Latest / Claymore: Become Who You Are / #503 "The Mystery Is Great"; The Systematic Destruction of the Nuclear Family

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#503 "The Mystery Is Great"; The Systematic Destruction of the Nuclear Family · Claymore: Become Who You Are

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Become who you Are podcast, a production of the John Paul II Renewal Center.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: I'm Jack Rigg, your host.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Hey, thanks for joining me today.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: St Catherine of Siena said that if you become who you are, that you would literally set the world on fire.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: And St Athanasius, an early church father and a doctor of the church, said the son of God became man so that we might become God.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: You know I make a wild guess at this, but I bet you, most of us, are a bit disconnected from this divine life that these saints are pointing us to.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Yet Saint John Paul II said there's an echo of the story of this divine life that we're created for, inscribed in each human heart, in your human heart, and if you put on the proper lens if I put on the proper lens we can get in touch with this echo within us in such a way that we have that aha moment.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: See, that's the genus of St John Paul II's theology of the body.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: It connects our lived experience of life to the gospel in such a way that our life takes on a whole new meaning and helps us answer those big questions that our whole culture is so confused about today meaning and helps us answer those big questions that our whole culture is so confused about today.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Who am I?
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: What's my purpose?
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Why were we created male and female?
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: How do I find happiness here on earth?
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: How do I find love that satisfies forever?
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Hey, glad you're with me.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Before I bring Linda on, just a quick note or observation or bit of information.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Many times I'm asked, we're asked, at the John Paul II Renewal Center with all the craziness going on in the world and trying to get the truth, trying to understand the truth, trying to get closer to Jesus Christ, to our Blessed Mother, we need to help, don't we?
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: We need the sacraments, we need to help, we need prayer and we need a good parish.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: We need a good parish.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: So often I'll just say look, you got to find a good, solid priest and a good pastor and build a community, put roots down in that parish and help each other, fortify one another.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Well, one of those priests that are so good is Father Michael O'Connor.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: He's from Our Lady of the Gulf Catholic Church in Bay, st Louis Mississippi, pretty far from here, from me.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: I'm from Chicago, but anyways, a friend of mine sent me a homily of his that he did late last year it looks like New Year's Eve, maybe of 2023.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: And he talked about Houston.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: We have a problem, the destruction of the family and I listened to that, and so some of the things that he said in that homily are on my mind as Linda and I unpack today's episode.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: The mystery is great, so I'm going to incorporate, just because they're on my mind, probably a couple ideas from Father Michael O'Connor.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: So if I use some of your stuff, father Michael.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Thank you very much.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: I appreciate it.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: And what a great homily.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: I'll see if I can dig up the link to that and put it in the show notes if everybody wants to watch it.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: He's on YouTube and you know.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: Just one great homily after another.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: So if you're looking for a priest to listen to a wonderful priest, there's a lot of them out there.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: So just look up, father Michael O'Connor, and if you ever get down to it, looks like it's right on the Gulf, so it really looks cool.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Our Lady of the Gulf Catholic Church Bay, st Louis Mississippi.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: All right, buckle up and get ready for today's episode.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: We are back for audience number 93.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: John Paul II calls this the Mystery is Great, linda, good to see you, welcome.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: Good morning Jack.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: Good to see you too.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: The mystery is great Many deep thoughts here in this audience 93.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: So I'm excited to get going to unpack this.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: John Paul presented this on September 8th 1982.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: It's again, it's one of those things you know, when you start to look out, linda, into the world, and you see what's going on in the world, we can't be naive in facing the problems that we see out there.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: We see a lot, you know, there's no doubt about it that people, more and more when I run into them now are sensing something is wrong.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: They don't always understand what that is.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: They're looking for solutions and we have the solution here.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: So you know, Houston, we have a problem.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: You know we have a lot of evil unleashed on the world.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: At the end of the day, if I had to ask you know what is the foundational problem, what is the greatest problem that we have?
