Welcome to Become who you Are . Podcast production of the John Paul 2 Renewal Center . I'm Jack Rickager . Jose hey , thanks for joining me today . St Catherine of Siena said that if you become who you are , that you would literally set the world on fire .
And St Athanasius , an early church father and a doctor of the church , said the son of God became man so that we might become God . You know , I beg a while . I guess at this , but I bet you , most of us , are a bit disconnected from this divine life that these saints are pointing us to .
Yet St John Paul II said there's an echo of the story of this divine life that we're created for , inscribed in each human heart , in your human heart , and if you put on the proper lens , if I put on the proper lens , we can get in touch with this echo within us in such a way that we have that aha moment .
See , that's the genus of St John Paul II's theology the body . It connects our lived experience of life to the gospel in such a way that our life takes on a whole new meaning and helps us answer those big questions that our whole culture is so confused about today . Who am I ? What's my purpose ? Why were we created male and female ?
How do I find happiness here on earth ? How do I find love that satisfies forever ? Hey , glad you're with me . I'll be right back for today's episode . I'm so excited to be back again . This is audience number 58 , the Gospel of purity of heart . Yesterday and today the Gospel of purity of heart . I don't know , linda , it sounds pretty prudish to me .
The purity of heart , is it possible to get there ?
It's possible , Jack . I know it may sound prudish , but that would be a wrong guess .
We look around today and you know the paradox . It keeps coming back to me . This is the Gospel reading for the last week , in different parts of this , all week , starting last Sunday , the paradox of the weeds and the week . You know , people say what's going on in the world today ? Why does God allow this to go on ?
Well , he allows it because we all get a chance . You know , we have this chance called life , and that's what this chance is all about , linda . We have a chance called life . You know , it's that tombstone . You look at that tombstone and there's going to be two dates on there .
There's going to be the date you were born , it's going to be the date you died , and in between is a dash , and that dashes this life . And that's the battle here . That's what we're here for . It's kind of a test . You know , the great reset Are we going to take the one that Jesus offers us ?
The great reset that brings us back , not to that original innocence that we had from the very beginning , but the purity of heart , you know . We know that we fell , we know that we've distanced ourselves from that original innocence , but Jesus says it doesn't matter , I'm here to establish a purity of heart .
I know there's no innocence anymore , I realize that , but I'm here to offer it to you . I'm here , if you're willing to battle with me , to offer a purity of heart . Why is that ? Because this is God's heart , this is God , this is Jesus's heart . Look at a crucifix . That is the heart , that's the purity of heart right there being poured out to us .
Do we take that in and come up and become one with Christ ? I just went the mass , which is one with Christ and the Eucharist . Or am I lying ? Am I a liar ? Do I lust in the heart ? And just to end with this little opener is Jesus takes us back to the beginning . He's or John Paul , I should say , does Of course following Jesus to the beginning .
Before sin , we have the fall , we have the great fall and then Jesus comes back in on the Sermon of the Mount , says whoever looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart . He wants the heart . He wants to say okay , I know that you're not cheating on your wife physically , but you're cheating on your wife in the heart .
And this is a big deal to Jesus . He was correlating the Ten Commandments , saying the Ten Commandments are not just what you do on the outside , but they're also what you do on the inside . He often spoke about that to the Pharisees and the scribes right that their vessels are not clean on the inside . It's what comes out of you that matters , right .
Right . And what is on the inside is what determines what's going to come out of you . And so you know , it's very possible . As he calls our attention to going back to the beginning in Matthew 19 , three through six , where he says you know , having not read it from the beginning the Creator created them male and female . And so that's the starting point .
And then what is the description of what that means ? Further on , the Pope tells us that the truth of man being made male and female is that there's an eternal mystery of the person as the image of God , and that it is visible and bodily visible as the masculinity and femininity and the complementarity of those two .
And he says all of this is what we're talking about when we say theology of the body , seeing God in the body . So when we talk about this great reset , it's so true that we understand through our fall in this . We've kind of gone off the rails and everybody is feeling that something needs to be reset . We need to get back on track .
