Is Jesus Just a Statue? When Your Faith Goes Lifeless

I am your host, the undisputed technician of the truth. TJ Hayes coming at you. I'm very happy to be doing so. I know my wife and kids right now are downstairs saying, what the hell is going on upstairs? Tonight, we're talking about Jesus Christ. Is he a statue? Is Jesus just as I bet you for many of you, for most of you, Jesus has become a statue. He's not living flesh. What does that mean? How does that happen, and what do we do about it?

I'm gonna talk to you about it tonight. Let's fade that music out, and let's get right down with it. So is Jesus a statue? Let me tell you where this came from. So today, I was sitting in church, and directly in front of me at at at a distance on the far wall of the church, there's this nice and very old statue of Jesus.

The church is very ornate, so there's a lot of stuff to look at, a lot of statuary, iconography, frescoes, paintings, stuff like that. So So there's always something to look at. This particular moment, I was looking at that statue of Jesus. And I was feeling, and, you know, full disclosure, is Jesus a statue? Well, that's something I was asking myself, you know.

What do I mean by that? There is a transition that sometimes we make where Jesus ceases to be real. He becomes like a statue where he looks like the real thing. Very dramatic that zoom. Wasn't that dramatic? Do you wanna see it again? You'll have to stand by for the rest of the episode. He looks like the real thing. He seems like the real thing, but he's stoned. He's lifeless and he's dead.

Right? Sometimes that happens to us in the Catholic experience. Sometimes we intellectualize our relationship with Jesus. We think that we're walking with Jesus, but are we really? It's something we have to ask ourselves we don't ask ourselves enough. Is it really Jesus or is it just a statue that we're adoring? This particular statue was, as I said, it was ornate. It was very detailed. Looks like the real, you know, what we would think is the real Jesus. Right?

Sorry. Something popped up on TikTok loves popping stuff up on on the screen. So everyone's on wants to whoever designed the TikTok TikTok app, thank God they didn't design the Starship Enterprise. Because everybody there would be going nuts thinking the Klingons were attacking, because there's always something flashing and popping up on a screen. Kirk or Picard, they would have been launching photon torpedoes, letting off all the phasers, phasers on, destroy, whatever, And then they're gonna realize, wait, captain, I just realized it's asking me if I want to invite a teddy bear icon up on the screen to share the livestream with me for a free diamond and a piece of candy.

What the hell is that? It's TikTok. The app is crazy. The people are tremendous. The app is crazy. It's North Korea during a bad nightmare. It's very crazy. Anyway, the statue, very ornate, and sometimes our walk with Jesus can seem like that. It can seem like we're walking with the real Jesus when really we're intellectualizing him. He's the Jesus of our imagination.

But he seems so real. But you know how they you can tell the difference? Here's how you can tell the difference. First, I'm gonna do you a solid. I'm gonna do that drama cam thing again for you. You ready? Here you go. Watch. Pay attention. Pay attention closely.

TikTokers, if you wanna watch this on YouTube and see this drama cam thing that I'm about to do, it only lasts a couple of seconds, so you gotta hurry up. You can watch this on YouTube at Catholic Firebrand. Okay. Here we go. You're about to miss it now. Here we go. Okay. You ready? Here we go. You know how you can tell that you're not walking with the real Jesus?

Because if you've ever walked, if you've if you've ever had a relationship with Jesus that that has got every and everyone watching this probably does. Right? But when you have a relationship that's really deep, it's really grassroots, it's like so real because the Lord has brought you into a closeness with him that you previously did not have. When you experience that, you're going to know the difference between really walking with Jesus and walking with a very good figment of your imagination. Fulton Sheen once said, The closest thing the blessed mother has ever come to knowing sin is when she lost the Lord for three days.

That's what sin feels like. I think that's true. I can't say I I mean, obviously, I've experienced sin, but I can't say I've felt it that way, but I can tell you I know what it feels like to walk closely and intimately with the Lord. And then, for one reason or another, to feel that closeness slip away. There's a difference, a stark difference.

The difference happens gradually. You don't know it as it's happening, but it happens sometimes. Why does it happen? Sometimes it's because of sin. Sometimes it's because of a lack of attention, a lack of discipline in the interior life. The things that bring us closer to Jesus require discipline. And when we lose that discipline, guess what? We lose Jesus. Not truly, but, you know, effectively. We're not walking as close with him.

We're not as tight with him. You understand? That's how that goes. Be attentive to your walk with Jesus and and maintain it. Very carefully maintain it because Jesus will let you lose it. You think he's just gonna hold on to you? He's not gonna force himself on you. Jesus will let you lose it. So be careful and be mindful. So if you can please tap that like button, I would really appreciate it.

