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
#592 Battling Cultural Upheavals and Chaos Is Primarily a Spiritual Battle! -- "God Is Love"
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There a spiritual battle raging in our culture! Join us as we unpack the profound insights of JD Vance and Sister Lucia of Fatima, examining how marriage and family stand as pillars against modern cultural upheaval. An encounter with Jesus Christ is vital in this ongoing battle against forces undermining life and love.
God's grace, especially as Sister Faustina had painted in the Divine Image, is a powerful antidote to the spiritual void in society today, revitalizing both body and soul. As we address the challenges posed by radical ideologies and cultural shifts, we propose a compassionate approach that recognizes every individual as a "beloved child of God." This perspective not only affirms inherent dignity but also fosters unity, inviting us to journey towards the truth of our humanity.
Our bodies are sacred vessels of divine love, designed to reflect the eternal exchange of God’s own nature. This episode reveals how embodying grace allows us to manifest divine love, offering a counter-narrative to cultural views that diminish the sacred. We delve into the sacramental nature of marriage and the human body!
Join Claymore and Gen Z as they set out on the path to find a life of love, selflessness, and moral courage, embracing their universal call to holiness.
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Welcome to the Become who you Are podcast, a production of the John Paul II Renewal Center. I'm Jack Riggert, your host. This is our regular Friday edition of Claymore. Militus Christi, soldiers for Christ. I'm a little late, I know. I know I should have been. I usually try to record this on Thursday night and so have it ready first thing Friday morning. But I've been out speaking, talking to people. It's all good stuff, but just got a little bit behind. So here I am. I hope you're doing well. Just a quick reminder.
Speaker 1:This is our regular Friday edition, which is unpacking the big story. Right that we came into. We came into a story. We didn't create the universe, we didn't create the big story, we came into a story. So this Friday is putting this timeline together, putting the big story, the big vision together, the model together. Don't forget that the first part of Claymore is the spiritual formation. You got to encounter Jesus Christ. You got to get on your knees, you've got to follow that plan. So again, if you haven't done this already, go to our website, jp2. It's in the show notes, org. And go to resources. Under resources you'll see the Claymore, that sword behind me in red. Click on that. Download and or print out the Claymore Battle Plan. You'll see everything there that we're talking about.
Speaker 1:The other thing is any questions that you sent me and reminder you can send me questions, right, and I'll bring them up, not always on the Friday show, because we've got a certain agenda here on a Friday show, but during the week I'm doing a lot of supplemental pieces there. I hope I've answered at least a lot of the questions that you have about different things. Tom Hampson's on there with me, linda Piper's coming on to answer questions with me, other guests, so we're really here to support you. So a reminder send me some information or some questions, either via text. You'll see in the show notes if you're on audio on rumble. My email address is in there, goes right to me, so so go ahead and send it and we'll keep unpacking. Hey, look at, we're on this journey together. You know who is a real example is jd vance. Jd vance, we got lucky there.
Speaker 1:Huh, this crazy Kamala Harris this you know I don't know if she just used this upon in this culture of death and I want to talk about that. You know, this culture of death versus culture of life, and we're here to fight for the culture of life and there's a lot of enemies out there, and this is very the reason I bring this up is very clear, because you can get caught up in all this rhetoric, all this emotion, live on the surface of things, and then every time you hear a politician good or evil if they're good oh yeah, I'm excited, I'm going to vote for them and be behind them. Now I know how to live. And then the next thing you hear is some wicked politician like we have this governor here in Illinois, pritzker just evil, and it just twists and distort words and you say, oh yeah, I kind of get along with him too, I don't know what. And so you become apathetic, you don't do anything. So you have to be able to define good and evil in your own heart. You have to be able to discern this. We were given reason and intellect and a free will so we can choose this. So I want to address this a little bit and then I'm going to get into our actual work today, or our actual episode today, which is God is love, and it lays out this whole foundation.
Speaker 1:Let me just set this up a little bit. So JD Vance, and I'll put a link to X. I saw this in the show notes just defending marriage and the family. He sees this attack. Sister Lucia, fatima, said the last great battle between our Lord and Satan which is going on now is going to be taking down life, marriage and the family. And we see this destruction coming in with all these gender ideologies, christ in the church, religion getting moved out or even attack from within the church. So there's a lot of confusion. So that's why this is very exciting to share these with you. And again I'm using this Friday to put this foundational piece and remember Catholic social teaching is like a triangle in front of you. If you could picture like a pyramid in front of you. What holds this whole thing up Marriage and a family, life, children, marriage, family. And then it's linked directly to Christ and the church.
