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
#564 Our Body Speaks A Language: Modern Man's Challenge To Rediscover This Language In Truth!
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Discover the transformative power of divine love and its profound connection to human existence as we unravel the teachings of St. John Paul II’s theology of the body. Linda Piper joins Jack to explore how our bodies can Rediscover the invisible love Language of God.
We traverse the symbolic landscape of biblical teachings, shedding light on how human marriage mirrors the covenant between Yahweh and Israel, and ponder the implications of these ancient truths in the context of modern-day challenges.
In our discussion, we venture into the realms of self-determination and moral truth, reflecting on the impact of our choices on our personal stories. Guided by John Paul's teachings, we explore how actions steeped in integrity and faithfulness can lead to fulfillment, while deceit and selfishness pave the way to brokenness.
Reference: Audience #104 "Man and Woman He Created Them" St. Pope John Paul
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Welcome to 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, if I put on the proper lens, we can get in touch with this echo within us in such a way that we have that aha moment. See, that's the genus of St John Paul II's theology of the body. It connects our lived experience of life to the gospel in such a way that our life takes on a whole new meaning and helps us answer those big questions that our whole culture is so confused about today meaning and helps us answer those big questions that our whole culture is so confused about today.
Speaker 1:Who am I? What's my purpose? Why were we created male and female? How do I find happiness here on earth? How do I find love that satisfies forever? Hey, glad you're with me, I'll be. I'm with Linda Piper all the way from Pennsylvania, where it's cold like it is in Chicago. I'm not made for winter. I don't think, linda. Maybe I was at one time, and as I'm getting a little older, maybe my blood's getting thinner.
Speaker 2:But man, I've got the chills going through me yep, me too, but I do say it's december, so bring it on, because I don't want it in march and april.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, I'm with you, I'm with you, you know I I I just read the reports and I didn't really see any pictures, but I read the reports that they've got 40 to 50 inches of snow out east someplace. Did you hear that?
Speaker 2:Is that by you? Yeah, Buffalo, New York and that northern New York area.
Speaker 1:Have you seen pictures that's got to bury those cities right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, mike was watching the football game Sunday night. It was the Buffalo Bills against somebody. They're playing in the snow, oh that's not for me.
Speaker 1:You'd have to pay me more money than they even make to play in the snow in Buffalo.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, this is audience number 105, language of the Body Rewriting the Truth.
Speaker 1:John Paul gave this on January 19, 1983.
Speaker 1:So, linda, when you think about this language of the body, reread in the truth, we don't really think of our body this way enough, and we really should, because this is this when we think about the body, the, the body expresses something, I you know. It gets back to john paul's thesis. You know, our bodies, in our bodies alone, make visible the invisible, the spiritual and the divine. We don't really think about that, that we were created from the very beginning to express, you know, the divine, eternal love. And that's what we are to be connected. Can you imagine the power of this, to be connected with God's love, to be filled with God's love and then to be a created, visible sign of that love in the world. I think, in essence, john Paul is speaking here. When you say speak, reread the language of the body and the truth, he brings out the Old Testament then and the Old Testament prophets and what they do in the Old Testament. So we have Genesis 1 that says God created man as man and woman as a reflection of Trinitarian love.
Speaker 2:Boom.
Speaker 1:Right off the bat, we're united with God to express this in the world. And the second thing is the Old Testament. Prophets come in and they say, ah, this covenant, this marriage covenant, also goes with Yahweh and the people of Israel. So it's a people too, it's a nation that God builds. So something about this marriage that we live in marriage and family and children is this little tiny microcosm, if you will, a reflection of this whole idea that Yahweh wants a relationship with us as a people, like a marriage. And these are united, aren't they, Linda?
Speaker 2:Very much so. You know, when we have in the Catechism 221, that God is an eternal exchange of love and he wants us to share in it, those can be words that just like okay, what does that mean? If I'm just reading through it, this is what it means. And I think I mentioned last time that it's the covenant you know. So we've used marriage. God wants to marry us.
