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
#560 The Marriage Vows: How Does Love Become Dislike and Even Hatred For One Another?
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What if the very foundation of your marriage could be shaken by a single decision? Join us as we share our personal journey through the complexities of marriage, family, and faith, particularly the unanticipated effects of choosing contraception. With insights from Linda on the cultural shifts of the early 1970s, we examine how these changes have molded current perceptions of love and commitment within the Catholic Church. Discover how seemingly private choices can ripple out to affect intimacy and stability in profound ways.
Our conversation takes a deep dive into the sacred nature of marital love, drawing from the wisdom of renowned figures like Dr. Janet Smith and John Paul II. We explore how the sexual revolution and contemporary challenges like pornography have redefined societal views on gender roles and marital unity. With contributions from educators like Christopher West, we aim to demystify complex theological concepts, reaffirming marriage as a sacramental sign that shapes our identities at both personal and familial levels.
Reference: Audience #103 "Man and Woman He Created Them" St. Pope John Paul
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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.
Speaker 1: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 we can get in touch with this echo within us in such a way that we have that aha moment.
Speaker 1: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 Piper Linda? How are you?
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm great today. Thank you, Jack. How are you?
Speaker 1:I'm doing awesome. I'm excited to be talking about today is audience number 103, Dimension of the Sign. We're going to be really talking about marriage and the sacrament of marriage. This really needs to be talked about. I have a you know I'm thinking back to my own marriage and I remember wondering when it was going off the rails a little bit with three young children.
Speaker 1:I thought how does love turn into dislike for one another and almost into a form of hatred? And then, just quickly, what had happened to us after our first child was born? We had a problem, and I don't want to take the time to get into that, but it was a problem with my wife's uterus actually, and she had a hernia. The placenta had grown in there and then ripped the uterine wall, part of it out, actually, when they were pulling on the umbilical cord with the placenta after the baby was born. Anyways, we're not supposed to have any more children, so said one doctor. And then the second one was miscarried and we thought, well, maybe he was right, Maybe we can't have any more. They said you should get your tubes tied after after the first one, then we have the second one with the miscarriage and they said maybe now, should we tie the tubes? You know we're here said no, so we have the.
Speaker 1:My wife has the third one, jacob, our son, who is delivered c-section so she wouldn't go into labor. Right, do you want the tubes tied? You got your boy and girl. Now I said no labor. Right, Do you want the tubes tied? You got your boy and girl, now I said no.
Speaker 1:So then a third one comes and I'm really nervous. And I was just really nervous. I thought something was going to happen to this baby. And when the baby came out healthy and the doctor said do you want your tubes tied? Now You're taking a lot of chances, You're at risk, the baby's at risk, your wife is at risk, he said, and so I said honey, I'm good with that if you're good with that, you know, and she kind of left it to me and I, from what I remember, and I said yeah, let's just do this thing. And I was kind of relieved. You know, I had no idea, Linda, that when you start to contracept in a marriage, the damage that does. I had no idea. To contracept in a marriage, the damage that does. I had no idea Within a year of that, our marriage was coming apart. The intimacy had come apart. My wife noticed it more than I did that something had changed, and she's not even Catholic.
Speaker 1:I was a non-practicing Catholic at that time, so I had no idea about really what the marriage vows were, the language of the body we're going to be talking about today, why contraception is a big no.
Speaker 1:It's not because it's a rule and regulation. It's because of the grace that flows in when we get away from the reality of this story of God the Creator and how he created marriage and the beauty and power of this. How new life comes into the creator and how he created marriage and the beauty and power of this. How new life comes into the world, how this is a sign of Trinitarian love. It's a mystery. It's the awe and wonder of marriage, the awe and wonder of love. We don't understand it. I didn't understand it, and it wasn't until we were just basically done that I was handed a book called Theology of the Body for Beginners a long long time ago and then came back into the church, started to understand what this was all about and the power of this, and think how many people contracept today, linda, and they wonder why their marriages are falling apart.
