Welcome to the Become who you Are podcast , the production of the John Paul 2 Renewal Center . I'm Jack Rigert , your host . A lot going on today . You probably have heard by now about Israel being attacked . It's really something you know , that's . That's a tough country .
They've been attacked for a long time , but this is really something different today that we haven't seen in a long time . Over 5,000 mortars were lobbed into that country . You know it's not a very big country . If you look at the map , there's an area in Israel where it's only 33 miles across . It's a small country . So a dangerous situation going on there .
And we're seeing that all over the world , aren't we ? You know there's a breakdown in Western civilization , for sure , and we've turned away from God in so many instances . And in fact , if you have been following the Magnificat this last week , the prophets Baruch and others have really warned about this . You know when people turn away from God , what happens .
You know the protection for the faithful from God is really how we're holding this all together . And when you walk away from God , you see dysfunction , not only with countries being run over , but individual dysfunction and individual human hearts and in families , etc .
So that's really what I'm calling the crisis of our time , and then the solution to the crisis of our time , Compassion for those who don't know the Gospels , who have grown up into this melew of destruction of what it means to be a human being and human dignity . The solution , of course , and in the center of all history . We mark our dates , 2023 .
We mark our dates 2020 , three years since Jesus Christ , and so it's amazing how we can count history but yet we can ignore God in our lives . And then the third thing is to build small communities . So I want to talk about all of those things . So buckle up and get ready for the rest of today's episode .
In some ways , I'm really lucky in that I'm in this battle and I'm on our front lines a lot , and so , as I'm out speaking , I really feel this right . I mean , you can really feel this , this pressure between good and evil going on in this battle going on , and you can really see what happens when God is taking out of the equation .
You know our default position as human beings is sin and death . A body and a soul that comes into the world , but sin and death is all around us . I mean , that's , that's the default position of humanity after the fall . We need grace , we need God , and you could see what happens when God is taken out , you know . So a couple of quick stories .
I was banned from our group , was banned from the library , a local library . We had a room there and we had 100 people there in the room only held 100 people at standing room only , and we were talking about the pornography and the books that are in school libraries and also in the public libraries .
Well , word got out that what we were talking about and we were banned from future dates there which we had on the calendar already , and so so that won't be the end of that . We'll go back and fight them on these things , because you have to have the voice of God .
You know , we , we , we have a , we have an amendment that the First Amendment says , you know , free speech , and it's being taken out , of course , of the public square because God is being taken out of the public square , and so the other thing that I wanted to mention was we had an ecumenical prayer worship group .
I wasn't in charge of it , but there was a pastor that I know that was , and so everybody was invited to this . It was really beautiful . He does it often and I was asked to open this up with prayer and a couple of different , a couple words and different things . And , and as part of this , I met a group of young Mexican guys of Mexican heritage .
These beautiful young guys that came up and the pastor knew them . They came up and they prayed and during the course of their prayer I could say , wow , these young guys , the conviction that they had , you know , drawing on the Holy Spirit , they're really with conviction in their prayer and and you could just see something special was going on .
So I talked to them afterwards and so we decided we're going to meet . So we met last week in a restaurant and each one of those young guys shared their personal stories .
Now , when I say young , these guys are in their 20s and say up into the early 40s , and they shared personal stories , amazing brokenness in their life and then how they came back through this life of these communities that they're building , these and this gets me to the small group of community .
So what they done is they many of them were Catholics , christians , but they had walked . They walked away from the churches . They just weren't receiving what they were looking for in the church . There was no conviction there . You know , they're getting this watered down Jesus Christ , this kumbaya , weak knee nothingness that we hear in so many churches .
And I've been here in this in the 70s , the 80s and 90s and it continues today and they're looking for something more . So they they in this brokenness . They were brought into this , really the book of Acts where they built small communities , small churches .
These are the early seeds of Christianity and then so they go back and they model that and so they have house churches and they build those up .
But but when they told me their stories , I could see something really was special was going on there their power , their conviction in Jesus Christ , their openness to the Holy Spirit , their aiming their , their hearts at God , the Father and this Trinitarian story coming right into their families and how they're living this out within their families and with their
children and stuff . And I go , wow , something special is there . So they're not going to a formal church . So I want to stay with those guys . I want to know more about their , their , their movement . That's been going on for a while .
