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
#543 Moral Relativism Versus Truth: The Lens to Understand it and the Evil We Sense Around Us
Love to hear from you; “Send us a Text Message”
The human story is a confrontation between two opposing forces: the force of attraction, whose source is in the wounded Heart of the Crucified-Risen One, and the power of Satan, who does not want to be ousted from his kingdom.
Today's young people face enormous challenges in a culture that often denies the existence of God, the Church, and the Bible. We delve into the existential battle between a purposeful, created life and the bleak notion of existence as an accident. Drawing inspiration from Saint John Paul II and Cardinal Caffarra, we reveal how Marxist ideologies have impacted marriage, family, and religious values, and stress the critical importance of grounding our lives in spiritual truths. Only by doing so can one find true happiness and fulfillment amidst the noise of modern secularism.
Follow us and watch on X: John Paul II Renewal @JP2Renewal
On Rumble: JohnPaulIIRC
Catch up with the latest on our website: jp2renew.org and Sign up for our Newsletter!!
Contact Jack: info@jp2renew.org
Read Jack's Blog substack.com/@jackrigert
Welcome to the Become who you Are podcast, a production of the John Paul II Renewal Center. I'm Jack Riggert, your host. Good to be with you. Today we're going to be talking about the hydra of moral relativism. It's taken down a nation. We're very close, we're on the precipice. We all feel something, don't we? We have a sense that something's up. Very hard to put our finger on it sometimes and articulate it to our kids, our grandkids. One of the big concerns we have, of course, are with marriages and families and young people to John Paul II Renewal Center. So what I'd like to do is how do you articulate this down to our kids, our grandkids, so that they understand the milieu that we're in and understand the dangers we're in? This is a battle. This is a battle.
Speaker 1:I had Bishop Athanasius Schneider on not too long ago and we were talking about his book Flee from Heresy. He was talking about history and he's a historian. He's going through each century and there's always problems, right, there's always battles and problems and all kinds of things happening. So we get to the modern age and I said to him I said, well, is this any different? You know the things that we're sensing, we're feeling today, and he said it's unprecedented. I said really it's unprecedented? And he said yeah, it's moral relativism. Moral relativism. There is no truth. See, each century there's always problems, always issues, and we go out and we go after those problems. We try to clarify them, bring truth into those. But when we live in an age where there is no truth, then what do we do? That's what we're in right now. We're in this age, this hydra I call it hydra mini-headed serpent, you know, hydra of moral relativism, which is coming at so many directions Sometimes you can lose yourself in it.
Speaker 1:Bishop Fulton Sheen, when I was still in high school, said this. And you wonder what is he talking about? He's just talking about the decline of Christianity, the decline of truth. And he said listen to what I'm saying. He said it's almost gone in Europe and it'll be gone in the United States if we're not careful here. And it's already on the decline. And he said at the end of the day. He said listen to what I'm saying. Not Christ and the church, they're still here. But within that context, christianity is a culture, christianity is something we actually live out. That is almost gone, he said. And he said this he said of the 22 major civilizations throughout history, from the beginning of history on, 19 of them collapsed from the inside, from a moral collapse, and they rotted from within, and so that's where we're at right now.
Speaker 1:When we're starting to put this in context, we kind of sense there's a train wreck at our door so you can put your head down, you can hide, but it's much better to be able to be armed with the truth and understand where we're at and then be able to go out. See, this is what we're created for. When you hide, when you put your head down, the train wreck's going to come for you. It always does, and so there's no reason to hide. We're a body and a soul, if you think about this, no matter what you put your head down, this time goes boom in the blink of an eye. We're a body and a soul Without grace, without eternal life, without anything beyond this. Our default position when we come into this world is what it's sin and death. A body and a soul now filled with grace, right With that grace from the redemption of Christ himself. We're filled with grace. Now we have the potential for human freedom, we have the potential for human flourishing. We have to make that efficacious. To make it efficacious, you have to go out and live it out. This is why we're created. We have a body and a soul, so we have to manifest or make visible in this world the invisible, the spiritual and the divine God himself, who is true, good and beautiful. We have to bring truth, beauty and goodness into the world, especially the beauty of love, authentic love. This is why Jesus said hey, love God, be filled with that grace, divine life and love, and then go out and become that love. It's not brain surgery, it's the two great commandments.
Speaker 1:I was reading St Therese of Lisieux, st Therese of the Child Jesus this Morning, as I do every morning. Little clips from her, and she's talking about this. Her little way is to go out and live a virtuous life. Do good things, little things for people, for your family. Do good things, bring good things in the world. And she only lived till she was 24. So we can all do this.
