Latest / Claymore: Become Who You Are / #578 Erotic Love Poetry in the Bible? The Song of Songs with Linda Pieper

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#578 Erotic Love Poetry in the Bible? The Song of Songs with Linda Pieper · 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.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: St Catherine of Siena said that if you become who you are, that you would literally set the world on fire.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: And St Athanasius, an early church father and a doctor of the church, said the son of God became man so that we might become God.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: You know I make a wild guess at this, but I bet you, most of us, are a bit disconnected from this divine life that these saints are pointing us to.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Yet Saint John Paul II said there's an echo of the story of this divine life that we're created for, inscribed in each human heart, in your human heart, and if you put on the proper lens if I put on the proper lens we can get in touch with this echo within us in such a way that we have that aha moment.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: See, that's the genus of St John Paul II's theology of the body.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: It connects our lived experience of life to the gospel in such a way that our life takes on a whole new meaning and helps us answer those big questions that our whole culture is so confused about today meaning and helps us answer those big questions that our whole culture is so confused about today.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Who am I?
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: What's my purpose?
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Why were we created, male and female?
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: How do I find happiness here on earth?
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: How do I find love that satisfies forever?
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Hey, glad you're with me, I'll be.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: We are back for another episode.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: This is awesome, linda.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: This is the song of songs.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: I've been looking forward to getting into this part.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: This is episode 108.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: So if you've been following us, man and woman, he created them a theology of the body, which you don't have to do, linda, and I figure that not everybody follows that.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: So hopefully, every episode you can take something out of, regardless of whether you're following us or not.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Even though John Paul's work Theology of the Body as a whole he gave 129 short talks the Song of Songs is something he did toward the end.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: This is from May 23rd, 1984 is when he actually presented this kind of in a short form.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: So we're going to be talking about the Song of Songs.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: This is erotic love poetry, linda, right smack in the middle of the Bible.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: What is erotic love poetry doing in the Bible, linda?
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: That is a good question.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: It's called the Song of Songs.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: We've been talking about language of the body and our bodies do speak a language and we can speak that language in truth or in untruth.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: And here we have an example of the language, if you will, coming alive through the body.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: So it's speaking a language, but it also sings, right, it's so beautiful that it makes your heart sing and I think that's why it's called the song of songs, because it's not just any song, it's the song, it's the language of our body as God wanted it to be for us.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: You know his vision, the beauty, the awe and the wonder.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: The Pope says he's resuming Genesis colon wonder, you know.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: And if we can study the song of songs with some sense of wonder, which is difficult to do because of what our culture has done to anything sexual and with sexualizing everything, you know, we have just great confusion in our minds about what our true sexuality is about and what it's for.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: But if we can think about this, we're going to talk about the wonder of it and that may make the language appear even more beautiful to those who actually will go back to their Bible.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: It's right in the middle the Song of Songs.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd almost want to take people back if their innocence hasn't been stolen from them.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: This is what the government schools try to do here in our country is steal the innocence so they never feel this.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: But for those of you who made it through without your innocence getting stolen too early, I mean, it's going to be stolen from you, but hopefully you are at least 9, 10, 11 years old.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: But the beauty of this is the awe and wonder when you first see.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: You know, a man sees a woman for the first time, a girl say, and something happens to his heart, you know.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: And then vice versa.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: Well, here we have created an image and likeness of God.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: The human body.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: The human body is there to express love.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: That's what we do.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: We express love.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Love is invisible.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: We can't see love, even though we can't, just like we can't see God.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: God is love.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Well, god, you say.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: Well, god is a spirit.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: He's not even a sexual being.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: What has that got to do?
