Welcome to Become who you Are . Podcast production of the John Paul 2 Renewal Center . I'm Jack Rick of your host . 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 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 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 .
All right , we are back again . Linda Piper from Pennsylvania . How are you ?
I'm doing great . How are you , Jack ?
Good , good , good . So we are on number 68 . We're at it . Yeah , it was given on .
December 16th 1981 . So shortly before Christmas of that year .
Welcome everybody , you know , that's joining us . Today we are unpacking , we're on the third word of Christ , which is really where we're going , but yet we always keep in mind where we came from this model , this model of marriage and the family , which is a created Trinitarian model , a way to express Trinitarian love in the world . We know we're fallen .
We see the twisting and the distortions in the way we act , in the way we treat other people . We've lost our identity , linda , haven't we In a lot of ways , and when we lose our identity . we lose a sense of our dignity , our human dignity , and we see this like we were just talking before .
We came on with the wars and the rapes you know we saw with Hamas did to the Israelis , and it's really something right when you see human beings can treat each other like that . I mean something has gone terribly wrong , hasn't it ?
As I told you earlier , for me sometimes the level of brutality and the lack of any sense of dignity is almost incomprehensible to me .
And as I thought through it a little bit more , in our discussion we were looking at the fact that all of us , that image of God is stamped in us from the very beginning , that we were made by God in his image and likeness .
But that likeness part you brought to my attention again is God is love , and so when we walk away from that , when we lose that , we lose that likeness and it's really a rejection of God . And you know , if you kind of think , being catapulted to the opposite end , where do we find ourselves ?
Well , it was the same thing that Satan did , that total rejection of God . And in my way of thinking , it's like we find ourselves in that evil of the demons , the depths of evil , and that's the only way I can comprehend what we're seeing now in the brutality .
On the other hand , one other thought was that , with our abhorrence of many of the things we've heard , including beheading or burning of babies , we go . How can that be ? And yet , if we think about what happens in abortion and has been happening for so many years now , we have lost the sense of how abhorrent that is . So , jack , we are confused , aren't we ?
About evil and where we're at with this whole sense of our identity and our dignity . And I think that's what John Paul is constantly stressing for us in Theology of the Body .
And today's audience will take us to the flip side of all the evil and the troubles that we're seeing , the horrible activities going on in the world today , which is nothing new but has reached a new height , I believe .
And he takes us into the flip side of that eschaton , that third panel of the triptych , where we're looking at once again why we will take neither wife nor husband but will be like the angels .
And what is so satisfying , in a sense , is that he gives us a really wonderful description of the eschaton of being in heaven , of what that looks like for us body and soul .
Yeah , thank you . And so when you think about this , this love , god is love we're called into a perfect communion of love and , and that will be , that will be nourished by this vision of face to face .
We we call this the beatific vision and when we actually come into union and communion with the purely divine , you could see how far away from this we are and you could see why Christ came into . You know , I was thinking it , may ask this morning .
You know how beautiful it is when a priest faces ad orientum which which we , I did not experience today at the mass , but but but faces the crucifix , because Christ on the altar gives himself up , not not that sacrifices , and to us , it's to the Father , but yet we join in that sacrifice and he brings us to the Father . So he's pointing us to the eschaton .
Already he's opened that door for us and Just to to step back again , we could see what happens , the way you open it up , and we could see what happens when we reject him , just like Satan rejected him . Adam and Eve Fell for the temptation . If we do the same thing , we experience it amazingly right through the again .
Like you said , it's not just the murder of those babies , the murder of all these babies in abortion . We think about pornography and and , and so we think about rape and different things , but but we're a pornographic culture , and so you see how far we can fall in and to your point .
This is , this is the opposite here , what , what God wants to lead us into , which is total union and communion with him . It's so beautiful , so profound that when you see the evils in the world , hard to make sense of that .
The best way I think to do that is to step into this story very deeply , experience God's love in your life , actually take that out and become that person of love in the world . You will start to get a , that light will come into your soul . You will experience the warmth .
John Paul talks about the warmth and the light gets this from st John the cross and the mystics . You know , you experience this feeling of yourself and this is God already feeling you full of this divine life and love . And then you become that life and love in the world , in your family . You , you wouldn't , let's just go all the way back .
