Latest / Claymore: Become Who You Are / #568 Christmas Gifts w Linda Pieper: The Incarnation, Election of DJT, St. JPII, TOB, Peace and Joy!

Transcript

#568 Christmas Gifts w Linda Pieper: The Incarnation, Election of DJT, St. JPII, TOB, Peace and Joy! · Claymore: Become Who You Are

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the 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.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: 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?
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: What's my purpose?
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: Why were we created male and female?
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: How do I find happiness here on earth?
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: How do I find love that satisfies forever?
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Hey, glad you up on Christmas, merry Christmas.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: I hope you got your shopping done, and it's good to do a show like this, because it's not all about shopping, is it?
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Right, merry Christmas.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: Yes, I've had to enter the brave new world of online shopping.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Well, I'll tell you that's not a bad way to go.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: I like doing that.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, all the issues with the deliveries and so forth, but I'm just about done.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Wow, wow is right.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Well, I'll tell you, you know, mercifullyifully, I don't do much shopping.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: I, my wife does some, obviously because you know you got to do something for all the grandkids, as you know and remember, jack, I'm the wife yeah yeah yeah, but you got too much.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: No, no, thank goodness, you know.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Hey, grab that, grab that little beer behind you there, that's's a Christmas, there we go.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Oh, beautiful.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Sewing teddy bear.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: I sew a lot.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: You what?
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: I sew a lot, yeah, oh, that's beautiful.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's beautiful.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, you know, in the old days, right, think about, you know, families on the prairie and stuff.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: I mean they would keep this pretty simple.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Huh, they would keep this pretty simple.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Look, this is not a political show, of course, but Catholic social teaching will tell us that you know, you got to bring the life and love and freedoms that we enjoy In countries like the United States.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: We have to bring them out.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: So this is my, this is Trump 2024.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: And I look at Trump 2024 as a real gift to our country, as a gift to all of us.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: You know, I saw a tweet on X and it really was talking about the amount of Catholics that the Trump administration is bringing in, and after they said that, I wrote back.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: I said all we've done is really step back from the abyss that we were in.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: I have no, you know, actually I have no qualms about saying this.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: If the Biden administration of Kamala Harris got in, I would say we'd be in major my gosh people don't even realize, yeah, we would have went over the cliff.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: I mean the amount of evil, corruption it's in being.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: You know, biden wasn't the first guy to bring it in, they were the first people to stand up and be so proud of it, though you know proud of it, you know, from the day he went in, signed the executive orders to make abortion easier, making affirmative care, this trans stuff to fill our children full of these chemicals, very strong chemicals that are actually damage their bodies, their fertility, mutilate their bodies in surgeries, and all these things.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: He was just so happy with all this, and so, really, what I wrote back was I said now each one of us need to take a deep breath and know this is not Trump's battle to fight alone.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Each and every one of us must gather up the courage to stand with him and these Catholics he's bringing in if they're good Catholics, because Joe Biden calls himself a Catholic, nancy Pelosi and they can't wait to get us into more wars, kill more babies, trans more kids, push more medical vaccines on us.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: It's just nefarious and it's all being exposed right now.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: All those conspiracy theories, linda, that everybody was talking about, they've all come true, and so this is our time.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: This is our time I really feel this for the laity to stand up.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: This is no time to be lukewarm.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: If we didn't learn anything through this COVID thing, it's that the shepherds laid down.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: They were cowards.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: They closed the churches all the way from the Pope.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: He turned off the lights at the Vatican.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: If we don't stand up against this and the same thing in the government, if we don't stand up against this and the same thing in the government, if we don't stand up and say we declare our freedom and our human dignity comes from this little person that was born in the stable we're going to be talking about a little bit today.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: That happened on Christmas.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: You know this humility of God, huh, the humility.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: So we'll get into that in a few minutes.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: But during all this, I think about all these things going around us and God comes in, takes on a body and comes in how?
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: Not?
