Become Who You Are
What’s the meaning and purpose of my life? What is my true identity? Why were we created male and female? How do I find happiness, joy and peace? How do I find love that lasts, forever? These are the timeless questions of the human heart. Join Jack Rigert and his guests for lively insights, reading the signs of our times through the lens of Catholic Teaching and the insights of Saint John Paul ll to guide us.
Saint Catherine of Siena said "Become who you are and you would set the world on fire".
Become Who You Are
#528 Contrasting Abortion at the DNC and the Sacrament of Marriage, the Family and Authentic Love
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Is our modern world embracing a culture of death? Join us in this thought-provoking episode of the Become Who You Are podcast as we explore the timeless wisdom of St. John Paul II's Theology of the Body, Audience #98. We dissect the stark contrasts between the culture of life and the culture of death, especially in the context of today's heated debates on reproductive rights and abortion at the Democratic National Convention. With the guidance of scripture and saints, we challenge the prevailing cultural narratives and reaffirm the inherent dignity and divine calling within every human being.
Discover the profound beauty of love and sexuality within the sanctity of marriage, a topic often misunderstood in today's society. Modern culture tends to reduce sex to a mere physical act, neglecting its deeper emotional, psychological, and spiritual dimensions.
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Welcome to the Become who you Are podcast, a production of the John Paul II Renewal Center. I'm Jack Rigg, your host. Hey, thanks for joining me today. St Catherine of Siena said that if you become who you are, that you would literally set the world on fire. 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. 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. 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, 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. See, that's the genus of St John Paul II's theology of the body. 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. Who am I? What's my purpose? Why were we created, male and female? How do I find happiness here on earth? How do I find love that satisfies forever? Hey, glad you're with me. I'll be right. I'm here with Linda Piper, my co-host. We're on, if you're following us. Men and Women, he Created them. Marriage is a Figure and a Sacrament of the New Covenant. It's amazing how relevant this is today to all those who have been following the DNC. I am originally from Chicago. I live out in the far west suburbs now, thankfully because the DNC has got underway and Planned Parenthood is advertising outside the DNC, the convention in Chicago Pay as you go. If you don't have money, you can still get a free abortion, you can get a vasectomy, you can enjoy a huge blow-up of a IUD, and so what is it saying? It's saying death, death, death. Right. Abortions are front and center in the DNC and, from what I understand, kamala Harris of course loves to promote abortion, but she's not the only one. I'll just add this At the opening, the headliners were.
Speaker 1:Two of the headliners were Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear and former Senator Hillary Clinton, and they emphasized reproductive freedom. During the kickoff of the four-day event, beshear criticized former President Donald Trump for bragging about the overturning of rule versus way, telling the crowd. That's why we must tear away any chance he could ever be president again. Linda, donald Trump is not a perfect person, we know that, and he's a political person and he's coming into prominence among Christians, not because he's such a great model of Christianity, but because he seems to understand at some level that human freedom must include the right to religion and it must somehow protect the life of the unborn. He was happy with that. He knew that. Destroying the life of the unborn, he was happy with that. He knew that destroying the life of the unborn, putting a barrier and calling it reproductive rights.
Speaker 2:You know, when you look at what it is we're trying to do, as we're taking our audience through Theology of the Body audiences, as we're taking our audience through Theology of the Body audiences, and we look at what's in our face right now, this very day, with the DNC and the Democratic Convention happening this week, the irony, the hypocrisy just is all over the place. So I try to zoom out a little bit, because we're not about the politics per se, but what we are about is looking at how does what John Paul shared with us in Theology of the Body actually play out in the real world? And so what's happening right now with the convention is a big part of the real world in the US today. The convention is a big part of the real world in the US today. And as I kind of zoom out a little bit from the politics of it all, I see that, you know, we're once again looking at what I call like the two world views that are in total clash with each other.
Speaker 2:It's the culture of death and the culture of life, and what I believe we're seeing play out right now is the culture of death and how it expresses itself in all these various ways, Whereas, as you brought out about Donald Trump, there is this element of looking at life and the rights that we have through an understanding of you know where we come from, who we are and what really the culture of life is all about. So in today's reading we're recording on August 20th, in the Responsorial Psalm at Mass, the response was and this is God speaking it is I who deal death and give life, and you kind of have it right there. Who has the right over life and death? And that's really where our big clash is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this is a direct attack on life, of course, on the child and the womb. You know, when we speak of reproductive rights, you have the right. A man and a woman have a right not to have sex. They're not asked to have children, you know, and you can avoid that. You know, look, we come from the Latin right, where we have a whole religious communities and priests themselves who skip this earthly marriage and go right into this marriage of Christ in the church. Take, you know, really, step in big-heartedly. We have the saints and the mystics that really join in communion and union with God. This is where we're all heading.