Speaker 1:Now that may sound that's just a strain wreck and everything like bad news, right, but there's a flip side to this, because God will make good out of evil. St Paul said and we see this all around us. I know this in my own life. Think about this Western civilization is taking God out of their hearts, their individual human hearts which is a key to all this out of our marriages, our culture, and then obviously it's flowing then into our nation. Now, if we did all that, took God out of our hearts to grace, the grace then does not get into our marriages and our families and our children. We've taken him out. Now our culture, what Our culture, no longer has us manifesting what's true, good and beautiful in the culture, so it gets twisted and distorted, and then our nation gets corrupted, twisted and distorted.
Speaker 1:If all of those things happened and everything was fine, there was no problems, everything was under control, everything was fine, well then I would think, well, maybe we don't need God, maybe we don't need that grace, maybe this body and soul, the default position of sin and death, maybe that's okay, we'll worry about that later. But that's not what happened, is it? No, we're sensing that something happened, and so that's the good news, in a way. The good news is that the story that we're living in is true. Everything that we knew as kids and walked away from, maybe ourselves rejected God himself. We see. Nope, when you reject God, something happens. You know. Ephesians 6 comes to mind.
Speaker 1:St Paul says this is not a battle between flesh, between you and I, or even us and the people and the government per se. This is a power of Satan, power of the powers and principalities who ruled the human heart Once. Who rule the human heart Once they rule the human heart, then that's what's getting manifested in here and that's what I want to talk about today. We live in disturbing times, but if you have kids and grandkids and people in your family that you love, we have to be concerned about them. Again, I think, from our vantage point with the John Paul II Renewal Center, it's so cool because we go all the way from the spectrum, giving parish missions and different things to people of all ages, a lot of silver herd people coming to those.
Speaker 1:We're also working with youth, and so we see this right. We see it all the way through all the ages, and when you see that, you see that there's real hope. There's real hope. Those young people is corrupted, as this culture is. It's stealing their innocence, stolen innocence, and yet they respond to the truth. It's amazing, because the truth has something, doesn't it? It has power. We forget this when we proclaim the truth. There's real, real power there.
Speaker 1:And so the most intense battle now. If you think about the battles that we're in wars, violence, theft if we think about all the different things that happened the vaccines and the border crisis and all of these different things where's the most intense attack taking place? It's on children. It's on the children. The children are always the most vulnerable, defenseless. They're being attacked, and Marxists and ideologues always know this. Because Satan knows this, he has an anti-creation. He knows if he could take over the minds of children, corrupt and twist and distort them, and nobody's there to protect them from the stolen innocence. He's got them and it only takes one or two generations. Well, this already happened. We're already into probably our third generation and this started a long, long time ago. And now these poor kids are out there without any truth. So this is the most intense battle.
Speaker 1:The good news again GK Chesterton said what's wrong with Christianity? What's wrong with the world? He said I am, I am. So that's the task. We all can step into the truth, receive it and then become our little light in our little way, and that's what I want to synthesize today. Don't forget that. The reason we do these podcasts, the reason that we have the John Paul II Renewal Center.
Speaker 1:Podcasts are like a library shelf. You know you've got a library shelf behind you. If you're looking for porn addictions or understanding what marriage and the family are all about, understanding how to get these messages to children, just reach up on that library book. Email us if you want to and we can help you find some of that and you can listen to it. You can share that with other people. It makes it a lot easier. That's why again, that's our main reason for doing the podcasts and things is that after we give a talk, after we give a talk, after we bring these lies to the truth, we want you to be able to share them. And we know sometimes you know you're busy, you don't have time, or you just say, look, I don't have the words for this right now. You want to listen to it a couple of times, or you just want to share that with other people. That's why we do this. So we already are doing that. Right, and don't forget that we have this up on Rumble, we have it on X and we also have it the Become who you Are podcast on any music or podcast app and in those show notes. If you look us up, you'll see the Rumble and the X links. So you can find us pretty easy, because it's called something else under all those names. Right, we don't want to be too easy for you.
Speaker 1:We give a presentation called Stolen Innocence, stolen Innocence. We go into parishes and into communities and we actually show people what's going on in the schools and we show them how to get out of it and what to do about it. And then, finally, we have Love Education, encounter Love Education. We go into parishes, again, communities. We're going into evangelical Protestant Catholic churches and we get the parents and the kids together when they're coming out of that age of innocence and going into puberty, and we're filling those kids and the parents are leading this. We're helping the parents lead this conversation so that they can go home and continue to talk about it, and so much more. So let's just talk about a couple things real quick. I want to put it in a framework for you boom, boom, boom. So we understand the issue and then we know what to do about it because, like I said, it's a many-headed hydra.
