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
#621 Sacred Warriors: Young Men Reclaiming Their Hearts and Facing Fears Through Prayer
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The human heart has an extraordinary capacity for resilience. Even in our current era—where young men grow up bombarded by toxic influences that rob their innocence and shatter their moral imagination—something remarkable is happening. They're awakening to the sacred.
Mike Pacer, president of Five Stones and author of "Prayers for Catholic Men," joins Jack to explore how prayer is transforming young men's lives against all cultural odds. Pacer shares his own journey of faith—leaving behind a successful career as a trial attorney when God simply said "leave"—and how surrendering to divine guidance led him to a more authentic life.
The conversation centers around three foundational spiritual practices for men: beginning each day on your knees in surrender to God, viewing temptation as an invitation to prayer rather than a cause for shame, and committing to love the next person you encounter. These simple yet powerful habits create a framework for spiritual growth amid today's distractions.
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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, very excited to be giving an update for Claymore Militist Christie. This is our discipleship program for young men. I have the president of Five Stones, mike Pace, who just wrote a book on prayer. I asked him to come on because I was telling him about these young guys that we're meeting Despite all odds, growing up in the most toxic culture, their innocence has been robbed from them at a very young age, obliterated their moral imaginations and in spite of all of that, it's an incredible story of the human heart and the resilience of the human heart to seek something more.
Speaker 1:And that's what these guys are doing. You know they woke up and they said you know what? Enough of this stuff. There's got to be something more. And they're awakening to the sacred. Mike Pasture, it's great to be with you. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for having me. Jack, tell us a little bit. So you're the president of Five Stones. I've been out there to visit you on a number of occasions. You guys are doing incredible work. Give us just a minute or two of how you decided to work and take over at Five Stones and the kind of work that you're doing.
Speaker 2:Mike, yeah, kind of the short. The very short version is I'm a recovering trial attorney.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:You know, I was a litigator for about 14 years and really starting to question whether I was doing what God wanted me to do and really, just you know, the fighting every day and as a litigator just was really starting to wear on me. Lori, my wife also was starting to question are we, you know, do we really believe this stuff? Are we all this faith stuff? And we're starting to raise our kids and bring them to the sacraments? Are we going to live our lives the way we're living them, if this is what we truly believe?
Speaker 2:So we went on a retreat together, had a really strong Holy Spirit moment. I asked God look, I don't think you want me to be a trial attorney anymore. What do you want me to do? I thought you know I was looking for some destination. Oh, you know, go be an attorney for the church or go do this. And the words were just leave. So I fought those words for a year and on the Feast of St Therese 2004. I resigned my partnership, walked out of the law, having no idea what I was going to do.
Speaker 1:Isn't that amazing? Now, our friendship goes back quite a while, and so I know that journey that you're on. It's not always easy, is it? You wrote a book Prayers for Catholic Men, and the reason I want to bring this up right now there's a section in there and I don't want to focus on that so much today, but there's a section in there on discernment and it's very interesting. If we don't get to it today, mike, we'll get to it again, because what you said on discernment is very important.
Speaker 1:It's very important for these young guys that are trying to figure out the next stage of their life, so how to pray for discernment. Because here's what's happening, mike. Just to set this up these young guys, some of them have not been formed at all, some of them have, some of them haven't, but some of them are growing up without fathers. Some of them are growing up with no faith at all and they're coming into prayer and they're finding something very, very powerful. You know this vacuum that they've been growing up in. One of the things that's most important to us is, first thing, in the morning, we ask these young men and I do the same thing. Before you look at that, I call it a goofy phone, but there's some good things that come out of a phone. But before you look at that phone in the morning, before it robs you of your attention, get down on your knees and what we do is we pray with our blessed mother, mike, be it done to me according to your word, right off the bat, and we're opening up our hearts. The second thing we do is we understand temptation is not a sin. Jesus himself was tempted, so we use temptation as an invitation to prayer. You have a section in there that's so important for these young guys. And then the third thing we get up and we become persons of love, filled with divine life and love. We go out and practice that. We realize we need prayer all day. For that.
