Pints With Aquinas - Happiness, Sex, and Intimacy with Jesus Christ (Christopher West)

Episode Date: February 6, 2025

Christopher West is a renowned Catholic author, speaker, and theologian, widely recognized for his engaging presentations on St. John Paul II's Theology of the Body. With a passion for making profound theological concepts accessible to modern audiences, Christopher has spent over two decades inspiring individuals to discover the beauty of human love in God's divine plan. As the founder and president of the Theology of the Body Institute, he has written numerous bestselling books, including Fill These Hearts and Our Bodies Tell God’s Story. Christopher's dynamic approach to faith, culture, and relationships has made him a sought-after guest for podcasts, conferences, and media appearances worldwide. Christopher's Links: https://theologyofthebody.com https://shop.corproject.com/collections/books/products/copy-of-fill-these-hearts-paperback Use Code: HEARTS 🍺 Get episodes a week early, 🍺 score a free PWA beer stein, and 🍺 enjoy exclusive streams with me! Become an annual supporter at https://mattfradd.locals.com/support 💵 Show Sponsors: Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/matt Hallow: https://hallow.com/mattfradd 💻 Social Media:  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Pints_W_Aquinas TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@pintswithaquinas 👕 Store: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com/

G'day everybody, Matt Fradd here. I just had a really beautiful, vulnerable discussion with the one and only Christopher West. And this is just something of a warning that we get into topics that are very sensitive. And so if you sometimes listen to this podcast with children around, don't do that. Instead, listen to it. If you think your children might benefit from it, that's at your discretion. But that's your warning. God bless. Thanks a lot. You're trying to say, thank you, Father, for the nails in my hands. Thank you, Father, for the crown of thorns on my head. Thank you, Father, for the lance in my side. There's a sweetness to the cross. There's a beauty that comes. There's a fertility that comes from being There's a fertility that comes from being crucified with Christ

It's very professional what What is that go ahead go head. Go to head. Go ahead. I thought he said you're dead. Hello. Hi, Matt. Love it. Have you on?

Thank you. No, I've said this before, but you were the first one who came to my show. Remember? 800 years ago. In Atlanta. Yeah. Thank you for doing that when I had 15 followers, 15 subscribers. Yeah, sure.

Was I really? No, you weren't. Maybe the second or the third, but you know. And I think this is my fifth time on your show. If you count the three episodes

that we did for that Love and Responsibility series, this would be the eighth. How did that go? It went great for us. How did it go for you? I donibility series, this would be the eighth. How did that go? It went great for us. How did it go for you? I don't know, I think it went well. Well, if you- Do you remember that time I can't, what happened?

I was so just- You were exhausted. I'm so sorry. You were exhausted, Matt. It's A-OK. Did I, I think I flew in from Australia the week before. And we had filmed too much in one sitting. But if you don't know what we're talking about, go watch the Love and Responsibility series, Matt, and I did. Yeah, it's on... Three episodes on my channel and three

episodes on your channel. Yeah, that was good. How are you? Life is full. Joys, trials, agonies, ecstasies, it always goes together. And I'm thinking you asked me that question the last time I was on and I probably said the same thing, because it's usually the same answer. Because when are we without joys and trials all mixed up together? I could say it's the best of times and I could say in some ways it's hard times, but the Lord's in it all and I'm trying to find him there. It's like we've been lied to that eventually we'll just have a neat house and beautiful carefree sex with our spouses. That's a lie.

Donuts that won't make us fat. Come on. Is that really a lie? Vacations where no one gets frustrated. That's what I thought was going to happen. I just thought everything would eventually click into a gear. It's a good point. I'm beginning to doubt that. It's a good point that we are fed a certain line of what life is supposed to be and then because it doesn't turn out that way you feel you've been chipped. But the more I have found, the more you can find joy in the promise that everything that unfolds in your life is in the hands of a loving Father who's taking it all, molding it and shaping it for the good.

Isn't that the promise? Yeah. That the Lord works everything, everything, for the good for those who love him. Without that promise, I wouldn't know what to do with the struggles and difficulties that life has shown itself to have in store for all of us. Mason I think we're still under the impression that things aren't right when there's discomfort and pain and agony and tension in relationships. And that's true. In one sense that is true, but in another sense, what did we expect in a fallen world? In this world you will have trouble, says Jesus. You will have trouble.

Take heart. Take heart. I have overcome the world. Therein lies our hope and our promise. And there's a, even in the journey towards the fulfillment of that hope, it was just today's reading struck me in light of this, that it's not, there is a hope that we have that has not yet been fulfilled. For who hopes for that which, for which he already has, as Scripture says. So there is something out there we don't yet have, that is true. And yet this struck me very deeply this morning when I was just reading the daily readings in Mass. The Scripture says, Jesus was filled with pity for the crowds.

They had been with him for three days and they were hungry. And he said, I want to give them something to eat so they don't faint along the way. And whenever you see that, the word way or the way in Scripture, it's not just that these people who were with Jesus in a deserted place had to go home, you know, walk four miles or whatever to get to their home. It's not just that, it is that. But the way in Scripture always refers to the journey towards our heavenly homeland. And the pity that the Lord has for us is in our pilgrimage journey towards our heavenly homeland. And he wants to feed us on the way. And I am so grateful for the little tastes of heavenly delight that this life affords, because the Lord, in his pity for me, in his love for me, in his mercy towards me, wants to grant

me little desires of my heart. Whether it's a song that brings me joy, it's a meal that brings me joy, it's a friendship, just sitting this morning with you and catching up is a little joy that's not so little. You know, those little things are often quite big and they keep you going. And I love this line in the Mass. This is one of the prayers of the official Mass of the Catholic Church. Something like this, I'm paraphrasing, but it's from memory. Then we get needed solace. Needed, that's the word the Church uses in the Mass. Needed solace from the comforts of this

world in preparation for the joy to come in the next. Needed solace from the comforts of this world in preparation for the joy to come in the next. It's a needed solace. We're not only created for the joys of the next world, we're created to learn how to rejoice rightly in the joys that the Lord, in His love for us, gives us along the way. I was reading Matthew's Gospel recently and you know you read how the scribes or Pharisees were shocked because he taught as someone who had authority. I was reading it and I wasn't shocked by that, I probably should have been, but you know I kind of figure he's the second person of the Blessed Trinity so that doesn't shock me. What shocked me really was his kindness, because there is that spiritual

interpretation, as you say, but also just how kind he is. He wants to feed us these people so they wouldn't faint. I love that he's so beautiful. And I think when we stop reading the Scriptures intentionally, it's like a thick layer of film lays upon our understanding of who God is and who we are, and that we come to hold erroneous views of ourselves and others and God, and you read the Scriptures and it kind of sets you aright again, like this God is trustworthy and beautiful, He is your advocate, He is not your enemy, there is an enemy, it is not Him. One of the Scriptures that did that for me very recently,

Hey Thursday, can you grab my bag out there? I have it in my journal. I wrote it down. It was about the fig tree that didn't bear fruit. Did Thursday hear my, oh yes, thank you, sir. Appreciate it. The fig tree that didn't bear fruit. And the parable goes that the gardener said,

let me tend to it. And obviously there's a relationship between that word tend and tenderness. Let me tend to it and let me fertilize it and see if it doesn't bear fruit. And I felt such tenderness from the Lord. I've gotta read this without my glasses so I gotta hold it well.

You want mine? Yeah. Let's see what happens. I wonder if that's any better. I better. That helps. Look at that. I just wrote, oh the sweet tenderness of the gardener How he loves the good-for-nothing fig tree Leave it for another year and I will tend to it I will cultivate the ground around it and this this is like, I started groaning, like, I will fertilize it. Like there's a beautiful, you know how I am with

spousal imagery, right? There's a beautiful sense of we are that land and the idea of being the fertile ground for the seed, you know? This is a common, deeply rooted biblical thread, right? We are to be that good soil to receive the seed. The gardener, the Lord, fertilizes, he cultivates the ground and he fertilizes it that it may bear fruit. And I just realized I am the recipient, thank you sir, I am the recipient of such recipient of such tenderness from the Lord in people he's brought into my life who have seen me in my good-for-nothing state as the fig tree that's not only not bearing fruit but sometimes bearing rotten fruit, causing others pain or whatever in my broken humanity. And the people he has sent into my life who have loved me in my good-for-nothing state

as that fig tree that needs tending. And they've tended to me, like my spiritual director I've known and been seeing for 20 years now, my professor and mentor Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete, a retreat master I've been seeing for 20 years or so on an annual basis. These, and my wife, my dear wife who has tended to me in my tender places and helped to cultivate that soil and fertilize it so that this good-for-nothing fig tree might bear some good fruit. It's just that scripture just, you know, I've read it a thousand times and you just come at it one day because maybe you're in a place where you need to hear it in a different way and you hear it in a different way

and a very familiar story all of a sudden becomes fresh and new and sinks much deeper roots. That's the power of the word of God that it can do that. It has so many layers to it. I wanna get your take on these words from Christ. I've been thinking about him a lot lately. He says, see to it that your hearts do not grow drowsy by dissipation, drunkenness,

and the cares and anxieties of this life. What do you think that means? Well, drowsiness and awaken, you know, being awake are another common thread throughout Scripture. Yeah. I'm thinking of that song by Mumford and Sons, Awake My Soul. It's a great song. It is a great song, isn't it? And this idea of being awake is one of being alert, attuned with the movements of your heart

and how the Lord wants to satisfy them is a state of awakeness. Yeah. A state of awakeness. A state of drowsiness in Scripture is a state of numbness to the desires of your heart, numbness to beauty, numbness to pain, where Jesus says, we played the flute and you didn't dance, we sang the dirge and you didn't mourn. That's a drowsiness, that's a numbness, that's a hardness of heart. Alertness, awakeness, the virgins with their lamps on fire versus the virgins who don't have any oil for their lamps. We could see a connection there with drowsiness and alertness. When the Son of Man returns, will you be awake? Will he find faith?

And my favorite definition of faith comes from JP II, who says, faith in its deepest essence is the openness of the human heart. We could say alertness, awakeness, sensitivity, the openness of the human heart to the gift of God. sensitivity, the openness of the human heart to the gift of God. So when I hear Jesus say, be awake, I hear him say, be attentive to the deepest desires of your heart and open them to me. Here's the New Living Translation. Sometimes it's fun to read different translations that shed light on it. Watch out! Don't let your hearts be dulled by carousing and drunkenness and the

worries of this life. Here's the thing that struck me. Um, I want to, I'd want to say to Jesus, what do you mean by these things? These are the things we do because we feel dull. I'm exhausted. I'm run down. Life's beat me up. That's when people go to sexual immorality, drunkenness and creating, like

we, you know, doom scrolling news media because we want the anxieties of our life. Don't we also go to those things when we feel a desire for some unknown satisfaction and we don't believe the Lord's gonna meet us there. Exactly. So covertly we're like, our little things. Give me this little... We all have our idols, right, our God substitutes. And I think I'm hearing in that line of Jesus, don't take your desire for God to things that aren't God. Why do we go to these things? We go to these things because they do provide some semblance of pleasure. If they didn't, we wouldn't go to them. But when we are sated, or we pretend we're sated. It never really reaches the ache.

I think the reason it feels like satiation, I think sometimes, is it shuts down our heart. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. So there's nothing left to be filled because we've ignored it. But just that idea that, yeah, don't let your heart be dulled. Because it's like, oh, I thought the opposite was true. But it's like, no, no, these things lead to dullness. These things will dull your heart, yes. Yes, because we were not made for finite pleasure.

We're made for infinite joy. It just sounds so tiring, doesn't it? I've said this to you last time, I think. Whenever you or John Eldridge start talking like this in a way that you were made for more, I'm like, ah, go away. I don't know what's required of me. I'm not even sure if I can attain this thing that you're talking about. You can't.

We can't. Well, I'm crushing it then. And that's exactly why this, I'll speak for myself. This is the source of a great deal of rage in me. Pope Benedict XVI in his book, Introduction to Christianity, says that Eros, E-R-O-S, the Greek for that yearning, for a fulfillment that, as JP II says,

Eros is ever seeking in this world and never satisfied. Eros is ever seeking and never satisfied. Why? Because it's a yearning for something we can't get our hands on. And this is what Pope Benedict XVI says, he says, Eros leads us to the essence of the human problem, takes us to the very heart of the fundamental problem of human existence. I think this is his expression. The fundamental problem of human existence is this. The heart yearns for something that it cannot grant. It cannot yet have. It cannot have. It can't

grasp. It can't take for itself, and it makes us utterly dependent on something bigger than me to grant the desire of my heart. And it sounds like what you're saying is even that won't work. And in a way that's right, hey, like... What won't work? Well, even the opening up to God in this life won't work. In this sense, and I'll have you correct me if you think I'm wrong, but Aquinas has these distinctions between happiness, one's beatitude, one's felicity.

Perfect happiness, beatitude will not be had in this life. That's what I'm saying. Yes, you are correct. And the sooner we make peace with that, the more genuine tastes of the Lord's love for us on the way, he wants to feed us on the way. He wants to give us tastes on the way. And as the Mass says, these comforts, these solaces, these consolations are necessary for us along the way to believe that there's something bigger that's at the end of this pilgrimage. And it's good to be a creature.

It's good to be totally dependent on my Creator. And the fundamental lie that we carry in our bones from original sin is that it's not good to be a creature because God's not coming for you. He's not gonna, see, He told you not to eat from that tree. Isn't that tree desirable and pleasing to look at? Don't you want it? Don't you want it? God said you couldn't have it.

Interestingly, there's a tradition in both East and West that says it's not that God didn't want us to have the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but he wanted us to wait on his gift of it and not take it for ourselves. And so I often think of the original sin, you can look at it from many angles, obviously it's pride, it's disobedience, it's lack of trust, it's all kinds of things, but I like to look at it in some sense as impatience. I didn't want to wait. I didn't want to wait for the gift. I took it. I took it for

myself because I didn't believe in the gift, and that's how JP II describes original sin, as the doubting of the gift. We feel that yearning for something we cannot grant. We're totally dependent. We don't want to be dependent. I want to be in control of my own fulfillment. I want to be in control of my own fulfillment and I deeply, deeply resent that I am not in control of my own fulfillment. That I am dependent on something bigger than me to grant me the true satisfaction of the deepest desires of my heart. I resent that and I resent it fundamentally, and I believe JP2 is right here, because I doubt the gift. There's some fundamental doubt in me

that God's not gonna come through. He's not gonna grant it me that God's not going to come through. He's not going to grant it, and that's why I want to take it for myself. I don't want to wait. In the words of the prophet Tom Petty, take it on faith, you take it to the heart. The waiting is the hardest part, to stay in the ache. And this is where we learn virtue, by staying in the ache and this is where we learn virtue by staying in the ache. I mean think of any sin, I don't think there is a sin that is not a refusal to stay in the ache.