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: At the top of a mountain full of glory and coming down from the clouds, full of warrior angels, you know, to avenge all the evil and corruption in the world.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: Warrior angels, you know, to avenge all the evil and corruption in the world.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: He comes in in Nazareth, which, in the Bible, you know the scribes and the Pharisees say nothing good comes out of Nazareth, this backwater, little backwater town.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: He's born in a stable surrounded by animals and you go.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: You can't get any humbler than this, and once you know Jesus Christ, you know God through the Father's heart, you realize this is exactly exactly how he would play out the story, isn't it?
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and Jack, in my preparation I was rereading things we've talked about way in the past, and one of the comments with regards to how Jesus came into the world was he went through every stage of life, even in the womb, so that his incarnation and his redemption included every single one of us.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: You see, and I thought that's so significant to reflect on just a little bit he didn't even like.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: All of a sudden there was a baby.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: He was in the womb, and so it speaks to the humanity of the baby in the womb right from that very beginning.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: Yes, and we've been talking about the prophetic language of the body.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: And what does that mean?
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: It's an analogy.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: Of course, your body doesn't actually speak, unless you're watching my mouth right now move.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: The words that come out of me actually come through the body.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: The body is speaking from the depths of the soul.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: When I think about God creating, we say God created through his word, right Through his speech, but the action came actually and created things.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: And this is what happens with our body.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Our words are coming from our soul, from the depth of our heart, right From our mind and our intelligence, but they come out and they're expressed through the body.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: So this is very much a language of the body.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: And the actions are an important part of that.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: Jack, literally speech, but actions speak even louder than words.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: We know that you can talk the talk, but walk the walk All those things we say in everyday language.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: We know that deep within that it is not only what we say but what we do, and that's how the body speaks.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Yes, and you know, it's so clear John Paul and the saints and the mystics throughout the ages.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: Linda would say that it's man cooperating with evil that brings this evil in the world.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: Cooperating with evil that brings this evil in the world, in other words, those things I mentioned in the beginning.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: All of that evil comes in.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: And I could go down the list right for a long time.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: But this is a Christmas show and we want to be able to come in and talk about the good news.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: And the good news has been offered for all of us and it has been right from the beginning.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: But you're exactly right.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: Through man, cooperating either with God in humility or, full of pride, with Satan.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: We either bring good into the world or we bring evil.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: And John Paul would say it's called self-determination that you and I and everybody listening, every human being has human dignity and that human dignity gives us freedom to actually create ourselves.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: In essence, of course, we didn't choose to come into the world.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: And St Augustine would say you know, the God who created you without you will not save you without you.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: And so this is where we're at.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: We're creative, but now we have a choice.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: And when I do good?
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: So this is where we're at.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: We're creative, but now we have a choice.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: And when I do good, I become good.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: I am good as a person.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: When I do evil, I'm an abortionist.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: I'm part of this Planned Parenthood thing where we're transing these kids.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: When I do that kind of evil, I become evil, I am evil.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: So all of our choices have consequences, don't they?
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: Right, yes, and people ask with shootings and all these horrible things that go on, how could God permit this?
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: How could God let this happen?
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: You know it isn't God.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: He's given us free will and so we have that ability to choose the evil or choose the good.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: It's on us and we have to really recognize that.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: I think it's so important, with the idea of the language of the body In this audience 106, that we're going to pull a few thoughts from.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: The Pope says that we're called to become authors of the meanings of the language of the body.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: You see, and with regards to marriage, as we've been talking about, it's like our job, then, is to consider that we need to deepen that love and faithfulness, the integrity of our marriage, the union, all those things.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: So it's very important to understand that language of the body and our choice in it.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: There's nothing more important.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: You know, as you said, jesus came into to take on a body, came in through the normal way we would all come in, and that's through a mother's womb.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: He comes into a family, the holy family.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: He has cousins and family all around him.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: Our Blessed Mother goes and visits Elizabeth, her cousin right away, who's pregnant with John the Baptist.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: So I remember last year strolling through my neighborhood looking at all the Christmas decorations and I came upon this simple nativity scene and there, that stable.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: It was done so well, it was just lit up with some warm lights inside of it, and our Blessed Mother and St Joseph, of course, were there.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Some animals were there and I look upon Jesus in that straw, in that bed, right that manger, and it reminded me that every child is loved by God and while each individual is created in the image of God, it's the family that's the fuller image, this communion of a father, a mother and a child, and a sacramental reflection of the inner life of the Trinity.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: These are linked, are they?
