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
#536 Saint John Paul II: A Prophet for our Times
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“America needs much prayer lest it lose its soul”—Saint John Paul II
We are travelers on a journey that has a destination. Our life is an adventure with battles to fight and people to love...and thankfully we have Jesus Christ, the ‘Word’, the Gospel of life and love as our signpost ...pointing us to all that is true, good and beautiful. In addition, we have been given a very special Saint and Prophet to help us decipher the signs of our time. His name is Karol Wojtyla, also known as Pope St. John Paul ll.
How is one to interpret the signs of the time?
In the United States in 1976, as part of for our nation’s bi-centennial celebration and two years before his ascendancy to the Chair of Peter, then Cardinal Karol Wojtyla spoke these words in an address in Philadelphia:
“I do not think that wide circles of American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel.
Finally, we highlight the importance of love, both divine and human, in transforming our relationships and communities. Emphasizing the teachings of Pope John Paul II on authentic love, marriage, and sexuality, we stress the need to educate young people about these values. We offer practical ways to spread divine love in daily interactions, fulfilling the two great commandments and making a positive impact on those around us. Join us for an inspiring journey through faith, love, and the timeless wisdom of St. John Paul II.
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Welcome. I'm glad you're with me. I wrote an article for our upcoming newsletter, which will go out in a couple of days. I put it on Substack. Submit it for publication to the Catholic Exchange. If you want to read some of my other articles, you can go there to Substack and find some of them. The one I wrote that I want to talk about today and I want to read it to you. But I want to read it and add some commentary to it.
Speaker 1:It's called St John Paul II, a Prophet for Our Times. So people ask all the time what's going on. We have a sense that there's some crazy things going on in the world, and there are. So here's how I start the article, and this is a quote from John Paul II. We are now facing the final confrontation between the church and the anti-church of the gospel versus the anti-gospel, with all of its consequences for human dignity, individual rights, human rights and the rights of nations. And later on he would say America needs much prayer lest it lose its soul. That's something.
Speaker 1:We're travelers, aren't we? We're on a destination. We came into a story. We didn't create the universe here. We didn't write the story. We came into a story and it's our job to figure out what that story is and to see it as an adventure and a battle, and it's always for what's true, good and beautiful. It's for love, actually, and we see this battle between love and lust, truth and lies, good and evil, beauty and all that profanes beauty, and it's a war going on. So how do we make sense of that, right? Well, our life is an adventure to fight, huh, and thankfully, and this starts in the human heart. This is our first primary battle is the human heart. Once we understand that and we get that right, then the rest of this all gets cleared up for us. How do we find that? Well, thankfully, we have Jesus Christ, the word, the gospel of life and love, as our signpost, pointing us to all that's true, good and beautiful. In addition, we have been given a very special saint and a prophet to help us decipher these signs of our times, and his name is Kiril Wotiwa, also known as Saint John Paul II, who was our pope for 27 years, from 1978 to 2005. So how was one to interpret the signs of the times? John Paul II was in the United States in 1976 as part of our nation's bicentennial celebration, and this was two years then, before his ascendancy to the chair of Peter as Pope.
Speaker 1:Then Cardinal Wojtyla spoke these words and addressed in Philadelphia Look at this now he sees this coming right these prophetic people like John Paul II Bishop Sheen was living at the same time as him, a little bit older right, and Bishop Sheen said the same types of things. And we see these prophets coming down to us. And he said this. I do not think that wide circles of American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the church and the anti-church of the gospel versus the anti-gospel.
Speaker 1:This confrontation lies within the plans of divine providence. It's a trial which the whole church must take up. It is a trial not only of the church but, in a sense, a test of 2,000 years of culture and Christian civilization, and it's all its consequences for human dignity. Individual rights, human rights and the rights of nations. Must be prepared, he said, to undergo great trials in the not too distant future, trials that will require us to be ready to give up even our lives and a total gift of self to christ and for christ. Through your prayers and mine. He said, it's possible to alleviate this tribulation. Right, it is possible to alleviate this tribulation. Right, it is possible to alleviate this tribulation, but it is no longer possible to totally avert it. He said how many times has the renewal of the church been brought about in blood? It will not be different this time. So this is what we're facing.
