Latest / Claymore: Become Who You Are / #639 Claymore (1): The Spiritual Battle for Young Men; "What Sort of Tale Have We Fallen Into?"

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#639 Claymore (1): The Spiritual Battle for Young Men; "What Sort of Tale Have We Fallen Into?" · Claymore: Become Who You Are

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Become who you Are podcast, a production of the John Paul II Renewal Center.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: I'm Jack Riggert, your host.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: After a week of being off for the 4th of July.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: This is our special weekly Friday edition of Claymore, our apostolate for young men and the people that love them.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: A little housekeeping before we get started and before we get into the heart of today's episode.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: If you haven't already, make sure you download the Claymore Militus Christi Battle Plan found on our website, jp2reneworg.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Go to the top, go under resources and you're going to scroll down.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: You're going to see the Claymore sword that's behind me here.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: If you're watching on YouTube or Rumble, you'll see it behind me.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Scroll down to the PDF file.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Print it out To save ink on your computer.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: The first page is a beautiful picture of St Michael the Archangel with a big sword.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: But go to the second page where you actually see kind of another cover page with the Claymore sword on it.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Start printing it on there.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: You'll save yourself some ink.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: The Claymore sword is that sword, that big, heavy, two-fisted sword made famous by William Wallace in the movie Braveheart.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: For you younger guys, if you haven't seen that movie, look it up.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Braveheart.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: It's an incredible movie based on a true story.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: If you watch it, you know you're going to see this big, two-fisted sword.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: I mean, those were men.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Were men, as gruesome as it sounds?
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: The Scots were invaded by the English and that sword could take out a horse's leg.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: You know, it's amazing.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Can you imagine these guys going into battle with these things, carrying these heavy swords around?
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Powerful stuff, huh.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Today, you know, guys are playing video games in their basements against each other.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: There's nothing against that per se, but you can imagine.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: You know, take that guy out that's been sitting on the couch day after day after day for hours and put him on a real battlefield with men with these big swords.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: You'd see the contrast right.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: So why the Claymore Sword is our title and logo?
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Because we're in a brutal spiritual battle, perhaps like no other in history, and the young men that we're meeting in our apostolate with the JP2 Renewal Center, they're waking up to this reality.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: It's really something to see and they're realizing there must be something more.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: You know something more that they're created to be.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: They sense this and they have to become real men, what they're created to be, not the emasculated men of our modern age, if they're going to really not only survive the storm but thrive in it.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: They really got to stand up.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Too many men are just lackadaisical.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: And you know, just go through life like that.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: You'll never find this joy, this happiness, this enthusiasm and passion for life.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm getting older and my dad is almost 100 years old.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: He's still alive, old World War II vet.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: He still has the passion.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: And why does he have the passion?
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Because you stepped into the arena.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: You're fighting the battle.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: You're connected to our Lord and Savior, jesus Christ.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: You know, by the way, this is where we got the name for our podcast.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: You know, we're now on our sixth season of the Become who you Are podcast, and the name actually came from a woman, a good friend of mine, a sister of mine.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Get to know her, st Catherine of Siena, who was trying to wake up the men of her day.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: She wrote become who you are, who you were created to be, and you will light the world on fire.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: We need more women today, like St Catherine of Siena, don't we To raise the bar?
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: Become the women who they're created to be?
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: So they were encouraged, young men to become real men, to take up the claymore, to fight for them, to respect them, to protect them.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: In a word, to raise the bar and become who they're created to be, so that men understand that.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: But even if they don't and we know many, many women don't understand that today we have to become warriors who know that the first battle that they fight, as St John Paul would say, is fought on the battlefield of our own hearts.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Between love and lust, between becoming a self-giving man and who respects and protects life, especially standing up for the most vulnerable and defenseless, the child in the womb and the elderly, and for marriage and the family.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: And finally, we have to have the courage to go out and do battle and restore the culture and our nation for your own generation and the generations to come, the children that you may bring in in the world, if you end up getting married and having families right.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: We've been given this beautiful country and you need to be patriotic, you need to have a love of your country, otherwise we just let it go, and this is a real battle.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: Today you have to pick it up, because you know if you're looking at somebody else to rescue you, you're not going to find them right.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: So don't be afraid to be patriotic in this world.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: And and you know, you hear all these people fighting and we'll be getting into more and more and more of this.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Right Reading from the cover page after that beautiful picture of St Michael the Archangel, again, this is the Claymore battle plan.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: You're going to see a picture like this and I'm holding this up for those of you who watch that video, but it's just.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: You can download this and it's the second page.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: On this second page you'll see the Claymore Sword and John Paul II writes a quote for all of you.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: Pay attention.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: Your life is not an endless series of open doors.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: Listen to your heart.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: It's always about the heart.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: It's always about the heart.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: It always starts at the heart.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: Do not stay on the surface, like most people get blown around by the spirit of age, but go to the heart of things.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: That means go deeper.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: You get there through prayer and the sacraments.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: We're covering all that, so just take it all in for right now and when the time is right.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: John Paul said have the courage to decide, make a decision, because if you don't make a decision, you'll never find what you're looking for as a man.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: You see, john Paul II was a prophet for our times and it was clear how this was all going to be played out and he wrote incredible encyclicals and information to hand down to us.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: And I gleaned all of that.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: That's what the John Paul II Renewal Center has done, and of course John Paul didn't make this up either.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: He takes this from church teachings et cetera, et cetera that flow down to him and all these wonderful people and the gospels, et cetera.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: But he also could read the sign of the times and we're always called to do that Like what are the signs of today's times?