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Ah, our bodies make love visible in the world and we do that through our human sexuality, our masculinity, our femininity, receiving this love of God and then pouring this out.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: But the coolest thing, I think, is the beauty of the love of the bridegroom and the bride.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: John Paul says the power of attraction that's sparked by the body.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: I see that body.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Now this goes all the way back to, like you said, to Genesis.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: And now what we got.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: Very in an economy of words, very short, you know a couple of sentences which we can review if we want to, here, which might be a good idea Genesis 1, the objective sign.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: Genesis 2, the subjective experience of living out that sign.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: John Paul called it the primordial sacrament, which again is this reflection of Trinitarian love in the world.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Now the Song of Songs puts dialogue to that, to those signs, in such a beautiful way and you can feel it.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: You can feel it in your heart.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: So that's why I want to kind of have people back up and say you know what was that like before the world twisted and distorted my heart, and I want to feel that again.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: I want to feel that awe and wonder that you described Linda.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: I want to experience that again.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: And I want to look that awe and wonder that you described Linda.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: I want to experience that again.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: And I want to look at other people and say, wow, yeah, the awe and wonder of the body that attracts us not just to body parts, but to the human heart and see this is the beauty that they're experiencing.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: And that's so important to understand.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: It attracts us to the person, the I, the Pope says you know.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: So the person, the heart and soul, you know, and our bodies reflect that and that's where the attraction is and where it really lies at its deepest level.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: You know, I can remember when we were studying this Jack, that Christopher West pointed, pointed out, you know, like if I'm just attracted to the body, just you know, your beautiful eyes or your hair or whatever it might be.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: You know that changes over time.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: The eye colors might not, but the droopy lids come along.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: You know all of that can change and if that man goes, bald.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: Or you know whatever, or you get cancer and a woman goes bald.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: You know I mean a lot of things.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: A man goes bald, or you know whatever, or you get cancer and a woman goes bald.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: You know, I mean a lot of things could happen.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: All these things.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: So you know.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: The question is then what happens to that attraction if that's all it's rooted?
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: in On the other hand, you know if it's rooted in who the person is, the eye of that person, none of those things matter really to authentic love.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, it may be a sadness, a mourning of you know what might have been, but you're still in love with that person and still you know that comes through the body.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: So because we have so sexualized everything, it's difficult for us to get to that deeper level.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: But we've got to do that, you know we've got to go there.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, what a great point.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: You know that.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: You know I've been married over 40 years.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: You've been married longer than that.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: And you say, yeah, how can I still talk to my wife or find her attractive?
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: I have to be honest with you, I actually find my wife more, find her attractive.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: I have to be honest with you, I actually find my wife more attractive today, and it's not that she hasn't aged she certainly has, as I have but it's because of what you said.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: On this journey, you start to see past the body, but the body draws you in.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: And so this is the difference between when you really understand Catholicism, when you really understand the biblical attitude.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: It's not prudish, it's not a Puritan-type attitude.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: It is an awe and wonder of the human body that attracts you where you go.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: It takes your breath away.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: This is what happened in Genesis.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: So just real quick.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: Genesis, chapter 1, says that God created us in his image, in the divine image, male and female.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: So that's the objective sign.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: Something about our femininity and masculinity is actually reflecting something of God in the world.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: Genesis 2 then says it's not good that man should be alone.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: I'm going to make a helper fit for him.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: You remember Linda.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: In the Bible, god says go out and name the animals to Adam.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: What does he discover?
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: There's no body there for me.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: You know the animals all have helpers, but there's no one there for me, no person there.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: So he discovers Adam.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: Mankind discovers that, wow, of all the rest of creation, I'm different than the rest of creation.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: I have free will, the rest of creation, I'm different than the rest of creation.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: I have free will, I have an intellect, I have reason.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: This is God creating the image of God.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: These attributes come from that ruah, that breath.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: Now God says I got something else for you.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: There's no helper.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: As soon as he realizes that, god puts him in that deep sleep.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: But here's what happens when Adam wakes up, because at first it didn't matter, he didn't even know what human sexuality was right.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, he saw the other, helpless with the animals he's trying to figure out.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Okay, how does this work for me?