But also see , if I can't can't be a link , a tie back into the church , because it not to bring them back into the church , meaning that they have to just conform to everything within a local , say , catholic church , but at least that they've received the sacraments and that and they have a connection to the pastor there and so they can go to confession and
receive the Eucharist . I think if they could tie in together . But but they're also bringing something very special , so I want to be careful with the way this goes . You know , very , very interesting time .
So , anyways , at the end of the day , we have this battle between the city of God and the city of man going on , and we have to have compassion for the young people and the people that we meet out there that just don't have the gospel with them . Now there's just some evil people that have given up their hearts to , to , to , to the evil one for sure .
And I'll give you an example of that . While we were in this restaurant and these guys were sharing their personal stories , a woman came up near the end as she was playing slots . So there was a pretty far away from us . There was a row of slot machines with kind of a three quarter wall there .
You could see them back there , but we were far enough away and it was loud and the music was playing and nobody was really right around us at the table .
We had gotten there pretty early , like four o'clock in the afternoon , and so , anyways , this woman came up kind of with this , with this , you know , the eyes glow and she proceeded to to kind of ball us out , kind of leashed out at us , about speaking about God in a public place , in a restaurant . She goes you really need to talk about God in a church .
And I and I looked up and I go , what did you say ? She said you know , speak about God in the church . You know , you , this is a public place , this is a restaurant in a bar . And I just looked up at her and just smiled . You know , I wasn't going to take my time , but you could just see the anger , something stirred up .
And I said to the guys I said how could she hear ? She was so far away . I didn't even see that woman . And they said , well , we saw her .
She was playing slots back there , and and we really came to the conclusion that that somehow she was really either either zoned in on our conversation she had to be really careful to listen , to hear anything , and and the other case , we think that it was just the the Holy Spirit just coming in , you know , pushing against her , but you could just see her filled
with this wrath , a children of the wrath . And when you've given yourself over to the evil one , you can just see they want to just jump out at you for proclaiming God anywhere in a public space . And this is the . This is the time we're we're in right now . So , anyways , where does that lead us to ?
Well , john Paul II talked about this a long time ago . He called it the crisis of our time . And we're reminded of John Paul II's reflection on the 20th century in a book called Crossing the Threshold of Hope , which , he said , began with the hope of unlimited progress but ended it as the bloodiest century known to history .
Modern man , he said , had placed his hopes for a Messiah in his own genius . Now this has just accelerated since this , he said , in science , technology , medicine , and whenever man loses sight of the great mystery and sets his sights on this world , he's always going to meet with disappointment , even disappointment , even despair .
He went on to say the world is not capable of making man happy , it is not capable of saving him from evil and all its types and forms . Listen to this in illnesses , epidemics , pandemics , cataclysms , catastrophes and the like , this world with its riches and its wants needs to be saved , to be redeemed" .
It seems likely we should all caught on to this cosmic story by now good versus evil , light versus darkness , love versus lust , and seek the better way that's been revealed to us . Yet somehow we miss the larger story and we get caught up in a much smaller one of its own making . I often , when I'm speaking to young people , I ask them this question .
I just say anybody here create the universe . Anybody here write the big story ? No , you came into a story , so where do you come from ? Where are you going ? You have to decide . I always ask them you must decide . We're all free .
Either one of these two statements are true either and this is it , there's just two Either you're an accident of history , and they're here for completely at liberty to do whatever you please with your own life . You can indulge it , trash it , try to change it , even end it . For if this statement is true , your life is ultimately meaningless .
Or you're a created being , and in that case we're here for self-discovery . We've begun reason and intellect , free will , to find out what is the truth and to search for the good , and then the will is the motor to the good , to choose the good , what's true , what's good and what's beautiful . Because if you were created , you were created for a purpose .
If you were decided that you were created for a purpose , then what does that look like ? Either you end up in a hole six feet under to be covered by dirt , or we take God at His word and we share eternal life with Him , and this is really what the Gospels have been all about . Now I'm going to reflect back again .
All week it was talking about this what's going on in this world ? This is an old story , like Israel being attacked today . You know , the Israelites lost their land many times , the Polish people , other people we've lost land many , many times and the United States ? We're just giving ourselves in .
We're crumbling from within now from a moral , really a moral problem , moral issue . And so this is what the readings were for Sunday . The first one is from the book of Isaiah . It's chapter five . You know , isaiah is just a powerful prophet anyways , so what I'm going to read is really not very long .