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: How are we going to apply the word of these relationships and the relationship we have with God into our present day?
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: Right To St John Paul II, it was very clear to them and while we're not trying to predict the time of Jesus' second coming, we know that history is moving ever, ever closer.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: John Paul II, sister Faustina, bishop Sheen, they all had a sense that you know something new is happening.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: You know whether this is the end time we're getting close to.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: We don't know.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: We're not.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: They all had a sense that something new was happening.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: Whether this is the end time we're getting close to, we don't know.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: We're not going to exactly predict that, but we know that the evils of our days, especially with abortion and these twisting and distortion of marriages, and the wars, the endless wars, et cetera, et cetera.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: We know it's moving closer, but we don't get hopeless because we're stepping into a story.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Right, we're stepping into a story and this is our battleground.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: This is the time we were born.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: We were born here for a reason, but we're all sensing that something is happening right now.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: We're caught up in this great spiritual battle for human souls.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Don't forget, no matter what happens in this temporal life, we're set for eternity, and eternity doesn't mean tomorrow.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, jack, you're talking about tomorrow, I don't know about no, no, no, eternity means forever.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: We are already on the eternal stage and how we play this out is going to mean everything.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: We also know from experience that we're losing too many young people who have lost their way, their faith, their hope, and even lost what it means to be a person of love and see.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: Love is not an option for human beings.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: It's our primary mode of being.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: God is love and we're created in his image and his likeness.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: We're created, in fact, by love, in love and for love.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: But we cannot give what we don't have, in other words, if we do not first receive love from the source of love.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: We live like cut flowers.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: You know what cut flowers?
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: Huh, you go out and you cut these beautiful flowers.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: You put them in a vase, put some water and put them on the table.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: They look great for a few days, maybe even a week or two, and then what happens?
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: They start to boom, they start to wilt, and that's what's happening in these young lives we see around us.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: So this is very practical what we're talking about, like a branch disconnected from the vine, as Jesus so often put it.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: This, of course, is the state of our culture in the world today, one that John Paul II called the culture of death.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: The men of Claymore pick up the sword and we're restoring this culture of life that begins on the battlefield of each one of our hearts, men and women, young and old.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: This is why the battle plan includes that three-part simple prayer each morning.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: Hopefully you're all doing that Before you look at that phone.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: I'll just go over it quickly right here.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: Before you look at the phone, it just takes you minutes.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Fall down to your knees, you open up your heart.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: It's all in the battle plan, with our blessed mother kneeling aside you.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Let it be done to me according to your word.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: We're going deep, we're opening our hearts up to God himself, right?