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: Huh, then he wakes up and he goes this, at last, is the bone of my bone and the flesh of my flesh.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: She should be called woman because she was taken out of man, taken right out of his rib, which is his heart.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: John Paul says okay, well, he's pointing to the rib.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Right behind that rib is the human heart, right.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: So basically, right from the heart is formed.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: Now we're made in two kinds.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: We're right Look how confused our culture is today, linda that we can just change these things up, this sexuality, no, no, no, you can't do that.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: And so just my last point will be now, what we just said there, quickly, song of Songs.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: Now is going to unpack this dance right, this duet, as John Paul called it, the song that a man and a woman, the bridegroom and the bride are singing to themselves and really bringing this out.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: You know this ooh, this awe and wonder in a dialogue.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a couple of things.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: When woman is referred to as the helper, I know modern ears, you know kind of bristle a little bit, you know with that idea of the second-class citizen or whatever.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: But when I was.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: That's not what a helper means in Scripture.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: No, no, and I was exploring this.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: In fact, the actual word is ezer, if I pronounce that correctly, which in 30-some times it's used in the Bible to actually refer to God as the helper of his people.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: So it's a very lofty word to describe Eve as Adam's helper, and I see that in part.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: What we've learned is that we help each other discover this love and this spousal meaning of the body, which is being a gift.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: If there is no other, I can't be a gift to anyone else, right?
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: And so that was that discovery of that true meaning through helping, if you will, each other.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: You know it's so beautiful, you know, and we miss it all the time because we just kind of can't raise our thoughts up to the vision that God had for us.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: So the duet, the lovers here, in Song of Songs.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: I think that they might have even been singing some of this rather than just speaking it.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: Well, you can imagine that awe and wonder for the first time.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: I remember, as a young boy, even in grade school, when I saw that girl for the first time and I realized oh my gosh, what is going on with my heart?
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: What is that?
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: I remember looking at her and then looking again, and I was just a kid, you know and she started to come on my mind and in my heart.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: And what is that?
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: See, that's the beauty of that innocence before it's taken, there was no lust, no selfishness, no wanting to use, just really the awe and wonder of that little Italian girl that I was looking at.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: And what is it about her?
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: And right, we don't know.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: Well, here's, later on, this dialogue, in the Song of Songs this is right how it starts.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: It says let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for your love is better than wine.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Draw me after you, let us make haste.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: We will exalt and rejoice for you.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: We will remember your tender caresses.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: And so this is how the whole thing starts.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: You know it starts with really the body, with kissing, the tender caresses.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: You know it's drawing us into John Paul would say he may not have used the word malou but drawing into the circle of love.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: This is that original plan, that God flips his love story into the world and he does that through the image, the imago Dei, the image and likeness of himself, who is love, trinitarian love flips that in the world through our creation is male and female.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: It's such a beautiful thing and then we see each other and we we're attracted to the body and the body makes visible, hopefully, the heart, which is, hopefully knows what love is.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: and it's a love story, right exactly, I think once he did use the term irradiation of love, you know that, like yes, it just radiates from each other.
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: The discovery of adam for eve, and all the richness of the language of the body there.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: You know what?
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: What was it adam said?
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: He said you know bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: He recognized that, unlike the animals, here is someone who is like me, and yet that difference in the body, male versus female, he sensed, I believe, immediately that complementarity, that there's something here.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: There's something way beyond what he had experienced with the animals.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: And you know so, love isn't just about the emotional feeling that you know that I feel, love as we commonly use it, but it's so much more than that that.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: Here is another that is for me.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and and and.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: In that other it's.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: It's a love story.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: Love is invisible unless we make it visible through our bodies.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: I make it visible through my actions, through my words, through my tenderness, as it says in the Song of Songs, through that kissing right, all of those things.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: Now, when it gets twisted and distorted into lust, what happens?
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: Then I start to use and grasp.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: And John Paul in Love and Responsibility, talks about these four aspects of love.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: And here's the problem with pornography and what the kids are being pushed into today with the culture.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: So you have this power of attraction.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: Love is attraction number one.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: And John Paul would say and Benedict said the same thing in his first encyclical is about love.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: Very powerful Pope Benedict XVI also, and talks about this eros, this power.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: He goes, this is something that happens to you.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: I look up and there she is.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: I wasn't planning this.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: This is happening to me, something in my heart.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: But is that authentic love, Linda?
