#454 God Wants to Marry You: The Question For Today Is Which Marriage Are You Called Too? Traditional Marriage or Religious Life?

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 while to guess at this , but I bet you , most of us , are a bit disconnected from this divine life that these saints are pointing us to .

Yet St John Paul II said there's an echo of this story , of this divine life that we're created for , inscribed in each human heart , in your human heart , and if you put on a proper lens , if I put on a proper lens , we can get in touch with this echo within us in such a way that we have that aha moment .

See , that's the genus of St John Paul II'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 . We are back . This is episode number 78 . John Paul II presented this on April 14 , 1982 . As Linda and I always say , it could have been yesterday . Linda , how are you ?

It breaks apart marriage in the family . It'll tear out the child in the womb and gender ideologies . I bring this up , linda , because of the political focus right now . I'm referring to a battle for president , of course , but this extends to our local school board elections . We're in a battle with the forces of good and evil .

The battle is embedded deeply within the church . So it's important for us to be able to discern , as we're talking about this . How do we cut through the noise and the darkness , the lies , the falsehoods and find a personal solution ? Because this always comes down to a personal solution . It's not just out there , it's within here , it's within the human heart .

For the solution , it always comes down to Jesus saying what do you seek ? Who are you ? I have to ask myself those questions who am I really ? Do I bring good in the world or evil ? What is the purpose to my life . We have to discern what love is Love in the truth and truth in love .

I want to bring up the lips of TikTok , who is very , very well known in the social media spaces . On a number of different media posts I follow her on X . Today she posted a student speaking at a hearing .

She's a student at a medical college in Wisconsin and she said this in her statement if , as a doctor , I'm not allowed to abort even a full term baby , I will become a doctor somewhere else . I'll leave Wisconsin and find a place to practice where I can do that . This is what colleges and universities are instilling in young people .

Even in medical schools , we take the hypocritical that will do no harm . But now , to do no harm means to allow someone to take a full term baby out . It's totally demonic and I'd love to know which I don't know Linda about her upbringing . Was she left in a moral vacuum when she went away to the university ?

It's an example of what happens when parents don't instill a religious and a moral belief , or if they do and the children reject them . And I'll finish this thought with that . God , a misspezz , a number 36 again . When God has forgotten , the creature itself grows unintelligible . We no longer know who we are . We think that we reject God .

We live in a neutral place , somewhere between good and evil , and we can decide . We can decide , but just like this young girl who thinks she can decide , this is just Genesis three . No , if God tell you not to eat from that tree , no , you will be like God to know what is good and what is evil . You can call evil good and good evil .

And what happens is when this young girl steps into the story and she does evil , she takes the life of a vulnerable , innocent young child . She does evil , she becomes evil . I am evil , I am evil . It's amazing . And who do you think , linda , she's going to vote for in the presidential election ?

An old man who has dementia , who has no moral heart at all , and she's going to vote for him because she wants to match her immoral , her lack of morality , her lack of conscience , which is given to us as human beings that you somehow had to push your own conscience down to get to this place as a young girl .

And she will match this in the political sphere with a man who also has no moral compass , and so together they will abort babies and she will choose the next president of the United States based on that . But what happens , linda , is we no longer will have God's blessing on our nation when we continue to do that .

And so why do I bring this up in today , when we're talking about continents for the kingdom ? Because I think we want to talk about the power of Jesus Christ , the power of Jesus Christ to come into our marriages , to come into our lives , and also to point to give up this earthy marriage and point to where we're going . This young girl is going someplace .

We're not going to be here forever . Tic-tac , tic-tac . So to me it very much points to what Jesus is saying here , and you might want to unpack that . Then , linda , is he saying ?

You will have the power , you have the grace to bring this gift of life and love into the world , whether you're married or not , given away in marriage and actually step into the marriage of the Lamb .

I want to point out a couple of things to really stress in what you said in your opening explanation there , that we become unintelligible without God , and I think I told you earlier , just , it literally makes my brain hurt to think about the darkness that has unfolded so many people that they cannot seem to have any sense of the abortion , especially up to full

term , the horror of it and the evil of it . So , you know , it brings me back to the idea that without God we're really drowning in sin and that darkens the intellect and weakens our will .