So I now know my identity as a son and you know it as a daughter of God . We , then I have a self dignity . That identity turns into a human dignity . I know who I am as a person . My meaning and purpose in life is to be a person of love .
This is why we're created , male and female , so that it points to that , that sacramental sign of , of the inner life of the Trinity which we take , in which Jesus is pointing us to and and John Paul , the second , is taking us to Right now , and this in this eschaton . But we start to sense it now . We have to be aiming toward that now .
If we don't , it's just so far away from us we . I think we can start to get touch with this now . We see it in our own life and love . But we will have to carry the cross through this , because this is this is a we're programs here , aren't we , linda ? This is not our final goal .
We are and , as you reminded me so wonderfully , that In my struggle of the day-to-day stuff it's like that is the cross and we're still in the fallen world and we still have to carry the cross . Couple of points as you talk about , you know , our own Personhood and our own dignity .
The pope reminds us here once again that we learned many , many audiences About how each of us it has our own uniqueness , our own unrepeatability , which we call our unique person hood , and he tells us that we will acquire it in a much more Perfect measure than we ever have been able to here on earth .
So our authentic self is that uniqueness and we will , as we make it there in that face-to-face Beatific vision , be there in our full glory . But our pilgrim journey here on earth is always trying to get closer and closer , closer to that as we Take in that love .
And for me the key point is that our response has to be giving ourselves back that total gift of self is is the response here on earth , as it will be in heaven .
Yeah , thank you , and that's why .
That's why we don't , we keep our masculinity and femininity , you know , even though we don't take on wife or husband , because and sometimes this is a hard thing to for us to get our Minds around , but the reality is that's the self-giving , that's this unity and community in this self-giving love that actually brings life into the world , this divine , life-giving love
. When we're in heaven , you know you no longer need the sign , that sacramental sign . Yet we are still going to be in this reciprocal and giving relationship with God , so intense and so beautiful that it's . It's this the marriage is just a little taste of it , but not only that . We're going to be in this inner union and communion with all of the saints .
You know , we say this a John Paul Paul points out either here I think it was here , but if it wasn't , it was very close to this in our creed , right , where we express this in our bodies . You know that we are , we say this right in the creed , that you know In communion of the Holy Spirit , the Holy Catholic Church , the communion of saints .
So we are entering into this spousal relationship of all of those who have said yes to God . So we are not , we're not .
I mean , I hope my wife is there and I hope my kids , I hope everybody's there , but we can enter into all of these people so intensely that that it's it's amazing that when we're not just staring at God , when we're staring at God , it's all of those are in communion , and communion and union with God .
So the intensity this love and the depth of this love Is is going to be wild , and you can start to experience this now . You know when , when I speak to saints and angels today in my prayer life , this gets , can get to be a very intense thing . I mean , I I Feel them and many times actually speaking to me or guiding me .
And you know , as I get older , you realize that that that we're going somewhere . If we keep this path open , our hearts open , god's bringing us along the way .
Sometimes it doesn't seem like we made these giant steps , but if we , if we look back , I think many of us on this journey can look back and say , well , you know , I may not be perfect today , but I'm looking back and we made some strides right .
God is bringing us along . That universal call to holiness is becoming saints right , and some of us are are further along than others , and and that's a great point- right there , linda that hope that universal call to holiness .
This is , this is a , this is Vatican II . They said . If there's one thing that sums up Vatican II , it's that universal call to holiness . So I'm sorry to interrupt , but that's a . That's a very important point . I don't want people to miss that .
Yeah , and so relying on the saints who have gone before us , who have been declared saints and have some wonderful writings that we can take advantage of , is certainly one way and in a more every day element of our People around us .
You know , I know people who are clearly on on this journey with me and further along than I am and they have a lot to offer me . I kind of view this experience here in our earthly state as a stepping stone , if you will , to that eschaton to the end .
So in our earthly marriages I've always heard that one of our jobs is to try to get our spouse to heaven . Right , we're supposed to be working towards that and if we do a good job hopefully we'll be successful . But in heaven we won't be need to be joined in that marital sense because we will all be joined with the ultimate bridegroom who is Jesus Christ .
So , like you said , we have to sign here on earth and we don't need that sign anymore in heaven . In my little way of thinking about it , jack , that we're kind of practicing here on earth . If in heaven we are going to be in this union with God and with the communion of saints , god is preparing us for that here on earth .