Speaker 2:The word covenant I think Scott Hahn does a wonderful thing with when he says you know, a contract is an exchange of goods and services, but a covenant is an exchange of persons. And that's really what happens in marriage and it is what happens with us, with God, when we're sharing in that divine life. And the prophets expressed it so many different ways throughout the Bible, expressed it so many different ways throughout the Bible. John Paul, in the second paragraph of 105 here, says a prophet is one who expresses with human words the truth that comes from God, one who speaks the truth in the place of God, in his name and in some sense with his authority, which I think is another way of restating that thesis statement that we bring into the world the divine, the spiritual, the truth. So it's beautiful to meditate on and yet it becomes very practical, as we'll see in our audience today.
Speaker 1:Yes, it sure does we. You know, these skin, like you said, could be just words until we see the brokenness around us, the failed marriages, the men who will leave a woman after she becomes pregnant we see this over and over again, then and the gender confusion. All these things are when we don't speak the language of the body and the truth. And when John Paul speaks of that, he says well, we're the author. Man, meaning man and woman are the author, then, of their own story, but they have to speak it in the truth in order to live out the truth. You know, Linda, I think. Go ahead.
Speaker 2:Order to live out the truth. You know, linda.
Speaker 1:I think, and Jack, uh-huh, go ahead.
Speaker 2:Just a point that he brings out too is that God gave us the objective meaning, that spousal meaning of the body comes from God, and we have to appropriate that and make it our own through our actions. So that's how we become the author of the language of our own body.
Speaker 1:We become the author of the language of our own body. Yeah, and when we do that and we read it in the truth, we become persons of love. That's really what that means, and there's no time that we live with outside of it. This is always the interesting thing when I'm speaking in churches, when I'm speaking to people in discussions well, you know, that's an old thing. Or you know, nowadays, you know you can have same-sex marriage. It's meaningless. You know a woman's right to choose. There's trans movements. I mean crazy that I can become a different body.
Speaker 1:Right, when you start to think about all of those twisting and distortions of this, you say, okay, well, now, I'm not just reading the body in the truth. What does that mean? That, again, a male and a female, this is the only ones, that the two become one, become three, just the reality of that. And then John Paul says that in our wedding vows we're saying in words what that means too. I take you, you take me forever, and this is a reflection of the way God comes into the world with his people. I take you as a people, as a person though, each one of us, and then as a body, as let's call it the United States of America. I mean, god wants all of us to come together in one body, and you mentioned catechism number 221. And then, at the end of the day, that's where we're going. We're going to share an exchange of love with the Trinity. But that starts today.
Speaker 1:And I think again, the biggest, most practical thing is when we think we live above the law, and this is what I was getting to before, that you can change this. No, the truth is the truth. You know the universe was created. You know gravity doesn't change just because I don't study it anymore. You know murder is murder and you know all of these things. You know honor, your father and mother, all of these things come down to us and they don't change.
Speaker 1:You know there's a truth that God created everything with a truth, an objective moral base, and there's no time John Paul would say that you live outside of that. So I come into the world, linda, you came into the world. Now we have to decide do we want to live this in the truth of creation? In other words, do I write my little story with my wife, my family, my kids? Do I write it in the language of the truth or do I twist and distort that. I cheat on my wife, I get into pornography, I walk away from my responsibilities, say, as a father, you know there's this function that follows when I do those things right.
Speaker 1:I become selfish. I no longer see other people as someone. It's people to love and sacrifice for. Instead, I become very self-seeking. And this is the opposite, and the world is full of people on both sides of that battle right.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, in so many ways it's easy to see whether I'm rewriting my story in the truth or not by the fruit or not by the fruit. So just what you said here, you know, good fruit cannot come out of the untruth, out of the falsities which you know the Pope says everything expressed negatively, or the falsity of conjugal love, faithfulness and integrity. So if I behave in those ways, faithfulness and integrity. So if I behave in those ways, if I lack integrity, if I lack the faithfulness, bad fruit necessarily has to come out of that.
