Latest / Claymore: Become Who You Are / #479 Love Is Indeed "Ecstasy" Not In The Sense Of A Moment of Intoxication, But Rather As A Journey

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#479 Love Is Indeed "Ecstasy" Not In The Sense Of A Moment of Intoxication, But Rather As A Journey · Claymore: Become Who You Are

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Become who you Are podcast, a production of the John Paul II Renewal Center.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: I'm Jack Rigg, your host.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Hey, thanks for joining me today.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: St Catherine of Siena said that if you become who you are, that you would literally set the world on fire.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: And St Athanasius, an early church father and a doctor of the church, said the son of God became man so that we might become God.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: You know I make a wild guess at this, but I bet you, most of us, are a bit disconnected from this divine life that these saints are pointing us to.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Yet Saint John Paul II said there's an echo of the story of this divine life that we're created for, inscribed in each human heart, in your human heart.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: And if you put on the proper lens if I put on the proper lens we can get in touch with this echo within us in such a way that we have that aha moment.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: See, that's the genus of St John Paul II's theology of the body.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: It connects our lived experience of life to the gospel in such a way that our life takes on a whole new meaning and helps us answer those big questions that our whole culture is so confused about today meaning and helps us answer those big questions that our whole culture is so confused about today.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Who am I?
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: What's my purpose?
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Why were we created male and female?
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: How do I find happiness here on earth?
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: How do I find love that satisfies forever?
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Hey, glad you're with me, I'll be.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: I'm excited we're back.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: It's been a little break.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: We took a break for Easter and beyond and Linda had some personal things going.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: We probably won't get to it today, but her son had some health issues, so she's been dealing with that too.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: So it was a it was.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: It was a time we had to take off anyways, busy traveling for Easter.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: So we're glad to be back again.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Linda, how are you Good to see you?
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Oh, jack, it's great to see you and to be doing this again.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, life sends us a lot of challenges along the way and we've got to keep that uppermost.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: You know what is our goal here.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: What are we trying to accomplish most?
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: You know what is our goal here, what are we trying to accomplish, and I think that our discussions, you know, with our Theology of the Body, audiences can always direct us to looking at.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: You know what is most important, despite all the challenges, and God has taught me a lot of lessons through it and I hope I can share some of that.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, good, well, thank you.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: And yeah, life is a journey, you know, and we know that this is a journey and this journey is leading somewhere.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: We have to remember this.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: You know, sometimes, you know it's really God brings us to himself, most of the time in pain and suffering.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: And if we don't have pain and suffering, most of the time we just we go about our day and even though we may pray, we may go to mass or church, we don't really get into the depths of our heart until something really big comes up and you go.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: What is this all about?
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: You take a backseat.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: You know, I noticed this again with, on a different note, with this solar eclipse.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: You know, we have this mass media, this, you know, I call them the.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: You know the talking heads of mass propaganda, and they're looking up at the stars.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: It was amazing to me I did a podcast on it, linda, you know, I just put it out talking about the solar eclipse, and we finally have mass media, all these talking heads looking at the sky in awe and wonder.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: And so it takes something like this right, something to move the human heart.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: But here's the problem Our human hearts don't stay there very long, you know.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: So this is a daily battle and that's why I said it's a journey, you know, pope Benedict would talk about.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: We're going to be talking about love here and Eros and the difference between spousal love of a man and a woman and the spousal love of the saints and the mystics.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: And what St Paul would talk about here is, he says, you know, choosing virginity or continence for the kingdom.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: And he says it does better.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: And when you read that you go, what do you mean?
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: You know, to be unmarried is better than to be married.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: And St Paul says, ah, if you choose it for the kingdom, he said, because the unmarried man is anxious about how to please the Lord, the unmarried woman is anxious about how to please the Lord, and so our focus my whole point being, again, our focus is on the Lord and all of us.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Our focus has to be on the Lord, of course, when you're and what St Paul is alluding to here, of course is when we're married, when we have family, we have to please each other.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: At the same time, there's all these complexities going on.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Not that the saints and mystics didn't have them, there's.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: Many of them had problems in their own communities, right, with some other nun that she didn't like or didn't like her, and back fighting and all this stuff.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: So it's not like they skipped all this, but they weren't married to that person.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: They didn't really have to please that person, they just had to get along In marriage.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: We're asking for a little bit more.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: So, again, the idea at the end if I can get to the end again is that both of these whether you're married or continence for the kingdom, if I can get to the end again is that both of these, whether you're married or continents for the kingdom is aimed toward God and ultimately, this is that journey.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: Right, linda?
