#391 Navigating Life's Maze with St. John Paul II's Theology of the Body

And St Athanasius , an early church father and the doctor of the church , said the son of God became man so that we might become God . You know I make a wild 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 this story , of this divine life that we're created for , inscribed in each human heart , in your human heart , and if you put on a proper lens , if I put on a 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 Stegology , 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 with Linda and unfortunately , as I said last time , linda's sister did die , so we're sorry about that . Linda , it's good to see you , good to be back with you .

Before we got on air here , you and I spoke for quite a while discussing your sister , so how you feeling ?

I didn't mention this , linda , before we came , but it's amazing how clearly this speaks to everything and so I'm excited to dive into this we are going to be in . John Paul brings us clear at number 59 . Here we're concluding the reflection that's on the second word of Christ .

If everybody remembers , the first word of Christ was in the beginning , when Jesus was speaking to the Pharisees about the indissolubility of marriage and they were talking about divorce and Jesus took them back into the beginning , that model before sin , into the world and created male and female in the image and likeness of God . The Amago day .

It's amazing that the stature of a human being in this relationship of masculinity , femininity , man , woman , is a sacramental sign . I'm kind of setting up all just as we go into this kind of above the trees a sacramental sign reflecting actually Trinitarian love .

This is where we're coming from and Jesus points to this and says that this is what it was in the beginning . Then he takes us to the second word . We know this is after the fall , and this is what John Paul calls historic man Jesus' words kind of stand us up again . Stand up , linda , jack , and everybody's listening .

Bring the glory of God back into your life , into your union and communion with God first , so that we can be filled with divine life and love . And to become divine life and love , united in union and communion with God , and give that to one another . It's the two great commandments .

Here we have , as John Paul said , an invitation by Jesus by which he appealed to the human heart , extorting it to purity . Often we hear these words like purity In today's time we go oh my gosh , what a prude . It's almost anathema to us , isn't it , to say the word purity . Yet of course it's purity of heart , because God wants you to become one with him .

How do you become one with God unless God comes into your heart and makes it pure ? It's only this action of God working in our heart that allows us to come into union and communion with God and then allows him to fill us . Can you imagine all the people grasping and taking and lusting in the world wondering how to fill this hole in their heart ?

You have to recover that purity of heart , and who's going to do that ? Only Christ can do that for us . Here's my segment , here , linda , with Matthew 5 , 27 , 28 , which is the second word of Christ . Here's Jesus on the Serm of the Mount .

You have heard it said that you should not commit adultery , but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart .

You know , what really struck me in that very first paragraph in audience 59 is how the Pope repeats again that what Christ said your reading of Matthew 5 and his entire sermon on the Mount was given for all people , at all times , in all places . And we must never think that , well , jesus was speaking to those people 2000 years ago .

But come on , here we are , you know , in modern times . No , no , no , it's for all of us at all times , because that story of our hearts and needing to open our hearts to that grace of Christ is for every single one of us .

And I like how he reminds us too that , as you have always reminded our listeners that this is a love story that we find ourselves in and truly it is a story . But the other element of that story that the Pope says is a kind of a guiding thread of history is that story of good versus evil .

And this is why we can say , you know that that line of good versus evil crosses every man's heart , because that's that's the depth of the story , and it's only love that will conquer , of course , that evil part right .

So he begins to kind of pull these lofty ideas together for us and say that , yes , he's now linked Genesis , as you have brought us back to the first word , and that is original man before the fall .

And then where we find ourselves now as historical man , we have the beautiful history of salvation , the story of salvation , which is nothing other than a love story , and that , with the words from the gospel , we have the story of salvation and the power is the Holy Spirit .

So he reminds us of all these really key ideas in one paragraph here , and it's worth reading if our listeners have access to the actual text .

Just stop and ponder this awe and wonder , right , these words of Jesus , as you said , you know they , they've been captured by witnesses , if you think about this , and written down , then carefully preserved and passed down to us from person to person , from generation to generation , to shepherd , to the flock in the church , to parents , to the children .

This is part of this moral base , right , and how to live . That's been lost today and this is the problem Again . You know people will ask us many , many times over . You know , what does this world come to ? You know what ? What is it ? And well , it's because we stop passing this down .

You know these legacies , these words are power and they've been written down and this legacy has been passed us . So what happens when we stop passing this down to the next generation ? We see in Exodus that we were supposed to pass . The Jewish father was supposed to pass that down to his children , generation after generation . And the same thing here .

