Pints With Aquinas - Eating the Sunrise w/ Christopher West

Episode Date: March 20, 2024

Christopher West joins the show to talk about his new book "Eating the Sunrise". Get 20% off with Discount Code: EATING https://shop.corproject.com/collections/books/products/pre-order-eating-the-sunrise-meditations-on-the-liturgy-and-our-hunger-for-beauty-paperback Show Sponsor: https://strive21.com/matt Support the Show: https://mattfradd.locals.com      

Good day Good day, Matthew. How are you? Well good to be I think this is my fifth time on your show. Yeah, I Started on the Matt Fred show very kind of you to come on that because we had 18 followers back then still agreed to come on Yeah, I remember no it's a great conversation. It was in where were you in Georgia at the time at the land Well north of Atlanta and coming. Yeah know, it's funny as I think that COVID lockdowns sort of accelerated the technology needed to stream.

But back then it was more difficult. So we were actually at a studio that I rented. Yeah, I remember that. Was that 2018 maybe? Yeah, probably. Yeah. Yeah. And then this is my third or fourth time in this studio, I think. So always, always a joy to be with you, Matt. And that yesterday. Well, we should tell people this. This is very exciting. This was your idea. We have just recorded a seven part series.

Six part. I don't know why you keep saying seven. Six part. I don't know either. keep saying seven. Six part, I don't know either. A six part series on love and responsibility. I thought each episode was gonna be like 20 minutes, but they were like an hour and a half each and it's good that they were. And we are going to, so now that we've recorded them, we're gonna edit them.

They're gonna be available to our supporters all at once, all seven of them. Six. Crap! You know, it's a bit now. You keep going for that perfect biblical number. It's a bit. I just have to keep going now.

It's seven. People are going to be demanding their money back. Six. And what we're going to do is it'll be on your channel one week and then my channel one week and then back and forth. We filmed three of the episodes in my channel and three of the episodes in your studio. So people should go and subscribe to your excellent Theology of the Body channel and that'll be fun. Theology of the Body Institute. Okay. Yeah, it's great because Love and Responsibility is such a beautiful book. Yeah, and it's not

well known. I mean, it's well known among a certain group of Catholics that it exists, but it's not widely read. And it is the answer to the crisis of our times. I remember the first time I read Love and Responsibility, it was 1994. And I was 24. And somehow this guy knew what happened in my life. And he put words to it, and he says right at the start, this is not an exposition of doctrine,

as much as it is a constant confrontation of doctrine with life. And he says, I challenge you, in so many words, to test everything I'm saying against your own experience of life. And he says, I challenge you in so many words to test everything I'm saying against your own experience of life. That's where he makes the argument. He says, test this against your own experience. And I had been so wounded by having bought into this sexual messaging of the culture. And it's like when you take your car to a mechanic who knows exactly what's wrong with

it and you've taken it to this guy or that guy and he couldn't figure it out and you find the mechanic who's like, this is what it is, that's the way I felt when I read Love and Responsibility. Like this is the mechanic of my heart who knows the workings and the things that were not working right and could also provide the fix, the remedy, and set me on a pilgrimage that all these years later, 30 years later, I'm still on. I'm thinking of an analogy which I often do.

My wife had been sick for a long time. We might be seeing some improvements now, but she went and saw a chiropractor. And I've always thought that chiropractors were, forgive me if you're a chiropractor, this might just be my bias, but like, you know, snake oil people. Yeah, right. You know, or dangerous. Maybe there are some out there who kind of give that kind of reputation.

Let me let me clarify that. I don't mean that they're intentionally deceiving people. I just mean the science of chiropractic. I've had a lot of people say to me, it's just not real. And so I've just always thought, okay, well, it's just bogus. But then we had a guy who used to go to Franciscan, who's a chiropractor, come here and said, let me just work on your wife. And it was like a miracle occurred.

And so I'm confronted with this and I now am forced to change my opinion. It doesn't mean I understand it, I just know it works. And if it works, I go with it. And I think life is often like that. This makes things better. It must be true. And when I read Love and Responsibility, I wasn't... Well, I knew God existed at that point.

I'd already come into a relationship with Christ. But I thought to myself as I read it, if I didn't believe in God, this assessment of human sexuality and the human heart and what we long for is the realest thing I've ever read, that I would just believe in God based on this, because it works kind of thing. Yes, yes. It corresponds to something I know deep in my bones already, but I didn't have the language to put to it. That was my experience of it. And in the last few years, three years or so, I've really given myself to a deeper dive

into the text because I started teaching a course on love and responsibility for the Theology of the Body Institute and co-teaching it with my dear friend and colleague, Jeanette Clark. And if you want to learn something, teach it. I've been drawing from that text for 30 years in my promotion of John Paul's Theology of the Body, but I hadn't done the kind of real deep dive into it that I had in the text of the Theology of the Body for so many years, I'd been doing the deep dive in that. But had in the text of the theology of the body for so many years I'd been

doing the deep dive in that. But the last three years or so I've given myself to a deeper dive into love and responsibility and there are just so many layers to it and it's almost maddening to me. Like I want to scream from the rooftops, hey world do you want to know what's going on? Do you want to know what the problem is with the whole world? Here's the diagnosis. And it's not, what's great in terms of sharing it with a wider audience is that it's a philosophy book. And that's what our series is also trying to unpack for people. It's not a theology of the body, it's obviously a theology text. It's a Bible study. It's for people of faith, right?

It's an invitation to faith. You can read love and responsibility without any faith. And he's just reflecting on human experience. I feel like if we could get it into the hand of Jordan Peterson, he'd fall off of his chair. I agree. I absolutely- I'm gonna make that happen. Please, let's get our series to Jordan Peterson. Yeah. I think- I'd love you to get on his show. I'm gonna make that happen. Please, let's get our series to Jordan Peterson.

Yeah. I think... I'd love you to get on his show. I'm gonna make that happen. I don't know. I have no power to make it happen. The good Lord will make it happen. The Lord wants it to happen. Yeah, I said this to you in our chat yesterday. It's almost irritating, maybe to our pride more than anything, that you especially, and Jason Everett and me to a much lesser degree, have been saying these things about cohabitation and the pill and all this forever. Not forever, but for a long time. And it's just been met with, well, gratitude for those who accept it but scorn for those who

weren't Christian. But now, you know, Peterson just did an interview recently about how the pill changes women's brains and why it's bad for women. Yeah. What? And in his book, Beyond Order, he argues against cohabitation. Like, yeah. And he's even using the analogies that you and Jason have used about you. You don't try out people, you try out cars, things like that. I'm like, that's what we're saying. But it's like the good Lord. It's you can't get away from truth. There is a way things work. You can work against them. You can pretend that open marriage is a good idea as destiny tried to do and it smacked him in the face. You may not know who that

is. It's a YouTuber. You can pretend that contraception will have no ill effect or that adultery might be okay or that pornography in moderate, you can pretend, but you just can't keep away from reality smacking you back. What I think is interesting about the Jordan Peterson phenomenon is the way he's kind of built his platform reminds me, to draw an analogy, of what you two did early on as a band. So they were the, I mean, I know Jordan Peterson is not as yet a professed Christian, so the analogy doesn't quite hold, but there were three of the band members in U2 in the early 80s

who were committed Christians. They were going to regular Bible studies, they were part of this Christian community in Dublin, and they were, you know, they were really committed to their faith. At the same time, they had this secular rock band, and they come to America for the first time in, I think, 1980, and they're kind of wearing their Christianity on their sleeve. And then they started watching TVs in the hotels when they're on this tour and they're seeing these televangelists on TV and they're like, oh, when we say we're Christians, we're going to be put in this box in America. We don't want to be in that box. That's not where we're coming from at all. And they made a very explicit decision early in their career as a band to say, we're going to be Christians who play music, but we're not going to be Christian musicians, right?

We're not going to be a Christian band. We want to take our message to the whole world. And if we get locked into the category of a Christian band, we're immediately limiting our audience. And you and I and people like Jason Everett have been saying these things for a long time, but we're kind of locked in, in some ways, to a Catholic and Christian audience. Whereas Jordan Peterson can say the very same things that maybe we've been saying, but people are way outside the bounds of what you and I can reach. He's able to reach because he made a very,

I mean, he dabbles in biblical stuff. He's like, does he believe that Christ is the Incarnate Word? Like, I remember seeing this one video of Jordan Peterson where he was in tears, like, grappling with, could it be real that the logos, the logic behind everything has been manifest in one person in the incarnate. Is the Logos incarnate in Jesus Christ? And I think he was, I don't know if he was talking to Bishop Barron or who, but there he was on camera just, he was seeing the weight of it and his tears just started to roll down his cheeks. I was like, ho, ho, ho, ho.

I mean, we, you know, if you're raised in the church, you almost take these things for granted. The Word was made flesh, in ear, one ear, and out the other. For Jordan, he was like, I saw him confronting it and feeling the weight of it and trembling. There have been times when I've trembled at the weight of the incarnation, but man, I was almost jealous. Like, I wish I could come at it from where you're coming from so that I could tremble at the implication of it. All that to say, he has a platform that people,

that he can reach with the same message or messaging that you and I might use, but he's just built an audience that he can go much further. And go for it. I mean, that's awesome. More power to you, Jordan Peterson. The Joshua Tree? Is that the name of the album?

Or is it the Joshua Tree? Well, that was their 1987 album. The Joshua Tree, yeah. I don't know if I like you two, especially a lot of the kind of political things they get into these days. No, I mean, please. But that album might be the best album ever for me. Yeah.

That is magical. Do you know what the Joshua Tree is? It's a tree in a desert in California, but I mean, they're pictured in front of the album cover. But the Joshua Tree means the Jesus Tree. Joshua is the word, there's no form of, Jesus is a form of the name Joshua. And it's kind of subtle things like that where you're not going to quite catch it at first, but they're preaching it for those with ears to hear.

And I, of course, I do not subscribe to Bono's politics. I do not subscribe to much of his morality. I actually met Bono in 2005. Rick Santorum introduced me to Bono. Rick Santorum had brought me to DC a couple times to do some teaching for his staff on Catholic issues. Wow. Yeah, in the early 2000s.

And he said, hey, if I can ever do anything for you, just let me know. He's a really nice guy. Yeah. And a couple of years later, I had this kind of all this manifest destiny that I thought I was supposed to meet Bono and introduce him to JP2's theology of the body. And this is quite a fun story.

Can I tell the story? Please, yeah, I'm excited to hear it. It's a fun a fun story. Can I tell the story? Please, yeah, I'm excited to hear it. It's a fun, fun story. It was October of 2005. JP2 had died in April of that year. So I called up Rick Santorum because I heard Bono was gonna be at the Capitol meeting with Rick Santorum.

And I said, remember you said, is there's anything you could do for me? He said, yeah. I said, could you sneak if there's anything you could do for me? He said, yeah. I said, could you sneak me into this meeting with Bono? And he says, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll give you 10 minutes with Bono at the end of this meeting. So I have to back up though to share

how amazing this story is. In 1999, Bono met JP II, and there's this famous picture where the Pope gives Bono a rosary, which he to this day wears around his neck. Not that you're supposed to wear it as jewelry, but he does. You could do much worse things. Yeah, indeed. And Bono gave the Pope his famous shades. Yeah, I remember that going viral.

Well, it didn't go viral until 2005 because somebody at the Vatican did not have a sense of humor. When the Pope put Bono's shades on, the best picture you could get was the Pope holding the shades right here, like almost putting them on. And I knew this story because I'm a huge U2 fan and of course

a huge JP2 fan. And of course I want to see the picture of JP2 wearing the glasses of Bono. Well, I go to this meeting with Rick Santorum and Bono, a few other senators, there are maybe 20 people in the room. And I'm just a fly on the wall and Bono's sitting there doing his thing, preaching his message about AIDS relief in Africa and worthy causes. Not that I agree with some of the approach of it all, but anyway, neither here nor there. At the end of this session with the senators, Bono is going to come around and greet some people and I was promised about 10 minutes with him. Well, I see Bono's assistant lean over and

whisper something in his ear and he goes, oh I almost forgot. Some of you may know the story that I met John Paul II in 1999. He doesn't know why I'm there. I'm about to introduce him to John Paul II's teaching. I have a copy of my Theology of the Body for Beginners that I'm going to hand to Bono in just a few minutes. He has no idea why I'm there. But he, of his own initiative, so, oh, I almost forgot, something amazing happened to me today. Some of you may know that I met John Paul II in 1999. He gave me this rosary. He opens a shirt. I wear it all the time. He says, and I gave him my shades,

but I've been trying to get my hands on this picture for five, six years, and just today, someone at the Vatican released it to me, he reaches in his pocket. Wow. I am at the unveiling Wow. of this photo, and he pulls it out,

and there's the Pope wearing Bono's shades, and I'm thinking, this is JP II from heaven giving me the perfect alley-oop. All I gotta do is take this basketball now and slam dunk it. And Bono runs around the room with this picture. He stops right at me. This is before I was introduced to him. He doesn't know who I am.

And he says, look at the wicked grin on this Pope's face. And I'm thinking to myself, Bono, if you only knew why I had such a wicked grin right now, because you don't know what's about to hit you. And I did have about seven or eight minutes with him. And I really felt JP II was in the room. And Bono immediately came, understandably, as an Irishman, He came out kinda with both fists up about the Catholic Church and sex. When you spoke to him?

When I spoke to him. How did that? Well, I showed him a copy of my book. It says, Theology of the Body, for Beginners, and a picture of JP II. And he's like, Catholic Church, sex, what is this? And he was, well, you know, the Catholic Church put a big guilt trip on us Irish people about sex. And Rick Santorum interrupts and he says, Bono, this is not that.

You're going to be very impressed with this. And he says, well, you know, I've been thinking about this whole biblical vision that Jesus puts forth about lust. And I'm like, oh, interesting. And Bono says, I've thought, you know, many times, like, okay, if you even look lustfully, you've already committed adultery. And Bono is a real student of the Scriptures, like he really knows the Scripture. And he says, I've thought about this, if you even look lustfully, you've already committed adultery in your heart.

And he says, and I've concluded there has to be another way to look. And like, Bono, that's chapter two and three in my book here. And then he says, and okay, save sex from marriage, but what about a husband who's sexually abusive to his own wife? Can't you commit adultery in your heart with your own wife? And I said, Bono, the pope talks about that and I explain it here in chapter four. And every other thing he said as he was trying to unpack his scriptural understanding could have been straight out of JP2. Every other other thing he said was heretical and way off. But it was a lively exchange and I, my respect for this man,

I mean you got to think he is one of the most... He's a rock god and if you were in his shoes, if I were in his shoes, I would have just destroyed myself probably, except for the grace of God, you know? Exactly, exactly, and he has, and I believe him, he says he has been faithful to his wife, he's been married for over 40 years, to one woman, they have four kids, they gave them all biblical names. He is a fascinating human being. Again, I don't subscribe to his politics nor a lot of his morality, but I have studied his work, I've studied his life, because his music has meant so much to me. All of this because you brought up the Joshua Tree. I was 18 years old when the Joshua

tree came out. I was going through one of the darkest times of my life. There's a photo of him with the glasses. Oh yeah, there's a photo of JP II with the glasses. So you were going through the darkest time of your life when? 1987. My family had announced, I grew up in Lancaster, PA. I grew up in Lancaster, PA. My family had announced in March of 87 that they were moving our family from Lancaster, PA to Gaithersburg, Maryland to be part of a Catholic Charismatic community there called the Mother of God Community.

And I wanted absolutely nothing to do with this move and this community. And I wanted absolutely nothing to do with this move and this community. How old were you? I was 17 at that point. I would have turned 18 that November of 87. And I ended up running away from home, as a matter of fact. My dad had said to me, if you move with us this summer, I'll let you come back and finish your senior year of high school with all your friends. And I had a girlfriend I was very committed to at the time. And I just, the thought of missing out on my senior year

of high school was unbearable to me. So I, okay, that's fair enough. I'll come down with you guys for the summer and then I'll come back to finish my senior year. Was his hope that you would like it enough that you might stay? Yes. And I didn't. And halfway through the summer,

my dad said, I changed my mind. Oh. I don't want you to go back. Oof. And I jumped out my second story bedroom window that night and drove back to Pennsylvania. And I was, I mean, I'm making a long story short, but I was basically

estranged from my family for about three years as they got more and more involved in this community and I wanted absolutely nothing, nothing to do with it. It was in, yeah, it was in that dark time after the announcement of their move, it was one of the darkest times in my young life. I've had other dark times since. But there's experiences you look back on, you're like, that really shaped me. That pain that I went through when I was 17, 18, 1920, man, that was rough.

