Latest / Claymore: Become Who You Are / #562 The Prophetic Language Of Our Body: God's Plan Offers a Life Of Meaning and Authentic Freedom

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#562 The Prophetic Language Of Our Body: God's Plan Offers a Life Of Meaning and Authentic Freedom · Claymore: Become Who You Are

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Welcome to 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, 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.
• 1:08
  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?
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Hey, glad you're with me, I'll be.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: I'm back with Linda Piper.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: We have a great episode, I can call it for John Paul II's man and Woman.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: He Created them.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Think about just that, Linda the man and woman.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: He created them.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: A theology of the body.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Our body tells a story and it's the theological story, which means the study of God.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Our body reveals something about God and John Paul recorded this, if you're following us in Men and Women.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: He Created them, number 104, that he gave on January 12, 1983.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: That he gave on January 12, 1983.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: He calls it propheticism of the body.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Propheticism of the body.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: This is getting back to the Old Testament, prophets even, and how we're created, that we're created.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Our body speaks a language and we're going to be talking about that today and also maybe making an analogy, Linda, between the way that language is distorted and how much it hurts, especially young people, but of course even older people that have been caught up in in these lies and wondering why their marriages and their relationships are so malformed, why people are talking about going into a holiday season and maybe not meeting with their family members because they're not in agreement over Kamala Harris and Trump, which is really the essence of most of that when I talk to people as abortion it's the right to take the life of a child versus rational kind of you know, our free will given to us, if it's working properly, to choose the good what is good, huh, and so I think we can unpack some of that today.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: That's a mouthful, Linda.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: I know how are you.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, good morning Jack.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know you opened with saying it's a great audience and immediately I thought it is.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: And yet don't we say that on nearly all of them.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: This whole teaching that the Pope gave us is the answer to all of these distortions and all the ugliness that we see.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: And, as you said, it's funny because our political world it did come down to abortion, to life, life versus death, right?
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: So the battle line that we talk about really is life versus death, truth versus lies.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: That's where we are, you know, and when we think in terms of life, thou shalt not kill.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: Now I want to get into this a little bit more, because Pope talks about it with you know the rule, the negative way of expressing it, I guess many people you know.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: Just don't tell me what to do.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm call to an attentive love which protects and promotes life.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: And that's the crux of the problem of abortion, because it doesn't protect or promote life.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: It does do away with life.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: And it's really sad to me, families that have the issue where they're not speaking now because of that, because they have just totally lost the idea of looking into the depth of what the issue is and coming to some understanding, which I think if they did, we could have many coming back together in an understanding that we really are talking about life and death here, in an understanding that we really are talking about life and death here.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: When you look at the human body itself, your body speaks a language, and John Paul would say that that language of the body also enters essentially into the structure of marriage as a sacramental sign.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: And he said we appeal to a long biblical tradition.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: So what we're going to be talking about here, and what we are talking about here, is your body has language.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: It's a language of masculinity and femininity.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: It's a call to become one.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: It's a sign, then, in marriage, a reflection of Trinitarian love.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: That's really what that is.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: We, where a man and a woman, the two, become one flesh, literally one flesh.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: But that's a sign of my life giving freely to you.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: You talked about freedom.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: This is what freedom is, linda.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: We think freedom is a license to do anything we want.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Freedom is a choice, and that choice then affects everything that you do.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: So I walk into freedom and then I say to another person I'm going to give myself totally to you, without reservation.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: This is this gift that John Paul always talks about, the spousal meaning of the body, that we're called to be a gift to one another.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: I will be faithful to you.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: He's going to use that word over and over in this audience faithfulness and this is the same relationship.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: God always asks of us to be faithful, and then he is faithful, of course back.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: You know, god cannot lie, he's always going to be faithful to the truth.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: You know, it's amazing power that we have this freedom that you brought up, linda, freedom to move away from the truth, from what's good, what's beautiful, and then, finally, it has to be fruitful.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: The sign has to be fruitful.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: Because love is fruitful, god is fruitful.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: God created us and all of creation.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: Because this fruitfulness flows over into us.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: And then, finally, our bodies.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: We're the crown of creation.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: Our bodies, adam and Eve's bodies, say in the beginning, their whole project was to bring God's love into this created world.