Speaker 1:We're facing this final confrontation. How long does this last? We don't know. You know, jesus says very clearly it's not for you to know, but we know we're getting toward the end, don't we? What has become increasingly clear is this battle's intensifying, and it's not just in one nation, this is all over the world, right? What many fail to understand is the real battle is not between left or right or black or white, but between our Lord and Satan. The forces led by Satan have as their primary goal the destruction of humanity. We have to always keep this in the back of our mind. All of these evils by Satan is behind this right, the battle between good and evil. It's always a destruction of humanity. So, as I go along here, I just want to point some of these things out, because sometimes, you know, so many things come at us.
Speaker 1:But there's two basic pillars that civilization has always, you know. That forms the basic building blocks of all civilization all through history and of course, it's marriage, the family and the child that comes from that, that brings on to the next generation. That's one pillar, the other. So you have the pillar of a child in the womb and you have the pillar of the institution of marriage right that protects that child, nurtures that child and brings that child into the world. If you can take that pillar down, you can destroy humanity. That's the imago Dei, the image and likeness of God.
Speaker 1:So today Satan is utilizing the global elite, the secular government rulers of the world and all of its citizens who align with them to destroy humanity at its very foundation children and marriage. By promoting so-called progressive ideologies, they have effectively removed God from our culture through various systems. What are these systems? We hear about it build back better globalism, secularism. God is out. The city of man is being built right, socialism and communism. And these are all systems, right, man-made systems to build the city of man. So we have that on one hand On the other hand, while simultaneously removing human beings. So we remove God through these systems simultaneously. Once you remove God, then you start to remove the actual human beings themselves through abortion and the annihilation of marriage and a nuclear family On the other hand. So these go together. So this is the building blocks marriage and the family, christ and the church. You take out God and this one starts to crumble. It always works that way through history.
Speaker 1:So these present-day ideologues who have already forfeited their own futures and retold human history, and continue to do that even in our school systems all the way down to our kids, now Seek to destroy human reason and it's with it the capacity to understand what it means to be a human person. What is human reason? Human reason, at its core, is always seeking the truth. What is the truth, what is reality? And then, working with your conscience, your conscience becomes a motor to the good, to choose the good. This is what we do, I mean. This is what brings human happiness, this is part of the love story, et cetera, et cetera. Right, all right. Humanity is now standing in an abyss, experiencing the most violent attack on marriage and the family, the very foundation of human life, than at any other time in history.
Speaker 1:Sister Lucia, the main Fatima visionary, who met John Paul II on three different occasions, also died in 2005, the same year. So she's the main visionary of Fatima, the three children that our Blessed Mother came to, she said this. She wrote him a letter, to him and Cardinal Kofara. To John Paul and Cardinal Kofara, she said a time will come when the decisive battle between the kingdom of Christ and Satan will be over marriage and the family. This is the time, said Cardinal Kofara, in which we find ourselves today.
Speaker 1:The power of Satan is nonetheless not infinite. He is only a creature, powerful within the fact that he's pure spirit, but still a creature, and he cannot prevent the building up of God's reign. The problem in our post-Christian Western civilization, that's often the human person who's cooperating with Satan to prevent the building up of God's reign. So God's already defeated him. The war is really done, except in this temporal space where we are free to decide.
Speaker 1:We could all overcome evil, but it starts with us, and it starts with taking Christ again into our hearts. He takes away our hardness of heart and makes us persons of love. But what happens? We have so many people that have thrown God out, and so they prevent the building up again of God's reign. Although he was made, mankind was made by God in the state of holiness. From the very beginning he has abused his liberty. At the urging of the evil, one man set himself against God and sought to attain his goal apart from God. Hence, as an inevitable consequence, while human progress is a great advantage to man, it brings with it a strong temptation to be like God.
