#750 From Apathy To Action In An Upside-Down World! Meet Saint Pier Giorgio Frassati

Something feels off right now, and it’s not just policy or elections. When the culture starts calling evil good and good evil, it’s easy to spiral into doom-scrolling, cynicism, and the quiet lie that nothing we do matters. I read a viral post that captures that dread, then I push back on the trap underneath it: outrage that never turns into action becomes apathy, and apathy is how families, churches, and entire communities slowly collapse. 

Visit Claymore Milites Christi to join the movement! 

From there, I lay out a simple framework for Christian renewal that’s meant to be lived, not argued about online. It starts with the human heart choosing what’s true and good, then restores marriage and family as the backbone of civilization, and stays anchored in Christ and the Church. We also talk about corruption and institutional decay, using a clip about government fraud to show how real people get hurt when systems are captured, and why reform has to be paired with moral formation. 

The anchor story is Pier Giorgio Frassati, a young Catholic who climbed mountains, loved his friends, served the poor with his own hands, and refused to separate prayer from public life. I contrast his path with Robespierre as a warning: “justice” detached from God can turn into terror. The goal here is Christian social activism and Catholic political engagement rooted in charity, truth, courage, and joy, so we fight for the innocent without becoming what we hate. 

If this challenges you, share it with someone who feels stuck, then subscribe and leave a review so more people can find the show. What’s one concrete action you can take this week to choose the good?

Transcript

A Viral Post And A Dark Mood

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I'm gonna read you something from a post on X. I'm assuming that this was a copy of a post that somebody had put up a while ago, probably before the last election for sure. Concerned about COVID and everything they see out there. A lot of people are waking up and they're starting to feel like they can't do anything. Like they see so much evil. When you wake up to the evil, to the reality, and you start to see it, you can't unsee it anymore. This is a spiritual battle going on, and this is what Claymore is all about. You gotta pick up the sword, you gotta fight for for Christ, you gotta be a soldier for Christ. That's why it's called Militus Christi. We really don't get that sometimes. I I think we just grew up soft, too many of us, you know, all the way from the boomers on down. You know, we've seen so much evil out there, but we haven't done anything about it. We we're we're like that frog in a proverbial pot. We sit there and the the heat was turned up on us, and pretty soon you just get used to used to it, the dysfunction in your own heart, in your marriages, in your families. You stop going to church and making that connection, so you don't know what to do, and you just feel like I just got to get by through the day. And it's really a sad way to live because we're made for more. Saint Catherine of Sienna, my one of my favorite sisters. I just have a holy crush on her. She knows that I she's my older sister and she's my mentor, but she's just so beautiful and got just such a great heart. She said, and this is where the podcast uh name came from. She said, Become who you are. And if you become who you are, you would set the world on fire. We were made to be more, not just to be apathetic. Life is very, very short. So I'm going to read you this and uh see, tell me what you think. I woke up and as I had my morning coffee, I realized that everything's about to change. No matter how I vote, no matter what I say, something evil has invaded our nation and our lives are never going to be the same. I've been confused by the hostility of family and friends. I look at people I've known all my life so hateful that they agree with opinions they would never express on their own. I think I may well have entered the twilight zone. You can't justify this insanity. We've become a nation that has lost its collective mind. I I would add we've become a world that's lost its collective mind in many, many ways. And and goes on, put some bullet points. If a man pretends to be a woman, you're required to pretend with him. Somehow it's un-American for the census to count how many Americans are in America to request voter ID. It was cool for Joe Biden to blackmail the president of Ukraine, and I won't go through all that right now if you don't remember that. But it's an impeachable offense if Donald Trump even asks and inquires about it. Amazing, right? People who have never owned slaves should pay slave reparations to people who have never been slaves. Insanity. People who have never been to college should pay the debts of college students who took out huge loans for their gender degrees. Immigrants with tuberculosis and polio are welcome. But you better better be able to prove that your dog is vaccinated, otherwise, you're going to get a fine. Irish doctors and German engineers who want to immigrate to the U.S. must go through a rigorous spending process. But any illiterate gangbangers who just jump the southern fence, they're welcome. Five billion dollars, Biden and his group said, for border security is too expensive. But $1.5 trillion for free health care for everybody is not. If you cheat to get into college, you go to prison. But if you cheat to get into the country, you go to college for free. People who say there's no such thing as gender are demanding a female president. This is, of course, when uh Clinton was running for office. We see other countries going socialist and collapsing from it, but it seems like a great plan to us. Some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, and other people are not held responsible today for the crimes that they're doing. Here in Illinois, J.B. Pritzker criminals are caught and then released without bail to hurt more people, but stopping them is bad because it's a violation of their rights. And pointing out all this hypocrisy somehow makes us racist, bigots, haters. Nothing makes sense anymore. No values, no morals, no civility. And people are dying of a Chinese virus, but it's racist to refer to it as Chinese, even though it began in China. We are clearly living in an upside-down world where right is wrong and wrong is right, and where moral is immoral and immoral is moral, where good is evil and evil is good, where killing murderers is wrong, but killing innocent children is right. Wake up, America. The great unsinkable ship, the Titanic America, has hit an iceberg and it's taking on water and it's sinking fast. The choice is yours to make. What will it be? Time is short. Make your choice wisely. Time for our government to wake up. You either work with and for America or get the hell out. We're tired of paying taxes, and you incredibly selfish people don't give a damn for the people you work for, anyways. You should all be ashamed of yourself. That's how she ends.