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: Now, there's a variety of answers to that, but if I ask people what is the greatest problem we have, it is the breakdown of the family and the lack of holiness in families, the lack of faith and respect for life, for the dignity of life, the respect and honor that is supposed to be passed down from husband to wife, the wife to husband and then down to their children, where children are educated by their parents, educated in the faith, educating in virtue, educated in how to live, how to love one another, how not to be a bully, how to learn about what's true, good and beautiful in the world.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: And all of that is disintegrating, and we wonder why these young people join gangs, why there's so much hatred, and we see this even being promoted again within schools, within the government.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: The evil is pressing from within our own hearts and also from without being pushed down on us, and so the good news is that we know the solution.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: The solution is for the integration of the family with Christ and the church, the eternal bridegroom that comes back into the story and wants to marry us.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Because marriage and I'll finish with this, marriage is the first form of the church.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Marriage is the church we think about.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: I want to go to church.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: I want to go to church.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: Well, the first church, the first form of the church in the beginning, better sheet, what Jesus would say takes us back to the beginning, to the first creation of mankind.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: Man and woman is a family, marriage and the family.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: This is the sacramental sign that was to raise up all of creation as a church right to praise God, raise it all up to be priest, prophet and king.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: And this is what we're in union and communion with God, filled with divine life and love, adam and Eve and then all the rest flowing into the family.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: We're to bring this out into the world and bring this love story and this perfection into all of creation.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: Creation wasn't done when God was there.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: Creation was just the beginning and everything was sprouting and we were to go finish that story.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: And so, of course, when sin came into the world, we twisted and distorted that.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a couple of thoughts You're speaking here.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: The church reminded me of how we often speak of our homes being the domestic church and, yeah, maybe that idea has been lost to so many of us and we need to think about that again.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: Why would it be that our homes are the domestic church?
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: Because that's where marriage and the family is existing.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: We won't change the culture until we take back that, until we understand what you're saying.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: Hard to be countercultural and to put into their own homes and then out in their circle of influence, what a good marriage and a strong family looks like.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: But it is so darn hard in our culture and I would like to recognize everyone right now who is struggling and trying very hard now, who is struggling and trying very hard.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: Encourage them.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: Don't give up, because, really, if you think about the evil pressing in, if we think about what evil really is, it's the lack of the good.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: So if we have all these things we identify as evil, they don't have their own substance, so to speak, but what is missing is the good that should be there and that's what we need to strive for.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: It might be another way to look at this task that we all have this call to holiness, that the mystery of God is calling all of us to holiness.
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: If that seems overbearing sometimes, you know, because I don't think of myself as very holy, maybe I can start to think of myself as good.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: How do I bring good into my home, my family, my life, and then that would spread out, you know, to everyone else.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: That is a part of my life.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, if you want to express everything you just said in a nutshell, it's called to love one another.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: If you think about this, we are trying to be countercultural, we're trying to love one another, which is countercultural.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: In this world, missionary, you don't have to go out and say, hey, I have to do something different than the culture, you just have to love one another.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: But you have to love one another in the truth and you have to speak truth to one another in love.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: You know the Holy Family.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: If you want to get an idea of what that looks like, you just look to the Holy Family.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: It's a model, and a radical model of purity, fidelity, holiness and we're called.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: You know, all of Vatican II can be summed up in one phrase, which is the universal call to holiness we are called to be holy and that is countercultural.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Of course.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: It's been countercultural since, you know, cain killed Abel, since Adam and Eve put loincloths on and hid in the garden.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: All of these things are an expression of building up the culture and the nation.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Sin has come in the world and this is the reality.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: I think the only good thing that I could see that's come out of all of this sin and destruction and violence and hatred is that evil has been manifested through us.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: So, just like we started out saying that you have to really bite into this, hard is to say, love is to be expressed through us.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: That's how love gets into the world.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: How does truth, how does all the transcendentals that you're getting to with what's true, what's good, what's beautiful, especially the beauty of love, get into the world?