And it was the Joshua Tree. I didn't have any Christian faith of any kind. I didn't know they were singing about biblical stuff. I didn't know the Joshua Tree meant the Jesus Tree. I didn't know this album had all kinds of themes about the cross and death and resurrection. No clue. But I listened to that in my headphones night after night

and I heard this cry come out of Bono's heart that just gave me hope. It was voicing my own cry. We need artists, we desperately need artists who are brave enough to look at the real contents going on in the human heart and then express it, press it out. And that was my experience of that album, of that band. I had been filing that band since the early 80s. And Bono is the quintessential man of the O-antiphon. He lets out that, Antiphon he lets out that whoa Whoa

He lets that that Oh Antiphon right he lets it out. It's liturgical that oh When we have the Oh Antiphon in the liturgy. It's it's this it's this the the the Syllable we use to express longing longing for God right. Right. Oh, come, oh, come, Emmanuel, right? Oh, come. John of the Cross uses oh in his mystical poetry as this voice of longing. Yeah. And Bono just has this way of putting that longing into song.

I'm going on about Bono, but I have another Bono story. Can I share? So I've got a question for you because you speak at a lot of conferences. You've spoken to probably millions at this point, or at least over a million people. I would. I've never done the math, but yeah, I would guess over a couple million. And so I imagine that when you go and speak at a conference, there are people whose life you have impacted and they really want to meet you and yes I'm sure you've had the experience where people are lined up hoping to meet you which is kind of humbling and makes you feel kind of Even shame sometimes. Yeah, it's odd. It's an odd It's an odd existence to have weekend after weekend over 30 years

to have people want their picture with you and wait in line sometimes an hour and a half. So these people when they meet you they are naturally trying to endear themselves to you in the like 30 seconds that they have and they really hope that you'll see them not just as another one but as someone who's like you have actually impacted and you want to respect that by eye contact and really trying to meet them. So what was it like you being the one

who in that short amount of time had to try to make a real connection? Yeah, that's a great, I'm so glad you asked that question because I gave that a lot of thought. Okay, how am I going to engage him? Because yeah, he's a celebrity, he meets countless people.

him because yeah he's a celebrity he meets countless people and I had I had been told by Rick Santorum's kind of staff who knew Bono fairly well from lots of meetings with him that Bono loves to talk and if you pose a question to him that he finds engaging he will launch and he said if you want to engage him that's how you do it. So I gave that a lot of thought, like, okay, how do I approach this with Bono? And what I came up with was he talks a lot about, he talks a lot about the difference

between grace and karma. Karma is you get what you give out, right? You dish this out, it's coming back around to you. Grace, he says, is about mercy. And you dish out a lot of crap and you expose that and give it to God, and his mercy will meet you and it won't just come back to bite you because Christ died for our sins. That's Bono's understanding of grace. And so he sings about this in his songs, the difference between grace and karma. He has one song called Grace in particular, where he dives into this. And I thought, okay, maybe I'll approach it this way. I showed him a copy of the book and I said, Bono, what happens if you apply karma to today's sexual behavior? You get the

world we're living in right now, but what would happen if you applied grace to our sexual behavior? That's what this book is about. And he went, he did that doggy head tilt. And I thought, oh, I think I'm on the right foot. I think I engaged him. And that's when he launched into, well, the Catholic Church has been kind of da da da da in Ireland, and I'll give him that because there's a lot. Oh, phew. Sure.

When you enter into some of that cultural stuff and some of the abuses in the church in Ireland, you gotta just show reverence to the wound, you know? So that was my launching point. And from there, yeah, I think I already shared that part about the different scriptures he quoted. Yeah, yeah, that's cool. I have one more Bono story, can I share?

Yeah. So an interview he did maybe 12, 15 years ago, he was talking, he used in his own language the word Eros, which is a word I use all the time. And he was being interviewed and this interview, I think it was from Rolling Stone magazine, big rock and roll magazine, and he says to Bono, come on Bono, you're one of the biggest rock stars

in the world, you have groupies all around the world who wanna have sex with you. You're groupies all around the world who want to have sex with you. You're saying you've been faithful to your wife and at that point I think it was like 30 years he'd been married. You're saying you've been faithful to your wife? He says, and come on Bono, I know you sing about erotic themes in your music. And Bono says, let me try to explain something to you. He says, yes I do sing about erotic themes in my music. He says, let me try to explain something to you. He says, yes, I do sing about erotic themes in my music. He says, but first of all, when I sing about erotic themes in my music, it's a song of

fidelity to my wife. And then he says, but there's a moment in the music for me when the music segues, and then he used the word eros. He says, and eros itself segues from the things of this world to the things of another world. And he says, Eros itself in my music becomes a longing for things bigger than this world, for things that transcend this world. It becomes a longing for God. And I remember reading this, I'm like, oh my gosh Bono, you're on it, you're on it.

And then I remembered I had seen a concert clip from a 2001 show that they did at Slane Castle in Ireland. And any mega U2 fan, if you just say Slane Castle 2001, they know this concert. And I show this clip, hey, Thursday. Yeah, I got you. I'm already on it. 2001.

Got it already. Okay, bring up where the, he transitions from, All I Want Is You. We can't play the audio. Oh, you can't play the audio? No. We'll get, oh, we'll get whacked? You'll get whacked.

Well, we'll get whacked. We also don't have speakers. Oh, oh, oh. But anyway. Okay, you know, put a link toacked? You'll get whacked. Well, we'll get whacked, we also don't have speakers. Oh, oh, oh. But anyway. Okay, you know, put a link to it for people so they can look it up, but it's the transition from the song, All I Want Is You, which is a song of fidelity to his wife,

to the song, Where the Streets Have No Name, which is a song about heaven. And there's a moment when you can't miss it, when you see his, first he's singing this love song to his wife and his Eros is aimed at his wife, rightly so. But when the song transitions from a love song about his wife to a love song about heaven, his desire, you can't miss it, it just goes,

boosh, shoots like a rocket to the stars, to the infinite. And you see his, you see again this o antiphon come out of Bono. And it brings me to tears, like it pierces me. It's so vulnerable, it's so naked, it's so raw. And I show this to my students and then I say, do you know what we just saw here? We just saw Bono teaching 80,000 people how to pray.

Because prayer, this is one of my favorite quotes from Pope Benedict XVI. And this is pretty much verbatim from Benedict. Prayer, the fathers of the church tell us, properly understood, prayer is nothing other than becoming a longing for God. Yeah, Augustine says something similar to that because Aquinas asks the question, is it possible to pray at all times?

And he says, well, yes and no, no, because we have all sorts of things that we have to engage in. But then he quotes Augustine in saying that we can pray at all times by constantly desiring. Exactly. Yeah, Augustine says, longing is your prayer. And if you allow yourself to feel your longing, your prayer becomes constant. If we are in touch with what really is going on, and that's hard to be, it's really hard. We numb ourselves, we distract ourselves. It's painful. I don't want to be in touch with that

ache all the time because it hurts. I just removed the veil a little bit last night in my hotel room here in Steubenville, Ohio. Boom, it hit. Like, I'm missing my family, this is the end of a long travel season for me, I'm missing my wife, I'm alone in my bed, and the ache just started to overwhelm me, and I'm groaning in my... And I'm like, oh crap, I wonder what the next door neighbor might think is going on. I'm alone, I'm nobody's... And I'm is going on. I'm alone. I'm nobody's and I'm not doing that It's a prayer I'm praying over here Steubenville, Ohio only in student opening only in Steubenville Yeah, Bono, but the artists in my life. I have loved and again. Yeah, you talk about Bruce Springsteen when you were 11 or something

Please please I'm not subscribing to their politics. It must be so exhausting. I know it is exhausting. I know There's my copy and I will say and I will say I don't care There are wheat and weeds in all of us, right? Yeah, you are full of wheat and you are full of weeds and so am I Yeah and you can go to a secular rock concert and find more weeds, excuse me, more wheat at that secular rock concert than sometimes you will find wheat

at a so-called Christian music event. There are wheat and weeds in all of us. What we need is discernment. Okay, that's wheat and that's weeds. I'm not going to water the weeds, but I can benefit from the wheat there. And man. Mason Hickman I mean, I know you talk a lot about the importance of desire and you express it so well, but it might be helpful to talk about why it hurts. And it's not hurts in the sense of the gratification that we get from encountering God without desire, but hurts in the sense of not wanting to engage it.

I've shared this story before. Sister Miriam James talks about, you know, sometimes when you're out playing in the snow, maybe as a little child and you come in and you warm your hands by the fire and it hurts like hell. And you think maybe it was better to just stay cold. And healing hurts. And sometimes you're like, effort, this is too hard. Yeah, well, the saints speak of the wound of love

and John of the Cross. You can see why, sorry to cut you off. You can see why people would rather just a neat and tidy fancy ribbon in my nice leather Bible Catholicism. Can't you see that? God, that's easier. I may have said this on a previous episode, I can't recall with you, but if you're going to be following Jesus, it's going to be a bloody mess. It just is, because he was a bloody... that's where he goes... he says, follow me. And he went to Calvary and it was a bloody mess. If we are following him,

it's going to be a bloody mess. Mason- It's almost like we all start with messy rooms and you can either pretend your room is clean and not look at it, or you can just kind of get to work. And that sanctification is the Lord, what is it going to work with you on cleaning up your mess? But sometimes we would rather just fixate our attention on a saint or an apparition to somehow avoid the work that we're being called to engage in like if I can just read books about Padre Pio and feel a lot of Whatever I feel piety when I think of him if people are gonna misunderstand this there's no way around it, but Or if I can get fixated on a particular apparition or if I can have a neat little prayer schedule

Yeah, I'm sorry I have to offer the caveat because it's so exhausting but none of that's to say the call to the saints is bad, that neat prayer schedules is bad, all of that is even necessary to have a prayer. But it doesn't, it does, you can't just clean up your life. It's like a way of papering over the pain. Yes, it can become a mask. It can become. Those pious practices can and oftentimes do in our lives

because we're afraid, exhibit A, we're afraid really to look in there and see what is actually going on in there. It's scary. And to where our religiosity exteriorly feels safer, but you can only do that for so long, because if you're not looking at the mess in there, the pain, the brokenness, the sinfulness, the roots of our sins, if I can go back to John of the Cross, he says as we journey the way of purification, we first deal with the bad fruits of sin in

our lives. And God in His mercy, as we've dealt with a lot of those bad fruits, will typically give us a little resting time, a little hiatus, because that's a lot of work. It's a lot of painful work to deal with those bad fruits of sin in our lives. And I know when I had dealt with a lot of those bad fruits in my life, and I was more in a kind of time of, oh, I've made progress, praise, thank you God, I've made some real progress here. And you're kind of floating along and you're thinking, oh, I'm kind of doing okay.

But then John of the Cross says, You're kind of floating along and you're thinking, I'm kind of doing okay. But then John of the Cross says, then we have to look at the roots that caused the bad fruits. And that's a whole other level of purification. And as you say, thank God for those respites. It reminds me of Frodo on his way to Mordor, right? He gets to stop at that inn and have beer with friends. He gets to go to Rivendell. And in a way, I think those are sort of like the growth.

Like I think I'm right now experiencing like healing in my own life from our Lord. And I'm in a place of Rivendell. My wife and I are like, oh, things are good. Things have, that was hard, right? But we've both noticed good healing happen. Wow. But then you look up, you're like, oh no. Yeah, yeah, but then you look up. Oh, no. Yeah. Yeah the summits

You know, so there's never a cause for pride because there's always so much further to go Can I give you a little hope period? Because I need it I need to say this I need to remind myself so that I have the hope to For the joy set before him Christ endured those sufferings, right? For the joy set before him. If we don't have our eyes on that ecstasy, what ecstasy, participation in the infinite exchange of ecstatic love of the Trinity. This is what we're made for. We are made not only to have our sins forgiven, that's just the necessary prerequisite to get to the really good part of why we call the Gospel good news.

You and Imad are destined to participate in the eternal ecstasy and bliss of the Trinitarian exchange, which is a joy that eye has not seen, ear has not heard, it hasn't even dawned on us. It's the joy that thieves cannot steal and moths cannot come in and eat it up and destroy it. It's the joy that lasts forever. May I pivot? Because it's a natural point to pivot. You don't have to ask me. You can just do your thing. We were going to talk about this book that I've written, Shameless Plug. It's called

Eating the Sunrise, Meditations on the Liturgy and Our Hunger for Beauty. And I start the book with a story, just a telling of an experience I had one day when I was actually sitting down on day one of writing the book and like, how do I start chapter one? I didn't have a plan. Yeah. And I just found myself sitting at my desk in my office, and it was springtime. I was looking out at a redbud tree in my yard, which in May has all these beautiful buds

on it. And why we call it a redbud tree, I don't know, because they're more purpley. But they're in full bloom. And I was just like, ah. And every year I go through this love-hate with this redbud tree because the beauty of these redbuds seduce me. But then in three weeks they're dead and they fall to the ground and they're gone. And I hate it.

I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. And there I am, I'm at my computer thinking, how do I start chapter one of this new book? And my mind's drifting and I'm, urgh, friggin' red bud trees, you seduce me with your beauty and I'm drawn in, but then in three weeks you're gonna be brown and dead and all those buds are gonna be on the ground. I hate it. I hate death. I hate it.

I hate the fact that your beauty is fleeting. That's what I hate. Well, that's how I started the book. I was having the experience as I went to write chapter one and I said, well, just write that. I just started typing out my experience. And it shaped the whole book. And it became a different book than I thought I was going to write. It became a book on this longing for beauty and all of this is about what I was saying to you,

for the joy set before him. What joy? Infinite joy that's not fleeting, beauty that doesn't fade, ecstasy that's not here today gone tomorrow, a bliss and a joy and a super abounding fulfillment that is secure, that is not threatened by death. The cry in our heart for that is called, in the language of the Church, which is borrowed from the Greeks, eros. It's the longing for the infinite true good and beautiful. This is why only union with God can satisfy eros. Eros, and if I have my eye on that prize, infinite ecstasy and bliss, then I can look

at the sufferings and sorrows that I must pass through to arrive there, and I will be able to say with St. Paul, if I really have my eye on that prize, I will be able to say with St. Paul, I consider the sufferings of this life as nothing compared to the glory to be revealed in us. We have to keep our eye on that prize or the suffering. Forget it. Forget that I'm going to numb myself out. I'm not going to feel it. I'm going to shut down. I'm going to repress all that longing on the one hand. That's one approach. Or I'm going to try to fill that longing with all these finite satisfactions, which can never really reach the depth of the ache.

I loved your analogy about the tree. I think what else is painful isn't just that it's fleeting, it's that I know I cannot appreciate it the way I should. So if those trees never died, you just start walking past them and not noticing them, you know? That's the pain of beauty too, is I know that I cannot stand and reverence this thing the way I should. I want to take all of it in, but I know I can't. And then I feel almost just frustration.

It's frustration that I can't. I had this experience, which I emailed you back before we really knew each other. If you permit me to share it. I was in San Diego. My wife and I were pottering about a little farmer's market on the ocean with two dear friends of ours who we love, Chester and Alisa. And it was just one of these lovely slow evenings and beautiful warm weather. And we made our way down to the beach, you know, coffee in hand. And then me and Chester decided to strip down to our underwear and go swimming. And the sun was sinking into the ocean and we were body surfing. And I just remember thinking it doesn't get better than this.

It's no way near enough. We went home and my wife and I did what husbands and wives do and it was glorious and it wasn't get better than this. It's no way near enough. I think we went home and my wife and I did what husbands and wives do, and it was glorious and it wasn't enough. It's not enough. And so I don't know if it's not enough because it's not enough or if it's not enough because I can't take it all in. But the pain of that. Yeah, there is a...

It's almost like you wish it didn't even happen. Yeah. And that's, I think that's a danger. I know I've fallen into that danger because I, it hurts so much to long for so much. It hurts so much to feel so deeply. And you feel annoying to people around you? Yeah, and you feel, you start to, you think, am I the only one who feels this? Are there others? And then you read the lives of some others. I mean this is what the Saints talk about. I wonder if you want to read Francis de Sales at some point. Oh sure. I think sometimes we use this language of Eros and you think oh this is some kind of... Yeah, new, fabled... Yeah, kind of foreign innovation to the faith.