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: And he said no, I haven't done anything yet, I don't even know that girl yet.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: How could that be authentic love?
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: But but it's the raw material for love.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: It could be pulling you, so it pulls you.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: If you make the next step, it pulls you into that circle that we're talking about, into the second stage, which is love, is desire, knowing that I see the good in the other person, I see that beauty, I sense something there and I want that good for myself.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: But that's not authentic love yet either, because I want it for myself to fulfill something in my own heart that I see there, which is not a bad thing.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: I see the good right in that person, the beauty, and I want that for myself.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: Here's the problem, linda, is we sabotage our chances to find authentic love because what do we do here?
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: We sexualize it, right.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: So we think it's just a feeling and then we sexualize it.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: We never get into that friendship, we never get into what we're going to be reading here in the song, this beautiful dialogue that we'll get into in a second.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: But I want you to comment on that.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, john Paul talked about that all the time.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: He said you know you have to practice chastity because you'll, otherwise you'll never find authentic love right and I think the the truth is in the pudding when we think of hookup culture, one night stands.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: It's impossible, literally impossible, for that to be off to any kind of authentic love or even close to it, because it is just getting stuck there at the body and you can't go any deeper with that kind of a relationship.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: And so you know it's to me it's like so obvious that it's just the opposite of love as we talked about.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: It's just using and it's just doing something for me and not for the other person.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: And well, I had a thought that I lost here, but anyway, Let me just add.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: So they're both.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: Actually it's called utilitarianism, john Paul would say later on.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: He didn't say it in here, but we're just using one another.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: And you know, dr Miriam Grossman was on our show talking about trans issues and some other things, but she started out as a psychiatrist in a university section on a university, at UCLA actually, and she said these young girls start to come in with all these anxiety and depression and all these different things and looking for a pill, right, something to calm them down, something to take away their anxiety.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: And she would start to talk to them.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: And it was because of this stuff walking into sexual, you know, had been lied to that that the actual act of sex, the physical act, it was supposed to bring them love somehow, and they just felt like they were being used, which they were, and they were giving their bodies to someone that had no inkling of what love was either, and they're basically prostituting themselves.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: She would say, you know, and that's what they were doing.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: Isn't it a shame, right?
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: Looking for love in all the wrong places, as the song goes.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know, as you spoke earlier of the attraction and the raw material for love, I would like for people to really understand that, because in no way are we saying that the attractions are bad.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: Right, when God created Adam and even looked at that, he said it was very good and God gave us that ability to be attracted in that way.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: So it's very good, but it's how we act on it.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: You know, I shared this a little bit with you.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: You know, when my husband and I first met, we were in college and we were we hadn't known each other as kind of like a blind date thing.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: You know long story.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: But he told me afterwards, you know, we started dating and he felt like it was love at first sight and I pretty much squaffed at that for a number of reasons.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: But I have thought about it many times over the years about how were our reactions so different?
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: What was going on with us, you know, and I think with him, he was just able to feel what was in his heart as he had this attraction.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: Yes, he called it love, but it was really this first step.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: You know, on this journey of here's, someone I want to get to know and so forth.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: And for me it was that is not possible.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: I had the sense that not possible, that quick.
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: Love at first sight's not possible.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: I had the sense that not possible, that quick.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: Love at first sight's not possible.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what I felt.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: But what I did feel was something that was akin to what he was feeling, that same attraction I just couldn't name it love, and I'm kind of vindicated because, not knowing any of this back then, I'm kind of vindicated because not knowing any of this, back then I had this sense that that cannot possibly be love.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: As I was defining love, you know, in my head and in reality it was not a mature love If you would have sexualized it to our earlier point, but it was those raw materials that the Pope is talking about.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: That's right, and they're beautiful.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: We wanted to get to know who the other person was, and that was only by spending time together and conversations and so forth, getting to know the heart huh getting to know the person this is where chastity comes in, right, linda.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: Chastity is that virtue, john paul, that says that helps you flip from.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: You know, love is this desire that I have.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: Love is attraction and these things, like you said, are all good.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: I mean it's amazing power.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: But now I want to.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: The third part is to is to will your good?
