Latest / Claymore: Become Who You Are / #490 Pope John Paul II and "The Eternal Plan Of Man's Salvation in Jesus Christ"

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#490 Pope John Paul II and "The Eternal Plan Of Man's Salvation in Jesus Christ" · 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?
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: What's my purpose?
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: Piper, linda, how are you?
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: Doing good, jack, how are you?
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: I'm excellent, thanks.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: We just had a thunderstorm just went through, but it looks like it's cleaning up a little bit.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: I thought we were going to lose the lights and stuff here, like we did one time with you not too long ago, but it looks like it's clearing up.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: So last week we started part two of John Paul II's Theology of the Body, man and Woman.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: He Created them.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: He calls this the sacrament.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Of course it's alluding to the primordial sacrament of marriage as a sign of the inner life and the inner love of the Trinity.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: This is number 88, john Paul II, presented on August 4th 1982.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: The primordial sacrament.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: Awe and wonder, linda, that's what I think about.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Awe and wonder.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: What the world's lost today in so many ways is the awe and wonder, the awe and wonder of creation, the awe and wonder of our bodies, the awe and wonder.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: The awe and wonder of creation, the awe and wonder of our bodies, the awe and wonder of, especially, love created in the sign of love.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: And this is what we do in the visible world.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: We bring God's love into the visible world.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: I remember I was talking to a scientist.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: I had a scientist in a class.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: It was really a confirmation class for eighth graders, but their parents were part of this.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: So the parents would come to me, the kids would go off and learn something.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: He was a scientist, wasn't practicing his faith, but he had been coming every week, religiously, I'll say, and his heart started to stir.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: And he said, jack, he goes, I get it, I'm trying, but you know this Jesus thing and this God thing, he goes.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: I'm a scientist, he goes.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: I have to see it, I have to be able to experiment on it, look through a telescope.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: And that's what makes it real for me.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: And I said, steve, why are you here?
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: And he goes what do you mean?
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: I said why are you here?
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: He says because of my daughter.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: You know she's in blah, blah, blah.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: I said, well, tell us about your daughter, how would you describe your daughter?
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: And you know he, he talks a little bit about her.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: She's the love of his life, his only child.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: And I said, well, how would science describe your child?
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: Then You're a scientist.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: He goes what do you mean?
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: I said, well, you bring her to the doctor.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: You, you, you know something's wrong with her, you you're not sure what it is.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: So they take blood tests and urine tests and all that and they send it to the laboratory right and they look at it through a microscope and they figure out something, and and then they come back with pages and pages of different things which you have to be a scientist to to understand.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: Huh, and I said is that how you describe your daughter?
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: And he goes no, I said how do you describe your daughter?
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: And finally we got down to my main thing for my daughter is love.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: I love my daughter that would be the best description of her, you know, and all the things that she does that bring my heart joy, and hopefully I give back to her and and I said, well, that's awesome, steve.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: I said so, you're a scientist and a lover.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: I said so, throw some love up here.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Let's see what it looks like.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: I got a whiteboard behind me.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: We're going to look at it through a telescope, if you want to, a microscope if you want to.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Any way you want to do it.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: We're going to do experiments on love and then we're all going to be so smart because we're going to know what love is and if you ever forget about it, we can all come back here.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: We got the formula worked out on the whiteboard and he kind of thinking about how he's going to respond.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: He goes I don't know.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: I said, steve, you're a scientist.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: I said, come on, you can do better than that.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: Throw some love up here.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: And I said then, how do you express love to Mary, how do you express love to those around you?
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: How do you do it then?
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: Where is it then?
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: And I expressed it through my body.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Right, I said what do you express through your body?
