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
#601 The Language of the Body as Sacred Liturgy: Exploring Tobias and Sarah's Marriage
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What if the deepest mysteries of love, marriage, and human sexuality are actually encoded in an ancient biblical story most people have never fully explored? In this profound episode, we dive into St. John Paul II's examination of Tobias and Sarah's marriage from the Book of Tobit - a story where the marriage bed became either a place of death or redemption.
At its core, this episode reveals how our current cultural battles over sexuality, gender, and family reflect a cosmic struggle between authentic love and counterfeit versions that ultimately lead to despair. Through the lens of Theology of the Body, we examine how bringing "the language of the body into the language of liturgy" transforms marriage from merely physical union into a sacred sign that makes visible God's invisible love.
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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 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?
Speaker 2:and female. How do I find happiness here on earth? How do I?
Speaker 1:find love that satisfies forever. Hey, good to be with you.
Speaker 2:I'm fine, jack Riggard, how are you?
Speaker 1:Good, good, good. You know, today we're going to be unpacking John Paul his work on Theology of the Body, number 114, if anybody's following us out there there, you don't have to be following us, but I know many of you do. It's the marriage of tobias and sarah, and john paul headlines that when the language of the body becomes the language of the liturgy, he's making a link there between married, a language of a marital love, the conjugal. He will call it conjugal love. It's not just meaning sexual, but this is the marriage of a man and a woman. That includes, obviously, the one flesh union that produces a baby. Sometimes, this beautiful story, and in order to overcome the sin and death that's in the world, it has to enter into the language of the liturgy. So this is prayer, this is the sacrament, and he says love as a test of life or death. And you think, okay, well, that sounds a little dramatic, but in reality it's not. It's exactly what's going on in the world. I just want to bring up and I always put a link to our X, our John Paul II X channel in the show notes. So if you want to read this, just go to X, follow it in the show notes and you'll see a couple posts there. Just that I want to draw your attention to right now, to kind of open this up.
Speaker 1:So JD Vance, our vice president, said this abortion was the first political issue I can ever remember caring about. And he said even after 20 years, it still shocks me that progressives just ignore that there's an innocent life involved and you know this is really a battle, isn't it? And we see this playing out all over. I want to contrast this to something that was posted from Bernie Sanders. So Bernie Sanders had a transgender singer, laura Jane Grace, perform at his rally, and I'm not going to repeat exactly what she's singing there, but she's making a mockery of God. She says there that he has a big fat blank and it feels like he's blanking me and you can go and watch it yourself because it's so disgusting that I don't want to repeat it on this podcast.
Speaker 1:But what you can see is it's a hatred for Christians, for families, for children. They seek to defile, undermine, mock and destroy everything that's true, good and beautiful about the human person itself. So this is what we're going to be getting into today Sister Lucia again of Fatima, the main visionary, and she didn't die until 2005. Amazing, and she said, we've entered into this point in history where the last great battle between our Lord and Satan is going to be over marriage and the family. So we're seeing this play out big time right now. Everything that you see out there almost can be put into this lens the attack on marriage. We see it with all the gender ideologies, the attack on a child themselves, and then, of course, taking out Christ in the church, and we see this within the church, the deep church and also the deep state. So the attack is pretty ferocious. It really brings us into Tobit Before I read that, before we get into Tobit, which is really a battle. This is a fascinating story, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Tobit is a long book, I'll just say Linda, and so we're going to just take a little piece out, where Tobias is the son of Tobit and he's sent off on a journey far-off country to find his relatives who are there because his dad has gone blind and he wants them to get some money and some other things from his relatives before it's too late. And he doesn't know how to get there. And Raphael, who's disguised Raphael is the archangel who's disguised as a man comes along, he's journeying with him and on the way he says that there's going to be a girl there, you know, a daughter of Ragul, who is really the brother of Tobit, and he said you know, you're going to fall in love with her. And he's nervous right away. Tobias is nervous because he heard the rumors that seven men had come up to the altar to marry her, had asked for her hand in marriage, and before it was consummated, before they were able to get into the marriage bed on their way there, a demon Asmodeus actually killed them.
Speaker 1:And so this happened seven times right in this story. And so what we're going to find out is there was lust in their hearts and that lust in their hearts destroyed the love, and so this is again, this is this battle, as John Paul puts it the love as a test of life or death. Don't we see this, linda, in abortion I brought up earlier? When there's no love there and it's just lust, you kill the child and you have no problem with it. Or you mock God, and or you mock God without even trying to do that right.
