Become Who You Are

#689 The Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe: Finding Hope and Light In An Unhinged World

• Jack • Episode 689

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A late recording on the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe turns into a fierce meditation on a world that feels unhinged and the mother who leads us to her Son. We trace a throughline from John’s Gospel and the order of creation to Juan Diego’s roses in winter and the tilma that sparked eight million conversions, then ask what those signs say about today’s battles over life, meaning, and the human person.

Let's Pray together: 

O Virgin of Guadalupe, Mother of the Americas, grant to our homes the grace of loving and respecting life in its beginnings, with the same love with which you conceived in your womb the life of the Son of God. Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of Fair Love, protect our families so that they may always be united and bless the upbringing of our children. 

Our hope, look upon us with pity, teach is to go continually to Jesus, and if we fall help us to rise again and return to Him through the confession of our faults and our sins in the Sacrament of penance, which gives peace to the soul. 

We beg you to grant us a great love of all the holy Sacraments, which are, as it were, the signs that your Son left us on earth. Thus, Most Holy Mother, with the peace of God in our consciences, with our hearts free from evil and hatred, we will be able to bring to all others true joy and peace, which come to us from your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.

- Prayer by Pope John Paul

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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome. It's good to be with you. Happy Friday. I am late. I'm late. Today, as I record this, and by the time I get it out, uh, it'll be evening probably, because I was at Mass and doing things for the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I consecrated myself last year with Cardinal Burke. I was at the uh at the um shrine of our Our Lady of Guadalupe in Wisconsin. We had done a nine-month novena, and the crazy, the world's come unhinged. And I went out to find her to settle back into the peace of our blessed mother who brings her son. The world has come unhinged, and we do need to get our our our hearts back in order. It's so good when you just come back into the truth of things. You know, it was G.K. Chesterton said, when a man, man and woman, of course, stop believing in God, they don't just believe in nothing, they believe in anything. Let me say that again. When we stop believing in God, we don't just believe in nothing, we believe in anything. Isn't that the truth? Our our you know, wisdom comes from God, and our minds, our reason is filled with wisdom, and we see God, Jesus Christ brings the light in, God brings the light in the spirit that dwells in us, our blessed mother. The most clear thing you can see in the world today is how this is separating those who have rejected God, don't believe in God, don't bring the light into the world. They they're in a very dark place, and we see that today. No one understands human nature like Jesus, who counters this craziness, and he said this to the Jews. This is John 8, 31, 32. If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. You know, we know this from the very first chapter of John, that Jesus is that logo, that wisdom, that wisdom that brings that light into the world. You can go back and read the very first line or two from the Bible. It starts out, Betesheet, in the beginning, and it talks about the spirit, huh? The spirit of God that hovers above the chaos and brings order into life. And we see order all around us in nature. That's why it's so important to get out in nature and to ponder all that's true, good, and beautiful, and to be absorbed in wisdom. You start to see things different. But we as a people, and I'm talking about the Western civilization here, Europe, the United States, etc., Australia, we've taken God out and we believe in anything. And we've allowed Satan to rule. It's again, just pay attention to this. It's the most clear thing. Your heart will start to ooh, get anxious, nervous, depressed even. What man believes then today is not it's not only amazing, and it's not only anything, it's destruction and death that rule because we've opened up the void. We think that we uh came into a world that's neutral. It's been a world at war all along. So I want to talk a little bit about that. Uh, you know, these people, and again, these are our brothers and sisters. We pray for them, we try to bring them back into the story. They've fallen for the lie, and in their pride, you hear the pride of life, you know, pride summer and pride life. Well, it's the opposite. Uh, you know, it's the it it pride is what? The number one deadly sin. So they what are they doing? They're cooperating with Satan, who also was full of pride to destroy what? The children of God, the Imago Day, their own brothers and sisters, and they're out to destroy them. And they're building an eternal home for themselves in hell. A hell that's clearly manifests first in the world. It starts in your heart, goes out into the world, and you build a culture of death and that that that lasts forever. Mass reading for today, the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Our Lady of Guadalupe, this happened on December 9th, 1531, when Juan Diego, a Chechemica, I think, Indian, encountered a beautiful young woman near Mexico City. He was he was he was climbing, he was going someplace in the mountains. And speaking in his native tongue, she revealed herself as Holy Mary, mother of the true God, the true God, she