Speaker 1:For when the order of values, then, is jumbled and bad is mixed with good, we're all compromising today, right? Orson's okay. All these gender ideologies okay. Marriage being redefined is okay. We're all compromising, we're all lukewarm. And so what happens when these values again is jumbled? Bad is mixed with good, and we allow it to happen. Individuals and groups pay heed solely to what? To their own selfish interests and not to those of others. This is what happens. We're innately selfish in a fallen world. Thus it happens that the world ceases to be a place of true brotherhood and in our own day, the magnified power of humanity threatens to destroy the race itself.
Speaker 1:Who doesn't hear today that Putin just said from Russia that if the United States helps Ukraine, come in and start bombing? Into Russia, it could let loose nuclear war? We see that into Russia, it could let loose nuclear war. We see that Modern man has forgotten God, but God has not forgotten man. This is the good news, the solution to the problem of evil, of sin and death. What's the solution?
Speaker 1:This is from the first letter of John. The reason the Son of man appeared, the reason Christ came into the story, was to destroy the works of the devil. Let us turn that into our heritage, our history and our future. Listen to this. What is that To a baby conceived in the womb and the mother who carries him? Look at this. Comes down to God, doesn't just say, hey, I'm going to come in with all this power. He sends a baby into right into a woman's womb, our blessed mother's womb. And so this is amazing, isn't it? To a baby conceived in the womb and the mother who carries him, this is really how God decides I'm going to rescue and redeem mankind. It starts with a child and you see, even God himself says if I'm sending my son, I'm going to do it through a family, god's plan to bring out good, to bring good out of evil and offer a fallen humanity another solution the culture of life comes to a family, the holy family. This is how it starts. This is coming from Luke, chapter one. So how does this come right? How is it Listen again with this attack on marriage and family and the way Jesus himself comes into the story to redeem us, to give us a new heart.
Speaker 1:The angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph of the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary and coming to her he said Hail favored one, the Lord is with you. But she was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. Then the angel said to her Do not be afraid, mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. Jesus means God saves. Sometimes in the Old Testament he was called Emmanuel's. Coming right, god with us. God will be with us in person. So beautiful.
Speaker 1:I want to stop there and then I'll read you a little bit more of that first story. I want to go back to Jeremiah because I want to show you the importance of because I hear Catholics for abortion, catholics that are pro-choice, christians that are pro-choice. I mean, we meet these people. I meet them at church. They go to church and coming outside of Mass they say I'm going to vote for Kamala Harris, the most pro-abort person that's ever existed in politics, and we have the most pro-abort administration right now that we've ever had. It's amazing battles going on. If you go out to pray outside of an abortion clinic, like I do periodically, it's amazing battles going on out there. I highly suggest you do that once in a while.
Speaker 1:Let me just read to you from Jeremiah. So the prophet Jeremiah. You should really read him. So I'll give you just a little background.
Speaker 1:The book of Jeremiah combines history, biography and prophecy. It portrays a nation in crisis. So here we have a nation in crisis. At that time, jeremiah comes into the world in 650 BC before Jesus Christ, and so he comes into this, into again this nation in crisis, just like we are today. But the problem is for him, he's going to be just like the rest of us. It's an amazing attack on people. Arrest, imprisonment, public disgrace were his lot. Jeremiah saw in the nation's impenitence, so impenitence, so impenitence, right Refusal to repent Again, hardness of heart. Isn't this what we have today? We have the same signs. That's why these prophets, like John Paul II and Bishop Sheen and many, many, many others in between them, can speak to these things because we see through history, it's the same thing that happens over and over and over again. Let me give you a little thing from Bishop Sheen.
