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
#594 The Question About Eternal Life: What Must I Do So That My Life May Have Value, Have Meaning?
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What if the key to eternal happiness and fulfillment lies not in the material world but within our spiritual journey?
We take a look at the complex personality of Elon Musk, examining his extraordinary career alongside his personal struggles and the philosophical implications of his quest for meaning. By contemplating love, fulfillment, and the human condition, we encourage aligning personal ambitions with a higher purpose.
Finally we explore what it means to seek eternal significance over material success, urging Gen Z to unite their focus on worldly achievements to include a life of grace and divine love.
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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, and this is our regular Friday edition of Claymore. Militus Christi, soldiers for Christ. I hope everybody's doing well. I hope everybody's downloaded this right. This is the battle plan right in the show notes. Again, jp, the number two, reneworg. It's our website. Go under resources. There you're going to see that Claymore sword that's behind me, boxed around there in red. Just click on that and you're going to be able to download this. It's it's it's like seven pages, but really it's only four and it's double. You know it's not a lot on each page. So this is our battle plan and then the last three pages are just a summary of the first three, just kind of a quick summary. I almost didn't put them on there and then I left them there because it did some good for me, so I thought it might be do some good for you too.
Speaker 1:Anyways, I just got up off my knees from first thing in the morning. Before you look at that phone boom hit the ground. Get on my knees. Let it be done to me with our Blessed Mother. She's kneeling right there with us. Let it be done to me, according to your word, just like in the first chapter of Luke. And really, what she does her? Yes, she's impregnated with Jesus Christ, with God himself. So I'm impregnated with God. I mean, that's what we're all called to do, right, to be impregnated with God in a spiritual way, but in a very real way, huh, when I'm sitting there, when I'm kneeling there with our blessed mother, that's the narrow gate.
Speaker 1:If you read in Matthew 7, verses like, say, 14 and on, you'll see Jesus talk about the broad road that everybody else is on. And now we're going to enter through the narrow gate. Well, how do we do that? Well, through the cross itself. And here is where that image comes in. So we get down on our knees, we say that. Then we remember excuse me, temptation is not a sin, temptation is an invitation to prayer.
Speaker 1:St Catherine of Siena and these beautiful mystics, they talk about this. You know, god created us in his image and likeness. That's our reason. Our reason seeks the truth. And then our free will, and when it's working together with our conscience, our free will is like a motor to choose the good. Well, only God is good. That's what we've been listening to on these Fridays, right?
Speaker 1:And so what happens with that? She said nobody can take that away from us. The temptations are there, but nobody can make you sin, nobody. You can get tortured and God will give you the grace, look it. I always think to myself if I really get tortured, would I be able to stand it? Some brutal tortures that these saints and martyrs went through.
Speaker 1:But anyways, day to day are the temptations that we're going to be facing most of the time, and we offer those up, we open those up. And because she said, those passions and desires come through your reason, through your free will, through your sensual, this sensual. You know this nature within us and these passions and desires are not to be put down. God gave you those passions and desires. There are passions and desires would be the rocket fuel actually to get you all the way to your destiny, to heaven itself, and along the way we'll become persons of love. Right, and so we were opening those up.
Speaker 1:To what To? Then we get to the divine mercy, divine mercy image. The link is right there, right? Number two so temptation is not a sin. Use every temptation as an invitation to prayer, and then we download the divine mercy app.
Speaker 1:When you first start listening to that. You're only getting little snippets and you're going to come into the middle of it, you know, and so it won't really always make sense to you. But just open yourself up. Open yourself up. That's the divine image right there. This is very, very important to us.
Speaker 1:Today we are given that divine image of God's mercy. Jesus wants to pour this mercy out. So today, on my phone, I open it up. I usually just close my eyes and click it. I like to listen to Sister Faustina and Jesus talk. It just takes a minute and then there's a little prayer at the end.
Speaker 1:So today, this is Jesus saying I desire that that image be publicly honored. Everybody should get that. You guys should each have that image. Find that image and put it in your house. Hang it up right. You should hang it up right. As soon as one of you walks into your room, your office, your house, they see that divine image and I'll ask what is that all about? And you'll be able to tell them. And I'll tell you how you're going to be able to tell them in a second, after seeing the image come alive.