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: The invisible that you can't describe.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: We can't put a formula up here.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: You take the invisible and make it visible through your actions.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Mary only knows that you love her.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: You already said the things that she does, the things that you do express love.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: So, the invisible is being expressed through the visible, through our bodies, and that's what this is all about.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: That's what this whole work is about making visible the invisible in the world.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that really takes us back to the thesis of theology, the body right, where the Pope says that our body is capable, and only the body, of making visible what is invisible.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: So we're created to transfer into the visible world the mystery hidden from eternity and God, and therefore, with a sign of it and everything flows from that.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: Your story is wonderful.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: We start describing the personalities that they have, the invisible things that are brought to light, you know, through their bodies and through their actions, and that's the way it works.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: You know, and so all these you know, if you go back to our English class, the abstract nouns, you know.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: How do you know that those things exist?
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: You know love and justice and everything.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: It's through the visible and our actions, and so that is really the premise of everything we've been talking about since the beginning of these audiences on August 4th 1982, the Pope has us think about that again because we're looking at the big picture of Ephesians.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: I think last time I wasn't able to join you and so you had been talking about where the Pope is going with the sacramentality of the body and he stops us here a little bit in 88 and says, well, let's pull back a little bit and look at the big picture which is going to set us up for everything we study really here on out.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: So Ephesians 5, which we know so well.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: He's going to take us into the whole letter of Ephesians, but Ephesians 5 is uniting.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: What we just talked about making visible the invisible is uniting what we just talked about making visible the invisible.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: Each of us do this individually, but the fuller image, the fuller sign is marriage and the family.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: So in Ephesians 5, we hear husbands love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: So here we are, husbands and wives coming together as a family, again making visible the invisible, the spiritual and divine which is the blessed Trinity and the love of the Trinity.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: And this is what Christ came to unite.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: In the beginning that model was in union and communion with God.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: God created there's no sin in the world creates Adam and Eve as this primordial sacrament to bring this love story into the world, primordial sacrament to bring this love story into the world, his love story in the world.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: This is united and so it broke apart.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: It's sin.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: Sin came, satan came into the world.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: This is the reality of our world.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: Just look around and to break that up, christ comes back into the story to reunite.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: This is not plan B, linda, this is plan A, it took a little different route.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: It goes through the cross now, but this is still plan A, where God always wanted to be united with us in Christ himself.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: And so Christ comes back in to take on his body again who is all of us, the church, but all of us and takes it into himself to reunite it as it was in the beginning.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: So he wants to bring this picture back in, and that's what John Paul is getting to when he says let's back up and get into the rest of this letter, and that's what Ephesians chapter one goes.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: If you want to take a look, linda, at Ephesians one, john Paul says you know verses 3 to basically through 10, and I don't know if we have to read all of it, but it probably wouldn't be a bad idea.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: He's calling us back into the story again and he's saying here's the big picture, here's what Christ came to do.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: It's very, very powerful.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: In Ephesians 1, 3, where we get the greeting Blessed be God and the Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: He destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace which he freely bestowed on us in the beloved.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace which he lavished upon us, for he has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the story again.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: You know again.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: That's why I said this is not plan B.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: When Jesus came into the world to take it on a body right on human flesh, this was always here's.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: God chose Jesus in him before the foundation of the world that he would be united to us and we would be holy and blameless.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: And here's verse five he destined us in love.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: He destined us in love.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: This is a love story and when we look around the cruel world and how cruel things are, we really see the paradox and the juxtaposition between good and evil.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: We really see that there really is evil and the evil has been here since the historic man.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: So we had the beginning.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: We go to the tree very early on, we walk away from God and sin is allowed.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: The mystery of evil, mysterium in equitatis, the mystery of evil in the world, we see it all around us the pain and suffering, the pain that goes on in individual families and individual hearts.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: Christ came in to redeem that and to bring us back together again.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: And we see this his plan for the fullness of the time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: This is that phrase that you brought up of John Paul's thesis that our bodies were made right to make visible the invisible, the spiritual and the divine.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: Well, we are eternal beings, linda.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: This is from the very beginning we were to be united with Christ.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: If we don't come back into the story, eternity is going to be hot as hell, linda.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: It's going to be hot as hell, and that's literal.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, people need to start waking up to the fact that our world is accelerating into darkness right now.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: But this is nothing new.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: You know when you read scripture like this, linda, this is nothing new.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: This has been going on for a long time.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: It's accelerating, it's getting darker around us.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: Has it been the darkest time in history?
