Pints With Aquinas - St. Joseph as a Model for Fatherhood (Devin Schadt)

Episode Date: January 16, 2025

Devin Schadt is a dedicated husband, father, and co-founder of the Fathers of St. Joseph, an apostolate committed to revitalizing authentic fatherhood. As an acclaimed author and speaker, Devin has written influential books such as "Joseph’s Way: 80 Days to Unlocking Your Power as a Father" and "CUSTOS: Total Consecration Through Saint Joseph," which explore the spirituality of St. Joseph and the profound impact of fatherhood. His insightful talks and writings guide men in their roles as fathers, drawing from Catholic teachings and personal experiences. Devin's passion for fostering strong families and deepening faith makes him a compelling voice on fatherhood and spiritual growth. Devin's Links: https://fathersofstjoseph.org/ 🍺 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/  

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Ontario. As many of you know Pints with Aquinas is building a new studio and we would love to ask your help to build the studio. It's gonna cost at least 38 grand for the electronics and new cameras and lights and things and so paintswithaquinas.com slash studio if you if you want to support us people have said they do want it which is just so lovely. Let's be honest I'm gonna do it regardless. If you support me or not I'm gonna figure this out but if you do want to support us go to www.plaintswithaquinas.com slash studio and there's like different levels you can give and we give you free things in return like rosaries and books

and things like that so if you want to help us we'd really appreciate it. Thanks so much. My wife she's so good she's like let's do do it. Wow. Crazy. That's incredible. She's nuts. And look at what's happened. And face for a dear. Hmm. Faith and a bit of crazy. Hmm. I moved. Oh, I did, too. I think I was trying to. Yeah. Hmm. We're ready. Devon Sharp, we're not even going to pretend that we didn't just record 20 minutes. And then it all got fried.

Someone doesn't like this. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's an enemy. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah.

A lot of what you have written and speak about has to do with It's about men. It's about helping men become sons and husbands and fathers And you've said that this is extremely important you think maybe one of the most important things. Yeah, what is it when you look around the world? What is it that? What what is this absence look like to you? And why is it that most of the world doesn't even consider the absence, let alone mourn it? Oh, well, there's a lot of reasons for that, but let's just, let's just paint the picture.

If statistically, so 90% of youths in prisons come from fatherless homes. Children from fatherless homes are 32 times more likely to run away from home, six times more likely to commit suicide. If you have a single mom raising her kids the poverty level is almost 50%. Dropout rate is what 70% of high school. I think no actually there's a 70% probability if the father's still in the home that the child will graduate. But obesity, depression, there's like 70% chance that the child will suffer from those things without a dad in the house. Columbia researchers found that children from two-parent households who have a strained relationship with their father are 68%

more likely to get into drugs, alcohol, pre-marital sex. And then I think Pew Research found that dads have twice as much power in helping their teens stave off pre-marital sex. And then there was a fascinating statistic that came out years ago. I don't know if it really still applies, but if the mother was the first to convert to Christianity, there was a 17% probability that the family would follow. But if the father was the first to convert to Christianity, there's a 17% probability that the family would follow. But if the father was the first to convert to Christianity, there's a 93% probability that the family would follow.

All this says is that the human father is the epicenter. He is the foundation because society goes by way of the family and the family goes by way of the family and the family goes by way of the Father. If you want to change the world, you get that guy, you change him. And because if we want to convert the world, the church must be, I guess, renewed and the church is in desperate need of renewal. I think it's starting to happen though. And if the church is to be renewed, the microchurch of the domestic family must be restored to

what it really is called to be, which is the icon, a living icon of the Trinity, self-giving love. And if that's to happen, then marriages need to be revitalized, but that can only happen if the man is the husband of father, the leader, if he is like basically a father in the image of God the Father like Saint Joseph. in the image of God the Father like Saint Joseph. So my belief is when I look around at the landscape, what I see is men who men will work hard. Men are goal-oriented. They are doers. A lot of times they're achievers, but they're shooting for the wrong target. And you know, I don't care how much I shoot for the wrong target, hit dead center every time, I'm still not hitting the target.

And that's what we're doing. We're achievement, fame, wealth. These are the things that men are, or just getting the attaboy at work, which we all liked. But human respect is shifting sand upon which no man should build his house. Because you might like me today,

and so I live my life to get you to like me. But then if you shift, you don't like the way I dress, the way I act, the performance, whatever I'm doing at work, then I need to shift from my identity to please you. And then pretty soon I keep shifting to where I'm no longer who I really am, and my identity is meant to lead me to my destiny. Who God created me to be is going to help me to achieve what he wants me to be for all eternity and I'm going to bring others with me. So when a father is checked out, let's just put this way, there's a great study. Oh man, this just came to mind. There's a great study. It's the longest study on human beings that's ever been done consecutively. It's done by Harvard. Robert Waldinger, it's the largest TED Talk ever, 45 million.

And Robert Waldinger is the fourth lead facilitator on this study. It began in 1938 during the Great Depression, and they had two subset groups. One was sophomores at Harvard, and the other one were inner city kids in Boston, very poor. And they started following these kids. There was 724 of them. And they followed them throughout their lifetime, the trajectory of their life, their marriages, their relationships, their kids, their kids, kids. That study is still going on today. There's still 64 participants who are still

alive from that original study, and there's now thousands now participating from the outgrowth of it, from the people's families. But this is what's so fascinating about it. They were like, what makes people live longer? What gives them greater health? What are the greatest predictors of like death or early death or disease, all these things? and they were saying what do people want the most well Millennials 80% of them their life school is to be rich 50% is to be famous studying these men achievement wealth fame a lot of those guys it brought them sorrow and loneliness, even if they achieved it.

But the one thing, the one factor that was a predictor in longevity for health and life was relationship. If you had one solid, loving, caring relationship, even if you bicker with that person that Relationship would prove to give you additional years in life and a healthier outcome and your brain would function better what they found is one out of five people suffer from loneliness now and They're finding that toxic loneliness Actually declines break brain cognitive, you know functionality And it also causes health problems. It's like toxic loneliness is...

What does that mean? What's toxic loneliness? So it's where you have no friends and you feel isolated. And if we believe the stats, Pew Research just came out saying that 15% of men have toxic loneliness. They don't have any friends. So would toxic loneliness be defined against loneliness in that it's not just occasionally or moods of loneliness, as it were,

but kind of deep set ongoing feeling of... I think it's a dynamic where you get trapped inside of it where you can't get out because you you have no friends therefore you Forget how to socialize or you're not practicing at that and then you don't take the risk to do that You're afraid people will betray you or you become suspicious and therefore you become trapped in this dark room of self And then you begin to have the deprecation the disparaging comments about yourself the discouragement that leads ultimately to despair but The disparaging comments about yourself the discouragement that leads ultimately to despair but Toxic loneliness the effect on the neurological system body is the equivalent of smoking a half a pack of cigarettes a day

It's insane. So what you're saying is if I have a good relationship, I could smoke a cigar a day and I'll even out You'll be okay. Good. You'll be okay because it heals. Yeah, the relationship heals. Yeah, it's wild. Yeah, so it covers a multitude of sins Yeah, friendship. Yeah love and friendship, right? So I'm thinking I keep coming back to this line of Christ's to you know Satan has desired to sift you as wheat. Yes. What a bastard Well, and and and look at what he did with Peter. He isolated him Yeah, Peter sinned and he went out and wept bitterly. Judas, isolation. That's where the devil works on us. And this is why I bring this up is, the most difficult thing for men is relationship. Because we are goal-oriented. We're solution-based.

And so you give me a project, I'm on. I'm gonna finish that project. We're gonna do it right. We're gonna watch a ton of YouTube videos, whatever it takes to get that job done. But a relationship isn't a project, it's a person. And relationships are hard because I don't know how to fix my wife. I don't know how to fix my children. And that's actually not the problem.

That's actually the reality is you're not supposed to fix anyone. What you're supposed to do is actually enter in and love them and give of yourself. And then there's a flourishing is you're not supposed to fix anyone. What you're supposed to do is actually enter in and love them and give of yourself. And then there's a flourishing in you and in them. And that's what we call family and marriage, at least the way it's supposed to be the way that God designed it. But this is what's so interesting about that study from Harvard is that we're meant for

relationship and why, and you know this better than I do, but God is eternal relationship. Three persons so self-giving in their love, they're literally in the other one. And then it's the exitus retitus. From God we are born, we are created. And then he wants us to return back ultimately to that beatific vision, to that relationship so we we can participate in it for all eternity. But it goes by means of the human relationship. So we have to learn how to have a relationship with God now. We have to learn how to have a relationship with our wives now, our children now. That is the context for sanctity. That's the context for salvation. That's the context for holiness is the relationship. When we don't enter into those relationships and we're workaholics or we're trying to achieve fame

or wealth, we miss the target. And we wake up 50 years kicking that can down the road and we're wondering why we're divorced or we're wondering why our wife hates us or we're wondering why our kids have don't talk to us anymore You know We we spend We spend the health of our youth To get wealthy and then when we get older we spend our wealth to get healthy again. Oh We we work So that we can achieve by neglecting those who we work for and then when we achieve and we're older, they neglect us.

The greatest investment we have right now is in relationship. Friendship, marriage, children, God. Keep going. That's incredible. So how I learned this, right? Wow, it just, I said keep going now and interrupt you. Excellent. Hell, eternal isolation. You nailed it.

Heaven, eternal communion. Oh man, that was so, back again to the theology body, that, that truth right there I just remember thinking I actually will be able to participate in God like I'm gonna give myself to God for all eternity like for the first time in my life I can look into someone's eyes and have no hidden agenda no shame no worry that I'm not gonna be accepted God is gonna enter into me and allow me to enter into him with self-giving love and with all these other people that there's gonna be this unity and there's gonna be this huge party and bliss. Why wouldn't I want that? And then I realized no way out, darkness, pure accusation. And a desire for it, in a way, right?

Because the fire of hell, this is why I believe, I don't know if this is true, but you've got three fires. You've got the fire of hell, the fire of purgatory, the fire of heaven. The seraphim, the highest of the angels, the burning ones. Is that what that means? Yeah. That word? I think so, yeah. Awesome.

Yeah, I hope so. The way you pronounced it made me think you knew the etymology. I'm trying to sound smart. Yeah. The seraphim, okay. But they're the burning ones, so they're literally on fire with God's love. Lucifer, the light bearer, was literally on fire with God's love for a time. So in heaven, the, okay, the scent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles with fire.

That fire is a, yes, a purifying fire, but it's a fire of love that ignites. And it just is, you know, when you feel something for your wife or that fire, you can, it's great. Purgatory, as we believe, was it, is it 1 Corinthians chapter 3 verse 15, Paul talks about on that day, the day of judgment, we will pass through fire, and that fire will disclose our works, straw, hay, and then wood, but then some that are more durable that will pass through. Those are the works of charity. It is the fire of the Holy Spirit that burns us, that tries us, that purifies us, so that we can burn with eternal fire

For the Lord for all eternity won't hurt. It'll be joy. It'll be gladness. It'll be charity But hell I believe is that it's all around us Because God is still present. That's why it exists It's all around us, but it's a torturing fact that I refuse to cave in I refuse to give in to the Holy spirit. I refuse to say not my will, but yours will be done. And it's interesting because when Jesus says there'll be wailing and grinding of teeth, but then he talks about buying that guy.

Remember the guy who didn't have the white garment, buying them hand and foot. It's because hell really like St. Teresa of Avila said, she, she had, it was, her spot was like a cupboard hole in the wall, which she couldn't move. The idea is, is you are stuck in isolation with no movement. We can't ascend. The gravity of hell, of self-idolatry, it just, it weighs us down so much. It is the greatest gravity. Whereas the angels and the saints, they fly because they're not held down by self-idolatry. As Tristan said, they are able to fly because they take themselves lightly. Right. I wish I would take myself more lightly, for sure. But that's all born out of wounds

from my youth, you know? And that's the big struggle. I think that, I think men are so wounded. We live in a generation of men who were raised by men who thought, well, let's just put it this way, we had the two world wars and those men ended up coming back bearing their emotions. It was too painful. And then, then there's the generations after that, that because they were raised by fathers that were burying their emotions, they didn't know how to do that. They didn't know how to be good fathers. And so they, you know, invested themselves in work and initiatives. And then you have radical feminists and pornography that all comes. And then you've got these generations now of children who grew up with massive father wounds.

And they don't, and this is fundamental to everything, is trusting God the Father. If you don't, okay, so trust is the base, we're talking about relationship. Trust is the basis of every great relationship. If you don't trust me, there's no relationship. If I don't trust you, there's no relationship. You trust me to be here. I trust you to invite me here, and it's all gonna be good. In a marriage, it's so much deeper. With our children, it's so much deeper. But if we don't trust God the Father, then we're not passing on the trust that we should have in that relationship. We're just passing on suspicion, doubts,

using, objectification. And I think this is why men kind of tend to go to two polar extremes in leadership, abdication or domination. So we see with Adam, abdication. You know, he's there, he's been given the commands by the Lord to protect and defend the garden. And in the Hebrew, the commands were to till and keep the garden of ad and shamar, which literally are cherish and protect and Garden in Hebrew literature song of songs as we know it the garden is a woman in clothes a fountain seal

She's a garden so God is saying really implicitly in the text You were called to protect and provide for her and be the priest because where was Eve when God gave all the commands? Not to eat from the tree of knowledge, good and evil, all that stuff. She didn't even exist. She's a twinkle in Adam's rib, you know, so she didn't even exist. So he's saying you've got to transmit these commands to her. Then what takes place in the garden is all this shifting. What's going on?

Is she upset because Adam's not stepping in when the Nahash, the serpent, the beast is intimidating her? And she's like, I'm not getting any affirmation from him. He's not protecting me. He's not sacrificing for me. He's abdicating at his post. I'll lure him. I'll entice him. And I think that's the dynamic we have today a lot of times is when women don't get the sacrificial love of the new Adam, Jesus Christ, through us, then what they do is they dress provocatively. They put themselves on show. They do things to try to win that love by being used and manipulated and objectified. I was at a

conference in Damascus, the Damascus camp in Ohio, huge, but all these young, young adults, men and women. And it's just a great event. And I remember at one point during the event, I said, women, what do you want in a man? If would you want massively handsome, wealthy, but he's probably not going to sacrifice for it. Maybe he's a little bit into himself. Or would you want a guy who's adequately attractive? You'd find him attractive adequately, but he's into you and he would sacrifice for you. And I couldn't believe it, the reaction.

The women started screaming, sacrifice, sacrifice. And all the adequately moderately looking guys were like, yeah, I can do my best. And one was like, the second one, yeah. And I was like, and it just really hit me. I'm like, man, women really want the sacrificial love of the new Adam They don't want the abdicating pusillanimous You know

Not love, you know selfishness of the old Adam and it's interesting My wife and I were trying to write this book and we've been interviewing women and we were asking them, you know We've been interviewing women and we were asking them, you know, what, what makes a man appear weak and not strong in your estimation? In whose estimation? In the woman's estimation, a lack of leadership, laziness, unwillingness to enter into the fray to protect her from the children, to discipline the children, to lead the children and unwillingness to protect her in front of his friends. That came up many times.

Just like, yeah, because so like, a lot of times men will make jokes about their wives. So the old ball and chain or, oh yeah, you know, I'm not getting any from her or whatever, you know, blah, blah, blah. These women, they feel so betrayed and vulnerable because their men are not protecting them. And the one thing that we found is that what women want to be protected from the most is us. Our insecurities are inferiority complexes.

Just like we talked about earlier, weighing them down with our emotional needs need for validation and affirmation and attention. And man, I'm the biggest enemy to my wife, besides the devil. Or I can be Jesus Christ to her. I can bear her burdens. You do this with your wife. We are called to bear our wives burdens as our own. That's challenging, especially when the burdens are heavy. I mean, my wife has incredible challenges right now. And there's a temptation sometimes to be like Adam in the garden and to flee from it

or to bury myself in projects or to, no, she needs me. And if I leave her undefended, what happens? Every man, if you want to be a real man, the context for becoming a real man is how you live in relationship with woman. Do you objectify her? Do you use her? Do you lay down your life for her? Do you uphold her dignity? This is the context, especially in marriage. That is a context for the forging of the man. No woman can make a man a man, but God uses marriage in the relationship with woman as a context to forge us into real men because we have to learn to set the pace

of self-giving love, to initiate self-giving love. Adam didn't initiate self-giving love. Jesus Christ did. Both were in gardens. You know all this. But both were in gardens. And the night of Jesus' betrayal, I love the text. It says, he went forward. He went forward and met the adversary. All he did was he stepped forward. Adam didn't step forward. He set the pace of self-giving love. He said, take them, or take me, not them. Let them go. And then he did that for the bride the church and then he set the pace of self-giving love all the way to Calvary So effectively that for the last two millennia that bride has followed that pace That's if we want our wives to love us to think we're the greatest

You know to to uphold us in highem, all we have to do is sacrifice. All we have to do is set the pace of self-giving love in little ways and begin to show them that without bragging or complaining. Mason- Yeah, yeah. It's so apparent that women want men who are strong and who lead, and it's apparent from what the woman desires and from what the man desires Yeah, suppose It's three in the morning and you hear a loud crash inside the house and you look at your wife You're like, could you go?