Speaker 2:Yeah, jack, your story is similar to many stories. Mine's a little bit different twist to it. I had been a practicing Catholic, never fell away. My husband is a convert, and so we got married in Catholic church. But I think back to what the instruction was. You know what my real understanding of marriage was at that point, and I'm sad to say I don't recall that the church was very helpful. I mean, there was, there was some stuff out there, pretty basic, but the pill had just come along. I got married in 1971. So the pill had just come along. I got married in 1971. So the pill had just come along. And then, two years later, abortion. The Supreme Court ruled versus waiting.
Speaker 2:So I look back on the cultural things as well as my understanding through a faith base, and I thought, praise God, we made it through. But what I didn't know, that I have learned through Theology of the Body, the language of the body, has just deepened my sadness in a way of not having known it when I was so much younger, but just a gladness and a thankfulness that it's here now. I was able to share it with my daughter and my son and grandchildren are coming along. The oldest one is almost married now, and so if we really can understand that, yes, contraception is the main part of the marriage piece that we're going to talk about, but if we back it up just a little bit more, as we do in Audience 103, to the vows, the actual wedding, the understanding of what the vows that we say relate to, the marital intimacy that we experience, it's like a whole new world of understanding that opens up and it's truly a grace up and it's truly a grace, yeah.
Speaker 1:And when you see the devastation that's out there right now with marriage, families, children, you know the violence, you know. You know the drug addictions, the porn addictions, the sex trafficking, you know it's just what. The LBGTQ issues, all of those things, the gay, same-sex marriages, all that comes out of contraception, when you really understand it. I won't spend a lot of time here, but I think it's important. When contraception came in, if marriage is no longer connected to God, right, has no meaning or purpose anymore, when the marital act itself, sexual one-flesh union, is no longer procreative, no longer has any meaning of life flowing out of it, but it's closed off to life and just becomes a hedonistic pleasure, right I just want to take. And whether you realize it or not, this is what happens. And so when that happens, then what difference does it make? If sexual union is no longer procreative, if it has no longer a procreative dimension to it, then who cares? Right, why not two men, why not two women? Why not this, why not that?
Speaker 1:Pretty soon, we actually lose the gender itself. The femininity and masculinity all of a sudden have no meaning. Now, same-sex marriage is the same as this marriage. You can be a man now, can be a woman, A woman can be a man. I mean, you get all this twisting and, at the roots of it, hard to understand at first, but at the roots of it it all starts with that breakdown of the marital act and it's no longer a sign, a primordial sacrament reflecting Trinitarian love in the world. And, linda, the reason I say it is because, if you're listening to this for the first time, the mystery of how we're created in this sexual union is so beautiful, so powerful, so life-giving, so love-giving that you know you either got to walk into the mystery and understand this or you walk away from it, and then the dysfunction follows. I mean, that's the reality. The reality is, it's a practical reality.
Speaker 2:Very much so, dr Janet Smith. I remember in one of our classes, very much so, dr Janet Smith. I remember in one of our classes put it very simply that the act is for babies and bonding you know the co-creative grace that we have been given to co-create with our Lord and then the bonding, all the part of the love, the affection, the pleasure, all those things that go along with that for a husband and wife, the pleasure, all those things that go along with that for a husband and wife. And so when we separate that and we totally throw out the baby's part through contraception, the bonding part falls apart too. And I think that's really what you described with your wife, that that's what was happening, so it's essential for us to get this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and because the grace is not flowing in. When we say that marriage is a sacrament, it's efficacious. When John Paul said to men at a men's conference one time, he said, men, before you make love to your wife, take your shoes off, for you're entering unto holy ground, you're entering into a sacramental order, you're entering into a place that's a sacramental sign of Trinitarian love in the world and totally connected with that, as it was in the beginning, before sin. So, as we dive in here, this isn't just some way to describe marriage, this is the reality of how we're created, and you and I just unpacked the reason why we believe this today, because it's true in our own lives. But these are hundreds of people I know now, just hundreds, that I talk to that just say yep, that's right.
Speaker 1:When I started the contracept, my marriage came apart and they realized that it's really sad to your earlier point, linda, that we were lied to through the sexual revolution. The church never had a way to really describe that to us. When you got married, you said in 71, john Paul's Theology of the Body didn't start until 1979. He became Pope in 78. He didn't start talking about this until 79. We didn't really understand this until after 84, when he was finished, and then they started to put this together and I think it was really until Christopher West really started to popularize it in the language that we could all understand that we just go oh my gosh, we were lied to and jack the lies continue today, because the fallout and all the bad fruit are all those things you mentioned.