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: I don't know that World War I, World War II had to seem pretty dark to people.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: Rape and pillaging that's going on in the world has to be pretty dark to people.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: Human sex trafficking it's not the first time that this ever happened and this has been going on.
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so true.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: In paragraph three of our audience here we bring it out once again, where Paul says well, once you were in darkness, now in the Lord, you are in light.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: Live, therefore, as children of the light.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: Do not be thoughtless, but understand what is the will of the Lord.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: You are in light.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: Live, therefore, as children of the light.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: Do not be thoughtless, but understand what is the will of the Lord and be filled with the Holy Spirit.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: So each time we recognize that the darkness is enveloping, it should be a wake up call, if you will, to say we have, our light has dimmed, we need to come back.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: And how do we do that?
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: By being filled with the Holy Spirit, by you know that acceptance of the redemption.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: Looking up at the crucifix, as you always mind us, that's how we do it, right.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: It is how we do it.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: You know, Christ is pouring his Spirit out on us.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: yes, you know, we have to remember when we're looking up at the cross, linda.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: This is where Jesus defeated Satan, right there on the cross.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: He defeated Satan just at his weakest moment, when he was allowed to die.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: Where Satan thinks he's got him, he offers it all up.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: And here's the difference is that he is resurrected.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: He overcomes sin and death, and this is the mystery, the mysterium pietatus, we call it the mystery of Christ's passion, death and resurrection.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: That countered all of that.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: Now you can say what you want about that, linda Believe it, don't believe it.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: But there is no power on earth that's going to unite us again.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: So when you look around the world and you see the division, you see the division.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: You see it even in the school systems, where everything's about CRT, dividing us by race, dei, all these ways to divide us, all of these gender ideologies.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: We've got the whole alphabet now.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: And what are they doing?
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: They're continuing to divide, divide, divide, divide, divide.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: And we hear we're doing this for you know, for you know, for for justice.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: So we're doing this to be fair, or we're doing and we don't realize that all we're doing is is walking into Satan's hands and dividing and dividing and dividing.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: Right when you say I won't discriminate.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, nobody should discriminate.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: We're walking into love.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: But as soon as you start to say you know, you start to put labels on each of us.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: You can get down to this nitty gritty and now I can't discriminate against some poor kid they call it that thinks he's a woman, a man that thinks he's a woman, a little boy that thinks he's a girl, a little girl that thinks she's a boy.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: And now we've gotten down to the point where we're discriminating against them if we try to help them with their mental illness.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: And this is how insane.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: My point is this this is how insane we become.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Where you just read that in the darkness, which verse was that that you were reading from?
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: In paragraph three of our audience today.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: That's right there.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: It's Ephesians 5, 8.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: You know, jack, you said there's no other power that is going to rescue us.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: We're told there's no other name on earth than that of Jesus Christ.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: Right, it's as clear as a bell, if you want to see that.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: And all the descriptions you just mentioned of things that are, the insanity that's going on is a total distortion of reality and, like you often said, satan doesn't have his own clay.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: He takes everything that God has created and he perverts it and distorts it.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: And we've been doing that throughout history on very many topics.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: And we've come now to the point where, you know, we don't know what a woman is.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: Men want to be women and think they can be, and all this complete break, if you will, from reality.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: And we know that's the definition of insanity, right?