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: And John Paul would say in this audience, which is number 106, that marriage and the family is a sacramental sign, linked directly, constituted directly, that sacrament of Christ and the Church.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: It's not two different things.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: It's one great sacrament St Paul would talk about in Ephesians 5.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: And what does that mean?
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: That means everything that you said earlier how important this is to walk into the story, to become a person of love, to be able to see marriages and families not as meaningless things.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: You can't redefine marriage in the Catholic Church, you can't tell us that a baby's not a human being, because this is the Imago Dei, isn't it?
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: This is the fuller sign pointing directly to God.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: If we lose this sign, which we've done in modern culture, all chaos breaks loose, doesn't it?
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: It sure does.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: And again we recall that marriage is the best analogy we have of that Trinitarian love.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: And yet the Pope reminded us that, while it's the best, you know, analogies always fall a little bit short of the full reality.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: I mean, we'll never come to that full reality on this side of the veil, you know.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: So that's what's so exciting about thinking about our destiny and where we're headed.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: I pulled Jack a couple of summary statements from very early on, in TOB, where the sacramentality of the body is first introduced to us, and in here it says that God's mystery has been revealed in human flesh, for in the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: Therefore, that title of theology of the body isn't just a title but it's the very logic of Christianity.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: And here's the kind of summary statement Through the fact that the word of God became flesh, the body entered theology through the main door.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: I remember the first time I heard that.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: It just was like I had never really thought of it that way before.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: Hence theology of the body as a title, but as a concept, really made sense.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: And here we are at that time of year, right, we have the incarnation and then we have the birth of Christ that I think.
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: Someplace along the line it was also stated that the incarnation is like the hinge of our salvation, because had he not become incarnate and come in the flesh, where would we be?
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you think about this, you know, maybe we should stop for a second, pause for a second, to ask ourselves what exactly is human dignity?
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: What does that mean to be a person, to be a human person?
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: You know, if you don't answer that question, linda, then you live on the surface of life.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: You never go deep, never going deeper to what's true, good and beautiful, never reaching your heart.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: I think this is the biggest problem we have with these cell phones and the technology.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: The technology, cell phones, the iPads, et cetera.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: They can be used for good, there's no doubt, but I just see so much time being wasted.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: My wife went to see our grandkids today to get some of them off, help some of them get off to school.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: The littlest one's struggling with her spelling and some different things.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: The other three had no problems, but this, the fourth little girl that my oldest daughter has, and she doesn't want to put an ipad down.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: And I told my wife again today.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: I said, when you go over there, you just tell her, you know, just to put it down, you're, you're the boss, you know, you're right, we're the boss, you know, just to put it down, you're the boss, you know right, we're the boss, you know.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: We let these five and six and seven-year-old kids tell us no, no, no, I'm not putting this down.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: No, you're putting it down because, at the end of the day, you don't even know how to spell basic words, because you're looking at the well anyways, the point being, it could be good or it could be bad, right, but I think the biggest thing it does with this little girl and with the rest of us, it separates our hearts.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: We don't get to those big questions.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: And what are those big questions?
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: Who am I right?
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: Who am I?
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: What's my human identity?
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: What's the meaning and purpose of my life?
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Why are we created male and female?
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: None of this stuff.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: We.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: What is love?
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: We can't answer these questions anymore.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: These are things that have been contemplated from time immemorial, I mean, since history began, we stopped asking these questions and we see this chaos that comes and Jesus comes in.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: And, in essence, if you think about this, linda, a body and a soul, a human person without this incarnation that you're talking about, without a body and a soul, a human person without this incarnation that you're talking about, without Jesus, who takes on a body and comes into the world, our default position is sin and death and anybody that disagrees with that, right?