Speaker 2:And so there's where we're at right.
Speaker 2:yeah, and so there's where we're at yeah, the depth of this battle really needs to be understood as life and death, because it is. You know, abortion being probably the easiest example of death as a result, but it there's. It's so much broader than just that, you know. So in the case of Tobias and Sarah, we again are looking at life and death.
Speaker 2:You know and I found it interesting as I was reading through this, that the Pope knows we had just finished talking about the Song of Songs, which was all this beautiful love language. You know a lot of the metaphors we said. You know aren't really ones we would use nowadays, but the thought was that here are lovers who are speaking to each other from the depths of that authentic love, and yet now he says we don't find that in our story here with Tobias and Tobit, and it's something much deeper than that and we're actually looking at life and death issue here. So in Song of Songs we learn love as strong as death, and in Tobias' story here we learn something even deeper that love stronger than death. So there's a real connection here from what we just looked at in Song of Songs to our story of Tobias.
Speaker 1:And the other theme is the sister, my sister, my bride, right so we saw that in the Song of Songs, that this wooing, this eros, he sees the bridegroom in there, sees the future bride as sister first, before bride, and it's acknowledging her as a person created by God, loved by God.
Speaker 1:He sees, like you said, the mystery of the person first, because what do we do with the sister? We protect them. We see them as a friend, hopefully as a common human being that's worthy of all our dignity and respect. It's only then, when a man sees a woman that way and vice versa, that they can become husband and bride, with an understanding that this is not forego, this is not some Puritan thing where you say, no, I don't feel this incredible power of femininity and masculinity. It's not that. But it's also seeing them even more beautifully, that when you enter into even marital union, sexual union, that it's more beautiful, it's more powerful, it's more transcendent. You're not using them, you're loving them, as Christ loves the church, as the bridegroom loves it. So this is where the liturgy is locked in when you see Christ on a crucifix, the bridegroom who pours himself out to all of us to redeem us and to overcome sin and death. And that's the only way to overcome the sin and death, linda, and that's just.
Speaker 1:The reality is to his redemption and resurrection on the cross.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so to your point of the sister. First, you know the human dignity of the bride for the groom is a theme that can never go away in a marriage. You know, because if it does, then we're just starting to use each other. We don't see the dignity of the human person, and you know you can engage in your marital union frequently, all the time. Whatever, If it's just using each other, it has destroyed. It's a form of death, if you will, in my mind, Jack, of killing off what is the authentic marriage and authentic love. So these themes really do come together and, as you spoke of it coming down to the image of Christ's love for the church. Many, many, many sessions ago we talked about that and here we find ourselves coming back to it and recognizing it in a new way that our marriages are a sign, a visible sign, of Christ's love for the church and that his love, then, is the model for us. So we can't get away from that. It just keeps coming back.
Speaker 1:And it's very practical when you you know most of marriages and Christopher West alludes to it in here too. He said that most of the time when you see the difficulties in marriages. In fact it says here indeed, one would be hard-pressed to find any marriage difficulty that cannot be traced directly or indirectly to a failure to read the language of the body truthfully. So you know what does that mean to read the language of the body truthfully. It's really what we're unpacking here, right? I think that, christopher West, as we get into the story, you want to do a little summary of it, linda, and kind of unpack it. It's really a beautiful, powerful story. It's worth reading the whole book, but we're going to focus on that marriage between Tobias now and Sarah. But kind of give us a little overview.
Speaker 2:And it does read like a wonderful novel and it's full of themes of theology of the body. So Christopher has a nice summary. He says we read in the book of Tobit that before marrying Tobias, sarah had already married seven others and you had spoken, but through the work of the demon, the Asmodeus, each man had died in the bridal chamber on the wedding night before consummating the marriage. With this in mind, let us place ourselves in Tobias's shoes. The angel Raphael tells Tobias that he is to marry Sarah, and John Paul II, man of keen insight that he is, observes that Tobias had reason to be afraid he's a little nervous.
Speaker 1:He's a little nervous and he says that to the archangel yes, he does Again a little nervous. He's a little nervous and he says that to the archangel, you know who he again he doesn't know. He's an archangel yet.