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: And as I'm just glancing over what you read, again, if you allow these words to come into you, let no one Think about what we just said about the insane world now, with the World Economic Forum and all these gender ideologies that really are trying to expose children to pornography, it doesn't take much to look at these books and realize that the books they're bringing into the school system really is an underlying of pornography, only with a little cover of a gender ideology, so we can inject this into the innocence of kids.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: So when I think about this, I'm looking at Ephesians 5, verse 6, let no one deceive you with empty words.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: And that's exactly what we're facing again today, for it is because of these things that the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: Therefore, do not associate with them.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: For once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: So walk as children of the light, and so take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: See, we have to expose this darkness.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: We're such cowards today, linda, as I speak to people I'll say well, join us, stand up against this.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: Ah, I can't do that.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: You know what happens if you know.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: Somebody finds out that I'm doing this or that and they're going to be coming after me or whatever, and we're a bunch of cowards and we don't realize that we're allowing this evil to come into the culture, into our schools, and especially into kids.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: You know, we don't stand up for kids.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: And it says expose it.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: It says, for it is a shame even to speak of things that they do in secret, but when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: Therefore, it is said awake, o sleeper, arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: Look carefully how you walk, not as unwise men, but as wise, making the most of the time because the days are evil.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: Therefore, do not be foolish.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: This says it all.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: I could just use this for my next talk with parents of kids.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: I'm just going to read that to them and say go meditate on that in adoration.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: Let that sink in and let your minds come out of this darkness, linda, and start to bring light into the world.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: That's what we're called to do.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: Yes, and as we look at that side of it, we turn to the flip side, and what we are given counsel on is what really, then, should it look like?
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: What is the climate of the spiritual light that should animate each of us?
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: Clearly, not being powered is a good start.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: We step into the light there, and the description goes on to talk about the domestic community and especially the family, which takes us right back to the husband and wife, which is the nucleus of the family, and so we have a big picture here, jack, of looking at the evil and calling it out and seeing it for what it is and then saying, okay, now what do we do about it?
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: And that's really where we're headed with this.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you're exactly right, and that's why John Paul mentions in here.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: He says there's two main themes here and basically what you just said right, understand the story that you came into.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: Look at the world with awe and wonder, as it was in the beginning.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: Understand the way it was created in love, by love and for love.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: Understand that there's a force out there and you don't have to be a theologian or a philosopher to see the evil.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Gk Chesterton would say you know, sin is as obvious asa potato sitting on your plate.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: Just look around.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: And he said look in your own heart, you'll see it.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: So we know it's there.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: What St Paul is saying, what Jesus gives us the opportunity to do, is to walk away from this evil, not to walk away from it like we can get out of this world right now.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: But we're in the world not of the world.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: I do not want to partake in this darkness and I turn to light, and so we have to turn around and become that light in the world.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: This is the whole story.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: So how do I do?
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: This becomes the second part of this right, and this is taking in deeply the knowledge of how we're created, the sacraments, prayer.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: We're walking into the heart of Jesus Christ and carrying our cross along with his and then, like a libation, turning around and pouring this out to our spouses, our family, our neighbors, our friends, our country.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: And so this isn't brain surgery.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: It's not easy, not easy, but it's not that complicated, right?
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: I just came back from mass, right before we start this, and this is John, john's gospel today, and I'll just read just a little bit.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: This is just the gospel from today.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: Jesus says this is 16, and he's going to the Father and he's telling them.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: He says I did not say these things to you from the beginning because I was with you.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: But now I'm going to him who sent me?
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: And none of you asked me where are you going?