Yeah, the woman would loathe you and you would loathe yourself Yes, if a woman gets down on her knee and proposes marriage to a man, this is disordered. Yeah. If I lay around dreaming of my wife holding me, there's something disordered. Oh my gosh. But no, I desire to hold her. I'm the giver of the embrace. Yes.

Now there might be a time where I lose my parents or my child and I'm in a place of trauma or something and my wife gives the embrace to hold me. I'm not trying to go to the other extreme. I'm just saying it's a natural desire the man wants to give, the man wants to lead. You ask a man, how do you want to be remembered? And he doesn't say, well, I want to say to my wife, well, you talk to our kids because I just don't want to be not liked by them. You know, like the man wants to fucking crush it. Man, a friend of mine, he and his wife kind of wore the pants in the family and they were listening to some talk or something as if they're on family vacation. And it was kind of about spiritual leadership, the manner. And she said to him, as they were driving, she goes, you know,

I want you to be the spiritual leader from now on. I want you to lead our family. And he, he was like, kind of concerned, but at the same time, he's like, yeah, okay, cool. You know, I'll try to step in that. But then, you know, he's like, I wonder what this is all about. And then it came time for them to stop to eat. And the kids are clamoring. They're like, I want to go here. I want to go there. I want to go here. And he says, mom's going to decide. And she goes, no, I'm not. You are. And he said, and this is what's hilarious. He actually began to sweat because he realized

that some kids are not going to like the decision. Some kids might, but over the years, what he had done is he placed all that burden on his wife to be unguarded and unshielded for everything. And I think that women, so when women that Kent State study, they're looking for the chivalrous man, the man with wealth and muscles, and we need to talk about that a little bit, I think too, but that Kent State study showed that radical feminist women even want the wealth and the muscles. They want a man to lead and to protect

and provide for them. But when they don't get that, that's where the breakdown happens is there's resentment in marriage and all the kind of, I mean, yeah, the division. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah. Yeah. And we'll let women talk to women about why they shouldn't be controlling horrible wives to their husbands because they're a controlling horrible wives. You know that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. We'll let women talk to women about that, but it's not a very masculine trait to sit around complaining about wives and women and how they're failing. Right?

Yeah. So let's talk about how we can kick ass and chew bubble gum and take names, right? Because enough's enough. I'm tired of it. I, I, I, the other day I sat down with my kids and I said, oh, let's, I'll show you this show that your mom and I used to watch when we were kids. It was that old cartoon called The Flintstones. Oh, right. We had it on for a minute before my wife and I were like, this is feminist trash.

You've got two bitchy women dominating two dopey men. Both my wife and I were horrified. Yeah, we were conditioned by all that. This is the crap we watched. Yeah. Now that's due in part to the failure of men. Like you might say that feminism is a result culturally to the weakness of men in the way that a wife hates her husband

as a result of his failure to lead her. You know, but you could also put the blame on women for the way they manipulate and are horrible as well. But we were, we were, we were absolutely. Stood in that pot of dopey men and then, yeah, unhappy women. Yeah. And then I know for me, I was raised, I just feel like effeminately in the sense that. The only time I could bear my heart to another person was my drunk friends. You know, you'd have too many drinks and then you'd start telling them how you love them and crap like that. I love you, man. But a lot of the time, a lot of us men, we had to take our heart to women, right?

Like to friends who were girls who wouldn't laugh at us when we kind of like opened up with them. Like we weren't taught how to be men. Yeah. And for me, I got into my marriage and I just brought those, that poverty with me. And I think I said to my wife, like, make me okay. And I think because of her childhood,

I know women are different My beautiful wife. I mean she in her family was the one who made everything okay You know, and so she did she sought to make me okay and I and I let her Mmm, which is just such a disordered way and I would say about 15 years into our marriage. It stopped working Yeah, I can work for a while like it worked as long as I was looking to her in a sort of weakness and she was okay. But then like the Lord started to heal and sometimes healing hurts and it feels like you're dying actually. There's no way this is good.

Yeah. I'm afraid. But as the Lord went to work on us, I would say that's beginning to, I fail at it. She fails at it to like bear her, bear her load. Right. And that's been so freaking beautiful. Our marriage has never been better than when I can stand up like a man and receive her and cherish her, protect her from myself, as you said, from my own insecurities. If you don't mind me asking, I don't know a lot about your marriage.

I've never met your wife. When you guys got married, how did your, maybe they didn't, maybe you had received a lot of healing by that point, but how did your disorders play into each other and how did the Lord heal that? Yeah. So we, we dated seven years. I was very insecure had an inferiority complex I was like I said, I was five foot one in high school. I graduated five one one and a half hundred fourteen pounds You know, I was very small, but I played football baseball all that started but it was just this overcompensation Always trying to be tough trying to do things the bigger guys were doing trying to prove myself But deep inside because of my relationship with my mom, we had a very volatile relationship, very physical relationship. And out of that, there was a

lot of pain and insecurity. And so when I met Kim in high school, she was beautiful. She's like six inches taller than I actually she's five foot 11. And she's just beautiful. And I was like, wow, she's it. And she was attracting me because I seemed very confident, right? And arrogant. But that was all a ruse because I was dealing with my own insecurities. We broke up off and on many times because I would out of my, the way it works, at least it worked with me was it wasn't enough that I had her because I would begin to feel insecure and wondering, well, is this an accident? Do other girls like me? Am I still attractive? And so then,

you know, I'd look for that, right? Even though I had this incredible woman, a woman that could never really get outside of God's grace. And I didn't realize the gift that God had given me in her. And it was all meant to be. God designed it and we know that now, but I messed around with that for seven years and, you know, doing stupid things, stealing and thieving and partying and womanizing. And I remember, so basically I was at, she broke up with me. Finally she said, I cannot take any more. This is, I was about ready to graduate art school, commercial art school. I think I was about 23. She said, I cannot take any more. This is, I was about, I was about ready to graduate art school, commercial art school. I think I was about 23.

She said, I don't want anything ever to do with you again. I hate your guts. And for her, she's so sweet, so kind for her to say that it was bad. So she, uh, she broke up with me and in that time, we, I don't, can't remember if it was a half a year or whatever it was, I was just devastated because she was the only person in my entire life who actually believed in me and loved me. And I threw her away. I pushed her away. And so now I was isolated and alone.

And I remember I was living in this apartment, we lived across from this complex where special needs adults lived, you know, who were kind of like in this kind of halfway thing where they have some supervision, but they're trying to get them to live on their own. And I have a special needs daughter now. So it's kind of funny how this all plays out. But there was this guy one night after,

so she's left, and I worked at a clothing store. Instead of washing clothes, I would buy clothes. So I had two rooms full of clothes all over the floor and I'm like, yeah, I gotta get my life together. I gotta get my act together. So I go to the store, I get hefty garbage bags and I fill 14 hefty large garbage bags of clothes and I'm stuffing them in the car.

And I go down three flights a stair, middle winter, and I've got a huge window, bay window, on my apartment, third story, windows on the stairs, and then I get outside and this guy from the upstairs window of this apartment, special needs guy, he's staring at me the whole time. In my window, up the stairs, and I'm ticked I have to do laundry because I'm going to go to the laundry man late at night and just monopolize all the machines, you know? Yeah, wash it all at once so I can get out of there quick, dry.

And he's staring at me the whole time, seven trips up and down, two bags at a time, and it's frigid out. And finally I had it with this guy staring at me. And I put the last bag in and I gave him the bird and I drove off, did my laundry. That was in the middle of winter, probably December. It was May, I think, April, May, beautiful spring day. I was coming out of my apartment and there he was again

and his window was cracked open. And I'm like, oh, not this guy, I was heading to work. And he says, Hey buddy, sorry about the other day. And I was like, what? Hey, no problem, man. No problem. And I got in the car and I went to turn on the car and I just sat there realizing that up to this point in my life, I went to turn on the car and I just sat there realizing that up to this point in my life, this is what I did. I trashed the people around me. I hurt them. I, you know, use them, manipulated them. And then they take the brunt and they feel like it's their fault or their life is miserable

because of it. And so that was like an opening. Because I think I was possessed. I think I was obsessed or something. I was in a life of massive darkness, like I said, stealing and doing all sorts of vandalization, all sorts of stuff. That was a little opening, like I need love. I need something here.

I'm missing something. And I would go out, shoot hoops at this parking lot to get Kim off my mind. Cause I was suicidal at this point. Um, I was suicidal throughout my youth or yeah, I had that temptation or tendency, but now it was really dark. There was no hope because she was the only person that really loved me and it was gone and it was deep. And I was shooting hoops out there just trying to get my mind off things and the ball caromed off the backboard and I grabbed it and I was looking over the ball at this Catholic church, St. Edward's. I was like, huh, I haven't been in a Catholic church in years. And you know, it was back in the days when Catholic churches were open, you know,

back in the middle ages. And so I, I walk over to the church, put down the basketball and I walk into the church. And as I'm, it's dark and I start to walk up the aisle, I have no idea why I'm there. And this is totally real. I'm not making this up this weight a Physical weight I can feel it just comes up on me, but it's a good weight and it drives me in a sense to my knees And I just begin to weep and and I didn't know Jesus I didn't understand God or anything like that, but I just remember said whoever you are I I can't do this anymore is before Jesus take the wheel that stupid song came out But I'm like I'm driving my car in the ditch. I'm spinning my wheels

I said this I you have got to drive this car You've got to help me and at that moment also this music comes on and I'm like this is a sigh from heaven You know, I mean and there's this like 150 year old woman up in the balcony She decided come in practice. So I'm like, okay, so I sheepishly move into the pew and I continue to commit my life in whatever weird way I could to this God, Jesus Christ. And then Kim calls me about a month later, and I'm struggling with like all the sins of the past, trying to get rid of friends, trying to, you know, start to listen. I started listening to Moody Bible Radio, you know, and just trying to get rid of friends, trying to, you know, start to listen to Moody Bible radio, you know, and just trying to find answers. What is this all about? And she calls me, she's like, I hear you're going back home, I hear you're leaving, you know, after I graduated.

I'd like to see you one more time just so we can end on a good note. Okay, cool. But back in my mind, I'm like, man, it'd be so great to get back together with her. That was not her intention at all and So we went out great night and great conversation and I'm like man. I love her. I just I just want her back and So I drop her off at her apartment and she goes to get out of the car she opens a door and She just starts crying and she said I promised myself that I would hate you forever and she said, I don't know something's happened to you, what happened to you, what changed and I said I surrendered my life to Jesus Christ and she said I want that too

and then she gets out and she closes the door she goes into her apartment I'm like that's it, And then she gets out and she closes the door. She goes into her apartment. I'm like, that's it. That's it. And so I go back, I move back home. I don't hear from her for months. And then finally she calls and she says, do you think you could, you still have about three hours

wait, do you think you'd come up and see me and we could talk? And man, God gave her back to me. I remember during that time, just praying like, Lord, if you can't give her back to me, give me a woman that I will love more. And he did. He gave me her. She was unbelievable. And she has been like she's the invisible power, you know, God is, of course, but she's the invisible. I've written 22 books. I've, you know, I've, I've, we've raised a special needs child. I recovered from cancer. I mean, you know, she, she's walked every bit of this

with me. She is the power behind me. Behind every good man is a greater woman. You know that. And she is it. It's definitely true in my life. I don't know if it's true always, but it's definitely true in my life.

She has been, she has been the fuel, the power, you know, the confidence to do stupid things, you know, and to do those stupid things well, you know, and so yeah, so so after that then it was she started that was where the virtue starts kicking in the effort to try to find out who Jesus is and to leverage issue with the Catholic school her entire life and I remember starting to get into my faith I came back to the church after church hopping, trying to figure out if I should be Baptist or Methodist or whatever. A girl tried taking me to her church and stuff like that, and while I was broke up with Kim. And, you know, I was just, you know, after I had my conversion and I just, I remember,

oh, yeah. So I went back home and I thought, you know, I think I need to go to confession. I didn't even really understand confession. And I went to this. I only went to Catholic school two years and went to that priest and I was confessing my life story basically to him, all the thieving, all the stuff I did. And it was serious stuff is a horrific confession. Actually all the stuff was coming over my lips and I'm just like, I can't believe I'm saying this. And then when he absolved me, literally this incredible weight, I felt it just was lifted

off of me. And he was absolved me. I said, stop, stop, stop. Something's happened. This weight has just come off me. He says, that is Jesus taking your burden and your sin upon himself. And I'm like, oh my gosh. So I knew that I was supposed to be Catholic. So I went back to that church, St. Edward's, where I had that experience. And I called my first Holy Communion. I went to Mass and I received our Lord. And in that moment, and I'm not making this up, I received our Lord. And there was this burning sensation all the way into my chest and it was a good burning. Seraphim, the fiery ones, it was God's spirit. I couldn't even get around the corner that front pew without, I just broke down. I just broke down

and I knew the Eucharist was real like that. Those were huge graces for me. Huge graces. But Kim, you know, it wasn't like it was immediate for me, like where I was just like, oh, I'm virtuous. And I had to deal with so much and I still do. But it but God had me secure. He was like, okay, now we can work together on you. And I'm going to make you into this son that you're going to you're going to be proud of and I'm going to be proud of.

You're going to be proud of and I'm going to be proud of. You're going to please me. And it's just been a wild journey ever since, you know, with cancer and a special needs child and now my wife's got a serious chronic illness that looks like it could be deadly. So you know, it's just, it's amazing, you know, the journey that Lord has us on, you know. You've done a lot of men's ministry. What happens to a man in his marriage when he doesn't believe that he is a beloved son? What does he do without that knowledge?

It's disastrous. So he will turn to his work to gain affirmation that he's good enough. So he become a workaholic or he will turn to pornography, or to adulterous situations in order to be affirmed. He will either dominate his wife and his children, like the machismo, the heavy hand, or he will abdicate and just become a video gamer, or just check out and booze it up with his buddies all the time and So there's so many effects

He will chase dreams that have nothing to do with the relationships that are most important his life He'll wake up 50 years from now. Let this happens all time I'll give talks at conferences or retreats and they'll be an older guy or several older guys. They'll come up to me just bawling and they'll say, where were you 25 years ago? Because they've invested their life in all these things that they thought would make them happy and fill that gaping wound of the fathers that the fathers love and nothing fills it. But on the flip side. What did you say earlier? They spend their health.

Yeah. Okay. So men will spend their, they, they will spend their health of their youth to gain wealth. But then later on in life, they will spend the wealth that they've obtained in hopes to regain that health. They will work for the family that they're neglecting only later on to have that family neglect them. This is how it ironically plays out. It all boils down to this. Really, I think when I started getting into all this and I discovered St. Joseph, he was really pivotal in all this because he is the exemplar father.

I realize a lot of people say there's not much about him in scripture. There's a ton. There's so much there. And that's what our whole spirituality, the father of St. Joseph, is based off of his four pillars, embrace silence, embrace woman, embrace a child, embrace our charitable authority. But what I found though is this, if I could put in one statement, one simple statement, we men, we fathers, we are called to be the face of the Father that our children cannot see.

We're called to be the voice of the Father that our children cannot hear. We're called to be the touch of the Father that our children cannot feel. As Malachi chapter 4 verse 6, that great prophecy, God through the prophet Malachi says, in the end, before that great and terrible day where I will accursed the earth basically, he says, I will turn the hearts of fathers toward their children and the hearts of children toward their fathers lest I come and strike the land with a curse. God is giving us His game plan for salvation, sanctification for the kingdom of God. What is it? Fathers, turn

your gaze of love and affection and attention, yes, discipline, but properly speaking, toward your children so that they will not only turn their gaze of love and trust back toward you, but toward me, the one whom they represent, the Heavenly Father. See, we are the link between heaven and earth. We're the link between God the Father and our children and our wives. We're called to be the face of God the Father to the world around us. And there's a vacuum, a massive void,

and a hole in this area. And why? Because we don't wanna go home and be St. Joseph. That's what happened to me. After I had cancer, a friend of mine, so what happened was our daughter, Anne Marie, she was born at 28 weeks premature. She was like, you know, basically a little under six months in the womb.

What child was this? Third child. Third child, all women, all girls. She's now 24. But Anna Marie, she's born 28 weeks premature and she was tiny. She was like this. Her leg was the size of my index finger. And she was in the NICU unit for about a month. And then she came home. We had our low pressure sanitary, everything was fine. Her digestive system, her lungs were all developed

and working. And then within five days, she started having a fever. She was struggling breathing. So we brought her back to the hospital, but we couldn't readmit her to the neonatal intensive care unit because he'd infect the other babies or she would. So we admitted to the pediatric unit, young parents. We didn't know anything.

We were very sick ourselves. And so she was recovering. The doctor said she was recovering. We were at home. The family, we came to visit her one day because we had to keep the kids away from her, the wife, because we were so sick. RSV. She had a strand of RSV.

She was recovering. Everything was good. I came into the hospital while the kids were in the car at the moment to see the nurse coughing on her and she was taking care of a boy who had a much stronger strand of RSV. She took a nosedive. She had 10 hours of apnea. They'd undetected. They didn't, they didn't detect it. Suffered, started having seizures, a hypoxic event, not enough oxygen was transmitted to her brain. And then they finally got the life support team in there. Manual life support, medivacter out to Children's Hospital.

