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
#688 Merry Christmas is Back! Thank You President Trump
Love to hear from you; “Send us a Text Message”
Advent sharpens our memory and our courage, and that’s where we start: gratitude for the return of public faith and a renewed freedom to say Merry Christmas without apology. From there we move straight into the central question young people are asking in a noisy, anxious age: What is the truth, and how do I live it? We lay out the Claymore battle plan—recover your heart, restore marriage and family, and then rebuild culture—so purpose moves from an idea to a daily practice that changes lives.
The Claymore battle plan is a practical map for spiritual formation and cultural rebuilding. The goal isn’t outrage; it’s forming men who can love well, raise families, start businesses with integrity, and anchor parishes that become bright centers of mercy and truth.
If you’re tired of false choices and hungry for a life that unites faith, work, and citizenship, this is your invitation to begin. Subscribe, share this episode with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review with one habit you’ll start this week to live the third way.
Read Why Young Americans Are Turning to Socialism—and Why They Deserve Better
Follow us: X https://x.com/JP2Renewal
Check out the Podcast on YouTube
Contact us: info@jp2renew.org
If this resonates, subscribe, share it with a friend who needs courage, and leave a review to help others find the show. Your voice helps build the future.
Good to be with you. I'm glad you're joining me. We're in Advent right now, and we're leading up, of course, to Christmas. And I I started to think about what I was thankful for. What we should all be thankful for. And it's so important to keep your memory to know what just transpired this last five, six, seven, eight, ten years. It's amazing what was going on. So what am I thankful for? I'm thankful that under Donald Trump, I'm not getting arrested for saying Merry Christmas. That Merry Christmas is back in. Remember, it wasn't very long ago with Obama and Biden. You know, it was happy holidays or whatever. And you could say happy holidays if you want to, but it was amazing how people would look at you if you just said Merry Christmas. I'm thankful for Donald Trump for that. I'm thankful for Claymore, the big sword behind me, Claymore Militus Christie, uh Soldiers for Christ. These young men that are waking up, just surprise the heck out of so many people that in the most toxic culture, these young people could come up. This shows you that this is in our hearts. This is in our hearts. What is the truth of things? You know, how should I live? Who am I? What's the purpose and meaning of my life? What is the truth of things? So Donald Trump, thank you, Jesus, for him. Because he believes in something. He believes in marriage and the family. Look at he's been divorced three or four times. He's coming to this party late, I think, you know. But I see his faith blossoming. I think he understands something. He loves the country. He saw what was happening, and I think he started to understand one nation under God. What does that mean? One nation under God. And he's talking about it. And Merry Christmas is back. Our nation's leaders are proclaiming Jesus Christ. Uh Marco Rubio, uh J.D. Vance, many of the others. If you see if I watched this uh second or third, probably the third time I saw the whole cabinet together. And these are faithful people. These are believers. So thankful for again for Claymore. It fills that story, huh? It tells these young guys that weren't formed, that some of them grew up in the church, some of them didn't, but they there's so much noise they got away from their own heart. So three-step uh three-step battle plan, right? For getting your heart back, understanding marriage and the family, going out and restoring the culture and the nation, you know, patriotism. If they don't do it, if we don't all do it, get together and do that, uh, we won't have a nation for them. And I really feel bad because I have children and grandchildren, and so do my my friends. And it's not just, it's not just what's going on. It's a real battle uh to destroy human beings and destroy their hearts, separate their hearts from their souls, their their their uh their bodies and souls from God themselves, uh to not understand what love is, happiness is. It's it's insanity. In a way, I gotta tell you, I it in a way I like it. I don't like evil, of course, and I don't like what's really transpiring, but I like the idea that it's in the open. And you either see it or you don't. And if you don't see it, uh I really stopped uh really discussing things with people. It would be like just discussing, trying to bring truth in when somebody's just emotional and they don't really care. It's like seeing like a through two different, totally different lens. One is irrational, there is no truth, only my truth or your truth, and it's just all emotional. And one person is saying, what is the truth of things? What is the actual truth? And you can't discuss it. So I would much better uh spend my time like today talking to these young people that are growing up in this toxic culture and saying, What is it? You know, what's going on? So for this alone, just be able to say Merry Christmas, and they have a cabinet that's faithful, I would have voted for uh Donald Trump. Romans chapter 10, verses 9 and 10 says this. This is St. Paul, of course. The word is near you on your lips and in your heart. That is the word of faith which we preach, he says. Because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For man believes with his heart and is so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved. One nation under God, huh? Saint Paul goes on, the scripture says, No one who believes in him shall be put to shame. No one who believes in Jesus Christ will be put to shame. For there is no distinction, and this is very important when you think about our country, there's no distinction