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: But because I said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: And here's the point he goes.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: Nevertheless, I tell you the truth it is to your advantage to go away, because he's going to send the Holy Spirit, the counselor, and when he comes, he will convince the world of sin and of righteousness and judgment.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: Of sin, because they do not believe in me.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: Of righteousness, because I go to the Father and you will see me.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: No more.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Righteousness, because I go to the Father and you will see me no more.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: And here, verse 11, 16, this is John 16, verse 11, of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: The ruler of this world is judged.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: And that's because this is after the.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: Don't forget.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: You know, christ already suffered his passion, death and resurrection.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Now he's getting ready to go to the Father in his ascension and he's saying he's already been destroyed.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: But in this temporal space, every generation gets a chance to confront the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: Choose Satan or choose God.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: This is our time to bring eternal life into our own lives and into the lives of those people we love.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah and Jack, a couple of things kind of struck me Earlier you had said that we're really like walking into the heart of Jesus.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Well, just as a side note.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: You know June is the month of the sacred heart of Jesus and we need to you know we're rapidly getting there here, but so I thought it was pride month.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: Pardon me.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: I thought it was Pride Month, but I oh yeah.
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: Some people think it is, but we look at it differently.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: Here's why I brought it up.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: Well, here's why I just brought it up Because pride is what it's the first deadly sin.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Pride is the first deadly sin when you look at this.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: And again, I'm not talking about individual person here, I'm talking about the theme, the overall theme.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: We've rejected God and we are putting it right in everybody's face.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: This is Pride Month.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: Let's all be filled with pride, let's all expose ourselves in pride, in our sinfulness and whatever we do, whoever we are.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: And so it's amazing how we can make what visible either God visible or Satan and evil visible in the world.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: So you decide, and that's why the saints and the mystics always talk about humility, humility, humility.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: Look at Jesus himself.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: Jesus comes on and takes on a body and humbles himself, even dying on a cross right, the worst, stripped, naked, bleeding, just exposed.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: In all this humility, with no power.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: He looks like all weakness, just bleeding, and he says who's going to save you?
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: Huh, and he gives up his life in humility.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: He washes the feet of the disciples.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: He's a poor man, his whole life, everything about him.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: He comes from Nazareth, this backwater town that says nothing good comes from Nazareth.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: I mean all of these things.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: And here we are Linda pride month, you know versus the sacred heart of Jesus.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: I mean what?
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: a shame.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: It started out non-servium.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: I think you talked about this last time.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: The whole premise I will not serve.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: So flip that over.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: The solution is, yes, that we do serve.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: We serve Jesus as head of his body, mary with her fiat another model and the whole premise of theology of the body as gift of self.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: We serve our spouse and we serve our children and our family, the greater community, so it's the total opposite.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: And how can we do that?
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: We have to have humility.
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: We can't be of service to others without that humility.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: And I think the image that struck me.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: I've always had kind of difficulty with the concept of that.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: You know, first you think of a physical body head and the rest of the body and then translate that to Jesus as head of the church and we are the body, we are walking into his heart.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: Okay, the heart, the core of the body, the life source of the body there, right?
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: So it's a beautiful image to say that's where we need to draw our strength from, draw our resolve from, and then put that into action as we serve others.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: And we're so about pride and everything in our culture that to some people this may sound nearly impossible.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: And yet if we do humble ourselves and say you know, as Jesus is the head and he is our model.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: That's the virtue that I really need to work on, especially during the month of June, and Mother Mary this is her month she will guide the way, she's our model for us during this month to send us in that direction.
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: But I'd like to make a connection, if you will too, with what we spoke earlier.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: So, as husband and wife, is that sign or that reflection or that image of Christ and his church?
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: You know, when we get into this more in detail in some of the audiences it's going to unfold in a beautiful way.
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: But what has always struck me is, I think of so Christ, his headship and his love for the church is the model for each of us as husband and wife.