I drove that night a couple hours to get there. By the time my wife got there the next morning, Anna Marie was swollen from the Lasix. She was on the ventilator, the machine's breathing for her. She's basically almost dead. And my wife comes in and she just breaks down because Anna Ray is pretty much unrecognizable. And she said, I just need you to come home and be a husband and father.

And I'm like, but that's what I'm doing. And she was like, I was working around the clock. So I was in part-time youth ministry, which everybody knows is full-time youth ministry. I was working around the clock doing new sets for Fox News and PBS shows and and trying to make a name for myself. And I was I was in the process of launching my own graphic design business. I was just all over the place. I wasn't home.

I wasn't a father. I wasn't it. I didn't even know how to be one. And when she said that, it was just like, oh my gosh. I just want to pause here and just say to every husband who's watching this, who is currently wondering what to do with the guilt and the accusation they might be feeling, because I'm feeling it, repent. Don, accept the love of the Father. Yes. Because as you're saying this, I've just got so many examples of how I, I just abandoned my duty.

I abandoned my post and let my wife. Matt, I love you. I love you. You're so humble. We're all like that. But this is the great thing. This if I play this out a little bit, there's so much hope in this. I mean, this is where the solution is offered by God. There's so much hope. So she says this, and then I'm like, okay, I'm going to try this. I quit working all these hours. I give up on my business

launch. I give up on youth mystery. I literally bury myself in my home to try to be a good father and a good husband. I don't know what the heck I'm doing. And I was languishing. And I didn't want to, I didn't have the dream of being a father and having a big family, like all these Steubenville grads and all these kids do. I just, I wanted to have a beautiful wife and have sex with her, really. I mean, I think that's why I got married initially, you know?

And I'm like, oh my gosh, this is more than I thought. Well, a friend of mine, he noticed I was languishing and he leads these pilgrimages to Medjugorje. He says, I'm gonna pay for your trip. So I said, well, I got a friend who I'd like you to take too. It was Keith, Keith Nestor. So we both go to Medjugorje with this guy. And I just had cancer, thyroid cancer.

They removed my thyroid. And each year you have to go through this. I Hope this isn't too much But basically you have to go through these testing to find out the cancer still there and so they take put you on a low Iodine diet, which basically means you cannot eat anything but raw vegetables But they take you off of the ins of the the synthetic thyroid hormone So by week three, you're not feeling your appendages. Your lips are numb. You can't, you're having trouble. You're slurring in your speech. Six weeks, your organs start to shut down. So they take you to basically five weeks. And

then they do the ultrasound to find out if you have cancer. I did that year after year. And what one time you literally you go insane. My mind, I could hear voices telling me to kill myself. In Medjugorje, we were on the HRIXC and I heard the voice, throw yourself in. My wife and I took our special needs child and our family up to four hours away to this clinical therapist who had this new kind of therapy for kids with special needs that help them walk. Our daughter was confined to a wheelchair, still is. That four hour drive back that day, because I was like on day, week five almost of this,

I was going on my mind, the kids were screaming in the car. We came to this intersection outside of a town. I literally got out of the car, four lane highway intersection, and I decided I was going to run for the fields. I literally got out of the car, got on the median and I was done. And I look back, this is how insane it is, this is what the mind does. I look back and my wife is looking at me like, what are you doing? I'm just like, I have no idea. Got back in the car, drove home but I was so out of it because of the cancer and everything, the other therapy.

So I get there in Medjugorje and I'm just messed up. I think that God created me to be a Judas. I think that I'm a betrayer. I think that my life has no hope. I want to throw myself in the Adriatic Sea. And there's this woman, Nancy, who's the interpreter for Father Yozo. And I ended up talking with her and I'm like,

I just can't shake this feeling that God's got a plan for my life. And I just don't want to be presumptuous, but I feel like he's got to call my life. And I'm so messed up. And she said, are you married? And it wasn't because she thought I was cute and wanted to marry me.

And I said, yeah, I'm married. And she said, do you have children? I said, yeah, I got three children. She said, go home and be St. Joseph. And I was like, St. Joseph. You mean the guy that in the stained glass windows, it's balding and you know, he's over a cane and he's in the dark. He's a flower guy, you know, like, nah, I want to be wielding the sword, man. I want to be Maximus, not St. Joseph. So I got home, I consecrated myself to Our Lady, St. Louis de Montfort,

you know, to Our Lord, to Our Lady, surrendered everything over to her. And then it was like, I just felt like she's saying, I want you to meet my husband. And then I carved out this space in my old attic and made it my chapel. And I just start praying. And then all these obscure passages from the Old Testament were coming to me in regards to the New Testament comparing to St. Joseph. I'm like, whoa. So I started scratching down notes and found it in a writer's group. I'm not a writer. I wasn't a writer.

I couldn't tell you when to use a semicolon from a comma. First rough draft, my spiritual director was like, where are the paragraphs? It's just one run on sentence, you know? But we started a writer's group and I would share these little passages with the guys and one of the guys goes, you're supposed to write on fatherhood through St. Joseph, the lens of St. Joseph. I'm like, man, I like that. And then that's how Joseph's Way, my first book.

Everyone has to get that book. I'm not just saying that. I read that and it reads like a classic. It reads like, you know, when you read Imitation of Christ or something and you're like, wow. And then sometimes you'll read modern books and you're like, ah, it's cute, but it feels gimmicky, or it's just not that good. That book is so dense.

And I'll say this for you, since you won't say it, there is a very popular Hollywood actor, we'll leave it at that, who you told me read this book and called you to thank you. So you are an excellent author and people need to get your books. So what is your quickly? What's your website? I know. Fathers of ST Joseph.org. Fathers of St Joseph.org. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I,

Joseph Sway was a letter to myself. I wrote four volumes of comparing Saint Joseph to the Patriarchs Abraham, Moses, David, and Jacob and I was finding all these rich lessons of fatherhood but the thing that I discovered about Saint Joseph which was so healing was that he was little, silent, and hidden. And that was so hard for me because I hated being little. I'm little. I don't want to be little. I want to be big. Silent. No, I want to be, I want to be loud and proud, you know, and hidden unknown is like, oh my gosh. But the Lord gives so much hope. What is hidden will one day be revealed, you know? In our weakness

we are strong. And so I embrace the weakness of Fatherhood. I embrace the weakness of St. Joseph's spirituality, if you will. And he was that silent, strong leader who gives us so many incredible lessons just in so few passages. If you go to the Greek, it's incredible. That man has become my mentor, my spiritual guide, my friend. He has taught me how to love the Blessed Mother. He has taught me how to adore Christ. He has taught me how to be a man. He's taught me how to be a father. He's taught me how to be a husband. And I just love him. But it is a death to self. And this is what's so beautiful about... So, do you remember,

this just came in my mind, do you remember when Jesus heals the demoniac that was possessed by Legion? And this is on the other side of the Sea of Tiberius, the capital, it's the Greek side. And so, this isn't where Jews reside. And Jesus is getting back in his boat with his disciples and this guy who's been cured, he's like, I want to come with you. I want to follow you. And what does Jesus say to him? No. No.

And what does he say? He says, go back and tell your family what God has done for you. So there's this distinction like between like-facing life and the out-there missionary life and this go back to your family and tell them what God has done for you. And it seems so small and miniscule, right? But he does. And you know how we know? Jesus returns back there, and that's where he has the other feeding of the crowds.

And there are a lot of mostly Greeks, tons of Greeks are there, because he went back to the Decapolis, the ten cities, told his family, became a family man, and everybody's looking at him going, what has happened? And they're like, this Jesus thing must be real. We got to find this guy. And then he feeds the multitudes. Wow. So this is what can happen is when we go back to our families and we really really truly Decide to be little silent hidden because what is little God will make manifest in large

What is secret God will reveal what is hidden God will make me make known we all want to be known But we trade that out to be noticed. You know? God wants to know us and wants us to know ourselves by being known by Him. So by diving wives, by being a gift to them, they then reflect back to us who we really are. They're like, you've got this talent, this gift, you're this, you're that. And then you discover so much more of yourself by becoming that gift to your wife, your kids. You become the man beyond the achievement and the wealth and the fame that you would ever aspire to. But this is what we're missing in our culture. We're going out there rather than going back in there to the vocation.

You know, vocation, the Latin root word is vox, voice. When we chuck our vocation, we no longer can truly discern the vox, the voice of God. All of this, as little as it is, but for me, I mean, it's crazy. It's born out of my vocation. It's a direct consequence of my vocation. So I'm not defined by what I do for a living. I'm defined by who I live for. My occupation is at the service

of my vocation as a husband and father. It's not the other way around, you know, but this is what we're doing. We're inverting it. We're placing our family at the service of our vocation, our vocation at the service of our occupations so everybody will know how great we are. And meanwhile, a Hispanic priest said this to me one time when I was really struggling because I just felt like I should be more, I should measure up. I just felt so much like a failure. We can get into Vainglory too. It's huge. Bob Schuetz, I think, had a big part in healing me of that, but I'm still being healed of it. But this Hispanic spiritual director said, we Hispanics have a phrase, do not become a street lamp only for your house to go dark.

Yeah. And I was like, yeah. I'm standing around in the corner being that light of Christ. And meanwhile my house was going dark. And so Anna Marie is amazing. Anna Marie ended up that hypoxic event, ended up having CP trapped inside of her body. And I had no other choice really but to figure out how to embrace it. This is, it was nurse neglect and this was the beginning. So the, when they rolled Anna Marie across the tarmac, the head nurse said to us, my parents are present. They said, this is our fault. We'll do whatever we can to rectify the situation. That never happens. They never admit malpractice. She did.

So my wife's sister was married to a multi multi millionaire. He calls me and says, Devin, we'll take care of all the attorneys, legal fees, we'll file the suit. We got this. Just let us know when you want to do this. Well, as I'm dealing with Anna Marie, who literally for the first three years of her life, basically all she did was scream because she couldn't communicate. She's stuck in her body.

And literally the insanity of all that, right? But as I considered the filing the lawsuit, I found myself distancing myself from Anna Marie because I was saying that's not what God wanted for us. She's not the daughter that God wanted for us. They took her from us and that's the position I was holding to file this lawsuit and or the potential of it. But I found myself slipping into this massive depression and spiritual darkness, you know, and I was trying to pray through it and I'm like, Lord, you got to deliver me from this depression, you got to deliver me from this darkness, and a voice, whatever you want to call it, said forgive them. I'm like forgive who forgive the doctor

and the nurses I'm like there's no way and so I kept spiraling into this self implosion of spiritual darkness and then finally in a moment of desperation I called the head nurse I explained who I was and I said I release you from your debt and it was in that moment that I began to not just accept Anna Marie, but to choose her. And I think this is what's missing from fatherhood these days. We accept our children. They live in the same house with us. They eat with us. They sponge off of us, whatever, you know, our Netflix account, but we don't choose them. We don't sit down with them and look them in the eye and talk about life. We don't take them on daughter dates and man

dates and we don't, you know, we don't spend that time and saying I choose you I delight in you I desire you and how did the nurse respond when you said that did she remember you yeah I don't know how long the period yeah yeah it was pretty pretty you know months and she did she remembered me and she was so grateful but it was in accepting Anna Marie, you know, Jesus says in Matthew 18, whoever receives one such child receives not only me, but the one who sent me. And I realized through Anna Marie and taking a long time that by receiving this child of Anna Marie, I was receiving Christ and I was receiving the spirit of fatherhood. And then she became the power behind the apostle at the ministry.

I've learned so many lessons from her. I mean, she's an incredible, joyful kid. Like she's like, she's almost like autistic. She can, she could hardly communicate. And yet she got to this point where all of a sudden she was singing these Christian songs and she could, she had them all all memorized. But yet she could hardly communicate. And then in fifth grade, she's confined to a wheelchair. Happy kid. Happy kid. She comes home sobbing one day off the bus. She's just sobbing. It's so unlike her. And she has trouble talking,

so we're trying to figure out what's going on, and we're asking her questions. And this goes on all the way into dinner and finally we figure out that some knucklehead at school was making fun of her saying she'd never walk. Her little brain, you know, she figured it out. And so I picked her up from, you know, her chair and I carried her into her bedroom and I was rocking her. I sat on her bed and she's sobbing and I carried her into her bedroom and I was rocking her. I sit down on her bed and she's sobbing because it's so emotional for her. She can't handle her emotions.

But then at one moment, her eyes open up and she sees the crucifix on the wall. And then a smile gradually comes across her face. I'm like, Anna Marie, why are you smiling? She goes, and this is from a mental handicapped kid. I get to suffer with Jesus And it that makes me happy I'm like man. I've read Aquinas. I've read Augustine, but nothing has hit me like that read Aquinas, I've read Augustine, but nothing has hit me like that.

She's taught me so much. She's taught my wife so much. Not, not today. I mean, like she's literally, she was, she was possessed. We went to Monsignor Asif with her. David Abel was the one who made that connection. Um, how did she become possessed? And how did you know that? If you don't mind me asking.

Yeah, it was the craziest thing, Matt. So in high school, because of, so they have IEP, they have these waivers and so at school they have paras who take care of your child, bathroom stuff, changing diapers. You can make the connections there. And so something happened to Anna Marie. So what happened was she started literally, so the initiating primary experience was when she was 16 or so, she came home from high school, very early on in her first week of high school, and she wasn't sleeping. Like seven days of insomnia, screaming. Like I mean like terror screaming, saying that black flaming guys are coming out of

the walls at her. She's scared to death. Her eyeballs are like this all the time. She's vomiting. I mean like it's insane. And we're like taking her to the ER. They can't figure it out. We take her to the university hospital.

They basically all but make us leave because she's too much for all the other patients in the ER. They're trying to tell her to shut up. She won't do it. Priest, come in, you know. So finally, after her stint, medication isn't touching it. She was in the hospital for 30 days.

They tried putting her in a psych ward, but they didn't have the equipment to take care of her with her special needs. Then they had to put her in a psych ward, but they didn't have the equipment to take care of her with her special needs. And they had to put her in the pediatric ward, driving everybody crazy. So finally, I'm just like, I think she's, I think there's something diabolical here. And so David got us in connection with Monsignor S.F.

who was leading an exorcist retreat in Mundelein. We drive up there and you know Monsignor S.F. right? He's like this tall. He's like Yoda and Padre Pio like all in one person you know and he's like being all nice to him. I'm like I'm thinking I never met him before you know and I'm like this is ridiculous. He's asking all these silly questions and like what just like you know how old are you you know you go to school you know and she's she's like this you know she's just non-responsive yeah just totally out of it and all of a sudden he grabs this huge crucifix off of off of his desk and he holds out in front of her and he says in the name of

Jesus Christ I command you and she starts shaking and my wife and I are like, we don't know whether to stop him or, or to stop. So we put our hands on her and we're holding her and David Abel was weeping. And then he, you know, he's the one who found out that, that she was something. How did he find that out? Doesn't matter. Yeah. He was asking some questions and some things came out, but then she was doing all sorts of weird stuff. And by the end of it, he said, three are gone, two are left. Gregorian chant and image of Our Lady, Immaculate Heart and Sacred Heart of Jesus, place them in front of her all times.

And she was dead to life for about four months. And then one day, boom, she smiled and we had her back. Four months. Yeah. And then- Did you see any reason for hope during that first exorcism? Get this. It was so crazy too, Matt. She had wounds in, you know, where your foot meets your, kind of like your shin. Like about the ankle area. She had wounds there, wounds that were bleeding. Yeah. Why? We don't know. They started then? Yeah.

It was a crazy thing. So a friend of ours from the family of Mary Priest. Like between your shin? Like where your shin? No, where your foot is. Like where your foot, right where you have that crease where your foot meets like maybe your leg. Yeah. She had these wounds. Like they weren't deep, but they were like surface wounds that bled. Oh, I see. Like you're like the stigma almost or something. Yeah. And we're like, this is so somebody, which is bizarre because she's not walking. No. So there's no reason for her. No, she doesn't even wear shoes. And so this priest comes by with the relics of Louis and Xaeli and prays over, you know, St. Troyes' parents.

And it was after that, that she started to come back to us. This is the four months after you're saying. Yeah. So you have four months. And what do you mean when he said Gregorian chant, et cetera? What did you do? How did you? Oh man, you know, just playing Gregorian chant all the time.

I mean, why would you put it on? But yeah, I mean, because the demons hate it. The demons absolutely hate it. They don't want to stay there. And they don't want to be looking at images of Our Lady and Jesus all day long. And Anne Marie can't go anywhere, you know? And she just gets so angry, you know, so angry.

But finally the anger left and then it was catatonic and then finally she came back now we've had we've had recurrence of these episodes and and it's kind of been insane at times, but overall we've we've weathered the storm and My wife's a saint My wife's just a saint. She's she's dealt with all of this between me and my insecurities, you know, and then, you know, and then finally embracing God the Father and then cancer and then Anna Marie. And now I mean every day, Anna Marie now has a superpupic catheter because she couldn't figure out how to urinate. So she would literally drive around in her wheelchair

outside for hours because the pain was so severe. Finally, I'd have a surgery for her. But anyway, bottom line is change your catheter, change your bag. I run a nursing home and a behavioral mental health clinic at our house with her. But it's amazing. We take atorhid mass and it's hilarious. So she's sitting over in her wheelchair and you know, and and you know from the outside I can't imagine what people think but she's singing her songs and you know

She's you know out of her mind and people come up and they touch her like she's some kind of relic or statue You know they come up and because they they know she's holy. Mm-hmm. They just want to touch holiness and I think that that's the key is that Anna Marie's literally on the cross in her wheelchair. She can do nothing. She can't move. And yet she, she bears it so well for the most part, drives us crazy a lot, but she's paying the price for all of us to be saved and sanctified. Let me ask you, um, how, cause I think sometimes we don't know how to act in front of people who are seriously, uh, physically or mentally handicapped because we don't encounter that.