Speaker 1:Go back and I don't want to take the time to do it right now, but read Ephesians 5, where St Paul puts this foundation in. He said husbands love your wives, wives love your husbands, as Christ loves the church and gave himself up for you. This is the bridegroom on the cross. This is linked to your marriage and family, your desire to be married and family. So I'll break that open today, when that foundation is here, then everything else, the culture, is built on that and solid character and virtues that are given in marriage and the family. And then we go on to politics and economics and all the things that we do, or carpenter a plumber, but we're bringing the good into the world, we're creating a world of good. But you can't give what you don't have. So it starts with that foundation, so we don't get blown around all over.
Speaker 1:You get somebody like Pritzker and say, okay, well, how do I know if he's right or not? Look, most of the evil you see in the world are men and women who are cooperating with evil, with Satan. When you read Ephesians 6, what comes after Ephesians 5, after he impacts his foundation, ephesians 6. In fact, let me read you just a little bit and you understand this battle that we're in. See Pritzker, as evil as he is is not the enemy. And see Pritzker as evil as he is is not the enemy. He's just cooperating with evil, but he manifests that evil in the world and so Satan uses people to do this. This is the battle and it's very clearly seen. So how do I know?
Speaker 1:Because he's the most pro-abortion governor, probably in the United States. He's pro-gender-affirming care right, pushing this. He's even funded Lori's Children's Hospital in Chicago here to do trans surgery and give out puberty blockers and these cross-sex hormones. I mean, you know you can't make this stuff up, right? And he's pushing this stuff on all of us. He talks about trans rights all the time. Well, what is trans rights? It's telling a child you know, anybody but a child in the Delores Children's Hospital that a boy can become a girl, which is a total lie. I mean, why would you do that to a child? It's not like something that we could do and we shouldn't do. It's impossible to do. We just ruin their lives. We render them sterile. Think about this If a child makes it outside of the womb and isn't killed in the womb I think that's his preference Then we render that child sterile Because Satan think about Satan.
Speaker 1:Satan doesn't have his own clay. He can only take what God created good and we're going to get into the episode here only God is good and Satan twists and distorts that. He's not the creator. He can only take the clay that we see. The creation around us, our own bodies, our own minds twist and distort that. This is the battle. Huh, this is Miletus Christi. This is what Claymore is all about. It starts on the battlefield of the human heart. Jd Vance is fighting that and succeeding on it because he's filled with grace. He's asking God to come into his heart. Now he can go proclaim the truth. Jd Vance, on the other hand, was standing at that tree of the knowledge of good and evil and chose evil, chose Satan. And so he participates in this. And what happens? It twists and distorts even a child's body. This is how nefarious this is.
Speaker 1:So this is what St Paul says after Ephesians 5. I put it in the foundation. I tell you to go out and do good things. But he reminds us. He says put on the whole armor of God. He said finally this is Ephesians 6, starting on verse 10. Finally, be strong in the Lord and the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand, and then he goes on and on and on. How do you do that? Well, this is spiritual formation in Claymore. This is why it's so important to follow the spiritual exercises there and we're going to continue to talk about that.
Speaker 1:This is number two on there which is really understanding the big story, this doctrinal, beautiful deposit of faith that's come down to us that John Paul spoke about so much. So let's dive in. God is love. God is love. You are the image and likeness of God through the very act of creation, a beloved child of God. We're all a beloved child of God. If that's not our identity, we get very confused very quickly and we'll just get blown around by the spirit of AIDS. This is a powerful. If you really sit on that, we're a beloved child of God. I'm not an LGBTQ, I am a beloved child of God. It's amazing power when you get that and an amazing brokenness when that goes out of your heart, out of your mind, and we don't see it anymore. So remember the story We've been talking about this man, this young man who comes up to Jesus and questions him.
Speaker 1:So we pick it up again. So Christ replies to the young man in the gospel. He says no one is good but God alone. Very important no one is good but God alone. We have already heard that the young man had asked teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Remember, he came up to Jesus. Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? How must I act, in other words, so that my life has meaning and value? This is what we're asking. Right? We could translate his question.
