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
#650 (Claymore 5) "Romantic Challenges to True Love; The Fall and the Normalization of Sin"
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The human heart is the first battlefield in the war between love and lust. As we navigate a culture that normalizes sin and distorts our capacity for authentic connection, Jesus offers us more than rules—He offers transformation.
This episode explores the Claymore Battle Plan, a three-step approach to spiritual warfare focused on restoring the individual heart, rebuilding marriage and family, and reclaiming culture for Christ. Satan, lacking creative power, can only attack what God created good—especially humanity made in God's image. This explains why today's most devastating cultural assaults target the unborn child and the institution of marriage.
The path forward requires reconnecting to divine love and allowing Christ to heal our hearts. Our conscience forms the interior treasure that guides us toward eternity, shaping not just our own destiny but the moral landscape for generations to come.
Will you join the battle for authentic love? Download the Claymore Battle Plan and take your stand against the normalization of sin.
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Read Jack's Latest Blog: "The Tale We’ve Fallen Into"
Welcome to the Become who you Are podcast, a production of the John Paul Toobie Renewal Center. This is our special edition of Claymore Claymore, as you remember, that's the big Claymore sword behind me. This was developed for young people, especially young men that we're meeting, who know something's wrong or wondering about this. You know what is going on, and so I hope all of you have downloaded the Claymore battle plan. It's about seven pages or so. It defines the battle plan and I'll just briefly go through this. We've done this already, but there's three parts to this. The battle plan defined. I'll just read you from the battle plan.
Speaker 1:There's an enemy that seeks to destroy humanity. Satan doesn't have his own clay. He can only attack and distort what God created good. We're in a battle. This is a spiritual battle, but we make visible God in this created world. So when there's an attack, satan would love to take out God himself, but he can't. So what's he going to do? He's going to go after the Imago Dei. He's going to go after you and I, marriage and the family, this reflection of Trinitarian love in the world, and he's going to create a culture of death in the world instead of a culture of life, as God intended in the beginning.
Speaker 1:So again, we've covered this. This is in the battle plan. But those are the three things. You're going to attack your individual heart first. The image of marriage and the family create a culture of death in society. Right Abortion, these trans ideologies, et cetera. So how do you get this back?
Speaker 1:So we have Claymore's three-step battle plan or blueprint for taking back territory for Christ. So it always begins restoring the individual dignity of the human heart. So this is what we always are working on your heart, my heart, the individual heart. This is where the sword comes in. That sword is not first to go charging out into the battle, it's fought first on the battlefield of each individual human heart, between love and lust we're going to be getting into that today between being a giving, a self-giving person, filled with divine life and love, and then becoming love in the world, loving neighbor right. This isn't brain surgery, it's two great commandments to be filled with divine life and love, to love God and then go out and love your neighbor, as Jesus said so well.
Speaker 1:Then we want to restore marriage in the family. This is pro-life the child in the womb, traditional marriage in the family, the best way to raise children, of course, and build up all of society. Marriage and the family A father and a mother brings life into the world. We protect and nurture that life and bring it out. Well, this is what Satan would love to attack and destroy, and he's doing a pretty good job of it.
Speaker 1:And then the third thing once we get our hearts back, once we understand this image and likeness of God in the other person, in the created child, in the womb, marriage and the family love of neighbor, we're going out into the culture, restore this culture of life, really to stand up as a pro-life, pro-marriage, pro-family, and get rid of the pornography and the child sex trafficking, what they're doing to kids with these gender ideologies, all of these things, the violence, the wars, et cetera. So get your own heart back. You become that light and we're joining with each other as disciples. We're discipling each other, forming communities. You don't want to just go out there alone, you need people around you. So we're always building communities, up people of love that can work together, disciple each other, and that's where Claymore comes in. Claymore is a way to disciple young men, old men, you know, and look, this does not exclude women, you know. There are plenty of women that we're meeting too, that are starting to understand this. But Claymore was originally for men. This is a discipleship program for men and the women that love them and the family members that love them. If men can stand up and understand what's going on, they can lead this battle of the heart and say you know no more of this lust, selfishness, this porn culture has got to go.
Speaker 1:When pornography, things like pornography, come in, for an example, you start to see another person as an object and start to use them. Then what happens, you know. Example you start to see another person as an object and start to use them. Then what happens, you know. Then you start to lust after somebody. You have a lot of violence out there because of this. You have a lot of people being used as objects. You have a lot of abortions to come out of this. So all of these things get twisted and distorted. So the title of today's show is Romantic Challenges to True Love the Fall and the Normalization of Sin.
Speaker 1:Very important for us to get a handle on what's going on in our own hearts, to spark this divine life and love that God wants us to have for Him. First of all, right, this connection, this intimacy with God and to bring this out into our love lives. For a man to be able to see a woman not as an object to use but as a person first of all, a person to uphold to God and a person to love. This is very difficult in today's time. So this is where the battle comes in. You know, there's no pulling punches here. So grab your coffee, grab a beer, and we'll dig in.
