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
#584 The Secret to Unlocking the Mysteries of Humanity Lies in Understanding True Love
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What if the secret to unlocking the mysteries of humanity lies in understanding true love? Join Linda Piper and me on a journey inspired by the transformative teachings of St. John Paul II's theology of the body. We ponder how faith can serve as an anchor amidst cultural chaos, using the Song of Songs as a metaphor for love that transcends mere emotion. By observing the rhythms of nature, especially the renewal found in springtime, we find a reflection of divine love that speaks to the heart's deepest longings.
Have we lost touch with authentic love in a world enamored with superficial connections? Our conversation with Linda explores the profound importance of relationships rooted in genuine love, as highlighted by the personalistic norm, that insists love is the only proper response to another person. We confront the challenges posed by modern hookup culture and rediscover the beauty of values like chastity and dignity, drawing from the teachings of Pope John Paul II and the redemptive love of Christ the Redeemer. Life devoid of such love is incomplete, and we emphasize experiencing its fullness within families and profound relationships.
Reference: Man and Woman He Created Them, A Theology of the Body, #110
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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.
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 we created male and female? How do I find?
Speaker 2:happiness here on earth? How do I find love that satisfies forever? Hey, glad you're with me, I'll be.
Speaker 1:I'm excited to be with my good friend, linda Piper. All the way from Pennsylvania, she joins us. Linda, how are you?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great. Thanks, Jack. How are you?
Speaker 1:I'm doing awesome. We were just talking before we came on contrasting good versus evil. There's a lot of evil going on. Know, there's a lot of evil going on, but there's a lot of good going on. The main thing that when I see this evil, linda, and then we're reading today the Song of Songs, huh, the ode to love. The ode to love and the truth, the ode of the mystery of God himself as made visible through our very bodies, huh, what we're called to, that Jesus didn't come in the world to convict us, to judge us, as much as to call us to this higher place.
Speaker 1:And so I guess my main point in saying that is that my faith has never been stronger. It's amazing, the more the Vatican and the more the Pope and the more these weak bishops try to confuse, or do it on purpose or naive. You know, I have my own way of, I have my own thoughts on that, but today's show's not a time and place for that. But when I see that confusion that they sow, I think this is awesome, because this shows how powerful this deposit of faith that's been brought down to us. Stay with that deposit of faith. Stay with what Christ has revealed to us, what nature reveals to us, what natural law revealed to us Stay in the truth. Only the truth will set you free. And Jesus said I am the way, the truth and the life. So we're going to be talking about love in the midst of chaos, aren't we Linda?
Speaker 2:Yes, and the chaos and confusion is not from Jesus. So anytime you notice this is really confusing here, you know, be aware, because that is exactly what the evil one does, so he sows confusion and doubt. So it is becoming clearer, especially in the confusion, and I feel, like you, that my faith has gotten stronger through all of this, although I'll admit I've had some really low moments, really low ones, and yet, you know, I just tried to pray myself out of that because I know, I know the truth of this love story that we're in. It involves suffering and pain, and you know we can't get away from that. So in number 110, we're continuing with the Song of Songs, this true love story that unfolds in the most beautiful way, a lot of metaphors, you know, a lot of language that we're not used to and, yes, I see that love songs really always get into metaphors, because we're searching for a way to explain and bring out that deep love that we feel, that we know is in there, you know that echo that we talk about in our hearts.
Speaker 1:We're trying to express a mystery, aren't we the mystery?
Speaker 2:of what we forget about.
Speaker 1:Love in today's time has been reduced to a feeling and then to just sex, this act. We are so far off the mystery, and so when I think you know we're in the middle of winter the good thing about being in the middle of winter is that there's a spring on the other side of this so beautiful when you have the four seasons. Sometimes I think I should live in a tropical place, but I would miss the four seasons because I wouldn't miss the heart of winter as much. But I love spring and again springtime. You know, you start to see these little buds on the trees come out and then the perennials start to come up and so you see the flowers. And then you know the bees and the birds and you hear the bird songs and they're looking for, they're building nests and they're thinking about mating and fertility, this life-givingness right that comes into the world.