Speaker 1:John Paul II wrote into the language of our own times. In this context, christ's answer means this Only God is the ultimate basis of all values. Only he gives the definitive meaning to our human existence. Only he gives the definitive meaning to our human existence. You know, it's important for us to start to just look around. This is a good time in that evil and good and evil are standing up and you can see it, just like JD Vance and Pritzker, very, very clear. But you have to have this lens, you have to be looking at the lens. What are their actions, not just their words? We can always twist and distort words, just like Satan twists and distorts what's good. We twist and distort the good out of words, out of the way we speak to one another. When we do this, we can get blown around by the spirit of age. So it's very important that we understand this.
Speaker 1:When God is taken out of a person's heart, like Pritzker's heart I don't actually hear him proclaim himself as an atheist, he doesn't really need to. We can tell, but you can see that God is out of his heart. So what happens? Right, you can see what happens. And then what happens with somebody like JD Vance, who proclaims that Christ is in his heart, who proclaims that Christ is in his heart and you can tell by his actions that he really is right.
Speaker 1:So if you lose this, we lose the definitive meaning of our whole human existence. We don't know who we are anymore. Only God is good, which means this In him and in him alone, all values have their first source and final completion. He is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. That's from Revelation right. Only in God do values and their authenticity have definitive confirmation. Do I know what's good? Do I know what the truth is? I have to be looking at Jesus Christ Over here. Is the divine mercy right.
Speaker 1:The divine mercy, that picture right there is so important for today, because that's where grace is coming from. That's where Sistophastina. That's why, on your knees every morning, even if you don't understand it, I have you listening to that little clip from divine mercy. Over time you will see what it is. Today's reading was so. Today's little clip was so important when he says I am mercy, I want to come into your life and see mercy.
Speaker 1:When you see the blood and water coming out of the heart of Jesus Christ, the water being this washing right, this washing of our hearts, of our washing away of our sins. That Christ redeemed us right on the cross. And then the blood being his own blood, his own nourishment. You sins. That Christ redeemed us right on the cross and then the blood being his own blood, his own nourishment. Just giving this to us that we can receive at mass and in the Eucharist to fill us up. This is where grace comes from Body and a soul. Without grace, a JD Pritzker throws out grace, breathes out. I don't need the grace, it's just sin and death. Sin and death here and sin and death for eternity. When we have grace, it's a body and a soul plus grace. Christ himself, god himself, breathes back into us that what we lost in sin and that fills us up so we know how to live. So, so, so important to do that.
Speaker 1:So without that, without reference to God, the whole world of created values remains suspended in an absolute vacuum. Isn't that true when you speak to people that don't have God in their hearts? It's like you're speaking to somebody that has just this vacuum within themselves. It's the same thing with me when I walked away from God a couple of times. You have this vacuum. You're trying to figure things out, but you can't get a handle on it. It also loses its transparency. You no longer can see what we're talking about.
Speaker 1:Clearly, evil is put forward as good, and good itself is rejected. Isn't that what, again, we're talking about here? Are we not shown this by the very experience of our own time? Whenever God has been removed beyond the limits of evaluations, our estimations, our actions, this is what happens. Young people, all of you guys are growing up in a historical moment in human history where the whole world is facing quite a conundrum. Many in the generations that came before you drank the Kool-Aid, rejected the good and accepted the culture of lies that has left you, as it were, suspended in that absolute vacuum, like innocent lambs led to the slaughter. Young people today are being sent out, without that armor that I was just reading about, from St Paul to confront the train wreck of evil plaguing humanity. The number of victims is staggering, including the poor, the disabled, the sick, but the most ferocious is the evil unleashed on marriage and the family Today.
Speaker 1:So-called modern man modern man right who wants to murder his own children and render marriage meaningless, right. He's gone so far as to pass laws. We have passed laws, we've legislated this to annihilate a child in the womb, render marriage meaningless. Increasingly, parents are forced to accept gender ideologies that would seek to render children sterile, groom them for sexual exploitation, expose them to pornography as normal. We have gone so far as to institutionalize this practice, pushing radical gender ideologies, often directly linked to pornography, within the public school systems, joining teachers unions, big tech, government bodies and private institutions in a nefarious plan to rob children of their innocence and identity. Satan doesn't have his own clay Soon.
Speaker 1:After I arrived at an all-day theology of the body retreat we were given to sophomore class, I threw out an icebreaker, so a hand went up to answer. I said yes, young lady, and she said call me they that's my preferred pronoun and I said why would you want me to call you they? Look, this isn't my first rodeo, right? I want to see where this girl's coming from. She shared that she was gender neutral, non-binary, was in this gender fluid space. She said some days I feel like a boy, other days like a girl, other days I don't know where I'm going to land. I looked at her and her eyes met and she was sincere. I'm a simple guy, I said to her, and I don't even know your names yet, and now I need to learn all your pronouns. I wonder if you'll do me a big favor and I'm looking at this girl again.
