Become Who You Are

#694 2026: The Year of the Great Harvest

• Jack • Episode 694

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The air feels heavier this year, like we’ve reached a hinge in history. We name that tension and call it what it is: a harvest moment. Not a date prediction, but a sober read on where the seeds of our culture have grown—especially around life in the womb and the meaning of marriage. We trace how those two pillars reveal everything else: when a society can’t say a child is a gift or that a mother and father are best for that child, the compass is broken and the language starts to lie.

From there we open the parable of the wheat and the weeds in Matthew 13 to make sense of the confusion. Wheat and weeds look alike for a while; time reveals their roots. Jesus refuses a premature purge, not because He’s soft on evil, but because mercy gives room for conversion. Drawing on St. Faustina’s Diary, we explore why God allows delay: before the just Judge, He opens wide the door of mercy. 


We also get practical—the Claymore battle plan—that starts on your knees before screens, anchors you in Scripture and Divine Mercy, and builds fraternity so men stop drifting into isolation and vice. The goal isn’t to swing at enemies; it’s to become good wheat with deep roots that can feed others and stand in the storm. 

Subscribe, share this episode with a friend who needs a clear path forward, 

Ready to bring the Claymore plan to your parish or circle? Reach out—we’ll equip you to lead.

Contact us: info@jp2renew.org

Finally, Scripture and Divine Mercy study is part of the battle plan. Pick one out and meditate on it! This is part of going deeper and encountering Jesus Christ! Amazing how your heart will change. 

Scripture & Spiritual Reading

  • Matthew 13:24–30; 36–43
  • Matthew 3:12
  • 2 Peter 3:9
  • Diary of Saint Faustina, §§1160, 723, 1146, 699

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SPEAKER_00:

See that you survived New Year's Eve, huh? Well, happy New Year, 2026. I call this and I call this year the year of the great harvest. The field is growing. Mercy's still being offered, but the harvest is coming. You know, I'm genuinely glad to see 2026. Because whether you want to admit it or not, 2025 set the stage and its passing left something ominous, something thick, palpable in the air. Don't you feel it? Everybody I talk to senses it. It's clearly pointing to an event, a showdown between two great forces, and the battle lines have been drawn. This is very exciting. It could be terrorizing if you're not ready for it. But you know, this whole battle, all the way since history, it's been coming through, it's been moving, and divine providence is winding down. And we hear these prophetic voices. I'm not trying to pick a day, but I know 2026, something's going to come up. I sensed this in 2020 when I started this podcast. I started just a month or so before a COVID hit, just because I knew that, you know, something was in the ear already. I couldn't put my finger on it. I started this podcast because as I was going out speaking, you know, we see uh I uh this attack on marriage in the family already. So many people would line up to talk to me about their kids, about their marriages, about abortion, all these battles we're fighting. And so I said, hey, instead of uh taking notes or me standing here and giving another talk, let me do some podcasts as a follow-up. That's how I started, just simply to answer people's questions that I was, you know, people that I was speaking to. Well, within a month or so, uh COVID hit and all my calendar came unwound. And then here I am stuck with this, just this little podcast going out to a few people that that I was um talking to, speaking to, and then my friends would call me, et cetera, et cetera. So I just did it for them because uh I didn't want to just keep repeating the same thing. So I thought, well, if 50 people want to hear this, I'll put it out for 50 people. So we went on audio. In the beginning, uh YouTube would censor me too much uh some of the things that I was saying. Now with the Trump administration coming in, we're finding that uh slowly, slowly, slowly we're being able to build up their channel. So I just want to tell you right now, uh, hit the subscribe, hit the like button. Will you help us get this uh message out because it's slowly building up? But uh man, it's taken uh uh a long time on YouTube. And and that's okay. We can expect them not be behind this message or so, but but there's an urgency, right? So we have witnessed this last year. What it's not just a political tension, it's it's not just cultural confusion. It is all that social fragmentation, but it's something deeper. It's a battle raging between the forces of good and evil, a battle that's been building for years and is now breaking out into the open. And it's happening here in our country. And this is the last free country in the Western world. I don't know if you realize that or not. We we dodged a bullet with uh Donald Trump. That's why I hang his hat back there, uh, make America Great Again. Not because I think uh Donald Trump is Jesus Christ. He's not. He's not a perfect human being, but God used him, and we all sense this. You know, he's appointed some great Catholic guys, J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, Christians on his cabinet. This is a battle between good and evil. He is it's not going to be perfect. Politics is a messy thing, so don't be too quick to judge him. But all of us that have been paying attention knows that if Joe Biden or Kamala Harris was our president and this crazy Tim Waltz, uh, you if you listen to or listen to this last podcast that uh I did with Tom Hampson, uh, really to help your liberal neighbors and and uh pastor understand the basis of immigration. And it's very important. So last week I did to help get that one out too. It's it's very, very important. So, anyways, it's happening here. We're the last free speech uh country in the Western world. It's amazing what's happening in the UK, etc. So I've covered all that in past podcasts, and I've got a a good follow-up coming out um after this podcast, too. So good ones to share. So that reality alone should sober us, but it also should awaken us. Because if you're honest, deep down, you know this, you sense this. So this is a great time to be alive. Men are not made for comfort, are they? Too many men have grown soft, huh? They're addicted to the porn and the gambling. And you know, the the culture loves this, you know. Satan loves to take this, but they've lost the sense of the three core things that every man actually knows in his heart if he listens. We're made for adventure, not to sit on in a couch or masturbate down on porn in the basement. We're made for battle. That's why we have to claim our sword. And it's all for beauty when we discover it. And it's so incredible. Every one of those realities, though, is pressing in on us right now. The battle comes into clear focus when you read Sister Lucia of Fatima, who wrote to Cardinal Kafara and John Paul II. She wrote this, and this is important for us because when we hear all this noise, how do you get this down? How do you get a sense of who's good, who's evil in the world, huh? Well, a time will come, she wrote to to Cardinal Kafara, and she knew he would share this with uh John Paul II. A time will come when the decisive battle between the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of Satan who wants to rule over this world will be over what? Marriage and the family. And those who work for the good of the family will experience persecution and tribulation, but do not be afraid, she said, because our lady, our blessed mother, has already crushed this head. And I repeat, and those who work for the good of the family will experience persecution and tribulation. Isn't that what Charlie Kirk's legacy is all about? He was encouraging young people to not be afraid to embrace marriage and children, to start to see the world in a different lens. And he was assassinated for standing for love and the truth. This is really demonic. And those who cooperate with evil are very much on the move in this great battle between our Lord and Satan. This is what we're sensing, honey, this battle, and it's over marriage and the family, it's because this is the basis of all civilizations. But keep in mind, our lady has already crushed his head. It's only in this temporal space that he is allowed to take down human beings. Why? Because of freedom, human freedom. But the power is with those who stand up and testify. You say, well, they killed Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk, you