Become Who You Are

#672 Act VI "Christ Appeals to the Resurrection": Christ, Marriage, And Our Final Destiny!

• Jack • Episode 672

Share episode

Love to hear from you; “Send us a Text Message”

What if the ache you feel isn’t your enemy but a compass that points you to true north? We take a clear-eyed look at desire, identity, and destiny through the lens of Scripture and John Paul II’s theology of the body, asking how eros can be lifted into real love without denying the body or the heart. Starting with our origin as image-bearers—male and female—we unpack why reason, freedom, and the call to self-gift are the core of human dignity, and how forgetting this origin twists desire into confusion. 

Romans 1 doesn’t shame the body; it warns what happens when truth is suppressed and love loses its aim.

From there, we turn to the Bridegroom who doesn’t do sin management, but brings power. Blood and water from Christ’s side signal the birth of the Church, and the Eucharist becomes the key to understanding love: “This is my body, given for you.” Eros, like rocket fuel, needs a flight plan, and Christ charts it—toward protection, fidelity, and self-gift. We share a pastoral moment with a young man questioning his belonging and make it plain: your deepest identity is beloved child of God. Attractions don’t define you; grace refines you. 

The resurrection reframes everything. Jesus’ answer to the Sadducees shows earthly marriage as a sacred sign that points beyond itself to communion with God, where desire finds its true home.

Here are the links to Jack's Substack and  X https://x.com/JP2Renewal

Support the show

SPEAKER_00:

Because when you open yourself up to lust, your heart changes. Jesus knows this. We all know this already from our experience. Therefore, Jesus gave them up to the lust of their hearts, to impurity, to dishonoring of their bodies among themselves. For this reason, God gave them up to disordered passions. The women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men, no matter who you are, wherever you've been, what thoughts you're wrestling with, you are a beloved child of God. That's your deepest identity, Sean. You are a beloved child of God. This is the power. Jesus didn't come for sin management, he came with power. Hold fast to this treasure. Do not settle for a disordered or an impoverished view of love, for love rejoices in the truth. Hope you're doing well. Welcome to the Become Who You Are podcast and our special Friday edition for the men of Claymore and the people that love them, the women that love them, the parents, the friends, etc. It's a beautiful journey that we've been on. And today we're going to be talking about Act 6: Christ Appeals to the Resurrection, the third panel of the Triptick. Before I get to that, I'm recording this Tuesday because I'm just getting ready to head out west, and I'll be leaving a little while. This shows that I that I care about you, huh? I'm going to get this recorded so that on the road I can get it produced and then put up in time to uh to get to get it to you on Friday. But any reason the uh anyway, the reason I bring that up is that the reading for today is from 1 Romans 1. When we think about our creation and our creation as male and female in the very beginning, and what makes us different than all the animals? Well, it's reason, intellect, free will. And you see when that is taken away, it's very, very important to watch out for this. Sometimes we forget the power and the majestic way that we're created, different than the rest of creation. Sometimes we forget this. If we forget that we're created in the image and likeness of God, a tiny reflection of Trinitarian love in the world, called into a relationship with Christ, that that Jesus, the bridegroom, comes into this world. When you think about Genesis, when God created Adam, and then he creates Eve from the side of Adam, right? Think about Jesus. Jesus is on the cross, he's given up his life for his bride, the whole reason he came in here just to give himself away totally, freely, faithfully, fruitfully. And so what happens to Jesus? Jesus gets hit right in the side, and what comes out? Blood and water. And this is the uh Bishop Sheen would call it, and he got this from Saint Augustine in in the third going into the fourth century, is this is the seminal fluid. Christ is inseminating in a sacrificial way, of course, the church. And so the blood and the water pours out of his side. He's creating his bride from his side, and it comes down, and who's at the bottom? It's its blessed mother, Mary, who he now calls woman, no longer mother, but woman. And then he turns to John, the evangelist who wrote the gospel of John, and he and he says, Well, this is your son, this is your mother. And so here we go. Jesus is is inseminating the church, impregnating the church, and that's why our blessed mother is the icon, the icon of the church. Well, we all take that place with our blessed mother when we go to receive the Eucharist, when we go to see uh receive Mass, when we kneel down in prayer. Why? Because we become the bride, right? We're part of the church, we become the bride who receives life from the bridegroom, just like a man and a woman. A man carries the seed, a woman carries has the womb, and then uh, you know, the egg and then the womb. And so a man impregnates the woman. Jesus impregnates, and again, in the sacrificial way, but in a very real way, the church. And so this is what we're gonna be talking about a little bit today. So this is Act Six. So remember that uh this is coming out of a handbook that I'm finished. I'm basically putting the finishing touches on it, and hopefully we get this into production. But anyways, Act Six, I call it Act because they're short chapters, and um, and there's gonna be over 52 plus a couple of bonus chapters, one for each week that we could discuss. So this is Christ Appeals to the resurrection, which is the third panel of a triptych. So, what's a triptych? John Paul's theology, the body, is divided into three parts, basically. And so the first part is in the beginning, when Jesus brings us into Genesis. This is the way we're created before sin came into the world. Kind of what I just described in the image and likeness of God, male and female, he created them. He gives us everything, you know, be fruitful, multiply, form families, and then work, right? Work, right? Bring this beauty of love into the culture, into this nation. You're co-creators with me. It's unbelievably powerful when you really think about that. And then the second part of that panel, a panel is a work of art, usually a painting, divided into three sections or panels, often hinged together that can be displayed or folded shut. So I can carry this panel with me, say on a handle, and then when I get someplace, I open it up. There's one panel, two panels, three panels, forming one coordinated panel. First one again, in the beginning before sin, how we were created, male and female, and God's plan to reflect Trinitarian love and make it visible in this created world. Part two is the fall, where Jesus says, you know, uh in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, verses 27, 28, you know, you have heard it said you should not commit adultery, cheat on your wife. But I say to you, even if you lust in your heart, right? Even if you lust, you see a woman, you've already created uh you've already uh uh caused adultery in your heart. And so you go, well, that's kind of rough. You mean I can't even look at a woman with lust? And he goes, No, because when you take that into your soul, your soul, we're an embodied soul. The last thing you want to do is take that in to consume that lust and selfishness, it changes you and it changes the way you look then at the world. So Jesus said, and this is so powerful for all of us, brothers and sisters too, that are joining, joining those men that are on this journey too. When when you think about that, when you think about, you know, I'm pushing these desires down. Oh, I can't even look with lust at a woman, you do the