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: Love for the church is the model for each of us as husband and wife and as we look at Christ's love for the church and we take that into our marriage, that primordial sacrament husband and wife the husband is reflecting Christ as the head and the wife, in her receptivity, is reflecting the church and our receptivity to Christ.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: But I would talk about this to groups and say you know, it seems to me that if this is really happening in a marriage, that we're that sign, people would look at that couple and not even know what it is they're seeing, but something is being brought into the visible reality where they look at how that couple interacts and just everything about them says there's something different, there's something special about them.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: And I think you know some couples like this and I have seen that too, and I hope I can be that with my own husband.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: But you see, that is how we reflect that image of Christ in his church and that's how we get to that core of his sacred heart and dispel the darkness, you know, bring that light into our culture, and we can't be cowards if we're going to do it.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: No, we can't be cowards and we'll see the fruit of this.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: Right before we came on, I talked to you about, just for today, a book of daily meditations from St Therese of Lisieux, with entries from the Imitation of Christ, which was her favorite book.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: And just today so this is May 7th, while we're recording this.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: It won't go out until May 8th, but May 7th and in the Imitation that St Therese would be reading, she had this book memorized, linda.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: And here's just a little snippet from today and from the imitation.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: It says I have often said to thee this is God speaking right, and I repeat it again forsake and resign thyself, and thou shalt enjoy a great inward peace.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: Forsake yourself, this is what you're talking about.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: Give yourself away, resign yourself, just open yourself up, reject the pride, humble yourself.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: And then he says and thou shalt enjoy a great inner peace.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: So this is what we're talking about.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: He said give all for all, give all.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: This is what Jesus does on the cross.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: This is what you were speaking of.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: Give all for all.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: Turn around and be a gift to others.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: Seek nothing, call for nothing back.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: See, this is disinterested love again, when I'm being kind to my spouse, to my kids or to my neighbor I'm not looking for anything back.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: As soon as we start to seek something back, they have to return this to me right away, or my ego gets hurt.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: Then you're not really becoming a gift.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: Christ gave us that gift.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Disinterested love doesn't mean I'm not interested in you.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: It means I'm not interested in getting anything back.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: So I pour myself out to you Now.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: Can you imagine how many people have rejected Christ, this pouring out of love, and turned away from him?
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: Sister Faustina speaks about this all the time that Christ says one of the things that really pierces his heart, and I would say our blessed mothers too, is this coldness.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: And Jesus speaks about this, this coldness.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: And he said to Sister Faustina I'm just going off the top of my head, but that you, by coming in and just saying that you love me, that you love me, you overcome so much of the coldness that I feel in my heart.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: And so the last part of this meditation again seek nothing, call for nothing.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: So stand purely.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: And this is what St Paul's saying here, right, without blemish.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: He says you're called into holiness without blemish.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: Of course we are, linda.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: How can we unite ourselves to Christ, who's holy who's, without blemish, if we are full of blemishes.
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: So this is the journey we're on.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: And then, and with full confidence in me, god says and thou shall possess me.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: So if you do that, if you pour yourself out with me, have full confidence in me, for thou shall possess me.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: This is what we're doing when we do this.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: It's not like we're just doing it for nothing.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: We're doing it because of love.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: This is what love is.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: Love's not afraid of these things.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: Love is these things.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a quote I cannot remember the source right now but where Jesus says to one of the saints when you have nothing but you have me, then you have everything.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: And that reverberates in my head all the time, because here we are, in the culture that is constantly saying what about me?
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: What about me?
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: I've got to be number one.
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: I've got a race ahead of you, only to be stopped at the light.
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: But I'm ahead of you, right, you know just, everything about our culture is the reverse of what you just described, and so we have to get counter-cultural.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, think about social media.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: What do you see on social media, over and over and over, linda?
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: What do you see when you, when you think about social media?
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: What are they putting on?
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: What are they posting?
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: All about me, me, me, my picture, my selfie, my this, my that, my family, my dog, my dinner.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: That's what I tell my kids sometimes, who are grown adults, and their kids.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: If I see one more stinking selfie and I'm being a little, you know I.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: They understand what I mean because of course, you know you go on vacation.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: You take a picture of the family.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: I'm not talking about all.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about constant, constant thing.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: Now I'm out for dinner, now I'm this, now I'm that.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: I just throw one picture in there.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: That's nice.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: We haven't seen you for a while, and so you know what I mean.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: I don't be ridiculous about it, right I?
