#444 Did you dream of an average marriage? Nor did anyone I have ever met.

I give presentations , as you probably know , all across the country , from Anchorage , alaska , the South Carolina and all points in between , but one of my favorite talks is this it's gift of self . It's for engaged couples , but if you're not an engaged couple , don't tune this out , because really , at the end of the day , it's talking about love . What is love ?

And and and the marriage of the land where we're all going ? So this is for everybody . It's a game changer for marriages . It's a game changer for everyone . When you understand this , buckle up and get ready for the rest of today's episode .

One of the things I'll ask engaged couples getting ready to be married now in the Catholic Church is before you met , think of a time before you met and everybody listening to this . If you're married , think of a time before you met your spouse . What were you looking for ?

What were you looking for what makes you go up to the altar , you know , and get married , you know , in this world , of this crazy world , and be open to life and love , faith , hope and charity . Who dreamed I'll ask them of an average marriage ? Put your hand up . Who dreamed of an average marriage ? Nobody . What do you guys want ?

You want above average right . So why do so many people get average ? And then how ? This is incredible love that you're feeling today . How , in so many couples and so many divorces , how does that love turn into dislike for one another and then even in a form of hatred , with these messy divorces ? And what are the divorce statistics ?

I think they're a little less than 50% now . But if the people that stay married and this is a little bit more of a subjective number , you know it's about a little less than 50% of them that stay married really are happy in their marriages . So what's going on ?

Well , one of the biggest problems is , in essences , that love has been reduced down to a feeling , to emotions , even a feeling of romance a lot , of , a lot of young women will tell me and then that's been further reduced down to what ? To sex , to an act . What's the problem with feelings and emotions . The feeling .

The problem with feelings and emotions is that they go in and out like the tide . You know , you've heard of the honeymoon period , right , when everything your man does is perfect . It's kind of cute when he's so comfortable , he's comfortable enough to clip his toenails on the couch and you can't get enough of each other .

You know , here's what happens when we fall in love . Our brain gets a rush of these feel-good neurochemicals that causes these feelings of romance and intense love . But unfortunately , naturally it lets our brain bathe in these feel-goods for about 18 months In the beginning .

We all get this rush neoprenephrine , it's called dopamine , serotonin , other things that gives rise to this euphoric feeling . But the catch is that nature only gives us about 18 months worth of these chemicals and then they start to diminish . Though this is not supposed to be a flame that went out , it's like a rocket .

If you think about a rocket on a launch pad , a three-stage rocket , and that rocket's starting to fire up and the fire is starting to go and the rockets are going . And what happens if it doesn't move off that launch pad ? What happens if it doesn't know where it's going ? What happens if it's just feelings and emotions .

It sits there and sits there and finally all those neurochemicals , just like fuel and a rocket , they just give out . Or the rocket starts to blast off and it loses its first stage . But then what happens ? It takes just a little bit longer . In five years from now , 10 years from now , we can't take it anymore . And a rocket crashes here and crashes there .

We see this all the time , don't we ? Well , these are the same chemicals that are released when viewing things like pornography . That's not authentic love , my friends . You know social science has done a lot of work on this Counselors who meet with hundreds and hundreds of couples . They agree with this , science agrees with this .

So how do we keep this connection going Over five , 10 , 30 plus years ? You know these couples that have that chemistry going and they're still so much in love . You look over and you go oh , I wish I had that in my life . Right , the one principle that they all talk about , the overarching principle , and this is social science .

Again , social science hates when the Catholic Church has this right . So they're not going to say it unless it's they have to . But the overarching principle was what it's ? A decision of the will .

That love isn't this feeling that you have , because we all know that feelings come and go , that they ebb and wane with the quality of the relationship , the state of your mood , with all that's going on in your life . The feelings we have are like waves , tides in , tides out .

Love , on the other hand , it's the decision you make on a day-to-day basis that's going to that you are going to be a person of love and that you're going to show up for your spouse as a person of love in your relationship every day . An interesting thing is that once you do show up and put in the effort , the feeling of love follows .