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: And then, you know, I always hear in the back of my mind, you know, from the wedding feast of Cana do whatever he tells you.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: And that's the second thing I think of.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: Okay, I'm open up.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: Let it be done to me according to your word, do whatever he tells you.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: And then I watch for him during the day.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: Second thing temptation is not a sin, very, very important for us today.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Temptation is not a sin.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: Jesus himself was tempted, if you understand it properly, and we've talked about this many times and I'll continue to talk about it because I think it's the most important thing we can know as men, that divine sparks say lust, selfishness, porn, whatever it is, laziness.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: It could be a lot of different things, but a lot of you are struggling with pornography and those images.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: You know, it's not about suppressing those images.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: You're trying to be good.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: It's about opening up and knowing that every temptation that comes into your mind, into your heart, is an invitation to prayer, very, very important.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: So do that.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: And the next thing you get up off your knees and love the next person you see, authentically included in that is a divine mercy prayer for the day, and it's only 30 seconds usually, and then you say a little short prayer.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: It's all in the app there.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: But don't skip that Divine Mercy.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: You play it, you can hear the words of Jesus talking to Sister Faustina and speaking to us, and you really start to realize how God is calling us, how Jesus is calling us Very, very, very beautiful.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: So Sister Faustina, who spoke with Jesus, wanted us to receive his mercy as we draw near to the end of history, and this was that spark that Jesus told Sister Faustina about.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: You know, things are winding down here and I want everybody to know about my mercy and my compassionate heart, just for times like this.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: So again, don't skip that.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: It's going to be a great gift to your life in a short period of time.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: Finally, this episode today is a reset of sorts.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: It begins at the beginning of a book that I'm writing.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Look, I get into this a little bit more later on in this episode, but the book that I'm writing, I sat down and so I'm unpacking this.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: The book's not quite done yet.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: I'm still got.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: Actually, I'm only about three quarters of the way through it.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: I sat down and so I'm unpacking this.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: The book's not quite done yet.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: I've still got actually I'm only about three quarters of the way through it.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: I got a lot of work and then a lot of editing to do on it, so it's going to be a while, but I'm unpacking these chapters, starting again today, and so you're going to get this tidbit and we're going to really go into a comprehensive story.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: So it's going to be really, really good with short chapters.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: Remember that we encourage you to share these Friday episodes with at least one other person and discuss the questions in the show notes together.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: Also meditate them.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: There's scripture references in them.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: You know really what you need for this battle.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Again, over time, you're going to be drawn closer to the heart of Jesus Christ.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: This is always our goal to encounter Jesus Christ, who calls us his friends and, in love, invites us, seeks an intimate, very personal, intimate relationship with himself.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: This is what makes it different.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: This is not just more information.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: This is the DNA, that desire that we have for something more.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: You know, god gave us that desire.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: He has the same desire for us.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: And one more thing take a second to subscribe and hit the like button.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: When you do that, when you hit the like button, the algos will pick up on this and we'll get this much needed message out to more young people.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Okay, buckle up and get ready for today's episode.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: The Tale that We've Fallen Into.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: The Tale that We've Fallen Into.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: I love Henry David Thoreau.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: He wrote this book called the Walden Pond that I used to when I went backpacking.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: I loved to read snippets of this book, and so he was going to the woods just to figure things out.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: And this is what he writes.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived, For the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: So he's living deliberately.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: This is what we do when we fall to our knees before that phone.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: We're living deliberately.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: That's what he's talking about here, so that I know you know we're going to get into this more, but John Paul said your youth is a gift.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: This is a time for you to discover what life has to teach.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: You See, this is what he's saying.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: You know, writing for me is hard work and I asked myself do young men need another book?
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm told that they seldom read anyway.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: Haven't they already grown up in this mind-numbing bubble of noise, texts, images, endless messaging?
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: Aren't they constantly inundated by social media influencers, professional marketers, educators, all these government experts, all telling them how to live, what to buy, what to inject into their bodies, how to think, what to fear?
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: This leaves young people in an uncomfortable and confusing vacuum, and what Pope Benedict XVI called the dictatorship of moral relativism.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: We live in an empty illusion where there is no truth, only my truth or your truth, full of noise, people bringing in all these directions, until you finally just give up.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: You play video games all day or you numb yourself right, because it's a painful place for a human being to live.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: Statistics confirm it.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: This is the most anxious, and I'm talking about Gen Z.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: I love Gen Z.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: I love working with them, because the men especially respond to our witness stories and the truth.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: They're looking for something more, but in general, this is the most anxious and depressed generation of young people the world's ever seen, and in just the past few years the numbers have spoke about this They've skyrocketed.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: I'll give you just a few.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: According to the CDC Center for Disease Control, 50% of teen girls say they feel persistently sad or hopeless.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: 57% 40% of teens altogether boys and girls report they felt so down at some point during the last year they couldn't do their normal activities like schoolwork or sports for at least two weeks.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: 52% of teens who identify as LBGTQIASS plus say they struggle with mental health.