Speaker 1:At the end it's Catholic social teaching. It's like a triangle in front of you. So picture a triangle like a pyramid, two-dimensional in front of you. So picture a triangle like a pyramid, two-dimensional in front of you, at the base of that marriage and the family, christ and the church. That's what holds everything up.
Speaker 1:Then we get into culture. All that's true, good and beautiful that flows out of marriages, flows out of families, flows out of well-formed human hearts of the children that we educate and bring in. That flows into the culture music, art, the literature that we read, what we learn in schools, other buildings that we build all of those things right Build up a culture. It's all these different people bringing what's true, good and beautiful into the world. And then out of that culture rises politicians, people that go into business and banking and economics, build businesses all that. When you have a corrupt culture, when you have a twisted and distorted culture that came out of breakdown of marriage and the family, throwing God out, there is no truth, no true way to live, then out of that corrupted culture comes corrupted politicians, corrupted leaders and Satan rules the heart. Satan rules the heart and this is the big thing to know.
Speaker 1:So how about stolen innocence again? What are we seeing with the kids? I'll give you just this one quick thing. In a high school, 15, 16-year-old speaking to them, speaking to them about love, what their bodies actually were created for, et cetera. We're going to be there for a high school retreat four sessions. This is the opening session. We're bringing to be there for a high school retreat four sessions, this is the opening session. We're bringing them into the story.
Speaker 1:And I said to them I said you know, when we come back, I have a little team with me when we come back and we go on with this, is there anything particular anybody wants us to make sure we address? A couple hands went up. I pick on them. I said yes, young lady, she wants to talk about mental illness. And I said what do you mean by mental illness? Anxiety, depression? How come so many of our peers are talking about suicide? And I looked around and I said does anybody else want to talk about any of those issues? Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Everybody's hand goes up.
Speaker 1:See, the kids know this In their hearts. They sense something, they're anxious, they're depressed. They see around them something's going on, but nobody's speaking to it. This is really stolen innocence. We've given them up like lambs to the wolves, to Satan himself, and this is really. We're going to be held accountable for this. So, again, we bring tools. So just reach out to us. We have the tools. We bring the tools. We bring the beauty of this, because this isn't just more information, is it? This is the very DNA in the human heart.
Speaker 1:The only message those young people receive from the culture is to forget about God, the church and the Bible. Right, take it. I forget about God, the church and the Bible. You aren't created. You're here by accident. This is what they're told. You're just atoms hitting atoms hitting atoms. You're reduced to a materialism, to biology. There's no soul, there's no meaning and purpose, and so you're going to get anxious about that. Of course you're going to get anxious, but if nobody brings you the truth, they're swayed very, very easily.
Speaker 1:So I just asked them this simple question. I said so is that true? You think? Are you just here by accident or are you created? Those are the only two things. Those are the only options, if only options. If I am not created, then I'm just here by accident. There's no creator, there's no thought. We're just here, adam sitting, adam sitting, adam.
Speaker 1:If we're here, if we're created, we have an identity. Beloved children of God, we have a meaning and purpose to life. We understand why we're created male and female. How do we find happiness here on earth? How do I find love that satisfies forever? We know all those things. If we throw those things out, then we live by accident in an age of moral relativism. Then there is no meaning and purpose to my life, there's no identity, there's no meaning to our sexuality or anything. So in a situation like that you can do whatever you want with your life. You can indulge it, trash it, even end it. Because if there's no meaning and purpose to your life, who cares? But something doesn't function well in a world without meaning and purpose. And what is that? It's the human heart. It's the human heart.
Speaker 1:Cardinal Kfar, who worked with John Paul II John Paul II was bringing this in he saw this. He said you know, he lived in Nazism, communism in Poland. He said what communism could not do in Poland, what communism is? An atheistic system, moral relativism based on dividing people, the oppressor, the oppressed. This is an economic model, originally between the proletariat and bourgeois, between the worker and the business owner. We can separate them. We can take down the business owner. We have a socialist, communist government. We're going to control all the means of production. Everybody will be equal, right, yeah, we're all going to be equal. We're all going to put gray drab clothes on, we're all going to shuffle to our factory job and we're going to work for the state. That's their solution at the end. Well, of course, in the United States that didn't work because our middle class was too strong and we said no, we want to be the bourgeois. At some point I want to be the business owner, and if not, no, you know what? I don't want the government giving me my job and making us all even. Maybe I want to get ahead, maybe I don't, but that's my choice.