Why Outrage Turns Into Apathy

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Anyways, she's she's right to point all these insanity things out. But here's where here's where everybody gets mixed up, and this is why I started this podcast as I did become apathetic. Now we're tired of paying taxes, we're seeing the selfish, the corruption. If you don't work for American people, get out of politics, right? Well, they're not going to get out of politics. The corruptor hiding in plain sight. They're not trying to hide this. So if you don't do something, if you don't stand up, if we don't act on it, and if you feel good just because you posted this and you're not doing anything, you're not involved in the political process. And I want to talk here about social activism, what we need to do with the midterms coming up. I agree with those points, but what we don't realize is that the deep state socialists, the neocons, the warmongers, the Marxists were already deeply entrenched in power. They're in all our institutions. They're certainly in the education department, they're certainly in the Biden administration. So we were living an illusion. You know, again with that proverbial frog, and we didn't even see it. COVID exposed that, that tyranny, and you could see that people, the sheep and the goats separating themselves, those that would just, you know, get in line and wear their mask and listen to all of this baloney, you know, take the jab just because the government said it, and afraid to stand up against it. It was the only the election, and I agree with the way this started, that it's like it doesn't matter who we vote for, it's always gonna, we're just going down, right? What was the election of Donald Trump that upset the globalists that had that power? If you follow what's going on and how he's taken down these globalists, you'll see. So when he got into power, I was kind of surprised. You know, I thought they're gonna figure out a way to upset this. Now, here's where people get it wrong. They think Donald Trump is the savior, those that that realize this. But the people in the MAGA movement that I know are are two things, basically Christian and patriotic. This is a populist movement. They rallied behind Trump because he seemed to have that power, that energy, that understanding of where this country was going. But it's a populist movement. It wasn't Democrat, it wasn't Republican. It was a populist movement by the people, for the people, and of the people. This is getting back to our roots, and we understood this. We're gonna have to take this back, but we're gonna have to do it through the power of God Himself, you know, because it's a spiritual battle. The insanity is demonic. But remember, the government is made up of people. So those that say, I want a socialist government or a communist government, if those people are not moral and religious people, as John Adams clearly stated, then evil just reigns. If those people that vote for socialists and Marxists and evil people, and you can usually tell, I mean, I always get down to those two truths. How do they vote on life? Do they protect it, the innocence of the children in the womb? And will they fall for the LBGTQ, the gender ideologies that will actually even trans a child? You know, if a child makes it out of the womb and put them on puberty blockers and tell a little boy he can become a girl and vice versa. If they're involved in that insanity, then I know I can't vote for them. I mean, they're gonna be bringing evil into the world, whether they do it naively or not, it doesn't matter. They're still bringing evil into the world. You know, if I have a glass of poison and I give it to you, but I don't know it's poison, and you don't know it's poison, but I give it to you and you drink it, will you still die? Yes. So even the naive, it doesn't matter if they're naive. It's just what they're doing, you know, and if you don't stand up against those things, it doesn't matter how they got here. I mean, it does matter to us personally, and if we get to know these people, we can help them out. But in general, I'm speaking. Because when evil people, this is what happens, you know, when we look at the state, communism, socialism, it's made up people. Somehow these young people get this idea that it's like Big's Daddy's state, and I can see why, because they grew up in dysfunctional families without God, without the church, and they're in a state of flux, and then they fall for the propaganda that says, we'll take care of you, we'll pay your bills, we'll help you do everything. They say, Yes, give us that, right? So it's what we call the deep state, and we have the deep church, the same thing. Attacking what? All of these ideologies, I'm just gonna make it simple for you. When they attack the child and the womb and they distort marriage and the family, right? Buying children as a commodity and just selling them and calling this, you know, legal. It's insanity, right? And so that's why I bring this stuff up because when you're trying to figure this all out, you know, get back to the truth of things. What is the truth of things, right? We have to always protect the innocent. We have to get back to that base. Remember the triangle? I keep showing you this, and I'll keep doing it just so we remember. This whole culture and the nation of ours is held up like this triangle, and the bottom base is the human heart that's filled with good. I know the truth, and I'm going to choose the good, right? And then understanding marriage in the family because every civilization, you know, throughout history is built on marriage and the family. When that breaks down, you have dysfunction within the children, within the family, and then of course, that is disconnected then from Christ and the church. And then what happens? There's we're going to bring this force of evil, again, even if we're naive, Satan will fill us with poison and we will become that poison in the world. And that's again is what we call the deep state in the deep church. And that's why so many people can't define the deep state in the deep church because they don't know what I just told you. That's why people have TDS, Trump derangement syndrome, because the demonic are in an uproar when they were so close to ruling the world. And then he comes in. Remember, he said, you know, they're really after you, and I just stand in between. This is what we have to understand. And again, he's not our savior, just to make this point. He's just a man. He is he's a man appointed at a certain place and a certain time, but he surrounded himself with Christians, with people that are trying to do those two things, right? To become the good in the world, you have to receive that, right? So they're religious first, they're on their knees, they're praying, and then to bring that good into the world. And this is the difference. The socialists, the Marxists, the communists that are winning political races in the United States right now, these are joining those already in power. It's not like we're going to flip to socialists and evil and Marxism. It's already in power. It's been in our schools, it's been indoctrinated our kids for decades and decades. We're finally just waking up because we we've gone so low. Do you really think people who are excited about late-term abortions and pushing trans ideologies on young people really care of you know if you call them some name, you know, or tell them get out of politics because you're not for the people? They know they're not for the people. Of course they're selfish. Of course they don't care about you. This is evil up front and in your face. This is a spiritual battle. So what's the solution? I am. You are. Take the side of light over darkness. It's amazing what happens when you say, I am the solution. Of course, you are only the solution when you're yoked to Christ and his church, right? We have to get active. You have to get your heart back. Marriage and the family, Christ and the church. This is all Claymore. This is how the Claymore Battle Plan Handbook. If you don't have that, you need to get that and share it with people. This gives you the base. And then it shows you part three, which I'm gonna touch on today, is to be social activism.