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: 30% of teen girls have seriously considered suicide.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: That's a huge number and a number that's been rising and risen 60% over just the last decade.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: 22% of LBGTQIASS plus teens say they attempted suicide in the past year.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: It's a sad number, and that's not even counting the fact that 100% of the young men I meet today have been exposed to hardcore pornography.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: It's robbed them of their innocence, obliterated their moral compass and many of them have just given up altogether, become part of a staggering number of young people who die each year from drug overdose and suicide.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: Thoreau was right the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation, but in the midst of this present chaos, really in a very real attack on our young people, I personally witnessed so many young men especially respond to the message we're sharing with them.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: We found that, despite all the endless chatter and advice to receive from these so-called experts.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: Again, young men were awakening to the realization that something has gone terribly wrong, and when they search for answers, too often they encounter people that lied to them or who, despite good intentions and try to help them, have sat with that proverbial frog in that big pot of moral relativism for so long.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: They become numb to the evils of this day and they have nothing then of substance to share with anybody.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: So I sense an urgency to come up alongside these young men you that are listening today, and I asked our team to reflect on their own journey and to share the impact that John Paul II's message had on their own lives.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: Without holding back, I began to do the same thing I'm not holding back with the young people.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: The results were instantaneously.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: These guys would lean into our witness stories, they would ask questions and then they would start to share their own heartfelt stories.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: It's amazing how you can connect when you're seeking the truth.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: For us, then, after that, there was no turning our backs on these young men and young women who became our brothers and sisters in so many ways.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: This is how Claymore Miletus Christi Claymore is the sword Miletus Christi soldiers for Christ came about.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: It's a framework for discipling, really journeying with the young people that we meet and show them how to journey together.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: So I decided, regardless of the time and effort, to write it down in a book, something that would serve as a kind of a handbook to help them get their hearts back, while also providing a lens so they could step back and know the larger story.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: Both of those are important to get your hearts back and to know the bigger story and how this all fits together.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: So to provide all of you with the lens that you need to answer this timeless questions.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: You know we had these timeless questions that everybody used to try to answer for themselves.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Now, this is the first time in history, the culture has stopped asking these questions and let alone trying to give you an answer.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: They don't even ask the questions anymore.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: These are the timeless questions we all want to know who am I?
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: What's the meaning of purpose of my life?
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: How should I live?
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: Why were we created, male and female?
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: I mean, you would think that would be a simple one.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Not anymore.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: How do I find happiness here today?
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: How do I find love that lasts, that won't fade away?
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: I decided, despite the hard work I would begin a book.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: I ordered to the young men that we meet, to John Paul II, a prophet for our time, who changed my life.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: So I picked up a pen and I began to write.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: And here's what I began to write.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: Looking back, I clearly remember like it was yesterday, being a young man who felt alone with his questions that no one could answer.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: I felt the same thing.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: So on the day I graduated from high school, the very day I skipped the parties, threw my backpack, my hiking boots, a few of my favorite books in my car, strapped my beloved bicycle I'm still riding bicycles, I love them to the roof and I drove west.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: No cell phones to distract one in those days.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: I lived in Denver for a while, moved around and eventually landed in Southern California.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: I was searching for the truth, wondering if I would ever find it.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: So I went to a new place.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: I would go to a new scene, a place to hang my hammock, beauty to uphold, always keeping one eye out for danger.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: I wandered among the thousands of people I passed.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: I settled in Los Angeles, in the Southern California area, and I remember I would pass thousands of people on the streets of LA, and yet I was alone.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: Is there someone out there for me?
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Out there, just, and and you know I mean anybody.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: What a difference that makes right.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: Think about relationships.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: I walk into a new city, whether it's Denver or Los Angeles and many other cities, moving, traveling, sometimes as a young guy, and I remember you can get, really get alone, you know, and I would walk among these thousands of people.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: I was amazed that you can be with all these people and feel this alone.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: And it just takes one special person be with all these people and feel this alone.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: And it just takes one special person, anybody, a man or a woman, just a friend, right, it opens up a whole nother world.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: See, this is the relationship with God in our hearts.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: You know, when we're disconnected from God, we feel alone, even among many people, even among friends, even if you're married.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Sometimes, when you open up to God, things start to change.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: And this is that relationship.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: We're made for these relationships.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: And then so I'm walking around LA thinking, man, I wish there's somebody out there for me.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: One late evening, after working a dinner shift in a restaurant, feeling particularly alone, I went off for a walk.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: I wandered to the beach not far from my apartment.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: I laid back in the sand, it was dark and a vast panorama of stars opened up.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: It took my breath away.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: I felt small and insignificant then, and I heard the words of Christ.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: This is from John, chapter 1.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: What do you seek?
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: What do you seek?
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: I responded in silence.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: I'm seeking the truth, if it exists.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: I'm seeking meaning and purpose in my life.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: I want to know is there a best way to live Then?