Speaker 1:Being a simple guy, let me propose a simple solution just for the moment. If you're not satisfied, we can think about plan B for the next session, but just for now, can I call you a someone, a beloved child of God? Would that work for you? After a moment, she nodded and I asked the boy sitting next to her Can I call you a beloved child of God, a someone? And he said yes. I said me too. I'm not just a they, a, them or a pronoun. I have a name. I'm a someone. I'm a beloved child of God. The truth is that we're all brothers and sisters, I told him, and that we all came from a common heritage, we all came from the same father. Huh, I propose a new pronoun of this journey of the heart Someone, claymore, miletus Christi. We all have a name, we all are a someone. We're soldiers for Christ. That's our identity, beloved children of God.
Speaker 1:And I said to this class right, you can go back to the he, they, they, them, caesar, something else, but for now you're a somebody. And as the antonym or the opposite of the pronoun something or they or them, it very succinctly captures this very succinctly captures the unique personal character of each and every human being. I understand, I told him that by assuming other pronouns call me they that you're seeking a new identity. You seem to possess a desire to recreate yourself. Ooh, that's a temptation. What if I told you you were onto something and that Kira Wotewa, who became John Paul II, called it self-determination? I assume that you're seeking the truth about your identity. Then you should move beyond mere feelings and emotions that all they do is cause anxiety, depression, which is the normal state when you live in a situation on the surface of things getting blown around. I'm going to be anxious. I have no anchor, no roots, You're continually battered by the winds.
Speaker 1:I said, said, in order to grasp the personal structure and self-determination, you actually can be involved and you are involved. We're all involved in, in creating our ourselves. But we don't do it in a vacuum, we do it with god. Right, we have to start from the experience of what a human being does. Again, think, think Satan doesn't have his own clay.
Speaker 1:The temptation is to twist and distort the clay itself. Either you take that clay that you've been given, the reason, the intellect, the truth, and now you have to seek the truth. You have to be able to self-determine. Well, the self-determination doesn't mean I change my body I'd be given this clay or I twist and distort my mind. No, I open my body, I'd be given this clay. Or I twist and distort my mind. No, I open my mind to grace. I open my mind to that. You know, I have it in here with the picture on the camera. I'm the opposite. So that divine mercy, huh, jesus, I trust in you to receive that grace again.
Speaker 1:I remember that Ruah in Genesis 2. God takes this biology, this clay that we all are, and he blows into us and he wants us to search for the truth, and the truth is like a motor. Then your free will then, along with the truth, becomes like a motor to the good. Choose the good. What is the good? As I choose the good, I determine who I am. I become good. That's the self-determination that we want. Don't be taken off base here. So for now, let's all go beneath just the labels, just the emotions the world wants to slap on us or that even you put on yourself, including. I'm not good enough, I'm not pretty enough, I'm not smart enough, all these labels. Let's go beneath all the noise and, just for a little while, enjoy the freedom of being the children of God. You know the freedom that is, the peace that that brings. That's why this prayer is so important.
Speaker 1:You know I'm a scuba diver. One of my favorite things about diving is, no matter how turbulent the surface is, I'm on the boat, right. Some days it can be pretty rocky up here, but as soon as you jump in 10 feet down, 20, 30, 40, you start to look around and the only thing I hear is bubbles and it becomes very peaceful. I can look up and I can see the boat still bobbing on the surface, but not down here, right. And then I look down ooh, the awe and wonder of the beauty. Huh, always beauty and awe and wonder. Small bee beauty of creation brings you into big bee beauty and I say glory to God, huh, and it's just the most beautiful thing. And that's what prayer does. It gets us below the surface of this thing. This is why it's so important to this beautiful place where we can discover our identity.
Speaker 1:I always ask the Holy Spirit to come in here. I said come on in, come into this class. I'm praying, even quietly to myself. Sometimes, even if I'm speaking to you, I say come on, holy Spirit, right, come into me and share, right, the Holy Spirit that's in these young people. And so we just are communicating. We're communicating together. What are we communicating? Not just anything, you know. We're communicating God himself and Jesus didn't come for sin management. He came with power. God himself and Jesus didn't come for sin management. He came with power. And so, as we proclaim the word, we're saying yes to that power, because Jesus gave us free will, god gave us free will. So we have to open the door on our side, right. So act one in the very beginning. So let's get down to the roots, in the beginning awe, wonder and the cosmic explosion of love. Remember, jesus said what do you seek? What's in your heart? What do you seek? So we're going to get back to the beginning.
