Latest / Claymore: Become Who You Are / #433 Jesus said, "Be Watchful! Be Alert! You Do Not Know When The Time Will Come"; The Universal Call To Holiness

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#433 Jesus said, "Be Watchful! Be Alert! You Do Not Know When The Time Will Come"; The Universal Call To Holiness · Claymore: Become Who You Are

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Become who you Are podcast, the production of the John Paul 2 Renewal Center.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: I'm Jack Rigard, your host, and I hope you're doing well.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: It's amazing how fast time goes.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: We were already into December, looking to Christmas, we're in the Advent season.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: It's a beautiful time and the scriptures are just alive.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: I hope every day you're spending some time reading scripture.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Certainly try to read scripture before you go to Mass and so you can sit on, meditate on that scripture.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Today, you know, in this crazy time, you know, the scriptures just come alive and they tell us what we should be looking for, what we should be doing.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: So here's the Gospel according to Mark.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Jesus says to His disciples be watchful, be alert.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: You do not know when the time will come.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: It's like a man traveling abroad.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: He leaves home and places his servants in charge, eats with his own work.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Well, that's us.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: We're the servants that Jesus put in charge.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: You know Jesus was here, he redeemed us, he gave us the path to salvation and then he left, but he sent us the Holy Spirit right.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: That would be with us always, this power of His redemption.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: And now we wait.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: We have this.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: You know this ushered in the end times.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: We've been in the end times for a while, but we know something's up, but whether it's, you know the end times.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: You know Jesus said you know it's not up to you to know the exact dates or times, you know he didn't even know.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: He said it's up to the Father, but, but, but, but, tick, tick, tick, tick.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: You know the end is coming for all of us and we know the power of sin and death.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: You know is, is is around us.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: So Jesus is just saying look at I, I, I created you for something more, for union and communion with me.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: I want you to be with me, be alert.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: And what is it?
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: What is this alertness to?
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: What could we do today?
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Well, it's the universal call to holiness.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: This is what Jesus came to do.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: You know, how can you be in union and communion with God forever unless we are on a path to the universal call to holiness, and, of course, that that comes from Christ himself, to be united with Christ himself.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: And this, the sign of this, is right, stamped into our very bodies and our creation is male and female the sign of the union and communion that God wants with us.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: It's amazing, it's, it's right, built into us.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: It's a desire to love and to be loved, and this is an eternal sign of God, that who wants to bring us into eternal love.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: So buckle up and get ready for the rest of today's episode, as we try to figure out how to live in this crazy world.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: You know, we've been given all this, it's poured out to us.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: It's something that we have to, to remember, we have to live out and we have to be on.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: It's a journey that's going somewhere and in our own lives, hopefully, we have been going somewhere.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Hopefully you're not the same person that you were 10 years ago and 20 years ago.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: Hopefully you're closer and closer and closer to that, that universal call to holiness, you know, which is a universal call to love.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: You know, this isn't brain surgery right To be filled with divine life and love, which will make you holy.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: And then you go out into the world and you give yourself away, and it's in giving yourself away that you, you become holy.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Really, you become holy in your actions and drawing on the power, the divine power.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: Well, this has been going on for a long time.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: So listen to this reading from the book of Isaiah today.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: This is the prophet Isaiah.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: This reading came from chapters 63 and going into 64.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: And here it is.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Think about this.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: This is, this is thousands of years ago, right?
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: This is before Jesus Christ and the prophet looking to our Redeemer, looking to this.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Right, this is the story we came into.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: You know, we think about the ancients and, looking back, well, you know, they're struggling with the same things that we were.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: You know, this is a universal call to holiness.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: You know, depending where you came in in history, your place, your time, but at the end, we came upon the stage now.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: We just happened to be the people that are alive today.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Most of the people that ever were born are gone, aren't they?
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, we forget about this as we're arguing about politics and this, and that you know there's much evil in the world, but it didn't start yesterday.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: Here's from the prophet Isaiah you, lord, are our father, you, lord, are our father, praying to the father, the Abba, papa.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: And then he's going to he's, he's, he's the avenue, the, he's the path to redemption.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: He sends the son, and it goes on to say our Redeemer, you are our father, you are our Redeemer, you are named forever.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: And then, why do you let us wander?
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: You feel this frustration from Isaiah.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Why do you let us wander, oh Lord, from your ways?
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, isn't this today?
