Latest / Arena Ablaze Podcast / Building an Army of Catholic Men, Why Arena Ablaze Exists

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Building an Army of Catholic Men, Why Arena Ablaze Exists · Arena Ablaze Podcast

0:03
Welcome into the arena.
0:04
This is the Arena Blaze podcast.
0:07
Our mission here is we're the clarion call
0:10
or the megaphone to men.
0:12
We're in the process of building an army.
0:15
It's an army that's consecrated to Jesus through
0:19
the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
0:21
So we'll talk further about that.
0:23
The purpose of the arena is it's just
0:25
life.
0:25
It's men doing battle day to day and
0:29
what we hope to bring to that is
0:30
a witness of conversation, a witness of devotion,
0:35
a witness of men toiling in the world
0:38
so that we can sharpen each other, that
0:41
we may be made worthy to wield the
0:43
sword of the Holy Face of Jesus in
0:45
the spiritual battle that rages all around us.
0:48
I Todd Powers, a repentant sinner, renew and
0:53
ratify today in your hands, O Immaculate Mother,
0:57
the vows of my baptism.
1:00
I renounce Satan and resolve to follow Jesus
1:04
Christ even more closely than before.
1:07
Mary, I give you my heart.
1:10
Please set it on fire with love for
1:12
Jesus.
1:14
Make it always attentive to his burning thirst
1:16
for love and for souls.
1:19
Keep my heart in your most pure heart
1:21
that I may love Jesus and the members
1:24
of his body with your own perfect love.
1:27
Mary, I entrust myself totally to you, my
1:31
body and soul, my goods, both interior and
1:35
exterior, and even the value of all my
1:39
good actions.
1:40
Please make of me of all that I
1:43
am and have whatever most pleases you.
1:47
Let me be a fit instrument in your
1:49
immaculate and merciful hands for bringing the greatest
1:53
possible glory to God.
1:55
If I fall, please lead me back to
1:58
Jesus.
1:59
Wash me in the blood and water that
2:01
flow from his pierced side and help me
2:04
never to lose my trust in this fountain
2:07
of love and mercy.
2:09
With you, O Immaculate Mother, you who always
2:13
do the will of God, I unite myself
2:16
to the perfect consecration of Jesus as he
2:19
offers himself in the spirit to the Father
2:23
for the life of the world.
2:25
Amen.
2:26
I am joined as always by my fellow
2:27
son of muck, Todd Powers.
2:30
How are you doing today, Todd?
2:31
Hello, everyone.
2:32
Good.
2:33
Thanks for joining us.
2:34
You know, one of the things I notice
2:35
about our viewership is you don't leave comments,
2:38
so if you can be kind, leave a
2:40
comment, like, stab, press, whatever you need to
2:43
do to do to the button.
2:47
Yeah, we've, I, we thrive on the comments.
2:49
I hope to get some feedback.
2:51
Again, we're, you know, we're trying to build
2:53
an army of men, so we'll talk more
2:55
about it, but a lot of it's centered
2:57
on the consecration to Jesus through the Immaculate
3:01
Heart of Mary.
3:02
If anybody wants to be a part of
3:04
that, please leave a comment.
3:06
We're going to have a link in the
3:08
episodes to the, to the books, the 33
3:11
Days.
3:12
We'd like to get a group of men
3:13
to walk through that together.
3:16
We've done it, I've done it six times.
3:19
I'm always ready to do it seventh, eighth,
3:21
so put comments in there, any questions, let
3:24
them fly.
3:25
Yeah, the beauty, the beauty of that book
3:27
and that consecration to me was how four
3:32
different saints looked at their lives in association
3:36
with the Blessed Virgin and how they viewed
3:39
that relationship and helping them be drawn closer
3:42
to Christ.
3:43
Yeah, those saints are beloved saints, too.
3:46
Louis de Montfort.
3:47
Louis de Montfort, which this is his consecration,
3:51
the originator.
3:52
St. Teresa of Calcutta.
3:55
JP2.
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JP2 and St. Maximilian Colby, the martyr of
4:02
Auschwitz death camp.
4:03
He started the Militia Immaculata.
4:05
So it's all these things kind of fit
4:07
together.
4:08
What we're trying to do is a modern
4:10
version of those things and get it going
4:12
again.
4:13
You know, most of the men's groups that
4:15
I am aware of in Catholic parishes and
4:18
societies revolve around socializing, which means drinking.
4:24
There's nothing wrong with that.
4:25
But one of the things that I feel
4:28
is there's a lot to draw from others'
4:31
humanity.
4:32
And one of the things that attracted me
4:34
to you was how deep you are in
4:38
your search for Christ and what can I
4:41
learn from that and what it made me
4:45
reflect on how many other people take this
4:47
seriously.
4:48
Now, I'm 58 years old.
4:50
I didn't begin to take this seriously till
4:53
way later in life.
4:54
And I think a lot of it had
4:56
to do was I was raised in a
4:57
family and I was distracted by the family
4:59
and then I get distracted by my iPad.
5:02
And there's so many distractions that keep me
5:05
from being involved in parish life, that keep
5:08
me from even thinking about what is somebody
5:10
else thinking about?
5:11
How are they doing this?
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And at this point in my life, I
5:17
am sad that I didn't have that interaction.
5:21
I didn't have anyone telling me, helping me
5:26
understand how to raise my children up in
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holiness, how to do things that would give
5:36
them a better opportunity to know Christ.
5:40
Because the Catholic school system is really associated
5:43
with indoctrination.
5:45
What are the rules?
5:47
You do a good job of teaching the
5:49
rules, and then you get a grade on
5:52
how well you learn this prayer, or did
5:55
you learn this?
5:57
And I think it creates a wedge between
6:00
the real need of the Catholic church to
6:04
teach the love of Jesus and God's mercy,
6:08
as opposed to you need to know these
6:11
rules and why these rules are in place.
6:14
Yeah, I love what Father Bernie said during
6:16
his podcast, was the greatest distance that you'll
6:19
ever travel is from your head to your
6:21
heart.
6:22
And I think that encapsulates it in a
6:24
nutshell.
6:24
We learn in our head what the faith
6:27
is.
6:28
We can pass a test.
6:30
And then even we learn physically how to
6:32
practice it, like your dad was saying in
6:34
his podcast.
6:35
We know when to stand.
6:37
We know when to kneel.
6:39
We know the physical piece of it, but
6:40
those things coming together and getting into the
6:43
heart where it's a passionate love.
6:46
In passion, you're going out and trying to
6:50
move the world, profess the name of Christ
6:53
into the world is a different transition.
6:55
You know, in my daily life, I am
6:57
a financial advisor, private wealth manager, and I
7:01
meet with people all the time.
7:04
And it's not unusual for almost all of
7:08
my meetings have nothing to do with money.
7:10
It has to do with getting to learn
7:15
about how, what someone's relationship is with themself,
7:22
what their relationship is with money, learning where
7:25
all the bodies are buried, how decisions are
7:27
made.
7:28
There's so much more to it.
7:30
And I have, I'm very comfortable in a
7:33
situation where I can listen and draw information
7:39
to either help me to find solutions in
7:42
that regard.
7:43
And it transmits really well to my faith.
7:48
And there's so many times I'll be out
7:50
and about in my travels and I'll sit
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next to somebody and they'll just start talking.
7:56
And years ago, I'd be like, just shut
7:58
up, stop.
8:00
I'll pull up all my iPad and I'll
8:02
ignore them.