Speaker 2:And people wonder sometimes, you know, like, look at all these problems I'm having in my marriage and with my kids and all these things, why is this happening? You know all they'd have to do is stop for a moment and think, okay, happening. You know all they'd have to do is stop for a moment and think, okay, you know what am I saying with the language of my body, as I'm living out my life and all this multitude of areas, all these decisions we have to make day in and day out, and I kind of always go back. I'm probably too simplistic sometimes in the way I think of this, but you know, mike does something to irritate me. I have a choice right there I can say something nasty back, or I cannot. I can overlook it, or maybe even try to say something kind, depending on the situation. You know and that's what we're talking about with writing our story Every situation like that that comes up I can either respond in the truth or the opposite.
Speaker 1:Yes, and I love the way John Paul says that there are things that merely happen to us as people. Like you said, somebody says something to me and I feel some emotion. Right, I could be offensive, right, I could fight back as I feel that emotion. But these kind of things happen all the time, and even down to our dispositions. You know, we were born in a certain place at a certain time to certain parents. We didn't choose any of that, things merely happen to us.
Speaker 1:I have a certain DNA. I'm not born, say naturally, with patience. Some people are, some people aren't. Right, we all have these different gifts, but within what merely happens to us and and the outside too, we came into a broken world already. We came into the united states of america, but my grandparents didn't. They came into different countries, right, so we can be born at different places, different things.
Speaker 1:Now, within that context of what merely happens to me and what's happening on the outside, I have a power, and that power of my conscience, my power of my heart, I have a power this is so cool to me. I have this energy flowing, this power flowing for me, and I am a self-determining person. You just decided, linda, not to yell back at your husband. When you develop patience, over time you become a patient person. We actually we self-determine who we are. We co-create ourselves In a sense. John Paul would say we're co-creators.
Speaker 1:Through my acts either good and evil. Good or evil I become, in a sense, a creator of myself. I become good or I become evil. It's so much, it's so powerful when you become a person of love, even in all the sacrifices, because you think, well, why would I do that?
Speaker 1:Why do I want to go visit the sick? Why do I want to visit the prisoner? Why do I want to go visit the sick? Why do I want to visit the prisoner? Why do I want to help out, say, the homeless? My father is in the hospital right now. Why do I want to go visit him right and feed him today, or whatever? Well, you do it and it's amazing. You know the gifts that you have within this sacrifice. It just is. God will fill you up with these gifts and this grace. And there's something good that happens to the human heart. We kind of can shrink a little bit, we take some pressure off ourselves, we walk into a story, god is in charge, and we go with the flow of the truth instead of fighting it all the time and bringing so much anxiety to ourselves and and dysfunction into our own lives and our own hearts yeah, what happens to that human heart?
Speaker 2:is the hardness begins to soften hopefully even melt away at some point. But you know you're so, but also it goes the other way, linda, right?
Speaker 1:I mean, you know when you see, so right. But also it goes the other way, Linda, right, I mean when you see hardness of heart and I think if you just go the opposite way, you wonder how do people get so hard? I always think of these women on the View.
Speaker 1:I pick on them too much probably, but you think they're just this vitriol and spewing this stuff out and you go. How do they become these people that are just angry at the world? You know, joy, joy, behard, right, I mean the name joy itself is an oxymoron you know, and, and she's just so angry. And so how do you get angry? Well, you, you develop a hardness of heart over time by rejecting right you know, really what's good, what's beautiful?
Speaker 2:you know the truth itself and the truth, yes, the truth itself yes. And when you speak of us having the power we certainly do to choose between the good and the evil, People confuse that with I can determine myself what is good and what is evil, and you know we do not have that power. Our power lies in the ability to choose the good. That's our true freedom, right, and so if we clarify that in our own heads, that no, I don't determine whether this is good or evil, I recognize it and then I choose.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great point, right, because, again, I didn't create the universe. It's amazing how proud, you know, the threefold concupiscence is wild. Concupiscence of the eyes, which are more, if you think about it. In essence, you look out at the material world and you see things and instead of looking at them as a gift God gave all this to us as a gift to use we want to grasp and take. You think about all of the people that, instead of you know getting just enough for themselves, they want to grasp and they want to take what's yours and what's the next guy's and what's the next guy's. And we have these greedy right. So, concupiscence of the eyes. And then the flesh, which is a lot of it is sensual, you know it's sexual, sensual, but anyways it's satisfying the body, kind of in disconnection from the soul and from the truth that we're speaking about here today. And then the third is the worst it's the pride of life, which says exactly what you said, linda.