Speaker 1:Bishop Sheen in 1974, he has a warning of crisis in Christendom. He said, first of all, we're at the end of Christendom. And he said now, not Christianity, not the church. Remember what I'm saying here. He said. Then he defined what he meant the church. Remember what I'm saying here? He said. Then he defined what he meant Christendom as a economic, political and social life inspired by Christian principles. We no longer have that. That's ending. We've seen it die. Now we've seen this totally die in Europe, but it's dying here too.
Speaker 1:He said look at the symptoms the breakup of the family, divorce, abortion, immorality, general dishonesty. Isn't that what we see today? Today, we know it's even worse with the definition of marriage and gender confusion drawn into the mix. And the crisis within the church is really something. He reminded us of the 22 civilizations that have decayed since the beginning of the world, the 22 major civilizations that have decayed since the beginning of the world. 19 of them rotted from within, from a moral decadence. Isn't that something? So this is what we're facing today. Western civilization wasn't invaded. We're totally disintegrating from a moral apathy, from moral relativism. We're all sitting in that proverbial pot with the frog, but this time it's not just water coming up, it's this toxic stew of moral relativism which says what there is no truth. There is no truth.
Speaker 1:Jesus came into the story as the person of the truth to guide us along this way. Let me just tell you this, then. It's a very interesting book, but I won't spend the time to go into it much more, except to say this he announces the new covenant. Then the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers the day I took them by the hand to lead them forth in the land of Egypt, for they broke my covenant and I had to show myself as their master. So you know, god's lead them through the desert. We know these stories.
Speaker 1:And then we turn away. We have the idols going already. You know this is unbelievable. And Moses comes down, he breaks the tablets. He sees them already. He just goes up and he comes back down and they're already worshiping. You know, this is what we're doing today. We've thrown out God again.
Speaker 1:But he announces the new covenant, and this time it's going to be a son, isn't it? So let me just go on reading this again Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and his name shall be Jesus. He will be great and be called the Son of the Most High One. He will be great and be called the Son of the Most High. One more thing when Jeremiah listen to this. Sorry to do this for you, but think about the child in the womb again. So here's Jesus coming into a womb to his mother. And how does Jeremiah get called? This is the very first chapter of Jeremiah. It just starts right away. So Jeremiah goes through his history the first four verses and then the call of Jeremiah. It just starts right away. So Jeremiah goes through his history the first four verses and then the call of Jeremiah.
Speaker 1:The word of the Lord came to me. Behold, I have formed you in the womb, and before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you Before you were born. I dedicated you A prophet to the nations. I appointed you. Ah, lord, god, I said. I do not know how to speak, I'm too young. And the Lord answered me and he said I'm going to give you the words to do that, but before I even formed you in the womb.
Speaker 1:You know, when we say that this is just a blob of tissue especially Catholics and Christians, you know the scripture is just full of this kind of stuff, right? Remember John the Baptist, when Jesus was in Mary's womb, and right after this, and she goes and visits Elizabeth, her cousin, who was supposed to be barren, and now she has a child. And when Mary walked in pregnant with Jesus, what happened to the baby John? This isn't Luke's gospel. The baby jumped in Elizabeth's womb. The baby jumped in Elizabeth's womb. So this is amazing, right? So he will be great, this baby, and he will be called the son of the most high. This is the angel still speaking to our blessed mother and the Lord. God will give him the throne of David, his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever and his kingdom will have no end.
Speaker 1:But Mary said to the angel now think of that. She's questioning the angel. How can this be, since I've had no relations with a man? And the angel said to her in reply the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be called holy. The Son of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be called holy the Son of God.
Speaker 1:And behold, oh, here's the story here, and I'll just read a little bit more. And behold, elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old age and this is the sixth month for her who was called barren, for nothing shall be impossible for God. Mary said Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word. Then the angel departed from her. That's from the very first chapter of Luke. May it be done to me according to your word. It's so important for all of us to say that this is our blessed mother's fiat, her. Yes.