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: It gets into our bodies, right, john Paul's thesis our bodies, in fact our bodies alone, make visible the invisible, the spiritual and divine.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: What you're seeing today is a disconnection from that grace, from that holiness Only God is good and that disconnection.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: Evil is going on.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: This battle between good and evil is going on in each human heart and we are losing this battle.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: When you lose this battle, evil is what is going to be manifested through you.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: The scary thing is you and I, disconnected from God, right, fighting this battle every day.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: This is what a Christian does, this is what a Catholic does, a Christian does, someone who believes.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Every day, you have to get up and you have a battle going on.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: You never get rid of this battle in this temporal space, the powers and the principality of evil.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: Satan himself is very strong and, no matter what happens, we have to get up every day, and other people don't have to do they.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: They can get up and just be themselves.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: I want to be myself.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: This is pride.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: I want to just be myself, accept my identity, accept my sins and and many people, accept their sins.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: But at the end, you're not going to be happy, you're not going to find what you're looking for, and you may find some little momentary pleasures, but I'll I'll exchange that for peace and joy and a depth of happiness and love.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Anytime.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Is is a is a person that's well experienced with all of those other you know, make myself happy for many, many years.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so true, and you know we cannot overstate the fact that good and evil, love or use is manifest through us, through our bodies.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: We are the visible creation in the world that brings one or the other into the world.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: And think about this Jack Christ, in taking on a body, was the ultimate manifestation of bringing love to the world through his body given up for us.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: So we are all to look to him as our model, and the Pope in our audience today makes a very, I think, clarifying statement.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: It's at the end of paragraph one.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: Let me pick up here.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: So the plan in the created world with the definitive revelation and manifestation, namely the revelation that christ loved the church and gave himself for her, endowing his redemptive love with a spousal nature and meaning, which is why St Paul is working so hard to link our understanding of how marriage and the family reflect this love of Christ giving himself up for all of us, for the church.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: And the Pope says definitive revelation.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: It's like there's no other revelation, revelation.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: This is it, this is what we are called to.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: So the linkage, if we want to bring it to a more everyday level, when you talk about how, unless we fix marriage in the family.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: Nothing is really going to get fixed here and we just keep, you know, moving further and further away from it right now.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: However, as I said earlier, there are the pockets of people who are really trying and I think we're beginning to see some of that manifest clearly in those groups of people who are working very hard at their marriages, through all difficulties, and working hard to raise their children counter-culturally.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: So, while it's looking pretty grim on one hand, there are many sparks of light that I'm seeing where, when the main task is working on marriage and family, we're seeing some very good results coming from that yeah.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, mother Teresa said that if you want to change the world, go home and love your family, love and sacrifice for your family.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: This is what we're missing so often in fatherhood, when I'm talking to men, you know is that sacrifice and understanding.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: They'll go to work, you know, and bring home money and stuff, but it can't stop there.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: You know, there's a.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: There's a story that we were read not too long ago.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: It was.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: It was a.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: It was a, you know, a fairly rich guy and a lot of business affairs, very, very busy guy, but he spent some time almost every day if he wasn't traveling every day teaching his children about faith, asking them about school, talking to them about what he did for a living, asking them about their own lives and their own interests, and every day he tried to do that.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: You know, certainly every day that he was home having dinner together whenever he could, and not just pushing that out of the way.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: No matter how busy he was with business, he would go back and spend time with his family.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: The industrial revolution took that away.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: So now we have to make a conscious decision to do that when I say that it was you lived on a farm, or you were a blacksmith or you had some trade when you a mason, you would teach your son that you would pass that down.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: A blacksmith would pass that down to his son and his son would pick that up and get to know that trade.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: And when the industrial revolution came and fathers worked outside of the home, we lost that continuity and so we have to make a deliberate attempt to do that.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: So a lot of men, linda, bring home the money and think, well, that's enough.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: You know, we have that picture from the 40s and the 50s where the father got home, he took his shoes off, he went back in his recliner, grabbed a drink and a cigarette and that was it.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: He was done and he expected his wife and everybody else just to kowtow to him.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: That was a terrible image.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: The real image is the father that comes home tired and beat up and whatever, and then turn to his wife and to the kids and ask them how their day is and lend a hand and let's put dinner on the table, let's talk a little bit.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: And this is the real sacrifice, isn't it this?
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: is not easy to do.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: And that's exactly what I was thinking, jack.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: When we talk about gift of self or that self-sacrifice, that's what we're talking about.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: I'm tired, I don't feel like doing this.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: I'd rather just take a nap, eat my dinner and rest, and that's when it counts as that true gift of self the good times when you're playing and whatever is nice.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: But it really, really counts when I don't feel like it and everything within me is crying out.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: I don't want to do this.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: And yet we do.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: You know, and and you know, we've taken it so much further.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: So the industrial revolution took dad out of the home, and then we pushed it even further as things proceeded to take mom out of the home too, and so now you have the double trouble of both not being there.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: You know, with the children coming home both being tired, nobody feeling like they're wanting to have any quality family time, and you can see how that all worked to destroy our families.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: I mean when you're distracted as parents and you're on your own phones.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: When you get home, put those stinking phones down, walk in the door, put those phones down, put them on top of the refrigerator, turn them off for a little while, and and and and the same with the kids.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: You have to spend that time together because a woman walks in, just like you said.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: She's frazzled too.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: What am I going to put on the table for dinner?