Speaker 1:I heard these words Sister Faustina says and then Jesus says that mercy that he came here on that cross. Mercy is the second word for love. God of the universe cares enough to not only redeem us and save us himself in his own body, but the second word is mercy. What he's pouring out on the cross is his love and his mercy. When you see that, raise again, right, the red and the white. The white is baptism huh, the water that cleanses us.
Speaker 1:Confession then after that. And then the red is blood huh, the eucharist blood. It's the blood that we're receiving into ourselves. This, this, so, body and soul, without disgrace, without this connection, is sin and death. That's just the reality. We fall into sin and then, ultimately, we all have a six-foot hole waiting for us out there, a whitewashed tomb with a chisel poised to put our name on it. In between, we're to be men of Christ, we're to rise up, and so this is a beautiful thing, isn't it? So, body and the soul.
Speaker 1:Now, with that image, we look at that image and we see that image and Jesus says take that, let it come alive for you. You need to know that I'm pouring out my mercy to you. You're baptized, you're coming into the story. Now go to confession, keep getting washed. This nuptial bath, this union and communion with God. Experience it in yourself, in prayer and in the sacraments. That's what this formation is. This is page four of this. Again, I got notes all over the place, but then I read the divine mercy, so I'll leave you with this before I get into the meat of today's session. Go on X on our JP2 Renewal X site. That's where I post everything Some good posts there and so yesterday I posted that image. It's a beautiful, stark image of the Divine Mercy. You'll see it there Right before that. So it would be underneath.
Speaker 1:It is actually a thread that somebody put up to tell the whole story. It's really beautiful. It won't take you long to go through it. But then you can share that, read it, get it, take it in and then share it with other people and then later on you can read the whole diary, the diary of Sister Faustina. And again, when you start the diary it seems a little wow. It takes you a little while to get into it, but once you do you start to look forward to it. It's Sister Faustina's dialogue with God. It takes a little while, these things, you know, to unwind. So you don't read a lot, you just read a little bit, maybe before you go to bed and meditate on it. It's just really beautiful. Over time it'll be really beautiful, okay. So, x, you're going to go through, read the thread, et cetera, et cetera. So today I'm going to put my glasses on here.
Speaker 1:The question about eternal life. This is John Paul II is getting ready to meet young people and one of the things he wants to talk about with them is the question about eternal life. You know, right before I came on the air, I'm drinking coffee and I got it down the wrong pipe, right. So what's the solution? More coffee. Thank you for that. Indulging me, yeah. So the question about eternal life. So let's go through this. You have the rich young man again coming up to Jesus and he says what must I do to have eternal life? So the question what must I do that my life may have value, have meaning? George Orwell said this in 1984. He didn't say it in 1984, but he wrote 1984. And he said this looking at all these generations, each generation now, gen Z imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it and wiser than the one that comes after it. Each one, right.
Speaker 1:So you come into this world, you came into a story. It's amazing when I talk to people oh, I got it handled, I don't need anything else, I got this thing, and they're anxious and nervous and getting blown around by the spirits of the age. You're sucked into all of this propaganda and stuff today. Easy to do. You really have to work to be able to discern, to open up your reason and so that your free will can be a motor to the good. How do you do that If you don't have the spiritual formation that we're talking about? That we're just talking about previous, and then this is again. This is what we call doctrinal formation in this battle plan. But really it's opening, just opening up the larger story. Right, we're connecting the dots, and so that's what this is.
Speaker 1:What must I do that my life has value, have meaning? This earnest question comes from the lips of the young man in the gospel in the following form he says to Jesus again what must I do to inherit eternal life? Good question, right, we're looking at that six foot hole. I want to have meaning and purpose in my life here. What must I do? Is a person who puts the question in this form speaking a language still intelligible to the people of today? That's what John Paul asked.