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: This is all created for you in the Garden of Eden.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Now, on the sixth day, boom, be filled with divine life and love and then make that visible, use the language of the body made visible in the created world, and let all of creation see the beauty of God's love.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we were the pinnacle of creation and we have the ability, through that concept of spousal love, is speaking that love of God and bringing it into the world.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: You know, jack, I had to think about how to present this to middle schoolers many years ago, back when I was still really just learning this myself, and you know, I'm still just learning this every time we go over it.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: But we understand body language in a simple sort of way that the looks we give people or signs that we make you know can speak a language.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: I mean, even my sister taught deaf ed and you learn about sign language and finger spelling.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: That our bodies can do that, yes, but what the Pope is bringing out, to out here to us is that that's like a surface level.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: But the body also is the window to the soul, right, we're making visible what is invisible, and the language goes deeper than just, you know, surface communication, so to speak.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: It goes all the way down to who I am as a person made in the image of God, and so that's kind of the level that I believe we're talking about, with these wonderful ideas of the body speaking the language of God in that covenant that he made with his people, which reminds me of how we've spoken of it before, saying God wants to marry us.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: It is spousal, it is an analogy that flows through all the way back to the Old Testament, and so it's very deep.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you think it just.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: You know, just simply.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: I have an appointment right after our podcast here and I'll be getting in my car and as I drive away, someone comes up behind me.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: I'll stop.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: They'll see the language of this car right.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: They'll see the red light go off in the back.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: They may see a red light in front of me and know that I'm going to stop.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: I'll put my turn signal on and say I'm turning left, and so all of these things are signs, and we pick up these signs all the time.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: We're so used to it.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Our body speaks that language too, and we can lie.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: I can put the signal on and say I'm going left and then zoom right and cause an accident.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: I can see the light turn yellow from quite a distance and decide, instead of stopping, I am going to just plow through that I'm going to cause some problems.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: So again, you have chaos when we don't read the signs that are out there.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: And so God created a world that, whether you follow it or not, it is based on objective morality, because that's who God is.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: God is love, and so he creates a world that is filled with love and gives you the freedom to walk into that or not, but if you don't walk into love, in other words, if you don't become a gift, if you don't see the other person as a gift, if you don't will the good of other people, then you're lying, you're grasping, you're taking, you're using, and so when we do this, we're going to create chaos.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: Truth is something real, linda.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: Truth exists, an objective truth exists.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: Now there's a thing called, just quickly, subjective truth.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: Right, there is a subjective truth.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: I like green, you like blue Okay, that's a subjective truth, but the reality is.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: The objective truth is the sun is really up and it really is out there.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Right, the sun actually exists, and so these are objective truths.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: And, subjectively, I like oatmeal and you like eggs over easy.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: That's subjective truth.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: So we do have that oatmeal and you like eggs over easy.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: That's subjective truth.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: So we do have that.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: But don't confuse that with the order of the universe.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: And our bodies speak a language of truth and love and beauty and goodness if properly ordered.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: We learned a long time ago in grammar that there was such a thing as abstract nouns, which were nouns, that love being an example of one integrity, all kinds of words that we have that I can't pick it up and show you integrity.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: And we learned that and we accepted that.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: And what we're talking about here is really that ultimate abstraction of God creating our bodies to proclaim his truth, that mystery of life and love and of communion.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: I have in my notes here that we're being reminded of our perennial vocation.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: The Pope says of the communion of persons.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: So, as it begins with that Trinitarian love and that image of becoming one flesh and the two becoming one, becoming three, then it extends out greater to that total communion of persons Because I know not everyone in our audience is married and can always put it in the context of their own marriage, but it does go far beyond that.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: And that communion of persons is that concept that, again, we've lost so much of because of all the distortions that have gone on with the sign.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: If I'm a single person and I'm listening to this and I'm not married, right.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: I look at marriage, though, and I say that's the kind of intimacy God wants with me.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: That's the sign.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: I can feel an ache in my heart, say, ooh, I wish I was married, maybe.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: Or I wish I found the right person.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: That's all, okay, right, we're called into the sign.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: Certain people are anyways, but don't forget, we have the religious that are called to celibacy and they also walk in the sign and they look at marriage the same way a single person does and they say, ooh, this is the type of intimacy God wants with me.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Now I can skip this as a religious person, say a priest, and go right into that marriage of the Lamb.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: So this is what's so important to know that God instilled this language with us to tell us right from the beginning, right from Genesis, created us in his image and his likeness, and he created us in this way so that we understood right away that we were, like you said, a sign in this world.