said, of whom we live. So why does she say the true God? Because they, you know, they worship all kinds of gods, just like they did in Roman times, in ancient Greek times, etc. And she says, Holy Mary, mother of the true God for whom we live. She requested that a chapel be built, she told Juan Diego. And after the local bishop refused to believe Juan, the Virgin herself arranged roses in Juan's rough cloak. When Juan Diego was in front of the bishop, he opened his cloak before the bishop, and a miraculous image appeared on his on his toma, on his on his cloak. And we had that image today. That's the image you see behind me of the Lady of Guadalupe. And then roses came out, and this was wintertime, and there were no roses in that area, especially in the wintertime. And they poured out all over the place. So in seven years, eight million native people were converted to Jesus Christ. It was astounding. Pope John Paul II called the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, then, which is in Mexico, the Marian Heart of America. On the inside of his cloak was that beautiful picture again that you see behind me. Read about that. In Mary's eyes is a reflection of the people that she was seeing reflecting back with the bishop and Juan, etc. And the details were in there. It's amazing. It's an amazing miracle. Okay, mass readings today. I always say, read the mass readings that the night before. What a beautiful way to go to sleep, right? So Mass is the next morning. I'm going to read those, the readings, and it just brings this wisdom in. You know, you bring the word in, you bring the light into your own heart. And remember this: every little thing that I do, every every time I read scripture, I pray the rosary, I pray uh I get down on my knees in the morning. I am determining who I become. All those actions that we do. Remember, a body and a soul plus grace gives you the potential for human freedom freedom and the potential for human flourishing. It's in my actions. I actually co-create myself with God. And then if you walk away, you walk away and you get darker and darker and darker and darker. And people wonder, you know, how can people be so dark today? Well, at first it was slow and then it accelerates, right? So here's the first reading: the book of Revelation. A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon underneath her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was with child and wailed aloud in pain as she labored to give birth. Then another sign appeared in the sky. It was a huge red dragon with seven heads and ten horns, and on its heads were seven deadems. Its tail swept away a third of the stars in the sky and hurled them down to earth. Then the dragon stood before the woman. Listen to this. The dragon stood before that woman about to give birth to devour her child when she gave birth. Well, she gave birth to a son, a male child, destined to rule all the nations with an iron rod. Her child was caught up to God and his throne. And the woman herself then fled into the desert desert where she had a place prepared by God. Then I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, This is John the Evangelist who wrote this down. Now have salvation and power come back into the world, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his anointed, the word of the Lord. So the darkness was there. And so God sends his son. What? To restore, to restore this, to redeem it, to overcome sin and death. When we walk into the word, you know, Jesus didn't come for sin management. He came with power. How do I know all this? I have to do it. I have to act. Those little actions of mine, when I love people, when I speak the truth, when I pray to God and I'm filled with life and love, and then I sacrifice to these little things for other people, etc., etc., etc. Um, I become that person. I become better. I become like God. After the birth of Jesus, think about this in Bethlehem. What happened? So he's in Bethlehem, born in a manger. And what happened right after that? It was the slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem. Herod did what? He went, he was looking for Jesus, and he said, Well, just kill all the babies in Bethlehem that are under, I think it was a year or two years old. And it's estimated that about 300 children could have been murdered at that period of time. Maybe 300 children under that age, 300 uh baby boys, would have been murdered. And that battle has only accelerated in our time. Again, get back to that image from the book of Revelation where the Satan is ready to devour that child. And now because he can't devour Jesus Christ, the baby that came out of his mother's womb, what happens? He goes to devour human beings in the emalgo day. Think about this battle. Don't forget these things because these signs are all around us. I live in Illinois. Illinois alone aborts about 117 children a day. And this does not count the chemical at-home taking of a child's life. We murder nearly 300 children a day just in Illinois. So you think, how could how could God have permitted 300 children to be murdered in Bethlehem after his son was born? I mean, that's tragic. That's sick, right? But we do that almost every day here in Illinois, and we think nothing of it. Abortion, the number of children in Illinois. And now, today, on the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, think about this. Patroness of America. Governor Pritzker just today signed a law in the state of Illinois. It's the 12th state now, where youth in Asia murdering the old, the sick, the disabled, 18 years and above. We've heard that unfortunate news today. Now think about this again. The reason I bring it up, these are signs, clear signs from heaven. On our lady of uh