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's just your opinion.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: No, just have some patience.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: You'll prove my point right.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: You'll prove my point.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: Death has entered the world.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: Now this is Christmas and the good news is Jesus comes into the story.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: You look back at some of our beginning theology of the body, and it said this in the beginning.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: It was not so In the beginning.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: It was not so.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: Yes, and so that idea of human dignity, which we need to recover.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, one of the things that is a little bit exciting about President Trump, this little breather is that we have a window of opportunity as he speaks, one nation under God, that many more will awaken to this deep rooted idea of the human dignity of the person.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: And yet, when we say we get our dignity from being made in the image and likeness of God, we need to understand our God is a Trinitarian God and that he is a family, and so we are made in that image and we're made for relationship and our relationship is a communion of other persons, not iPads and iPhones and all those things.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: We are made for relationship with other persons who are also made in the image and likeness of God.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: And if we could not get anything more out of this Christmas season, if we could just meditate on that and reflect on what are my relationships with others that God has put in my life and what you know make my New Year's resolution even being, can I begin to improve those relationships?
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: Start with one person, maybe, you know, but really reflect on the fact that I set aside that technology and I spend time talking with a person playing a game of cards or something you know.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: There's so many things we can do if we just stop and think about it a little bit, on how we can improve and really become that image of the Trinitarian God who is love itself.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so Genesis?
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: We see this in Genesis 2, verse 7, one of my favorite verses from the Bible.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: And you see, god picks up the clay and he blows ruah, his breath, into it.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: Here again, is this breath, this word of God being established through his spirit, coming into us.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: If you just sat back and thought about this human dignity, this is where it comes from.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: We're now a beloved son or daughter of God.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: When I looked at that manger and I see those animals, it's very clear that that holy family, while they're getting along with the animals, while we're part of creation, we're something more and we all know this in our hearts.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: We're something more.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: This is where the anxiety, depression, these suicidal thoughts, addictions come from.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: We're trying to fill ourselves and we don't realize that's the infinite.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: It's that breath that we breathe out, and so Jesus is very clear.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: He said in the beginning it was not so.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: We were linked directly, adam and Eve being created in the image of God, no sin.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: Their heart was open to God, filled with divine grace.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: They became persons of love, just like you said, and because God is love, now I express it in the world.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: Jesus also said the third word.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: He said you know, when we're finished here, we're not going to be married or given away in marriage, because the ultimate intimacy is with God himself.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: You won't need the sign anymore.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: We'll be united with God and with one another.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: Now here's the problem.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: We came into what's called historical man, the second word, and that's fallen man.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: And John Paul in this audience makes it very clear that we are what he calls and what tradition has called the man, men and women, the man of concupiscence, which is the man of the fall.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: So, even though we're baptized, the stain of original sin is taken from us.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: We have entered a battle, linda.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: We have entered a battle.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: We see it all around us, and the good news is in the midst of a battle, linda, we have entered a battle.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: We see it all around us and the good news is in the midst of that battle.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: We see that little infant at Christmastime who takes on a body, to your earlier analogy, takes on a body, walks through the main door.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: And what does that mean?
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: In a sense, he takes on our humanity, unites it once again, as it was in the beginning, with divinity.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: And what does he do?
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: He totally pours this out in humility.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: Right, he suffers every pain, spitting.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: This is what breaks God's heart more than anything, is not just the pain and the suffering.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: It's the rejection of God by man, as it was with Adam and Eve right after the beginning, that brought sin and death in the world.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: And this is what we're doing today, linda.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: We have to go back to that manger and look at that manger and just pray there and feel that peace and joy that comes back into your heart and then fill up that heart, like you said, and then go out and become that person of love.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and when I look at that manger, I am looking at the incarnation of truth, goodness and beauty, and I'm called to reflect that in my life.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: And you talked earlier about being a prophet.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: In this audience the Pope says we are called, through spousal and procreative love, to be a testimony worthy of true prophets.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: And so we once again, as we open, we can be true prophets with the language of our body or we can be false prophets, and that is that man of sin and concupiscence.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: The wonderful thing for me is that you know, when you hear people just kind of say, well, we're kind of stuck, we're stuck in this sin and concupiscence, this tendency towards sin, it's like, well we are if we don't recognize that we have been redeemed.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: But I have to appropriate that redemption, I have to take it on, I have to open my heart to it and if I don't, I will be stuck.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: It's like there won't be any light at the end of the tunnel for me.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: And yet the whole gospel message is, yes, the fall happened, but we don't have to stay there, because the Pope will say are we speaking of the man of concupiscence or the man of redemption?