opposite. You open those desires. It's like the rocket fuel that will actually propel you into this third part of the triptych, which is Christ's appeals to the resurrection, where we're going. But that starts now. In other words, when I feel lust and selfishness, and and you do in this world, it's going to happen maybe every day, maybe 10 times, 20 times a day, especially in this pornographic world. So, what do we do? We we know that that's that eros uh coming from the ancient Greeks, what that's seeking all what's true, good, and beautiful. It's all always it's sensual too. We feel this in our bodies, this desire uh for sexual uh union, especially, you know, this is marital union, what it's supposed to be, and it's supposed to be powerful. When that rocket fuel, say your body's a rocket, and that's that rocket fuel, when it it's it doesn't have a flight plan, and Jesus says when you look at somebody and you lust, the rocket's going all over and it's gonna crash and burn. You're not who you're supposed to be. When I can use that energy and open that energy up and open that up to that Jesus on the cross, his eros, his desire is for us, but his desires Pope Benedict would explain in his first encyclical God is love. He said that his eros, Jesus' eros is totally agape love. What's agape love? Total divine sacrificial love. This is my body given for you. Well, that's the way a man should look at a woman. This is my body given for you for protection, for love, authentic. It's not easy. And and scripture uh says it's not easy, but the the power again is when I open that up and say, Jesus, I can't handle this anymore. Jesus, I trust in you. That's divine mercy, and Jesus just pours this grace into us. Very, very powerful, because when we stay too connected to divine. Okay, so now we're on the third part. So we've been on this journey again, and this journey is just it's it's been a beautiful journey. First, God's plan for love in the beginning, second, the battle in your heart after the fall. We know that. Now Jesus drops the third and final piece of the puzzle, your ultimate destiny. This is where we came from. This is this is the beginning before sin. Now we have the fall. Jesus comes into the picture, the bridegroom to pour himself out to us. He's like the bridge, he becomes the bridge. We get to a certain point in our life where we can't go any further. It gets crazy out there, and he's the bridge. If he doesn't, if he's not the bridge, this is what happens. And this is the reason I brought up Tuesday, because the reading for Tuesday, go back and read it. It's from Romans chapter one. So here's St. Paul. This is the way, this is the first book after the gospels is Romans. And here's St. Paul writing. He goes, For I am not ashamed of the gospel. It is the power of God for salvation for everyone who has the has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For for in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith, for faith, as it is written, He who through faith is righteous shall live. So this is our faith in Jesus Christ. Now, what happens if I don't have faith in this crazy lustful world? For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth. It's always about the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible nature, namely his eternal power and deity, have been clearly perceived in the things that have been made, so they were out for they are without excuse. For all they for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. But they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. This is why I started off saying we have reason, intellect, free will. When you take God out, you see this culture and this world that we're in right now. It doesn't make sense. A man could be a woman, a woman could be a man. Ah, the COVID uh fiasco that came out, and you see the darkness of war, you see these crazy people protesting all over the place because we we we we stand up against killing babies in the womb. And you see this twisting and distortion. Why? Because their minds are senseless. They became fools. Claiming to be wise, they became fools. Therefore, God gave them up to the lusts of their hearts. This is why Jesus says about your heart, it's so important. Again, read Matthew 5, verses 27, 28 from the Sermon on the Mount. Why? Because when you open yourself up to lust, your heart changes, and Jesus knows this. We all know this already from our experience. Therefore, Jesus gave them up to the lust of their hearts, to impurity, to dishonoring of their bodies among themselves. You I saw a protest yesterday outside of the ICE facility in Portland, Oregon. These people were all riding their bicycles in the nude. In the nude. They just lust, lust, lust, lust, lust. You know, just crazy. And there's nothing wrong with our bodies. It's just that there's kids and stuff around it. You know, again, you know, there's nothing wrong with our bodies, but pornography twists and distorts it. And all these things twist and distort it. You know, you have to have a heart for children. You have to have a heart for what's civil, you know, what's the right way to act. Therefore, God gave them up to the lust, dishonoring their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator who blessed, who was blessed forever. For this reason, God gave them up to disordered passions. The women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their ir. And then he goes into starts to name them. You should read this. They're all filled with the manner of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and it goes on and on. What happens when the human heart? We're the worst animals God created. When the light of God's divine life and love are taken out of our hearts, we destroy one another. Why? Because we allow ourselves to be ruled by the powers of this world, which is Satan and the demons. We don't see there sometimes, do we, brothers and sisters? You know, we we don't get this. We don't see that we came into a world that wasn't neutral. If you open your heart up to God, God will refill it and we'll move toward God, and that's where we're moving today. If you don't, that void will be filled. And we don't realize the power of this lust when we give ourselves over to Satan who would love to destroy us. And so I'm gonna go on here. I just want to set that all up for the rest of this because Jesus drops this third and final piece of the puzzle, our ultimate destiny. Uh, you