Speaker 1:But I think we should start with a prayer here today In the name of the Father, son, holy Spirit, amen. Dear Holy Spirit, lead us in wisdom today that unlocks the path to God's will for us in the large and small choices of our lives, so that in all our thoughts, all our words, all our deeds, we might give glory to God. You know, a very simple thing for all of us to do countless times a day is to say this small phrase glory be to God, glory be to God. You could say this all day. You know, hey, when I got up this morning, I sat outside for just a little while as the sun started to peak up over the horizon. And you know, just glory, this awe and wonder. You know, you realize that. You know we are just this tiny little person, you know, sitting on this tiny little planet in a solar system that's only one of millions, maybe billions of solar systems. Yet God knows you and you see the awe and wonder all around him. Can you imagine the pride of people's lives that? You know? We didn't create the universe, we didn't create this big story. We came into a story and it is a story of intimacy with God, with love, and to take that and become persons of love. This is self-giving and this is what we're going to be talking about today, with the romantic challenges to true love, the fallen normalization of sin. So, in the name of the Father, son, holy Spirit, amen. So we're going to start with Jesus right here. And Jesus is given is at the Sermon on the Mount. This will follow very closely on the session before this. So, if you look back at this, this built it up, this Imago Dei. So I'm going to pick it up from okay, we're created in the image and likeness of God. And now Jesus comes on the scene and he's got all these people sitting down and he's given them this beautiful sermon on the mountain. Now we're just going to pick one phrase of that sermon Everyone who looks at a woman lustfully, jesus said, has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Speaker 1:See, he's getting back to human heart. If you look lustfully at a woman, right as someone to use, again, it's not self-giving. You've already committed adultery with her in your heart and he's condemning this. Because once our hearts are distorted and twisted, even though you may not be committing adultery, you would want to commit adultery. Or you're looking at people.
Speaker 1:This is very difficult for us to understand, that this is not who God is and we're made in the image and likeness of God, who's self-giving love. If you ever want to just see that image again, just look at Jesus on a crucifix. This is my body, this is my blood, given for you. The creator of the universe comes in to restore us, and what does he do? He gives it all to us, and this is what Jesus is saying. I want to untwist your heart, undistort your heart.
Speaker 1:This is the battle. This is a real battle. We have to fight, but it's worth it. It's worth it to step into it. You know, this life of ours goes by very, very quickly. You know, when you look back at your life, when you get to the point of your life. Where I am, you look back, you know what is this all about and you have to lay it out on the battlefield. You have to become, you have to step up and become a man.
Speaker 1:Protect the most vulnerable and innocent the children, of course, in the womb first of all, and once they make it out of the womb, we have to be there for them and we have to nurture our younger brothers and sisters as they're growing up and disciple them you know, this is part of Claymore too and to look at women and not to be able to use them and abuse them. So, sister Lucia of Fatima you've heard me say this phrase before, so she was a main visionary of Fatima. There's three small children that our lady, our Blessed Mother, appeared to. Sister Lucia was the only one that made it into adulthood. Two of the children actually died of the Spanish flu in 1918, I believe they died. Lucia just died fairly recently, in 2005, the same year John Paul did.
Speaker 1:Sister Lucia wrote to John Paul II and Cardinal Cafara and said we've entered basically into this last great battle that we're in right now, and this is the last great battle between our Lord and Satan, and it's going to be fought over marriage and the family. This is the core. Once again, satan doesn't have his own clay. His power lies only in twisting, distorting and seeking to destroy what God created good. His ultimate target is humanity, made in the image and likeness of God. Very important that we take this in. His ultimate target is you, your heart, your individual heart. And then, if he can get into your individual heart and the other persons that say you're attracted to and you're going to try to get married, and you go in there and you're using and not seeing each other as and try to get married, and you go in there and you're using and not seeing each other as this gift that God has given me, and I have to be a gift. I have to look at this woman and say I see the good and the beauty, god, that you've given me. You've created her as a gift to me, I've been created as a gift for her, and we're imaging you who is love, and hopefully we bring love and not lust into this relationship, right?
Speaker 1:This assault, then, takes many forms, if you think about it Violence that we see, war, greed. This is all twisting and distortion of the human heart, who no longer is a person of love, but lusting selfishness trying to fill the infinite desires that God gave us to love and be loved in a finite world, and we just become lustful. Right, we've thrown out God. We live like cut flowers. So you have this erosion of truth and you have these ideologies come in, like gender theory in this school's critical race theory.
Speaker 1:What are these things doing? Separating, separating, separating. Satan's always trying to get in between and separate us, first from our own hearts. These gender theories again, where we're using one another, critical race theory, where we're dividing up into color. And you see this, you know, and we all battle for each other and Satan sets back and watches everybody argue about all this kind of stuff. The only way to overcome this is to go back and you know, like the branch back on the vine and draw deeply from the source of divine life and love and then become that person of love in the world and you're going to be crucified for that, for becoming persons of love. It's a sign of contradiction. The culture itself is out to use and abuse and we are stepping up to the plate with the sword and say no, we have to protect the innocent, the vulnerable. Become persons of love Very difficult to do, and that's why the battle plan is important, because we need to see the whole picture right.
