Latest / Claymore: Become Who You Are / #736 The Decisive Battle Now Rages For Life, Marriage And Family! Stand Up and Testify

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#736 The Decisive Battle Now Rages For Life, Marriage And Family! Stand Up and Testify · Claymore: Become Who You Are

0:00
We came into a story that was already there.
0:02
We didn't create this story.
0:03
We didn't create the universe.
0:05
We came into a story.
0:06
And God gave us reason and intellect and free will so that we could come into the story, understand his plan, and then live that out and find what we're looking for.
0:15
This is the hour he foresaw.
0:17
This is the battle plan.
0:18
In other words, it's going to take our prayers, yes, but it's going to take more than that.
0:22
We have to stand up and testify.
0:25
There's two pillars that everything's built on.
0:28
You know, Catholic social teaching, like a pyramid in front of you, held up by the human heart and marriage in the family, united to Christ and the church.
0:36
Everything else flows from that.
0:38
If you get these things wrong.
1:02
I love working with young people, especially these young men that we're meeting.
1:06
This is what is the truth of things in this crazy chaotic chaotic world?
1:10
And I always ask him, I said, you know, don't forget, you know, 10 minutes in the morning, before you look at that phone in the morning, fall down to your knees and do that Claymore 10-minute morning ritual.
1:20
You'll find some peace there, and you'll know in your heart.
1:23
Then we then we read one act out of the Claymore Battle Plan Handbook to fill our minds.
1:28
You're on the Claymore A team.
1:31
Go 10 minutes in the morning, go vertical, fill in it with the beauty of God's plan.
1:36
I'm an early riser.
1:38
I love to watch the sun rise even before it actually comes up, you know, right before it breaks the horizon and the light starts to hit the clouds, and you have these different designs.
1:49
This is the time of the year for that.
1:50
You can just walk outside, you feel the breeze blowing, you can hear the birds, and you watch that come up and you go, ooh, the awe and wonder of that.
1:58
And here's what I want to talk to you about today: the awe and wonder of the reality.
2:04
God has meaning and purpose in everything, including our bodies and our sexuality.
2:10
If we start to understand this, it it blows your mind away.
2:13
But we have a lot of confusion because the culture's been bombarding us all along.
2:16
But especially this confusion since Pope Francis and now unfortunately Leo is not clarifying these things.
2:23
You know, they come up with a couple of good things, and everybody, ooh, and oh, he they said something that makes uh sense, but then they'll they'll they'll go off the reservation.
2:32
So I say, look, it we already know God's plan has been flowing down to us this beautiful deposit of faith.
2:38
We already know this.
2:39
You know, there's no reason to to delve into all the noise that's out there today and the confusion with some of the shepherds.
2:45
I hope you guys have a great bishop.
2:47
You definitely got to find a a pastor in a church, a parish that you can belong to that's going to bring the truth of things.
2:57
But anyways, hey, here I go.
3:00
As we're sitting there, you picture you're with me right now.
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We're watching the sun come up, we can hear the birds singing, we got our coffee, and we're just relaxing.
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And we think, well, we're sitting still.
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But are we sitting still?
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And the awe and wonder of God's plan that we're actually living on the surface of a gas-fired planet called the Earth that's spinning on its axis at 1,100 miles an hour.
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It's actually revolving around a nuclear fireball 93 million miles away at 67,000 miles an hour, all while we think we're sitting still.
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And that's not all.
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The whole universe is exploding out since the Big Bang at 448,000 miles an hour or so.
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You know, we used to think that the universe was static not too long ago.
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Because while you're sitting there, you don't experience all this, but now we know something different.
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And there's always an order to nature designed by the creator to reflect something of himself, the awe and wonder of who God is.
4:03
Small be beauty of creation and what you see around us, the mountains, the stars, the sun, all the small be beauty of creation reflecting something of big be beauty, the creator.
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You know, in the past, all altars in the Catholic Church, when you would go to Mass, the priest was positioned in a way that he was facing east, because the sun comes up in the east.