Speaker 1:Is it Because when you speak about that oh, I don't want to speak about the end of life this and that you know it's the only thing that's guaranteed in your life? You know, you don't know everything that's coming, but you don't know that you're going to die at some point. Well, death shouldn't be a fearful thing If you're in union and communion with Jesus Christ, like we were talking about. It's just a veil that's going to open up and Christ promises he'll be there with us. If we venerate the divine mercy, if we kneel with our blessed mother, think about the Hail Mary it ends like this Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, Be there with us, right? So in the beginning, our bodies and souls should have never been separated, but they are. Sin came into the world, huh. And then you go back. You'll become dust again. We're going to get a glorified body, but anyways, in between we have a life to live and it has to be filled with meaning and purpose. And so John Paul says, when I ask that question what must I do to inherit internal life? People don't even believe today, do they or don't they, or whatever. Well, we're here because we're saying what is this all about? What is my life all about? What must I do? Are we not?
Speaker 1:Now he's talking about the Generation Z. Now are we not the generation whose horizon of existence is completely filled by the world and temporal progress, aren't we? No, that's not that's. You guys are waking up. You guys are awake. I would say the millennials before you are. They're the harder ones to wake up and the boomers were starting. I mean, you know, this has been passed down through the generations. Nobody, no particular generations to blame, but certainly the millennials. God bless them. You know, I now look at I. I don't want to throw them all under the bus. My kids are all millennials. Some of them get it, some of them don't, you know. But but you see the suffering that those, their kids, their generation z kids and and even younger than that, are going through right now. This is a very evil world that can really suck you away. But I like it because it's easy to see the battleground right between good and evil. That's why you're here.
Speaker 1:You sense there's got to be something more to all this. So we think primarily in earthly categories, right, materialistic view. This is all there is. If we go beyond the limits of our planet, we do so in order to launch interplanetary flights, rockets and stuff right? Transmit signals to other planets, send cosmic probes in their direction, right? All this has become the content of our modern civilization. Science, together with technology, has discovered in an incomparable way man's possibilities with regard to matter, and they have also succeeded in dominating the interior world of his thoughts, capacities, tendencies and passions. So again, science, together with technology, has discovered a way. You know all these possibilities with matter. We're saying you know we got this all figured out. Well, well, you know what we found out with these vaccines, that it's coming out more and more and more.
Speaker 1:Uh, in, you're going to see, with robert kennedy doing this, we've been lied to a lot, right. We've been lied to about continuous wars. We've been lied to and twisted about who our identities are, what marriage is, what love is I mean all the basics, along with everything else. And the government's been stealing all of our money all this time. Well, we knew those things. And at the end of the day you go what is real? Well, it's not all about matter. The government would love to have you, society and Satan would love to have you think that this is only matter. But we know our hearts are made for more. And then he goes on to John Paul said in a statement. He said so besides the exterior things that they're doing, you know outside of us, the interior world, our hearts itself, our thoughts, our capacities, our passions, those right have been also taken over by these phones.
Speaker 1:Pornography, addictions, the phones, the social media Look, I'm on my phone. I travel with my phone so it can do positive things, but I too have to have periods of time where I just say no, no more of this. I have to contemplate, I have to read. I love books. If I showed you a picture of all the books that are around me, they're piled up all over. I love books, I love to feel them, I love the taste of them, I love the thoughts and ideas in there.
Speaker 1:Get some books, get some great books, get the diary. Speaking of books, here's a great book for you Christopher West Fill these Hearts. Christopher West, fill these Hearts. It's really good. It looks like a woman's book, right? Well, it's more than that. It's really talking about the passions and desires God, sex and the universal longing. Really a good book and not a really difficult read, not overly theological or anything. Christopher West did a really good job with that. So if you're looking for something to read, get the diary, get that one. Go to X and read some of those clips that I put in there.
Speaker 1:But anyways, don't let this culture take over your heart. That's why we hit our knees first, right. Open these temptations up, start connecting to the transcendental, moving past this to what's true, good and beautiful. All right, do you find it interesting that while man searches for answers in the sky, his heart has lost its ability to soar and is tethered horizontally in two dimensions to the world? We've talked about this many times, right, this two-dimensional existence that we have Now, when we get it down on our knees, when we open up to our temptations, we're entering into 3D, no longer stuck in a cycle of trying to be good starvation diet, indulging, starvation diet, indulging.