Speaker 2:But and in fact Sarah's father, ragul, was so convinced of Tobias's imminent death that on the wedding day he was already digging Tobias's grave. So that kind of sets up the story of the situation Tobias is in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so let's stop there just for a second. So Ragul, the father of Sarah, the bride-to-be, is embarrassed, right, because the town it's a laughingstock really, you know, and people are saying here we go again. Well, ragul says, well, I'm that night, right. So that night, when they're going to enter into the bridal chamber, right to consummate their marriage, that very night he's out digging a grave, because what he figures is, if Tobias is killed by the demon Asmodeus, that he's going to just put him in the grave and he's going to cover him up, because they can't take another one of these embarrassments, right? And so that's how far this has gone. Of course Tobias is very nervous, and so he knows, because the archangel had already warned him about this. And do you have anything there with that?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes. So the angel Raphael was encouraging Tobias and he said now listen to me, brother, for she will become your wife, and do not worry about the demon, for this very night she will be given to you in marriage. Do not be afraid, for she was destined for you from eternity. You will save her and she will go with you and you will have children by her. And then we read when Tobias heard these things, he fell in love with her and yearned deeply for her. So we're told that the love became that authentic love that we have spoken of many times.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and in there too, you can pass it over really quick too, but you will save her. And we keep hearing that we're to get each other to heaven. And this is really what it's all about, when you really understand what was happening with Christ on the cross. He's sacrificing everything. His eros, his power of love for us is so incredible. You know the mystery of his love. He pours himself out that it's totally agape divine, sacrificial love.
Speaker 1:Well, we have to do that right. You know, in the very beginning we were created in the image and likeness of God. This goes all the way back to Genesis, and so that's where our sexuality came from. God's not a sexual being, but God creates our sexuality to be a sign of Trinitarian love. This is how this is connected. So God said you know, let's create them in our image, in the divine image. He created them, male and female. He created them so that the two again, my wife and I, can become one, can be open to life and become three right Three persons and one a little tiny reflection of God's Trinitarian love.
Speaker 1:In the beginning, in Genesis, before sin, this was linked, this primordial sacrament of marriage. Before sin, we didn't need any other sacraments because this expressed God's love in the world. This was linked, though, to grace. When we fell, we disconnected these two. So this is what we're doing, linda we're bringing the language of the body back into the language of the liturgy.
Speaker 1:We do that through prayer and through the sacraments, and so these sacraments, especially the sacrament of marriage, when open to prayer and this is what we're going to get into now links these back together again. This is the only way to conquer sin and death, and when you put it in a frame like that, this is where Tobias and Sarah now are going to go. They realize this, because Raphael told them right. The archangel said look it, you're going to have to get into prayer here, and he gives them a little sacrament and other things to do. Do you have all of that there? I'd like to really enter into that place where Raphael had given him instructions already, and so he's going to perform this in this prayer, and the prayer is really beautiful.
Speaker 2:Right, right. So here's the prayer, then, of Tobias and Sarah. Blessed are you, o God of our fathers, and blessed for all generations. In your name, let the heavens and the whole creation bless you for all ages. You created Adam and you created Eve, his wife, to be a help and support for him. From the two of them the whole human race was born. You said it is not good that the man should be alone. Let us make him a help similar to himself. Now, it is not out of lust that I take this kinswoman of mine, but, with rightness of intention, grant that she and I may find mercy and that we may grow old together. And they both said amen, amen, jack. I'm going to put a little sidebar here.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:When our daughter got married.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and before you do that, though, I mean for people to understand that Tobias and Sarah are kneeling together, they're saying this prayer together, and so they're offering it up. And just before you passed through it, though he what he says there, you know. He said it's not good for man to be alone. Make a partner like himself. Now, lord, you know that I take this wife of mine not because of lust, but but because of a noble purpose. Call down your mercy on me. This is where this link again is coming, between the language of the body and the language of this liturgy. Call down your mercy on me and her and allow us to live to a happy old age. So they're on their knees. They just had done a sacrament, burning the liver of a fish and some other things, and now they're kneeling, and it's not because of lust. See, this is the battlefield of the heart again. This is that Bernie Sanders versus JD Vance.
Speaker 1:Right One is this beauty of the sacrament we're entering it. The other one is rejecting God and mocking God and, just you know, attacking marriage and the family. So this is what they're doing on their knees. And then he gets up and he's not dead. They find him the next day, right.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I'm sorry to interrupt but I just wanted to make that clear for people.
Speaker 1:It's so important because he's linking it right here the liturgy.
Speaker 2:Right, right, you painted the picture for us of the context of this prayer, which is just beautiful, and what I was going to share is that my daughter had just studied theology of the body, shortly before she got married, and they actually chose this scripture reading as a part of their wedding, because they did have some options, so you know they got it and in a sense, you know, with this being read at their wedding again, was their form of asking God for mercy on them and blessing their marriage.
