#442 Reflecting upon my early pursuit of Truth in light of the work of Pope John Paul II

We kind of expect some kind of give in 2024 . We don't know what it is , and so I had . I was reflecting on my own early pursuit of knowledge how do I figure out all the craziness that's going on ? And I started to reflect back on my late teens in light of the fact then of John Paul the second's work now all these years .

Now I've been studying him intensely really for the last , say , 15 years or so , and I owe John Paul the second much for clarifying and make his sense on a lot of loose ends of my life , especially early on in the 2000s , and I sought to answer , you know , these timeless questions that human beings have pondered since the very beginning what's my identity ?

Who am I ? What's the purpose and meaning of life For my life , you know , why are we created , male and female ? How do I find joy , peace in this world and , most importantly , what is love and how do I find love that satisfies forever ? We have these , these innate . You know this isn't just information , right ? This is the DNA that runs to human beings .

But now we speak to a lot of teens and what we do here , and look at teens today . They're even more confused than we were when we're growing up . You know , we grew up in the sexual revolution , we grew up with , you know , the Vietnam Wars and all kinds of different things .

But looking at teens today , there's a lot more moving parts and they're getting these ideologies shoved onto them . So it's even a more confusing time and they're disconnected from these timeless questions , in a sense , and that they're not asking themselves this as much as they're getting pushed into them with an ideology behind them .

So they're asking the same basic questions , in essence , but then they're getting the answers at the same time and just like almost like parrots , they're just , instead of searching for the truth , they don't believe there is a truth . So everything's about feelings and emotions . So they go . You know what's my identity ?

What's he , him , they , them you know all these different pronouns and stuff meaning really to take away your personal identity and make you a part of a collective , you know , meaning and purpose in your life ? Well , there is no , no objective per meaning and purpose . It's about feelings and emotions . And maybe I can find it in an ideology . You know why ?

Were we created male and female ? Well , we were not . We were an L , a , g , a , b a , t a , q , an , I , a double S , double spirit . Plus , you know how do I find joy and peace ? Well , maybe if I'm trans , you know , maybe if I'm the opposite sex , then I can find joy and peace . Or maybe if I'm , if I'm queer , then I'll be happy .

You know , love is love . No objective truth in either . This again , it's just feelings and emotions . Even my sexuality is fluid . The big difference then between my early experience and theirs . I left home to seek the truth . I believe there was a truth Today . How would I find that in a world that pushes moral relativism in my mind ?

That didn't fly with my heart . I knew I wouldn't be satisfied in a world of moral relativism . I would go out and find the truth and love . You know , I would study philosophy , I'd sit in nature , I'd ponder this thing , but I wasn't looking for an ideology and I wasn't looking for the answers in nature .

I was looking for something that would touch my heart , and so I got into different philosophies and different philosophers and even different religions like Buddhism , etc .

But while I had left the church in my in my teens , I knew that it was just something about the person of Jesus Christ who always spoke to me , who always spoke the truth , always spoke the truth and love , and I remember reading John's Gospel , chapter one , where Jesus turns around to the disciples that had begun to follow him , just asking what do you seek ?

What do you seek ? And then he would say come and see . Come and see the answer . The answer is in me , the answer is in a person .

So this is the path that John Paul II took , and ultimately , it was through my experience of life , my search for what was true , good and beautiful , especially the beauty of love , that John Paul II was able to put into a systematic order and give me the words to be able to share that . This was a huge gift .

Seek the truth , then , is innate with us to choose the good . That's our will . Our will has given us to choose the good . Now we can choose evil , but we have no right to choose evil . What separates from the rest of creation is that that's the Imago Dei , created in the image of God , that we have reason , we have an intellect , we have free will .

This is what I want to explore today . So buckle up and I'll be right back with the rest of today's episode . I came back into the church after a 20-year absence , on my knees at the side of my brother Daniel's bed as he was dying of AIDS .

Unbeknownst to the rest of the family , danny had been sexually abused by our pastor , would later turn to drugs and a homosexual lifestyle , before succumbing to AIDS at the age of 29 . But God , as he is wont to do , turned evil into good .