Speaker 1:This is nature itself. We need to observe nature. These young people that stay on their computers and blah, blah, blah, get outside right and enjoy this. And now is the crown of creation, if you think about all of nature singing this song, this dance right Of love and the mystery of love, and entering into the mystery of another person as a sign of entering into the mystery of God himself, who is love. This is why we can't hardly express it in words. And then the crown of creation. That's what we're going to be talking about today, this cry of the human heart for infinite love and infinite life, and we see it in the mystery of another person. Ooh, this is beautiful stuff that the saints and the mystics talk about all the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we're actually continuing today with this concept of the line in Song of Songs where the groom says my sister, it last week.
Speaker 2:But this terminology actually brings us into this understanding that we are together in humanity, male and female, so that we first need to see each other as a brother or a sister in this one humanity with our father, god, the father of all of us.
Speaker 2:And if we start with that and don't jump into what may seem kind of awkward with, you know, fiance, a groom calling his bride sister first, you know it's jarring to some people in some way, because how can I think of my bride if I'm thinking of her as my sister, right, I think from the male perspective sometimes that would seem like this is strange. So we have to first get past that to see what, you know, what does this really mean in that single humanity, so that I as a man can see that femininity of my bride but first see it as a sister woman, to see the masculinity. And the Pope just repeats this, I think very often through these, because that's such a strong point for us to understand that we're looking at each other first with a disinterested tenderness, if you will, that I'm first seeing you as another human being before I see you as my lover. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:Yeah, for those of us that are in first grade, I would say it like this this is not uncommon, this is a common thing Back in the biblical time, but all the way through to today, there are many cultures that are tight Polish cultures, the Greek cultures, you know these different cultures that tend to find a spouse within their own communities.
Speaker 1:I was mentioned before that my son went, had four friends from Iowa, that he went to the university of Iowa and he stayed with those four friends. So there's five of them. They had a big apartment. They did. They spent their whole four years together. They met as freshmen and then had a big apartment. They spent their whole four years together. They met as freshmen and then they got an apartment. They spent their whole four years. They became very, very good friends.
Speaker 1:Three of those friends went back to their small towns in Iowa and found a bride and so they knew the families, they knew these girls before they were old enough to even date. So they had little crushes and stuff on them, you know, and so they went back for them and so this is not uncommon. You know, we, we think about it today because of this, this modern pornographic culture, in a lot of ways. Think about this. You know, we, we are attracted to a woman, right, natural to be attracted, right to the beauty and the mystery, but we don't understand what that is. But we don't know anything about her background, her culture, where she came from. We're two strangers basically coming into the into this called into a love story, but we don't see it as that. This is the feeling and emotion, and then we sexualize it. It's it's a hookup culture and it's a pornographic culture. So this is why when you hear sister, my bride, you go, oh, that's not like my sister, but that's not how. That's not how we did it in ancient times and in cultures. We knew those cultures.
Speaker 1:So I saw that young girl. I go, oh, I remember her when she was in eighth grade or seventh grade or whatever. So I saw her with the respect that we don't see each other in anymore. We have to regain that respect. That doesn't mean you're going to have to go back and find somebody and you know we are in such a dysfunctional world with dysfunctional families, you know to even go back and think there is a culture. How many people I know today that the children are not even baptized, are not brought into a faith, who have no respect for the culture, no respect for the country. Look at people are burning our flag, no idea of what they're doing. We have an open border policy.
Speaker 1:We're flooding this in with people that don't even know our country right, and so, at the end of the day, this is not by accident. We're diluting this down. It's an attack on love, actually an attack on the human person, on the family, and so we have to regain that, the power of that, when you think about the making love right and authentic love. God's calling us to union and communion as a reflection of the mystery of love itself right and communion as a reflection of the mystery of love itself right. And then the bridegroom in the song says not only calls her a sister, my bride, but says you're a garden closed, a fountain sealed, that you are the master of your own mystery, that you have dignity coming from the Father, and so do I. And we're giving as a gift the father your father in heaven has given you now to humanity as my sister and then maybe as my bride, if she says yes, and now I get to enter into that mystery of that person, that woman. But she has the right to say no to me.