Speaker 2:And so I just share it because people may think, you know, wow, you're just talking about stuff not practical. And it's as practical, you know, as we can get it when we bring it into our life, because really, all the preparation for marriage, all the courtship, romance and everything, all a part of leading to the wedding, it's the marriage, you know, the day after the wedding and the rest of your life. That really is where the battle is fought and it truly can be life and death in some of those battles, you know so trying to keep this as practical as we can.
Speaker 2:Well, not only is it practical?
Speaker 1:I remember again that when we had three children, married for about 11, 12 years and looking at getting separated, I really thought it was over. I mean, I didn't want to believe that, but I really thought our marriage was over and I fell down on my knees for the first time I had been away from the church for 20 years and said, god, do you have a plan? And it wouldn't be long. And I came back into the church, came back into the mass, came back into the liturgy. I remember at one point my wife was a non-practicing Methodist and I was a non-practicing Catholic when we got married, I remember. So I came back into church. It was very powerful and my wife didn't want to talk about it. She didn't like me or the Catholic church at that point. And so I came back into church, was very powerful and my wife didn't want to talk about it. You know, she didn't like me or the Catholic church at that point. And so I remember getting back down to my knees in the chapel doing the same thing only I'm by myself right and I said I'm getting it, god, but what are you going to do about her? And I heard so clearly I'm not going to do it, you're going to do it right. So I had to become that person of love, to love someone even when they didn't love me back. Well, how do you do that? You don't have the power for that? You have to enter into.
Speaker 1:Even though she wasn't kneeling with me, we were married and, just like Tobias said, you know, I was to get her to heaven. She was going to be part of this thing too, and I opened myself up to God. I said I don't know how I'm going to do it. She won't even talk to me, right. And he filled me with grace. And then I would go home and start to do those small things that you were alluding to, to start to give yourself to someone that doesn't even love them back. And when I couldn't do it anymore, I was complaining in the chapel again one day and I look up at the cross and I go, ooh, that's what he does. Jesus loved me, loved my wife, even when we weren't loving him back.
Speaker 1:It was when the language of our bodies again came into the language of the liturgy that our marriage started to come back together. It was a battle. It was a brutal battle, but it took a long time. This, linda, is why the Church says not to contracept, and I think we should throw it in here, because contraception is what ruined our marriage. We didn't know about this and I talked about this in the past, so I don't want to go over it again, but I didn't realize it.
Speaker 1:You know, we don't realize that this is a sacrament, that when you look at Christ, you look at the altar at Mass, and this is Christ giving himself up, right, his whole body, offering it to the Father to justify all of us, to bring us all back into this divine worship again, to be union and communion with the divine. Christ does that in his body and he pours that out to us Well, in our bodies. We also then are the union of human and divine. And when we make love to one another which we should be building up, my sister, my bride, all the time, but when we join on that marriage bed, john Paul would say it's an altar Men, take your shoes off because you're entering unto holy ground. And so this is a connection, this is a liturgy, this is a sacramental sign reflecting again God's love in the world, and so this is very powerful. So it's a mystery, but you'll know it if you don't do it, and you'll know it when you do do it right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because are we acting in the truth of the language of the body or not? And the way I interpreted this when I heard this is that contraception really is. We're acting through lies. You know, it's actually not the truth of the language of the body, it is a lie, and I am not giving myself fully and completely and not recognizing that God's plan, the end of our union is procreation. You're not going to conceive every time, of course, but that is the purpose of it. And so if I don't recognize that and I'm not acting in that manner, I am living a lie, so to speak, because your union is to be life-giving, linda, exactly so.
Speaker 1:That would be like me going to Mass. I was at Mass this morning, going there receiving the Eucharist and putting it in my pocket and not consuming it. That's what this is. So if you want kind of an analogy of that, here's God, here's Jesus Christ offering you his body literally, and instead of taking it into myself, I put it in the pew or I throw it in the garbage, and so I didn't receive that sacrament. If I'm getting baptized and they actually don't pour water over me, the sacrament is not efficacious, it doesn't take place. If I go to confession and I don't really confess my sins, the forgiveness doesn't take place.
Speaker 1:So all of these things are visible signs that you know. Like John Paul would say right, our bodies, in fact our bodies alone, make visible the invisible, the spiritual and the divine. Our bodies were created to transfer into the visible reality of this world that mystery hidden from all eternity and be a sign of it. And that's Trinitarian love, and that's what marriage. Each one of us are created in the image of God, but the fullest sign is marriage in the family. This is what's being attacked today, linda, because it's the primordial sign, the primordial sacrament in the beginning.