I don't want to be in that painful place of utter dependence. He's not coming for me. My life tells me you're not coming for me. So I'm taking it. I'm taking it for myself. It reminds me of what the prophet Larry David said. He said, wherever I am, I just want to get the hell out of there. That's it, isn't it? Yeah, that's the wrestling with our creaturely status. I know at some deep fundamental place in my humanity I resent that I'm a creature because I don't like that dependence because I'm not in control. And I will have no peace, I will have no

peace in that posture of rebellion against reality, against my creaturely status. My whole journey of faith as an adult has been needing to learn and relearn and relearn and relearn and relearn. It's good to be a creature. It's good to be dependent because he's dependable. It's only not good to be dependent if the one upon whom you're dependent is not dependable. But imagine this, wouldn't it be awesome if the one upon whom we are dependent was utterly dependable? Wouldn't that be, would that not be good news? That would be good news. That would be really, really, that would be life-changing to discover and realize and base your life. Thank you sir. Base your life on the fact that the one upon whom we are dependent is dependable. I'd like to live that life.

Yeah, I would too. And and dependable in a way that, yeah, not just on the big things, but on all of my little things that don't even seem important enough for me to share with you because I don't want to bore you. Yeah, even those things. But share one or two of them. Yeah, just well, the fact that I feel so often because I don't want to bore you. Yeah. Even those things. But share one or two of them. Yeah. Just, um, well, the fact that I feel so often that I can't sit still. The fact that I wake up in the morning and a million thoughts rush at me to take me down and I'm completely overwhelmed by them and I don't know how to stop them.

Um, my, my irritation with my beautiful children, instead of being able to be mature now for them. Lord, do you understand that if I have to wait to be mature, a lot of people are going to get hurt until you finally hurry up and mature me? Like, and sometimes in really profound ways that I don't even, I will never know. So, are you sure? Are you sure you know what you're doing? So what would your life be like and what would my life be like in in those same and similar situations if We believed that the one upon whom we are dependent in all those little things Was dependable that in that very understandable very human place of saying Lord Don't you realize that because you're not maturing me quickly, I'm causing my children a lot of pain? What is it? I'm asking you. I know the answer. My shoulders would

immediately relax. What if he already has that taken care of? What if he already has a plan to help your children, to bring a greater good in your children's life, then would have been possible if you had been mature enough not to wound them as much as you are and have. And me too, with my own children. I am in the phase of life where my children are old enough to tell me, I have three children in their 20s and they're old enough and even my teenagers, my two teenagers, are all five of my children are now old enough to reflect back to me and Wendy ways that we've really

messed them up. And I've been reflecting on the Lord's providence right there that, Lord, you must have already in place a plan to bring a great good in my children's lives from the ways my wife and I have wounded them. If you don't, I'm done. Because I did everything in my power to try to not wound my kids and guess where that leads. You know, when you think you have something in your power that you can fix so that you don't, what, you're not going to pass on the fallen human condition to your children. Is that your plan? That was my plan. I mean, I knew better that I obviously couldn't spare them that.

But I did think in my self-reliant attempts to... I'm not going to do that to my children. You know, the wounds that I had from my childhood, I'm not going to repeat those things. Well, guess what you end up doing exactly when you make those inner vows. I'm not going to do that. Well, despite yourself, you end up either doing that or doing other things that cause all kinds of turmoil just because you're broken.

I said to a dear friend and Shane Bennett, you know, Shane Bennett, he was the founder of Net Ministries of Australia. I said to him, we have a afraid of like messing up your kids. And he went, oh, no, I'd hate to deprive them of Australia. I said, Tim, were you ever afraid of like messing up your kids? And he went, oh no, I'd hate to deprive them of healing. Yeah. That's interesting though, right? Because you're like, I will not, even that is faithless. Yes. Because there's not a dependence on the one who's dependable in that. It's like, I will take this for myself. I will. Maybe? Or no, am I being too...

No, no, I think... I mean, it's an admirable desire. Yes, this is what I've learned from my spiritual director who's helped me to face these things, or at least begin to face these things. When you make a vow, an unholy vow, it's a self-reliant vow, I will, I will not. There is a good desire there that you have, there's a good desire not to want to wound your children, it's a good desire, right? But the self-reliant vow that I will not do it is failing to recognize that apart from me, you can do nothing. So the way you begin the journey out of that unholy self-reliant I will not or I will,

fill in the blank, is by repenting of your self-reliance, renouncing the self-reliant vow, so something like, in the name of Jesus, I renounce the vow that I made that I will not cause my children the same pain that my father caused me because of X, Y, and Z. You renounce that vow, and then you ask for the grace. You recognize your total dependence on the Lord. You renounce the self-reliant approach. You renounce the self-reliant vow and then you recognize your total dependence as a creature and you say, Lord, grant me the grace to heal in my own life from the inheritance of my

forefathers and not pass this on. That's a very different approach than, I will not do this to my children. Well, if you take that self-reliant vow, you're gonna end up falling right into the trap that you think you could save yourself or save your...you think you can save your children. Something that I have been trying to enter into more deeply and it's become more and more meaningful to me is call no man on earth your father. It's a direct challenge to that self-reliant vow that I've made to be the greatest father on planet Earth.

You know, I'm gonna be the dad that all my kids just love me. You know, I'm gonna be the dad that gets X, Y, and Z right. Well, there's a real idolatry going on in there. Like, I want, at some level, I want my kids to see me as the perfect dad. Well, guess what? There's only one perfect father. Call no man on earth your father.

And seeing the- No, I love that. You know why I love that is because so often as Catholics, we read that verse as an apologetic response to those, and that's the only way we've ever interpreted it. But I love that. Oh no, there's much, much more to it. It's the, for me, as I've been entering more and more into it, it's the, it's the, oh, oh,

I have some, somewhere in my psyche, I've wanted to be God for my children. The perfect dad. The perfect father. There's only one perfect father. And it ain't me. I'm not it. And seeing my children as young adults now wrestling to, and all kids in some way, idolize their parents. Because that's their first impression of who and what God is. And they can, the distinctions can get blurred and you have to go through, you have to go through a letting go of your earthly father in quest for your heavenly father. And that's a long journey. But it's also quite relieving when you realize, oh, I was never supposed to be God for them. I'm supposed to be an image of God for them, and I need to take my own healing seriously

to become more an image of God for them. But in the final analysis, call no man on earth your father. I am not your father in that sense. And go, go find your true father. Go, go, go, go find your true father. Go! Go, go, go find your true father. It's a great relief. It's like a huge burden comes off your shoulders when you've been trying to be super dead. How does forgiveness of self play a part in that as you realize as everyone watching? The difficult thing about being vulnerable,

right, and you and I are similar in this regard. I find that sometimes I'd be part in that as you realize is everyone watching. The difficult thing about being vulnerable, right? And you and I are similar in this regard. I find that sometimes I'd be vulnerable because I actually want to share a part of my heart and I feel like it's not received. And it's not received because the person before me refuses to see my own poverty and their own poverty. Instead, they try to fix me. You ever done that? Where you're like, you say something like that and someone's like, I'm really sorry. Well, maybe you should try. You're like, oh God, we're not having the same conversation. This is, this is embarrassing. So every single person watching this is either in the fortunate place of knowing that they've wounded others or are in the unfortunate place of judging your beautiful

vulnerability and saying this. Hopefully they'll get to that first stage. But how do you begin to, Lord, how do you get to forgive yourself for the sins you have committed? I don't like saying mistakes, because if it was a mistake, you wouldn't have to repent of it. Yeah. Yeah, I've made a lot of mistakes in my fatherhood, but I've also lived from sinful

dispositions in my soul that I do need to repent of. And I do need to trust in God's mercy and in my children's mercy, whether they're at a stage in life where they can show that or not. It's taken me, you know, in my relationship with my own earthly parents sometimes decades to work through stuff that I needed to forgive them for. I just, it was like two and a half years ago I had to sit down with my mom and dad about an event in my teenage years that really like rocked my world. It was so painful and and there were so many layers to work through over decades. It took me 35 years to have a

conversation with them where I could finally see in a new light the sacrifices that they made for me when I was a teenager that gave me the life I have now. You know, you make certain decisions for your children that have repercussions on their whole lives for good or for ill. And my parents made a decision to move our family from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where I grew up to Gaithersburg, Maryland when I was 17. And it was one of those world rocking decisions that was out of my control. My parents made that decision. And the ripple effect of that decision on my life, I could only see for decades, I could only see the negative. I could only see the, not only, but I was mostly focused on the negative side of it. But I came to see it from a different angle that I wouldn't have my wife, I wouldn't

have discovered John Paul II's theology of the body, I wouldn't have the very meaningful work that I've given my life to, I wouldn't have my children, I wouldn't have my grandchildren without my parents making that decision, which was very painful. And just because there's been beautiful fruits from it doesn't mean it's any less painful, but it does show how the Lord uses everything for good. And it took me 35 years really to release my parents and even thank them for that. And there was this moment where I, oh man, I still feel it in my body.

Like we were talking about that book earlier, The Body Keeps the Score, like you just store stuff in your body. And that move in 1987 to Gaithersburg, Maryland, caused me so much pain in my life. I stored it in my body and 35 years later I was sitting down with my parents and I knew I had to thank them for making that decision. I knew I had to get there and my body was shaking like I couldn't get it out.

I couldn't get the words out, thank you. I couldn't get it out. And my father, in a shining moment of fathering me, and again, this is just a few years ago, I was 53 years old, my father in a very beautiful moment of fathering me, said, I know what you're trying to say. He looked up to heaven and he said, you're trying to say, thank you, Father, for the nails in my hands. Thank you, Father, for the crown of thorns on my head.

Thank you, Father, for the lance in my side." And he was exactly right. That's what I was trying to say. Because it was a crucible. The implications of that move, which I won't get into all the details, but the implications of that led me to the cross. But this is where all true fruit comes. I'll loop it back to that fig tree image. I was a barren fig tree as a teenager, and the Lord allowed that move to tend to the soil in my life, to cultivate — dude, it's so deep — to cultivate that soil and to fertilize it. And I can attest from, not just because I've read a lot of theology books on the cross, but I can attest from my life experience that there's a sweetness to the cross, there's a beauty that comes, there's a fertility that comes from being crucified with Christ. And that decision my parents made in my life that I had no control

over crucified me. But there has been beautiful, beautiful, beautiful fruit from that. It's of going from an academic theology of the cross to a lived experience of being crucified with Christ. If we are willing to be crucified with Christ, we will also live with him. St. Paul says we carry in our bodies, we carry in our bodies the death of the Lord. Why? Because we're masochists? No. So that the life of the Lord, what is the life of the Lord? It is the infinite ecstasy and bliss of the Trinity. So that the life of the Lord, so that the infinite ecstasy and bliss of the Trinity might also be manifested in our bodies for the joy set before us when we endure the cross. And when that becomes a lived experience, that you taste the fruitsights of resurrected life, of new life. You taste those figs that the Lord has tended to the soil and cultivated and fertilized it, and those figs are sweet. Then

when other crosses come in your life, you go, oh, oh, I don't want to go through this, but okay, I look back and there's a there's a pattern here that it will bear fruit. It will bear fruit. So looping it back to what you were asking about, just the vulnerability in our viewers here, it's a scary thing to be as naked as Jesus invites us to be. The nakedness of the Lord on the cross is theologically very, very important. And St. Francis' motto, naked to follow the naked Christ, resonates with me here here and it's a scary thing. It's the original fear. I was afraid because I was naked so I hid myself. Yeah, so this naked to follow the naked Christ is another way maybe of saying

that is to be unprotected, to follow the unprotected. Exactly. Exactly. To be vulnerable. To be what you really are. A totally dependent creature. And we can only do that, we can only be that peacefully if the one upon whom we are dependent is completely dependable. And Christ's nakedness on the cross is saying to us, my father is totally dependable, even in the most abject horror of my being nailed to a tree naked. And the resurrection is the testimony that Christ's trust in his dependence was not in vain. What do you say to people who may want to have a conversation like that with their parents, but they're pretty sure their parents won't react the way your beautiful father did?

They might believe that their parents are actually, and they're right in assuming this, kind of maybe even too immature to have a conversation like this. You know, don't know the language I'm using, And if I was just a, or someone was just to go to their mother or father and lay all this on them, either the, Hey, this really hurt when you did this or even just the praise, like, thank you. Like some parents won't receive that. They won't even know what you're doing. And it might just be incredibly embarrassing. I am very,

very blessed in that I have parents who are not afraid to talk about real stuff. I am very, very blessed in that regard. And it's kind of a West family trait that maybe even to a fault, we're not so much for shallow conversation, like we go to those deep places, and I've learned that from my parents.

And I'm so grateful to them that they have had the... And they'll be the first to admit there's a lot of dysfunction there in our family. But they're willing to look at it and talk about it. So I've been so blessed to be raised in an environment where that's normal. I have a dear friend who whose family was not that way and and his parents are now quite old and failing in their health

and his dad in a very particular ways digging his heels in like in his pride and his arrogance and his unwillingness to address things and my friends like hey We don't have a lot of time left here Can we be honest now? Can we look at stuff? We really need to look at here You're not gonna be on this planet much longer and he's just digging his heels in and doesn't want to go there and There are there are occasions where he recently talked to me about, he said, and it wasn't a spiteful thing, but he said, I just want them to die so that they'll see they will

be forced to encounter the God who loves them and have the opportunity in that last moment of earthly existence to say yes or no. And he had a vision of his father in purgatory painting an icon of the Trinity. And it was a great consolation. And I just I love that thought of, you know, when you don't paint an icon in the language of the East, you know better than I as a as an Eastern Catholic, you write an icon. And there's a whole experience of entering into the mystery that you are writing. The idea of purgatory being an entry into the mystery of the Trinity and the Trinity's love,

and being forced to be naked. That's the pain of purgatory, where we haven't been naked before the love of God in this life. We stayed in that posture. I was afraid because I was naked so I hid myself. And now there's no hiding. You are naked. You are utterly naked before the... I mean this in a positive sense... the terrible love of God. I heard recently, I think it was on a Christophanic interview, I forget who he interviewed, but it was a psychologist or counselor who said, we must learn how to tolerate the love of God. And I like that word.