between Jew and Greek. The same Lord is Lord of all and bestows his riches upon all who call upon him. For everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved, and of course he's talking about Jesus Christ, right? So how many young people are hearing this for the first time? Not only from our nation's leader speaking about Jesus Christ, but perhaps hearing it for the first time, period. St. Paul continues, but how are men to call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher? And how can men preach unless they are sent? And as it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach good news. Well, you know, we have politicians that are preaching the good news. It's amazing. I um had a podcast uh maybe two weeks ago or something on Charlie Kirk, and I played a segment from Marco Rubio at his memorial. It was fantastic, right? So, this, of course, is the heart of the attack. You see this against Trump, Trump derangement syndrome. This is a demonic attack, you know. The heart of the attack, remember this against young people today, though. That's where the attack is, really against children. If you're going to protect the children, then you're gonna get attacked to keep them from hearing the good news, and it's been effective. Young people today have been just disconnected from their faith. Astonishing then again is the fact that these young guys are waking up and asking, there must be something more, and going on to ask, what is the truth of things? So many people thought this battle, what is the truth of things, that when you're asking that question, it's a political or an economic uh question. Well, COVID brought it all together, didn't it? You know, we used to see this battle that begins in the human heart. It goes out as a battle between, then we say, between left and right, or socialism and capitalism. Um it was an illusion, though, because we found out during COVID that the people in power, the deep state, the deep church was real. We were supposed to be living in a in a republic. The Western civilization was supposed to be free. Ah, COVID showed something more sinister, didn't it? Both systems corrupt, inefficient, ineffective, socialism and this fake illusion of democracy that we were living, which is just morality taken out of it, and everybody just becomes greedy and and and wanting more and more and more. It becomes hardly any difference between them. Both funnel funneling meth uh money, taking it like a hydra, a multi-u-headed uh serpent, just with all these tentacles going into the hardworking middle class and funneling it to who? To the so-called powerful. And they give a few peanuts to the poor. Uh, those are on welfare, food stamps, especially those are in the government dole, and they're by the boats, huh? And that's why you're seeing, like in where I uh live outside of Chicago, where you can't turn this around. It's a blue state because they've got 50%, over 50% of the city is on some type of welfare. So they're gonna vote for them. And they just come sucking the rest bly uh uh uh um dry. But it can't go on forever. It continues to unravel. In fact, they are often the one and the same thing, these governments, then, right? We're say we're free, you're not free. You know, try not to pay your real estate taxes that are going up and up and up and up and so unjust, you know. It's amazing. You're not free. They'll take your house for you in in a second. So let me address the the the battle the young people face. We've tried to get ahead of it a little bit, right? These young guys that I'm talking to are trying to get ahead of this economy, they're trying to pay off debt, sometimes it's college debt. They want to buy a house. Someday they want to get married, and they think, man, if I could get money for a house. What they don't notice, and this is why I really enjoy being with them and and and talking to them through this claim or battle plan, because what they don't notice is this whole pyramid screen scheme is falling around them. So they're trying to pay down debt, they're trying to do the right thing, they're worrying about what they're gonna do for a living, etc. Um, but what's happening is our money is going out to pay student loans for people that that took these gender classes and all this kind of stuff, and can't now they can't pay their loans back, right? We're giving free money to illegals that came in here and taking the tax dollars from these young guys when they're working a job. You know, free money to those who will not work, it goes on and on and on. So this is coming around them. We're overspending, the whole nation is in debt, and this is imploding. So while they're trying to work so hard, unless they see the big picture and we need to turn this whole thing around. So they stand before two apparent doors, it looks like, right? Door one, where the state socialism and this Marxist socialism, it's all atheistic, um, stands where the state owns you, right? The state becomes the power, the state becomes dead. I've talked about this uh last week in a podcast. You should go listen to that. It's really, really good. I have a couple articles out on that in different magazines and things. I'll have to put some links in the in the next couple of show notes. Or or door two. We heard the capitalistic market, and then what they found out, these young guys though, is the market uses them too, right? And so these are both distortions, both uh deformations, you know, deformed uh ways of treating the human person, the human good. But to a generation that was raised without moral formation, without deep community, without even a dad and a mom in the home so often, without the transcendent, transcendent uh horizon of faith that connects you to God, you you have a lens that just gets you get blown all over. So the compassionate promise of socialism feels like the only option that speaks to their wounds. Ah, you know, the government's going to take care of me. No, the government's not going to take care of you. The government wants