But there's at least a couple of ways that are being proposed on how to do that . There's Jesus's way and there's man's way .
Yeah , and when you start to play around with this , when I start to do evil things , even small things , evil things I mean you start to look at the tyrants of the world . They didn't start out as tyrants . They start to do small things . Evil things , lie , cheat , a grasp for power , stab somebody in the back right and then over time , they became evil .
They lost their purity of heart . You said it , you really summed up what's going on in the world today . What comes out of your heart is manifested in the world and that's what we're seeing .
When you put somebody in power , say , and they have a lot of money and power , they've sold their selves to the world , you know the devil will come in and he's gonna use you and you're gonna use that power , you can really leverage your evil , the evil that you can do .
Joe Biden in the world can do a lot more evil than I can do just because of his position , his power , his authority . You know that's really something . The that small evil right , I mean , when I say small , it's great evil , but it's small because it's coming out of one person is leveraged over the whole world .
And you could see what happened when he signed those executive orders for abortion and affirming , you know affirming these poor young people in their brokenness and this you know , affirming their gender dysfunction and confusion and then putting people like again we talked about Dick Levine in charge of the HHS you know putting crooked people in all positions of power and
you could see what the devastation that they can bring upon mankind . Then , and we're seeing that today .
Yeah , it's interesting . You said that the devil is using you . If you love him , he will use you . And then you turn around and you use others .
And that's this whole utilitarianism , that concupiscence , the threefold concupiscence that we've talked about , that you then turn around and use other people as the means to your power and to your fame and whatever it is you're reaching for , and so it becomes just the opposite of what we've learned , that our true identity as man is , and that's to be gift to other
, just the opposite of using people . So do I look at people and say , how can , what can I get out of this person ? How can I use them or how can I serve others ? And that's that battle in our heart , right there .
Yeah , and it gets twisted right away with this gift that the primordial sacrament , the primordial sign of that is what you just said . It's the male and female bodies that were called to be a gift to each other to show what two become one can become three with the new life that we bring into the world .
Now you see that we live in a pornographic culture where most of the young men now the vast , vast majority of them have been exposed to hardcore pornography , if not all of them at some point . How many of them are actually addicted to this ? There's a lot , and of course that has repercussions for women , and so you see the sign being twisted and distorted .
Then we project this on young people and these perverts of the world bring this right into our schools now and I really are perverts and or evil right , or both a lot of times and they bring this right on our kids , and so they attack the kids . They attack them right into sexuality Again . People don't realize how distorted this is .
We're called to be a gift in our sexuality and we actually can lose that vision . We no longer see other people as the temple of the Holy Spirit . We no longer see ourselves where the human dignity , says I'm a child of God , and so when God has forgotten , the creature itself grows unintelligible .
We don't even know who we are , and that's where we're at today . And Christ comes into the world and he says stop , let me open your heart up to me . Let's do this together . Let's carry the cross . We just heard it not too long ago right , yoke yourself to me , for my yoke is easy and my burden lights . So he's asking for that . That's the great reset .
When we reject that , we're back to this brokenness .
Exactly . But many people think that while we're stuck here in our brokenness and even take that on as their identity and we're not the brokenness or the weaknesses , that isn't the sum of who we are . The Pope is always trying to tell us that what is the truth about who we are ? And again it takes us back that we're not the weaknesses .
We are in fact made in that image of God and we're persons . That idea is stressed a lot and sometimes we forget to revisit that , that we're not just a body but we're body and soul , which makes us persons .
And I wonder often with the whole problem of pornography , as a woman , when I hear the statistics of the age at which young people first view pornography . Well , my grandkids are that age and older right now and I'm thinking I haven't talked to them about it , but what has their exposure been ?
And it just in some ways makes my skin crawl to think that it is that widespread among our beautiful young people and that they're so confused by all the messages in our culture . And it seems to me that we need to stress once more very , very heavily , that you're looking at a person . What does that mean ?