know, eternity doesn't start tomorrow. Eternity means forever. We're eternal beings already. Everything we do here is uh is we're gonna carry parts of that in our death. This is really something, you know, either we shed the sinfulness and this lust and become the people that God created us to be. Saint Athanasius, uh early church father and a doctor of the church, you know, the Son of God became man so that man can become God. The only way you become God is through and with God. You can't become God like Genesis 3 when you walk away from God. You're trying to be God, but without God, it's impossible. We were supposed to be created in union with God. So in what John Paul again calls his third panel of his theology of the body, this third triptych, Christ points to the resurrection, showing where this love story is headed. So it reminds me of a talk I gave. A young man named Sean came up. He was a little nervous at first, and he said to me, Can I speak to you for a second? I said, sure. He said, I'm uh look, he's gonna talk fast because there's other people around. We moved off to the side a little bit. He said, I met this dude at school and we're tight. We talk every day. He's smart, funny, kind, and athlete. I can't stop thinking about him. I'm wondering if if I'm attracted to him, that I might be gay. I've been anxious about this and whether I'm still welcome in the church when I'm having these thoughts and temptations. What do you think? He asked me. I replied, let me share something with you. Ever since I can remember I was attracted to some men, I still am today. The way you just described your friend, what's not to be attracted to? I also have friends who are smart, kind, funny, and I add brave, courageous, self giving. I'm attracted to them because they raised the bar and inspired me to be a better man in so many ways. Your friend sounds like someone with qualities worth admiring. That said, your question about belonging to the church has a clear answer. Absolutely, you're welcome. No matter who you are, where you've been, what thoughts you're wrestling with, you are a beloved child of God. That's your deepest identity, Sean. You are a beloved child of God. God, who am I? I'm a beloved child of God. Twisted and distorted. Yes, it's not all our fault. We came into a broken, fallen world. But through Jesus Christ, you're invited into an intimate communion with God. He is our bridge. We go through that narrow gate and enter into him who leads you to what? Life in abundance. Seek Jesus first, for he will guide you to the truth. Hear that word truth again. That's why I wanted to read Romans. It's always when we sin, Sean, you know, we lose truth. When we get into lust, we lose the truth of it. Now we we become, you know, in these trans ideologies. It's it's insanity, Sean, right? So just watch how it never stops. Once you open a rabbit hole in your heart, too, it'll just keep bringing you down. So I'm glad you're here. I'm glad we talk about it. Seek Jesus first, he will guide you to the truth of who he is, and in turn the truth of who you are. As Scripture says, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well. Seek first his king and his righteousness, his kingdom and his righteousness, all these things shall be yours as well. That's from Matthew 633. But I just read about that in Romans 1. So you see these themes repeat themselves because this is the truth. So to further answer Sean's question, let's dive deeper now into Jesus' words and John Paul II's wisdom to see how the bigger picture is linked to our attractions and desires. In the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 22, the Sadducees, who are a religious sect, uh, when Jesus was around, they're no longer around. Well, they didn't believe in the resurrection. They only believed in the five uh first five books of the of the Old Testament called the Torah. And in there it didn't talk about the resurrection. So they don't believe in the resurrection. So they try to trap Jesus with the trick question that said, Teacher, Moses said if a man dies having no children, and his brother must marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now that that's true. They did have a law about that. So if your older brother, say, dies and he was married, but they didn't have no children, then you had an obligation to marry that widow and raise up children for his brother. Now, there were seven brothers among us. The first married and died, having no children, he left his wife to his brother. So to the second married her, and he died, and then the third down to the seventh. And after them all, the woman died. They were married, she was married to all seven brothers, and then she dies in the resurrection, then. The Sadducees are asking Jesus, therefore, to which of the seven will she be the wife? For they all had her. Jesus shuts them down. You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. It's amazing. Jesus just knows how to answer. Can you imagine? You know, these these people that are always testing him, and he's always coming back and he knows all of this. Just boom. You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. But Jesus says, But I know the scriptures, and I know the power of God. I'm the author of the story. So for in the resurrection, they they neither marry nor are given in marriage, Jesus says, but they're like angels in heaven. That's from Matthew 22, verses 23 to 33. Well, why are they like angels in heaven? Uh angels don't have bodies. Aren't we going to have bodies? Oh no, they're not like angels in heaven because angels don't get married. In fact, that's one of the reasons that Satan and the and the and the fallen angels are jealous of us, because we can co-create with God, created in his image, and they can't. Angels, how many angels were created by God? That's how many angels are around. They have this relationship with God except those that turn and fall. And we're dealing with those all around us. And in fact, I'll just say here really quickly before I go on that I just put up a podcast today, it went up. So for you guys, just look back a couple of days with uh Charles Fronti, and he writes about the occult and the demonic, etc. etc. And uh so he has a book about exorcisms and the saints and exorcisms. It's an important podcast for all of you guys to listen to. I would really head you in mind when I was asking uh Charles questions about what's going on in