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
#642 Claymore (2) The Battlefield of the Heart! Awakened by Beauty, Commissioned for Battle, Seeking Adventure and Truth
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What if your deepest desires—even the ones that sometimes feel overwhelming or confusing—weren't obstacles to overcome but rocket fuel for your spiritual journey? In this profound exploration of authentic masculinity, Jack and Mark Schmitt unpack how the Claymore Battle Plan helps men redirect their passions toward their divine purpose.
Drawing from Jack's childhood memories of adventure, battle, and beauty, we discover how these core masculine themes reflect our deepest spiritual longings. That magnetic pull toward beauty you've experienced? It's actually a divine spark designed to draw you out of yourself and into communion with God.
The conversation takes a practical turn as Jack and Mark address the daily battlefield of the human heart. Rather than repressing desires or indulging them, they offer a third way: opening our passions to God and allowing Him to transform them. When you notice beauty that stirs something in you—whether a person or anything that awakens longing—you can immediately redirect that spark toward gratitude and prayer.
This approach reveals an extraordinary truth: your temptations aren't roadblocks to sanctity but can set you on the very path itself.
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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. Welcome, especially to Claymore. These are the young guys that we've been working with. That's the big Claymore sword behind me. It's good to be with you. It's good to be with Mark Schmidt back for another session. Really, we did a little reset, didn't we, mark? And so last week, last Friday, was number one, claymore number one, you'll see in the title, and so this is session number two. So for all the guys joining us, some new material. Of course, we're always bringing over from a book that I'm writing, so we want to make sure we touch all the different points and, mark, it's good to be with you Always a pleasure to be with this great community and looking forward to diving through Claymore again.
Speaker 2:You know, as I've been thinking about Claymore as we were preparing to sit down, something that came to mind that I wanted to kind of start us off with this morning was a baseball analogy that I had heard from Bishop Barron. He said you know so if you're trying to teach someone the game of baseball, one approach is you could just sit him down, go through all the rules of the game, the positions, etc. Go through all the rules of the game, the positions, etc. Another option is you bring that person to a game at Wrigley Field. You know, you let them experience the smell of the stadium, the sounds. You get to watch the players closely, allow them to study the game. You know, you give them an opportunity to really experience and fall in love with baseball. And I think we can all recognize that going to the stadium is a much different and richer experience of baseball versus just sitting down and explaining the rule book to someone. And this is why Claymore is so important. It's because it's not just about information. Claymore is meant to bring you into the stadium. It's meant to bring you to a deeper love and union with the person of Jesus Christ, and so that we can become the men that he has created us to be.
Speaker 2:We've talked about this, you talk about this all the time. There is a crisis in masculinity, of just being an authentic human being, the way God has created us. You know St Irenaeus. He said the glory of God is man fully alive. And so the question then is well, how do we do this? You know, how do we become fully alive? Where does Claymore step in and fill this gap? And so, you know, jack, you've outlined and I'm just going to kind of go through these quickly here as we get into the episode today but really three steps in taking back the territory for Christ becoming fully alive.
Speaker 2:So step one is restoring the dignity of the human person, you know, and understanding what it means to actually be human, and we need to recognize that we have been made in the image and likeness of God and that we are made by a God of love who desires us to be filled with his love so that we can then become people of love. And so step two is restoring marriage in the family. So, now that we have been filled and received this divine love from God. We then have to become a gift and pour ourselves out to others and bringing God's love into the world, into our homes, those closest to us. You know one of my favorite quotes from Mother Teresa if you want to change the world, go home and love your family. How crucial it is the building block of society to bring that love of God into your home.
Speaker 2:And then step three is now we're getting out into the culture. It's that socio-political activism, it's answering Christ's call to go out into the vineyard to bring the light of our faith into our communities, the world around us. And so those are just kind of a quick summary of these three steps. But you know, on the website, the John Paul II Renewal Center, under the resource tab, you can download the Claymore Battle Plan and there's further spiritual theological formation We'll get into this over the course of the weeks of all that Claymore entails. But the last thing before we really dive in today is I want to highlight is Claymore is meant to be done in the context of discipleship and friendship.