You're not just looking at a body , and so I hope that the thoughts that John Paul has provided in this first part here is he tells us , yes , think about the difference between the satisfaction of your passions versus the joy that you experience when you have conquered those passions and you have a self-possession of yourself , that it is only at that level that
you can become the true gift , and that all happens in our hearts . So it's kind of like connecting the dots of everything that we've been talking about , but the pornography issue is something that everyone needs to search their heart about .
Yeah , and again , that's just one current of evil , but they all are attacking the same thing . They're all attacking this image and likeness of God . And so Jesus , and of course , took us back . And John Paul is pointing that out to us , that when he's speaking about the heart and when he's speaking about you've already committed adultery in your heart .
He's saying look back into the beginning . You were to be one with me , one with God . We created this world so that your body , your body , soul , filled with grace , could be an expression of love , as God loves . We don't think that's possible anymore and I'll tell you why .
I know that I walk into churches all the time and they don't allow me to be unleashed a lot of times they just don't , they don't think their people can take it . And I say you know what ? I'm gonna have one chance here , or maybe in parish mission , maybe three nights it's an hour each and but one chance to be with these people .
And you don't want the power of the gospel , you don't believe in essence , right Of this great reset . We want to leverage this . We wanna be lukewarm , we don't wanna hurt anybody's feelings . Well , I'll tell you what if you wanna change the world , you gotta start to change the individual human heart . Well , how does the individual human heart change ?
You have to declare . You have to proclaim the gospel . You have to proclaim the gospel so that it touches their heart and they make a choice . Then they say , yes , I normalized the fall , even within my own heart . Have I had enough of this brokenness ? I think that's what it takes , finally , for people .
Have I had enough of this brokenness where I actually start to understand what Jesus is getting at here ? I've seen the other side of this . This is wicked stuff that happens here .
I just was at a school board meeting last night and again , they're pretty good schools out where I live , but yet they're bringing SEL and this castle , social emotional learning into the schools . They have no idea of how dangerous this stuff is . You start to play with these kids and you start to allow these teachers to have .
They're anonymous and they can say whatever they want and the kids can bring whatever they want up . You know what this is craziness ? No gospel , take God out and then allow these broken people to talk to our kids about whatever the heck they want , really at the end of the day , and look at them .
Mean well , sometimes even , but that's just not the way it is .
Yeah , that's all part of the way . I view it as man's attempt to promote this reset , to get us back on track .
And the kind of devious thing about it all is that on one level , yes , it's important to pay attention to the social and emotional climate and how that interacts with a child's learning , but that isn't again like saying , well , anything goes , anything is okay .
There's no standard , there's no norm by which we judge whether something is appropriate or not appropriate . So it's kind of this effort like well , we're gonna invent it .
I think we talked about that , that's exactly my thought last night , when I was listening to these people unfold this , I said they're just inventing this as they go . I really mean it . I could tell in their voices they had this jargon of words , this babble , this scrabble game like of words .
They were just spewing all these words out and I realized , as they were speaking , nobody understands what they're saying and neither do they . They actually don't understand .
They have the verbiage , they have this mixed up babble , but they have no idea of what they're actually doing and they don't know how it's gonna turn out , because SEL , social emotional learning . This is like telling the teacher now , or asking the teacher to be the psychiatrist to a kid . Well , I'll tell you what . You don't have time .
You got 25 , 26 , 27 kids in your class . You're gonna tell me that you're gonna fix all the problems that the culture is bringing on these people . Broken homes is bringing on these people . No father in the home is bringing on these people . The sin is bringing , and your own sin , and you're gonna go in and fix this . I'm sorry , it's not gonna happen .
If you don't make it worse , I'd be surprised , you know In general Interesting to use babble as the word because it recalls the tower of babble . And this is really a modern version of it , if you will . Yes , it is , exactly , it is .