It's called the Song of the Vineyard , and it's a masterpiece of Hebrew poetry , full of symbolism and carrying an important message In the figure of heartbroken farmers . So that's what you're going to hear . We're going to see our Lord Jesus Christ in his sorrow at finding His people yielding such a poor crop of righteousness .
And when the poem begins , the author's friend is speaking .
So the author assumes the role of God's friend , and then we get into verses one and two , and then we get into verses three to six , where the owner this would be Jesus Christ , the lover himself , the lover of the vineyard , describing all the curious taken for his people to set up this land , this place where they can dwell .
So , and then in verse seven , the author speaking again , only this time it's saying you know , this is what's going to happen to you if you turn away . You know again , our default position is sin and death . God comes back into the story and Jesus Christ comes into history to do what ? To open up to us again this tree of life .
So here's from the book of Isaiah , let me sing for my beloved a love song concerning his vineyard . My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill . He digged it and cleared it of stones and planted it with choice vines . He built a watch tower in the midst of it and hewed out a wine vat in it , and he looked for it to yield grapes .
But it yielded wild grapes . And now , oh inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah , judge , I pray you , between me and my vineyard , what more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not already done in it ? When I looked for it to yield grapes , why did it yield wild grapes ? And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard .
I will remove its hedge and it shall be devoured . I will break down the wall and it shall be trampled down . I will make it a waste . It shall not be pruned or hodled and briars and thorns shall shoot up . I will also command the clouds , that the rain , that no rain will come upon it .
For the vineyard , the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting . And he looked for justice , but behold was only bloodshed For righteousness , but behold , a cry , the word of the Lord .
So this gets back to what I said in the beginning to these young people You're either an accident of history or you're a created being , if you're a created being . God comes into the world , remember , before sin falls . Jesus takes us back to that model .
He puts us in the Garden of Eden , this beautiful place that he's hewn out for us , and then the fall comes , and then the thorns and the briars right . Evil comes into the world . Here's Jesus Christ again , he's going to come in and this is the prophet , isaiah speaking about this what's going to happen in the future and how God sets this up .
It's so beautiful . And then the second reading was a reading from the letter of St Paul to the Philippians . This gets back to my building , small communities , things . This is what happened again in the early church . And he's saying this now . Don't forget , you know they're in the middle of a pagan world there .
And he says Brothers and sisters , have no anxiety at all , but in everything , by prayer and petition , with thanksgiving , make your requests known to God . Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus .
Finally , brothers and sisters , whatever is true , whatever is honorable , whatever is just , whatever is pure , whatever is lovely , whatever is gracious , if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise , think about these things .
He says Think about these things , keep on doing what you have learned and received and heard and seen in me , then the God of peace will be with you . The word of the Lord and then I have chosen you from the world , says the Lord , to go out and bear fruit that will remain . That's what these young guys believe . You know .
They come together in community and they're building up this community . They're in these home churches . They're declaring and proclaiming the word of God and then talking about how they should live that out , even to the point where they will actually take a megaphone .
Some of them not all of them , some of them will take a megaphone and go out on the streets , right in a town not too far from me . Go out on the streets , go out into the malls and declare the gospel and invite people that are looking for something more to come and join them . It's amazing . You know . This takes a lot of courage .
And then the reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew . This is Jesus himself now coming into this story . This is from Matthew 21 , verses 33 to 43 . And we're getting back to this vineyard again . So Jesus said to the chief priests and the elders of the people here . Another parable he said there was a landowner who planted a vineyard .
So again we're getting back to this vineyard . You know , god puts this vineyard together , he said . He put a hedge around it . Jesus said dug a wine press and built a tower . Then he leased it to tenants and went on a journey . This is again . This is our story , this is the United States of America .
If you think about it , you know you come into this land and you know we came in with these Judeo-Christian principles which we have gotten away from now and we're going to have this thing crumble so we become the tenants . You know we didn't create the world , we didn't create the bigger story .
We came into a story and God gave us this world , this earth and all these gifts to use as ours . But right , but we weren't the creators of this thing and we grasp and we take instead of opening our hearts to God who wanted to pour himself into us . So I'm going to go on here with Jesus .
When in Jesus says when vintage time drew near , he sent his servants to those tenants to obtain his produce . But the tenants seized the servants and one day beat . Another they killed and a third they stoned . Again , he sent other servants , more numerous than the first ones , but they treated them in the same way . Finally , he sent his son to them .