Speaker 1:So you have the manipulation of public health narratives, the mislabeling of you just saw it with COVID mislabeling these fake vaccines, this mRNA vaccines as vaccines when they really weren't, and all these types of things that we've talked about, and so this is always a destruction of the human person. These climate change ideologies, will you know, just spend all of this money and it's just a power grab on the crazy stuff. Again, we're this little tiny human being in the middle of the universe and we think we're going to take care of all the climate change. Now, like we've talked about before, god gave us right from the very beginning. In Genesis, he creates this male and female. It says go, be fertile and multiply and keep the till the earth and subdue it. We got to keep it right. It's our job to keep the environment clean, our water clean, our food supplies clean, et cetera. But when climate comes in, what do they want to do? Reduce the human population and there's cows that are passing gas and ruining the climate. The insanity just goes on and on, yet, yet, yet.
Speaker 1:The reason I bring this up there's no attack more devastating to human life, civilization and society than the assault on the two foundational pillars, and this is what we want to focus on because of all of the other things that I just mentioned, and many, many more that I can the sanctity of the unborn and the institution of marriage. That's what Sister Lucia is talking about. The last great battle between our Lord and Satan is going to be over marriage and the family. This is the child in the womb, marriage and family itself. If you destroy that, then that's where we're at today. This is really the battle that we're in. If you destroy that, you see, all of civilization will decline. So by targeting the most innocent and defenseless, our children, and the sacred bond that nourishes and creates them, satan seeks to unravel the very fabric of human society.
Speaker 1:In the previous session we saw how Jesus wouldn't limit himself to the Pharisees' line of questioning on divorce. Remember that Jesus asked you can go back to the other session, but just very briefly. They come up to him and say can we divorce our wives? And he says no, you can't. He says well, they said to him well then, why did Moses allow us to divorce our wives? Now you're saying we can't. And he said because of the hardness of your heart. Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, remember.
Speaker 1:But from the beginning it was not so. We know sin came into the world. So he orders them and us, in the sense, to pass beyond that boundary that runs between man's first situation, created in the image and likeness of God, and then the fall. Jesus is saying yeah, I know, because you live in a fallen world and you have a hardness of heart, you have to get your heart back. This means that, although man has lost his primordial innocence, we lost that innocence that we had before sin. The force to come, the force to overcome evil, jesus is standing there, has been restored, how, his sacrifice on the cross, mysterium Inequitatis, the mystery of sin, overcome by the Mysterium Pietatus, jesus giving up his life and overcome that. So Jesus does not come into this world to offer sin management to us. He brings transformative power to renew the human heart. When your heart is renewed, you're going to look back and you're going to go holy cow, that was a brutal battle, but I'm a different person. I'm a different person, I'm a new creation and only Jesus can do this right.
Speaker 1:Jesus consistently invites us to probe deeper, to the level, always, of the human heart. Rules, the Ten Commandments, etc. They serve as guideposts on this narrow path. Right, keep us on guideposts. But the true journey, the true journey, is a love story, god, who comes into the world to restore this intimacy with us so that we become persons of love. Once we become persons of love, the need for all the rules vanish. They fade away as love fulfills the law. You can read that in Romans 13.10. How is the law fulfilled? Jesus said the two great commandments love God, be filled with divine life and love, and then go out into the world and love others. So once I really realize this and I see the other person as a person to love, then I don't need all the other rules. I'm not going to lie, cheat, steal from them, but you see the opposite happening. Right, just go to the inner city here I live outside of Chicago these mobs that are going in beating up people, robbing stores. They're doing the opposite. They've lost the image and likeness of God. They lost their own heart and the violence just comes out. It's amazing.
Speaker 1:So in the Sermon on the Mount, jesus presses the whole crowd to what To go deeper. That's what we're talking about here. All of us are going to have to go deeper, and you have heard it, said Jesus. So here's Jesus again, let's enter into it. We're sitting there, you know, and Jesus is standing up and we're listening to him and we hear him say these words, just like we hear it today you shall not commit adultery. He says this is the sixth commandment you shall not commit adultery, you shouldn't cheat on your wife. But I say to you and you see this over and over in the Sermon on the Mount, he's asking us to go deeper. And he's asking us today, you and I, as we're here together. And he said this whoever looks at a woman to desire her in a lustful or reductive way has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Speaker 1:This teaching calls us to purity of intention, where love, where love, not lust, shapes our gaze. We have to overcome this, and this is a brutal battle, but this is what we're called to step up to. I don't just charge into battle, I charge into battle as a person of love. Otherwise we just become another violent person swinging at people with the sword. That's not what the sword is. The sword is. We turn it in on our own heart.
Speaker 1:When Jesus was hanging on the cross, remember, the lance went into his heart and blood and water came out. This is what you see behind me with the divine mercy picture. This is our heart, you know, our heart united to his heart, our wound of our heart opening up to the wound of his heart, and then we carry our cross with him. So, in the beginning, god created man in his image, right In the divine imaging. He created him Well, how, as male and female, he created them.
Speaker 1:This truth presents the creation of man as a special gift from the creator, containing not only the foundation and the source of the essential dignity of the human person, man and woman. Where did that dignity come from? Created in the Imago Dei, in the image and likeness of God, we were to bring this love of God in the created world. Remember, god created our sexuality. He's not a sexual being. He created our sexuality, though, to become part of this clay. We're part of biology, with a body and a soul. He breathed into us intellect, reason, free will, but mostly His divine life and love. And how do we express this? We express this as becoming persons of love.
