#457 Exploring the Divine Dimensions of Love, Marriage, and Identity

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 beg 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 . This is audience number 79 . John Paul II , presented on April 21st 1982 . We're still talking about continents for the kingdom . It's really interesting .

I'm here with Linda Piper , as usual for our Wednesday audience . It's really interesting that in Matthew 19 , linda , verses 3 through 9 , we have that well known of those well known verses that John Paul II is following Jesus into the beginning . This is what marriage is all about . This is what man and woman was all about .

Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female ? And this , of course , points directly as a sacramental sign to the Trinitarian love story , which I'm not going to take the time to unpack . But what's really interesting here is Moses allowed a divorce , but Jesus is saying ah , it was because of the hardness of your hearts .

Moses allows you to divorce your wives , but from the beginning . Love can't just be thrown away , linda , canada . It can't just be a feeling like we reduced it to today and then down to a sexual act . Love is love . Love is meaningless . It's just , whatever you decide .

Jesus is saying love is eternal , and the reason that I'm going to give away the story here a little bit is because God is love . Everything that we're going to be talking about today is connecting our hearts to an eternal love story . We came into this world and it's an eternal love story .

Marriage was a sacramental sign of that love story , that eternal Trinitarian love man and a woman open to new life . Well , moses allowed divorce because marriage is difficult . And what made it so difficult or impossible ?

Marriage is always going to be difficult , right , you're trying to , because it's a self gift of one another and we're selfish and we have to open ourselves up , you know , to this other broken person , one broken person to another , because we came into a sinful world . See , in the beginning it was not so , because in the beginning there was no sin .

We were perfectly filled with divine life and love , with no sin in the world , we could do this . Now we find it very , very hard in a broken world and the only way to do that is to Christ's redemption of the body .

And so he comes into the story and in essence he's saying I'm standing in front of you and I have the power to change that hardness of heart into something else . But anyways , he says in the beginning it was not so and that Moses allowed you to divorce your wife . But I'm saying to you basically that you can't .

And the disciples , right away , in 19 verse 10 , matthew , 19 verse 10 , the disciples said well , if that's the case , maybe we shouldn't be married , or at least it's not , we should be in no hurry to get married . And Jesus says something very cool , if you really think about this .

He says well , not only am I holding you to a higher standard in earthly marriage , I'm going to say to you not all men and women are to be given away in marriage in this earth that you can skip this earthly marriage and go right into the marriage for the kingdom . That's an amazing story that you can actually give your .

It's called continents for the kingdom of heaven . I can skip this marriage , but I do so to be able to spend more time , more work , to be able to bring this gospel , the story of love , into the world and not be worried about my earthly marriage . Right ? What am I going ?

You know , underlying that , I think we would find the same reaction in many people today because , number one , we don't have a clear understanding , truly , of what marriage is about and , deeper than that , we don't understand love . And when it comes down to the understanding that God is love , then it's all about understanding God and his plan for us .

And so , as Jesus says , yes , that higher standard comes from God , because of his plan for us and his love for us .

And there's even another standard that I want to talk about , which was shocking to the disciples , because it also implied not having that relationship , not having the marital intimacy , and even today , aren't people shocked at that idea , like how could I survive without it ?

So we're not all that different from 2000 years ago , right , and we need to really think through this because it's incredibly eye-opening and important as we look at what God is , love means and what our eternal destiny is .

So in same-sex marriage , those two people , if they can't get married , that means they're not supposed to be having sex . If they're not having sex , then they can't find love , and so love has been reduced to an act .

Well , it's not so different , like you said in this , that these guys are ready to divorce themselves because the sex isn't so good , I suppose , and they want to move on to the next person to fulfill their hearts . You know , I haven't found it here .

That feeling has gone away first , and probably then the sex is not so good and so , yeah , now I'm going to divorce my wife and move on . So you're right , it's not so different . This is the fall . This is the fall , isn't ?

And his understanding was clarified through theology , the body , and what he understood is that you're being called to a marriage either way , the earthly marriage or the heavenly marriage . And so the celibacy for the kingdom is that call to that heavenly marriage being made visible , being concretized .

The Pope had said you know , here on earth , which is how we say , then both marriages are assigned . We talk about our earthly marriage as a sign of the Trinitarian love and we talk about the heavenly marriage and the celibacy for the kingdom as a sign for the heavenly marriage that we're all called to .