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: I see your good, I see your beauty.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: Now I want what's good for you, and now it's, it's a step to say am I ready to give my life to you?
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: That's what you were saying.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: As a woman, too, I don't see this love at first sight because I have to give my life to someone.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: I mean I have to sit back and say am I ready to do this?
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: This is a big deal, and so this is what we're being called into.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: And just when you get married don't forget that doesn't just turn off that attraction.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: And here's a big problem with infidelity, with guys that get wrapped up in the porn is they see beauty of, say, the lady that lives down the street from them after they're married?
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: God gave you those beauties too.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: He gave the beauty of the mountains, the beauty of the stars, the beauty of what.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: Why would he take all those things away the beauty of flowers, the beauty of a glass of wine, the beauty of the mountains, the beauty of the stars, the beauty of?
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: Why would he take all those things away?
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: The beauty of flowers, the beauty of a glass of wine, the beauty of the woman down the street, but just like anything else, you know, these are beautiful things that I need to open my heart, reminders that God brings beauty into the world, but that I gave my life, just like Jesus on the cross gave his life for us.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: Now I have to give my life in the Imago Dei, right in the image and likeness of God.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: In my own little tiny world.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: I now climb the marriage bed of the cross and not to make it look like it's all painful, but it's sacrificial on both persons' part, we have made a commitment to each other to come here freely, to give ourselves totally, without reservation, faithfully, till death.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: Do us part and open to life, right?
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: Well, this is a little tiny reflection of who God is and, by the way, linda, where we're going.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: If you don't mind, read me some of your favorite parts here, because John Paul puts a couple of parts that he kind of emphasizes with the song of song in these beautiful words.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: I think we need to talk about them and just to see.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: Now, just one caveat here is that this is a thousand years or more before Jesus even came, right.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: This is Old Testament, so let's say a thousand years I'm not sure on the exact years on this thing, right, but we know this is Old Testament.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: These are shepherds in general, and so what they're doing is they're looking around for words to say, oh my gosh, you know, I see, like I said, the stars, or I see the mountains, or I see a goat, or I see, you know and I'm trying to explain the way I'm feeling which you really don't have words for love, right?
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's very difficult because you're describing the inner life of God himself and, on the other hand, there's some verses in there that this bridegroom is probably royalty of some type.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: So they're blended together here in a couple of different things some shepherds looking, maybe some royalty, because there's four, basically four stories within here, within the songs, and it's just beautiful.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: But anyways, I only say that because we won't understand, as John Paul points out, why are you using this kind of language?
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: Just let it go, and he even says it here.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: Let the experts worry about all that.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: Let's get drawn into the love story.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, experts worry about all that, let's get drawn into the love story, yeah, and he really stresses the wonder, the admiration, the fascination, and I did read one statement that we have to take it a bit out of the great analogy that we have been speaking of with the mystery of Christ and his church.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: Speaking of with the mystery of Christ and his church, it's like he says we step outside of that here and we go back into Genesis and that original in admiration that Adam experienced.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: So as it is expressed here, there are several places that I kind of highlighted here.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: A couple of things, oops, here a couple of things where he says my lover belongs to me and I to him.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: That jumped out at me because again, when we make the marital commitment, when we say the vows, this is what we are saying, that we literally belong to each other.
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: It's repeated a couple of times in the Song of Song my lover belongs to me and I to him.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: But then when he is speaking, also in chapter four, he says you have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: You have ravished my heart with one glance of your eyes, I mean as a woman, a couple of things.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: You know just the, the intensity of that feeling that he has for her but then saying my sister, my bride.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: Now we did some extensive discussion on that in our classes, but essentially his first calling her my sister is that recognition that you are another person, you know your humanness, and then my bride.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: Then that complementarity kicks in.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: But it's the recognizing of her dignity as another person you know.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: And it also brings to mind for me how, you know, a brother protects his sister, you know, his sister, you know.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: And so it's important that he says my sister, because it's like I protect you and see your dignity as another human first, and then I see you as my bride.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: So those were just a couple that really struck me.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: I remember as a young boy seeing this girl and I found out where she lived, not so far, a few maybe, you know, a half a mile or so away.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: And so I started to ride my bike over there.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: I remember this riding a bicycle and and on, say, a Saturday, when I have nothing better to do, I would ride my bike, like around her area, just hoping maybe for a glance, maybe she would.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: And it never happened.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: It never happened that she would walk out the door and I got a glance.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: But I was so enamored that I go, maybe by chance I'll just get a glance of her, right?