8:04
But now I put that down and I
8:07
listen.
8:08
And sometimes there's so many lonely people in
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the world.
8:11
There's so much suffering that you can't see.
8:14
The world is full of that, full of
8:17
it.
8:18
Yeah.
8:18
And I don't do a good job of
8:19
that.
8:20
That's something I picked up in one of
8:21
our previous podcasts from you.
8:23
I'm like, I need to do a better
8:24
job of, there are times where you pass
8:27
somebody or you see somebody and you can
8:29
just see sadness in them and just, you
8:33
know, simply just saying, you know, Hey, how
8:35
are you doing today?
8:36
Or, you know.
8:37
Sometimes their pain makes me cry.
8:39
Like, uh, one of my daughters is, uh,
8:42
her hopefully soon to be fiance had a
8:46
twin, the past identical twin.
8:49
And I, all of a sudden this feeling
8:53
came over me that he, he, he, he's
8:56
sad.
8:57
He has the eternal sadness and only, only
9:03
Christ can relieve that.
9:06
There's nothing in our world that can change
9:10
that.
9:11
He had a special connection.
9:13
It wasn't like a brother or a dad.
9:17
It was part of him.
9:18
He grew in the womb with this other
9:22
human.
9:25
And one of the comments that, well, I'm
9:28
not going to say that because it's too
9:29
private, but that, that sadness, so many, so
9:33
many people we come across in our, in
9:35
our lives experience that, and they don't know
9:39
what to do with it.
9:40
They don't know how to be rid of
9:42
it.
9:43
And it just, they just become, they, they
9:45
live with it.
9:47
Yeah.
9:47
One of the things that I do is
9:50
easier for me is I'll wear my crosses
9:53
on the outside of my shirt.
9:54
And, uh, times I've worn metals on the
9:57
outside of my shirt and I'll have people
9:59
come up to me.
10:00
It just happened to me last week.
10:02
Um, I think I was at, uh, one
10:03
of the big box stores, everybody would know
10:05
who it was.
10:06
And I was, uh, renewing my membership.
10:09
And the lady said, she saw, I had
10:11
a Holy face of Jesus from the Shroud
10:13
of Turin.
10:14
And she said, that's beautiful.
10:15
And so I carry a pouch that has
10:17
metals in it.
10:18
So I opened up that pouch.
10:20
I said, here, here, I got them.
10:22
You can have one.
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And she said, I can't accept anything because
10:25
it's against company policy.
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And I'm like, it's just a metal.
10:29
It's, it's less than $5.
10:31
She still couldn't accept it.
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So I said, I'll leave it there.
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She could, wouldn't do that.
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So then she said, how about if you
10:37
leave it by my car?
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So I went outside and placed the metal
10:40
near her tire of her car and then
10:43
left.
10:44
So you just never know how those things
10:45
turn out, but spreading, spreading seeds that way,
10:48
I feel like is, uh, something new since
10:51
I've went through the consecration.
10:53
I think that to me, that is the
10:55
way from the head to the heart, Mary
10:57
plays a huge role in that.
10:59
And so, you know, a big mission of
11:02
this podcast of blue army is to get
11:06
as many men as we can into the
11:08
33 day consecration and just let them, you
11:12
know, I was like, I was kind of
11:13
talking before this about, Jesus says, you can't
11:16
pour new wine into an old wine skin.
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It'll burst.
11:19
So you need to have new wine poured
11:21
into a new wine skin.
11:23
Uh, in my experience, this Marian consecration, Mary
11:29
is the way to get helping you get
11:32
that new wine skin so that Jesus can
11:34
pour his fresh wine and go ties back
11:36
into the wedding of Cana.
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It's all very beautiful, that imagery, but, um,
11:41
it is very beautiful.
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And, you know, one of the Catholic beliefs
11:47
that is so special to me is the
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saints, the apostles, blessed virgin alive in Christ
11:56
in heaven.
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And it is so confusing to so many
12:02
different people.
12:03
Why do Catholics ask it's intercessory prayers that
12:10
we take at face value to be intercessory
12:12
prayers, but there's clear instruction to ask for
12:20
the heavenly hosts, the angels, the saints to
12:24
pray for us.
12:25
And it's very powerful to, to have those
12:29
that have gone before us that have been
12:30
accepted into heaven, to, to be able to
12:34
pray on our behalf rather than we're our
12:39
creature dumb here on earth.
12:42
We're as father Ripper, Ripper, Ripper said, we're
12:48
just dumb.
12:48
Humans are dumb.
12:51
And it's when I think about my brothers
12:57
and sisters in Christ that are Protestant and
13:00
their objection to the blessed virgin to the
13:04
saints, why do you pray to those people?
13:08
And it's, there's clear directive.
13:12
I can't quote where it is in the
13:13
Bible to ask everyone to help us become
13:19
like them through Jesus.
13:22
Yeah.
13:24
It's this thing where to me, all of
13:27
society is, is putting its pressure on you
13:32
to look down, look down for your power,
13:35
right?
13:36
Look down for your freedom.
13:37
And we know it's a living God.
13:40
God's alive.
13:42
Nitschke was incorrect, a madman.
13:44
God is alive.
13:46
Jesus Christ is alive.
13:47
Mary's alive.
13:48
Saints are alive.
13:48
Our loved ones are alive in heaven, right?
13:51
It's our battles, not against flesh and blood.
13:54
It's against the principalities of St. Paul says.
13:57
So, uh, you know, this is one of
14:00
the reverberations through society that drives me insane
14:03
being when people denigrate prayer or they laugh
14:05
about prayer or they like, you know, you
14:09
know, I, I pray all the time.
14:11
I prayed a decade of the rosary on
14:12
my way in for this podcast that, that
14:16
God would send the Holy Spirit to speak
14:18
through me.
14:18
Not me, but God.
14:19
I do it all the time.
14:21
I coach, still coach softball.
14:23
Um, we're looking for some players and I,
14:26
I pray for that.
14:26
I pray for the intentions of all those
14:28
people that are tied to that, um, past,
14:31
present, future, um, constantly.
14:33
I have so much fruit has come from
14:35
prayers here.
14:35
You know, as we reflect back on some
14:37
of these podcasts, your dad provided a great
14:40
witness to that.
14:41
Like, uh, the prayers of the sacred heart
14:43
and throne mints and how that in his
14:46
mind cured his daughter.
14:50
And I believe that, like that is the
14:53
way towards miraculous cures or, or any miracle
14:58
in the world is through prayer.
15:00
And I'm such a meathead that, uh, and
15:02
one of my, my dad talked about four
15:04
of his kids that have had near death
15:06
experiences.
15:07
I was one, but I wasn't one that
15:09
was mentioned because all of mine were when
15:11
I was on my own as an adult,
15:13
uh, that I've had a lot of people
15:16
praying for me, uh, pulmonary embolisms, open heart
15:19
surgery, sepsis, and I could go on and
15:22
on.
15:23
And I'm such a meathead that it never
15:26
occurred to me that it was the power
15:29
of prayer that saved me, that there there's
15:32
a purpose for my life that has yet
15:35
to be revealed to me.
15:37
Maybe that purpose was to make the woman
15:41
smile in the airport a few weeks ago,
15:43
whose husband had just died.
15:46
Um, maybe it is the continuously sharing of
15:52
how I think that a man ought to
15:54
live his life in a chivalrous Christian Catholic
15:58
honorable manner with my kids that there's so
16:03
much left to do.