Speaker 1:I can be like God. Think about this. Genesis 3 explains almost all the dysfunction in this world today. I can be like God. I can decide what is good and what is evil. And that gets back to the earlier point I made. It's great that you bring it up again, because I think you need to say this a couple of times sometimes we live within a moral context.
Speaker 1:John Paul would say very clearly and it's so important that, as I'm making decisions, I'm never making decisions outside of this moral truth that we came into. I can sin, I can go against it, but my decisions are still within a moral truth. My decisions have consequences. If I do something that's evil, if I bring in something that's not true, good and beautiful, it's going to change my heart. I'm going to get the hardness of heart. I'm going to bring it into my family, I'm going to get angry with my wife, I'm going to start drinking too much, whatever, I become a porn addict. I mean, it just keeps rolling right.
Speaker 1:I get confused about gender and I stand up for kids having, at 13, 14, 15 years old, having their body parts mutilated, and I think, yes, it's their right to do that. And these poor kids are suffering because of adults, because of adults. If there weren't adults around, there would be no kids on puberty blockers, no kids chopping off their body parts. It just wouldn't happen. And but we instill that we give them while they're confused. They're young, we, we push this down on them because we don't speak the language of the body and the truth. You know who are we?
Speaker 2:Right, and the Pope is specifically focusing on the marriage vows when he talks first about what we speak. You know, I couldn't remember exactly the wording of the Catholic wedding vows. No, I couldn't remember exactly the wording of the.
Speaker 2:Catholic wedding vows. So I looked that up and there's two sets of wedding vows that are approved by the Vatican. They're both very short, but I'd like to read each of them to kind of bring us back to what it is we say when we are professing the vows and actually bringing into existence the marriage covenant. So the first one says I, linda, take you, mike, to be my husband. I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life. So I, you.
Speaker 2:This is the exchange of persons that happens. The other one says I take you for my lawful husband or wife to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. Until death do us part. That's the one I think most of us think of more. Until death do us part when we talk about the faithfulness to the end. But it strikes me that we say these words and hopefully a couple speaking these words really understand because they've had good, you know, marriage preparation what it is they're actually saying and what the implications are literally for the rest of their lives together. Promise to be true to you. You see, truth, we can't get away from it. Good times, bad times we know there are going to be bad times, hopefully more good times, but all the things that come up. So if we don't understand from the very beginning that we're actually speaking about living in the truth, then, like you say, you know, all kinds of brokenness enters in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it doesn't stop. You know, once the dysfunction starts, it's you've let the, you know, the genie out of the bottle. It's. You know, lust is like that, you know, when I'm working with young persons and I know this even in my own life when lust is released and I'm not talking about Eros. Eros is this, as Plato and Aristotle would say, it's more than just sensual. It's more than sensual love. It is sensual love and it is romantic love per se, but it's also a search for all that's true, good and beautiful. It's larger than that. It's looking at Mother Teresa's of the world and saying, yeah, this is not just a spouse that I'm taking, but all of these spiritual children out there. I give myself away to them. So it becomes this, really, this story, that that that we walk into and and it's so important to see that around just to open our eyes and say, because we don't, we have this pride, linda, and we say, well, I don't want to follow. You know, you know I. Why didn't I create the universe? Why didn't I have a say in all this? I said, well, if you did have a say in all this, you wouldn't have created anything more beautiful than you get a chance to participate in. When you were saying this, linda, till death, do us part.
Speaker 1:God made that really clear. That's why Jesus, in Matthew 19, said in the beginning you weren't able to divorce your spouse Because in the beginning, before sin, this was a sign of God's love for you. God is true to you, god does not leave you. God is there and all the way there, even to death, and we see even death on a cross. We see God playing this role. Jesus takes on a body, right, is united with divinity and a body in himself, and then, as the bridegroom, getting back to this, yahweh Israel, look right when Jesus comes in.