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: We're on a journey and the journey's going to the same place, you know, and we're going into this eternal exchange of love that happens today.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: you know that's happening today and we have to walk in that space, and so that's what I think is more interesting about our conversation today.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a couple of things.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: We need to remember the context that St Paul was writing in.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: He's writing specifically to the Corinthians and the Pope tells us he's most likely answering some very specific questions that they had.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: And so, with that understanding too, that the city of Corinth was known for the paganism, the sexual sins that were going on, and so within that context he's addressing some very specific things.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: But where the Pope says pleasing the Lord, that phrase in quotes that Paul uses, has love as its background.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: And so, while the unmarried have devoted their entire being towards that concept of pleasing the Lord, the married are trying to please each other, it's true, but as we have developed better, more, greater development, I guess, of the understanding of marriage as it became a sacrament instituted by Christ, it's husband and wife together pleasing the Lord as they're on that journey together.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: So there's really no real conflict in my mind.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: It's that it's two different ways to love and to get on that journey to our final goal of being incorporated into the Trinity.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think what you said there about those people in Corinth, I think that's good to bring up because, again, that's basically our culture today.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: My understanding of Corinth at that time was that it was a pretty, like you said, pagan decadent society at that time was that it was a pretty, like you said, pagan decadent society, one that saw a man, saw a woman as someone to use, really, even if it was his own wife.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: You know that she just became, you know, material or an object to satisfy what they would call love.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: But St Paul's very clear on this that that's not authentic love, right, that's not the love that someone that skips that marriage and looks toward God, he's drawing from that and, in essence, reminding all of us what you just said that we all have to draw from the source because we can't give one another what we don't have.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: We see this you called this a sacrament.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: You know marriage is a sacrament in the church and the reason is we lost that ruah, that spirit, this a sacrament.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: You know marriage is a sacrament in the church and the reason is we lost that ruah, that spirit of God and sin and we use one another.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: You know utilitarianism, right, I use you, you use me and we think it's love, and then we get into these messy marriages where the feeling is gone and sex isn't as good and you go.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: Well, then there's no love.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: Well, there never was love in most cases, right.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: So again, I have to be purified.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: My eros, my desire has to be purified, and then I have something to give to my wife and my wife has something to give back to me.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: Without it, we're just empty vessels, aren't we?
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the strength to do that comes from grace.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: Wife has something to give back to me.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: Without it we're just empty vessels, aren't we?
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the strength to do that comes from grace, the grace of the sacrament.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: Christopher West even makes a comment in his commentary book kind of along these lines, where his now this is Christopher West speaking.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: He says that it doesn't seem to him that Paul holds out the power of grace to set the Corinthians free from the domination of concupiscence with the equal strength of conviction that the Pope has been talking about.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: But it seems plausible that Paul offers some concessions to the human weakness, because he says the bold proclamation of the full power of redemption the Corinthians weren't ready to hear yet and that makes a whole lot of sense, again within that context, that he was in a way making some concessions by saying, you know, he says in fact, that they're babes in Christ and he could only feed them with milk, not with solid food.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: Well, we're past that now, and so we understand the grace and the role that grace plays in overcoming the concupiscence, and that understanding of marriage that we're a gift to the other through the bad times, which is probably more than— Well, here's the interesting thing, what you just said, though you know.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: You said that we're past that, and you and I in this conversation, are past that, and of course, the Gospels have become and John Paul's teaching has become past that, but our culture's not past that.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, no, our culture is just.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: If somebody was listening to us right now, we'd have to give them that milk.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: If they weren't normal people that have been listening to this show, listening to other Catholic podcasts, or at least good Christian evangelical podcasts, a biblical understanding of what marriage and the sacrament of marriage is.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: If not, then they're.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: Just look at, this is a pornographic, decadent pagan culture that we're in again now, isn't it?
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: Yes, it is so good clarification there.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: Our culture, very much like the Corinthians, trying to unfold or uncover, I should say how it is.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: We need to move gradually towards what our ultimate goal is, and it's not easy, but without grace it's nearly impossible.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: And we have to remember that love is what we seek at the end.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: And this desire for love is innate in us, right?