And then when we do encounter that, people feel awkward about that. So I mean, as someone who has a child like this, what do you say to people? Like how does that make sense? Yes. I mean, people who don't know how to act or they act weirdly. Oh, yeah. Yeah. All the time. You know, people talk to her like she's a baby, you know, like, yeah, and all that. And just but I don't know criticism.

It's just do your best. You know, pay pay attention. You know, that's the big thing. Why do we're afraid? We're afraid. Yeah, that's right. We're afraid. What are we afraid of when we see someone who's seriously mentally handicapped? What are we afraid of?

Well, one, we're afraid of our own patheticness. We're afraid that we do not know how to love, to be empathetic, and we want to just get out. It's too dis- You know what it is, I think? I think I hate that part of me. Oh gosh, we all do. That I see incarnationally in someone like that. Does that make sense? Oh yeah, yeah, we're crippled. Oh yeah, Anna Marie has shown me that I'm actually the one with mental handicap and spiritual handicap and all that. She is the one who's, you're the one who special needs, you know? But it is a facing of self, but it's also a facing of our inability to be empathetic. We don't know how. But at the same time of upholding a dignity of this

person, we don't know how. How do I relate? How do I uphold their dignity? How do I love them? You know, because there's's a barrier because you're like, I don't know how to communicate therefore I I just don't know how dresses for it But I love it when the people will just come up and touch her and ask her how her day is She tries to tell them. Yeah, they don't understand her for the most part But yeah, it's just try it's just try try just break out You know, it's so funny when my wife and I were dating in high school, they would go visit Hope Haven, which was for special needs kids.

And she would talk about how they were just so loving. Like they would come up to her and hug her and embrace her. And they were just the most free kind of individuals on this earth. You know, they just trusted you implicitly. And my wife, when Anna Marie is on life support and we kind of knew, I think, no, no, no. Yeah, it was when Kim actually started hemorrhaging at one point with Anna Marie while she's pregnant. And a special needs magazine came to our house. We don't have a subscription to it or anything. And she looked at that and she was bleeding and she went to the shower and she just realized that was the invitation. She knew at that moment that in her soul that that was the invitation.

God was giving her an invitation and she wept in that shower and she said, I don't want a special needs child, but then, but I'll accept if you want it. And God gave us that child. I'm like, how come your prayers, you know, but anyway. And now my wife is just a saint, you know, a living saint because of Anna Marie. The biggest thing to holiness and spirituality, sanctification, all the stuff that we talk

about, it's so simple. So maybe you can relate to this. I was talking with my spiritual director at the time who was the prior of this monastery. Incredible man. Funny. And I was like, I post these videos on YouTube and they get no hits. I mean, Father, that terrible... Who said this? Me. I'm like, that's terrible. I stink at this. I hate it. I lack joy. I mean, I think my my motivations are all out of you know sorts and he said You know why you know why you're joyless. I'm like no he's cuz you lack poverty and I'm like

Pop pretty sure that's not it. I get no money on YouTube No, I'm not making any money off you too But I was like I was like I don't get it He tried explaining me the connection between poverty and joy and all sounds like I I don't get it. And he tried explaining to me the connection between poverty and joy and all this. And I was like, I just don't get it. I don't get it. So he said, okay, we're gonna have adoration, self-serve dinners in the kitchen, go grab yourself. You just gotta go through the,

forge the refrigerators. Well, if you know anything about monk food, man, I get in the refrigerators and it's like pan after pan of unidentifiable mush, you know? And I'm like, oh my gosh. And so finally I discover in this little Tupperware bowl, like these cubes of cheese and like what looked like salami and then a shriveled up olive and a shriveled up tomato

on a toothpick, you know? And I'm like, that looks like food, I'll eat those, you know? So, but I hate olives and the tomatoes are shriveled up too and like raisins, I'm like, I'll just pitch them way deep in the trash so the monks won't see it, and otherwise they'll commit murder and then they'll be going to hell. So I mean, I begin to pray over this food, and the whole time I think, I hate olives. Thank you Lord for the food, you know, and then I go to eat, and I'm thinking I'm gonna throw away the olives and I thought

You know if I was a beggar if I was a homeless person, I hadn't eaten for like four days That olive would be like a ribeye. I Would be rejoicing over that olive and then it clicked. I was like, oh wait a minute When I look at what I have as the gift and I accept that Because I'm not entitled anymore. I don't deserve anymore. I don't deserve more views on YouTube I don't deserve more sales and books, you know to help you I don't deserve any of that if when I accept what I'm given and I realize that I can't procure Anything more than that on my own like that beggar can't

Then the joy comes in and I ate the olives and I was happy. And I think the whole idea behind spirituality life, sanctification, is just, thy will be done. Just accept. I've been thinking this lately and I wonder what you think that sanctification, so much of sanctification is it's more about letting go than acquiring. I think what happens when we become Christian, we start acquiring all sorts of things, a scapula. We start acquiring a habit of the rosary, mass, reading good books. It's all this addition. Yes.

Where I wonder if sanctification is more like clinging to a branch 20 feet off the ground and the Lord's like, let go. And so much of it is about letting go of my pride and my idea of who he is, who I am, because that involves trust. Like the acquiring. Well, first of all, the point of those things is to let go. What first of all the point of those things is to let go so I'm not saying mass and yeah Yeah, yeah, but it's like trust is required to let go You don't it's kind of what you said earlier about trusting You know because you don't you wouldn't let go unless you're trusted So I think so much of about it is that you have a good father who loves you trust is the essence of sonship

You know it it's everything it's the essence of sonship. You know, it's everything. It's the essence of sonship. So to the level that I trust God the Father and his goodness is to the level that I will be a good father. It's all based on that trust. Now it's funny, we've done two episodes today, one that didn't work and one that is working. Right Josiah? Good. So I forget if we talked about that in this video or the previous video when you were talking about we can't have a relationship without trusting. Yeah. I cash was that the other one? Well, Hebrews chapter, it's so great. So what did I say? Look, you and I can't have a relationship unless we trust each other. Right. Yes. Exactly. Like if you

didn't trust me to lead this interview without being a jerk, without asking a bunch of gotcha questions. Yes. Or if I didn't trust that you want to come in here and like... With my own agenda. Yeah, whatever. I don't know. Yeah. Like we can't have a relationship.

No. We can have something. I don't know what it would be, a transactional relationship. Quid pro quo. We can't have communion. No. It's all based on trust. Hebrews 11, chapter 11, verse 6, I think, without faith, that is trust, it's impossible to please God. That's what it says. Yeah, it's impossible. It's not even possible in the slightest. It is impossible to please God, and this is what's so beautiful about

Jesus Christ. So, His baptism, He's coming up from the waters, and the heavens are rent, the Holy Spirit descends upon Him like a dove in bodily form, and then there's that solemn pronouncement, You are my beloved Son, with You I am well pleased. And we have to ask ourselves, up to this point, what did Jesus do that would make the Father so pleased with him? No astounding works, no public miracles, no conversion of the masses, nada, nada, nada. He was just hidden obscurity in Nazareth, a carpenter's son, a handmade son. Why was he pleased with him? There's two reasons. Well, the one reason, Jesus, well, two reasons. He knew his identity and he knew his father's identity. He trusted the Father and the Father's goodness so much

that he knew he was his. He knew, Jesus knew he belonged to the Father and he knew that the Father belonged to him. And that was the fuel and the power for everything that Jesus did because immediately after that, and this was so powerful about the example Jesus Christ immediately after that confirmation of his identity and the and that all the validation that's in that and Understanding he belongs they belong he already knew that but that that that affirmation of all that God drives God into the desert. Mm-hmm. The Holy Spirit drives Jesus in the desert to be tested.

This is sonship. Once we're rooted in sonship, and we believe that God the Father is good, God the Father wants the best for me, but God the Father also doesn't want me to be a grown baby, a boy stuck in a man's body. He wants me to be a man. He wants to be heroic, virtuous. So he's going to lead me into the desert. And you know, that detachment that you were just talking about, which is so powerful, Matt, is song of songs. It's so beautiful because she goes through these phases where it's first,

it's let us run together. She thinks she can keep pace with them. And then there's this way, I'm black, but I'm beautiful. She has this self-knowledge, oh my gosh, I'm not ready yet, I haven't kept my garden. And then she works through him with that, and then there's this, I place myself under his apple tree, which is wisdom, and she's meditating, and she's holding on to these gifts. She's holding on to all the things that he's given to her,

and then she's at rest in her bed at night and he's not there. I sought him she says three times I sought him whom my soul loved and I found him not. She's emptiness and so what does she do? She leaves everything else and chases after him into the streets. Have you seen my beloved? Have you seen the one here? And she will not let up until she finds not scapulars, not masses, even though he's there, not rosaries, but Him, that Him that comes into us. And we know, I got to have you, you got to be in me because I want it to be, it's no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives in me. I want to be the manifestation, the revelation of God's glory to this world. What else is there? To be a manifestation of myself?

I'm pathetic. I mean, who wants that anyway? But if God is in me, man, there's so much healing and joy. And I love it when I can see God working through me and I can say, that was you, that was you. You know, it's just so beautiful, you know. But I think with ministry, it's easy to get confused, you know. Like the podcasting, I was trying to do it for a while and it just, I was going, it was terrible. It was terrible.

And I, so I was, I decided to go outside and work. I like manual labor, building boulder walls and digging and I'm outside and my wife comes out and I'm like, 11 views. She's like, what? I'm like, 11 views. She turns around, goes back inside. And I'm like, God, why don't you help me? Why don't you help me reach the masses?

And it really came to me, it's like, because you want it for yourself. And I was like, oh my gosh, I'm usurping your glory, or I'm trying to. And that's when I reached out to my friend who connected me with Bob Schuetz. And that's when I realized out to my friend who connected me with Bob Schuetz. And that's when I realized how wounded I was.

My childhood wounds just were driving so much, even in the mystery, even in all the good I thought I was doing, I was driven by, I have to measure up, I have to be more. And God the Father's note, you have to be mine. And I had this vision the other day I was talking, I think it's okay to say I meet with a therapist now, great young man. And, uh, and he was taking me through some memories. He's like, what do you see? You know, cause it was a very traumatic experience. And, and I'm like, I was, I was stuck in this room for days,

literally as a kid. And no food. And he's like, he said, what would you do? Can you see yourself in there? I'm like, yeah. He goes, what would you do? I said, kick that freaking door down and I grabbed that kid and he goes, stay there. I want you to visualize it.

And all of a sudden I saw God the Father or Jesus who are coming in and kicking that door down, grabbing me, and he puts me on his shoulder and he's clearing the way. And he just takes me out and then pretty soon we're in a car and he's like laughing and I'm that little kid in the seat bouncing up and down. And I'm like, I'm with Jesus and I'm just a kid again. I think that's the hardest thing for myself was there was so much tragedy

and trials and physical trauma and volatility. It was just painful childhood and I grew up feeling socially inept. I grew up awkward, seeking women's girls validation, always trying to be loud to get the attention, trying to be big when I was small, trying to get in fights and do all these stupid things and to prove myself. And I hated that boy. He's such a dork. He's such an idiot. You know? And I, and I'd see pictures of me. I'm like, oh man, get that out. I buck teeth big enough to eat corn through a picket idiot, you know, and I and I'd see pictures of me. I'm like, oh man get that up I buck teeth Big enough to eat corn through a picket fence, you know

and the bull haircut and the big glasses and you know, just an idiot, right and And I remember one time I went up at it. I was at a conference. I received Holy Communion and I went back to my You know to Neil and all of a sudden I saw Christ, I saw his face, just like I'm seeing yours. And I just shoulders and head and, and he's looking at me and then he looks over and I'm following in his arms going down and I look and there I am, seven year old Devin that was hit by the car, you know? And he looks at me and he's like,

are you going to love him? And I'm like, whoa, that's probably one of the greatest challenges of my life. And one of the most healing things, my oldest daughter, Maddie, she has these grandkids, things. My oldest daughter, Maddie, she has these grandkids. They're kids of her own and they're our grandkids. And Goose, Goose is four. Well, he just turned five and Goose is a wild man. Goose, when he's talking, he's bouncing around, you know, he's jumping on the furniture and he talks really loud and he's like, okay, this kid need hearing aids. I mean, I love Goose. I mean, Goose was over I love goose. I mean, goose was over to our house. We're putting on a deck and he's his name, goose, Augustin. So we come goose. I just love goose, blonde haired, big eyes, just facial expressions. But he does this craziest

things. Like he stepped on a deck board that had nail and pierced right through his foot, you know, he's screaming, bleeding all over the place. But I see Goose and I'm like, that's me. And I'm like, but I love Goose. And God's like, I want you to love you. And so like, I visualize, I can see God the Father just kind of clearing the path. Like, like recently, I wrote this book called The Rule. I buried it. So it was at a very low point. I think three years ago, it was It was summer. I decided to quit the ministry. Couldn't take it anymore. And Chris, who you know, my supervisor. Love her. She's terrific. Oh gosh.

Yeah. What a woman. She's just, she's a big sis to me, man. But she's like, you need to just go work outside or something and take some time and think about this. And she goes, you're, you're, we're holding off on this decision. So I'm out there building a boulder wall or whatever I'm doing. And I'm sweating. And I'm like, I'm quitting, I'm quitting. And I was listening to the Ignatian rules of discernment and you know, never turn back in a storm, you know, kind of thing. Don't make any decisions in desolation. Like, and, and then I'm like, you know what, how come we don't have like a Benedictine

rule or like an Ignatian rule for discernment for men, for fathers, husbands. And then I was like, Devin, I want you to do that. I'm like, I'm done. I'm not writing another book. I've written a ton of books and nobody reads them. You know, I'm like, I'm sick of this. And so I'm out there working and rule number one, write my brain. I'm like, I'm sick of this. And so I'm out there working and rule number one, write my brain, I'm like, I'm not writing it down, Lord.

I'm not doing this and, you know, go and eat dinner, you know, maybe have a beer, you know, and rule number one, just sitting there, I can't sleep. And I'm just like, Lord, I'm not doing it, I am done. And then next day I get up, rule number two is right there. And I'm like, oh my gosh. So I said, fine, I'll write rule number one and rule number two and we're done. Well,

I wrote all 88 rules, seven sections. Yeah. Seven sections, you know, sonship, your vocation, marriage, fatherhood work, whatever. And I wrote it in a week, seven days. And, uh, and I buried it. Yep. And then, you know what? A friend of mine, he's, he's like, hey, I'd love to read that. He works as kind of like an editor for some publishing houses. He's like, you mind if I show this to Sophia Press? Like, sure.

They want to publish a book now. So this spring, it's going to come out. How big is it? That's a lot of rules. Oh, each rule is very short. Yeah, it's going to be a smaller book. It's going to be like a handbook. But it's so beautiful because you can tell vocationally in your marriage as a man where

the devil and the evil spirits are working, how they're influencing you, where God and the good angels are influencing you, how to know when the enemy's at work, how to know, you know, in a sense, where to go in your marriage, where to go in your fatherhood, the things that, the way the devil is going to try to distract you or derail you. And it just poured out of me. I was done. And then two years later or three years later,

God just says, I'm carrying you, man. I'm clearing the path. And I just love that visual. It's not me. I can't do anything. It's so important that we become acquainted with our own story. This isn't sort of modern psychobabble. This is just our interaction with the God who saves us.

And he doesn't save us generically, he saves us individually. Yes, amen. And so this is why Augustine and Teresa of Avila and Thérèse of Lisieux can see the hand of God in everyday experiences throughout their lives and they can write about it almost as if God knows them and hasn't taken his attention off of them since the moment of their conception because it's the way it is. Yes, it is. And so too with our lives. knows them and hasn't taken his attention off of them since the moment of their conception, because it's the way it is. Yes, it is. And so too with our lives.

And I love that. I love that you are becoming, I am too, becoming acquainted with the God who has known us from our conception and who has been present to us, even if we weren't present to Him. I love it. I think that what happens is we encounter Christ, we have this pinnacle experience, or this mountaintop experience as they call it, we receive this influx of consolation and we feel His presence and the goodness of all that. And then there's a point where He pulls back a little bit because He wants to give us greater

gifts than just this superficial consolation. And I think what I tend to see is most of us don't go with him. He's luring, you know, like Hosea, I lured her into the desert, right? And the Lord wants to lure us into the desert and why? So we can become thirsty, so we can become hungry, so we can learn to trust, like the Israelites, all the things that they needed to trust him in their thirst They needed to trust him in their hunger He leads us in the desert to empty us so that he can fill us That's what she said in world's first love about Mary. She was the most empty person in the world Mm-hmm, and that's why she became the most full and rich person of God's presence in the world

She's so empty of herself. There's she didn't have anything she was holding on to she allowed herself over and over repeatedly to be led into the desert You know Who is this that comes up like a parallel pillar of smoke aromatic spices of incense and myrrh? You know in the desert, you know led in the chariot of Solomon, you know Stars and banners, and it's her. Mason- Let's take a pause. I need to pee and we'll come back. hello.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. Hello.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 my lo-fi. Hello 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. 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 for them at night. It'll help them pray. Fantastic.

