Welcome to the Become who you Are podcast , a production of the John Paul II Renewal Center . I'm Jack Riggert , your host . This is the update for Claymore . Miletus Christi this is really for young men , gen Z men . Let's start with Miletus Christi . This is really for young men Gen Z men we started with .
We're finding that it's going a little bit around for even the younger millennials . So up into the 30s , let's say this is the battle plan and Miletus Christi , developed by the John Paul II Renewal Center . What it's for is this crazy world that we're living in and this is our regular weekly update . And Claymore is really to help young men .
We're starting to see a real movement with young men . We saw it in the election with Donald Trump , and it's not really just about Donald Trump . It's more than that . It's the young men that we're talking to are saying , hey , there's got to be something more .
More than that , it's the young men that we're talking to are saying , hey , there's got to be something more . We're living in a very toxic time . They're sensing something around them is not right . This has been going on for a long time .
We've been talking to young people for a long time , and women too , but the young guys especially , are starting to ask questions more and more and more , and we want to be there for them . You can see this craziness right now with .
We're trying to take down this deep state and I won't get into all this right now because I've been talking about it for years already . Go back and listen to some of the earlier episodes of Claymore coming out on every Friday . We have been talking about this for a long time . The deep state . You know this deep state and also the deep church .
And what is that ? It's a way of really taking down the United States . It's an attack on marriage and the family . It's an attack on Christ and the church himself . So this is an old battle . This has been going on for a long time , but we saw it accelerating . Something's up right now .
We want to make sense of it and also , at the end of the day , to always keep our eye on the prize . You know where we're going with this thing this battle of the human heart between love and lust , between all that's true , good and beautiful and everything that wants to twist and destroy that . Remember , satan doesn't have his own clay .
He could just take what God has created good , including us , our hearts , our bodies , and twist and distort them , and we're seeing this all around him . You're seeing the attack on the administration . Now , with Trump's administration , you're seeing the attack on Elon Musk for really exposing isn't that something ?
That he's exposing the waste , and you go , who would be against exposing the waste ? And so I want to talk a little bit about that today and I want to get into an example or a story that I had with a young woman .
And I'm going to tell a young woman's story because , at the end of the day , you know all of us , when we start to stand up for what's true , good and beautiful and we start to understand how we're created , our identity , our meaning and purpose , why we're created , male and female , this love story , and especially in this pornographic culture , we also , as men ,
we have to turn around and protect the women in our lives , even if they don't understand it . We've been talking about my sister , my bride , from the Song of Songs , where a man is wooing in this erotic love poetry in the middle of the Bible , is wooing this woman and he calls her sister , my bride , my sister , my bride . He calls her sister first .
You go . Why would he call her sister . First he does because we come from a common humanity , and he's viewing her as a sister , as someone to respect , somebody to protect , especially from himself , from his own lust .
And he's viewing her as a sister , as someone to respect , somebody to protect , especially from himself , from his own lust , and then , only then , is he worthy to be the bridegroom and bring his bride into this story . It's really a beautiful story . So this is the battle of the heart .
Elon Musk , if you've been listening to this for a while , you know I really love Elon . You know , if you've been listening to this for a while , you know I really love Elon .
Elon is very broken , though , in his personal life , but the bravery that he's had in exposing so much corruption and buying Twitter itself , which is now X , just to give a platform because he saw the free speech being taken away . So we've seen all this already . But Elon , he said this late last year .
He said the reason I believe in truth and honesty is because I'm trying to understand the universe . I'm trying to understand reality . I'm trying to understand what's the meaning of life , what are we here for ? What's going on ? So he's asking , asking , asking these questions .
Well , he's not a believer in Jesus Christ , as far as I know , and you can tell that he's got 14 children now and he's trying to repopulate the world , and he's trying to do it through children , what he doesn't grasp yet .
And this is the moral of the story today , when you take your eye off the prize , when you take your eye off of Jesus Christ , who came into this world to not only redeem us for our sins , to save us from sin and death , but to be a model to showcase how to live when you don't have this objective truth in your life . This is what I was just saying .