Speaker 1:And so if she, says yes, though right, this privilege of coming into the story. Well, what do I do with the sister? I protect her right.
Speaker 2:I don't use her. I don't use her.
Speaker 1:And then the last thing I'll say on that is I have to protect her from myself, from the lust and selfishness. See, eros, the power of love is that power and that passion. But do I open myself up to God and then be filled with grace so that I have something to give this woman? Right, it doesn't stop my passion. It makes my passion even more beautiful when I understand what's going on. Or do we reject God and we fall into lust and I see her as body parts and use her? You know that let that image that I've used, linda, in the past, where John Paul spoke to these young married men and said before you make love to your wife, take your shoes off you're entering into holy ground.
Speaker 1:What a difference from a pornographic culture.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you've covered so much there, jack. Back to you know, have I fallen into lust? Well, yes, a brother who loves his sister rejects the idea of any lust after his sister. And the Pope makes it clear you know Christopher West expounds on this a little bit that you should feel the way about your bride, the way you would about your sister, you know, not falling into lust, protecting her and that mystery that is her femininity. And so that's where it really makes sense to me, you know, with the phraseology of my sister, my bride, and it's a wonderful check, I think, for all of us, you know, because deep beneath that is, am I using this person for my own selfish interests? But going back a little bit, I'd like to make a couple of points with the idea of the community and your son's friends and so forth. I too, my son-in-law's brother, is married to his seventh grade sweetheart. So they met, I think, in grade school and they kind of became boyfriend and girlfriend seventh, eighth grade, and they've been married I don't know 15, no, 20 years now, I think, and they're a great example and it's fun to talk to them on how that all developed.
Speaker 2:But what the Pope points out to us, it's so important about this. This is, that is that foundation of this idea of a communion of persons. You know, we hear the communio and the bride and groom. That is the pinnacle of this communion of persons. But we must experience it, you know, like you said in the gospel, with who is my mother, who is my brother, who is my sister, the one who does the will of my father, as the foundation of our communion and that common humanity in God, the Father. So the idea is, you know, it's almost like we have a wagon wheel here and you know we've got the foundational ideas that the Pope stresses for us with this communion of persons and we see how it flows out into all our relationships. We're made for relationship, right? You know that if we really understand our anthropology as humans, we're made for relationships. God said it's not good to be alone. So that is so important, as we look at in the Song of Songs, that that's a key point. And finally, the garden closed, fountain sealed, as you brought out again, that's another way of looking at the inviolability of the person, that a person is not to be used to grasp that A very basic idea that, just you know, resurfaces all the time in theology of the body.
Speaker 2:Because of that personalistic norm, the only true response to a person is love. So the depth of you know, the ideas here, are so foundational to us to understand about each other and, as you point out, our culture has just like totally lost all of that and our goal is to try to bring it back and some understanding, so that the idea of a woman being a virgin until she gets married, you know, and has saved herself for her husband with those marriage vows, would not seem so strange anymore. You know, that's one of the things. It was once that way as a whole. But we've lost that so much with the hookup culture that our goal here right, is to bring some sense of that back. And it's so beautiful, why wouldn't we want it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and on the flip side of that, I actually know of a couple of women that did do that, that saved themselves for marriage, but unfortunately, unless the man didn't get involved in this pornographic culture, he'll never appreciate that either. So what's the solution, Linda? The solution, of course, is Jesus Christ. This is why our faith, For those of you who are listening, you grew up in a very toxic culture. You came into a story, a very broken world, and so this is not our fault, but we have a lot of work to do.
Speaker 1:John Paul would say where does this start? How do I do this? Is this even possible? It's a battle, and it's going to be fought on the battlefield of the human heart between love and lust. Again, the opposite of love is not hate, at least initially. The opposite of love, which is self-giving that we're describing here, is grasping and taking from another person, seeing the other person as body parts, say in a sexual activity, and to grasp and take from them. So the opposite of self-giving love and trust, the beauty of love, is grasping and taking. Well, the only way to overcome that is by Christ himself, the Redeemer.