Speaker 1:Your book starts out so beautifully and I think this is going to be a great resource. In fact, I want to get this to a lot of the young guys that we work with and have them on hand for myself, and I'll put a link in the show notes for young guys and the people that love them that want to buy that book. But it starts out right off the bat, mike, and this is where I want you to go with. Here's how you start your morning.
Speaker 1:So we kept it purposely simple, mike, because we said, hey, no matter how busy you are in the morning, you got three, four or five minutes. That's okay. You can do these three simple things. What we're finding is guys are getting up five, 10 minutes earlier and they go. What else could we pray? What else do we do? What can we do during the day? And so I'm going to throw it in your court, mike, and talk a little bit about some of the things that you wrote in here for early morning prayer, lunchtime, catch it again, and maybe even on the way home. So this is where we're filling up our hearts, because there's a lot of distractions out there for these young guys.
Speaker 2:So everything you're saying is true. And prayer, of course. Of course it's for young men and it's for old fogies like you and me, and the reality is prayer is for everyone, male, female. And prayer, remember, the most important thing is prayer is just communication, Prayer is just a relationship, and God, above all things, wants to be in a relationship with you. So what's the start of the day, my favorite phrase about that moment, the first moment of the day. St Josemaría Escrivá called it the heroic moment. You know, you wake up at that moment and it doesn't matter you're groggy, maybe you're anxious, maybe you're still tired, maybe you're sad, maybe you're excited, doesn't really matter. That's that moment, that first moment of consciousness that you get to make a decision. And what's your decision? Your decision is for God or not for God. That's exact.
Speaker 1:You know, don't go too fast through this, because what you hit is just perfect, right? This is exactly why we get down to our knees and there's a fear sometimes, right, I mean, there's a lot of things hitting us right as men. And what you're saying, mike, just let's unpack that a little bit. You know, these guys are down on their knees in the morning not only temptations from sexual sins, but from the fear what they got to go out and face in the world. You know, I mean, this life that we're living is not so easy. And so talk a little bit about that. Facing the fears in the morning, first thing.
Speaker 2:Again. Well, let's focus on fears. But it doesn't matter what if you're about to have the greatest day of your life. And that's one of the things that the devil's out. You want to talk about it, the devil. You actually are more inclined to turn to God when you're in fear than when everything's going great.
Speaker 1:So I think it's actually sometimes easier to get up and pray when you're afraid of the day.
Speaker 2:How about that day that you just had, that awesome day? Everything's going to be phenomenal. Are you still willing to get up and make that first moment about God? Because God wants everything. He wants our fears, he wants our joys, he wants our sorrows, he wants our sufferings, he wants our accomplishments.
Speaker 1:He wants to celebrate with you, doesn't he? In your joys. That's a great point. Thank you for not letting me take you off just in one direction there, because God, you, you know he wants a relationship. And this is the biggest thing, mike, isn't it that we have to? As men? We have to realize this is real, this is what these young guys are waking up to. You know, one good thing about the evil in the world, you know, is that you know we can see that, and you know we're bombarded and we say, hey, you know, I saw what happened when you guys took God out of a life. What would happen if I put him back in? And that's what we're talking about here, isn't it? Yep.
Speaker 2:So that moment, the first conscious moment of your day, has got to be turned to your God, your creator, your father, and you just give him the day. And there's you have. In Claymore, you've got some suggestions.
Speaker 1:They're awesome.
Speaker 2:Give it to God, Call upon our lady, Give the day to God that habit of getting up. Here's another thing too. And I'm going to get up at 6 when you know you're really going to get out of bed at 7. If you're really tired, get out at 7. Get up at 8, whatever it is. But whatever you made that decision the night before, for whatever reason it was, then get up at that moment, Open up your eyes. You know when you're young, jump out of bed on your knees when you your knees when you're a little bit older.