the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, where our blessed mother comes back into the story, comes back in and reminds us what's going on. What do we do in Illinois? And these are no accidents. You know, maybe Governor Pritzker didn't know it was our lady of uh the feast day of our lady of Guadalupe, but God knows, Satan knows. These are very clear signs if you pay attention. And today, if a child escapes the womb, they're rendered sterile in the most obviously insane attack on the human person that proves G.K. Chesterton, when a man and a woman stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing, they believe in anything. Even that a man could be a woman, a woman can be a man. This insanity is so clear. Gavin Newsom, the slick governor from California, reminds me of uh of Satan in a way. You know, uh the slick guy, huh? Mocking human beings. He enthusiastically threw his weight behind the trans uh movement on Wednesday, this last Wednesday, expressing his desire to see trans kids, he said. Now, this is a politician who wants to run for president. I want to see trans kids. He said, I have a trans godson. The California governor was bragging. There's no governor that's done more, he said, for uh pro-trans legislation than I have. No one has been stronger advocate for the LGBTQ community. That means if a parents says, no, you can't, you know, uh, you can't become Mary. You can go there. They can go to California and they will treat them anyways. This is insanity. But think about it, it's the destruction of the human person. It's fear to view everything Newsom does as a strategy for 2028. This is how insane it is. Like any sleazy politician, he's plotted his White House conquest for years, and he desperately wants Americans to choose him as their next president. And this is a platform he runs on. This abortion, all these types of things. But what does this say not only about Gavin Newsom, Newsom, what does it say about the voter base in our nation? Again, G.K. Chesterton, when we stop believing in God, we don't believe in nothing. We believe in anything. And we're gonna vote for these crazy people. Not to be outdone, once again, as Newsom and Pritzker, they vie for the titles of abortion, the euthanasia capitals of the world, human destruction of the world. There should be no surprise they also vie for the sterile sterilization of children, mutilation of little bodies. Get this, you know, take this in because you see this insanity and you go, wow, I don't know how strong my faith is in a God, but I see the evil, and you have to start to turn away from that. You have to be don't don't just go in that uh proverbial pot with that frog and just become apathetic. Remember what Jesus said? I'd rather have you hot or cold. If you're lukewarm, I'll spew you out because we're not supposed to be average. And he knows that you will slowly co-create yourself with Satan. You know, if you think about these Nazi medical experiments of Joseph, uh Dr. Joseph Men uh Mengele, you know, he he would not even have dreamed up of cutting and castrating uh uh uh boys' penises. They did castrate the Jews, but to cut off their their uh their their physical appendages, their sexual appendages, and then tried to form a womb in there and vice versa, they would have never thought about that. The Pritzker family funded the gender wing of Lori's Children's Hospital right here in Chicago that rendered children sterile, mutilated little bodies. It's demonic. And contemplate the fact that there are medically licensed doctors who are performing these grotesque trans surgeries, who are aborting children. These are doctors who went to medical school. You would think because they want to help people, right? Who are ministering now the death serum in so-called assisted suicides. You know, there was a time that I believe that I believe that people would doctor in their title, medical doctors, or even PhDs must be wise. I have long since come to understand the titles, especially in the areas of education and academia, academia and in uh in medicine are no guarantee of knowledge or wisdom. As Chesterton said, and I paraphrase, there's there are so-called worldly people who never understand even the world. They rely on a few maxims which are not true, then they base their whole lives on them. This is how dark we can become. I was like that at times in my life. You know, I sometimes I wake up in a sweat thinking about all the crazy things that I thought and I did. It's just I lived in darkness. You know, in a way I wouldn't change any of that. You know, I mean, the people that I hurt and stuff, yes, I pray for them all the time. But it's taught me that this stuff is really true. You can get into a very dark place. Worse, though, they teach young people that these maxims are true. Abortion is a right. Think how many young women have gone for this, how many old women have gone for this, and men too. Same-sex marriage is actually marriage. A boy can become a girl by thinking it. And the medical establishment will do anything today for power, money. Are they just blind? Human uh destruction is just all around us. Look at the COVID vax. Finally, the secular news came out earlier this week. This propaganda arm of lies and illusions is saying what we've been saying all along that I've said in the last six years now on this podcast. Some children are dying from these jabs children who, in essence, have zero, nil um reason to be afraid of the COVID virus. They survived it. They had natural immunity, especially I'm talking about healthy children. There's no reason to vaccinate them. And now they're finally coming out and say, you know what? Some children have died. Some children have uh been harmed by these vaccines, and it's coming out now. The dam is breaking. Same thing