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: And listen to this and harden our hearts so that we fear you not?
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: So why do you let us wander away and harden our hearts so that we fear you not?
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: You know this hardness of heart.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Isn't this today, where we've actually closed out God?
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: We've forgotten God?
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: Huh, and then return.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: He says.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: Isaiah is pleading to the father, abba, papa, return for the sake of your servants, the tribes of your heritage.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Well, of course you know he's looking ahead, and it wouldn't be that long in time in history he would.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: The Jesus Christ would actually come into this story, right?
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: And Isaiah goes on oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down with the mountains quaking before you, while you brought awesome deeds we could not hope for, such as they had not heard from of old.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: Something new, right, something new.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: Isaiah is saying no ear, listen to this, this is so beautiful.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: St Paul picks this up in one Corinthians, in fact, I'll go to this after that.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: But after this.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: So Isaiah is saying no ear has ever heard, nor I has seen, any God, but you doing such deeds for those who wait for him.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: And then Isaiah is going to you know, look ahead and say when that day comes, hopefully you find us doing right.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: This is what Jesus was saying in Mark's gospel.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: So listen to Isaiah again, would that you might meet us doing right?
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: But we were mindful, watchful of your ways.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Behold, though, you are angry because we are sinful.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: All of us have become like unclean people.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: All of our good deeds are like polluted rags.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: We have all withered like leaves, and our guilt carries us, carries us away like the wind living in the spirit of the age.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: There is none who calls upon your name, who rouses himself to cling to you, for you have hidden your face from us, isn't that today?
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: There are none around that are calling on Jesus.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Who rouses himself to cling to you.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: We're turning away from God, aren't we, for you have hidden your face from us.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Well, in a way, god is allowing us to bring this evil in.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: He's not shaking everything up right now.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: He's allowing us to fall into our sins.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: It's pretty clear today, isn't it?
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: The weeds in the wheat, those that are turning to Jesus Christ, asking to be in union commune with Him, and those who have rejected Him.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: You could really see this playing out all the way up into the Vatican.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: We know that in this universal call to holiness, we have to go into Mother Church and receive this holiness from Her.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: Yet on the outside, the Church itself looks like it's broken.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: But don't forget that there's this inner holiness there and you're going to receive that at the Mass.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: Yet, o Lord, isaiah goes on you are our Father, you are Papa, we are the clay and you are the potter.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: We're the clay.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: We allow Jesus to come into our hearts and redo us, make this clay that's been tattered and broken and put back together again.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: And he ends we are all the work of your hands.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: The Word of the Lord.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: We are all the work of your hands, and that's true.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: That's when we open ourselves up to Christ.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: We become the work of God's hands.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: We allow Him to be the path, and not only the path, but to actually give us the grace in this call to universal holiness.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: And so again in there we read what no eye has seen, nor ear has heard, nor the heart of man conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: That's from St Paul, who took that right from Isaiah.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: St Paul, of course, knew the Old Testament really well.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: So that's from 1 Corinthians 2, verse 9.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: But let me just go a little bit further into 1 Corinthians.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: So 1 Corinthians 2, verse 6.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: And I'm going to read from 6 to 16, because this is so important.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: This is our story.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: This is the story that Jesus is telling us to go back in, to be alert.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: This is the invitation from Isaiah, the true wisdom of God how should we live?
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: And Paul writes this.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: Yet among the mature, we do impart wisdom, although it's not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are doomed to do what, to pass away.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glorification.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: But, as it is written, what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love Him, god has revealed to us through the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: When Jesus was ready to go back to his father after he had risen from the dead, he said it's good that I go, because when I go to the Father we will send the Spirit, the Advocate for you.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: And so the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God, and Jesus said he will draw from me and give it to you.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: We become temples of the Holy Spirit.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: This is the call to universal holiness.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: How can the Holy Spirit dwell within us if we are not at least trying to open ourselves up to the Redeemer?
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: He can't.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: So here is verse 11.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: For what person knows a man's thoughts except the Spirit of the man which is in him?
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: So also, no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: Now we have received not the Spirit of the world, but this Holy Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed on us from God.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but by the Holy Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who possess the Spirit.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: This is why I pause again.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: This is why we see this separation between the weeds and the wheat.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: Those who have accepted and asked for, who seek and search and call upon God, just like I say call upon God.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: Come into my heart If we don't, st Paul writes.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: This is verse 14.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit of God, for they were folly to him and he is not able to understand them because they were spiritually discerned.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: The spiritual man judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: The spiritual man judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: Why is that?