4:25
And in the Psalms, it describes the sun rising as a bridegroom coming to meet his bride, the earth, the people who make up the body of the church.
4:35
All of creation is a clue to this.
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Everything God creates, he creates with meaning, order, purpose, awe and wonder.
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The sun comes up every day, bringing light and warmth.
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If it doesn't, we're done.
4:48
While small bee beauty always reflects big bee beauty, the crown of creation is what?
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What?
4:54
Or I should say, who?
4:55
We just had Trinity Sunday, the awesome mystery of God, who is a communion of love.
5:01
And what is what is the small bee beauty that reflects Big B beauty, God's love, Trinity in the world, like nothing else?
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It's us.
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We're created in the divine image, Genesis 1 says.
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And how does he create us?
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Male and female, he creates us.
5:18
Each one of us created with reason that searches for the truth, with an intellect that can look around and say, ooh, what is going on with this?
5:26
With free will so we can choose, and hopefully it becomes a motor to choose the good.
5:32
Ooh, then I start to fall into God's plan.
5:34
Well, here's the Trinity.
5:36
And how what reflects the Trinity more than anything else?
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The Trinity is a mystery of this self-giving love of God, this eternal exchange of love.
5:45
Well, each one of us are created in the image of God, what I just described, reason, intellect, free will, different than all of the rest of creation, all of the other bodies in the world, all the other animals.
5:56
But the fullest, the fullest sign of that is what?
6:00
What is it?
6:02
Marriage and the family, created in the image and likeness of God.
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So if you think about this, marriage and family then is the primordial sacrament, the main sacrament, right from the very, very beginning.
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You know, in the beginning, if you read Genesis, there weren't seven sacraments because sin hadn't entered the world.
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There was one major sacrament, and it was the primordial sacrament of a man, a woman, and then the child, the openness to life.
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This tiny reflection, that first sacramental reflection, this tiny way that we reflect God's Trinity in the world, self-giving love in the world in a very real and efficacious way.
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We bring love into the world.
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Without us, without human beings, without this the beauty of marriage and the family, love does not get in the world.
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This is why Satan viciously attacks marriage and the family, because what is most sacred?
6:57
The power of Satan wants to most profane.
7:00
This is the foundation that's being most viciously attacked today in a historical and unprecedented way, marriage and the family.
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And because so many in the modern world have rejected God, they've rejected the armor of God, the protection for their marriages and their families.
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And what do you see?
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Dysfunction all over the place.
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What family has not been touched in this way by this attack and twisting and distortion of evil.
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But what is historic in nature is that the ravenous wolves under the power of Satan are not coming just from the outside, but they gained a firm foothold and have gathered to attack marriage in their family, this primordial sacrament, a reflection of Trinitarian love within the church.
7:45
The latest of these attacks is I brought up in my newsletter last time and on a podcast not too long ago.
7:52
It's that report that came out of Vatican Study Group No.
7:57
Listen to the name of this study group.
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If you're going to make something clear, right, talk about unclearity.
8:03
This study group officially titled this report, Theological Criteria and Synodal Methodologies for Shared Discernment of Emerging Doctrinal, Pastoral, and Ethical Issues.
8:17
You tell me what that means.
8:18
You know, there's even confusion in the title.
8:21
It's so ridiculous.
8:22
This final report was released on May 5th, 2026, and I want to get back to this attack.
8:28
The document proposes a paradigm shift in how the church approaches controversial moral issues.
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Moving away from the authoritative teaching of the church passed down to us this beautiful deposit of faith I was describing toward a sonodal listening-based model centered on personal experience, conversation in the spirit, whatever spirit they're talking about, and pastoral accompaniment.
8:55
Now, if you think about this, I've been doing this for a long time.
8:58
When somebody new comes to me, look, we're all broken, we're all sinful.
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We do have to have a pastoral accompaniment.
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You can't just beat people up, yelling and screaming at people because I'm I have a drinking problem, I have a lying problem, I have a stealing problem, I have a sloth problem, whatever.