And since the battle is always , always in the human heart , this image comes to me that the darkness just has totally enveloped so many hearts in the form of both darkness , light versus dark , but also hardness .

You know , like maybe concrete has flown in and while it was pliable at some point , it's just totally set now in a hardness that is difficult to understand if we're not there . We don't know someone who is there , but as a culture , many people are there and so we're looking at Jack . What does this have to do with our topic of celibacy for the kingdom ?

It takes us right back to Jesus , looking in our hearts first and saying you know , what is it that you seek ? We're all wondering you know , what am I supposed to be doing with my life ? And that brings us right to the discussion of vocation that John Paul is dwelling on in this section .

You know , we looked at identity , who am I , and all those questions you pose . And now we're looking at what am I to do with my life , and it does come down to a complementarity of two ways to live my life .

Most of us are called to marriage , the normal , everyday male , female marriage , whereas others are called to something different and a complementary way of living out what we are both called to , that spousal meaning of the body , which is that gift of self , as we would define authentic love .

When this young woman who proclaims that she wants to be a doctor , who is a healer , who's a healer of bodies and Jesus , comes into the story and says I'm the great physician , I'm a healer of bodies and the soul , when you separate that out , when you are disconnected from God's grace and you look at a person just as a biological blob , then in essence you're

looking at yourself as this biological blob that has an indifference to the humanity of others , and so I can just go out and kill that child . The two become one , open to life , become three , three persons in one . And this is a direct attack on the Imago Dei , on the sign of Christ coming into the world , the sign of God himself .

We grew up in a fallen world and Christ came into that fallen world to become the bridge , the narrow gate over this abyss of sin and death . And if you reject him , you stay in . What John Paul would say is this culture of darkness right , the culture of death itself . And this is what this young lady's doing , linda . She's bringing herself in .

Now how will that affect these other two vocations ? If she decides to be married , right , how will that affect her marriage when she's actually aborting children and then bringing this darkness into her personal life ?

Or if , for some reason , she can't find a spouse , doesn't want a spouse , gets caught up in gender ideologies and stays single , and yet she's not pointing to heaven either . And what kind of darkness , what kind of death will she bring into her own life ?

And whether she realizes it or not , either married , given away in marriage , or I actually skip this marriage and go right to God himself to create union . These are the only ways that are going to move you . This filled with this grace is the only way that's gonna move you out of sin and ultimately , out of eternal death .

You are gonna die , tick tock , tick , tock , and then , finally , I would just say to this girl Linda , you know what's the difference between you and Joseph Mengele ? You know , joseph Mengele , as you remember , was nicknamed the angel of death . He performed deadly experiments on prisoners at an house switch . He grew up Catholic and so he had a morality .

He was successful in school , he was very smart , he went through philosophy and then became a doctor and then studied , had his a PH in anthropology . And so after all of this , yet he gets disconnected from his heart . He goes from wanting to heal people he wanted to study where cleft lips and palates and cleft chins came from and help people .

And then he gets involved with the Nazis and the ideology of Nazism brought together elements of anti-seminism , racial hygiene , eugenics all the things we see today Eugenics , right Planned parenthood they put these by minority populations . Why ? Because because the founder , a Margaret Sanger , was a eugenics . She wanted to destroy those children , you know .

So you see this over and over again . And then , finally , he ends up in working at Auschwitz and another concentration camp where he did medical experiments and this is what they called them the Angel of Death . He did medical experiments on human beings and then selected which ones would go right to the gas chambers and those selected to be murdered .

About three quarters of those sent there in general that were not fit for labor , according to Mengele and the other doctors , included almost all the children , women with small children , pregnant women , pregnant women , all the elderly and all those who appeared in a brief and superficial inspection by the SS doctor not to be completely fit and healthy ?

And what's the difference , linda , between her and Joseph Mengele ?

And if you do not , I guess it's another way of saying you don't believe in God either , and therefore it's survival of the fittest . It's me against you . You see , Jack , this whole political thing . They're touting the president as really supporting the rights of these women .