Speaker 1:Now we open up our passions and desires. You know, boom, that rocket fuel takes us. If we're the rocket, that's that rocket fuel that connects us body, soul plus grace. That's what we get from that divine image. Right there, the grace pours into us. Huh, gives us the potential for human flourishing, potential for human freedom, but freedom is always for something. That's the third thing. We get up off our knees and we become persons of love, but we can't give what we don't have right. So this is what we're talking about here. So we are no longer tethered to this world.
Speaker 1:We have forgotten our story. If we are, we were made for more. This is what our hearts are telling us. Men have forgotten God, and you see the ramifications around you. We're reminded of John Paul II's reflection on the 20th century, which began with the hope of unlimited progress but ended as the bloodiest century known to history.
Speaker 1:Modern man had placed his hopes for a Messiah and his own genius in science, technology, medicine. Whenever man loses sight of the great mystery and sets his sights only on this world, he always meets disappointment, even despair. The world, john Paul said, is not capable of making man happy. It's not capable of saving him from evil in all its forms illness, epidemics, pandemics, catastrophes and the like. This world, with its riches and its wants, needs to be saved. It needs to be redeemed.
Speaker 1:It seems that all of us would have caught on to the story by now. Right, good versus evil, light versus darkness, love versus lust, and seek a better way. That's been revealed to us. Yet somehow we missed the larger story and we get caught up in this much smaller one of our own making. Again, you came into a story, but if you don't look around, what is truth, what is good, what is beauty? Why do I have these past? If you stay in your little tiny circle and you don't open yourself up Satan loves you like this you just stay in your own dark, selfish little world of your own making. I can be like God. I'll decide You're not going to find happiness there, you're not going to find fulfillment there and you're going to waste your life. The result's always the same You're always going to end up with a broken heart. Look around us.
Speaker 1:Recently, as our team at John Paul II Renewal Center was wrapping up with a group of teens, I asked them if they had anything particular they liked us to address. When we came back, the topic requested Mental illness. Why they wanted to know. Do so many of our friends and classmates suffer from anxiety, depression, gender dysphoria, cutting anorexia, even suicide? In fact, suicide rates among young people have now surpassed middle-aged men, who had been the highest.
Speaker 1:They've heard the culture's message, or lack of coherent message, loud and clear there is no truth beyond your truth or my truth. There's no meaning and purpose for your life beyond the one you invent for yourself. They're sensing, in their pain, that which mankind has known since the dawn of history pain that which mankind has known since the dawn of history. The human heart was made for more, and it does not function in a world void of meaning and purpose. The human heart doesn't function well without meaning and purpose. So in the midst of their brokenness right, and that's what you guys are in In the midst of this brokenness you see around us, along comes some very good news.
Speaker 1:The path to meaning, healing hope which leads to authentic love and profound happiness can be found. First, know there's a reason for your deep ache and your thirst for more. Men have forgotten God, wrote Schultz. And but St Augustine counters with an important clue to the solution. He says, counters with an important clue to the solution. He says our hearts are restless, lord, until they rest in you. There's a message, there's a path. It begins with your restless hearts, both yours and the Redeemer of man, jesus himself also has a restless heart. He has a restless heart for you. Isn't that amazing if you think about that and the message, the path was amplified and developed for the subsequent 27 years of John Paul II's leadership.
Speaker 1:He was always thinking about this, always thinking how can I make this open, how can I bring you into the story? The path is the way of man, mankind, men and women. It involves a proper understanding, he said, of conscience, education and human dignity itself. But at the heart of it all, it's a path of love. It is the path of Christ, it's the path of the saints, it's the universal call to holiness and the sanctification of everyday life. Remember, eternity doesn't mean tomorrow, eternity means forever. We're eternal beings already. We are here to be filled with divine life and love and then to sanctify life, everyday life all around us. It's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 1:You know I have a lot of respect. You hear a lot about Elon Musk today, right, I have a lot of respect for him. I lot about Elon Musk today, right, I have a lot of respect for him. I mean, he's doing some crazy, amazing things with Doge Department of Governmental Efficiency and you know, this deep state has to be broken up. It's really just taken over like a cancer, but, but, but in his personal life, man, the guy's a mess in so many ways, but he's a genius on many levels, certainly not without flaws and imperfections. He's a seeker with big desires and appetites. He's the man behind Tesla, spacex, ex-formerly known as Twitter. He's got other projects going. It's amazing.