Speaker 2:I kind of do the kind of like, kind of fall off the bed to the side. I try not to hurt any of my muscles and kind of slip onto my knees right next to my bed and then give God that first moment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it. I love it. And you know what? Over time you're going to find out that it's so much better just to get up and just flop on down to your knees and say good morning to God. It's so much better than fighting that snooze button a couple of times. It's almost ridiculous what people do. But I agree 100%.
Speaker 2:The other thing to think about too is, you know, habits. Again, we have to be careful about habits. If we're doing things out of habit for merely the sake of habit, that's not good. But when we develop good habits in life, that's what carries us through the times where it's very tough to do the right thing. So you know, whether it's something like prayer, sometimes you have no problem getting up first thing in the morning and praying. Other times you have no desire. God is not talking back. Well, he is. You just can't hear him. You can't feel it. You're getting no consolations whatsoever.
Speaker 2:It's the habit that carries you in that prayer and there's no difference between that and getting up and going to your job every day. Nobody feels like going to their job every day, but you have to do it. Nobody feels like going to school every morning, but you've got to do it. If you're married, nobody is perfectly happy with their wives every day, but you have to work at that relationship. And let's say, you struggle with pornography. Now that's going to surprise a lot of guys about that marriage thing, Mike.
Speaker 1:Yeah exactly Somebody's going to say you mean, I'm not the only one that's not happy, every single day with her.
Speaker 2:Right and vice versa.
Speaker 1:Right, but you're right. And when you open up the prayer, you know, the third thing we do, mike, is we got to love the next person we see. And so if that, if you're living with a spouse or with kids, and if you're not, then I don't care if it's the gas station attendant down the street or, you know, the cashier. You love the next person, you see, and you know, you realize you need prayer in order to do that every day. Prayer in order to do that every day. But you can do it. You can actually do it. You know, when you start to pray and you're bringing joy into a place, into a house or into that local gas station, and you know you can bring some joy in there. It's amazing, man, and you may not feel God on your knees yet, but when you go out, you know you're going to find them. You're going to find them, like Mother Teresa, in the faces of other people that you see.
Speaker 2:Well, let's put those two together. Why do we turn to God? We turn to God first thing? A lot of reasons, because it's not all about me when we wake up in this excuse me larchic slumber, hit the snooze eight times and start trying to figure out well, how can I make myself feel good today? Now you've turned internally, not externally. You haven't even recognized that every good thing that could possibly come today comes because your creator, god, has given you those beautiful things. Now, when you get out of yourself right away first thing in the morning, then you realize the other thing. What are the two commandments? Love God and then love your neighbor.
Speaker 2:So it's not all about you, it's not all about you, and so you get in that habit right away of getting out of yourself, and so you meet God. And then, when you meet person, when you meet that first person that you tell, hey, good look, act with love towards the first person you meet. Well, who are you? What are you doing? You're acting towards God again, because you're supposed to see God in your neighbor. This is the beautiful, beloved child of God that he created. Whether it's your spouse, whether it's the gas station attendant, this is a beautiful son or daughter, you know what.
Speaker 1:So today's the feast day, as we're recording this, of St Catherine of Siena In her dialogue with God. Right, this is what we're speaking about, this dialogue that she had with God. She would go on these ecstasies and one time God said you'll never be able to love me like I loved you. And she said what do you mean? He said because I already initiated this love, I already gave you this love. You're giving this back to me, but, but, but. I created your neighbor so that you can love somebody that doesn't always love you back, so you can experience this type of love that I do.
Speaker 1:What you said, mike, is so important. God fills us and you can't give what you don't have right. So you know, god fills us and you can't give what you don't have right, so that we can love people that don't even love us back, and that's what God does. It's amazing. When you enter into that story with God, mike, you can change the world. You know, become who you are. Came from St Catherine of Siena again. Become who you are and you will light the world on fire. And it's true, in your own little way, in your own little world, you can become the hero of the story by just being a person of love.