So here's , here's Jesus talking about how God will finally send a son to them , right In the beginning . What did they do ? They sent the prophets to them . He asked them just like Isaiah , turn back to God . Right , you know , the vineyard's going to come apart . So finally , he sent his son to them , thinking well , they're going to respect my son .
But when the tenants saw the son , they said to one another this is the ear . Come , let us kill him and acquire his inheritance . They seized him , threw him out of the vineyard and killed them . This is an allusion to the course of the crucifixion . What will the owner of the vineyard do ? Jesus said to those tenants , when he comes ?
They answered him , he will put those wretched men to a wretched death and lease his vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the proper times . Jesus said to them did you never read the scriptures ? He's talking to the religious leaders of those days .
The stone and he's talking to himself , the stone that the builders rejected , has become the cornerstone . By the Lord , has this been done and it is wonderful in our eyes .
So the stone himself , jesus , comes back into the stone , into the world , so that we can build ourselves back on the Gospels of Jesus Christ and come back into what's true , what's good , what's beautiful , into a love story . But no , we rejected him . This is what that older lady came up to us to do .
This is what the library , the people in charge of the library of course you know they're run by Marxists . Now you know the head of the American library system is actually an atheist and avowed Marxist . Isn't that something right ? Rejecting the cornerstone , and then Jesus ends like this .
So far , the 21st century might be summarized in six words Men are at war with God . This is some notes that I took in and from an article from . It was in First Things , called Men Are at War with God , by Mary Eberstadt , and she's really done some great work . I've got a number of her books . Look her up , eberstadt .
I'll put her name and a couple of her books in the show notes so you can look those up . A very , very good job . And so men are at war with God , awakened from agnostic slumber by new forms of temptation , chiefly the sexual revolution . But I would add to this you know , we've seen these critical race theory , critical gender theory , critical queer theories .
All what to create ? Division DEI ? Right , it has nothing to do with diversity , equity and inclusion . Right , it's all a way to exclude the Gospels , a social , emotional learning . You see these in schools ? Huh , the pride of man versus God . Even to the point where we think we can change our own bodies and create ourselves in our own image .
Right , you see these gender ideologies ? Right ? Who exactly should have power over creation ? So the cultural , the culture dominant in the West today , teaches the opposite from what we're reading here in the Gospels and in Scripture . It says the creation of new life is ours to control . More precisely , that it's women's to control .
Right , we have , you know , I have the right of my own body and this and that right . It says that we can dispose of life in the womb for any reason whatsoever , from simple whim to a preference for a boy rather than a girl . I wanted a boy . Let's destroy this baby and we'll go for another one , right ?
And it goes further , saying that we can erase life on the basis of rationales that continue to expand . In Belgium recently , a middle-aged woman was recently euthanized because she was distraught over the surgeries done and the chemicals taken and the vain , vain hope that she could change her sex .
She was seduced by the prevailing culture , which says that we can reinvent ourselves in new genders , cosmetically accessorized by surgery and chemicals . How do we get to this point , right ? How do we reach this point where our society repudiates even creation ? Let's begin in the present .
You know many voices both supportive of and opposed to identity politics have discussed what this new code of conduct is doing to us , right ? Well , we need to ask a different question .
What is the nonstop obsession with identity telling us about ourselves , about our civilization , about the wounds that are complicity with the sexual revolution and all these gender ideologies that are included , and the climate change scares and all of these things ? What happened to humanity ? By way of answer , consider this syllogism .
The sexual revolution led to the decline of the family . This weakening in the family then fueled the decline of organized religion . You know they're linked together , aren't they ? You know organized religion that tells the story of our creation in the very beginning , as man and woman .
You know what happens when family is in dysfunction , when the Amago Day , the image and likeness of God , which starts with marriage and the family , and the children and the world based on the family . So again , you know , it gets back to these three necessary societies .
You hear me talk about so much looking at a triangle shaped like a pyramid , and at the base of that is marriage and the family , and Christ and the church . When the family comes apart , you know , you start to move away from Christ and the church no longer declare , no longer proclaim the real gospel in its fullness .
You have this breakdown in marriage and the family . So these go together . So both of these losses have left these big elephant sized holes in the western sense of self . As a result , many western people now scramble to fill those vacancies with something else . So what do our young people do ?