So they couch it in terms of rights , and you know , other candidates may be wanting to take away your rights , and a woman hearing that who has been so immersed in a culture that talks about rights , we can see it kind of deteriorate , deteriorate , excuse me into my rights versus your rights .

And we had talked earlier that there's this constant division being created by pitting one group or one person's rights against another . And in the battle of the woman and the baby in the womb , well , who's got a louder voice , you know ?

So it's this constant division , and I think a heart can become so hardened , that it just sees it from that perspective of my rights over yours and those rights must be protected that they can no longer even see the idea of love or self-gift or any of the things that we're talking about . And it's so critical .

I think that everyone understand that every aspect of what we talk about here in theology , the body , is constantly bringing us back to that battle in the heart . And whether you believe in the resurrection of the body and the fact that we are going somewhere or not , in every element , every example you bring up , there we are once again right .

So that's been around for a long , long time . But saying Paul and John Paul brought this up in 1 Corinthians 6 and he also brings up 7 today the body is not meant for immorality but for the Lord and the Lord for the body . And God raised , the Lord will also raise us up by his power . Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ ?

Shall I therefore Take the members of Christ and make the members of a prostitute ? Never . Do you not know that he who joins himself to a prostitute becomes one body with her , for it is written that too She'll become one . But he who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him .

Shun immorality , every other sin which a man commits , is outside the body , but the immoral man sends against his own body . Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you , which you have from God . You are not your own . You were bought with a price . So glorify God in your body .

So again , this is the Redeemer , who comes into this time and space , breaks into the , the visible created world , and Takes on a human body , unites it right in his body with the divine , bringing this back as it was before Sin . We were swimming , adam and Eve were in the ambit of God's love before sin .

So if this young girl again , and so many other people Choose to reject the Redeemer , they stay , not in a neutral place , linda , but they stay in this fallen world and they have normalized the fall . Normalize that . That baby is what ? It's ? Just a pile of biology . It means nothing , but that means she is just a pile of biology . So who decides ?

Like you said , it's the one with the louder voice , it's the one with the power . When someone like that has a chance to vote , she's gonna vote for the Bidens of the world because she joins that political power and she has the power . Now She'll move into an institution .

Well , she can promulgate this culture of death and take these , these babies , right and have the and and have the capacity to kill them and exterminate them , but she has to have the power to do that and they know in these elections that that right , that you call the right , can be taken away .

And just finally , linda , john Paul would clarify it by saying you can do evil . We are free in this world that we can bring good or evil in . But he said you have no right to do evil . You know we call it rights , but we have no right to take the life of another person . When we say I want the right to kill another person , I am saying what .

I want the right to take their right away . I want the right to call evil good and good evil . I want the right to take their rights to life and liberty away . Now , who gave them the power to do that ? They took it upon yourself . No , you will be like gods , who know what is good and what is evil . This is the rejection that we're looking at here .

And so , linda , as you start to think about a priesthood and a priest coming into the story what a beautiful sign . Don't you think of being able to say no , not , not . Not only can I step , you know , into this eternal marriage . What God will give me the power to do this ? The eternal bridegroom who pours himself out to the bride .

This is what's linking our marriages to this eternal story .

As you said , the union in marriage is that trinitarian sign , that love between father son , spirit , as as the beautiful description in that Catechism 221 , that we're destined to share in . That and marriage is the normal way that we see that sign .

But the sign also in marriage For everyone , or through marriage , I should say , is that it's a sign of the love of christ and his church , and that is so obvious when we look at what marriages ought to be that it is a continual sign of the husband for his wife , of our ultimate Bridegroom , christ , the bridegroom for his bride , the church .

So the signs are all around us and the algae body unpacks it and we're going to do that and many other audiences going deeper into that .

But for this audience , with the sign of celibacy for the kingdom , the priesthood , it is he's pleading that we understand it and that we're not opposing marriage and Continence for the kingdom that they don't oppose each other and that they don't divide the christian community , he says into two camps .

Rather , he says in paragraph two , in some sense they explain or complete each other with respect to the existence of the christian life in the community . So Our understanding of celibacy for the kingdom Needs not to be something that , looks at it , it was just imposed by the church .