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: Who knows the mind of God so as to instruct us on how to live?
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: Well, we have to receive that from God himself, from the Spirit.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: And what mind do we have?
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: St Paul ends up with this but we have the mind of Christ.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: We have put on the mind of Christ.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: This is our story.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Huh, every day we stand at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, don't we?
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: And I always say this before you look at that phone in the morning, just drop to your knees.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: This is such a blessing in my life.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Drop to my knees.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: Drop to your knees and say your will be done.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: Today, our Lord, I open my heart.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: Your will be done.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: And number two again the temptations will come.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: Temptations will always come.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Remember temptation is not a sin.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: Jesus himself was tempted.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Open up your temptations to Jesus himself, who will come into your heart right.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: So every temptation becomes an invitation to prayer.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: Here's what I'm going through.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: He already knows I give it to him and I take on his mind, his heart.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: It untwists and undistorts those temptations into love.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: And then, finally, number three, become a person of love, receive divine life and love, and then walk into the story and become love.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is not brain surgery, it's not easy, but this is exactly our call to the universal, call to holiness.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: And so I read the rest of the gospel.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: According to Mark, jesus said to his disciples Be watchful, be alert.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: You do not know when the time will come.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: It's like a man traveling abroad.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: He leaves home and places his servants in charge, each with his own work, and orders the gatekeeper to be on the watch.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: Watch, therefore.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: You do not know when the Lord of the house is coming, whether in the evening or at midnight, or at the cockroach or in the morning.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: What I say to you, I say to all watch, watch.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: This is the gospel of the Lord, this is our story today.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: We were watching, we were sensing something's going on, don't we?
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: We all have this within us.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: You know, those of us that are open to the Holy Spirit, we have a sense that something's wrong.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: Right, well, we should.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: And we have a sense that even in our own hearts, we need to come closer and closer to God.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: Look, evil is around us, there's no doubt.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: But while evil is going on, don't just get caught up.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: We have to get, you know.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: We have to do right, we have to bring good into the world, but in order to do that, we cannot give what we don't have.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: It's always first a drawing, it's a receiving redemption, grace, love to be filled with love, and then go out into the world and do good things.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: That's what Jesus says.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: He leaves home and places his servants in charge, each with his own work to do.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: Each of us has our own work, our own mission.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: You know God loves us all universally, collectively, but first individually.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: You know this is not just a collectivist thought.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: The difference between Christ and the world is he loves you individually.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: He's going to come into your heart individually, and then you go out and bring everybody to Christ so that all can be one.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: You don't lose your identity though you become who you are, united to, the one who unites us, to all our brothers and sisters in the world.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: There is no other solution.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: With that right, I came back into the church after a 20-year absence, on my knees.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: I just told this story.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: If you haven't heard it already, go back to just this previous podcast.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: I believe and love a letter to Danny.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: That's my brother, danny.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: And so I came back into the church after a long absence, on my knees at the side of my brother Daniel's bed, as he was dying of AIDS.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: You know, unbeknownst to the rest of the family, he had been sexually abused by her pastor.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: He would turn them to drugs and even a homosexual lifestyle, before succumbing to AIDS at the age of 29.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: But God, as he wanted to do, turned evil into good.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: Dan was, at that time, was the only one of five brothers who had come back into the Catholic Church after a hiatus and was receiving the sacraments.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: See, this is the universal call to holiness.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: There was a pastor within the church, right, the evil that people are bringing into the church.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: The church itself is holy and the church wants to make us holy.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: It's very hard to understand that sometimes, but at the mass is where we really witness this right.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: Well, speaking of witnessing, I witnessed him there, at his bedside, fight his way out of a coma, come back to the surface as he was dying when he heard our voices to give us a simple message before he died let's pray, pray to God, to Abba, to this Abba, to God that Isaiah is talking about, to stay alert what Jesus is talking about.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: Well, danny's mouth was dry and I was shaking a bit right and I said, danny, did you say let's pray?