the spiritual battle that we're facing today. So go back and listen to that. So here, boom, Jesus flips their game, pointing to a truth, again, truth bigger than earthly marriage, that marriage points to our primary and ultimate destiny, union and communion with God. John Paul calls this again the third panel of a striptych, this three-part vision of humanity. In Act three, we saw that the first panel, in Act Three, which is the third part of this book that we're writing, we again we went into the beginning, God's original plan for love, creating us male and female to reflect his Trinitarian love in the world. I already went over that. In the next act, Act Four, the second panel, showed the fall where sin twisted love into lust. Now, in Matthew 22, Jesus reveals again the third panel, the resurrection, his resurrection and our resurrection. That's why we want to die in this life with him, to rise with him, so that again, you know, we start to aim toward eternity. Earthly marriage, as sacred as it is, points us to something even greater, the marriage of the Lamb in heaven, where we unite it with Christ forever. This is Revelation nineteen, verse seven. This ultimate union with Christ began the day you were baptized, and in fact, our deepest desire to love and be loved, whether in your family, in marriage, or in loving relationships, has a source and finds its true home in God. John Paul II was shot twice and nearly killed at basically very close range by a professional assassin in 1981 as he was entering into the Vatican to present this part of his theology of the body. Now, this is five months later, after he heals, he took and he picks up right where he left off at the resurrection. It's amazing, huh? So this is the one he picks up after he comes back in and starts to go forward again with his theology of the body. So he said, Jesus' words in Matthew 22 show that marriage, the primordial and original sacrament in the beginning, is a sign of a bigger reality. It's pointing to God's eternal love and desire to be united with us. God's love has been made manifest in Jesus Christ. And before he suffered and died on the cross, he instituted the Eucharist. This is my body given for you. This chalice which is poured out for you is the new covenant. Think marriage in my blood. Christ is pouring himself out for us in an act of total self-giving love as the bridegroom for his bride, the church. And Saint Paul links these two bookends of the love story, earthly marriage and heavenly marriage, in which John Paul II called the Summa or summary of all his theology of the body, where Saint Paul says in Ephesians five, husbands love your wives, how? As Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. Marital sexual union. This is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the church. It was Jesus who left his heavenly father and his earthly mother to become one flesh with you. Saint John the Evangelist proclaims, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. That's how that's how John opens up his gospel, the very first verse of the very first chapter. God's love, what does that mean? God's love precedes ours. God is love, and in this love, it's not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the expiation for our sins, bringing us back into this love story. By sending his only son in the spirit of love in the fullness of time, God has revealed his innermost secret. God himself is an eternal exchange of love. Father, son, and what what is begotten of the Father and Son, the person of the Holy Spirit. He's destined us to share in that exchange. Again, a man pours out his love to his wife, his wife receives that. And what comes out of that? A person, a child, a tiny reflection, a sacramental reflection in this world of God's love himself. This is how powerful marriage and the sacred union between a man and a woman and the child that comes out of that union. Once again, when all the smoke and fog clears, our deepest yearning, burning desire to love and be loved in this world points us directly to the Eucharist and the bridegroom's desire to be one with us. In the Eucharist, we find ourselves at the very heart of the Paschal mystery, which completely reveals the spousal love of God, Christ the bridegroom, because he has given himself, his body has been given, his blood has been poured out in this way he loved them to the end. Dear brothers in Christ. God does not create people with disordered desires, whether for the same sex or opposite sex, all these desires to use and be used, all such inclinations stem from the fall, affecting every person. While same sex attraction may differ in degree from homosexual lust, both require reorientation toward God's original plan. The healing is universal. Discovering our true identity, truth again, as men and women in Christ. God's call is challenging but never impossible, for his grace is sufficient for us, Saint Paul says in 2 Corinthians twelve. To believe otherwise diminishes the power of the cross. This is the power. Jesus didn't come for sin management, he came with power. Hold fast this treasure. Do not settle for a disordered and or an impoverished view of love, for love rejoices in the truth. Love rejoices in the truth. Jesus is the truth. Seek this truth where it is found in Christ and his church. Be courageous, even if it means going against popular opinions or cultural slogans. The church's teachings, though demanding, are the path to authentic love. The church and humanity entrust to you the sacred reality of love, the foundation of marriage, the family, the future. With faith, you can make this love beautiful, humanly and uh Christianly mature love, great love, responsible love. Walk into everything that's true, good, and beautiful, brothers and sisters. Open yourselves up and your hearts up to Jesus Christ. Jesus talked to Sa Sister Faustina. I am the Lord, I am the God of mercy. You know, your your your sins, just one drop of my blood in this world can wash away all the sins of the world. This is the power of God. Open those temptations up to God. But but think about yourself. You're greater for something way more. The only way to get there is to open these desires up. Let God purify them and then walk into his light and then take that light and be that person of love. Not easy, huh? But it's it's the only way to really live. Hey, God bless you. Good to be with you. Talk to you again soon, everybody. Bye bye.