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This whole litany of things goes on.
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I have same-sex attraction.
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You don't have you don't just beat up all those people.
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You invite them in.
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Christ didn't come to condemn us and to condemn the world, but to save us.
9:30
But what they do now is they apply this methodology, right?
9:34
This discernment, this listening, this accompaniment to homosexuality, throwing out the actual teaching of the church, which you'll never find, which you're looking for if you throw out the teaching of the church.
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Christ always said, you know, I want to come here and heal you.
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You are now healed.
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He would physically even heal them.
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And then he would say, go and sin no more.
9:55
The greatest liberation that we can find is liberation number one is liberation from what?
10:01
From sin.
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Well, this methodology now, if we apply it to homosexuality as the report does, it features detailed testimonies from two men living in civil, same-sex marriages, presenting them as models of faith journeys.
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While it does not formally change doctrine here in that document, it frames the church's constant teaching that homosexual acts are intrinsically immoral and the inclination is disordered.
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Now that is an outdated paradigm shift.
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It no longer is adequate today for communicating God's will.
10:36
It instead it calls for ongoing local discernment.
10:40
I've been involved in the Synod of Sivanalities even with the bishop.
10:44
I served on as the chairman of the pastoral uh diocesan council.
10:49
And right away when this the synod was coming in from Pope Francis, you saw right away that there was an ideology, a uh a something that they already knew the end game.
11:01
All they were doing is questioning people at the discernment because they figure if they get enough opinions, they'll take those opinions and form them into a new doctrine.
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Very, very dangerous.
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These are wolves seeking the destruction of marriage and the family.
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Scriptures often warned us that this time would come, and this attack that started with original sin in the Garden of Eden would reach such a level that the world as we know it would collapse.
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And yes, we're at that crisis point.
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And in some sense, this is all man-made, and that man has forgotten God, has given themselves over to the only other power that's going to fill that vacuum, the power of the evil one.
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We forget this.
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We think that that we created this universe that's exploding out.
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I mean, reality.
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We didn't create the universe.
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We came into a story.
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The day we were exploded on the stage we call life and love, our lives.
11:57
We came into a story that was already there.
12:00
We didn't create this story, we didn't create the universe.
12:02
We came into a story.
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And God gave us reason and intellect and free will so that we could come into the story, understand his plan, and then live that out and find what we're looking for.
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But there's a time now that came, and we we have to speak plainly and clearly to, especially to the young people.
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They deserve this.
12:21
You know, hopefully you have it in front of you by now, the Claymore Battle Plan outline and the battle, the Claymore Battle Plan.
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I'm not holding this up very well because I have it open, the handbook.
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And uh, in the outline itself, which is only a six-page year, you can download for free from our website.
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It just read that first page about John Paul's warning there.
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Let me read you this.
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This this is his warning in 1976.
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He was here for the Eucharistic uh Congress in Philadelphia.
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And that was a bicentennial year of our country.
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Now he warns us then what's going to be going on today as we celebrate the 250th year anniversary of our country.
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So he's there, he's given a talk, and this is what he said.
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And he he in the back of his mind, he's thinking three years before this, Roe v.
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Wade became the law of the land here to kill innocent children.
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And so with that, he said, and you can read this with me if you have it on your desk.
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If you don't print this out and have a copy there along with the handbook and give copies away to people, we're gonna have to help these young people get their hearts back and understand this big story that they're in.
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They've been lied to, just like we all have been.
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He said this: I do not think that wide circles of American society or wide circles of Christian community realize this fully.
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We are now facing the final confrontation between the church and the anti-church, the gospel and the anti-gospel, right?
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The authentic beauty of the church that's been passed down to us, the purity of the church, the beauty of the church, the bride of Christ, and the gospel that's been claimed.
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So now we have the anti-church and the anti-gospel.
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Well, this isn't just out there, right?
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In the culture, in the country.
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No, this is coming from inside.
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This is what he's talking about.
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He said this confrontation lies with the plans of divine providence.