No, no, no, no, no. This is deep in the tradition of the church. Let me see if I can... Oh, here it is. Yeah. Okay. In the words of St. Francis de Sales, eros, E-R-O-S, right? Now, we have to do... The reason this is difficult for people... Will Barron It's because you think porn. Will Barron Yeah. Will Barron You think... Will Barron You hear... The erotic realm is synonymous in the modern mind with the I think of a quote-unquote adult bookstore. I think neon xxx. That's what I think

This is what we've been trained. This is exactly the enemy's goal is to plagiarize and bastardize the erotic realm Because saint after saint after saint will tell us it is that realm. Think of the Song of Songs, the great erotic love poetry of the Scripture. The saints have written more commentaries on the Song of Songs than any other book in the Bible. Why? What do they know about that erotic love poetry that you and I and the whole world needs to get in on? They know that Eros, the love of man and woman, this longing for union, for consummate union,

is what John Paul II calls the primordial sacrament of our eternal union with God. It's the main image the Bible uses, the union of man and woman in one flesh is the main biblical image of God's covenant love with his people, which is why every time in Scripture it says be fruitful or it says God wants to establish a covenant with his people, there is a call to be fruitful and multiply. There's a call the two to become one flesh because that's the sign of that reality. This is what St. Francis de Sales is getting at here when he uses this language. In the words of St. Francis de

Sales, Eros is the desire in us that passionately rushes toward divinization. Okay, now that may be a word it's more familiar maybe to Eastern Catholics, but maybe less familiar to Western Catholics. Divinization is what we were just talking about, that your destiny and my destiny is to participate in the divine exchange, in the eternal exchange of the Trinity. And so in every Mass the priest prays when he pours the water into the wine, he prays through the mystery of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.

That's the call to divinization. And Eros rightly understood is the longing to participate in that divinization, eternal union with God. And DeSales goes on, may I read this passage from On the Breastfeeding? Oh, of course. Isn't this rich? Oh, it's glorious. Now, if you said this, you'd be accused of being a closet sex addict.

I know. This is why I love to quote the saints. That's right. If you have an issue here, your issue is not with me. Your issue is with St. Francis de Sales. You will lose. And look what he says. He's talking about the union that awaits us in eternity. He says, ah, what a union of our hearts there shall be with God above in heaven, exclaims

to Sales. He goes on, he says, in eternity, after these infinite desires of the true good, which were never assuaged in this world. Say that again, that wrong line. After, meaning in the next life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which were never assuaged in this world That again the one line After meaning in the next life and then he's saying okay in this life these infinite desires For the true the good and the beautiful right they are never assuaged in this life They were never satisfied. They are never satisfied. Yeah, and that's why it hurts, right? It hurts because I feel the longing,

but the emptiness is not filled. Yeah. And Teresa of Avila got to the point in feeling this oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, oooooh, I die because I do not die. Yeah. She's longing for death because she knows on the other side of that is the consummate union, is the fulfillment of that cry. She says, I die because I do not die. And John of the Cross says,

when you get into the depth of this cry of your heart, he says it's worse than death. The suffering is worse than death because death is the birth into its fulfillment. But here on this side, the certainty that we are growing in holiness is not that our desires decrease, it's that they expand unto the point of infinitization. And there are times where you feel it so deeply you can barely breathe and you long, you long, you ache and pine for the consummation. And you feel, you feel what the bride in the Song of Songs feels when she takes off all her clothes, she goes into the marriage bed, she's longing for

the bridegroom, the bridegroom shows up, he peers through the the window, she sees him and she's like, here comes the consummate embrace, and then he turns and he goes. Saint after saint who enter into this imagery of the song of songs, ask the question, why, why, why? And it was Augustine who said, I think he was the first in there, I'm sure others, maybe origin and others. The bridegroom appears to leave, I am with you to the end of the age. I'll never leave you.

I'll never forsake you. So it's in appearing that he leaves. Why? Saint after saint has said to stretch our desire even further, to increase the longing even more. So he's flirting with us. Yeah. You can put it that way. Yeah, you got to finish.

We mentioned breast milk. I did. Here we go. Here we go. So after these infinite desires of the true good never assuaged in this world, this is all St. Francis de Sales. We shall find the living and powerful source thereof.

In other words, we're going to find the, I're going to find the source of the beauty that I saw in the red bud tree. I'm going to go from the sign to the reality signified. I'm going to go from small b beauty, created beauty, to capital B beauty, divine beauty, lasting beauty. And then this is his analogy. Then, in that eternal fulfillment, truly, as we see a hungry child closely fixed to his mother's breast... Now notice what he says here. As we see a hungry child fixed to... It's apparent because he goes into some very intimate descriptions of what a breastfeeding child looks like, that he has seen a child doing this at somebody's breast. This is what he says, then truly as we see a hungry child closely fixed to his mother's breast, greedily press this dear fountain of most desired

sweetness so that one would think that either it would thrust itself into its mother's breast, or else suck and draw all that breast into itself." Then he makes the analogy, so our soul, panting with an extreme thirst for the true good, when she shall find that inexhaustible source in the all goodness." With a capital A. Either, he says, to be all together absorbed in the breasts of the all goodness or to have the breasts of the all goodness come entirely into us. That would be so.

Matt, thank you for your tears. Don't do that. Thank you. No, I'm commenting. Because we need men who are willing to feel it as you are willing to feel it right here. Who couldn't? Well, here's the problem. We anesthetize ourselves because it hurts. Why are tears coming? I mean, it hurts. You know what the word anesthetize ourselves because it hurts. Why are tears coming? I mean that hurts. You know what the word anesthetize actually means? I do because I read your book. Oh yes that's right. Numb to beauty. Yeah. Yeah. What's the two, what's the root of the two words? Well and someone who's an anesthet aesthetic has a proper aesthetic sensibility

someone who's a proper appreciation for beauty but an aesthetic means you've numbed yourself to beauty. Yeah well let me ask you a practical question here because we can't be walking around feeling like this all the time we have things to do we have laundry yes we have business meetings we have you know children who would probably prefer us not to cry all the time. Is this what a mystic is? Is it that the Lord calls certain people to bleed in a way he doesn't call others? But then you've got people like Aquinas who are both mystics and scholars.

Or is it that he doesn't allow you to feel it all the time? I think in his mercy, I think it is a mercy that we don't feel it all the time. I think there are some saints who are granted to feel it almost all the time. Like Ignatius of Loyola was constantly weeping for an extended, like I don't know if it's weeks or months, but his spiritual director eventually begged him, ordered him, stop crying or you're going to go blind. He just was seeing beauty. It was so raw to him. He was seeing the sacramentality of the world. He was seeing the suffering Christ in humanity.

He was seeing the beauty of the resurrected Christ also in humanity. He was seeing the beauty of the resurrected Christ also in humanity, and the beauty and the sorrow, he became a living rosary, if you will. He was experientially living the joyful, sorrowful, and glorious mysteries, and it just made him weep constantly, to the point that his spiritual director said, stop, you're going to go blind. So yeah, I do think certain saints are granted what you could call, and I'll quote the Catechism here, as I do here in the book, these are what the Catechism called the extraordinary signs of the mystical life, like the stigmata, or like bodily levitations, or like Ignatius of Loyola constantly crying. These are the extraordinary signs of the mystical life.

But the catechism goes on to say, few are given those extraordinary signs, but they're given them to be a sign to all of us of what all of us are called to in a more ordinary way. So we're all called to bear the wounds of Christ. Doesn't mean we're all going to get the stigmata as a visible sign. Every time we go to Mass, we say, lift up your hearts, we lift them up to the Lord. Well, Teresa of Avila would be up in the rafters as an extraordinary sign of the ordinary mystical life, which is someone who actually means

what he says at Mass. We lift them up to the Lord. I mean, I have a priest friend, I think I quote him in here, who who once said, If I put a truthometer on my congregation, when they say we lift them up to the Lord, we lift our hearts to the Lord, I don't think it would barely register because we're just kind of going through the motions. We are called to an ordinary mysticism that I think is the normal Christian life, and that means that we're learning to open our longing. First we have to feel it and be courageous enough to feel it, and then learn how to open it to the great mystery, what St. Paul calls the mega mystery of Christ's love for the

church. That's what makes one a mystic. You're opening your longing to the mystery with a capital M. Yeah, I guess this is why we turn away from pleasures, earthly pleasures. Like this is what maybe sometimes the saints talk about abstaining from earthly pleasures in a way that rubs us the wrong way, because it sounds like they're saying, be miserable for the sake of being miserable. But because, gosh, I mean, I remember my wife once noticing me rummaging through the cupboards

and asking, what are you doing? And I said, I remember my wife once noticing me rummaging through the cupboards and asking, what are you doing? I said, I'm looking for happiness. I haven't found it in the chocolate or the whiskey. Maybe it's in this thing, which is kind of sad that I knew it and kept looking. But yeah, there, there, I have a whole chapter when you, when you, when you go after a chocolate muffin, like it might be God, or you go after sex, like it might be God, or you go after a chocolate muffin like it might be God, or you go after sex like it might be God, or you go after fill in the blank like it might be God, it makes sense why you do it. You're taking that pain, that longing. It's weird how it gets all mixed up and bastardized.

Like I have so many stories I want to share with you, but I don't want to do it live because they wouldn't be understood. It's weird being on YouTube, right? Because our Lord tells you not to cast your pearls before swine. And didn't I just call you swine? Yeah, I did. Oh, well, some of you, maybe. Well, maybe I am. And you're doing it to me.

I don't know. But like, you know, when you're in person, you can trust or you can get a sense that you'll hear this. You'll receive this. But you don't know who's watching. Yeah, that is to, to have your words exposed to an unknown audience, it's a delicate thing. But then I guess people who wrote in the 17th century and elsewhere had to risk that as well. Yeah, I think there's a proper veil that we need and the saints, there's no doubt the saints have mystical experiences that they've not told anybody

other than their spiritual director. Yeah, and a lot of respect for that, eh? Because I guess the temptation, too, is that you will accidentally monetize your, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We all have it. Well, you see people kind of capitalizing on emotion or spiritual experience, and you're not sure, but you can see how that would be something you could slip into. But what I was just trying to say, I guess, is like, I look to myself as a prepubescent child who found myself so desirous of breasts and sexual delight and things like that.

And like not knowing that that hunger and that yearning for I know not what to quote John of the Cross was good. Yes, yes. And you just learned that it's bad because the thing you turned to, the things that you were caught doing, you know, were, were shamed and the behaviors are shameful, but you somehow associated the longing with the action and equated the two and thought the longing was bad. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's that.

Uh, I've, I've probably shared this quote with you before, I'm sure I have, or if you've read it in my books. But this is attributed to St. Augustine. He says something to the effect, those who are lost in their passions are less lost than those who have lost their passions. Yeah. Why? No, they're both lost. I'm not saying go lose yourself in your passions because you'll be less lost. Well, you'll still be lost. But they're less lost. Why? Because they feel the hunger. And Christianity makes no sense unless you feel the hunger. Christianity is not some dutiful list of rules to follow while you repress all of your hunger and desire.

Christianity is an invitation to a wedding feast. He cannot satisfy the hungry heart unless the heart is hungry. Amen! That's a great way to put it. You satisfy the hungry heart. That makes no sense to somebody who doesn't have a hungry heart. The first step on the journey to have Christianity click is to be in touch with the ache. That's why those who are lost in their passions are less lost, because they're in touch with the ache. They're taking it to the wrong place. They're taking the hunger to the wrong place, but at least they're in touch with the hunger. And I think this is why the first people to run to Jesus were the sinners, the prostitutes, the tax collectors, because they were in touch.

They were taking their hunger to the wrong place, but they felt it. The Pharisees, at least the ones Christ was very firm with in his stern words were those who had reduced religion to repress what's really going on inside, follow all these rules to the letter, and put on a pious mask. That's who Jesus is most stern with. I get the temptation to lose myself and my passions. Why is it a tempting thing to reduce religion to a list of rules and put on a pious mask? What is tempting about that?

Yeah, well we were talking about it maybe 20 minutes ago when we said we don't want to feel what's really going on and it's easier to have just a veneer that I'm a good person, a veneer that I'm doing the right thing without the courage to actually look at the mess inside. And Jesus's challenge is direct. You whitewashed tombs. Right. That's it. You're clean on the outside. Exactly.

The tombstone is white, but inside you are full of dead men's bones. Right. Right? First cleanse the inside of the cup, then the outside will also be clean. The temptation of the Pharisee is like it's the shortcut to sanctity. I follow the rules externally and then I look good to others and you get a lot of Benny's from that. Right? When people look at you like you're the one who's figured it out. You're the one who got your SHIT together. You're the one who, let me follow you. You figured it out. And I fall into that. I'm sure you fall in. Anybody who's in a leadership role, a public role is going to fall into that at one time or another.

I remember once serving with net ministries and one night I ducked into the chapel to say a little prayer and this pretty co-missionary came in and saw me praying. I took way more delight that a pretty girl thought I was holy than that I was before the Blessed Sacrament. Those things are nice to see and cool out, aren't they? And not to shame either. Yeah. Because if you shame them, you won't, you't they? Yeah. And not to shame either. Yeah.

Because if you shame them, you'll stop recognizing them. It's part of our humanity. And to be willing to say, as the little flower did, I have resigned myself to discover new imperfections in myself every day, and in that I take delight. I love when she says something to the effect of, I should be discouraged at my sinfulness. Yes, but I'm not discouraged. I'm not discouraged. She was falling asleep in her holy hours. I'm not discouraged because I know that parents love their children even more when they're falling

asleep, and I know that surgeons to do deep operations have to put their patients to sleep, so that I'm content now to fall asleep in my holy hour. There's a bold confidence in the love and mercy of the Lord there that is true holiness that the Pharisee cannot understand. How do we invite people to let go of the pressure they feel to be at a certain place? Because sometimes when we talk about the spiritual life, and it's just surrendering to the Lord, and it still feels like the pressure's on me. And it kind of turns Christianity into a sort of philosophical program to live by in order to meet, to find something as opposed to, as you just put it,

to lay on the table and open up for surgery. How do we, I mean, I guess this, in a way, is kind of what the Protestants did when they talked about, you just have to accept Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. There's nothing to do. It's just, you lay on your back and open your legs. Sorry.

Well, I'm not sorry, because that is kind of what it is. If we're going to use the bridal imagery analogy, it's all I have to do is open myself to the Lord's gift. Yes. Yes. So how do we do? First of all, do you understand? Because I'm not expressing myself well. Do you know what I mean by the pressure? Yes. Yes. Yes.

Can we ruminate on that pressure so that we understand what we're talking about? Remember yesterday when we were filming the Love and Responsibility conclusion of our series, we quoted from a retreat that JP II gave in 1962, long before he was the Pope. And he said, if we put the I must accomplish X first in the Christian life. We have the cart before the horse.

And we put that pressure on ourselves, even to not put pressure on ourselves. Like we get caught in this riptide of, okay, now, okay. So I'm hearing from the saints like Therese that I'm just supposed to open and surrender. Okay, but now I gotta do that. So that's the thing I gotta do. There's still, and my confessor has told me, he says, Christopher, every time you go to

confession, I want you to confess the sin of self-reliance. And then he said, and the twin tower next to that sin which towers in your life, self-reliance, the twin tower next to it is self-condemnation. Because inevitably when we're relying on ourselves, we realize our self-reliance is not reliable. And then because we think it's supposed to be, we beat ourselves up that it wasn't, and that's the self-condemnation. And we just get caught in this ongoing cycle. What we're doing there, in JP2's words, is we're putting the I must first. And remember, I used that expression yesterday in the series we filmed. We can never really honestly say, I love you God.

We can only say, I love you too. Because this is the catechism, God's initiative of love always comes first. Saint John says it so clearly, this is love. Not that we first love God, but that he first loved us. And that's why in the spousal imagery, God is always the bridegroom and we are always the bride because our job is to open and receive a gift. I've got to be honest, I've never had difficulty imagining myself as the bride. I know a lot of men say that, like it's kind of weird, like it's easier for women because

they are women. I don't know why men say that, like it's kind of weird, like it's easier for women because they are women. I don't know why that is, but I've always just... That's awesome. I did struggle with it for a time and there are still some struggles. What I, and here's what I struggle with. Maybe it's because I'm not actually visualizing a corporeal act.

I mean, for sure, if I thought of it that way, it would be weird, but just this, I want to be taken by the Lord. I do. I want. Can I share a funny story? This dear, dear old man, probably in his eighties, a dear, dear man. He's been to some courses at the Institute, the TOB Institute, and he was struggling with this imagery of being bride.

And it was a good lesson for me because I swim in this imagery all the time, I'm very comfortable with it, but I forget how I had to overcome some weird ideas that were not what the saints mean when they use this imagery, when I was first encountering this imagery. And that's the stage where this dear older man was. And he kind of fell into a more literalism with the imagery. And he just said to me one day, he says, Christopher, I'm really struggling. I just, and he was so innocent in this.