to keep you on a couple of little food stamps, keep you poor, and you know, everybody in between, all that middle class is going to be taken out, right? So we're all going to be equally poor. That's what socialism does. And then you got the rulers on top, right? And you say the government people. So history offers a very sobering truth about this. Socialism has never deliberated on its promises. Never. It has produced oppression, poverty, and a mechanized view of the human person everywhere it's taken root. You are just an object to be used for the state, huh? Now the market, the capital markets, without moral foundation, also uses you as a consumer, huh? To buy this, to buy that, to buy that, and always stay in debt, huh? Always looking for the next thing I need to own. The tragedy is not that young people are drawn to it, to socialism, Mom Donnie say, uh, or the communist or socialist mayor in Minnesota, in Seattle, in Chicago, and New York, I'm all over the place. It's not the tragedy is not that these young people don't know any better and are drawn to it. The tragedy is they were never shown the alternative. They've never shown the truth. They never had the gospel preached to them, like I said earlier from St. Paul. Long before our current political movement that we're in right now, the church offered, the Catholic Church has been talking about these things and bringing them down uh for many, many, many years, right? Now, I wouldn't listen to you know Pope Francis or maybe even Pope Leo. Let's see what he has to say. But we don't need to listen to these kind of modern voices, right? The synod of synodalities and stuff, because the church teaching has been coming down, what we call the deposit of faith, being brought down to us from generation to generation. So the church offered a vision radically different from both collectivism, socialism, and unfettered individualism. This vision, articulated by popes recently, by Pope Paul VI, John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, right before Francis, has been described as a fully Christian humanism. Now, it this is not some vague spirituality or baptized version of secular activism, which we hear from Francis, and unfortunately sometimes I hear that from Pope Leo now too. But it's a profound understanding of the human person as created by God, ordered toward truth. What is the truth of things? Fulfilled in communion and union with each other and with the church, and destined, we can't forget this, destined for eternal life. Three necessary societies that uh that that are Catholic foundation in social Catholic social teaching. The human person, the human heart, you got to get that right. Understanding of marriage and the family, Christ in the church, this is united, and then we go out and form the culture, and then how we organize these the state, the government, and also the economy, finance, etc. Always united to Christ in the church. You know, take these values then of life and love. When you talk about uh Christian humanism, it starts with the person, it starts with marriage and the family, it starts with reality, and then we go out and build it. Our justice system, our laws are based on the Ten Commandments, the rule of law, honesty, integrity. This is this is how we built the United States. This is what Donald Trump is starting to really, really understand. And he knows we got to get back to our roots, and those are Christian roots. The Christian humanism shaped the church's strong preference now for a market economy, for capitalism, basically, but it's got to be grounded in moral law and service of the human person, what the church tradition often calls a free economy with a moral order. So we're free to go out and start businesses, we're free to live our lives, but we have to have a moral underpinning. You know, over both collectivism and unrestrained laissez faire capitalism, where you just, you know, you get greedier, greedier, greedier, and don't worry about the worker, don't worry about the effect in the common good. No, you can't have either one of those. You know, either one of those becomes this oppressive uh uh tyranny. John Paul II said this in Centennius Anus, which was updating Pope Leo's Catholic social teaching. Centennius Anus means a hundred years, so he updated a hundred years after Pope Leo XIII. This is the beauty of these roots that I'm talking about. He said the free market is the most effective instrument for utilizing resources effectively and responding to human needs. But only when it operates within a strong juridicial framework under laws, right? And laws that are going to be in place that protect the common good, that places it at the service of human freedom and recognizes businesses and the economy not as an end in themselves. He saw capitalism as capable of serving the common good, all of us, all of humanity, when it's guided by Christian ethics, the rule of law, an active civil society that understands all these things. But it gets dangerous when it's reduced to pure profit seeking, or we become idols of the market. You know, people that all they care about is the stock market and money, and you know, Satan is behind all this. And when you lose your heart, ooh, he'll find some way to destroy things. Pope Paul VI taught that authentic human development requires a complete humanism, which is open to the absolute, open to God and informed through that. And so this is where Catholic teaching uh comes in, right? And it always serves the family. This is the roots of it now. It always has to go back to serving marriage and the family because that's the basic building cell of every, we forget this, of every civilization, all through history. Where do people come from? Where do functional people come from? People that have been educated in the truth, in the love, and sacrifice its families to go out and serve their neighbors and communities and build a culture, uh, you know, the books that they read at home, the traditions that were passed down, including