Huh , they go to these alphabets and try to put a label on themselves . They believe in these critical race theories and all these different things . And you know what ? This is where compassion comes in . Right , because compassion comes in , because these people have grown up . These young people have grown up in this melew of no answers , of throwing God out .
The revolution robbed many of their family identity by spurring secularization and pulling them away from church , and you see what happens then to marriages and families , and so it robs them of their supernatural identity .
I am no longer a child of God , I no longer have meaning and purpose , so I grasp and grope for that , which is why swaths of the material advanced societies once rooted in European civilization now suffer unprecedented uncertainty of who they are . Ask young people today who are you ? Ask the Supreme Court Justice , the new one , you know ? What is a woman ?
No idea . So those young people , and so many people in general , are just wracked by the compound fractures of what is now a 60 , 70 year experiment moving , frantic , often furious attempts to construct their own identity . We're told to see ourselves as part of a political collective based on race , ethnicity , gender , the rest of the alphabetized brigade .
This decisive project has in turn given rise to people , sharp politicized turns of public discourse , street unrest , and the rank is unforgiving tone of much of our politics . We're all screaming at each other now , right . Well , we need to understand that humanity is running an analogous experiment on itself .
The revolution ushered in facts of life that have never before existed on the scale seen today . What are we talking about ? We're talking about billions now of children being killed in the womb , in their own mother's womb , by their own mothers , in abortion , of course . Fatherlessness on a scale that we've never seen before . Divorce like we've never seen before .
Single parenthood like we've never seen before . Childlessness like we've never seen before . The imploding nuclear family that's never happened before , because the nuclear family has has been the building block and is the building block of every civilization that ever existed . And then we have the shrinking , extended family for those children .
How many children have no siblings ? Not because of , not not because of of their parents that they couldn't have more kids or whatever , but because of choice , because they just wanted to have one child . Well , what happens to that child then ? Growing up without siblings and maybe without cousins that are close by or anything ?
All these phenomenon are acts of human subtraction . Every one of them has the effect of reducing the number of people to whom we belong , to whom people can call their own . Can you imagine security on the list of five boys ? You know we depend a lot on each other .
Outside consciously religious communities , which now amount to a call a counterculture , generational reality for most people come be summarized in one word , said Mary Eberstadt in her article mean fewer .
We have fewer brothers , fewer sisters , fewer cousins , fewer children , fewer grandchildren , fewer people to play ball with or talk to or learn from , fewer people to celebrate a birth , fewer people to visit one's death bed in a way that's not generally acknowledged .
The sexual revolution and all these gender ideologies and critical race theories have produced a relationship deficit . You see this in subtraction . You see this in the way people on the streets of Chicago and in major cities all around it's just that I'm close to Chicago just coming up and blindsiding innocent people to rob them .
And since we're social creatures and define ourselves relationally , this shortage means that we face an identity deficit . Who am I ? What is the meaning of purpose for my life ? Why were we created male and female ? How do I find happiness here on earth ? How do I find love ? This is a universal , inescapable questions now , aren't they ?
Because of this revolution , many of us have lost the material from which to construct an answer to that . We've thrown out God . All through history , we've looked to God for answers , because the human question can only be solved by the transcendent . There's a straight line . Remember what black lives matter . Just recently , you know they're Marxists .
And what do they do ? They're just looking to start revolutions . What's their utopia ? What is their end point ? They don't know . They just want to take down and tear up . And then they said they can build a utopia . Utopia , again the word , the etymology of utopia is no place , nowhere . It's hell . Is what we're trying to do .
Really , black lives matter was against the nuclear family , against fathers in the home , I mean all of this stuff . And then what did they do ? They got all this money , millions of dollars , and they just stole it . All .
The people that started this movement , you know , I mean , we're selfish , narcissistic , worrying about ourselves , grasping , taking no morals , no values . So these things likewise denied healthy relationships between the sexes within a natural family , failed even to mention fathers or brothers .
Both proclamations like this these black lives matter and other movements in academia and stuff . They signify the political identity which has become a substitute for family and communal bonds . Both are rooted in a fury at creation itself , an anger at the disruption of the natural order which the creature now claims the right to reorder . I am God .
This is an old thing . Just go read Genesis 3 again . The serpent comes in and what does he do ? He tempts Eve . No , you will not die . Did God tell you that you would die if you reject him ? No , you will not die . You will be like God's . You can decide to call evil good and good evil . This is exactly what we're doing right now .