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: He said pray to God, yes, yes, pray to God.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: Very clearly, In the next few minutes, I would have an experience that changed my life and put me on this trailhead of this narrow road and a journey back into the church.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: See, back into the church.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: The gospel itself and the church is not about more information.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: This is the DNA, this is what we have to understand.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: When we come back into the church, when we get down on our knees, when we pray the rosary, when we receive the Eucharist and go to compassion those things we start to find peace, we start to find joy.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: In the midst of this chaos, we start to have the power to love one another.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: Right, it's the very DNA that runs through our body, and so we were made for this.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: It's the power John Paul talked about it often when the experience of your life meets the gospel, meets the sacrament, in such a way, you have that aha moment, right, and it's that new lens that we see out into the world and we see differently.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: Getting back to St Paul, we're no longer the unnatural man who takes in the spirit of the world, but we become the supernatural men and women that we were created for.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: Well, how do we do that?
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Well, we have to take in divine life and love.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: Right From the moment I began to study John Paul's work, especially on the theology of the body, I knew it was the truth.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: I knew it was the truth that I had been searching for my whole life, answering those big questions who am I?
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: What's my purpose?
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: How should I live?
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: Why were we created, male and female?
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: How do I find joy and peace here on earth?
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: How do I find love that satisfies forever?
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Well, jesus is love.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: God is love.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: In order to find love that satisfies forever, I have to go in and become one in union and communion with the God, who is love.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: This is what I give to my bride.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: This is what we share with one another, isn't it?
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: And that's why St Paul would say in Ephesians 5, verses 25 to 27,.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: And John Paul called this passage the summa or summary of his entire teaching on theology of the body.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: And it talks about marriage.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: It's the two bookends of marriage in the whole Bible.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: The whole Bible can be expressed in five words God wants to marry us, god wants to marry you, me.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: So marriage starts in an earthly paradise with the marriage of Adam and Eve.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: It ends in a heavenly paradise in the book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible, with the marriage of Christ and the church, this marriage that we seek in the families that we want to form here and procreate and make visible the invisible, the spiritual and the vine in the world.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: This points us directly to the marriage that God wants with us.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: This is just a little tiny taste, and so here it is.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: Husbands love your wives.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: How, as Christ loved the church, his bride, so husbands love your bride as Christ loved his bride.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: See, this is the primordial sacrament of marriage of Adam and Eve.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: Before sin was a reflection of Trinitarian love in the world, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her by the washing of water, with the word that he might present the church to himself and splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: So Jesus is active oblation to the Father, this gift of Himself to the Father.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: He takes on our flesh and this we are the bride.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: He takes on His bride and he makes her clean, See, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: We draw from this church.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: See, this is the universal call to holiness.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: So this is what we're called to enter into.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: Every one of us should be focused on this, the universal call to holiness.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: So let's go a little deeper.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: It's a little heavy, but at the end of the day, this is what God wants with us.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: Marriage is a little heavy, right?
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: You don't approach marriage just lightly, right?
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: So again we had that summa of John Paul II's entire teaching on theology of the body.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: That's how a husband should love his wife.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: Make no mistake about it.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: When all the smoke and fog clears, man's yearning burning desire.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: Man's that means men and women, right, male and female are yearning, burning desire to love, to be loved, to join a marital union points directly to the Eucharist at mass, and Jesus' desire to become one flesh with us.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: That's one great sacrament.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: You know, in these evil times of confusion in the world and within the church, we have a lot of evil in the church, but see, the church is not evil.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: The church is that spotless bride of Christ.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: So, you know, I just most days I just bypass everything coming out of that Vatican right now.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: I mean there's just so much evil there and there's good there too, of course, you know, but I don't need that right now.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: I just don't need it.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: You know we have church teaching, we know what that is, but this is a, this is specifically calling you into a relationship with God, and we don't need any pronouncements from some, some, some goofball cardinal or bishop that came off the rails, right, we just don't need it.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: You could just step into this story.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: Right now.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: We need the church though.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: We need the church, we need a good priest, we need the sacraments, right, and so, at the end of the day, it's important to remember that the church is like this then, so.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: So here's very important is is believed to be in defectively holy, indeed Christ, the Son of God, who, with the Father and the Spirit, is praised as uniquely holy.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: Love the churches as bride, delivering himself up for her.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: So you see, this bride, this beauty of the church, don't walk away from the church because of the sinful people in it.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Go directly to mass, receive the sacraments.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: See, in the old days it wasn't too long before we had, in fact, it wasn't long ago before we had social media and the cell phones and everything we didn't know what the Pope was doing all the time.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: Right, almost, almost sometimes.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: We just need to ignore that.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: And so how did he do this?