He was not trying to joke. This was his language. And I'm sharing this because there's a lesson in it for all of us as to how we are to take this imagery and how we are not to take this imagery. The Saint after Saint talks about nuptial union with the Lord, right? Nuptial union with the Lord. Right? Nuptial union with the Lord. Pope Benedict XVI says, when a Christian prays, he is seeking nuptial union with the Lord. What is the Eucharist? The Eucharist, JP II says, is the sacrament of the bridegroom and of the bride. JP II

is so clear. You cannot understand Christianity. You cannot understand what the church is. You cannot understand what the Mass is. You can't understand what the, what our faith is if you don't understand why God made us male and female and calls the two to become one flesh. Because that union in one flesh is a mega mystery that reveals Christ's love for the church. This is our faith. We have to understand the nature of that analogy rightly.

It's an analogy. This dear old man says to me, Christopher, I'm just really having trouble with this whole I'm the bride spousal image. I just I can't picture getting bonked by Jesus I Love his honesty. I loved his honesty Truly, I loved his honesty and it gave me the opportunity as a teacher to go like good. Please don't yes, please don't never Ever don't go no need that that but it don't ever, don't go, no need. That, but it was, it was a, it was a like a,

oh, okay, this is how you're hearing? Yeah. Okay, we need to do a little backup here, right? Now truly husbands and wives in their union can open what's happening in their marriage bed to a mystical dimension. This is the invitation. And it can and is meant to be truly a sacramental sign

that enables us to participate. I'm just quoting JP2 here. He says, the One-Flesh Union is meant to be a participation in the life of the Holy Spirit. Mm-hmm, of course. What else is it? If it's not that, what would you run? Right, but that's scandalous to people

because we have God over here and our sexuality over there and we don't know how to hold the two together. So how did you help? Did you help him? Yes, I walked step by step through what we mean by analogy. And I do this in all my books

and in all my courses. And I was like, and the more I thought of it, I've said this to you several times, but I get it. It takes a long time for this to sink in, right? And we always have to remember this basic principle. Any analogy, we're zooming in on a certain similarity to make a point, but there is always an ever greater

dissimilarity that needs to be honored and respected. So long as we understand what the church means by the spousal analogy, we can press in to that certain similarity and mine mystical glory. It's just, it's essentially we're made in God's image, not God's made in our image. Correct, that is a good way to put it. And the catechism is so clear. In no way is God in man's image. God is neither man nor woman. Yet the perfections of man and woman, male and female he created them, they were naked without shame, that's the perfection of man and woman, male and female he created them, they were naked without shame, that's the perfection of man and woman, offers us something of a glimpse into the inner mystery

of God. That's what it means that we're made in the image and likeness of God. So what is that something? Right? JP too spends his entire theology of the body pressing into that something that we as male and female reveal and it turns out that something is awesome. It's a mega mystery that, and here's what's different we might say and it's important to say and recognize, of all the images in scripture, and this is often a criticism of John Paul too, why does he put so much emphasis on spousal image? Jesus uses lots of images, the shepherd, the sheep, the vine and the branches, and here's

my response to that objection, which I understand at face value, oh yeah, yeah, good point, well let's enter in. None of those metaphors, those are metaphors, vine and branches, shepherd and sheep, Jesus even compares himself to a mother hen who wants to gather his chicks. Those are metaphors. Jesus was not incarnate as a vine, you know, vine in the branches. Jesus was not incarnate the branches. Jesus was not incarnate as a mother hen. Jesus was incarnate as a bridegroom. And this means the spousal analogy has a pride of place because it's not merely a metaphor, it's a sacramental mystery. And what does that mean? It means spousal love, unlike the vine and the branches,

which metaphorically teaches us something beautiful about Christ and the Church. But a vine and a branch does not efficaciously communicate the relationship of Christ and the Church as a sacrament does. Marriage is a sacrament, which means it really and truly communicates the divine mystery it symbolizes. You can't say that about any of the other images used in Scripture to help us understand God's love, not even the love of a father and a son. That's not a sacrament. It flows out of the sacrament of marriage, but it's the father-son relationship.

Isn't that interesting? Yeah It's also very very important. God has not revealed himself in the Trinity as husband wife and child Revealed himself as father son and spirit all that needs to be honored. We don't have time to get into all those details But those are the kind of things, you know, I go into some detail in a book Is that what you but what did you say to him that helped me go? Okay.. Yes. I walked him through, I call it the Nicodemus conundrum. Yeah. Where Nicodemus, when Jesus says you have to be born again to enter the kingdom, what does Nicodemus say?

Takes him literally. Yeah. He's stuck. He's like, You're telling me I need to get bonked by Jesus. Yes. You're right. It's Nicodemus going, can a grown man enter his mother's womb a second time? Yeah. Now notice, interestingly, Jesus does not say to Nicodemus, no, no, no, no, you're misunderstanding me. He rather takes him on a journey from the natural to the supernatural,

to what as theologian I would say grace perfects nature. And so Jesus says to Nicodemus in that critical conversation they have, Nicodemus, if you don't understand the natural reality, well what natural reality? What context are we in? We're talking about regeneration and rebirth of the Spirit, right? If you don't understand the natural reality of generation and birth, you're never going to understand the supernatural reality of regeneration and rebirth. We start with the natural reality and we go to the supernatural reality. Why was Jesus so fascinated by nature's fertility? Why were so many of his parables about seed and soil? The sower went out to sow seed, some seed fell on good soil. Kite trees that don't produce.

Fig trees that don't produce. Pay attention to how the wildflowers grow. He says pay attention to when the trees to how the wild flowers grow. He says, pay attention to when the trees are in full bloom, right, like the red bud tree we're talking. He says, pay attention to that. What's going, he's so often referencing what we could call nature's nuptials, you know,

nature's fertility. Why? I make the argument in my book here that nature's fertility is the starting point of theophany. And what do we mean by theophany? Whenever you have an encounter of beauty and creation that lifts your heart heavenward, that's a theophany. in Greek, theos finai, I can't say the Greek, but it means to show God, to reveal God. So when when small b beauty opens you to capital B beauty you're having a theophony. Jesus is showing us when he points to seed and soil and I am the good seed, he says, I am the one who sows

the good seed. He's using these natures fertility, natures nuptials if you will, as a starting point for theophany. Seeing the world, this would be another way to say it, seeing the world sacramentally. Yeah, I was about to point to that. It seems like, I think it was often, Einstein is quoted as saying, we either see everything as a miracle or nothing as a miracle. I just wrote this down.

It's another way of thinking it is either everything is a veil or it's just, I don't know what you'd say, bedrock, like a cement wall forever. Yeah, the word I use is, I just lost it. What, the word I use is... I just lost it. What's the word I use? When you can't see through a thick curtain, like you can't see... I'm losing my brain.

Can't find the dang word. Not an iron curtain, but something. No, it's like opaque. When something is opaque, you can't... You stop at the thickness of the curtain and you can't see through it So there was just a debate that took place recently between Trent Horn Lila Rose a fella called destiny and some Porn performer hey, and I'd recommend you watch it. It's I wouldn't recommend everyone watch it because it does get into quite

Unfortunately some very visual content, you know, like it's two graphics at times. Trent and Lila did masterfully, but it seemed like they were coming at this issue of sex from two different angles, right? Trent and Lila seeing the thing, seeing the beauty and the reality and the veil and the others just coming at it from this atheistic worldview. And when you come at it from this atheistic worldview. Yes, yes. And when you come at it from this atheistic worldview, yeah, you got nothing because Lila and Trent were able to get these two unfortunate people

to concede in their worldview the legitimacy of animated child rape porn. Oh my. Bestiality. Dear God. At one point, Destiny said to Trent, so you're saying it's what he said, you're saying it's worse to eat an animal than have sex with it. He's like, yes, that is what I'm saying. Right. So bestiality incest.

They had to concede incest and they had to concede the fact that it might very well be a good thing that a 12 year old girl be exposed to like violent pornography. Like, and it's like when you get your opponents to concede these things, you win. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. But they're being perfectly consistent from their insane false worldview. Yes, yes, yes. But again, I think that that that that is it a sacrament or isn't it? So it's like, if we don't see sex rightly,

if we don't see the world rightly. Yeah, and here, just to make a theological distinction, we have to distinguish between capital S sacraments, there's seven of them, and small s sacramentality. And by that, the whole world that God created reveals something of the mystery of the Creator. That's what we mean by having a sacramental worldview. I call the little show that I do on the Theology of the Body Institute YouTube channel, I call it the sacramental lens, because I want to teach people to see the whole world with a

sacramental lens, right? To see the world this way. This is the Christian life, and you're putting your finger exactly on it, Matt. When you have these two different starting points, you're going to see the world very differently, and you're kind of bringing us right to the crux of what I argue here. Can I pull some stuff out of here? of what I argue here. Can I pull some stuff out of here? I discovered this in a lecture. A guy, I think his name's John Lanzelotti, not John Lanzelotti. His last name's Carlos Lanzelotti, I forget his actual name, but he was quoting from Wilhelm Reich. And Wilhelm Reich wrote a book called The Sexual Revolution in 1936. And it really is telling. I went back, I found this book, I did some research and I dug in a little deeper. Listen to this, listen to this. This is chilling. In his 1936 book, The Sexual Revolution, Wilhelm Reich, that's spelled R-E-I-C-H, stated quite

explicitly that the goal of the revolution he wanted to inspire was to replace the religious sense of eros, we've talked about this already, what's the religious sense? That ache you feel for union is ultimately a desire for union with God. It's a religious longing. It's a longing for God, right? So Wilhelm Reich wanted to replace this religious sense of Eros as a desire for the infinite with the scientific view infinite with the scientific view that erotic stirrings are merely physical excitations that come from bioelectric processes in the tissues of the body. So where do we go if that's our starting point? Indeed, I say, Reich insisted that what we think are religious yearnings, what we've been

calling the ache or the cry of the heart or that O antiphon or Eros, rightly understood, Reich insisted that what we think are religious yearnings are in fact, quote, a vegetative function which man shares with all living nature and which strives for development, activity, and pleasure in the form of flowing, surging physical sensations." End quote. Reich's revolution did not need to fight religion directly, he said, rather it just needed to secure what he called quote, the sexual happiness of the masses, how? Via the findings of modern science and if we do that the need for religion, he said, would disappear.

See what he's saying is all you really want when you feel those stirrings is physical sensations in your tissues. Isn't this Freud to an extent? This is, yes, Freud. Well, religion is a substitute for sex. There are Freudian undertones and overtones without a doubt. But he foresaw, Reich foresaw, that if we lose erotic fulfillment from the religious longing and merely provide unfettered

indulgence in the pleasures of this world, he said we will be able to prove that religion isn't necessary. Religion isn't necessary. Yeah. Yeah, decent hypothesis, disastrous consequences. Disastrous consequences. And he foresaw them. He said, listen to this.

This fella who wanted this to happen foresaw the negative consequences? Listen to what he says. There will be just one problem with this approach to sexual happiness in the process of attaining it as Reich himself unapologetically acknowledged, this is a direct quote, the family will disintegrate irrevocably. Other than that though. Other than that, everything will be great. He then casually dismisses any need for concern by naively assuring his readers that any problems

arising from the collapse of the family quote, will be constantly discussed publicly and overcome. Yeah, by the frigging government, you're going to need a tyrannical government to fill the role. I found this. I love Australia. I was just there and I love Australian people and being back home, their humor. I was like, I found my people again. I love these people. There's so much good happening in Australia. I was in Sydney, the priests are solid and good men, and Anthony Fisher, great bishop, Cardinal Pell, one day, please God be a saint. But in my small town in South Australia, it was like, it became almost a joke because everyone my mother would refer to, you know, bloody so and so, yeah, yeah,

oh yeah, their marriage busted up and everyone was divorced or dead or committed suicide. Mercy, mercy, mercy. But you've got this government now that steps in to sort of supplement what, you know, the fundamental building block, once it is obliterated, there has to be compensation to buoy up the mass. So you look around and everything kind of looks clean and neat and the roads are nice. And certainly that looked like Steubenville. It's a lot more beautiful than that, you know,

in the sense of you don't have broken down buildings where I live, but it's like just decimation, just suicide and divorce. But just this, at least it appears to me, and this may just be because I live in America now, but this overreach of the government into every aspect of your life. I don't know, Thursday, maybe you can look this up, but when I was a kid, I know that women would get paid five grand to have a baby or something like that. You know, that's cool. It's like, yeah, but no, it's not because the husband becomes unnecessary. Well, the husband's not there. So now the

government has to become necessary. And so there's this ever increasing dependence upon the state. Yes. When families collapse, you just, as you said, the government has to step in and in a kind of tyrannical way. And that is the world we live in right now. It's not some prediction of an apocalyptic future. Yeah. But there are great signs of hope. And here I want to quote, his name is Carlo, Carlo Lanzolotti, is the guy I first learned about Wilhelm Reich from. Okay.

So this is the hope in the midst of this tragic breakdown of the family, which has the ripple effect because what's the fundamental cell of society? It's the family. When you take out that foundation, it's only a matter of time before the whole edifice of civilization crumbles. And we're living through that. Real quick, why is that the case? Why isn't the individual the fundamental building block of society? Society, the very word. We are social beings. An individual is not a society. Society is the coming together of individuals. And the fundamental coming together of individuals is male and female. He created them and called the two to be fruitful and multiply. There is no society.

Individuals come from families. Correct. Correct. Before families come from individuals. Right. Yeah. Marvel is often accused of having really bad villains. I think they should come up with a new villain that just seeks to destroy the fundamental building block of society by pushing free pornography into the homes of everybody.

Here we go, 20 seconds of research says Thursday. We'll cut it later if we're wrong. They had a benefit credit for children amount was dependent on income of the household. Yeah. So in Australia, yeah. Yeah. And you I mean on the worst. And like, it's hard to be critical of that because you live in America, like crap, I've

got to pay 10 grand for a kid that I and I can't afford this. So I'm not praising the American medical situation either but Yeah, much could be said about that about how do we hit once we're in this bad situation? How do we handle it? What is the responsible use of government funds to fix a bad problem? but the amount of It's like we're shooting ourselves in the foot, or what's the other expression?

We're cutting off the branch we're sitting on. We continue to perpetuate the root of the problem. Or my favorite, cutting off your head to stop a nosebleed. Yeah. I mean, yeah, there's the problem. Here's the hope. Here's the problem. Here's the hope. Here's the hope. Carlo Lanzolotti observes that the denial of the religious sense of Eros is truly

paradigmatic of the sexual revolution as an epical phenomenon. And he goes on here. He maintains that the sexual revolution, quote, is not just one phenomenon among many in the world today. Rather, it's the phenomenon that marks our epic. The sexual revolution is the phenomenon that marks the time we are living in. Right? Epoch, is that what that is? Yeah, you would say epoch, we would say epic here in the good say epic here in good old America. But based on Reich's own challenge to the Church as to whether the Church is right about the nature of Eros as a yearning for God, here's Lancelotti's note of hope.

We can also see how the era of the sexual revolution will end. And this is a quote from Carlo Lanzolotti. He says, it will end by a rediscovery of the full scope of human desire. Of the fact that desire that we feel really is a longing for the infinite. Really is a longing for God. That mere stimulation of genitals can never, ever reach. It's funny that we keep putting this car back on the road and expecting it to run. You would think you just have to live five minutes or have five sexual experiences until you realize as good as it is, it isn't what you want. It isn't what's not the fulfillment of what you want. Well, check this out. Hungary pays couples who get married and pays child benefit based on the salary given up by a parent staying at home.

It'd be cool. I think that could be one way that governments could help is maybe stop taxing families that have over three children or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Massive tax benefits. Obviously, the incentive should be towards the family. I mean, again, how do you help a broken situation when it's broken? You have to do something, but still there must be an incentive that incentivizes men and women to become husbands

and wives and mothers and fathers. If we don't do that, guess what's over? Civilization itself. Because civilization is the making civil of the relationship of man and woman. How do we make it civil? It's a good argument for colonization. I know I'm getting into deep waters here,

but I really wanna explore that more. You've got- Colonization? Yeah, just Christians like England coming into countries and civilizing people. You're not talking about launching to Mars and colonizing other planets, are you? No, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, and I know that evil things take place

and did take place, but wanting to make people civil. Hmm, I'm gonna have to do a whole episode on this. Yeah, how do we renew a culture? You can't renew a culture unless you renew marriage and family life. And you can't renew marriage and family life unless you return to the full truth of Eros. What is Eros? And what we've done in the modern world with people like Reich is we've taken a scientific approach to everything, right? Thank you God for science. It's done so much good for us. Thank you

God, right? Another caveat. I'm not in any way down on science. What I'm down on, and what anyone who sees the world sacramentally is down on, is reducing everything to what only science can tell us about it. Right? When you take merely a scientific approach to human sexuality you will be blind to the sacramentality of human sexuality. And the example I often use here is, you remember the old Peter Gabriel song, in your eyes, the light, the heat, in your eyes I am complete. And then he says, and this is someone who sees sacramentally, he says, in your eyes I see the doorway to a thousand churches. Oh, he sees this woman's body as a theological reality.