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: But this is temporal life and this sign, you know, death, sin and death we're never supposed to enter.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: And this sign, you know, death, sin and death we're never supposed to enter, you know.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: And so the sign that we entered into was really a depth and a sign of the intimacy God wants with us, and this is portrayed all the way through from Genesis, all the way through.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you have any of those readings handy from Isaiah or Ezekiel, but I think we should read those Hosea Ezekiel, but I think we should read those Hosea Ezekiel, isaiah.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, they're incredible.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: And this is where John Paul is talking about the propheticism of the body.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: This goes by.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: This is a long ways back.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I got it here.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to find my page.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: Yes, ezekiel, I'm trying to find my page.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: Yes, ezekiel.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: Again, god claimed Israel as his bride.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: And that analogy again, god wants to marry us.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: It's very real in the Old Testament and the way the prophets speak about it and you know the way Israel turned away from God.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: We have the capability of turning away too, you know.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: And that sin, like, is less about breaking the rules than it is about breaking a heart, and that infidelity, really I like to think of it.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: As you know, that is breaking God's heart, just as infidelity with my spouse would break my husband's heart.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: So Ezekiel is reminding Israel who had been unfaithful when he speaks.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: Here I have it.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: It's a little bit lengthy, do you want to go through it?
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because the words are powerful and people that are listening should know that God spoke right through his prophets of this love language.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: That said right away that we're on two levels, that we see one another and we're called into the sign of love right, whether we're married or not married to be filled with divine life and love and then go love your neighbor.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: This is the two great commandments.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: On the other hand, it's an intimacy that God wants with us, and this is where it starts and this is where it ends.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: Okay, so it is Ezekiel 16 and several passages from that.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: It says and I said to you live in your blood and grow up like a plant of the field.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: You grew up and became tall and arrived at the flower of youth.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: Your breasts blossomed and you reach puberty, but you were naked and bare.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: I passed near you again and looked on you.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: You were at the age for love.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: I spread the edge of my cloak over you and covered your nakedness.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: I swore a covenant with you, says the Lord God, and you became mine.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: I put a ring on your nose, earrings in your ears and a beautiful crown on your head.
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: You were adorned with gold and silver, while your clothing was of fine linen, rich fabric and embroidered cloth.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: Your fame spread among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect, due to the glory I placed in you.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: But you, infatuated with your beauty and profiting from your fame, played the whore and lavished your favors on any passerby.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: How degraded is your heart?
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so this tells the story, doesn't it?
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: You know, god calls and he's talking again as a people, as a nation that he brought into himself.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: This points us directly later on to Christ in the church, who forms the church again as this nation.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: So God is speaking directly to us in this passage and he says you know the same thing.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: I saw you when you were small.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: I brought you to this point, I loved you.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: I saw you mature, just like a woman would mature.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: And I am the bridegroom, I'm the redeemer who came in to redeem you, to restore you to a love story.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: We find out that God's lordship over the people of Israel.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: Sometimes he's called Father, sometimes he's called this Bridegroom, sometimes he's called the Lord.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: If you think about it, this is all Trinitarian.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: You know, we have God, the Father, we have the Bridegroom that walks in.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: We call the Lord, the giver of life, the Holy Spirit often.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: And so here we are.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: The Lordship of Jesus Christ, say, and of this Old Testament reading too, is this God who is love, who seeks you in a love story, in an intimacy with you.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: That's almost too good to be true, but that's actually the logic of our faith is that God takes on a body in his Son, jesus Christ, walks into the story.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: This is theology of the body, the God who takes on a body to express this beauty of love language for us.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: He climbs the marriage bed of the cross to take on everything, all the sin, all the death, everything.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: The Redeemer walks into the story.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: So the Redeemer that you're talking about from the Old Testament prophets again, ezekiel here, isaiah, hosea, jeremiah will speak about this and all of that God takes on a body.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: Jesus walks in the main door, so that there's no misunderstanding that this is a God of love who will come in and not lord over you as a ruler.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: He says, no, don't give me power, I'm not here for power.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: Let the authorities rule over you.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: I am here for love.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: Let the authorities rule over you.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: I am here for love, yeah, a personal God, a lover, you know, wanting to cover us with his grace.