Daniel was the only one of the five brothers who , at that time , had come back into the Catholic Church after his own hiatus and was receiving the sacraments , and I witnessed him there at his bedside , fight his way out of a coma to give us a simple message before he died let's pray .

His mouth was dry and I was shaking a little bit when he did that and I answered Danny , did you say let's pray ? Pray to God was his very clear reply .

In the next few minutes , I would have an experience that changed my life and put me on the trailhead of the narrow road and a journey back into the church and back into what we call the universal call to holiness , into a oneness with Jesus Christ . Now , this was a long process for me and it was a tremendous battle of the heart .

It was not something that that ever even ends in this life . It's a constant struggle and a battle , but it's always becoming nearer and nearer and nearer to God . You know that you're on the right journey .

Then , while attending graduate school in the early 2000s graduate school in theology I ran into another problem as much as I was learning early Christianity and Scripture , the knowledge didn't provide me the vocabulary or the deep , the vocabulary or the deep understanding that was necessary for a transformation of the heart that would provide the means to salvage my

marriage . In other words , I knew , in countering Christ and the sacraments and the Scripture and prayer , that I was on the right path , but I couldn't articulate that to my wife or to others . So I said , you know , I fell down to my knees . God , do you have another plan ? You know ? What are you going to do about her ?

What are you going to do about my wife ? And he sent me John Paul II who said , in essence , the gospel is not about more information , it's the very DNA that runs through your body and a soul . When your experience of life then touches the gospel with this new lens , you will have that aha moment .

He was very confident in that and so for almost really from the moment I began to study John Paul II's work , especially early on in his theology of the body , I knew it was the truth that I had been searching for my whole life , right away , answering the big questions again who am I ? What's my purpose ? Why are we created male and female ?

How do I find joy , peace , happiness here on earth ? How do I find love that satisfies forever ? That is why I could wrestle with John Paul II's early philosophical ideas that he , you know he pulls all the way through from the ancient Greeks , and this is Catholic teaching . You know it's amazing .

You know how St Thomas Aquinas I lost his name for a second there and so St Thomas Aquinas takes Aristotle and of course he applies divine revelation to that , and you realize this is innate . The reason I bring this up and the reason he did this philosophical angle , is that it starts like I did in the beginning .

Here we're all seeking those questions of the heart until this new generation came along . You know , this is the first time in the history of mankind we think this is all just subjective , that there are no answers for our heart . That's got to be a very anxious , depressing thing . No wonder we're all on pills and stuff , right ?

Well , anyways , when we wrestle with that , we find out from Aristotle , and actually both of us before that , that when you start to describe what does it mean to be a human ? Well , being a human person or a human subject is a suppositum . It's called A suppositum humanum . And this means again getting back to that .

We are a natural substance , we're up to clay , this biology , and we have , in addition to that right , we have , a rational nature . That's what that is , and a rational nature means we have reason , intellect and also free will , and so we experience ourself then as a subject .

And this is what happens as I walked out searching for the truth that not only was this in me , that we're created this way , but that if you are left in silence and contemplation , you start to think about these things .

You experience yourself as a subject different than just a definition , right P suppositum humanum , again , this natural substance , of a rational nature . Well , I start to dwell on that and think , yes , I am seeking the truth , my reason is always seeking the truth . So your reason , your intellect , when it's properly ordered , is seeking the truth .

What is the truth of things ? And it works in tandem with our free will , with our will that , like John Paul would say , is a motor to the good , to choose the good . This is how we're created , this is where we find happiness and peace and joy in our hearts . This is ultimately how we find love .

So , only in the later , this actual understanding and experiencing oneself , is that I am that subjective person , I am that one that's in contact with this actual reality of my human heart , and we cannot separate that . We have to know that these desires within us are subjectively me and I am going out to search for the truth .

So consciousness that we have a role to play this is our human dignity plays a key role in this formation of this personal subjectivity seeking the truth , one could also say , john Paul said the human's suppositum becomes a human self and appears as one to itself because of this consciousness .