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: Then she looks at her husband.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: She goes how about you?
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: I worked all day too.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: And then you know right.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: And now the kids are standing there who haven't got any attention at all, who have been squirming in school all day listening to some ideological baloney, you know, and half in half the schools around now and now they have all these questions of their parents and all these things that could have been solved, at least a relationship right, where a bond could have been formed.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: And what do we do?
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: We don't even see one another, we don't even make dinner together, and this is sad, and this is why I started out the way I did with this.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: You're seeing a breakdown in letting evil come into the world.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: This is how it happens.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: We think it's some thing out there somewhere we can't get our handle on.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: No, it starts right here in what you called and, of course, what John, Paul and the church itself calls the domestic church, the primordial church, the first form of the church.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: You know, when Jesus comes into the world to restore this, think about how important the family is.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: He didn't come in riding on a stallion, he came in through a family.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: He was formed in his mother's womb, in our blessed mother's womb, right, he took on, you know, her blood features.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: You know, when he came out of the womb he had features of our Blessed Mother.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: You know it was an amazing story.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: And then Joseph, think about what we just said.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: Joseph was a carpenter.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: His son was in there for the first 30 years of his life.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: You know his son was there, you know, learning how to make chairs and tables and other things, and so that's what this model is.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: The model that we're talking about was the holy family.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: And then, when Christ comes back in.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: You know God, you know.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: Christopher West described it as God wants to marry us.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: God wants to restore because marriage was in the family is always an image of the relationship God wants with us.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, he wants that communion of persons.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: I'm going to look at my notes here because a couple of things are kind of jumping out at me.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: Earlier you talked about the primordial sacrament of marriage, about the primordial sacrament of marriage, and the Pope talks about it being the most ancient revelation of God's plan for the created world.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: But then Christopher West also points out so in Ephesians that we're studying here from Ephesians 5, 21 through 33, the Pope says this is quite interesting where St Paul will talk about For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and unite with his wife and the two will form one flesh.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: This mystery is great.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: I say with reference to Christ and the Church.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: Now Christopher West points out that the one flesh union isn't meaning just the joining of the two physical bodies, but it means the communion of persons.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: So here we are being called to sharing the life of the Trinity, with God wanting to marry us.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: That can be thought of as communion of persons.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: Now I'm going to fast forward to putting that in the context of our family.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: Do we have any understanding at all of communion of persons within our family, our most immediate family?
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: What does it mean, if anything, to us?
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: And yet, if we talk about the holy family, it jumped out at me, jack.
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: You may think I'm going crazy here, but are we understanding that holy family?
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: First we need to be a family, then we work on becoming holy within that family.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: If I'm going to be a family, it means we're individual persons who must share in communion with each other.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: And what does that mean?
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: Can we unpack what the reality of that looks like?
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: I think we can.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: You know, and I think what the Pope is trying to help us understand this, because how can we have communion with the persons of the Trinity if we can't even who we cannot see, you know, if we don't have that communion of persons within our own family?
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: So I think you know, for me that's like let me dwell on that a little bit and put it within my own family and my own relationship with those people.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: And what do I see?