It's fitting because, I mean, you think of tolerating something as unpleasant. Well, in that place of, I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself, it is unpleasant. Well, in that place of, I was afraid because I was naked so I hid myself, it is unpleasant to be exposed. It is unpleasant to realize I'm trying to hide my nakedness because I'm afraid, but I can't hide it. The Lord sees everything. What, fig leaves are gonna prevent him seeing what's really going on? Everything will be naked and laid bare. Isn't that purgatory? Where we are, we can't hide anymore, and all of our humanity, the good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful, is on display. And can we in that nakedness tolerate the terrifying love of God? And terrifying in the sense of we're encountering something so holy, so

awesome that our bones shake. But it's a purifying love. It's not a condemning or scolding or shaming. It's a coming face to face with the reality I've resisted my whole life that I am loved in my scary places, broken places, sinful places. I'm loved there. If I'm not, forget it. That and that alone can enable us to be vulnerable, is that we're loved. enable us to be vulnerable is that we're loved. We were talking about kind of trying to control reality because we don't trust that there is a good God who wants good things for us. And it's a it's not good when you start trying to control other people

obviously. But in this, in relation to your point about talking to our parents, I think there's a temptation to control their reaction. So, you know, like someone's out there, maybe their parents are about to die and they want so desperately to have this vulnerable, intimate moment. Isn't there a sense in which that can be something you're trying to contrive, control with your language, with your body expression. The only thing you can control is to state what you wish to state with love, and that's what you're responsible for. You're not responsible for their reaction or how they deal with it or don't deal with it. And to surrender that all to the Lord's providence

surrender that all to the Lord's providence. And to trust that He's infinitely more merciful than we are. I think it was Sister Miriam who said, like, we forget that our mother has a story. You know, we objectify our parents. But like, my dad has a story. Something happened to him when he was such and such an age that he carried with him. There were things going on when I was 13 that I wasn't aware of that he was trying to cope with and deal with as best he could. Yes. And that moment of real, and I love how your report there of what Sister Miriam said, our parents have a story. That moment of recognizing that is an opportunity to go from resentment in the pain they've caused us to compassion. Why did they cause us pain? Because they're in pain.

And when you realize the pain that I received from whoever, we're talking about parents so we'll just go with that relationship, the pain that I received from my parents was in some measure the pain they were in because they dumped it on me. And you know how painful it is to feel that pain, because you feel it. When you get to that point of realizing, oh, my dad has a story, my mom has a story, they were in pain. There's a miracle of grace that can happen here where the resentment, the pain becomes compassion.

And chances are I've shared this right at this table before. Forgive me if it's a repeat. But I return to this again and again and again in my own journey of the interior life. Catechism 2843. It's in the section of the catechism where we're going through the Our Father. And this is the line, this is the reflection on the line, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those. And the Catechism admits this is daunting, that our forgiveness is dependent on our offering

of it. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. That's daunting. And then the Catechism says in 2843, it is not in our power not to feel or to forget an offense. So just stay right there. Forgive and forget is an illusion from the human perspective. It's not in our power. It's not in our power not to feel or to forget an offense when someone has hurt us. Then it goes on to say, but the heart that offers itself to the Holy Spirit. So I open that pain to the Holy Spirit. I open it.

The Holy Spirit comes into that pain and a miracle happens when we open our pain to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit comes into the pain and the catechism says the Holy Spirit transforms the hurt into compassion. And that's what Sister Miriam was saying there about your dad, your mom has a story. And in some yes dysfunctional way when they dumped their pain on you in some dysfunctional way there's a desperate cry in their hearts, will somebody share my pain? Will

somebody feel it with me? I don't know what to do with it. I know I've hurt my wife and my kids here in a desperate cry of my heart, share my pain. Somebody feel my pain. Am I alone in my pain? And it's not healthy to dump it on others but that's what we do in our desperate situation you know it's like the drowning man who's so desperate he ends up pulling down into the water the very person who's trying to save him but it's a desperate cry of the human heart for communion in the pain. Pain is so lonely. The feeling of being abandoned is so lonely. Is anybody with me in it? The answer to that question is yes.

Jesus is with us in the pain and that's where we can experience a profound communion with the crucified Christ. Pain that my parents dumped on me wasn't fair, wasn't right. I didn't have any choice in the matter, but I can, as an adult, make a choice now to say, I freely accept that this happened. And I open that pain to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit transformed this pain into compassion. And then there's one final line there in that section of the Catechism that says that the Holy Spirit will also transform the sting of the memory into intercession.

So that my acceptance of that pain and my opening it and offering it in communion with Christ to the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit becomes powerful intercession for the people who cause me that pain. That's how the world gets redeemed. That's what the cross is. The cross is Jesus absorbing all of the pain of humanity and not punching back, but absorbing it and opening it to the Holy Spirit, the love of the Father, and trusting that the Father can take this pain and transform it into something

glorious. I love that you said forgive and forget is a myth, and it sounds...there's an analogy there to how we...if we desire something evil, and we're ashamed of our desire for that evil thing, trying to lop that desire off is not...that's a myth. We have to somehow redirect our desires to a true good. Yes, yes. is not, that's a myth. We have to somehow redirect our desires to a true good. And it sounds like something similar here, that if I want to forgive, it has to be somehow born again into compassion. It can't just be obliterated. Yeah, I love that connection. Very, yes, apropos, we can't just, if I have a disordered desire,

I can't just repress that desire and think I'm going to be healed. That's a myth, that's an illusion, right? JP2 says if the way we practice chastity, for example, is just by pressing down into the subconscious all of our affective and sensual reactions, he says it's only a matter of time before what we've repressed explodes in disorder. But I redirect the desire from an illusory good, a good that's an illusion, to a true good. How do I actually love this person and how do I direct this energy and passion and affection and sensual reaction in a way with God's grace that points me in the direction of truly loving.

Very similar here. I'm glad you made this connection. I've never quite made that connection, but you're exactly right. The pain I feel cannot be forgotten. It's in me. It registers, right? But it can be opened to the power of redemption, and the Holy Spirit can penetrate that pain, and we can experience deep communion with Christ in that pain, and that pain can become redemptive for me and for the person who caused me the pain. Can I share an experience I recently had teaching our love and responsibility course at the Theology of the Body Institute?

I know I'm taking a big risk here when I show this scene from a movie called Crash. Do you know the movie Crash came out like 2005, I think? Rings a bell. And it's about, it's like seven different stories happening in- Brad Pitt was in it, was he? No, Matt Dillon was one of the main characters in it.

But it's about these seven different stories that happen in LA and they all come crashing together. But there's also this epic scene of a car crash. Why do you say you'll take heat for it? Is it? I'll explain. It's a very, it's this scene, like nothing I've ever encountered in any story,

in any movie portrays through a real, and that's not a real life experience, but through a real, not that's not a real life experience, but through a story, a truth that is very hard to accept, that in all of us we have the capacity for great virtue and great vice. And we do an injustice when someone has wounded us terribly. For example, again we're talking about parents and children, I do a great injustice to my father if I

only look at him through the lens of the pain he's caused me. And I don't allow myself to see the good in him. Even in things that are vile in our humanity, there's still that image of God in the person. And I love something I learned from Carol House Lander, who was a 20th century mystic, and I imagine one day she'll be canonized. She said, when Christ is dead in a person, we must learn to show the same reverence for that person that we would have before the tomb of Christ. Would you not go to the tomb? If you could go on Holy Saturday to the tomb of the dead Christ. I'd want to go lay on top of him and cry. Yeah. So let's admit, okay, in this person who has, who's living a vicious life and his vice has caused you a lot of pain, Christ is dead in that person.

Okay, show the same reverence towards that person you would show to the tomb of the dead Christ and have hope in the promise of resurrection in that person. And I'm not saying this of my own father that Christ is dead in him. I'm not making that analogy or comparison. But I have, my dad and I have talked through layers and layers and layers of this stuff over many years. And yeah, his broken humanity caused me a lot of pain. But if I only look at that, his capacity to cause me pain, and I have been blinded by that to the many, many blessings he gave me and gifts he's given me. This scene in this movie, Crash, is addressing the fact, I'll quote Pope Benedict here,

in every one of us there is the rock and the denier, like Peter. And he says we have an all, this is Pope Benedict, we have an all too idealized image of the saints where we think of Peter as the rock after Pentecost and the denier before Pentecost. And Pope Benedict says the truth is Peter is both rock and denier before and after Pentecost. This is the truth of the human condition. Right now you have that capacity to be now, you have that capacity to be rock and you have that capacity to be denier. Because in all of us, the wheat and the weeds grow together

to the end of the world. The catechism says this. In all of us, the wheat and the weeds grow together. I don't care if you're Mother Teresa, John Paul II, I don't care what saint you were, when you were on this planet, you had the wheat and the weeds in you, growing together. This movie gets at that in a very dramatic, very painful, very...

I don't want you to give it away now because I want to watch it. A lot of people are going to want to watch it. Should they be careful? I don't know, is there stuff in here that's... Well, I would have to spoil. Oh, we're gone. Spoiler. I would have to spoil it. Everybody is about to spoil it. Should they be careful? I don't know. Is there stuff in here that's... Well, I would have to spoil. Oh, we're going. Spoiler. I would have to spoil it. Everybody is about to spoil it, so...

Yeah, if you want to see... I mean, it's worth watching without the spoilers, but it's a hard, hard movie to watch. And this scene in particular is very, very hard to watch. Do you want me to unfold it or not? Do you think you should? Yeah, I do. Okay, then do it. Okay, so there's this cop who pulls over this couple. He sees something untoward going on in the vehicle and he pulls them over. He's a white cop and this is a black couple.

So there are all these racial tensions going on. And he has to, he doesn't have to, but he takes advantage of his authority as a cop. And he frisks this guy's wife right in front of him in an abusive way. He terribly violates the boundaries right in front of this woman's husband to humiliate the hell out of both of them. And part of one of the stories is the unfolding of the impact of this on their marriage.

And why didn't you stand up for me? But he's a white cop, I'm a black man, what was I supposed to do? You didn't stand up for me, all that is going on in the marriage. Yeah. But then the next day, the very next day, this woman who was violated by this cop

is in a terrible car accident. The car's flipped over. She's pinned in the car with a seatbelt kind of tangled around her. And there's a puddle of gas coming and the whole thing's going to blow. And the cop sent to the scene is the same cop. And he doesn't know who's in the car and he goes he dives down into the car to save this woman and she's hanging upside down and she looks over no no anybody but you no no no and he he says he says obviously he's understanding what's going on and why she's saying no.

She says, ma'am, this car is about to blow. No one else is here to save you. May I reach over your thigh to unbuckle this seatbelt? He asks permission and she gets gets the point she realizes there's no other option and she says yes and he reaches out and it's stuck and he says he pulls out a knife and he says I have to cut your belt and at this point he pulls her skirt down and has to cut this belt off. And the music is so compelling, the way it was filmed.

I am so grateful to these filmmakers. It's so compelling. It's so gut wrenching. And at one point, a flame from another vehicle that was on fire drips down into this puddle of gas that's headed over to the car. So the flame is coming and some fellow cops are now on the scene who come to pull the cop

out of the car. She's still in it. The car's gonna blow any moment. He gets pulled out and then he dives back in to get her out. And yeah, you're feeling the whole thing and it is so it is one of the most powerful scenes in a movie that I have ever ever experienced and she he gets her out of the car just as it explodes saves her

life and they collapse in each other's arms. She's weeping and he's just stunned at what has occurred. And she's taken away by the ambulance crew and she looks back at him and he's looking at her and she's just shaking his head at him. What did that mean? It was it was a. There was gratitude.

For the fact that he saved her life, but there is also you son of a bitch. Yeah. And both are right. of a bitch. And both are right. Both are right. And this is the human condition. That man is you. That man is you and that man is me. I am that man. You are that man. We are capable of both. man. We are capable of both. And to reckon with that is to reckon with the human condition. And this is good art. It is good art because it's telling the truth of the human condition. And, and wow, there was a woman in my class. And I give my students, I say what we're going to be talking through this afternoon is very difficult stuff. And it's in the section of love and

responsibility where JP2 is talking about how the brutality of a fallen man can just wreak havoc on the heart of a woman. And the call to virtue in the marriage bed, where the man must learn tenderness towards the different rhythms of his wife's heart and body, to learn the proper loving of his wife in the marital embrace. It's so beautiful what JP2 unfolds, and you and I talked about that in our series that we did right here and on my channel. But it's in that context in love and responsibility where I'm showing this movie scene. You show the whole thing.

I show the scene of, I don't show the abusive scene. You explain it. I explain it and then I show the car accident scene. But I tell people, I warn people, because it takes the heart to such tender vulnerable places. I say to my students, okay, when we come back from the break, we're going to be looking at some very tender stuff. I kind of prep them.

If you know your heart is not ready for this, I give you a pass this afternoon, go take a walk around the retreat center. And a few people have taken me up on that, but most of the students return and I have to give them that option just out of respect for their own freedom and journey because I want to lead them to a place that I know is going to be painful, it's going to be terribly painful, but it's going to take us right to the cross, it's going to take us right into the paschal mystery if we let it. And there is a woman, I'm always sensitive about it, I'm like,

this is a really tender thing to do in a classroom, and I'm wondering if it has landed after I've shown that scene. And this woman, I said, how's everybody doing? I just leave people to be quiet for a few moments after I show the scene. And then I'll get up and I'll ask everybody how you're doing and what's your takeaway. And this woman made herself so vulnerable and she said, that man gave that woman a great gift to confront the cross and the people who have caused us the most pain

in our lives, if we open that pain, just like 2843 from the Catechism says, we open that pain to the Holy Spirit, we we are now through those who have caused us the most pain, if we open that pain, it becomes the sweetest of encounters with the crucified Jesus. And the theology of the cross is no longer just something we read in a book, but it becomes a lived experience.

And I don't know, in fact, I don't know that there's anything sweeter. In fact, I'm gonna say I know that there's nothing sweeter. There's nothing sweeter than the communion with Christ in his cross with the promise of resurrection. There's nothing sweeter. And so we can come through this amazing miracle of grace, just like Jesus did. He called

Judas his friend. He called Judas, the one who betrayed him, his friend. We can through this miracle of grace, and this woman, I know some of her story which I won't get into in this forum, it's not my place to do so, but I know she was speaking from experience when she said that that man who rescued her in the car gave her a great gift to confront the Paschal mystery. She was speaking from a place of real experience in her own life of people who have wounded her terribly and she has come to see that as a Paradoxically as a gift because it brought her to an intimate intimate encounter With Jesus Christ the evil is no less evil. Don't don't want anybody to hear me

With Jesus Christ the evil is no less evil. Don't don't want anybody to hear me Yeah, even implying that somehow this no the evil is no less evil But Christ has redeemed the greatest evil. He's redeemed it and we can experience that We can enter into that Thank you What are we doing here? Like what are we you know? There are podcasts that talk about why the liturgy isn't as good as it could be there are podcasts that talk about why the pope Isn't as good as he could be and that is this podcast as well. Yeah, we do that

What we're doing is Not that not that and I'm I'm I know there's a place for that. So I'm not disparaging that. But can you have that without this? That's what I I'm not sure I might. Let me let me see if I can break this open before you help me put it together. But you know, like is Christ big enough for all of me? Like if he's this refuge, St. Anthony of Padua says, I think there are four reasons Christ bore his wounds after he rose from the dead. One of them is so beautiful, he says, because these wounds are our refuge. He says like a dove hides itself in the cleft of a rock from the from the hawk or something.