PS. Anywhere you're seeing this, please tap like, please click your heels, do jumping jacks, back flip. I don't care what you have to do. For god's sake, tell the algorithm that my stuff rocks. You understand?

It rocks the box all around the clock. You have to engage with my stuff or the algorithm is just not gonna know that. I gotta I gotta tell you, man. The algorithm rhythm is a son of a bleep. You know that especially when you start to rely on the algorithm to distribute and disseminate your content, you realize how cruel the algorithm is.

There was one thing I dropped on TikTok. I couldn't believe it. It in in a very short period of time, it had, like, a 150 likes, which for me is, like, super viral. 150 likes in a very short period of time. You know what?

The algorithm only sent it to like 200 people or something. Something stupid like that. I mean, what's great about that is it's a lot of likes for very little exposure. But you would think the algorithm is gonna say, wow, a lot of people are liking this video. Let me send it to more people. Nope. Alright. Sometimes Jesus becomes a statue, our relationship with him becomes fake, faulty, make believe. It's true. It happens.

It's a progression. It happens without you realizing it. How do you avoid it? Try real hard to have a disciplined prayer life, a disciplined interior life, sacraments, sacraments, sacraments through that process and and and focus on Jesus, meditate on Jesus, read about him in the gospel. Through that process, you're going to be brought into a closer relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Then you'll have context. Then you're going to know what being away from him feels like. You're going to know what being away from him feels like. And then you're going to try like hell to go back to him. Here's the thing. Pay real close attention. I'm being dead serious here. That cycle of falling and rising again, you cannot give up. You cannot give up. You cannot give up.

You may want to lose hope. You may get tired of trying. You have to get your ass up and keep going. For this reason, eventually, that discipline will get so regular for you that you're going to spend more time walking closely with Jesus than you will spend walking away from him and turning your back on him. You'll spend more time in closeness with him than separated from him.

And then it's going to fuel your fire because more and more and more and more, you're going to want to maintain that closeness. You're gonna want to spend longer time in prayer because you want to spend more time focused on the person that you love so deeply. You understand? And then, oh, then your holiness is really going to take off Because you're gonna be spending more and more time with Jesus. More time in face to face engagement, interiorly, with the Lord Jesus.

The thought of of parting from him through sin or through habit that that isn't sinful or through lack of discipline, the thought of parting from him is going to be more and more distasteful for you until eventually you're gonna be like, I could never do that. Walk away from him. But it takes perseverance through this cycle of falling and rising and falling and rising again, and never ever ever giving up. And by falling and rising, I'm not only talking about sin, but that's part of the falling and rising, or that can be part of the falling and rising. By falling and rising in this context, I'm talking about losing the discipline of closeness with Jesus, and then working to gain it back again, and then losing it again and getting sloppy.

It's like anything. It's like exercise. Right? I'm running two miles every day. I've been doing it for two months. And that one time you skip, you know you're screwed. That one time, I'll get back to it tomorrow. That one time but you know you're screwed. Right? Yeah, you'll get back to it tomorrow.

Four days later, you're gonna skip another day. Three days later, you're gonna skip another day, maybe two days later. Then you're gonna skip two days. And before you know it, you crash and burn. You've lost the discipline of your exercise. Well, the spiritual life is the same way, except there's more of this in the spiritual life. Yeah. It's more it's more intellectual. It's it's not physical. It's spiritual and intellectual, which means it's a little bit more tricky than just exercising.

Just like exercise, you can lose the discipline and it's hard to get it back again. That's the falling and rising I'm talking about. But you cannot give up, you have to persevere. Do you want that? Do you wanna be so hungry for Jesus that you will never let him go?

Do you want it? Then you've gotta go out and get it, man. You have to make it real. You have to make it happen. Ask the blessed mother to help you, and ask the Lord Jesus to help you, and persevere through the appearance of failure, the appearance of worthlessness. I suck. I'll never be able to get this right. Persevere through that. That's part of the falling. That's part of the trial.

Persevere, and get your ass back up, back in the game, and renew your discipline. Walk with Jesus, the real one, not the statue. I'm about to get to you, like, right now, TikTok. This has been an episode of Fire Branded, a special project of the undisputed technician of the truth. That's for you old schoolers out there, and it's still true.

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Check it out. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, Catholics of all ages. Firebrand himself is signing out of here. God bless you, and God be with you all. Bye bye. TikTokers, wait. I'm not going nowhere. You guys go get something to eat. It's a crazy life tonight, man. Lord have mercy.