Speaker 1:Begin by getting in touch with the deepest yearning, burning desires of the heart. Once again, what Plato called Eros. Eros is that Greek God of love and it was identified by Romans as Cupid. Remember the little guy with the arrow, and those arrows could actually pierce your heart. Huh, cupid is from the Latin cupier to desire, cupier to desire, the human yearning that we're exploring right today when we're talking about desires, arrows you know it comes from the word erotic, which has been twisted and distorted by Satan today. But really, really, it's to lift you up into authentic love, into what's true, good and beautiful. Beyond just, it's the sensual, even though it includes the sensual, a man for a woman, say. But it includes, like, what is all true, good and beautiful in our relationships in the world. It's really beautiful.
Speaker 1:But when we have these, when we give our eros in to Satan, to a twist and distort right and bring us into pornography and using one another and then our eros, our hearts start to bleed in this desperate search for satisfaction and fulfillment. It's a power that's so powerful it can take you away from your reason, your intellect. But eros itself, right, we're looking for all that's true, good and beautiful. The sad thing is, most of us don't know where to direct this fire. So we say you know?
Speaker 1:Jesus says what do you seek? I don't know what I seek. I know something's wrong. Right Now we lift this desire, this power, and we unite it with Jesus on the cross into his heart. Otherwise, what happens is we blame the ache and we try to push it down, or we indulge it. This is the praying with temptations, right, that's why we get down on our knees.
Speaker 1:The second thing is to look at temptation as an invitation to prayer. We open this up. Jesus didn't come for sin management, he came for power, right, the yearning, burning desire. What is good? Huh, what is true, what is beautiful, what is real? You know, like these trans movement. What is real? Well, it's incorporated right into our hearts. It's incorporated right into our designs. So when we speak about these things, I know I can speak to you about these things because it's in us. Cutting through the moral confusion of this present age is not about learning more information, it's about getting in touch with our hearts, going like this, diving story beneath the surface, and you meet two people there, you and God. So it's understanding that, that story, the reason you can do that, that story is in our blood, it's in our DNA, because the heart of Jesus, bleeding on the cross, with water and blood coming down this is the human heart, yearns for this. It yearns for this, his heart and our heart being united together.
Speaker 1:The Pharisees came up to Jesus in Matthew 19. They said is it lawful to divorce your wife for any cause? Can I get divorced? How awful to divorce your wife for any cause? Can I get divorced? Jesus, instead of limiting himself to their line of questioning, pointed them back to the original model of marriage in Genesis, chapter 1 and 2. He answered have you not read that? He who made them from the beginning, made them male and female? Male and female. Look how we can get away from this today, right? And he said for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one. So there are no longer two but one. Balloons going up over that one, right? What, therefore? God has joined together, let no man separate. And they said to him why did Moses command one to give her certificate of divorce and put her away? Why did Moses command one to give her certificate of divorce and put her away? Why did Moses allow divorce? And he said to them because of the hardness of your hearts. Again, he's getting back to your heart, right, the hardness of your heart. It's given over to temptation and over to evil. Moses allowed you to divorce your wives because of that, but in the beginning it was not so.
Speaker 1:Bereshit is the Hebrew word. That's the whole Bible starts out Bereshit. In the beginning the earth was a formless wasteland. Darkness covered the abyss right, we're living on the surface and the darkness covered that abyss. The mighty wind then. But then the spirit of God blew into it. Light exploded, dispelled the darkness. It was good because God is good. Spell the darkness. It was good because God is good. Because God is good. And why is he good? Because he is love. God is love.
Speaker 1:After five days, if you read the Bible, five days, like the opening scene from the Lion King the Garden of Eden is ready. It's surrounded by a lush forest, wild flowers abound, animals too, with long necks, and some like unicorns, you know, like a rhino, huh, you can look around and say, oh my gosh, god is an imagination Filled with songbirds. It's beautiful, the garden's beautiful, it's prepared for a wedding feast On the sixth day. It's as if God draws back into himself and takes a selfie. What is revealed is an eternal exchange of love, the father pouring himself out to the son, the son receiving that love. It's so beautiful and profound. It comes out in the form of a person. We call that person the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1:Now, right above the Garden of Eden, god flips that selfie. What comes forth into that created world is what? His divine image and likeness. That's why we're created in Imago Dei. He flips the selfie and creates what man, woman, open to life, this child, trinitarian love is about to enter the created world.