Speaker 1:And that sacramental sign of that Trinitarian love the Father, son and Holy Spirit is marriage in the family, father and a mother and a child that comes from them is a tiny, tiny little reflected reflected like in a mirror, of Trinitarian love, or a reflection of Trinitarian love. And that's what we were supposed to be right from the beginning. Well, we had to fall, we know that. But Jesus talks into the story, not to manage your sins but to give you the power. It's the call for both of the man and woman to share in the intimate life of God himself. In the beginning we were in the milieu, or the ambit of God's love. I was filled with love, say, if I was Adam, and then Eve is filled with God's love, and then we express that to each other. But this flow of love between Adam and Eve and the children that would come is an expression of that love that they're filled with already, of Trinitarian love. It was this primordial sacrament that made God's love visible in this created world. That's how we're created to be. Yet the fall disrupted this harmony.
Speaker 1:Enter the tempter mysterium inequitatus, which is a Latin phrase which means the mystery of evil. Now, this is Genesis 3. Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the animals the Lord God had made? The serpent asked the woman did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden? Now, listen, this is already a liar. He said did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden? Well, the woman knows that if she's really thinking, she would have said this guy is really twisting and distorting the truth. The woman answered the serpent. No, that's not what he said. We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden. It's only about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said you shall not eat of it or even touch it, lest you die. But the serpent said to the woman you certainly will not die. No, god knows well that the moment you eat of it, your eyes will be open and you will be like gods and you will know what is good and what is evil.
Speaker 1:You can call good evil and evil good. And so what happens? What is that tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Again, god created this universe, just like our bodies, with meaning and purpose. So everything has meaning and purpose natural law and nature's laws. Nature's laws, you know gravity, et cetera. Natural law, which is the law, really a moral law, within our own hearts. You know that the ancient Greeks understood, you know, before Jesus came into the world, and they say you know what is natural law, you know what is reality. You know what is reality. How should I react to it? How should a human being? We're different than all the rest of creation, and so we have this tree in the middle of the knowledge of good and evil, and God says I give you all of this.
Speaker 1:You just can't twist what is good and call it evil. You can't take evil and call it good, because I give meaning to all of those things. I've given meaning to truth, to authentic love, to goodness, to beauty, to all of creation has this, you know, and so your job is to go in and recognize that, to be filled with my divine life and love. Go till the garden, express this through marriage and the family and bring this love out into the world. But you can't change that. That's the only thing you can't. But everything else was created for you.
Speaker 1:So while writing this chapter that I'm talking about today, or this episode, I paused to stretch my legs and I went downstairs and joined my wife in the living room. What she was watching on TV was a documentary featuring a renowned actress and singer discussing her past Super Bowl halftime performance. So I'll just tell you this I don't want to name this person, but she was at a Super Bowl. This wasn't the last Super Bowl, it was the one before this, but it was a documentary where she's talking about that. So what happened there?
Speaker 1:You know it was a provocative pole dance that she did before a global audience, and so I'm listening to this and I wondered you know, what compels a successful this is ultra rich, successful middle-aged woman to present herself as a pole dancer in front of the whole world? And the answer may lie in her story. You know, we don't know each other's stories. That's why I don't want to name names, because I meet people like this, men and women, all the time that we've been broken and we don't know their past sometimes.
Speaker 1:But at the end of the day, you think about how wild it is that a woman that's ultra rich, well-known, with all of this talent, everything that God, again, you know he's given her everything, and yet she goes to that tree and the knowledge of good and evil and she's fallen, and so she's going to do a pole dance. To do what? Why she wants people to see her but not to see her heart. You know she wants to see her as an object, as a body. Do they not get that? And so we don't know what she went through. So these displays shape how men view women. You know she's saying. You know, look at me as an object, as a sexual object, you know. But how do they view themselves? How families and societies perceive the human body? See, this is why we need to get our hearts back. We need to understand what marriage and family is about, because she's affecting the culture.
Speaker 1:Think about all of the people that are looking at her, thinking, yes, right, they are normalizing the flaw and blurring the line between the dignity of a person, creating the image and likeness of God, someone that should be loved, and to use them as an object. And she's fulfilling this. And you just go. Why? For money? No, she's already got money, she's already got fame. Why does she feel the need to do this? Well, it's the mysterium in equitatis that affects people's hearts. As Bishop Fulton Sheen observed, only those who live by faith really know what's happening in the world. The great masses of people without faith are unconscious of the destructive processes going on because they have lost the vision of the heights from which they have fallen.
Speaker 1:John Paul II wrote a letter to women called Mularis Dignitatum the Dignity of Women, and he wrote he says Jesus enters the concrete historical situation of women, just like he did at the Sermon on the Mount. He's looking. This was a culture at this time that was very male-oriented. Women were definitely second-class citizens there. He enters into that story and he's trying to raise men's hearts, the way you look at each other and he did this over and over again a situation which is weighed down by what?
Speaker 1:The inheritance of sin. So we're ready to blame each other men, women, men. Well, we are all to blame, but this is sin. That's why the battle, this is why we get underneath all of this in the Claymore battle plan. The Claymore battle plan understands what's going on here and understands it always has to start in the heart, right. So one of the ways we've seen this inheritance of sin expressed throughout history is habitual.