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God knows what's going on, and he's winding history down.
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We all know this at some point that this is all going to end, and that we have this the the second coming, right?
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Well, we don't know the date and time for that, but we certainly know something's happening today.
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And I would say within my lifetime, and I'm no spring chicken anymore, you're gonna you're gonna really see this manifested.
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So we want to get our foundation, our feet solid, and we're gonna be talking about that in just a second.
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So it's a trial, he said, that the whole church must take up is in this divine providence.
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It's a trial not only of the church, but in a sense, a test of 2,000 years of culture and Christian civilization with all its consequences for human dignity, individual rights, and the rights of nations.
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Aren't we seeing this attack?
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You you see, you know, Britain and and France.
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I mean, it's amazing how these they're unraveling.
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I would say the only difference between us and them now was this election of President Trump.
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Why do you think people have TDS today?
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You know, he said they're after you.
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The only the only one uh uh standing between you and them is me, but they want to get me and then they're gonna come after you.
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We see that in in the church today, too.
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We have to stand up and testify.
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So he said this we must be prepared to undergo great trials in a not so distant future.
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Now, this is in 76.
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Well, these trials are here, aren't they?
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Trials, he said, that will require us to be ready to give up even our lives and a total self-gift of self to Christ and for Christ.
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Ooh, he saw this.
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This is the time we're in.
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No wonder we're anxious, depressed.
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You know, it's it's a crazy world out there.
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He said, through your prayers of mine, it's possible to alleviate this tribulation, but it's no longer possible to completely avert it.
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And it's not.
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This is the hour he foresaw.
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This is the battle plan.
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In other words, it's going to take our prayers, yes, but it's going to take more than that.
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We have to stand up and testify.
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So the battle plan handbook, I hope you have this.
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I want to read from Act 33, stand up and testify.
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And here's what happens when we have this confusion that we see today.
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There's so much noise, you can get overwhelmed by that noise.
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So it's very, very uh important that we understand there's two pillars that everything's built on.
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You know, Catholic social teaching, like a pyramid in front of you, held up by the human heart and marriage in the family, united to Christ and the church.
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Everything else flows from that.
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If you get these things wrong, if you get these pillars wrong, if you don't understand marriage in the family and you see this breakdown, you won't even understand what they're talking about in the church and the culture, etc.
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You just know something's wrong in your heart.
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So this is very important.
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If you're in a conversation with somebody, always bring it down to the battle for truth, the two pillars of creation that we must defend.
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Without that, nothing else will hold.
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So this is from Act 33.
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Again, you can read along with me.
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It's so, so important to understand this.
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It starts out this way Jesus in John 12, 32.
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When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.
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And then from the first letter of John chapter 5, 19, the whole world is under the power of the evil one.
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The whole world is under the power of the evil one.
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This is why Jesus came into the world, didn't he?
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To defeat sin and death.
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And he does that hanging on the cross.
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When I'm lifted up from the earth on the cross, I will draw all people to myself.
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That's people that that see and hear and listen and they're seeking the truth.
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Now, the other side, the world under the power of the evil one, wants to destroy that, destroy that truth, and destroy here's the bridegroom giving his life to the bride.
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The bride is the church.
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Marriage reflects that and Trinitarian love.
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Reading these divine words, said Cardinal Kafar, gives us perfect awareness of what's really happening in the world within the human story, considered in its depths.
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The human story is a confrontation between these two forces, the force of attraction, whose source is the wounded heart of the crucified risen one, Jesus Christ, and the power of Satan, who does not want to be ousted from his kingdom.
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This is so important for us just to pause here for a second.
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When we're thinking and discerning all these things, this is a battle between our Lord and Satan, between good and evil.
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This all goes all the way back to that tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because we're free.
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We we decide.
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The battle is over the human heart.
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So Cardinal Kafara continues the area in which this confrontation takes place is the human heart.
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It's human liberty.
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And the confrontation has two dimensions, an interior dimension and an exterior dimension.
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And he says, we will briefly consider both the one and the other.