Speaker 2:Amen, and being the person God's calling you to be.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, yes, mike, before I rudely interrupted you a couple minutes ago, you were also talking about these addictions that hit young men, and that's number two, right. We're going to be on our knees and we're going to say temptations will come, but temptation is not a sin, it's an invitation to prayer. You have a nice section in here, michael, on temptation and also the beauty of prayer, right, and how we can pray in and through those things.
Speaker 2:Well, temptation is going to come and addictions, and what I realized, you know, what I was trying to get across is we can make things very complicated and I am not trying to lessen the very seriousness and the very, you know, involved nature of serious addictions, whether it's chemical, whether it's sexual, whether it's anger issues, whatever, all sorts of different things. There's a lot of things we're going to have to do to work at those. You know, yes, prayer is very important. There's a lot of things we're going to have to do to work at those. You know, yes, prayer is very important. Now, if you are very addicted to alcohol or to drugs, you very well may have to get external help besides just prayer. And the same way with, you know, pornography addiction. There's a lot of great organizations, including yours, that helps deal with this.
Speaker 2:But, at its basis, one of the important things when I don't want to lessen no-transcript it's a habit and all things in our character start with good habits. It doesn't mean it's going to always carry us through every single moment of every part of our lives, but what it's going to do is it's going to give us a lot more strength to get through them. Because when we develop these habits and again, it's not every moment. You're going to just feel like, ah, the lights are on and God's shining on you. My gosh, I'm loving this prayer Like no. I want to go back to sleep, but I'm going to pray through it.
Speaker 1:Michael, that's why we have a sword right, Because what you're describing.
Speaker 1:What you're describing is the battle. That's the battle right there. What you're describing right now, where it doesn't always feel good, it feels like, oh my gosh, I got to face the demons out there. That's John Paul would call it, and see the sword behind me. That's the Claymore sword right there and I have that there because that's the battle. That's battle time. I don't really feel like it. Look at, a hero's not made is he Mike? Because it's all just kumbaya. A hero's made because he's there to face the demons and the evils out there.
Speaker 1:And John Paul would say that that battle, that battle first takes place on the battlefield of the human heart, the individual man and woman's heart. It's usually between love and lust, right Between. You know this giving that we're talking about and grasping and taking. When you can't figure out your way through that, a lot of times you feel an ache in your heart and then we start with our addictions, trying to fill those infinite desires of the heart with these finite things of the world that were given to us as beautiful things. You know, our passions and desires were given to us by God. It's these twisting of our passions and desires and what you're describing is this untwisting again. Through prayer you can untwist those and open those back up, can't you? To our Lord?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and focus. I mean the whole thing is focus. The beauty about the theology of body is to understand that he created a male and female without shame and they looked at each other with love and beauty at first and then we got broken. So the reality is, the body is beautiful, the male and female anatomy and the sexual act is beautiful and it's amazing. But do we distort it? Sure, we distort it. So we need to find out, well, where are those distortions happening in our lives? What are our habits towards that? What do we have to avoid?
Speaker 2:And you know I'm sure you've had a million different conversations of this over all of your many podcasts but that phone, that phone can be your best friend. It can be your worst enemy. So you have to develop habits, you have to develop filters, you have to develop whatever it is, how to use that phone properly. And it's funny you said about the first thing in the morning looking at your phone. I would tell everybody never make that. I wouldn't make it your second thing either After your prayer, don't just turn to your phone, because then what you're really trying to do? You talk about habits. If your first thing is, I'm going to spend three minutes praying to God, and then I'm going to grab my phone and check my social media.
Speaker 1:I'm going to check one of my news feeds or whatever, even the news.
Speaker 2:What are you basically saying through this prayer thing in order to go do the thing I really want to do, as opposed to do the prayer thing and then get up and take a shower or get up and work out or get up and make the cup of coffee?