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: A deeper silence, not emptiness, but peaceful silence.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: And I realized I'm a tiny speck on the surface of this gas-fired planet itself, a tiny speck within a vast galaxy of galaxies.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: And yet yet, in that moment, hearing Christ's question, I sensed that my life mattered.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: I was not alone.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: I was connected to the God of the universe.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: I don't know why I felt like that, but this is in our hearts.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: I had not created the universe, nor was I the author of the story, but perhaps I was in a story, part of something larger.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: And I began to wander along with Sam Gamgee.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: You know the Fellowship of the Rings, part of the Lord of the Rings series.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: Well, this is from the Two Towers, and Sam Gamgee and his friend Fodor are on an arduous journey and they're about halfway through it and he just wonders out loud.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: He says I wonder what sort of tale we've fallen into.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: This is what we should be asking ourselves I wonder what sort of tale we've fallen into.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: Sam continues it's like the great stories, mr Frodo, the ones that really mattered full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end, because how could the end be happy?
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened?
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: But in the end it's only a passing thing.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: This shadow, even darkness, must pass.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: A new day will come, and when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something, even if you were too small to understand why.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: But I think, mr Frodo, I do understand.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: I know now, folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: Only they didn't.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: They kept going because they were holding on to something that there's something good in this world and it's worth fighting for.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: There's some good in this world and it's worth fighting for and it's true.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: End, quote there.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: So over time, I began to gather clues and they began to form a picture, one realization that I had creation is good and has its own proper perfection, but it did not spring forth complete from the creator's hand.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: I remember reading John Paul's work and he would explain it kind of like this you know, and has its own proper perfection, but it did not spring forth complete from the creator's hand.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: I remember reading John Paul's work and he would explain it kind of like this you know, the universe, like us, was created in a state of journeying, moving toward a final perfection, but it's not yet attained.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: God is the author and creator of the story, but he allows us as creatures to cooperate in its unfolding.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: We have our place here.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: If the world's not perfect, we've been brought into the world to make it more perfect in our own little way.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: At the same time, we become more perfect.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: See, this is the story.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: He grants us not only our existence but the dignity of acting, of being cases for one another and participants in his plan.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: One day I was in a public library.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: I came across the writings of Alexander Sholtsonitsyn, the great Russian writer who had spent eight years in the Soviet gulags, the brutal communist prison system, for writing a letter pushing back on Stalin that somebody got a hold of so suddenly, as I'm reading him, another clue on Stalin that somebody got a hold of so suddenly, as I'm reading him, another clue.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: See, we're looking for clues.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: Things became clearer.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: Schultz and Neitzan wrote Marxism.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: This is the socialism, communism, marxism that we see.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: It's a battle in our own country today.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: Watch for this Marxism, claims.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: He wrote, that some groups and classes of human beings are good and others bad.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: So to perfect itself, humanity must isolate and eliminate the bad people.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: Of course I decide who's good and who's bad.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: It's always the people in power that decide this, right.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: But Schultz and Nietzsche came to a deeper truth the dividing line between good and evil does not run between groups.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: Listen to this, because they want to divide us into groups.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: How does it run?
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: It runs through every single individual human heart.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: The Marxist position, he went on, was that humanity would be perfected through the inevitable progress of world history.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: Didn't we hear that after COVID, the Great Reset?
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: Listen to this, build back better.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: All of these European Union, the G7, everybody was saying build back better, joe Biden, build back better.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: Where do they got this from?
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: That's from here, right, the inevitable progress of world history.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: We're going to build back better.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: But if the dividing line Schultz and Nietzsche wrote, is within every human heart, then only limited improvement is possible in this life.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: We do the best we can and we make our small improvements, but it's always going to need more.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: But degeneracy, he said, is always equally possible.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: The Marxist position is to be rejected, it seems, because it overlooks the reality of original sin.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: End quote Original sin in the sense we all came into the story and on the day that you and I were born, sooner or later we find ourselves standing between that tree of the knowledge of good and evil from Genesis 3, created with free will, given the divine gift of reason and intellect, we were given all the tools we have to choose and our quest for meaning and purpose were sent on a mission to seek the truth.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: This is what our reason does, right.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: Our reason is always searching for the truth and our free will, if properly understood, will be like a little motor.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: John Paul said to the good to choose the good.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: This is how we're moving on our path and determining ourselves right To seek the truth and to decide which city we're going to help build the city of man, the Marxist position, or the city of God that we're created for.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: Only at the end of our lives, st Paul said from 1 Corinthians, when our partial knowledge gives way to full vision, when we see God face to face, will we really fully understand the ways in which he guided us within this larger story.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: See, this is the prayer, this is the story, this is the sword.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: We pick up Battle on our own hearts first, so that we open it up to God's plan, and he will be the one to guide us.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: He will send people into our lives to guide us.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: It's an amazing story.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: In the meantime, we must trust that someone, jesus Christ first.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: You know Miletus Christi.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: We're soldiers of Christ, but then we find mentors, we find disciples to walk with.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: This is the Claymore Miletus Christi battle plan, because there's an enemy there that would like nothing more than to keep us from the truth, to keep us from choosing the good.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: And this is a battle.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: It's a brutal battle.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: This is what we're sensing.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: Jesus turned to the disciples of John the Baptist who were following them in John chapter one again, and he turned to them, and he turns to all of us and he says what do you seek?
