#726 The Fall and the Call to Be a Man of God...ACT Five

You can feel it, even if you can’t always name it: the pressure, the drift, the sense that something essential about love and manhood is under attack. We step into Act Five of the Claymore Battle Plan Handbook to name the fight without flinching. The claim is bold and clarifying: every man is made for adventure, the adventure is a battle, and the battle is for beauty, especially the beauty of authentic love.

We use Saint John Paul II’s “triptych” to zoom out and see the whole story, the beginning, the fall, and what redemption is moving us toward. From there, we let Jesus define the battleground. In the Sermon on the Mount, he goes straight for the heart, where lust turns persons into objects and where real freedom begins. That has direct consequences for pornography, dating, marriage, and the kind of strength it takes to protect women and children rather than consume them.

We also look at how the fall gets normalized in modern culture, where bodies are marketed, fame and pleasure are sold as fulfillment, and men are trained to surrender attention and conscience. But we don’t stay in diagnosis. We move to hope with traction: grace is stronger than sin, Christ brings transforming power, and the way forward looks like prayer, self-mastery, brotherhood, and a renewed vision of marriage and family as the heartbeat of civilization. We point you to practical next steps, knees before the phone, the Claymore 10-minute morning ritual, then reading One ACT from the Battle Plan Handbook to share with a brother, plus a way to send in your thoughts for a follow-up.

Subscribe for the next conversation, share this with a brother who needs his heart back, and leave a review so more men can find it. What part of the battle feels most personal for you right now?

Email Jack with questions and comments to answer and discuss on future episodes! jack@ClaymoreMilitesChristi.com

Transcript

Welcome And The Urgency

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome, men of Claymore. Hope you're doing well. We're gonna dig right in here. This is Act Five from the Claymore Battle Plan Handbook. This is the spiritual warfare that we're in right now. This is titled, Act Five is titled The Fall and the Call to Be a Man of God. This is the second panel of the triptych, and we're moving forward, brothers. There's an urgency today, and you sense it. Three core things about every man. Life is supposed to be an adventure. It's gonna be a battle. That's why we had the Claymore sword, and the battle is real. And what's it for? For truth, goodness, and especially beauty. That's number three. Adventure, battle. It's for beauty, especially the beauty of love, authentic love. And love is worth fighting for, isn't it? That's why you and I were created. You may want to glance over Act Four in the beginning, all wonder and a cosmic explosion of love. That's the first panel of what John Paul II calls the triptych. Triptych again, as you remember, and you can get refreshed in Act Four, is a three-panel, a work of art, usually, and it's telling the story that we came into in the beginning before sin enters. Now, part two of that triptych is the fall. Sin enters the world. We know this, we're under this, but we have to understand this battle. And then next act would be where we're going, where this whole thing is headed. So you have to really come above the trees and you see this. You need to know the model. What sort of tale have we been, uh have we fallen into? So just as Jesus pointed us back to the beginning in Matthew 19, the model before sin and death entered, the story. Remember again, in the beginning it was not so. Today, Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount takes us to the second triptych, not to condemn us, but to define the battle, to let us know what type of battle that we're in. He says this in on the Sermon of the Mount. It sounds kind of rough. You have heard it said that you should not commit adultery, you shouldn't cheat on your wife. But I say to you, Jesus says, can you imagine just being there? I mean, what an incredible experience. But I say to you, and this is God Himself, Jesus, huh? Who calls you into an intimate union and friendship with him. But I say to you that everyone even looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. He's always after the heart, isn't he? You know, he he could have been talking about uh pornography then. Of course, you know, they didn't have the phones then, but uh, you know, they had a vivid imagination. And so I said, okay, I'm not cheating on my wife, but I, ooh, man, and there's nothing wrong with the beauty of that woman. But when we start to use her, right, we start to go into our imaginations. And and Satan loves that. He comes into that because it twists and distorts our passions and desires. We talked about this already. So it's important to kind of keep this in context. And if you need to review those prior podcasts or just do a quick review of some of the opening acts, especially act uh one today, too, because it starts out, what sort of tale have we fallen into? Let's be honest, huh? Authentic love is under attack. We see this, we feel this in our hearts. Sister Lucia of Fatima warned us, and this is not that long ago, Sister Lucia died in 2005. She warned us that the final great battle between Christ and Satan would be over what? Marriage and the family. History confirms her insight. The family is the heartbeat of humanity and the basic building block of every civilization. So when we're called into