That See , the average person wants to wait until they feel loving and then they act loving . They want to feel loving to give the person a hug . They wait until they feel loving to get the person to compliment or want to spend time with that person , when the reverse is actually true . When you act loving first , then the feelings of love follow .

Well , in today's toxic culture , feelings and emotions now have been reduced to an act . Love has been reduced to sex . But if , if sex was the most important thing , if really led to love , who'd be the happiest Persons in the world ? Who's having the most sex porn stars , prostitutes Are they the happiest people that you'll ever know ? No , well , what are they ?

Usually on drugs , alcohol , why ? Because the opposite of love is using someone , seeing them not as a person to love but as an object to use . And when you use someone , and these prostitutes and these porn starts are getting used over and over , over and over again .

Finally , your heart can't take it , because we were made for more and you have to deaden that pain within your heart . Today we're approaching almost a hundred percent of young men have been exposed to hardcore pornography . This is hardcore pornography . This isn't .

You know , some , some old , some old clip out of Playboy magazine with a with a woman and a , not a negligee . This is hardcore porn and it's really sad . It's ruining relationships . It's really the opposite of love . You know , when you think of of of young women , he's when I look out at in an audience , when that of engaged couples .

I look at those , those women , and I think you know when they were little girls , they dreamed of this day that they were going to get married . They , they had princess dresses on . You know , I remember . So I have two girls . I have two girls and a boy .

But the two girls I remember when they were young they would dress up , you know , and their princess outfits .

And now I have seven Children , grandchildren , six of them are girls , and one after another of those girls dresses up in that princess outfit and and I remember this one little one came to me , says papa , you want to see a different dress than this one ? I said sure .

So she goes and she comes back out with a different colored princess dress on and now she's got a pillow Stuffed in there . It makes it look like she's she's got a baby there and she's rubbing her tummy . She says , look at , I'm gonna have a baby someday , I'm gonna meet a man and I'm gonna have a baby .

Right , they dream of this and men , all that dreaming . She's dreaming of what her prince , her prince , it's going to to come and whisk her on that white stallion and they're gonna go off into the sunset , right , and she is going to say yes to you .

You got down on one knee and she said yes , this is , you know , you're her , you're her , your knight in shining armor . Sometimes , even today , I get a tear , kind of an ache in my heart when I think that my , my not so young wife today Dreamed of me . Is that Prince charming ?

And how many times I did not realize that and I did not stand up for her . I mean , I did lots of times too , but I could have been better . Huh , because as a young man I remember , you know , men have three core things in their heart that life is going to be an adventure , that it's going to be a battle .

And it's going to be a battle for beauty , especially the beauty of love . We learned that later on . I was the oldest of five boys . I used to in the city . I , we used to go out to this alleyway and I used to lead my brothers on and Onto this adventure . Every Saturday , in any time we didn't have school and we were going to go on this adventure .

We always knew it was going to be a battle . We had our , our plastic guns and our and our wooden swords and we wouldn't leave home without those things . We knew it was going to be a battle .

One day , as we're getting ready to go out the fence I'm unlocking the fence to going out into the alleyway we hear these voices , angelic voices , beautiful voices , and we look over and it's these two twin sisters , and they were beautiful .

I wish just at that age when my heart started to open up innocent of course , right , but but open up to just the beauty of of this , this power of these two young girls , maybe two , three years older than we were , and it just took our breath away . You got to remember those types of things . Huh , it's amazing beauty in that .

And this is our hearts right . Our hearts were made for love . So why do so many of us lose that dream ? Why do we settle for average so quick ? How did ? How come divorce right again ? How come love turns into dislike and even hatred ?

I remember there was a time at what three children , my wife and I , were married maybe 12 , 13 years and and it looked like it was the end was coming . And I got down on my knees and after I've been away from the church for many , many years and I said God , do you have a plan ?

I think God , you know , look down at me with a little smile , I know today , looking back , he did and he said yeah , jack , I have a plan . You're not following it very well , but it wasn't long before . After that , and and I was turned on to John Paul II , he's theology , the body .