Speaker 1:You know, this isn't just you alone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you alone in your house. You know my football coach in college.
Speaker 1:Well, again that analogy comes back. You know, when you step into the arena with other people, you actually stepped back into the stadium again to watch the game. You know, if you're just home by yourself, that's not the same thing. You're really making that connection to the outside, with with life, with other people. You're at the game now. You're at the game with others, you know we're social beings, the way God created.
Speaker 2:We're meant for relationship, we're meant for community and also just recognizing, recognizing how, how important it is for surrounding ourselves with the right people. You know our as I was saying, our football coach in college. He would say you know you are who you surround yourself with. You know you need to surround yourself with good, other like-minded men who are all striving to be Saints. So that's kind of a little intro here, but, jack, I'll toss it. I'll toss it back to you.
Speaker 1:We start with our hearts, right With our own hearts, with our own passions and desires. This is what makes it so important. This is how you really come into the story. You don't come into somebody else's story and say, okay, where's my heart at, especially what Plato would call eros, these great sensual desires. But they're also desires for what's true, good and beautiful. Again, this is moving you outside of yourself and allowing those desires to move you into arena and say you know what's this all about? It's when you connect those desires to the gospel this is what John Paul II said Then you have that aha moment, you go ooh.
Speaker 1:Yes, you know, I was born on the south side of Chicago. I was the oldest of five boys and I remember so well, by the time I was in second grade we had moved into this upper floor apartment of my grandparents' two flat and they lived below us, and in the back we had a small yard that opened up to our alley, and that alley, for us as young boys, was the main artery to the rest of the world. And it was here, in that alley, that my brothers and I awakened to the three core themes built into the DNA of every man that life is supposed to be an adventure, that it's going to be a battle and the meaning behind it all is beauty, especially the beauty of love. You know, one day I was unlocking that gate and my brothers were right behind us and we had our swords and our plastic guns. You know, we're getting ready for battle, we're going to go out on that adventure. And as I unlocked the gate that would bring us back to the alley, all of us eager for action, right. And then I heard these angelic voices coming down the alley. And there they were, and they were beautiful, two girls, probably in fourth or fifth grade, but to my second grade heart they carried something words alone can't capture. I felt, probably for the first time, the mysterious magnetic power that the beauty of a woman can have on a man's heart, a power, again, like we said earlier, that draws you out of yourself. And even my younger brother sensed something was happening, and no one tried to shove past me or asked why I'd stopped. One of them even gave a little wave and the girls glanced over, smiled politely at us and then disappeared down the alley, unaware probably of the effect they were having on us.
Speaker 1:Well, we soon discovered, mark, that those twins lived a few blocks down from us on the top of a three flat. From then on, every one of our adventures began in that direction. In fact, the building became a castle, ruled by an evil knight holding those princess twins captive. And we would come together and we would storm the outer doors of that apartment, which was now a castle. We'd fight our way up the stairwell, you know, after one black knight, after another coming after us, and we would rescue them in a dramatic fashion again and again, and over the summer we must have rescued those twins dozens of times, and the tragedy, of course, was that they never knew they were being rescued right, they never heard us, they never knew, but it didn't matter to us because this was chivalry at the finest.
Speaker 1:And at the same time I wanted to be a missionary priest. I wrote by snail mail in those days, no emails To every religious order I could find. It sent missionaries to far-off places like Tanzania, shenyanga and the Congo, and I longed to be part of this adventure too, this battle, and even as a boy, especially at mass, I sensed that this also was about beauty. This was the beauty of the sacred, and somehow, in my second grade mind, I was holding together some pretty profound theology I would find later on I didn't have and feel any conflict between my attraction to those twin sisters and the attraction to the sacred. Both stirred in me a deep longing for beauty and mystery, and later I would learn that I was touching the very frame of the biblical love story, which could be summed up in just five words God wants to marry us, god wants to marry us, god wants to marry us. It's an amazing relationship and this is that intimacy, mark, that you were talking about earlier on.