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: You know, I think of the cloak covering us.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: That's his grace coming down into us and that makes us beautiful.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: You know, we talked in here in Ezekiel on how we became beautiful.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: We talked in here in Ezekiel on how we became beautiful.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: A person who is filled with God's grace is beautiful from the inside out and it doesn't have to be the physical beauty that we think of, with good looks, etc.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: Because that is how our body is bringing God's love and grace out into the world from the depths of our hearts, having taken in that grace.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: It's just very overwhelmingly beautiful when you can get down to that level.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: And I so appreciate the Pope doing this using the Old Testament, because for me, as a lifelong Catholic, I've know studied the Old Testament in a way.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: I would still like to someday, but he brought in enough of it.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: That helps me understand the great symbolism and analogy that we have here.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: You know, and it totally becomes practical if I take it in at the level that John Paul II speaks about.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: At the level that John Paul II speaks about.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: And Christopher West would say you know, you could sum up this whole Bible in five words God wants to marry us, and it starts out with a wedding in the first book, in Genesis, and it starts out with the wedding of a man and a woman.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: It ends in the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, with the marriage of Christ and the church.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: This is where we're going.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: Smack in the middle of the Bible is the Song of Revelation, with the marriage of Christ and the church.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: This is where we're going.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Smack in the middle of the Bible is the Song of Songs, this erotic love poetry that speaks of a man and a woman again taking these two bookends, a man and a woman wooing one another.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: And the saints and the mystics spoke more of that than any other book in the Bible, because it gave them the vocabulary to speak this language of love that God wants with us.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: And so this is a one story, and Ephesians 5, of course Linda brings those two stories together, where this is the summa of John Paul's teaching Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, he's tying these two bookends together.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: For this reason, a man shall leave his father and a mother, taking this from Genesis.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: And he said well, why?
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: Again?
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: You know for what reason he says this is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ in the church.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: It was Jesus who left his heavenly father and his earthly mother to become one flesh with us.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: This is the whole deal.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: This is the whole deal, and he does it in holy communion.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: Holy communion which, of course, is the Eucharist, that is, his body, blood, soul and divinity, at every Mass.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: And we can't overlook the use of the word covenant here in this audience too, because that idea, you know, scott Hahn does a good job of distinguishing contract from covenant.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: You know, in a simple contract you're exchanging things, services or things whatever, but in a covenant it isn't about the things, it's about the persons.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: And the covenant with God is we could sum it up, you know, I am yours, you are mine it's the exchange of persons.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: And that's why a marriage between man and woman is a covenant, just like that, with Christ and the image of Christ and self-gift Christ giving himself up for the church we are the church, it's for us runs all the way to the depth of what it is.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: It's an exchange of persons.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: You know, to the depth of what it is, it's an exchange of persons.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: And the Pope talks about, speaking with the body, masculinity and femininity.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: So you just explain, you know, man and woman.
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: It's essential, it is absolutely essential that it is masculinity and femininity and the language of gift and faithfulness.