These are the facts in our times , the essential features of the world our children are inheriting if we don't stand up and preach the gospel . Bring the gospel into their lives . At least allow them to make decisions . Now it's amazing we can't face them . You know it was sugarcoating this . No more water down kumbaya .
Have them embrace Jesus Christ himself and encounter with God . This isn't just the information , this is what's running through your bloodstream already . These desires are already in the human heart for what's true , what's good , what's beautiful , especially the beauty of love . Ask any young woman that hasn't been indoctrinated into this baloney , as many of them have .
That's why we have to be able to get to these people when they're young . And that's exactly why the Marxists , the atheists , those who reject God , want to get into the younger and younger and the national sex ed standards in Illinois that the Pritzker family is pushing down on us right now . They want to get to preschool and kindergarten Kids . Why ?
Because they want to get there first . They know these ideologies , you know in these innocent young hearts , before their parents get to them . We'll get to them , right . Well , what happens then when we meet people on the street ? What happens when we come up above these mixed up young people protesting just normal life and love ? The first imperative is compassion .
If we're to rebuild from the rubble we're surveying , we must grasp what underlies it . Mary Eberstadt wrote there's massive , often understood and unseen suffering in people . This includes the suffering of people and factions that commonly oppose the church .
It's easy , especially among young traditionalists , to dismiss the public in enactments of identity politics with interrogatory terms like there's snowflakes or cuddled millennials or spoiled brats . Well , that's easy to do , but Mary says it's also wrong to do that .
There's a common denominator beneath these bizarre rituals occurring on campuses and elsewhere , beneath an increasingly punitive social media , beneath the performative rage of black lives matter . It's indeed beneath cancel culture itself . What's beneath it all ? It is anguish .
These days , many of those people who claim to be victims are indeed victims , but not the kind of victims they thought . They're not victims of some illusion of an oppressor . The oppressor is evil , the oppressor is sin . It's not gender binary , it's not heteronormative activity , it's not structural racism . It's sin .
It's sin that we're causing and the other victims are the victims that have never heard the gospel , never heard that there's a better way to live . And some believers , exhausted by the culture wars , convince themselves that surrender to this culture is loving . That's not .
What if embracing people as they are , as only as they are , ignores their pain and fails to address that pain and the deeper reasons for it , determin' out there is real , they're never going to find an answer . Those young people will never find an answer if they go on the way they are , and I know many of them , some in my own family .
We recently wrote about various celebrities who have redefined themselves as transgender or their kids right or as non-binaries . You just see so many individuals right and if you ask them , you know what are their backgrounds like .
Almost all of them have two common harms to their selves they were their divorced children of divorced families or absent parents or violent childhood . A lot of them have been sexually abused . There are 60 million adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse in our country today . In the United States , one out of every four girls , one out of every six boys .
So that should make us wonder what if the dominant storyline about gender self-invention is all wrong . What if the cheerleading grounds out other cries ? What if childhood and adolescent trauma , combined with the radical uncertainties of family and communal life , contributes to today's gender confusion and gender migration ?
If that is so , then embracing transgenderism at any level is just wrong . Caused by medical examiners or treatments and put them on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones when they're young and I'm talking about young kids here . Why would we do that to a kid , young and puberty confused , growing up in a broken home , say , and putting them on puberty blockers ?
It's , this is a crime . The days of pretending that we can carry on as business as usual after these so-called revolutions are over . We can't convert our eyes , as it demands a social justice . This is true social justice . They tell them the truth .
Well before the pandemic , new data indicated a steep rise in psychiatric problems among American teenagers and young adults , and 2020 , drug overdoses in the United States reached the highest level ever recorded in a 12-month period . This is before the COVID problems , and it's only gotten worse .
Loneliness studies abound , spotlighting the isolation of the elderly in every western nation . In Japan , they have a whole new industry that came up that cleans and scrubs apartments after somebody dies and is in there for a few days and nobody even noticed them . There's an intensifying push for more youth in Asia .
Another consequence of the people deficit A tsunami of pornography , at which we hear nothing from the people who march under the banner of social justice , continues to destroy marriages , romance families . These young people get entwisted and abused and used . You know what ?