Speaker 2:It's an amazingly profound summary of the gospel and I remember hearing that for the first time. And you know John Paul II, I think, did such a beautiful job explaining this. You know that this love story, his love story, is inscribed in our hearts and it's stamped into our bodies so that we can make it visible in the creative world. You know, to quote John Paul II, he said the body alone, and it alone, is capable of making visible what is invisible, the spiritual and the divine. You know, it was created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the invisible mystery hidden in God from the time immemorial, and thus to be a sign of it. You know, think about it that the Bible opens with the marriage in an earthly paradise we got these two bookends in Adam and Eve and Genesis and it closes with the marriage in a heavenly paradise Christ and the church in Revelation and Jack. Who is the church? You know it's you, you and I. We are.
Speaker 2:And so I think, as we kind of delve deeper into this mystery, one thing I want to just point out here, on the onset here is due to original sin, the daily subjective experiences there's constantly these temptations to doubt, to anxiety, that this story is too good, too good to be true, like this amazing reality that the infinite god desires to marry us, to be in perfect communion with us, that god, a trinitarian community and perfect communion of love, desires us to enter into that communion for eternity, you know, in eternity now, with him, and and so just wrestling with that and realizing that that temptation is there, and that's why it's so important that we know the truth and proclaim the truth that this is the reality, that God truly longs for us and he put that desire there.
Speaker 2:You know, something I've been thinking about is how are we, as finite human beings, how do we have that capacity for infinite longing, for infinite love? It's because God put that there. That's a gift, that's a seed he planted in each of us, that he's drawing us to himself when you think about those twin sisters that I mentioned.
Speaker 1:You know that spark, that's a divine spark, like you said, within the human heart and that was given to us by design, and this is why it's so important. I've heard you say many times that Satan doesn't have his own clay. He would love to just twist and distort those passions and desires Instead of seeing them as the spark where love can come into the story, where you lift one another up as a gift you're giving to one another, you turn it around and you use them. And this is the culture we're in today. We're using one another. It's really sad.
Speaker 1:Somebody said to me just and it happens all the time just recently said to me okay, jack, where is this God? You know, where is he? Why don't we see him? I said, well, first of all, he, you know, we did see him Christ was, is incarnate. I mean, this is the logic of our faith.
Speaker 1:You know, a man born of a woman walks into the story of history. He's not only murdered, he's resurrected. Without the resurrection, without that live person coming back into the story, you would never even have our Christian faith. But here's the other bookend of that when somebody says, where is this God. Today we are to be that person of love, we are to bring God's love in, and so that's really the beauty of our Christian faith. That's why marriage and the family whether you get married and have a family or not, you still need to know that image, because that's that Trinitarian image, that reflection of God in the world, and that's important, because if love is going to get into the world, we have to bring it in, be filled with divine life and love, and then bring it into the world.
Speaker 2:This is something that all of us could do. I still remember, Jack and I've shared this before but sitting being introduced to Theology of the Body, sitting down for the first time and reading Theology of the Body for Beginners by Christopher West was not a reader at any point in my life up till then and I could not put this book down. I read the whole thing in one sitting and I felt like, as I was reading, that the scales fell from my eyes and I was seeing reality for the first. It just it hit me. It was an absolute moment of grace.
Speaker 2:But that God is love and we are made in the image and likeness of God. We are made for this love and if we want peace and joy, if we want to thrive, if we want to become fully alive, that is only possible in the measure in which we give ourselves away, in which we pour ourselves out, in the way that our life looks like Christ hanging on the cross, and so I'm single at this point. But to your point, you don't have to be married to live this out. It is to each and every person when you meet. I remember the conviction I'm one of five, with four sisters was I need to love my sisters better, I need to love my parents better, I need to love every person around me better, and so the exciting thing is, this adventure is available to every person, no matter what stage in life you are at. Every day, you have opportunities to pour yourself out and to bring to receive God's love and pour that out to those around you.
Speaker 1:You know GK Chesterton, I always laugh when he's talking about your four sisters and your family. And you know this is again not brain surgery. You know, love God and love your neighbor. But he said, you know, go home and love your family, just like Mother Teresa said. And he said, and that's why Christ said, love your enemies and pray for them. You know, because he said, when you go home, a lot of times those family members are your enemies and the people that you love at the same time. I mean, you know, if you think about it, we don't treat anybody as bad as sometimes as we treat our own family right sure but here's christ, comes back into the story and get back to, kind of, our analogy here.