Human beings are subjects , and even subjects and actos , so to speak , only when they experience themselves as subjects . So we have to spend time . What do I seek ? What am I looking for ? Experience myself as this subject , that I'm created for something more , and this presupposes this consciousness .

I think sometimes today , these phones and technology get in our way of just sitting , and this is why it's so important to be in prayer and silence . You can see what happens when we no longer seek the truth .

I mean , think about these ideologies today , especially these gender ideologies , that you can be a man , can become a woman , just because I think it and you think . Well , what is the truth of that ? Of course , that's not even true , but we can accept that and we can accept lies and we shackle ourselves .

So we are no longer free to choose what , to choose the good , because we're no longer free . We think we're free , but we're not . We're just filled with these ideologies . So a young person today needs a lot of courage to be able to break away and to be able to seek the truth on their own . What do you seek ?

Sometimes I think about it like this , and it may help you too we are a body and a soul . This is that suppositum humanum where God takes the clay , the biology , the same stuff that animals and the rest of creation is made , but then he blows into us , and so into this living soul , he blows his spirit .

This is the Amago day , where we are different than the rest of creation and that again we have reason , intellect and we have free will . Well , what happens in sin ? What happens when we gave that up ? It's like we exhaled that spirit of God , that wisdom of God , and so what happens to our reason becomes very unreasonable .

Our free will becomes enslaved with sin . So the default position for humanity coming into a fallen world is what it's sin and death . It's sin and death . That's why , when I'm speaking to young people , at the end of the day you can fall for all these ideologies , but tick tock , tick tock , life will go on . Life will go on .

Almost everybody that was ever alive , as many people that are around today . There's way , way , way , way more that are long , long gone and what we have to do is decide how will we live and where are we going with this ?

So if you take a body and a soul now with this , wa as it was , as Jesus would say in the beginning , where we're in the ambit or the meleu of God , god's spirit blown into us , living in union with God , drawing from the source of divine life and love and living that out . This is what Christ invites us back into .

So we inhale again through the sacrifice , this oblation of Jesus to the Father , where he turns to us and he gets hit again with a lance on the side and water and blood pours out , and so the water is this cleansing of this original sin , and then the Eucharist itself becomes one with Christ . He blows into us .

I remember reading and this is just off the top of my head now when Jesus walks back into the story after his resurrection and he walks into the upper room right through the door without it even being open , and he breathes on them . He breathes on them , and so here's the spirit again .

So now , filled with grace , the Holy Spirit , we now have the potential for human flourishing , the potential for human freedom . So how is this activated ? As John Paul would say , how is that activated ? We become persons of love , we go out into the world and we love , and so the call to that is this universal call to holiness . Why is this important ?

Because when you start to look around the world , people are looking for political solutions to all of the sin and evil in the world . And it is not a political at least initially it's not a political solution . It's this universal call to holiness .

Then , when my heart changes and I happen to go into politics , then I will bring this good , this truth and this goodness into politics itself . John Paul II wrote an apostolic letter called Novo a millennial inuente , and in that apostolic letter it was the close of the year 2000 and the new millennium and it was the beginning of 2001 .

So he says we're going into this new millennium and he says what do I have to say to you ? First of all , he said I have no hesitation in saying that all pastoral initiatives must be set in relationship to holiness .

Once this jubilee is over , we resume our normal path , but knowing that stressing holiness remains , more than ever , an urgent pastoral task , john Paul II points out that the rediscovery and he did this at the Second Vatican Council of the church is a mystery , whereas a people gathered together by the unity of the Father , the Son and the Holy Spirit , and it was

bound to bring with it a rediscovery of the church's holiness , understood in the basic sense of belonging to him who is in essence the Holy One , the Thrice , holy Father , son and Holy Spirit . To profess the church as holy means to point to her as the bride of Christ , the bride of Jesus Christ .

He's the bridegroom who gives himself up for his bride , and it's very important to remember this call to holiness . It comes in and through the church and through our Blessed Mother in the church , because there's a lot of sinful people in the church . We have to separate in our minds and our hearts .

We have to see the separation between those who are sinful and would like to even bring the smoke of Satan into the church , and the church herself , right For whom Jesus gave himself up , precisely to make her holy . We read that in Ephesians 5 , which I did on my last podcast .