He's looking for reality . What is reality , what is the truth ? And you can go off the rails . So he's a genius in so many ways , building all these different businesses and stuff , and you can see he has courage and strength . You know he didn't have to put this all on the line . Tesla stores are getting bombed , cars are getting damaged and so you go .
Why would he do all this ? He had it made and it's just what he said . He's trying to stand up for what's true , good and beautiful for our country , for free speech , but he gets twisted and distorted in his own personal life . Right , we really need at this point to really discern how should I live , right ? So that's what Claymore is all about .
How should I live , right ? So that's what Claymore is all about . He's getting close with certain things for sure Elon is . I just hope we can get him over to the next stage and really to see Jesus Christ , and really to see , in order to make sense of the story that we came into . We really need God in our life .
Today we're faced with a culture and a nation in crisis and decline . Ultimately , this is a crisis of individual human hearts , men and women who've rejected objective truth and instead have embraced subjective constructs of individual thoughts and feelings . This falls closely on the heels of Europe and Western civilization as a whole .
America was always behind that broken , I mean . Europe was coming down . It's been declining for a long , long time . The United States seemed to be holding up , but underneath it , with this deep state , was building up , building up , building up . And we saw it with the Biden administration .
The evil just unleashed in the world , pushing pornography and these LBGTQ , abortion , contraception all over the world . Our CIA , fbi you just saw , oh my gosh , they're pushing injustice around the world and at some point you say , wow , this has got to be broken up .
The US Declaration of Independence says that governments aren't easy to take down and you don't want to take them down .
We spent all this time building up the United States , but he said at some point , if the tyrants come back in and this is in 1776 , the US Declaration of Independence said that if the government got out of control , if it really became this totalitarian state , then we have to really look at it . Well , this is what's going on now .
Trump understands this and is trying to break this apart , and it's just a brutal battle , right ? Fulton Sheen , with a saintly long-ranging spiritual vision he was speaking about these things when I was a kid saw the roots of this decline and today's crisis firmly planted and growing .
And in 1974 , before I graduated from high school , he said this he was warning of a crisis already in Christendom . He saw this ahead of time . First of all , he said he was warning of a crisis already in Christendom . He saw this ahead of time . First of all , he said we are at the end of Christendom .
He said solemnly during his television show , which he had a number one rated television show for a while on TV . It's amazing right Now . Not Christianity , he said , not the church itself . The church is the beauty , right , the church , the underlying is beautiful .
She's really the you know coming down , this deposit of faith coming down to us , spotless bride of Jesus Christ . But it's unfortunately , it's run by people and people are always following . We see this deep state and the deep church working together , even these globalist things . Okay , I've talked about some of that before . But he said this is what's ending .
Not the church , he said per se , but Christendom , he said . That's economic , political and social life as inspired by Christian principles . This has been taken out of our culture . We see this happening . This is what the young men are sensing . Something's wrong and it is . Morality has broken down , he says .
Look at the symptoms , he said the breakup of the family , divorce , immorality , general dishonesty , the violence that we're seeing in our inner cities and across the world , with wars and stuff . That was in 1974 . Today it's much worse . Almost every institution has been compromised by corruption , including the church .
The murder of the innocents now is a right Marriage and the family have reduced to mean anything and so nothing . Gender ideologies are pushed on children . Parents are forced to comply by a weaponized justice system . Bishop Sheen reminded us that of the 22 major civilizations and this is so important for young people will you have a nation ?
Will you have a country ? Well , we have to stand up . Right now we have a window of opportunity , with Trump back in there , to try to break up this deep state that's just been sucking .
You can just see all the waste just sucking the money , taking the money from all of us and pushing it up , taking it , extorting it in the form of taxes and other things and then dividing it among themselves . It's something huh , but we always see this in socialism , neo-marxism . It's the deep state . They wanted to suck it like a hydra .