Speaker 1:In ephesians 5, 31, 32, john paul said this is the summa, or the summary, right, of this whole teaching that he did, and he took it right out of St Paul. When St Paul said for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. He's talking about sexual union here and he said this is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the church. It's Jesus himself, hanging on the cross, that left his heavenly father and his earthly mother to become one flesh with us, to give his life away to us. And so he's saying you know, this spark, this divine spark, even the intimate union of a man and a woman open to life, right is the third person, right, the two become one and there's a love bomb explosion. There's actually three persons in one, reflecting Trinity, right Father, son and Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1:Well, here's Christ, the incarnate bridegroom, come down and he's going to pour his life out for the church. Who is us? We're the church. And so he's pouring his life out. So this is the bridegroom giving his life to the bride and, in a sense, sometimes it's hard for men to say what do you mean In the analogy? I'm the bride. Yeah, we are only the bride that we're receiving love. Right, he's pouring it out, we're receiving it just like a bride would be receiving her husband's love, and then you receive in a giving way and he gives in a receiving way. You have this flow of love and then this fruit comes out and that fruit is going out and loving others.
Speaker 1:You know, and until you step into the story and here's the last point I'll make right now, just because it's in my mind when you said earlier, you know it's very hard for us to think that this God of the universe actually wants an intimate relationship with us. But every man that I meet that really is on fire for God, for others, has had a personal encounter with God. A personal encounter, I mean, they know it. They could tell you what day it was. Sometimes it's multiple times. I certainly can. I remember the story that I just told you as I look back. That was one of the first sparks, but I've had a number of encounters along the way and I keep telling those stories over and over again, because we all have a specific story or series of stories that says, yep, god walked right in, I saw him, I felt him, I know who he is, you know.
Speaker 2:Well, I think you know, going back to this intimacy, when we God you know he hides himself in one way, but in another way he does it in the sense of the Eucharist, right, how the Eucharist ties into this reality that he is always desiring union with us. And I remember when I learned this the first time, when we were talking about these parallels here between the earthly marriage and the heavenly marriage. And you know, you look at our earthly marriage here, you know, you stand on the altar with your bride, you commit yourself totally to her with your words, and then God gives us the great gift of sex and marriage, which is a way that we recommit our wedding vows over and over again with our bride. And so you look at that and you think, well, now let's bring in the heavenly marriage, where Christ, you know Fulton Sheen said he laid on the marriage bed of the cross and he consummates this marriage with the church of laying down his life.
Speaker 2:And just like in our earthly marriage, where we have this ability to come into intimacy with our bride and recommit our wedding vows with our bodies, well, how do we do that? How does Christ offer us that? But this intimacy, this physical intimacy of the Eucharist, where the Eucharist is a way that God, where God is looking to pour himself out to us and have that union and intimacy with us, regardless of what we feel. We know concretely. He's revealed this to us in divine revelation that he is present in the Eucharist and he's longing to be one with us.
Speaker 1:It's so hard in today's time, when I'm speaking to young people, to grasp what you just said, because you're almost saying that the sexual union of a man and a woman, when all the smoke and fog clears, is pointing directly at the Eucharist and God's desire, jesus' desire to be one flesh with us. But that's exactly what's going on and what's happening here. You know, god is not a sexual being. You know, like you said, this is a sacramental act, right, but we're entering into an intimate communion and union. I know this myself from my own experiences. You know this personal, intimate union that Christ wants with us. But see, you know we're Catholic and the beauty of it. You can say sex and God in the same sentence. And here's the point. You know, god thinks our human sexuality is beautiful. He created it. It's so lofty Our human sexuality, if understood, when a man and a woman come together again, open to life, right, this beautiful, passionate, uh, love. You know, you think about, you know two people really give, really they get it and really are pouring themselves out to one another and this really ecstasy of, of love, this is pointing directly at, it is a sign. It's a tiny sign, but it's a sign that we enter into. For us it's not tiny, it's a big deal and it points directly again at God's desire to be one with us. In fact, that's where we're going. We'll get to that in future episodes, but that's exactly where we're going. You know I work with guys and I know you do too that have been addicted to pornography, same-sex attractions, all these gender ideologies and the beauty of it is, if properly understood and untwisted, and just relax and take a deep breath and open those desires up to God, you will actually be filled over time. And this is why it's so important, mark, and it's right in the battle plan.