And the Pope makes a very strong point in audience 79 that we're all invited to the kingdom of heaven , the kingdom of God . Jesus preaches the establishment of it on earth and he foretells its fulfillment in the eternal marriage . But we're all called to that wedding banquet .

I'm the one that's going to redeem your body and soul , move you back into Eternal union with God , because this is where we're going anyways , and your earthly marriages will become stronger as you Participate in this heavenly marriage .

And , like you said , it's so important to see these , the religious who have , who have given up or accepted , chosen continents for the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God here on earth . It begins here on earth and making that visible to us and the visible sign always to me , is that these men and women can be Fulfilled here and again .

We're not perfectly fulfilled . This is an earthly , temporal existence , just like the best marriage in the world . You're still looking for something more . You're looking for eternal love . These , the religious here that have chosen continents for the kingdom of God . They're not fully fulfilled yet , but you see it in the saints and you see it .

You know Teresa of Abba is so important , I'm gonna . I pulled this out of the last second , I'm gonna . I wasn't sure if I wanted to read this or not , but I think I will .

Teresa of Abba , like Saint John of the cross , were these incredible Carmelite mystics and that have skipped these , you know , continents for the kingdom right , skip the earthly marriage and gone into it and in this is so beautiful . St Teresa was canonized in 1622 and it was not uncommon for her to have visions of angels .

And this is St Teresa's description of the event that Bernini , the famous Italian sculptor Bernini , sculpts , and I've seen this live the ecstasy of St Teresa of Abba . It's , it's incredible , and this is what Bernini was reading , the words of St Teresa While he was sculpting it , and this is what she said .

Beside me , on the left , the period an angel in bodily form . He was not tall but short and very beautiful , and this face was so aflame that he appeared to be one of the highest rank of angels who seemed to be all on fire . In his hands I saw a great golden spirit at the very tip , the iron tip . There appeared to be a point of fire .

This he plunged into my heart several times that had penetrated to my intros . When he pulled it out , I felt that he took them with it and left me utterly consumed by the great love of God . The pain was so severe that it made me utter several moans .

The sweetness caused by this intense pain was so extreme that one cannot possibly wish for it to cease , nor is one soul content with anything but God . This is not a physical , but a spiritual pain , though the body has some share in it , even a considerable share . Wow , what do you think ?

I know myself , when I try to , when I come back from receiving communion and try to really focus on that , that I've received Christ body , blood , soul and Divinity and what that really means . You know it's a I .

A few times I've been blessed with having something , just a slight , slight sense of that awesomeness that he and I are joined , and it's this idea of eventually God will be all and all and we're to prepare for that now , and so the reception of the sacraments , I think , is one way of preparation and beginning to have that actual experience of union with God .

Am I off base here ? What do you think ?

You have to be a person of love , self-giving love . You have to go into silence . Number two you have to spend time basically in prayer and then , of course , in the sacraments . And the third thing he says is you have to move into mortifications of the body .

You have to accept that , which would be things like fasting and things right To detach from this world . You know this earthly experience and not that the earthly experiences are bad , you know in themselves , but they can't become our idols .

And so this has opened you up and this has opened for all of us to become persons of self-giving love , to be in silence and in prayer , often to receive the sacraments , and then to practice fasting and mortifications of the body . Whether that's from social media , whether that's actually food , fasting , from whatever it is that becomes an idol in your life .

You have to detach again from those things . This will lead you to that closeness that you are describing there in St Teresa of Avila , with the describing , and John Paul said in Redemptor Hominus this is the Redeemer of man and this is all based on the Redeemer of man .

Right , christ comes into history at a particular time , particular place and he is that bridegroom , the self-giving love , the model that we're looking at , linda , is on the cross , this total pouring of God , pouring himself out to all of us . And John Paul writes in there , in number 10 , redemptor Hominus , this first encyclical again that he wrote .

He says and I'm thinking about how we start this out Love , you know , is love right , we get this misnomer today or love reduced to a feeling , reduced to a sexual act . And love has feelings and it does have emotions and in a marital life it does include the beauty of our sexuality . But love is something different . Love is God .