Speaker 2:pornography is one that is just wow.
Speaker 2:It is so pervasive and when you see, you know, the fallout from two marriages from pornography, you know it's like little daggers in my heart when I think about how we've been lied to every step of the way by the culture.
Speaker 2:And yet we have the answer here, you know. But all those years it took the church to really recognize and then, through Christopher West, to bring it to the popular understanding, if you will, because John Paul II's readings are difficult to read for the average person and we're so busy so it's very difficult just to tackle that on your own, and we're hoping our podcast, too, will help with the understanding where we get right down to. Well, what does this mean for me in my life? Right now, and as we look back in our own lives and kind of see that whole thing, we still have the opportunity to use this understanding of our marriages being a sacramental sign as grandparents right To help everyone understand that, no matter where we are in life, with this we can get that understanding right now, and our bodies make it visible. Our behavior, our actions make it visible to all those around us, so lots of good stuff with it, right yeah?
Speaker 1:You know, yeah, you know, we, we determine who we. Yeah, you know we determine who we become. You know, through my acts, either good or evil, I become in some sense the creator of myself, and so we are creating ourselves, either as people of love, and this really starts in this marital act. You know, when a man and a woman exchange their marriage vows, I take you as my wife. I take you as my wife, I take you as my husband. I promise to be faithful to you always, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health, and to love you and honor you all the days of my life. Those are our wedding vows. I give myself freely to you, totally without reservation, faithfully, forever and fruitfully. Those are the four things that we say in the Catholic mass. Right and fruitfully means open to life, but open to life with each other, and then open to life with children. Now, that doesn't mean you're going to have children, but you're open to life. That's the sacramental side. So, with these words, John Paul wrote the engaged couple contract marriage. So they're at the altar. They say these words John Paul wrote the engaged couple contract marriage.
Speaker 1:So they're at the altar. They say those words, they contract marriage and at the same time they receive it as a sacrament, of which they're both ministers to that. The couple are ministering this. Both the man and the woman minister the sacrament. The priest is a witness there, just like the rest of us are a witness. He's a witness for the church, but we're all witnesses in the audience there. So marriage as a sacrament is contracted by means of the words. That's the form, a sign of the coming to be of marriage. So it's a contract now, but it's the coming to be as a sacramental sign. But that's not finished until what. Linda.
Speaker 2:Until the marriage is consummated our language until the actual intimacy happens. And, Jack, what I love about this is an understanding that the vows, it's my intellect and my will and it's the words In the traditional language of the church, it's the form of the sacrament when we actually say the words. But when I understood it in a new light, as the Pope presents it here, that that's only part of it. What is the matter of the sacrament? What is the other piece?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the physical matter. Yeah, the physical matter. The physical matter. Our bodies, right? Yeah, the physical matter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the physical matter. Yeah, the physical matter, our bodies, right, husband and wife. Then you know, and it just caused me to understand at a new level how sacred the actual act of intercourse is. And then, of course, you know we go off to how we have gone so far off the rails with that understanding and in our behavior. And the other piece that strikes me all the time is that everybody knows, in most ordinary circumstances of life, that actions speak louder than words, that old proverb right? And so, in every area, we can talk and talk, and talk, you know, but if we don't walk the walk, it doesn't mean that much. And so, even here, with as profound as the marriage vows actually are, they still require the completion of the action, of what I'm saying to my husband or to my wife. It's profound, I think.
Speaker 1:It is profound and just a step to really clarify this for people. Every sacrament has these two elements in it. First of all, it has two dimensions. It has a human dimension and a spiritual dimension, and the sacrament is where they kiss right. So God is going to kiss humanity, kiss us right, fill us full of grace, and so we have to do something. And God says if you do this, I'll do this right, because we have to show that we want that right we're free yes yes.
Speaker 1:So the human dimension of that right, that two-part piece God's dimension, the divinerament, the human dimension of that right, that two-part piece god's dimension, the divine and the human dimension. The human dimension has two elements, so it's form and matter. The form, again, of baptism you say certain words, you do certain things, and then the physical matter is water. In the eucharist, again, we have the liturgy, and and the priest is going through certain things. So you have the form and the words of consec. We have the liturgy and the priest is going through certain things. So you have the form and the words of consecration, the epiclesis, where the Holy Spirit comes down, and then you have the matter, the bread and the wine.