Speaker 1:First thing in the morning, first thing in the morning, before you look at that phone, drop to your knees, let it be done to me. According to your word, you're just kneeling with our Blessed Mother opening your heart Very practical thing to do and then I always hear our Blessed Mother say you know, at the wedding feast of Cana, do whatever he tells you. Now I open it up and I'm listening for him. But the second point is temptation is not a sin and all these temptations a lot of sexual temptations, but also sloth I don't want to get up. I don't want to do this. Oh, I'm fearful, you know, and it's hard. I don't hate my boss and I got to go to work, but all those temptations, I just open those up and allow those to go right into the heart of Christ and come into my heart. It's amazing how that works. It's really beautiful.
Speaker 1:And then the third thing is just get up and love the next person, you see, and whoever that is. If it's your wife, if it's your kids, if it's the cashier down the street, it doesn't matter. If it's that boss, you don't have to like your boss. But you can really relax if you can just say no, I don't have to like your boss, but you can really relax if you can just say no, I don't like him or her. But I'm called to love them anyways. Still treat them with respect, man. It takes the pressure off of you, right, and they might still be a jerk or whatever, but you know, I don't like them but I love them. And you know, until I get another job, I get out of there. Why am I going to beat myself up every day and be all nervous about this schmuck?
Speaker 2:right Love him.
Speaker 1:Maybe he'll change. Even you know.
Speaker 2:Well, I think, just on a practical note too, I think it's that understanding of just controlling what we can control, right, we cannot control that other person, but we can control being that person of love. You know, when we stand before God at the end of our life, we're not held accountable for what our boss did, or what our sister or brother did, or our spouse did, even to some degree, but we are standing. Well, how did you respond? You know, and I remember reading one of the spiritual, something from Jacques Philippe, and he said you know, the spiritual mature person moves from the question of why me to God. How do you want me to respond? Right, how do you want me to respond?
Speaker 2:And that's someone who's really taking ownership of their life, answering the call. They know their human dignity, they know the call of love and it's saying how can I bring love into this situation? How can I sacrifice? And they're not being tossed like the waves at the sea by the external circumstances, but their foundation comes from what they've been filled with, which no one can touch, no one can take that from you, this divine love that's been poured into us and St Catherine of Siena and St Teresa of Avila, st Therese of Lisieux, padre Pio.
Speaker 1:St Teresa of Avila, st Therese of Lisieux, padre Pio, bishop Sheen We've been talking about this St John of the Cross and they always are touched by this eros. This, you know. They become mad with this love for God, you know, and mad in a good way, you know. I mean like a madness takes over them. You know, plato called that eros Again, that's that Greek god of love and the Romans had Cupid Cupid remember the little guy with the arrow man and it would pierce your heart. This is what we're talking about.
Speaker 1:When I saw those twins for the first time and this would happen over and over again when I realized later on that that was the spark given to me by God, that this incredible like, oh, she's beautiful. You have those stunning moments in your life, maybe the first time you meet that special girl in your life. I always laugh. I go to Costco every once in a while and I'll see a beautiful woman coming at me down the aisle, and still to today. But the beauty of it is I don't turn it around into a situation where I go, you know, I start to imagine lusting after her or whatever. I just right away, I see that and I'm and my down, just like I'm down on my knees in the morning, and I open that desire and I'll try to stuff it down. I don't stand there and try to indulge it because that'll drive me crazy, man, after a while. Right, it's a waste of time. So I open that right away. Thank you, jesus, for the beauty of that woman, thank you for touching my heart again and reminding that you are the one that ultimately loves me, that spark I'm feeling. Thank you for that spark, because you just reminded me again about this intimate love he has for us and I pray for that woman. I pray with right. I see her and I go, oh, thank you for that, and I say a prayer for her. It's amazing, over the well now, years and years and years, but even over a few weeks, you'll start to feel something different. You know, Because then here's the last part I'll make Because everything that you said earlier too, we determine who we become by these thoughts. We are co-creating our own lives with God.