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: Well, this is not more information, this is the DNA that flows to us.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: You know God seeks that intimacy with us and again, you know it's expressed in the inner life of God.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: Again, this inner life of the Trinity is an eternal exchange of love expressed in the sacrament of marriage a man and woman and their family, right?
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, that intimacy has to be with each person.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: First, you know, it has to dwell within the individual human heart.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: That is purified.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: Then.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: That is their eros.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: Their desire to love and be loved is purified through Jesus Christ eros.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Their desire to love and be loved is purified through Jesus Christ and then given, and then given to one another.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: This is what makes that sign so beautiful and so powerful.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: And if we don't understand this in the sacrament, then every time you make marital love to one another, sexual union, that that's a renewal of a sacrament.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: It's a renewal of your wedding vows, Again, I've said this before, but I love saying it.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: It's a renewal of your wedding vows, again.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: You know I've said this before, but I love saying it.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: It's John Paul speaking to young married men at a conference, that you know, before you make love to your wife, before you enter the marriage bed, take your shoes off because you're entering unto holy ground, and this is much different, you know.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: So now, when I think about St Paul and he says, you know that you can, you know that it's even better to miss this, to skip this marriage, and better meaning because we're focused on God.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: Right, we're focused on God.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: And when you're living in these pagan societies and stuff and spending a lot of time at work and trying to work for your families and there's, you know, sickness comes in, this comes in, that comes in.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: It takes a real discipline.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: You know, on both vocations, of course, but it takes a real discipline to be able to, with all the idiosyncrasies going on in the marriage and family, to be constantly moving your heart to God, which is possible.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: And in fact that's where we should be offering all these daily trials up and uniting them with Christ on the cross right.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: They actually can be the way to that purification, because when you're being called to do things for your family that you'd rather be doing something else, you know your family, that you'd rather be doing something else, you know and yet you put aside yourself to be that gift to the others and doing that thing.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: That in itself is the very process of that sanctification, that purification, offering the suffering up.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: It's just really beautiful.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, sit on that for a second, because that is really it.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: You know, we can look at those things.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: And I'm not talking about this functional marriage where one person's you know, a drug addict or an alcoholic or you know, but, but, but a normal marriage, just, you know, it's just these, these daily grinds starts to get to people right, and they and they, they start to look at the other person and and, and they want to hear something good from another person before.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: I do something good for my wife's sake.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: But the reality of what you're saying is I have to sacrifice that.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: So I offer this little prayer up and I say you know, my wife is kind of, she's in a bad mood, whatever, and instead of pushing back against that right and starting something, I actually offer that up and then I'd be kind to her, even if she's not being kind to me, and hopefully that's reciprocal, you know.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: And then we start to.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: It's funny, when you act loving, you actually become loving again, you know, and this really shows us the unity between body and soul, doesn't it, linda?
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: That we're a unity, that our bodies are experiencing something, but this is also a body-soul experience and when we open our souls up and become united to divinity, right to the Holy Spirit, and then push this out right, live this out and experience, act on it.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: We actually become better people.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: Holiness starts to enter in and there's a joy to that.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: There's a happiness and a peace that comes out of that.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: All those things.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: Amen.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: It's so great the way you describe it because as we talk about the generality that we're all called to, holiness, holiness can seem like this unattainable goal.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: Like what are you talking about?
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: My day, my day-to-day grind doesn't seem anything holy.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: And yet when my body and soul integration is that this is what I do, because my goal is to become holy when you respond the way you describe, you actually are becoming holy.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: Matthew Kelly has that new book Holy Moments.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: I have it.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: I kind of looked at it.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: Haven't read through it all the way, but the essence of what he's talking about is that each and every interaction that we're faced with during the day can become an opportunity to become a holy moment.
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: It's all on the choices that we make.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: And remember, jack, we had talked earlier that holiness the Pope says is really a state rather than an action.
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: Holiness the Pope says is really a state rather than an action.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: So it's that body-soul integration of here is my goal and so this is the state in which I'm going to live, and then my choices come out of that, which makes it easier to respond in a kind way to someone who's grouchy and moody than it would be otherwise.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that gets back to that earlier statement that you cannot give what you don't have.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: So I have to become holy, I have to start to move into holiness, to ask for that purity of heart so that I can act it out right.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: But I don't have to wait to be holy, because actually my actions are uniting me in some way more and more and more with divinity, right, because I'm walking with God to do that, and then it kind of it pushes back again, so the state of holiness comes out of my actions, but then my actions are reciprocal to bringing me back into holiness again.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: So it's really a beautiful thing.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: But we see that with the saints and the mystics how they have this intimacy with God and then they go out and they face these little trials to your point and they're always offering those little trials up and still becoming a person of love, in spite of even people talking about them behind their back.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: I was looking for the word.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: It's on the tip of my tongue.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: I'll think about it in a second.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: It's funny how words come in and out of my brain as I'm talking sometimes.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're all there, yeah, and one thought that came into my mind as you're speaking is that for all of us, whether we're consecrated virgin for the kingdom religious priests, or we're in the married state and I know that there are single people and I'm just leaving that aside for the moment, they're certainly included is that all of it?