Speaker 1:Now, jesus is the new covenant and he actually takes on a body and he goes to the marriage bed of the cross and actually, till death, all the way till death, pours himself out to us, but then he rises again and shows us. You know, at the end of the day, yes, we have to follow him. That's why we say, well, you got to carry the cross. Well, yes, we actually are carrying this to our deathbed. I mean, it's kind of a tough picture if you're not united with Christ. I don't know. I mean this would be a rough one, you know, but we are united with Christ.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, paragraph 1648 in the Catechism speaks to the difficulty of this. It says it can seem difficult, even impossible, to bind oneself for life to another human being. This makes it all the more important to proclaim the good news that God loves us with a definitive and irrevocable love, that married couples share in this love, that it supports and sustains them. See, when I was doing my marriage classes, I really wanted to stress this point. I can't stress it enough, really that we cannot do it alone, it is impossible, and that if we don't appropriate the graces that we got in our marriage, that it's going to be tough and we're going to have all this broken Not that we don't have brokenness anyway, even when we're trying our very best, you know, because that's the nature of the broken world that we're living in, but so it's. It's excuse me supports and sustains them and that by their own faithfulness they can be witnesses to God's faithful love, which is, you know, st Paul saying that Christ and the church is that mystery and we are a sign of it. Spouses who, with God's grace, give this witness, often in very difficult conditions, deserve the gratitude and support of the ecclesial community, the whole church community. So I hope everyone listening has some couple in their life somewhere that at least begins to approximate this, showing the love of God and the faithfulness.
Speaker 2:You know, when we had our 50th wedding anniversary, we had just a very little party, and so our sons-in-laws were there, my sister and brother-in-law were there and I thought, oh, you know what, here's two other couples who have both reached the 50-year mark and beyond, and so I just said a little talk to our group, thanking them for coming and how wonderful it was. I said to the younger people look you guys, you have examples here, not just me and my husband, but the others who also have remained faithful and gone beyond. You're seeing real life examples here of what God is calling you to if you're called to marriage. You know, and I was a little bit the preacher teacher there- that.
Speaker 2:I've been accused of. But it's like you kids, you know all ages, we have little ones on up to my oldest grandson is getting married in a couple of weeks, and so he was what? 20, 20 at the time. You know, I thought you need to hear this, you need to see this, you need to bring it to your consciousness because it's very, very real. So, anyway, my little story there.
Speaker 1:No, that's awesome. Yeah, you know we've walked into a story, didn't we, linda? We walked into a story, and a story had meaning and purpose already. It had a beginning. It's going someplace and we pop up into the scene, on this stage, but it's already got a plot. Can you imagine if every actor in a play decided to he was going to play God, he was going to play the director and the author of the story. He was going to choose what was a good part, what was a bad part, and change it around if he wanted to, but then everybody did that and nobody knew what was going on.
Speaker 1:Here's the confusion you see today. Here's the chaos you see today. Here's the sense. We just had an election here in the United States, and when I say that because we have listeners from all over the world, actually on this podcast, we'll have 12, 14 different nations listening to any single podcast at a time, and so I say and welcome to them. But in the United States, as they know, we had an election and in that election, we all sensed chaos. We all sense a breakdown, violence, chaos. So there was a sense of something. This is a spiritual sense that there is a disconnection.
Speaker 1:At the end of the day, this battle, whether you realize it or not, was a battle between what was true, good and beautiful. It was a battle of the truth, of the language of the body. It was a battle for authentic marriages, for authentic love, a battle between abortion. Really, again, this isn't just political, in other words, trump wasn't just pro-life, but we all had a sense that now we can all really participate. The government itself will not push down on us for speaking the truth. You know, I always say to people in analogy, which, if I'm praying outside an abortion clinic, you know, with Trump in the house I could still pray there. I have no doubt that if Kamala Harris came in, we'd see a continual. It was already happening and it would have just been a continual clampdown on people praying, just like in Europe. Right now, in the UK, people are getting arrested. Now, that's just one part of the story.