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: And choose right, which one are you, but it isn't easy, of course.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, our Blessed Mother, at the Annunciation, said yes.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: And if you read Luke, the first part of Luke, the first chapter of Luke, you see that our Blessed Mother was a little confused by this right.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: How could that be that I'm going to be, I'm going to carry the son, because I haven't been with a man.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: You know, you see the real struggle going on there.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: And I did not know a man.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: She says in biblical language, and then the angel says you know, this is God, this is the breath of God.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: Right, he will breathe on you, but you have to say yes, and this is the point you just made, that our Blessed Mother makes her fiat her.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: Yes, let it be done to me according to your word.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: Now, every morning, as you know, linda, every morning the first thing I do before I look at that phone is get down on my knees and I express that I can see our blessed mother beneath the cross.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: I kneel with her and I say let it be done to me according to your word.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: In other words, I open up my hardness of heart to allow god to breathe into me again as it was in the beginning.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: This is so important to do for his incarnation.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: From god, he emits number 22.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: For by his incarnation, from Gaudium et Spes, number 22,.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: For by his incarnation, the Son of God has united himself in some fashion with every man.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: He worked with human hands, he thought with the human mind, he acted by human choice and loved with the human heart.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: Born of the Virgin Mary, he has truly been made one of us, like us in all things except sin.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: And then finally, he conquers sin and death as an innocent lamb, and he merited for us life by the free shedding of his own blood.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: In him God reconciled us to himself and among ourselves.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: From bondage to the devil and sin, he delivered us so that each one of us can say with the apostle paul the son of god loved me and gave himself up for me.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: This is the good news, linda, this is the good news of christmas.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: So while we're shopping, please pause and consider what is going on, right.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he gave himself up for me, Total gift of self, and that's what we're called to do.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: Marry, the most beautiful model saying it all, begins with that fiat and that once and done, every single day, as you say.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: It's like, Father, thy will be done.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: I will accept what your will is for me today and oftentimes.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: You know, the struggles are part of his will, because he's going to bring an even greater good out of those struggles.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: And yet we have at each moment a decision to make.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: You know, am I going to continue with this attitude of thy will be done.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: You know, in my prayers, Jack and we talked recently about my son having a stroke and of course I'm praying, you know, every day, for him and his complete recovery, recovery.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: And yet I have found myself having to put the disclaimer if it is your will, because I only want what God wants for him.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: But I believe deeply that he listens to the prayers of those of us who wish only the good for the other.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: And yet I know too that it's also in God's own time, you know, as we want to have everything just kind of so quickly.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: So it all comes together and it starts with looking at that infant in the manger.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: When you have a situation like yours.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: Kevin Wells, our good friend and author Kevin Wells, wrote a book on the hermit.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: It's called the Hermit.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: On the hermit it's called the hermit.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: By the time, this show today is is put out on christmas eve.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: Kevin wells and I will have done a podcast on on the hermit, and kevin in there saw this vision very clearly with his wife.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: His wife became an alcoholic and he was going through these struggles.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: It's a beautiful story, it's amazing.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: It's called the Hermit and I really recommend everybody get that book.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, if you're looking for a last-minute gift, buy that.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: Amazon is so good, they'll be delivering it tomorrow for your relatives.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: I guess they deliver on Christmas too.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: But anyways, his point in there was he was called to sacrifice, you know.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: But anyways, his point in there was he was called to sacrifice.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: In other words, he was called to fast, to pray, to make amends for his wife.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: So he realized he couldn't do anything.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: He gave it.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: Like you said, this is God's will.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: I can't do anything, you know, I'm powerless.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: She won't even talk to me about this stuff.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: A holy priest who actually became a hermit that's where the title came from really showed him that journey of carrying the cross for her, fasting, praying.