If we take it seriously that we practice , if you will , being self-gift first to our spouse in that marital union and then to family , you can see how the communion of saints if in your own little family you're all working towards that holiness and that sainthood , you do get a lot of practice in how that works and then it extends to your extended family , and
then friends and neighbors and so forth .
We were talking right before we came on about . Sometimes it's hard to get your heart around . Handicapped children say that are born handicapped , something like that . And you said something you know you can find good if you pay attention to it . Within that suffering , within those things , and sometimes it's hard .
I was telling you about a story of a deacon I met over the weekend and he was talking to me about his 40-year-old son who was very bitter with God because of this handicapped child . But I'm going to make an example or an analogy to another friend of ours , a woman who came from a . Look at , we can all be selfish . I certainly can be very selfish .
You know , we always are trying to break out and become more of a gift . Right , that's what we're called to do to sacrifice and become a gift , to turn our selfishness inside out and to become persons of love . Right , that's the definition of what we're talking about here to give yourself a way to others .
But this family was pretty selfish and they were friends of ours , but sometimes they would drive you crazy just because they always talked about themselves , everything was about themselves .
Well , they had an autistic child and you could see that autistic child is very difficult , very difficult , profoundly autistic , very difficult to raise , and I mean it's almost unfathomable how almost every moment of the day is supervising this child from not eating too much .
I mean you know you have to lock up all your food sources and one of the things is just constant eating and then it will wander out the door and just be gone , and just you have to constantly watch this young person and you could see , even though you would never wish that on anyone you could see how unselfish they've become .
I mean , they become unselfish , they no longer are able to just turn on themselves all the time , you know , and it's bringing them to this universal call to holiness . And I don't think they would have chose it .
And I'm not saying that I don't know God's will and I don't know his plan , but certainly this life will go by fast and certainly that child could and again , I'm not saying is or isn't , I don't know all that , but could be their path to holiness and their path to heaven .
But it's very possible yeah . I think that plays out in so many ways because that only allows that cross and that suffering in order to bring a greater good out of it , and that's an awesome good brought out in that family , as many families who have all sorts of problems with handicapped children and you know a whole host of other problems .
I'd like all of us to think that a simple example this poem that I read brought out , even when it comes to our little , tiny , little bitty crosses , of having to do laundry or having to do dishes every night . And the idea was , if I have dirty dishes to clean , it means that I have food that I have eaten and others do not .
You know , if I have laundry to do , it means I have clothes to wear where others are lacking , and we could take every little bit . You know that we complain about and say can I flip that over and see the blessing and have an attitude of gratitude for that ?
You see , and it begins to pull everything into place in this love story that we talk about , because while so many things seem to be big negatives , they're really constantly drawing us out of ourselves and to see the good that is in the problem and lose that selfishness , as you were speaking of .
Yes , and John Paul talks about all of this , and when he studied you know , he did his doctoral thesis on St John of the Cross . And one of the things is the San Juanista Triangle .
And if you think about the base of this triangle , with a long right angle , but on the base it's you or me standing there and we have to learn to give ourselves away as a gift to others . And then the , the , the period , dynamic case of that is the spousal love between a man and a woman , is this total gift of self that has to flow back and forth .
You know , to your earlier point , I can complain , even say , about my wife . She does this or she does that , but but we have found love , right , we have found love . How many people have never found love in their life at all ?
And and again , what happens then is this points up to the top of this triangle , which is the Trinity and exemplar of love and gift . So this , you know all of your self is , when I open myself up to this Trinitarian love , I am then able to be filled and able to bring this into this created world .
Without that , I see again that this function that goes on even within this transgender movement , linda , where you see , kids are so far away from this .
Nobody has ever shown them to the gospel , nobody has ever said you know the reason that your body's soul is living this connection is that you again , you came into a story that's a battle for your soul , and there's that Satan wants their soul .
And so what we're talking about here is when you start to open yourself up to be a gift to others , you are opening yourself up first to God to receive that gift and that Trinitarian model so that I can live it here on this earth . Well , what that does , linda , is I aim toward the eschaton . As I aim toward this is I become more whole .
I'm on that universal path to holiness and it may be slow , it may be quick , I don't know , but at the end of the day , as I start to open myself up I have to I start to see other people as people that I'm called to love , even with other idiosyncrasies . When I do that , I start to heal within myself , my body's soul starts to heal .