This as it was , this objective gift of holiness is offered to all of the baptized . The Pope then draws our attention to one of the most important documents of the Second Vatican Council , lumen Gentium , which is the Constitutional Constitution on the church .

It's one of the four constitutional documents of Vatican II and one of the most important chapters deals with the universal call to holiness . If you get a time , pull up Lumen Gentium and you can get it . Just the Vatican and you can get a PDF for free . I read that chapter on universal call to holiness . I think it's a couple chapters actually .

The gift of holiness and baptism then becomes a task which must shape the whole of Christian life . John Paul said this is the will of God , your sanctification . St Paul says that in 1 Thessalonians 4-3, .

It's a duty which concerns not only certain Christians but all the Christian faithful , of whatever state or rank , are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of love . The pulp insists that such a call to holiness isn't an optional , like an optional extra for some of us , but it's intrinsic to our lives .

To ask people they're coming into the church or studying the church do you wish to receive baptism ? That's a question for catechumens to come into the church like through an RCIA program , john Paul would say it means at the same time to ask him do you wish to become holy ? Do you wish to receive baptism ? That means you wish to become holy .

It means to set before them the radical nature of the Sermon on the Mount , where Jesus said in Matthew 5 , be perfect , as your heavenly Father is perfect . Well , how do you do that ? You do that by our fiat to Jesus Christ through the bridegroom , then it comes through the church . This is our path , this is what we're on .

As the Vatican Council itself explained , this ideal of perfection must not be misunderstood as if it involves some kind of extraordinary existence possible only to a few uncommon heroes of holiness . The ways of holiness are many , according to the vocation of each individual .

I thank the Lord that these years he has enabled me to beatify and canonize , john Paul said , a large number of Christians and among the many lay people who attain holiness in the most ordinary circumstances of life . The time has come to to repropose wholeheartedly to everyone this high standard of ordinary Christian living .

The whole life of the Christian community and of the Christian families must lead in this direction . So unless we all embrace this , this cry to holiness as men and women this is a battle of each individual human heart then we bring this into our friendships , into our marriages , and then bring this past us down to our children . This is what changes .

And so this is this training and holiness . It starts with prayer . This is the when you read the signs of the times . In the midst of the secularism , john Paul said , there's a hunger for spirituality , and we see this even in these ideologies or a cry .

You know , they become like a cult that sometimes met by turning to even non-Christian religions , and I remember myself even turning to Buddhism for a while , thinking , well , maybe it's there because I walked away from the church and then it didn't go anywhere . You know , it was kind of a escaping .

You know the evils of the world , but it didn't really take me anywhere . It took that person of Jesus Christ where it really touched my heart and said , oh , here's a shepherd . That's the way , the truth and the life right . Well , the great mystical tradition of the church of both east and west has much to say in this regard .

It shows how prayer can progress as a genuine dialogue of love , to the point of rendering the person wholly possessed by the divine beloved , vibrating at the Spirit's touch , the Holy Spirit's touch resting within the Father's heart , like this lover within the Father's heart . You know the saints and the mystics .

I was just reading fire within from Father Thomas du Bay . He wrote about Saint Trisa and Saint John of the Cross , saint Trisa of Abba and Saint John of the Cross on prayer . It's amazing , and and their hearts would get to this point where you could just vibrate , just this infusion of God's love in prayer and in silence .

Well , this isn't just something just for saints , this is something for all of us . This is a relationship that God wants with us . And again , john Paul said the point of rendering wholly possessed each of us by the beloved by the divine , beloved by by God himself , and their hearts are vibrating at the Spirit's touch , resting filially .

You know this , this personal relationship within the Father's heart . This is the lived experience of Christ's promise . When Christ said he who loves me will be loved by the Father and I will love him and manifest myself to him . That's from John 14 . So it's a journey totally sustained by grace . This is that grace , that rog and that that Jesus blows into us .

And when he goes to the Father , he leaves us . What with the Holy Spirit ? We are filled , we are , we are impregnated with the Holy Spirit .