We hide ourselves within Christ because of the enemy. So how sad that very often we mistake Christ for our enemy when he's the one who's coming to save us. And that we're a delight to him. And that even when we sin, our sin can be an occasion of delight for him when we repent of it, because it's a delightful thing for the Saviour to save. Like, there's no fear here, there's nothing, He just loves you. But I think, you know, just like we can have superficial relationships in any other aspect in life, Christianity can be superficial, can't it? Yes, yes.

There's an external appeal to Christianity that is legitimate. There's mass, there's incense, there's bells, there's morality, there's clear teaching, there's teaching for the wayward, there's correction, there's conf... Like, this is here, but I guess I'm trying to figure out, do you and I just get this deep because we're both like, melancholic poets? Or is everybody actually called to this, even if they're not called to talk about it publicly on their podcast? Like, isn't Christianity about bringing all of me, like all of these things that I don't

understand? And I fear sometimes that the Christianity we're being sold is a small hotel that we're able, a small hotel room we're able to enter. But we have to leave our our heart, our wounds, our baggage, our fears outside and bring inside of it like our shiny, polished self. So like Christianity becomes about praying at the right time saying the right prayers The right devotions so that I look at me. I've got my life in order. Yeah, and then anything that's messy that starts to bubble up There's no room for that here in this Christianity actually. So what are you gonna do with it?

Okay Well, you distract yourself from that bubbling up you indulge because of the bubbling up and then you repent But you don't bring it in with you. What am I saying? yourself from that bubbling up, you indulge because of the bubbling up and then you repent, but you don't bring it in with you. What am I saying, Christopher? Chris Matt, you are saying be real. That's what you're saying. Okay.

It's way less profound than I thought. Chris No, that to be real is very profound and scary as hell because it demands the removal of all of our defenses. I think what you're saying, if I would if I put it this way, is a lot of what passes for Christianity is really just another form of fig leaf where I have these externals that if I really press into them they will take me on the journey of that vulnerable nakedness, naked to follow the naked Christ, which is a beautiful, this is St. Francis's motto, right, is a beautiful summation of what

the Christian life is. I must be naked to follow the naked Christ. Now there is a there is a time and a place for that. You don't just throw out your nakedness to anybody and everybody and even here we're being as vulnerable as is appropriate in a on a podcast. There are aspects of the story here that I am veiling. There are aspects of my story that will always remain veiled, aspects of your story that will always remain veiled. We all need at least one person on this planet where there's no veil, and that's a good spiritual director, where you can share your deepest and your darkest, uncensored, unveiled. If we don't have at least one person on this planet unveiled if we don't have at least one person on this planet that we are

Utterly naked and vulnerable with we we will be incredibly lonely incredibly lonely because the deepest cry of the heart the deepest question of the heart is Am I seen and known and loved in that most vulnerable, naked place. And what I think you and I are trying to do here is to say Christianity is much more than those externals. Those externals and those...you can have a whole podcast about what's the right way to pray the liturgy, and that's a value. But the right way to pray the liturgy, the purpose of the externals, if we're only focusing on the externals, the danger is we end with Pharisaicalism, which Jesus condemned in no uncertain terms. You are cleansing the outside of the cup and the

dish, but the inside remains unclean. You are a whitewashed tomb. You are cleansing the outside of the cup and the dish, but the inside remains unclean. You are a white-washed tomb. You've washed the tomb on the outside, but on the inside you're still full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. I think what we are trying to do, and you and I, whenever we get together to talk, we go there pretty quickly, is because you and I both have an allergic reaction, and rightly so, to reducing Christianity to those externals. Because if you're reducing Christianity to those externals, you're not dealing with the real. Christ came to help us deal with the real, and He came to reverse that fear. I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself. He came to reverse it.

And that has to happen in all of our lives. It doesn't mean there aren't different temperaments that have to be respected. We were just talking about this over coffee this morning, that our wives are very different than we are, right, in their temperaments. My wife, in her approach to her own interior journey, is very different than I am. And I have dishonored her by wanting her to be more like me. And I've had to learn over time to honor and reverence the different, very different approach my wife takes to her own interior journey.

With all proper respect for different temperaments and different spiritualities and different even theological emphases, this is one of the great things about being Catholic. We have the Franciscans, we have the Dominicans, we have the Jesuits, we have all these different expressions and they all fit under the roof of the universal, the Catholic. So with all respect to those differences, we can still say there's not a single human being

who is not called by Jesus Christ to the interior journey. Into the depths. Into the depths. Deep cries out to deep, and Christ is that deep crying out to each of our depths. And the way I experience that and live that and what I share with my spiritual director is going to be very different than the way you experience and live that and what you share with my spiritual director, it's going to be very different than the way you experience and live that and what you share with your spiritual director. But we're all called, with respect for the unrepeatability of everyone's person and journey, we're all called to that interior life.

And to say that interior journey is only for a certain brand of Christianity, or a certain emphasis in Christianity, but it's not the Christian life, is to miss the Christian life altogether. The Christian life is synonymous with deep calling out to deep, and getting in touch with that cry of the heart, that thirst. Think of the woman at the well. Saint after saint after saint has told us that the encounter of Christ with the woman at the well is the kind of archetype of the Christian life, where we come to the well because we're thirsty. And we have to learn how to direct, to feel that thirst, to see how we've misdirected it. Go get your husband, you know, she's taking this

thirst to all these different places. And Christ says, if you knew the gift that I wanted to give you, if you knew the gift that I wanted to give you. We have a brand new event at the Theology of the Body Institute that's called The Well. Yeah. And it's looking at some depth at the story of the woman at the well. And the purpose of it is to follow the bishop's call for Eucharistic revival. Okay. And we use the story of the encounter of Christ with the woman at the well as a call to eucharistic revival.

And it's a call, as the woman says, the well is deep. And that's an image of the heart. We all have a deep well because we are all made in the image and likeness of God. We all have the kapax de'i, the capacity for God. That's deep, that is deep. But now we're back to that scripture that you brought up earlier about Jesus. Don't grow drowsy, don't become numb to the depths by covering them over with these surfacey satisfactions or distractions or the anxieties of life. This is why we all have to

take the time in our lives, if we are to make this interior journey, we have to take the time in our lives, whatever your life affords, to be quiet, to be still, to take away the distractions, to let go of the noise. I mean one of the biggest distractions in our lives is this thing. I mean it can do great things. We're both doing what we can with technology to get the gospel out. It can do great things. But man, we know it can be a major distraction. And we're afraid of quiet. We're afraid of solitude, we're afraid of what's left when the noise is gone. We're afraid of those depths. And each in our own way, we have to take the time

in our daily lives to quiet ourselves and be to feel those depths and to learn how to open them up. Mm-hmm. So what is this new initiative called again? The event is called The Well and you know the poster is like come to the well. You know it's like you see it in the back your parish come to the well. And so yeah. And you know all you who are thirsty come to the well.

And we had a two and a half hour event, which has live music and the big screens and lighting. It's kind of like a night at the theater. And we've been doing this for a number of years with our, we call it our Made for More event. It's a ticketed event, so it does not cost the parish anything other than a six month commitment to walk through a process of promoting the event at your parish. And the well is kind of a... some of the themes in the Made for More event have been developing and we thought, we need a spin-off event, we need another event where we are focusing specifically

on Eucharistic revival. Beautiful. And Christ says to the woman at the well, if you knew the gift that I wanted to give you. So he gets her first in touch with her thirst, with her hunger, with her yearning. And the proper name for that, the Church uses, is Eros. The yearning for the true, the good, and the beautiful. The Church uses the language of the good, and the beautiful. The church uses the language of the Greeks here, it's eros. So the first part of the event is

getting in touch with that longing, that thirst. And then the second part of the event is based on I don't have a husband. So the first part of the event is the well is deep. We're getting in touch with that, that thirst, that yearning, that ache we all have. Yeah. Second part of the event is the well is deep. We're getting in touch with that that thirst, that yearning, that ache we all have. Second part of the event is called the I don't have a husband, and it unfolds the spousal imagery of the woman at the well. So Jacob's well is actually, it's the place of encounter, Christ and this woman, the well, there are very significant wedding proposals, marriage proposals in the Old Testament that happened at a well. So the Israelites would have known woman at the well, Christ the bridegroom at the well, this is a marriage proposal. And the Samaritans represented adulterous Israel, right?

They were the outcasts, right? They went to worship the foreign gods. They intermingled with other cultures. And ultimately, the story of the woman in the well is about true worship, right? Well you say that we're supposed to worship in Jerusalem, and da-da-da-da. The Father desires those who worship in Jerusalem and da-da-da-da. The Father desires those who worship in Spirit and truth. Well, what is that all about? True worship is when the bride discovers her true bridegroom. And how many men had she been with? She had been with six men. She had been married five times,

but now she's with a guy she's not married to. So that's very significant. Six. It's the imperfect biblical number. So she'd been taking her thirst to all these imperfect lovers. Imperfect love will never satisfy the thirst. If you knew the gift that I wanted to give you, you would ask me for a drink. What's the perfect biblical number? Seven. Who's her seventh lover? Christ. Christ. And what's the gift? If you knew the gift, this is my body given for you. That's the gift. The Eucharist is the gift. And as JP2 says, the Eucharist is the sacrament of the bridegroom and of the bride so presumably it ends of adoration it It ends. Yes. The goal is to lead people

To their true the true satisfaction of their deep have you done these events yet? We've done we tested one in in the country of Colombia last month And what do you look for to know that this is resonating with people? Well, you there's always tweaking that this is resonating with people? Well, there's always tweaking. It took us about, we've been doing the Made For More event for eight years and it took us about three years to kind of really fine-tune it and get it where we wanted it to be and there's still even polishing on it. So it's always a work in progress. It'll take us, we'll have to do it 10 or 15 times before we kind of get

in the rhythm of it. Yeah. But it really did resonate beautifully with the audience in Columbia. How do you know that? Because of the looks on their faces, because of the questions they asked at the end, because of the conversations I had when I was signing books afterwards. Yeah. And just, you know how it is. You can read a room.

Oh, yeah. You know, when you've been speaking to audiences for years and years, you know if what you're saying is landing or not, is resonating or not. And I think we have something that really resonates and we'll keep fine tuning it. Yeah, that's beautiful. I'm glad you're doing that. I'm glad that you're taking up this initiative of the bishops. Yeah, we wanted to be very intentional about that because theology of the body has so much to offer us in our understanding of the Eucharist.

Obviously, the theology of the body has something to do with the Eucharist, the body of Christ given up for us. And I know I sound like a broken record to those who follow my work, but I've been trying for 30 years to help the church understand, not the, like people in the church, I don't mean the church, but people in the church to understand the scope of what John Paul II has given us. Are there new criticisms of the theology of the body that you've encountered cropping up? That it novel? Not novel in the sense of superficial or false, but like,

oh that's interesting. I haven't heard that. Well, I'll tell you, this isn't new, but it gets to the crux of what I have run into for these 30 years that I've been doing this work. I was in Madrid in September, and do you know about the group Hakuna? No. There's somebody to just have your eye on and be aware of. The Holy Spirit is doing something. They're going through various growing pains, but it's Hakuna.

It comes from Hakuna Matata from the Disney movie. What is that? It means no worries. Right. It means no worries. They just started gathering and singing songs and praising the Lord. Okay. And I went to an event in a stadium in Madrid that held 17,000 people. What? And it was just this Hakuna music group on stage singing these songs and I'm like what it must be the lyrics because I I couldn't understand it was all in Spanish, but I was,

I could, everybody's singing along, 17,000 people in the stadium. They had all these like fireworks going off on stage and it was quite the, something's moving, something's happening through what they're doing. And they brought me over to... Is it a Catholic group? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's Catholic, fully Catholic. Yeah. Started by a Catholic priest. Okay. And they brought me over to... Is it a Catholic group? Oh yeah, yeah, it's Catholic, fully Catholic, started by a Catholic priest. And he's gathered some people around him who are discerning, giving their lives to this and living a celibate life in service of this movement. And they're working under the bishop to have all the right canonical approvals. But they're going through growing pains. Like it's really sprouted up very quickly and it's international. Their music is selling, like, it's best selling stuff.

Like, I, yeah. They approached me, I was at a conference in Mexico City a year and a half ago, and this founder of Hakuna approached me backstage and asked if I would come give them some formation in the theology of the body, their leadership team. So that's what I was there to do. And they brought me over right at the time they had one of these major events so I could see what was going on. I was amazed at what the Lord is doing.

Mike Mangione from my team, who's my musician who travels with me, he was with me. And we've just been like, wow, the Lord is doing something. Anyway, I was doing this training for their leadership team, and at the end of the day, after a day-long training, we went out to dinner with some of this team, and the guy said, I am so glad I came, because this morning when I got up and rolled out of bed, I'm like, theology of the body, I get that, that's just safe sex for marriage, I know all that stuff, because this morning when I got up and rolled out of bed I'm like theology the body I get that that's just save sex for marriage I know all that stuff I'm not gonna go and he said but then there is this nudge to go and he like almost with tears he's like Christopher I had no idea how vast this was I had no idea

that this is a lens through which you see the whole of our faith. It's not just this chastity talk. And that's what I've been dealing with, you know, there's, if people know about theology of the body, they kind of reduce it to the, oh, that's for the teen chastity talk. Yeah, yeah. No, no, no, no, no. Christianity is a theology of the body, because Christianity is the religion of the word made flesh. God took flesh. This is our faith.

To understand the body theologically is our faith. And JP II has given us truly like a well, I'll just quote Mikhail Waldstein. He says, the theology of the body is the John Pauline lens for reading the catechism. You know how there are movements that crop up and come up with a system that help us see something more clearly,

and then other people take it and run with it, and so you've got like Thomism and then Neo-Tomism. Do you think that because, yeah, Neo-TOB, I mean, if you were to sit down with John Paul II, as he was halfway through these letters, do you think that two of you would be learning from each other? I mean, not to put you on the same level

as Pope John Paul II, I'm sure you wouldn't appreciate that, but I mean, are you bringing, clearly, how could you not bring your own thing to it? But is what you're presenting an extension of that. But I mean, are you bringing, clearly, how could you not bring your own thing to it? But is what you're presenting an extension of, in like, maybe in opposition to in some ways? I don't know, the original mission? BD It's certainly not in opposition. In the final Wednesday audience of the theology of the body,

and for those who don't know, it's a collection of 135 Wednesday audience addresses. He only delivered 129 of them because the section on the Song of Songs was too intimate to deliver publicly, but it is published in the final work. So 135 Wednesday audience addresses. In the final one, he basically gives a commission. He says, what I have dealt with here in what I've called theology of the body is a specific approach to the male-female relationship, but the foundation I've laid now needs to be built upon, and we need to apply this in other areas.