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: The umbrella is God loved us first, jack.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: This is all a response.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: Whether it's in the unmarried state or the married state, all of it is a response to God's love.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: And so when we pull further and further away from holiness, we are giving, I guess, if you will, a negative response to God's love or no response at all.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: And when we are pulling closer to that holiness, we're saying that I love you too, back to God.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: It's not really that difficult in concept, but it's really hard to live out.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and when I think, when people are struggling in their marriages and wondering how to fill themselves up and thinking, well, maybe I'm with the wrong person and I got to go find somebody else or the trials come in, I'm going to challenge these saints and the mystics to help me to be filled, to open my eros.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: Pope Benedict XVI in his first encyclical is Deus Caritas Es God is love, and he wrote that the ancient Greeks, not unlike other cultures, considered eros principally as a kind of intoxication, the overpowering of their reason by a divine madness.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: This is kind of what St Paul is talking about.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: I see how you're acting.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: Right and it's not proper.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: I'm going to give you a little milk now, but at the end you have this power within you.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: You know that Plato would call that the desire for all that's true, good and beautiful, especially the beauty of love.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: That gets twisted and distorted, though so easily, into an overpowering of reason in a bad way, or that overpowering can take you and lift you to the stars.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: See the power within us to love and to desire love.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: This eros, this power, can really be twisted and distorted right into lust, into selfishness.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: We had those, you know.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: You had those in those days, st Paul's days, you actually had these temples where prostitutes were there.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: And you know, and the ancient Greeks had those temples too, and you know, and the ancient Greeks had those temples too.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: So you would go there and actually have sex with a prostitute.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: You know, trying to get into this intoxication of divine power, you can see how twisted and distorted that became right.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: And so this divine madness, pope Benedict writes tears man away from his finite existence, right?
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: So this eros, like when a young man and a young woman are in love you know, I do these talks for engaged couples they're so empowered, intoxicated even, like we just said here, that it overcomes their reason.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: And you can look at a person and I've seen this over and over again and I'm saying to myself that's not the right man for that woman, that's not the right woman for this man.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: But they don't see it because they're intoxicated.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: But instead of lifting their hearts and praying on this, they get into a sexual relationship too quick, love being reduced to a feeling and then reduced down to sex.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: That intoxication is a twisting and a distortion and a spiral downward of use, right.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: It takes away human dignity, it takes away everything, it dehumanizes love, and in what St Paul and what the saints always get to is no, no, no, let that be purified.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: Walk into holiness and that eros.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: When it's united with agape, love Jesus', love on the cross, is this divine, sacrificial love, and that's what we were alluding to earlier.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: You become a sacrifice to another person, you start to care for other people and you think well, that doesn't sound very erotic, but it's amazing how your heart, lifted with God, will fill you, and the intimacy with God is what actually lifts you to the stars.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: You know, and we don't believe that and we don't trust in that, and so we never find what we're looking for, do we in this life?
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: Yes, it all does depend on where that Eros is directed To.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: Married couples where things have gone a little bit stale and you're looking at I don't know is this the right person, as you had said.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: I would say I'd send out a challenge here of think back to when you were in that stage and think back to the beginning years of your marriage and what was that attraction all about and what did that look like and why did the two of you pronounce those vows and actually become together and take yourself back there to see that.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: Can I reclaim that?
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: Or have I gotten so caught up in just what am I getting out of this marriage?
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: What's in it for me?
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: And kind of slipped away from the fact that that love and that Eros was directed at the other person in the beginning.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: We're humans and we're weak, and it happens, I think, in every single marriage, no matter how good.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: But when you can take yourself back to the original, you know God gave us Eros as that wonderful desire and without it, you know, would couples come together at all?