Hello.com slash Matt. Fried. Nice shot. Oh, all right. To the man. Nice shot. It's a band called Filter. You know who's amazing?

True survival. Oh yeah. I am. I'm a fan of the band. I'm a fan of the band. I'm a fan of the band. I'm a fan of the band. I'm a fan of the band. I'm a fan of the band. I'm a fan of the band. It's a band called Filter. You know who's amazing?

Teresa of Avila. Oh yeah. I love this woman. Just started reading her life. My mom and dad are third order Carmelites. Are we recording? Hey, back. All right.

Your mother and father. I wanted you to tell me about it. Are we recording? Hey, back. Alright. Your mother and father. That's right. I wanted you to tell me about it. So the Third Order Carmelites? Third Order Carmelites. What does that look like? Lay people who make vows of, I believe, chastity, poverty.

I can't remember what they are, but as lay people can. But yeah, they wear the, sometimes they wear the large scapula, scapular. But yeah, they're dedicated to studying the writings of St. Therese, St. Teresa of Avila, St. John the Cross, all the big, heavy St. Teresa of Benedicta, the cross. Yeah, I mean, I I don't know what, after my conversion, I remember being really allergic. Well after my conversion, I heard a homily from a priest who talked about sin, like a cancer that killed us, you know, and I hadn't heard any kind of strong homilies like that before and I was extremely turned off by it.

And now I'm sure if I heard it, I'd be like, oh, thank God, we so desperately need to hear this. But I don't know, I had this view of Teresa, like she was overly stern or if she saw what a wretch I am, she would just kinda come back when you're serious. But I've just started listening to her autobiography. I was talking to this awesome Carmelite, Michael Joseph and he said start there because I have read You know other works of hers, which I benefited from

But reading her autobiography. I'm really I love her. Yeah, I really my wife just texted me today because she started reading it too and Oh my gosh. Oh, that's so cool. The of you are reading it, are reading together. Yeah. Yeah, you know, um. It's, I would highly recommend it to people because sometimes, you know, you read these, these autobiographies from saints from hundreds of years ago and you feel like you're trying to like it because you think you should.

Yeah. She's really easy to like because her writing is very vigorous. It almost reads like an audio recording. It's quite unorganized actually. I think that's what it is. Oh, it's very unorganized. Yeah, yeah, but beautiful because of that in a way, I think.

Have you ever read St. Therese's last conversations? So her sisters, while she was in her sick bed in the nurse, I guess, nursery, you know, where, the infirmary, they recorded or wrote down a lot of the conversations, the things she said, and man, she was so real. Well, I mean, there's a couple of, there was one edited version,

and then they've now released the unedited version. So I think there's a couple of manuscripts. So the one that's not edited is her talking about her soul dealing with the darkest plagues of atheism. Is that what you're referring to? Yeah I just like yeah I love it. It's terrifyingly beautiful. Yeah because I'm like yeah wow she's so real and she's a saint you know that's the Saints they they go through those dark nights. Yeah. The reason I'm looking at my computer is not because I've lost interest in you. It's because I've asked people for questions. You're like my wife. What? She loses interest in you? She's looking at your computer?

No, she's fantastic. Hi everybody. Look at me. Look at me. Would you consider supporting us at matfrad.locals.com? When you do become an annual supporter, we will send you a free, much-coveted, beautiful, beautiful pints with Aquinas Bierstein. You'll get these long-form interviews one week early before they hit YouTube. You'll get exclusive streams from me. You'll get access to our courses. You'll get to ask our guests questions. But more than any of that, you get to make sure that this show continues and continues to reach more people. MattFrad.locals.com. And we have some questions which you have not yet seen. Which I would like to just throw at you. ReminiscenceLogic says, best practices to balance the strong masculine role as well as the loving father fortress children go to?

Best practices to balance between being that loving father. Strong masculine, yeah. Well I think to begin with, so back to the fundamental principle. Fundamental principle is I can only reflect God the Father in as much as I'm spending time with Him, knowing Him and trusting Him. So I need to know who God the Father is. God the Father is not a big teddy bear. He is not a sugar candy dad kind of guy.

He's not just giving out, he's not Santa Claus, you know? But nor is he, you know, Hitler, you know, or, you know, he measuring every infraction and just punishing it exactly to, you know. So we need to find out who this God, God the Father is. And the only way is through Jesus Christ. He reveals him, right? But I would say just fundamentally, very practically, God the Father doesn't whine. God the Father doesn't complain. God the Father doesn't whine. God the Father doesn't complain. God the Father doesn't feel sorry for himself. But God the Father, what he does is when he's given a situation with his children, he deals with it. And he's patient, incredibly patient.

And I think that one thing that we do is, Dad's on the on the erring sign of being a little bit too dominating, maybe too strong, if you will, is that we respond by reacting, and we react emotionally. And so if you're not working on mastering your emotions, which actually begins way back than just in the moment of dealing with whatever's coming to the surface, it's actually to the surface. It's actually asceticism, your prayer life, your sacrifices, all of those things, right? So I think that

you got to love yourself because you cannot love your neighbor if you do not love yourself properly, right? So love God to create his commands. Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Everything hinges on that as yourself. So if you cannot love yourself properly, if you love yourself too much, that's gonna play out. If you love yourself too little, that's gonna play out. So you've got to figure out how to love yourself and let the Father's gaze rest upon you, which means practically speaking every day you're in his presence spending time in the morning if you can't, you know, like try to carve that out. That's what I've done. I know guys who do it. It's amazing if you can do that because then you allow the, you know, when you go in for, you allow the infusion, the grace infusion to take place.

When you go in for a blood transfusion, you don't have to do anything. You don't even have to understand the process. It's new blood in, old blood out. And it's like that in prayer. At first you might be scrambling, the chattering's going on, you're trying to figure out what you're talking about. Maybe you read the gospel, but there comes a point where God is saying, relax, let's do the infusion now. New man in, old man out. Just be with me. And it's that being with Him, just waiting on Him, just being in His presence, that's saying, I trust you. I know if I don't feel anything here, you're gonna be doing something in me that I'm not even recognizing. And it's gonna come out in all my actions later on.

Those who pray are those who actually are able to master their emotions in those times of, because what we're talking about is abdicating or dominating again. What brings out the worst in us is unexpected situations. And the kid blows up at you or your wife, you know, does something, whatever it is. We have to be prepared for that, but is, we have to be prepared for that. But you don't have to be prepared for like, oh, hey, this is what I'm gonna say, this is how I'm gonna react. You can't do that. But you have to become like someone.

You become like the Father by spending time with Christ in prayer, and a big part of that is just resting in His presence. And I think that's one of the big things that's missing in prayer. Like, I have the Rs. Recognize His presence. So you literally recognize God's presence. Read. So read this gospel. Because, and this is, I wish I knew this years ago. This, this is a kind of a new thing in the last several years, maybe four years ago. I was going to

prayer with my petitions. I was going to prayer with my Thanksgiving. I was going to prayer for so many different reasons, but I realized there's only two reasons why I should be going to prayer. To know Jesus and to become like Him. So it's flipped everything around. So when I read the gospel, I'm not reading the gospel about what I should do or am I that person in the gospel? How should I react? I'm like, what are you revealing about yourself, your character, your desire, your empathy, your power, whatever it is? Who are you, Jesus? Reveal yourself to me. I want to know you and in knowing you I can love you. And then I realized looking in that divine mirror I'm like, whoa, I'm nothing like you. Please make me

like you in that area. So it's recognize His presence, read, respond. You know, so read, reflect, reflect on that, respond, Lord, this is who I am. I'm not like you. And then rest. And just rest in Him. I try to rest like five minutes, whatever it is, just let Him in. Just let Him in in all my nakedness and my vulnerability. Just let him in into all those dark places and and man, and then I just I'm empowered. You can't give, Gustin says, you can't give what you don't possess. So in order to give God, I must possess God.

How can I possess God if I don't spend time with God? How can I even know God if I don't spend any time with him? Everything, everything comes right back down to prayer, comes right back down to knowing Jesus and becoming like Him. I love that. So recognize, read, respond, rest. Reflect, okay. Yeah, so when I read the scripture, you know, it's, it's uh, oh my gosh, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the you saying about yourself? What are you doing that reveals you? And it's just... Yeah, that's the... The first one was recognize. Yeah, so recognize God's presence. So basically what I do is I do that bodily, the body expresses the person. So I prostrate myself, and then I... You know, that St. Charles de F of Cald, he has this

incredible prayer of surrender. It is so beautiful. I recommend it for everyone. It's, I say, Abba, Abba, Father, I abandon myself into your hands. Do with me what you will. Whatever you may do, I thank you. I'm ready for all. I accept all. Let only your will be done in me and in all your creatures. I wish no more than this, O Lord. Into your hands I commend my soul. I offer it to you with all the love of my heart, for I love you, Lord. And so I need to give myself to surrender myself into your hands without reserve and with boundless confidence for you are my father." And so that's like just beginning, you know, just, okay, this is I'm surrendering.

And so that's recognizing God's presence, you know, just you're here, I'm here, okay, let's do this. And then it's reading what his son has to say about himself and his father. And then it's reflecting on that. So you take time, read over and over, and, Jesus, what are you saying about yourself here? And then it's responding to that. Wow, Lord, you are so amazing. How did you do that? I'm so unlike you. I'm so, I lack so much courage. I lack so much faith. Please, and then that's when I rest. Okay, Lord, just infuse me with you so I can become like you. All right. We've got a lot of questions here

I'm just realizing oh my gosh, so that was an incredible answer But would you mind if we try to keep it more to like lightning round dances some work because absolutely There's a lot of excellent questions here. So I'm not no if you feel like you want to go longer. That's fine. But CTC says aside from a set of says and what are some ways single men can live out masculinity in the day to day? Yeah. Okay. Well, first of all, recognize that your identity does not depend on another human being. So a lot of times we depend, masculinity is in relationship or related to how many women

I'm having sex with, or if I'm gonna get this girlfriend. It's not about that, it's about your relationship with God and you. So masculinity, all it boils down to is, okay, magnanimity and humility. So if you're humble enough to accept the person that you are and then you're magnanimous, large-hearted, then you'll be courageous in your love.

But you can't do that unless you have the relationship with God. We always go back to this. But the point is, how can I do it as a single man? I've got to have a relationship with the real man, Jesus Christ. And one of the very practical things that I recommend is if you're not going to daily mass, go to

at least one or two daily masses a week because you're going to receive the real man into you, even though we're not real men, we're receiving the real man so that we can become real men. He infuses himself with us through that sacrament. So he gives you the ability to combat even your own disorder desires. You know, like we were talking about earlier with that fasting, yes, asceticism, but we gotta be proactive in receiving the new man, Jesus Christ, into us.

But it's not mustache wax, sorry, it's not how you dress, it isn't the car you drive, it isn't the externals, it's all internal. Because the internal becomes manifest, your interior life gives your exterior life form. Who you are on the inside determines your outside. That's such a great point. And yet it feels like many of us want our exterior life to give our interior life form. In other words, we cling to the accidents of manhood without wishing for the substance. So good. And it does. It does. Because if I cling to those accidents, how I dress, what I wear, what I drive, whatever, eventually

that is going to shape me. It's going to shape me into a moldable man who's effeminate because I'm based on the trends and the fads and what the culture's dictating I'm following. Whereas the Christian man says, I don't derive my identity from any of that. I derive my identity from God the Father. Mason- Right. Freddy17 says, have there been any Protestant Catholic collaborations regarding Father-Son outings? I'm thinking about events like John Eldridge Wilderness Retreats, where fathers and sons spend time reading the Bible and praying. Bregman- I don't know about collaboration, but there's a great group fraternists, Jason Craig.

He does those and he has initiating rights and things like that. But fraternists, I would look that up. Okay. Mia Tijuana says, we live in an area with many practicing Catholics and many friends that we love, but it seems that the majority of good Catholic men and women around us seem to embrace modern gender roles. For example, married couples wait to have kids for years until the woman's career is fully established. Having lots of kids is considered responsible.

Men are demonized for being gentle hearted towards women because of feminist ideals. Unmarried men and women are allowed to be able to are allowed to be able to be deeply intimate friends with that romantic ties, how would you recommend my soon to be husband and myself to lead a joyful example of traditional gender roles when the notion of it causes Catholics around us to recoil? Oh man, okay, that's a can of worms. Yeah, well, there you go. Okay, so, okay. So I'm going to say something. I don't. So this book right here, meaning a mystery man, I lay this out, but that's your answer, Mia. Yeah. Get that. Yeah. So God created, okay. I don't know if we talked about this in this one

or in the earlier one, but when God created Adam, he gave him the commands to till and keep the garden of odd and Shemar, and the garden is a symbol of woman as well. It's a literal place but a symbol of woman. But where was Eve when he gave all those commands? She didn't exist. God endowed Adam with this primary role of priest, protector, and provider. To transmit the commands, to protect her, to provide for her.

Mia and her husband-to-be, they need to work on what does that mean? A man is a spiritual leader in the family, or should be. Now, this is interesting. In Ephesians 5, this is where we, if we get to the Greek, we understand. Jesus says, a husband, or Paul says, deliver yourself up as Christ delivered himself up for the church. That Greek word for deliver is paradox. Paradox is the word that Jesus was used in Matthew when he said he gave his authority, or disciples' authorities to cast that demon. Paradox he gave. So the idea is a man has been given the authority, but he shares that with his wife, Paradochi.

He gives her the authority. In the creation account, Eve was the azer connegedo, the helpmate is azer connegedo, which means as a right hand is to the left, it is a counterpart, an essential counterpart. So the two are equal in dignity. They have difference in roles though. But the man's role is to always, in a sense, initiate and in self-donation, in a sense, service, because that's, in a sense, by doing that,

then she wants to reciprocate that respond and then you have the dance of love, as in the Trinitarian dance, and then the children eventually will see this and they wanna get in on that. But I think that when we... So imagine this. Let's see if this works. But I think we have to recognize that in the creation account man was created first and he was given that role of spiritual leadership. If we deny that, then we live in kind of like this vacuum

or a void where the woman has to kind of try to do that. And then the man doesn't know what to do. Someone has to lead. If there's no leader, then there's no followers. The children will not follow. He has to set the pace of self-giving love. So my recommendation is the two of you pray about that and then find out what that means for you. What does that look like? You know, will he be leading prayer at dinner? You know, will he be leading prayer with the family? I don't know, but each family has to determine how he is going to lead. You know? Okay. Also, I think it's nice to give both of you the freedom to do it clunkily. You know, like if a man were to say, I just, I don't know how to it clunkily. You know, like if a man would have say, I

just, I don't know how to like protect my family. You know, like I don't, I guess it doesn't come naturally. You'd say, all right, well do it anyway. And if a woman's like, I'm just not naturally nurturing. Okay. Just figure it out. Well, I don't know how to cook. Okay. Read a cookbook, figure it out. It's not that hard. Yeah. Let's do it. That's right. And, and when you're doing that, I think, okay, so this is I'm convinced of this for a marriage to work. So marriage is based on these kind of three components. One is understanding that God endows men and women with God given needs. The second is identify your needs and she identifies her needs, then you communicate those needs. Then once those needs are communicated, then the two creatively on their own, not under coercion manipulation, determine how to

address those needs. They can never meet those needs because only God can satisfy. So basically, I might have the need for physical intimacy. My wife, maybe she doesn't have that need as much. Maybe it's more for closeness, you know, like maybe more of an emotional kind, right? Well, that's a God-given need that He's given me as a man. She has a God-given need for closeness. They complement one another. But we talk about that. We say, okay, this is who I am. this is who you are, without accusatory blame, you know, or saying, you don't do this for me. No, this is just, these are my needs. Communicate that, and then you leave it to the other to figure out how to address those needs. That's when

you have a marriage that totally works. Because you look at Mary and Jesus, the bridegroom and the bride at the foot of the cross and at the wedding at Cane of Galilee. I love this because Mary expresses her need to Jesus. She says, they have no wine. She trusts that he's going to do something, that he's going to meet the need. And he does. And at the foot of the cross, Mary's there and Jesus says, I thirst. And he's hoping that she and all the followers of the bride and Christ will fulfill that desire for love that people will be saved. It's the expression of our needs then leaving the couples to determine

how to address those needs, that's where it gets clunky. But that's where the secret of a great marriage is. Because when I see my wife, maybe she doesn't want physical intimacy as much as I do, and yet she tries and she does beautiful things to try to please me Like man, she loves me incredibly. Yeah, it is really helpful to ask your wife or to ask your husband What are some ways you feel loved when I do it you feel loved what's great about that is like once you know that

Awesome. Yeah, you can stop wasting time doing things that she didn't even care about Right, right communication is a communion. Right. Right. Communication leads to communion. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. Christopher 307 says, as a habitual line stepper between masculinity and misogyny. Mm hmm. Oh, bless you. How does a Catholic father better walk the fine line?