Speaker 1:So here we're describing the same thing. The form are the words, the wedding vows, and the matter is our bodies. Our very bodies become the matter of that sacrament. So when the two become one, that moment is where that grace flows in. Every time you make love to each other, once you're married, you're renewing that sacrament. Just every time I go to receive the Eucharist, I'm renewing that that I'm receiving, I'm becoming one flesh in a sacramental way, but in a very real way, right, physically, with Jesus Christ himself, in a non-sexual union, right.
Speaker 2:And Jack, there's such a great implication there with the understanding of we're renewing it and in particular in marriage I'm renewing the wedding vows. So when I'm engaged in the sexual act with my husband, you know a brief thought of we're renewing our vows, but then think a little bit further. What were those vows? What did I say to you in sickness and in health and good times?
Speaker 2:and in bad that I'm here, and do I really mean that now, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years down the road, I must? If I don't, then I have an issue with the language. That my body is speaking is not in sync with what the words were, and that opens up the issues that we'll talk about in a minute.
Speaker 1:Yes, and Jesus himself, when asked of the Pharisees about divorce, points back to Genesis, chapter one and chapter two.
Speaker 1:So in Matthew 19,. He does it. I'm not going to read that, but he points us back to the beginning, and part of that is Genesis, chapter two. I'm just going to read verse 24, where he says a man shall leave his father and mother and unite with his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. And so they were no longer two, they're one flesh, they're united. There's still two individual people, but they are united as one here. Well, what does that mean? You know, how can my wife be one? Now? We actually unite in one flesh.
Speaker 1:This is a reflection, again, of the Trinity. You know, the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Father, jesus Christ. The Son is not God, the Father, but the two are one. And you say, well, how does that happen? Well, it's the same thing. It's this beauty of the Father pouring himself out to the Son. The Son receives that.
Speaker 1:It's so beautiful and profound. It comes out in the form of a person, the Holy Spirit, and a man offers himself to his wife, his wife receives that love, offers herself back in a reciprocal, self-giving union called the spousal meaning of our bodies. Give to one another so that the two become one, open to life, become three, three persons in one, reflecting in a tiny, created sign, trinitarian love. We enter into that mystery, we become united with it and unless we open that up to grace, it's amazing how the breakdown of marriage, the breakdown of love, it's amazing how it doesn't work. It's astounding, actually, and that's what makes all of this so real to me, because you just have to look around the world and see what's going on. All of this so real to me because you just have to look around the world and see what's going on.
Speaker 2:You know, when we talk about the other sacraments baptism for example we understand that through the reception of baptism we actually become a new creation in Christ. The same thing happens here in marriage. So you say, yes, you still have your body and I still have mine, but we become one flesh. In that sense, there is that new creation. While the physical bodies remain too, there is, on that spiritual level, a new creation as a husband and wife together, and that is what we are to be reflecting as Christ in the church. Is that new creation of who we are, whether or not a child is born of the union In most cases children are, and that's a very physical reality and sign of that union.
Speaker 2:But even if that doesn't happen, that new creation of husband and wife functions differently than just you and me. And that's why, to me, like in a practical sense, when people get off the rails and not understand because it's like, well, 50-50 or what's in it for me, you know, like either person kind of what's in it for me, you're destroying that concept of that unity and that bond, that new creation. If you're a new creation, the two of you function differently now than when it was each of you individually, you see, and so to me, on a practical level, it's important to understand this kind of intellectually and within your heart, so that it answers some of those questions of all right, when we're having difficulties. What's going on here? Am I expecting, you know? Have I broken away from that unity and just worried about myself too much? Here, you see, on a practical, everyday situation, this has a lot of implications to all our marriages.
Speaker 1:It gets back to that. What are we reflecting? What is that sacrament reflecting? It's reflecting God himself Trinitarian love. If you don't go there, as each of the people in that marriage, go to that union and communion with God himself, to receive that grace individually into my own heart, then I have nothing to give. You cannot give what you don't have. If I try to give to my wife what I've never received from God or vice versa, it's going to break down.