faith, morals, values, virtuals, uh, virtues. What about honesty, hard work, taking care of one another? Don't lie, don't steal, don't cheat. I mean, all of these things have been erased. You know, look at these these mobs that are robbing these stores. So the government needs to get behind this, and Donald Trump is understanding it. You've got to lower inflation, you gotta stop this debt that's going on, you gotta stop all this corruption that's going on in the deep state, and people don't care about anything but themselves. And who is is behind it like an orchestra leader? It's always Satan. We don't realize this. Think about real estate taxes. I know so many families with young children and their taxes going up every year for a crooked, corrupt education system that doesn't care about their your kids. They just care about their own money and their own ideologies, right? And we got to stop the the government borrowing and all that stuff, the wasteful spending. Remember how they attacked Doge? Why did they go after Elon Musk? Because what we're doing, we're cutting off their money supply. School vouchers should be there where families can go and go to the school that they want to. We got to help families instill these timeless values that come down and pass them down. And what does it all come down to? Love. It's all based on love. Love and the truth. Speak love and the truth and speak the truth in love. The thing the people want more than anything else, more than paying uh the mortgage on time, more than getting rich really comes down to it. And anybody that's got rich knows this, if they have any uh moral uh foundation at all. The only thing that leads to meaning and purpose is what? Love and to serve other people. So is there some reason for being on this planet? Is there some mission? Am I useful? What's the meaning and purpose of my life? Why do you think kids today are anxious, depressed, and even suicidal? You've taken away meaning and purpose from their life, told them they're just accidents of history. The human heart doesn't function well, right? So we gotta speak the we gotta speak the gospel. We gotta speak to these young people in the truth. That's what Claymore is all about, right? The evil of various systems is clearly out in the open and it's mocking us. However, you refer to the system, progressivism, socialism, communism, secularism, modernism, globalism, totalitarianism, climate alarmism, queerism, they're all the same. What do they do? They attack marriage and the family, destroy children, take God out of the equation, and the culture and the nation starts to collapse. We see this. This is already happening right before our eyes in Europe, in Western Europe right now. At its core, they're all anti-human. This is what we have to be able to see. They're always an attack on the human person, especially children. It is not natural, of course, for a species to destroy itself. There's a metaphysical, right, beyond just the physical or let's call it supernatural battle going on between God and Satan. The battle is for the human person, body and soul. We know who wins, you know. Our lady has already crushed this head. God won that war. Jesus Christ came in and conquered sin and death. But we're living in a temporal world where we're free. And it's human freedom given by God that allows us to choose between good and evil, truth and lies, beauty, and those who would profane what is beautiful. So we got to stand up for children. Whenever you get confused in the world, look what they're doing to children, the most innocent, vulnerable, and defenseless. I'm looking at this woke mind uh mind virus, right? That we're Talking about twisting and distorting these young people, even their bodies. What we call extinctivism, maybe. I don't know if that's a word, extinctivism, where we not only uh abort children, we render them sterile in these gender ideologies, we euthanize them. It's amazing how we're killing the older people. Uh, or you're even sick kids now. Climate alarmism, you know, uh you know, take away all of the cheap energy and stuff all over the world. And who who gets hurt? It's the always the poor. You know, give me another boost, uh Fauci, right? How many boosts are, you know, uh, and people are still taking those vaccine boosts with that mRNA vaccine. I can't believe it. Look at when you talk about how what a battle this is, look at Charlie Kirk assassinated for speaking on the truth of things. A reminder of just how fierce this demonic force is. The goal is the destruction of the human person created in the image and likeness of God. See, Satan can't kill God, and he doesn't have his own clay. He's not a creator, so what does he do? He attacks and twists and distorts the clay of God, huh? God created us in his image, uh in his likeness, and he's good at it. Satan is good at destroying us, isn't he? And he's recruited a whole army of the fallen to carry out his plan. This is what we call the deep state, the deep church. They're embedded in all our institutions right now. We are at the end times. And the end times, you know, when Jesus came in, we were already starting to go into the end times, so we don't know exactly when that is. We're not supposed to even uh, you know, try to guess. But we know that it's winding down. Sister Lucia Fatima said the last great uh battle between our Lord and Satan is going to be over what? Marriage and the family. And we're seeing that the point of that attack on children, huh? Propaganda, it's nonstop. If you're not careful as a young person today by filtering it all out and seeing for it for what it is, this culture of death, it destroys the human person. It will destroy you and me and the and the beauty of the culture and the country that you're being, that you want to raise families in, that you that you're going to be living in, the most beautiful uh and and and the most powerful, the the richest, the most successful country in the world, because it was grounded on those Christian uh values that we already said. St. Paul, let