I invite God in so that I'm able to be a person of love . When I do that , you know we are a unity of a body and a soul , and God is the one that created us in his image and his likeness and wants to redeem us , wants to save us and wants to bring us into this eternal love story .
When we put this back together , we're standing in this broken place called the world , right now that we're in fallen world , and what John Paul is doing is stretching us both ways stretching us into the model of what it was supposed to be like in the beginning , that we were supposed to be an expression of Trinitarian love , and appoints us to where it's all
going and that we're going to actually participate in the actual Trinitarian love story . The catechism of the Catholic Church number two to one . It's so beautiful . But St John goes on even further . It says that God is love .
God's very being is love and by sending his only son , in the spirit of love , in the fullness of time , god has revealed his innermost secret . God himself is an eternal exchange of love Father , son and Holy Spirit and he's destined us to share net exchange . That's where we're going .
That's the path that we're on to share an eternal exchange of love , and that's what marriage and the family is , this tiny , created taste of it .
But I guess the thought is when in the beginning , where Adam and Eve before sin , they were fully expressing this beauty of love I mean , they weren't broken people , they were actually making this visible in the world and I guess the last thought is that we were partners with God , bringing eternal beings into God's union and communion with us forever .
We participate in that and hopefully we can get all of us into this final destination .
And that is why Jack the Pope brings us back to considering before the fall , in the beginning , where we started the audiences , when we're looking at in the beginning , when he's talking about the indissolubility of marriage because that was the whole point right , that we're participating in this and that was not meant to end .
It wasn't to fall apart as it did Christopher West in his book explaining theology . The body makes a statement here that I think would fit right in with what we're talking about .
He says if we don't believe that surrendering totally to God provides the key to our freedom and the fulfillment of our personal subjectivity , so that we can act out that call to holiness those are my words . He goes on and says we're still duped by the Father of lies , we're still doubting the gift .
If you think of all these problems the transgenderism , the newest here while there's a bit of truth where you might recognize the feelings a person has that that's their feelings , right we're still duped by the lies that we can be our own gods and change our bodies .
So you could take any one of the main issues and see the little bit of truth that's in it and then notice that the bulk of it is lies and we're still being duped .
And we have to pay attention to that because we can't turn things around and become those persons of self-giving unless we recognize that we have fallen for some of the lies and we need to discard that .
You know , feelings are fine , but feelings unfortunately go up and down like a yoyo Exactly . I mean you know , the reality is , if the person really wants to understand the truth . It's not the truth of my feelings , it's the truth of sacramental sign right in front of me that I'm created either male or female .
If .
I can't acknowledge the truth of that biological reality right in front of me , then I'm going to have a hard time with anything else .
You know , then I'm living just in my own head and , to your point , you can be blown around by the spirit of the age and I guarantee you , I guarantee you , the powers and the principalities of this world are going to get into you . You know what you're seeing right now with people . They're doing the opposite of the self-gift of love .
They are so love of self that they're imploding . They are so concerned about their own feelings . See , if my feelings now are turned in toward me , all I'm concerned about is myself and I no longer become a person of love and sacrifice for another . I will literally implode If I don't , if I'm not filled .
And then go out and express this out , move this , this inner life , out into the visible world and take action and become a person of love . You can see the power of implosion where I get so bad that I can look at my own body and think that by mutilating my own body you know , and think about the disaster .
This is when we're called into this holy communion , which is a unity of body and the soul , where the body is really an expression of the soul . Okay , now we go over two different parts , so this is how far away we can get . You know , and this is a confusing time and it's a time .
It's a beautiful time if you've heard the gospel because you have the answers . We have to keep claiming this . You know , christopher West said I remember in a class and you'll remember this to the two book ends of the Bible . Right starts with a , with an earthly marriage . You know , in an earthly paradise with the marriage of Adam and Eve .
It ends in a heavenly paradise with the marriage of Christ In the church . With that , that's all of us , and so these are the two book ends . And he said how do you sum up this whole Bible , this whole experience of marriage ? It starts with marriage , it ends with marriage . Jesus's first miracle is that a marriage feast . It's .
God wants to marry us God wants to marry us everything about us . God wants union and communion with us , whether it's expressed in marital love here on earth , or whether I give up marriage for the sake of the Of the of heaven and I and I go right into the heavenly marriage .