And it brings you back to those big questions that these are timeless questions that mankind , men and women , would ask themselves up until modern times , where we just something happened . We have like a veil in front of us . We've lost touch with the reality of our own hearts , of who we are . But these timeless questions that people are so confused about today .

Who am I ? What's my true identity ? Listen to young people . They have no idea . What's the purpose and meaning of life , of my life ? Why were we created male and female ? How come there's only two sexes and not 26 different genders or whatever it is now today , maybe a 72 ?

I guess the last time I read how do I find joy and peace in this life here on earth ? How do I find love that satisfies forever ? I remember when I came back into the church Reading the first gospel of of John , so beautiful , read chapter 1 and I'm just gonna sum it up off the top of my head .

But John the Baptist is baptizing near Bethany , bethany , near the Jordan River , and he sees Jesus come down . Now he , he figures out for the first time who Jesus really is and he says it's a lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world . He's so exuberant and he does it again , that two of John the Baptist disciples start to follow Jesus .

After just a little while , jesus turns to them and says what do you seek , what do you seek ? And then they said to him rabbi , where are you staying ? And he said come and see . Come and see . See . No lectures , no , nothing . No moral teaching . What do you seek ? So what does Jesus know that we don't ?

Why is he so confident that if we , if we , he that he knows what we seek , what do you seek ? And then you're gonna find what you seek just by coming and seeing what he does . Why ? Because he put that into our hearts . This is the author of the big story that we came into . This is not about more information . This is the DNA that runs to our blood .

We're created to love and be loved . And here's the author of this love story that says what do you seek ? Well , he knows what we seek . I mean , you know , did anybody listening here today create the universe ? Didn't anybody write the big story that we came into ? Put the stars in the sky , separate again the land from the sea ? No , you came into a story .

It doesn't dawn on us . Sometimes we came into a story that ready , had a beginning , was already going someplace . We came in at a particular point of time , in a particular place in history and here we're meeting the author of the story who says what do you seek ? Because he put that dream for something more in our hearts . That dream for what ? For love .

John Paul the second said it's when your experience of life and that deep yearning , burning desire of your heart come together and then it's touched by the gospel at a particular place , in a particular time , where you have that aha Moment and that gives you a new horizon , a new way to look at the world and a decisive direction for your life .

But if we don't , if we don't have that , then we just meander around . You know it could be like a , like a movie . You got to 45 minutes late . You ever get to a movie really late . You don't know how it started . You know you're in a movie but you're trying to catch up to the story and you don't know how it ended yet .

So you're kind of stuck in here in this limbo . Sometimes beautiful things happen in life , don't they ? You fall in love , you get that job that only you could do . But then comes along a little time and tragic things happen in life .

You fall out of love , somebody falls out of love with you , something happens to you , happens to your spouse , you get sick Lots of times . Things , things , they happen . Right , you think about that job . Oh my gosh , that job I loved . If I have to go to that job one more day , I what happened ?

Well , jesus was asked this about divorce and relationships in Matthew 19 . And what he's going to do ? He's going to bring us back to the beginning of the story . Here's the author of the story . He knows the story well and in this passage where the Pharisees came up to Jesus and they're going to and they tested him this is from Matthew 19 , verses 3 to 8 .

And they said to Jesus is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause ? Well , you're going to listen here . Jesus is not going to limit himself to that conversation , because he's going to go further in . He wants to show them the model . So he answers have you not read that ? He who made them from the beginning ? He points back to the beginning .

He's going to do that twice here . He's going to point back to Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 to the beginning of the Bible . He's the author of the story . He knows the story . Have you not read that ? He who made them from the beginning made them male and female ?

And he said for this reason , a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one . They were no longer two but one . Why ? Because God has joined them together and let no man put us under , let no man separate them .

And then they came back to Jesus and they said well , why did Moses command one to give her certificate of divorce and to put her away ? Why did Moses allow divorce in the Old Testament ? He said to them ah , it was for the hardness of your hearts that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives , but from the beginning it was not so .