16:06
But me being the meathead that I am,
16:09
it never occurred to me until maybe a
16:12
couple of years ago that it was prayer.
16:14
Lots of people praying for, for me specifically.
16:20
And, and I just, I don't know what
16:24
I thought, how I lived through all that,
16:26
but I did.
16:28
And my dad's right.
16:30
There's been so many instances that he had,
16:34
he can attribute to that.
16:35
And what I loved about, you know, one
16:37
of the things I loved about his story,
16:39
and I experienced this, I can relate, we
16:42
all can, is that you go through life
16:45
and you have suffering and you have trials
16:48
come to you.
16:48
And you're, you know, as you said before,
16:51
you're in like mind numbing suffering, but yet
16:55
you get these little dew drops that come
16:57
to you and it's having clear eyes to
17:00
recognize those dew drops from God, you know,
17:04
like meeting the man of the sacred heart
17:06
and then taking a step, right?
17:09
It's, it's by faith and works.
17:11
It's both and our faith is a faith
17:14
of both and everything.
17:16
So God presents you with something, a gift,
17:20
but he loves us enough that he respects
17:25
our freedom.
17:26
He wants us to come take the gift
17:28
and then he wants us to work to
17:31
do his works because that is where our
17:34
sanctification comes from.
17:35
So seeing that opportunity, recognizing it, and then
17:39
making haste to go do, to go do
17:44
that bears so much fruit.
17:46
So like your dad did that for his
17:48
daughter and received good fruit from it, received
17:52
a cure of his daughter from it.
17:54
And then what did he do?
17:56
The magnificat.
17:57
He took that good news and he spread
18:00
it.
18:00
He said, hey, I want to spread this
18:03
to as many people as will open their
18:04
home to it.
18:05
And as he said, he did 300 enthronements
18:07
of the sacred heart in two years.
18:09
That's a lot.
18:10
And he also made the point of saying
18:13
that when he was there doing that, he
18:15
was doing it for those other people.
18:17
Yes, but he was also doing it for
18:19
himself because he offered that to God, you
18:22
know?
18:23
And so those prayers were passing through him
18:26
in the home and doing the enthronement.
18:29
They were benefiting him as they were benefiting
18:31
others.
18:32
I think often about those spiritual physics, like,
18:35
you know, you're passing God's grace through you
18:38
as a channel into the world.
18:40
And as you do that, you affect others,
18:42
but you're being changed in that process as
18:44
well, because it's like a pump.
18:46
You're pumping his grace into the world.
18:47
It's changing you, affecting you, sanctifying you.
18:51
It's a very important thing to do, but
18:53
not when we're so distracted with the day
18:55
-to-day, we're so distracted with, you know,
18:59
all the things that we have to do,
19:00
oftentimes we miss those opportunities.
19:02
And so, you know, it's, to me, a
19:04
message to men is that we got to
19:06
open our eyes.
19:08
When life is hard, it's easy to, maybe
19:15
easy isn't the word, when life is hard
19:18
and it's filled with suffering, there is a
19:22
draw to wanting relief.
19:26
And it's only been in the last two
19:29
to three hundred years that a leisure class
19:32
has been created in the world.
19:34
In other words, our lives are mostly happy,
19:39
and we have almost all of us all
19:43
over the world have almost everything we need
19:45
or want at a moment's notice.
19:50
And it's filled with intermittent periods of sadness
19:54
or suffering because we don't have internet, or
19:58
we don't get something we want.
20:00
But for almost all of humanity's existence, it
20:04
was the opposite.
20:05
There was abject failure and suffering almost all
20:09
the time intermixed with periods, intermittent, small, tiny
20:15
periods of happiness.
20:17
There was a draw.
20:20
Christ spoke so much to the poor, the
20:22
downtrodden, because that, the world was filled with
20:28
people that were suffering like that.
20:30
And, you know, when I leave here today,
20:34
for the most part, I'm going to be
20:35
happy and adjusted.
20:37
And when I go home tonight and I'm
20:39
going to turn on a show and my
20:41
volume on my Marantz receiver is going in
20:43
and out, that's what I'm going to be
20:45
unhappy about.
20:47
Because I'm part of the leisure class.
20:50
And that distraction, it's a huge distraction.
20:55
And I am thankful for not only the
20:58
physical suffering that I've experienced and continue to
21:01
experience, but the emotional, interpersonal relationship, and intellectual
21:10
suffering.
21:11
Because that brings me back.
21:13
That makes us all more even in Christ.
21:18
It's that suffering.
21:19
It's through the suffering that we're drawn to
21:22
Him.
21:22
Like when things are out of our control,
21:24
where else do we have to go?
21:26
We seek Him.
21:27
We seek Him in prayer.
21:29
And so His wounds and our wounds are
21:33
united.
21:34
And this is how He draws us into
21:36
relationship with Him.
21:37
So this kind of brings back to the
21:39
son of muck thing.
21:41
That's a comment that we've received.
21:43
Like, what is that?
21:44
So the son of muck, to me, it's
21:47
a play off of the sons of thunder.
21:50
James and John, Jesus calls them the sons
21:52
of thunder because they want to call down
21:54
fire from heaven to consume.
21:57
I think it was Samaritans that were degrading
22:01
Jesus.
22:02
And so I like the image of the
22:04
sons of muck because this is where we
22:07
come from.
22:08
I've come from the mud to come to
22:10
this.
22:11
There's no perfect people, but it's through my
22:14
wounds and through being beaten by life that
22:18
I eventually surrendered.
22:20
And what I'm doing is not working.
22:23
I got nothing.
22:26
Show me the way.
22:27
And so then I get a seed in
22:29
my mind.
22:30
You should read the Bible.
22:32
It was part of my testimony.
22:35
Thirty-three days just kind of came out
22:36
of thin air by what I would say
22:38
is an angel that God sent to me
22:40
and picked that up and changed my life.
22:43
So it's one thing to be handed something.
22:45
It's another to do it.
22:46
And then we'll go on this weekend.
22:48
We've got the procession of the Holy Face.
22:51
And again, to me, that's a physical prayer.
22:54
We're lifting up an hour and a half
22:56
of our time or sweat of our brow
22:58
to carry something that's meaningful, to carry a
23:02
relic of Jesus, to demonstrate him into the
23:06
world.
23:06
I love that.
23:07
Physical prayer is something that our world lacks.
23:12
We don't toil in prayer and sacrifice for
23:16
Jesus Christ.
23:18
And I would witness that to men.
23:20
It's very fulfilling.
23:23
It's wonderful.
23:25
It's one of the things that can save
23:26
society.
23:27
Now that we live in a godless world,
23:29
a godless society, absence of Christendom, absence of
23:33
state religion where most cities, towns, municipalities, and
23:39
even countries all were governed with the idea
23:42
of Christ-centered government and people flocked to
23:47
the town square to go through all the
23:51
religious holidays and feast days.
23:55
And now the reverse has happened so much.
23:59
Evil is now in the public square.
24:03
And a person is condemned for having any
24:07
type of Christian values.
24:12
Can't even espouse those in the public square
24:15
anymore.
24:17
And it's just shocking to me the reversal
24:20
that's happened in the last 50, 60 years
24:23
in that regard.
24:26
But if you look at like, I don't
24:28
know, popular culture, popular avenues of information, you
24:32
hear a lot that the youth are being
24:36
drawn back to the church, men are being
24:38
drawn back to the church because they're searching
24:40
for meaning, because they're finding when you look
24:42
down, right, the only treasure that keeps and
24:47
lasts is treasures in heaven.