Do you remember that story ? The Tower of Babel , right ? So you know , they're trying to build this tower all the way up to the heavens , basically build their own utopia . It's pride again P , capital , p , capital , r , capital , I , capital , d , capital , e , pride , pride , month , pride , pride , pride , pride .
And we're also proud of ourselves , you know , and we have a whole month of pride now , which is one of the seven deadly sins . Right , we're trying to reach the heavens utopia with this and you're exactly right , that's exactly what this is .
And God took it down and humbled us again , and he knows , if he doesn't humble us , that pride will bring us into eternal damnation .
It's crazy , right .
Welcome to the age that turned away from God , this age of moral relativism , isn't it ?
Yeah , and again , when we see how widespread it is , it recalls Jesus's warning to us about the narrow road versus the wide road .
Right , so , this is the wide road that seems easy and allows for the passions and allows for anything goes , but that's the road to perdition , and we know that , we know that , and yet you know so many are still pursuing that road .
Yeah , let's let me read from Matthew 13 , with these parable of the weeds , and then maybe you should read that . You know that's Matthew 7 , I think verse 14 that you were just quoting there . That wouldn't be bad to read that either .
That's just a couple of lines , but let me start with this , the parable of the weeds and the wheat , and then you line up I think it's 714 , linda , somewhere Matthew , chapter 714 , what you quoted , but anyways , so the parable of the wheat and the weeds . So think about this .
Another parable he put before them , saying the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field , but while men were sleeping , his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away . So when the plants came up and bore grain , then the weeds appeared also . And so here's what happened , linda .
This happened right away at the tree , the knowledge of good and evil . You know , a Satan came into the story and God throws the seed out there and the good seed in the field and the world , and then it gets distorted and twisted and then the weeds start to come up . And then God gives us a chance . He actually took them out with Noah .
I mean , this is how bad it got . We just heard Exodus , now again this Exodus story , and God wanted to take them out again with the golden calf . And so this is the story of the Old Testament . This is the great reset happening for every generation . It's happening to our generation .
That's why John Paul called this yesterday and today , because yesterday , all the way back from the fall , and today it's really the same story . Every generation gets a chance to play out the story . And you're right . What path do you take ? The great reset ? The man made great reset or the God made reset right ? The city of God .
Right , yes . So in Matthew 7 , 13 and 14 , we're being told enter through the narrow gate . For the gate as wide in the road , broad that leads to destruction , and those who enter through it are many . How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life and those who find it are few .
That has always caused me great concern because when you think of yourself and then all the people you know , it's very scary to think there are many more on that wide road than on that narrow road .
And Pope John Paul is in this 58 , this audience that we're talking about is repeating , kind of summarizing what he's talked about in the first 57 audiences of bringing us back to that narrow road . Many folks feel it's not possible because we're so far gone . But he's saying it truly is possible .
If we look at St Paul's words of life in the spirit , you know how do we get there ? It's accepting that grace of the redemption of Jesus Christ and living with and in and through that grace that it is very possible and that's the exciting part to me .
Yeah , and you know , john Paul makes it so clear , you know , when he's looking back on history , and even our history , even our time right now . He said you know , we're trying to be liberated from pandemics and from climate emergencies , all these catastrophes , right , one after another . There's just pure baloney , right ?
I mean these hoaxes , look , I'm not going to get into all of those things right now , but the point is that they want to just keep us in fear . Why do they do that ? Right ? Well , this is it .
The weeds are growing and the global elites , these people are so gluttonous , so prideful , so just grasping and taking that they are raping and pillaging the whole world right in front of us , while they're playing these games .
And it's only the humble , it's only the very little humble , the little guy , the janitor , the little person trying to keep his family together , that actually sees this . You know , even the liberals in the world , I mean , I watch these . You know the ?
You know there's a woman I just saw on a clip , a Hollywood star , I won't even name her name , but she's got three children . They're all trans , every little kid's , they're all trans . Well , where did they get that from ? They didn't make this up their own right . So it seems like we would have got caught on to this cosmic story right now .