You know , come in into all of us . And that doesn't mean every single person that works for the government is an evil person . They're not . But unfortunately , what happens is you get into a corrupt system and in order to play the game , you got to become part of it , or at least turn your head and pretend like you're not seeing it right .
So we live this day-to-day and we don't see the decline . But now it just got so bad . We say , okay , what am I going to do now ? What should I do ? And so this is what Claymore is about . So I want you again to download this Claymore .
If you go to John Paul II , john Paul II Renewal the website's in our show notes and when you go there , just go into resources , go to Claymore and click on this and just download it just a few pages and that's the battle plan .
It's a three-step battle plan based on John Paul II's work , where he saw this very , very clearly , kind of like a triangle in front of you , and that triangle marriage and the family , christ and the church builds up the culture . And then we take those principles , like Bishop Sheen said , and bring those out into the culture .
That's the way you save the country . That's what the country , that's what our nation was founded on right Judeo-Christian principles , people that were standing up for liberty , standing up for what's right .
The good news is for all of us as you do that , you actually become a good person , you actually become a person of love , you actually fulfill the very meaning and purpose of your life . When you do that , it's a win-win situation , because someday you're gonna be out of here . This is a temporal space . We're not here very long and boom , we're out of here .
And when you are out of here , god will be there to take you in , because we're already walking with God . Eternity doesn't mean tomorrow . Eternity means forever . We're eternal beings . That's what Claymore is .
Claymore's sword is to first of all do battle on your own heart , your individual human heart , between love and lust , between truth and lies , between truth and lies , between goodness and all the evil that comes in the world , between the beauty that we see in the world and the beauty that we see in a woman , a woman to a man , a man to a woman .
And we don't profane that , we don't twist it and distort it . Again , satan doesn't have his own clay .
He can only take what God has created beautiful , say a woman and a woman's body and twist and distort it into pornography , into use , into using each other , to the point where , if the woman would get pregnant with your child , we'll kill the child , right , mother Teresa ? Isn't it a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you can live as you wish ?
Look at , this is a tough battle . Look at , I know this as a man . I've been leading men for a long time . I had to fight that battle and I still have to fight that battle all the time . I mean , it's amazing . I was spiritually attacked on Monday . I'll tell you that story sometime Monday night .
You know , the devil is real , satan's real , and he's out after , after , your heart . All right , I wanna tell you a story of a young woman . We were having this conversation and I'll tell you about it . So I'm writing an article right now , called Living on the Surface , never Going Deep .
It's a stark contrast that emerges between a world without God , where life drifts into meaninglessness this is what we're told today . Right , life has no meaning , only my truth , your truth , et cetera and in contrast to that , we're a world where we embrace our divine purpose and discover our true identity .
This is the story I want to tell you today , upon arriving at a friend's house , his lake house . It's a beautiful summer day last year we come up to his lake house . He's got a beautiful lake house . It's a beautiful summer day last year we come up to his lake house . He's got a beautiful lake house and it's literally right off of the water .
Well , when I knocked on the door , I was greeted at the door by a young woman , his daughter's college roommate , who had come for a long weekend on the water with a couple of other friends . She introduced herself as Jenny and we spent a few minutes chatting before I walked in to greet everybody else After a day we spent on the lake .
That day we gathered at night for wood-grilled steaks , a bottle of great Napa Cabernet Sauvignon , and the conversation turned to these young people that were sitting at the table with us and I started to ask them questions about dating today , relationships , casual hookups , the prevailing gender ideologies being pushed on college campuses , and I asked a few other probing
questions about love and happiness , encouraging them to reflect and just to talk about these things . As we talked , I shared snippets of John Paul II's theology of the body and it became clear how many misconceptions and confusions are out in today's culture .
Later that evening , as a friend of mine that owned the house and I were carrying logs to this outdoor fireplace to do a little burning of some wood out there , it's a beautiful setting and everybody was going to come by later on and grab a glass of wine or some drinks and come down by the fireplace .