I'm pretty sure misogyny means hatred of women, doesn't it? Yeah. I'm so sorry that maybe he's being hyperbolic, but I don't know why masculinity would have anything to do with that. Well, it doesn't. But that's that's the Andrew Tate kind of culture. OK, so it's it's the domination of the woman for our own benefit. Right? So, well, first of all, if you have a hatred for women or leaning in that direction,

it's very important to give yourself over the blessed mother and let her teach you how to love women. But I think that this is a huge topic. I don't know if we really want to go into this, but the marriage debt. I listened to your episode on that. What did you think of it? Oh, it's excellent. You can criticize me.

Oh no, it's excellent. What was her name? She was theology by a... Oh, that's funny because my wife and I have been, we've spoken about this publicly as well. Ah, that Sheila, what was her name? Gosh, she was terrific. Annalise? Yeah. about this one publicly as well. Ah, that Sheila, what was her name? Gosh, she was terrific. Emily's one?

Yeah. You both did a great job. Um, but I think that the problem is that there's so many men abusing the marriage debt. Right. Co-opting the language of authority and the marital debt to then dominate and tyrannize their wives like little immature pricks. And yeah. Wow. I love that. I mean, that is a mic drop. Man, that's excellent. So yeah, but it's even more severe psychologically for the woman because she sits there and she feels guilty unto God. Like she's offended God because this man cannot restrain himself in his passions and learn to love without lusting after

her and treating her like an object. And so then she has to look, well, you know you're committing a mortal sin if you don't give in to me. And then therefore she thinks, oh, this guy is symbolizing and reflecting God, the mind of God. God's saying I got to have intercourse here regardless of what I'm feeling emotionally, psychologically, physically, whatever. And so I think that where I would go with this is go right to the loins. How you treat women in the way that you look at them, pornography, whatever it is, that is going to come out in your relationship with your wife. So your interior life gives your exterior life form. So where we have to work is in the area of purity, learning to love woman

rightly and that'll come out with your spouse, your wife, meaning you start to you start to battle against that and truly learn to love in a sense love all women, you will learn to love your wife properly and vice versa. Mm. Beautiful. Thank you. Megan J says, How can women ask the men in their life to act out their masculinity better without becoming bossy, nagging or emasculating? Hmm. Yeah. Well, that's a big one, because if they do nag, he will only recoil. He will only dig himself in, you know, and he will not become a gift. You know and he will not become a gift. I friend of mine his wife

On him about going to mass more praying more rosaries going to more retreats and he left he just left all together But she woke up and then she started treating him with respect. So this is the answer so man's a man's primary root need is Is not sex a man's primary root need is not sex. A man's primary root need, authentic need given by God is respect. So when respect in the Latin is ari and specere, to see again. So when a wife begins to see her husband again anew

and sees the good in him, the good things he's trying to do where he is. And then she respects him in that. There's many ways a wife can respect her husband. He will want to respond. What was the question? Yeah, how can she invite men in her life to act out masculinity?

Respect. So the more that she respects him properly, the more he will want to respond by... and her first need, a woman's fundamental first need, is to be secure in love. Secure in his love. And there are many things that we do to make women insecure. Goggling at other women, lusting, pornography, demeaning, you know, whatever it is. There's so many things.

Women desire to be secure in his love, a man's love. Men desire respect. The two needs complement one another. If she respects him more authentically and doesn't demean him, beat him down, criticize him, especially in front of kids or in front of his friends, you know, like he installed the toilet, but he flooded the basement, you know, that isn't going to help their situation. But if she can respect him, see him again anew, and respect has a lot to do with admiration, but it's not that really. It's deeper than that. It is believing that that person is good and seeing that good and then basically affirming

that good. And when a wife does that or a woman does that for a man his it's it's incredible for a man Yeah for the 800th time just look at the way JD Vance his wife looked at JD Vance on election night after they won That's what I Excellent. Yeah. All right. Teddles says the most masculine thing I can think of is a successful family man What are some ways resources you've used to balance growth in career and growth in leading the family? Okay. A lot of our conversation has been about that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, first of all, in your own mind, remember that in the end, you are not going to be presenting your career to God on judgment

day. You're going to be presenting your family. And so it's a mental thing. We have to have that mind shift. So the reason we lean on our work so much is because when I complete a task, when I complete a project, I can look at that and say, accomplishment, achievement, done, good. Relationships aren't like that. That's it. They're just not designed that way. It's constantly feeding

that input, right? So we have to get the mentality that my occupation is at the service of my vocation, and what is it that I'm trying to do? I'm trying to build lasting relationships. I'm trying to be the link between them and God, that face of the Father they cannot see the voice the touch But at the same time put provision in its proper place, you know, I'd have a I do have a friend but a friend of mine He's older now. He Incredibly successful incredibly wealthy many children They all fell away. He provided cars when they were 16 to each of them. He gave massively incredible schooling, great universities.

They had everything. And he laments that he did not give them the one thing that matters, which was his time. Our children want to be chosen, not accepted. So this is why men sacrifice for that, which they love. That's why men sacrifice all the time for their work, for their houses, for whatever money, but look at where you're sacrificing. And if you're not sacrificing for your family, that's where to begin. Figure out ways to sacrifice it each day for your family. Shauna asks, what are some of the most effective ways a wife can support her husband

in the raising of strong but thoughtful sons? Bregman- Sons. Okay, well first of all, a united front, because any kind of division between the parents, the kids sniff that out and they play it and they use it to their advantage with a young, but then eventually it actually undermines his authority. Second thing is moms need to understand that the sons at some point are gonna want to move away from mom. Because it's natural for boys at first

to want to be the mama's child, but then they get to this age, you know, after puberty where they want to start distancing themselves from mom, the mom has to understand that that's kind of like the initiating right. That's a beginning of that where the man, the boy wants to become a man. So she needs to allow the dad to take him on these, hey, work side by side, even in dangerous situations, you know, prudentially, you know, hunting trips, trips things like that whatever it is But dad's son time is so important the mom should not coddle the Sun or try to you know

That's Jacob's problem remember Jacob Esau Jacob his mom. Yeah, Rebecca He was a he was a tent man. He lived in his hands a mama's boy smooth skin He saw was a hunter and his dad, Isaac, loved Esau more. Moms have to just recognize, because what's gonna happen is, if that son growing up under his mom's kind of placating kind of affirmation and holding him back from danger, risk, whatever,

he's gonna resent that. Eventually he's going to resent that. Eventually he's going to come back at her or he's going to become very effeminate and he's not going to step up and become that man. So her and the husband, the wife and the husband need to work on ways that they can spend time with him to allow him, the boy to grow, to become, you know, a man. This is a question that a lot of people want you to ask.

This person would like to remain anonymous, but it's a man who says, for those who feel they haven't ever had fatherhood, masculinity modeled for them because of divorce or other circumstances, how do we learn to be good husbands and fathers? How do we become masculine without masculine initiation? Okay, that's really great. That is the situation that I think many, many men in our world are living in right now. They didn't have that male role model. They have an absence in fatherhood.

Okay, back to basics. You got to learn to trust God the Father. The only way you're going to learn to trust God the Father is by spending time with Him and bearing your heart to Him and allowing Him into your life. The other thing is, is you, in my opinion, you have to find other men and hang out with those other men, good men, and let them mentor you in ways. I love hanging out with older guys. I go to coffee with older men because they have so much wisdom experientially, both negative and positive, and it just feeds me. But I think that the focus has to be, you don't need a human father to become a great

father. You need God the Father. But you do need friendship. That friendship will guide you and say, hey, you know, how are you doing your prayer life? You seem off here. Or how are you doing in your marriage? You seem a little... you need that to, as like, kind of like a, I don't know, a measuring stick, something that's telling you, hey, I'm a little bit off here. Or you're doing well. But God the Father is everything. Jesus came to cultivate that, or to inculcate that relationship with you and the Father.

So it all boils down to that. What happens when we don't have a dad that raised us, we have these massive wounds, and then what we will do is we will turn to the world, its trends and its fads, and human beings for that respect, thinking that somehow that's gonna make me a man, because if I'm liked and validated then I'm I'm it no

Because the more you depend on that the less of a man you really are It all boils down to being one with the father and trusting him Which means you're gonna be in situations that are difficult trials tests Setbacks and sufferings God's leading you to the desert. There's two parts of a test setbacks and sufferings, God's leading you into the desert, there's two parts of a test. There is the trial itself, or I guess there's two parts of a trial, crisis, that's in Greek, decision point, right? Challenge or test. So there's two parts of that. There's the test itself, which is given by God. There's a temptation, which is given by the devil. In every test or trial, the devil is saying, take the easy way out.

We have an opportunity right there to trust God the Father, even though we cannot feel Him, we cannot see Him. Maybe it seems like He's distant, but that is the initiative, right? That's the Passover. The more we do that, the more we test that, the more that we see He comes through, the more we will become a real Father and a real man,

because it's all based on trust and that's experiential. You have to go, if you keep going to the booze whenever you have a trial, if you keep going to the pornography, you're stunting that process. I don't know if I'm making any sense. Make a little sense. Okay. Yeah. This is an interesting question.

K8, what is the masculine response to seeing a random child being treated poorly by a father. Oh my gosh. Isn't it heartbreaking, dude? This happened recently. I was driving in some really rough areas in Steubenville and I was driving down this road and it breaks my heart even to think about it. This father was out, I think he was doing something, talking to a neighbor or something. And the boy came out and looked like it was around bedtime. The father turned around and screamed at him. And I saw the child

physically like jump. I just thought what's going on inside that house, man. It just, yeah. Yeah. It enrages me. I think it, God willing, it's from a justice, divine justice position, but it enrages me. I see these dads, you know, we tend to kind of deviate or gravitate toward one polar extreme. We either think we're the warrior, so we're doing two a days, we're in MMA, we're getting our tats and we're doing all this stuff and I'm not against any MMA or working out or any of that,

but we want to be the warrior so bad that that's our focal point is to be tough and resilient and mentally, but on the other hand there's the lover and the lover he ends up like we were talking about clinging to woman too much if he'd be if he moves too far in that direction but there's a hybrid. We have to become the lover warrior so Christ calls us to be like Judas Maccabeus, right? But he also calls us to be receptive to the divine bridegroom. This is what's interesting with our religion is very weird because Christ, he is a man's man. I mean to endure what he endured without becoming angry,

retaliatory, or impatient and endure all for our sake, there's no one greater. He is a man's man. And yet, he was the lover of all lovers, so empathetic and so compassionate. But as for us men, we have to recognize that Christ is a divine bridegroom and I need to be in relationship as the bride with the divine bridegroom very hard for men But also be the warrior the more that I receive his love the more I'm gonna be willing to fight for that love That's the warrior because warriors fight for that which they love if you are if you're just a warrior You're just and that's it. You're fighting for yourself. You're a narcissistic arrogant dude Who's just fighting for his own ego?

So what we want is we want to combine the warrior lover. We're receptive to the divine bridegroom and allow him to love us and love him in return. And then we fight for that love in others and with God. And it's the great combo. Mason Hickman I think what's so tough about that situation is no man will respond well. No man in the heat of anger disciplining his child in a way that he shouldn't is going to respond well to criticism from another man. Right? That's for sure. Because he's acting immaturally. That's not he's acting passionately in the negative sense right then. So the question is, what do you do? Oh, what do you do with that guy? That's the

question. How do you respond masculine? What's the masculine response? That's what she's saying. I guess it depends. I mean, it's one thing to be driving down the road and seeing something. It's another thing to know a friend who's doing it. If it's a friend, I mean, it's your duty. It's your duty to step in, take him aside at some point and say, Hey, you know, it could be a week later. You're having coffee with him and you're like, hey, I just, I'm noticing something in your son. And I think it might be because you're a little abrasive with him.

You know, I think he's distancing himself from you. And you know, you're right. The guy's gonna, who are you to tell me? But for me, those are some of the best moments of my life. I remember when I worked at an ad agency and I had this terrible habit of turning the conversation around toward me and Finally when our copywriter guy said, you know Devin it's not always about you

as Whoo, and it stung at first and I didn't want to be around him But then go home think about that for a couple days and I went back and like you're right You're right. And that was a very beautiful pivotal turning point for me, you know I love this question here from Dave Pacifici But kitty says for men like me who are not Herculean by any means nor athletic How do we show that being masculine is more than our physique and physical strength? I got a little anecdote here before you respond to that. I was recently

Hanging out with a group of men. I Was with them for a good amount of time actually like like actually a few months Not not like one-on-one. Okay, but like in a school setting. Let's say I don't want to give too much away That's what being a little cryptic here What was interesting is there was a guy who was like quite thin, would wear turtlenecks and, but seemed way more masculine than this other guy who was actually bigger. Like actually had muscle to him, but there was something I said to my wife,

I'm like, do you see what I'm seeing? Like, why is I look at that guy? He just sort of, and the guy with the muscles, it seems like wispy, like he's just his physiognomy. Like it was just it may have been entirely superficial, but that's why I was asking my wife. Like, how come I look at that guy and I just he's just kind of a feminine. This guy character over here is like quite thin, you know. And again, with the turtlenecks, no offense to those who are like that. But I don't look at him and think he's a feminine.

I just think he's a thin, nerdy looking dude, but he seems masculine. Yeah. Yeah. But but what's your advice to this fellow? When Kim broke up with me, I was in college and I was I decided because I was 114 sopping wet. I'm like, I'm going to work out. I'm going to show her. And I was doing two days. And I what does that mean to two workouts to work out today?

So you pick a body part, biceps, morning triceps at night, whatever. Gotcha. And I'm taking protein powder and amino acids and I bulked up in basically like a year, all the way up to 163. And I actually grew too, which was nice. And I was like, you know, all that.

And I remember she called me and I said, you know, we live in a small town, I'm like, hey, so you've seen me? And she was like, you know, all that. And I remember she, she called me and I said, you know, we live in a small town, like, Hey, so you see me? And she said, yeah, yeah, this is totally arrogant before I knew Christ. You know, I'm like, Hey, did you see me? I've been working out. She goes, yeah, you look like a gorilla. She was like, you're welcome. Yeah.

She's like, I'm not interested at all. And it really that like, oh, and it's funny. Cause like guys go through this when they're not, when their wives aren't having intercourse with them, they think, oh man, I need to work out. Like guys say this all the time and she doesn't care. She doesn't even notice that you haven't been working out really unless you-

Yeah, no wife wants her husband to let himself go. But men have this ridiculous Hollywood idea that you need, that women are at all interested in you looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger. What they're interested in is the attention and that closeness. And you being safe. Yeah, secure in love. That's it, dude. Secure in love. And so the question was- For men who are not Herculean by any means.

You don't have to be. How do we show that being Masleon? Yeah, more than. So confidence in the Latin is, you know, confide, so with faith. So when we're truly confident, we're walking with faith, in faith, in God, in who he's created us to be. This is the key. This was really key for me. So your identity leads to your destiny. Who you are determines who you become. But if you do not love who you really are, who God has created you to be, your temperament, your personality, your physicality, all these things, your talents, your lack of talents, whatever, you're gonna always be trying to be like someone else and you're gonna look to that as your ideal.

We have to be comfortable with our human identity, our divine identity as sons of God, and then also our kingship. So when you are confide with faith in who you are, that God didn't make a mistake in making you, He made me short for a reason. He made me look this way with my big ears and everything for a reason. I have no idea why. But when I embrace that, that's when the confidence begins. But when I'm not secure in my identity, then I will not achieve my destiny. Right? So it all boils down to working with God to love who you really are, to see as a gift. There are two things in prayer that I think that we've forgotten to thank God for. Because like, think about this,

I asked people, guys, this in retreats. When was the last time you thanked God for. Because like, think about this, I ask people, guys, this in retreats, when was the last time you thanked God for these two things? The first one is, when was the last time you thanked God just for God? God, thank you for you. Not because of what you do for me, not because you did this or that. Thank you for you. And then the second is like it, God, thank you for me. Not my life, not my talents, not my gifts, but thank you for me. When's the last time any of us have thanked God for those two things? But that is the beginning point of confidence and power. Because the more I thank God for me, because without me, I cannot recognize the greatness of God.

It's such a gift to be me. And it's such a gift that He's Him. And it's so wonderful to live in that relationship being comfortable and confident that He made me this way for a reason. That's where all the confidence comes from. Yeah, yeah. This sort of thing I've been praying repeatedly on the Chotkey on my prayer rope lately is, I am yours and you are mine. Just repeatedly, I am yours, you are mine. It's like my beloved. That's the word.

I am my beloved and he is mine. He is mine. He loves me so much. He does. You will see to it that I am a saint. I know it. I trust it. Not because of any of my own virtue.

God knows I'm wretched. My wife knows it maybe even more than God. But I trust Him. It's about Him. You know, praise the Lord. How good is He? He's so good. God will never be outdone in generosity. Glorify God and He cannot help but to glorify you. Glorify yourself and you're left with that glory. Yeah.

Yeah, and that sucks. To be left holding the bag of your own glory. It's like, gosh, that kind of smells, you know? What bag is it? You know? Yeah. JT Hull's Vice says, how is it best for a father to respond to his child who hates Christianity and wants to leave the faith?