The Claymore Framework For Renewal

SPEAKER_00 12:38

That's part three. So you get your heart back, understand marriage and the family, connected to Christ and the church. Boom, that's the base. Social activism. We have to be the good in the world. We have to be that force. Jesus said, go out into my vineyard, preach the gospel, get your heart back, understand marriage and the family, understand your passions and desires. Don't be a slave to all those. It's time to get out of your basements. It's time to stop gambling. It's time to understand this. So you have some foundational peace in your heart, and you have the light of Christ coming in. So you know the truth, and then you use your free will to choose the good. This is how you change your whole life. Then Christ in the church holds all of this up. The whole United States and really the world has been held up by that. You know, 80 cents of every dollar that used for evangelization, bringing Christ into the world, comes from the United States. When the United States grows dark, the world is going to grow dark. Now, if you're going to tear Christianity down, what would you do? You take out that base. You take out and disturb that individual human heart. We've been indoctrinated to the schools, to the culture, etc., twist marriage in the family and tell them that you don't need God, right? This is what we've been talking about. And it's become very dark and very distorted because we've allowed evil to reign. You understand why someone like Mam Dani, who's a Muslim, mayor of New York City, can unite with socialists and neo-Marxists. That may be more understandable than they say, well, why is he on the LBGTQ parades and all that kind of stuff? Because in reality, Islam would be against those types of things, right? Why do they unite? Because the number one enemy is Christianity. This is the spiritual battle. They join forces. They'll all end up harming each other, killing each other, probably. But first they're going to take out Christianity. This is good versus evil. And of course, once all the good is gone, they all destroy each other because Satan doesn't have his own clay. He he hates God, so he's going to take out humanity, right? The image and likeness of God in the world. So what you have with Marxists and socialists, neo-Marxists, you always instill fear. You always have an oppressor oppressed so that we don't look at evil at Satan. We look at our race. Is he white? Is he black? Is he brown? You know, and we start to hate each other based on that. Uh gender ideologies. We start to separate each other and we start to say, you know, I'm born in a certain body, but I can recreate myself. This is from Satan, right from the beginning. Uh, you can call evil good and good evil. The the sad thing, the saddest thing is we're attacking the innocence of young people. Climate hoax, the zero climate policy, and and you just see the globalists just taking the money, the powerful. Then COVID came, and COVID and climate and gender and race, division, division, division, division, and they got richer and richer and richer. So you have two classes of people in socialism and Marxism, those that belong to the party, those that are taking the taxes have the power to suppress everybody else, and like a hydra into every every body of every person that works and just take everything that they've been working for. So, like I said in my last podcast, we don't need Christians that are angry. We need them to be filled with the light and then be luminous to bring that light into the world to bring what's true, good, and beautiful in the world. Because there's a power behind us, and that power is Jesus Christ. If we don't take that power into ourselves and act from there, we will fail. Christ said, you know, when you're dealing with these people, to love even your enemies. This is a whole different approach, right? Not only not to kill babies, not to trans kids, uh, but but not even to kill our enemies, but to love them. Now, when I say don't kill your enemies, if you're attacked, if your house is attacked, if your nation is attacked, then it's called a just war, right? We have to protect ourselves. There's nothing wrong with that. We, you know, we're not cowards, we're not weak, but we proclaim the gospel, right? And we have to love even our our enemies. Very difficult to do, but you can only do that filled with grace, right? So what does this do? Not only restores the culture and the nation, but our own personal lives avoid that dysfunctional disaster when we're filled with the spirit and we're filled with the light. So you are in it. You're in the battle already. The only question is, how will you act? How will you live out your life? Remember, it's in my actions when I do the good that I become good. I am good as a person. Saint Pierre Giorgio Fersati. He just became a saint this year, young guy. And I want to show you as a model for how he did this. It's so important. It's Act 32 from the Claymore Battle Plan Handbook. Grab the handbook, read this uh again, but I'll go through it. Before I do, I want to show you a clip of Donald