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: I don't even know if I would have said hi or not, I was just a, you know, a young guy, right?
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: But I read this now, and and so in in the bride grooms and the and the bride right this is the future bridegroom and bride.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: And so here's the bride right, love's inquiry.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: It's called.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: This is from chapter one, verse seven.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: Tell me, to whom my heart loves, where you pasture your flock.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: Where are you?
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: Where do you pasture your flock?
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: Where can I come?
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: Where you give rest at midday, lest I be found wandering after the flocks of your companions?
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: So she says I want to know where you're at.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: I see a couple flocks out in the distance, in the mountains.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: I don't want to go after the wrong one, I'm after you.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: And then the groom says the bridegroom.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: If you do not know, o, most beautiful among women, follow the tracks of the flock and the pasture and pasture the young ones near the shepherd's camps, and he's describing, you know, come this way and he's going to be watching for her.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: But anyways, again, you know we're using this kind of shepherd and these older words, these analogies, but I know exactly what he and she mean I know exactly what they're talking about.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: So, jack, I'm thinking of your little story.
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: So you got on your bike and you rode around.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: We moved to a new home when I was going into seventh grade and you know, just meeting people, so it was probably the summer after seventh grade.
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: I can remember people.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: So it was probably the summer after seventh grade.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: I can remember sitting on the front porch of our home.
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: I was the one hoping someone would just happen to ride by.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: You know, and once again, it never happened, but it expresses for both of us that longing in our heart.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: Right, just to get a glimpse right, or have somebody respond.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: This is the beauty, again, of that innocence.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: This is why it's so important for us as adults now not to allow those children's innocence to be stripped from them, because it's so beautiful what we're talking about here.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: Can you see what pornography, linda, and these gender ideologies do to a young heart?
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: Pretty soon you'll be sitting up there and, instead of waiting for somebody to come by or catching somebody's eye, you'll be looking at that phone and looking at pornography, and hardcore pornography, where people are just using one another.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: And this is what we get drawn into, because we feel these attractions, just like Adam did when he saw eve for the first time.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: This raw material, right, oh, my heart, right bone of my bone, flesh, my well, now what happens if you see that and it goes right into use you, you know, you, you, you're attracted, but it's not love at all.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: You, you haven't done all the steps that we're talking about and you just start to use one another.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: When you release lust into your heart Scripture talks about this a lot right, when you release lust, this is what in 1, john, for all that is in the world the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world, and the world passes away and the lust of it, and you can just see this over and over.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: We're called to something much higher, to transcend the evils of this world, and there's only one way to do this is to be filled back up with divine life and love, because we can't give to each other what we don't have.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: Linda.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: Right and it's wanting to achieve that purity of heart that you know.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: Jesus spoke about that only which we can't yeah, which we can't get for ourselves.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: We have to go to that Redeemer Right.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: Yes, and you know the Pope was fully aware that, with all the experiences in the modern world that we had what he called, you know, the masters of suspicion.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: You know saying that that that isn't even possible.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: You know that you know, the, the lust.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: Lustful thoughts, lustful actions are the way it is.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: Yep, I cannot achieve it Right.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: If I have same sex attraction, that's who I am.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: If I lust after a woman, that's who I am.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: If I'm addicted to porn, that's who I am.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: If I lust after a woman, that's who I am.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: If I'm addicted to porn, that's who I am, and you're exactly right.
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: And then you know the Pope.
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: That's so wrong, because you know we can overcome that concupiscence, but only with grace.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: You know, we all know that.