Speaker 1:Actually, in an interview with Rolling Stone some years ago, he said that he had a rough childhood. His parents divorced when he was nine and he went to live with this estranged father, who he called a terrible human being. He struggled all his life with loneliness, was mercilessly bullied growing up and adding when I was a child, there's one thing I said I never want to be alone. Well, now he's been divorced three times, I believe. He said he had five sons with his first marriage, has, I think, 13 children now with four different women. Musk said this.
Speaker 1:And you see, this disconnection. As smart as I can be, if I want to go to the stars, but I'm only shooting at Mars, god says why stop at Mars? Come all the way. Your desires are for more than that, right. If you don't understand this foundation of what love is, what our sexuality is and the sacramental sign of Trinitarian love, you become selfish. I mean, you know those first five sons. He left them right and I'm not making a judgment call on this, but he called his own father a terrible father who abandoned them, got divorced and then he did the same thing, you know. And so we follow these patterns.
Speaker 1:And again, I have a lot of respect for him.
Speaker 1:I really like him. I would love to become friends with him and share this divine image with him. Right, maybe we should send him one. Huh, if you're running to Elon, send him my thread or buy a couple extra pictures of that divine mercy and give it to him. He needs to come into the faith, be really something he would really be able to turn that life around. But think about those children.
Speaker 1:Now he's so busy. How much time could it be spent? Again, I'm not judging. I'm just saying when you're disconnected from God himself, from mercy, from love, the grace is not flowing in. Somehow he's being protected. I think God can use any of us. He can use Trump, he can use me, he can use you. God will use us, but if our hearts are going to be aligned with his, then most of this work gets done by Christ himself, because our objective is eternal life, right?
Speaker 1:So he said if I'm not in love, if I'm not with a long-term companion, I cannot be happy, I will never be happy without having someone. See, it's not just having someone, it's loving, right. And what is love? Going to sleep at night kills me. It's not like I don't know what it feels like being in a big empty house and footsteps echoing through the hallway. No one there. Well, he's talking about after he got divorced from his wives, who keeps the children, et cetera, et cetera. You know no one on the pillow next to you. How do you make yourself happy in a situation like that? And again, you don't make yourself happy. You give yourself away as a gift. Young people you know John Paul said your life has meaning to the extent it's given away as a gift to others. You know, focus on the other, not on yourself.
Speaker 1:Today, his sight set on Mars and he plans to permanently resettle the red planet. He says he thinks there's a 70% chance in his lifetime that they're going to make it to Mars. I wouldn't put it past him. Musk said that his desire to colonize Mars is driven by the same passion that fuels people to climb mountains for the challenge. Driven by the same passion that fuels people to climb mountains for the challenge. I don't know Yet, because everyone I know my son climbs mountains and I know everyone who climbs mountains is never satisfied. It's always the next mountain, don't? We all know people like that.
Speaker 1:If I get an A on my report card, I'll be happy. If I make the team, I'll be happy. If I get accepted by this or that group, I'll be happy. If I get that car, I'll be happy. If I get accepted by this or that group, I'll be happy. If I get that car, I'll be happy. Iphone, the job, et cetera, et cetera. If only I get that boy, if only that girl will say hello to me, if I only have the courage to say hello to her right, if I get that pair of jeans or whatever, then I'll be happy. Then I feel the ache in my heart for that something more.
Speaker 1:Well, john, paul and the church would say that what we're seeking is eternal glory, life and love, and we're only getting little tastes of it here on earth. In fact, all of the cosmos was created. Good is meant to be a sign. Small B beauty leading our hearts and our minds, our souls, our whole passions to big B beauty, to God himself. Small B beauty, huh, leading to God.