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's the grace.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: It's the grace.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: You know that you don't do this on your own.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: What you're describing, you know people that are trying to do this.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: You know, trying to be good.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: People will find that they will often fail at this.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: People will find that they will often fail at this.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: We all fail at this and this is why we know that love is manifested through the sacraments, through prayer, through the Mass, the Mass.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: This is happening.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: At the Mass, you know, we bring up the bread and wine of human hands.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: We offer that.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: So we're offering right those elements, those physical elements.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: Christ comes into those physical elements.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: This is an oblation of what we offered, along with Christ offered, and he offered his whole body.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: This is what you do in marriage you offer your whole body to another person.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: Now we're offering this body, extending it out to Christ, who takes on our body, in a sense, all of our bodies, unites them to divinity right within his body, takes these gifts that we offered, he goes into these gifts through the Holy Spirit, offers all of this to the Father, who accepts his oblation, his sacrifice, and pours this back into us so that we can manifest this power of love in the world, and we will have to sacrifice in order to get that done.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: Our sacrament has to be a sacrifice, has to be a gift of oneself.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: John Paul would say, and he would say even to young people Young people, you know that your whole life has meaning to extent that it's given away as a gift to others.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: You see, this isn't just marriage as between a man and a woman.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: This is marriage between Christ and the Church that we begin to live out from the day that we're born, in a way, right, we have to be taught this, and so this will be the last subject I think we should talk about is really how we are given, as parents, the responsibility to teach children how to love, and we have to educate those children.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: We educate them in the beauty of their bodies, the sacredness of their bodies, the sacredness of marriage and the meaning of that, and the meaning of a child that comes in a mother's womb.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: That can't just be destroyed because I'm too busy today.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: That marriage is not without meaning.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: It can't be between just anybody.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: It has to be between a man and a woman who are open to life, that can bring life out of that sacramental sign, and it's not about going out and making a baby in a test tube.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: We will never grasp any of this if we don't understand this as a sacramental sign that manifests, actual manifests.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: The grace and power of God within us, unites us to God and when we make love to one another, we're renewing our wedding vows.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: If we don't understand those things.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: We're always going to be wondering what the heck is wrong with my life and my marriage and my whatever.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so important.
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: So that one flesh union.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: Think of how christ demonstrates that for us.
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: You know, many catholics even today don't believe that of the true presence uh, body, blood, soul and divinity in the eucharist.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: And the church is working to help all of us come back to that understanding.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: And it is his body and his blood.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: And when we receive Holy Communion we have that union, that one flesh union with Christ.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: It's such a beautiful, visible sign for us that we now have that union with him, as he's allowed himself to sacrifice to the depths of humbling himself to actually become a himself in our host.
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: I'm struggling trying to explain this because it's so deep.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: So, in that one flesh union that we have with Christ, and we see the linkage to marriage in that one flesh union, our bodies given to each other as husband and wife.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: But then think of this, jack, when that results in new life, as God graces, that union beginning with the mom's body this is my body given for you, the baby.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: There's so much self-sacrificing in that.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: And then when the reality for dad, when the baby is born, this new human life.
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: So not only is he provider and protector for his wife, now it's for the children, and so what we're talking about here becomes very real and very practical, and we've got to get it on that level that the bottom line is our bodies given for each other through the love that is manifested in all the sacrificing that we're called upon to do.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: And look at it.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: A man carries the seed of life and when he offers himself to his wife or to any woman, and if she becomes pregnant, he walks away.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: When you walk away from that responsibility, say, well, I'll pay to take care of that and I walk away from that, you're walking away from the responsibility for that life and laying all that burden on a woman.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: That burden?
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: Once that seed is planted, that burden falls, to your point, almost totally on the woman.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: Not that a man isn't going to have to take this as a lifelong project.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: This child that comes out and the woman that was pregnant with this child and brought forth his life or her life into the world.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: This is a big deal.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: This is a big deal.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: So the only other thing I want to say quickly, linda, is that you talked about no longer believing in Christ and the Eucharist, his real presence, or not even going to church.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: Well, don't think that that hasn't made a huge impact on the dysfunction that we're seeing in marriages and the families.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: If everything we said in the front end of this was true, then in the back end, when you no longer believe this, when you are delinked from Christ and the Eucharist, look it, I could receive the Eucharist.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: But if I don't believe, if I don't open myself up, if I don't use my free will to walk deeply into that story, something is going to be lost there.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: And if I don't even show up, or show up sporadically, and then no longer go to confession and just receive them in my flip-flops and my shorts and my you know, my ripped t-shirt, and you know I don't really care and I and I show up whenever I feel like it.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: Look at I get it, people do it.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: You know, and I'm not trying to, you know, be self-righteous here, or, you know, can, you know, judge anybody?
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: You know, at the end of the day, I just say don't be surprised if dysfunction doesn't come into your own heart, into your families, into your marriages.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: The evil out there is pervasive and you need the grace.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: You need the grace and you need the grace, you need the grace, yeah, yeah, that really is the bottom line.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: Not much I could add to that, just if people can put it in the context of their lives.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: You know, walk the man, walking away.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: The child is not a burden, the child is a gift.