I mean , jesus was celibate , he was the model for the epistles you see , and that the pope brings out . That that is something , once again , that comes from within that understanding of knowing that this celibacy is actually a gift .

If we have time , I happen to read up article that came out of the cat the carol , out of the uk , and it's written by a priest who says that in the face of calls to abolish celibacy , the church needs to remember that it is a gift from god .

And he Focuses on two things in the article the history of celibacy , which is interesting , but we won't get into that , but also his personal reflection on it , and just a couple of things that he has to say Is that when he studied theology of the body , he understood that this experience of celibacy for him was first of all a gift Put into his heart by god

, and then he saw it was a positive grace rather than a negation that the concept of marriage does not exist and happen . It's solidified for him that to be celibate on earth is to start living now what we will all Hopefully experience in heaven . That greatest love is . God is love and he just . You could just see how he he understood .

You know what poke john paul is teaching here of what this gift of celibacy is really all about .

St Paul said we are temples of the Holy Spirit . I don't know if we sit on that long enough sometimes to say that the Holy Spirit resides within us through Christ's actions , passion , death , resurrection and ascension into heaven .

And then , sending the Holy Spirit , he gives us the power to live out our vocation of marriage , or Celebsi for the kingdom , and they're both linked . One is pointing us to the eschat on where we're going Celebsi for the kingdom and the other one is showing us the Amago day , the created version . What does that look like ?

So a priest looks back at a married couple , a happily married couple with a few kids , and , and , and , and , then this happy little family right Open to life , and says , wow , this is the intimacy God wants with me .

And yet we as a , as this happily married couple with kids , can look back at the Priest and say , wow , he's showing us where we're going and how we need to be filled . So I need to take that same grace you know , not celibacy per se , but I need to take that same grace that Christ offers and fill my own heart with that .

Jesus is always talking about , like you mentioned earlier , the hardness of heart . He wants to go into you , fill you with divine life and love , so that you can become a person of life and love , either in your marriage , but even if you are married . We're called to love our neighbor Linda . It doesn't just stop with our own little family .

We're called to open this up to our neighbor and then open it up to the culture and society and then elect elect the public officials that understand the power of this story and then bring laws in that Protect the unborn and also protect all of us from taking our religious freedoms away , our freedoms to raise our kids , our freedoms to educate our children .

You see all of those things being stripped away , you know , because when you lose on the , on the loose , evil will do what evil does , which is destroy humanity .

But he makes a really strong point that just jumped out at me , that the dines , the physical Procreation act of becoming mother and father , that the fullness of that meaning is , is only Achieved with the spiritual Counter-power , counter-power to that that it's expressed in all the things that parents do to educate their children .

So you know when , when we look at that aspect of it's not just about procreation Physically , you know , having a baby , it's what happens after that . That is so incredibly important . And here is where , as Physical mothers and fathers , we are very much charged with that spiritual development of our children to .

We work mostly with our children , whereas our religious Becomes spiritual fathers and mothers to a great many more , you know , in the church and in the realm from all of us helping us out . So you know , that point to me just was so important that we've got to look at the spiritual side of it as well .

You know , john Paul says over and over again that this is an echo in our heart . We know this story , but we can reject it , we can push it down or it can be pushed down . I get back to Joseph Mangle . He's a Catholic , he's raised Catholic . He comes into the story , goes away to the university and then joins the Nazis .

And you can see , by his education , without a moral , without a moral base to it , without a religious base of any kind , how , how you can be taken out of your own heart , your own consciousness , you , that darkness can permeate you . It's , it's , it's scary , you know , when you think about how evil we can all be .

But yet I speak to to men and women all the time , and , and I'll just relate this one story , you know , I know a guy that that a very faithful Catholic , is his whole life different things .

He , well , he gets divorced and Then he , he goes to move in with a Woman and this guy's already in , you know , in middle life for it , you know , at the high end of middle age , and and I tell him , I said , hey , dude . I said , what are you doing ? I said , you know you , you proclaim your Catholic faith , you're , you're living out .