Speaker 1:We came into a story, but every time I say yes to the good and I do the good, john Paul would say, I become good, I am good, and when you do that, you start to find more peace, more joy, joy. And when you do that, you start to find more peace, more joy, joy. It's very, very important. And every time I, I lust and I turn in selfishly, I look at porn instead of going out and doing good things in the world. I actually do evil to myself and as I do evil, I actually become evil. It's amazing, you know, I, I come into myself, I change and over time if you don't get out of that, over time I actually become evil. And here I'll give you this example.
Speaker 1:Some time ago, a guy that I know pretty well got into this relationship. He had gotten divorced, got into this relationship with this woman and she got pregnant. Now here's a good Catholic man trying to live this thing out, but then he falls for this girl. They're not married, they start a sexual liaison, she gets pregnant and they end up getting an abortion. So here's this guy that considered himself a good Catholic, talked about it all the time, knew his faith, murdering a child. He became part of murdering a child. This will be on his conscience and on her conscience forever. So this is what I mean Now. Did he become. He did an evil act. If he's not careful, you know, doesn't confess that, really start to turn it around and he steps, stays down that path. It over time, he, he will change and he will become much more selfish person. Uh, there'll be a disconnect. Sin is always a disconnect between the relationship between God and myself. I put up a barrier there and um, and you change.
Speaker 2:This is the convicting reality. You know that we, you know asking my own self every day. You know we're not, it's not neutral territory, we're not just stagnant. We can grow in virtue, we can grow in vice. And it's an every day, it's a battle.
Speaker 2:We have to pick up our cross daily and we have to look at ourselves and say what parts of my life have I not surrendered to God? You know, where am I grasping? Where have I turned into selfishness? How am I not emptying myself? What parts of my life do not look like Jesus hanging on the cross, pouring myself for others? And it's humbling because you hear these stories and you think there I go, but for the grace of God, right, it's all possible. You know we have to stay grafted right. Jesus says I'm the vine, you are the branches. If we pull away from that, if we pull out.
Speaker 2:That's why the battle plan is so important with Claymore, because it's not just information, we're not just here telling you you know, god is real, jesus is real. Go on with the rest of your life. We're saying you need to take this in and transform your entire life, because the consequences are enormous. You know, the older I get, jack, and I'm coming up on six years of marriage, three young kids, and I don't have all the answers. That's one thing I've learned. I definitely don't have all the answers, but what I have learned for sure is that if I myself do not strive for sainthood, I can wreak havoc in the lives of my wife and my children.
Speaker 2:If I do not become who God is calling me to be. If I don't become fully alive, if I don't become this person of love, who do I pour that out on my children, my wife. They need me to be a saint. They need me to keep growing in virtue and you see the painful consequences when you don't, when you slip up, when you turn into anger and patience to vice and different things and you think, oh, you could see it so clearly the effect that you have on those around you.
Speaker 2:But I think one thing that I think you had mentioned earlier I just want to touch on is you know you talked about opening up you know the power of this Eros, this power of this attraction. You know, when you're walking through Costco, I think this is a message that needs to be shouted from the rooftops because I think so many men you know Christopher West talks about this in Theology of the Body they have this starvation diet or the fast food diet where they think I really only have two options here. I can either just repress this and push it down, or I can indulge, I can just dive in. You spend the rest of your time walking through Costco lusting after that woman, you go home, you turn to pornography, whatever it is, but the beauty of it and just to interject for a second.
Speaker 1:It doesn't have to be sex. I mean that's drinking too much, that's eating too much, yeah no, absolutely this overindulgence, right.