know, all of us are gonna die. You know, we this is the world goes by very fast. Now it's tragic that he was 31, you know, married to uh Erica with the two beautiful children. It it's it's a it's it's a travesty. It's sick, actually, that people are this evil. But we have to open our eyes over this. For in truth, Jesus is conquered, though, sin and death. The problem is human freedom, and those who in this passing world are cooperating with evil. This is the wheat and the tears that Jesus talks about. And I'm gonna get to that in just a minute. Yesterday, I saw on social media a picture of two women in a restaurant smiling and raising their wine glasses for the picture with the caption, I took my wife. Now, this is two women, right? I took my wife out for fancy dinner, so we see that they're already uh confused, God bless them. But that's not the that's not the the the the worst of it, right? We're out to celebrate her doing 300 abortions for the year. 300. One woman raising her glass and smiling with another woman, but pointing to her husband and and um or her wife, I got I don't know if if they're both called wives, or one's a wife and one's a husband, I don't know, but pointing and celebrating in this fancy restaurant for doing 300 abortions a year for for just for the year of 2025. And it reminded me of the slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem. Remember when King Herod uh found out that from the wise men that that uh the savior was to be born in Bethlehem and they were going there, and then they didn't come back, they went to a different route. King Herod said, Hey, come back and tell me where he is. He wanted to go kill him. Well, they didn't come back. So King Herod sent his his army, his soldiers, into that uh into Bethlehem. And they estimate that they killed about 300 baby boys. Uh Herod said, Go out and kill any boy uh under two years old. And they figure about the size of Bethlehem, uh, there would have been about 300 baby boys that would have been slaughtered of the innocents. This one woman took out that many children. I mean, it's it's unbelievable. You know, you have a new communist mayor of New York uh city as of January 1st, 2026, Zoran Mam Mamdani, right? With his hand on the Quran. He became the city's first Muslim slash communist mayor and the first to use the Quran uh for the for his oath, making a historical departure from his predecessors who typically used a what? A Bible. We're a Christian nation, and there's a reason for that. Amazing that he promised so much free stuff. All the socialists and Marxists, they always say it's free stuff. Well, we we know childcare is not free. All this free busting, free this. No, they they take it, they confiscate it from hardworking middle class people and use it to distribute four votes. I'll give everybody just a little bit. Hey, I'm gonna give you all this free stuff, vote for me. They get into power, and then it's all collectivism. You'll see that gets away from the individual. He's already sprouting this out. I've covered this already in in uh in other podcasts. But it's amazing that they call this free, huh? Uh I the my last podcast touches on this with uh again with Tom Hampson. Speaking, you saw this in Minnesota, right? All this free stuff, free childcare, free this, free that. And we saw this. Hopefully uh you you you know about this, you know, the Somalians up there. And I don't want to just throw every Somalian under, but this Somalian community who commit committed so much fraud, running in in the billions of dollars. And this Peggy Fleming is the lieutenant governor. They're running now for a Senate seat, doubling down on her support for the Somalian community who committed this uh fraud. Well, of course, because somebody in government had to facilitate all this. Look the other way. Again, I don't want to get into all this right now. If you're not following it, you should uh listen to some of the other podcasts that we did when we're unpacking some of this stuff. It's it's very interesting. But here's the point I want to make. That fraud and those politicians that cover for it are just corrupted. And so when when I always say, well, where does she stand? Where does he stand, uh, Tim Walls, too, on what? We're getting back to what I said, on abortion and on traditional marriage. Well, you know where they're gonna fall. I mean, this evil just grows, it it just sprouts up. So before I even worry about all of the corruption that that they're promoting in Minnesota, I get back to this and I ask right away, you know, is she what what kind of platform is she running on with when it comes to abortion and marriage? And so what do I find out? It's easy, you know, just go on to grab AI and do a profile. She's running on a platform abortion with no gestational limits. You can literally murder a child as it is about to be born. This is sick stuff. She's a strong advocate of, of course, gender ideologies, highlighting Minnesota's ban on conversion or talk therapy for minors who are confused about their sexuality. That means in practice that a therapist cannot journey with a child, talk therapy. Uh, some people call it conversion therapy, but it it allows them to journey with a child. When children are confused about their sexuality, they just need time. You know, upwards of 90 plus percent of children, if just given time, will become comfortable in their own bodies. But why don't we just let them do that? If 90% of my patients are going to get healed if I just walk and talk with them, why would I say I put a ban on that? Why? You you can make your own decision there. You know why. That a therapist in the state of Minnesota can only affirm them in their confusion. Keep in mind, again, that studies show that the vast majority of them would be comfortable as they develop. You know, the the evil of this, right? If a child escapes a mother's womb, they're hounded by the demonic forces of evil to destroy their fertility, mutilate their young bodies. This is how they treat children. Keep this in mind always. Murder them if possible, destroy their fertility. Why? Why, why? Satan and the fallen angels are spirits. They're sexless, and they can't reproduce, huh? So they're envious of man and woman who can co-create, procreate with God and bring eternal beings into the world. And so if you want to destroy God, Satan does, but he can't, he's going to destroy the Imago Dei, the image and likeness of God in the world, which is the human person, and the fuller image, of course, is marriage and the family. This is why it's the core, it's the found foundational piece. So he's out to destroy that. And he's going to use people who cooperate with him to get