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: What do you seek?
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: And then they said to him rabbi, which means teacher, where are you staying?
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: See, we sense something.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: I hear the word.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: I'm starting.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I hear that word.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: So where are you staying?
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: I want to follow you a little bit further.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: And what does Jesus say to them?
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: Come and see, come and see.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: He doesn't give them any propaganda, no ideology, nothing to sell them, just come and see.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: Ooh, good stuff.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: Right, that's the end of this episode.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: Let me just there's a call to action here Download the Claymore Miletus Christi battle plan this week.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: Connect with a Claymore disciple or invite someone to become one and share your journey with you.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: You're stronger together.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Ask them to watch this week's podcast.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: And then you have the discussion questions.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: I'll have them in the show notes.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: Let me go through one or two.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: You can just see the beauty of these discussion questions.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: What are some moments in your life when you felt a deep longing for truth, meaning or purpose?
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: Right, ask yourself that, because you see, this is our story and our heart.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: Sometimes we get so busy and listen to so much noise we forget that we're asking these questions.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: So how did you respond to that desire?
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: Did you push it off?
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: Ah, you know, even the Old Testament prophets were speaking about this.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: Of course, this is timeless.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: Again, this is from Jeremiah 29.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: This is our Lord speaking, and he's speaking through Jeremiah than to other people.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: Remember it's always about the heart.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: I will be found by you, says the Lord.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: He's not hiding from us.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: We got to get and do this.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: Here's question number two.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: Sam Gamgee says I wonder what sort of tale we've fallen into.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: Do you feel like your life is part of a larger story?
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: If so, who's writing it?
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: Are you writing it yourself?
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, pride, pride, this pride that, well, you do write a story.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: You co-author, but you came into a story.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: You're writing your story within the context of the story between good and evil that you decide.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: You have a lot to do, a lot to write here.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: If I didn't, I wouldn't be writing this book here, but I didn't write the larger story we live in the contents of reality.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: Gravity really exists, good and evil really exist.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: God is the good.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: There's an evil one that wants to take us down, and you see this playing out in hearts.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: Most of the evil that you encounter in the world today are people that are cooperating with Satan, with the evil spirits, right?
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: So who's writing that?
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: What role is he?
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: You know Ephesians.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: St Paul writes in Ephesians 2, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: See, the story is written.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: Now we should walk in his story, and these are beautiful things.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: One more right In a world full of noise, opinions, competing truths, where do you go, or where could you begin to go to seek what is really true, good and beautiful?
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: And in John, chapter eight, which is a powerful chapter, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: And so, you know, go in, ask those questions of yourself, ask them with somebody else.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: So have a beer or coffee or whatever you know with somebody.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: And so have a beer or coffee or whatever you know with somebody and start to unpack these things using scripture coming into the story.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: It's a life-changing thing.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: Hey, god bless you.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: Don't forget to subscribe.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: Hit the like button.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: Also, we have great podcasts.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: You know other podcasts that are going to give you, you know, even a different lens on all of this too Bitcoin, we just did one the moral money.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: Listen to that, eric Sammons, who's the editor of Crisis Magazine, did a great job on that.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: Speaking really to the issues of today for young people how hard it is we talked about to own homes, those kinds of things Very practical.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: What we're talking about here is practical stuff.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: Also, on suffering, dr Aaron Curiati.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: He's an incredible young doctor, psychiatrist.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: I really respect him.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: I knew him and knew of him before this podcast.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: It's a beautiful podcast too, so listen to some of those too.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: All right, everyone.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: Talk to you again soon.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: Bye-bye.