And so this is why John Paul says man cannot live without love . Whether you choose marriage here , whether you choose continents for the kingdom , whoever you are as a human being , we desire love . We can live without sex , but you can't live without love . So John Paul goes on to say man , men and women remain a being that's incomprehensible for himself .

His life is senseless if love is not revealed to him , if he does not encounter love , if he does not experience it and make it his own , if he does not participate intimately in it . This , as John Paul says , is why Christ the Redeemer fully reveals man to himself . He is that person of love and the power of it .

That's why even the religious are called to be spiritual mothers and fathers . We are called to guide and bring this into each other's lives here on earth . So we are to become persons of love , regardless of what vocation we choose . And in order to do that , we have to receive love . We cannot give what we don't have .

So we receive those religious receive that love first and their response in that calling is to give themselves for the kingdom and that he says love shines through the gift of self for the kingdom in their response .

And you know , it just kind of struck me how important it is we understand what love really is in order to understand this and he fully admits that there's a depth and a seriousness of this decision and great responsibility goes along with it . And a part of that responsibility , I see , is that call to spiritual fatherhood and spiritual motherhood .

And so it is so small a piece that the sexual part of it , I think , is a very small piece .

You're giving up that as you're renouncing marriage and family , but the Pope really stresses that that's a very great length to go to be that sign for us of the kingdom , that sign of the redemption of the body , and for us to just , you know , look at the religious as well .

They're just doing without that , we're totally being blind to all the elements of what they are being for us and showing us .

And lastly , just this point that , as we've heard always that the priests in particular are in persona Christi , and one of the descriptions , of course , of Christ is the bridegroom , and so the priests become bridegroom to the church , and that connection is very , very important for us to consider .

We're all created either male or female , and our saints and mystics and those that choose continents for the kingdom of heaven don't give up their sexuality . They become this , and that sign , as a priest , is this bridegroom again giving his life to his bride . So that's why a priest is a man and a priest can't be a woman . And why is that ?

Because this is the initiator of the gift , you know . He's carrying the seed of life and he's giving this to his bride . When we're sitting in mass and as lay people , you know , facing the altar , we're receiving this .

We take this female posture in a way , and sometimes it's hard for people to grasp in the beginning , but we're receiving as a female would receive from a male in a physical marriage . We're receiving from the eternal bridegroom , in a spiritual way , this bridegroom pouring himself on us . So we all do that . Now , when we reject this , what happens ?

You know , even in our temporal space , we see this all the time when we reject this story of self giving love , what do we end up with ? A pornographic culture . The opposite of love is not hate . The opposite of love is , instead of self giving is taking , grasping lust , and so you have a pornographic culture .

You have a culture that wants to steal the innocence of children . We have abortion , which again , it's the self giving love . And what happens you could see right away . No , this sexual union was nothing about self giving , it was about taking , because if there's a life that comes from it , I will snuff out that life .

And you see this in the twisting of gender ideologies , where these poor young people , their sexuality is being attacked and they're being rendered sterile , even as children in puberty , with puberty blockers and things , and so this is a real evil that can twist the story . We see that in sex trafficking , children being used . You know , look at this .

When we forget , when we just leave feelings and sex into love , then anything goes to these people . In today's culture , linda , we've fallen so far , we've normalized the fall to such a point that sex is sex , love is love .

And whether it's between me and a child , between me and a screen and pornography , you know , and just masturbation , whatever it is , it doesn't matter , love is love , sex is sex , marriage doesn't matter , children don't matter , it's just myself fulfilling .

And you can see how far away we can get from into that hardness of heart and we do evil and we become evil . I am evil and you can see how far we've spun out of control here in this life .

In that vocation to the religious , in paragraph six , the last sentence I'd like to read that he says , quote if someone chooses marriage , he must choose it exactly as it was instituted by the creator from the beginning . He must seek in it those values that correspond to the plan of God .

If , on the other hand , someone decides to follow continents for the kingdom of heaven , he must seek in it the values proper to such a vocation . In other words , he must act in conformity with his chosen vocation . So either way , he says , we need to conform to the values that are there .

And what you just described for us for the most part , is showing that not only in marriage are many people not identifying with the values of God's plan for marriage , which is one man and one woman in that exclusive union .

But we're just , you know , we've opened it wide open to anything we think it can be , and his statement here is telling us that's exactly the opposite of what we need to be doing .