Speaker 1:Anyways, you know, ephesians, chapter 1, john points out here this is verse 3, 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, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him. He destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will. And then in verse 7, we have this disconnection right Sin came into the world. And in verse 7, it says in him, jesus Christ, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the richness of his grace which he lavished upon us. What happened there? Well, we lost grace through sin, which is participation in the life of God.
Speaker 1:Marriage let's get to marriage here. Marriage is the primordial sacrament. Marriage was the sacrament right from the very beginning. When we say primordial sacrament, it was the sacrament that reflected God's and reflected the Trinitarian love into this world, into this created world, and it was efficacious. In other words, it brought God's love into this created world. This was part of the plan from the very beginning. We were filled with divine life and love, created to make this visible in the world. This is John Paul's whole thesis. When you think, linda, about this disconnection right, this loss of grace, here comes Jesus to give himself to us, to take on a human body, to unite right in his body our humanity and his divinity again as it was in the beginning his body, our humanity and his divinity again as it was in the beginning. Then he takes on all the sin and death and he pours this back out to us in the Eucharist.
Speaker 1:At Mass this morning, the Eucharist was stated by the priest right on the altar right. This is the sacrament of unity and peace. And when you start to think about the disunity and the lack of peace that we see in the world today, this is because we've disconnected. And the last thing I'll say is in verse 13,. So you have the Father and the Son already, and in verse 13 of the first chapter, in him you also, who have heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and have believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory. So you have the whole trinity here. You have the whole trinity.
Speaker 1:And marriage again is that reflection, a created reflection of Trinitarian love the Father, son and the Holy Spirit. So this is why it's the primordial sacrament and this is why it's attacked. It's the Imago Dei, the image and likeness of God on earth. If you can destroy marriage and the family and the child, the love that comes from them, you'll take down the whole civilization, you'll take down humanity. It's an attack on human beings themselves, you know.
Speaker 2:Sure. And one point the Pope makes, as he makes it clear that marriage is the primordial sacrament, is linked to the whole sacrament of creation. Man and woman, male and female, were the pinnacle of this creation. In fact, all the created things that we see were really made for us and we are the pinnacle of that creation. And that union of man and woman reflects the Trinitarian. It brings the invisible to become visible in the world. And that was God's plan. And, as you said, when sin entered the world we essentially were not trusting God, doubting God, rejecting his plan.
Speaker 2:But the Pope makes clear in this audience that the union of us with Christ was part of the plan from the very beginning and that our sin, while it caused that loss of grace, did not stop God's eternal plan for our salvation. And St Paul makes that so beautifully clear in Ephesians. So what he then goes on to tell us is that marriage is that model, that icon and figure also of the new covenant, the sacrament of redemption, where we see this love of christ and the church. He calls it a spousal gracing. So we recover the grace in the image of spousal love, which is that total self-gift and that included. Then St Paul says giving us back all the spiritual blessings. So marriage, the primordial sacrament, became that prototype really for all the sacraments and that recovery of the grace, the sacraments and that recovery of the grace, and so they're linked together.
Speaker 2:And what struck me, jack, as I was reflecting on this, was that with the sacrament of redemption, you know, the first thing in being redeemed is that forgiveness of sin, and part of the forgiveness of sin, then, is that we make an effort to sin no more, to change our ways, and people would like to continue to use an excuse that well, we're fallen. You know, we hear excuses for our bad behavior as well. That's just the way we are. That's human nature. And the Pope tells us no, our human nature in that sacrament of creation was far beyond the fallen state that we think has become normal, and so a big part of this is we've normalized that fallen state and we need to recover, through the sacrament of redemption, what truly our human natural state is, and that is not the fallen state man's natural state is supernatural and what you're seeing in a natural state is this lack of grace that we lost at an original sin, and you can see it so clearly.
Speaker 1:You can be like God and you can call good evil and evil good. Just go down to the DNC in Chicago right now, at the convention, and step outside and see abortions being done, free vasectomies, iuds, all of this and what you had brought up right before we came on, is that even women don't see this. When I brought this up to a woman yesterday talking about all of this right, abortion, pushing reproductive rights but again, you have a right not to have sex, you have a right to not get married, you have these rights, but you don't have a right to kill a child. See, this is the fifth commandment. So you say, okay, well, I'm killing a child. Okay, I get it, I kill a child.