And that's the work that I get very excited about doing. So, for example, at the Theology of the Body Institute, and our charism is different, say, where I trained. I trained at the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, which was the institute JP II himself started to spread this vision. So I trained there. It is a very academic approach, which is good and great and necessary in the church, but also that academic theology has to be broken open for one and all. And that's the charism of the Theology of the Body Institute. We take the academic side seriously, but our goal is

to bring it to the common man. So our foundational courses are Theology of the Body Level 1 and Theology of the Body Level 2, and in those courses we go through very closely the whole catechesis. And you've been to Theology of the Body Level 1. But then in other courses we take it and build upon it and we start applying it. One of my favorite courses to teach is Theology of the Body and the New Evangelization where wearing these glasses we just walk through the whole catechism and pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, the catechism comes alive. And what Waldstein says is true.

The Theology of the Body bodies that John Pauline lends for reading the catechism. One of my favorite moments as a teacher is when we get to pillar four of the catechism in the TOB and the New Evangelization Course, which is the pillar on prayer. And prayer comes alive for my students, having been already through typically TOB 1 and 2, they're now coming to the catechism with those glasses and they can understand what John Paul II means when he says, this is in his document, Novo Millennio and Juente, on the dawn of the new millennium. This is his pastoral plan for the next thousand years.

And we're only 25 years in, right? We're only, we're still, haven't even begun to really enter into the new millennium. He says, this is where the new millennium must go. He says, we have a duty to show the world the depths, there's that word, the depths to which the relationship with Christ can lead. depths, there's that word, the depths to which the relationship with Christ can lead. It leads through a dialogue of love to rendering the person wholly possessed by the Divine Beloved. And he says, we come to vibrate at the Spirit's touch.

And he says, this demands an intense spiritual commitment on our part, but it is a work of grace and is a grace that will lead us through painful purifications, the dark night. But if we embrace these painful purifications, this is my favorite line, it leads to the ineffable joy experienced by the mystics as nuptial union. Nuptial union with love eternal. And he says, how can we forget here the teaching of John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila. So there's JP II himself saying, we have a duty to call the whole world to nuptial union with the Lord. Jesus says go into the main streets and invite everyone to the wedding feast. This was

my doctoral dissertation. It was called, go into the main streets, invite everyone to the wedding feast, and then the the subtitle was, if was called, Go into the Main Streets, Invite Everyone to the Wedding Feast. And then the subtitle was, if I can remember it, A Method of Translation and Enculturation of John Paul II's Theology of the Body for the New Evangelization. That's where I live. That's my sweet spot. To evangelize wearing these glasses and invite people to the wedding feast. to evangelize wearing these glasses and invite people to the wedding feast. So when we get to pillar four of the Catechism in our TOB in the New Evangelization Course, and we have applied exactly what JP II said to do,

take what I've given you and start applying it to other areas of theology, we go through the whole Catechism and now when the Catechism is talking about contemplative prayer as entering into this covenant nuptial relationship with the Lord, it's no longer just something you're reading on the page of the Catechism. It becomes a lived experience. And there's nothing, there has been nothing more rewarding for me as a teacher than to

see my students have a lived experience of that intimacy in prayer. My marching orders are Novo Millennio 33, which I just quoted. We have a duty to show the whole world the depths to which the Christian relationship can lead to nuptial union. So that's what we're about. That's why we do what we do, and that's why we're having the conversation, I think, at the level we're trying to have it, is just to invite people to those depths where we are known. We are known. It was George Weigel, wasn't it, who had that great line about the theology of the body as the theological time bomb set to go off with dramatic consequences perhaps in the 21st century. Yeah, I've talked to him about that and he says

that some have taken that out of context, but I don't think that bomb has detonated yet. I believe it will. I think he was right and he predicted some time in the third millenn, perhaps in the 21st century. And my mission in life is to hasten that detonation. Do you see a decline in interest in it? I mean, it's hard to tell because you live in this world. Yeah, it is hard to tell. I've seen shifting interests. I've seen some who kind of felt like they rode a wave and it kind of faded and they're like done with it. Yeah. And that's to be expected. I've

seen others who've picked it up and know that this is... like I was just meeting yesterday with Katrina Zeno. She and I have been friends for 25 years. Oh my goodness, she's lovely. She is lovely. And she and I are in full agreement that this is, we are at the kind of moment in the church's history that I compare to 800 years ago when St. Thomas was writing his summa. And the first generation of students of St. Thomas

saw the value of his summa and said, we gotta pass this on. And because they passed it on to the next generation and they passed it on to the next generation and they passed it on to the next generation, 800 years later, it's part of the fabric of the way the church understands herself. And Thomas was a controversial figure during that time. Very controversial at the time.

And so there are all those controversies going on about JP II in this day and age, but I am of the mind that 800 years from now, this will be part of the fabric of the way the church understands itself. How have you seen it make its way into maybe Protestant, the Protestant world? Yeah, I have done a lot of work in Protestant churches. Honest Protestants who, and I'm not trying to say, well those are the honest ones and those are the dishonest ones. The ones who agree with me.

Those Protestants who are very concerned about the state of the culture and are saying, how did we get here, are looking back and they are recognizing more and more the role contraception has played in the societal chaos. Oh yeah. And they are looking for a much deeper theological understanding of our creation as male and female. And they are discovering John Paul II's theology of the body. Just last night I was lecturing here on campus and an Anglican woman came up to me

and shared an amazing story that she and her Anglican priest husband came to a talk of mine eight years ago at an Anglican church. And they loved everything I said all day long until I started talking about contraception and the history of it and how it's changed everything. And they said for eight years they've been wrestling, wrestling, wrestling, wrestling, wrestling, wrestling, and they started practicing natural family planning. I don't know how, I can't, I

don't know the time frame of it, maybe a year and a half ago or two years ago. And she said it was putting it into practice that was kind of the final conversion experience to the truth of the Church's teaching. And those stories for me are so rewarding, Matt, when I, you know, I came to a talk here 15 years ago and it sent my life on a whole different trajectory. Mason- You know, what do you say? Because people would criticize the Catholic Church and say, well, a normand is just Catholic divorce, an NFP is just Catholic contraception. There seems to be a growing resistance to adopt NFP if by NFP you mean using it to avoid pregnancy. Have you noticed this? Yes, yes. And it's what's right. What is right about that skepticism?

Okay, there's what is right about it is yes, you can any good thing can be abused. Any good thing can be abused. Having a knowledge of your fertility when your wife is fertile and when she's infertile is a beautiful thing. To understand and enter into the glory of God's creation and the intricacies of a woman's body and how together with a man's body they come together and do what they do is an astoundingly glorious, beautiful, wonderful thing to know and understand. That knowledge can be put to good use and it can be put to bad use. Is that a surprise? Should we blame NFP itself because people abuse it?

No. Should we blame alcohol because people abuse it? No, it's a sacramental reality, alcohol. If you don't have alcohol in the altar, it's not a valid Eucharist. Don't blame the good things for our abuse of them. So the truth in that is that people can and do abuse these things. JP too is very clear on this. In Love and Responsibility, he says, and do abuse these things. JP too is very clear on this. In Love and Responsibility he says, if you are putting into practice your knowledge of the infertile period just with a utilitarian attitude and an anti-child mentality, this will serve no good. In fact, it will cause damage because the mentality is off. But you could be in a situation in your marriage, he says, where you have a moral duty to avoid a child. What's the loving thing to do?

You know, I think I haven't really looked into a lot of these arguments, but I think they would they would say, and I'm not aligning myself with this position, that there's never an OK reason to, what would they say, to use NFP to avoid pregnancy? That's so not Catholic thinking. That is messed up. You can fall off the boat on the right or on the left, and those who go in that direction are fallen off the boat on the right. I'm trying to think about what I'm trying to think what the argument there is. Is it that okay, so now I have an awareness of when you my dear bride are fertile and when you are not. I think we would agree that this is not a good thing or a bad thing, but maybe it's good for certain. All right, so now I know that. All right, so now what is the argument? To avoid coming together

because I know a child will result. Like is that there? No, you don't know a child will result, but you have a much more likely that a child is going to result. It's very probable. Is that the sin in their mind? And then what's on the other hand? Would it be to... Yeah, I guess that's it. That's the argument. I almost don't want to get into their mind because it's wrong. You could have a moral duty to avoid a child. What could you do if you have a moral...

What must you do? I think the way they'd push back there, they would say, is that doesn't seem clearly spelled out. You know, because what will happen is often you'll hear these Catholic apologists and they'll use these dramatic examples to make a point. You know, like they'll say, oh, you know, you're avoiding pregnancy because you want to buy a yacht. Yeah.

Something like that. Well, that's really not the position most of us are in. I believe in the catechism of the Catholic Church. I believe what the catechism teaches is true, and the Catechism teaches that couples who have a just reason, that's the word the Catechism uses, there's been a lot of argument, what's the proper word? Is it grave? Is it gravitas?

What is the proper word? The Catechism uses the word just. That couples who have a just reason to avoid a child do nothing wrong in abstaining from marital relations during the fertile time. That's the only proper form of birth control is self-control. That's the Church's teaching. Then the question becomes, okay, you abstain when she's fertile. Okay, another time of the month she's not fertile. Do you have to continue to abstain? Well, you might have reasons to abstain. Maybe she's sick, maybe you're sick, maybe you're at the

in-laws and they're thin walls, whatever. But having intercourse when you know you're naturally infertile is not sinful. Yeah. My wife has passed childbearing years. We're not doing anything sinful by knowing that a child is not going to result. It is bizarre, when I worked at Catholic Answers back in 2011 or so, when I got the job, I remember I got a handwritten letter from someone who actually made the case that it was sinful, and I understand that it isn't, but this just goes to show how you can fall off the right side of the boat. They actually know you shouldn't be coming

together past your infertile years. Somebody said that to you? Yeah. Oh, that's nonsense. Yeah, it is nonsense. Of course. Of course. Thomas Aquinas shows that it's nonsense.

There's multiple ways. You know, one of the ways is he says that it's a mutual comfort for spouses. That's one of the ends of the sexual act. We should have the right to dismiss nonsense. And with charity, explain to those who believe nonsense why it's nonsense, but also to say that's nonsense, that is not Catholic thinking. And why are we debating, why are you, we're proposing what the Church believes, why are you, I mean go ahead and argue with the Church if you want to. The Church is not afraid of your arguments, but the

church will prove you wrong. Not in an arrogant triumphalistic way, but just because truth is truth. You've heard what I've said about Thomas Aquinas and what he had to say about menstruation, haven't you? I don't know that I have. He says that if a woman is menstruating in an unnatural Flow of blood such that she can't get pregnant she may still demand the marital debt. Mm-hmm. How's that? There you go. I don't think I have heard that the point of that isn't yeah Yeah, isn't a makes to demonstrate the point is to say that even Aquinas is saying it's a legitimate thing to engage in when you cannot Get pregnant here's here's where JP to goes and and I don't think a lot of people are willing to look at this and I am recalling we have spoken about this at this very table so we don't have spent a lot of time on it but he says if the only reason you are having intercourse is to have a child you are in danger of treating your spouse as a means to an end. He says the attention and intention

in the marital act should not be on its fruit. Your attention and intention should be on the affirmation of the unrepeatable dignity of your spouse. And only such attention and intention can we confirm this is an act of love. The goal of the marital embrace is to express divine love. Divine love is a fruitful love. So to render the act sterile is what the Church says is in every case wrong. In other words, to activate your generative capacity and thwart it at the same time is a contraceptive act. It is an act against conception. Abstaining from intercourse is a non-procreative thing, but it's not an anti-procreative thing. And what is wrong in every situation is to be anti-procreative.

And here's an analogy I use. Suppose you have three people walking past a church. One is religious, one is non-religious, and one is anti-religious. The religious person, we could rightly imagine, if he has the time, would go into the church and say a quick prayer, even if he's on his way to work or whatever. The non-religious person would just keep walking.

The anti-religious person may well go in the church and desecrate it, right? Who has done something that is in every situation wrong? Man number three. Man number three, right? So we are called, the general call in marital life is to be procreative, right? You may have a good reason to be non-procreative. All right, don't go in the church. Keep walking, right? But you can never justify being anti-procreative, going in the church and desecrating it. And the analogy is much more fitting than you might think at first,

because really and truly, your wife is an image of the church. And you as a husband and I as a husband, we are images of the priest who enters the Holy of Holies to make the sacrifice. If you may have good reason not to enter your wife, okay keep walking, don't enter your wife, but if you enter your wife, make the offering, don't desecrate, pray for the Lord and Giver of Life to come if it's His will to come and make a new life. That's what's required. In every marital act, we must be able to say, Lord, if it is Your will, let there be life. If it's Your will, let there be life.

That is a beautiful place to be. Yeah, that's great. I haven't heard you use that analogy before. Is that a new one? It's an old one. It's good. Yeah, it's an older one. I don't use it often. You're more familiar with the grandmother one. Yeah, the killing and grandmother versus waiting till she dies naturally. It does feel like the church does have a real opportunity here, especially as more and more people are becoming health conscious. Yeah. And and are willing to condemn all this drugs. Americans have a pill for every ill. You're seeing a lot of people who lean more kind of natural

being like, I'm not putting that crap in my body. Yeah, that can be a good bridge. Yeah, bridge. A bridge, but still, if we're only executing it as a technique. 100%, I'm just saying it's a great opportunity. It is an opportunity. It's an intro, yeah.

And I know of many, various people come up to me over the years and have told me that they were motivated to use it for those reasons, because they didn't want to put all those chemicals in the body, they didn't understand the moral argument. But again, in putting it into practice, it brings about a conversion of our heart. If we're attentive to it. For sure. I mean, here's a simple way. I mean, if you... How do you react, you know, when

you thought you were going to come together, but then you have to discern whether or not we're ready, you know, like, immaturally, maturely, like it brings up a lot. I think Janet Smith's done wonders. She had and she I don't think she realized for those who are watching, there was an old tape she did back in the day. Contraception, why not? It was anointed. It was because she's done since a series of CDs, like she's redone them. And I'm like, they were fine.

But that one was it was almost like Scott Hans conversion story. It was it reached millions. Yeah. Mill millions of people. I really like her. Yeah. I had her debate Father Pine on my show. Oh yeah. On this.

Oh yeah, online. Did you ever watch it? I saw some clips. I didn't watch the whole thing. Oh my gosh. Like it was awesome. It was the only debate I've hosted where whenever one person spoke, I changed my mind.

Once, you know, when Father Pine stopped, I went, yeah, Once, you know, when father pine stopped and went, yeah, that's right. And then she spoke, went, yeah, no, she's right. She's very good. I love that woman. She's great. She has been such a dear supporter of, of my somewhat tumultuous career over the years. I was going to ask you this because I just saw in the news today, tumultuous career over the years. I was going to ask you this because I just saw in the news today, rumblings of another prominent Protestant pastor who's, you know, apparently being embroiled in some sort of sex thing.