Speaker 1:John Paul's, I wasn't going to read this, but as we were talking, but as you were talking, I started to think about a redemptor hominist, this redeemer of man, and in number 10, I'm going to read you just the opening to number 10 in this encyclical of John Paul's man, man and woman. Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that's incomprehensible to himself. His life is senseless if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in love. This, as has already been said, he said, is why Christ the Redeemer fully reveals man to man himself and exposes human dignity.
Speaker 1:When you look up at Jesus, Linda on the cross this is my body given for you Then he gives this to us. It's when we receive this right body and the soul we come into this broken world, sometimes without even baptism, not realizing that our default position is sin and death. Christ the Redeemer comes in. To do what? To restore that, to pour himself out to us Body, soul, the spirit breathes this back into us. Then, only then, do I have the potential for this human freedom that we're talking about, to give ourselves. John Paul would say freedom is always for something. Well, freedom so I can choose you, so I can trust you, so we can enter into this beautiful union. But it has to be efficacious. I have to actually spend the time in prayer on my knees to open to this, be redeemed, so that I can give this and see my beautiful sister, my bride, my wife, right In this beauty of this, a mystery of this dance between a man and a woman, children, grandchildren and the fruit that comes from this, and we have eternal life.
Speaker 1:Linda, we're looking you know the end is not here. The end is the beauty that Christ calls us into eternal life.
Speaker 2:And Jack, with regard to that beautiful quote from the Pope, you know, our life is senseless if we don't experience love. A piece of me wishes he might have said authentic love, because I know some people who thought they were experiencing love when in fact it was false love. It wasn't authentic love, it was a very selfish kind of love that they were experiencing. And to me, when he says that, yes, we must love be in that story of love, what our culture has so warped is that people think they're being loved and they think they're in love when in fact, it is the, you know, the opposite of authentic love in the, and the brokenness that comes from that is just tremendous.
Speaker 2:you know, the Pope talks about the peace of the encounter in this, and we talked about the peace of the interior gaze a very long time ago. I'd like to just point that out here, because we know that there is so much anxiety on the part of our young people now. And what is the answer? Yes, jesus, through understanding that that's where I'm going to find this peace in the other person. Right, and if we would just, you know, say why is there all this anxiety? It's because what we're experiencing is all the falsification, you know, and that's what the evil one does, you know. He takes and twists and perverts everything that is good from God, and we've got to become aware of that, you know Just to stop you there for one second to make that point that Satan doesn't have his own clay.
Speaker 1:He's not the creator. He can only twist and distort what God created good, and so that's what he's doing. You know this's, you know this isn't brain surgery really. You know, we were created for a purpose to love in the truth, to your point in the truth, to understand what love is and then to live that out, and Satan will do anything to destroy that, and this is what we're seeing in the world. This is how we opened up.
Speaker 2:This is the battle, isn't it, linda? Yeah, yeah, and that peace with regard to our discussion of the community and going back to you know, knowing someone for so many years, I think that's a part of it, because I've known this person and who they are, and I feel safe. I feel like I know the truth of this person and that's where their peace comes from and that's a powerful element of the authentic love yeah, and the song in.
Speaker 1:Do you happen to have the song there?
Speaker 1:I don't have it in front of me. But in, in, in the song in 216, in 216 she, you know the bride talks about trust. You know, and this is what you're describing because I know you as a brother, as a sister, I know your background, I know you as a person. I can trust you and I'm entering into a union and communion with a person that I can have trust in. It's so important in today's time, it's so important in a marriage bed, to trust the person that you're there with right. When you said earlier, disinterested love, it's not that I'm not interested in you. I'm not interested in getting anything, pulling, grasping, taking something back from you. I'm pouring myself into you and then you have to respond yourself, right. So I don't have that expectation that you have to perform for me. You know.
Speaker 2:Right. So I don't have that expectation that you're that you have to perform for me. You know, and if one doesn't have, you know, like my story isn't someone from my childhood. I met Mike in college, which, going back now, was a long time ago. But we were in that situation of not really knowing our backgrounds, knowing anything about each other in the beginning. Our backgrounds, knowing anything about each other in the beginning, and as I reflect on what happened and how it fits into what I'm learning here, we did take the time to do nothing but have conversations. I can remember we just had lengthy, lengthy conversations in which we were telling our story.