love, when we're called to build a family, say, get married, see the woman, the woman sees the man, this is the basic building block. God set this up to be the building blocks of every civilization throughout history. When that family is weakened, which it is today, the co culture that we see around us fractures, become toxic. Why? Because Satan cannot create. He can only distort what God has made good. He's not a creator. He can only take our hearts and just twist and distort them. This is why he targets the two pillars that sustain every society. You think about marriage and the family. So what does he target? So directly today, the lives of the most innocent, our children, especially in abortion, but even after that. And the sacred bond of marriage that brings them into being and protects them. You see this, this falling of marriage, this redefinition of marriage. So you're living in the middle of this battle, and time is short. The path forward depends on young men, all of you. And when I say young men, and I don't just mean age, I'm talking to guys that are uh uh much older than even me. And and they're young at heart because they're starting to discover what sort of tale they've come into, and it and it changes everything. They went from a life of being uh twisted and distorted, uh enslaved, actually, and now they're becoming free and they get that young heart back again. Christ gives that to you, right? I wonder what sort of tale we've fallen into. So you're living in this battle, and the path forward depends on all of you to step forward with courage, discipline, and faith. Ooh, why do I want to do that? You want to get your heart back, you want to get excited about this life, you want to understand what sort of tale. That's why the Claymore Battle Plan Handbook begins, Act one, with that. The title of that, I wonder what sort of tale we've fallen into. You know, that comes from J.R. Tolkien's great novel, The Lord of the Rings. You should read it. When Sam Gamge then, in that novel, faithful friend and servant of Frodo, they're about halfway through this arduous journey with another half to go. And he wonders about this. Like we should all be wondering about this. What sort of tale have we fallen into? I'll give you a little context from uh from Tolkien's story, which I did not uh uh write in the book. So this is what this is unpacking that, right? I'm just gonna take this little context. The brave things in in the in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo, this is Sam Gamsey, adventures as I used to call them. I used to think they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, you might say. But that's not the way of it, with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seemed to have been just landed in them landed in them usually. Their paths were laid that way, as you put it, but I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn't. I'm gonna pause there for a second. So, you know, you get bored, you start to look around, you wander into this life. But but no, these guys did something different. They're looking for meaning, for truth of things. This is what we're at. We're on this adventure, not just to walk around because we're bored and get caught into all kinds of things, but to find the path, right? And when they found the path, Jesus says this so beautifully in in Matthew chapter seven, you know, look for the narrow path, the narrow road. Take that because most men live lives of quiet desperation, Henry David Thoreau said right in Act 1. And Jesus said they're on the broad highway to nowhere, to destruction. So when you find that path, he says this. But I expect they had lots of chances like us on this adventure of turning back, only they didn't. Again, I pause. You know, you you might get distracted. You might get into all kinds of things. It says, no, I don't want to do that Claymore morning uh ritual on my knees before I look at that phone. That eight, ten minutes in the morning, that's too hard for me. Uh I don't want to read an act and discuss it with my brothers and unpack it. Oh, that's a little bit of effort. It's amazing what Satan will do to us. But he says uh we could have turned back, only they didn't. These are the guys, the great adventurers. And if they had, we shouldn't know, because they would have been forgotten. Those that turn back are forgotten. You know, it's it's John the Evangelist, you know, it's it's uh it's these great heroes of the story that seek all that's true, good, and beautiful, the sacrifice, that understand to pick up their claymore sword and be knights in this great battle. So we hear about those people that went on. And not all to a good end, mind you, at least not to what folks inside a story and not not outside it would call a good end. Sometimes you get killed, sometimes you get wounded. This is a short life. You know, coming home, he says, and finding things all right, though not quite the same, like old old Mr. Bilbo. So I wonder what sort of tale we've fallen into. Okay, you you won't understand all that because you have to put it into context. But basically now I come home and I tell these great adventures and these stories now. Uh and what are we sharing it with our with our other brothers, with our family, those that are lost in here? And and those are the best tales to hear. So I wonder what sort of tale we've fallen into. I wonder, said Mr. Frodo, but I don't know. And that's the way of a real tale. Happy ending, sad ending, but the people in it don't know, and you don't want them to. Again, I stop for just a second. You