We need poets, we need these artists, we need these people with these mystical insights to give us a language, right? To understand these deeper realities. What would happen if we reduced that song to something merely biological? In your eyes the cornea, in your eyes the retina, in your eyes I see the lines of a thousand bloodshot blood vessels. And I often say, rightly so, thank God for optometrists and

all they can tell us about corneas and retinas and blood vessels. But ladies, you know, you know you want the man in your life. Even if he's an optometrist. Even if he's an optometrist, exactly. To see not just your cornea and your retina, but to see the doorway to a thousand churches. I wonder if you know the rise and fall of the new atheism, right? So Hitchens and Dawkins and Harris and these fellas who sort of rushed in. And I think it was maybe a reaction to sort of like terrorist attacks, 9-11, things like that, and just went, no, there is nothing else. Let's all be adults, Christianity and God are, it's Santa Claus for adults. It's just this, and this is enough,

and let's squash it, and this. Even now, I think you're seeing the resurgence of mystery and wonder, or the hunger for mystery and wonder through people like Jonathan Pageau or Jordan Peterson. And maybe Jordan Peterson's like the gateway drug to Christianity because we've been bought into the atheist worldview and we're tired of that and now we want wonder, but maybe we won't wonder without God. Is that still possible?

And it's almost like you've got Peterson being the bridge. Yeah, that's a keen observation. And now I really do think you're seeing people desiring Christian faith again. Yeah. Even people who say, well, no, it's not true, but I want to act as if it is true. Which is a sad thing, I hope. Yeah, I think the bridge, I mean, everything begins with wonder, with taking an approach of wonder towards creation. That's the beginning of the sacramental worldview. And also, let's apply it to the question at hand here, human sexuality, how to take an approach of wonder. I

quote here from Edgar Allan Poe. I love him. Well, I love some of his works. He says, yes, this is great, Listen to this. He says, the origin of poetry lies in a thirst for a wilder beauty than earth supplies. Yeah. Right. So when, when we, Nietzsche said that modern man, how does he say it? He says, the time is coming when man will no longer shoot the arrow of his longing beyond himself. That's the world we live in now. But as Lanzelotti was saying, you can't repress that longing forever. It's there. It's irrepressible. The longing for a beauty that is wilder than

what this world offers is irrepressible. I'm thinking, have you ever heard the term hikikomori? No, I don't think so. It's Japanese? Yeah. Thursday, you need to look this up for me. And by the way, we're going to be taking questions soon from our local supporters, but do us a favor, ask the question in the locals post, not on the YouTube live stream. So okay, I hope I got this right. I haven't thought about this forever. He kick Amore.

These are people in Japan who are choosing to lead and please look this up this day because I could be totally off. This could be like the name of a sushi roll that I've forgotten about of these people who've decided to live isolated lives, where they don't want any interaction with society. So they live in their house, they live on the internet, they stream, they don't interact even for food. The food is dropped off and yes, did I get it right? Okay, hikikomori, pulling inward, being confined is what it means, also known as Hikikomori, pulling inward, being confined is what it means. Also known as severe social withdrawal.

How proud are you of me that I got that right? That's pretty impressive. I'm very proud of me. Let's see here. Hikikomori refers both the phenomenon in general and the recluses themselves. The concept is primarily recognized only in Japan, although similar concepts exist

in other languages and cultures. Hikikomori have been described as loners or modern-day hermits. The difference between them and hermits is they're not directing their arrows to the heavens. Presumably. Estimates suggest that half a million Japanese youths have become social recluses, as well as more than half a million middle-aged individuals. That's very scary. The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare defines hikikomori as a condition in which the afflicted individuals refuse to leave their parents' house, do not work or go to school and isolate themselves away from society and family in a single room for

a period exceeding six months. Dear Lord. The psychiatrist, this person, defines hikikomori as a state that has become a problem by the late 20s that involves coping oneself up in one's own home and not participating in society for six months or longer. This is kind of the defining characteristic of it, but that does not seem to have another psychological problems as its principal source. Huh.

Yeah. They also end up dating holograms or video game characters. Yeah, this is anti-sacramentality. This is the anti-version of the human project. Wow, man. And you can see, like, we do that in a way now, don't we? I mean, with with Uber Eats and Netflix streaming and and online pornography. Yeah. And it kind of maybe so it has to do with kind of what you're talking about is I thought of the the arrow not shooting it further than ourselves. This sort of solipsistic take of the world. Exactly. And you can you can only holy mackerel, look at this. Chat, oh, okay, where are we? What is this here?

Replica? Replica is a generative AI chat bot released in November 2017. The chat bot is trained by having the user answer a series of questions to create specific neural network. The chat bot operates on freemium pricing strategy with roughly 25% of its users

based paying an annual subscription fee. So this is the online girlfriend that we're doing here. Gee whiz ey? Oh okay many wait go back a little bit. Many users have had romantic relationships with replica chat bots often including erotic talk. Well what do we mean by erotic talk? Right. So sexual talk is what we mean. Well, they're it's they mean well, I don't even I don't want to surrender the word sexual. Sexual is a good word. They're having pornified talk. I see. Right.

They're pornifying the sacred. They are bastardizing the erotic. The the the invitation. The invitation. Sorry, I've got to look at this. What's this criminal case? In 2023, Replica was cited in a court case in the United Kingdom where this particular individual had been arrested at Windsor Castle on Christmas Day in 2021 after scaling the walls carrying a loaded crossbow and announcing to police that I am here to kill the Queen?

What? Chael had begun to use replica in December 2021 and had lengthy conversations about his plan with a chatbot Including I shouldn't be laughing but it's so absurd prosecutors suggest that the chatbot had bolstered Chael and told him it would help him to get the job done. When Chael asked it, how am I meant to reach them when they're inside the castle days before the attempted attack, the chatbot replied that this was not possible and said that we have to find a way.

Asking the chatbot if the two of them would meet again after death, the chatbot replied, yes, we will. All right. All right. You know what? I see this, this closing in. When I say it's the anti-Sacramental worldview, because the world view, the sacramental worldview begins by opening up and out and looking up at the stars and looking at a tree and smelling

a flower and being curious at the stars and looking at a tree and smelling a flower and being curious about the natural world. This is total withdrawal from the natural world and total immersion in screens and technology, right? It's the anti-sacramentality, it's the mocking of sacramentality, it's the pornifying of Eros. It's reducing what I want to, as William Reich says, bioelectric impulses in my tissues. How do we reawaken wonder at the mystery of sexuality, at the mystery of the universe, and at the pinnacle of the created world is male and female, he created them, right?

I quote here from Victor Hugo, the author of Les Mis, the novel from which the musical is based. And I say, OK, let's compare William Reich's language around human sexuality, bioelectric processes stimulating our tissues, with what Victor Hugo says poetically about the wedding night of Marius and Cosette. Listen this, this was written in 18 something Thursday. Look up when Victor Hugo wrote Les Mis, 18 something. Listen to this, listen to this. A little after midnight, this is the wedding night, right? A little after midnight, the house became a temple.

Upon the threshold of wedding nights stands an angel smiling. The soul enters into contemplation before this sanctuary. 1815. 1815, he wrote this? All right, this. 1815. 1815 he wrote this? Okay, this is 1815, right? Victor Hugo, the wedding night of Marius and Cosette. The soul enters into contemplation before this sanctuary in which is held the celebration of love. It is impossible that this sacred festival of destiny should not send a celestial radiation to

the infinite. Love is the sublime crucible in which is consummated the fusion of man and woman. The one being, the triple being, the final being, the human Trinity springs from it. Okay sorry, 18 Oh, I thought 1815 sounded too early. Yep. The story takes place in 1815, written in 1862. That's what... okay, thank you. Yes, listen, this language in 1852, to my knowledge, in the modern era, JP II, in terms of Catholic circles, was the first to daringly say that man and woman image God, the Trinity, not only as individuals, but in the communion of persons. Is that right?

I believe that's the case. I mean, you can find roots of it in the tradition, but this bold just saying it is JP too. But here's Victor Hugo in 1860, whatever, saying, the human Trinity springs from the union of husband and wife. And he goes on, he says, the lover is a priest. Something of this joy goes to God. A nuptial bed makes a halo in the darkness. That little obscure alcove has for its ceiling the whole heavens And then he concludes when two mouths Made sacred by love drawn near each other to create it is impossible that above that ineffable kiss There should not be a thrill in the immense mystery of the stars

That's wonder. That's the beginning of a sacramental approach to the mystery of the human body. And it is the healing of the entire mess we are in. The mess we are in began when we stopped respecting the sacramental integrity of the sexual relationship. That's how we got in this mess.

How do we get out of this mess? By restoring a sacramental lens, a sacramental view of who we are as men and women made in the image and likeness of God. Yeah, if you don't know what something is and you don't know what something is for, you don't know how to treat it. You can be whatever you want it to be.

In a way, that's a critique of modern education. If you don't know what the person is and is for, then I guess you could just make him useful. Yeah. To whatever end you wish to use him. Yeah. Sex is like that. Inevitably, inevitably, when we reduce the body merely to the scientific level,

and again, praise God for biologists and optometrists and everything we know about the body, thanks be to God, but if we stay there, merely think this is all we are, we will reduce sexual activity to physical sensations that I need to gratify myself and then others become objects for me to gratify those sensations I desire. In other words reduce it to the scientific level and stay only there you inevitably have a utilitarian culture where you are useful if you are What I want you to be if you are pornographically exciting to me And I don't even want to say sexually exciting because because I don't want to ruin that word

Yeah, God made us sexual beings, but he didn't make us pornographic beings, right? Porn it to pornify something is to bastardize something good Right and and the enemy wants to pornify something is to bastardize something good. And the enemy wants to pornify, whereas God wants to purify. And we must go on that pilgrimage of purifying what has been pornified in our mind if we are to have a sacramental worldview. What's the verb of sacrilege? To desacralize? if we are to have a sacramental worldview. What's the verb of sacrilege? To desacralize? Desacralize? Yeah.

To desacralize, perhaps? Yeah, so contraception makes a sacrilege or desacralizes what is sacred. It desacralizes the sacramental mystery and integrity of our creation as male and female. I mean, it is a direct frontal attack against the sacramentality of sexuality. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Hey, I want to do a couple of things. This book of yours, Eating the Sunrise, two things I want to let our viewers realize. 20% off?

20% off. That's right. There's a link in the description below. You can get 20% off this book for how long? We'll put it up for however long. I don't know. We'll just keep it up there. I don't know. Okay, cool. I want to tell you about a course that I have created for men to overcome pornography. It It is called Strive21.com slash Matt. You go there right now or if you text Strive to 66866, we'll send you the link. It's 100% free and it's a course I've created to help men

to give them the tools to overcome pornography. Usually men know that porn is wrong. They don't need me or you to convince them that it's wrong. What they need is a battle plan to get out. And so I've distilled all that I've learned over the last 15 or so years as I've been talking and writing on this topic into this one course. Think of it as if you and I could have a coffee over the next 21 days and I would kind of guide you along this journey.

That's basically what this is. It's incredibly well produced. We had a whole camera crew come and film this. And I think it'll be a real help to you. And it's also not an isolated course that you go through on your own because literally tens of thousands of men have now gone through this course.

And as you go through the different videos, there's comments from men all around the world encouraging each other, offering to be each other's accountability partners and things like that. Strive21, that's Strive21.com slash Matt, or as I say, text Strive to 66866 to get started today. You won't regret it.

And we're back. How are you feeling? I'm feeling happy to be here with you, Matt. That's good. So we've got a very vulnerable question here from one of our local supporters. I'm gonna sum it up because it's quite long, but this individual was attracted to BDSM and

When he got married he tried to encourage his wife to engage in some of this quote-unquote play Mercy drove a wedge in their marriage He begged her to try to get involved in some of this stuff Mercy mercy when this happened when she became sort of upset with him when this He begged her to try to get involved in some of this stuff. Mercy, mercy. When this happened, when she became sort of upset with him, when this wedge was driven into the marriage, he fell into porn addiction and writing erotica. This made a deeper wound. Yes.

This went on for a few years. He said he had a reversion and began working on repairing the damage that he felt and they began to grow closer. He's been doing much better with pornography. He stopped writing. He's gotten away from the quote unquote kink community, but those desires are still there. First of all, thank you for your honesty and your vulnerability. Wow.

And there are many, many people who struggle with this just in the dark and they feel so shamed and shameful. They never even bring it out into the light. So the very fact that he's bringing this into the light is the beginning of a deeper healing. And he's already on the road. There's real grace at work here. Yeah, let me finish his question. He says, how do I know if those desires are sinful or not?

The desires are not outside the teachings outlined in the Catechism or the Bible, and I personally feel like they would bring me closer to my wife, but I'm afraid that my reasoning is flawed because the draw of it is so strong that I can logically justify it if I want. What's a good way to delve into this? So I guess we have to talk about two things. We have to talk about things within the realm of sexual morality, hey? Yeah, I want to show a certain reverence here for a deep, deep wound in this man's life. That's where we must begin, just a reverence for the suffering and a caveat. I am NOT a psychologist, I'm a theologian,

and this man is going to need some, if he's really going to heal, he's going to need some deep psychological help, some deep therapy. So a counselor who, preferably a Catholic one who knows about inner healing, because... I point you to Bob Schuetz's book, Be Restored. Oh yes, Be Restored, absolutely. Bob Schuetz, Be Restored, please get that book. Be Restored, absolutely, book. Absolutely. Absolutely. Bob Schuetz, friend of yours and mine, does excellent work here in another organization

called Desert Stream Ministries. They offer a course at the Theology of the Body Institute called Sexual Integration and Redemption. And you can look up on our website to get more info on that but our sexual desires Even our most disordered ones and there is no doubt when violence is involved. We have something tragically disordered Nonetheless those disordered sexual desires are a window into what's going on in my soul and Oftentimes those who go for violence in sexual activity are reliving in some ways recycling traumas of their lives. I don't want to even

venture in more than that because I'm not qualified. It's not my- Not only are you not qualified, but you don't know this man and he hasn't given you enough to speak specifically. But I think one can say these things don't come out of nowhere. These desires, they are not natural, they are not God-given. This is not God's intention for human sexuality. To try to wedge it in there in some kind of legalistic, well, it's not outside the bounds of what the Catechism says. This is a justification because he thinks,

I don't wanna let go of this because this is a medication for a deep pain in my life, and he thinks it's the only medication that will reach that pain. It is not. The good news is there is real medication that can reach that real pain, but it's gonna be really painful.

It's going to be taking up the journey that you and I were talking about earlier in this program where for the joy set before us, we're willing to look, not just put a pious mask over things, not just try to justify the things that I want because not technically not in the catechism, or's you know I can justify it. No, no, no, we have to be willing to get utterly naked before God and this man is already taking some steps there. I'm exposing it. Bring it to the light. But someone far more qualified than I can help this man go on a journey that he needs to go on to face stuff in his soul and in his history, from which I believe this stuff comes.

And it's going to be dark and it's going to be difficult and it's going to be painful, but the light is going to shine and this is why Christ came into the world. Redemption is real. Let me kind of ask a follow-up question. What do you say to him or another man who, I'm not referring to BDSM at this point, but who might be with a wife who is, to use the word, sexually frigid and is unwilling to engage in legitimate sexual behaviours, maybe because she finds them objectifying, dehumanising. Now, she might be wrong in her assessment of why the man wishes to engage in this way.

And she might be right. Or she might be right. Right. But then you have the man who's frustrated. You know, like, talk to that. John Paul II, in Love and Responsibility, talks about the need for a culture of marital relations. And by that, he says,

the world of the man is a different world than the world of the woman. And the world of the woman is a different world than the world of the woman, and the world of the woman is a different world than the world of the man. And this makes establishing harmony in the marriage bed a real challenge. Every married couple can attest to this challenge. And what is needed, he says, the key to marital harmony is tenderness in approaching the otherness of the other's world. Where I say, okay, my wife is different than I am. There's another world over there that is not my world and I don't understand it, but I'm going to

trust that it's meant to enrich me. My world is different from her world, and I'm going to open it up to her, trusting that this could enrich her. Now, it doesn't mean everything that's in my world as a man is going to be wonderful and beautiful because I'm a broken man, And I might be seeking to justify all kinds of things sexually that are actually degrading to my spouse. So we can't just say, well, it's in my world. You have to respect it.