Speaker 1:We get back to the San Juanese Triangle of St John of the Cross that did so much for John Paul II. Again, you have that individual standing there. I have to aim my ultimate desires right at God, because God himself and Jesus came in to redeem my heart, to save it, to give me that. You talked about a new creation. I have to become a new creation first. I don't become a new creation first in my marriage, I become first in union and communion with Christ and if I don't have another person with me my wife that has also done that right and really opened their hearts to the grace of redemption and salvation. This is what we give to one another Now. We become one together, but united in Christ.
Speaker 1:You know, if you get to Gaudium Espes that John Paul II loves so much. You know he references it in here. Gaudium et Spes. Let me find it quick. It's number 24, the third paragraph, and what he says there is Indeed the Lord Jesus Christ, when he prayed to the Father that all may be one as we are one Father. So we're opening Vistas, gaudium et Spes, to close Vistas closed.
Speaker 1:The human reason, for he implied a certain likeness between the union of the divine persons and the unity of God's sons and daughters in truth and love. This likeness reveals that man, man and woman, who is the only creature on earth that God willed for himself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself. So that gift first starts on the cross, this total outpouring of Jesus Christ, the bridegroom to the bride, the church. We receive this and this is where we're at. That's why we come into a church, linda, to exchange our wedding vows, because it's the church that we receive this grace. Don't forget that when two people exchange their wedding vows, behind them is Jesus Christ hanging on a cross, and this is the bridegroom that pours himself out to the bride, to us, and then we look at one another and exchange our wedding vows underneath that sign. And so this is one great sacrament.
Speaker 1:St Paul would say right the marriage of man and woman and the marriage of Christ in church are one great sacrament.
Speaker 2:Yes, there is a custom I think it's Herzogovina, where I recall reading about the custom that they have where not only is the marriage ceremony, you know, under the crucifix in church, but they bring in a crucifix as well and they, their hands, are placed on top of the crucifix, man and wife and the crucifix, and then that is what the couple then hangs over their bed as the reminder right. And they have, like virtually the statistic is so low of the number of divorces coming out of that particular area that it can only be because of that belief and that understanding and the grace that is so powerful in their lives. And wouldn't we all do better if we remember that? You know, as you say, we're getting married with that crucifix there and that really is the sign. And then we become that sign as that husband and wife new creation the Pope brings out.
Speaker 2:In paragraph four, here, at the very end, he says the structure of the sacramental sign remains in essence the same as in the beginning, before the fall. What determines it is in some sense the language of the body, inasmuch as the man and the woman, who are to become one flesh by marriage, express in this sign the reciprocal gift of masculinity and femininity as the foundation of that conjugal union of the persons. So again, this understanding that it's our bodies but it's a masculine body and a feminine body, that is the basis, the foundation of that union. That has a lot of implications for how we're misunderstanding that now in the culture.
Speaker 1:How sad that. You know, most people have never really made love like this, you know, with a misunderstanding or even open to life, people that have been contracepting their whole lives, people that have had so many partners ahead of time. I mean the hookup culture is alive and well on college campuses today. When you say we've become a new creation, you know if people really understood the science behind even oxytocin, you know, I mean, it's amazing.
Speaker 1:It's a bonding hormone that your bodies give off. If you've made love to only one person, that bonding hormone is very strong. So, just from a physical, let's just take your body and your soul out of it for a second, which of course you wouldn't want to do or couldn't do but your body alone will bond to these hormones and stuff that you give up. Now, if and it's very strong a woman really has that strong when she makes love to a man and when she has a baby, I mean it really pours out. If she's made, you know, if she's had sex with many, many partners, which is not uncommon.
Speaker 1:Again, you know that that oxytocin, by the time it gets down to your husband, who's the 40th guy or the 20th guy, sadly, that you've had sexual unions with by the time you make love together and then contracept it. So it's closing off the grace plus the oxytocin's not there and no understanding of the sacramental sign. You've never really made love, you've really never poured yourself out, you know, to one another and it's really sad when you think about that. My heart is sad myself, when my wife's tubes were tied after that third, fourth child, but the third one that survived and it really wrecked things for a decade and had no idea what was going wrong and it was a terrible time to go through very turbulent.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think too. All the women who have had multiple partners outside of marriage, in the lack of understanding, you know, you say they've never really made love. That's what they're looking for, jack. It's sad, isn't it? That's really what they're looking for, and the Pope has helped us to understand that marital intimacy is saying.