that we've been saying all along. See, this is the hour of what? The hour of the laity for each of us to realize there's no, there's no guardian, uh, there's there's there's there's no politicians that's gonna come in on a white horse. You know, Donald Trump. I like Donald Trump. I mean, he he's I I put his hat back here. Um, not because he's God, not because he's you know he's our savior, he's not. But at least he's coming into the story and pushing back on these gender ideologies, et cetera, et cetera. So he's not God. He's not perfect. He's got a huge ego. You know, he's got his own issues to deal with. But I'll tell you what, at least he's not persecuting us for standing up against this. Now, there are people, especially in our state here in Illinois and other states, who will still persecute you or are still pushing you down for speaking out against this stuff. But at least from the federal level, he won't. So I so I have to say thank you to him. You know, for each of us, though, we have to stand up. It's going to be each one of us. You know, when we're filled with light, we bring that light in the world. Remember, Jesus said, don't hide your light under a bushel basket. Allow it to come into the world. This is why we came into the world. We have to go in to speak the truth. Each of us has to regain our sanity. We have to draw deeply from the wisdom that comes directly from God. It comes down from being on your knees, the sacraments, reading the word. Again, we we are we are self-determining who we become in the world. Are we good or are we bad? It depends how we choose. All those little things. Every time, if you only got 10 minutes, five minutes, read the word, read scripture, uh, pray the rosary, you know, something, right? To to do some act, make some act for other people. Because you become that person then over time, over time, over time. Your heart changes, and God lets us co-create. He's gonna give us the grace and the power to do this, but we have to we have to yoke ourselves to Jesus Christ. We have to ask our blessed mother to lead us to her son. Otherwise, we're left in darkness. And we're gonna vote for the right to murder our own children. We're gonna vote for the right to render them sterile. We're gonna vote for the right to euthanize them if they have a disability or that they get old. We are surrounded by horrors that we can no longer pretend are marginal. The slaughter of millions of unborn children, deliberate redefinition of marriage until it means nothing and therefore anything. The open war on children's innocence to these transgender ideologies. It's a demonic distortion to praise especially on those who may never have been given the armor of baptism even today. They're defenseless unless we stand up for them against the rulers, the powers of this present darkness, as Saint Paul would say. And Saint Paul didn't mince words, did he? He said we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the rulers of this present darkness, 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 Christians, who will finally stop standing idle and go out into the vineyard like Jesus called us to do. Our faith is not theor theoretical, it's fiercely practical. But think about this again. When you think about faith, when you think about getting, you know, the courage to walk in, to, to, to say, Jesus, you know, going on your knees, Jesus, you know, uh help me with my faith. Help me to to open your heart. And our blessed mother does this the best. We kneel, remember with our blessed mother first thing in the morning with Claymore. You know, download that Claymore battle plan if you haven't already. Do that formation, that especially that first 10 minutes in the morning. That 10-minute ritual where you go down on your knees, you're kneeling with our blessed mother, and you're opening up to be filled with divine life and love. Our blessed mother was impregnated with Jesus Christ. We will be impregnated with God, right? We must plunge deeply into divine life, prayer, sacraments, scripture, penance. This is no time to be lukewarm. And then we carry that fire out into the world. We do not sit like the frog in that slowly heating pot watching generations slip into the abyss while we scroll, shrug, sigh, watch these goofy uh network uh Netflix series. I mean, again, I'm I don't want to pick on everybody for every time they unwind, but oh my gosh, talking about winding, you know, time is winding down. None of us wants to reach old age, sit back in a rocking chair, and realize that the destruction we tolerated in our own hearts has leaked out, wounded our own hearts, our own families, our marriages, our neighbors, the culture, and our nation. We could have changed it. God working through you could change it. You know, especially when we start to to form friendships with others, we start to infect people in a good way. You know, get vaccinated with Jesus Christ, huh? And then you can be vaccinated against the evils of the world. 