You know good versus evil , light versus darkness , love versus lust and seek the better way revealed to us . Yet you know what we don't know the power of God . We don't realize until we step deeply into the story that God is going to fill your heart . The vacuum is there . The vacuum is there .
That's why lust and selfishness and all this stuff comes in and we don't think we can have purity of heart . Look , it's a battle . We all know this , right , we , you know , we have the threefold we inherited . John Paul says , right in this , in this episode , we inherited the threefold concubiscence . We have this in us . So this is the battle of the heart .
But we don't trust that God can change that heart . This is the difference , right , and John , what ? The first letter of John , chapter two , for all that is in the world , the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life , is not of the father but is of the world . But here's the thing . Listen to this . This is so powerful .
Tick tock , tick tock . I just mentioned that gravestone , right ? But ? And he goes and the world is passing away and the lust of it , and he who does the world of God abides forever . This is going so fast . Everybody that ever existed in the history of this world is gone . We are just this little tiny pin . We had eight billion people .
It sounds like a lot , but when you compare it to all the people that have ever been born , including the ones that we snuffed out in the womb , it's nothing , and we're all gonna be out of here soon and nobody will ever remember the Klaus Schwab's and the George Soros . By the grace of God . Why look at I ?
You know , every day when I start to look at this world , I I'm reminded of the gifts that God has given you and me and anybody else that's trying to step into this story . Everything came from him , I mean by the grace of God , go , I look at I can . I can sit here the rest of the day and just tell you how many faults that Things I've screwed up .
It's amazing to me that God actually Cures enough to try to pull me out of this again . You know .
Exactly , you know , you say about stepping into the story . Kind of paradoxically , jack , we are in the story from the moment we're born . We are in the story . So , um , you know , on one level , yes , we have to step into it by recognizing it .
But on the other level , if we never do , then we're living our entire lives in the story but never understanding it , never knowing who I am , never knowing how I'm supposed to live . And so the plea is again recognize that we are in the story . It is a love story and our whole goal here is to love as God loves .
And when we achieve even a bit of that , um , the joy that we experienced from that is Almost undescribable . You know that this idea of becoming gift , you and I both have grandchildren , and I think we can see it even more clearly at that generation when , when we are now no longer 100 , responsible for raising the children , you know .
But we can look back and stand back and see the beauty Of the children , you know , when they first come on board as these little newborns , and we can see that image of God in that child and how it flourishes when that child it learns about and Understands this love story that he is a part of .
Yes and and and look what we're doing to that little one , the , the . You know the loss of innocence . You know I mean it's amazing how this you know I'm Jesus came into the world . You know he's born in Bethlehem and we have the , the murder of the innocence , right off the bed .
As soon as Jesus comes in , right to restore us , to take us out of this evil , to give us a purity of heart , what does the world do ? It attacks right away , the powers attack Jesus , christians , etc . Right away . Why do they do that ? Because because of this gift that you're explaining . And so we had 300 young Children murdered right , right at that time .
And what is it ? The holy family has to flee to where ? To Egypt . You know , it's , it's , it's , it's crazy . And so we have the same thing today .
Right , we have the murder of the innocence and we have these young children that should have such a joy of running up to their mom and their father , and they're twisted and distorted and they're anxious and they're depressed , and and they actually become Suicidal and confused because we're not bringing this light of the gospel down .
If you want to really see the , the beauty of a child who is loved and who loves you back . That's what you just described . But also there are many , many kids suffering today , even from from early on .
You know , I'm going to end my part here , linda , for today , with with this quote from john paul the second in 1994 , as the new millennium was approaching , john paul was reflecting back in the in crossing the threshold of hope . It's .
It's an incredible book that was published in 94 and his reflection on the 20th century , where he says it began with the hope of unlimited progress , but in it is the bloodiest century known to history . Modern man had placed his hopes for a messiah and his own genius in science , technology and medicine .