Well , of course Jesus knows he's talking to fallen men , but he's pointing to the model . He's pointing to the model before sin in Genesis 1 and 2 . So the most important thing you'll ever read in the Bible is Genesis 1 and 2 . And I'm going to read just a few verses for me from Genesis 1 versus Genesis , chapter 1 , verses 26 , 28 .

And you think about this ? This is like the opening scene from the Lion King . You know , god has been creating for five days . He's got everything ready , he's got the Garden of Eden perfect , and now he's going to draw back into himself . And he's going to draw back , almost like he has a selfie on the Trinity itself and says , okay , are we ready ?

We got everything ready . Now we're going to flip the selfie . And we're going to flip the selfie . God is an eternal exchange of love and we are going to bring love into the world . The essence of who we are , god , is love . And how are we going to do that ?

Well , this is what Jesus says okay , you got the opening scene from the Lion King , everything's ready . Let us make man in our image , after our likeness . God says Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea , the birds of the air and the cattle , over all of the wild animals and all the creatures to crawl on the ground .

Then God created man in his image , in the divine image . He created him . How , as male and female , he created them . God blessed them , saying to them be fertile , multiply , fill the earth and subdue it . Amazing how we're created the Amago day , in the image and likeness of God . Who is love . Now , what was the first commandment there ?

The first commandment was be fertile , multiply , fill the earth and subdue it . What's God talking about there ? He's talking about human sexuality . He's talking about the marital sexual act . See , you could talk about God and sex in the same sentence . See , god thinks it's beautiful . It's us that's twisted and distorted it . Sex and the marital act .

When done properly , it's the nearest thing to an outer body experience that we're gonna ever have . You transcend this earthly life almost . But what happens if you don't understand what love is ? You become an addict , a sex addict , using and abusing or or or you move the other way and you become a lover . Huh , the Amago day .

You know you can live without sex , but you cannot live without love . Human beings were made for love . Think about what we know about the Trinity the Father pours himself into the Son . The Son receives that love and it's so beautiful and profound it comes out in the form of a person . We call that person of love the Holy Spirit and think .

I thought about this as I read this . I thought back to our first child and that child was born and they handed her to me to hold and I thought after my niece stopped shaking . I thought back . You know , nine months before that I poured my love into my wife . My wife received that love and it was so beautiful and profound .

It came out in the form of a person . We call that person a child , a zygote . That zygote was , that single cell exploded into being you , me , everybody . That child , our first child , jessica , was never a sperm or an egg . As soon as they touched , it's explodes into this one cell wonder and this little industrial plant of live .

It has all of the DNA that Jessica needed to grow up . He had their eye color , it had her body shape . It had the type of basic personality she was gonna have All of these things right Toenails and kidneys and a heart . Everything was gonna be . Everything was in that one cell .

It's amazing , amazing , amazing , you know , with these gender ideologies and stuff , and they're going to wake up one day and decide that they're gonna . They're a man from a woman , a woman to a man . This is in each cell . They have no idea the power and the beauty behind this . You think about the beautiful sexual act that we're entering into .

John Paul said to a group of men at a seminar one time . He said before you make love to your wife , take your shoes off because you're entering unto holy ground . The marital act is this expression of God , of trinitarian love .

See , in the beginning we swam in the orbit or the ambit of God's beautiful love , and so we were drawing from that love and giving that to one another . But now , in a fallen world , now we need help , right , we need grace .

John Paul's whole thesis on all of this is that our bodies , in fact our bodies alone , make visible the invisible , the spiritual and the divine , pointing up toward the trinity . Our bodies were created to transfer into the visible reality of this world that mystery hidden from all eternity in God , and to be a sign of it .

Well , what is that mystery hidden from all eternity in God ? That we're a sign of God is an eternal exchange of love . And if you read the Catechism , number two , two , one , it outlines this so well and it begins with the first letter of John , not the Gospel of John , but the same author , but the first letter of John .