Speaker 1:It's inconvenient for me and at the end of the day, we have too many human beings anyways. Well, this is natural man. Again, you don't see the dignity of the individual person there. You can just destroy a child. We've come to the point where we can just casually talk about the destruction of a child. What the woman that I was talking to yesterday brought up, though she didn't even see abortion. She just pushed that off. What she saw was the vasectomies and she goes it's good for a man to get a vasectomy because you know he needs to take responsibility for this, you know, instead of a woman worrying about taking the pill or whatever, right.
Speaker 2:And so this is the mentality and so this is the mentality Women in particular, I think, have been so focused through our culture on being like men, maybe even getting even with men. You saying that we need abortion because men then would have the freedom in a country where abortion is on demand is the norm in that country. And he was going along those lines.
Speaker 2:And look at how it's just revolving all around whose responsibility is it right? Because it's a complete perversion, misunderstanding of who we are, as male and female, called to be in the complementarity of our union in marriage.
Speaker 1:Think about this. You know. A woman, you know, is basically saying I just want to be used and I don't really care. This is not about love. This is not about procreation. This is about not unity. Don't forget there's two aspects of this. There's the procreative, as it was in the beginning to bring this divine life and love in the world, to bring eternal beings into the world that would be with God forever. This is how we're created.
Speaker 1:When we get away from this understanding, when we add contraception to here whether it's a man or a woman, it doesn't really matter who does it, it becomes utilitarianism. It just becomes I use you, you use me and nobody cares. And this is what's happening today. We're using each other for hedonistic pleasure. There's nothing wrong with sex for pleasure, but it has to be open to a bond between two human beings. When you take that away, then it becomes an addiction. You just become addicted to this. You become addicted to using one another. You no longer see that this is asking you to come in and form a bond with another person so that the two become one, can become three. Whether a life comes out of that sexual union or not, it doesn't always and it isn't meant to always come out in a child, but at least the unitive is there when a man and a woman make love to each other in marriage. There's a unity there. There's an incredible beauty there that I think most people, certainly in the Western civilization, have never experienced in their life.
Speaker 1:They've never really experienced sex really the way it's created to be, it's always been a matter of using another person, of taking pleasure from the other person instead of this life giving force. It's a force. It's a power within us, it's a force and this is why it's always on everybody's mind in this culture. You know, they want more and more. If I can only get more sex, if I can only get another partner, they give me more. You know, I mean it's the hookup culture. It's using one another, even to the point where it doesn't even matter if it's a male or a female anymore, because when you take when it's contraceptive sex, linda, it doesn't matter how I get it or where I get it.
Speaker 1:It's all about me, right, and my fulfillment, and whether it's a hole and I'd be vulgar here a little bit but whether it's a hole someplace, it doesn't matter where it is. This is what it's come down to, and you see this all around us. It's really sad actually.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So let's go back to this idea of the unitive aspect. The unitive, perhaps in most people's mind now, is just the biological union and thinking, nothing beyond that. So, as you said, whenever with whoever, it's just that biological union and and that's such a misunderstanding of the unitive, because it is so much more it is, you know, the psychological, the emotional, the spiritual, all of that is a part of it, and that's why I said earlier to you that I think so many women perhaps have never experienced, like you just said, that unity, because it does involve love and it involves self-giving, and for many, sexual intimacy is far, far, far away from that. It's just the biological.
Speaker 2:And so if you're looking at the outcome, if you will, okay, using one another, even that is not a level playing field from a woman's perspective. If I'm thinking this way, because we mutually use each other, but I'm the one who still has the consequences to deal with if conception occurs, you see, to deal with. If conception occurs, you see, and so there's this attitude, then you know, give me the stuff to deal with the consequences. You know this is not fair. So it has devolved, you know that low, and that's why we see what we see going on at the convention. You know it's supposedly this is the party that are protecting women, when in fact they're helping women go down that scale of degradation, in my view, to just I don't know how low it can go with our loss of our sense of dignity and what we're called to be as women.