me let me read you for something from St. Paul because it puts it in perspective. This is Ephesians 6, verse 10. Put on the whole armor of God. He said, Finally be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. This is a story that we have to understand. It's playing out in front of us. It's a very challenging time, but we could see this now. For we are not contending, uh, St. Paul says, against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness. He's talking about the ranks of angels, but he also is talking about those who cooperate with him, the human beings in this world. So against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual host of wickedness and heavenly places, therefore take on the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand the evil day, and having done all, to stand up. And then he goes on to say how to do that. Read that. Ephesians 6, start at verse 10 and just kind of read through and oh meditate on that, right? So the fallen ones who seek to destroy us are not the true enemy. The enemy is the enemy. As wicked as guys like Joe Biden can be, and and maybe because he lost his mind, it was the auto pin thing that put all these um gender ideologies and the abortion laws, and you know, go look at his first executive orders the very first day he came into office. It was all anti-human. But Satan is the one behind that. Satan is the orchestra leader, the leader of the deep state, the leader of the deep church. Once you start to understand that, even in relationships, you go, you know, the guy that's arguing with me, you know, he's really not the enemy. The enemy is the enemy. So many people aren't even baptized today, don't even have that grace flowing from baptism, have never been brought into the church, or they just rejected God. So again, COVID made this so clear. I'm almost thankful for COVID because it woke people up that may have never been saved. We thought we were free in Western civilization, but it was an illusion. We're enslaved, used, manipulated, lied to. And the so-called leaders of the Western nations were following their father. What does that mean to follow their father? I've read this to you before, but it's worth doing again. The next thing after Ephesians 6, read John chapter 8. It's one of my favorites for sure. I'm only going to read you a part of him. And he's going back and forth with um with the Jews of his day, and they answered him, and he said that you know uh God is not your father. And they answered him, Well, Abraham is our father, so he's connected to God, so of course God is our father. And Jesus said to him, If you were Abraham's children, descendants of Abraham, you would do what Abraham did. But now you seek to kill me. A man who has told you the truth, which I heard from God, this is not what Abraham did. You do the works of your father. They said to him, We were not born of fornication, we have one father, even God. Jesus said to them, If God were your father, you would love me. We get back to love again. For I proceeded and came forth from God. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. Listen to this. He was a murderer from the beginning, has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell you the truth, again, in today's time, there is no truth, only my truth, your truth. Yeah, this is Satan. Because I tell you the truth, you do not believe me. Which of you convicts me of sin? Jesus said. If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? He who is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is you are not from God. And that's what we got to realize. I I'm getting older. I don't I only have a certain amount of time left. I'd rather speak to young people and spend my time with young people who are at least searching for the truth. Some of these older people have been sitting there with that proverbial frog for so long. You know, they just fell to these bullies of this age, you know, they sold their souls to the devil. Since the fall, right from Adam and Eve, there's always been bullies. You think about this in the murders. Cain, the next generation, the the the son of Adam and Eve, murdered his own brother Abel. And now these same people seek power, money, sex, right? They want to twist everything that's true, good, and beautiful, and take the lives of those who don't uh agree with them. This goes all the way back from Genesis 3. Here's your third thing you read, is Genesis 3, you know, where he, I'm just going off the top of my head, but where he he says to Eve, you know, you will not die if you eat of this fruit. No, you will be like God's, and you can call evil good and good evil. Isn't this with this trans and this queer and and killing uh babies and twisting and distorting marriage? You know, what is the thing that brings you joy? I'm asking you now, right? To love and be loved in the truth. Marriage, family, children, grandchildren, your neighbor, God's creations. Even even the things we enjoy in this temporal world, you know, food, uh, laughter with friends, a great glass of wine. But we seem to lose track that that these bullies exist around us, and if we don't wake up and proclaim Jesus into this world, and this is why, again, why I said uh I'm so thankful for Donald Trump and his cabinet, they're actually they're actually proclaiming Jesus Christ at the top. But we're not always doing our part underneath, are we? So that's what we have to do. We have to get this army, this grassroots army that's not afraid to speak the truth. I mean, we're all gonna die at some point, you know? What's our meaning and purpose? To love and be loved and speak the truth, huh? And that is really dangerous, what's happening today, because we live in a world that's under the influence of the biggest bully, the actual oppressor who seeks to destroy us, Satan, who is the orchestra leader. And his objective again is the destruction of humanity. Watch for that, watch for that, watch for that. Today we stand once again before that tree of the knowledge of good and