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: And that's really my idea of beautiful marriage that if we have those elements, we have the start of a beautiful marriage.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it can hurt a little bit, just like the crucifix.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: You know, john Paul speaks about truth in here and the love language is a truth language.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: I had mentioned earlier that, no matter what you decide in your choices, that there's an objective truth that the world runs by.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: It's created good and of course we know that there's the powers and the principalities rule the world.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: There's an evil force that rules this world.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: Municipalities rule the world.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: You know there's an evil force that rules this world.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: But even underneath that is objective truth, is objective morality.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: See, just because you decide that you don't like it doesn't mean it's not there.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: You can't just reject the truth and think that you're going to live a happy life.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: You can do it.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: Live a happy life, you can do it.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: When I read just recently and I don't mean just to pick on her, but let me just see so after Trump became president, and I don't want to just pick on her, but I am going to Whoopi Goldberg Now, whoopi, look, I don't know her personally.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: I'm sure that she has gone through just like all of us came into.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: A broken world is broken ourselves.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: You know we need a Redeemer, we need a Savior, but you have to humble yourself in order to do that.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: You know, the threefold concupiscence again is the concupiscence of the eyes, the materialistic, you know Whoopi at some point was she says it herself was broken, was addicted to drugs, et cetera, et cetera.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: But at some point you have to say is that enough?
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: And she mixes up freedom of choice, for freedom to choose the good.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: See, freedom again is not just in a vacuum.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: That's why I brought up underneath it all is objective truth, because when I'm free, I'm free to make a choice.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: Do I choose good or evil, truth or lies, beauty or profane beauty?
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: And so here's what she says in there.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: She says, you know, she came out on a rant Think about the language of the body here, linda about how she was cutting men off from sex because Donald Trump was elected and more men than women voted for him.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: So she's warning men out there.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: She's pointing a finger.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: It's amazing, actually, when you watch this, especially in the language that we're talking about here.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: She's pointing a finger at men and saying, ah, you didn't get here alone.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: It takes a woman to get here.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: And now we're saying no to you.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: And I think you know she's about 70 years old.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: She still thinks that sex is some kind of bargaining chip that women have because she has been used and allowed to be used to in lust and for meaningless sex, so she may not ever know.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: In fact she says in here she was married, I think, three times.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: She said I never was really in love with any of them and so you cannot give what you don't have.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: Linda, we have to be redeemed, our bodies have to be redeemed.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: When she speaks of freedom, she says this Goldberg claimed that God would support abortion rights, that he's for abortion rights because he gave women freedom of choice.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: But freedom, again, is for something.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: See, she does have freedom of choice, but it's freedom to choose the good.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: Mother Teresa would say it's a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you can live as you wish.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: See, that's your freedom, that a child must die so that I can live as I wish.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: It's the opposite of spousal, covenant, marriage and love that we're talking about.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: I come here freely, I give myself totally, faithfully, open to life, fruitfully.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: You see, this is the countersign.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: This is the opposite.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: And again, I feel bad for her.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: I know she's talked about it herself.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: She's had many, many abortions, the first one when she was like 14 years old.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: She might've been used and abused.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: Linda, I don't know her background.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: I would just say this Somehow she was never brought into the gospel message that we need a Redeemer, that our body and soul, our default position we come into this broken world, our default position is sin and death, and you can see this sin and you can see the death that's coming out of this sin.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: We need a Redeemer, don't we?
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: We need the bridegroom.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that default position there.
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: Sadly, many think that this is the way it is.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: You know, there are many times people will say, well, that's human nature, speaking of some fallen behavior.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: Well, it's fallen human nature.
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: It's fallen human nature exactly, but we don't think that we think this is human nature.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: It's fallen human nature exactly, but we don't think that we think this is human nature.
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: This is the way it is.
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: You know, if we have lost that idea that it wasn't always this way, remember, original man, when we talked about that, it wasn't always.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: You know what, linda, I have to just stop you here just for a second, because we, you know, up until fairly recently, you know christians, especially in catholics, right, we certainly knew that murder was a sin.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: We certainly.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, you have early christians from the didache, which is from the first century, first century, and it talks about morality and how a Christian should live.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: Right, this is very early document and it talks about how Christians would go to these places where they would leave babies.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: The Romans would leave babies to die.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: So pagans, right, pagans without God, without Jesus, would leave their babies to die.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: So, yes, this was an old practice that people believed.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: But for us there should be no confusion at this point, especially for modern men and women who know scientifically that this baby is a biological reality, even though the Romans would put out a live baby out in the forest sometimes, and Christians would go recognize and actually rescue them and bring them into their family.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: So this is the battle at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, but remember, we talk about how the distortions can become so great and that veil of darkness, if you will, can become so thick that, yes, while we should know, many people have turned to what would be a pagan way of thinking.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: You know that this is the normal way.