Speaker 1:The crowning sign of creation is the primordial sacrament, it's marriage in the family. This is the point that Elon misses, the biggest point. He misses that his let's just say again, his first wife, with those five children maybe would have had a couple more children, right? That is the icon, the sacramental sign of Trinitarian love itself. The father who gives his love to the son, the son receives that love, so beautiful and profound. It comes out in the form of a person. A man offers his love to his wife. His wife receives that. It's so beautiful and profound. It comes out in the form of persons, right, these are called children, and so this is the fullest sign. But you can't leave one and go get another and leave another, because Christ, god, the Father, the Holy Spirit, will never leave you. The covenant with you is eternal, and so this is a little tiny taste, a little reflected sign of that covenant forever. That's why, when we're on the altar getting married, we say I give my life to you forever, in sickness and in health, et cetera. Right? So that's the crowning of sign in all of creation is that we are persons of love. See the creatures out there. They can reproduce and they do reproduce, but we procreate, we open ourselves up with God himself. We're the only ones with reason, free will, that can bring love, authentic love of God, into the world. So that's the difference, right, it's meant not only to point us to God but, if properly understood, allows us to enter in God's co-creative act and participate in it. What is Elon missing?
Speaker 1:One of Poland's great poets said something like this His last name is Krasinski, and I took some poetry that he was writing and I kind of made it for Elon. Elon, sometimes, an engineer and a scientist needs to listen to a poet. We must accept and acknowledge that all of the talents we possess, the greatest is that of humanity itself. We are our greatest talent, and to flower, to open ourselves up. If God asks us to give an account of how we used our various talents, he will ask from this point of view, how have we used that fundamental talent, the talent of humanity? This is the greatest talent. Why? Because God himself paid for our humanity. The price that was paid reveals the meaning of humanity, the value of the work of art that is mankind. John Paul II, also a poet, might add.
Speaker 1:As Genesis has it, all men and women are entrusted with the task of crafting their own life. In a certain sense, they are to make a work of art of it, he said, a masterpiece. You are here to make your own life a masterpiece. How do you do it? You have to be connected to the source of all that creativity and that grace as a person. The artist labors on various works of art, as well as the masterpiece of love and the work that is himself. Whoa, as somebody, is bringing art and beauty into the world. And while he actually does that using his own talents, when he's connected, he's actually created himself.
Speaker 1:Self-determination. As I do good, I become good, I am good. Or if I choose evil and I start to do evil, I am evil. That's the deep state, you know. I'm sure there's good people right, so we don't want to throw everybody under the bus. Obviously that works for the government. There are good things that they do, but at the end of the day it's these small things. I get a little lazy, I get used to the security of the state, I don't work very hard, I try to get a cushy job with a big paycheck and all these things. If I'm not connected to the source of love itself, I start to really deflower. I'm not that masterpiece of love. I'm not that work of art. I have to go out and push myself to bring Christ into the world, to bring the beauty of God into the world.
Speaker 1:And again, I'm not judging any individual people. I'm just trying to set up a concept for you to see that, no matter what you do, if you're connected to Jesus Christ, if you're connected to the Trinity, if you're expressing yourself in love, whether you're married, single, all of those things don't matter. I become a person of love. How you do that is gonna unfold for you and your life becomes this story unfolding. But the masterpiece is what you're working on, that's the work itself, and the work itself is going to be done with you and God together. So that's why that image is so important. Get that image in your house and look up at it. Jesus, I trust in you. Are the words there.
Speaker 1:So, our brother Elon, I would say go to Mars, but don't be satisfied with Mars. Why stop at a planet when the eternal life, the whole of heaven, is our destination? The desire for God is written on the human heart, because man is created by God and for God, and God never ceases to draw man to himself. That's why you're here you hear that Only in God will man find the truth and happiness. He never stopped searching for it was St Augustine, again as a womanizer, as a young man who never married and he never married the mother of his son either. A man of the world who was never satisfied, always seeking, who one day heard St Ambrose preach the gospel. It touched his heart and he proclaimed later on you have made us for yourself, oh Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you. He was restless going around the world trying to figure this thing out when he heard the word, when he heard Jesus speak. Jesus will say my people, my sheep, my people, they hear my word and they know me. We know him in the word. That's why reading scripture again is part of spiritual formation.