Speaker 1:But my point being we came into a story. Do we become persons of love or not? Do we speak the truth or not? When we speak the truth about our bodies, we're looking at other people and say, yeah, I speak the truth about their body and we become prophetic. John Paul would say we become prophets. By living out marriages, families, love, truth, goodness, beauty. We become a prophet of saying, yeah, this is the way the world's designed, this is the beauty of it.
Speaker 1:And in all our brokenness you know you made an earlier point you know we're messy people, aren't we? We live in a tension between the world we came into, that was broken, being redeemed and then going someplace. But that redemption is a constant battle, isn't it? It's a battle of the heart. But over time, that battle, it gets deeper and deeper and deeper. You become deeper and deeper and closer to God. You're filled in different ways. It's amazing.
Speaker 1:And prayer, my prayer, life, I mean, it gets much deeper and all of these things that we think about. And then we've got to wake up in the morning and be persons of love, and so, while these sacrifices are going on, I'm thinking I got a chance to do that, that good for that person. I got a chance to be that person of love. If I would have just took something selfishly, it might have felt better at the time. Right, didn't take the time to visit the sick or whatever that was, but when I was done, at the end of the day I watched an extra news show or read some more emails, or I visited that sick person and I'll tell you what. You'll find more fulfillment in visiting that sick person than you will in any other way. There'll be a smile, there'll be something that you were able to bring to the table and something that happened to your own heart, and you'll know you did the right thing. It's really something how it works.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it really is when you think about all the political situations, not just in the US too, but everything going on worldwide.
Speaker 2:In politics it really does boil down to the truth or the lies. I mean, you know the Children's Health Defense, you know Robert Kennedy Jr and, looking at those issues, you can pick any particular issue and look at all the aspects of it and say what parts of this speak the truth of who we are as human beings and you know how God made us to be, and what part of this is just downright lies, adding to causing all the confusion. And I think that so much of it could be resolved so much easier. You know, forget republican, democrat or any of those kinds of labels and say let's look at the issue, let's look at the truth of it and let's look what is falsehood. The problem there, of course, is there are people who want to believe the falsehoods as the truth, and they're you where you get all the confusion and the unwillingness, I think, to come to some agreements, and this can go for simple things all the way up to, you know, potential World War III, with what our leaders need to be doing. So it really is the answer, jack, but, you know, bringing it a little bit closer to home with our audience today and looking at the role that marriage plays, you know, because there is where our next generation does form and all the issues become important all over again with our kids.
Speaker 2:The Pope says in paragraph five, the words of the conjugal consent. So our vows contain within themselves the intention, the decision and the choice. And so from the very, very start we have to realize that we already made a decision and now we're acting out our intention of marrying this person and making the choice, and if we can, you know, kind of think in all of our issues. That's really the root, the base of it. You know what is my intention, what's the decision that I made and then what's the choice that falls from that decision.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that falls from that decision. Yeah, and we have the energy again of this conscience and this heart in order to do this.
Speaker 1:You know that when we walk in, when we face a difficult situation and we look at again what's happening in our country and what's happening in the world, the best thing we can do is to be faithful to everything we're talking about, to bring the truth in in our own way. When enough people do this and this is what you're starting to see in the United States Now what's going to happen? Who knows? Because we're pretty close to 50-50 on this. You know, even though Trump won almost everything it looks like, but he didn't win by huge margins, right, it was one or two percent in a lot of cases. And so there's, you know, let's call it 48, 49% of people that maybe voted the other way. What does that mean? You know, people that really, in essence and I'm not saying all of them, some of them are just naive or used to voting democrat, whatever, but when you look at the, the positions, you know, just you take the trans movement that they were pushing. You know, don't forget that the biden administration had a man, richard levine, in charge of the hhs health and human services, one of the I think it's the biggest budget in the United States over many, many agencies, right, health and human services. So in charge of mental health, physical health for the country is a man who has a mental health problem. Right, I mean, you pray for him. He calls himself Rachel. He dresses as a woman, he's obviously a man when he walks, when he talks and everything, but this is the lie. Though, when you say that you can change a body, there's a lie. But then when the administration puts him up in the front and says think about this, this is 1984. This is Orwell, this is the brave new world with Huxley, now the whole world has to accept that lie and say that's the truth, that a man is a woman. Now, just because he stood at the tree and said no, I can be like God, I can decide who is what and what is you know. So he thinks he can move outside of the objective truth, but we can't. There is an objective. So anyways, the point being when the whole population, or 48% of them, accept that lie, don't see that lie and allow that to permeate families and marriages and kids. So we work with kids.