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: It's amazing how that prayer works.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: Right, it's efficacious.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: We are really in a mystical place, linda.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: I mean it can be a brutal place, right, the suffering, because we're in a tension between good and evil fighting it out.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: But just like Jesus took on suffering, we have to all take on suffering.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: It's a hard thing sometimes for us to come to grips with that, but that's exactly what we have to do.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: We have to offer ourselves as a living sacrifice to make amends in this world and to breathe the good in it, and we'll be attacked.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: We'll be attacked for that, because evil is real, unfortunately.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so true.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: If you think about Christ's whole, you know, like, if we go from the very beginning, where he becomes incarnate, conceived of a virgin Mary, born in the stable, as you mentioned, everything that the gospel brings out being raised by Mary and Joseph, his baptism in the Jordan, the transfiguration, where we get that glimpse, you know, inauguration, where we get that glimpse, you know.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: But then we have the passion and the death and rising, the resurrection, all the way through the ascension.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: You know, this is the gospel story and he experienced all of it.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: So why on earth wouldn't we?
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: You know, we're going to experience a great deal of suffering.
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: There will be those high points that Jesus had in his life, but mostly it's being in the battle, which is constant, and always praying for the grace to fight the battle just for one more day and make those choices for the good, true and beautiful.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the problem comes in when you want to hide.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: You know how many.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: We all know people.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, sometimes it's people of means, but sometimes it's just people sitting on their couches watching some mindless show over and over and over again.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: These crazy things, right, we're just we, you know.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: Instead of stepping into the arena taking on the battle, going to visit the poor, going to visit, doing something for foster kids, for prisoners like Christ said, to feed the hungry, you know, instead of doing this, instead of visiting the neighbor that's sick, you know, or taking care of people we want the comfort, it's only until you're willing to take on the suffering, to get out of yourself and to choose the good and choose a good action.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: If I don't do that, I'm choosing not to do anything, and so I'm participating, even without choosing.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: I don't think I'm choosing right.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: I'm not choosing evil on purpose, but you will become evil because there's an evil force in the world, and unless you accept that baby in the manger to come into your heart and be willing to carry the cross out into the arena, you'll never know what it means to be filled with the love and the grace of God, because you realize I can't do this on my own.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: I can't do this Somehow.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: Though when you do it and the saints and the mystics talk about this a lot, we know this in our own lives when you do it, there's a fulfillment and a peace that comes into your heart, a fullness and a joy, and you go.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: How could there be fullness and joy right in walking with or suffering with other people?
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: But it's true.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very paradoxical, and yet anyone that I've ever talked to or with on this very topic finds that when you get out of yourself to do something for someone else, you experience a joy that just totally surprises you sometimes.
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: My sister who passed away about a year ago was very ill towards the end and yet she still had some strength that she was able.
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: She was independent, she could still drive and get around and she decided to help out in a daycare.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: She had been a nurse and she had done public health nursing, particularly working with families, low-income families, with the newborns, you know and to try to get them to have a good start.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: So she always had that in her heart to help others.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: But she couldn't do a whole lot at that point and she found that she could help out at a daycare and they needed as a volunteer.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: You know she wasn't even going to get paid for it and she would go whatever little things they had her doing to help out with the toddlers.
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: And when I would speak to her on the phone she was almost giddy with delight oh, I had so much fun and would tell me a little story of something and I'm like, yes, dear Lord, she's getting it, because so often she had been kind of wallowing in all her illness and all her legitimate problems that she had and yet she just stepped out this little bit and found this joy, as I say, to the point of being giddy it was so wonderful for her to experience, and I'm like that's it, you know, and we all have to do that, and we will find that joy that God has for us at the end of that suffering or during the suffering.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: So often you're going to find out that, as you're trying to be a gift to others, they actually become the gift to you, mother.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: Teresa spoke about that a lot.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: She said I always saw the face of Jesus in the poor, in the homeless.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: There's an astounding scene after Jesus' resurrection.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: We talk about this ruach right, this breath that God breathed into us in the beginning, when we were at that tree, adam and Eve, they breathed.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: In a sense they breathed that out.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: It's not that they didn't have some reason free will, different than the animals.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: They still knew that.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: But their reason could become very darkened, very unreasonable.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: Their free will was no longer free because they no longer were able to choose the good.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: They had already chosen evil, to walk away from God, who is good.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: Jesus has this astounding part now in the resurrection.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: He comes into the upper room to the disciples who are hiding for fear of the Jews, and I'm going to read you just a little part of that.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors were shut where the disciples were for fear of the Jews.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: Jesus came.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: He goes right through the door the door is locked and stood among them and said to them peace, be with you.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: Here's that peace right?