But whenever man loses sight of the great mystery and sets his sights on this world , he always meets disappointment , even despair . The world , he said , is not capable of making man happy . It's not capable of saving him from evil and all its types and forms illnesses , epidemics , cataclysms , catastrophes and the like .
This world , with his riches and its wants , needs to be saved . It needs to be redeemed .
Amen , could not be said any better , and I would hope that everyone listening would Repeat that and listen to it again . Or , if you happen to have the book , read that , because that's what we're Seeking to pull into our heart , to have that understanding , and and then we'll win the battle in our hearts when we understand what you just read .
Yeah , and I would say that's a great book . It's not it . You know John Paul's books are not easy , but this is more of a question answer . In each chapter Is somebody asking him a question about evil , about you know , all the tough questions that that you would think to ask him , you know , and he's answering those so well , crossing the threshold of hope .
It's just a phenomenal book . A memory and identity is another one that I should , I should , quote once in a while . It was written or published in 2005 , which is the year he died , so this was his last thoughts on everything and another beautiful thing . So just those three things . I haven't mentioned them for a while .
Before you look at your phone in the morning , first thing in the morning , just go down to your knees and and just open yourself up and say you know God , you know , just like our blessed mother , I will be done , I will be done . Open up your heart to him . That's , that's what Jesus is really asking us , in the purity of heart .
He's gonna do the workforce , but we have to do . You know , our job is to do that and it's hard work to to open up , open up , open up to him . The second thing Temptations are not a sin . It's the temptations themselves , right , when we're fighting this purity of heart . The temptations will come .
Sometimes they're brutal , the battle , but it's the invitation , then , to prayer and use Temptation as an invitation to prayer . If you're trying to stop things like pornography and etc . You will be praying all day long because these images will come at you . It'll be , you know , you will literally start to be praying all day long .
This is opening your heart , opening your heart . And then the third thing is what we're getting to when we're tight , when we always talk about the spousal meaning of the body . What does that mean ? It means then , now that I've received grace , I've asked Jesus to come into my life to redeem me . I go to the sacraments , you know I .
I go to confession , start to receive the Eucharist . I'm doing these things and now I have to become that person of love . That's the spousal meaning of the body . But I cannot give what I don't have , so I get . And now I have to become . If I stop and and don't do this , don't act , it will never be efficacious .
I will not see Jesus in the people that you're just , that you just described in a child . I will not see Jesus in my mom or my dad or my , my wife . You just don't see God in those people . Until you take that step and you actually try to live that out and then you go , oh , I really need that grace , I really need that grace .
Then he comes in and he yokes himself next to you and then you know he's real . Until you become Do all of those steps be filled and then go out and do that's when you start to know I need to be in communion and union and communion with God .
I think it's so beautiful , linda , when you think that God is spirit and one of the reasons that this is so cool is that he can actually fill you up today . Right , we're created beings . God is not a sexual being . We are to express love , but his , his spirit , can't actually fill us up . That's grace , huh .
So yeah , that's stuff right . It's a great and it's not once and done . It's every day . Every day when I get up , I need that grace again every moment , as you said , when the temptation is come , moment by moment , I can be aware that I need that grace and it's all about I will be done .
That's how we reclaim our true identity as being made in that image of God and born to love .
You said a great while you're saying that , I think you know every 24 hours , linda , is a great reset . We have a great reset every 24, . You know , look at that . Right before we came on , what did we say ? That a lot of the stuff is repeated because we need it to be repeated . Isn't that something ? And we do . I think you know another .
We have a day every day as a great reset . What a great chance for us to try to do good things today , right ? Yes , amen All right , I'm gonna try , linda . I hope you try . I hope everybody listening to us tries . Give it your , give it your best and have be . Have mercy on yourself . Well , you , because we know we're in a battle .
Look at , we didn't start all these battles . We're in the battle . We're getting shot at all the time . So be kind to yourself and open yourself up to grace . Hey , god bless you . Linda , thank you so much for being with me Jack .
God bless you .