Speaker 1:This marks the moment when the Holy Spirit, who had already infused the fullness of grace into Mary of Nazareth, formed in her virginal womb the human nature of Christ. God the Father told St Catherine of Siena St Catherine of Siena, this is my beautiful sister. I have a holy crush on her. So beautiful, so powerful, so holy. She said that God the Father said this to her. It was therefore necessary to join human nature, our human nature, with the height of my nature, the eternal deity, so that it might be sufficient to satisfy the whole human race.
Speaker 1:Think about that when Jesus takes on a body, in a sense he takes on all of our humanity. He unites it in his body. This is what God, the Father, is saying to St Catherine of Siena, with his deity. And then what does he do? He goes and pours this all out to us. It's fantastic what he does, but he unites in his body.
Speaker 1:That's why, when we receive Christ, when we say yes to Christ, it's like in the beginning, before sin, chapters one and chapters two out of Genesis, before sin entered the world. I mean, we were united before sin. Here's Christ coming in. This is what Jeremiah was talking about. It's a new covenant and it'll be in your heart. Why is it in our hearts? Because we say yes to Christ, who came into the story, who broke the power of Satan over sin and death, and so this is written in our hearts. But we have to have grace first to have this written in our heart. See, a body and a soul without grace, without this redemption, without this power of God, uniting himself in Jesus' body himself, right. Without that, what are we? We're a body and a soul, and the default position is sin and death. That's just the reality. We're all dying, you know. When you think about this temporal city of man, where is it going? It goes nowhere, you know, and the world passes fast.
Speaker 1:Read the first letter of John. It's so beautiful and so powerful, and it'll talk about those kind of things, right. So may it be done to me according to your word huh. The love of our Father, god, the Father, who sends forth Jesus' Son and the gift of the Holy Spirit into our hearts, does so through a human woman's yes, from whom the Redeemer is born, so that we might each be joined in our own divine affiliation in the family of God. We all can be joined in the family of God. This is our yes. This is what we receive at the Mass. In the Eucharist we become one flesh with God. It's amazing right so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3.16.
Speaker 1:The mother of the Redeemer is already prophetically foreshadowed in the promise of victory over the serpent which was given to our first parents after the fall into sin. So sin comes in in chapter 3. And then in verse 15 of chapter 3, already the woman comes into the picture and it's already what we call the proto-evangelium, kind of the prelude or intro to what's coming next, the gospel. This is right from the beginning of Genesis. Go back and read that. Likewise, she's the virgin who shall conceive and bear a son whose name shall be called Emmanuel. And we hear this in Isaiah, micah, matthew.
Speaker 1:The Son of God took on human nature from her. Can you believe that it was a woman? This is why we revere our Blessed Mother. This is why the first person other than Jesus who comes into the world right, the Son of God, but the first actual person, person, a created person, was what is a is our blessed mother. This is the highest rank we give to her, to a, to a woman.
Speaker 1:You know, I you hear so much in the catholic church. You know the catholic church puts down women. We revere our blessed mother as the number one after jesus, her son. Here, right in the church, she's actually the symbol of the whole church itself. We elevate her to the queen of heaven. I mean, that's amazing, right? So the son of God again took on human nature from her that he might, in the mysteries of his flesh, free mankind from sin.
Speaker 1:The father of mercies, think about this. The father of mercies, you know. The second word for love, john Paul would say, is mercy. The father of mercies, think about this. The father of mercies, you know. The second word for love, john Paul would say, is mercy. The father of love wants to extend this to all of us. This is the good news. He willed that the incarnation should be preceded by the acceptance of her, our blessed mother, who was predestined to be the mother of his son, so that just as a woman contributed to death, so also a woman should contribute to life.
Speaker 1:John Paul II said the future of humanity passes by way of the family. Why is that, huh? Why is that? Think about this. The Imago Dei from the very beginning.