Speaker 2:I'm showing you now what I told you in words through our marriage vows Well, obviously those don't exist. So you have a total spattering of the unity and the understanding of what the act is even about, and I don't believe that the pleasure element can compensate at all for it. And so the woman would feel very let down and not really understand why. I mean, it's very strong from the chemical oxytocin and that standpoint, but on the emotional and intellectual level it's very hard to understand, when we have not made this connection, that the sexual act is so much more than the physical part of it yeah, but yet yet it has a very physical part and and you know it's almost, you know, sometimes you'll let you think about the puritan model of this, where you know sex is only for babies and it's not for bonding.
Speaker 1:you take that that part out. You've taken some of the mystery out of that too, because there should be joy in that. That marital act, right, and we have natural family planning that you can still I mean you, you can make love to one another during those non-fertile times and, and it's a sacramental sign, it doesn't have to be just about having a baby every time.
Speaker 1:In fact that would be too much. Even so, there was a time in certain teachings in churches, and even in the Catholic Church in certain times, where the marital act was like this, duty that a woman just had to perform, and that was sad too, you know. I mean, when I hear that kind of language you think how broken it was. On the other side, you know that marriages stayed together often because there was no contraception. So you're afraid to go out and have sex with just anybody because you didn't know and and and. Yet we were in and and they were both going to mass yet and receiving the sacraments. Even if they didn't know anything about what we're talking about, they were receiving the sacraments and living and self-giving love.
Speaker 1:So I know many older people that had beautiful, beautiful relationships and you could just see it in their eyes. But unfortunately that was few and far between. That, found it all right, found a pleasure in the sexual intimacy and understood the grace that was being poured out, the mass and the sacrament. Some people just got it and it was amazing to see you know how beautiful that was. And other relationships just this is not easy, is it?
Speaker 2:Linda Living this Right, it's not easy, and I think what you described going the other way with well, it's just a duty that one or the other spouse might have to the other. It's kind of, you know, the pendulum going too far in the other direction.
Speaker 2:But it also, jack, is rooted in not understanding the connection between the vows, the promises, the words that I've spoken and the action, and so even performing as a duty. I'm missing the piece of it that says I'm giving myself to you again, truly in love, sickness and health. You see, so it's like a distortion, only the opposite side.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it sure is, because if I'm giving myself to you totally and faithfully, that means totally in this act. I'm not holding back because this is a drudgery for me or it's my duty as a woman say, or whatever.
Speaker 1:You know I mean that's sad too. And so, you know, christ gave himself to us, you know, with reckless abandon, pouring himself totally out to us on the cross. You know, this is the marriage bed of the cross. He climbs the marriage bed of the cross.
Speaker 1:Bishop Sheen, who got this from St Augustine back in the fourth century, climbs the marriage bed of the cross to give up his life for his bride. But you know he, he said, you know before that, you know I, I eagerly go to have this last supper with you. You know he was eager to do this, eager to pour himself out his eros. You know his, his, his passionate desire for us being fully agape divine, sacrificial love. You know I, and pouring this out, this is the mystery, that, man, if I could do this over again with this understanding, it would have been different, because you know you would treat each other different on a day-to-day basis, and this is not only about being in the bedroom. Right, this is the friendship you have to develop first. This is what chastity does. Chastity is that virtue that holds you back from just an erotic lovemaking, because eroticism without the friendship is you've missed the boat too.
Speaker 1:You have to become friends first, and that's the beauty of chastity, right and courtship and engagement and getting to know one another and spending time with one another and become really good friends and knowing that the other person has a deep faith life or is at least looking to that faith life. Because if you don't and you get married, you know today you're asking for trouble, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and my understanding too, even of chastity. I think back it was more the just no, you know, you don't do it. End of story kind of thing, where I understand now as you went through you know the whole, the friendship, the dating, the courtship, and all of that is a part of it which helps us with the right ordering of our sexual desires. And then for me, what happened when I studied this was I understand now that if I have sex before marriage, I'm really speaking a lie with my body because I haven't gone through this process and I haven't said those vows, I haven't made the promises, so it's like an empty shell here. And that gave me a whole new way of looking at it, other than sinning or not sinning, yes, and no black and white kind of thing. It just totally opened up this is God's plan and now I get it right. Yeah, it's such a beautiful thing.