Speaker 1:And so the other thing is, we believed in marriage and the family and we also based our country, we founded our country on God, on the Ten Commandments, on moral and religious people, as John Adams would say, and many of the other founders. Of course, they were all believers in God. I think there was out of all the founders. Of course they were all believers in God. I think, out of all the founders, there was only one that didn't believe in God. But even he went along and said no, we still have to bring biblical principles into our culture. This is what our laws everything is based on.
Speaker 1:Well, when we've taken that out, now we see what's happening, right, john Paul II again would say what communism then could not do, that the reigning end of sexual revolution would do. So what did the communists do? They always took down marriage and the family. They always promoted abortion. And what else did they do? They took out God. Right, because now you can control the population. Well, behind that is Satan, of course. Satan wants to do what he wants to take out God and he wants to take out the creation, the Imago Dei, made in the image and likeness of God, which is the individual human heart, and then the fuller image of that is marriage and then baby that flows from that. So that's what's going to get attacked and this is what I'm going to make clear to you right now.
Speaker 1:So Cardinal Kofara was given was tasked by John Paul II to start the Pontifical Institute for Marriage and the Family, so that John Paul saw this clearly and said we have to bring the truth of who we are and how we're created into this culture, into human hearts, into churches, so that people can articulate the battle that's going on. This Marxist ideology is now cultural Marxism. Flip everything on its head. You know this beautiful country that we said no, no monarch, no king. God is basically the king of our country and we, right, are elevated as individual people. It's our country, we run the country. So we flipped that dynamic on its head. We now are the people. The Constitution, declaration of Independence, bill of Rights by the people, for the people, of the people.
Speaker 1:And now Marxism comes in and says no, no, no, no. We want to control everything, we want to go back to the top, we want to control all of you. So that's what they're flipping on their head. Well, they said. Well, we can't do that in the United States, so we have to use what's called cultural Marxism to infiltrate the institutions, take down marriage and the family, infiltrate even the church, take down the church. And that's what you see happening today. And you see this thing crumbling. So Karna Kapara says and that's what you see happening today. And you see this thing crumbling.
Speaker 1:So Karnakophar says when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself. This is Jesus lifting himself up from the earth, right? He said I'm going to draw all people to myself. The whole power. He said this is from 1 John. He said, the whole world is under the power of the evil one. This is why Jesus comes in the world to defeat the power of Satan. If you come in, you have a body and a soul into an evil place, and so this is the battle Jesus, who is the truth? Who brings the truth? And then you have Satan. That was the power. When you take away God again and the redemptive power of Christ, then you're just being blown around by the spirits of the age.
Speaker 1:So reading these divine words gives us a perfect awareness of what's really happening in the world within the human story. Consider it at its depths. The human story is a confrontation between those two forces, the forces of attraction of Christ, whose source is the wounded heart of the crucified Christ. It's right behind me, right there, whoa, I'm backwards, I get mirrored on my picture, but that's what you see, right, there is the image of the divine mercy, and the image of divine mercy done by Sister Faustina had that painted. And that's the blood and water that came out of the crucified heart of Christ, the water being baptism and confession, and, of course, the red is being the Eucharist, the body that he offers us, and this is what we receive at Mass. So this is the battle between that power and the power of the evil one, and it all starts in the human heart. So the area again this is so important that this confrontation takes place is not out there first, it's the human heart. All the evil that you see in the world, all the oppressive governments, all the violence, all the murder, all of it starts in the human heart. The confrontation has two dimensions an interior dimension, first the human heart, and then it goes out into the world, an exterior dimension. So let's talk about briefly one and the other.
Speaker 1:At the trial, before Pilate, the governor asked Jesus whether he is the king, whether which is the meaning of Pilate's question he has true and sovereign political power over a given territory. And Jesus says you say that I am king. For this I was born, that I came into the world to testify to the truth. Listen to this. We started out. This is the hydra of moral relativism. There is no truth, just your truth or my truth. This comes from Genesis 3. Satan comes in and tempts them, our first parents. He says no, you're not going to die. You be like God, you can decide what's good and evil. It's moral relativism right from the beginning, jesus says again I came into the world to testify to the truth. So he says this anyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice. John 18, verse 37.
Speaker 1:Jesus wants us to understand that his kingship is not of the kings of this world, the rulers and the principality, but consists of the obedience of his subjects to his word, to the truth. Although he reigns over his subjects, it's not force or power, but through the truth which he is witness, which all who are from the truth receive with faith. I have faith in what I have, faith in the person of Jesus Christ, who is the truth. If you ask what is the truth, the truth is not a something. The truth is a somebody, and his name is Jesus Christ, the crucified one who came into the world to proclaim the truth. And only those who are of Christ understand this. We hear this, my sheep hear my voice, voice and I hear theirs. And so this is what happens You're either coming up to be attracted by Christ, who rises himself right when I raise on the cross and give myself out to you to overcome good and evil, or you reject me, just like your first parents. So this force of attraction can only affect those who are from the truth, that is, those who are profoundly available to the truth, who love the truth.