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: You know there's got to be, some attraction.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: There the pope talked about the raw material of love.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: That's a part of it where you are attracted to the person psychologically and physically and all those things are good.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: But it's the raw material.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: It's not quite true love.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because you have to see the good, and only god is good.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: You have to see the good that that woman or that man was created for, and I have to want your good, I have to want that.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: That's love as goodwill, right.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: And so here's the thing, because we don't want to lose this intoxication, we don't want to lose the reality of it.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: But you alluded to remember back that first love and I think that is important to do because it's a, it should have been a you know a real movement of the heart, but.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: But you're not going to recapture.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: You know that.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: You know it's.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: It's going to be different, it has to mature, because you know just the chemical process going on in your body.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know the first 18 months on average.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: You know you have these, have this chemical cocktail going off in your body.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: It really happens within your body.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: You know you have you know dopamine and you have testosterone.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: You know you have serotonin, you have epinephrine and norepinephrine and all these things are going off in your body.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: It's amazing, but that fades after about 18 months.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: So while you think back to that early relationship, that power, now what you want to do is think back to that and then that's like a rocket that first stage fell off.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: But a rocket if it's really aiming towards someone, aiming toward agape love.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: In this case, that second stage should be going faster and smoother.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: So it's a mature love now.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: It's a self-giving love and you're not trying to capture that first booster rocket.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: I mean the booster rocket's the booster rocket.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: Now it has to mature into something deeper.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: So that's why we said earlier this is a journey.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: People are looking for a moment of intoxication.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: Right, this is the hookup culture, this is the porn culture.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: But you become addicts, linda.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: You become addicts instead of lovers.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: You know what we're talking about is to become a lover.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and as a part of that process, of course, is the importance that this is a person.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: You know, John Paul is a person of mystics.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: This is a person, you know, john Paul's personalistic.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: So in the beginning, even with all the hormones and all the everything going on, there still must be that recognition that this is another person and the attraction is also to the value of this person as a person and not just all the you know biological things that are going on.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: And see, in the hookup culture and all these ways we've lost this idea that this is a person right, and so we just, you know, totally ejected that and we we must keep that uppermost in mind, otherwise the culture is so selfish, linda I, I, I, if, if the culture is so selfish, linda I, I, I, if.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: If the culture, if these, if people get any more selfish and using sex for their own selfish desires, they're, they're imploding on themselves.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: They're imploding instead of that rocket launching into the next stage.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: That rocket actually explodes right, it explodes on the launch pad.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: And the other thing is, I see these people now in their 30s, late 30s, early 40s.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: I see men and women, but I especially am thinking of a couple of women that I know that are now in their early 40s, 43, 44.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: And they were promised these lies, that this was just I can use a man, I can, you know, just like he used me.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: We get back to this crazy thing that we did Before we came on.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: We were talking about radical feminism, not feminism as suffrage in the beginning.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: Right, and saying, hey, I need to vote, et cetera.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: I need respect human dignity.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: Those things were all good and necessary.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: But when we start to think, now I see a man, so I can use him, just like he used me, and blah, blah, blah, where are we going with this?
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: And so now I see these women that were told that they'll find ultimate, infinite satisfaction in a corporate job, infinite satisfaction in education, infinite satisfaction in being used and using other people.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: And now they're in their 40s and looking back and going, wow, I don't know what that was all about.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: So there's a certain relationship between love and the divine and I think, as we wrap up here, linda, I think that's what we have to remember, that God put that in our heart, because that's how God loves us, that those people that have been lied, we were all lied to.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: We all grew up in the sexual revolution.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: I call it the sexual confusion, you know, of using one another, and it's not, wasn't always done on purpose, you know.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, look at when we grew up.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: We saw the wars going on.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: We saw people using and abusing each other.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: You saw, you know, racial discrimination, actual racial discrimination, you know, not made up to divide us like they do in the schools now, but actually on the street.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: It needed to be talked about, right, and we needed to change.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: But this gets back to holiness, linda.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: It's not a political solution.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: You can try all the laws you want, but at the end of the day, this becomes understanding that love promises.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: Think about this, that spark that you were mentioning earlier, where you first saw the girl, you first saw the guy.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: Love promises infinity.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: It promises eternity.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: This is that intoxication.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: Your reason is almost like gone right, because I'm so in love.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: I remember those days and it is beautiful, like you said, to go back and think about that.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: Because I think about it now, as that's the kind of relationship God wants with me.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: God wants with me.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: But if I didn't do that, linda, that remembering of my early marriage would actually be detrimental to me, because I was thinking I want to recapture that and see, that's what you do.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: When you look for a new wife or a new husband, or a new drug, or a new this or a new that, we're always looking for the next high, a new porn thing I got to get hardcore porn now we're always looking for the next high.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: When I understand that that intoxication in the beginning is an eternal intoxication with God that the saints talk about, then you start to open your heart toward that and that gives you this long-term effect.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: Long-term effect, like you and I are still talking about this, not because we have to, but because we want to and we want to be filled with this eternal intoxication.