this work done. Very, very important for us to remember this. Is it any wonder that Flanagan is particularly vocal then in their support for trans rights, including for minors, has the audacity to describe gender-affirming care as life-saving health care. You can't make this up. Only Satan could, huh? She's proud that Minnesota is a trans refuge state. This evil abuses language, of course, calling the murder of unborn uh reproductive freedom, trans sterilization, body uh mutilation as gender-affirming care. Charlie Kirk, you know, in in with in people's eyes like this, he's bigoted. Uh, he's he's a hater because he wants to protect uh life in the womb and marriage in the family, the right of a uh a baby um to, you know, a baby comes about with a with the with with the one-flesh union of a man and a woman and says, hey, let that man and that woman also raise the child. This is how we're created. So this is the last great battle taking place in our time. It cannot be any clearer. The battle for the human person created in the image and likeness of God and the fuller image of marriage and the family, which brings us to a gospel, the parable of the wheat and the tears that I want to talk about today. Because Jesus tells us exactly what kind of moment we're living in and how to live through it. I let's call this the wheat, the weeds, and the mercy that waits. And before I get to it, I remember to subscribe and hit that like button again. So let me start by saying this. One of the most frustrating things about living in this world, and yes, even in the church in the modern world, is that we see good and evil so often tangled together. You expect clarity. We expect the good guys to look like good guys, the bad guys to look like villains, but we know in this confusing time that we don't. Well, Jesus knew this frustration long before we did. That's why in Matthew 13 he tells about the parable of the wheat and the tears or the weeds. And again, tears are weeds that closely resemble wheat, especially in their early stages. So it can be hard to distinguish in this early growth stage. But now, here's what we know at this time that we're in the 2026. And that's why I say the harvest is near. The weeds and the wheat are not in the early stage anymore. They're sprouted up. You can see them very clearly if you just follow what I said. Where do you stand on life? Where do you stand on marriage and the family? And then it goes, the evil will go on from there. That's just the start of it, but that's the foundational piece. So we see the good and the evil, the wheat and the weeds, separating who? They themselves. The angels don't have to do much work when they come back at the final harvest, right? So the final harvest, we're close to harvest time. Is it going to be 2026? Let's see, buckle up. So setting the scene. Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is like this: a farmer goes out and sows good seed in this field. Not cheap seed, not compromised seed, but good weed. And while everyone is asleep, though, an enemy comes in the dark and sows tears. This weed called Darnell, actually. By the time the plants sprout, you can't easily tell them apart. So the servants see this, they know, they panic and they say, Master, didn't you sow good seed? Where did these weeds come from? Should we go out and pull them out? The question matters, huh? Because it's the same question we ask today. And it's a dangerous question, isn't it? Shouldn't we just get rid of the bad ones? Shouldn't we purge the corrupt? Expose the hypocrites, clean the house? The farmer's answer is shocking. No, he says, if you pull up the weeds now, if you uproot the the wheat the wheat, you'll uproot the wheat with them, let both grow together until the harvest time. In other words, not yet. And then Jesus goes on, he takes the disciples uh aside and explains himself later away from the crowds, right? So he says this he says the sower is the son of God, Jesus Christ, huh? The field is the world, the good seed are the children of the kingdom, the weeds are the children of the evil one, the enemy is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels, he tells them. This isn't vague symbolism. It's a diagnosis of reality, huh? Of what's going on, why God allows the mix. I tell you what, there was a time in my life if the chair, the weeds were taken out too early, I would have been taken out. This is the point. God gives us time to repent and come in. He's doing that for all of us, maybe for our brothers, sisters, our family, whatever. Here's the hard truth, though. Until the end of time, the world will be mixed, huh? And we're seeing that. Good people and bad people, holiness and hypocrisy, faith and the counterfaith, Christ and the and the Antichrist, from the outside, they often look the same. And people that are not in tune to what we're talking about here, they don't even see this. They have ears but don't hear, eyes that don't see. That's why Jesus warns us about premature judgment. Because human beings are terrible at seeing roots. Look at the people, the evil calling Charlie Kirk bigoted and hatred. And young people that aren't in tune to this, they just hear this and they and they call him the same thing. They don't even know him. Because we judge by just appearances or what we hear from propaganda. But God judges hearts, doesn't he? And when we try to play God, even those of us that see, we usually cause more damage than we realize, right? We don't see everything. Mercy explains the waiting. This is the word divine mercy comes in. This is why every morning in the Claymore battle plan, you see every morning the 10-minute ritual, that part of this is listening to the uh Divine Mercy app. This is Sister Faustina, just a little piece every morning. It's so important. In the diary, Jesus tells uh Sister Faustina something that unlocks this parable. I prolong the time of my mercy for the sake of sinners. That's the reason for the delay. The wheat and the tears grow together because mercy is still at work. God is not a different to evil. He's patient with sinners. Every extra season before the harvest is what? An invitation to repent. Every sunrise, every time the morning comes up, that's why we go to our knees first is another knock on the door of the human heart. Jesus says elsewhere to Sister Faustina the greater the sinner, listen to this, the greater the sinner, the greater the theer. The right he has to my mercy. That line alone should stop his cold. Some of the people we are most tempted to label as tears, as weeds, are the very ones God is pursuing most intensely. God's patience, though, is not weakness. Mercy does not cancel justice, it delays it so that conversion is