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: That's why this battle is so hard.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: In some ways, line crosses through the human heart of good and evil.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: It seems to me that, in light of our culture now, it might even be more helpful to say the line is between truth and lies, even more so than using the terms good and evil, which is very true and accurate.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: But truth and lies, I think, can even clarify a little bit more, especially when we're speaking of the language of the body, that this is where the battle really is.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: Many, many women who have experienced abuse in their lives and use and who have gotten hardened hearts because of it and haven't been able to get through that, you know, by opening themselves up to that grace.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: It's there, right, but if I don't do something to open myself up to it, my heart gets harder and harder.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: This is the freedom.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: This is her choice.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: She said that God made us free, and she's right.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: God made you free, but he made you free to speak the truth and to choose the good.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: They work together, and so I love John, chapter 8.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: It's one of my favorite things.
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: So much of John is good, but Jesus says this in there I told you that you would die in your sins, for you will die in your sins unless you believe that I am he.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: We are destined to die in our sins.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: Again, body and soul.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: The default position is sin and death.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: And so what happens?
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: I have to breathe in, like you just said, I have to choose God.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: Then I open myself up to the Spirit, the Holy Spirit and grace.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: This is a participation in the life of God.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: So now I come back to body, soul, filled with grace, divine life and love.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: Now I have the potential for human freedom, the potential for human flourishing.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: Now what stops me?
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: I have to act.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: I have to choose the good.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: So I know the truth.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: I have to choose the good, and Jesus says this when you have lifted up the son of man himself, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing on my own authority, but speak thus as the father taught me.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: And he said to the Jews who believed in him if you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: And so when whoopee, or me or you and look it, we're all sinners oh my gosh.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: When I think back, linda, when I first came back into the church and I started to understand these things, I realized how dark my own heart was.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's a startling thing.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: When you talked about that blindness earlier on, I was blind.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: In fact, I think most people that I speak to at some points of their life very few people don't have blind spots, even to today, right, but I, I couldn't believe it.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: The things that I accepted as okay, that weren't okay, a lot of those things were even in my own heart.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: You know where I'd say, okay, well, I'm not cheating on my wife.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: But in my mind, I'm off there, you know at some other place, and you realize, wow, even that has to stop, right, because if I'm really going to be able to live this out, I have to accept Jesus and I can't be of one mind, even in my own heart and God.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: It's not going to sit well with evil and sin in there, so it has to be purged right and that purity.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: But I think that the lesson for today is that's a love story, that when, when you allow the redeemer to come in, do you experience love and a freedom, a freedom to not only see the truth but to choose what's good.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: And there's a real freedom there and a beauty there that unless you try it, unless Whoopi goes in and tries it, she will never really understand that it's Jesus Christ who frees our freedom.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: Right, he makes our freedom free, and that's from Gaudium Espes, that Christ sets our freedom free.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: And I always wonder well, what does that mean?
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: Well, that's what that means, you know.
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well said, and I'm thinking that so many of us down the road as we try to become stronger in our faith, have that same experience.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: Like whoa, I can't believe at one point that I really thought that was okay.
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: And go down the laundry list of things that the church has taught us maybe not as well as it should have over this whole time of the sexual revolution, maybe starting from most recently, the whole issue of IVF coming up in the political world, but going back all the way to the pill and contraception back in the 60s.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: So much of it, to our modern way of thinking, seems like a restriction in freedom because we do not have the proper understanding of what our freedom is.
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: It's like you know, I want to have of freedom and free, total, faithful and fruitful, as you described it earlier.