A Politics Clip About Fraud

SPEAKER_00 17:26

Trump. If you haven't watched, and I'll put this link in the show notes, if you haven't watched everybody together, right? Everybody that's working with him in his cabinet, and these are incredible people. I mean, really incredible people. Now, don't forget politics is messy. There are people that really want to destroy our country. There is an evil force that really wants to destroy us, destroy Christianity. It's true. You know, we have to fight. Wars have been fought over that. There's no doubt about it. And uh, and so these are not easy decisions that these guys make, but the but the difference between them and previous administrations is they're very prayerful. Most of them are incredibly prayerful, and they realize that this is messy. J.D. Vance said in an interview, I say throughout the day, Jesus, I trust in you. That's the image of the divine mercy, where Sister Faustina Jesus said, uh, to tell the people to receive my mercy, Jesus, I trust in you. Jesus, I trust in you. So then Jesus said to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. So he's telling us, once you get your heart back, once you understand this thing, once you're yoked to me, then you have to go out and bring that light into the world, right? So I want to show you a clip from one of his cabinet meetings just recently. And in this clip, you're going to see what I mean. You should watch the whole thing. I I'm I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it here, but I want to just show you uh uh a clip or two of it, and then I'll comment on it.

SPEAKER_02 18:57

Blow it away. So it's an honor to have you, and I'd like to ask our great vice president, JD Vance, to say a few words, followed by Marco and Pete and Scott and uh Bobby Kennedy. Okay? Thank you very much, everybody.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Please share. Well, great. Thanks, Mr. President. First of all, thanks for having us at this historical and and beautiful place. And uh it's an honor to be on the team, an honor to be able to work on fraud, which is what I want to talk about today, though I know we have a lot of things going on. This has been an amazing team. From Kelly Leffler at SBA uh to Doug at the BA to Todd and Bobby Kennedy. This really has required a whole of administration approach to try to tackle fraud. There are a few things that I want to talk about and celebrate. Uh the first is that just since the beginning of the fraud task force that I started under the president's leadership and direction, uh, we have identified $230 billion of fraud that's being perpetrated against the American people, and we have halted already $56 billion of that. It's sometimes hard, once the money has already gone out the door, it's hard to get it back. But stopping it from going out the door is how we save the American people. $56 billion, and of course, we're going to keep on working on that. Just today, Mr. President, we will announce 17 new anti-fraud actions that will total uh about a third of a billion dollars, and that that's added to the $230 billion that we've already uncovered. And I want to just talk uh for the benefit of the American people about why do we care so much about this? Because what I always try to remind people is that fraud has two victims. So, to give one concrete example, there is a program that is administered by Medicaid, and that program ensures that low-income moms and low-income babies have access to neonatal care. Now, I think most Americans probably share my view that this is one of the great things about the United States of America that if we see a baby and we see a young mother that requires help, we help our fellow Americans. That's a good thing. It's something that we should be proud of. And yet, there is a program that has defrauded the moms and the babies who benefit from these. You've gotten people who've gotten rich by setting up false companies that are providing false services. So who loses in that equation? Number one, of course, is the American taxpayer that is $230 billion poorer because of the fraud that this country has let go on. But I actually most importantly is that we've seen that program run out of money. So we've seen moms and babies unable to access the health care that they need because the fraudsters have gotten rich. That is a disgrace. And until the president ordered us to stop it, no one was doing anything about it. So we've made a lot of progress, Mr. President, in just under a year, but we're going to keep on working at it because we believe the American people deserve to have their money spent as you and the Congress have directed it.