Speaker 1:And I hope people embrace it, learn more about this and really go to God in prayer. The reality is, time goes by very, very quickly. Your life's going to go by very, very quickly. Marriage and the family are the building cell of all of the foundation, first of all, of God's plan. It's the most powerful form of governing that there is. This is where people really give to one another not just the husband and wife, but the children, like you said, the grandchildren. It goes out to friendships and et cetera. This is what everything is built on. All civilization has always been built on this foundational piece. Right here and now, you see what's happening, not only in marriages but to children. Today, again, with these gender ideologies, the pornographic culture. And where does it all come from? It comes from this disconnect of God. I don't want God in my bedroom and if all the places you don't want to throw God out, that's the first places in your bedroom because, you will no longer be connected to the source of love.
Speaker 1:I want to read you something that I got from International Planned Parenthood, when you see the opposite of this. So I'm going to take some of the luster off what we're talking about here, because I think it's very good to juxtapose these. This letter came from Planned Parenthood. It came from their Director General of International Planned Parenthood Federation, and he starts like this dear friend, this is after the election. I know how you feel, because I feel it too. Anger, sadness, disillusionment. These are heavy emotions, one we're all carrying right now. Embrace them, recognize them in those around you. Let them drive us forward. Together, we have the power to keep making change. First and foremost, I want to be clear that our work to protect and expand sexual and reproductive health and rights worldwide is going on, regardless of the outcome of the US election. It's amazing what happened when Trump got elected. Now Trump did not run on a pro-life platform.
Speaker 1:Right, we know that he leans pro-life, that he's not a great fan of abortion, but he certainly didn't say anything about it. In fact, he said the opposite, that he would not seek to do anything. He said this is out of my hands already. We did what we were supposed to do, which was take it off the country and put it back to the states and let the people decide which is the right thing to do. Now he says this not once.
Speaker 1:Over the last seven this is the letter again from Planned Parenthood over the last 72 years, have we backed down in the face of listen to this anti-rights, extremists or totalitarian governments that threaten women, girls and marginalized communities. This is who we are, what we do best reaching people regardless of circumstances. And then they talk about all the defunding that could take place with the Trump administration because they're not going to give them money to push abortions all around the world, that they're not going to give money to the WHO World Health Organization that does the same thing, promotes abortion and contraception all over the world. Pornography we push it all over the world. Lbgtq all over the world. And so, finally, the last thing I'll read here is now, more than ever. We're going to rely on the support of committed advocates like you to make up for this funding we're going to lose because of the Trump administration and provide life-saving sexual health care for women, life saving as I destroy a child right.
Speaker 1:This is the language and LBGTQ people and other marginalized groups we push this contraceptive. You know this culture of death all over the world. You can see very clearly here, linda, the anger we must feel because Trump won. It's amazing, isn't it, because evil will not just be able to run rampant wherever it wants, that the United States will not fund it with millions of dollars all over. Starting, obama was a big advocate of pushing all these things all over the world. We are known in the United States as pushing these LPGTQ gender ideologies and contraception and abortion all over the world. It's a bad state that we are in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, really, I mean clearly a misunderstanding of rights when they talk about reproductive rights. You know where do our rights come from. If they come from a government, the government can take them away, and I've never heard someone who pushes this explain. Okay, how do you explain that if the rights, wherever you think they come from, don't they can be taken away just as easily. So you know that's a whole nother discussion. Our reproductive rights, if they exist, are from God. You know he has given us the grace to co-create and we've talked about that, started this movement it's called the 4B movement where they're saying okay, we'll show you, we'll show everybody. No marriage, no childbirth, no dating and no sex. Now wait a minute here. Planned Parenthood better watch out if these women are serious, right, because if they're not going to have sex and they mean it then they're not going to conceive and so there won't be need for abortion. I'm just trying to point out how holy illogical it all is. And yet they're. You know it's just all rooted in lies.