When we stop , we see what's happening , right , so it's an honor to take this teaching of John Paul II and pass it down in these podcasts , because that's what we're doing , despite , john Paul said , advances in technology , science , and I'm , you know , not quoting him here exactly , but despite everyone carrying around a smartphone .

You know we can't live without love . You mentioned love . We can't live without love . All the technology in the world , all the science advancements in the world , all of the medicine advancements in the world . And this morning I woke up and I'm I'm thinking about life and love .

And Corinthians 1.13 comes to me today and I and I'll just read just part of that . You know , love never ends . St Paul says in the way of love , 1 Corinthians 13, . As for prophecies , they will end . As for tongues , they will cease . As for knowledge , it's imperfect , our prophecies imperfect , but when the perfect comes , the imperfect will pass away .

When I was a child , I spoke like a child , I thought like a child , I reasoned like a child , but when I became a man , I gave up childless ways . And he said so faith , hope and love abide , but these three , the greatest of these , is love .

So it's , it's amazing how we can put all our eggs on Science and technology and think that this is the greatest discovery . At the end of the day , we're all looking for love .

And what does that bring us ?

Right back to person means body and soul , and so if we're just focused on the body and you can see this sometimes , I think , in doctors who you know , we used to talk about having good bedside manner , which was kind of a phrase , meaning that the doctor was recognizing that you're not just this patient with this Disease , but you're a person too and need to

take into consideration all the elements of that , and we seem very much to have lost a lot of that .

My youngest daughter's a doctor that works in the cancer . So she's a cancer doctor and and she , she is having some major problems , or she was at least . I don't know if she's resolved any of those , but she was spending too much time with her patients and she's on a clock and these are owned by big corporations .

Now Nobody has a , and I shouldn't say nobody , but but very few people have private practices anymore . You know every the big corporations are buying everybody up .

So anyway she's on a timer and she has to make so much , she has to hit so many patients and they said you know , and you have to move on , and you know , she's with dying people Sometimes right or people that have so many questions about their treatments and stuff . And you're exactly right , she has to go on . So we've separated body and soul .

We're seeing that , you know this , the suffering that takes place in in the human being when body and soul are not in union . You know we're embodied spirits , so our bodies actually manifest the spirit into the world . You know we're , we're a manifestation . We bring our soul , our spirit into the world and we're bringing . God along with that into the world .

When we don't understand that , look at the sexual confusion today and maybe what we won't go into that right now , bring that up later on . But we do live in this damaged pornified culture and Children are suffering in the schools .

The public school systems are twisting and distorting the sexuality and so you wonder , is there any wonder that we're suffering from anxiety , loneliness , separation , seeking community ? You know , I so many of these lbgtq youths that I that I'll speak to today or meet . You know , part of the reason they got into these clubs is because they were accepted .

They were lonely , they were accepted and , and you know , something is missing in their life and they're looking to fill that up , you know .

And if we don't understand that body and soul connection , which he calls the integral vision of man , then we're going to continue to go down these false roads of trying to help out , kind of a false Compassion , because we're not seeing the entire person . And he's actually speaking in this audience to that .

The Understanding of the beginning and then historical man is what actually creates for us that , what he calls adequate Anthropology , which is that understanding of man , which is actually another way of saying the theology of the body .

But then he goes on to say that it also is this pedagogy , which is an education in who we are and what are those requirements and why are there requirements and how do I fulfill that ? Is it just another way of saying what do I need as a human person to thrive ? And we know it's love . Okay , then what does that mean in a practical way ?

You know , I was thinking about this and it sounds kind of , you know , theoretical , but it's actually very practical In my head I came up with sort of a sports analogy .

So take any sport football , basketball , whatever and you have Kids coming out for the sport and have the coach and one of the first things the coach has to teach these is how this game works . Right , what are the requirements , or the rules , if you will , of this game ? How does it work and why are some of these the rules ?

Because , with the way the game works , if I don't have this rule , then the game falls apart . Right , you know I could get into specifics . I don't want to take time . But then it's like , okay , the ways to fulfill men , ie Win . The game is this is what you have to do , and we accept that so readily .

Jack , I think in sports and many other areas of our lives that , yeah , if I don't have , if I don't understand the requirements first , but what is expected of me and why I don't , I'm not gonna know how to be successful here , right and .

And yet when it comes to our spiritual life , in our entire life as a person in the image of God , we seem to want to reject so much of it . Oh , don't give me rules . I want to do what I want to do . Do you see what I'm saying ? Yeah , no , that's a great analogy .