No, we have to submit our world, our inner world, our desires also to the truth of God's plan for sexual desire. And the blueprint for that is in the beginning. In the beginning they were naked and felt no shame. Why were they naked not feeling any shame? Because they experienced sexual desire as God created it to be, which is the desire to be a true gift to the other. JP 2 says the key here to harmony in that tenderness of entering the other's world and trusting that at the depth of that other's world, behind whatever might be broken or sinful or disordered, there's also a treasure.

And I want to go on a journey to find that treasure and honor that treasure. And he says the key here is to recognize that the other is more important than I am. Not that I'm not important, because the other will also be saying the same of the other is more important than I am. Not that I'm not important, because the other will also be saying the same of the other. It's like, you know that analogy of heaven as the long forks where you can't get the fork to feed yourself, but the person across from you can feed you? It's that kind of thing. If both people are doing that, trusting that there's a world over here that I need to learn and discover, and it's going to challenge me.

Mason- Thinking of Paul's words of mutual submission for the sake of Christ. BOOM! That's the proper sense of what that is. Mutual submission out of reverence for the mystery of Christ and the church that is revealed in you and that is revealed in me as a man, as a woman. Finding that, going on that journey, and I like to say, like a man's inner world is like a deep cave. And the woman who goes on that journey has to be a spelunker, a cave explorer, right? But he also has to open that freely.

She can't go poking around in there if he doesn't open it to him, open it to her, because that would be a violation. And her inner world is like a deep ocean, and his mission is to go deep sea diving into that world. But he can't go swimming into her depths unless she opens them freely, or that would be a violation. So what is needed here is trust, vulnerability, tenderness. No, I'm no psychologist and so I maybe I'm wrong here, but I think I'm right. That I would imagine that a woman's.

I know a man could be possibly frigid, I guess, but a woman's frigidity like one one that is like, no, this needs to be healed. This this is not good. Yes, it's not good that that you viewing sex and sexual relationship with your husband this way. But I imagine that begins to heal as the woman begins to trust. Yes, yes, yes. The woman has has the the woman can legitimately trust if the man shows himself trustworthy. Yes. And I imagine as she allows him into that deep ocean to use your analogy,

in the sort of psychological way, then bodily there'll be an openness there that wasn't there prior? In your own words, you're saying exactly what JP II says in Love and Responsibility. He says, fragility in a woman may sometimes be her own issues that she brings to the table, but it may also be, and maybe even often is, the result of a certain lack of tenderness on the man that he calls brutality. And there are different grades of brutality. A man can be brutal with a woman in a really brutal way, but even there's an emotional brutality, you might say, where you just dismiss that other world and you're really demanding

that she'd be more and more like you. I know I've done that to my wife because wouldn't that be easier if my wife just thought like me and I didn't have to go on that pilgrimage into her world. And I remember one situation in our marriage where there was lack of harmony and something we were dealing with and I just I kind of was like angry about it. Why does she just think more like me? And I realized well

that would make her a man. And there is there's something homosexual about it. You know? And I can I get when I'm in those places of like angry at the difference of man and woman I can begin to say yeah I mean, when I'm in those places of like angry at the difference of man and woman, I can begin to say, yeah, I mean, I think I get something of why men might prefer a man because there's no other world. Yeah. It's just my world and you have pretty much the same world and we can selfishly feed off each other. But I need the otherness of that world for my masculinity to flourish To become what it is. Otherwise I'm gonna be what we were talking. What's that name for those isolated? Oh Hickemori

Hickemori, we had those people that the isolation of Sameness Otherness there that other world that deep ocean calls me out of my cave. And there are treasures in that ocean that I am called to discover in my wife that she doesn't even know about. And there are treasures buried in my cave that she's called to discover if we are willing to go on that vulnerable journey of exposing our hearts. Yeah.

Well, thank you for the question. Alex says, Christopher, my dad is a big YouTube fan, but he's a non-Christian. Can you give me some specific songs or lines from songs that can help me build a bridge with him? I'm sure you've never been happy to receive it. That's a great question. Sure, sure, sure. How about let's start with the song Grace. Go to the song, Desire.

Go to the song, Where the Streets Have No Name. Go to the song, October. Go to the song, Scarlet. Scarlet on the October album is one of my favorite U2 songs. It's just a hymn. It's a hymn that's just rejoice, rejoice, rejoice. Go to the song, well, there's a short list.

Start there. And do some reading. There's some good books out there about the kind of Christian roots of U2, and you can do a lot of reading. That could be a nice Christmas gift. Yeah, do that. Get them... What's one of the books?

The Gospel According to You Too. Oh, okay. Interesting. Kyle says, what are some common mistakes you see people making in the theology of the body realm? And what's the remedy for those errors? Yeah. I'd say the most common mistake is to reduce John Paul II's theology of the body merely to something for marriage prep or a chastity talk. Oh, that's for married people. Oh, that's for a chastity talk. That's for, yeah. To reduce it to that, is it great for marriage prep? Absolutely. But guess what? It's great for baptismal prep. Why? Because what John Paul 2 is giving us is a sacramental

worldview. And this is the beginning of Christianity. This is not the end point of Christianity. This is the beginning of Christianity, coming to see the world as God made it to be. To have that sacramental worldview. To reduce what John Paul has given us merely to something that belongs in a sexual ethics course or a sacramentality of marriage course in a seminary or in some institute of theology, is to miss the broad scope of what he's given us. What he's giving us is theological anthropology, a proper understanding of what a human being is. So what we say at the Theology of the Body Institute is, theology of the body is humanity 101.

If you have a body, this theology applies to you. If you don't move along, you move along. Yeah, yeah. So that's the biggest mistake. Yeah, good stuff. I mean, sometimes when you hear people teaching the theology of the body, do you try? I'm sure you try to be humble thinking that, OK, maybe they're seeing this through a different facet, you know, and they're because Because who would you say, like, if someone was to learn the theology, buddy, from you, who is somebody else you would like them to learn it from, where presumably they're not saying the

same thing as you? They've got a different spin on it, but it's still faithful. Which direction do you want to go? Do you want to go the more scholarly direction or the more...? Both. Let's do both. If you want to go in the scholarly direction, Michael Waldstein, he and I worked together on the English translation. I'm not a language scholar, he is, but he wanted to run it all by me because I was one of the main guys trying to get it out there. So we had a lovely, lovely back and forth, and he's – I don't know how many doctoral degrees he has. He's had at least three.

And he actually directed my doctoral dissertation, which was a tremendous gift. But in terms of scholarly work on the theology of the body, I'd point people in that direction. In terms of a more popular approach, I'd point them to Jason Everett. Yeah. I'd point them to... Jason Everett's got a little book called Theology of the Body in an Hour. Yeah, Theology of the Body in an Hour. I'd point them to Katrina Zeno. I'd point them to an organization called the Theology of the Body International Alliance.

I'd point them to an organization called Tobit of the Body International Alliance. I'd point them to an organization called Tobit Theology of the Body Evangelization Teams. There's a lot of them out there. And everybody comes at it with a certain nuance or different perspective that will enrich them. If you like my approach, take advantage of all the stuff that we do. But there are lots of other teachers out there too. Francesco says, you talked about the need we have for healing, even if it hurts like hell. Where can we start from? I have an answer.

Where we are too afraid to face the wounds that keep us paralyzed. Another shout out for the John Paul II Healing Institute run by Bob Schuetz down in Tallahassee, Florida. He runs weekends around the country and more intensive things than that. Did I tell you about my experience? You've told me that you have been incredibly healing. Oh, do you mind if I tell you a bit? I was in Australia visiting my family and the Lord was just doing something. I didn't know what it was, but it was frightening. I was, you know, reading spiritual authors from books that I had in my house in Australia that I hadn't read in a while.

And just the Lord was very near and I could sort of smell him. And it was just, he was very present and things were opening up in me. And this one day I lost my stuff at one of my children. I just lost it. I was driving and we're all in the car and I missed my exit. I think I felt embarrassed. And dude, when I say I lost it, I mean, if you, if there was a camera in that car, people would- I've been there. Yeah, it was so embarrassing.

Yeah, I've been there. And I was so ashamed. And I pulled this person to me after, of course, and I begged their forgiveness and I told him it wasn't their fault and all of that Thank God, but it was about that time that sister Miriam James She shot me a text and asked me if I wanted to come on one of these retreats She'd asked me before and I was busy But she asked me that vulnerable state and I'm like, yes now it was to happen three days after I got back

Yes. Now it was to happen three days after I got back. So I share this because I really want people to to take me up on my invitation to to check out Bob shoots. So I arrive home and about three days later, I drove to this maybe four night, five days sort of intensive. What is it called? Restoring the glory. Or is it healing the whole person? Yeah, healing the whole person. Weird things were happening. I remember, and only you will understand this, and 5% of our audience, the rest will be very offended and confused, I think.

But all the weirdos out there will understand us. I remember just, I was on my way to the retreat and I stopped off at this Whole Foods place and I was in the parking lot and I saw this woman and she was putting her groceries into the car. She had very short shorts so that I could kind of see under part of her buttocks and I just wept. I don't know why I wept. I don't know if it was beautiful. She was beautiful, but it was something going on. I'm like, why am I crying over this woman's bottom? That's a strange thing. And then I went into, I sat down. Here's what's weird, right? There's nothing manipulative about the conference. If anything, they could have tried a little harder. We were in a basement with fluorescent lights and I forgot that I was a

known Catholic. I didn't realize that people would be coming up to me, but I just couldn't stop crying. I'm reading the Bible, I'm just weeping, and I didn't know why I was weeping, and people are coming up saying hello. I can't talk to them, and they go, okay, and they leave, and Sister Miriam came, and I'm like, I felt like the Lord was inviting me to be a body on a surgeon's table,

and that I didn't have to try. And when I say didn't have to try, I mean that at times I just checked out and was just checking the internet. Like I actually put zero effort into this cause. And there was still fruit. I showed up later, late one day because I was tired and didn't want to go. And the Lord just beat the shit out of me. In a good way, I hope.

That's not what I mean. What did he do? The Lord just cut me open and put me together and scales fell from my eyes and my frost-bitten hands were healed and my body began to feel again. And it was like I was waking up from a coma and I was taking everything in and it was too much. Beautiful. So many days I just walk out and weep. in and it was too much. So many days I just walk out and weep. Yeah, that's a sign that that real deep surgery is going on. And then what was weird, and this is why I believe the stories of the saints, of which I'm not yet but will be, because I tasted it. I would walk around seeing people's spiritual warfare.

I didn't even know them and I'd see what was going on in them and I just heard for them. All of that. Why am I going on in him and I just heard for them. All of that. Why am I saying all that? It's just to say that- Someone asked how do you begin the healing journey? Healing's possible and you know, like, just healing begins when you encounter the Lord who loves you.

And you know, it's, yeah. So go to Bob Schuetz. Yeah, and their podcast, Restore the Glory. Restore the Glory. Bob Schuetz and Jake Kim, both dear friends of mine, they have this beautiful podcast. You've been on it, I've been on it. Yeah. Please listen to that podcast.

Listen to that podcast. Thursday, if you don't mind putting a link to Restore the Glory, because I tell you what, if Jesus is not like Sister Miriam or Bob Schuetz, I don't want to know him. They are the most just beautiful people. They have the tenderness of Christ. He helped me so much when I moved here. I was in such a desperately bad place. Thank you God for Bob Schuetz. I've shared this story before. I don't mind sharing it again, even though it's embarrassing.

He texts me because he wants an endorsement for that book. I just moved here. I was so fried, dude. I was so unhappy. Cameron was hospitalized three times within like the first two months of us being here. We didn't know what was going on. It was winter. The kids were adjusting. He texts me and he's like, how are you doing, Matt? And I said, I just want to smoke pot and listen to Radiohead. That's it. That's all I want to do. Honesty. Healing begins with honesty like that. And he said, we should maybe get together and do. Honesty. Healing begins with honesty like that. And he said, we should maybe get together and pray. All right.

And so we started meeting weekly for like an hour at a time just praying. Jesus is so faithful and he's so good. Yeah. And I'll just endorse everything you said about Bob. He has come along my side in some very, very tender painful moments of my own journey and been a tremendous guide. Tremendous guide. So all of that is to say, you don't need to know what you need to work on.

It's almost like if you were trying to make flowers grow and they were all seeds in the ground and you didn't even know where they were. What do you do? Well, you just water it and you give it sunshine. We don't know what needs to grow within us and what needs to be pruned within us, so you just expose yourself to the good God. BF I'll tell you this, the starting point of my adult journey into a deeper healing, and you're on it your whole life, you can never say, I've arrived, I'm healed, was coming

face to face with the pain that my own broken humanity had caused my wife. Despite all my best efforts to love her, I was the TOB guy. I was the guy who's going to get this right. And I want you to delve into this because you've told me that prior to your marriage, you had no, you were no longer looking at pornography. You were no longer emancipating. This is not something you're dealing with because I think a lot of men, when they think of the wounds they're inflicting on their wife, it's their own kind of shameful side behavior. So what, if you don't mind me asking,

what was it that was hurting your wife? 2005, 2005 is when I began to look more honestly at the pain I was causing my wife. We'd been married for 10 years. And I came to realize I was 35, 36, and I realized with the help of this very beautiful, wonderful spiritual director who I'm still seeing,

I've been journeying with this beautiful priest for almost 20 years, I had to go on an arche archaeological dig, so to speak, to find the roots of pain in my life that I was unwittingly and sometimes wittingly dumping on my wife. Why do we cause people pain? Because we're in pain. Why are we in pain? Because other people cause this pain. Why do they cause this pain? Because they were in pain. Someone has to stop the cycle of wounded people, wounding people, by being willing to take the punch and rather than punch back, return love.

And that's what the cross of Jesus Christ is. This is where he absorbs the punch of the whole human race, so to speak, absorbs it in and doesn't punch back but returns, forgive them Father, they don't know what they're doing. I am blessed to be married to the kind of woman who, not that she didn't have to work through anger and rage towards a husband who had really hurt her, but got to the place with the help of good spiritual direction where she could realize, my husband's hurting me because he's hurting.

And she realized, I can offer the pain he's caused me as intercession for his healing. The Catechism says this. This is one of my favorite paragraphs from the Catechism. You want to begin a journey of healing, go to Catechism 2843, where it talks about the inability for us to forgive our trespasses as we forgive those and how difficult it is to live that out. The Catechism says this, the heart that offers itself to the Holy Spirit opens the pain, that's the context, opens the pain we're in to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will transform that pain into compassion.

How can I have compassion for the person who hurt me? Only the miracle of the Holy Spirit can do that in a human heart, where I come to realize the reason I'm in pain is because you're in pain. You've dumped your pain on me. The pain I feel is the pain you feel. Guess what? We feel the same pain. Guess what? That's called, open to the Holy Spirit, that's called compassion, to suffer with. And then the catechism goes on to say, catechism 2843, that the Holy Spirit will transform the memory of the pain into intercession for the person.

Wendy was doing this for me. She didn't know that catechism quote, this was what she was experiencing in her own prayer. She was doing that for me. And she didn't come at meatechism quote. She was just, this was what she was experiencing in her own prayer. She was doing that for me. And she didn't come at me with the pain I caused her with a punch back. She came at me with mercy and that softened me. That enabled me to see her pain

and to see that I was causing it and to say to myself, why am I causing, I wanted to love you, but I've hurt you. I wasn't an total asshole. I mean, I could be on occasion, but this was just the rotten fruit of a deep root of pain in my life that I had to go on the dig. And what I discovered through lots of digging with my spiritual director and he always says this, go within with him. Never poke around and to what's going on way down in there on your own as if you can fix it. Go within only with him. This is what a good counselor can help you do.

This is what a good spiritual director can help you do. Go within with him. So Jesus, I really believed in my prayer, was leading me into these memories of being really rejected deeply and painfully by my older brother when I was a kid. And just defences that I built up in my life to protect myself from a constant barrage of... Mason Hickman Would you mind if I ask you, and if it's too personal, please don't tell me because it's quite sensitive and I'm honoured by your sharing, what was it you were doing to her? Was it anger? Was it manipulation? Was it criticism? Bregman- Here's what I was doing. I have to go back to... this all comes out in spiritual direction and deeper prayer life.