And the city of man , very quickly , throwing out God , turns into a city of lust , of sin and also a power . It's a power struggle . It no longer . You know . We throw God out and of course , satan is the ruler , but the rulers of this age are filled with evil .

Really , you know , and you see this all around us the Communist Party in China , but even in our own government today , those that are pushing all of these gender ideologies and pushing abortion and pushing meaningless marriage on all of us , allowing our borders just to be filled with anybody that wants to come in . All of that is done on purpose .

You know , even the border thing .

You know , even though we love , we're a land of immigrants and we care about immigrants and other people , of course , at the end of the day they're deluding who we are as a nation , which is Judeo-Christian principles , which is getting back to what Christ said you know about marriage and about love and about how we treat one another .

Now , when you delude all that , what happens ? Everything becomes meaningless . Even our nation becomes meaningless . There's nothing to hold it together and , of course , this is systematic and done on purpose . So we lose this idea and it's amazing how everything will fall apart .

And my last thought on that is we mentioned this before we came on the air , linda that this is happening even sooner in Western Europe , where all these ethnic people are not being brought into the culture , say , of a French culture or a British culture , but are keeping their own culture . In other words , they're colonizing Britain .

Now you know we have whole areas and , whether you know whatever you care about Muslims or anything else , the Muslim communities are growing very , very quickly in France and Great Britain .

Now , if that is your choice to live , god makes us free , and so if Britain decides they want to become a Muslim country and give themselves over to that , then that's their choice . So I'm not condemning anything . I'm just saying there are consequences to our choices .

Here in the United States , do we want to continue to be a Judeo-Christian country which allows Muslims to come into the country and they don't have to proclaim Christianity . Yet our constitution and the way of life is built on these principles that bring maximum freedom , but only freedom to people whose hearts are not hardened by sin and vice , etc . Etc .

And the truth of it will lead us to life rather than death , and choices in the Western culture , we see , have been the opposite .

That , you know , it's all about leading to death and snuffing out life , and that's something that is showing itself in so many ways , abortion , of course , being one of the major ways , but euthanasia and the transgenderism , and you know , on and out , all those ideologies are just leading to death . And so that search for truth is one way .

The evil one has gotten to us . He's like kind of snuffed it out , why you hear people say , well , that's your truth , but my truth is . So , again , if love is love , truth is truth , right , we have total confusion and it becomes meaningless .

And so , you're right , we're kind of we're in the depths of all of that right now because of those choices we've made .

So at the end of the day , we're looking to be good and to do good things . But think about the confusion of these college campuses now , who are pro-Hamas , say ? And again , I'm not even making a judgment call here , I don't , but here they are .

And we have the LBGTQ crowd , those that have reduced love to a feeling and then to sex in many , many ways , who've renounced life in the womb in many , many ways . And not all , of course , who've looked at marriage as meaningless now could be anything , right . So now , what are they doing ? Now ?

Think about the confusion here , and this is the only point I want to make is that , while they're pro-Hamas and throwing God out of our culture , throwing certainly the attack on Christianity and our culture and what are they doing if Sharia law would really be here ? Right , what they're actually backing ?

If it would actually become law here , all their ideologies would be thrown out , because Sharia law does not accept abortion , does not accept same-sex marriage and does not accept the equality , really , between a man and a woman , and so all of this would be thrown out and none of those people would be able to speak .

It's amazing and again , I don't want to get in the weeds on those issues , right , because we could do a whole show unpacking that . But my point is , when we get confused about who we are , our identity , how we're created , male and female , why what love is , everything will fall apart and our reason becomes unreasonable . We don't know what the truth is .

So how do we choose the good ? We can't .

I don't know all the details of one of the latest stories , jack , but to your point about the great confusion that rains yesterday , so today is what we're recording . On the 29th , some activists through soup at the Mona Lisa which of course now is at least protected by glass .

And they were in part supporting the farmers who have been , you know , the world economic form and all that is going after all the farming and much , much greater amounts in Europe .

There I think it might have been the Netherlands , but they were talking about that and kind of pro for the farmers efforts , but they were also complaining about what we're doing to the climate . So they were the green climate activists and you could just tell in their what they're for and what they're against .

They are so confused they don't have really any sense of what it is they are being an activist for and what it is they're being against . And doesn't the evil one do that to us ?