Speaker 1:And in Genesis 1, we hear this, verse 26, let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Let him have dominion over all of this the fish, the seed, the birds, the cattle. So God created man in his image, in the divine image. He created them, male and female. He created them, god blessed them, saying to them be fertile, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. The first commandment have sex, join in marital union. So you could say God and sex in the same sentence. If you're Catholic, you know God created it. He thinks it's beautiful. We're the ones that distorted eros. See eros on the cross. Eros is totally agape. Jesus' love for us is eros, this power, this beauty, this movement of love so strong, so powerful, but it's totally agape. Divine, sacrificial love, pouring oneself out for another person. This is what we're called to in marriage, in love. This is the very first thing that God tells us and he wants us to know in the Bible that he created us in his image, in the divine image. He created us.
Speaker 1:Human beings, from the beginning, were created to be sacramental. A sacramental is a sign, that's a sign of God's love in the world. To be a sacrament is to be a sign, the visible sign of God Trinitarian love in the created universe. There's nothing else like this. Man and woman open to life is the actual Trinitarian love, the sign in the world. John Paul II wrote this the human body, with its sex, masculinity and femininity, seen in the very mystery of creation, is not only the source of fruitfulness and of procreation, as in the whole natural order, right animals produce right. We, you know, you know you. You got two deer, you know, and they have a baby deer.
Speaker 1:But he says that goes beyond even this. It contains right from the beginning, the spousal attribute, that is, the power to express love, precisely that love in which the human person becomes a gift and to this gift fulfills the very meaning of his being and existence. God is love. We're created to express love. This is not just in marriage, but marriage is that that power for the fullness of the sign, if you really want to see what trinitarian love looks like, god is not a sexual being. He creates our sexuality. To what? To express this sacramentally? So we become this visible sign in the world of authentic love, of trinitarian love.
Speaker 1:In order to to to consciously do this, you have to have a reason and an intellect. We have to be doing it in the truth, love people in the truth, speak the truth in love, and I have to freely choose the good. Well, what am I choosing when I get married? I choose what's good for my wife, what's good for her. I want what's good for her and I want to be that person of love that expresses that to her. It was not until I was married and my wife delivered our first child that I got a glimpse into this love of the Trinity in a concrete way. Holding our daughter in my arms for the first time, I was looking at my wife. I was overwhelmed by this new person she had just delivered. Now there were three of us.
Speaker 1:Later on, as I reflected on this day in the subsequent births of our other children, I began to realize that my wife and I were called to be a reflection of God's image in the world. I gave myself as a sincere gift of love to my wife. She and her body even were created this way, right, my sexual organs are external, hers are internal, so she can receive right. So she receives that love, but she receives in a giving way. I give in a receiving way. This reciprocal exchange of love, this isn't just sex, it's an act of procreation, as John Paul said. This is an expression of love, of Trinitarian love in the world.
Speaker 1:From that exchange of love, another person came into our lives, our baby. The two my wife and I called to become one in the sacrament of marriage, which is consummated in the sexual marital embrace, became three, three persons in one. Boom Wow. God not only created us in his image, but allowed us to be co-creators of love with him in the mystery of a new creation. I remember being taught as a boy that God is a trinity that the father gives himself to the son, the son receives this gift and gives himself back to the father. Proceeding from him is the Holy Spirit, like I said. But I had struggled with this image until I held that baby in my arms and realized that her existence was entirely due to the gift of love between my wife and myself. It was at this moment that I realized for the first time that our creation of male and female makes visible God's image here on earth.
Speaker 1:Can you see why Governor Pritzker and others are just crazy against Trump and JD Vance that want to bring marriage and the family and common sense a natural law that's in our heart back into the world, to defend religious freedoms, to defend Christ and the church and then bring this out into the world. I mean, these are not perfect people, we're all imperfect people, but what a different image from somebody that wants to take that down. This is the battle. When you listen to these politicians, when you listen to your neighbor speak about this, ask them where do you stand on a life, the life of a child? Where do you stand on marriage between a man and a woman, expressing this Trinitarian love? See, this is the foundation. Whenever you get into these arguments with people and stuff, I always start with those two and I won't let it go from there because they'll spin into all these. They're living on the surface. It's just an emotional thing for them. I stay calm. Where do you stand for life, Mother Teresa said isn't it a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you can live as you wish?