SPEAKER_02 21:53

They look like that group of people you have lined up behind you that you're doing a great job. Yes, sir. Billions of dollars is being recovered. Billions. And you haven't seen anything yet. We have things happening that people aren't going to believe. The level of corruption and fraud that took place under the Biden administration was unprecedented. And Minnesota, California, Maine, Maine, believe it or not. You know, you think of Maine as this wonderful place. The level of corruption is incredible. All over, all over. So uh great job. Thank you very much. Thanks, sir. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

Okay.

Corruption, Industry, And Family Life

SPEAKER_00 22:31

So if you go on and listen to the rest of that, you're going to see how uh Trump in his administration is rebuilding the basic guts of our country. Uh during Biden and Obama, even before that, we sent all our jobs, our industry, our manufacturing, all the blue-collar jobs, the guys that are trying to make a living and support their families, and sent them overseas. So what did they do? Well, it was destabilizing because young men would lose hope. They'd see all these free things given away, all this corruption. You know, you had the sense of this evil. And not only that, you know, we were pushing like USAID, we were pushing abortion and these gender ideologies all over the world, pushing our jobs and our factories all over the world. It was a self-destruction. The evil one is smarter than everybody else. You know, these globalists that took power are like puppets. And though they're getting rich and wealthy, of course, the puppet master again, the orchestra leader again is Satan. And he wants to take down our livelihoods, our way to make a living, etc. But most of the time we allow this stuff because our our own hearts have been given in. You know, most of the time a nation has been weakened from within. Our souls have already darkened. Why didn't we all stand up? Why didn't we fight this? I cannot believe that Donald Trump was able to assemble such a beautiful cabinet and these MAGA people that I meet that are, again, uh Christians and also patriots that understand this deeply. I was surprised there was that many people left. So getting back to that earlier post, when you start to see this, when you start to see that these political leaders have come in and they're getting rid of this corruption and bringing industry back and getting rid of all these uh evil ideologies out of the world, including transiting our kids, uh getting back to schools and saying, no, parents have a right, and uh they're the primary educators of their kids. You can't throw them in jail, you can't call them bigots and and haters just because they don't want pornography to be shown to their kids. Okay, we get all that stuff, right? Watch the rest of that, you'll see. So, how do we react? And this is what I want to get

Meet Pier Giorgio Frassati

SPEAKER_00 24:39

into right now. So, brothers, in a world that pressures you to remain comfortable, avoid risk, and keep faith locked in the private sphere, imagine a saint who smoked a pipe, pulled epic pranks, crushed extreme sports threw punches for justice while burning with love for God. A man who climbed mountains, prayed the rosary at that altitude, organized political movements, defended the poor in the streets, and died at twenty-four, leaving a legacy that still summons men upward. As we enter into part three of the Claymore Battle Plan Handbook, and as you're reading this, social political engagement rooted in Christianity is what follows. Charity and truth. What does that mean? Love, love, be filled with love and be a person of love, but love people in the truth, speak the truth in love. There's a big sacrifice when you get into political life because you won't get rich. You know, you you weren't made to get rich. You're supposed to be a public servant. You know, it's Jesus himself who said, I came into the world to serve the world. Remember, he they tried to make him king and give him power and stuff. He didn't want anything to do with that. He came to serve. So that's what we have to do. And it's very difficult in in this world for us to get that mindset, especially we haven't been brought up in that, uh, to be a person, a gift. That doesn't mean we don't support ourselves and get good jobs and do the best we can, raise families, but we got to have raised families in a climate and a culture and in a nation. So the love of our nation to be a patriot all stems from love of what? Love of our families, you know, being able to protect them, building that culture of life and love. So we see a saint that understands, who embodies what it means to go out into the world, into the world as a laborer for his harvest, like Jesus said. So I want you to meet Pier Giorgio Fersati, who again is a saint now. His story is not one of sheltered piety or timid virtue. It's a story of a young man who refused to separate faith from public life. This is so important. Don't separate prayer from politics. This is what I said about the Trump administration. They're praying before these meetings. Saint Pier Giorgio would pray intensely before he went out. He demonstrates that sanctity, to become a saint, we're all called to become a saint, right? It's not a retreat from the world, it's a transformation in Christ. Pier Giorgio Frosati was born April 6, 1901, in Turin, Italy into wealth and cultural prestige. His father, Alfredo Frasati, owned Lestampa, one of Italy's leading newspapers, and served in the Senate. His mother was a prominent artist. The family expected Pierre to ascend into the social elite. Instead, he gave himself for Christ. This is what we're talking about here. Though raised in a largely secular environment, just like we are now, secular, materialist, throw out God, etc., etc., Pierre developed a fierce personal faith. Academic study came hard to him, and he failed exams repeatedly before finally completing studies through discipline and perseverance. He was not a quiet intellectual. He was an athlete, mountain climber, a magnetic presence among his friends. He proved that God delights in calling men whose strength lies in action as much as reflection. He reminds us that holiness is not reserved for monks and cloisters, but forged in classrooms, climbing routes, friendships into the public square. He had a joyful masculinity and he had a love for his brothers. This is all part of Claymore, isn't it? To be have joyful masculinity, to know what it means to be a man and also to share it in community with brothers, right? That's all part of the Claymore battle plan outline, isn't it? Pierre's personality overflowed with humor and mischief. And he's having fun while he's doing this. You can't take everything so seriously that you just wake up in the morning and you're all beat up. Christ brings joy into your life. This is a very short life. We're aiming for something, and he knew this. So he played pranks. He wrote letters and he signed it. Robespierre, the French revolutionary, with the who had the model, Tyr Conquers All. Maybe I'll say something about him a little later on. He delighted in teasing his companions, yet this exuberance flowed from a soul disciplined by prayer and Eucharistic devotion. Very different from Robespierre and his model, Tyror Conquers All. Pierre and his friends knew and understood very well who Robespierre was and what went wrong there. World War I had just been fought, the streets in Italy when Pierre was growing up, seethed with ideological violence, communists, fascists, police clashed around him daily. He understood that he could not just stand by if Italy was going to be a free nation. But he also understood that this was very much a spiritual battle. It was a call to be a saint first, to be in union with Jesus Christ and his church. So that's our first objective, to get our hearts back, to become a saint. Then to go out and witness for marriage and the family, Christ and the church to bring the gospel out. These are the two great commandments when you do it in charity and love. Love God, receive that grace from God, and then go out and love your neighbor, huh? To turn around and bring that love into the world, to go out into the culture and to go out into your beloved nation, huh? And to change it. This is what Pierre did. It is a culture and a nation without a soul, otherwise, and it will not stand. We see this over and over again. You have a great leader that comes in and tries to restore the nation, but when he goes, just like Orban in Hungary, he was trying to restore that Christian ethic, uh, trying to get marriages and the families and revitalize the culture. But when he was taken out of power just recently, the nation already is starting to crumble. It was an illusion because the people didn't rise up and take this on themselves. They didn't fight on that battlefield of the heart. They saw the gifts that Orban was bringing in and the beauty of the uh uh of Hungary, the freedoms that they have, and they just took it for granted again. So when he was gone, it all fell. See, the same thing can happen with the Trump administration. If we don't all rise up, and again, the MAGA people, they understand this. They have to rise up, they have to become that. But I also want to point out the reason Robespierre was that you have to really be united in Christ. It can't be violent uh just for the sake of violence. Again, if you have to defend yourself, you defend yourself. But that's a different thing. So let me just get into this and give you some more examples.