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: I mean you're proud of your, you know, in a good way, of your family and what you've accomplished and you want to share it with your friends.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: I get that.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: But when you are just taken with yourself to the point where you know everything, I do, you know it's, you know you become the center of the universe and this is the opposite of what we're talking about here, right.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: Linda, take us home here as we close up here, and I just throw you know one thing this is just the one great commandment, isn't it?
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: It's not brain surgery, what we're describing here is not, you know, crazy.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: It's the one great commandment.
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: Love God and love your neighbor.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: Isn't that what we're talking about here?
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: that's what we're talking about, I think and you can't reverse the order.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: In other words, I can't be this person of love without first going to the source, right?
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: That's why the first the commandments start with just three about god and they they don't start with three about God for any other reason, that if we don't go to the source, we are like cut flowers disengaged, right.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: The?
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: root of the flowers is no longer connected to the vibrancy, to the nourishment, and so you wonder why we have so much divorce and children out of wedlock and porn.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: Right, I mean again, we get back Linda to.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: This is the only power that unites.
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: And the recognition, jack, that this is a spiritual battle, as you talked about.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: And Ephesians 5 rolls right into Ephesians 6, where we get a great discourse on that.
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: And so the Pope tells us in the very last paragraph here of Audience 88, in number five, he says but you know, before we get into some more details about these ideas, he said we should add that the whole letter ends with a stupendous encouragement to spiritual battle, because that appeal to the spiritual battle is really what is at the basis of all of this.
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: So I think we've given many descriptions of how that plays out in our culture today and without going to the source of that strength to engage in this battle, it's pretty much impossible.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because that spiritual battle that you're speaking about is taken on and made visible in our flesh Again.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: Our bodies will make this evil visible in the world, and that's why do you have Ephesians 6 in front of you, maybe, just let let maybe, read verse 12 and remember to kind of aim.
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: Aim at the at the computer, so that we don't lose your voice there okay but yeah, just that, just a verse or so.
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: There you really see what we're up against and and it's good to make that clear yeah, verse chapter 6, verse 12, for we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: World rulers, jack, you know, he was speaking 2,000 years ago and here we are battling still the world rulers of this darkness.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: This is our story.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: And the reason, again, Linda, is each generation gets a chance to step into this story.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: Go up on the stage and we all go, in a sense, before the tree of the.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: Now it's a good and evil.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: The next generation gets to do it, the next generation gets to do it, the next generation gets to do it.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: We're lining ourselves up on which side of the battle we're going to be.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is the way god allows us to be free.
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: How would he make us free.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: You know, and and and again.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: Without freedom, there's no love, right you?
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: You can't force someone to love you.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: If god just forced us, you know what kind of freedom would this be?
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: No, this is what we're playing out here, linda.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: Do you become a person of love and unite yourself to that person of love, or do you reject it?
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: That's the question.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: Right, right and Jack, as you describe the story, and with Christ, when all looked when he was on the cross, it looked like this was the end, and we know that that was the very beginning of our redemption and the birth of the church.
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: I think we know that deep in our heart when you look at movies, that you know there's a battle.
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: I don't care who it is, but you have good and evil battling each other.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: And almost always in the movie it looks like the good guy is done.
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: You know they've got him, he's about ready to go and, oh dear, what are we going to do?
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: And you see that somehow the good guy pulls it off and the story ends.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: Well, why do the movies always do that?
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: I think that story is so deep in our heart they can't help but do it, you know.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's a great point.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great point.
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: Well, that's a good way to finish.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: Watch your movies.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: Go out into the world Movies.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: No, linda, to your point.
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: Why do we not get it If the movies, like to your point, have gotten it all the way through the ages, right, since movies began, huh?
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: So, hey, god bless you.
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: Thanks everyone.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: Thanks for being with us.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: Thank you, linda.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: We appreciate your time and effort.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: Talk to you soon, everybody.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: Bye-bye, bye-bye, thank you.