24:48
So when you look down, I feel like
24:50
at some point you get to the point
24:52
where the things of this world, they just
24:54
don't satisfy.
24:56
You know, we spoke before about Augustine's restless
24:58
heart, like happy, I'm happy, or I feel
25:02
happiness is pretty empty.
25:05
It's a bellow and empty.
25:07
But in the deep, deep recesses of your
25:10
heart and soul, a lot of people feel
25:12
an ache.
25:14
And that ache turns into alcohol abuse, or
25:17
it turns into sexual escapades, or it turns
25:22
into, you know, consuming material goods, or all
25:26
these other things that just leave you empty,
25:30
because that thing's consumed, and then it's the
25:32
next, and it's the next, and you got
25:33
to consume the next thing.
25:35
So the only thing that fills is what
25:38
we're talking about here.
25:39
So when I kind of segue a little
25:44
bit into young families with young children, so
25:48
we both went to the traditional Latin mass
25:50
this week, and there were families in there,
25:55
so I got an opportunity to speak with
25:58
a bunch of kids outside of the church,
26:02
and what were they, there was like 11
26:04
of them in one family.
26:05
It was beautiful, and those parents are obviously
26:10
doing a special job in raising them up
26:13
in the faith.
26:14
And one of my biggest regrets in my
26:17
life was the, I don't, other than sending
26:22
my kids into Catholic schools, I don't feel
26:26
like I affected them AFF in a way,
26:31
like I see a lot of good dads
26:32
doing.
26:33
My brother Austin is raising up children in
26:39
Christ to experience holiness in his home, to
26:43
be holy, and I couldn't even get my
26:47
kids to tithe.
26:52
Like, that was a big thing in my
26:53
house.
26:54
Oh, you're going to mow grass?
26:55
You're going to make this much?
26:57
And my folks would talk to me about
26:59
that.
26:59
I just, I had an open relationship with
27:03
my kids, so every time they went back
27:05
to their moms, there'd be a whole different
27:06
set of rules.
27:08
It was very difficult, and a lot of
27:10
my parenting was spent just trying to survive.
27:15
And I have a lot of regrets with
27:16
not being able to affect or influence, and
27:20
I was emotionally, I'm still emotionally unstable, but
27:23
when I was younger, I was much so.
27:25
In other words, you know, easy to anger,
27:29
just dysfunctional in regards to relationships, having so
27:36
much less control over my ability to control
27:39
myself and not knowing it.
27:41
And now I have adult kids, and I
27:46
have less of an impact on the affect
27:50
with them on being adjusted in Christ, and
27:54
because I have a few that are neither
27:57
here nor there with it, agnostic, some that
28:01
are going to be followers of Christ, but
28:06
there's so many men in the parish that
28:10
I go to that are just adamant that
28:12
all their adult kids go to church every
28:14
Sunday.
28:15
Oh, they're all following Christ, and I'm like,
28:19
but do you know this?
28:21
Oh yeah, they tell me.
28:22
Well, my kids tell me too.
28:26
I think it's one of the great evils
28:27
in our modern world, is just it's anti
28:31
-life.
28:32
That's what I think it boils down to,
28:33
because we've talked and had witnessed as part
28:37
of these podcasts that a lot of young
28:40
adults come back to the church when they
28:42
have children.
28:44
I've just noticed, you know, I had a
28:46
child when I was 18 years old.
28:48
So immediately that requires sacrifice.
28:52
Like you can't be self-focused and self
28:55
-interested about your own life when you have
28:57
another life that you are raising.
28:59
The best parent is a selfless parent.
29:02
You just have to.
29:04
You know, my siblings, they waited into their
29:08
30s before they had kids.
29:11
You know, I have a daughter who's 30
29:14
and doesn't have a child yet.
29:16
Just this whole generation below me, I've just
29:19
seen a lot of it.
29:20
It's kind of an odd thing, and I
29:22
don't know exactly why that is.
29:25
I think a lot of it's financial driven.
29:27
A lot of them, maybe they don't look
29:28
at the world and they assess it as,
29:30
I can't imagine raising a child in this
29:32
world.
29:32
I've heard that before.
29:34
They're too expensive.
29:35
Like this family of 11, one of the
29:37
things that was so notable, and I was
29:39
there to witness that, they had so much
29:41
joy.
29:42
They were so happy.
29:43
They were so happy.
29:44
They were so talkative.
29:46
Everybody, every one of them had something to
29:48
say, and the other ones that were talking,
29:51
they weren't concerned that somebody else was talking
29:54
at the same time.
29:55
They were just all focused on you and
29:57
connecting with you and telling you about what
30:00
they were going to do.
30:01
Yeah, it was beautiful.
30:03
So to me, that's a subtle evil in
30:07
the world that is, again, trying to push
30:11
God to the margins because something about society
30:15
is telling people that they don't have children.
30:17
It's irresponsible to have children.
30:19
Or even putting off marriage.
30:21
Marriage.
30:21
So many young men, and I know this
30:25
because they've talked to me about it and
30:26
they date and are engaged to my daughters.
30:30
They want their life to be perfect before
30:32
they ask for the hand of their woman
30:35
in marriage.
30:36
My response has always been, that's not how
30:40
you do this.
30:40
If you think this is the one, you
30:43
make a life together.
30:44
You build it from nothing.
30:46
You have nothing or negative nothing, and then
30:49
that's the glory of building that family, is
30:53
that you do it together.
30:54
You don't wait until it's perfect.
30:57
It will never be perfect.
30:59
Oh, I need to have this job, or
31:01
I want to get this ring.
31:04
And if you believe that this is someone
31:07
you want to spend the rest of your
31:09
life with, then make that happen and build
31:13
that life together.
31:14
Yeah, I have so much to say about
31:16
marriage.
31:17
I love marriage.
31:20
And if you've seen my witness, that's kind
31:22
of an upset from where I come from.
31:25
But I think the older I've got, the
31:29
more I've kind of vested my mind into
31:32
the sacraments.
31:34
Marriage is an unbelievable, unbelievably powerful sacrament of
31:41
special graces and love from Jesus Christ to
31:44
sanctify two people, to help each other get
31:46
to heaven.
31:48
It's unbelievable.
31:50
What Charlie Kirk used to say, get married,
31:52
have kids as soon as possible.
31:55
Do not put it off for material goods.
31:58
Like you said, that's a beautiful thing, that
32:01
both of you are building a life together
32:04
from the beginning.
32:05
So nobody can say, well, I had all
32:08
this before you came along or whatever.
32:10
Any of that goes away.
32:11
You're one.
32:12
Become one body and everything that you've done
32:15
has been done together, either an active or
32:19
a passive component because you support each other.
32:22
You're not in competition.
32:24
That's another lie of the world that's so
32:25
prevalent.
32:27
Male and female, husband and wife, you're not
32:29
in competition.
32:30
You're complementary of each other.
32:34
It's a balance like a teeter-totter.
32:36
When one's up, the other one's balancing them.
32:39
And so together, you help yourself get to
32:43
heaven.
32:43
That's the point.
32:44
From an athletic team analogy, I only played
32:49
on two teams the entire time that I
32:52
played basketball that were amazing.
32:56
My junior year at Capon and my sophomore
33:03
year in college, and there was good leadership.
33:08
And I was younger.