You know , when I open up businesses , you know I had to understand , you know , the fundamentals of how to build a building and how to put a business plan together , and also , though , how to attract people to come to that business and stuff , right , all of those details have to be done and if you miss any of those , you're gonna lose some money .

You know , you know , and and and we see we , we have disconnected to your point Sexuality , so much that let's just extend this out that we no longer even see each other as Any aim , any aim . To the end . You know , we're just using one another .

We have no idea that that body expresses love , that if we are just like we just said , that we're Manifestations , that our bodies actually express love , that our bodies express the soul , the spirit , actually express God in the world and we give that to one another and our sexuality is a sacramental sign Pointing to the inner life of the Trinity itself .

You know , sometimes we can't get that . We're such a pornographic , pornified culture and God is not a sexual being and sometimes it's whole hard for us to imagine that God creates our sexuality to be an expression of two people becoming one , becoming three , three persons in one and reflecting the inner life of the Trinity and we , we , we don't get that that .

God is a spirit and Yet our he's gave us this spirit and we are to be temples of that spirit and Express that in a created version here .

And the last point I'll just make is that , you know , science is studying the biology of , say , a male and female , or reproduction , but at the end of the day , we know this just from Genesis 2 , that God took that biology , that clay , and then he breathed into it and that's that soul , that's that spirit of God that made a human being different than any

other human in any , any other creation , any other animal In the world . We have reason , we have free will . Why do we have all these things ? So that we can make a decision right , that we can actually know the truth and then live out the truth .

And , like you said , linda , when , when we don't put the pieces together , when we don't know the rules of the game , we are just playing around using each other . We're , you know , we'd be , like you said , like a football team , just making a mockery out of the game .

We find ourselves just , you know , totally In darkness , if you will , about what it means to be made in the image and likeness of God and the great gift that our sexuality is for us to be co-cooperators with her in the process of life . So two , one becoming three , as total self-gift of husband and wife results in that new life .

It is so I'm searching for a word here . It's almost so far beyond the beauty of it and the gift to us that God allows us to participate in creation with him . That way is totally lost to modern man , in my view , that we've completely lost that .

And if we could begin to grasp just a little bit of that understanding that , we could see things happening In the pro-life movement . One of the ways they're trying to do that , of course , is through the ultrasounds and seeing that ultrasound , that this is a baby , you can see it right , okay , and that's a start . That's a wonderful start .

And we hear that the statistics are showing that many women change their minds about abortions . So , praise God , they're beginning to see .

Yes , that is a human being here , not just that blob of tissue , that lie that we've been told , so that there's kind of a light at the end of the tunnel when we begin to open up our minds and our hearts to this understanding of that co-creation factor and , as we understand then our sexuality , that being co-creators with God is a major part of it .

To me , it's always been the pleasure that is a part of that . Giving is another great gift to God for us that not only are we given the gift of potentially creating with him a new human life , but it's pleasurable as well . And what a good God . That is right , and I think our culture is just stripped all of that away .

I mean it's the closest thing I've probably to an out-of-body experience you can have and , of course , this is because God watched that he wants you . You're entering into a powerful mystery Now we think about today , john Paul , and you mentioned earlier that we're standing at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil , and this is what we have to decide .

We're at the deciding line right now because this is the basis . This is the basis of all the twisting and distortion in our culture . If we do not get this right , there's no way we're gonna heal the culture . You know we are putting band-aids on this game again . We're playing on the football field with nobody knows the rules .

Everybody's running all over the place and they're running into each other and they're getting hurt . We're trying to put band-aids on but nobody knows how to pick up the pieces .

So it doesn't matter how many people we put in the hospital and get out of the hospital and , you know , pat them on the back and tell them to get back in the circle because nobody knows where this is going . So we think about today , with all our advances , children are taught in public schools of false teaching , with full knowledge of science .

Right that they're taught that . We know science , we know the technology , we know the baby in the womb , we know how babies are made . And yet , with all of that , masculinity is interchangeable with femininity . A man can be a woman , a woman can be a man . Marriage is meaningless . It's all about feelings and emotions .

The concrete truth about what you've seen in ultrasound or what I see in my own body , is treated more or less John Paul would say systematically as an object of manipulation . When we separate body and soul , we start to look at biology , it's just something that can be manipulated , an object of manipulations .

Mankind no longer even identifies himself subjectively , john Paul said , so to speak , with his own body . Now , this was in 1981 , 1981 , but we're making it as relevant today as it was then because it's the pride , john Paul said , of the meaning and dignity that stemmed from the fact that this body is proper to the person .