Speaker 1:John Paul writes discrimination against women in favor of men. Today we see that twisting and distorting the other way. You know through the DEI programs and this. You know blaming everything on white Christian men. And you know, for the Biden administration and all this stuff. So now we want to demean men? Well, neither one of those works. Everybody is to be raised. You know and understand the equal dignity we have, but we have such a distorted view of this. So this inheritance is rooted, this inheritance of sin, within women too, not just men. From women, it's particularly eloquent.
Speaker 1:In the end, jesus says to her, elegant in this, the woman caught in adultery. This is John 8, verses 3 to 11, I believe. And so in the end, jesus says to her this is the woman caught in adultery. Do you remember this? So this woman is ready to be stoned. These men are all around her. You can go back and read that and they're ready to kill her because she's actually kill her, stone her because she was caught in adultery.
Speaker 1:And Jesus says to her do not sin again. At the end he goes don't sin again. But what does he do? First of all, you know, he says you really should read this. He evokes an awareness of sin in the men who accuse her in order to stone her, thereby revealing his profound capacity to see human consciences and actions in their true light. So Jesus seems to say to the accusers, to the men around. Remember he said for those among you who have no sin, you'd be the first one to cast the stone right. And he's trying to say look, you're stoning a woman for getting caught in adultery. But how about you? How about the man? Where's the man that she was having the affair with? Why isn't he here too? So Jesus seems to say right to all those accusers is not this woman, for all her sin, above all, a confirmation of your own transgressions, of your male injustice, of your misdeeds? The truth is valid for the whole human race.
Speaker 1:Now, this episode recorded in the Gospel of John is repeated in countless similar situations in all of history, and this is the brokenness that comes down to us. We think, as modern men and women oh, we're so enlightened, we're so smart. It's the same sin. We all stand at that tree again and we're using, abusing each other in a little distorted way. And this is why this Claymore Miletus Christi is so important to get our hearts back, to understand marriage and the family and to go out and restore the culture. And John Paul's work on this is so important, because we go beneath all this vitriol, all this sin, and we have real solutions.
Speaker 1:You know, a woman is left alone there, exposed to public opinion, with her sin, while behind her sin there lurks a man you know. Think about every abortion. Basically behind not all, but basically behind every abortion is what? A man of lust, not all again, but a man of lust, almost always A man of lust who says, no, I used you, but I'm not here for you, I'm not here for the child that came out of this right. So we have a sinner guilty of another person's sin and indeed equally responsible for it. So the woman has to pay the price of that more than the man. He drops her off at the abortion clinic or whatever, or she can raise the child on her own. You see this 80% of the minority Black children in Chicago are born without fathers, out of wedlock Abortions. In cities of Chicago, new York, there's an abortion for every child that's born. In fact, I heard in New York now that there's more Black babies being aborted for everyone that lives.
Speaker 1:And so this is really this twisting and distorting. And yet his sin often escapes notice. He's just on to the next thing. It's passed over in silence. He does not appear to be responsible for the other's sin. So we say, yeah, that woman is going in for an abortion. That's that man's sin. We're in this together is the point, and this is the point that Jesus is saying here. How often in a similar way here in today's society.
Speaker 1:John Paul is writing this now. He says the woman pays for her own sin. Maybe it is she in some cases who's guilty of the other sins, the sin of the man. Maybe she lured him into it, but she has to pay for this at another level than a man. We have to be there for each other. We have to know that our sexuality has been twisted and distorted, but our sexuality is where the two become one, open to life, and we're using each other. That's where this abortion and that's where you know, john Paul says to all of the men here he says you know you are not without sin. You know, quit hurting each other, quit hurting that woman. Be there for her, see her as your sister to build her up and protect her. That's what we're doing with the Claymore Sword. We're going in and we're saying no, I see you as a sister.
Speaker 1:First, how often is she abandoned with her pregnancy, when the man, the child's father, is unwilling to accept responsibility for it? And besides the many unwed mothers in our society, we must also consider all those who, as a result of various pressures, even on the part of the guilty man, very often get rid of the child before it's born. They get rid of it, but at what price? Public opinion today tries in various ways to abolish the evil of the sin. Well, that's not sin. That's a woman's right. Do we hear that? No, this is a sin. We're taking a life right. Normally, a woman's conscience does not let her forget that she's taken the life of her own child, for she cannot destroy that readiness in her own heart to accept life which marks her ethos from the beginning, john Paul said. In other words, he said you know, right from the beginning you had a readiness to become a mother. I, you know, I have eight grandchildren, most of them are girls, and there's this time where they go through this, this time of dressing up as a princess and dreaming of the knight in shining armor that's going to, you know, put her on the back of the horse and they're going to go off together. To do what? To raise families, and they'll be talking about. You know, they'll be walking around with their little dolls. All of them. They have these babies. This is very natural, and so we're saying to them no, you have a right to get rid of that child now. It's really sick what we're doing in this culture, isn't it?