Speaker 1:The reason I say this is not just to spout off. I see the brokenness in grade school kids, high school kids, kids that are confused about their gender identity. What we're talking about here is, with the truth of the language of the body, is to say, no, your identity comes as a beloved child of God. That, if you don't accept that, you know. If you think about that statement I just made, linda, it seems simplistic. Right, you are a beloved child of God. You say, okay, well, if I reject that, you can reject that.
Speaker 1:But you see the dysfunction that comes into even a young human heart, right, 12, 13 years old, who's confused now about their gender identity. You know where do they get this from? You know so, something merely happened in them, right? They have some confusion. What you do? By slapping labels on them, you tell them they don't have that energy of conscience.
Speaker 1:I don't have that self-determination. I don't have the reason to say what is the truth of my body? Accept it what it is. You know what is good and how do I live this out out. You know, it's not about changing my body, it's becoming a person of love. That's what it is. You know our bodies come down to do I, am I a person of love or not? And so I, I don't need all the pressure of saying jack, do I got to transition to a woman. No, whoever you are, receive that love and become a person of love. I know that's overly simplistic, but that's really where we need to go. We become very self-centered. You know me, me, me, me, me. No, no, I am who I am. I may not be perfect. I may need, you know, some help from a lot of different people in a lot of places, but at the end of the day, I have to become a person of love that cares about others. Otherwise I get closed in and dysfunction happens.
Speaker 2:And the popes have been addressing this for over a century. I mean, essentially, marxist communism was the root of saying we're throwing out God and we are becoming and creating ourselves, but without God and without how he made us to be. You know, we're rejecting all of this and, as you say, the power of is there for us to accept and live in that truth In our audience. Gee, at the end of paragraph one, when he's specifically speaking about the wedded couple, but he says that vow, that covenant, is continually nourished with the power of the redemption of the body offered by Christ to the church. It always comes back to that, jack, and we can try to run away from it as much as possible. You can run, but you can't hide. It's always there and it is that power, the grace from Christ and the redemption of the body.
Speaker 1:Think how beautiful that is If you really can. You know, push away your pride, accept some humility, accept the point that Jack is only this little tiny speck in the universe and yet the God of the universe knows who I am, knows who Linda is, knows who everybody that's listening today, that's listening today. I mean who, who, who? I mean it's almost blows your mind, right that I can, I can kneel in prayer and I can ask that God of the universe to come into my heart to you know, in prayer it's really where you sink down below the surface of all of this noise. You, you even get away from what merely happens to you and you go into this place called the conscience. You go into this place called the conscience. You go into the place called the heart. The heart is the core of who we are body, soul. And you meet just two people there you and God.
Speaker 1:Of course, god brings the Trinity, god brings the angels, the saints. Everybody is there, but in essence it's God and I'm there, and yet I have my family, my friends and everything. So in essence I bring them. You know myself, but really the two of us are having coffee there and we're talking and it's the I thou again. You know the I you right, and so I God, give myself to you. God says to me you know, yeah, you opened the door and I've been looking for you. I've been pursuing you and I now give myself to you, right? So this becomes a reciprocal gift. This is where it all starts.
Speaker 2:Yes, and some say, well, how does that happen? Well, for us Catholics, we know what happens in the Eucharist. He gives himself to us very physically. You know, we can see, touch and taste and that makes it very real. You know, and I would hope everyone, everyone really has that experience. You know, it's beautiful beyond words and I too have kind of thought about that. I'm just this little speck.
Speaker 2:I mean, we've had all these phenomena with the moon and the northern lights and all these things you know, and it just keeps coming back over and over these fantastic things and it causes me to think too. Here I am, this little speck, you know really, he knows me, he knows who I am, and it does seem really difficult at times, but then I say, okay, well, if he doesn't, if this isn't true, what do I have? How did I get here? You know who am I and what does any of this mean? And yet we all know, deep down that echo, that there is meaning to our existence, there is meaning to life, which most of us are always considering.