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Right that he may sanctify her?
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: He united himself to her, his, his bride, the church to himself as his own body.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: And so it becomes one with Christ.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: When we enter into the sacraments and prayer, we enter into this mystical, this mystical spiritual union with Christ that the saints and the mystics talk about.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: And then he brings the church to perfection and as bodies, as organic building blocks of the church, he's calling us into perfection.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: How does this happen?
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: It's a gift to the Holy Spirit for God's glory.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: Therefore, in the church, everyone, whether belonging to the High Archery right, the bishops or the Cardinals, or even the Pope, or being carried to it.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: We're all called to holiness, right?
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: Look, I used to look up at the Cardinals and the bishops as these people that know so much, and then I found out you know what they're just like some of them are.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: Just like these educators that have PhDs psychological head disorders, I think and the same thing, you know, they're fallen.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: If they're not called to this universal call to holiness, then they wasted all of that time.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: Right, this isn't about more information.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: This is the DNA that's within us, right?
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: So all of that evil in the church or the Vatican?
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: Well, who are we?
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: Right, we're called to be holy.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: So how do we do that?
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: We go receive the sacraments First of all.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: Confession is so important, right, to be washed of the water, to be washed of our sins.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: It's like a nuptial bath, getting ready for the wedding feast, and then we go to Mass and we receive Jesus in the Eucharist.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: That's like making love, a spiritual love, a spiritual oneness.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: Right, I receive Jesus, he becomes one with me, I become one with Him and he brings this oblation to the Father.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: So I read Scripture every day, because this is God speaking to us, right, he's telling us what he's doing and what he's thinking.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: And then what do we do?
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: We take that into ourselves, and then we have to act, we have to become so we receive divine life and love, and then we have to be divine life and love in the world.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: Right, this isn't not easy, but on the other hand, it's not brain surgery either, right?
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: So let me just go on.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: From St Paul in 1 Thessalonians, chapter 4, verse 3, says this for this is the will of God.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: What is the will of God?
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: Your sanctification?
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: We came to a full sense of the dignity of all of us, all the lay faithful, if we consider the prime and fundamental vocation that the Father, god the Father, assigns to each of them in Jesus Christ.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: How, through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us a vocation to holiness, the perfection of love, the Lord Jesus, the divine teacher and model of all perfection, preached holiness of life to each and every one of His disciples, of every condition.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: He Himself stands.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: Jesus stands as the author and consumator of this holiness of life.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: He said in Matthew 5 verses, verse 48, be there for perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Well, how do we do that?
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: We join with Him and we allow Him, his perfection, to be risen to the Father, and then he pours this, the Holy Spirit, back into us, right?
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: We receive that redemption.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: It's amazing.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: Jesus didn't come here to manage our sins since he came here with power, right?
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: So this charge is not a simple moral exhortation, but an undeniable requirement arising from the mystery of the Church.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: She is the choice vine, and all the branches, all the different parishes are growing out of that choice vine that Jesus has redeemed His bride and grow with the same holy and life-giving energies that came from Christ.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: She, the church, is the mystical body whose members share in the same life of holiness as the head who is Christ.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: She is the beloved spouse of the Lord Jesus, who delivers himself up for her sanctification.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: See, when we enter into the church, when we're baptized, when we walk into the story and are we open up our hearts this is what we're doing the Holy Spirit that's sanctified, the human nature of Jesus and Mary's Virginal womb.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: This is from Luke, chapter 1.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: Right off the bat read Luke.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: Now that Advent is here, just chapter 1.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: Archbishop Fulton sheen summarizes the teaching of countless saints and mystics when he proclaims this listen to this, and this came from St Augustine and in the third, going into the fourth century, talking about Jesus, any, any enters the marriage bed of the cross.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: This is profound, he's right, he says this.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: Now, we've always thought, and rightly so, of the son of God on the cross and the mother beneath him.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: So so Jesus's mother Mary's beneath him.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: But watch, he's gonna call her woman.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: She changes her role.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: So he said, that's not the complete picture, that's not the deep understanding.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: Who is our Lord on the cross?