And if you have other points to make , we could certainly go back again , but I just love the way he did this . He ends this particular session here . It says it's characteristic feature of the human heart to accept even difficult demands in the name of love for an ideal , even and above all , in the name of love for a person .

Love is in fact oriented by its very nature toward a person , and so , in this call to continents for the kingdom of heaven , first the disciples and then the whole living tradition of the church quickly discovered the love for Christ himself as the bridegroom of the church , bridegroom of souls , to whom he has given himself to the end in the mystery of his

Passover and of the Eucharist . It's so beautiful that when I think about that , I think about so many different things . So I think about the self-giving love that we're talking about , the difficult demands in the name of love , john Paul says , and I think of parents with handicapped children and the amazing love .

So I had an RCIA presentation this last weekend while I was there . One of the sponsors there he was sponsoring his dad was a man who was really physically challenged . He had two college degrees , very , very bright , but spoke through a computer . And what a beautiful personality he was and his name was Jack .

So I would talk to him a little bit as I'm given a presentation here , and I saw the beauty of his mom there with him and being there with him , you know , and this self-giving love within this family .

And yet it's the son who leads his father into the church , and so you have this dynamical love going on when we're willing , but this is difficult for the young boy , for the parents , right , I mean , this is self-giving love .

When I think of adoptive parents , especially those who adopt disabled children , say , or even children who are a little bit older , you know , even two and three who have been sexually abused and who have all this brokenness within them and you know they're innocent , stolen from them , and they're self-giving love .

And then I'm also thinking again this love of nation , of our soldiers and the Patriots who gave theirself for the love of our nation . Well , what does that mean ? The nation is again a person , you know . It's persons that live within a nation . A nation without persons is nothing right , it's just wild .

So a nation is something that's held together , and that's why I mentioned Judeo-Christian principles again , because that was the heart of our nation , is the heart of the cross of Jesus Christ in our concept , in the Declaration of Independence .

Just to get back to the people , it says this we told these truths to be self-evident that all men this is about people are created equal , that they're endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights . Among these are life , liberty and the pursuit of happiness .

That to secure these rights , governments are instituted and they derive their just powers from the government , from all of us . And so again , you know you get back to this is all about people , and our founding fathers gave up so much sacrifice . So much to John Paul's point in here , for an ideal .

He says the difficult demands in the name of love and for an ideal . And we do that , don't we ? This is the human heart willing to sacrifice for love . And finally it all comes down to a person .

And it all comes down to where we're aiming , linda , that the model of perfect love is on that crucifix , and that's him we're opening ourselves up to , isn't it ?

It's characteristic and those of us who haven't yet hardened our hearts to the point where we've snuffed out that ability , you know , my plea would be to parents who have had , even while in utero they diagnose some issue with the baby . It's like okay , so go have an abortion , is the doctor's recommendation .

No , the parents have it within their hearts to not go that path and to make the difficult choice for love . And remember , if the church defines love for us , it says willing the good of the other and the good starts with life and then ultimately eternal life . So you nailed it here with bringing that point out .

To summarize what we've been discussing for many , many audiences now , and the love that the religious and the priests have when they answer that call to that marriage . It's a particular response and they have particular responsibilities , just like those of us who answer the call to earthly marriage have to our spouse and to our children and then the extended family .

So it's a beautiful thing really , because ultimately the religious , you know they Christ is the bridegroom and they are the bride and they represent for us . You know we're all , we're all bride to Christ and that receptive , but they have a particular way of experiencing that in the world and being the sign for us . So you got it , jack .

And John Paul or Saint Paul would say , this is a great mystery , and I mean in reference to Christ in the church , referring to earthly marriage . And it's Jesus who gave up , you know , who gave up his heavenly father and his earthly mother to become , to become one flesh with us .

He says , when all the smoke and fog clears , our deepest yearning , burning desire to love and be loved , and marriage or in any other way , always points to the Eucharist and Christ's love for us , that even our desire to become one flesh and marital union with one another , sexual union points at the Eucharist and Christ's spiritual desire to become one in union

and communion with us at a very , very deep level .

So , no matter who we are , where we are and I think this is the takeaway , linda is no matter where we're standing in the story , no matter where we find ourselves , it's always pointing to a love story and it's to be filled with divine life and love , the redemption of the body so that we can go into the world and become persons of love .