Speaker 1:This is? I tell them no, no, no. This is selfish Women's right to this. Or blah, blah, blah. Or you know what happens to this? Men are just using them as objects, then to know they can walk away and she can have an abortion. We're all using each other. We all go down this rabbit hole if we don't get this right.
Speaker 1:John Paul II went on to state his whole thesis and, when allowed to sink in, well, revolutionize the way you and I understand the human body and sexuality. So here's what he said. This wraps up his whole work on theology of the body. The body, your body, my body, in effect, your body alone is capable of making visible what's invisible, the spiritual and the divine Our bodies were created to transfer into the visible reality of this world, right here, the invisible mystery hidden in God from all time immemorial, and thus to be a sign of it. See, this is the sacrament. Again, we are our sacrament.
Speaker 1:Our bodies make visible our souls, first of all inside Our souls, infused with grace. Body, soul plus grace gives me the potential for human freedom, potential for human flourishing. And then I have to act on that. I have to become that person of love, and then I make visible that Trinitarian love story in this world. This is what we're created. This is the meaning and purpose of who we are, the meaning and purpose of our body and soul. This gives us our identity, right? I'm a beloved child of God. I'm going to make visible that love story. This is not brain surgery. This is the two great commandments I cannot give what I don't have Be filled with divine life and love. And to become love, your neighbor, right? What does this all mean? As a physical body, as creatures, we cannot simply see God. He's pure spirit.
Speaker 1:But God wanted to make this mystery again visible to us. So he stamped it into our bodies by creating us, male and female, in his own image, right? So God again, doesn't have a body. God, the Father we're thinking about, right, the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. But he created our bodies to express his love, his authentic love, his very image in this created world. The function of this and that's why we go into prayer, because our soul we don't say our soul, our soul expressed through the sacrament of the body. So we want to get deep with God in there, so that what's expressed is not just my ideas. You know, I want to be like God, I want to figure. No, no, no. I want to bring God love in, so that my heart's unite with God's love and we bring that into the world. The function of this image is to reflect the Trinity, an inscrutable divine communion of three persons.
Speaker 1:Thus, in a dramatic development of Catholic thought, john Paul II concludes that man, men and women became the image and likeness of God, not only through their own humanity. Right, we're each created in the image of God. If you're not married, you go, well, I got to go search for it. No, no, no, you're already created in the image of God. You go well, I got to go search for it. No, no, no, you're already created in the image of God.
Speaker 1:Marriage is that communion of persons. That, right from the beginning, expresses the full sacrament of that. But we have, in the Latin rite, our priests and our religious don't get married. Why? Because they're like Christ and the church, that second part of that Ephesians 5. Because the eternal bridegroom, jesus himself, didn't get married. So he, what does he do? He unites himself to us. We're all the bride. So we want to do that. We want to unite ourselves with God. First of all, right, I receive this love, just like a bride receives from the bridegroom. And then I go out and love my neighbor. So, while that marriage sacrament is this Trinitarian story, in reality the whole church is a woman right, receiving from God. And so a good priest is a father to his whole congregation, he's the shepherd. Mother Teresa would teach her sisters and say you know, we're the bride of Christ, take Christ deeply into your heart. And then we go out and express this sacramentally in the poor, in the people that we take care of. So Mother Teresa becomes a mother to thousands of people, right, a spiritual mother, a priest, a spiritual father, right.
Speaker 1:So on this, right from the beginning, john Paul said their descent, the blessing of fertility, linked with human procreation. Human procreation. You know, we procreate, we don't just create, we just don't have babies. We are persons of love. And this is what you see, twisted and distorted today.
Speaker 1:The body then has a nuptial or a spousal meaning, because it reveals man and woman's call to become a gift to one another, a gift fully realized. How In their one flesh, marital union. Can you see how we elevate sex? You know people say oh, you know, church always pushes down sex. No, the church elevates sex. The culture pushes it down, stamps on it, makes it into like a garbage dumpster. And we pull it out of the garbage dumpster and say, no, this is created good. In fact, it's created very, very good. The body has that generative meaning that, god willing, brings a third into the world through their communion.
Speaker 1:In this way, marriage constitutes this primordial sacrament right from the beginning. There was the only one sacrament in the beginning, the only visible sign of God. We didn't need all the other seven sacraments because there was no sin in the world, but marriage. It's all based on marriage. Every sacrament is a spousal meaning, meaning that it's a way to get back into the spousal meaning with God. Baptism, confession, the Eucharist, priesthood, marriage all these things are about marriage at the core right. Thus, in this dimension, a primordial sacrament is constituted, understood as a sign that effectively, efficaciously, reality transmits into this visible world the invisible God from all eternity. This is what we're created to do, this is what we're battling in the human heart.