I have a body that's proper to me , that reveals me , the body , my body reveals who I am , body and soul , and it doesn't reveal something false . All through my body are these XY chromosomes that say I'm a man , not just in my sexual reproductive organs , those chromosomes , they XY's in every cell of my body . It's amazing , you know .

And so when you start to play these games with people , and now these poor kids have never been taught this . We talked about earlier passing Jesus is passing this word down to us , but we're not passing it down to our kids . The church sometimes is not passing it down to the kids , and so the kids are running around with a vacuum , trying to understand this .

They're told about sex , they're told about the pleasure of sex to your earlier point without understanding the sacrament , the theology . So the pedagogy John Paul says , the education of kids about the body has to also include the theology of the body that God has expressed in that action .

So when we teach kids about sex and our sexuality , we have to do it in a way that we bring body and soul into that pedagogy , into that term for teaching and education .

And so the Pope says with that , if we understand that , so what's he really saying ?

He's saying look , marriage and the family , the dignity of the person and the communion , that authentic gift of self , is what we need to really consider here as having that , to get to that point of the understanding and the appreciation of the dignity of marriage and the family .

And here we are , jack right back to that point where we've been told that that final battle is gonna be against marriage and the family .

So , in a sense , all these issues with the transgenderism and the completely misguided sex education that they're offering in the schools and all of that if you wanna package it all up , it's that attempt to destroy the marriage and family and we're really way down that road in our culture and that's why it's become so critical to understand that the way back is

through this understanding that we call the theology of the body , but these beautiful teachings to help us get to recognizing and understanding . You know , marriage , the whole uh , no fault divorce it was called , you know , just that was like a hatchet to marriage . When that happened , you see , and we have to see it for what it was .

If we're going to be able to come back and then , as we understand it , as parents and grandparents , then of course teaching it to our children is critical .

You know , that was the . That was the reading from today . Uh , you know the feast of the immaculate , uh , uh , uh , the assumption of of our uh of our blessed mother into heaven .

So you know , in there was a uh the reading from the book of revelation where , uh , the devil is ready and I'm just going off the top of my head here not reading it from it but but Mary is pregnant with the , with the child .

The woman is pregnant with the child in the book of revelation and and ready to give birth and the dragon is waiting to devour that child .

You think about that , think about abortion today , think about these gender ideologies , think of what you just said of of um , the attack on marriage and the family , that in the book of revelation , that dragon is waiting to devour the child as soon as that child comes out . Well , if he can't devour Jesus himself , he's going to devour the immogal day .

So we hear that the tale of the dragon sent one third of those stars down . Well , that's the demons , right , that's one third of the of the fallen . Those are the fallen angels . They're here with us . This is the battle that's going on today .

So they're just think of these demons ready to devour these children and they are consuming them literally in the womb , and if they make it out of the womb , to to render them sterile . And if they don't render them sterile , to twist them , to store our sexuality so much that we're not even getting married in churches anymore , we're not getting baptized .

So so , so again , to sum this up , to become integral again , to regain a unity of body and soul , to be open to what we had talked about the last few sessions , a life in the spirit Saint Paul would call it , and you know versus life in the flesh , the fallen world . And so to come to know that the spirit is expressed again in and through our bodies .

We're embodied spirits , but when we experience disjunction , which you're talking about with and we're speaking about , with all of these twisting and distortions , we can even sense , john Paul said , the body is not ours , even in some sense , that we're not even our own bodies . What we seek is life in the spirit .

You know we're these poor kids are missing something and they're told that what they're missing is they might be in the wrong body , when the reality is they're seeking the spirit , they're speaking connection with the spirit . This gives you peace , this makes you comfortable , you know , in your body .

And now you're going to express this , what you , what you have in your heart , you're going to express through your body . Instead , they're uncomfortable . They feel this disjunction , this separation from God , so even our soul and our body , and they're seeking to heal that somehow . And they're told a lie .

They're told that they'll be able to discover it by changing their body . And you know , this is an inner angst within their souls , you know , and it becomes really a mental illness . We call it that , but we have no other terms for this . You know , in a medical field , it's trying to grapple with this , and so what are they going to call it ?

There's something wrong with them . But look at this , any doctor , I had Marion Grossman on a not-too-long-going . In fact , her book Lost in Transnation is out . It's so good , everybody needs to get that Lost in Transnation . She calls it Very , very good , mariam , dr Mariam Grossman , and it's a fascinating book .