My friend mentioned that Jenny had confided to his daughter , saying she felt as though she had lost her identity . Jack , he said , it's such a confusing time for young people . He said what's that expression you always quote from God Amos Best , one of the Vatican II documents , and I replied it's when God is forgotten , the creature itself grows unintelligible .
We don't realize this sometimes . When you take God out of your life , god out of the culture , you lose your identity , you become unintelligible , you don't know who you are . We become these animals that you see in the world , and human beings can be the worst . Most of the evil that you see in the world and human beings can be the worst .
Most of the evil that we see in the world are men and women cooperating with evil and we go out , we do evil . When we do evil , we become evil , and this is the battle that we're fighting today . So we , as Claymore men , miletus Christi , soldiers for Christ , are coming in and saying no , no , no , no .
We're willing to fight that battle , we're willing to live our lives for Christ and be able to have this guideline right Go along the narrow gate and live properly . So isn't that the truth ? What doesn't have to look far to see a world losing its way ?
God has been systematically pushed out of our country , our culture , our marriages , our families and , most tragically , our own individual human hearts . When we forget God , humanity becomes unintelligible .
The next morning Jenny came out into the deck where I had got up early enjoying a cup of coffee and I loved to watch the spectacular sunrise coming up over the lake .
And that was a morning where the clouds glowed with brilliant magenta streaks in them , that beautiful rose-colored streaks in there , and it had the wisps of soft gray clouds kind of in between them and the birds were singing in the trees . It was truly a magical moment .
Jenny came out there and after a few minutes I acknowledged her a little bit , but I was looking . I let her just enjoy the sunrise for a little while . Something about small bee beauty and nature lifts you to big bee beauty God himself , right . And then I turned to her . I said Jenny , think about the day you were born .
You arrived on the stage of life suddenly existing in a world that you didn't create . You came into a larger story that you didn't write and as a newborn infant you were completely dependent on others for food , warmth , love . But regardless of your circumstances , you weren't in an accident .
You were brought into this world not as a mere spectator but as a vital part of a larger story . Jenny , you are a beloved child of God . That's your deepest identity , as Scripture says before I formed you in the womb , I knew you Before you were born I set you apart . It's from Jeremiah , chapter one .
This is the lens through which you will understand your identity , meaning and purpose in God's plan . God's plan that we learn how to love and be loved . God is love . The truth is inscribed in our hearts and even stamped in our very bodies as male and female , created for love . But here lies the danger . Our culture has lost its story .
We no longer pass this down like we should have from generation to generation to generation . It's abandoned . Truth , goodness , beauty , especially the beauty of authentic love . Truth , goodness , beauty , especially the beauty of authentic love . Love in today's time has been reduced to a feeling and then further reduced down to sex .
Right , modern culture screams at us forget about God , the church and the Bible . There's no creator . We're all here by accident , just random atoms hitting atoms . Life has no meaning , then no purpose , no truth . Truth , only my truth or your truth . But the human heart doesn't function well in a world devoid of meaning and purpose .
As saint augustine famously wrote so long ago you have made us for yourself , oh lord , and our hearts are restless until they rest in you . So where do you come from ? You have to decide on just two possibilities . There's only two .
You're either an accident of history , free then to do whatever you please , indulge it , waste it , even end your own life because ultimately it has no meaning or purpose , it's meaningless . Or you're a created human being , and if that's true , then you're created for a purpose and our whole life is to discover what is that purpose ?
If you've never opened your heart and mind to this fundamental question of existence , you'll never really have peace . There will always be a void that nothing in this world can fill . So many people today on prescriptions I think it's over half the country now Anxiety , medicines , depression . Jesus understands this .
He understands the human heart's yearning for identity , meaning and purpose . He created us . It's fascinating that Christianity begins in the very first chapter of John , right in the beginning , with Jesus asking a question of the first disciples who encountered him . As the Gospel of John recounts , the next day John the Baptist was standing with two of his disciples .
He was in Bethany , near the Jordan , baptizing . Right he's just Jesus walking down toward him and he looks at Jesus and he goes the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world .