Robespierre Versus A Saint

SPEAKER_00 31:04

So let's talk about those two men who both cared deeply about justice. So I'm gonna talk a little bit about Robespierre versus Pierre, uh Giorgio Frosati. They both cared about justice, virtue, the future of their own people. One became, though, a symbol of revolutionary tear, and the other became a saint. Their names are linked by a joke that I just said earlier, but the difference between them is no joke at all. Maximilian Robespierre was a brilliant young lawyer who rose to power during the French Revolution. He believed the Republic needed purifying. He spoke of virtue, right? Doing the right thing is a habit constantly. But when virtue was threatened, and here's the difference. I have virtue. I'm doing the right thing. But when it was threatened, when he was attacked, he declared that terror itself was an instrument of virtue, prompt, severe, inflexible justice. So he became the judge. In other words, if you disagreed with me, now I can go after you because you're going after virtue. He said, and then you're going after your evil. But you can't just do that. Christ said he allowed the weeds and the wheat to grow up together. Now we have to bring the gospel in, but let God be God. If we have to protect ourselves, again, we protect ourselves from outside forces, from inside forces. But at the end of the day, we don't just become judge and jury here, right? We can't just kill people on the streets. You can't just hurt people on the street. So under his influence, Robespierre, the guillotine, as you know, in the French Revolution became policy. You know, priests who refused to swear loyalty to the revolutionary state were hunted down and put underneath the guillotine. Thousands died. Uh Robespierre was a deist. And what is a deist? A deist believes in a higher power, believes in a God, but like a watchmaker, that God made the watch, wound it up, and just sets it here, and that's our world, and then he just walks away and lets it just go by itself. But that's not what happens, is it? You know, God is here with us. He's here. Jesus became one of us to do this. So he was separated from that. So he's going to try to do the good, but when you're separated, the forces of evil are much smarter than you. Satan is much smarter than you. He's going to get in and twist and distort things, and you become that person who's going to see other people and use and abuse and actually take them down because they don't agree with you. This is just chaos. So he rejected the Catholic Church, Rome Speer, tried to replace it with the state cult of the supreme being. We have a supreme being, you guys. We have to do the right thing. But if you don't do the right thing, you know, we'll put you under the guillotine. In the end, the same machine of terror that he justified turned on him and he died in the guillotine, right? The guillotine that he defended, his head was cut off. Now consider Pier Giorgio Fersati, a young Italian Catholic university student. He was a mountain climber, a third order Dominican. He also hated injustice. He also wanted a better society, but his path was completely different. He did not just seize power. He did not call for the blood of his enemies. He went into the slums of Turin, served the poor with his own hands through the St. Vincent de Paul Society. He spent his own money, his time, his strength on the suffering. But at the same time, he organized Catholic students. He stood publicly against fascism when it was rising, not with revolutionary violence, but with courage, prayer, fidelity to the church. But when the fascism and police tried to tear down Catholic banners, tied to desecrate churches, Frasati was there. He grabbed him. He held the line. He lived the faith. He prayed the rosary on the mountains. He received the Eucharist as the center of his life. And when he died at 24 years old from a polio contracted while serving the sick, the poor of Turin flooded the streets for his funeral. The rich were shocked. Robespierre, on the other hand, tried to build a republic of virtue, tried to do the right thing, but through tear and the rejection of the church. Frasadi built nothing by force. He simply lived as a Catholic man, and the kingdom of God advanced through him. This is the difference, you see? Allow Christ to come through you, illuminate you, tell you what to do. You have to do this in prayer. Catholic social activism is not about capturing the state and purifying society by force. It's not about declaring our enemies less than human so we can justify destroying them. It is the hard, hidden, daily work of charity, of truth telling, of courage rooted in Jesus Christ and his church. It means going to the poor yourself. It means defending the family and the innocence of children, standing up at school board meetings, voting for the right people, standing up for them. It means refusing the lies of the age without becoming what we hate. It means living so that when we die, the people we serve know we were theirs because Christ was there first. Toward the heights. He's pointing to Jesus Christ, huh? You