And John Paul said nonetheless , this demands an intense spiritual commitment and is no stranger to stranger to painful purifications , but it leads in various ways to the ineffable joy experienced by the mystics as nuptial union . Here he says how can we forget , among the many shining examples , the teachings ?

And now he lists St John of the Cross and St Teresa of Avila , st Therese of the Seuss , st Catherine of Siena . This important new document emphasizes that we can't take prayer for granted and of course this leads us into the sacrament . Of course we have to be able to , we have to be attending Mass and receiving the Eucharist , confession , all these things .

But again the point I'm making , we have to re-assume that Ru'ah , we have to take that deeply into itself and , holiness , at the end we have to be listening to God's Word . And so how do we do that ? We do that in Scripture , by reading Scripture , by meditating in Scripture , by praying the Rosary , which is meditating on the Gospels .

All of these things bring us there .

Holiness of course leads to love , and John Paul II points out in various ways in which love needs to be expressed in our relationships with one another , in the church , in our diversity of all the gifts that we have , and to be filled with divine life and love and then go out into the world and be divine life and love to others .

This is the one great commandment . This is what's different than in Catholicism and Christianity from the other religions , is this call to holiness and this call to love and the call to love and the truth and speak the truth and love . At the end of the day , we're even called to love our enemies .

This is much different than say even what they teach in Islam . When you start to see what's happening in countries in Europe , when we have thrown this out , when we've thrown Christianity out , now it's all coming back to us and John Paul II and many others .

But John Paul II saw this coming early , early on , as a young priest and then as a bishop and a cardon . He spoke about it very often that there was a time was coming where this was going to all catch up to us .

We throw Christianity out , we throw God out of our hearts and then Benedict XVI would say at first , when you throw God out of your life , everything seems to be going on like it did before , but slowly , slowly , slowly , it starts to change . That change is here right now . I think back . I was just listening to a talk from Father Robert Muteig .

He had , I guess , john McCurk on . Look up , father Robert Muteig if you wanted to , but anyways , they were speaking about Ireland and he was talking about this horrific stabbing of three children by a migrant , and these are young children coming out of school . And he said there's big changes over the last 30 years .

That would have been unimaginable in Ireland In 1995 , it was still the most Catholic country in the world . But since that year , they passed . In that year they passed a referendum that legalized divorce and that had not been legal until then , 1995 . Well , it went from the most Catholic country . It totally unraveled the morals and you could see what happens .

You say , well , how is that going to change anything ? It changed everything and they start to be disconnected . And you had the abuse scandals that broke out in the church through the same thing , the same roots of the sexual revolution , the smoke of Satan within the church .

And so you have marriages unraveling , you have priests that are , you know , get into these sexual abuses because everything's unleashed , everything's OK , there's no objective truth anymore . We were told , and priests were told , in the same thing , the lady was told you need to explore your sexuality , et cetera .

And it's not even good for us psychologically to repress this . Well , we all took that to heart and what happened ? It's amazing . So now , in 2023 , ireland is the most progressive country in the world . John Kirk said it's like California on the edge of Europe . It would be as if the whole US was California , more radical in many ways even in California .

In 2015 , they legalized same-sex marriage . In 2018 , they abolished the last remaining ban on abortion , and so more and more , we just threw out the faith and we're living in this pagan world now . Whatever's left of the church is very weak and progressive too . You know it's a Pope Francis church basically going on now . Open borders another Pope Francis idea .

They said one in five people was not born there , so you totally have a breakdown . Now you have a housing crisis going on . Dublin's now the most expensive city to find a home . You know it's amazing . Marxism comes in , neo-marxism comes in . All the name of helping the poor were so naive . The last thing socialism and Marxism does is help the poor .

You know inflation starts , money gets devalued . Who does that hurt the most ? The people making . You know that can barely make ends meet . So the paradox making the whole middle class , you know , especially the poorer middle class , the working middle class into poverty . It brings them down into poverty . You give up the faith and pretty soon what ?