And he says it again with an exclamation point the two disciples of John's who we find out were Andrew , the brother of Peter , and St John , the Evangelist , who actually wrote this . They started to follow Jesus . Jesus saw them . He turned and he says what do you seek ? What do you seek ? And they said to him Rabbi , which means teacher .
Where are you staying ? You seek . And they said to him Rabbi , which means teacher , where are you staying ? In other words , we sense something about you . Where are you staying ? We want to continue on with you . And what did he say to them ? Come and see . Come and see .
This invitation , come and see has echoed throughout history as the essence of the Christian journey . Jesus never imposed , he never used propaganda , he never forced an ideology . He simply invited us , trusting the human heart's ability to recognize the truth . We all ask what is my true identity ? What is the meaning and purpose of my life ?
Does true love even exist ? Jesus answers our thirst with an invitation you want to find those things out ? Come and see . To find the answers our hearts are yearning for . We must have the courage to journey beyond the noise and false promises of this world . I'm reminded of Carl Jung .
If you've ever taken Psychology 101 in college , you studied Carl Jung and the crazy Sigmund Freud fathers of psychoanalysis right ? Well , he wrote in Memories Dreams and Reflections . He wrote this I have frequently seen people come to me because they were neurotic when they contend themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life .
They seek position , marriage , reputation , outward success , money , and remain unhappy even when they attain these things . Such people , he said , are confined to too narrow a spiritual horizon . Their life lacks sufficient content , sufficient meaning .
If they are enabled to develop into a more spacious personalities , get an idea of what the bigger picture , the neuroses , he said , generally disappears . What we need is GK Chesterton would say we're closed up . Huh , we need air . We need air . I think this applies to everyone . Speaking of Carl Jung , let me share one more story as I finish up here today .
In 1961 , bill W , co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous , wrote a letter to Dr Carl Jung . This letter described in his own words the chain of events that changed Bill's life and influenced the spiritual emphasis of Alcoholics Anonymous . Events in which Jung played a key role , synonymous events in which Young played a key role .
It all began , bill wrote in 1931 in a conversation between Carl Young and a hopeless alcoholic named Roland H . Roland H was young , gifted in business , rich , but he had tried every cure for alcoholism available at the time . All his attempts failed .
In despair he traveled to Zurich , switzerland , and placed himself under the care of Dr Young for nearly a year , finally with no success . Young was blunt . He told Roland that any further medical treatment was pointless . Stunned , roland asked if there was any other hope . Young held out only one that Roland experienced a genuine conversion , a spiritual transformation .
According to Young , such experiences were rare among alcoholics , but alcoholics who had them stopped drinking . This shred of hope was enough for Roland . He returned home and began his spiritual search . Bill , in his letter to Young , told of his firsthand knowledge of conversion for himself .
For Bill it happened in 1934 , during his last detox at Towns Hospital in New York City . At that time Bill was also an alcoholic at the end of his rope . Dr Silkworth , bill's attending physician , laid out the options to Bill's wife . She should let the authorities lock Bill up , watch him go insane or just let him die at home .
Bill knew the doctor's prognosis . My depression deepened unbearably and finally it seemed to me as though I was at the bottom of a pit . He wrote young . All at once I found myself crying out if there is a God , let him show himself . I'm ready to do anything . At that moment , bill wrote , his hospital room seemed to flood with white light .
I was caught up in an ecstasy which there are no words to describe . It seemed to me in the mind's eye that I was on a mountain and that a wind of not of ear , but of the spirit was blowing . And then it burst upon me that I was a free man .
Dr Silkworth encouraged Bill to hold on to this experience , whatever it was Bill did , and he never took another drink from that day on .
Released from the hospital , bill immediately began to work on two tasks understanding that white light , that ecstasy , that white light that had come into his heart , and then helping other alcoholics to experience something equally powerful . And it developed into the 12-step program . Here it's not brain surgery .