Speaker 2:Yes, and to me what's important to understand too is that as we speak of the agape love, the total, self-giving love, we're never going to be able to do it as great as our Lord and Savior did, but that's the goal to continue to imitate that. You know, draw to the good, true and the beautiful and the physical attraction that we have to one another was given to us by God as a gift. Now that's all part of bringing into the visible world, and so I think it was Pope Benedict that had addressed this, as well as John Paul saying that it's the eros that needs to be brought up into the agape, saying that it's the eros that needs to be brought up into the agape, and so we're not saying, you know, just totally forget the romantic side of a relationship, but that we have to pull that into that agape love.
Speaker 2:Prayer is an important part of it, and I don't know your situation with if you and Jeannie pray together, situation with if you and Jeannie pray together, but it's very clear in so much of the literature about prayer that when a couple is praying together that it so solidifies that union. Because when I have that intimate prayer with my husband in combination with facing and overcoming all the trials that our marriage is presenting us. That that's really the goal for us, because we are together asking for God's grace and, hopefully, together asking for that mercy, like Tobias and Sarah did. You know, jack, with the liturgy, what do we do in the beginning of Mass? The Kyrie, lord have mercy, christ have mercy. We're begging for that mercy, and we need to do that in our personal prayer as well. Yeah, we do, and we're really again.
Speaker 1:We not only see it outside but if we're honest, we acknowledge that we feel this inside right us. We acknowledge that we feel this inside right. This is the most anxious, depressed generation ever, right now, existing today. These generations on the planet today it's 50% of the American population is on some type of drug, the main ones being for anxiety, the main ones being for anxiety and depression. And it's amazing, and almost everybody you talk to you know knows either them or there's somebody around them that's on some type of anxiety medicines and stuff. And so that nervousness, that anxiety should be assigned to us to come into the liturgy to open to that mercy.
Speaker 1:Over and over again, in the Mass and in Scripture, you'll hear Jesus comes in and he says my peace, be with you. My peace be with you. He knows what we're going through in this world. This is a temporal world. It's a battle between good and evil, between truth and lies, between beauty and all that profanes beauty. That's exactly what we read, or I read right from my RX thing right in the beginning right, the beauty that JD Vance is talking about with the child, with marriage, and the total profaning of beauty in Bernie Sanders. And so this is the battle that we're in. You know, when people look around and they see the political battles going on right now, this is all over the world. Linda, you know the attack on Christians, on marriage and on God is happening in Syria. It's happening in.
Speaker 1:China. It's happening all over the world. There's more people, more martyrs. Nigeria, another big one, right where they're kidnapping so many priests and so many Christians, and so we see these battles. There's more martyrs. Do you realize that there's more martyrs today than there ever was in history? More Christians being martyred. It's really something and I just saw another clip yesterday on that in Syria, what they're doing to the Christians, they're really torturing them and I guess they're actually crucifying some of them. It's really sad when you see this. So, when you get anxious and nervous about these things, we should be opening ourselves up to God and asking for the light to come in, and we have to be that light in the world. And it's a temporal space, linda, but we have to be there and we have to be bringing this in, because generation after generation has foregone this and evil is out there for sure.
Speaker 2:Right. And when you speak of Christ saying you know, my peace I give you, not like the world gives you peace, and I think you know, if we say, okay, how is the world giving us peace? Well, the antidepressants, right, the anti-anxiety pills is a way the world is trying to calm us down and give us peace, and that isn't what he's talking about there. You see. So always you're seeing the contrast of God's way versus the world. And as you describe the state of the world we have really fallen so far.
Speaker 1:One of the best things you can do, linda, is get off these things, spend a little time on it. I got to work I mean, this is my office half the time when I'm moving around but on the other hand, there's times you just have to put that down and it can be very addictive. You know, I get a lot of my news from there, but it's not all good stuff and that's okay. You have to know what's going on. But that's again. That's that battlefield of the heart. That's where that sword is. Behind me here we fight that battlefield on the battlefield of the heart between love and lust, and that's really what goes on. You know, I like to kind of wind down with this. You know the summa of this whole thing, which is Ephesians 5, right?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And in essence, you know, he, st Paul, links these two bookends, doesn't he? He links exactly what we're talking about here. He takes the liturgy that we're talking about and the language of the body and puts them together, and so this is it goes. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her. This is what we're talking about here.