Speaker 1:Let me just read Genesis again. This is the importance of the family. The family is not just a biological reality of nature, the basic building block of all civilizations, of all history throughout. It is actually the sign, the sacramental sign of the divinity of God coming into a marriage, in the family that we make. What Visible God's divinity that we're talking about here in our bodies, our bodies, it's really. It's not brain surgery, it's the two great commandments Be filled with divine life and love, say yes to Jesus Christ and then be forgiven of your sins and then do what? And then become Jesus Christ in the world, take on his body. We die with him so that we could rise with him and we could bring this love story into the world. So this is all the way from Genesis, chapter one. So this is.
Speaker 1:God says let's make man in our image, after our likeness. Let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air and the cattle, over all the wild animals and all the creatures that crawl on the ground. God created man in his image, in the divine image. He created them. How did he do that? They're a trinity. Remember, it's a trinity. He's pulling back and he's going to bring this into the created world. And he says let's do this. God created man in his image, male and female. He created them. God blessed them, saying to them be fertile, multiply, have children, fill the earth and subdue it. So this is the story, god.
Speaker 1:Our bodies, in fact our bodies alone, make visible the invisible, the spiritual and the divine. Our bodies were created to transfer into the visible reality of this world, that mystery hidden from all eternity in God, and be a sign of it. What is that mystery hidden from all eternity? That we're a sign of God is an eternal exchange of love. Father, son and Holy Spirit. The family the father who gives himself to his wife, the wife that receives that so beautiful and profound. It comes out in the form of a person, a little baby. Well, the father in heaven gives himself to the son. The son receives that. It's so beautiful and comes out in the form of a person. The Holy Spirit we're a tiny reflection of that. Unless we get marriage and the family right, we won't get anything right.
Speaker 1:John Paul said this in his first encyclical, redemptor Hominis, when he first became Pope, and he said I carried this with me from Poland. I had this all in my heart, I just had to write it down. He said man, man and woman now cannot live without love. He remains a being that's incomprehensible for himself. His life is senseless if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience love and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in love.
Speaker 1:When we don't proclaim this to young people. We do them such a disservice. We leave them like little lambs huh and we just throw them to this wolves of this culture. It's really something John Paul would say. This he said later on and really I think about this. Maybe I'll set it up this way. You know, my heart really goes out to these young people. They're growing up in a very twisted, distorted and toxic culture. They've been repeatedly lied to about all these things we're unpacking today, about the very basics concerning the meaning of marriage, the family, what authentic love is, the true meaning of sex and our sexuality. And more Particularly disturbing is the sexual indoctrination, grooming and desensitizing of our children in public schools, where they're being shown pornography under this thin veil of these gender ideologies. But it's really pornography because that can be mass reduced. It's a mass attack on all of these children.
Speaker 1:John Paul II wrote closely connected with the formation of conscience is the work of education, which helps individuals to become ever more human, leads them ever more fully to the truth, instills in them growing respect for life and trains them in right interpersonal relationships. It's so important to do this. So why is this important? He goes on to write this In particular, there's a need for education about the value of life from its very origins. It's an illusion, he said. Now think about this. When we're trying to change, we're looking for politicians and et cetera, et cetera. Well, we have to do that. We have to bring Christian values back into the public square. But this always starts in the human heart and it starts with educating our young people, who are being indoctrinated. So again, in particular, there's a need for education about the value of life from its very origins. It's an illusion to think that we can build a true value of human life if we do not help the young to accept and experience their sexuality, love and the whole of life according to their true meaning and, again, of their close interconnection.
Speaker 1:Sexuality, which enriches the whole person, manifests its innermost meaning in leading the person to a gift of self in love. We have to be talking to this with kids, right, the model? We just model this in our own families, right, the love between a mother and a father who takes care of those kids. So John Paul went on to say the trivialization of sexuality, which is what we're doing today, is among the principal factors which have led to a contempt for new life. Think about that.