And in there you're gonna see that Jesus is the author of the story , the logos , the eternal logos . In there you have this eyewitness of John . After the resurrection , jesus walks into the upper room because the disciples and the apostles are hiding there because of fear of the Jews they think they might be .

Next , jesus comes into a locked door , comes right into the door and he says peace , be with you . And he breathes on them .

He breathes this Holy Spirit , he breathes this love , this ambit back into them and you hear John said this is Jesus , who we've heard with our ears , who we've seen with their eyes , who we looked upon and we've touched with our hands , and we've come to understand that God is love , not that we love God , but that God loved us first .

Marriage , then , is a sacramental sign in the world . See , everybody's created an image of God . That means we have reason , we have an intellect , we have free will , we're called to love and be loved . But the fuller sign of that is marriage and the family . This Trinitarian story actually brought out into the created world . It's so beautiful .

In the beginning that was the only sacrament before sin came . It was the primordial sacrament . It was the sacrament of God's love showing forth through the whole world . Now , jesus said this twice right in the beginning . So that was Genesis one .

He also pointed to Genesis two when he said for this reason , a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one . So let's read Genesis two together . In Genesis two you're gonna have three original experiences , and this is our experience of life .

First one when I'm reading this , try to look for this original solitude , original unity and original nakedness without shame . These are all experiences that we had before sin into the world . But first we're gonna stop at the fourth original experiences , which is the boundary before the man of innocence , the original man before sin .

And then , right on the boundary , this tree of the knowledge of good and evil , where Adam and Eve fell . And then we have historical man , which we've all come into , which is the man after original sin . So let's go to that boundary , let's go to that tree for a moment . And so that tree , because in an essence we all stand before that tree .

Now , today , we've normalized the fall , we've reduced even love down to a feeling and down to an act . But God knows that you were created for much , much , much more right . So at that tree we have to decide are we gonna become persons of love or persons of lust , persons of humility or persons of pride ? A gift to others or grasping and taking .

We have to decide . You know , when I was a young guy , my brothers and I loved Elvis . Elvis , you know , he had the looks he was . He was older than us , of course , but he had the looks . He had the guitar , he , he was an actor , you know he had all the girls . And so , you know , in your heart you go , oh man , I want to be like Elvis .

We couldn't wait for his next songs to come on or his next movie to come out . But what happened to Elvis ? See , I love to study people that have it all . You could study people that are , you know , working their way up , and that's most of us right trying to , you know .

But there's a problem with that , because we always think that it's gonna be the next thing I accomplish , the next grade , the next job , the next lover , the next whatever . Then I'm gonna be happy . Well , how about if , at a young age , like Elvis and some of these stars , have it all as far as is Manmade , materialistic , consumeristic stuff ? We have it all .

We got the girls , the money , the talent , whatever . And then what happens if you're not happy ? This is what happened to Elvis by the time , elvis the king . Right by the time he was in his late 30s , he was already washed up to a large extent . He was already a dip , addicted to opioids , addicted to painkillers .

What happens to a human heart when you , when you have it all and you're still not happy , you can't take that pain and you start to deaden yourselves . Right , see , he came into the story 45 minutes late , but nobody ever told him how it began or where it's going , or if it did he chose .

You know , it's very difficult when , when you have all the stardom and the money and etc . Etc . It's very difficult to get past your own pride . Right , he was so insatiable , right , these desires of our hearts for love , to be loved , and these passions , desires , these are eternal desires . These will burn you up if you don't understand where they're headed .

And so what happened to him ? He started to try to fill himself in the finite world with finite things , but these are infinite desires . And so he became addicted to junk food . Can you believe it ? He became addicted to junk food .

And so by the time he was 38 , 39 , he started to look heavy and out of shape , and you could see that he was even for getting lyrics to the songs and different things . By the time he was 42 he was gone , he was dead . The king of rock and roll , right ? I know young women , quite a few of them actually . They got married .

You know , in my life and other people's life we say , you know , don't marry that guy , that guy's a loser . But they don't see it , you know it's .