Speaker 1:and don't look at your phone right away.
Speaker 2:Put that further down in the day.
Speaker 1:Because you're going to have time and again. You bring it out in the book too. You're going to have time to meditate, you're going to have time in that silence. Talk a little bit about silence, mike, because this is a great time, look. The third thing is go love the next person, you see, but even before you go love that next person unless they're laying right next to you you got a little time to be in silence, right, and this is what Mike is saying right now about looking at your phone right after it intrudes on that silence, that time where what happens, mike, when we're quiet now, what happens in this dialogue? Somebody gets to speak to us now.
Speaker 2:Gosh, give me a couple hours now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've got to put together— Give me three minutes.
Speaker 2:I've got to put together a bunch of those points. First of all, we always think about prayer. Petition is always the first thing that comes to mind. Prayer is talking, but prayer is communication. So therefore, prayer is listening. If we're always shouting at God working our way and I look, I love the rosary, I love the chapter, those are all good. But if all we're doing is focusing on my words, my words, my words, my words, we're not listening. We have to listen to God. God wants to speak to us. So let's say you get up, you get in the car.
Speaker 2:One thing I hate about my car and I've gone through all the different things and I've turned it off a lot it still does it. My car automatically turns music on, automatically turns something that's playing. And I personally, when I get in my car and I may listen to the news at some point, I may listen to a book, I may listen to a podcast, but when I first get in my car first thing in the morning, I want nothing but silence for a while, because we have to just spend that moment in silence. I just want to be present. It's a great time, it's my first thing in the morning. Most people aren't awake yet. I get to work fairly early. I'm going to 630 Mass, so I love that moment of darkness, of silence in my car. Wait, jack, I'm going to hold you One more, one more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah good.
Speaker 2:You talked about silence and you also talked about loving an individual. Now we always think, loving an individual, I'm going to go. You said I'm going to go. You said the gas issue. I'm going to go pump gas for the person. I'm going to go wish them a Merry Christmas or a Happy Valentine's Day or whatever. One of the most beautiful acts of love is to listen to a person. How often are we too busy talking and not listening? That is one of the most beautiful acts of silence is just to listen to another.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true. You know when and again, a lot of the guys listening to Claymore are single, but not all of them, that's for sure. And of course, a lot of the people that love them are married parents, et cetera, et cetera. And this is the first thing when I'm talking to guys in a relationship with a woman and trying to figure out how to get uh, how to, how to deepen that and see what went wrong is to put that phone down and listen. You know when I first you think I wouldn't have to discover this, mike, but I did, I put start to put that phone down and listen. And you know the first thing about a man right as soon as a woman says something, we're trying to fix it. And I stopped trying to fix it. I just was listening.
Speaker 1:It was amazing and my wife started to have this joy in her voice. I honest to goodness, mike, I hope she doesn't listen to this. Sometimes I didn't even know what she was saying. You know what I mean. I'm just allowing it Like I had questions like what are you talking about? But I didn't Long as she was rolling, I just listened and it was amazing how I started to understand there's things going on in her heart, in her head. I had no idea and I started to get to know her by listening, like that it was amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's. The problem is, you know, we do want to go fix, we want to jump to, you know, to the next level, and when we start figuring things out in our brains, we're not listening anymore. I mean, I'm kind of listening, but I'm even listening for a reason. It sadly goes back to one of the reasons why I'm happy I'm not a trial attorney, because while I'm sitting there in front of a group of people, whether it's a judge or whether it's the jury, oh sure, I'm listening, but I'm only listening to the point that I'm getting the information that I need to make my next point, to make sure that I win.
Speaker 1:And that's how I was trained, not a good way to deliver a relationship, so I can actually listen and think at the same time, yeah, but I'm listening for my purposes, to get what I want out of it.