know, we're going on this path. We don't always know. You know, is it going to be a happy ending, a sad ending? How is it going to end? It's worth the battle. It's worth going out into this venture to get those three core things that we know adventure, battle, beauty, what's true, good and beautiful. He goes on to say, I wonder if if we shall ever be put into songs or tales ourselves, because we're in this great adventure, of course, he says, but I mean put into words, you know, told by the fireside or read out of a great book with red and black letters years and years after we're gone. And people will say, Let's hear that story about Frodo and the ring again. And they'll say, Yes, that's one of my favorite stories. Frodo was very brave, wasn't he, Dad? They'll be they'll be talking to each other, right? Yes, my boy, the famous, the most famous of the hobbits. And that's a that's saying a lot. So this again, you know, they're telling the story years later, and they're telling the story about Frodo and Sam Gamsey. So they're they're saying, hey, if this story was written down and years later they're talking about this. Why didn't they put more of his talk in, Dad? That's what I like. It makes me laugh. And Frodo wouldn't have gotten far without Sam, would he, Dad? Let's let's be the heroes in our own story. Maybe nobody will ever write it. But people that know you will tell the story because you will have changed their lives and they'll be telling this to their kids, right? Jesus shows us the way. When the Pharisees tried to trap Jesus by asking them whether divorce was lawful, he refused to argue on their terms. Instead, he returned them to God's original plan. He reminded them that man and woman were created for a permanent communion of love, joined by God himself. When they objected, the Pharisees in Matthew 19 and appealed to Moses, right? Why did Moses allow them to get divorced in the Old Testament? Jesus responded plainly, concessions exist because of what? Because of sin. They don't define the truth of things. So Jesus says, look, from the beginning, it was not so. This is your call, brothers. First, understand marriage as God intended it was from the beginning, before sin hardened the human heart. Then say yes to Christ's work of redemption in you to untwist and undistort what Satan has been twisting. You receive his grace. Grace is the participation in the life of God Himself. He will give you this life. He came on this earth, became incarnate to pour this out to you. So put your own house in order. And you don't do this alone. You do it vertically with Jesus, right? Get him into your heart, and then uh horizontally with our brothers, huh? This is the journey that we're on. So Jesus did not come merely to manage our sins, did he? He came with transforming power. How do you know this? You have to walk into your adventure, your story. St. Athanasius captured this truth when he wrote that the Son of God became man so that man might share in the life of God. This is the heart of the gospel. God desires union and communion with us, with each one of you, so real and intimate, the scripture repeatedly uses the spousal language to describe it. God wants a relationship with you, like this beautiful love story between a man and woman in marriage. In fact, man and woman in marriage, remember, is the icon, the sign that points to this love itself. So the prophet Isaiah proclaims that just as a bridegroom rejoices in his bride, so God rejoices in his people. Isaiah 62.5. Go read that passage. Isaiah 62.5. Marriage matters because it mirrors this divine love. Before love radiates outward to a spouse and family, it must first be restored between you and God to get your heart right. Because only a healed heart can love rightly. Genesis makes this clear. You're made to share in God's life and love. This is what's expressed in marriage. This is why sin shatters this harmony. This is why we feel anxious, nervous, depressed, even enslaved by things like pornography. If love is the self-gift that we're talking about here, pornography is the opposite, grasping, twisting, using someone as an object. A real man doesn't do those things. Not if you want to be written about, uh like Frodo and Sam are talking about. But evil is really true. And this power against us is really true. So don't get discouraged, guys. We're really on a battle. And the first battle is always fought on the battlefield of the human heart between love and lust. You know, stepping up to what's true, good and beautiful, or letting it get twisted and distorted, right? Much sin is caused, much uh uh pain is caused in this life, you know, taking down the innocent, etc., etc. So it's true. Sin shattered disharmony of our hearts. The serpent entered with deception right away in Genesis 3, but this happens today. In a sense, we're all standing before that tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And what did he do? He sowed distrust and suggested that God was with holding something good. Is God withholding something from us? When Adam and Eve believed that lie, they grasped at divinity of being in this in this great part of the story, but they did it apart from God, and so they fell. Innocence gave way to shame, trust gave away to fear, communion gave way to hiding. This lie has not gone away. Today the fall has been normalized. Turn on the television, and you will see bodies displayed for consumption. I remember a wealthy and famous middle-aged celebr celebrity, I won't name her, just a couple years ago performing a pole dance at the Super Bowl before