It's because love has been , you know , given over to this feeling , and if it feels like love , we don't really know what love is , and then we sexualize it right away , right , I was talking to this young girl after she started to learn theology , the body , and I said now , looking back at what love actually is , she goes oh my gosh , it felt like love and

then it didn't . I thought sex was love and then it wasn't . And now I know why . So there's a sadness there because of the waste and the hurt you caused yourself and other people . On the other hand , then there has to be something good about that , because finally we can break out and we know what our hearts are .

You're gonna have to open up that beautiful heart again to this amour of God's love . See , we can't give what we don't have . You know , we have to receive . We have to be open to receive divine life and love . It fills us . God Jesus came in and he breathed on us because we exhaled that at the tree .

And now we Be called back into the story again , into this we're still . You know , we can't go back to original innocence . We came into a sin for world , but Christ has overcome sin and death right . So now let's back up a little bit more .

We're gonna talk about the three original experiences before sin , the , and so I'm gonna read you from Genesis , chapter 2 . This is verse 15 , starting at 15 . I'm gonna read about eight or ten verses . The Lord God took the man , and now this is before Eve . Now , right , but this is even even Adam . Adam just means mankind .

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it . And the Lord God commanded the man , saying you may freely eat of every tree of the garden , but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat , for the day that you eat of it you shall die . Wow . But now you think about this .

Adam has everything . Everything's been given to him . He's just . What is God saying ? He's saying you cannot take true love and turn it into something else . Love is love . It's a gift of one person to another . It's just falling into this union , a communion in the ambit of God's aura of love or the essence of who God is .

You cannot take truth and turn it into falses . You cannot take good and turn it into evil . That's it . Everything else is yours here . And then the first time God says of all this creation over six days , it's the first time you're gonna hear him say what ? Then the Lord God said it is not good . For the first time , it is not good . What's not good ?

That man should be alone . I will make a helper fit for him . So , out of the ground , the Lord God formed every beast of the field , every bird of the year , and brought him to the man to See what he would call them and whatever the man called every living creature , that's what its name was .

The man gave names to all the cattle , to the birds of the ear , to every beast of the field . But for the man there was not a helper fit for him . So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man .

While he slept , he took one of his ribs closed up its place with flesh and the rib which the Lord God had Taken from the man , he made into a woman and brought her to the man . Then the man said this at last is the bone of my bones and the flesh of my flesh . She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man .

Therefore , a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife and they both become one flesh . And the man and his wife Were both naked and were not ashamed . So beautiful . So these are the three experiences . So this is all of our experiences . You are created .

You came into to the world , like we said earlier , in a particular place , in a particular time , and God's got the story there . Now we have to learn the rest of the story . He gave you reason so that you could search for the truth . He gave you a will so that you can choose the good . Now you don't have to choose the good . You can choose evil .

But you have no right to choose evil and you're gonna ruin your life if you do . And here's the problem when you come into the world , you not filled back with that grace . You're like trying to run around like on flat tires . You've exhaled that ambit of love and we're trying to . We try to fill ourselves . So we start to grasp and try to take right .

So now , where's this original solitude come from ? So original solitude ? So what does Adam discover ? God has him discover what . Oh , I'm different than the rest of creation . I'm there , I look around , I have reason , I have free will , original solitude that they . God is alone with man , man is alone with God , in other words , as rational beings .

Now God wants to take him further . He says look at , truth is truth . You can't take good and turn it into evil . You can't take evil and turn into good . Otherwise , everything is here for you . Now , come with me , I have something else to show you . Okay , so you can see Adam coming with God . And he says okay , name all the animals .

What is Adam a discover there ? As he's naming the animals , ooh , I'm different even than all the other bodies , right , all the other mammals , all the other bodies . And then he says there's no , nobody there for me . Everybody , everyone has a helper , everybody has a soulmate . I don't have one . And as soon as he realizes this is , what does God do ?

He puts him to a trance . And and what does he do when he wakes up ? He takes right from his side the essence of who he is . Now it's separated . He creates you into two . Why does he do that ? So that we can be a gift to one another , sacramental sign of God's love into the world . And what does Adam do when he sees Eve ?