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 evil. America has grave sins, yes, but they're not the fault of a broken system. They're the fruit of broken hearts inside the system. Every one of those evils that are done in our government, etc., the deep state we call it, or the deep church, those are individual human hearts that have gone dark. Remember John Adams when he warned this republic was made only for a moral and religious people. It's not wholly fit for any others. This weekend, retreat, tune out some of that social media, read wisdom, go out and take a walk. This is winter here, but I still love to take a walk and just look at the sun, the clouds, you know, even the snow can be beautiful. I attract animals. It's amazing. We have a lot of coyotes around and just attract them and see where they went. It just gets your mind off of this, and you look up and you get some fresh air. See, John Paul said to all of us, but especially to the young, in you there is hope, for you belong to the future, just as the future belongs to you, young people. For hope is always linked to the future. It is the expectations of future good things. That's why we always keep our eye on Jesus Christ. That's the ultimate future, but we're also creating a future here on earth, what's true, good, and beautiful. Think about that. The world you find yourself in today was shaped by who? By the young people who came before you and are now grown up. How did they do? Are you happy with the world the way it is? If not, what will you do differently? Are you going to just get into the political arena and just do what everybody else has done? You get in idealistically? Unless you're filled with wisdom, you'll get caught up in all these agendas. You'll either become have just inundated with so much stuff you almost give up. But no, go in there clearly. I see some politicians doing that today, right? Again, Marco Rubio, J.D. Vance, uh, these Catholics, they're not perfect. You know, they're we they grew up in a culture that's not perfect. They may not have everything perfectly taught to them, but they're trying. These are the kind of people we want in our government. But we have to raise up and support them and do good things. You know, politics is messy, so we got to get our hearts first. We got to get our consciences formed first. You know, not all young people do. Not all old people do. We don't realize what's going on. My heart goes on to all of those young people who have never been uh given the faith, never been formed at all. Some of them, so many today not even been baptized. They don't go to mass, they don't receive the sacraments. How do they deal with the evil that's in the world? These are confusing times in which to grow up. And they had they were for the boomers, Generation X, the millennials. It's just unwinding because we're passing less and less and less and less down to our kids. You know, stats show that this is the most depressed, anxious generation of young people the world has ever seen. I'm talking about Generation Z now. And the rates of depression and anxiety have grown dramatically in just the last few years. So the so-called experts, the formerly young, now grown up at least, uh, at least in years, want to treat your anxiety with medications. And in doing so, they mask over the deeper heart of the matter, heart in quotes, heart of the matter. They fail to confront the toxic cultures they find themselves in and have been allowed to take root in their hearts. And then these these medical doctors, psychiatrists, therapists, they're all trying to help, maybe even. They're not helping us unless they really confront the root of the problem. If I just mask it with pharmaceuticals and stuff, I'm just numbing myself. You know, and a powerful line from the Screw Tape Letters, the satirical novel by C.S. Lewis, in which a senior demon, his name is Screwtape, and he's advising his nephew, which is i is like his protege, his name is Wormwood, and how to tempt a human soul. And we read this. He said to him, so he's teaching him, the safest road to hell is the gradual one. He's talking about how to get human beings to get down to hell and create hell in their own lives. He said it's a gradual one. The gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts. See, we just get blown around by the spirits of the age. You know, it's Jesus Christ's scripture, uh, you know, putting our eyes to the prize where we're going, these become signposts for us to show you what's true, good, and beautiful. And when we aim for those things, we have somewhere to go. It's like having a map and a compass. Lewis is warning us how small, seemingly harmless choices in our lives repeated over time, lead to a spiritual drift. And the vacuum left behind leads to what Jesus called the hardness of heart. How else can we explain today's culture of death, where children again are aborted in the name of women's rights, the elderly euthanized in the name of compassion and the innocence of children stolen by gender ideologies in the name of freedom, freedom to become who they are? Jesus explained to his disciples, seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, which says, You shall indeed hear but never understand, and you shall indeed see, but never perceive. For this people's hearts has grown dull, Isaiah said, and their ears are heavy of hearing, and their eyes have been closed, lest they should perceive with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their heart, and turn to me to heal them. But blessed are your eyes, Jesus says, because they see, and your ears because they hear. That's from Matthew 13. Dear friends, John Paul II begins this apostolical letter to young people, Delete Delecti Amichi, which means dear friends. He said, In you there is hope. Again, so you belong to the future, just as the future belongs to you, for hope is always linked to the future, and it is the expectations of future good things. Trust in the future, believe in the future, walk with Christ. You know, this world uh will will go by very, very quickly for you. Before you know it, you're gonna be uh my age, and before I know it, I'm gonna be my dad's age, who's almost a hundred years old and still alive. In fact, he's on his way to the hospital now, uh probably just had a stroke. And so, as a Christian virtue, hope is linked to the expectation of those eternal good things which God has promised to man in Jesus Christ. And at the same time, this hope, as both a Christian and a human virtue, is the expectations of good things, which