And sometimes I see this stuff and I think, wait, am I the only person not abusing women? Like, it seems like, or just not having some weird sex thing on the side? It can get very cynical because all these people are I love this fellow. Like there was that Ravi Zacharias fellow and this fellow whose name I won't mention because it's relatively new and I'm sure more stuff's coming to light. But it's like, is everyone doing this? You know, do you ever feel that way? I know that just basic principle.

And again, I'll quote JP too, if your approach to erotic desire is not an integral one, and what does that mean? It means integrating the physical and the spiritual energies in our humanity towards the true, the good, and the beautiful. If it is not that, if you were – and this again, it goes right back, Matt, to what we were saying earlier about how Christianity can be just another fig leaf. For me, it feels like if you get on this sanctifying train, right, and you allow the Lord into your

heart and he's going to work, you know, and you start going – at some point, I think people like get off and just stay there Yeah, like they get off and go okay. I've now learned enough. I've now built up a ministry enough Yeah, but I'm gonna now use this to enrich myself Yep, or to or to teach this one little truth, but I'm no longer doing the work like the Lord's no longer He no longer has access to those deep recesses of my heart worries because I don't know how you can live Here are some of these priests and you know, they're celebrating Holy Mass, they're doing horrible things, like the founder of that regnum...

Yeah, regnum Christi. Is that it, or whatever the legionary is? Yeah. And you're like, I do not understand. Like, I know what it's like to be a sinner. I know what it's like to do shameful things, because I suck. I am aware of that. I'm aware of repenting Maybe I mean I see then again, maybe there's parts of my personality like we all can't see right?

There are things about you dear listener That annoy people around you that you can't see And you're still lovable and so am I but so maybe they just have these gigantic blind spots But it's hard to... I can speak to my own experience here, Matt, and say, I know there were periods in my life where I was not looking at my crap because I was too afraid, because I was in the public eye and people were looking to me like I had the answers to these questions. And you know, as someone in the public eye, how you can fall into that trap. And I thought my crap disqualified me

from this work. And there's this, you know, every minister of the gospel has to reckon with that fear of being a hypocrite, because you're preaching a message, but you also know your own interior struggles. And I did, there was a time in my life, a span of years earlier in my ministry, where I wasn't looking at stuff I needed to look at. And the way the Lord and the way the Lord will compel you to look at stuff you need to look at that you haven't been looking at. You walk into a wall. You have a fall. You slip on a banana peel and you're down. And by God's good graces, I've not crossed sexual boundaries in a physical way in violating my marriage, but my wife has called me on ways my heart has gone out that she felt as a violation, and I've had to reckon with those slips. Yeah. And those slips that the Lord allowed in my life, those were wake-up calls.

Those were, Christopher, there's SHIT in your heart that you're not looking at. And you have this mask on, and you're afraid because you're naked, so you're hiding yourself. I'm not gonna let you hide anymore. And when there's whatever the new story is of whoever falls, this great pastor has this great fall,

whether Protestant or Catholic or whoever, part of me is like, thank you Lord for that severe mercy. Because I've had severe mercies in my life. And those severe mercies are good Medicine I have to here's a kind of humorous one I was on a panel with some distinguished people and people were asking us questions And we would dispense wisdom, you know, and I was you know pretty anxious because I knew I didn't have much wisdom to give.

And someone asked me a question and I didn't really know the answer, but I wasn't going to let that stop me. So I launch into this answer and I could feel everybody else realizing I was full of shit. I could feel it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just kept talking and I thought I'll land the plane here eventually. I did not. Oh bless you brother. It just crashed and I... that was such a blessing. At the time I think I hated myself. I wished that I was smarter. I wished that I was humble and I didn't know how to be and I wanted to belong. I wanted these people on this stage with me to admire me or at least to think I had something to offer. Yes. And I just had nothing to offer. And I would say that was one of the most beautiful things that's happened to me because it really just taught me a hard lesson.

I think I'm much better at it now. I'm sure sometimes I bullshit because I'm full of it still. Yeah. But you know, when people ask me a question, I'm much more comfortable like I don't know that I don't even know the word you're using Yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah, and that's been beautiful. What a beauty So anyway, I'm sure we all have that what could you maybe you don't have to do a big deep dark one But any trivial things maybe not trivial, but any things that come to mind? Yeah, I was at a... I generally don't do the more academic conferences because it's not my thing. I get invited on occasion, but my charism, as I was saying earlier, is to take the academic theology and translate it, put it in language that

normal people can understand. But I got invited to this more academic conference and I got up there and I prepared what was, from my perspective, a little more academic presentation. Still not as academic as the other paper. I cannot deliver a paper. When you go to an academic conference, you're supposed to get up there and deliver a paper. I cannot just get up and read a paper. Uh-huh. Uh-uh. Not gonna do it. Can't do it. So I said I will only come to this conference if I can give a talk and not deliver a paper. Yep. So I went and I'm

already a little bit out of my element and feeling there's just all these other people up here reading their papers and now I get up and I can't even stand behind a podium. You know, I have to move, I have to engage my audience, not just reading my paper. And I made a theological blunder about the processions of the persons in the Trinity. That's easy to make a blunder when you get into that territory. And I was corrected for it. And I was just like,

won't, won't, won't, won't. How were you corrected? Christopher, why do you keep saying such and such? Do you not realize that you are contradicting the Lateran Council of such and such because of the processions of this and that? Was it public or? It was not like,... yes it was public.

But it was a smaller group. Yeah. Like it was like an after party. It wasn't during my talk in front of the whole group. Yeah. It was an after gathering. But there were people there that I was trying to, you know, just like you were saying, you want you want to show people that you can carry your own. And yeah. So how did you respond? I wanted to pretend that I took it well. Yes, that's beautiful. Yeah. Honest thing to say. Yeah.

I don't want to be wrong and seen as arrogant. Right. Right. But inside I had to, yeah, there was a few days of wrestling afterwards and how, you know, because you want to, yeah, you want to be seen as you know what you're talking about and intelligent. It was a correct correction. I was glad I was corrected and I had to go back to a book that I had written and redo it and because it was a failure to understand what's settled doctrine about the processions of the Trinity and processions of the persons in the Trinity.

Yeah, so that was one example of that, so I can relate, yes. Fun times, man. I want to tell you about Halo, which is the number one downloaded prayer app in the world. It's outstanding. Halo.com slash Matt Fradd. Sign up over there right now and you will get the first three months for free. That's like a lot of time. You can decide whether it's useful to you or not, whether it's helpful.

If you don't like it, you can always quit. Halo.com slash Matt Fradd. I use it, my family uses it. It's fantastic. There are over 10,000 audio guided prayers, meditations and music including Mylofi. Halo has been downloaded over 15 million times in 150 different countries. It helps you pray, helps you meditate, helps you sleep better. It helps you build a daily routine and a habit of prayer.

There's honestly so much excellent stuff on this app that it's difficult to get through it all. Just go check it out. Halo.com slash Matt Fred. The link is in the description below. It even has an entire section for kids. So if you're a parent, you could play little Bible stories to them at night. It'll help them pray. Fantastic. Hello.com slash Matt Fred. Well, I have some questions from my local supporters. Would you mind if I did that? Let's do it. This is the awkward part of the show where I look from you into the camera and say, hi, person watching right now. The fact that you've made it this far shows me that you don't hate this channel, or at

least this show, or at least not Christopher. If you would like to support us, please do at matfrad.locals.com. When you do, we give you a bunch of free things in return. You'll get these interviews a week early. You'll get exclusive streams from me. We have courses. It's a beautiful community to be a part of, but maybe more than any of that, you actually do get to help this work continue.

Thank you for your generosity, or at least considering matfrad.locals.com. And I just want to add that supporting this man in his mission for the church is a very worthy endeavor. He will put your support to good use in spreading the gospel. Yeah, it's not going to my, I don't have a fund. I don't have a yacht. It does go to this, yeah.

We're building a new studio in Florida. It's gonna cost tens of thousands of dollars. So this is the last hurrah for me in this studio. Yeah, but I can't wait till you come visit me in Florida. I shall. All right, registered nerd says How does one discern using NFP for spacing purposes versus another form of birth control? My wife and I are converts in mid 40s youngest is 12

Should we be open to life and see what the good Lord gives us? Well, he's interesting the way he worded that. How do you discern using NFP versus other forms, unless you mean total abstinence, the other forms you're talking about would be nothing to discern because they're all going to be damaging to your marriage. Questions of discernment are never between something good and something evil. If it's evil and contraception is objectively evil, it is objectively damaging to marital love. It is objectively contrary to the language of marital love. It is an objective contradiction of the commitment that you made at the altar

to receive children lovingly from God. For a host of reasons, and if you're not clear on what those reasons are, please read my book Good News About Sex and Marriage, and we'll get you a link for that, and a discount code and whatever. Mason Hickman Well, do you want to do that now? David Riegel Oh, sure. Mason Hickman Because we'll have Josiah put it in the description,

but what is the… David Riegel Okay. The book is Good News About Sex and Marriage. It's my Q&A book, and I'll tell my team to make a code that'll be Matt Fradd. You'll have to tell us so that we'll do it. So it'll all be clear down below. It'll be clear, okay. Because you'll tell us by that time. So the Q&A book, please, please, please read that Q&A book if you are not clear, if you have not heard compelling arguments for the Church's

teaching against contraception, please read that book. So I'm going to jump at this question, assuming a Catholic perspective, which is you're not discerning NFP versus contraception, right? I think he's, I want to get underneath it, and he's saying, do we have just reasons to be avoiding children? And I don't know. I don't know. I would have to sit down and have a conversation with you. I could give you some examples of just reasons. You might have serious financial hardships in bringing another child into the world. You might have real health concerns, risk of life in having another pregnancy. You might have five kids under the age of six and you just need a breather. All of those could be just reasons. So I don't know if he has just reasons or not, but

also I want to clarify something. Should we be open to life? Yes, you should always be open to life. But this too is a phrase that has entered into the lexicon of the way Catholics talk, which is confusing. As if you... Let me back up and say the language the church actually uses is not each act of intercourse should remain open to life. That's a bad translation of Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI document that addressed this in 1968, and sadly that bad translation has entered into the Catholic lexicon, at least in English-speaking countries. The words, each act should remain per se destinatus, per se destined toward, ordered toward procreation. Right? That's a different, has a different

feel to it. Because, because, because for example, like my wife had to have surgery, she's incapable of having children. Our act should, it would be a little confusing to say, are you open to life? But it would make more sense to say, are you acting in such a way that it is... You are engaging in the act that is per se destinatus to generate life. And you have not done anything willfully to thwart that. And so that's a very good example of why that openness to life language is problematic. It's not the language of humani vitae. So if he's asking, should each and every act of intercourse that my wife and I engage in

remain per se destinatis for the generation of... absolutely it should. The question is, do you have a just reason to be abstaining from the marital act in order not to bring another life into the world? And I can't answer that because I haven't sat down with them to know. And what I will say this, John Paul II is very clear on this. He says the couple alone have the responsibility to discern that question. Yeah, yeah. We see this in other areas of church life too. Am I too sick to go to Mass? You know, in the Catechism it says another reason for not attending or not having to fulfill your Sunday obligation is the care of little children. There is freedom here where I have to discern because I'm a grown-ass man.

And you have moral responsibility there. Oftentimes, when we are saying, would somebody just make the decision for me? What we're saying is, I don't like the fact that the responsibility to make this decision is on my shoulders. Would you make it for me? No, no, no, you must make that decision. There's also a real desire not to displease the Lord. I think that's the positive way of putting it. Because I think, and I think, scrupulosity comes to me for sure, but I've definitely had people say like, okay, am I sick enough? Like, how sick do I have to be?

I mean, technically I can still get out of bed. I want to say to everybody who's coughing behind me at Mass, please don't come again. For my sake, not for anybody else's sake, not even for your sake. I don't want to look at you. If you sniff, you're blowing your nose behind me. Don't come out in public for at least two weeks. It's disgusting.

The weave? What? The weave. Oh yeah, I really don't like it. I, when I, and I, there's a difference between a, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the deep gutter, all phlegm-y, your face is red, you're sweating. Why would you come here? Why? All right, that's one of my pet peeves. I have many pet peeves. So many. No. Well, have I? I don't. Yeah. But the point is, I know what your point is. People don't want to displease our Lord, which I think is partly where the I want to be sure I'm not, you know,

that's where it comes from. But that's where scruples also can really strangle the the vitality of the the living the Christian life out of us. Yeah. Dill. She like to get a guy. What just happened? This person has to be anonymous. This person has to be. Matt Fred just burst into tongues, people.

Did you hear? Yeah. This person has to be anonymous. And I went to say their name. Oh, oh, oh, OK. I do that all the time. I'll go back to that individual. Maybe human, maybe a different type

of individuals question. It could be AI. Later. This individual says, any suggestions about dealing with scrupulosity about how much intimacy is acceptable? How about all the time, always? How much intimacy is acceptable for whom

and in what context? Yeah, I mean context and what do you mean by intimacy and what do you mean by intimacy yeah yeah sexual intimacy what is that but between whom yeah what what are they yeah that I God bless these individuals I mean they're willing to post these intimate questions yes yes on this in this community well let's let's we have us we could assume some things here sure Let me take it from various angles. And it's so hard to give brief answers to these questions. Please again,

please again read my book Good News About Sex and Marriage where I get into all the nitty-gritty details. But, and isn't it interesting the word intimacy? Intimacy is related to sexual behavior but is not synonymous with and it's unfortunate that because we're afraid to talk about sex directly we use these things like we say intimacy and but then the word intimacy gets the kids becomes almost synonymous with something sexual right we we we cannot live without intimacy we are created for intimacy and by intimacy I don't mean sexual We cannot live without intimacy. We are created for intimacy. And by intimacy, I don't mean sexual intimacy.

We are created to remove those fig leaves and be seen and known and loved. And when I say fig leaves here, I don't mean physically naked. I mean the exposure of your interior, the revealing of your heart, we desperately desire to see another and be seen by that other's loving gaze. That is what I mean by intimacy. Thank you, sir. So there are different levels of that, even that kind of intimacy that are appropriate

and inappropriate for given relationships at given times. But let's talk about what he means, sexual intimacy. The Catechism says that those who are unmarried should reserve those behaviors that are expressions of marital love for marriage. Well then the question becomes what expressions of physical closeness and intimacy are inherently marital? I have a question that, where you're going, there's a question that might be more specific to that. Would you mind if I tried, just because I know

we're gonna get to some things like this, can I just kind of, I'm not really sure, if he says, scriptedulous about how much intimacy, can we just think he means coming together marital act? Why would you be scrupulous about how much? That's what I understand. Does he mean like frequency of the marital act? That's what I thought he meant.