Speaker 1:If sex is just sex, then the baby is just a blob of tissue. And if I accidentally get pregnant, well, you don't accidentally get pregnant. I mean, there's an act that brings that life on. How sad, huh. Mother Teresa said it's a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you can live as you wish. It's amazing, huh. So only true love is able to protect life, and we have to pass this down.
Speaker 1:What is true love? Huh, that's what we do at the John Paul II Renewal Center. Huh, there can be no avoiding the duty to offer, especially to adolescents and young adults, an authentic education in sexuality and in love, an education which involves training in chastity as a virtue and fosters personal maturity and makes one capable of respecting the spousal meaning of the body. The spousal meaning of the body, again, that's that image that I gave you from Genesis 1, where we become a gift to one another. It's not about using someone. Sex is just sex, right, pornography, etc. No, the opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is lust, the opposite of love, which is the self-gift that we're created for, even in our bodies, as a male and a female, to give this gift of life and love to one another. It's not just about the child that comes out of there, right, I mean, the child is not always even conceived in some marriages. It's about that openness to that gift, that sacrament, that power of giving oneself to another and then accepting the life that may come out of that union.
Speaker 1:Let me end like this this is the last thing that John Paul II left us. He wrote this in a personal identity. I think is where I got this from. He wrote this on April 3rd 2005, and he would die sometime after in that same year, and he got really, really sick. So think how important this is. He said to humanity, which at times seems to be lost and dominated by the power of evil, egotism and fear, the risen Lord offers as a gift of his love that forgives, reconciles and reopens the spirit to hope. It is love that converts hearts and gives peace. How much need the world has to understand and accept divine mercy. This is divine mercy that God, the Father, pours out to the Son huh and you know this child conceived in his mother's womb and he pours this out on the cross to us. It's amazing, lord, who, with your death and resurrection, reveal the love of the Father. We believe in you and, with confidence, repeat to you today this is from the Divine Mercy Chaplet right given to us by St Faustina the simple phrase. Say it often throughout the day. Jesus, I trust in you. Have mercy on us and on the whole world.
Speaker 1:There's a simple three-part solution that I often talk about for all of this. Before you look at that phone in the morning, get on your knees and kneel there with our blessed mother, who said what Let it be done to me according to your word. You come into my heart, god. Let it be done to me according to your word. That's the first thing we say in the morning. It's such a beautiful thing. Number two you know that we're in a battle. Then, right, we start the adventure with Christ. Gets back to what I said in the beginning we know it's gonna be a battle. That battle is about temptation in the human heart. When temptation comes in, remember temptation's the battle we're in. It's not sin. We're on the battlefield of the human heart, and so the thing to do is to use every temptation that comes into you today, tomorrow, the next day as an invitation to prayer. What prayer?
Speaker 1:You can say anything when you see the beauty of a man or beauty for a woman, and you start to feel, maybe lust come in, or you just see the beauty of them to say, hey, thank you for the beauty of that person, whether you're going to go talk to them, not talk, thank God, thank you for the beauty of that person and I offer it, her, to you. Say, if you're a man, I offer that her beauty to you, I offer my heart to you, god, so you can purify it untwisted, so that if I do talk to her I do think about her for a couple of seconds. I think, oh, she's so beautiful. Thank you for reminding me about the beauty in the world not to be profaned. And then say that, just say that phrase again, jesus, I trust in you, have mercy on us and on the whole world. So I see the temptation, or I feel some temptation. Jesus, I give you my heart, I trust in you. Let it be done according to my word. I trust in you, have mercy on us and on the whole world.
Speaker 1:And then, finally, number three go out and love the next person. You see whether it's your spouse, your kids, the neighbor, the person behind the register at the store when you go to pick up some tools or something today, whatever it is, just love them right. That's what we're called to do. The two great commandments be filled with divine life and love and then become divine life and love in the world. Hey, god bless you. Good to be with you. Talk to you again soon.