33:09
I subjugated myself to this leadership.
33:11
There was no infighting.
33:13
Everybody knew their role.
33:15
Everybody knew their role.
33:17
In so many marriages, in so many families,
33:19
everybody's jostling for power, refusing to subjugate themselves
33:25
to their wife.
33:29
Of all the sinning I do in the
33:31
world, the most is to the one that's
33:34
closest to me, and that's my bride.
33:37
And it makes me the saddest.
33:39
I struggle with vulnerability and transparency, and I
33:45
hate it.
33:46
I hate everything about that.
33:48
And I've been married twice, and I'm the
33:52
common denominator in both.
33:54
So I've seen perspective from two different women.
33:59
And I feel like those interpersonal relationships where
34:05
I'm closest to people, where I have the
34:08
opportunity to be transparent and vulnerable is when
34:12
I sin the most.
34:14
They see all of me.
34:18
And there's times when I'm embarrassed and ashamed.
34:22
I don't know how the other side is
34:24
taking that.
34:26
And that's why it's easy for a man
34:28
to shut down.
34:30
I don't want this person to see this
34:32
because I don't know how they're going to
34:34
respond.
34:36
I mean, when I coach, I tell those
34:40
young girls all the time, and just young
34:42
people in general, as a young man, the
34:45
first place that Satan's going to try to
34:47
compromise you is in sexuality because it's so
34:49
easy.
34:50
Not only is it a sin on you,
34:52
and I wonder how often people really think
34:54
about, am I leading somebody else to sin?
34:57
Is my behavior leading another soul to sin?
35:00
Never.
35:01
I never think of that.
35:02
I never thought of that.
35:04
And that's all of sexual sin.
35:06
We get into these victim categories, and I'm
35:09
this type and that type, homosexuality, but it's
35:13
all the same.
35:13
It's sexual dysfunction.
35:15
There's no victim special categories.
35:17
Taking what God has ordered a human to
35:21
be natural at, and the human disorders it.
35:26
For his purpose, right?
35:28
It's a gift.
35:29
He is sharing his creative ability, his ability
35:33
to create a new life.
35:34
He's sharing it with husband and wife.
35:37
And so that perversion goes all the way
35:39
back to the Eden.
35:42
It's something that's, again, leading another soul into
35:48
sin.
35:51
Young men, we got to throw that off.
35:53
I spent years and years and years under
35:55
the yoke of that sin, under Satan's yoke,
35:59
and we were just meant for so much
36:01
more.
36:02
The faster you can get that yoke off
36:05
of you, you can achieve so much more
36:08
in life.
36:09
What happened to me, Marco, is there was
36:12
a point a few years ago when I
36:15
shed the selfishness of immorality, and it wasn't
36:23
too long after that, that I realized that
36:27
that overriding cloud of sexual dysfunction that was
36:36
now gone, I could get to my true
36:41
problems.
36:43
Because I thought, well, if I can just
36:45
stop doing this, I'm good.
36:47
I got a clear path.
36:49
What it allowed me to do was see
36:52
more of the yuck that I needed to
36:55
work on the pride, the false pride, the
37:00
allowing myself to be distracted, so many other
37:04
little things.
37:06
Insert the name of a hundred different things,
37:09
and what I thought was the big one,
37:13
if I could just get rid of this,
37:15
then I'm going to be good.
37:17
And it, in fact, allowed me to be
37:22
more transparent with my own self.
37:26
And I think that's the first part of
37:30
really becoming the man that God aspires me
37:36
to be.
37:37
I have to want it, and I have
37:41
to, it's not being honest, because it's so
37:45
easy to lie to oneself.
37:47
It's that complete and utter nakedness to my
37:51
own self.
37:53
I go back to, if God is I
37:56
am who I am, existence itself, and poor
38:00
me, somebody says, who are you?
38:02
Who should I tell them you are?
38:04
There's no other answer than Todd Powers.
38:09
So if I'm accepted into heaven, Todd Powers
38:12
goes to heaven, I have a name.
38:17
And what's so hard for me to understand
38:19
is I have a responsibility to be what
38:23
I'm called to be, and I don't even
38:25
know what that is.
38:27
I don't know how to do it.
38:30
I am so overwhelmed with the distractions of
38:37
the world.
38:37
There's so many moving parts, and I have
38:39
a simple animal brain.
38:43
Best way I could describe it is when
38:45
I was younger and I played Nintendo, there
38:47
was a baseball Nintendo.
38:49
You'd play it, there was no curveballs.
38:52
You couldn't throw any curveballs.
38:54
I'm only going to play this game if
38:55
we throw strikes.
38:57
I have to know what's coming.
38:59
I have to know what's coming, and it's
39:00
a video game.
39:01
Well, it's a metaphor for my life.
39:04
It's the curveballs, I do really well when
39:06
I know what's coming.
39:07
When I don't know what's coming, I suck
39:10
at that.
39:11
I'm thrown for a loop.
39:15
Yes, where this is, I hope this podcast
39:19
goes, or where it will go, is eventually
39:21
a walk through the sacraments.
39:23
That's why I think the sacrament of reconciliation
39:25
is so important.
39:29
To me, all sin is distraction.
39:33
Satan is distracting us from the truth.
39:35
Jesus Christ went to the cross, and he
39:40
died for our sins.
39:41
He forgives our sins.
39:44
All sins are forgiven.
39:46
If you bring the sin, you humble yourself
39:48
and bring your sins to him.
39:49
He forgives your sins.
39:51
I always think a lot of times this
39:53
confession, the Catholic church is focused on what
39:59
type of sin, how many times.
40:02
It's all sin, sin, sin.
40:03
I always look at that as self-focus.
40:07
It's a little bit too self-focus.
40:09
I do think it's important to examine your
40:11
conscience for sure.
40:13
You need that humility to say the things
40:16
that you did for sure, but the sacrament
40:19
of confession is all about love.
40:22
God paid love and mercy.
40:24
Redemption.
40:24
You're there because you love God, and you're
40:27
sorry for what you did.
40:29
You have a sorrow.
40:29
You want to be in a relationship with
40:31
him.
40:34
Throwing that distraction off is 100% true.
40:39
You never get to the deeper part because
40:41
what the really insidious stuff is, is pride
40:44
and the big stuff, the stuff that hides
40:47
in the corners that drives that.
40:49
When I was in high school, all those
40:51
sexual sins were largely driven by pride because
40:56
everybody else is doing it.
40:58
All the stud athletes are doing it.
41:00
I got to keep up.
41:03
Everybody wants to have the prettiest girl on
41:05
their arm or whatever the case may be.
41:07
It was things you would manufacture in your
41:09
mind to value yourself in the game, to
41:16
give yourself a higher rank in the game
41:17
that you were playing, which is nonsense.
41:20
It's all pride-based.
41:24
You get distracted in that.
41:26
You get lost in those sins, and you
41:27
never get to what's really driving it, like
41:31
you said.
41:33
We talked about chivalry and knighthood.
41:38
We're trying to learn about that.
41:42
It's not like we're experts.
41:43
We're just two guys sitting here witnessing and
41:45
talking about our struggles.
41:48
The ultimate goal is to be chivalrous, to
41:51
be knights.
41:52
It's virtue.
41:53
It's virtue.
41:53
When you're lost in sin, it's impossible to
41:56
grow in virtue.
41:57
To serve and not serve myself.
42:02
Prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance.