millions. And you and I was thinking to myself while I was watching that. What drives this woman? What drives any person to seek validation, not through their beauty and talent or dignity, which she had all of those things. But by being reduced to an object of desire, she put herself on display as a middle-aged person now. She should have known better, you know? This is a twisted and distorted thing. Is it for money? It's a power. You know, a lot of times they really feel this validation. We've been we, you know, we we've we're in the fall. They don't know that their bodies, their beauty was given to be loved, not to be used. And she put herself on display. This is not an isolated moment. It's it's a culture that we grew up in, and you grew up in that teaches exposure, fame, and pleasure as pathways to fulfillment. She thought she'd be fulfilled there, but nobody really loved her. They just wanted to use her, and in your mind it starts, this is why Jesus says this, you know, even in your mind when you see that woman, right? And lust enters your heart, you've already committed adultery in your heart. The damage is real. It shapes how men see women, it distorts how you view your girlfriend, your sisters in Christ, all of them, your future wife. Pornography trains the heart in lust and conditions the mind to use rather than to love. That lie extends beyond sexuality. The public schools are in on it, increasingly participating in this distortion, pushing these gender ideologies on young people, critical race theory on young people that creates division, fear driven narratives such as permanent climate emergencies, and in some cases enforcing medical mandates like these vaccines on children that had not been thoroughly proven safe. You know, we have to think about these things, not just let people grasp us and use us like objects, because they're using our kids as objects, right? To twist and distort them for power, money. But there's an evil behind that would just like to destroy the child's heart. And then those children, as they get older, huh? They become men that are just addicted to all of these things. These pressures are presented as unquestionable goods. We can't even question them. Yet they're training young people to surrender their reason, their God-given reason that says, what is the truth of things? They silence our conscience and submit to authority without discernment. That's what they want. We saw that, didn't we, during COVID? Put the masks on, so yeah, everybody obeyed. Six feet apart, everybody obeyed. Take the that vaccine that was never uh actually never uh stopped transmission and or infection. It was a total lie. So see, these aren't neutral ideas. They're they're assaults on the human person. Create it again with reason, intellect, free will. I'm not telling you what to think or what to do. I'm saying start to use your reason, intellect, and free will in the image and likeness of God who frees your will and wonder. I wonder what sort of tail we've fallen into, and know that Satan is out there pushing back on you. Have courage, right? That's why they they claim our militist Christi uh wristband says, be not afraid. Again, these are assaults on all of us, on our dignity. I'm not telling you what to think or what to say. Christ didn't even say, you gotta think this way, you gotta say. He says, you know, open up your heart and open up your mind and see what sort of tail we've fallen into. So what happens right now? Satan's attack is uh and his aim is clear. Destroy the Imago Dei, our personal dignity, create an image of God, and that fuller image, which is marriage and the family, man and woman coming together. So he attacks the innocent. How? Through abortion? He attacks the family through divorce and redefines marriage to be anything you want it to be, and so meaningless, really, it has no meaning anymore. So he sows what? In in these climate ideologies and these uh critical race theory, he's sowing division, fear, hatred whenever possible. Saint John Paul II teaches that the human body, male and female, is meant to express love to the sincere gift of self. Sin induces what? Concupicence, which is a distortion of desire that turns the other into an object. And Jesus exposes this distortion again in the Sermon of the Mount. Lust is not merely an action, it's a condition of the heart that reduces a person to something to be used. This is the opposite of love, but take heart. Christ does not abandon us. The spousal meaning of the body has been wounded, but it's not been erased. You feel this in your heart. Grace is stronger than sin. We see this clearly in Jesus' encounter with the woman caught in adultery. Remember that? She was caught in adultery, and they were going to stone her to death. And Jesus walks up and he says, Who's ever without sin, throw the first stone? And nobody did, did they? And he looks at the woman, it's only him and the woman. Everybody else walks away. And he and he says, You are forgiven, but go and sin no more. You are forgiven. We're all forgiven. Christ comes in to not to condemn us, to free us, to save us, to bring us in communion with him. But then he says, Go and sin no more. This is the battle, huh? It always starts on the battle of the human heart. He reveals both mercy and truth. This is how Christ looks at you. So now you stand at a crossroads like Adam and Eve before that tree. The world urges you toward lust, self-assertion, pride, and lies. Christ calls you to love, self-mastery, like a warrior, like a knight, and seeking the truth of things, and your choices