Speaker 2:And so I think the reality that there is a third option you know that God wants us to open that up and bring that to him and that has been an absolute game changer to me is that these desires are beautiful, these desires are good, and it's amazing. The power, the power you know the analogy it's the raw materials for love. It's the rocket ship, the fuel that gets it off the ground. Think about the power to get a rocket ship off the ground, how powerful it is. But the thing is, if it's not, if the rocket ship isn't oriented directly to the stars, right to the infinite, and it's headed and it's pointing the wrong direction, back towards yourself, it's going to cause real issues, right?
Speaker 2:And so, as you said, as we mentioned, you know, the devil doesn't have his own clay. It's not about eliminating, obliterating your desires. It's this untwisting that they are beautiful, they're good. These are the raw materials, but the goal is they're meant to bring you. They are beautiful, they're good, these are the raw materials, but the goal is they're meant to bring you outside of yourself. They're meant to pull you outside of yourself so you can hang on that cross like Christ and realize the freedom of pouring yourself out and dying to yourself. And so it's just I think it's just important for men to hear that that your desires are a beautiful thing. The battle is not eliminating the desires. The battle is not refusing to see beauty. It's like oh no, that's not a beautiful woman. I need to get that out of my head, I need to repress that down. It's opening this up to God in prayer and staying connected with him the whole time. And the beautiful thing is you start seeing reality clearly. You start seeing it clearly. You start seeing as the way that god intended.
Speaker 1:That's so important. You know, um, the dominican father and playwright, john cameron, said this there's no escape from that burning desire within us, and it's for the true, the good and the beautiful. And he's talking about these passion desires and and it's so important here just maybe the pause. Plato knew this. Aristotle, this is 400 years before Jesus. The ancient Greeks. They knew that this was a divine spark. The sensual desire that you were describing is a divine spark, but it's also for what's true, good and beautiful. So you don't just stop there. Like you said, this is that third part.
Speaker 1:We're living in a three-dimensional space where that rocket ship is launching now. Well, where's it going to go? It's going to go where what is true, what is good, what is beautiful, even in a woman, what is good for her, you know, and what is good for my own heart, and I start to open that up to the divine. This is so important. This is where we enter in, we're starting to really enter into this game plan because these passionate desires again, I'm saying the same thing we said before, but that's the spark within us, that's what's lighting the rocket ship within us. That's why the sword? Because the first place we fight this battle is on the battlefield of our own individual human hearts, between love and lust, between being a self-giving person and a taking and a grasping person. And you'll see these older politicians and these older billionaires, when they make these tiny selfish moves, constantly, constantly, constantly through life, they become this really selfish person that can almost do anything evil in the world, person that can almost do anything evil in the world. And then the opposite when I use my wealth or power or position in life to do good and start to pour myself out, you know I really change and I become that person that can do great things in the world.
Speaker 1:So Father Cameron said each of us lives with this unextinguishable experience of life that's supposed to make sense and satisfy us deeply, and even the most jaded atheist feels cheated if he doesn't experience meaning, purpose and peace in a word, happiness in this life. But just where does this universal expectation of personal fulfillment come from? It isn't something we manufacture or develop on our own. Rather, that yearning, burning desire for what is real is incorporated again into our design, and this burning can lead to either the torment of pain or the torrent of love. It'll either consume us or consummate us, and our very bodies tell the story, that yearning of eros, that were incomplete, that we're in search of another to make sense of ourselves. Although that yearning originates deep in our souls, it's also manifested in our bodies, and our very bodies tell the story of our incompleteness.
Speaker 1:Think about how a man is created. You look down at yourself before you jump in the shower and you say, yeah, my body doesn't make sense without a woman, a woman's body doesn't make sense without a man. Well, so we're incomplete. We know this, but we're not drawn to you somebody. Just love has been reduced to a feeling and then to sexual activity. We are called to give ourselves away. So when we come together and consummate this relationship, we're renewing our wedding vows, and it's just so important and this is part of our sexuality.
Speaker 1:You know, our modern world, finally, has lost the beauty of the story. Our story, it's normalized the fall and original sin and we come back. We're going to be talking about, you know, but from the beginning it was not so and we'll open up this triptych and, you know, when you get above the trees, you see, you know, jesus takes us back into the beginning before sin. We're in now which he would call a historical man, which is really this battlefield of the heart after sin came in.