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: All of which seems to someone who hasn't opened up to that grace that you're trying to stomp on my fun, my freedom, my pleasure and all those kinds of things, because you hear it from people talk, you know, keep the government off my bodies or whatever phrase they use there, you know, but when?
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: Really the understanding of how all of these twist and turn and pervert what God's plan was for us in the beginning is actually a slavery, you know as soon as you see how clouded these people's minds have gotten.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: I mean if nothing else, you know, open yourself up to transcend.
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: You know your own human nature.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: You have to feel this in your heart At some point.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: You know Whoopi is 70 years old, let's say At some point, you know, do you wake up in the morning and say is this it?
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: I'm on the road to dying?
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: Right, we all are.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: And what was my life all about?
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: You know, I took the fame, the fortune, the money and then I became what a spokesman for what?
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: For death and destruction, for meaningless sex, you know, for abortions, for whatever it is, you know.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: And now the same people right, and you can watch them, watch the clips.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: All all mass media was like this.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: The same people that are saying keep the government, you know, out of my, you know, the bedroom, keep the government out of the bedroom, keep the government away from my body, that I have my bodily autonomy.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: They were the same people just not too long ago that were saying everybody that didn't get the jab is some kind of sinful, morbid person.
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: So the same people that say bodily autonomy were saying anybody that don't get that vaccine, they, they were bringing what disease and infection to all of us, you know.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: So everybody has to get the shot.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: People were getting fired for the shot.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: People you know in the service were getting let go because they didn't get that shot.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: So bodily autonomy only when it serves your purpose everybody.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: You really we need getting let go because they didn't get that shot.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: So bodily autonomy only when it serves your purpose Everybody.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: We need to watch out for this.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: Because they use the language.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: But see, truth is always the truth, it doesn't change.
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: And that's the point I was going to bring up.
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: We're on the same wavelength there, and that's why I say that battle is between truth and lies, because look at what happened with the vaccine and all the lies that we were told that are now being uncovered as lies.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: And in other areas as well.
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: It just repeats and repeats, and repeats.
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: Is this the truth or is this a lie?
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's not easy today, because we even have people in our shepherds, in our church, who are distorting this.
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: You know Same people.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: You know, I mean we had the Pope and bishops who were telling us we had to get vaxxed.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: You know, and I mean when I say you have to get vaxxed, right, he actually, the Pope, actually mandated that in the Vatican and you go, that's against all Catholic teachings.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: So these are times where you really have to open yourself up to a good pastor, find a good shepherd and really study Scripture and the Catechism, Know that it's a love story and know that God wants us to seek the truth.
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: Right, Pope Francis, with this fiducia supplicans?
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: Right, this blessing of same-sex marriages and stuff like that same to couples?
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: And people wouldn't understand this unless we're talking about the language of the body, in truth.
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: Well, what does that mean again, Masculinity and femininity.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: What is the truth of that?
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: What is the truth of that?
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: What is the truth of our bodies?
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: You know, what does our body language say?
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: So, you know, we distort this.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: The language of our body speaks the language of love, that spousal love, the same way that Jesus takes on a body and shows love.
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: Jesus was never married.
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: He, you know he was a celibate man who practiced chastity.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: So did many of his apostles Not all of them.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: Some of them were married.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: The point being again is that we have to speak the language of love and not to confuse people that this is somehow the language of use or that we can take the language of the body and distort it in any way we want, and so these can be confusing times and we're pushing this on children all the way into our school systems and stuff this abuse of language.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: So I think it's a very important thing to speak about, but stay in love, Know that it's a love story and when you speak to children, tell them that they're beloved children of God, called into a relationship with god, and get them into that.
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: Now make sure that we're not sexualizing these kids, because you can see how we can twist and distort the language.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: It twists and distorts the human heart to the point where they can be a 70 year old man and woman at some point and have never heard the actual truth because we robbed them of their innocence.
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: Whoopi Goldberg's innocence might have been robbed.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: Her moral imagination might have been taken away from her.
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: I don't know all these things as a young person, very difficult to gain that back again.
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: You know, it's really something where you steal the innocence.
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know.