know, Jesus said, When I am raised up on the cross, huh? Men will be attracted to me, huh? Like a magnet, or repelled one or the other. It's not about power. He didn't aim toward power, not toward the guillotine, but toward the heights of Jesus Christ. Young men of Claymore today, young women too. The world will offer you Robier's path dressed up in a new language. It will tell you that virtue requires crushing your enemies that are against that, that the church is the problem, that the end justifies the means. We have to reject that. Take Fersadi's path instead. Serve, pray, stand, climb. Live to faith both with your fists, but also open hands to love, huh? Be strong, in other words, be masculine, but with open hands, open to receiving and then to helping. And when the day comes that you're asked to choose between revolutionary tier to destroy someone's life just because they don't agree with you, or the cross, choose to cross. Versal the alto to the heights. Jesus, I trust in you. Then go out and help build the city of God.

Brotherhood, Joy, And Daily Discipline

SPEAKER_00 37:12

He formed a fraternity of friends. He called them the sinister ones. So again, I bring this back in as we're ending up here because I want you to know you have to have some fun with this. You know, we're not called just to be stuck in the muds, right? Whose motto was few but good like macaroni. Hey, we're few but good like macaroni. Classic Italian swagger, huh? Together they climbed alpine peaks. Again, this is the importance of community. This is part four of the Claymore Battle Plan outline. Go read that. But they did that while praying the rosary and calling out higher and higher and higher where Christ is. This is where we march. These excursions became spiritual training grounds where physical endurance, theological debate, sacramental life was fused into a single pursuit of sanctity, of holiness. Afterwards, they attended operas, museums, plays. They argued late into the night about Dante, Saint Paul, heaven, hell, salvation, important things. Pierre believed that Christian culture required formation of the imagination as much as the will. In other words, we have to understand the model. We have to be filled with that. That's why the Claymore battle plan has stories in it with awe and wonder. You have to step into the awe and wonder. This is piety in essence, the awe and wonder of God, but also the awe and wonder of how we're created. And it's a life anchored in prayer. Behind the athleticism and laughter lay a demanding spiritual discipline. Pierre attended daily mass, spent hours in Eucharistic adoration, practiced silent prayer with unwavering fidelity. He sought Christ in the poor with the same reverence he showed in the host. You hear that again? So he sees Jesus in the host. He receives that, huh? His heart's moved. And then he shares that with the poor. When friends questioned his devotion to turn slums, he replied, It is the Jesus that I go. Jesus comes to me every morning in holy communion, he said, and I repay him in a very small way by visiting the poor. Around the sick and the poor I see a special light which we do not have. See the sick and the poor, they have nowhere else to go. You feel helpless, so you turn to the Lord, and you are filled with that light. It's amazing. His allowance vanished into alms. Often he gave away his bus fare and ran home for dinner. He refused luxury travel, explaining with a grin that he rode third class because there's no fourth class. Though ear to a newspaper empire, he studied mining engineering so that he might one day serve Christ better among the miners. He knew that, hey, look at this is the work of the hands. I'm going to be a miner because I can bring Christ into those into the lives of those miners. He found housing for the homeless, beds for the sick, work for the unemployed, food for widows. He never advertised these deeds. His niece said he would do everything for those families, carry coal on his back, find jobs for men, buy shoes for everyone. Above all, he gave them himself. See, that's real manhood. Not just giving stuff, but being there. See, charity for Pierre was not abstract, it was incarnational. This is the difference between socialism. My wife has this well-educated relative, and he votes socialism. When I asked him why he votes socialism, he said, because they take care of the poor. I said, How foolish, how foolish, how foolish. If I give one dollar to somebody that's poor, they have a dollar. If you give it to the government, the government takes the majority of that, builds all these organizations all over, and takes money for themselves, enrich themselves, and gives peanuts, ten cents to the poor. I mean, it's a joke. We have to be that incarnation. Jesus took on a body and did it himself. This is the difference. You can't just, you can write a check, right? And we do write checks for good things. I write checks for good things. But you also have to be incarnational. Jesus, who took on a body, I received that body, and I have to be that person. I have to go out and and help other people.