possible. Jesus tells Sister Faustina plainly, before I come as the just judge, I first open wide the door of my mercy. This delay is not denial. That picture of divine mercy is what he had Sister Faustina paint. You know, when Jesus got hit with that lance, water and blood. Water is our baptism, a confession, so that when we when we turn to him, we're washed of our sins. The Eucharist is what sustains us, huh? The blood, huh? The life force of Jesus Himself. The harvest is coming. The harvest is coming. And Jesus says, He says this, and this was not that long ago. He said, But first comes my mercy, the time of mercy, full, real, demanding mercy. They call sinners to change. Judgment is still real. Jesus is equally clear. When the time of mercy ends, and this is what we're going to sense, maybe 2026 is the time of what? A time of justice will begin. The angels will separate perfectly. Something we cannot do right now. The tears, the weeds will be gathered and burned, the wheat will be gathered into the barn. Divine mercy does not mean everything turns out fine no matter what. It means that everyone is given a real chance. What does this mean for us? So what can we do? First, don't let don't be scandalized by the presence of evil in the world. It doesn't mean God has lost control. It doesn't mean God has forgotten us. He's doing exactly what he said. He's allowing people to repent. Second, resist the temptation to appoint yourself judge and executioner. That role is already filled. Third, and this is the heart of it, focus on becoming good wheat. You do this yourself. Get deep roots, real repentance, bear actual fruit in the world. This is the Claymore battle plan. Not appearances only. Go deeper. Don't accept any other labels except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. You know, I'm not outraged by this evil. God is patient with us. We must be patient with others too. It's not easy. Holiness, then go out, huh? You get your own holiness, universal call to holiness, then go out and proclaim the gospel and divine mercy. That's what the Claymore battle plan is all about, walking and discipling one another. Because the same mercy God is extending to the world, He's extending first to us. And it sustains us and He uses us to bring this mercy, His mercy, along with the warning that the harvest is near. That is what we're all sensing. So a final reflection here. This parable is both a warning and a comfort. A warning because self-deception won't last forever. A comfort because God is still working, still waiting and calling sinners home. As Jesus said to Sister Faustina, while there is time, let them have recourse to the font of my mercy. The field is clearly separating itself into the weeds and the wheat. The key signs are those two pillars I talked about. Keep those in mind when you get confused. Where do you stand on life in the womb, on abortion, and where do you stand on marriage, the right of every child to a mother and a father? Remember, even for an abortionist, though, mercy is still available because the harvest is near and his mercy is out there. Remember, know that the Claymore handbook is going through its final edit. And hopefully we'll finish that in the next few weeks and we'll go to print with that. But this is an urgency here in 2026. And we know that you feel this too. So don't wait for that handbook to come out. In fact, download the Claymore battle plan outline today. It'll be in the show notes if you haven't already. This complements the handbook. They work together. And if you're just getting started, focus on that Claymore morning ritual. First thing in the morning, before you look at the phones, go down to your knees, opening yourself up. And that includes the St. Michael prayer and a little meditation. You just download the app of Divine Mercy and listen to that. You know, the evil spirits are real. You need protection. Finally, scripture and divine mercy study is part of the battle plan as you read there is after your after the 10-minute uh Claymore morning ritual. So I'm going to put reference to in the show notes here on the scripture I use today and also uh the the quotes from uh the the diary of St. Faustina. You should make sure you have one of these books. This is very, very important. Download that app. So when you when you read scripture, when you read the diary, every action that I take, I I move closer. I I determine myself who I will become as I move closer to God. So every action, nothing is wasted. Always those good things. I'm tempted about something, fall to your knees. Remember, temptation is an invitation to prayer. So okay, make 2026 the year. You take up your sword, the claymore sword, not to cut down the weeds, but to storm the gates of hell, confront the weeds, make it clear to them, and build up your brothers and sisters. Mercy is still offered, but the harvest is coming. And in the meantime, the sword of justice demands that we stand up for marriage, the family, the most innocent and pure among us, the most defenseless children. We're going to be judged harshly because we understand this very well, don't we? We're going to be judged harshly if we don't stand up for uh the innocent. And we also, at the same time, we stand up for our country as patriots who love our country because it all flows together. Don't forget that God gave us this nation. And it's the natural extension of the family. So as the family moves out into the world, it moves out into the nation. So this has to work together. God gave us this beautiful nation we call the United States of America. So I want to challenge you to get involved with us as a leader to bring Claymore to your parish or circle of influence. So if you're if you take on that challenge, if you feel it in your heart, don't be afraid. Email us, see the show notes. It's easy. It's not time consuming. We're going to provide you with everything that you need. We're training uh young guys right now, but but you'll you'll you'll have it all. Download the Claymore Battle Plan outline. You'll have the handbook. You have this uh podcast, and going forward, we're gonna be really working with those uh uh leaders. Again, it's not time consuming. Your heart is going to feel a change while you're helping other uh people come into this story and there's an urgency, right? We are a counter-revolution. Those cooperating with God to bring it all. That's all that's true, good, and beautiful into the world, especially the beauty of truth and love to our brothers and sisters who are lost. And the clock is running down. Let's do this together. Hey, God bless you. Great to be with you guys. Talk to you again soon. If you have any questions, you got my email. Bye bye, everyone.