Speaker 1:When I see around me the people that are forming these young families you know I work with a lot of Catholic communities and a man and a woman that actually embrace the beauty of marriage, the beauty of their sexuality. It's something so powerful, so beautiful that you see, you know they have children around. When you see the interaction between a man that really respects a woman, a woman that really respects a man, and you see the beauty of what they bring forth and how they interact with each other and then with the children, it's, it's, it's almost, it's almost alien, I think, to you know the people that would be braiding around the DNC. I think they would look at that family and have no idea what that even means. To look at them, say with three or four or five kids even, and say, what are you doing? You're just breeding kids or whatever. It's amazing, as I get older here and I have seven grandchildren so far and six of them are girls, and just the beauty of them.
Speaker 1:And I see their hearts and their hearts are looking for love. Already you see this Within the family, first, within friendships, and then going out really and starting to pay attention to the boys and et cetera, et cetera. The older ones are all girls, and now I look out in the culture and I think, man, it's going to be so hard for them to find what their heart is really seeking, which is authentic love. That we're unpacking here and I think we have to bring it down to this level I've mentioned a couple of times when I talk to young men and I ask them you know, what did they do first? Did they hold the young girl's hand first?
Speaker 1:And the beauty and the power of that? You know the beauty and power of sitting in a in a movie or going out on a, on a, on a on a first date with somebody, and then, and then holding a girl's hand. I mean this was powerful and there's something powerful. But did they do that first? Or did they see hardcore porn first? And none of the young men I meet now held a young girl's hand before they saw hardcore porn. And so we've taken their innocence away, we've taken this power away. It's Christ that comes back in to restore our hearts, to bring us back into this call to holiness and purification. And you say, well, that sounds prudish. Well, it's not prudish at all, because I start to see the power, the mystery of love itself and the power of what God has poured into us, that we're created to make visible. And this is the whole meaning and purpose of our life to be a gift to other people.
Speaker 2:But in order to be a gift.
Speaker 1:I have to first receive this gift from the source, the eternal wellspring, and then I can give it away.
Speaker 2:Right, and the real sadness of what you just mentioned, jack, as you look at your granddaughters. I have granddaughters too, and you know that desire for love, to love and to be loved. All the women who are out there protesting I am sure at one point in their life were there. They had that desire to love and to be loved and you have to wonder what happened along the way in their lives that they have reached the point where they have probably given up on love.
Speaker 1:Authentic love. Authentic love, for sure.
Speaker 2:And, you see, it's like a dam bursting, it's like, okay, if authentic love just really isn't part of what I'm going to experience, then this is what I'm left with, you see, and my prayer for all those women, and the men too, is to come back and ask yourself what really is love? Where does it exist? How do I experience it? And it's only through the power of grace we know that being filled with love from our Creator first is where we get it and that's how we have it available to share.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we've walked away from the love story, haven't we?
Speaker 1:I mean, when you think about this Jesus says right away in Matthew 19, talking about relationship problems and divorce problems and he said in the beginning it was not so and he brings us right back to Genesis that we're created in the image and likeness of God, that God draws back after he's got creation, he's got everything ready. He draws back into himself and let us create man in our image and our likeness. And how did he do that? Male and female, he created them. You know, God is not a sexual being, but God created us and our sexuality to be so beautiful, so powerful that we are actually. We walk into this love story and we actually are efficacious. We are actually bringing divine life and love into the world.
Speaker 1:You know, Linda, without this, without human beings, without you and I and every human being that's created, love does not get into the world. Because, you know, the rest of creation is so beautiful, so powerful, it has its own intelligence in a way, right. I mean, trees know how to be trees. You know, this little walnut that's in the ground can grow up into this massive tree. How does it do this?
Speaker 1:You know, I was at a buddy's house not too long ago, at his lake house, and there were two trees growing up next to each other and one had gotten really, really big and one smaller must have been a little bit younger, but it was went up about 15 feet or 20 feet and then it started to curve and it's totally curved away from the bigger tree because it's getting away from being underneath its foliage and looking for the sun. It's amazing how it just went up, up, up and then you could see the other tree must have got bigger and started to fill out and this one just curved away and you just go. But yet the essence of love, the inner life of god himself, is brought into this created world through our creation.
Speaker 2:Our bodies actually bring this through and jack the great blessing that we play a role in that through procreation that God has said. I will let you be a part of this and what have we done with I mean, the chance that the women dressed up as the chemical abortion pills you know were saying you know, pretty gross. You know that you can't force me to procreate was the last line you know, and I thought that's interesting that they actually choose the word procreate rather than reproduce, right, all of a sudden. It was very interesting to me.