He sees her for the first time . It's like when I saw those twin girls right coming down the alley . He goes oh , bone on my bone and flesh on my flesh . But there's even more because as he walks toward her , what does she see ? No lust , no selfishness , knows no sin in the world .

And they start to talk and they start to laugh and they Start to walk around the garden and pretty soon they realize this is the helper that's made , they're made for one another . Their bodies even compliment one another and the two Become one and they are naked with no shame , because there's no sin in the world . How beautiful of that right .

And how sad is Pornography when you start to think about that . Instead of this beauty of love , we start to use one another . That's why in In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus and in Matthew 5 , verses 27 , 28 , he says have you heard that it was said you should not commit adultery .

But I say to you that everyone who even looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart . What's he getting to ? He's talking about the heart . Now , that hardness of heart again . And even his apostles thought oh my gosh , that's got to be difficult . What do you mean ? We can't lust , we can't know .

He says no , because you'll change your heart . And he said there's a way out of that , don't get Discouraged . He says , because I didn't come in here to manage your sins . I came in here with wah , with the power , with the power . See , here's the reality .

When you came to this tree and we all come to the tree again we come there with original sin off of us . If we've been baptized , but now we got to live it out but if we choose to reject God there and many , many people do today , right , what happens ? We have a body and a soul that's exhaled , and what's the default position then ? Sin and death .

Sin and death . That's what . That's what's there for us . God gave us everything . He just said all you got to do is you got to trust me , you got to walk toward me , because I'm a person of love . You'll know this , you'll experience it , your heart aches for this already , and then you'll see it in action in your life . So a body and a soul .

Then then you know I accept my fiat , I accept Jesus Christ redemption on that cross . You know where the blood and the water poured out and I say yes to that and the water rents is me in baptism and confession , and the blood is the Eucharist and I actually take him into my body .

And then what it happens when Jesus was going Remember ascending to the father he said it's good that I go to the father . In his resurrection he says that's good that I go to the father , because then I will send you the advocate , or the father will send you the advocate , the Holy Spirit , the person of love who will reside within your hearts .

And now my body and soul again infused with that Ru'a , the Holy Spirit . Now I have the potential for human flourishing , the potential for human freedom , freedom . For what ? Freedom is ? Always for a reason , and it's freedom to love . And Then I have to act on it . To be efficacious , to make it work , to have it come into my life , I have to act .

I can't just sit on that I have to become a person of action . I have to receive love and I have to become a person of love . Go out and the next person you see , be kind to them , be generous , compassionate , go to the poor , the prisoners , etc . But especially with your spouse or those people close to you , around you .

We're called to this relationship with God . He's the only one that's going to fill us up . It's always going to him and then be filled with him and then just the next person you see , the next Opportunity , you see , you live that out . When I'm speaking to young girls , so often They'll start to cry over this , because they've all been used and abused .

They've all fell for the lie that love is a feeling or a romance . And then , if it's , if you , if you feel good about it , then you sexualize it and you use one another . It's called utilitarianism . You know , it's an old Bob Seger song I use you , you use me and nobody cares . Well , I used to love that song until I realized what it meant .

They start to cry because they know they've been used , but now they also Critears of joy because they know that love is something more and their heart was right .

Young men will respond with those three core things when you understand , when you tell them that adventure You're on , that battle is for purity of heart , that battle is has to be fought on the battlefield of your own Individual heart first .

And it's a battle for love , a battle to open up your heart to purity so that God could come in and purify those desires . Not to get rid of those desires , not to push those desires down God gave them to you but to open them up to be purified , so you can become a personal blog .

I talked to young men sometimes and I say I would do anything for my girlfriend , I would take a bullet for her , I would die for her and I'd say , well , you may have to , but chances are you won't . But I'll tell you who you do have to Protect her from for sure , a hundred percent from yourself . You have to protect her from you .

Would you take a sword in the heart to allow God to purify your heart for her ? That's the whole thing , you know ? I'm gonna finish this you with this . You can sum up the whole Bible in five words God wants to marry you . Everybody listening to this , god wants to marry you . He created marriage to be an icon . Marriage isn't going to last forever .