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: Because he knows they're nervous, they're anxious.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: We all are, aren't we?
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: We're all nervous about the future.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: We're nervous about suffering, we're nervous about the wars.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: They're very real things.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: But Jesus comes in and he says Peace, be with you.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: When he said this, he showed him his hands and his side and again, just so nobody misses it, he says peace, be with you.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: As the Father sent me, so I send you.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: And when he said this, he breathed on them.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: He breathed on them.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: So this is only the second time.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: So here's Jesus, takes on a body, gives it up, offers it up, takes on sin and death.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: Right, remember, I said body, soul.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: Our default position is sin and death.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: It has to be filled with grace, as it was in the beginning.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: Here's Jesus filling you with that grace.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: Again.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: He breathed on them so that my body, soul, now again is filled with that grace that gives me the potential for human freedom, the potential for human flourishing.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: But then I have to do what we've been talking about, linda.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: I have to receive that and now I have to act on it in order for that grace to become efficacious in me, alive in me.
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: We're a body again, and the language of the body means I must speak this language in the world.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: I have to be a prophet.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: How do I become a prophet?
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: I have to speak this in the world.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: How do I do this?
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: I become a person of love.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: I have to be a prophet.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: How do I become a prophet?
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: I have to speak this in the world.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: How do I do this?
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: I become a person of love.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: I walk into the arena, but not alone this time.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: I am carrying the heart of Christ within my heart, and so I die with him, so I can rise with him.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: This is what this is about.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: You walk into the mystery, right in humility, or you become prideful, and in that pride, oh, I will be like God, I will decide what is good and what is evil.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: And this is what you see around us.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: So you know, the beauty of what we're talking about here is not a get-rich-scheme.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: It's not about power.
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: Just like I said, jesus didn't come into the world for power scheme.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: It's not about power.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: Just like I said, jesus didn't come into the world for power.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: When we're seeking just power for power's sake, money for money's sake, we walk into the same pride and it will take us down.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: It will certainly separate our hearts from God, just like that technology does Jesus, and the Bible would call it hardness of heart, right and the Bible would call it hardness of heart, right?
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: Yes, Jack, I love that you brought up the reading with peace, because immediately I thought here we are in the Christmas season, Christmas Eve, when this airs, and a lot of us still send out Christmas cards in my generation anyway, the younger ones the Shutterfly things are nice, but you still have the option there of what you're going to say on the card and we still talk about the peace right and the joy of the season, and I think we're talking about that peace that surpasses all understanding, as St Paul says.
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: As St Paul says, and you know, it's there just waiting for us to appropriate it, to grab it, to get it into our hearts.
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: What perfect time, you know, this season, this is where we have to do that.
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: This Sunday we were not at our regular church because we were traveling back, and so you know, we found a church nearby the hotel and in the homily the priest was actually contrasting joy and happiness and what he said was that, you know, we could be happy by little things that happen, things we have, whatever.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: That's all external, external, but the joy is internal and he boiled it down to that understanding that we are known and loved by God is that source of that joy.
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: So it all, kind of toys in, comes together, peace and joy together.
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: And this is the season.
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: But you've kind of explained how it happens here and I'm just repeating look what we do on a day-to-day basis during the season.
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: It's all right there in front of us, but it has to get down into the heart, not just the busyness of it, right?
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah and this is where our human dignity again comes from, from being this beloved son or daughter of God.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: But I have to receive it.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: I can't give what I don't have.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: This is why it's so difficult.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: It's so difficult for us.
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: St Catherine of Stana talked about this a lot.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: She saw the weakness within her.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: She was very conscious of how difficult this could be to act as a person of love.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: So to become a person of love, so we have to become and experience this in faith, right?
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: We have to open ourselves up to prayer.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: The prayer and the sacraments are what's going to fill us.
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: We have to sit in silence.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: We have to pray.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: We have to take time to do that every day.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: That's why I love strolling around and looking at these mangers and looking at the lights, just slowly, kind of contemplating things, you know.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: And then we have to receive the sacraments.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: Without that, st Catherine said, you'll lose heart and inevitably fall.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: She said, at the slightest obstacle.