I got to this point in my life where I had to be as cool as my brother. My brother was the cool kid in the neighborhood. And in order to win my brother's approval, I have to kind of just step in line. I have to listen to the right music. I have to have the right bike. I have to wear the right clothes. I have to wear the right clothes. I have to be as cool as my brother. It became this idol of coolness in my life

to win my brother's approval. I have no idea when I get married and I'm 26, that this is just the way I see the world. Yeah, and if somebody has suggested to you, you're just trying to be as, you're trying to be cool for your brother, would you have understood that? No, no, I would not.

I had to go on that archeological dig in spiritual direction and prayer to come to understand that this is a deep problem in my life, that I've made this idol of cool. So Wendy comes into my world in my mid-20s. She's not a cool kid. And I remember the pain that she felt when looking at childhood pictures of her, when I realized, oh, geez, if you and I had been in the same school, I never would have invited you to my eighth grade party. You weren't cool enough. You

were one of those uncool kids, you know, whatever your categories are. Right. So did you sort of resent her for that? No, no. Well, I loved her for it. I mean, first of all, I loved her for it because way down in there, I like, she doesn't believe the same lie that I believe. Yeah. She's been liberated from this lie and her love is going to save me from this lie too. Way down in there, I was so drawn to her because she was a free woman. She was free. She certainly wasn't asking you to be the kind of cool you thought you had to be. No, no, no, no.

So I was simultaneously, this is the solution to my own neurosis at some deep level. And at the same time, I'm scared to death that you're that free because I'm bringing you into my family and my brother's going to reject the shit out of you because you're not cool, just like he did to me. And in my, I really, it was a desire that was really messed up, but really what I wanted to do was save her from the pain that I endured at my brother's hands. That's what I wanted to do.

But what I ended up doing is causing the pain from my own hands, because the way I tried to spare her the pain that my brother caused me was Well, Wendy if you want to be lovable in my world You got to listen to this kind of music. You got to ride this kind of bike. You got to wear these kind of clothes And what's what's the message Wendy's receiving when I'm subtly and sometimes not so subtly making her, taking her to cool school. Cause I mean, I get that you said that at a deep level you loved her for that, but you know, people talk about how parents kind of resent in their children what they know, what they see in themselves.

Was it also a kind of a resentment at the same time? Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was, there was a- Trying to fix? I need, I need to educate you And not just when you're around your brother, but in life in life I need to educate you to be as cool as I am Who's the idiot here not my wife I am and my taking her to cool school, what's the message?

And my taking her to cool school, what's the message? Does my husband love me? Why is he trying to shape me into something I'm not? Well the reason I'm trying to shape her into something I'm not is because that's the way I coped in my own life with my pain. I had to be something I wasn't in order not to be rejected by my brother. Because the real me was the weak, dork, little shit that my brother constantly, emotionally rejected. I was so afraid that Wendy was going to experience that,

that I did that to her so she wouldn't. Does that make any sense? No, but in some way you can understand why I would think that would be the approach to spare her that pain. The net result of all of this from a wife who took that pain and instead of punching me back, learned how to open it in intercession for me was the beginning of a healing journey that took me into my pain that I realized originated a lot not all of it

but in this emotional abuse of my older brother well guess what now I'm learning to turn my pain into intercession for him. And yeah, it's opened up incredible doorways into healing. That's still underway and may take a lifetime. Who knows? But you ever chat with your brother about that's what I'm saying. Like the fruits of this, it's still ongoing. It's still ongoing. It's but yeah, I've seen beautiful growth. Doesn't this just go to show, thank you for sharing that.

Doesn't it just go to show that our individual paths to sanctity are gonna look so different? So different, yeah. But if you were to try to impose your path of healing onto somebody else, you have no way, like people are so complex, it's so different. And we're so, we're unique in our journey. You can say, oh, there's certain,

this is why it's good to tell our story, because's elements of it that you oh it makes people feel less alone Yes. Yes, you are not alone in your pain You're not that's and we all need to know that because the aloneness in the pain just causes more pain So when you began to find healing, did you just sort of did you what happened? Did your wife feel more freedom to be herself? Or? Yes. Yes.

Yes. She started, this was just one of the fruits I could point to many, but she started listening to her music again. As crap as it is. I'm just joking. Sorry. But that was the arrogance that I had. Like that was the arrogance I had.

I didn't ever use those words, but that was the message. Don't listen to this. Don't listen. That's medicine for her soul. Yeah, don't take your medicine. That's not, you're not, you gotta be, my family's gonna reject you if you listen to that kind of music.

And I don't want you to be rejected. So don't listen to that kind of music. Yeah. And I don't want you to be rejected. So don't listen to that kind of music. But what did I just do? I just rejected her for listening to that kind of music. I just did to her what I didn't want my family to do to her. Yeah. And you made your family the standard of truth. Yes, exactly. You kind of confirmed in your own mind that what their judgments were accurate.

Yeah. Yeah. yeah, yeah. And the pain that my wife endured coming into my family culture was really, really painful. Your, if you don't mind me, your wife told me that your sister apologized to her. Yes, yes. I hope that's not too personal to share. Your sister, Emily, died 2019 from cancer. And my sister didn't like this Wendy Weidman coming into the West family. And she was very close to me and I think there was some, you know, she didn't like some other woman taking me out of the family and now I'm spending all my time with this other woman

and you know, sibling stuff. And my sister Emily was not kind to Wendy when Wendy came into the family. Like four or five days before she died, my dear sister Emily was in tears, you know, apologizing to Wendy for the way she had not, she said, I crushed a little bird. That's right.

I crushed a little bird. That's right. I crushed a little bird. Mm-hmm. I crushed a little bird, my dear wife. Mm-hmm. Mercy is real. Mercy is real. Healing is real. We are not alone in our pain. Jesus knows your pain. He knows my pain.

And he has promised, and this is the miracle, this is his promise, Wendy is going to shine for eternity with far more glory than had I never caused her that pain." That's just the promise of the gospel. Does that mean I should cause her more pain? Should she sign with more glory? St. Paul says, if that's the way you think, your condemnation is deserved. Right. No, but God will bring flowers from wounds. Or dung. Yeah. And yeah, the manure is part of the journey. But that's a great image of fertilizing, right?

We got to look at our dung, we got to look at our pain, we got to look at our wounds, but the Lord can end- Look at it. This is the symbol of the wound of sin, right? The open side of Christ. What flows from the wound of sin? The redemption of all sin. The very infliction, the very imposing of all of our pain and sin and broken humanity on Jesus, who Scripture says he became sin who

did not know sin. The very wound that we inflict becomes the fountain that brings the healing we need. I have experienced that in my own journey in married life, that the very wound I've caused can become also opened to Jesus. And the very wound that has been inflicted on me by others, opened up to Jesus, can become a font of redemption for the very people we've wounded. It's real. It's real.

Thank God. Carbite asks, how does God... I forgot we were in a Q&A session. Thank God. Carbite asks, how does God- I forgot we were in a Q&A session. Yeah, well this fella asked about healing and that got me onto my story. But Thursday thinks that this is way better than questions anyway. But how does God purify something pornified, as Christ said asks carbide looking specifically for the physical facet as spending time in sexual sin cause psychological damage so

what's he saying here just as porn cause psychological damage like then what's the thing to begin purifying the pornified well you can I have one of those pieces of paper you've seen me do this a hundred million times. I need a blank one. Sorry. That's all right. If I had cash on me, I'd give you that. Here we go. See, I carry a tablet with me because I do this so often. So, visuals are helpful, right? And this is, let's start with a principle that is absolutely bedrock, foundational Catholic cosmology. And by that I mean, if we don't understand this, if we get this wrong, we have the whole cosmos wrong. We have the whole universe wrong. Here's the principle. The devil does not have his own clay. The devil does not have his own clay. What does that mean?

Everything that is created, all that exists, was created by God, and God looked at everything he made and said, behold, it is very good. Here's my visual. Suppose this is a painting. This is a painting of man and woman naked without shame. This is the pinnacle of the goodness of all of creation. Behold, it is very good. There is nothing more beautiful than man and woman naked without shame in the beginning. Nothing. This is the crown of creation. The enemy hates this painting. the main icon or window to the heavenly mystery of the

Trinitarian exchange. The destiny that we all have, which is the marriage to the second person of the Trinity so that we can be taken up through the marriage of the Lamb into the inner life of the Trinity. This is the earthly sign of that heavenly reality. That's why Satan hates with all his diabolic fury this painting. And what happened with Original Sin to the painting is that clay, that very good clay, got all twisted up. This is the nature of evil. It's the distortion of something good. The devil doesn't have his own clay. There's no such thing as evil in itself, meaning evil does not have is-ness. It does not have existence. It's the distortion of

something good. The good and existence are the same thing. If it exists, it's fundamentally good, right? Even Lucifer If it exists, it's fundamentally good. Even Lucifer is a fallen angel who God created good. Because he has fallen, he now wants to get his hands on all the goodness that God has created and this is porn right here. Porn is the distortion of that original beautiful icon. How does this get redeemed? Here's the mistake we typically make.

Oh, it's been pornified. That's bad, that's evil. Throw it away. Right? Now we think spirit good, body bad. This is heresy. We've given the devil his own clay. That crumpled painting does not belong to the devil.

It belongs to God. It's been crumpled. The redemption is not the throwing away. The redemption is Christ coming into this mess. This is an image of our hearts, right? See, what most people do, we were talking about this a long time ago on this episode, the Pharisaical approach is stuff, don't look at that, because that makes me unholy and

unlovable, put on my religious mask and just follow the external rules. And Jesus says, whitewashed tomb. You're not looking at what's really messed up. You refuse to look at it. Christ wants to come into the dead man's bones, into the depth. And this is that interior journey, that archaeological dig where like, oh, that's really F'd up. I'm really F'd up. I can't let people see this. I can't let people see this. I can't let people see this. Ah, ah.

I got this impression growing up as a kid because this was just our family culture. Hide your weakness, hide your imperfection that makes you unlovable, bury it. Don't look at, hide it. You're a blemish on our family record, hide all that. And I got the impression to please people, I gotta hide all that. And I got the impression to please people, I gotta hide all that. What happens when I do something wrong?

There's an emotional distance now between me and my dad. I don't like that emotional distance. So I can't let my dad know that I've done anything wrong. I gotta hide it, gotta hide it, gotta hide it. Misery cordia is the antithesis of that. Mercy. Misere cordia, a heart that gives itself to those in misery. I'm in misery because I got this twisted, crumpled up thing deep in me, and to bury

it I'm just going to be in more misery. What does misere cordia do? Misere cordia is attracted to that. The mercy of God, the crucifixion of Christ, is precisely God Himself entering into this. And as soon as He does, what is our response? Get away from me. Get away. I'm a sinful man. Exactly. Everyone on the journey has to overcome that initial Understandable reaction you will never wash my feet. Yeah Peter if you don't let me wash you wash you you have no part of me. Okay, then wash me all over Right. I love Peter there. He's

So we all have to let Jesus into the Pornified reality and we can say pornified here, not just our sexuality, but any aspect of our humanity that's been twisted, where that clay is distorted. We gotta let Jesus in. And what's the miracle? We're loved right here. We're loved right here.

What was the first result of original sin? Hiding. Why? I'm afraid because I'm naked. So I hid myself. The journey of the Christian life is the reverse of that. I was at peace because I knew he loved me. I trusted in his misery cordia that he's actually drawn to me here in this miserable crumpled up mess of my broken life. So I exposed myself.

I exposed myself. I exposed my misery. I exposed my pornified understanding of the body. I exposed it to the light and what happened? The light came in and this miracle is now underway in my life, where my broken, twisted, fouled up, pornified view of things is now becoming more and more purified. It reminds me of the blind man who began seeing trees walking upside down. I can see, but if people look like walking trees, okay, touch me again.

And that's the journey. Beware the false summits, as we were talking about earlier, right? The false summit in the mountain climb, as you get to the certain section, and you think, oh, I have, oh no, the summit's over there. And guess what? When you get there,

you can realize the summit's over there. So keep going, keep going. It's not an easy journey. It's not for the faint of heart. In fact, this is why the temptation to externalize and just make it about external following of rules is very tempting and attractive. John of the Cross is very clear here. He says most Christians stop the journey when the painful purifications come and they

externalize it. It's a real temptation. Keep going. Be not afraid. Keep your eye on the ecstasy and you'll be willing to endure the agony that it takes to get there. And as if I've, no no no no, I'm just a man on the journey. I can look back and say, wow I've come a long way, but I, no, I'm just a man on the journey. I can look back and say, wow, I've come a long way, but I look ahead and I say, man, I got a long way to go. Yeah, and if it weren't for manner, or bread for the journey, it would be too exhausting. We would pass out.

Who was that, Elijah? Who was that? Well, Jesus himself says, if they leave and I don't feed them, I'm afraid they'll pass out on the way. Pass out on the way. Pass out on the way. We can apply that to the whole way of following Jesus. If he doesn't give us little breathers and little breaks and little foreshadowings of our destiny, of that ecstasy,

little sacramental tastes, we'll pass out on the journey. Mason Hickman Many people are aware of these excellent courses you run at Theology of the Body Institute, but they may not be aware of one of the most recent courses taught by our friend Bill Donahey. So could you tell them about that course? Yeah. And that could be a segue for people looking up your other courses and maybe signing up. Bill Donahey, dear friend, brother, colleague, just taught for the first time a course through the Institute called Poets for the Kingdom, and he was examining the sacramental worldviews of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.

And he is like he is this is his pet project. He was made for this. He was made. You've had him on the show. Yeah. Love it. You want to get a taste of a beautiful soul, watch your interview with Bill Dunahee. So I'm the president of this Theological Institute, Theology of the Body Institute,

and my other colleague, Jason Clark, he's the executive director. And so Bill, one of our star faculty members, he came to Jason and me, maybe two years ago, and he says, I have this idea for a course. How would you think if I were to teach a course on Tolkien and Lewis? I was like, yeah! And we like set him free, just go do it. This is gonna be excellent because it,

remember I said one of the main errors with John Paul's Theology of the Bodies, people reduce it to sexual ethics or something. This is what Bill's course did. He went through John Paul's anthropology, which starts with original man before the fall, historical man who's fallen and redeemed, and then fancy word that JP II uses, eschatological man, meaning who are we in the redemption, the fullness of redemption, in the eschaton at the end of time.

That's the full scope of what it means to be human. Bill Dunahee very creatively took our students through a tour of Lewis and Tolkien through this paradigm of our origin, our history, and our destiny. Where do we come from? Where are we now? Where are we come from? Where are we now? Where are we going? And he broke open how the poetry and the story, the mythology of Lewis and Tolkien is a mythological presentation of the very same truths that JP II presents in his Theology of the Body. Brilliant, brilliant. I know people said in the evaluations, it's one of their favorite courses at the Institute.

We're going to offer it again maybe 2025? Oh, oh, oh, Bill is doing a pilgrimage to England where he's going to take people through some of the content of this course. That's next July. And then he's going to use some of the content that he gains on the pilgrimage, and he's going to do a version 1.2 of the Tolkien Lewis course in 2025. We will film that and we will have that eventually as an online offering as well. So we offer our courses in a five day format. And then we film them and we offer them online as well.

Do you go to all the courses or just? I've been to all of them. Yes, I've been to all of them. I've been to several of them multiple times. I mean, I know the notes that you give the participants are extremely extensive. I'm sure he could put together a book. I hope he does. This is going to be his doctoral dissertation, actually.

Bill is one of the most grateful, humble people I've met. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He has a childlike sense of wonder. And when he was teaching the class, he would read the different characters of the Tolkien stories in different voices, in different voices for the C.S. Lewis characters. And in the evaluations, the students said things like, I just felt like I was a little kid at story time

with my dear grandfather or my dad or my uncle or my favorite teacher, you know? And he really does have that ability to awaken that sense of wonder and awe in our, you know, unless you become like a child, you will not enter the kingdom. Bill has that sense of being the child full of wonder. Theology of the body. I remember when I first saw the book, because I'd heard about it. It was actually at World Youth Day Canada. And I was a...

Toronto? 2002? Yeah, I was a Christian for like two and a half, well, just under two years, I suppose, since my time at World Youth Day Rome. Christian in the sense of a believing professing Christian. And I could hear about the theology of the body. I'm like, oh, wow, this sounds really powerful. I got to find this. And then I saw someone on the airplane reading it. I'm like, oh, gosh, it's huge. No, I'm not. I couldn't even begin to and then when I even tried I remember finding it just off-putting because it was well it was big and unruly and kind of repeated itself sometimes and it's dense scholarship yeah and you you have

to be willing it's not it's not terribly systematic is it or is it well yeah I mean it's it's poetic it It's the the the way of saying non-systematic. Uh, no. Am I wrong in thinking it kind of repeats because these are lectures he's giving and doesn't he kind of repeat himself at times?