People get sick , things happen , right . We're all tick-tocking down and it's okay . We can allow . Even in our pain and our suffering , we can allow Christ to come into those aches . Anytime you heart aches , invite Him into that ache , into that brokenness . He will come in and he will fill it .

The only way you really know is when you say yes , you fall down in your knees and you say yes , I accept that I'm tired of anxiousness and depression , I'm tired of all these things . Come into my life , fill me up and allow me to become a person of love . It's a battle . It's a battle , but Christ is here to help you win the battle .

He will carry the cross , but he won't do it alone . You have to carry your part of the cross too . But then you find something spectacular . You start to come alive and as that love flows through you into you and you become a person of love in little things , all around the world , whatever you do , whoever you talk to , you become that person of love .

The whole Bible can be summed up in five words God wants to marry you . God wants to marry you . Think about this . It starts out in the book of Genesis in an earthly paradise with the marriage of Adam and Eve . It's an icon , a sacrament . The points to what the last book of the Bible , which is the book of the revelation .

Read the last few chapters of that . Read the whole thing , but the last few chapters . The marriage of the Lamb this is where we're going right now . This is where one points to and they're linked together . One fills the other . One is the icon that points to the other . At the end of the day , the only marriage that's forever is the marriage of the Lamb .

Smack in the middle of the Bible is this beautiful erotic love poetry called the Song of Songs . The Mystics and the Saints wrote more about that little book and they wrote more things about that than all the other books in the Bible put together .

It's amazing because it gave them the vocabulary to express the type of love that they felt for God himself In that . Let me just read you a little part of that , because think about this for all of us , especially if you were getting married and the way you look at your wife .

It says in songs , in the Song of Songs , chapter 4 , verses 9 , you've ravished my heart , my sister , my bride . You've ravished my heart with one glance of your eyes . How beautiful is your love , my sister , my bride . Why does he call her sister first ? Why does he call her sister first ?

Because we have a common heritage with all our brothers and sisters in the world and before he sees her as a bride , he sees her first as a sister . Because what would you do , young man , for your sister ? You protect her . You don't use her as an object . Isn't that something that will go after our sister's friend and try to use her ?

But yet , if our sister itself , we would protect her . No , we have to see all women as our sisters first , to protect them , especially from ourselves , and then she ravished our heart . Only once you do that , once you become a friend , once you can protect her from yourself , once your heart has been purified , only then does she come in and become your bride .

This likes this gives love time to mature , right . This is a game changer , helping people become , overcome this . You know this pornographic culture that we're in today , which is so devastating on so many .

So let me end with CS Lewis , from the weight of glory , one of his books , and he's talking about beauty , and this is what we're all coming to Remember when I said three core things of a man's heart . We know life's going to be an adventure . We know it's going to be a battle . We find out that that battle is for the purity of heart .

It's a battle of love over lust , but at the end of the day it's for beauty , it's all for beauty .

We got to keep our eye on the beauty , especially the beauty of God , but that translates into the beauty of all the people around us and , as you know , when a man for a woman , a woman for a man , and you see this , this beauty , the beauty of grandchildren , the beauty of friendships , all of those things , so especially the beauty of love , on deep love for

all the people that we meet . So CS Lewis has just just a couple lines I want to read from that book on beauty , and he says this we want so much more , something the books on aesthetics take little notice of , but the poets and the mythologies know all about it . We do not merely want to see beauty , though God knows , even that is bounty enough .

We want something else which can hardly be put into words , to be united with the beauty we see , to pass into it , to receive it into ourselves , to bathe in it , to become part of it . Whoa See , this is the ambit of love . In the very beginning , a dom brought into the world God pouring himself into it .

This is the beauty that Adam felt , right in this solitude . Only then , being filled up with God , bathing in God's love , can you then start to pour this out to everybody else in the world . Hey , god bless you . Thanks for being with me , everybody , talk to you again soon , bye , bye .