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: And it's another, in my view, key idea that we've lost really in our culture that children are a gift, not a burden.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: And so that kind of ties into the whole idea of gift of self, that Christ gifts us with the children, not to burden us but to share that love.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: You could see the dysfunction even in people as they get older who have rejected that, just say I don't want kids.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: Look, some people can't have kids.
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: We know all that.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: Right, I'm talking about people that just reject the idea of having children.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: As they get older 60, 70, 80 years old, even 50 years old, I mean you see them getting more and more selfish.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: It's a process.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: Sin is a process, evil is a process.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: Selfishness becomes a greater selfishness becomes a greater selfishness.
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: I mentioned Father Michael O'Connor at the beginning of the show and he was talking about how we need to talk to our kids about what we bring to the table at the John Paul II Renewal Center.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Linda is Love Ed to help parents, empower parents to get this word down.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: So if anybody's listening here today says, oh my gosh, I know I need to talk to my kids about all these things, but how do I do it?
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: Well, we have a way to do it.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: So just reach out to us and we'll show you how to do that.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: And it's important, it's not a one-time conversation.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: What we teach you to do is not only have the vocabulary to speak to your kids.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: We do it with you and also create a bond.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: We don't create the bond, but you create the bond in this experience, through Christ and this church, so that you can continue this conversation at home, because this is not a one and a done thing.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: When we talk about the beauty of our sexuality and the sin all around us, if you take this marital embrace outside, we see what happened with pornography and infidelity.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: This is a mortal sin, this is a twisting of the sacramental sign, and I remember this priest I was alluding to Father O'Connor.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: He said he was talking to a religious brother.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: He says and we're having a conversation about these things and making sure parents talk to their kids about these issues.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: He was kind of poo-pooing what I'm telling you right now, father O'Connell said.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: And he said I don't see it really.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: And he says you don't see it, look around, you don't see the death all around you.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: You don't see the death of the family, the death of individuals, the confusion, the chaos, the violence, the hatred.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: Oh, my gosh, the brothers and sisters in Christ, we have a problem, houston.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: We have a problem and it's that we don't see the evil and the sin that's been unleashed because of a lack of grasp of what our conversation, linda, has been so far today.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: And that'll be the last words I have to say on this for the day.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: It's all yours to finish up and take us home.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: Well, my thoughts are flip that over to the parents, who know that they need to have these discussions with these children and maybe feel like you know they haven't been doing a very good job.
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: Let them think too.
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: You know, actions speak louder than words.
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: What have your actions been?
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: You know, when you and when mom and dad are kind of agitated with each other, does it become a full blown argument, or do they calm down and, you know, come to terms with whatever the issue is and hug each other or whatever.
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: All of those little things.
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: The actions that we take speak very loudly to our children and when we complement that with the actual instruction of what we need to be telling them about all these issues, it works very, very well.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: So I want to encourage people to really seek that out and to look at their own lives and they can make some changes immediately.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: Right, I can be more loving the very next moment if I plan to be, rather than being angry or whatever.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: So a lot of key points here today.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: Jack and you do well to encourage people to seek out Love Ed and to look at how they're doing in their marriages and to look for that evil, because it's there and we need to start.
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: You know the spiritual warfare that we talk about all the time.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: It's the battle of good and evil, and right now we're not doing real well, so we've got to pick up the pace.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: And I said I wasn't going to say anything else.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: Don't be discouraged, because, as you were saying all these things, I thought well, that's me, I'm the one that screwed that up.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: I'm the one that screwed that up.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Look, these are not easy, right.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: And when I look back, I could have did it much better, but now we know and now we can share what we learned.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: You know, and hopefully some young couples out there too will start, you know, will see this right off the bat and avoid a lot of pain and suffering.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: But those of us that have already caused a lot of pain and suffering, you know to your point, you just start today.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: You start when you find out St Augustine.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: Many of the saints you know they were late bloomers.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: There are a lot of saints out there that were late bloomers, right, and suffered a lot in their marriages and their families and all kinds of things.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: So, hey, by the grace of God, go I right, all right, everybody.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: Thanks, linda, thanks for being with us.
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: Everyone.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: Talk to you soon.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: Bye-bye, bye, bye.