matter. They shape your heart and the culture you build so that you have a story to tell. Saint John Paul II told young people that Christ questions their conscience, their moral awareness, and the plan for their lives. Lust obscures love, but it doesn't destroy it. You are not powerless. So what must you do? First, learn to see women as God sees them, treat every woman as a As a person first, as a sister, never as an object. Second, you gotta reject pornography that trains your heart to use. Instead, train your heart to prayer, untwist and undistort. Don't lose your passions and desires. Remember this? Temptation is not a sin. Learn to pray in the midst of temptation and use the resources provided through the Claymore Militus Christi apostolate here. This is the reason we're here. To journey with each other, huh? To see the adventure, to understand the battle, and to seek the beauty. Third, you know study theology of the body. This is what we're unpacking here today. We'll go through this together first, but in the back of your mind, something like Introduction to Theology of the Body by Christopher West, it's a it's a great supplement to the work we're doing here. You're created male as a man to give yourself in love, whether through marriage, priesthood, or another vocation. Your life is meant to be a gift. Marriage and family remain the battleground today. You're a warrior. You have to understand this. A knight in shining armor, the hero of your own story. And then that story has to go out to protect others, doesn't it? You have to spread this out in your actions, huh? We redeem ourselves. This act deepens the second panel of the triptych, focusing on historical man, the human condition after the fall. It's true, isn't it? This is the sort of tale that we've fallen into, where love is wounded by sin, but it is not destroyed. The struggle between truth and distortion now unfolds within the human heart, preparing the way for what? The third panel of the triptych now. The redemptive hope explored in the following act. Again, what you have in the first triptych in the beginning, this is the model, this is the fall. Where is this all heading? Once you start to get above the trees and you see start to see the big story and we'll continue to fill that in. It's amazing. This is this is the story. Your life extends out to eternity. And it all depends on our actions today. You're fighting the battle for your own heart and hurt the hearts of your brothers and sisters, so we can spend eternal eternal life together. But eternity doesn't mean tomorrow. You're already an eternal being. Eternity means forever. The adventure is to overcome the evil ones, very real assault on your heart. This assault is made visible in our actions. If like so many men you struggle with pornography and more, Satan has you where he wants you in this story. This is your story, but he's taken over that story. Meditate on that. If you're addicted to all these things and stuck in them, you're a pawn in this game, easily manipulated and all the while thinking, you've got it, you've got it under control. Read one John, the first letter of John. You know, remember he knew Jesus, and guess what? That's the game plan for you, to know Jesus. And Jesus didn't come to manage your sins, he came with power. Pick up the Claymore sword, train your body and mind. You're a knight, a warrior. But like the Christian knights of old, these are men that knew the battle began in the heart and didn't extend it out to the battlefield. The knights of old on chivalry fought to protect women, children, keep his country free from foreign invaders, who would destroy all that's true, good, and beautiful. Don't forget the discussion podcast that follows. And I'll bring a few more elements in so we'll even see this more clearly. Until then, there's remember the two asks, always before that phone in the morning, practice that 10-minute claymore morning ritual. This goes directly to Jesus to receive his power, to continue to build a relationship, a vertical relationship, so that you open up your heart. Secondly, we continue to go through these acts to fill in the content. In the discussion questions, one of them references John Paul II's Letter of the Families. You can access this for free. Just Google it. Let John Paul II's Letter of the Families will take you to a Vatican website and you can read it there. Because you're you're you're Claymore A students, you're already, you know, getting your heart back, you're in training already, and you you have an urgency to this. Start right at the beginning of that beautiful letter instead of going just to number six. You know, read the opening up to uh number six. It's so beautiful. It'll reinforce everything we're talking about here today. It's powerful stuff that provides many more clues to answer Sam Gamsey's quest to discover what sort of tale have we fallen into. And let me ask you something else. Get in the habit of sharing your thoughts with us via email. I'll share them uh and expand on them in Friday's show to answer them. You know, I I don't share any personal information. You can also, of course, share comments on the podcast for others to see in the comments below the videos. So check out those discussion questions. Tune in on Friday. We'll unpack this a little bit more. I'm going to show you a couple of video clips that show the real attack on the human persons that we have to stand up for and defend. And when we're defending others, we're getting our own hearts back at the same time. Hey, God bless you. Talk to you again sooner.