Speaker 1:And so this is what happened in the human heart, isn't it? We have actually given up our human heart that searches for the truth. This culture no longer searches for the truth. It's really sad. Pascal writes you would not seek me if you had not already found me. He uses those words of Jesus. Right, you would not seek me if you had not already found me. Well, if you find him in the human heart at first, the human heart, when your reason is working correctly, what it's? Searching for the truth? What is the truth? How should I live? I remember this as a young boy. Don't you remember when you were a young kid? What is the truth? It's not normal. It's not natural for a human person to be walking around on these screens all day and just give in and say no, there's no truth, it's just my truth or your truth. This is the age we're in now. This is why it's unprecedented.
Speaker 1:He who holds the entire world under his sway instead dominates through lies. Jesus says this of Satan he was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there's no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature. He is a liar and the father of lies. That wording is dramatic, isn't it? The first proposition he's a murderer from the beginning is explained by the second he does not stand for the truth. The murder which the devil performs consists in his not standing in the truth, not dwelling in the truth. It is murder because he is seeking to establish, to kill in the heart of man a desire for the truth. This is what happens. This is the age of moral relativism. He's actually killed the desire for the truth. Age of moral relativism. He's actually killed the desire for the truth. We've allowed him so deep into our heart, generation after generation, without proclaiming the truth, that we sit in that proverbial pot with the frog, only this time not as the water's getting higher to boil us to death, but the moral relativism, this toxic sludge, the sewage of moral relativism that we live in. We can no longer see the light, we're just covered with darkness, and this is a very, very scary thing.
Speaker 1:Satan, then, is this refusal, this opposition to the truth, to Jesus himself? The text continues because there's no truth in him. The words of Jesus go to the deepest root of Satan's work. He himself is a lie. From his person, truth is completely absent, and hence he is, by definition, the one who opposes the truth. Jesus adds immediately afterwards when he lies, he speaks according to his own nature. He is a liar and the father of lies.
Speaker 1:When the Lord speaks according to his own nature, he introduces us to the interiority Satan, to his heart, a heart which lives in darkness, in the shadows, a house without doors, without windows. It has no truth, it's cut off in the truth. This heart is the heart that you see around us in the opposition right now. You walk around and you see people that are like zombies. Today, they have taken the heart. When you stop the light, then your default position is sin and death. You get the heart of Satan himself where there is no truth, and you see this. So, to summarize this, therefore, is what's happening in the heart of man, men and women? Jesus, the revelation of the Father, exerts a strong attraction to himself. Satan works against this, to neutralize that attractive force of the crucified, risen one. This force of truth that makes us free, acts on the heart of man. It is the satanic force of the lie which makes slaves of all of us, yet not being pure spirit.
Speaker 1:The human person is not solely interiority. Human interiority, again, is expressed and manifested in construction of the society of which he or she lives. When you look and say what's wrong with the culture, it's what's wrong with the human heart. Human interiority is expressed and manifested in culture and then ultimately again in polity and into in culture and then ultimately again in polity and into our politics and the way we organize ourselves. You know the the way we become unjust with unjust laws. Culture is a mode of living which is specifically human right. Animals don't live in cultures. They don't build up cultures, humans do. We do All right.
Speaker 1:So now, what's the manifestation of that? What is the manifestation? Okay, how do I grasp this? You're starting to get an idea? It's the human heart, it's the attack on human heart. So in our Western culture are there developments which we reveal? Cardinal Khafara said with particular clarity the confrontation between the attraction exerted over man by the crucified, risen one and the culture of the lie constructed by Satan. And yes, there is. There's two developments in particular. So this is so important.
Speaker 1:Remember again just quickly Jesus comes in on Matthew 19 and they're asking him about divorce. And he said from the beginning it was not so. And he points to the model, he points to Genesis and he says look, I know you guys came into a sinful world, but you got to start with the model. No matter how broken we are on the individual heart, you got to start with the model. And what happens? We got the wedding feast set up, jesus, five days. You know, we got the wedding feast set up, jesus, five days. He points back to Genesis, chapter one. So in five days God's got everything ready, he's created everything and it's all ready, it's ready for a wedding feast.
Speaker 1:And so what does he do on the sixth day? He draws into, say I now want to bring in the essence of divine life and love into the world. My grace, my life, my participation, I want them to participate a creature that participates in my divine life and love, and then he, she, will bring this into the world. It's our job to do that. That's why, again, it starts with the heart. Then we go out and build the culture. We go out. This is right from the very, very beginning. So this is what Jesus says. He's pointing to the Father and he says boom, genesis 1.