You have the two great commandments right To open yourself up and be filled with divine life and love , and then to go out and love your neighbor . Right , the two great commandments love God , be filled with divine life and love , and then go out and love your neighbor Jenny , st Paul .
St John Paul II left us a prayer in a homily he gave for the dedication of the Divine Mercy Shrine in Poland , and I want to end this morning . I told her with a prayer Would she pray with me ? And she said yes . And here's the prayer God , merciful Father . Let's say the sign of the cross right . Father , son , holy Spirit , amen .
God merciful Father , in your Son , jesus Christ , you have revealed your love and poured it out upon us . In the Holy Spirit , the Comforter , we entrust you today the destiny of the world and of every man and woman . Bend down to us , these poor sinners that we are . Heal our weakness , conquer all evil .
Grant that all the peoples of the earth may experience your mercy . In you , the triune God , may they ever find the source of hope that they're looking for . Eternal Father , by the passion and resurrection of your Son , have mercy on us and on the whole world . Amen . Amen to the Father , son , holy Spirit , amen .
This is part of the three-step plan right , the spiritual formation number one , where in the morning you get down on your knees before you look at that phone and what do we say ? We say let it be done to me according to your word , kneeling with our blessed mother , opening ourselves up . Then , number two remember that temptation's not a sin .
You're going to get battered by temptations . This is an invitation to prayer . It's what Bill W did . You fall on your knees and say God , boom , I'm opening myself up to you . Every time a temptation comes , I'm just opening it up to you . It's an invitation to prayer . Help me with this , help me with this , and it becomes a beautiful thing .
You'd be praying all day long , right , but it's always lifting your heart up . And then , third , you know , get up from there and become a person of love . Love the next person . You see , that's how we start out every morning . It's a beautiful thing . So , again , download this . Let me just read you again from the first page of the Claymore Battle Plan .
It's called . It comes from 2 Timothy 2 , verses 1 through 3 . You then , my son , be strong in the grace that is in Jesus Christ , and what you have heard from me before many witnesses . Entrust to the faithful men who will be able to teach others also . Take your share of suffering as a good soldier of Jesus Christ .
You know , this movement that we're talking about with Claymore is not for those on college campuses seeking a safe place with cookies and milk .
This is a movement of young men with the courage , reason and intellect to do what men of like minds and hearts have done throughout the ages to go out and seek the truth , what is the truth , and then stand up for that truth .
Then , upon finding this treasure this is so important to go out and share it , just like Bill W with a brother , go out and find another person or two that is searching for the truth and share this battle plan with them , building a community of brothers and seeking all that is true , good and beautiful , especially the beauty of love .
To succeed , you must know the plan and know that you're not living in a neutral zone . You came into a world at war with an enemy that seeks your destruction . Over the past decades , the enemy has gained a lot of territory . So Claymore battles for life , liberty and the pursuit of authentic love .
A three-step plan to take back territory for Christ and build their culture of life and love . That's what Claymore is all about . So every Friday again , I'm going to update this so you'll see the spiritual formation there . Get into that spiritual formation , share that with a brother of yours and then I'll continue to unpack the stories . On Fridays .
Have me out at your church . Give us a call . I don't care where you're at in the country . You know we fly out there . It doesn't cost much anymore on an airplane . Get a little community together . Let's talk at your parishes or in your communities and let's build these cells . I want to build these cells all over the country and help each other .
Also , in the show notes , you're going to see discussion questions in there . So sit down with somebody , listen to this podcast and then answer those or just discuss those study questions . I didn't put them in all the earlier ones . I meant to do that all along and sometimes I just get busy and forget about it .
So I'll go back and start putting those study questions in the previous ones and then put them all into the ones going forward . You can email me . My email is in the show notes info at jp2reneworg . You'll see it in there . Shoot me an email if you have questions or if you need help on something . In the meantime , keep me in your prayers .
I'll keep you in mind . God bless you . Thanks everybody . Talk to you again soon . Have a great weekend . Bye-bye , thank you .