evil, just like Adam and Eve, and we choose. The battle lines are very clear. The weed and the wheat are taken sides, right? We're separating ourselves. God doesn't have to do a lot of work. There's no other rational reason for the destruction of marriage, the family, children, when you see uh this incredible influx of immigration that they're allowing in the European countries to completely change and destroy that Christian culture. Why did they why why did is that allowed? Because we threw God out first, and then Satan just comes in and he just fills it in, right? Human life is being destroyed in an unprecedented number, never before seen in human history. The 20th century, we saw this in all the different wars, and this is accelerating now. But we even with all those wars, uh, abortion and euthanasia and the things that we're doing to each other, um, it's just killing more. It's not even close. This death toll is accelerating. We're reminded of John Paul II's reflection on the 20th century. He's looking back at the beginning of the 20th century, right? The world wars, etc. He said it began with the hope of unlimited progress, but it ended as the bloodiest century known to man. Modern man had placed his hopes for a messiah in his own genius, science, technology, medicine. John Paul said this 30, 40, 50 years ago. Whenever man loses sight of the great mystery, he said, and sets his sight only on this world, he always meets disappointment, even despair. Because the world is not capable of making man happy. This is the world without God. It's not capable of saving him from evil in all its types, illness, uh epidemics, uh, pandemics, catastrophes and the like, he said. This world with its riches and its wants needs to be redeemed. It needs to be saved. You know, you think we would all caught on to this cosmic story by now. It's good versus evil, light versus darkness, love versus lust, and we would seek the better way that's been revealed to us. But so many people miss the larger story. We get caught up in this little tiny story of our own selfishness, and we enclose ourselves in sin. The result is always the same. A broken heart, huh? And when I'm talking to young people that we're told, you know, they're just an accident of history, they're not created. Life has no meaning or purpose, and you see this hopelessness, right? And we're all broken in some way, all of us. We've all been broken in one way or another. But along the way comes some very good news. The path of meaning, healing, and hope, which leads to authentic love and profound happiness, can be found. First, know that there's a reason for your deep ache and your thirst for something more, young guys. Alexander Schultz and Neitzen said, Why did all this come? Because men have forgotten God. And Saint Augustine, uh, in the third and going into the fourth centuries, our hearts are restless, Lord, until they rest in you. So John Paul says that a tremendous responsibility falls upon the church and the believer, and a distinct but weighty responsibility falls upon the political political community and the citizens that live in a country to speak for the truth. There's a message, there's a path. It begins with the Redeemer of Man. Throw out Jesus Christ, throw out the Redeemer of Man, and there is no solution. Mankind has tried everything for all the history, but we don't know history. This message is amplified and developed for the subsequent twenty six years of John Paul II's leadership as Pope. He said the path is the way of man, this path, the narrow gate of Jesus Christ. But it involves a proper understanding of our conscience. We have to be educated correctly, but at the heart of it all, it's a path of love. It's the path of truth, it's the path of Jesus Christ Himself. God is love. You know, truth is not a something. If you're wondering what the truth is, it's a somebody, and his name is Jesus Christ. So it's a universal call to holiness and the sanctification of everyday life. It's not brain surgery, again, it's the two great commandments to be filled with divine life and love and to go out and become a personal love. That gives you meaning and purpose, right? So, you know, there's a lot of things happening today, right? I mean, even if you just believed in biology, you know, when I was a kid, it was all about biology. There's no God, it's just evolution, evolution. Well, you would see human beings if that was true trying to pass on their genes to the next generation, right? If if it was all about that, think about that. That's what they told us. It's all evolution. It's trying to keep our genes going. Well, we're destroying our own lives. We're childless. We're destroying the baby when it comes in. We twist our gender ideologies, render these young people sterile. Don't forget there's only there's only one way through sexual intercourse between a man and a woman that new life comes. All those other things twist and distort that. We have decisions not to marry today, not to have children. You know, it it it it this doesn't make common sense if you're following Darwinian evolutionary theory. It goes against nature and nature's law. Well, what's the good news? The good news is this is a call for all of us. You know, it's not a call for the politicians uh or the lawyers or the educators um or or the the deep state uh Vatican even or the deep church. You know, it's all of us have to rise up. And this is where Claymore comes in because it lays a foundation in the truth. And as I kind of start to think about how to wind down here, you know, G.K. Chesterton is so beautiful, right? He said, When a man stops believing in God, he doesn't believe in nothing, he believes in anything. When you think about these trans movements and abortion, we believe in anything. Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, if you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. We know this in our own hearts. It starts in our own hearts so we can experience this freedom ourselves, freedom from addictions and pornography and murder and hatred. We're surrounded by horrors we can no longer pretend are on the margins. The slaughter of millions of unborn children, the deliberate redefinition of marriage until it means nothing. The open war on childhood innocence to these trans ideologies, to what we're doing to them in schools, it's a demonic distortion that preys up especially on those who may never have been given the armor of baptism or the armor of an education in our religious background to protect us against the rulers and powers of this present darkness. You know, St. Paul did not mince words. He said, We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Only the power of the living God can cast these down, and he has chosen to do it in large measure through us, ordinary Catholics, ordinary Christians, who will finally stop standing idle. He says, Come on, you two come into the vineyard. You know, our faith is not theoretical, it's fiercely practical. We must plunge deeply into this divine life, prayer, sacrament, scripture, penance. Uh you know, download the Claymore battle plan outline from our website. I'll have a link in the show notes, and then carry that fire into the world. It's all laid out there for you. We do not sit like the frog in a slowly heating pot, rotten generations slip into the abyss while we scroll, shrug, sigh, get into porn, gambling, whatever, anything to fill that time. We're ravenous creatures. Time is winding down. You're gonna lose the nation. You know, none of us wants to uh reach old age, sit back on a rocking chair and realize that the destruction we tolerated in our own hearts leaked out, wounded our families, our children, our grandchildren, our neighbors, our nation. We didn't pass anything down. But what a lack of courage. I hope I I don't become one of them. To the young people especially, I say, the world has lied to you. It told you marriage is oppression, children are a burden, and America is the root of all evil. America has grave sins, yes, but it's not the fruit of a broken system, not on our foundation, not on our constitution. It's broken because we're broken. You know, there's a fruit of broken hearts inside that system. When John Adams warned this republic was made only for a moral and religious people, it's unfit for any other. He meant that, right? So we're starting to wake up. It was starting to wake up. And and uh next time I come on, I think I'm gonna talk about 1 Samuel 8, when the the Israelites uh were coming in uh into their own nation, and they had judges. They didn't have a king over them. And then they said, I when we want to be like all the other nations. God's not enough to be our king. We want an earthly king. And and in there uh God explains exactly what's gonna happen. In fact, maybe I'll just say a couple of things here, right? The Lord told Samuel to warn them what the king would take. Listen to this if if it's not the same thing today. This is from the Old Testament. He will take your sons for his chariots and his armies, right, into war. He to plow his fields, to forge his weapons. He will take your daughters to be perf uh performers and cooks and bakers. He'll take the best of your fields, your vineyards, your olive orchards, and give them to his cronies, and give them to people that will support them in their power. He will take a tenth of all your grain and vintage for his court. Well, today they take a lot more than a tenth of our grain, don't we? He will take your servants, your best young men, your donkeys, work them for his projects. They're gonna take something of all of us, right? He's gonna take a tenth of your flocks and for yourselves, you will become his slaves. And that's what we're becoming. That's what we woke up from COVID. And the final chilling word, you will cry out, God said, in that day, because of your king who you have chosen, but the Lord God will not answer you that day because the people refused to listen. No, they said, We all have a king over us so we could be like all the other nations. This is what the United States was becoming until Trump came in. This is why I'm thankful for Trump, because we're turning back to God. Look at this is a big battle. This is a lot of evil going on, so we all have to wake up. Let me just say a couple other things. I would have voted for Trump just to be able to say Merry Christmas and to hear them uh talk about Jesus Christ. You know, politics is a messy business. This battle that they're in is messy. Can you imagine that the power structures that are after Donald Trump? I would have had voted him for him just to close the border to this river of sex trafficking and fentanyl coming in and water down and dilute um our Christian culture. I would have voted him for uh for him just so parents can speak at school board meetings without the FBI treating them like terrorists. This was going on just a couple years ago. I would have voted for him just for a cabinet to praise in Jesus' name and says Merry Christmas without apology. Something stripped from public life over Obama and uh and Biden. And you know what? I would have voted him for him just to dismantle this great climate scam. The pharma uh industrial complex where we're just continuing to vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate without being tested. You know the story. The military industrial complex that just is growing richer and richer from all the wars, the corrupt Department of Education that pushed these radical gender ideologies into the souls of little ones. Rachel Levine, who was Richard Levine, a man that's married with three kids. Who decides to dress up as a woman and take over the nation's health? For sending abortion decisions back to the state so that our country is no more under this evil, for rooting out the runaway fraud and corruption in the government, for stopping the United States from polluting the rest of the world because we're pushing these random radical gender ideologies, DEI, gay marriage, abortion, war, overthrow governments all over the world, just