Speaker 1:And here's what happens in Genesis 1. Let us 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 to crawl on the ground. God created man in his image, in the divine image. He created them. How Male and female. He created them. God blessed them, saying to them be fertile, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Then he sends us out, boom. So here we go.
Speaker 1:God draws into himself the Father who gives his love to the Son. The Son receives that love. It's so beautiful and profound. It comes out in the form of a person, the Holy Spirit, who is the love proceeding from the Father and the Son. When he flips the selfie, what happens? He creates us, male and female. A man who offers his love to his wife. A wife receives that. It's so beautiful and profound. Sometimes it comes out in the form of a person, a child, baby, the little zygote. Right away, you were never a sperm or a little egg. As soon as you touch, boom. There's an explosion called the zygote. It's got half of your dad's DNA, half of your mom's DNA, and when that baby forms, boom comes out as a reflection of the love between the father and the mother. This is the Imago Dei, the image of God. We're all created individually, our human heart, in the image of God. The likeness of God comes from us again, taking that on the grace in ourselves and then going out and becoming part of that sign. The fullest sign in the created world is marriage between a man and a woman. This is the Imago Dei and the child that comes for it. So listen to this If there was a creature that wanted an anti-creation, an anti-revelation, a liar and a father of lie, a murderer from the beginning, what would he do?
Speaker 1:He would murder the grace, the desire for truth, the desire for God in the human heart, and this is the age of moral relativism. This is what he did first. Now he's going to actually come out. And in the human heart and this is the age of moral relativism. This is what he did first. Now he's going to actually come out and murder the human being that flows from this sign right, of this sign from father and mother. So here are the two things just quickly.
Speaker 1:The first development is this crime of abortion, and I'm not talking about an individual person, I know plenty of people. I work with people all the time that have had abortions. I'm not talking about an individual person, right, we're not judging that person, but we're judging that. Here's what we did. Now. We made abortion into a right, and this is the saddest thing. Now the good news is the Supreme Court had the guts to put this back to the states to say, no, this is not a blight over our whole nation. So again, I'm not speaking of abortion as an act perpetrated by one person. I'm speaking of the broader legitimate. We made it a law, legitimized in their judicial system. And so what are we saying? We're saying it's a subjective right, so it's not about one person.
Speaker 1:Again, we said this is an ethical category. We have taken the truth, the fifth commandment, thou shalt not kill and we've taken it out, and we have given ourselves the right, made it a law in the land that we can murder a child. So this signifies calling what is good, evil and what is evil good. What is light, darkness, good. What is light, darkness, right? What is light has become darkness, and we're saying, no, no, that's perfectly normal. So what do we think about?
Speaker 1:Again, who did this? Who's behind this? When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he's a liar and the father of lies. An attempt to produce an anti-revelation. It's an anti-creation. Satan says to God you're the creator, watch, I'm going to make an anti-sign, an anti-creation. It's the killing of the child in the womb. Now, how about the second one? The second one is what? It's?
Speaker 1:Taking the sign itself, the sign of marriage, and developing into what these gender ideologies, same-sex marriage, et cetera. Again, I'm not talking about my neighbor down the street, my gay neighbors who I can go have a glass of wine with, make dinner with whatever. I don't condone what they're doing. But look, I can't judge the individual human heart, but I have to proclaim the truth. So, if we're talking about it, I said, jack, you're Catholic, they don't let us get married in a Catholic church.
Speaker 1:Why and I just described to them what I described to you oh, marriage is a sacrament and it comes from nature and natural law. I mean, you could move away from divine revelation that I just read from Genesis and you just see that life flows from a man and a woman coming together. There's no other way. It takes this complementary nature. When you enter into a same-sex marriage, there is no life. You're creating an anti-life again. Do you see that there is no life that flows from that? So, again, it's not the individual person, but it's that. We made it into a law. Again, we legislated that. So that's the problem, right?
Speaker 1:It denies entirely the truth of marriage, the mind of God or the Creator with regard to marriage. The divine revelation has told us how God thinks of marriage the lawful union of a man and woman, the source of life. In the mind of God, marriage has a permanent structure based on the duality of the human mode of being femininity, masculinity. Not two opposite poles, but the one With and for the other. This is a pouring out. Like you know, god Jesus pours out again on the cross. He gets hit, baptism, cleansing. That's the nuptial bath getting us ready for marriage. Then the red is the Eucharist, his actual blood. He wants to join with us, right. So we take the nuptial bath, we join with Christ. Well, marriage is the little sacramental sign of that that you pour yourself out. You actually pour out your heart to another person. They receive that again. When we got ready for the nuptial bath, we get washed up and we live in the truth and then we give one to one another and this is the sacrament of marriage, which cannot be separated from procreation. So you have a bond right between those two in the sexual union and you also have fertility. And if you don't have that one, you don't have actual the Imago Dei right, the image and likeness of God.