Speaker 1:This is what Tobias and Sarah were doing on their knees, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word that he might present the church to himself, which is all of us in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. So Jesus is offering up his sacrifice so that all of us can be without spot or wrinkle. Right, this universal call to holiness. Then he says this even so, now, husbands, you should love your wives as your own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself, for no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it as Christ does the church, because we're members of his body.
Speaker 1:Now he's linking this together, right? For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh, and that sacrament of marriage on that altar of the bed, the marriage bed. And he says, for what reason? Ah, this is a great mystery, but I mean in reference to Christ and the church. It was Jesus Christ who left his heavenly father and his earthly mother to become one flesh with us. Why To link this back right that?
Speaker 1:crucifix there is the marriage bed of the cross, so we have to bring ourselves into that liturgy in order to be redeemed, washed, made spotless, so that we can give this to each other. It's the most practical thing in the world, Linda.
Speaker 2:It is. But then you hear, this is really hard, you know, when you're in the mud with it this is really hard, and that's where that grace comes in that we need so much in order to live out and the sanctification that Christ brings to all of us. Husband and wife have that special task of sanctifying each other, you know, and so their union is lived out in a day-to-day battle, with little things and big things coming along, you see. And when we hear, you know we look at the cross and we hear the words at Mass. This is my body given for you. You know, it struck me so many times that husband and wife can say that to each other if they're living in this grace, in the agape love of Christ. This is my body given for you, not just the sexual union, big part of it, not just the sexual union, big part of it.
Speaker 2:But you know when, when, if dad is providing, you know he's going out and just feels horrible and knows he has to get up and go to work. And you know, another meal I really have to cook another meal here. You know it's in those little things, but it is very truly. This is my body given for you, and together, husband and wife build that family and the children see that. And that is that love brought into the visible, that divine love that our children must learn. So it all makes total sense. I constantly have this in my mind when I'm thinking about you know, how does this really as I love studying this on a intellectual how does this really as I love studying this on an intellectual level how does it really play out in day-to-day life? And it does.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and you know there's a joy. You know the reason it's hard is because we're selfish.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:You know, I mean you know you want to make it really hard. Don't do it and go from relationship to relationship, from abortion to abortion, to broken marriage, to broken hearts. Don't do it. Instead, you'll finally, after this battle is fought on the battlefield of the heart, you start to surrender your selfishness to Christ, who's surrendering his selfishness on the cross. Pick up your cross daily and follow me. We hear those words but we don't do it. When we do it, a joy and a peace enters into your heart. When I'm cooking now, then right, for my bride and for my family, there's a joy there because you're bringing people together and then you see their laughter, and then you're actually even cleaning up and you see the beauty of love around you, the beauty of love in your heart, and you've surrendered yourself. And when you do that, you find the paradox of this right. And the other side.
Speaker 1:You know John Paul would say to young people, young people. You know John Paul would say to young people, young people, you know that your life has meaning to the extent that it's given as a gift to others. So he said that, even to young people. Try it, he said go out and become a gift. This is Mother Teresa. You know, with her nuns, you know, going out and picking up the poor, it's hard work, yes, but it's in giving yourself a way that you find yourself. And this is the paradox of happiness, this is the paradox of peace, this is a paradox of joy, because this is love.
Speaker 1:You know, st Catherine of Siena is one of my favorite, this beautiful, mystical nun, right, third grade education had so much power. Right, she had the stigmata. One time she would go into these ecstasies and God, the Father, told her. He said you'll never be able to love me like I love you. And she wanted to know why.
Speaker 1:And he said because I initiate this gift, expecting nothing back. You can't do that because I've already given you life, I've given you love, I've already given you the gift. So you can't give me a gift that you haven't already received. But he said that's why I created your neighbor, that's why I created your neighbor. See, that's what I had in mind when I got up off my knees and said you got to go love someone that doesn't even love you back. See, you have to go out and do that to your neighbor, because that's what Christ does to us on the cross, that's what God, the Father, does so. That's why you have to go out and love your neighbor Linda, because you're going to love somebody unconditionally and God gives you the grace to do that. It's a beautiful thing when you understand it.
Speaker 2:Yes, so it's the marching orders for Lent, right? Yes, so it's the marching orders for Lent. Right, here we are. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much, Linda. Thanks for being with us. Hey, thanks everybody. Thanks for joining us. You know, meditate on that. Go read the book of Tobit. It's a long book but it might be a good Lenten exercise. Linda huh, yeah, Amen, Yep, All right, Goodbye everyone. Thanks, Jack. Thank you so much.