Speaker 1:The attitude of Jesus in this episode, again described in John 8, is significant. This is one of the few instances in which his power, the power of truth, is so clearly manifested with regard to human consciences. Jesus comes unto the story just like he comes into our hearts. He's calm, collected and thoughtful, as in the conversation with the Pharisees that I said earlier, where they're asking him about divorce and he says nope, it's because of the hardness of your heart. Nope, I'm not going to be putting the blame on anybody else.
Speaker 1:You know, guys, we all have to sit back. We all have to get our hearts back. This is where we always start. So you're going to have all of us guys are going to have all of these things coming at us. If you go on social media, you read, you know, just boom, boom, boom, one thing after another. No, get your heart back. Always, go to prayer first. That's why we say in the very beginning with the Claymore battle plan in your formation, right there in the outline again the formation. Always get on your knees first, before you look at that phone. Open up your heart.
Speaker 1:The next thing is temptation is not a sin. You know when these temptations flood into our minds, just like Jesus is talking about, when our hardness of heart causes us to lust after somebody. You know, don't try to push those down. This mysterium in equitatis, mystery of evil, can only be overcome by Jesus. The mysterium pietatis, his passion, death and resurrection and ascension that he pours out to us from the cross and the sacraments and prayer. That's the power. So Jesus again doesn't come into the story to manage our sins. He came in to give us the power. This is the power. So Jesus again doesn't come into the story to manage our sins. He came in to give us the power. This is the adventure. This is where the battle begins on the human heart and you'll see he'll change your heart.
Speaker 1:So this is Jesus, right away in the mystery of the beginning, when man was created, male and female, and he points us back to that. He says nope, because of the hardness of your hearts, that Moses allowed to divorce your wife, but from the beginning it was not so. And he points back to the beginning. What was the beginning? All were created, male and female, and with that the woman was entrusted to the man with her feminine distinctiveness and with her potential. For what? For motherhood. The man was also entrusted by the creator, by God, to the woman. They were entrusted to each other as persons made in the image and likeness of God himself. Again, we're this tiny reflection of Trinitarian love in the world. This entrusting is the test of love, spousal love. In order to become a sincere gift to one another, each of them has to be responsible and to feel responsible for that gift. This test is meant for both of them, man and woman.
Speaker 1:From the beginning, after original sin, contrary forces are at work in our hearts, in both men and women's hearts, as a result of the threefold concupiscence, that stimulus of sin. They act from deep within the human being. This, what this mysterium in equitatis, this threefold concupiscence that St John talks about, and that's all in the battle plan again, but just quickly, that threefold concupiscence, concupiscence of the eyes, what we see out there? We see the material of the world and we want to grasp and take the concupiscence of the eyes. What we see out there? We see the material, the world, and we want to grasp and take the concupiscence of the flesh which we're really zoning in now, where you're twisting and distorting the other person and our sexuality and using somebody, and then the pride of life, right, the pride of life. You know, I will be like God. I'll decide what is good and what is evil, and we see all these things working in a human being's heart.
Speaker 1:It was right after the fall and it continues to play out today. You know, we just are a new generation and you young people listening today were, you know, gen Z, let's call it. You're a new generation that comes into the story. Things will be a little different, you know. You know you have a different technology, whatever, but the human heart, this battle, it doesn't change. We always have to go into the battle and if you could put things into perspective like this, it changes everything.
Speaker 1:Therefore, that's why Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already created adultery with her in his heart. How is this different from Genesis, chapter 3, or when Jesus was given the Sermon on the Mount? How is this different today? It's worse. The twisting and distorting is worse because we're using technology, that phone, to say, access pornography when today we have the three A's it's affordable, anonymous and accessible, right, easy to get, easy to do, and we're pushing this on people.
Speaker 1:You know what's behind it all. Of course, money and power, we would say. But it's the human heart that's cooperating with evil, it's cooperating with Satan himself. What For the destruction of the human heart? And then we'll destroy a child in the womb, we break down marriage and the family and all of civilization becomes unraveled. Evil comes into the world violence, famines, you know, hatred for each other because of the color of our skin. You see how all of that comes back and that's where we're getting our heart back, always again on the battlefield of the heart, with these words again, everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. These words, addressed directly to men, show the fundamental truth of his responsibility vis-a-vis a woman, her dignity, her motherhood, her vocation, Unless we fight that battlefield in the heart and we see in her, even if she doesn't see it herself.
Speaker 1:You know this rich actress that we're talking about, singer, multi-multi-millionaire, pole dancing in front of everybody. This same woman let's go unnamed has been engaged six times, married and divorced four times, and the last time she gets divorced she says you know what I'm done with marriage. For a while she goes I'm going to be think just concentrate on myself, concentrate on yourself. You know what happens is. You know she's already been concentrating on herself and, unfortunately, the men she's been marrying and you know they're been concentrating on themselves, looking at each other again as not people to love, not people to pour their hearts out, to, not, like Jesus on the cross, willing to give and pour into one another. Unless we stand with Christ, unless we allow him to connect the branch back on the vine and to be persons of love. This woman's getting older and older. She's going to lose her looks. Pretty soon she'll be in her 60s and then 70s.