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: But no one can do it alone.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: And yet it's such a lofty goal to have that purity of heart, to once again be able to see the song of songs through that purity of heart versus.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm reading some kind of a romance novel here or something you know, yeah, and that's a great point, because for young people listening that threefold concupiscence doesn't just go away.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: That's always dragging on.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: You can overcome it, like you said, through the grace of God.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: But there's a battle, and John Paul would say, buckle up.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: That's the battlefield of the heart between love and lust.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: That the opposite of love is not hatred.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: The opposite of love is using someone.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: It's lust, it's porn, it's all those things.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: So we know, in this temporal area there's always going to be a little bit of a draw.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: But like you and I always talk about Linda, use those temptations that come as an invitation to prayer.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: Open yourself up and if you do that often enough, hit confession, the Mass and receive Christ, you will see.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: You will see those pulls start to lessen and the beauty of what you're describing there starts to get brighter and brighter and it almost pulls you out of yourself again.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: You could almost experience that ache again, like you were when you were young, and just go oh, that's so beautiful.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: Only this time I'm not under pressure to you know, I could just go along with it and say thank you, jesus for the beauty of that mountain and say thank you, jesus, for the beauty of that mountain, for the beauty of the stars, for the beauty of that woman, thank you, I pray with her and for her and say thank you for bringing that beauty into my life.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: And whether it's my neighbor down the street, I respect her beauty and I respect her husband too and the beauty of this, but it touches your heart and you go, ooh, that's what God wants.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: See, when that happens to me now and when it happens to someone that's starting to work on this right, who's been working on it for years, you realize that's the intimacy God wants with us.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: So when we open that up, it's not saying no to those attractions, it's saying yes to the one who put them there and who is actually drawing us into eternal love, which the saints and the mystics say.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: Everything that we're describing here is a little tiny taste of what God wants to give us.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: Yes, st John of the Cross, I believe, looked at the Song of Songs too, as that conversation between God and an individual soul.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: You know, and it's very mystical in what, how he speaks about it, and it's difficult for us sometimes to get there.
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: But if we think this is just a call to seeing God's vision for love, you know, I I can get there each time.
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: I think you know how does God see this person and can I see that person in that way too, and the respect and dignity comes along with it.
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: You know, I think, jack too, it also speaks to, as we have talked many times, that echo in our heart that at some level, if I allow myself to listen, it's that echo that God had a vision for this and I want to tap into that.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: You know, and I think, modern movie makers, it's worth experiencing, right, it's worth experiencing.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: Let that echo be opened by Jesus Christ, that echo of something more that we feel Allow God to come in there.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, what an experience.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: That's what the mystics and the saints, that's why they wrote about Song of Songs so much, linda, because they were opening to that echo and saying please, come in and fill me.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: You said it's possible, you fill me, you're the bridegroom right, yes, yeah.
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: And even what you read earlier, where she's saying where are you?
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: You know, where do you hang out?
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's it.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: We're searching for God too.
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: Where are you?
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: And we find him.
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: We find him in the sacraments.
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: That's why our Catholic faith is so good.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: When we're asking, where are you God, we find him there.
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: And it's not just going to happen.
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: If I just sit around and do nothing, I have to go.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know, I think, jack.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: Just one point I wanted to make because it popped into my head how older movies, when they were trying to show love blossoming, had a sense of this West Side Story.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: When he meets Maria and you know the whole song after he had first met her.
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: you know Maria, you know it just oozes this what's going on here, this awe and wonder, you know, and other things about the movie, but this in particular always gets to me, you know, and I think that tapped into that sense that we all have and brush off all the cobwebs and's get there.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: You know, let's find that, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: It's such a beautiful thing, huh, when you think about this, it's called the triest in the spring.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: This is from chapter 2, verse 8, and this is the bride says and you could see what you're describing with the saints and the mystics talking about god.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: But this is actual.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: John paul said don't jump too fast for that, because these are linked that this is the actual.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: A man and a woman too.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: Right, because we're created in the image and likeness of god.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: So they're, they're.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: They're not exclusive to each other, they're yes and yes, yes and yes.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: In effect, they're actually linked, right.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: So she says this harkark, my lover.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: Here he comes, springing across the mountains, leaping across the hills.