Speaker 1:When you start reading scripture and you start doing the Lectio Divina and again this is all in the Claymore Battle Plan. The notes and stuff are there to find these places to go Again. If you go to the Claymore Battle Plan, you're gonna see two things very, very important there. One, praying. You go to the Claymore Battle Plan. You're going to see two things very, very important there. One, praying with temptations. Get that, print it out. That might be something you want to read in the morning again after Divine Mercy. And the second one is Lectio Divina how to pray with scripture, because this is the word, we're hearing this word and you're just going to pick out a phrase or so and it's going to lift your heart and over time, it's amazing how God can speak to you very, very quickly.
Speaker 1:Elon Musk, like so many of his contemporaries in the so-called modern world, speak and dream of even transhumanism. It's an illusion, of course. Yet another clue that, with the restless heart of man, it's yearning for eternal life. That's what transhumanism isn't it? It's a yearning for eternal life without the giver of eternal life. It's absurd, but this is the pride of man, right For all of us who wish to talk to Christ and accept all the truth of his testimony.
Speaker 1:It is true that on one hand, you love the world, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son. At the same time, you must acquire interior detachment with regard to all this rich and fascinating reality that makes up the world. In other words, god gave us all this beauty and stuff, like I said, to show us to him. But it is beauty, it's all wonder of what's around us. It's discovery, but the real power, this discovery comes in when I'm filled with the gifts of the Holy Spirit and I see small B beauty pointing right as a pointer to big B beauty, I feel my heart restless. And I know that restlessness is there and I'm in touch with it because it's leading me to God himself and to do good things in the world while we're at it. So that's what we say you can love the world, but you have to detach from it enough to know that this is a temporal space and the only way to really change it is to become a person of love and then walk into the story. Right, that's what Claymore Miletus Christi is all about.
Speaker 1:So God loved the world. At the same time, you have that interior detachment. You must make up your mind to ask the question about eternal life, for the form of this world is passing away and each of us is subject to this passing. Man is born with the prospect of the day of his death in the dimension of the visible world. At the same time, man, whose interior reason for existence is to go beyond himself, also bears within himself everything whereby he goes beyond this world. So we're in the world and we know that it's good to contemplate.
Speaker 1:How do I get eternal life? How do I gain eternalate? How do I get eternal life? How do I gain eternal life, how do I find eternal life? Because that pushes you on beyond what you see, beyond the material world, to make that connection and its interior, that interior with God, and then we take that and we walk into this material world. It is explained by the image and likeness of God which is inscribed in humanity from the very beginning, in this primordial sacrament. Christianity teaches us to understand temporal existence from the perspective of the kingdom of God, from the perspective of eternal life. Without eternal life, temporal existence, however rich, however developed in all its aspects, and in the end brings nothing other than the unavoidable necessity of death. Elon's going to get that, bill Gates is going to get that, the richest man in the world is going to get that. I'm going to get that. So what is this all about? How do I find joy and happiness, knowing that I'm filled with eternal love?
Speaker 1:Today, human experience, left to itself, says the same as sacred scripture it is appointed for men to die, once. The inspired reader adds but after that comes judgment and Christ says I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he die yet, shall he live. And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. That's the reality. You know the veil. When you talk to people that had near-death experiences, you know, you feel this death. You look at the body and from the outside they look like they're dead. Right, and they are dead, I mean for all practical purposes. But yet they talk about everything that they see, everything that they open up to. As soon as you go through the veil, you know and this is what he's saying After that comes judgment. I am the resurrection and the life. I will be there. Whoever believes in me, though he die yet, shall he live. And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. You really don't die. I mean your body's not there anymore, but boom, you're off and running right.
Speaker 1:I'm going to finish with St Catherine of Siena. St Catherine of Siena, I have to remember to bring up a book or two for you. I don't want to give you too much here today, but she just was passionate for Christ. She had the stigmata, she didn't have a big education I think it's third grade but she was just incredible. Her mind, her spirit, very passionate. She talks about this. She would go into ecstasy. She was from Siena, italy, and her secretary and people would record or write down, I mean, what she said. She would be speaking out loud.