Speaker 2:You know what is this all about? And there is nothing, unless there is God, that there's no other explanation that anyone has ever been able to come up with to explain our experiences and all the things we know from a source that maybe we can't name or identify if we don't think about it much. But we have it there, you know. And it's just incredible when you say I really have two choices here, and which one do I need to go with?
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is Advent. In Advent you're really readying yourself, of course, for the birth of Christ, but you're readying yourself to be able to get ready to die actually, and you don't really think about Advent that way. But that's really a preparation, right, we're going someplace, a body and a soul, just fact going someplace. A body and a soul, just fact, practical. A body and a soul without what you just said, linda, disconnected from God, the source of love. The default position is pretty simple it's sin and death. It's inevitable. Sin is already here, it's already permeated, it's already even within us. With this threefold concupiscence, this wanting to pull us down always, the power that lifts us up and gets us out of that is grace. It's this power of the redemption from the cross, where Christ gave himself for us, like you said, pours himself out for us, brings humanity in a sense back into divinity, right in his own body. He pours this out to us. When we have this opening up, you know we now have a, you know we unite ourselves with eternal life, eternal love. It's a different thing. And then we go out and we actually do it. So that action of Jesus Christ, that redemption, gives us only the potential for human flourishing, the potential for human freedom.
Speaker 1:I have to say yes, right, I have to kneel down and say yes. That's what the beauty of prayer. I say yes to you, I want that. And then I have to go out and act, and that's what we're talking about here, with the action of the language, of the body and the truth. I can't go out and rape somebody. I can't go out and steal their food. I can't go out and lie and start wars.
Speaker 1:I mean, people are actually starting wars in our administration right now, taking down other governments, and, at the end of the day, something's missing from their hearts. When they can, when we just say, well, I'm glad we just killed, dropped a bomb, and it's 150 people. They're enemies. A lot of those are young soldiers that never did anything against anybody, were sent into that battle even though, yes, they would be our enemy, sent in a battle by people with evil hearts and evil intentions. Look, these are complex issues, but what I'm saying is there's a lot of young people that get caught up in wars and killings and get maimed and lose their families Over one or two or three people that are behind pulling these triggers.
Speaker 1:So we all have my point being we all have to be infused with redemption, walk out into the world and be signs of it, and if enough of us do that, that's the only way, because we bring God into the public square, into politics, economics, finance, and then we change it right, we change it for the good. This is a battle, this is our stage, our time to do this, and if we don't do it, nobody else will. Linda, we see how close the world is coming to even World War III right now. We know this is all coming to a close. At some point Christ will be coming back, you know. But for me and you, linda, I don't know, you know I.
Speaker 2:I think we have to look up from these stupid phones all the time.
Speaker 1:Look at, I like my phone too, once in a while you know what I'm saying is, we just spent so much time on the surface, we don't drop to the heart and we're missing out on what life is really all about, which is really a beautiful war going on in the heart, and we need to win that war and become persons of love.
Speaker 2:Right. So rereading the language of the body in truth is getting down to that very deep level within the heart and, as I think you know, that line between good and evil can be rethought as the line between truth and lies. And if you're not sure where to start in all of this, just begin to look at, well, where's my heart right now, this moment you know, and say a prayer to ask for it to open up just a little bit to the truth that I might have been overlooking or been blind to, and it gets you on that start. But grace, prayer, getting that grace from the prayer, is where it's at For me anyway, Jack.
Speaker 1:And the shortest path to that John Paul would say and he got this from Louis de Montfort and other saints is to our Blessed Mother right, the Immaculate Heart. She's our mom, she's mother. If you want to pray, and you haven't done it for a while, and even if you do it every day, you know our mother is always going to bring you to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, her son, you know. So, hey, there's your shortcut for you, linda. Hey, god bless you. Thanks for being with us. Thanks everyone.
Speaker 2:Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1:Talk to you again soon, bye-bye.