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: My lover is like a gazelle or a young stag.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: Here he stands behind our wall.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: Now, listen to this.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: He doesn't force himself, he's not there to use her, he's waiting for her to say yes, I mean, you could see how beautiful.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: Here he stands behind her wall, gazing through the windows, peering through the lattices.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: My lover speaks.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: He says to me arise, my beloved, my beautiful one, and come to me.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: So this is what we do, right?
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: We don't rape, we don't pillage.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: You hear all these stories.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: Now he said no, no, no, he's a gentleman.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: Right, the bridegroom's a gentleman, he's wooing his bride, and while he does that, he's waiting, now, waiting, waiting, waiting for her to respond.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: That's what a man has to do, right, he can get down on one knee, but he can't force her to say yes.
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: And on the other hand, linda and again I don't want to move too quickly, but now that we see that this is also what God does, god never is going to force you People will say to me how come God doesn't get rid of evil?
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: Or how come God doesn't do this?
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: He says, hey, this is man cooperating with evil or with good.
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: And God woos you, though.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: And so you see this love, this dance, and you see the intimacy God wants with us.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: It's only when we embrace this, linda, that we can love one another, even love our neighbors as ourselves.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: You know how do we do that?
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: You have to have this intimacy with God.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: So see, they're linked.
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: Even though John Paul says, hey, we're not skipping this attraction between a man and a woman, but just the saints and the mystics said, hey, I get the vocabulary that explains, or at least given to me so I could articulate the intimacy that I want with God himself.
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: Sure yeah.
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: And as I said earlier, you know, none of this is necessarily easy to achieve, even here.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: Wait, I'll say this is a battle A little bit further on.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it takes years.
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, in verse 15, as, carrying along from where you were, they say, the bride says catch us the foxes, the little foxes that damage the vineyards, for our vineyards are in bloom Foxes.
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: What is that?
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: Pornography, you know?
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: Planned Parenthood's instruction to us, all those things that are trying to destroy this beautiful love story that is in bloom.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: And so, even so many thousands of years ago, it was happening.
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: It's the battle that you just spoke of.
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: You know we are in the battle.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: And this is really can be seen today.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: You know, when you start to put this lens together, you start to see this is where it's attacked.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: Linda and I don't want to stay here too long, we're going to wind up now, but this is where they attack.
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: This is why Sister Lucia said Our Lady of Fatima, our Blessed Mother, said the last great battle between our Lord, satan, is going to be over marriage and the family.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: Because that's the imago dei.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: So those foxes you're talking about have turned into really evil spirits in this time.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: Really with, with attacking what?
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: There's always the destruction of the human person, this culture of death.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: So he wants to get in between love, he wants to render that sterile with contraception and abortion, and even these poor young kids get caught out into these sexual ideologies, put on puberty blockers.
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: All of this is like these foxes, only these are spirits running around trying to destroy a human life.
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: So what we're talking about here is really a battle between life and death.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: Why don't you accept and open your heart to authentic love, to this echo in your heart?
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: It's so beautiful and so powerful to sit around and eat out of the garbage can.
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: When this banquet's offered to us, linda would be oh my gosh.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: It breaks my heart when I see that happen.
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: Deuteronomy God says I set before you life and death.
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: Choose life.
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, yes.
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: Well, god bless you, linda.
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: Thanks for unpacking this with us and Song of Songs.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: I think we're going to do a few of these, aren't we?
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: So we're going to get a little deeper into this language of the bride and groom, and then the story of Tobit, which is a fantastic story too.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: Before we start to wind down on all this, john Paul's teaching.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: You know it's been really beautiful.
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: So thank you, linda, thanks for spending the time.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: Thanks everybody for joining us.
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: Don't get frustrated, you know.
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: Kneel down and just open up all of those temptations to God.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: Use temptations as an invitation to prayer and then just go love the next person.
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: You see, hey, talk to you soon, everyone, bye-bye.
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: Thank you Bye.