Speaker 1:So one of the fundamental laws through which God governs the universe is that he does not act alone. Listen to this. This is very, very important. This is the law of human cooperation with the divine governance. God again said I am going to bring a creature, mankind, into the world. To bring this into the world. I'm not going to just act alone, I'm going to act through man, with man, in union and communion with mankind, to be filled with divine life and love and then to actually participate that bring eternal beings into the world. I mean, this is such a beautiful thing. God creates the liturgy of his creative act. Right, the liturgy of his creative act.
Speaker 1:How, in the holy temple of conjugal love, john Paul had a conference one time with men, married men, and he said to them before you make love to your wife, take your shoes off, you're entering onto holy ground. Ooh, what a beautiful thing, huh, to be able to make love again in the light and no darkness. You know, this is making love with the lights on, because there's no shame, just the beauty of a flow between a man and a woman. So, in summary, these are the two pillars of creation the human person, the human heart, the individual human heart, irreducible to the material universe. Young people, you are not just a blob of tissue, right, you're a body and a soul. You cannot be reduced to the material universe. And so the second thing is and either can, that baby in the womb. And the second thing is the conjugal union between a man and a woman, the place in which God creates new human persons. Do you remember this?
Speaker 1:In Genesis, again, going right back to the beginning, when Eve has a son, cain first, and she says I have produced a child, I have produced a man with the help of God. She doesn't say with the help of Adam, even though Adam was there, he was participating in that. Why does he say God? Because she knows the actual life comes from God, that that expression between a man and a woman was expressing what they've been giving. You cannot give what you don't have. Each one Adam, eve, filled with divine life and love, were giving that to each other, participating in the eternal love of God. We're destined to share in that exchange. The marriage is just a tiny little sacramental sign of that love and the intimacy that God wants with us. God wants to marry us, god wants a union and community with us. It's so intense, so beautiful. St Therese of Lesotho, our beautiful saints, they got this right. So those are the two pillars the child that comes out of that union and then again marriage itself.
Speaker 1:At the root of this work of the anti-sign is Satan, who wants to build an actual anti-creation. This is the ultimate and terrible challenge which Satan hurls at God. I am demonstrating to you God. He says that I'm capable of constructing an alternative to your creation. And man will say this it is better in the alternative creation, in Satan's creation, than in your creation, god.
Speaker 1:That's why I say to young people are you a creature or are you here by accident? The reality is, if you say you're by accident, you aren't here by accident. But what happens is you give yourself up and your heart gets darkened. You become anxious, depressed, you might even start to entertain thoughts of, say, suicide. If you're asking how to get out of that, you have to go back to the crucified one. You have to go back and search for the truth. You have to take your heart back first. In this dark time, children, young people, going all the way through. I'm giving a talk to a retreat to young people next week, 19 to 39 years old. Right, they have to have hope. They have to have hope. And here's the thing. Truth, again, is a power. It's a power of its own. Sometimes we think, well, how are we going to do this? This is not more information we're sharing. This is the very DNA that comes within the human being.
Speaker 1:The catechism of the Catholic Church starts out with the human heart. What is the desire of the heart? Today, somehow, we have allowed our eyes to be blinded. We no longer even see in our own human hearts. So, again, what do we do then? The frightful strategy of the lie, constructed around a contempt for man. This is what we have to realize.
Speaker 1:Man is not capable of elevating himself to the splendor of truth. That's what Satan says. You're not able, young people. You are not able to do this. You're not able to reach the splendor of truth. You're not capable of living within the paradox of infinite desire for happiness. Your heart has an infinite desire for happiness. You're not capable of living that, you're not able to find yourself in a necessary gift of life.
Speaker 1:No, go for pornography, go for the pleasure, take what you can, because the rest of it's a lie, an illusion. That's what Satan tells you and therefore continues the satanic discourse. We tell him banalities about man. We convince him that the truth does not exist and that his search is therefore a sad and futile passion. Isn't that sad, those great desires of your heart. We trivialize them, don't worry about it, just take, take, take. You know, this is why we're pushing pornography in the schools, so it darkens their hearts, darkens their consciences, so that they look at another person. What, not to love them but to take as an object. And if a child would come out of that union? We have abortion to take that out. I mean, this is the sickness that we've brought into the culture and we persuade him mankind, satan says to shorten the measure of desire in line with the measure of the transient moment. We place in his heart the suspicion that love is merely a mask of pleasure.