Speaker 2:So it's been a lifelong journey of trying to listen to my wife, listening to people who I don't like. God has put people in my life that I have to deal with. I have to help and they're obnoxious to me. They're hard to listen to. Certain people with mental illness that I have to deal with. I love them, but they're hard to listen to and to just shut up and listen. That's one of the greatest acts of love.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's why it's so important what you said, with prayer in the morning to listen to God, let him speak to you about these things. We don't realize it, but there's going to be more grace that flows into those relationships throughout the day because of what we did in the morning. In other words, god knows that we're going to be, you know, in relationships, or at least in contact with these people that are difficult. I might be difficult some days, right?
Speaker 1:No, jack stop it not you, but you know you have to have the grace to do this, you know, and that grace is going to come from that morning. But we're not done yet. You know, talk a little bit about. You've got some prayers there for lunchtime and here's the last two things we'll hit on today, mike, and then I'm going to tell the audience. I want you to come back for a couple other things, but that lunchtime prayer, you've got a few minutes there. It's time to kind of reset again. And then at nighttime we're getting home, because when you walk in the door at night again, this could either be a great fruitful time to unwind and to open your heart up or it could be just a time of distractions again. This is where a lot of guys with porn addictions and drinking and stuff, this is where all this stuff comes up again.
Speaker 2:The age-old question is not only what should I pray or how should I pray, but one of the big questions is how often should I pray? And I thought Guardini had a great statement which he puts it as the minimum.
Speaker 2:Who had this statement Guardini, bearish minimum. Kiss God good morning, check in with him in the middle of the day and then kiss him good night. So he's saying a bearish minimum. Make your first thought of the day about God. Make your last thought, you know, communication with God, and those are two pretty long, you know, far away bookends. Check in at least once more in the day.
Speaker 1:I like that. I like that a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So start off with prayer in the morning. And I do think you know, before you go to sleep, you should try to first of all get rid of all the worries, the concerns, everything of the day, and try to have that last moment as much as possible focused on God. It's a great time for examination of conscience and other types of prayer. Reading the Bible is really nice right before you go to sleep, whatever. Now in the middle of the day, it's important. Now the Jesuits they have a habit of doing what's called examine. Jesuits, they have a habit of doing what's called examine.
Speaker 2:So kind of looking at you, kind of go through your morning and what have you done? What has your life been like? What are the things and has God been in it? Now, maybe God's been very well in that, you know, maybe it's cleaning out the trash, maybe you're a welder, it was welding, maybe it was going to school, maybe you're a teacher, or maybe it was welding. Maybe it was going to school, maybe you're a teacher, or maybe it was bad. Maybe you know, god was not in it. You spoke very poorly to your mother, your brother, your wife, whoever.
Speaker 2:All right, then, time for a little course alteration. What am I going to do this afternoon and how am I going to make some changes for this afternoon. This does not have to be 30, 40 minutes. This can be a couple minutes. But quiet yourself, take a couple deep breaths, think about it, come back to God and then ask him. So, whatever form this takes, the important thing is remember you're in the middle of your day. Hopefully God was with you for this first half. Maybe he wasn't. If not, hey, let's get him back in there in the afternoon.
Speaker 2:Beautiful Night prayer we talked about, but I want to talk about one that I think is very important in our culture, and that is most of us have this break that comes at some point or another, where we finish work or we finish school and we come back to our house. We come back to our family. It could be to a parent, it could be to a spouse, it could be to children, and it's a big change. Okay, and even for people, let's say you're a, let's say you're, you're a woman or a man, and you're you're the house husband, the housewife, whatever it is. Well, now you may be still in the same place, but your world's going to change because people are coming back in to your world.