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Brothers, what Cardinal Kafara addresses here gathers together every dimension of the Claymore battle plan.
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First of all, restoring the dignity of the human person, the individual human heart, your heart, my heart.
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You gotta start there.
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And then you have to understand how that goes out into love and this expression of love.
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You know, the two great commandments, be filled with divine life and love, and then go out and be that.
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Love your neighbor.
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Well, the fullest sign, again, of Trinitarian love is what?
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Marriage and the family.
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So we have to restore that.
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That's number two.
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And then we have to go out and testify to the truth.
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This is sociopolitical activism aimed at reclaiming the culture for Christ.
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That's a three-step battle plan.
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The heart, marriage and the family go out.
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Cardinal Cafara was a close collaborator of John Paul II, was entrusted by him to establish and govern the Pontifical Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in Rome in 1981.
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And John Paul saw all this battle coming on, just like I read in 1976.
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Well, this is only five years later, and he said, Look, we have to get the truth of this out, establishes the Pontifical Institute for Marriage and the Family, puts Car Cardinal Kafara in charge of it.
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And Cardinal Kafara acknowledged that the Institute faced strong resistance against it.
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And because the patroness of the Institute was Our Lady of Fatima, he wrote to Sister Lucia, who was the main visionary, asking her for her prayers.
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She replied with a long letter that concluded with these words Father, she said, a time will come when the decisive battle between the kingdom of Christ and Satan will be over marriage and the family.
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Those who work for the good of the family will experience persecution and tribulation.
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We see this attack, don't we?
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Stand up for the truth or for Christian faith against these LBGTQ ideologies.
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You get attacked.
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But she said, do not be afraid because our lady has already crushed this head.
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The battle has been won.
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Jesus Christ won.
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Our lady has already crushed this head.
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This is all this all goes all the way back to Genesis.
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But we have to battle this in this temporal space.
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This is ultimately for your eternal soul and my eternal soul.
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That's why we're doing this.
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This is in divine providence, as John Paul the II wrote.
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And it and it's winding down.
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It's going someplace.
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It has a beginning, it has a history, and it's going someplace.
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So we have to decide.
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So we just have to take this grace into ourselves and proclaim the truth.
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This is going to make us happy, anyways, when our marriages and our families are solid.
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Brothers, that's this is the time that's come.
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Marriage and the family now stands at the center of the decisive.
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Spiritual conflicts of our age.
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Satan attacks what most perfectly reflects the creator in creation.
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Sacred scripture teaches God created man in his image, in the divine image he created them.
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Male and female he created them.
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God blessed them, saying to them, Be fertile, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it.
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Unable to create, Satan seeks to destroy and distort that image.
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He fashions what Cardinal Kafara called an anti-creation by warping what God declared good.
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So what is how does he do that?
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He strikes first at the individual human person who is not a thing, but a someone made in God's image.
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And then what does he do?
22:44
He's going to assault the second pillar of that image, the communion between man and woman, that culminates in marriage and openness to what?
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To life.
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In this struggle, woman becomes a particular target since creation reaches its completion when God fashions her.
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She's the crown, the pinnacle.
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Sacred scripture records that after creating woman, God rested.
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What do we observe today then?
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First, the legalization and cultural celebration of abortion, destroying the most innocent and defenseless among us.
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First pillar.
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Second pillar, the attempt to equate same-sex relationships with marriage.
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As Sister Lucia warmed, those who work for the good of the family will experience persecution and tribulation, but do not be afraid because our lady has already crushed this head.
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Brothers, the world is not a neutral territory.
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Today you were you were exploded onto the stage as a battlefield, and you're standing in the middle of it.
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Cardinal Kafara returned to these themes at the fourth annual Rome Life Forum in May of twenty seventeen, organized by Voice of the Family.
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There he again cited the words of Christ.
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When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.
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Those are people that are seeking the truth, of course.
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He also warned them directly through Scripture with equal clarity, but the whole world is under the power of the evil one.
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These are not metaphors.