You say you're always living out your Catholic faith . You speak about it all the time . Well , jack , you know , I fell for this girl , you know , and I'm trying to recapture this love that's in my heart and blah , blah , blah . And he moves in with her . She is supposedly past the age where she could get pregnant , but she gets pregnant .

And Now , faced with the decision , this middle-aged guy that proclaims his Catholic faith and and says he lives it out , what do they do ? They decide to have an abortion .

And so here , my point being Unless you live this , unless you pray for this , unless you ask for the grace you're not in neutral territory , and All of those words , all those things , you can become evil . I did evil , now I am evil , and Now you know to get back on your hands and knees again .

You know God will take you back , but you destroyed a life , and now that you've got a confession . Do you Believe ? Have you changed , have you ? He didn't move out with that girl right away and it could have happened again , you know . So , yeah , I'm forgiven , but am I really ? Has it changed my heart ? It hasn't made a difference in my life .

If it hasn't , god knows this , linda . And and you're not bringing light into the world , you're not bringing the culture of life into the world .

And you know , I think , in the terms of us talking about Love being that complete gift of self , you can see Along the lines in that story where it's really not about giving myself to another , it's about what I can get you know back to what's in it for me , and I'm the complete , really opposite .

What we're talking about here and I think , jack , we mentioned earlier to each other that's really what we see on a total cultural Basis here is everything is upside down and backwards from the way it should be According to God's plan for us , and that's what to be is about . What is God's plan for us ? Right ?

In there he said through the words , through the actions and the very person of Jesus who says I am the way , the truth and the life . Men and women are given the possibility of knowing the complete truth Concerning the value of human life .

From this source he receives , in particular , the capacity to accomplish this truth perfectly , that is , to accept and fulfill completely the responsibility of loving and serving and defending and promoting human life . In Christ , the gospel of life is definitively proclaimed and fully given .

This is the gospel and , indeed , it's written in the heart of every man and woman . It has echoed in every conscience from the beginning , from the time of creation itself . So this is within us , linda , this is written in our heart . We have to listen for that echo and we have to realize , as we look around , what is the truth . Again , who am I ?

You know , and you have to be able to open up and you say to the , to the Redeemer and the Savior yes , my fiat , yes , I accept you , or you're standing at the tree and you reject God and you go , you walk into darkness . This is really very , very easy to see in today's time .

You know , and I thought it when you look at it , the two key words of John Paul statements are truth and life . Truth and life . And look at what we really have going right now . We have falsity of all kinds , ai probably being the newest iteration now of really many false Things . And then we're the culture of death .

You know , the opposite of life , in fact , the global elitist Expressing the fact that they think human life is the problem . You know , oh , without human life we wouldn't have all these problems on earth . It's now . Who else would say that ?

Your feet out , you're kneeling and saying yes to me , and the silence that you mentioned is so important to get in and touch with your own heart , and then you'll get in touch with the heart of of God . In that silence , st John of the cross would echo , probably a cardinal , sarah .

He said when you're searching for wisdom , you're trying to understand the truth . You search for wisdom . You have to be a person of love . In other words , you have to be you know , in the Amago day , this person of love . You have to sit in silence . You have to sit in silence and then you have to do some type of mortification .

He says you , and what that means is fasting and detaching from whatever it is that that you are worshiping now . I need to detach from those things , and so I sit in silence , I detach from everything else and I put my desires really toward God , and this is continents for the kingdom of heaven .

Again is to , is to open my heart so totally that God pulls you into an eternal love story . Well , we're all called to be filled with that eternal divine life and love , so that we can become Persons of love in the world .

You either do this , linda , or you bring your reign in the culture of death , and we all are at the tree , in a sense , and we all have to decide every day , every day , yes .

Interestingly enough , a priest who was Counseling and helping young men discern he said , instead of pouching his Discussion in terms of while you're being called to marriage or you being called to the priesthood , he said , after really understanding celibacy for the kingdom , his question became which marriage are you called to , the married life or the religious life ?

Because they are both marriages , right ? so the celibacy for the kingdom is already that glimpse of the eternal marriage and Marriage as you and I , our marriage , espouses on earth are the sign of that eternal marriage . Isn't the great , jack , how it really comes together .