Grassroots Action And Serving The Poor

SPEAKER_00 41:07

This is where you really start to see Jesus at work in other people's lives. You know, you can't push that off because it doesn't change your heart only when you walk into the story and do it yourself. You know, this is why our we have a body and a soul. You know, we're embodied souls, and our soul is made visible through our actions. Pierre insisted that mercy demanded structural transformation. He said, charity, giving money away is not enough. We need social reform. So he saw what Trump and them are seeing with the MAG movement sees. We have to have social reform also because they're stealing all our money. It's a corrupt system. The FBI, the CIA, they were all after. We're going to have Mark Hauk out uh to speak in a couple of months with the John Paul II Renewal Center. And Mark was arrested in his home for praying outside and defending his son outside an abortion clinic. 20 or 21 SWAT members uh Biden sent to his home just to set an example for him. Don't screw with us. You know, don't be praying outside abortion clinics. Uh don't bring that Christianity stuff in here. We'll show you what we'll do to you. And certainly people will get scared. I mean, I saw it during COVID. Uh people so scared, you know, uh, two, three masks, even in their car. Well, I won't get into that now, but I really saw how people could fold very, very, very quickly, right? So, anyways, he joined Catholic Action, the Catholic Student Federation, supported Italy's Popular Party. We have to do the same. Find the right parties, find somebody, uh, like, say, Darren Bailey or somebody in Illinois that's running for governor, or somebody that's going to look at those two pillars again. Do you do you support life? Do you support marriage in the family? Will you throw out the corruption? You have to to help those people get into power, make some calls, you know, uh deliver things to, you know, at house to house, talk to people about those candidates. You have to get involved. You you'll change. Your heart will change. At first, you you won't know what to do, but join a grassroots movement just like uh Pierre Giorgio did. They're ahead of you already. They'll teach you how to do this, and then you just join them and you just do it. Italy's streets seethed with ideological violence. Communists, fascism, police clash daily. Pierre led Catholic demonstrations, he endured arrests many times and defended companions when they were attacked. When fascists invaded his family home, he expelled them personally, proclaiming it's not those who suffer violence who should fear, but those who practice it. When God is with us, we do not have to be afraid. He embodied the truth that Christian political engagement is not a partisan frenzy, but courageous witness animated by love and justice. In 1925, Pierr contracted polio while serving the six and died within five days. On his deathbed, he scribbled instructions for aiding poor families, handed out pawn tickets that he had so they could be redeemed for the needy. At his funeral, more than a thousand of Turin's poor gathered and stunned his family who had never known the breadth of his hidden generosity. His witness inspired a young Carol Woltiva, who would later become John Paul II, who beatified him in 1990 and called him a man of the beatitudes. When Pierre's tomb, listen to this, was opened in 1981, his body was found incorrupt, right? Incorrupt. That means it had not decayed. His rosary was still in his hand, his face was peaceful. The church, by opening that up, revealed what heaven had already confirmed. So he's going to be a saint. They'll open up your coffin and just see, you know, did God make a sign out of this? And sure enough, he did. So he's a model for the Claymore generation. Brothers Pierre, Giorgio Fersati demolishes the myth that holiness demands weakness or withdrawal. He teaches that masculinity, disciplined by prayer, becomes unstoppable for the good. His motto remains a summons. To live without faith, without a heritage to defend, without battling constantly for truth is not to live, but merely to get along. We weren't created just to merely get along. Do something, act, pray fiercely, build brotherhood, serve the poor, enter public life with courage, reform unjust structures, refuse cowardice, climb towards Christ, versal the alta to the heights. God

To The Heights And Farewell

SPEAKER_00 45:20

bless you. Thanks for being with me. Talk to you again soon, everybody. Bye bye.