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: He's the new Adam right, the new bridegroom.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: Where's the new Eve at the foot of the cross if, if he became the mother of the living in the natural order, right in the beginning, the first book, end of the Bible and Genesis, it's not this woman at the foot of the cross to become another mother, and so she becomes a symbol of the church.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: And so the bridegroom looks down on his bride from the cross.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: He looks at his beloved Christ, looking at the church Right, and there, right, there is the birth of the church.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: If St Augustine puts it and this is from, but Bishop sheen wrote this down, but he said, as St Augustine puts it, and here he says, I'm quoting St Augustine verbatim the heavenly bridegroom, left the heavenly chambers with the presage of the nuptials before him, he came to the marriage bed of the cross, a bed, not a pleasure but a pain, uniting himself with the woman and consummated the union forever, as it were.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: The blood and water remember when he got hit with the lance in the heart by the soldier?
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: The blood and water that came from the side of Christ was what, the spiritual seminal fluid, impregnated the church.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: It's amazing, right, the power of this.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: And what came out again?
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: The water and the blood, the water of baptism, the blood of the Eucharist.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: Woman, there's your son.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: And so this is Jesus looking down and here, woman, there's your son.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Well, who's the son?
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: That was John, the evangelist that was writing this.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: This is the beginning of the church.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: Christ himself gave up for her, gave, gave himself up for her.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: The bride right that she might be.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: What immaculate.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: Let me finish like this, jesus, and this is from Deus Caritas est, God is love.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: This is Pope Benedict the 16th.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: This is so beautiful.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: This is his first encyclical.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: Jesus gave this act of oblation, offering himself to the father and enduring presence through his institution, institution of the Eucharist at the last supper.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: The Eucharist is so important right.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: He anticipated his death and resurrection by giving his disciples and the bread and wine, his very self, his body and blood as the new manna.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: Read John, chapter 6, right verses 31, and on.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: He goes on to say the ancient world had dimly perceived that man's real food, what truly nourishes him as man this is man and woman is ultimately the logos.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: See, the ancients knew this right, the even.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: You know that the Greek philosophers look for wisdom, eternal wisdom, this same logos, this eternal wisdom now truly becomes food for us as love.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: Eternal wisdom is love.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: The Eucharist draws us into Jesus's act of self-oblation, this offering of himself for his bride.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: We enter into the very dramatic of his self giving.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: The imagery of marriage between God and Israel is now realized in a way previously inconceivable.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: It had meant standing in God's presence right in the Old Testament with Israel, but now it becomes union with God through sharing in Jesus's self gift, sharing in his body and his blood.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: The sacramental mysticism grounded in God's Descension towards us.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: Old Jesus, coming down toward us, huh, enters into our world and to do what?
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: To give himself for us in love.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: It operates.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: Benedict the 16th said this operates at a radically different level and lifts us to far greater heights that anything that any human mystical elevation could ever Accomplish.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: So powerful, isn't it so quickly?
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Three-step plan Get on your knees before you look at that, that goofy phone in the morning.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: Look, the phone can bring some good stuff, but it also wastes a lot of time and brings all this noise into your life.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: Always the knees first and to say in the morning your will be done.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: Right, we kneel before the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and instead of choosing the world, we choose God.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: Number two every temptation that comes at us, then we're gonna use that as an invitation to prayer.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: Whatever that temptation is, open, open, open and invite the Holy Spirit in.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: Invite Jesus into our hearts, right?
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: Jesus, who initiated love, who gives you the power to become a person of love.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: So, so when we do this again, we've said let it be done to me according to your will.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: Every temptation I lift up, I keep inviting Jesus into my heart.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: All day, the Holy Spirit resides within me and what happens?
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: I'm receiving that love.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: And then I have to love others in the truth and then speak the truth in love, right?
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: The last thing I'll just say to you.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: So that's the third thing right action.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: Be a person of love and then, finally, always Confession once a month of possible.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: Receive the Eucharist as often as possible.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Be praying the rosaries incredible Do when you pray the rosary, especially in the evening.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: Or say before you go into bed to Anytime right, but this is how you can just relax into a into an incredible meditation and a gift.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: Every night, read scripture.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: I try to read scripture every day, that scripture for the mass the next day.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: God is always speaking, speaking, speaking, and then Be quiet.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: Well, take a walk, sit there in silence and after you read scripture, just allow that, don't even think about it.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: Just allow God to tell you what he wants to tell you.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: It's such a beautiful thing.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: Huh, this is the, the universal call to holiness.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: This is how we do it.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: Hey, god bless you.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: Thanks for being with me.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: Goodbye everyone.