Or I don't know, Christopher, I'm not trying to tell you something because I haven't read it. I would tell you I had a great aha eureka moment when Waldstein and I were working on the translation together, this is 2004, five-ish, and it had come out through the Observatory Romano translation that was

whoever was there at the Vatican the day John Paul delivered that address would do the English translation. So you would have wildly different translations of the same terms, like nuptial meaning of the body would also be translated matrimonial significance of the body, spousal significance of the body. So it had to be retranslated in a uniform way with a certain scholarship, a critical edition and going to the original text. So Waldstein did that with the help of the Polish and the

Italian. We have this now. He relied primarily on the Italian because that was the official translation from the Vatican. But even the Polish, he now says, brings up a little bit more that is still lacking. Anyway, side issue. Why am I talking about this? Theology of the body, is it systematic? Is it poetic? Oh yeah, yeah. So one of the eureka moments, aha moments, and I had been already studying the text since 1993. This is 11-12 years later and Waldstein in his research

discovered the original handwritten manuscript of the text and it had handwritten manuscript of the text. And it had headings seven layers deep that nobody who had been studying the text in the English speaking world had ever known about. All we had was the translation of these Wednesday audiences. It was written as a book. And he divided it into 135 short talks.

And in those talks, the translations, we didn't have the seven layers deep of headings that organized the argument. Now, having read the text and really studied it in depth, I had come up with my own kind of schema. Okay, this makes, I think he's saying this point here and he's, okay, I'm going back there. And I gotta, I put an outline together of my own

with the help of some other scholar friends and we had it, I would say, when the actual headings were translated into English and I can compare what I had put together with some others with what JP2 had organized, we were 60, 70 percent. That's cool. Right?

That must have been a nice confirmation for you. Yeah, it was a confirmation for me. But this was like the map. These headings were the map that took you on the journey to understand the text. That was one of the problems. And you found it in 2002. So this was before the new... Have you ever spent any time with the new translation?

All of my books and everything have been updated with the new translation, all of my courses use the new. It's the critical edition. If you're going to be a student of the Pope's teaching, you've got to go to the Waldstein translation in English. Well, I got a job for you. I got a suggestion for you. I would love there to be a kind of audio course where you pay somebody to read the reading

and then you give no more than a five minute summary. Yeah, pray that we can do that. We've been trying to get the copyright. You can do Theology of the Body in a year, blow Schmitz out the water. No, no, I actually pray for this. I proposed that to Father Mike Schmitz, and some other friends, we kind of collectively,

like we gotta do this. And I pray that Father Mike Schmitz might say yes to that as a project, because there's a lot of demand for it. But we also, we're running into an issue with the copyright. Can we use that text? Yeah, it's pretty frustrating. Especially because if they just came to you and agreed, okay, we'll allow it But you have to promote this one edition of the book from our publisher. They would

I know I know I know there's such a kind of Short-sighted old-school way of yeah clinging to things without really no no no if we do this this Not only does it benefit more people, but you would make a lot more money. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that would be really neat. I think I'd be willing to dive into it because I have no desire to pick up the theology of the body and try to read it. Just none. Yeah, I get it. And you couldn't talk me into having that desire. I just, I don't want to do it. Yeah. Well, that's why. But the Lord may place it on my heart one day and I will, but.

A lot of people have that. You know, they get excited because there's this talk about theology body out there and they go and grab the Pope's book and they're like, I don't know, I wade through this. I think the particular charism of the Theology of the Body Institute is we translate that dense stuff in a language, in images, in analogies, in stories that resonate with the heart. That's what we do. Mason-I just got to go to Poland. I was in Ukraine twice last year. Well, one time I was only on the border, but both times I was in Poland. It was neat to...

Oh yeah. Just to see where he lived and see that, uh, shh... Well, what is it? More of a museum of sorts outside of... Yes. I have quite the... memory of seeing that museum for the first time. Such a handsome man, isn't he? Stunning, really. I love the images of him as, like, he's in his 40s and he wears those glasses and, I mean, like he was a stud. Very attractive guy. Yeah. And so,

I mean, charismatic, he was an actor. That was part of his charism, you know, the way he carried his body, the way he spoke, the way he interacted with people. I have learned so much as a presenter, as a man who has a message to deliver. I've learned so much from actors, from comedians, from musicians, from front mans of bands like Bono. Like I study these guys. And I see the ones who are masters, and JP2 was a master of making a connection with an audience to the point that you're in a huge stadium

of 80,000 people and you can feel like he's connecting with you. That's right. That's an art form and I have learned a great deal from JP2, from actors, comedians, musicians again about just how to make a connection. It's an art form but it's also a gift. Absolutely. It might even be principally a gift. I would say all true art forms are genuine gifts. That you then work with. I remember saying to an artist once, you're very talented.

And he said that he almost finds that insulting because he's like, I work my fricking ass off to get to this. It wasn't a gift. But I remember Jerry Seinfeld talking to these people who wanted to learn comedy and they came to a class and he said, let's be honest, if you were going to make it, you wouldn't be here. Like there's got to be that raw talent. Yeah, well said.

What do you take of kind of contemporary criticisms of John Paul II that he did not nearly enough to stem the tide of bad bishops and sexual abuse? Have you waded into that much? Well, let's just assume that all the criticisms are onto something. Okay, there are wheat and weeds growing in everybody. To be canonized a saint is not a statement that there were no weeds in this person. John Paul II, and Weigel writes about this in his two volume biography, and in fact Weigel himself lists various criticisms, and you don't get a bigger JP-2 fan in the world, I think, than Weigel.

So there are legitimate criticisms of anybody. Just like there are legitimate criticisms of you. You're reaching so many people through this platform. Anybody who wants to look at you under a microscope can pick up all kinds, it's me too, anybody. So that shouldn't be surprising, right? If we're surprised that we found some weeds among the wheat, well then we got a wrong understanding

of what a human being is and what a saint is. And the catechism is very clear. The wheat and the weeds will grow in all of us our whole life long. They are there. They are present. The wheat and the weeds are present in everyone till the day we die and purgatory if you need it. So to expect that there would not be something off in JP2 is...

I really like that approach of just sort of biting the bullet and then saying, so what? Yeah, that's really good. Okay. Okay. You press into Mother Teresa, you're going to find issues because she's a human being. What's interesting is as we know more and more about people because of technology, it's going to be harder and harder to kind of deify each other. Because you look at the same like St. Anthony of Padua or something,

it's like, I'm sure he had a bad day. Yeah. But you don't know about it. He didn't tweet constantly. Anybody, you've been through it, I've been through it. Public criticism when you're in a public eye. And I remember when I went through a real rough one, and I was thinking to myself,

I know there's so much more worse you could pick on about what my failings are. These may or may not be my failings. You might be onto something here, but a lot of it was just slanderous stuff. But some of it was, yeah, there's my weakness, there's my issue, there's my fault. Yeah, I shouldn't have said it that way. I was young, I was green, I didn't know what he's doing Okay criticism taken. Thank you But oh my gosh if you're gonna make such a hullabaloo about that if you only knew how broken I am if you only knew I Think when we are

when we're scandalized by somebody else's brokenness, I Think it's a pretty clear indication. we haven't been looking at our own. The more you're doing your own interior work and you just see layer after layer of brokenness, selfishness, pride, arrogance, lust, you're not scandalized when you see it in others. I don't know, there's something about, I mean, I think that's, I think that's right. I think the scandal comes when that other has a megaphone. Yeah. By megaphone, I mean YouTube channel and they're influencing thousands of people. That's when I think, I think it becomes a scandal if it's hypocritical, hidden. I mean, I've made some major, major blunders in my life, in my marriage, in my ministry. There's a time and a place

for, well, that's content for the confessional. I'm not gonna announce that on YouTube. But with a proper certain veil, I've also been very vocal and open publicly in my podcast on YouTube. My wife and I have talked openly about how I had had some emotional infidelities in my marriage. Wendy's talked openly about those wounds that that caused her. I talked openly

about that. I don't want anyone who turns to me to come to whatever wisdom and insight I might have to share on John Paul's Theology of the body to think for a moment that I think I got it all figured out or I'm some god have mercy, some perfectly sanctified person, you're going to find a trail of real brokenness in my life. And my spiritual director, I think I've shared this even on this program, Points with a Coinist, before, but a life-changing moment for me was when my spiritual director diagnosed my neurosis so well. And with your permission, I'll just say it as he said it to me. Yeah, please, I know what you're going to say. Please say it. Yeah, he said, Christopher, you think a saint is someone who has a shit together. He says, you got it all wrong.

A saint is someone who has all of his S-H-I-T open to the merciful love of the Father. That was a game changer for me. So you wanna point to JP2 and say, hey, what about that? Well, maybe that's real, some, to use the Polish, maybe that's some JP2 shitzky okay okay it doesn't mean he's a saint is someone who has all of his schitzky open to the merciful love of the father and I have no doubt that JP to was on the earnest journey of opening up all of his broken humanity to the merciful

love of the Father. Yeah, I sometimes put myself, when I'm tempted to be too critical of bishops and priests, I sometimes do this little thought experiment. Okay, Matt, you're the bishop of Cleveland. Go. Uh, what do I know? What do I not know? That's a lot more.

Who do I listen to? How do I know I should listen to them? Even if I should bring the hammer down, what results from that? I mean, there are a million things that follow, isn't there, from every decision we think would be the right one to make. And I think that, I mean, when you talk about the sexual scandals in the church, there is a particularly deep wound. And when we, when someone is in that much pain, we want to find somebody to be responsible

for it. And I don't think that's entirely wrong. But I, but I also think, what, how do I say this? No, it's not wrong. Someone is responsible. But I'll answer the question. I'll get to my point by putting it this way. GK Chesterton, I love him. I know you love him. One of my favorite things he ever did, he was among many thinkers of his day, was asked to write an essay to be published in a book, What's Wrong with the World. Do you know the story? Yeah.

His two word answer. Dear Sirs, I am. I am. I am. If we start there and recognize, I'm what's wrong with the world. I am. It's not just this evil world out there. This world is evil because I'm in it, because I have evil in me. I have twisted up stuff in me.

If we can start there and if we begin with that disposition, and this is right out of the Gospel, don't point out the speck in somebody else's eye if you're not looking at the log in your own. Right. So start with what's wrong with the world? I am. What's wrong with the church? I am. Stay there for a long time before you have any ability to say, hey Bishop, or hey JP2, or hey so-and-so. You gotta look at that. We all need, we all need, especially if we're in the public eye, good, if I can say it this way, shit detectors. People in our lot, because when you're an influencer,

you have lots of people who do this. You need people who don't do that to you and will call you on your crap, will call you on your selfishness. If you just surround yourself and your team with yes men who are in a bow to Matt or bow to Christopher or bow to fill in the blank Scott Hahn or anybody. If you don't have good crap detectors, SHIT detectors in your world who are not enamored

at any of your public persona or whatever, public display or public influence and are willing to say, and I have three really good ones, my wife, my spiritual director and brother, I won't name him, who's very close to me in this work, and he calls me on my crap. And I have come, I never like it. Could you give me an example? Does one come to mind? Oh, I could give you a hundred examples.

Just one. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I could give you a hundred examples. Just one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here's a great one. I was giving a talk on Our Lady of Guadalupe on a pilgrimage to Mexico City. And beautiful mother and her Down syndrome son were on the pilgrimage. And his mother came up to me, he doesn't speak so readily to many people. And she said, he wants to talk to you.

And this is like a special thing. He doesn't usually do this. I said, okay. And he motioned me over, he was 16, a Down syndrome boy, motioned me over to the, I had an image of the Tilma there and I had just given this long talk about it. And I point out how she's dancing on the Tilma, this victory war dance. And he pulls me over and he says to me, she dances with me. And my friend, partner in ministry who was with me, who's my SHIT detector, saw me put on my Christopher West hat of teacher, where I was like, oh, that's really nice. That's beautiful, Daniel. Good for you.

And Jason, I just said his name, he taps me on the shoulder. That's really nice. That's beautiful, Daniel. Good for you. And Jason, I just said his name, he taps me on the shoulder. No, you don't have to. That's all right. Yeah. Thank you. He taps me. This is not Jason Everett.

He taps me on the shoulder. He says, Christopher, come here, come here. I said, I'll be right back, Daniel. And he says, knock it off. You are not the teacher here. You're the student. He has something to teach you. Knock off the, the, the, I'm the teacher guy. Be humble and listen to what he's teaching you. And I was like, and I fired him. And I, I, I, I knew he was right. Yeah. And I went back to him with a very different disposition and it changed the whole course

of my pilgrimage and brought me some really deep healing that I needed. Because Mary Guadalupe wanted to dance with me. I needed to be the student and I needed to get off my high teacher horse there. So that's one example. That's good What's funny is that something might hear that go? Well, that wasn't really much of a criticism But it is because he knows you he knows me and he knows he knows my faults He knows my faults and he knows that I can get in this mode where I'm not really paying attention to what's going on Because I think somehow it's about me. Yeah. Because that's a real temptation when people wait an hour and a half in line to get your picture and autograph and whatever else. So, yes, we need we need people who know our weaknesses, know our crap and call us on it.

Do a final plug for this book. Yeah, final plug for this book. Because that name is such a good name. Oh, I'm so glad you like it. My wife. How could you not? I put I put a list of titles that I wanted for the book, and this was one of them, and my wife said,

pick that one, pick it. Okay. And I- What was another one? Oh, I don't even remember. I have to look at- Eating the sunrise? Eating the sunrise.

That is beautiful. Let me tell you where I get this. A student of mine, you may know him, he's now a speaker in his own right, teacher in his own right. He came up to me at a course like 12, 15 years ago. Yeah, you tore this in the book. Yeah, and he said, we're talking about beauty

and this hunger we have to behold beauty. He says, Christopher, I don't wanna just behold the beauty of the sunrise. I wanna to eat it. I want to take it in. And that just always stayed with me. Eating the sunrise, that's such an image. And it's the subtitle, Meditations on the Liturgy and our Hunger for beauty. Well, what are we doing in the liturgy? You and I the other day went to an Ad Orientum liturgy, and I'm a fan. I mean, I'm a fan of Ad Orientum. I love the Novus Ordo.

I love the Novus Ordo. We still need to bring about- Well, this was the Novus Ordo that we went to. Yeah, this was the Novus Ordo. So I just want to draw some- Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love the Novus Or. So I just want to draw some, I love the Nova Sordo. I believe in the Second Vatican Council and its call for liturgical renewal.

I also believe we have not yet seen it. We're only 60 years out from the council and it usually takes at least 100 years after a major council for that council to bear its fruit. So we're not, we're a little over halfway there. So I am a real believer that this renewal of the liturgy is coming. But why I love Ad Orientum is because it makes sense out of the cosmos. It opens our eyes to the sacramental worldview we're talking about. Why does the priest pray towards the rising sun. Because what does scripture say about the rising sun?

Psalm 19, the sun comes forth like a bridegroom from his tent, and nothing is concealed from the burning love of the bridegroom. Who are we in the liturgy? We're the bride. The whole earth in the liturgy is the bride, and the rising sun is the bridegroom. I once heard it said, you know, if you're on a bus ride to heaven, you don't want the

bus driver facing you. Right? That's correct. It's not that the priest had his back to the people. He was leading the people on pilgrimage to the bridegroom. He's saying this way to the consummation of the marriage of the Lamb. And when you understand that meaning, oh, oh, this whole church is orienting me towards the Eucharist, this whole celebration, this whole act of worship.

What is worship? We worship whatever we think is going to satisfy our hunger. That's what we worship. What should we worship? The Eucharist, because that and that alone can satisfy the hunger. So is properly called eros. Idolize, despise, or liturgize. Idolize the things of this world because we think they're going to satisfy it. Despise that hunger and the things of this world because they're only going to get us in trouble. Or liturgize that hunger. In other words, orient it towards the coming

of the bridegroom, open like a bride to the coming of the bridegroom, and don't let anything in your life be concealed from the burning heat of the rising sun. What's going to happen? You, if you liturgize your longing, you're going to be like a flower opening up and you're gonna be... that's what the rising Sun does to the flower. It opens it up. Pay attention,

Jesus says, to the way the wild flowers grow. What's he doing here? As I say in the book, he's not just bidding us to be better botanists, he's luring us into loving the liturgy. You don't know what the liturgy is if you don't know what a flower is. And if that, if you're like, huh, read the book. Beautiful. Christopher, thank you so much for being here. Matt. Sharing with us. Your joy, you're an inspiration and you're reaching many people with this program and

I'm happy to be part of it. As one priest said, and I've shared it with you and everybody, may he use everything, even my bullshit, as manure for their growth. Amen. And yours and all of ours. Amen. Thank you.