Speaker 1:I see women all the time that I knew when I was a young guy, and you know they're still beautiful. You have to see the beauty in their heart because their outward beauty is not going to last. It never does. It was never meant to. We're always supposed to be on this path. To what Eternal love? And the only way you'll get into that narrow gate of eternal love that takes us into this forever is if we start now the way we see each other.
Speaker 1:Christ did everything possible in that culture to ensure that, in those customs and social relationships of that time, that woman would find in his teaching and actions their own subjectivity, their own dignity. They would hear in Jesus' words. They were really attracted to him. He had many women, as you know, when you're reading the Gospels, these groups of women. In fact, at the foot of the cross, all of the men had taken off except for John, and there was this group of women under there that were just because he lifted them up. You know, he was the one, the voice, he was a man that was really a model for the rest of us, treating women with that kind of respect.
Speaker 1:So, on the basis of the eternal unity of the two, this dignity directly depends on woman herself as a subject responsible for herself, and at the same time it's given as a task to man. The dignity and vocation of women, as well as those of men, find their eternal source in the heart of God. And so, again, what I'm saying right there, this rich woman that's pole dancing, she has to take responsibility for herself, she has to be able to say no, I'm not going to be an object of somebody's use, I am going to be respectful of my body and the way I act, the way I talk. I want to be attractive. She's an attractive woman. She doesn't have to take all her clothes off in order to do that. She's making a spectacle of herself. She's teaching the people watching her. Oh yeah, we have to be objects, even if we don't want to be. Just the way she's portraying us is moving us into becoming persons of lust. So John Paul would say to that woman you have to be cognizant of that too, and at the same time, men, you have to be cognizant of the way you're looking at them. So this is a battle for both of us. We both have to be involved in this, men and women.
Speaker 1:The dignity and vocation of women again, and those of men find their eternal source where, in the heart of God, in the heart of that wounded, that lance that pierces there, and blood and water flow out Baptism, baptism of water to cleanse us of sin, become adopted children of God. And then the blood, the blood is the Eucharist. This is it, this is what sustains you. This is my total sacrifice. This is why we go to the Mass. Danger this is my total sacrifice. This is why we go to the Mass to receive this again. It's such a beautiful thing, connecting again this intimacy that God wants with us so that we can restore this with each other.
Speaker 1:So, consequently, man must look within himself to see whether he who was entrusted to him as a sister in humanity, as a spouse, maybe, has not become in his heart an object of adultery. You know, I speak to men who are looking at pornography while they're married and then expect to be able to look at their wife with respect. No, they become, they start to lust after her. Well, she feels this, and vice versa, and that breaks apart marriages. You know, you cannot become an object. My wife cannot become an object of exploitation of somebody that I use, and this is very, very difficult. You know, the people that have sustaining love lives, that have sustaining beautiful, even sexual, marital relationships with each other, they've learned not to use each other. There's a beauty about that that we're missing when we're using and abusing one another. Anyways, I won't get any more deeper in that because I have to start to wind up here.
Speaker 1:But does this mean that we should distrust our own human hearts? No, it's only to say that we must remain in control of it. In a sense, we all stand again before that tree of the knowledge of good and evil, faced with the choice to trust God or succumb to temptation. This is the battle every day. You know, sometimes you know most of the day we're standing on that battlefield, that tree. You have to open those temptations up to God. I have to choose God. The temptations will come.
Speaker 1:Dear young friends, john Paul writes the response which Jesus gives to his questioner in the gospel is addressed to each of you. Christ asks you about the state of your moral awareness and at the same time, he questions you about the state of your conscience. This is the key question, he says, for man. It's the fundamental question of our youth, of your youth, one that concerns the whole plan of life, which must be formed precisely in youth. He says, if you don't get this when you're younger and you become a person of lust, it becomes very difficult to even see this later on.
Speaker 1:Sometimes we don't even see the sins. You see these older, middle-aged white women standing up for abortion and chanting these gender ideologies. You see how lost they are. Well, how can they be that lost? Because in their youth they never got this right, as they take this crippled, distorted view of the world you know, and into their hearts and become these persons that will willingly give up their own child. Now you do that one or two or three times. You pretty much you can't even talk about it anymore. You want to push it away and then you want to justify it and then, instead of opening your heart and be forgiven and saved, see that, oh yeah, the sins were tremendous.
Speaker 1:Jesus said to Sister Faustina you know, the person who sins the most has most right to his merciful love. He said the greater the sin, the greater right you have. He's always calling us back. You know, most of the women that I work with in pro-life most of the most powerful ones, I should say that really speak on it have had an abortion and have turned their lives around. So, at the end of the day, when you see the crippling effect and you see the Joe Bidens of the world, kamala Harris of the world and so many other people, and you say, how did they get so broken, how did they get so distorted, how did they get so lost? Well, it's slowly, slowly, slowly and then boom, you finally fall off the cliff. You can always come back in, but you won't want to. This is really a danger, isn't it? You don't want to.