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They describe the deepest drama of human history.
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Christ draws humanity toward truth, freedom, and life, and Satan resists that, deceives, and enslaves.
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Every human being stands with this tension.
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And you're not a spectator, you're a participant in this.
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Cardinal Kafara insisted that the confrontation unfolds upon these two fronts.
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The interior front concerns the human heart.
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The realm of conscience is there.
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Freedom is there to choose.
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It always starts in the individual human heart.
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We have more power than we think.
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We just have to say yes to the one that's that's on the cross, huh?
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That's attracting us to himself.
24:56
The exterior front then concerns the laws, the institutions, the culture, the public life on the outside, right?
25:04
We have the interior life, and now we go and manifest either the good or the evil on the outside.
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And these laws and stuff that we were born into already, with same-sex marriage laws, with abortion laws.
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You came into that culture already.
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And you could be sitting like that proverbial frog in that pot.
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You don't even know what's going on.
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No wonder you're anxious, depressed.
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So many young people are suicidal.
25:28
Old people are suicidal.
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Well, Christ himself told Pontius Pilate what?
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I came into the world to testify to the truth.
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Everyone who belongs to the truth, he said, listens to my voice.
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That's John chapter 18, verse 37.
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Christ reigns not through coercion, but through attraction to the truth.
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We are trying why are we attracted to Jesus Christ when we hear the gospel?
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Because we're attracted to the truth of things.
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On the cross, he revealed love that gives itself so completely so that life might flourish.
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Yet the truth only takes root in the hearts willing to receive it.
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This is the battle when you look around.
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You know, we have to start uh feel uh sorry for our brothers and sisters who are so nervous, so anxious, so full of vitriol and hatred, so distorting, even transing uh their own children.
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It's unbelievable when your reason becomes unreasonable.
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As Blaise Pascal wrote a long time ago about Jesus, console thyself.
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Thou would not seek me, he's talking to all of us, if thou hasn't not already found me.
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When you're attracted, stay with that, stay with that, see where it leads.
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If you hunger for the truth, Christ is already within you.
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He's already at work within you, he's working on your heart already.
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Stay with that.
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That's why that Claymore 10-minute morning ritual is so important.
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Even if you don't understand it, you're already seeking the truth.
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Now let him work within you, and we're inviting him in.
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Satan is going to wage war against you, however.
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He he senses and he knows that hunger, and he wants to put that flame out.
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So Jesus describes him in unmistakable language.
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Here's what Jesus says in John chapter eight.
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He said, He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him.
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When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
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Cardinal Kafara elaborated.
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By inducing man to unbelief, he wants man to close himself to the light of the divine revelation, which is what?
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The word incarnate Jesus Christ Himself.
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Therefore, these words of Jesus on Satan do not speak of the fall of angels.
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They speak of something much more profound, something frightful.
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Satan constantly refuses the truth, and his action within human society consists in opposition to the truth.
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Satan is this refer uh this refusal.
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He is this opposition.
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Think about that.
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People that will indiscriminately just yell and scream for the right to kill their own children.
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People will scream for the right to trans children, put them on puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, mutilate their very bodies, render them infertile.
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This is what Satan wants.
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He is that refusal to see, to understand the truth.
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You can't make this up.
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Until you understand this battle, you won't understand what's going on.
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He warned that Satan in our time launches what he calls the ultimate and terrible challenge against God, attempting to construct an anti-creation.
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The humanity will be deceived into preferring over the true order of creation.
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Are we not there?
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Satan's mission is to distinguish your desire for truth and lead you wholly astray from God's mercy and love he wants to pour out on you.
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On the cross, this is mercy, this is love being poured out.
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He talks to Sister Faustina in the diary that I listen to every morning, and you should too, that Divine Mercy app, remember, is there, is part of that Claymore 10-minute morning ritual, and you hear Sister Faustina and Jesus talking, and how heartbroken Jesus is when we walk away from him.
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This is a God who really loves you.