man will build using the talents given to him by Providence. In this sense, the future belongs to you, young people, John Paul said, just as it once belonged to those generations who went before you who are now adults. And precisely together with them, it has become the present reality. See, the present reality and everything we're describing here, and there's many good things going on too, and the pushback and the battle against this evil that so many people do. Well, this is our present reality now. Again, think about that. The world that you find yourself in was shaped by the choices of the previous generation. And again, how did they do? Think about that. Are you satisfied with what they've handed to you? If not, what will you do differently? Many young people are waking up, emerging as it is from a slumber. They're saying, there's gotta be something more, and they're seeking to reconcile the hope within them with the anxiousness in their hearts that they feel. They say there's gotta be something more. There's evil around them, and they're starting to sense that. You don't really sense that until somebody brings you into the truth, into this connection with Jesus Christ. So to answer that, we must begin at the beginning. You know, there was a precise time when you made your glorious entrance into the stage of human history. Think about that. Each one of us, this is a fact. But to understand who you are and your purpose, you need to know the largest story which you are intimately linked to, a story that's been unfolding for many, many, many generations. Ask yourself this. Ask now, ask this weekend, did I create the universe? Am I the author of the largest story that wrote meaning and purpose into the world? That's why it's so good to go out in nature. You see the order in nature. What confused many of the generations before you is that they never took the time to discover that larger story. You know, it's a ri it's it's like arriving to a movie 30 minutes late. You take your seat, you got your popcorn, but you've missed the beginning of the movie. And of course you haven't seen the end yet, and you're trying to understand the plot. Isn't life like that? Sometimes beautiful things happen. You fall in love, you land that dream job, but then tragedy strikes. The love fades in your life. The dream job becomes a burden. You think, I don't know how much longer I can do this, but you got rent to pay, kids to feed, the car, the phone bills. So you bury your head and carry on trying to get through just day to day to day and numbing yourself. Here's where the plot thickens. The universe was created good, but an opposing force launched an anti-creation. And the main target in this ancient battle between good and evil is what? Your heart, my heart. The battle is for your heart. This is the story you came into, but nobody gave you the memo. Why not? Because they want to take you down. Because you're growing up in a culture that screams forget about God, the church, and the Bible. There's no creator. We're here by accident. We're just atoms colliding with atoms. No purpose, no meaning, no truth, except your truth or my truth. But something doesn't function well in a world without meaning and purpose. Your human heart. So where did you come from? You have to decide one of these two statements is true. And that's it. There's only these two. You're an accident of history and free to do whatever you please, indulge your life, trash it, end it even. But if that's true, your life is ultimately meaningless. Or where does the hope come from? It comes because you are a created being. And if that's true, you've been created for a purpose. And you've never, and if you've never opened your heart and mind to this fundamental question of your existence, of those, am I accident or am I created? You'll never find peace. You're getting blown around, but you're anxious, nervous, depressed, even suicidal. You come to the end of your rope because there's always going to be a void in your heart, one that nothing in this world can ever fill. And that void can only be filled with God. That's why we say in the in the Claymore Battle Plan, every day, get down on your knees. And then read some scripture every day. Get the magnificat, uh, get get hollow, uh, or the USCCB website, and just get the readings for the day. Even if you can't get the mass the next morning, read them at night when you're going to sleep. What a great way to go to sleep. I want to read you something from Luke 1. This is what we do first thing in the morning with the Claymore Battle Plan. So we we we first thing in the morning before you look at that phone, we fall to our knees and we kneel with our blessed mother who's going to lead you to her son. And this is from Luke chapter one. The angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary. And coming to her he said, Hail full of grace, the Lord is with you. But she was greatly troubled at that, and what was said, and she pondered what sort of greeting this might be. Then the angel said to her, Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold you will conceive in your womb and bear a son. Think about this, and you shall name him Jesus, God who saves. So he says, He will be great. This is the angel telling our blessed mother, and he will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end. And she says to the angel, How could this be, since I have no relations with a man? And the angel said to her in reply, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you, and therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. And behold, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived the Son in her old age, that's John the Baptist, right? And this is the sixth month for her, who was called barren, for nothing will be impossible for God. And then what did Mary say? Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word. And then the angel departed from her, the gospel of the Lord. This is what we see in the morning. This is why we say that fiat. May it be done to me according to your word. We're kneeling with our blessed mother. As our blessed mother was impregnated with God, God wants to come into our life and impregnate us with the truth, with the light. This is the Claymore battle plan. Read that, the first that 10-minute morning ritual. Let me just, as I close here, let me just tell you this. As a young man, some of my fine fondest memories of the times I spent with the mothers of my friends, both boyfriends and girlfriends. And I remember as a young man being drawn to their open hearts, uh, I love bantering with the moms. And obviously, they obviously they had love for their child, whether it's a a girl I was interested in, or just many of my uh male friends. And they they just love these children, and they also sensed in me, as mothers can, that my interest, love, and attraction for their son or daughter was real and authentic. I no longer remember any particular conversations, but only the sense of warmth, acceptance within their families, dinners, laughing together, experienced the beauty of human love that extended beyond my own immediate family. In some instances, our individual families would, in a sense, grow to be united. They'd get to know each other in a way that we all became deeply concerned for one another. This intimacy went both ways, and it became it became common for me to come home and find one of my friends in the kitchen of my house, bantering away with my mom. Many years later I would find that my separation from the family of God would lead to a dysfunction, pain, needless suffering in my own marriage and family. I was almost forty when this prodigal son came home. While God had welcomed me with open arms, I experienced a barrier deep within my heart that kept Jesus from fully entering into me. In my thirst for him, I turned most naturally then to our blessed mother. Just like I turned to those mothers of those friends of mine, I wanted Jesus, I thirsted for Jesus. I felt that I needed a friendship with Jesus. And so what did I do? I turned to his mother, to my mother. You know, she's the symbol of the church, huh? She's all of our mothers. And I asked her, I remember this distinctly, just open a crack in my heart that would allow Jesus to enter. She worked behind the scenes in a sense, but I knew it was her efforts that led me to the miraculous events that would remove this barrier. Over time, our blessed mother's fiat became my fiat. As I knelt with her beneath the cross, she showed me that she was literally impregnated with Jesus Christ and that I would be too, in a sense, impregnated with her son. This maternity of Mary in the order of grace began with the consent which she gave in faith at the enunciation that I just read, and which she sustained without wavering beneath the cross and lasts until eternal fulfillment of all the elect. Taken up to heaven, she did not lay aside this salvific duty of hers, but by her constant intercession, she continues to bring us the gifts of eternal salvation. By her maternal charity, her love for us like a mother, she cares for the brethren of her son, who are still journeying on this earth, surrounded by these dangers and difficulties until they are led into the happiness of their true home. In our fiat, our yes with our blessed mother to Jesus Christ, the barriers that separate us from the family of God are taken down. See, this is a love story. Just as the one goodness of God is really communicated in different ways to his creatures, so also the unique mediation of the Redeemer does not exclude but rather gives rise to a manifold cooperation, which is but sharing in this one source. When we kneel with our blessed mother, we don't, we're not going to worship our blessed mother like some people think. She will always lead you to her son to that one source. So let's pray together. I'll put this up on the on the screen, but I'll also put it in the show notes for those that just listen on audio. And here's a prayer by John Paul II. Let's pray this together. Name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, amen. Virgin of Guadalupe, Mother of the Americas, grant to our homes the grace of loving and respecting life in its beginnings, with the same love with which you conceived in your womb the life of the Son of God. Blessed Virgin Mary, mother of fair love, protect our families so that they may always be united and bless the upbringing of our children. Our hope, look upon us with pity. Teach us to go continually to Jesus, and if we fall, help us to rise again and return to him through the confession of our faults and our sins in the sacrament of penance, confession, which gives peace to our soul. We beg you, blessed Mother, to grant us a great love for all of the holy sacraments, which are, as it were, the signs that your Son left us on earth. Thus, most holy mother, with the peace of God in our consciences, with our hearts free from evil and hatred, we will be able to bring to others true joys, true joy and peace, which comes to us from your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns forever and ever. Amen. Saint John, Paul II, pray for us in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, amen. Take some time out. Just relax. Contemplate these things just like Mary contemplated these things in this heart in her heart. You will see. You will be drawn into this into this life of God. It changes everything. Hey, God bless you. Thanks, everyone. Thanks for being with me today. Talk to you again soon. Bye bye.