That's what you're taking? How much? Yeah. Okay, I took that in a different way. Well, can I, I have another question here that I think might get to what you wanna answer. I apologize if you think I'm cutting you meant. That's what you're taking? How much? Yeah. Okay, I took that in a different way. Well, can I, I have another question here that I think might get to what you want to answer. I apologize if you think I'm cutting you off. That's all right. This anonymous person says, not quibbling with euphemisms, oral sex for married people. Is it permissible as foreplay? Please read my book, Good News About Sex and Marriage. I, There are, even that is such a...

let me put it this way. I'll try to speak of these things delicately. These are real questions that real people have. I will try to put it as delicately as possible. A husband's seed belongs one place only in the garden. A husband's seed belongs one place only in the garden. There is nothing un-kissable about any part of your spouse's body. That's the answer. Amen. Those two things together. Figure it out. Hold that together. Beautiful. That's really beautifully put, I thought. Thank you. You know what I think it is too? I think that because many of us have been tragically exposed to fil. Yes that we come to associate certain activities

with such, you know, and that's such... And we all must go through a deep pornification of our minds and hearts here. The lovers in the Song of Songs, the sacred love poetry of Scripture, talk about tasting and delighting in each other. Everything that can be and is abused pornographically, gosh, yes, something holy is being mocked. Something beautiful is being mocked. The devil doesn't have his own clay. He loves to take God's clay and

Twist it beyond recognition And it's very sensitive and tender. I'll just add this and then we'll move on Those qualifications I said earlier the seed belongs only in the garden. There's nothing unkissable about any part of your spouse's body That said, there are, you know, you have to respect your spouse's heart and concerns and preferences and don't take what I'm saying here as permission to impose something on your spouse who might not be comfortable with something for whatever reason, you know? So if you start taking, well here are the boundaries and then you cram them, you know, shove them on somebody, well this is not objective.

Okay, but what's going on in your heart? What's going on in your heart? Are you looking at your heart? Does your wife feel used? Are you utilitarian in your attitude here? Are you just in it for your own selfish gratification? All of that stuff has to be looked at too. Those are the objective boundaries, but there are subjective realities we also have to be very honest about. What's going on in my heart. Yeah, attentive to the other. You know, I think it was St. Paul who says be tender with your yes gentle gentle Okay, thank you I'm not gonna say these names just in case anyone these are quite beautiful these questions

They're coming from raw places, and I want to say thank you to my local supporters for being so lovely here This man says what is the Catholic response for those men afraid of, or even disgusted by, sex? There needs to be some real healing. Is this something you've encountered? Sure. Yeah. Do you know, and what, I mean I'm sure there are different answers that people give, but what are they disgusted about, or what are they afraid of? there are different answers that people give, but what are they disgusted about, or what are they afraid of? Bodily functions. There can be a disgust at the bodily realities of marital intimacy. The smells, the body fluids, the fear of what arousal does to me, fear of losing my control, fear of losing my use

of my faculties. There can be nothing but a pornographic mindset involved and how could this be holy to do that with my wife? Well guess what you're right to do that if that is a pornographic reality for you to do that is messed up and there can be well I don't know how to deal with this it's so scary it's so confusing I'll just shut it down I'll just I'll just I'll go live a spiritual life to the earth from all that but but to live a spiritual life divorced from our bodies is is is not a true spiritual life. That's a disincarnate life.

That's a ruptured life. That's death. That's the very definition of death is the separation of body and soul. And we can cover it over with all kinds of layers of holiness. And this kind of brings together so many themes we've been talking about here today, Matt, about where religion becomes another fig leaf, I'm not really looking at my stuff, I'm putting on a facade that I'm doing the right thing, religion becomes exterior. Well guess what happens if that's the way you're going to live your life? Eventually

you're going to have a major fall. That's what's going on in the lives of these pastors and other people, have these major falls, and I shared an experience of a fall in my own life where I wasn't looking at stuff I needed to look at, and the Lord allows us to have these falls to say, we got to look at some stuff here, we got some stuff to look at here. And if someone is afraid of their sexual being, and afraid of the marital embrace, afraid of the fact that this is the way God designed us and this is where babies come from, or this is disgusting to you. There are things that need to be looked at. There are things that need to come to the light.

Yeah. I mean, for the sake of you, but for the sake of your spouse, you need to look at this. You need to get help for the sake of your spouse, yeah. And there are counsellors who can help you find a good Catholic counselor Someone who believes what the Catholic and here's the sad thing you can go to counselors who can screw you up even more Because they have such a faulty anthropology Go to go to at my podcast we list and maybe you do too do you list counselors people can go to no Okay, go to ask Christopher West calm that's my podcast with my wife, and we have a list of Catholic counsellors who believe what the church teaches.

Mason- Tim Paul says, can you expound on why the cross is the marital bed and how that plays into the requirement that priests be both male and celibate. Sure, sure. This is St. Augustine. He says, Christ came to the marriage bed of the cross. What an expression. The marriage bed of the cross. Why is the cross Christ's marriage bed? Because it is his spousal identification with his bride unto the most abject suffering. Pope Benedict XVI quoting a father of the church, I forget the father of the church's name, but Benedict uses this he says, is there any more mad Eros than the longing of the bridegroom Jesus Christ that led him to become one with us on the cross even to the point of bearing our sufferings. There is no more intimate yes to the

other than Christ's yes to his bride on the cross. So that's why Augustine, among many many others in the tradition, described what happens at the cross as the consummation of a marriage. And this is why, this is exactly directly, he's right, he's doing the proper theological math here, this is why only a man can be a priest. Because what is happening in the Eucharist is a spousal reality. And it is the bridegroom on the cross who's giving up his body for the bride at the foot of the cross.

At the foot of the cross is the woman, right? And the fathers of the church had no difficulty recognizing at one and the same time, in the flesh, she's his mother, but in this deeper mystical dimension, what's going on is she's the new Eve. And there is a union of their hearts, a mystical marriage of their hearts, and it's fertile. Woman, behold your son. The beloved disciple is the mystical offspring of the mystical marriage of the new Adam and the new Eve. So are you, so am I, so is every beloved disciple.

We are born again, we are born of the first Adam and Eve, we are born again of the new Adam and Eve, we are born again of the new Adam and Eve in our baptism. Baptism, the catechism says, is a nuptial mystery, right, where the imperishable seed of God regenerates us in the womb of the Church. Hello, this is our faith. This is our faith. In the Eucharist, the bridegroom is saying to the bride, this is my body given up for you. Right? The priest has to be a man. Why? Because sacraments only communicate what they symbolize in as much as they properly symbolize it. For example, if you baptize somebody with

mud, no spiritual cleansing is communicated because the physical reality is not one of cleansing. The spiritual mystery cleansing is communicated because the physical reality is not one of cleansing. The spiritual mystery that is communicated in the Eucharist is the bridegroom giving up his body for his bride. If a woman were to attempt to confer the Eucharist, the relationship is now bride to bride, and there's no possibility of a holy communion, and there's no possibility of new life. Grace, the order of grace, perfects the order of nature. That's the short answer. I could write a doctoral dissertation on it. Thank you. Let's see here. Okay, Catholic Viking,

that's probably not his real name, so I feel like we're safe to use it. First, want to thank Christopher for all his advice and wisdom in this area. Thank you so much for doing what you do. Catholic Viking, you are welcome. My question is, I have had struggles with a sexual kink for a majority of my life. I've been working with a great priest on finding the roots of it and finding peace.

I've been trying to give it up to God and trust in him. However, I have fought so hard over my lifetime to control it. Giving up control feels foreign. I'm having a difficult time with that and working with my wife. That is more frigid in the bedroom sense. Nothing against her. I've caused a lot of it. Is there a good prayer regiment or a good process to help in trusting the Lord with His struggles I've tried to control for so long?

Yes, there is. Can I communicate it effectively in the next two or three minutes is the question. It involves the very naked vulnerability that we have been talking about in this episode. It will involve that. It will involve an exposing, a raw exposing of whatever that, he called it a sexual kink, whatever that perversion might be. There is some, underneath the perverse approach, there There is some underneath the perverse approach, there is some legitimate need of your heart that is crying to be met. And the only way we can overcome a perverse satisfaction of a perverse desire is to discover the genuine desire that goes deeper than the perverse one and find the legitimate satisfaction of it and learn how to open that up for legitimate satisfaction. When I was three weeks before my wedding I was praying in a church and I was praying specifically

to be a good gift to my wife on my wedding night. And I was afraid because I had exposed myself to a lot of porn as a teenager. And it had been several years at that point since I had been exposed, thanks be to God, but those memories were there. And I was praying specifically, Lord, make me a good gift to my wife.

And the Lord said, all of those diseased ideas and images must come up and out, and I want to show you what you were looking for the whole time. So this is a practical application or example of what I was saying to this man, that perverse reality, you must discover the legitimate desire underneath it and find its legitimate satisfaction to heal from the kink, from the perverse reality. So I gave to the Lord every one of those diseased ideas and images in my mind that had formed and shaped me. And I surrendered it to the tabernacle and I saw them burning away. And it took a long time to go through the whole catalog, but as I got to that final image and I surrendered it to the Lord in the tabernacle, I saw something I will never forget. It was the Christ child at the breast of the Blessed Mother.

And I heard the words, this is what you've been looking for the whole time. We are made. We are made to drink at the abundant breast of the New Jerusalem. This is how the prophet Isaiah describes heaven. That is the legitimate yearning that I didn't trust or believe God wanted to meet me and grant me, so I was taking it in these perverse directions. We have to get to the underlying good genuine human desire and find its legitimate satisfaction. And I have to learn and have had to learn over the last 29 years, since I first saw that, to enter into a relationship of Mary where I am not afraid to be an infant at her breast.

And that's a scary thing. That's a scary place to go. But it's the only true legitimate healing of that perverse pornographic approach to the breast is to find the true holy. We overcome evil with good. We overcome evil with good. You don't just wag your finger at the evil. Falsehood with truth. Correct. So if I have a false view of what breasts are for, then the truth sets me free. Amen. Amen. You don't go to avoid, you don't fall into a void. You fall into the arms of love. You fall into the arms of your mama. And she says, drink deeply. Bernard of Clairvaux says, no, no, excuse me, it's Louis de Montfort. He says, so few people know that they can take their thirst to the virginal bosom of Mary and because they don't know it, they take their thirst in these perverse directions. That's a paraphrase of Louis de Montfort.

I fully believe you. I've read things like that, but I need you to send that to me anyway because it's gorgeous and I want to repeat that for the rest of my life. And what's that beautiful painting? Is it Clairvaux who's receiving the milk? Yes, receiving the milk from Mary's breast, Bernard of Clairvaux. Is it those watching? There's a gorgeous painting of our blessed mother who's feeding, she's squeezing her nipple, and there is a fountain of milk. So if you're upset with Christopher, take it up with Saint. Bernard of Clive.

And take it up with this, I just learned I was on pilgrimage in September to Italy, and I had never gone to Padre Pio's hometown. Have you been to Padre Pio's hometown? No. I was there for the first time, and right before you go into his tomb to see his body, there is this huge image of, what's the name of, Our Lady of Graces.

And the image is of Mary squeezing her breasts, exposed, Mary's exposed breasts, this beautiful icon. And these images are all over the town, and because that was known that that was Padre Pio's favorite holy image. And he had a great devotion to our Lady of the Graces, and the image is Mary giving her milk to her children. Yeah, that's beautiful. I'm now in the St. Augustine area in Florida. Oh yeah, there's a shrine there, our Lady of Leleche shrine. Have you been? I have, yeah. I've never been. When I come to visit you in Florida, I would love that. I would take you there. I want to go there. That'd when I come to visit you in Florida. I would love that there I want to go there. That'd be great

Okay, let's see This person says how did vulnerability play a role in teaching your kids about sex So how do you how do you talk to your children about sex? Because there's also another comment here from somebody who says Here's the comment. My heart yearns to protect my children from the world's sexual perversions. We have three kids, three under three. How do we teach our children about sexuality that leads them to wisdom, purity and sexual maturity? Yeah, I can see all of my adult children rolling their eyes right now. Really? Cause you-

Sit down! I shouldn't laugh. Cause I mean, in my, I mean in in my I mean Wendy and I made Serious attempts to try to pass on a holy vision to our children and and we we we made Many missteps along the way and my adult children are now Working through that and we're having various conversations about it And so I don't want to hold myself out as, look at the West family, we figured it out. But my children I think also would say there were some things for which they

were grateful that we did. And one thing that we did that I I think was helpful, every night when we tucked our kids into bed it went like this. You've taught me this prayer and I've done it with my kids for years because of you. Thank you for this. I heard you say it on a Catholic Answers radio show. Oh, beautiful. So we would say, thank you Lord for this day. Thank you for making mommy to be a woman. Thank you for making daddy to be a man. Thank you for calling us to the sacrament of marriage.

Thank you for bringing John Paul and Thomas and Beth and Isaac and Grace into the world through Mommy and Daddy's love. Thank you for making the boys to be boys. Help them to grow into strong men to give their bodies away in love. If they're called to marriage, please bless their future wives wherever they are. If they're called to the celibate vocation, please help them to make that gift of their body in that way. Thank you for making our girls to be girls. Help them to grow into strong women to give their bodies away in love. If they're called to marriage, please bless their future husbands wherever they are.

If they're called to give their lives directly to you, Jesus, as your bride, please prepare them for that gift of their bodies. Every one of my kids could recite that prayer because they heard it hundreds, hundreds, hundreds, hundreds of times. And what I liked about it is the context of prayer. It's holy. It's sacred. They know it's something that we celebrate. And I'll just give one good fruit of it, one good fruit. And again, I'm saying this in the context of knowing Wendy and I made tons of mistakes and our kids are talking to us about it now. So get ready to make mistakes, but better to try and fail than not to try

at all. Right? Better to get out of the boat and sink than never to get out of the boat. One good fruit, I'll never forget, one of my children, a son, was seven years old and he went to the grocery store with his mother and he came back from the grocery store and his face was just fallen. I knew something was troubling his spirit. And I said, I said, bud, what's wrong?

And he said, I saw a picture of a woman on the cover of a magazine at the grocery store that was not respectful of her dignity. And I was like, wow, wow. Because when I was his age and I saw those images, I grabbed them and ran into the little boy's room and paged through the magazine. And I think what was going on in my son Thomas, we have in our house images of our lady of Leleche.