Well, well, okay. So this is hard. Is it JT? Okay. JT, this is very difficult because this is where the introspection and self analysis needs to take place. Why does your child hate Christianity? Yeah. Now, whether he's referring to his own child or might it be more of a generic question? Okay. Okay. Well, I think that children oftentimes resent Christianity because the way it was portrayed to them So like I I hated religion because of my mom

My mom's a wonderful woman now. She's holy. She's a saint even but the way that she represented Religion in God I felt like was very hypocritical and I wanted nothing to do with it. In fact, I was angered by it. I Hypocritical and I wanted nothing to do with it. In fact, I was angered by it. I Think that for parents who their child children rebelling we it's not always like it's okay It's associate like I did this and therefore my child is off the charts. The world is so strong right now It's crazy, especially with all social media and everything. However The Christianity that we are presenting to our children Has a that we are presenting to our children has a huge influence as to whether our children will receive Christ. Because if I take Jesus' advice to receive my child as Christ, if I

really do that, if I take that seriously, like I look at my child and I think, that child is Christ, or I'm going to treat that child as Christ, what happens? If I receive that child as Christ, that child? If I receive that child as Christ, that child is gonna be more likely to receive Christ from me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, the only way around this, there's no silver bullet. It is the hard work of example. It's the hard work of... So, if I'm rigid and rigorous and a domineering religious tyrant, my kid is gonna walk away.

If I'm the felt banner, Jesus' love, my kids aren't gonna take me seriously. But if I have a balance there where I am, I'm strong in authority and leadership, I discipline when it's necessary, but I love, you know, hugs, kisses, words of affirmation daily, all that stuff. Gosh, I love my kids.

I love them so much. Just think of wrestling with my kids. As you said that, kissing my kids. Yeah, my boy, Peter, he's so fine. Like, it's a lovely thing, isn't it? When you realize what kids are actually asking for. When a child says, can we wrestle? What he's saying is, he's saying a number number of things but one of them is I want to

feel your body I want to be close to you well he also wants to feel your power and test his own yeah it's when a child says dad look at look at me he's saying like affirm my existence it's so bloody gorgeous yeah I love that yeah I remember yeah that's what we all want. Like when I was a kid I remember being on the playground maybe sixth grade and we're just pick up game of basketball and there was like seven of us is Evidently was gonna be three on three Team captains the guys start picking the guys and I'm I'm short and I'm like pick me pick me pick me pick me Hmm, and I was always picked last I didn't get picked Yeah, and that's what we're like with God pick me pick me. And I was always picked last. I didn't get picked. Yeah. And that's what we're like with God.

Pick me, pick me. But God, but God is like, I've already picked you. You just have to recognize it. And like that wrestling, that is saying, I choose you. I delight in you. I desire you, you know? So I have this game with my son where we wrestle and he says a number and that number is how hard I'm trying.

So like 10 is just me fighting him like he were you. Yeah, that's super cool. And one is me barely. Five, four, four, three, two, two, two, two, seven. Tap out. Yeah, that is awesome. I love that. I wanted to say something about this though, because the question had to do with how is it best for a father to respond. And I think sometimes what we do is we lose our power by trying to manipulate

another instead of doing what we can do. And what I mean is this, like, I remember someone saying, I'm so afraid that my daughter will hate me or so I'm so afraid that my son will grow up to hate me. What can I do? The only answer is you don't hate them. Because if it's anything other than that, if it's here's how you help them not, it's, we're talking about manipulation. Well, it's not about trying to make them love you. It's what's in your control. Here's what's in your control. You don't hate them. You love them. That's all you can do.

Yeah. Motives matter. Motives matter. And, and, and, and what you said there, they expose themselves in that because they're driven by fear. St. Thomas Aquinas says that fear is almost always rooted in loss, or potential loss. They are afraid of losing the child's admiration, the child's friendship, whatever it is. This is where we get in trouble as parents, because that's at the point where we've shifted. We've placed the creature above the creator. If my children know at the end of the day, God is first, I love God, but they also experience my love, they know that they're secure in love. I'm, you know, showing them, demonstrating that, words of affirmation, physical touch, all of that. But yet, at the end of the day, when there's an infraction that's and I'm like hey look guys that

was out of line why because we honor God first they're like okay they trust they're like yeah you're right dad because why do they trust because they know they have my love but if I'm always placating them they sniff that out and they don't respect me yeah they're not gonna respect me if I'm placating them I had a problem still do occasionally of raising my voice and my kids. And like, I don't mean when it's appropriate. I mean, just because I'm irritated. Yeah.

And I had someone once suggest to me and I throw this out here for other dads who are dealing with the same thing as is instead of going up, go down because it has the same super powerful. If you're talking like this and then they get a line, you go, come here, buddy. Come here. Look at me. Whoa, that's that's how much that's more powerful It's way more powerful and it keeps you in check strong and silent Strong and silent. Yeah, it's really good. Yeah. Yeah Hmm what a gift to be a man, huh? It is a gift

You know you think about it like John John Paul II in Theology of Body, he talked about how the body is an expression of the inner person. And when we look at women and men in their bodies, obviously they're very different and we love the difference. And that difference is what leads us to communion, as Christopher West, you know, talks about so much. difference is what leads us to communion is Christopher West you know talks about so much but a man's body it speaks of the ontological essence of a man as being distinct from the woman you know yes we're made of the same stuff body soul but there's something different about a man there's some different by woman and to the fact that like literally in the sexual act we have to

go forth from ourselves and we have to penetrate, we have to initiate. We have to first rise to the occasion. Yeah, there you go. In all seriousness, I know that sounds funny, but I mean the man has to rise to the occasion. If he doesn't. And spend his strength. Nothing happens. There is no life, there is no intimacy, there is no real communion ultimately. So what I'm saying here is the body reflects the very fact that we are continually meant to go forth from ourselves in self donation spiritually, physically. We're called to plant the seed of love. We're called to rise up in faith of God and defend our wives, our children. It's all built into our body

whether you're wearing the turtleneck or whether you are the guy that work out. And back to that working out, one of the reasons why men work out and get really big is because they have a mom wound or a dad wound, but usually it's a mom wound because, okay, so they feel they, their mom was domineering. And so they feel, they felt effeminate, they felt overruled. They didn't feel strong, especially if a mom hits you in the face or a mom abuses you, then what happens is you end up working out to overcompensate that. Once you hit puberty, you're trying to be a man. But it's in response to the lack of a feminine love or an overbearing mom.

So that the woundedness can play out a lot of times in these over muscular guys, you can see it literally in the flesh. I think sometimes you can see in the eyes too. Yeah. I hope you don't see it in my eyes. Not at all. I see the opposite in your eyes, but I mean, sometimes you'll see that in man's eyes. It looks like a, it's like a four year old's eyes in a muscular body. So what it is is they're trying not to display their fear and what the fear is I'll be found out that I'm actually insecure.

I'm trying to overcompensate with the way I'm built, the way I exercise, the way I master myself. And we do respect men who work out and have great facies. A friend of mine is like a Greek god. And the guys just are like, always asking for advice, hanging out with him, trying to pal. Because there's something intuitively we're like Oh, he's mastered his flesh. Therefore. He must have a master a master of his will so we respect that

But when you like you're saying when you're looking in the eyes of a guy who doesn't have that mastery of the will and the virtue And all that you can see the insecurity you can feel the weakness But he's desperately afraid that you will find out shifting eyes, looking away, you know, joking around, you know, maybe even self-deprecation just to get you off track. Um, interesting. Those are, I'm not a psychologist, but just, those are the things that lines up. That's interesting. Yeah. Hmm. Um, Francesco, writing from Italy. Nice to see you here, brother.

He says how the lies that we have heard from society about masculinity and fatherhood after the sexual revolution have impacted us both physiologically and philosophically. How can we heal from them? Wow. Just a small question for you. Oh my gosh. Well, I would love to just talk about Kate Mallette. Just for a moment, a famous quote. She was one of the founders of now the new organization Women in the Late 1960s, Radical Feminist. She would go on these rallies. Of course, yeah. And she would begin her rallies by saying, why are we here today? Yes.

To start a revolution. What kind of revolution? It's disgusting. The cultural revolution. And then she would say, how do we- Destroy the patriarchy. Yeah. Yeah. And undermine his power, monogamy. How do we do that with promiscuity, homosexuality, pornography, welcome the world we live in? My thinking is, is that if men can- so everything almost boils down to how men love women rightly. Inside. When we learn to love women rightly, that's when we answer that question. Because the radical feminist can yell at us all day, but if we love her rightly, we uphold

her dignity, fine. Because we know our role. Destroy the patriarch, destroy the American patriarch. She says, then you'll destroy the family. So she knows, Satan knew through her, how do you destroy the American family? Destroy the American patriarch. How do you destroy the American patriarch?

Destroy monogamy. So what's the secret? Love your wife right. Get your sexuality in order. Learn how to defeat lust. If you struggle with that, work with people, you know, like you in your books, integrity restored you know all these things do do your Jesus says this

I've been reflecting as he says strive to enter through the narrow gate For many I tell you will not enter, you know, and it's the many tribe, but they won't enter but the word strive Is agoniseth Which is where we get the word agony ag gone in the Greek which means to compete Mmm to struggle to fight. So the question is is For all of us. So what are you fighting for? What do you agonize over? What keeps you up late at night? What do you worry about all the time? Like what what is it that you're agonizing over on a regular basis? That's where your heart is. And Jesus is saying, what I want you to do is identify that,

yeah, but now shift over. Do you strive for me? Do you strive to enter through the narrow gate for me? For your wife. If you really want to be a real man, strive to love your wife properly. How do you strive to love your wife property properly? Well, first of all, not objectify her. Second of all, uphold her dignity. Third of all, make her secure in your love. Fourth of all, generate closeness on an ongoing basis. I love date nights.

I love the 10 minute couch time at night. With kids, it's sometimes a struggle. But closeness, and then let her in on the mission. She may even have her own mission. Uphold her mission as high as you would uphold yours. Women love all of that. And then you feel like such a man because you are a man, but they respect you as a man. It's incredible.

It's all in the self gift. We think that when we give something away, we come out the loser. We have less. But when we give ourselves away, we always come out the winner because we gain more. We gain their respect. We gain their love. It's just, it's a wild dynamic, but we still hold on. We're still so afraid to give because we're like, well, are they going to take advantage of me? Because I'm lauding her, affirming her, Is she going to get too confident? Go out, get another guy? No, she's going to be so secure in your love. She's not going to want to run at all. You know, do you feel stuck in old idols or burdened by the pharaohs of our time? Do you know that

you're capable of so much more than you're giving today? Exodus 90 is the number one freedom app to help you become the man you were created to be. Exodus 90 is a powerful 90-day journey to freedom in Jesus Christ and it starts on January 20th. I've met so many men from all around the world who have been blessed by Exodus 90, so download the Exodus 90 app today to join tens of thousands of men from all around the world for Exodus 90, starting January 20th leading up to Easter Sunday. We all have pharaohs and idols in our lives, things that hold us back from being who we were created to be, things that keep us from love. It's time to leave

our pharaohs and idols behind to journey to uncommon freedom in Jesus Christ. Join the men of Exodus 90 and Father Boniface Hicks, Benedictine monk and renowned spiritual director who is the spiritual guide for Exodus 90 this year. We will establish daily habits of prayer, discipline and brotherhood as we journey to greater freedom in Jesus Christ. So go to Exodus90.com slash Matt to learn more about Exodus 90. That's Exodus90.com slash Matt to join tens of thousands of men from all around the world for Exodus 90, starting Monday, January 20th and leading up to Easter Sunday. Mm. Thank you. Uh, Julius, great name, dude.

I hope that's your real name. How can I find balance between providing for my family and taking on more childcare duties without getting stretched too thin? How can I find balance, he said, I'm just reading it, between providing for my family, taking on more childcare duties? Well, one thing that women do resent is when

the man just works and he comes home and he does not help out with the kids. They deeply resent that. But there's also a danger of being coming home and then being the babysitter. You know, just you know letting the wife off the hook all the time. Right, as if the wife says, you're it. Right. Maybe an example will help. So, um, my wife has massive health problems and, um, you know, and we have a special needs child. The way it's set up, I try to put her to bed at night, and I'm ready to bed at night, which means a lot, you know, we feed her, we do everything for her, clothe her, bathe her, all that. My wife tends to get her up in the morning, but there might be some days where I'm just

like, man, I know she's struggling. I just need to step in there. And what it's not all the time, but what she sees in that is like, well, he chose me today. He remembered. You know, this is part of the culture. What we're really struggling with right now is that people aren't remembered. They just aren't remembered. We don't remember people. Like, I got a text from someone I hadn't heard from. I'm like, and they were like, how are you

doing? I've been praying for you. I'm like, they remembered me. There's something about feeling remembered. Like, a wife who husband remembers her. And I think, you know, in the wedding at Cana, when they filled those jars, they did it in a very hidden way, the servants did. They didn't do it on one hand boasting or complaining. I think when we step in and we remember our wives and we choose them over ourselves, we do without boasting or complaining. That's when God transforms that water into divine wine in our marriage. Because she, over and over again, she's like,

man, he keeps choosing me, even above himself. Yeah, one thing I've started to say to my wife, I'm almost afraid of her hearing this episode. Because I don't want to be held to this. But I think a beautiful question that we could ask our wives that I can ask my wife is, how can I make your day better? How can I make your day easier today? Tell me something, what can I do?

Like, what can I destroy for you today? Yeah, it's beautiful. It's really humble, you know? And I think that just that alone. Cause that's what I'm asking is how can I, how can I love you? Right, that's what I'm asking. Like, how can I make your day better?

And oftentimes, at least my wife, she'd be like, I'm doing good. My wife told me to call the insurance company. Uh, I, yeah, that's the call earlier. Oh yeah, that's right. So I did it. You're welcome, honey. Yeah. So, so, and, but I do think a lot of times I'll be like, you know, nothing,

just the fact that you asked. Yeah. That's, that's enough, you know, just the fact that you asked. Yeah. That's enough, you know. But I love doing things for my wife that she doesn't, didn't ask for, that she didn't, and maybe she doesn't even notice. Like I don't, hey did you see I moved the boxes to the basement? Can you give me a pat on the back and make a kiss on the cheek? No, you just do it and eventually it, you know, it calculates somewhere along the way. I just think that

our wives need security and the fact that you think of her and ask that question is gives that security. Now if you don't follow through she says well I want you to do this and you're like okay all right that's really interesting yeah that's all I was off to I would never do anything how I could I didn't say I would. That's a death blow. It's like when the kids, you know, the kids keep asking you to do something, you're like, yeah, yeah, I'll do it. And you don't do it. As a kid, I wanted a Johnny Bench batter-up. I don't know if you remember Johnny Bench, great baseball player. Oh, from Australia. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So he great baseball player. And there was a Johnny Bench batter-up, real simple,

kind of archaic. You get a tire and you fill it with cement and you put this mechanism in there and it had this thing with a ball and so like you'd hit it with the bat and just spin around I loved it well I wanted it for my birthday well I got it and I'm like dad can you can you do this dad can you do this guess what they never did Johnny bench batter Up somehow disappeared after years. I never used Johnny Bench Batter Up. That kills me. Because you need someone to help you with that? Is that how the game works?

I was seven, eight years old. I had to have somebody... Like throw it to you? Is that how it works? Around the pole? I just had to have somebody take the tire, pour the cement in to solidify the mechanism. And that never happened. I could use it ad infin And then that's never happened. I could use it at an item and it never happened. I got the greatest gift, the gift that I wanted. And there's nothing more torturous to have the gift and not be able to access

it. I'm sorry. Well, no, I'm just, but I'm just saying that's the worst thing we could do to our wives and our children is say, yeah, yeah, yeah, I got that. And then not follow through, you know, date, date nights and daughter dates, you, yeah, yeah, I got that. And then not follow through. You know, date nights and daughter dates, you know, man dates, you know, they're so important. I need to do it more. I love looking at my daughters in the eyeballs and just assuring them of my love

and that they're beautiful. That's one thing that I think dads, when they don't assure, so basically a daughter that doesn't have the gaze of affection and attention from her father will seek for that gaze of affection and attention for guys that we don't approve of. And it's so awkward at first, but it's so beautiful after a while. Like I asked my girls, I'm like, do you know that I love you? Do you know that you're beautiful? And finally, my one daughter, she doesn't

think she's beautiful and she's, she's gorgeous. And she's like, yes, I know I'm beautiful. And it was brought to your smiles. It's like, finally, finally, it's just, I had this, one of my favorite stories with one of my daughters who I love. She texted me out of nowhere. I think my wife was visiting her family in Texas and I was here because I was working and I hadn't seen him in a week and I hadn't heard from my eldest sort of Avila. And she texts me and she says, I love you dad. Something like that.

And I just, I wrote back, I love you, dad. Something like that. And I just, I wrote back, I love you. And if anyone ever hurts you, I will kill them and give you their head as a present. I don't know what's up. Yeah. Yeah, we fight, we fight for- I almost want someone to hurt my daughter so I can hurt them. Oh my gosh. I don't know what that is.