42:05
I always say temperance is the virtue of
42:08
our age because all these attachments in this
42:11
world, they distract us from what's most important.
42:14
When we can only get 25 people to
42:17
show up at the procession on Saturday, the
42:19
reason for that is I'm too busy.
42:21
Too busy with insert blank.
42:25
For me, the time I missed, I was
42:27
too busy because I was coaching softball.
42:29
A lot of times, it's kid sports.
42:31
Kid sports driving us all over the place.
42:33
We're spending a lot of money on it.
42:36
It could be I got to mow the
42:37
lawn.
42:38
It could be I'm working that day.
42:40
It could be all kinds of excuses.
42:43
Temperance is key to free us from the
42:46
attachments so that we can focus on what
42:48
will really move the needle.
42:50
I know a lot of men are just
42:52
like, we look around the world and we're
42:53
like, what is going on?
42:55
What can we do?
42:56
How do we affect?
42:57
Am I really doing anything for anybody if
42:59
I'm drinking beer and smoking turkeys and I'm
43:01
selling for my parish on Thanksgiving?
43:04
That's really a pleasurable thing.
43:06
There's nothing hard about that.
43:09
Drinking beer, smoking turkeys with my friends.
43:14
What?
43:16
I like to drink beer.
43:18
I don't do it as much the older
43:19
I've gotten.
43:20
I don't mind it.
43:21
There are times I'll go out with my
43:22
wife and have dinner and I'll have a
43:24
beer or two.
43:26
When we're talking about God, we're trying to
43:31
go deep.
43:32
Man, we got to go deeper.
43:34
Jesus says, put out into the deep.
43:36
That's where you're going to catch.
43:37
If you're a fighter or an athlete, you
43:39
want to go into the deep water.
43:41
That's a scary place to be.
43:42
You don't ever want to be in the
43:44
deep water.
43:46
It would get your ass beat.
43:48
It's a place you can't come back from.
43:50
I'm an electrical engineer by trade.
43:52
I love frequency.
43:54
I think about it all the time.
43:56
Frequency and wavelength.
43:58
The whole world.
43:59
It's almost like the breath of God.
44:03
That's what prayer is.
44:05
Largely, you're meditating prayer.
44:08
You're getting on the wavelength where you can
44:10
commune with God.
44:11
Anytime you're introducing some kind of a drug
44:16
into that, that's affecting the wavelength of your
44:19
brain.
44:20
It's hard to be.
44:20
You can't enter the realm of God when
44:23
we've affected ourselves that way.
44:26
I'm looking for deeper conversations.
44:29
I'm looking for men who are serious about
44:32
their faith, serious about bringing it into the
44:35
world, and the world's against it.
44:36
That seriousness requires due.
44:38
That's my biggest struggle, is the doing part
44:42
of it.
44:42
We have a friend, Lance, daily mass attender,
44:47
prays the rosary, is raising his kids up
44:50
to know Christ in a holy manner.
44:54
He's a doer.
44:55
You're a doer.
44:57
I struggle with that, with the doing part
45:01
of the worship.
45:02
If we lived in feudal times and we
45:04
had a king, we'd have to do shit
45:07
for the king.
45:08
You have to do it.
45:09
You just can't sit in your little farmhouse
45:13
like I do, pathetic little existence, watching shows.
45:18
We're required to do.
45:21
That's my biggest challenge.
45:23
Then do that, pick up that cross, and
45:26
carry it with a joyful heart.
45:27
That was my biggest takeaway from Bob.
45:29
That's why we're sitting here, though.
45:31
That's why I'm sitting in this chair, because
45:33
it had nothing to do with, hey, I'm
45:35
going to start a podcast, and get famous.
45:38
Nobody's even going to watch this, probably.
45:43
Somebody else has to be having these same
45:46
kind of questions.
45:47
There's got to be ordinary people, Marco, that
45:49
feel like, what am I doing here?
45:51
You hear it in popular culture.
45:54
I saw a podcast recently that had Sean
45:56
Ryan on it.
45:57
He was talking about how he's just done.
46:01
He's not going to participate in the political
46:02
process.
46:03
Everything's a lie.
46:05
Life's meaningless.
46:06
It's so shallow.
46:08
He's going to invest more into this Christian
46:10
thing.
46:10
He's going to talk more about it.
46:12
I'm sitting here thinking, we live in Wichita,
46:15
Kansas.
46:16
It's probably, I think your dad said, we're
46:19
the richest Catholics in the country as far
46:21
as richness of the faith.
46:23
The things that we have going on here.
46:26
We live in this environment.
46:28
We have a lot of this knowledge.
46:29
We take it for granted.
46:31
We have a lot of this knowledge and
46:32
experience.
46:33
We live in a warm pot, so to
46:36
speak, where we have other Catholics who are
46:39
not lukewarm.
46:42
We need to be sharing this message, because
46:44
there are people out there who are searching.
46:45
There are men out there like Sean Ryan
46:47
who are like, I do this.
46:49
I want to go to this podcast and
46:51
make all this money.
46:52
Then I get here, I'm at the top
46:53
of the mountain, and it's just empty.
46:55
There's more.
46:57
Something's missing.
46:59
What I would say is this is what's
47:01
missing.
47:02
These conversations are what's missing.
47:04
Going into the public square and professing your
47:06
faith is what's missing.
47:07
Giving up, sacrificing, sacrificing your money to do
47:13
something that spreads the Word of God into
47:15
society.
47:18
Those are the things that are missing.
47:20
For me, I just happen to be listening
47:22
to a podcast.
47:23
There's Father Kearney.
47:24
I didn't know who he was.
47:26
He's talking about this holy face devotion and
47:28
how it goes back to Rome, how it
47:30
goes back to the 1800s, how it goes
47:32
all the way back to the crucifixion, the
47:34
passion, the veil of Veronica.
47:36
I'm like, wow, that sounds awesome.
47:39
I want to get involved.
47:41
I sent an email to Father Kearney.
47:43
Let's meet.
47:44
I meet with him.
47:45
It's like your dad was saying.
47:47
It's one step at a time, one step
47:49
at a time.
47:50
The realization that comes to my mind is
47:51
this message is unbelievable.
47:54
This is the weapon to affect these revolutionary
47:59
men that are running wild in society, go
48:02
all the way back.
48:04
Communism, Bolshevism, that's what it is that is
48:08
affecting us so greatly.
48:11
What's going on in the world?
48:12
That's what it is.
48:13
This devotion is specifically designed to destroy that.
48:18
I'm like, this guy, his message needs to
48:22
spread.
48:23
Who's going to spread it?
48:25
You look around and nobody's doing it.
48:27
Well, I'll do it.
48:28
Here I am.
48:29
I'll do it.
48:30
We start doing it one step at a
48:32
time, and here we are.
48:34
There's so much to learn.
48:35
Every time I talk to Father Kearney or
48:37
when Father Bernie was in here, if you
48:40
ever get an opportunity to really have a
48:43
candid conversation with some of these people, they
48:47
share their faith with them, whether they're a
48:49
priest or it's Lance or it's Marco.
48:53
You begin to learn that there's so much
48:56
depth to the love and mercy that humanity
49:00
has to offer, but we're caught up in
49:03
our own world.
49:05
I live in a sterile environment, and it
49:10
keeps me from the feeling, touching, smelling, and
49:15
tasting that the rest of humanity has to
49:19
offer.
49:21
Sometimes I think, well, what in the world
49:25
can I have to say that anybody's going
49:27
to want to listen to?