Speaker 2:Basically, you know, and and mine wasn't a real good, happy story and I shared that with him thinking, you know, at some point he's going to say, yeah, this isn't what I want and obviously it worked out differently. But we knew each other and you know I met his family more because he was close, they were closer to the university but, you know, got to know his brothers and that community was developing. I didn't really think about it that way at the time and he was also meeting. My sister was there at school with me and my one sister would come visit and so he was meeting my. You know communion of persons, and if young people would see that that's the path to go, it may not turn out. You know, you may find out. This is not the person that I'm being called to be with, but it's just so opposite. You know what we do now with that hookup culture.
Speaker 1:You sabotage when you sexualize it.
Speaker 2:we don't realize it when you sexualize a relationship too early.
Speaker 1:You're saying I'm giving myself freely, totally faithfully, fruitfully in the eyes of God, to you forever, and you're lying. It's a lie. So your relationship starts off with a lie and then you wonder how things could go so wrong later on. How did this love that was? Never, actually love turn into dislike. How did that rocket that was starting to take off come and crash and we?
Speaker 1:see this over and over again. So what we're describing here is not some weird pie in the sky thing. This is actual, practical aspect of this that this sister, my bride, is someone given by God as a gift, that my job is to take her into eternal life. I mean, I used to hear that when I was young your job is to get your spouse and your kids to heaven. And I go, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Well it is. And it's only when I'm on that journey that I actually find who I am. My actual vocation, my actual identity becomes wrapped up not only with God himself, as a child of God, as a son of God, but then I bring that into my relationships, only then. That's why John Paul said in that little part I read Christ reveals man to man himself, that God is an eternal exchange of love. Who pours himself out.
Speaker 1:It's only that's paradox of life. Is I give myself away, I find myself and people don't get this today, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I was thinking even in my conversations you know, in a way I'm giving myself away, I'm exposing, you know, my past and experiences that I had that all played into the person I was at that time. And yet I was learning about myself too through that. And so it's's constant we're still learning, we're still growing some years later. That's a great point linda.
Speaker 1:That's a great point that you know that when you step into this journey, the journey is not over the journey just started and the self-discovery of my identity is is getting deeper and deeper and deeper as I go, deeper into this mystery of who we are and how we were created to be. Right, you know, mystery of God. Mystery doesn't mean we'll never know anything. It just means it keeps going on and on and on. And as you discover more, as more is revealed to you, there's more to discover. So love is this depth, this beauty that you don't just conquer the mountain. When you get to the mountain, you go ooh, this even goes higher, it goes even more beautiful.
Speaker 1:The saints and the mystics talk about this all the time when they had these glimpses of God St Catherine of Siena, St Teresa of Avila. They get into these mystical ecstasies and, in fact, before we end, I have to read you St Teresa of Avila again, this ecstasy that she got into and she described this ode of love so well, but the point being that they couldn't even believe it when they came back too, and they didn't have the words, just like we're talking about in the song. They tried to describe it the best they could, but they couldn't right. We're trying to describe the mystery of love, of God himself that we're entering into.
Speaker 2:It's really beautiful, yeah, it is. And that authentic love, as you said earlier, is holiness, and that's very difficult to describe in words. Chapter 2, verse 16 in my version, says my lover belongs to me and I to him. He browses among the lilies until the day breathes cool and the shadows lengthen. Doesn't that describe a long-term marriage? You know the my lover belongs to me and I to him. You know modern years here. Well, what I just lose myself. You know like who am I, and just the opposite happens, just what you described, that known. Not only do I not lose my eye yes, we become a we but as a part of that journey, we find deeper and deeper our own eyes of who we are, in the mystery of this authentic love.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how sad See, I don't have the words for it, jack.
Speaker 2:It's like you know it just astounds me when I think about it. But when?
Speaker 1:you see it in action when you see young people falling in love and actually starting to get the spark of this. You see them in these vibrant parishes where they're open to life and you see the beauty of life and the beauty of families start to go. And you know it's a sacrifice, you know it's hard, you know there's some suffering going on and yet you ask them which one of these children would you like to get rid of? And they'll laugh once in a while. That's that real loud one over there. But in reality you know there's no way they're going to give up those children because you discover more and more, like you said about yourself, because you're entering into something new that was never there before.