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: Thinking about Whoopi, I mean, I had an older sister who had a lot of struggles in life and her marriage was not good.
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: It lasted about 20 years and they were divorced.
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: She left practicing the faith for a long time, looked at that and I tried to help her through in many ways.
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: But one day it occurred to me that when I looked at her situation with her husband and her children that she never really experienced being loved the way God calls us to love.
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: And it was a big insight for me because I began to have conversations with her a little bit differently than I had in the past.
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: Whoopi is probably another example, and many other people.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: You know we're the walking wounded Linda.
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say the majority of people are walking around like that To one degree or another.
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: Right, the father wounds that many of us have, and so on.
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: So to me, that's a call once again to say, okay, each of us have experienced some degree of love, regardless of what you know they have experienced in the past, so that any interaction I have, you know that goes back to that personalistic norm, right, that the only correct response to a person is love and that means willing their good.
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: So, as I reflect on, yes, all the woundedness that so many, all of us, have, one degree or another, what can I do?
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: Well, I can't fix all the problems, but in each instance I can be that person of love and whatever that means in a particular situation, right?
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great way to end this audience because we have the holidays and we have Christmas coming up.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: I say holidays because it's not just Christmas, right, we have New Year's and Thanksgiving and all these other things.
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: Family get-togethers.
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, make sure that you.
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: You know, my brother and I just had this conversation a couple days ago and the best thing we can do is to love people.
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: You know the early Christians.
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: You will know them by their love.
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: Jesus went and had dinner with everybody sinners, tax collectors, adulterers, everyone because if he didn't, how would he ever bring them into a love story?
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: At the end we have to declare the gospel, there's no doubt about it.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: But we don't have to do it there at that table.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: We do it really through our actions.
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it's very, very difficult.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: If I'm sitting having a discussion with Whoopi Goldberg, you know you have to be very careful.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: The subjects you brought up, you know.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: But at the end I'd love to hear about hey, whoopi, tell me about your child, how was it growing up?
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: And you would hear, just like your sister Linda, you'd hear a lot of wounds, a lot of disappointments, and you know we'd be praying at the same time.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: You're speaking to those people that God can use you, if he wants to, as an instrument of his way to speak to them.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: But if the words don't come out, I know for a fact that sometimes I'll pray to the Holy Spirit, you know, give me the words, tell me what you want me to say, and then I would leave a party and I didn't say anything.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: And you know what?
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: That's?
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: Because he didn't tell me to say anything and maybe that was the best time.
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: Maybe it's better, safe for the next time we have dinner together and maybe we will be just because of biting my tongue Right, yeah, and very often all the person really wanted anyway was someone to listen to them, you know, and wasn't really wanting a response, and you know at that deeper level.
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: So, linda, the first time I ever really started to understand that with my own wife was amazing that she didn't always want to respond.
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: She just wanted me to listen.
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: A couple of things happened.
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: First of all, it was difficult because man always wants to heal things or fix things.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: But the other thing that happened was I was free.
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: I was free just to listen.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: I didn't have to figure it out.
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: And you know, after a while it got to be pretty freeing actually, and if she really wanted me to do something she would tell me or ask me can you do this?
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: And if she didn't say can you do this, most of the time it was just I didn't have to read.
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: I was always thinking, oh, I got to read between the lines, like what is she really saying to me?
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: Well, she didn't know.
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: A lot of times she's just bantering.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: And there's a certain joy in bantering because your own heart comes out and I could banter back too and it's kind of fun in a way.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: So I can go have Thanksgiving dinner.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: Let God do the judging.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: I didn't come in to condemn the world.
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: I came in to what To free them, to save them, to redeem them, to bring them into a love story.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and Jack, I think that's a good description of what we mean with the communion of persons.
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: Right, it's not that you're going to solve everybody's problems out there, but that you have this union at a deep level with the person, listening to them because you're loving them as a person.
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: It's pretty cool when we can understand it that way.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: All right everyone.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: Hey, linda, thank you so much.
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: Thanks for being with me.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: Thanks everyone, thanks for listening.
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: Catch up again soon.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: Bye-bye.