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You know, most evil is not done spectacularly but cooperatively through human beings who accept lies and then legislate those lies into law.
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It's an injustice.
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When scandal erupts again within the church, or when political leaders codify moral evils into law, the task of witness falls heavily upon the lady, upon you and I.
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You say, okay, we got all those political leaders, all the bigwigs of the world, all the big whigs in the church, and yet it falls to us.
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Bishop Fulton Sheen framed the matter starkly.
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He said back in the 60s and 70s, who's going to save the church?
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He said.
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He answered, It's not our bishops, it's not our priest, it's not the religious.
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It's up to you, the people.
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You have the minds, the eyes, and the ears to save the church.
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Your mission is to see the priests act like priests, your bishops act like bishops, and the religious act like religious.
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The Pope acts like a pope.
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Cardinal Kafaro and Bishop Sheen speak with one voice.
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The renewal of our culture depends upon informed consciences, our prayer, fasting, and then courage and public testimony.
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Union with the wounded heart of the crucified risen one must overflow into action.
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Remember, a body and a soul, the default position without this grace, without this crucified risen one, is sin and death.
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It just is.
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Look around you.
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But now a body and a soul filled with grace, participation in life of God that flows from that crucified risen one where the water and blood came out, now I take that into myself.
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I say yes to Jesus.
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Now this gives me the potential for human freedom, for my own freedom, the potential for human flourishing in general and in my own heart.
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But what makes that efficacious, what makes us come alive, it's our action.
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Our bodies, we're always created to make visible God's love story in the world.
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We have to bring this into the world through our actions.
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We can't just stop at the heart.
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You have to be able to speak it.
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You have to be able to act it.
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Culture, that you look around, is the pattern of human living.
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You think about it, music, art, architecture, family life, political order, education, language.
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We have to bring our skills into all of those aspects, whatever gifts that God brought to you.
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Otherwise, the evil one does all of that.
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Two cultures now contend for domination.
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One is built upon Christ and truth.
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The other is constructed upon lies.
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This is what you're seeing all around you.
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Cardinal Kafara describes the final phase of this struggle by appealing to sacred scripture.
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This is the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, the apocalypse, we call it too.
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Describes the final confrontation between two kingdoms.
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In this book, the attraction of Christ takes the form of triumph over enemy powers commanded by Satan.
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It is a triumph which comes after a lengthy battle, and this lengthy battle is unfolding now.
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The fruits of this victory are the martyrs, all the way from the very beginning.
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Remember the martyrs?
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But there's more martyrs today.
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We don't realize this.
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We know that the early church started with the blood of martyrs, but you know, people willing to unite themselves just like the crucified Christ and become that visible sign of giving up your life in the world, and it's through your blood, huh?
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That the seeds of renewal always come.
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That's what John Paul said right there when I read that too.
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He says some of us will be have to give up even our very lives.
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Sacred scripture proclaims this.
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It says, the great dragon, serpent of the primal age, he who we call the devil or Satan, the seducer of the whole world, was flung down to the earth.
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But they, the martyrs, overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the words of the testimony of their martyrdom.
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That's from Revelation chapter 12.
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At this point, I pause to recall Charlie Kirk and his family.
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Charlie Kirk endured hostility and public attacks, just like Sister Lucia said.
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Anybody that stands up for marriage in a family is going to be attacked.
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But don't worry, right?
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Because Our Lady already crushed his head.
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Charlie became a martyr.
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We have more martyrs again in these present in the 20th or 21st century than we had in all the other centuries combined.
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Charlie endured hostility and public attacks for defending what God created good, the child in a womb, marriage and a family.
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He spoke courageously about Christ to young people, and he paid for that witness with his life.
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He feared not death, but silence, he said.
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His concern was always for eternal salvation for all of those people that he came in contact with.
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We all die, he said.
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He feared failing to proclaim the truth.
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Again we hear Sister Lucia's words, but do not be afraid because our lady has already crushed his head.
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You were called to imitate such courage.
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Cardinal Kafara identified two unmistakable signs that the culture of lies advances.