Whatever that is , I have to become a person of love and we find out very quickly when we try to do that . We're gonna need help and . Jesus gives us that help .
The second .
You know the first Adam . St Paul says the first Adam brought sin into the world right by his disobedience . The second Adam , who's ? Jesus , who created the first Adam ? You know it's . You know the second Adam takes that body back on and offers it to the father . It's accepted , and he pours that out to us .
So you say , well it's not fear , well it , you know we're free . And the second Adam came and he redeemed us . Just like we inherited sin and we didn't have anything to do with it , we also would . The sin was taken away and we had nothing . So the first Adam brings it in , the second Adam brings it out , basically .
But we're in this historical place where we have to and that's what's confusing because the evil around us , unfortunately , has rejected God and and this isn't the first time right .
Yeah , and what a blessing for us to be alive at this time , when it is after . Christ has been here and Redeemed us , and our job is to Accept that redemption , and we've talked many times on how the sacraments is a major way of accepting that Redemption , that grace that is open to us .
I'd like to go back to a point when you had said earlier that of course we are body and soul and we have a disconnection .
Now that is so great that when Our body is designed to express our soul , to express the inner person , to express love , when that connection and that understanding is so cut off from each other that we see the mutilation of our bodies , to a sense , that is , you know , something that many years ago I never would have even been able to consider .
And yet here it is and we're seeing it . To me that speaks to what a Bad state , if you will , that the soul is in , that our souls are in , that .
You know , darkness has so Infiltrated our souls that the the darker our souls become , the less we are able , with our bodies , to express that love , and so it comes out being expressed as pretty much the opposite of love , through all the Mutilations and distortions and perversions that we see happening . Does that make sense ?
Yeah , but it and it shows the , the inner life of your soul . You know when you can , when you can do these acts . This is a reflection of who you are and you have some work to do and you better do it quick . Let's end with this . This is today's reading . This is from the gospel of Luke that I'll really turn our attention to .
That Jesus said to his disciples now listen to this . When I read this , jesus is saying look it , I'm coming back at some point . You better be ready , and that's what I think we're all sensing now .
But whether the second coming , you know , we don't know when that's gonna be , and Jesus tells us , you know , not even to try to guess exactly when that is , but for me and you , linda , and for the rest of us , this is just a moment in time , and so we have to be prepared and right , even in here . He's going to talk about his return from a wedding .
He doesn't again . When you could read through this kind of fastest think of all , he was at a wedding . He could have been at Walmart . No , no , no . Jesus says a wedding , because it's a wedding . This is where he's bringing us and he's returning from that wedding . Right , the marriage of the lamb .
He's returning and he's coming down to to receive us , and we better be ready . So here's how it goes . These are said to his disciples gird your loins , light your lamps and be like servants who will wait their masters return from a wedding , ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks .
Blessed are those servants whom the master finds village , vigilant on his arrival . Amen , I say to you . He will gird himself , have them recline a table and proceed to wait on them . And should he come in the second or third , watch and find them prepared in this way , blessed are those servants .
So whenever he comes , linda , we don't know exactly when it's going to come , but he's coming from a wedding feast and he's coming to bring us to that wedding feast . And this is the whole story here , and I'll tell you what . You know , it's a wild story and it's a beautiful story .
But we all know this in our own desire to love and be loved , and that desire , when I married my wife and she married me , that that desire was like you said . It was it that in desire Ability , that that desire was for eternal love . And so that's why Jesus says we shouldn't divorce one another , because God would never divorce us .
He's coming after us now , we know , we fall into a broken world and there's going to be plenty of of Relationship problems , but at the end of the day , in the beginning it was not so . So watch for the bridegroom . Watch from coming and in the meantime , you're going to find a better life . That's the . That's the bottom line right now .
Wonderful summary . We're here to be gifted , to enjoy the gift of the other person , and that will be totally fulfilled when we join the bridegroom .
Yeah , yes , yes , yes , all right , thanks everyone . Find somebody to be kind to , and not only that , find somebody that really needs you to do something for them .
Right , stretch yourself out , give yourself away , you know , carry your cross and I know many of you probably do , and easier said than done , but that's why we have grace , that's why we have Christ . I tried doing it by yourself , and , and , and , and . It may be even impossible . God bless you . Thanks everyone . I .