Speaker 2:It's that moment and what I try to do and I'm not as good as as I should in that car. I get into the garage and I don't just hop out of the car. I'm like, wait a second, I'm about to go greet my spouse or my children. My children are grown now, but my spouse still home. What do I want to share about my day? What do I not want to share about my day? I don't want to walk in there and talk about all my problems. How am I going to let go of the problems? How am I going to be loving towards this person? How am I going to focus myself to live with this person, to love with this person and to listen to this person and so making that transition from one part of your life to another part. I don't know if great saints have talked about it, but I would say I think it's one of the most important things we can do as people who just live in our society and our culture.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's beautiful. You also said in the book which I hadn't thought about as much when you're walking in the door and you had a great day and you just walk in, exuberant.
Speaker 1:Again, it's about me though my great day and you might be walking into a, you know, into a house where people have struggled and they really don't need to hear about my great day yet. You know what I mean. Give them some transition time. You know, the biggest thing I think a man could learn is that it's not all about me and it doesn't have to be, and when you do that it's something so beautiful that happens. It doesn't it, mike? And in other words, when I can humble myself and it doesn't have to be about me over a little bit, it doesn't take long and all of a sudden you can relax. You know, I don't have to be the center of the stage anymore. You know I can walk in and I put my kids or my friends or whoever that is. I let them be center stage. Let God be center stage. If I'm walking into a house with nobody there, right, god center stage. And maybe I'm going to go out then and do something good for somebody. But anyways, at the end I'm so much more relaxed.
Speaker 1:I mean, there was a time where, if it wasn't, you know, if I wasn't like performing somehow or something, right, but now I don't have to do that anymore and I learned this many years ago. Now. It's just a joy to get into somebody else and say how was your day no, you tell me about you or even if it was a struggle and to get into that. And what a gift that is to be able to be a gift to other people. And it's a beautiful thing John Paul said to young people so often. He said young people, you know that your life has meaning to the extent that it's a gift to others. And he said you'll find yourself in giving yourself away. And it's true, it's really true.
Speaker 2:You know it's something that just hit me too that you said some of your audience are perhaps young men that maybe they live alone and maybe they don't have a spouse yet they're not living with their parents, that's right. Or young women.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about that for a second. That's often yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, let's talk about that for a second. So now you know, maybe you're still fairly early in your career, where you don't have a lot of autonomy. So you're at work and a lot of your day is structured around what you have to do, or you're at school and it's such a round. Well, I've got to go to these classes, I've got to do the studying, et cetera, and now you're going to walk into your house. Let's say you're going to walk into an apartment all by yourself.
Speaker 2:Another great reason to stop and say well, you've got now this chunk of time two, three, four, whatever number of hours how are you going to use it? Are you going to crack a beers? Is this really the way that you're supposed to spend your Tuesday night, your Wednesday night, your Thursday night, every single night? What are you going to do and how are you going to use your time and what time are you going to go to sleep that night, if nobody is telling you what to do? Well, if you're going to get back up at five or six the next morning, maybe that's the time to say you know what I think I'm going to do this weekend. Tonight I'm going to do blank, and I've been pretty tired today. I'm going to make sure I'm in bed by blank whatever it is, but it's a great check time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's beautiful. You know those are times and we'll get into it in the future, mike, but those are times for these little fasts. I, you know, we always talk to young guys about these little fasts. You know, when I hit my knees in the morning, I usually give up one or two little things. Right, no dessert today. You know, no alcohol today, whatever. And you know, pick out. You know, pick out your poison. And just once, just today, I'm going to give this up. And then temptation is not a sin. So this will be a temptation to go back to whatever that habit was. And now I open.
Speaker 1:I open, I'm praying all day, because when you fast you get a little hungry, you start praying and I offer that up. When you do that for a while, you'll overcome some of those bad habits. Or at least, if I'm going to watch a game, you know I'm not going to do it as soon as I get home. First I'm going to pray, I'm going to call somebody up, make somebody else's life a little bit better. I'm going to do one or two little things and then later on, hey look if I watch sports for a half hour or something, that's. You know, you have to make those decisions for yourself. But if you sit there right off the bat, like you said, you sit down right away. You lose that inertia, man and uh, and it's so much better to unwind with a little prayer and walk, take a jog, a walk. It's good stuff. Undo some of those bad habits.