Speaker 1:The conscience formed by truth becomes a treasure for all of you listening today that carries you toward eternity. You cannot wait. John Paul is saying it's the value that's connected with the relationship with each one of you, with moral good and moral evil. Decide what you want. All of us have been given reason to search for the truth what is the truth of things? And then our conscience works with that reason and our intellect to be able to say it becomes a motor. Our free will becomes a motor to the good. And this is where we're going. Always keep your eye on the prize, always aim to Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1:So we find ourselves here at a crucial moment. We're at every step and time and in eternity. You know time and eternity. Today, this moment we are listening to this time, our time here on earth and eternity are meeting at a level which is proper to us. We're just a banana peeled away, but always touching on eternity. We co-create ourselves with God on these choices that we make. When I choose good, I become good, I am good, or I choose these little steps of evil and at some point, guys, you won't be able to come back from that. You'll be giving yourself over to evil, and you've done so much evil. You just get into a place where we're just broken. And so, at this level of moral values, it's the level of the conscience of moral values.
Speaker 1:This conscience is the most important dimension of time and history Our conscience, our moral values, how we see each other. This becomes so important because we're hitting eternity and we're bringing this into the created world. What do we bring in? What's true, what's good and beautiful? For history is written not only by the events which, in a certain sense, happen from outside, right All these events that happen outside. John Paul said it is written first of all from within, in your own heart. It's the history of human consciousness, of moral victories and defeats, right there, here to the essential greatness of man, of each one of you, finds its foundation, your authentic human dignity, right there at the heart.
Speaker 1:How do you choose? This is that interior treasure whereby man, meaning men and women, continue to go beyond themselves and where, in the direction of eternity. How? By choosing Jesus Christ. By choosing Jesus Christ who says only God is good. So I choose the good. You know the temptations and the evil out there. That's what we're battling.
Speaker 1:This is a spiritual battle. You know, by ourselves we were never supposed to take on the powers of Satan and it's impossible for us to do that. We have to open up our hearts to the one that was always filled up. In the very beginning, we were intimate with God. The fall broke that and now we have to freely choose Christ. Right, we're free, just like Adam and Eve were free to walk away. And so now we have to be free to say, yeah, I mean, be cognizant of this, that you are free to walk away today. And this is the battle going on right now.
Speaker 1:So this interior treasure that we have is our conscience, whereby we are continually again going in the direction of eternity. We're all going to die, my friends. I hate to bring that up, I hate to. If I'm the first one that's ever told you that, I'm really sorry, but at the end of the day, we're all going to die, but it's just a veil that we're going to go through. And then what? So it comes death, judgment, and then heaven or hell. Those are the four last things. Right? Death, judgment, heaven or hell. So if it's true that it is established that people would die only once.
Speaker 1:It's also true that man, men and women carries within themselves the treasure of conscience, this deposit of good and evil, across that frontier of death, in order that, in the sight of him, who was holiness himself, he may find the ultimate and definitive truth about his whole life. That comes after judgment. Can you imagine being a person and look it by the grace of God, I get it. I'm dealing with all this every day in my own heart. These battles are very real. I just know I've been doing it long enough that every time I've walked away and I've chosen evil, that I've created so much evil behind me and I can't find peace anymore. So you start to understand that they can't find peace anymore. So you know, you start to understand that.
Speaker 1:But can you imagine that if you don't and you've been promoting abortion, you're married and divorced four times? And you know all of these different things and you know the sin. You know I brought hundreds of thousands of men and women into a lustful culture because of the things that I did, and you know I could have changed that. God gives us these various talents and we have to use those talents for good. Well, anyways, after death comes judgment, and can you imagine that I've been promoting abortion and yelling and screaming about manipulating these poor young children's bodies, with all these gender ideologies pushing critical race theory on them? I'm going to be standing there and all of a sudden I'm going to start. I'm going to see Jesus Christ and he's going to expose my heart and I'm going to see my heart and I dread it already to see my own human heart, all the things that I've done through my life. It's good to look back and to remember how far you've come and also to say, hey, you know, I didn't do that by myself. You know only by the grace of God.
Speaker 1:So this is just what happens in the conscience and the interior truth of our acts. In a certain sense, there's a constant presence, this dimension of eternal life within and simultaneously the same conscience to our moral values, imprints the most expressive seal upon the life of generations to come, upon the history, the culture of human environments, societies, nations and all humanity. You know, when you look out at the world and you see this culture of death, humanity. You know, when you look out at the world and you see this culture of death, it's from parents and grandparents not sharing this life of faith to their children and grandchildren. It happens in the home, it happens in families, and so that's what John Paul is saying here. Let me just read that again. This is just what happens in the conscience, in the interior truths of our acts, and in a certain sense, there is constantly presence, the dimension of eternal life, right, and simultaneously, at the same time, the same conscience through moral values, imprints in the most expressive seal upon the life of generations, the ones that are coming up behind us, upon the history and culture of human environments, of societies, nations, of all humanity. So when you come back into the program, you get your own heart back and you let God, let Jesus himself, who is God, of course, untwist and undistort our human hearts and we become persons of love. And so then you pass that down into your marriages, you certainly pass it down to people that you meet, to your neighbor, to children, to your children, to our grandchildren, and so these are the things that change the environment.
Speaker 1:St Paul writes this in Hebrews 3.15. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts, don't reject it, open it up. So get the battle plan, download it, follow it, disciple one another and continue to support us on this podcast. We appreciate it. If you have any questions, our contact information is in the show links. I look forward to the next episode with you. Thanks, everyone. Talk to you again soon. Bye-bye.