Speaker 1:What should we do? How should we do this? We have to testify to the truth. You have to get in touch with your heart. How do you do that? It's usually on your knees. It's usually on your knees Most of the time when we come back and we're attracted to Christ on the cross. It comes to suffering. It comes from realizing that I cannot on my own find that grace, that I need A body and a soul filled with grace. I have to get on my knees for that. I have to open myself up. Nothing more important once you realize that is to go to confession, get the nuptial bath that I was just talking about and then also then go to mass, receive the Eucharist. Don't do it. Before you take the nuptial bath, wash yourself of those sins so that you're open, your heart is open to receive. It's not that we haven't sinned, we've all sinned but that nuptial bath, it's the mercy on the cross that Christ pours out to us. He took upon sin and death. We can never do this on our own Body and soul. Without that, the default position is sin and death. With that we're filled with grace, we feel something, we understand something, something happens in our heart when we open ourselves up in prayer, read scripture every day, pray and pray the rosary.
Speaker 1:Those three things I say very often, before you look at that phone in the morning, get down on your knees and say your will be done, your will be done, your word will be done. In my life today, I know that temptations will come. I say, ah, okay, every temptation now becomes an invitation to prayer. I have this temptation. Satan starts to whack it. I open, open, open. You take it here, jesus, I'm not ashamed, nothing I can do. Boom, here it is, take it. I'm always praying, I'm always moving my heart up into Christ himself. And then you have to be. You have to be, you have to do those little things. You have to love the next person, you see. So that's number three. Number one get down on your knees before the phone. Number two temptation is an invitation to prayer.
Speaker 1:Temptation is not a sin. Don't forget that. It's when I get tempted, as soon as I open that up to God, then I don't fall into sin. Otherwise you do fall into sin. It's very attractive. Satan's a power. We got to forget that. But the truth is even more powerful. That's the other thing we've forgotten. Sometimes, when you start to think about what's true, what's good and what's beautiful, it's all flowing from that heart of the sacred heart of Christ. Our Blessed Mother is the Immaculate Heart that will bring us to this. Our Mother always wants to just grab you, hold you in her hands and lead you right to the heart of her Son. That's her job, right? Her job isn't to say, okay, you and I, jack, are going to figure this out. She says, come with me and I'm going to bring you to my son. The rosary is the most powerful weapon we can have after the sacraments today. Walk around with your rosary, put it in your pocket. I don't go anyplace without the rosary in my pocket and say that every day, okay.
Speaker 1:Second thing is doctrinal formation. You've got to be forming, you've got to be learning, you've got to be putting good things into your mind. Start with John Paul II's Theology of the Body. If you have his Theology of the Body in front of you, you have a Bible next to you, because it's a thousand lines of scripture in there, and you've got the Catechism of the Church, those three books. You could stay in that for the rest of your life. It that for the rest of your life? It's so beautiful. Just read a little bit. You can go back to our podcast again. Send me an email and I'll give you a series that you can go through and just you can dwell on that.
Speaker 1:We've unpacked all this theology of the body, linda Piper and I. Okay, so, number one prayer. Number two form yourself, learn more about your faith. Start with theology of the body is my recommendation again, because it gives you the vocabulary to speak the truth in today's culture. Number three we got to realize the formation of parents, forming of young people, forming their kids. You can't just leave your kids without formation, which is bringing them the faith, speaking to them about it, to human sexuality, all these things that we're talking about. We have the way for you. I hate to call it a program. We have the Love at Encounter is what we call it. Email us, we'll bring it to your parish so that we help parents give the talk to their kids. We do this with you and for you. You don't have to wait. Don't wait because we don't have time to wait. So bring us into your parish, we'll help you with that.
Speaker 1:And finally, you got to go out. You have to go out and love people and you have to go out into the culture, into the polity, into the political field. Even Look around at your community. Run for school board, or at least go to school board meetings, see who's in your library board, who's bringing the pornographic books into your culture. You've got to be able to do this. You've got to be able to proclaim the truth. Write an article, you know. Stand with pro-life issues, you know. Don't be afraid of that. You know. Go out, pray out at abortion clinics. Right, and here I'll give you a really good one to do Support the John Paul Terreno Center. We're looking for donors that can give $25, $50, $100 a month. It really helps. And as we build out these teams to go out like this, it all takes money and we have to wake up to the fact that you have some resources. Help us, help us bring this out so we can help families. Hey, god bless you. Good to be with you. Talk to you again soon, everybody. Bye-bye.