Speaker 1:Michael, let me just mention a couple of things. I'd love to have you back on, because you've got this book again. Tell us where you can get it. We'll put it in the show notes. This is a small book and everybody should be carrying this around with them. It's really got those beautiful morning, lunch, dinner routines. Whether you're single you've got something about there whether you're married, so there's prayers for everybody there. But then later on in the book you get into the Mass, confession, the Rosary. These are all things that are very important to Claymore, and so I'd love to have you back to talk about that. But for right now, mike, where can guys and family get this?
Speaker 2:Pretty much. You can get it anywhere. The books are available. I'd like to support.
Speaker 1:Ignatius. Okay, let me say the name again. So Prayers for Catholic Men by Mike Pace. Yeah, it's by Ignatius Press.
Speaker 2:So obviously you know I love Ignatius Press. They're an amazing Catholic publisher. So Ignatiuscom is their website. You can get it there, you know. But obviously it's getting out to bookstores now and it's, you know, on all the online type stores as well. So Beautiful.
Speaker 1:Well, you know it's, it's. It's amazing how you and I started to talk and I was telling you about Claymore and I was over by you actually for some some uh, some work involving the John Paul II Renewal Center and uh, and then you reach out with this prayer and it just fits so well into what we're doing now. So we really appreciate it. It's really done well. Some beautiful prayers there and a good reminder Can.
Speaker 2:I point out, jack, we've talked about the prayers, but the other thing about this, it's a daily guide, you know, and I really like the name, prayers for Catholic Men. But it's really more than that. It addresses very simply all sorts of different things that hit a man in his life Going to school, determining should I go to school, should I become a doctor, a lawyer, a janitor, a welder, a priest, should I get married, should I not get married? I'm suffering from depression. I'm suffering from the loss of a child, the loss of a spouse, the loss of a parent.
Speaker 2:I'm facing retirement, I'm facing the end of life, all these different issues, all these very key moments of life. It's addressed, there's some advice, simple, and then there's prayer to help you as you're going through those challenges in life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, those are great points the discernment that I brought up earlier, what you're kind of talking about there today too, right now, with the discernment process. How do I get through these? How do I make these decisions? How do I deal with these things? Yeah, it's really beautiful. You know, when I sat down to read it I said, well, I'm just going to read a bunch of prayers, and it's not like that. Even the addiction sections. You know, you open that up, you talk about it and then you bring the prayers in. So it's done really well. So thank you for that work, mike. Hey, God bless you.
Speaker 1:Reminder for you, for those of you who live in the Chicagoland area join Illinois Right to Life at one of the most impactful pro-life events of the year. Don't forget, this is about action too. To be part of Claymore, you have to go out. You have to go out and do good things in the world. Pro-life is one of the things that we have to do. So we have their annual Leaders for Life dinner is being held on Thursday, may 15th at Drury Lane Theater and Events in Oakbrook Terrace, illinois. It's going to be featuring big names, wonderful people like Abby Johnson, dr Anthony Laventino, dr Linda Corey and Father Tom Lawyer, who's been with us on a number of occasions, an incredible priest. Plus, experience their new Pro-Life Expo, where the John Paul II Renewal Center will be there exhibiting Love Ed.
Speaker 1:I'll be there with our executive director, david Avignone. So stop by. Meet David, he's an incredible guy. Enjoy an open bar. Meet David, he's an incredible guy. Enjoy an open bar. You know we're Catholic and Christian, so we can have a glass of wine or a beer to start the program. Get your tickets at IllinoisRightToLifeorg. Check the show notes for more information. Thank you, hey. Thanks everyone. Thanks for joining us today. We'll get Mike back on in a couple of weeks and we'll go into the Mass discernment confession, maybe some other things. Right, michael? Thank you so much. Thanks everyone. You're welcome. Thank you, jack.
Speaker 2:God bless.