Even what you have here on earth starts to be taken away from you . You know , divorce , children on a wedlock , abortions , etc . Now , what do you have ? It's frustration over the stabbing government policy favoring immigrants in Ireland . And again , you know , it's all strategic .

It's all being done on purpose to water down the faith , to demoralize and break up marriages and their families and parents and their kids , and then they can control the population , especially through the new immigrants that are coming in , that never had , you know , that deep Catholic roots either . And so they become , just like also socialists .

You know , I'm from Chicago . I remember Cabrini Green when Lyndon Johnson brought in the Great Society , right , and he , just he created a hellhole there , and he created a hellhole , you know , across the country with all the socialistic views and he wasn't the only one , of course , right .

And so now we have these digital currencies being pushed in everything so they can turn off your spigot to your bank accounts . So you just see this sick , evil people . Well , what is that it's ?

You know , it's the principalities and the powers of the world that the , the demonic of the world , are taking over , and we thought it was going to be no big deal . We'd give in , it didn't matter anymore . Everything's relative . Well , I'll tell you what you know . Pretty soon , your freedom is taken away , your reason is no longer reasonable .

So now we have pictures of riots in the street . You saw this just weeks ago in Ireland and Dublin , an ongoing crime problem that were never there before . So cracks are showing and there's more to come . Civilization became very uncivilized there . Because of what ? Because of sin , lack of love , lack of truth . It's becoming less civilized .

You see that in Denmark now you see that in Sweden . You know all those countries that were so progressive . It only took two generations and now they're all coming down now and they won't be there anymore . You know the , the Muslim population . There is just a something I saw on X .

It was a video of these arguments , of the people that are standing up with the Palestinians , palestinian protests and stuff , arguing with the Danish people there and just laughing in their faces and say look it , you're having one child or no children , maybe two at the most . We're having five and six children . You know we .

You know in , just in 10 years , we're going to be the majority of the population , you're going to be in the minority . There's only five million Danes there . Pretty soon it'll all be watered down , alright . So anyways , whatever you think about all those things .

The reality is that when you take the Christian faith out , you don't have a Christian country anymore and chaos is going to erupt . That's just the way it goes . So what does John Paul do ? How does he kind of end this all up ? He says open wide the doors to Christ . It's a universal call to holiness .

Open up your hearts , and that's been a key saying of the Pope for many years . The other thing he said be not afraid . Be not afraid , we are going to witness this chaos , but he said be not afraid , open the doors to Christ . You know , throughout history we've seen , we've seen moral corruption come in and and implode and take down whole civilizations .

And now we're seeing the Western civilization . They gave in to these ideologies and gave into evil . This is the battle between good and evil . John Paul would say put out into the deep , put out into the deep , be not afraid . As the new stage of the church's journey begins , he said our hearts ring out with the words of Jesus .

When one day , after speaking to the crowds from Simon's boat , he invited the apostles , remember to put out deep for a catch . And Peter said well , we had been fishing , you know , all night , but we'll do it . And when they had done this it says in Luke 5 , verse 6 , they had caught a great number of fish that almost capsized the boat .

These words ring out today and they invite us to remember with past gratitude , to live the present with enthusiasm and to look forward to the future with confidence . How , how can we do this ? How can we look forward to the confidence Everything's unraveling ? Well , jesus Christ is the same yesterday , today and forever .

You know there would be very little hope the way things are going , unless , of course , that you know we turn our ourselves over to God and so we have a chance here in the United States .

I don't know about the rest of the world , but , but you know , we are maybe no longer a Christian country per se I think it's less than 50% consider themselves Christians , but it's close enough . It wouldn't take much for us to open the living door . Who is Jesus Christ himself ?

The risen Jesus accompanists us on our way and enables us to recognize him as the disciples of the road to Emmaus . Remember that they they recognized him in the breaking of the bread . Go , go read Luke 24 again . It's an amazing story .

John Paul says may he find us watchful , ready to recognize his face and to and to and run to our brothers and sisters with good news . We have seen the Lord . We have seen the Lord . That's John 20 versus 25 . We have seen the Lord . This is what we need to do , right , hey , god bless you . Thanks for being with me . Be not afraid . Bye-bye , everyone .