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Again, remember this.
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Number one is abortion, transformed from tragedy into an alleged right.
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Vatican II called it a heinous crime, but today's world calls it freedom.
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We are free, huh?
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Free to kill, free to murder.
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Sacred Scripture warns, I will demand an accounting for human life.
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If anyone sheds the blood of man, by man shall that person's blood be shed, for in the image of God he has been made.
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To destroy the human person is an assault on our Creator.
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God will not let that stand.
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The second sign is the redefinition of marriage, severing it from sexual complementarity and openness to life.
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And do to do what?
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To push homosexual relationships as equivalent to marriage.
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Marriage is not merely a legal arrangement.
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It's a sacred participation in God's creative power to cooperate with him and bring new life into the world.
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It takes a man and a woman to do this.
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To alter its meaning is to temper with the architecture of creation itself.
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These two assaults then, the child in the womb, marriage and the family, form the core of Satan's anti-creation.
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They proclaim a false promise.
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The humanity can improve upon God's design.
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Fyodor Dostoevsky, the great Russian writer, captured this temptation in the voice of the Grand Inquisitor when he wrote this, and this is the Grand Inquisitor, you know, basically quizzing God.
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You know, it says, Man is weaker and lower than you have imagined him to be.
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Man is weak and cowardly.
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But you are not weak, brothers, you and I, because we're made in image and likeness of God.
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So how do we respond?
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By testifying.
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Testimony is not private sentiment, it's public fidelity.
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Speak without fear.
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We have to go out and proclaim the gospel of life and marriage.
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Stand firm when pressured to remain silent.
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The world functions like a courtroom, and it's Jesus Christ that's placed on trial.
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You are as witnesses.
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Saint Augustine advised to love the sinner, love all our brothers and sisters, hate the sin, hate the sin, because you leave them in their fallen state.
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Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote, My mouth shall discuss truth, and to impugn ear contrary to that truth, and my lips shall detest the ungodly.
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We have to speak the truth.
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We have to speak, especially those that will proclaim a lie to these young people.
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You know, much like a physician who diagnoses illness in order to heal the body, or a plumber who locates a leak in order to stop the damage.
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A faithful Christian must both affirm what is true and expose what corrupts it.
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Kafara concluded with these words, he said, Christ is that witness.
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He is that truth.
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On the cross, truth was unveiled.
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Christ drew the world to himself.
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Now he draws you.
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Do not desert.
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Don't be a deserter, because where else would we go?
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He has the words of eternal life.
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So be a man of Christ.
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And I would conclude again with a reminder of those two asks of every Claymore man.
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Number one, begin your day, knees before the phone, always praying that 10-minute Claymore morning ritual.
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You'll find that in the outline.
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And then read one act at a minimum per week from the Claymore Battle Plan Handbook and discuss it with the brother.
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Build up relationships.
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You are on the A-team, though.
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Don't forget.
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I would say the A Team is very simple.
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It's 10-5, 10 minutes in the morning on your knees, five minutes reading one of those acts every night, because then you're going to put on the armor of Christ.
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I like to read before I go to sleep at night, again, just because I love to start the day going vertical with Christ, inviting him into my heart, let him go to work on me, and then fill in this content up somewhere toward the evening, going to sleep on these beautiful ideas of Christ.
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It's a great way to start and end your day with Jesus Christ.
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You know, Jesus didn't come to condemn the world, to condemn you or I or somebody with same-sex attraction or somebody that drinks too much or whatever, but to save us.
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It begins with you on the battlefield of your heart.
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And then we go out as Christ asked and share his gospel with a brother.
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On the way out here today, I would just ask, please keep me in your prayers.
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I'll keep you in mind.
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We need to pray for each other.
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We need to be for there for each other.
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You know, Jesus never sent the apostles out alone.
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He doesn't send us out alone.
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You know, always two by two, and even more than that.
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Let's build this uh community up and stand for the truth of things.
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Hey, God bless you.
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Talk to you again soon, everybody.