Speaker 1:Linda, you know we've created a love, a bond, the love between two people and then three and four and five. That was never there before. It's something totally new that God allowed us to extend who he is into the world through our visible relationships. Right, this love that's brand new, that God allows us to participate in and to bring, if we're fortunate enough to bring an eternal being into the world, another human person that gets to know us and I get to know them. Talk about a journey With our children, we get to know a person that was never even there before, and then they teach me something about myself, and hopefully I teach them something about them. But this all comes from this gift of the Creator, the common Father that we all had first, who sends the Son to redeem our bodies and then fills me with the Holy Spirit so that we actually can live this out and to mention again that it's not without suffering, and I think your term was the wound of love.
Speaker 2:I recently read a meditation describing the wounds of love that Christ suffered for us when his heart was pierced as being the ultimate wound of love for us. So our love story is going to be wounded as well if we're following the way, the right path, and I think what you have from St Teresa describes it wonderfully.
Speaker 1:When you open those wounds, though this is so important to know when you open those wounds to Christ. This is so important Because then not only are you redeemed, but then you go into the world with the story. You'll see, you have to walk into the story, but yeah, so this is St Teresa of Avila. Give you a little background. St Teresa was canonized in 1621. It was not uncommon for her to have visions of angels. This is what St Teresa's description of the event that Bernini depicts. So Bernini, the famous Italian sculptor. I've seen this. It's amazing, this ecstasy of St Teresa of Avila. You can Google this right.
Speaker 1:And you see it and she is in this. Well, look at the picture, You'll see. And so this is what her statement was that Bernini, while he's sculpting her and he, somehow, these artists, they get this out and you could see it in her body. So this is her words. Beside me, on the left, appeared an angel in bodily form. He was not tall but short, but very beautiful, and his face was so aflame that he appeared to be one of the highest rank of angels who seemed to be all on fire. In his hands I saw a great golden spear and at the iron tip of it there appeared to be a point of fire. This he plunged into my heart several times, so that it penetrated to my entrails. When he pulled it out, I felt that he took some of them with it and left me utterly consumed by the great love of God.
Speaker 1:The pain was so severe that it made me utter several moans. The sweetness caused by this intense pain is so extreme that one cannot possibly wish it to cease, nor is one's soul content with anything but God. This is not a physical, she said, but a spiritual pain, though the body has some share in it, even a considerable share in it. So you see, this is this body, soul, being penetrated by the spear. You think about the heart.
Speaker 1:You just said Jesus was pierced. Well, this is the piercing that she's undergoing and this piercing of her heart, right for God, that she's meeting. You know, Jesus is pouring himself out, she's pouring herself out, and this pain, this agony, I'll never want it to stop right. This is the agony, the ache of love. When you think about love sometimes, when I think about the first time I saw my wife right and start to realize, and when I came back into the church especially, and my heart was really softened and redeemed, and then it took years, but then hers was, and then I almost cried again, you know, because I had that vision that I told you about before, where I actually saw her as a young girl in a vision, and I saw that she was hurt and she suffered pain and suffering just like you started to describe earlier today, and then I thought I'm just another person bringing her more pain and suffering in the world.
Speaker 2:And I'm going to stop doing that.
Speaker 1:And that's when I fell down to my knees to be filled with divine life and love and then see her as a sister, first, and only then. When I saw this little girl who was now a mature woman, who had kids, et cetera, then my heart softened and I saw her in a different way my sister, my bride, a fountain, seal, the garden closed and said, yeah, I entered into a mystery and I didn't respect it, I didn't understand it. It's not always our fault, but I do now and I'm going to change. And so that's this journey that you described. We're on right, and it continues. Continues many years later.
Speaker 2:And with that change, that redemption, your gift became authentic, and that makes all the difference.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great point. Authentic love, huh. And so this is what Christ offers us on the cross. Huh, this is what we receive in the sacraments, in prayer. This is how you enter into the story, linda, isn't it? So it's a beautiful story. Hey, god bless you. Thanks everyone. Thanks for being with us. Linda, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Jeff.