00: But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change.
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  SPEAKER_00: It will not be broken.
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  SPEAKER_00: It will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.
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  SPEAKER_00: The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation.
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  SPEAKER_00: The only place outside heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers
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  SPEAKER_00: and perturbations of love is hell.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a beautiful quote.
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  SPEAKER_00: And you have to understand what Lewis means by hell,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is what we mean by hell, which is the separation from God, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: Being separated from God.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that God respects the fact that if we wanted to, we could separate ourselves from him.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where we would be truly safe from the pain of love would be in hell,
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  SPEAKER_00: where God could not touch us.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because hell is the absence of love and love Always involves that risk.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: It involves that danger.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's what vulnerability means.
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  SPEAKER_00: Vulnerability means the possibility of being wounded.
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  SPEAKER_00: And if I open myself up to the possibility of loving and giving myself,
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  SPEAKER_00: I also open myself up to the possibility of pain and the possibility
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  SPEAKER_00: of being wounded by someone, by something.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I think that is just the reality.
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  SPEAKER_00: And we have to acknowledge that.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's why we celebrate today this feast of Our Lady of Sorrows,
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  SPEAKER_00: not because we're celebrating her sorrows,
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  SPEAKER_00: not because we're celebrating that she was sorrowful or sad.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's not in itself a good thing.
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  SPEAKER_00: But her sorrows flowed from her love,
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  SPEAKER_00: from the fact that she loved so much and was willing to give herself so much
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  SPEAKER_00: that she was open to the possibility of suffering and of experiencing sorrow
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  SPEAKER_00: and sadness and pain.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that is something that is beautiful and is truly worth suffering.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: And there's another quote from Lewis's autobiography, Surprised by Joy.
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  SPEAKER_00: Well, this is more of a paraphrase of that.
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  SPEAKER_00: But Lewis talks about the experience of joy.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: And he says that we don't understand joy in our modern world.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: And we always talk about happiness, you know, and who's happy and so forth.
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  SPEAKER_00: And happiness is kind of superficial.
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  SPEAKER_00: Joy is what we really are looking for.
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  SPEAKER_00: And Lewis says, basically, the idea of joy is not something that's satisfied.
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  SPEAKER_00: Like happiness is sort of being satisfied,
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  SPEAKER_00: being filled,
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  SPEAKER_00: having enough, you know, being, you know, having cookies or whatever, if you will.
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  SPEAKER_00: He says,
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  SPEAKER_00: joy is a deep longing for God,
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  SPEAKER_00: a hungry pursuit of God's heart that never ends and is more satisfying
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  SPEAKER_00: than any earthly happiness.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis talks about this.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: He says, joy is something we sort of catch these glimpses of.
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  SPEAKER_00: And as soon as we see a glimpse, it's gone already.
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  SPEAKER_00: And our heart is just filled with this aching longing for something
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  SPEAKER_00: that we almost couldn't even see or grasp,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is the presence of God that we see in these flashes through our life.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that is joy.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that joy necessarily includes within it pain and suffering and sorrow
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  SPEAKER_00: and this experience of longing and of loss and of not yet.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: And yet that those glimpses of joy that we have are truly the transcendent moments
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  SPEAKER_00: where we touch what is most beautiful and good in life.
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  SPEAKER_00: So there's always a certain sorrow mixed into that because we're not there yet.
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  SPEAKER_00: We have not yet reached God,
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  SPEAKER_00: but we know that we're made for that and we catch these longings for that.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's why Mary experienced such sorrow.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's why someone like Mother Teresa of Calcutta experienced so much sorrow in her life.
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  SPEAKER_00: Her experience of God,
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  SPEAKER_00: she described as an experience of thirst,
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  SPEAKER_00: the thirst for God's presence because she longed so much for him.
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  SPEAKER_00: And she experienced his absence because she loved him so much.
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  SPEAKER_00: She experienced that he wasn't there.
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  SPEAKER_00: And much of Mary's life, it was the same.
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  SPEAKER_00: Christ went off to do his mission ministry and then died.
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  SPEAKER_00: And she experienced That absence,
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  SPEAKER_00: she experienced the lack of his presence,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is this beautiful,
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  SPEAKER_00: deep longing,
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  SPEAKER_00: but which was also a sorrow and a suffering that sprang from her love and her desire
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  SPEAKER_00: for God.
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  SPEAKER_00: So that's worth celebrating, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: That's why we celebrate Our Lady of Sorrows,
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  SPEAKER_00: not because she was sorrowful, but because she gave herself so much.
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  SPEAKER_00: She opened herself up so much.
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  SPEAKER_00: She was so vulnerable, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: That she was capable of being hurt in the deepest way possible and she experienced
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  SPEAKER_00: that pain with God.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's the other beautiful thing about pain and sorrow and suffering
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  SPEAKER_00: and we talked about that a little bit yesterday.
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  SPEAKER_00: That we can unite it to God.
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  SPEAKER_00: That with God we can embrace it.
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  SPEAKER_00: That with God we can turn our sufferings and our sorrows and our difficulties
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  SPEAKER_00: Into transcendent acts of love that we can offer that up.
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  SPEAKER_00: We can make those into moments of self giving.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's what fills us most in life.
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  SPEAKER_00: We actually don't want to be sitting around on the beach eating pizza.
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  SPEAKER_00: We actually want to be doing something meaningful with our lives.
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  SPEAKER_00: We actually want to be giving ourselves to be contributing to the world.
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  SPEAKER_00: And when we're doing that,
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  SPEAKER_00: as difficult as that is,
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  SPEAKER_00: as painful as that is,
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  SPEAKER_00: we have a deep sense of satisfaction and meaning and belonging.
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  SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's not happiness, but that does get us towards joy.
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  SPEAKER_00: It gets us towards fulfillment.
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  SPEAKER_00: It gets us towards what we're made for.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's what Christ is offering us.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's why we have this beautiful feast day today.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because Mary, yes, she experienced suffering.
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  SPEAKER_00: She experienced sorrow.
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  SPEAKER_00: She experienced sadness.
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  SPEAKER_00: But she also experienced that infinite joy of Christ's presence and of God's love.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that is what love brings us to.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that is what it is all about.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's what we receive today as we unite ourselves to Christ in this celebration
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  SPEAKER_00: of the Eucharist.