It'll get down to all this stuff , but she calls it evil in that book . And I remember , linda , when we last year , when we had an interview , I said , dr Grossman , I said you didn't say this , but I'm going to say it . So these are my words and just to be clear is this is a battle between good and evil . What's going on ?

And we were describing some of the issues that you and I are describing now and she said yes , it is , yes , it is . And her opening of her book . She said this is a battle between good and evil . She understands that . It's a psychiatrist . You know of all the battles .

If we can substitute dragon , the literal image of a dragon , and say it's our culture , our materialistic it's all about me culture is that dragon waiting to devour that child . It doesn't seem so far-fetched or so disconnected from the reality of what we're talking about .

And it is that lack of the spiritual that we're experiencing and the Pope talks right in this audience that it requires spiritual maturity , so growth in that spiritual life . If I'm a temple of the Holy Spirit , I'd like to think of it as if I'm growing in that spiritual life .

If I'm building that temple and cleaning it right , I'm making it presentable for him to live there , and that only happens through that life of prayer and the sacraments as we've talked about many times .

So it all kind of comes together , jack , that you know , as the Pope says , that it's not everywhere that the dignity of the institution of marriage and the family shines with the same brightness , and there are pockets of people out there who really have recognized that . You know we don't want to put down everybody . We know that many people are really trying .

They're trying to grow in their spiritual life and they're trying to have the kinds of marriages and families that God is expecting . And the culture just keeps slamming us down . But we have to keep in perseverance .

But he says that brightness is obscured by the plague of divorce , what we used to call that free love , many other deformations which he wrote that in 1981 . But look at how the deformations , including transgenderism , have expanded since he wrote this . It's kind of mind boggling . So he says that the conjugal love is profane by egoism , hedonism , illicit practices .

So he kind of generalizes in categories , if you will , all of those specific issues that people are dealing with and you put it all in one big bundle and it's good versus evil .

So I hear so many people lend a blame the church falling apart and weakening on Vatican II , but yet when you read the Vatican II documents , I don't see that at all . The Vatican II documents are really beautiful . I would propose this as one of the major factors , and there are many of them .

You know we , pope Paul VI , said very early on that the smoke of Satan had entered the church . So we know that there were shepherds , so-called shepherds , within the church who distorted and twisted this , just like the culture does , and so unfortunately , that's what happened .

So I would propose this and we can get into this more , maybe in the next session a little bit but what you just talked about , this twisting and distortion you know Vatican II places the appreciation of the dignity of marriage and the family among the most urgent problems of the church in the modern world .

John Paul said so marriage and the family among the most urgent problems of the church in the modern world . He said a dignity and you already mentioned many of this , much of this .

A dignity obscured today by polygamy , the plague of divorce , so-called free love , so many other deformations Today , even same-sex marriages being blessed in parts of the church and in addition , conjugal love is often profaned , by John Paul said , by egoism , hedonism elicit practices against generations .

So here we get into what is a difficult subject , if you don't open this up correctly , is contraception . And so when contraception enters the sacrament , if everything that we just said was true , if the two become one , open to life , become three , this is a sacramental sign of the inner life of the Trinity .

And now you interject contraception against conception , so against the baby .

You know , in addition , in essence and I don't want to be too harsh on people because we've been told so many lies , but in essence you are doing the same thing that Satan wants to do , which is preclude life from that union , right , not only life in general , but life from your own union , where the two become one together .

And then I put a barrier in there . It would be like receiving the Eucharist and instead of consuming it , I put it in my pocket or I put it in the pew and I leave it there . So I haven't become one with the Eucharist . And this is the same thing that happens in the sacrament of marriage .

So when that happens , you no longer are open to grace , because when you're open to life , you're open to life in the Spirit , into grace . So grace in that sacrament , when the two become one . John Paul would say to men before you make love to your wife , take your shoes off , or you're entering unto holy ground .

So we're entering into a sacrament , grace flows into a sacrament , and your bodies are that sacramental sign , they're the physical part of that sacrament and so they're the material that makes that sacrament and brings grace into that . So if that was going to be excluded , what do you think would happen to marriage and the family ? It's going to come down .

And so we have contraception . When contraception fails , we have abortion . When abortion fails , we have children out of wedlock , people leaving , we have sexual abuse , we have drugs . We have all these things coming into these relationships . And so what will happen to the church now ?

Well , if you have a lot of dysfunction in marriages and the families , you have a lot of people that are not going to church . Less and less people are going to go to church . The church gets watered down in the teaching , so you're not helping people that are trying , that don't understand what went wrong .