Speaker 1:So, as I finish up here, and this is the mystery of truth and love, the mystery of divine life in which man really participates, in man, created in the image and likeness of God, the very sacramentally, the sacramentality of creation, think about all the things, the beauty you see right, the stars, et cetera, the beauty of oceans, small B beauty, bringing you into large B, big B beauty. God himself, he creates these things, these little signposts, right, but ooh, with man and woman it's B plus right, it's the crown of creation, actually, efficaciously, actually bringing this grace, this love story into the world. See the rest of nature, we can see it, and it's reflecting God. We actually not only reflect Trinitarian love, we bring it into the world, we make it visible.
Speaker 1:Without us, love does not get into this world. God's love comes in, love and truth come in through us, and this is the beauty of how God created us. We have a big responsibility, don't we? Together with man, men and women. Holiness has entered the visible world, we hear in the beginning, naked, without shame. There was no sin in the world. The world was created for us without shame. There was no sin in the world. The world was created for us. The sacrament of the world and the sacrament of man in the world comes forth from the divine source of holiness and is instituted at the same time for holiness. Again, this is a way of saying the sacrament of man comes forth from this divine love story. That divine love story is the source of holiness. Love story, that divine love story, is the source of holiness.
Speaker 1:And so when we go into prayer, we're bringing this into our hearts and remember the third thing of that simple thing in the morning that you do, you stand up and you become a person of love. We're not perfect when we do this, so we have to keep asking for grace. Right? Such is Christ in the conversation with this young man. Such is Christ in the conversation with each one of. Such as Christ in the conversation with each one of you.
Speaker 1:When you say good, teacher, he asks why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone and therefore the fact that I am good bears witness to God. He who has seen me, jesus said, has seen the Father as I do God's will, as I unite with him in that divine mercy image, and I look at that Jesus pouring out himself to us in mercy. I have seen the Father. The Father is a God of mercy and of love. Right, thus Christ speaks, the teacher and friend, christ, crucified and risen, always the same, yesterday, today and forever.
Speaker 1:You know this beautiful deposit of faith that comes down to us that people want to rip and distort and push onto the side. This is what you enter into, prayer and into the sacraments, and then you become that sacramental love in the world. But first we have to be filled. How are we filled? Prayer, mass confession, praying the rosary, reading scriptures, you know we're always being filled right. We're being filled from the source. We receive these gifts of the Holy Spirit for wisdom and understanding, for counsel, for fortitude, courage, knowledge, piety, which is humility to say yes, I need you, god, right, and I want to become holy. And then, finally, fear of the Lord. You know, later on, as I got older, the fear of the Lord is really losing my own heart and becoming a person not of goodness and love in the world anymore, but allowing myself to be twisted and distorted into lust.
Speaker 1:I know these stories very, very well. Right, I lived these stories out. I saw what I could become without God, and you need to acknowledge this. You could see how powerful this pull is, you know. So your youth, young people, opens different perspectives to you, john Paul II would say, as he's speaking to you, it offers you as a task the plan for the whole of your lives.
Speaker 1:Hence the question about values, hence the question about the meaning of life. He says about truth, about good and evil. When Christ, in his reply, tells you to refer all this to God, at the same time he shows you what the source and foundation of this is in yourselves, for each one of you is the image and likeness of God, through the very act of creation. You came into a story. You are a beloved child of God. We came into original sin. So what does Jesus do? Baptism, right. What poured out of his heart on the cross when he got hit by the lance? Water and blood Water, baptism, confession, this washing away of our sins, this pouring out of God's mercy. And then he actually gives us his life, the blood right, the precious body and blood, soul and divinity that we receive at mass and holy communion.
Speaker 1:I know this story very well. Hey, god bless you. Thanks for being with me today. Share this. Share this with people. Share this story very well. Hey, god bless you. Thanks for being with me today. Share this, share this with people. Share this story with people. You know, meditate on this. You know, go out for a nice walk and listen to this. And on your exercise bike. You know, it's wintertime here, certainly in Chicago, so I'd love to get on my bike and listen to, you know, to these kinds of messages. You know, they bring me back into the story. This is it. This is the battle of the heart. Hey, god bless you. Don't forget, send me some questions, text them to me, write them to me and I'll bring them up. If I can't bring them up on this Friday show, I'll bring them up during the week. Thanks everyone, talk to you again soon. Bye-bye, thank you.