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: It's only going to come from one place, Linda Right, and we're destined for that eternal exchange of love and we've got to get that or we'll continue to be the mess that we're in.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: Well, talk about this, Linda, as we go out that spark, go back to that spark you were talking about.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: That just gives us a little tiny taste of properly understood of what.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, the marriage feast of the lamb.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: So that's why you want to go back and remember it because that gives you a little tiny taste, the intimacy that the saints and the mystics have with God.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: They actually experienced, you know and think of this too, jack, in the vows that we've talked about, the marriage vows, do we not say that until death do us part, that we're recognizing from the beginning that we're going to take this as far as we can throughout the journey of life?
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: And it's only when we part in death that the separation will happen.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: And we can get into a whole other discussion there, but we need to bring ourselves back to that understanding.
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: Was that's what we promised, that was the vow, and the journey will continue in the eschaton.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: But we're looking at together, the two of us in this life, till death, and our culture has totally, I think, lost that understanding, except for those who still make the know, make the promises and still make it.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: That's why we look at older couples that have been married for a very long time and still go, wow, look at that, because we sense that they got it.
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: You know, they understood.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: Till death do us part and through all the stuff that life passes at us, they're still there, you know, working towards the marriage feast of the Lamb together.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we're guaranteed to hit some bumps in the road, and we know this.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: Look at the person who was a person of love.
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: Traitors in the road.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah well, the person that was a person of love, our Savior, is hanging on a cross.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: Right, he's hanging on a cross.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: So let me close with this idea from Pope Benedict XVI.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: You know my words kind of, but things I just read in God is love, his first encyclical.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: Love is indeed ecstasy, and the reason I want to say this, linda, is because we don't lose this.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: You know, we think sometimes in the Catholic tradition that we're talking about not lusting, that we lose this intoxication.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: Well, we don't.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: It purifies it and it actually expands it.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: So here's the statement Love is indeed ecstasy, not in the sense of a moment of intoxication, but rather as a journey, as an ongoing exodus out of the closed, inward-looking self toward liberation through self-giving and thus toward authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: At the end of the rainbow right this idea of love, in fact I even say rainbow there are all these young people that are so twisted and distorted in their various ideologies.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: At the end of that rainbow, if they understood this, they would stop this enclosed.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: That statement could really work for a lot of the young people I work with.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: And indeed, looking towards self, I've got to fill myself.
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: I got to change my sex.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: I got to do this they're looking for.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: At the end of the day, they're looking for God.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: If they would unveil that, if they would open that to purification, they would find God and save their self.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: A lot of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones and body mutilations Isn't that something?
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: And so that's why this message that we're talking about is so important.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: Today, it's the very first day that John Paul gave this.
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well said Jack.
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: Of course our popes have given us just some beautiful writings to help us understand this.
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: You know, I was thinking on the path of the vocation of marriage.
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: As you're on this journey, marriage forces you to get out of yourself and if you're blessed with children, that just continues that path of having to go further and further outside of yourself.
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: And then the grandchildren come along, and if you're blessed to see them, even further and that opens up actually to the whole horizon of getting you to God.
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: It's just he said it before us and those who are in the religious vocations have perhaps a more direct path there.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: But they're not without trials and tribulations as well, and in this culture it's very difficult, I would imagine, to be a religious person, perhaps more so than at other times in our history.
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: So what the Pope said there, it's exactly right that end of the rainbow.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: There he is waiting for us with open arms, as he showed us on the cross.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, hey, beautiful.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: Thank you, linda.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: Let's do a wrap right there.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: God bless you.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: Thanks for being with us.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: Thanks everybody for joining us again.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: Hopefully we get back on track and we're able to do this most Wednesdays at least.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: I'll be traveling sometime, so will you, and we might skip one here and there.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: All right, everyone, talk to you soon.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: Bye-bye.
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: Thank you, bye-bye.