49:29
But when we have our meetings with men,
49:33
we have so much, men.
49:36
We have so much that we can gain
49:39
from conversation, from working elbow to elbow.
49:43
I learn so much from all these men
49:46
who would say, I don't know anything.
49:49
I've got nothing to say.
49:50
Then we come into conversation and little bits
49:53
and pieces flow between us, and we make
49:55
ourselves better.
49:56
Iron sharpens iron.
49:58
We have got to unite as Christian men
50:02
and get rid of our distractions and start
50:05
getting together and getting into the world and
50:08
creating the world that we want it to
50:11
be, instead of sitting on the sidelines and
50:13
watching it be destroyed.
50:15
There's a term I want everybody to understand
50:17
that really got this whole thing started, and
50:20
it's called podcast gold.
50:22
Podcast gold is shit you can't say on
50:25
the podcast.
50:26
When we talk privately, there's some heinous stuff
50:30
that gets said.
50:32
When we talk about our personal lives, our
50:35
relationships with our wives and our children, the
50:40
mud and the dirt and the gloriousness of
50:42
it, it comes out.
50:45
It is an environment that men really need
50:48
to have.
50:49
I call it a locker room environment, but
50:51
faith-based.
50:53
I need to be candid.
50:55
Look, I'm struggling here.
50:56
I'm mad.
50:57
I'm angry.
50:58
In my heart of hearts, I'm a killer
51:01
and a warrior, and I've had to be
51:03
civilized.
51:04
When we talk privately, those things come out.
51:08
We call it podcast gold.
51:09
I tell Marco, I said, we can't say
51:12
that.
51:12
You can't say that.
51:13
My wife heard me talk like that.
51:15
She would divorce me.
51:17
The point is that there's no outlet for
51:20
men to do men shit.
51:25
Everybody wants to be rip until it's time
51:27
to do rip shit off of the character
51:29
from Yellowstone.
51:31
You want to talk about a masculine character,
51:34
but there's good Christian Catholic characters, men that
51:38
are operating like that.
51:40
I want to gravitate to those people.
51:43
When I played basketball or when my son
51:45
plays football, he wants to find the best
51:47
person opposite of him to work his skills
51:51
on.
51:51
I want to find somebody that can push
51:53
me, challenge me, push me into deep water,
51:56
push me.
51:57
You're going into deep water.
51:59
When I own my boxing gym, I would
52:01
get sick to my stomach and throw up
52:03
knowing that we're going to get working that
52:05
night.
52:06
We're going to get, we're going to put
52:07
on the headgear.
52:08
We're going to put the Vaseline on and
52:10
we're going to get some, you're going to
52:11
get down and you're going to get your
52:12
ass beat.
52:13
Knowing that going into that would make me
52:16
sick to my stomach like a hard basketball
52:18
practice.
52:19
I think our image and vision of Jesus
52:24
is not right.
52:26
He's way too soft the way he's imagined
52:29
in society.
52:30
Like Jesus was the man, man.
52:32
He was the alpha male.
52:35
I don't think him and the disciples were
52:36
sitting around.
52:37
Those cats followed him because they had respect
52:39
for him.
52:39
Like this dude's a little different.
52:41
Yeah.
52:42
I mean they weren't sitting around talking in
52:45
a completely sterile manner all the time.
52:47
Like I just don't think so.
52:49
Like these guys were fishermen.
52:50
They were on the water.
52:52
They were like, you know, they were, they
52:54
were, they were like this, right?
52:56
There were like guys who owned a boxing
52:58
gym.
52:59
So these conversations were being had.
53:01
You know, he, he was perfect.
53:04
He, he said, he said it in a
53:05
perfect way, but there's no way they weren't
53:07
cutting up.
53:08
They weren't talking about the, the real dirty
53:11
truth of life and what they were going
53:13
through and dealing with.
53:15
So I just think it's more providing answers,
53:19
real time answers that they'd never heard that
53:22
made sense to them.
53:23
And they knew, they knew enough to know
53:27
who are we going to go to?
53:28
And they were willing.
53:29
You're the son of man.
53:30
And they were willing to run through a
53:32
brick wall all the way to their death.
53:36
Like that's a different type of cat that
53:39
you're following that you're willing to run all
53:42
the way to your death.
53:43
Like they all did.
53:45
I mean, that's, that's something else.
53:50
That's definitely something else.
53:52
So no podcast goal today.
53:54
And I'm not saying that I owned a
53:57
boxing gym because I was some likes to
53:59
fight guy, my partner, Jake, and I, we
54:02
just can't, it just happened to happen that
54:04
relationship.
54:05
And, you know, it's interesting in my life.
54:07
I find these relationships like you and I,
54:10
they just pop out of the blue.
54:11
We met what, a couple of years ago
54:13
on Christmas Eve when you were going just
54:16
along what we're dealing with.
54:18
And you, you were in my house.
54:19
I didn't know why you were there.
54:21
This Brown man's in my house.
54:22
I'm like, make sure you tie all the
54:24
China down.
54:25
Marco's going to steal my shit.
54:27
Not really, but he did bring good beans.
54:31
Yeah.
54:33
It's just like what we were talking about
54:35
earlier.
54:35
Just like a door opens, you walk through
54:37
it.
54:38
At the time we met, we didn't even
54:39
really meet just a brief exchange.
54:41
And then there's a lot of people in
54:43
that house when we really met was when
54:45
we were both, there was a men's club
54:47
at our church.
54:48
We were both interested in it.
54:49
Finally, men are going to get together and
54:51
we're going to, you know, talk about men
54:54
stuff.
54:54
And we're going to talk about the faith
54:56
and we show up.
54:57
And it wasn't that Todd tried to put
54:59
some ideas forward, just have an informal discussion,
55:02
shut down immediately.
55:04
And I said, that's exactly what I want.
55:06
So I reached out to him and that
55:08
this is where we're at, but, and there's
55:11
only two of us.
55:12
We've tried to get other, other, other people
55:14
to come in a couple of younger guys
55:16
have come.
55:17
Um, but you know, when you're young and,
55:20
uh, you're, you're, you're doing your thing and
55:23
you're, you're look, we're all trying as hard
55:26
as we can with the information we have.
55:28
No, nobody's saying that the failure is happening
55:30
purposefully.
55:32
We, when I was sitting and when, when
55:34
I was younger, I was doing bad shit.
55:37
And I, I didn't really understand the consequences
55:41
of what was, I didn't understand the far
55:43
reaching consequences of the bad.
55:46
And I didn't understand it of the good.
55:49
It was, it was, it was just my
55:50
life and I was making it up as
55:52
I go.
55:52
Cause I didn't have any guidance.
55:55
I had this roadmap that my mom and
55:57
dad had given me and those tapes roll
56:00
in the back of my head.
56:02
And, but I didn't really, I didn't really
56:06
know the consequences of my day-to-day
56:08
decisions.
56:09
I was a meathead Catholic.
56:10
I know I need to go to mass.
56:12
My daughter, Madison's born.
56:13
We're not going to live in a religious
56:16
house.
56:17
We've got to do something.
56:19
That's what, that's what I did.
56:20
And so you start doing that something and
56:24
then life just happens to, that's when you
56:26
don't have a plan.
56:27
See when life is just happening to me
56:30
over and over and I'm not prepared to
56:33
exert Todd powers on the world.
56:38
I'm just getting up and doing without a
56:42
plan.
56:43
And that was the mistake.