Speaker 1:Think about this. There's women saying exactly what you said. That said you know, when I go out on a date next time just you know this man you're not going to get sex from me anymore.
Speaker 2:So what she's saying is I'm not going to even date at all.
Speaker 1:You know I'm not going to have meaningless sex with a man that doesn't love me, who I don't love yeah, and we're just going to have sex.
Speaker 1:I mean, this is what we've come down to. This is the twisting and distortion that this has done. And you think well, if you're contraceptive, why do we even need abortion? Well, we need abortion because contraception fails. You know, it's an amazing thing.
Speaker 1:The lies that said if you take the pill, abortion will go down, marriages will get better because you're going to have sex anytime you want. And the church said if you take the pill, abortion will go down, marriages will get better because you can have sex anytime you want. And the church said nope, that's not what's going to happen. Abortions will go up and people's marriages will fall apart. And everybody said well, that's nonsense, right? Even people in the church agreed, right, that we should have the pill.
Speaker 1:So St Pope Paul VI wrote Humanae Vitae, which we're going to be getting into in the next some sessions coming up, predicted all of this. The government controls all of this stuff the unhappiness, the using of women, everything was predicted. And why? Because the church knows what the sacrament was for in the beginning. And when you twist and distort that, all hell literally breaks loose, doesn't it? Abortion goes up. Why? Because more people are having meaningless sex, and even if they're contraception. Contraception doesn't work all the time and you just have way more people, even if they're contraceptive and work all the time, and you just have way more people, even if they're contraceptive, and way more abortions and yeah, getting that.
Speaker 1:Planned Parenthood was started by Margaret Sanger, who who was taking care of the negro problem, that's what she said and put them by these urban minorities, you know, in the, the urban areas and minority areas, to make it accessible to Black people, because it was a eugenic movement she was, you know and. Adolf Hitler actually took that idea and applied it to the Jews and others you know. So this is really nefarious. This is really a destruction of human life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and Jack, let's not forget that was all couched within this population explosion idea, kind of hitting at the same time that you know we have too many people on Earth. And what are we looking at now? The demographic winter, it's called, where the reproductive rates in countries now are below the replacement level. But no, here we go another bad fruit series, outcome from the lives, and they're all kind of coalescing now to create where we're at.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and as we wind down here, linda, we're running out of time.
Speaker 1:As we wind down here, linda, we're running out of time as we wind down here. The reason we brought this stuff up at the end is so that you could see how devastating this is. So if you're listening to this and you're just trying to you're a young person trying to think about marriage and family and stuff you can just see how important what we're talking, this primordial sacrament, is again, the building block of everything. So not only is it important to you as an individual, to your happiness, to your family, but this spreads out into the community and actually is a nation-building process. And you can just see, right from the very beginning, god created them, male and female, in his image, in his likeness, and wanted to bring new human beings, new eternal beings, into the world. With our help, in our partnership, and if they were in union and communion with God, we would have brought love and truth and goodness into the world and the beauty of love into the world, and that's what we were created to do and that's what we're created to do today.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and bringing those new ones in. We're to populate heaven. So we have our job to get there and our children and our grandchildren and that's what he had planned, the Pope and our children and our grandchildren, and that's what he had planned. The Pope, in concluding this audience, makes a nice statement here that I think will lead us into our further episodes.
Speaker 2:The key for understanding marriage remains the reality of the sign with which marriage is constituted. On the basis of man's covenant with God in Christ and in the church, it's constituted in the supernatural order of the sacred bond requiring grace. So any individual contemplating marriage, I would say start with yourself. As you said earlier, I first have to become that person of love through the grace, through my bond with God, through Christ and the women you know, male, female, everybody doing that as an unmarried single looking towards marriage is the starting point. And I would say then, stay tuned, because when you're working on that, you have this whole horizon of beauty awaiting you when you finally do find the person God wants you to marry. You know so it's like so many problems we've talked about, but oh, my goodness, there's this beauty waiting for you. So hang on.
Speaker 1:Hang on, hey. Glory to God, huh. Thank you. Thanks, Linda, Thanks everyone Thanks for listening and thanks everyone. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions, email us. There's especially, I know, on podcasts and our audio podcast. There's a place you can actually text us. So God bless you. Thanks everyone. Talk to you again soon. Bye-bye.