Speaker 1:This is one of those. In Christ's blood we are made strong, even though weakness persists in our sensuality. So we can see how the strength is gained, since all our weakness is in the sensual side of us. We're talking about this sensuality, the flesh side, right, and what we see here materialistically, and you know these passions and desires. This is our weakness, but it also can be our strength.
Speaker 1:Here, I am saying, is how we gain this glorious virtue of strength and steady perseverance, since our reason is made strong. We just talked about this. How, in Christ's blood, right there, in that image, our reason seeking the truth is made strong. In Christ's blood, body, soul, plus disgrace, we must drown ourselves in this sweet, glorious ransom. How, with our mind's eye and by the light of most holy faith, we see it within the vessel of our own soul, in the knowledge that our being comes from God and that God created us anew to grace, in the blood of his only begotten son, ooh, body, soul, blood filled with grace. And in that blood, right White, is the baptism confession. In that blood we are freed from our weakness. Oh, look and be happy, she says, for you have been made a vessel that holds the blood of Christ crucified, if you are but willing to taste it in the affection of love.
Speaker 1:You know I'm recording this on a Sunday. I am going to go to Mass in just a little while. I pick up my 90, almost 99-year-old father with one of my brothers and we go to Mass together. I'm going to taste that Eucharist and I'm going to bring it to myself, right, and I'm going to remember to just open my heart up, like St Catherine said just now, if you are willing to taste it in the affection of love. So ask Christ, like the young man in the gospel what must I do to inherit eternal life? Then turn your heart with all of its concerns, dreams, anxieties and worries over to the sacred heart of Jesus Christ, who is the great physician of human hearts. It's a beautiful thing. You've stepped into a greater story, haven't you? This is what we're doing, and God will pull you deeper and deeper and deeper and give you more and more and more. If you're willing to do that.
Speaker 1:You have to get used to this discipline Every morning. One other thing I'll add is I always give up something, you know dessert, or this, or that, whatever, fasting for the day, whatever it is. I like to do that because it helps me discipline myself. And also, you know, when you are tempted with different things food, sex, et cetera, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah those temptations become this invitation to pray again, and so, ooh, I feel like eating right now I'm fasting today, just black coffee and water or something, and then I open that up, and so it's in that sacrifice. I join Jesus in a little tiny way, with the sacrifice of the cross. Right, be kind to someone that's not kind to me.
Speaker 1:We're called to love even the crazy Joe Bidens of the world that have done so much damage and wrecked so many lives with abortion and this trans ideology. But we're called to love him. We're called, to the end of his day, to pray for him, him. We're called, to the end of his day, to pray for him. Our Pope Francis seems to be unless something miraculous happens, maybe on his last legs.
Speaker 1:We're called to pray for him, even though there are times where I get angry, and with a righteous anger. I think about not being clear on things, but it's up to God to judge at the end. I can say though I can judge people's actions, I can judge my own actions, and we need to do that. At the end of the day, I can give the last final judgment of the person's soul, of their interior life, which I don't know. I can give that to God, I give that to Jesus Christ, I give that to our blessed mother to take to him. I'm filled with the Holy Spirit and I become a person of love. It's really good because I don't have to get angry. I don't have, you know, I can.
Speaker 1:Just Jesus said don't lose your peace. You know, in the world there'll be troubles. He said there's plenty of troubles in the world, but don't lose your peace, you know, keep opening yourself up to me and we'll get through this together. I mean, that's the encounter that you're going to have, If you haven't already. You're encountering Jesus Christ now in the word, in prayer. Sometimes you'll have this really powerful encounter when things come to you.
Speaker 1:Just journal those, remember, it's not a diary, it's a journal. I have these journals that I've kept since high school and there's a whole stack of them now, and sometimes I don't write for a whole year. But then something will happen. I go ooh and I start to write. Sometimes I'll write every night for a little while. It's good to remember that, because when you're 15, 16, 17 years old, you'll forget all these things or they won't be clear to you and you say, oh, that really happened to me. God was already watching for me, even when I wasn't loving him back like I should have. Hey, god bless you. Great to be with you. Talk to you again soon, everybody. Bye-bye.