undermining everything, just chaos. Donald Trump is not our savior. He's a remarkable instrument being used by God to do some really good work, but it's up to us to fill in those gaps. Don't keep coming down on Donald Trump. He's doing the best he can. He's not a perfect man. He's not perfectly formed. I, you know, at the end of the day, I'm just astounded by how much he actually understands. I and we got to pray for him, right? That real work, though, is saving our own soul, our marriages, our families, our culture. It happens at the grassroots level. It always did. Jesus didn't go out and grab the rich guys. He didn't grab the rulers of the world. In fact, he did the opposite. He went and got the poorest guys, the fishermen, um, the people that had nothing. And he said, You go out. And he said, Well, we can't go out. We're just the poor. We're weak. He goes, Ah, I will give you the strength. I will give you the courage, right? It happens when plumbers, doctors, lawyers, machinists, mothers, and students carry the gospel into every corner of the world. And then when they come into power, they'll do what Marco Rubio and J.D. Vance are doing, right? So young men and women become the right first the right person first. This is where it all starts, you know. Even before you go out and get in and try to find somebody to marry or date or whatever, you become the right person. Sink below the spirits of the age that want to blow you around, protect innocence, then marry well. Raise children who love God and the country, refuse the false kings. Give your life fully, joyfully, courageously to the one true king who takes nothing but your heart and exchange gives you everything, even himself. This is the hour for the lady, huh? So again, we see all these different things happen, right? Jesus does not treat holiness though as a suggestion. He gives us a command, be holy, build on the rock, obey my words, enter the battle. This is a universal call to holiness. It's not just a poetic phrase. It's a wartime commission. You two go out into my vineyard. The master is walking through the marketplace at the 11th hour. He's looking straight at you and saying, You too go out into my vineyard. Answer him. Remember what he said? The harvest is great, but the laborers are few. And the king is coming back soon for the second coming. Print out the Claymore battle plan. Follow it. Phone a friend. Know that the Claymore handbook is getting ready to be sent to the printers, should be ready to bring to your parish. And think about this. Plant the seed. We're going to begin as soon as this handbook's ready. We're identifying right now and continue to send us some names. A hundred young leaders, a hundred young men, and they could be, they don't have to know everything because we're going to be able to give that to them. They just have the desire for the truth and to spread the word of Jesus Christ and to disciple others. So we're looking for a hundred young men from a hundred different parishes who plant the seed in their parish. They don't need anybody's permission. They don't need to get an okay from anybody because they belong to a parish. And now they're going to just look to disciple one or two or three other guys and we'll continue to build out from that. People that are looking for the truth, right? The future is going to belong to those who build. You've seen the two dead ends. You've heard the Pope's warnings. You felt the cost of a culture that believes freedom means loneliness. Pleasure means happiness. Progress means replacing people with screens. But now you are seeing the way out. The Claymore Battle Plan is not nostalgia. It's not a compromise. It's a countercultural revolution of freedom. And the number one liberation we need to be free from is sin. And then we look to marriage and the family, love of country, love of neighbor to protect what we build from totalitarianism, from socialism, for those that would use and abuse people so that we can own property. We can start to build families, we can serve the poor. We could fear God alone as our king because everything else turns to dust. The Claymore battle plan is not a theory you admire, it's a life that you choose. And here is the secret every saint understood. Your small decisions can rebuild a world. Every decision I make brings me more into evil, more into an addiction. Everything I do good, it rewires my brain, remote it gives me peace, gives me purpose. You know, these meals that you have with your family and with friends, blessed in gratitude and prayer, the business you start with integrity, the children that you welcome, the parish that you help revive, the elderly neighbor you take care for. It all takes courage to refuse the lies of this age. These things echo across generations. Politicians cannot save us. Technocrats cannot design a human future. Influencers on social media cannot preach us back to sanity. Only people, real people, rooted people, sacrificial people can rebuild what's crumbled, and that means you. So you're not too young, you're not too late, you're not too small, you're exactly the kind of person God uses when the world is shaking. Be not afraid, build love. Begin. Because the future will belong to those who walk through the narrow gate, and Claymore will journey with you, be there for you, and we'll journey together. For eternity doesn't mean tomorrow. Eternity means forever. We're already eternal beings. And it's a win-win situation. When we do good in the world, when we love others, when we build others up, we're also opening that narrow gate to go through the heart of Jesus Christ into eternal life at the same time. It's a win-win situation. We're connecting with what Christ did on the cross, redemption, salvation. We take this into our heart and then we speak with our mouth and so that we are saved. Shoot me an email if you have any questions. If you want to see a show, uh if you want certain topics uh to relate to, if you have questions about Claymore, God bless you. Talk to you again soon. Bye bye.