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: So again it's walking into the story and think about this human dignity.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: Again, it's not a passive thing, it's an active thing.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: I have to say yes and then I determine myself.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: Think about the human dignity here.
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: I determine whether I become a person of love and I am good, or I take and grasp and I become a person of evil.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: So we're creating ourselves at the same time.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: So God creates us, but we're in this temporal space.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: The person that we become is up to us.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: And St Catherine would say, as John Paul said, you cannot take that away from a person.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: You can't take my free will away.
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: My conscience is still there, but my free will is also still there to choose.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: That's the one thing that human dignity really gives us is you can't take, you can beat me, you can crucify me, you can scourge me as jesus, you can throw a crown of thorns on someone's head, but it's going to take courage to fight these battles.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: You know, I know this even today in our, in our apostle linda.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know there's a lot of evil in the church.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of evil shepherds around.
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: You know, when you stand for the truth, you're going to get attacked.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: It's not easy to do.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: It'll even take your breath away sometimes because you'll go.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: I thought I was just speaking in a Catholic church, you know.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: And anyways, because it's Christmas, we won't get into all those details, but the battle is real and again.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: So the first thing, before you look at that phone, our fiat right Be it done to me, according to your word.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: The second thing is the temptations will come.
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: Temptation's not a sin.
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: Jesus himself was tempted.
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: So use every temptation that floods into your mind, your body, your soul today as an invitation to prayer, right, as an invitation to get closer to God.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: And if you use every temptation as an invitation to prayer, you're going to be praying a lot, huh.
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: And then finally be a person of love Love the next person.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: You see, it's not brain surgery, it's not easy, but it's not brain surgery.
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you've got a great summary.
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: A couple of thoughts.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: You know, the freedom as we create ourselves and the freedom to choose For freedom.
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: Christ has set us free and we have that available to us.
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: You know we have to act on that freedom.
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: Mother Teresa also said with regards to love you know, if you're in a situation and there appears to be no love there, put love there and you will find it.
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: You know, I thought I gotta think about that one, you know, but that's really just saying.
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: So.
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: Here's a tense situation or some of the temptations has arisen to be angry or whatever it might be, you know.
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: So it's not there.
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: I'm not feeling love.
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: Do the loving thing, put love there and you'll find it, you know.
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: So it's simple but not easy, and yet that's kind of our New Year's resolution.
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: I'm going to work on this, right?
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: Merry Christmas everyone.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us today.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: We appreciate it.
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: Christmas 2024, can you imagine?
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: I mean life just will fly by.
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: We're in a temporal space.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: Use this time, like we just said.
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: Huh, go really, look at a manger, think about the Holy Family, think about all those things that we're talking about today.
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: Spend time at a church.
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: I'm going to find a chapel today and just spend some time in adoration.
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: I missed Mass this morning, kind of getting ready I got a late start getting ready for this podcast.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: Even today there's a Mass out in the country.
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: I know there's a country church that has a Mass on Tuesday nights and, of course, on Christmas Eve itself is when this will go live, and Christmas Eve there's Midnight Mass and all kinds of things going on today.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: So, linda, merry Christmas to you.
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: You know I probably won't connect again with you, maybe even till 2025, right, we'll see how it goes A few weeks out.
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, merry Christmas to you and to those who maybe are going to midnight mass or some mass on Christmas day, who do not attend mass regularly, let this Christmas mass be the start, you know, really, let it be the start to.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: I'm hearing your voice about missing mass.
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: I can't get to daily mass, but those who do it's, you know, it's really like disrupting to my whole, being Like I didn't get to mass today.
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, those of us who can't get to daily mass, prayer is my substitute, and then adoration when I can, and so whatever level might work for you, you know, let this Christmas Mass be the start for you.
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: You won't regret it.
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: No and if you haven't gone for a while, the last thing Linda remind them about confession.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: I have to be the devil's advocate here.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: Oh yes, the devil would love to have you go to Mass, receive the Eucharist unworthily.
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: If you've missed Mass in the past, you've got to go to confession.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: You've got to take that nuptial bath.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: Get cleaned up so that you can become one flesh with Christ.
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: Absolutely All right, everyone Thanks so much.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Bye everyone.