Beautiful, yeah. Right, so his first impressions of the breast were in the context of something holy and sacred, so that when he saw the counterfeit, it disturbed him. But if you feed your children with nothing, if you are not making attempts, and you're going to screw up, but if you're not making attempts to feed them from the banquet, they're going to take their hungry to the fast food, because the fast food is on display everywhere. Silence is not an option. But there's a basic principle here, you can't give what you don't have. If we are not absorbing the banquet ourselves, if we are not immersing ourselves in what the

church's vision really is, we're never going to be able to pass it on to our children. You know, one way I would say that my parents blessed me in this way, and I don't think they even meant to, and I don't think they would ever realize that this is the primary like one of the things that I would say I'm so grateful my folks for is how um how they flirted with each other. Oh beautiful. Sometimes. They were affectionate with each other. Yeah but I am joking I'm being facet yes yes they were very effective. When you said flirting were you saying it was not a beautiful thing? It was beautiful when I said sometimes what I meant is sometimes it was a little awkward Yeah, like my mother be like well your father and I go on to go away for the weekend

So and she'd like do that Yeah, that was as bad I'm not saying it was inappropriate, but that was the kind it was the kind of playfulness as we got older Yeah, my my mom and dad. Yeah, it was really beautiful. I think that my dad loved my mom well He yeah, we everyone's a failure,. I think that my dad loved my mom well. He, yeah, we, everyone's a failure, but I remember laying in bed with my brother. We were in the room next door and hearing my mom like belly laugh because my dad was telling her jokes and things, you know, like that's, that's good. That's good. Yeah,

yeah, that's good. And I just, we were driving one day for hours. I was about to get a job in the outback at a copper mine. It was like a four-hour drive through nothing just red dirt black trees and a couple of dead kangaroos and we hadn't spoken for 30 minutes or something and just out of nowhere he says she's a bloody good woman your mother oh I'm like yeah she's fine yeah I didn't say that but that's beautiful like he then he just went on to tell me why he loves my mom and That's lovely that registered in your heart here. You are telling that story. It's lovely. Yeah, what a lovely thing. Thank you, dad so

You know like I just think one of the ways we teach our children about the beauty of sexuality Yes, you know is by using you know, the anatomically correct words for their genitalia is by using the anatomically correct words for their genitalia, by not being weird about it and realizing the weirdness is all on your end. You don't have to worry. And you can't fake that stuff. If you are weird about it, it'll come across. Yeah, it'll come across.

And that's your fault and deal with it and then do it. And I mean, a lot of my children, my children are getting older, but so we'll see. We'll see. Maybe I'll be more humble like you in the future and say, we ruined everything. Some of it, not everything. But you know, like the ways, you know, you just show playfulness and the way you are gentle with your wife and, um, affectionate to her. What a beautiful witness that is to bring your wife flowers after you kind of grumble grumbly the day before or something like that. These are all ways of showing Yeah, I would say I would agree with that that that much more than the words you say not that the words aren't important

They are but the love that you Show for your spouse and your children know it and they rest securely in it Yeah, I would say that above all is the best witness. Praise God. Let's do one more question. Is it all right? Yeah, and then I have a couple things that I want to share. Yep, that's fine. All right, I haven't read this yet, but this person says, what is some practical advice for single people on how to allow God to fulfill all your desires, sometimes feel impossible for God to fulfill your desires for sex, marriage,

and fatherhood? Yeah, that I want to just show before I launch on some answer. I just want to show reverence for that real suffering. It's real, that ache for to be married is noble and good and sacred and sure our own selfishness can get in the mix and does get in the mix and our idealized images of what marriage is gonna be and how it's gonna take away all my problems. And I mean, yeah, it just there,

we have a lot of illusions there too but nonetheless and even in the midst of all those illusions and selfish things and idealizations that we bring to it there's something noble beautiful and sacred there I just want to honor that well I'm gonna go back to what I said two hours ago can I Can I just put in something much more less profound than what you're going to say? I think in a way it's like, well, no, God isn't actually going to sexual desire. Yeah, that's what I was going to go there. I was going to say, quoting from John Paul 2, in this life, even if you're married, this is important, even if you're married, in this life, Eros is ever seeking and never satisfied in this life. But again, we have

a duty to show the world the depths to which the Christian relationship can lead the whole way through painful purifications to nuptial union, to the bliss described by the saints as nuptial union. What does that even mean, nuptial union with the Lord? What does that even mean? What? So many people say, what? That's... It's because we have a really twisted idea of our sexuality and we have a twisted idea of our sexuality because And we have a twisted idea of our sexuality because the enemy knows that this is the sacred terrain that is the key that unlocks the door to the mystical union. And he wants us to get fixated on

the key. Like our pornographic culture has been so fixated on the key. I'm saying sexuality is a key that unlocks a much deeper mystery, right? For this reason a man will leave his father and mother, be joined to his wife, the two become one flesh. This is a great mystery and it refers to Christ in the church. St. Paul is saying the union of man in one flesh is a key that will unlock a much deeper mystery, a much deeper reality that will, not in this life fully, although we get taste of it, in the next life satisfy every longing of the human heart. Eros will be fully satisfied in the marriage of the Lamb. How? I don't know. Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, and if we start projecting earthly realities onto it, we're inevitably going to get it wrong. But the enemy wants us to become so fixated on the key

that we never use it to unlock the mystery. And when we're fixated on the key, and we're trying to suck something out of the key that it can't possibly give us, the key becomes more and more gnarled and twisted and it doesn't even fit the lock anymore. Right? That's an image of why we were like, how do you even apply sexual imagery to these holy re- because all our frame for sexuality is pornography. And we are not applying the pornographic to the holy. We are allowing the Lord into what has been twisted up to untwist it, to straighten out that key, to polish that key, to get all the rust and grub and grime off it, so that it can actually function to unlock this much deeper reality that will take us into what the saints describe and the scripture describe as

eternal nuptials, the marriage of the Lamb. This is our faith. Pope Benedict XVI says scripture uses boldly erotic images to describe God's passion for his people. This is our faith. We have to wrestle with it, we have to reckon with it, we have to look at what's going on in our hearts, and to do that we have to go to the places we've been talking about. Nakedness in prayer, removing the fig leaves, exposing our wounds, exposing the diseased images, surrendering them to the Lord, letting them get burned away to come to see the true, the good, and the beautiful. If you're not on that journey, I can't answer that question. Because the answer to that question is that journey. It is Novo Millennio 33. We have a duty to show

the world how to endure those painful purifications in order to experience the ineffable joy of nuptial union with the Lord. How can we forget here the teaching of John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila? So we must take the interior journey seriously, to expect that there's some quick, oh if I just say this prayer, or if I just put in this ten-step process to exposing my heart to God, then all of my desires will be fulfilled in Him. That's an illusion.

It's an illusion. It's not real. It's take up your cross every day and follow me. And if you really follow me, you will experience very painful purifications. We are all in our fallen nature. We are idolaters. And by that I mean we take our desire for God to things that aren't God. And I'm looping back to our whole new event, the Well. The Father desires those who worship in spirit and truth. What does that mean? He desires people who learn how

to aim their eros at number seven, at the perfect lover, and not at the six imperfect lovers, right? And we want the... Our idols take no faith. This is a painful, painful lesson I've had to reckon with. Idols take no faith. I'm a painful, painful lesson I've had to reckon with. Idols take no faith. I'm in control of my own satisfaction with my idols. I can dip in whenever I want and get the semblance of satisfaction. And so we're back to what we were talking about earlier of total dependence on something bigger than me to meet my deepest desire.

And Pope Benedict XVI says, this is the basic fundamental problem of human existence. Eros reveals that we have a desire that we cannot satisfy on our own. And so prayer, Pope Benedict says, is nothing other than becoming a longing for God. And prayer means learning how to feel that ache. I'm just gonna be blunt about it. You might feel an ache to masturbate. I'm feeling it in my body. I have this itch. I need to scratch it. My advice is stay in the ache. And if you're a man, this is my recommendation to a man, you get yourself in the shape of a cross. Go cruciform. And you stay there in that cruciform. If you're a woman, I like the image of Mary at the foot of the cross with open hands,

where she is receiving what the bridegroom is pouring out. And guess what he's pouring out at the cross? A sword will pierce your heart. That's what he's pouring out at the cross. Mary is in abject agony at the foot of the cross. And John of the cross. And John of the cross says, and remember JP 2 says, to go to those depths, to experience nuptial union, you can't forget the teaching of John of the cross and Teresa of Avila. John of the cross says, so few experience nuptial union with the Lord. Because when the purifications come that prepare us for that union, we put up blocks. We say, no, it's too painful. I don't want to go

there. And then we do exactly what we were talking about earlier. We externalize religion. We still go to mass. We still thumb our beads, we still put money in the collection, but we're not opening up what's really going on in there. And some of the best advice I ever got was from a priest. This is this Monsignor I briefly mentioned earlier who I've been on retreat with almost annually for 20 years and he gave me permission years ago he said Christopher I was going through some really tough stuff in my marriage he said Christopher you need to learn how to pray and I'm like I'm hearing that in that kind of external ritualistic way he said no no you've learned how to say prayers, but you must learn how to become prayer. And to become prayer means you become a longing for God.

Prayer is nothing other than becoming a longing for God. And he gave me this permission. He says, I'm gonna take you through these exercises to get you in touch with your deepest desires. He says, I'm going to take you through these exercises to get you in touch with your deepest desires. And he said, you must promise yourself and promise the Lord that you will not censor anything that comes up in your heart. Don't put a pious mask on it. Don't say, I shouldn't feel that. Feel it and open it up to the Lord. And that took me on a brutally painful journey of getting in touch with really painful stuff, and I promised him I wouldn't censor it, so I didn't. And that was a major point of conversion in my life of learning how to pray.

Getting naked. And I thought I was going to hell for what I said to God because I was so angry about these unfulfilled desires and this beautiful mystical priest said to me, Christopher, you don't need to confess that you got naked with God. You need to confess that you haven't been naked with God. You've been wearing this pious mask. religion has been some external ritualized thing that you do, rather than becoming a longing for God. We must learn to get naked before God. That's the only path through those purifications and through experiencing, even in this life, and again we're looping back to so many things we've already said, that the Lord in His love for us wants to give us food along the way so we don't pass out. If we don't get little tastes of heaven on the way to heaven,

we will pass out on the way. Jesus in His love for us will give us a little taste of it. And as we endure these purifications of your idols, guess what? it. And as we endure these purifications of your idols, guess what? You don't come to love the things that you've loved less, you come to love them more because you love them rightly. I've come to love music more, I've come to love beer more, I've come to love my wife more, I've come to love good conversation more, I've come to love good friendship more, I've come to love a sunset more, I've come to love good friendship more, I've come to love a sunset more, I've come to love walking through a forest more, and I've come to love the marital embrace more. As I allow all, and I've turned all these things into idols, because these are great, food has been a big idol in my life, beer has been an idol, sex has been an idol, the

beauty of creation has been an idol, music has been an idol, the beauty of creation has been an idol, music has been an idol. Why? Because you get little tastes of heaven in them. And because you get little tastes of heaven, you can mistake them for heaven. And you can aim your desire there. Here's the logic of a sacramental world. The beauty of creatures, the beauty of creation, can awaken your desire for heaven, but it can't satisfy it. And we have to let it awaken our desire for heaven without aiming our desire

for heaven at the creature. Because if we do that, now we're idolaters. We have to let creation awaken our desire for the Creator and stay in the ache saying, I treasure your promises in my heart, O Lord, lest I sin against you. And that's one of the Psalms, I think it's 81 or something. I treasure your promises in my heart, O Lord, lest I sin against you. What's his promise? In this life, Eros is ever seeking but never satisfied. In the next life, it will be satisfied beyond your wildest imaginings. If we can treasure that promise in our hearts,

and trust that the Lord will give us little taste along the way, we'll make it. Amen. Well said. Thank you. Now this book, I think I was reading, he passed me that, I think you gave me the first copy of this book before it was published. Yeah, I did. And I'm pretty sure I emailed you because I was weeping on a plane. I remember that, Matt. I remember that. Yeah. Yeah, well done.

Thank you. And we're celebrating this book, even though I first wrote it in 2012 because it's republished. It's been out of print for a year or two, and it's republished now through the Theology of the Body Institute Press. And it's exactly, it's called Fill These Hearts, God's Sex and the Universal Longing, and it's exactly about everything we've been talking about today, how to direct those longings towards the Lord. Here's all you need to know to sell it. Peter Crave says, revolutionary, liberating, life-changing. How many books deserve these labels? Very few. For many

readers, this one will. I love that man. He's a good, good man, isn't he? Yeah. So we have a discount for Matt, Fred, Pints with Aquinas listeners. If you go to theologythebody.com, go to our bookstore and purchase Fill These Hearts. When you're checking out, there's a little line there, and just type in Hearts. Type in Hearts and you'll get a 20% discount because you heard about it on Pines of Aquinas. Thank you. And it's really beautifully laid out. I was afraid when you guys said you published it that maybe it's very spacious and beautiful. We have a very good designer and we want it to have that very specific look and feel.

Yeah. Yeah, we have a very professional team with our publisher, our publishing now, Theology of the Body Institute Press. Anything else you want to say before we leave? Yes, I want to share a new initiative just to help your listeners to be aware of it. You and I were talking very briefly about it before we got on the air. We live in interesting times with what's going on in Rome, and it has underscored, in my mind and heart, the need to ensure the legacy that John Paul II gave us. And earlier we were talking in our conversation about my belief and the

belief of many, many people who are the first generation to take up John Paul's vision. Many, many people believe that we are at another moment in church history like St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa. But how did that become part of the fabric of the church? By people who believed in it, took it up, and passed on his legacy. So we have started a new non-profit foundation that we are calling the St. John Paul II Legacy Foundation. And the goal of this foundation is to ensure that the work of promoting the legacy of John Paul II continues after my generation. There are many people of the JP2 generation who have given their lives to teaching and promoting his legacy. Well guess what, I'm 55. I got

maybe, I don't know, 25, 30 years left of doing this. That's not a lot of time. I've been doing it for 30 already. And there are a lot of people my generation who were not gonna be around forever, and neither are you. You've got maybe another 10 years on me or something. But we want to ensure that there is an endowment to fund the next generation and the next generation and the next generation to get this message out there. So we are raising money to ensure the legacy of John Paul II continues. And our goal is to have a multimillion dollar endowment

to enable it to happen. And it will go to fund scholarships at places like the Theology of the Body Institute, but not only the Theology of the Body Institute, any organization is eligible for the funds that will come through this foundation if their mission is to promote the legacy of St. John Paul II. And we have a board, very mature board, I would say, that has been appointed to discern that and eventually when the money is there, you could apply for grants to ensure. And we want to sponsor...you know how people will, like a record company, will sponsor an aspiring artist that they see has talent. We want to be in a position to say, this 25-year-old guy or gal has great potential to be an apostle of John Paul II's vision. We want to sponsor

that person and sponsor that person and help that person to grow a ministry and to get this message out there. So you can, we'll have the website in the description below. Yeah, in the description below. Thank you very much for coming on. You are welcome, Matt. Thanks for having me. It's always an honor and a privilege. And I look forward next time to being at your new studio in Florida. Thanks. Bless you, brother.