56:46
Yeah.
56:46
So men join us.
56:49
Um, if you're interested in the 33 days,
56:52
drop us a comment.
56:54
Um, I'll, there'll be a link in the
56:56
notes.
56:57
Uh, if you don't, if you can't afford
56:59
a book or you need a book, let
57:01
me know.
57:02
I'll send you a book I'd love.
57:03
So these things coincide with the feast days.
57:06
So there, um, there's only certain times to
57:09
start.
57:09
So it ends on a feast day of
57:11
a particular one.
57:12
So please do that.
57:13
I mean, we grew, we want to grow,
57:16
we want to grow this army.
57:17
We got to start.
57:18
One of the things I loved about having
57:19
father Bernie in here is he's so imaginative
57:21
and creative, you know, Wichita is known for
57:24
pumping out priests.
57:26
Like we have so many priests all the
57:28
time.
57:28
Every year we're ordaining five, six priests.
57:32
It's a great blessing for this diocese.
57:34
And I used to think it was because
57:35
of the stewardship way of life and it
57:37
may be, but I was kind of thinking
57:39
after we talked to father Bernie, he started
57:41
totus to us.
57:42
And many of those priests went to totus
57:44
to us and taught.
57:45
So I wonder if totus to us might
57:48
be how we're churning out all the priests.
57:50
We'll have to ask him about that next
57:51
time.
57:51
But I think it's Eucharistic adoration.
57:54
I think it's the adoration that we have.
57:56
How many, we have many churches and parishes
57:59
that have 24 hour Eucharistic adoration.
58:01
That's another thing in Wichita.
58:03
It's very special and unique to us.
58:06
So we just, we need to dream bigger,
58:08
man.
58:08
We got to think bigger.
58:09
Like we, we can, you know, this, God
58:13
spoke the world into existence.
58:15
We know that speech is creative.
58:18
We speak things.
58:20
Demand accountability.
58:22
Have a plan.
58:24
Yeah.
58:24
There's a, you know, I say, we have
58:26
an abortion clinic here in town that I've
58:29
always wondered, like, why is that there?
58:31
And why does it do what it does?
58:33
And how I feel like it drags us
58:35
down spiritual, even though we have so much
58:37
fruit.
58:37
But I think, you know, if we had
58:39
500 men engaged in something that would go
58:44
away.
58:45
I mean, I think if you, if we
58:46
have men engaged this world, a lot of
58:50
this nonsense in the world would just go
58:53
away.
58:53
I think about the gladiator movie.
58:56
We kind of keep talking about that, this
58:58
whole arena blaze thing.
59:00
I think it's a perfect metaphor for that
59:02
because, you know, Maximus is in the, you
59:06
know, he's working for the, for the Caesar,
59:08
and then he gets betrayed and basically loses
59:12
everything and he becomes a slave.
59:14
And as part of being coming a slave,
59:16
he joins with other slaves.
59:17
I think that's a perfect metaphor to men
59:19
being under the slavery of sin.
59:21
And then they get this opportunity to be
59:23
gladiators, right?
59:25
So they go into training and it's kind
59:27
of this vagabond group.
59:28
They're all kind of slaves.
59:30
They come from all these different places.
59:31
They get thrown out into these arenas, right?
59:33
They start with a small arena, different parts
59:35
of the world.
59:36
They speak different languages, but yet they have,
59:38
they have a common suffering and that's what
59:41
brings them together, right?
59:42
They come into these little arenas and they
59:45
go out there and they start winning.
59:47
They're defeating all the gladiators, right?
59:50
They're set up to lose, but they win
59:52
and they advanced to the bigger arena and
59:55
to the bigger arena.
59:56
And eventually they end up in the Coliseum
59:58
in Rome, right?
59:59
And again, the whole thing is a show.
1:00:03
They've got, they're putting them out there as
1:00:04
gladiators, but they've got it all set up
1:00:06
that they're going to lose, right?
1:00:08
And then they get there and they see
1:00:10
that Maximus knows what he's doing.
1:00:12
So they unite behind his leadership.
1:00:15
And he says, you know, we got to
1:00:17
do this and that.
1:00:18
And so they, they do that.
1:00:19
They fight as a unit and they win,
1:00:22
right?
1:00:22
They defeat the battle.
1:00:24
And the Caesar's like, what's going on here?
1:00:26
That's not the way the story goes, right?
1:00:28
Right.
1:00:28
This is what we're trying to do.
1:00:31
This is the blue army.
1:00:32
This is the arena of blaze.
1:00:34
This is men in the arena.
1:00:37
Iron sharpens iron, making each other better.
1:00:40
So we can go out into a world
1:00:41
that's stacked against us and we can defeat,
1:00:45
right?
1:00:45
It's the same reason that God sent his
1:00:50
son as a human.
1:00:53
I am who I am.
1:00:55
Existence itself sent his son to be one
1:00:58
of us, to be sacrificed for us, the
1:01:02
little guy, for the little guy.
1:01:05
I'm a big Lord of the Rings guy,
1:01:08
as you know, and it was the hobbits
1:01:11
of the shire that saved the day.
1:01:15
Not only that, it was Smeagol who turned
1:01:17
into Gollum, who actually saved the day.
1:01:20
And the whole show was about all these
1:01:23
great men and elves and great beings and
1:01:27
Kings fighting this battle against evil.
1:01:30
But who was it?
1:01:32
Who was it that ultimately saved middle earth?
1:01:36
It was the hobbits from the shire and
1:01:38
Smeagol.
1:01:41
And it's the lowly of us.
1:01:43
God calls the lowly of us to do
1:01:49
stuff.
1:01:51
We just have to be open to the
1:01:53
call.
1:01:53
Yeah, he favors that.
1:01:54
It's all throughout the Bible.
1:01:56
The younger son, because it's in our weakness
1:02:01
that his power is most displayed.
1:02:04
So it's a mystery, but that's like a
1:02:08
feature of his personality.
1:02:09
That's the way he works.
1:02:12
The sword for all of this is the
1:02:16
holy face of Jesus.
1:02:18
That's the sword of this army that we're
1:02:20
trying to build.
1:02:21
So it's pretty simple.
1:02:24
It's deep, but oftentimes throughout the day when
1:02:27
I see things that are blasphemous, and we
1:02:31
all know what they are, it could be
1:02:33
anything from like you're watching the Olympics and
1:02:36
they've got this fake last supper display up
1:02:39
there.
1:02:40
I just say, you know, arise, oh Lord,
1:02:42
and let thy enemies be scattered and let
1:02:45
all those who hate thee flee from before
1:02:46
thy face.
1:02:48
That's simple.
1:02:49
There's the golden arrow prayer, very short prayer,
1:02:52
because what we know from this devotion is
1:02:54
God does not desire the death of the
1:02:57
sinner, but he desires his conversion.
1:03:01
He may be converted and lived.
1:03:02
So the golden arrow prayer, we put it
1:03:06
on the show notes, essentially you're shooting arrows
1:03:09
into his sacred heart because he's the one
1:03:13
that will exact the justice.
1:03:15
Oh my Jesus, forgive us our sins.
1:03:17
Save us from the fires of hell.
1:03:18
Lead all souls to heaven, especially those who
1:03:20
have most need of thy mercy.
1:03:22
I must say that 50 times a day.
1:03:25
And where'd that come from?
1:03:27
That's the Fatima prayer.
1:03:28
Our Lady of Fatima, the blue army.