Speaker 2:So again that complete misunderstanding or lack of even knowing what procreation truly is about.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, and I have to add, we have a garden. We have tons of green and yellow beans coming. I was out there picking the beans and you try to get the good beans. You know the best ones. So here is this plant and all these green beans hanging from it and you have to lift up the stem. Some of the beans are perfect, they're hanging beautifully and they developed you know the long, beautiful green bean. Some of them curve up, you know, and they're kind of like misshapen, and others of them the stem has been laying on the ground, so the beans get the rusty brown spots and being, you know, laying in the dirt.
Speaker 2:I was picking those beans and I was thinking what a metaphor that is for how we grow and mature, dependent on the conditions that we're exposed to. If I am lucky enough to be in a Christian home where I learn these things that we're talking about, I have that opportunity to grow like that really beautiful green bean. But if things come along and divert me, you know, then I'm that green bean that got a bit distorted and, you know, the ones laying on the ground, wallowing in the dirt are useless. Right, I had to just throw those out. We learn these lessons in so many ways in life and yet when we try to apply them to ourselves, in the big picture of us as eternal beings, so many of us just get lost in the weeds, as you say.
Speaker 2:And so our hope is that we can understand what God planned for us from the beginning, with the primordial sacrament being that prototype for how he had desired for us to live.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, yes, yes. You know, as we wind down here, I think it's so important again, when we're starting to grope for answers for this, that this is a heart-level thing. Love is a very deep thing and love is not just love. We don't make this up as we go. It's a power, it's divine power and we know this because when we walk away from the divine power, we see how much we lack love. We find ourselves as individual people.
Speaker 1:I know that I did many times in my life and you battle this all the time to become a person of love. I was with my dad and mom for Mass today and my dad's almost 100 years old, old World War II vet, and it was very dizzy. He got real wobbly and he's blind. And you know, can you imagine being dizzy and blind at the same time? And it's difficult right to find your way even out of a church. You know and you realize, wow, I have to become a gift to that person, right to love that person and not to look at taking care of him or helping to take care of him so much as a burden, but as a way to be a person of love. You know, instead, what does the culture do linda? It's this culture of death who want to destroy right, to put an old person away and then even euthanasia, and so we're killing them when they're old, we're killing them when they're sick. We're killing them if they're old. We're killing them when they're sick. We're killing them if they have Down syndrome or some other disability. It's you know, and all over the world you know, there's laws being passed in countries now that you can kill a child, even when they're older, if they have some type of disability and you don't want to take care of them anymore, and you just go holy shysters, right? Life goes by so fast. And so what do you do?
Speaker 1:Again, just these three simple things. Before you look at that phone in the morning, get on your knees and just pray with our blessed mother to open up your heart. Right, this fiat, let it be done to me according to your word. Step into the story and just open up your heart with our blessed mother, whose sacred heart will lead you to the sacred heart of her Son. The second thing is don't worry about temptations. Temptations aren't a sin. Use temptations as an invitation to prayer. So, as I journey into this call to holiness, it's a battle, and don't be afraid of those battles and actually use those temptations again to open up your heart, just like you did when you made that fiat first thing in the morning.
Speaker 1:And then the third thing just go out and love the next person you see and put it right to work. Put it right to work, you'll start to walk into a much bigger story, a love story that no longer tries to divide, no longer puts labels on people. You start to see, linda, the gender ideologies and the racism at the DNC they're talking about both of those. Well, they're both ways to divide people.
Speaker 1:And again, theology of the body and our church says no, this is a unity that each of you, all these unique and unrepeatable persons, and say yes, we're called together. That's why, when we receive the Eucharist, we become one body, right, one blood with Christ, and this is the whole body of Christ itself. And St Paul would say with all different, you know, one person's the arm, one person's the eye. You know what happens if the body said, no, I want to be all arm or I want to be just all eye. You know what type? We wouldn't be able to move and do our thing. So this is all through scripture. Read scripture every day and enter into prayer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well said. I would just like to add that it's not going to be easy, and that's why we need to soften our hearts, open up to the grace available to us, because without that grace it's really tough, you know, and sufferings will come along and they too, like temptations, are opportunities to grow in that grace, in that interior life, to make me more capable to see it as an opportunity to be that person of love, even through whatever the suffering might be, the unfairness, the injustice you know could be any number of things. So all of that together is that's our worldview, jack right the culture of life and love hey, god bless you, thanks, linda, thanks everyone, thanks for joining us talk to you again soon.
Speaker 1:Bye.