Again , it becomes this idea , this pedagogy , these words of Christ are not being passed down from generation to generation to generation . So even the people that are listening to this , that have been trying and wondering what's wrong with my marriage and tubes have been tied and pills have been on . We've been taking the pill forever .

These are tough things to discuss sometimes and tough things for people to understand , but they need to know that you're missing out on certain grace that we all need to come into here , and so that's why , when John Paul says , we need to understand these things again if we're going to be able to patch up this team again , to get this football team back on the

field , to know the game , because if we don't know the game , the sacrament no longer points to the inner life of the Trinity , of where we're going , so we can't win the game .

As I look back , you know this is the story of my life , the age that I am coming of age , in 1968 , and wow , what the world has been like since then . It's like holy cow . That's my whole adult life . So , you know , many of us make decisions poorly informed and regret some of those decisions .

And I think that for me personally , knowing that I can take it to confession , that God's mercy is there for me , it's there for each and every one of us . But we have to start with that , being open to recognizing that .

You know , I strayed from the path and I regret it and I'm going to turn in a different direction and the grace in confession really helps us do that , you know .

And I think too that on the other point where we said that you know we need to be passing it along to children , we need to be teaching children the correct information , and so the Pope says , as kind of a prelude to that actual teaching , we need to create a climate that's favorable to that .

So you look at our culture now and it's pretty much far from you know that climate and parents could start . This just popped in my head . Like some of the things that Disney movies and stuff are getting into , it's like just shut it down , just do not let your children see that .

That's a very little step in the right direction to setting that climate where it's going to be more favorable for them to be open to the teachings that you need to understand and live and pass on to them . So it's not an easy task , jack , but we've got to start .

Well , we can't save the country until we save human beings , until human beings live out life in the spirit . When marriages and the family are broken down , again , that's linked to the church . So the church is going to break down right , because not break down in essence in its Christ and in its bride , but people aren't going to go to church .

So you're going to see declining numbers . And when the church shepherds no longer have the courage and or even have evil intent and don't want to pass the story down and even bless . You know , same-sex marriages and things like that .

As you see , the father James Martins and the German bishops of the world , and again , nothing against people with same-sex attractions . We talked about all that already . My brother went through that . We know all of that kind of stuff , you know . But at the end of the day , what are you going to do about it ?

You know , when we see the broken culture , when we see our broken hearts . You can either stand at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and you can choose God , and then , if you're going to choose God , you have to choose what he said and did . Look at , god is calling us in , you know , as we wind up here into an intimacy with him .

This is a love story , like you said , and this love story , god wants to be in union and communion with you . So how would I start ? If I have same-sex attraction , if I was on the pill or my tubes have been tied , what I'd start is I'd start entering into that deep relationship with God . Like you said , god is merciful . He goes in .

You know , each one of us is the lost sheep . He went to find us all , one by one . He brings us back , but he brings us back into a community and when you come back , he wants intimacy with you . You know it's so incredibly powerful and beautiful . When you understand this . This is not about rules , this is not about regulations .

This is about nothing but God saying open your heart to me and our blessed mother . This is our blessed mother's day . She is the key to all this , our blessed mother . If you pray to her , she will open a crack in your heart for her son , and she will help you find a way to come into union and communion with him . Everybody wants to happen .

Everybody in heaven wants this to happen , right , everybody . Though we have an evil force that doesn't want this to happen , and it's going to take grace , but it's so beautiful and powerful , that man . You just don't want to . You don't want to . You don't want to miss this .

I was thinking , too , that you know , if you're in a marriage , if it's a troubled marriage , do whatever you need to do to help that marriage heal and get healthy . And it may just be just starting with praying and asking Mary to help you there too , you know .

So you know , if your marriage is good and you could kick it up a notch with your spouse in terms of your spiritual life , praying together , you know , to start a family rosary , there's so many things you could do on a practical level to just say I need to begin today to build that spiritual life in myself , with my spouse and with my children .

So you know , we dwell sometimes on all the negative things that are going on , but if we can counter with the positive , as you just said , it's just so beautiful and so uplifting that you don't want to miss it .

So so we're giving you the tools to do it . If you're interested , we're looking for parents that are that want to bring this into their church and into their communities , and we want parents to be behind this initiative , and we're there to help them and make it very easy to do so . Thank you , linda . Thanks for being with us . Hey , god bless you .

Thanks everybody for joining us . Talk to you next week .