Speaker 1:And then the third part is really important, especially with guys with same-sex attraction, pornography addictions, to realize that at the end this will never fill us because it's always pointing. All these desires are pointing us to ultimate union and communion with God. And we're not talking about tomorrow. Eternity doesn't mean tomorrow. Eternity means forever. The beauty of our story Mark what we're talking about. We're stepping into the arena. We are already eternal human beings and we're really, you know, deciding where that rocket's going. Do I go on to eternity or do I turn around and just die right here and then that's the end of it? You know, and you know. So, a body and a soul without this grace that we're talking about, without opening up to eros, just the facts it's.
Speaker 1:the default position is sin and death. That's it. You're going to fall into sin and we're all going to die, brother, and I think it's good to know that and good to remember that, because you live more fully when you know oh, I got just a little time right here and really I'm creating my own destiny and I do that through truth, goodness, beauty and love.
Speaker 2:life is so much about little decisions. It's it's the little things and it's something that I'm taking away from our conversation here as I go into my day is just these desires. The battlefield, you know it struck me when you said the battlefield of the human heart it starts with our human heart. It starts with that introspection of just looking at these temptations that come with us each and every day. But I remember, like just the encouragement I want to, I want to give, is that your temptations, your temptations, these desires that you have are not roadblocks to your sanctity. They are the path. They are the path where God wants you to open these up. And what?
Speaker 2:The difference between the men that are heroic, that are living lives of great virtue, and the ones that aren't, that turn to vice, is. What do they do with that ache, what do they do with the temptations? And that's the question, right, we have to take into. This is the path to become a great saint. It's not just one heroic act, it's little heroic acts every single day, over and over and over again. And we know we know our experience as a human being If we just do a nightly exam and look back on the day at all the different little temptations, different things that come up. And the question is what did we do with those things? Did we open them up to this story that God's invited us into? Did we open these longings up for him?
Speaker 2:And there is immense freedom, right, jack? Like you had talked about the difference between a guy who sees a woman in Costco and just spends the next half hour in the store lusting after her, versus the man who can look, who can see, who can see her beauty and say thank you, god, but then allow that to open up and bring him into deeper union with God. I mean, think about the freedom. This is the path that we can recognize the beauty, we can affirm the beauty without turning and lusting after it, but we can actually allow that to be the rocket fuel that brings us to deeper union and prayer with God. So we're not extinguishing this ache that we know is so powerful within us. And so that's the challenge that I feel you know from our conversation. Just to continue, what am I doing with that ache, what am I doing with the temptations, what am I doing with the beauty that I see in the world? As Jacques Philippe said, it's about how do you respond.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's beautiful. I think we'll end it right there. Maybe just you know there's a picture behind me of the divine mercy Jesus. That's beautiful, I think we'll end it right there. Maybe just you know there's a picture behind me of the divine mercy Jesus. I trust in you. I say that very often.
Speaker 1:But take that ache of your heart because you'll feel it, man. I mean, you know, when you stand up and you try to fight these things, you'll know a battle's going on. It could be really fierce in your heart. So we don't want to downplay that this is going to be a battle, but the beauty is going to be there and, like Mark said, it's going to bring you into an intimacy with God that you didn't think existed. But when I start to open up my ache, I open it up to the ache right here. So the image of the divine mercy. That's where Jesus got hit with the lance and what flowed out was blood and water. So that's his ache and his ache is for you. And that's his ache and his ache is for you.
Speaker 1:And that's baptism and confession and that's the Eucharist. There the red is the Eucharist, where he wants to become intimate with you. So you're stepping into the arena. You're stepping into the story. You're not doing it by yourself. Go out and get a disciple, do these together. There's discussion questions right in the show notes. And to make sure you're doing that, three simple thing in the morning Make sure, if you're Catholic, that you're going to confession, maybe twice a month, especially in the beginning, so you can receive that Eucharist. And it's going to change. It's going to change. Your life is going to be more joyful, more peaceful, for sure. Hey, marcus, thank you so much. Thanks for being with us, thanks everyone.
Speaker 2:Talk to you again soon.
Speaker 1:Bye-bye.