We should have a message for all of those to push back against God , who call us haters and mockers , mock us for our belief in God , for a belief in a higher power , for objective truth , for objective good , and to choose the good , to see the beautiful and not try to profane it .
You know we ought to say you know you're welcome to abandon your mockery , enjoying the counter-cultural activists seeking to undo some of the damage that you not only ignore but you ignite . Let's try to roll back abortion , divorce , these gender ideologies , this hatred in critical race theories and all these other things .
Right , these are the social justice priorities of our time is to put marriages back together , families back together again , and to know that on the other side of this foundation that's holding up this triangle we call our culture and the way we build our whole life and our nation that the church has been infiltrated too .
I mean all the way at the top of the Vatican . Look at the way of a pope here that , if he's not the worst pope that I've ever lived , he's certainly the most confusing pope , which is maybe the same thing .
You know , at the end of the day , you know Bishop Sheen said you know it's up to the lady to make sure that our bishops act like bishops , our priests act like priests , and you know what ? That ? The lady that calls themselves Catholic , like the Bians and the Pelosi's .
Let's call them out ourselves , because if the pope is in bed with these people , I mean , what do we ? You know ? What can we do ? Just stand aside . I have a lot of respect for that office and everybody should have a lot of respect for that office . You know God himself has initiated this .
But he also said look at , you know this will hurt a lot of people . This confusion hurts a lot of people , just when we're bringing people back into the church to say there are answers here and then to say something like Pope Francis , who doesn't push back on bishops , blessing same sex , marriage and etc .
I'm talking about in the church here , you know , nobody has to come into the church . But if you're going to come into the church , if you're going to be a shepherd in the church , then speak what Jesus Christ spoke . Otherwise , just you know , move away , move out , quit confusing people .
This religious divide of our time is between those who think they can compromise with these sexual revolutions and these ideologies and these Marxists without compromising their faith , and those who are awakened to the fact that this experiment has tried and failed . This is simply going back to Genesis 3 . You turn away from God or you turn into God .
But if you're going to turn into God , then speak the Gospels , especially if you're within the church . Right , this has failed . It's failed the institution of the church . It's failed our institutions and our country , from our universities and our government , etc . It's failed the institution of marriage . At the end of the day , it's all unraveling , right ?
This church of being nice short changes it's victims . It ignores their wounds . The church grounded on belief in redemption and a benevolent creator is who we believe in , the God who loves us , the God who created us in love , by love and for love , who wants to come into . Just like we heard at the readings , he put this vineyard together .
He asked you to come in and take care of it with him . He wants to love and nourish us and bring us into eternal life . And that's the story . And you know what Christ says . The power to do this , this faith , didn't come down to us over all of these years because it didn't work , because these encounter I'll tell you what .
When I met those young people , those young guys of Spanish or Mexican heritage , I saw the power that God does in their life . I saw the power that God does in so many people's lives . If we didn't need God , we would have thrown him off . But never in the history of mankind has man not worshiped something .
We have this in our heart to reach up and look for what's true , what's good and what's beautiful , to escape this earthly , purely earthly life . We're created as spiritual beings . Our body is formed by the soul , by the spirit .
You know , in the end , the choice before people of faith is simple we either believe that there are souls on the line or we don't , including the souls of those who hate what we stand for or what they think we stand for . Either they believe that , like us , we're created an image of God and for a purpose .
We have purpose and meaning in our life , or we subject ourselves , in all who come after us , to perpetual self-invention and those miseries that it causes . Look at the pain and suffering that we cause each other Violence , warm , war , theft , unbelievable .
So let us witness as best we can to the truth that humanity's problem today is not with creation , not with reinventing yourself . It's rather with interference in that creation by an ongoing revolutionary experiment , one that sweat and prayer and grace is the only thing that can turn this around .
Turn to prayer , go to confession , get rid of your sins this always starts with us , with the individual human heart . Receive the Eucharist . You will know you will encounter Christ At the end . Pope Benedict XVI said your faith will never be an ethical decision or some lofty philosophical idea . It's going to be an encounter with an event .
It's going to be an encounter with the person , the person of Jesus Christ , and that encounter will give you a new horizon , a new way to look at your whole life and give you a decisive direction for your life , which is eternal life . It's amazing what happens when you turn your life over to Jesus Christ . To conclude , I'll keep you in my purge .
Please keep me in yours . God bless you . Thanks for joining me , everybody . Talk to you again soon . God bless you .