That's like 24 or something, yeah. I don't know. It's like obviously I don't want someone to hurt my daughter. But there's some weird part of me that just wants an excuse to kill somebody. Yeah, justice. Just because they hurt my daughter. Yeah, my friend of mine said I'll fight for my wife. I will kill for my daughter. I'm like, huh, it's interesting. You know, so good. They're so good. Yeah, but you know what? I think one thing

that is so powerful, that is so easy to do, that we're not doing as men generally, is blessing our wives and children. We have the priestly authority. Amen, we do. And so each night we need to bless our wives, because Satan works in a void. The demonic loves to fill spaces where God is not. If I have the spiritual authority to bless my wives and my children, and I are in the same place. Aaron and I are in the same place. Aaron and I are in the same place. Aaron and I are in the same place. Aaron and I are in the same place. Aaron and I are in the same place. Aaron and I are in the same place.

Aaron and I are in the same place. Aaron and I are in the same place. Aaron and I are in the same place. Aaron and I are in the same place. Aaron and I are in the same place. Aaron and I are in the same place. Aaron and I are in the same place. Aaron and I are in the same place.

Aaron and I are in the same place. Aaron and I are in the same place. Aaron and I are in the same place. Aaron and I are in the same place. Aaron and I are in the same place. Aaron and I are in the same place. Aaron and I are in the same place. Aaron and I are in the same place.

Aaron and I are in the same place. Aaron and I are in the same place. Aaron and I are in the same place. Aaron and I are in the same place. Aaron and you say that, I feel called out because I was doing that for a while. I haven't done that for a long time. So I'm gonna go back to doing it. So I wanna encourage men, like, even if you do this occasionally, that's good. Just don't get discouraged, keep doing that. One thing I've been doing lately, it's been so beautiful,

is we'll pray in front of the icons and at the end I'll grab the crucifix and just give it to each kid and my wife to kiss our Lord. Oh wow. But yeah, you're right. Yeah, yeah. Well, in the moment that you bless them, at the end I'll grab the crucifix and just give it to each kid and my wife to kiss our Lord. Oh wow. But yeah, you're right. I love that. Yeah, yeah.

Well, in the moment that you bless them, you become the face, the voice, and the touch of the Father simultaneously. I love holding my daughter's heads and looking them in the eyes and, you know, and then just pronouncing that favor, that blessing, God's favor and blessing upon them. It's so powerful. My wife, you know, at first it was awkward, and now she just closed her eyes, she melts. And then there's something very, it's not just practical,

it's not just physical, God honors that. His divine spirit operates through that to unify the relationship and to bestow grace and blessing on the children and the wife. That is very real. That's divine. It's supernatural. And once we understand the weight of all that and we do it, man, we could change the world just by doing that one thing. Our children would grow up without the father wound. Mason Hickman You know, I know that we could talk about blessing our children in different senses, and one of them is the very real sense in which you're talking about. Maybe it's an analogous sense, but in a way I don't think it's any less real that we bless our children and wife by affirming them.

Oh gosh, yes. By calling out the good we see in them. You know, I think we can all do that. Like, even if you didn't have a very affirming father or mother, maybe you had a terrible relationship with your parents, but we can usually remember a time when they said something kind about us. Hmm. Maybe you can't, which is all the more reason that we should be getting to be, Hey, yeah, I just love you. My said to my daughter, Avalos, you are like one of the funniest people I know. I just, she's just hilarious. Wow. All my kids are so good.

They're so good. The boys are so strong and normal. I even like affirming my kids for like superficial things. You know, like I'm like, I remember I said to my kids, I'm like, I just love that you are all attractive. Like your bodies are so beautiful. Like you're so strong looking. I'm so glad.

So I'd love you if you weren't, but I'm really glad that you look manly to make boys, you're so strong looking. I'm so glad. I'd love you if you weren't, but I'm really glad that you look manly to boys, you know? Well, the human father's words are prophetic. So if he tells his son that he's a good for nothing, he's going to mount to nothing. And that's what happened with my wife's brother. He, in and out of state, pens five times, cooking up mess, stealing money out of mailboxes. The child will follow that often. But if you tell a child that they're made for greatness, that you see the greatness in them, even if they take out the trash and you're like, hey, thank you, great job, or just like you're saying, man, I love your eyes, or I just love the way you did your hair today. That is, it becomes

prophetic. They feel that love and they become that they become that greatness. They step into that they want that because nothing is more intrinsic to a human child than to want to please their father, their human father, even if they hate their human father. I was on a plane coming back from a vent and there's this African American woman young, I think she's in her 20 father. I was on a plane coming back from a vent and there's this African American woman, young, I think she's in her 20s, she sat next to me. And I tried greeting her, she did not want to greet me. I don't know. Anyway, so she sat down and she got out her iPad tablet and there was a guy on there with a child. And I kind of gathered

that that was her child. And so finally in the middle of the trip, she takes out her earbuds and she turns to me and she says hi. And I'm like, oh, hey. And then we start talking. I said, hey, so who was that on the iPad? Was that relative? She goes, oh, that's my husband and my child.

And I'm like, oh, you're just away from them for a while? Oh no, they live in a different state. I live in this. I said, why? Well, I'm taking on this job and I'm like oh you're just away from for a while oh no they live in a different state I live in this so why well I'm taking on this job and I'm I'm moving up very high as a CEO or whatever and um and how long she goes well I'll go back every couple months and you know that kind of thing and I said so we got into it guess what happened she was in she was in track and um And she was in track. And yeah, she's extremely athletic, went to state, high competitive level. Her dad pushed her like crazy and demanded perfection. If she lost, it was like the worst thing in the world.

And I said, why are you doing all this? And she goes, I just want to prove to him that I'm better and that's that's when it broke open we had this incredible conversation and I was just like look you're chasing a ghost no matter how much you achieve no matter how great you are you will still be thinking you're not better than him you'll still be thinking you've got to achieve more it's never gonna be enough because you've got a father in heaven and he loves you in a whole different way than that. That's not based on achievement or anything. It's based on you He loves you for one reason you why because you're his That's what we forget. Why does god the father love me for one reason?

Because i'm his Because he created me for him And we were talking about it was amazing the plane all around I didn't realize at first but everybody's listening and you know right around us and not in their heads and stuff and and then she was started crying and it was so beautiful because at the end of the plane she confessed she goes I just thought you're probably a white bigot and She goes but I'm so thankful that this conversation happened today because I think I'm going to go back and live with my husband, my child. And maybe be less judgmental to white people. Maybe good to.

She's beautiful. She's just, just beautiful. Wow. It's just amazing. But that father wherever she is, the father wound just drives us in insane trajectories that will destroy our life, either for fame and wealth and achievement, or to give up and become slothful and lazy and become a video gamer in the parents basement. Unless we trust that I am his and he is mine, like you were saying earlier,

we fall off the rails. Everything depends on this. Everything. It's all about the identity. If I can love myself with his gaze, how he loves me, I'm going to be confident. I'm not going to chase after anything or not chase after what I'm supposed to be chasing after. Mason Harkness So everybody watching, you can see that Devin is the man who has very beautiful things to say. He's internalized so much of this wisdom because God has given him the ability to do it. Please go get his books. Please go check out Saint, oh sorry, Fathersofstjoseph.org. Fathersofstjoseph.org. When I forget to put this in the description, will you text me so I can then do it?

Oh, I will. Yeah. Please go check him out. Please go get some of his books. Again, I said this earlier, a very, very big movie star who all of you would know called Devin to say that this is changing his life. Was that the language? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, come on. Yeah. Go get his go get his books and get get a few and share them with men in your life. Would it be OK if we also put the rule in your show notes? Yes. All right.

But you have to remind me because I will forget. Oh, yeah. Now he's saying not the raw. He's saying the link to the new book. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's beautiful, man. Matt, I love you. I just I just I just love like so like you wrap up with you telling me how much you love me. Yeah Well, yeah, I what I love about you is that you're willing to go to that place where you're saying You know, I'm not I'm not perfect and and I'm working on this or that and then that opens up the conversation to say

Yeah, I am too. And then yeah, this is what we're we need to work on. I just I just love that That's just that well, it's probably the same as you. It's the melancholic temperament. Yeah. Which is both a blessing and a curse. It's a huge curse. It's funny, my wife's funny. So that's melancholic, so I was looking half full or half empty.

My wife's funny. She's the coolest person I've ever met. It's the best thing that's ever come out of America is my wife, I think. But it's funny. Anyway, I had an Australian recently text me and say, America never that great to begin with and I wanted to punch them. And so instead of punch them, I just sent them a list of all the awesome inventions that came out of America. And I said, most of all, Cameron made it. So she's awesome. Like her a lot. Why was I telling you that? Oh, yeah. She's super choleric. My wife, she's like textbook cholericble though, which is interesting. Like very humble. Humble cleric, wow.

Yeah, it's weird. She, I remember she once said to me, she's like, you know when you walk into a room and you size up who's in charge, and if no one competence in charge, you take over? I'm like, I've never done this in my life. I wanna say yes, cause it feels manly, but no honey, I don't do that.

Like she's so cool. Like she will willingly submit herself to someone who knows what they're doing if she gets a sense that this person doesn't know what they're Doing she will gladly explain to them why they don't take over but not an arrogant sort of way They just know that this doesn't make sense the way you're doing it. So clearly we don't she's really cool But she's very it's she's not as self-tortured as I am and I think it's something to do with the melancholic temperament where I'm living inwardly, reflecting continually, aware of all of the movements of my heart. It can be a tiring place. My wife is an external processor, so asking her, how you doing?

She has no freaking clue. No idea. That hasn't even occurred to her. So she needs to talk to you for 10 minutes and she's like, ah, then she knows. It's really interesting, eh? Yeah, it's amazing after all these years of marriage how you come to discover that about your wife.

This is why like rigid stereotypes about how men and women ought to be can be so terribly unhelpful. Yeah, that's true. And I'm guilty, I'm guilty. Well, in a day and age where there is so much confusion about what men and women are and are for, it's understandable why we should seek to sort of reassert the male and female roles. I get it. And it's healthy and necessary. And yet we can overdo it. So how do you do that with, okay, so she's choleric, yet definitively in a way from God, you're

called to be a leader, especially how do you integrate that or how do you. Well, I'm, I'm melancholic, choleric. She's choleric, choleric. I keep, I's funny, I don't know. I've had, I've had, I've spoken to my wife in a way that other men have said to me after the fact, if I spoke to my wife like that, she would have went to a hole and never came out. Like I have to speak very directly to my wife. I'm like, no, no, she's very special. Like here's an example.

I'm talking to my mate, Rob. We're sitting around chatting. She comes in and she's just kind of taking over the conversation without realizing it. I'm like, hey, no, she's very special. Like, here's an example. I'm talking to my mate Rob. We're sitting around chatting. She comes in and she's just kind of taking over the conversation without realizing. I'm like, hey, I don't have much time. Do you mind if I just chat with you? I'm on. Please. Thank you. Like, I'll talk to her very directly. But she I understand why that might offend another woman, but it does not offend my wife.

She's extremely transparent. She doesn't hold grudges. She's not, um, I think I grew up in a family that was definitely more passive aggressive. She doesn't know what that means. My wife's very different to other women. I have men say to me that their wives, like they'll say one thing, but you can't tell. No, my wife, she might not know that she's feeling a certain way and so has to talk it

through. But if she says she's fine, like it's not because she knows she's not fine and says saying something else. So my point is as a choleric, I think it's like our temperament. I have to talk to her very directly. I'm like, please don't ever do that again. Yeah, she hears it that way. There is a science to that. That's they say, I can't remember who the self-help guru is, but he said with those type of assertive chol cleric people, they're so used to people backing down, they're so used to getting their way, that the way to actually deal with them sometimes, not in your wife's case, is to push back though, and they respect that.

Yeah, and my wife very much does, and I'm sure there are times I cross the line and then have to apologize. And yeah, for sure, I'm not using that as an excuse to be disrespectful or to, you know, whatever. But it's funny too, I've seen my wife get into conversations with people where it's too complicated to explain the details. So everyone will just have to trust me here. But she got into this kind of confrontation

with a friend's husband. She kind of got in the middle of some family drama that was taking place and she was trying to help, but she was sticking her foot in where she shouldn't have. And he kind of lost it at her and she kind of, when I, I didn't mean lose. I mean, in a way that people who aren't cleric consider losing it, but they're like, they feel totally fine the whole time. And both of them were completely fine immediately afterwards, and they really were you know like so my wife can handle a lot of very Straight and frank talk wow she sounds like she's got a very good personality. She's super cool. She's super cool

Yeah, I mean. She's an idiot like me like she's wretched Like your your wife's right my wife's not right now. She is she really is no No, no, Matt Matt. I bet you she'd agree with me. She would so why are you disagreeing with her? Because it's untrue. No, I mean I understand that there are levels of degrees of sanctity And I don't I don't doubt you at all when you say your wife's a saint she's but she's wonderful like right now So she's been diagnosed with this polycystic kidney disease. I hate that I just called your wife, Richard, continue.

Fatal, yeah. I'm so sorry. Which is fatal, but she has basically the only thing that they have found, and it's tentative research, but it was accidental. They started giving these laboratory rats one meal a day and they found that the cysts, so my wife's liver is literally twice the size in her body. It's contorting her body. It's covered with grape-like cysts so much you can't even discern the liver. And then on top of it

that's not the bad part. The part of it is that the kidneys, which get out all the toxins and everything, they each have a tumor that's half the size of the kidney and other cysts on it. They found by giving the laboratory animals, the rats, who have this disease one meal a day, it can starve the cysts to actually reduce them. It's a possibility. So as my wife did, she's already on the carnivore diet for like forever. So she goes to eating one meal a day every 23 hours. She's given up everything, drinking everything, pain medication, everything.

And that's a big deal for her. Just like your wife. That would be a huge deal. And she's so joyful. She's so she's and she loves me and she supports me and everything. Even while she's carrying this huge cross Yeah, Matt I would have to fight back and say and she takes care of a special needs child and loves the other children Yeah, I'd like to edit the part out where I said that your wife could be dying right now is rich Yeah, yeah, she's a special woman she had to be to put up with me I mean my my kids They imitate my wife because my wife was in so much pain and she would like hobble around the house, you know, like literally

like her hips would dislocate and she could feel them as she, as she would walk and she would go, praise you, Jesus, praise you, Jesus, like that. And meet it. And my kids were kind of like make fun of her in a kind way. You know, like praise you, Jesus. What a good woman. That's incredible. Kids make fun of you. Oh my gosh. I love that. Wow. That's incredible. Yeah. Well, God bless your wife. I'm so sorry that she's going through this. I'm so sorry. Your family. Please pray for her. Yeah. You know, and, you know, miracles can happen. Miracles can happen. You know, but, you know, you think of Saint Joseph and Mary, I mean, what they went through. I mean, it's just unbelievable. If you really, I mean, I mean,

like if you read the scriptures, it's like every time they turn around, a calamity is happening. You know, I mean, from being chased out of Bethlehem and the child being almost murdered. And then, you know, Magi show up and then, you know, I mean, did you imagine feeling like? Okay, everyone two years old and under just got slaughtered because of Them I think it tormented them and not to question God You know to understand that there are things that men do that aren't God's fault Yeah, you know, but I love what happened there, you know, and I think about this Joseph It says that he arose and went there. He rose and took the mother and child by night and

I meditated on this and this is so beautiful St. Joseph. Is that that is a dark night of fatherhood You know where you're not seen you're not acknowledged, you're running from the enemy. We're all like Jason Bourne. We all have targets on our backs, but we don't know why we're being hunted or who's hunting us because we've lost touch with our identity and our mission. Joseph has this identity and this mission. He's an underground king. You know, he's a Davidic king. he's underground, he's hiding all that, he's taking care of the Christ child and the mom, he's running for his dear life with all of them and it's the dark night of fatherhood.

No one's clapping for him, no one's saying, way to go buddy and giving him a medal, and he goes down into this foreign land and he ekes out a living, not even speaking their language, suffering through it all, maybe wondering how long it's gonna last. That's a man's man. I love St. Joseph. I love that you love St. Joseph.

I've never had a devotion to him. And I've always not understood people's, and I know Teresa of Avila spoke highly of him. So she's on board. And if Jesus is on board, then I am on board. I'm not saying I'm not on board. You know, it's just people- Gosh, there's so much about him.

Like, says that he, when he discovered Mary pregnant without his cooperation, that he put her away privately. And there's so much right there. So privately is lathe-ra, which means secret. So Joseph, he was a secret person, a hidden person for God. He didn't post it on Facebook, you know, or hashtag my wife's pregnant without my cooperation, you know, he was so secret.

But the putting away privately, actually it's in the Greek, it's apoilo, which means to liberate and set free. Which means that he discerned at some level there was something divine going on even though he couldn't explain it. He's like, out of respect for her, I just need to secretly set her free. That is massively powerful. He's like, God, you do whatever you want here. Even though I love this woman with my entire

being so much that I'm willing to be chased, willing to be a virgin for her. I'm following her into that vow. I don't want to lose her. And that's the whole thing when he pondered those things, that Greek word ponder is entha maime, which is where we get the root word thumos, which is the masculine warrior spirit. But it's the masculine warrior spirit grieving, agitated. Joseph was agitated and grieving as he pondered the idea of letting Mary go. And yet he did all that in hiddenness.

He didn't tell anybody, he didn't complain about it. That is so incredible. I'm like, why wouldn't I love him? Why wouldn't I want to be like him? The guy's amazing. And there's so much more, you know? No. What's the book you've written again that you didn't have here? The rules? The rules?

No, no, no, not the new one. The first one you did. Joseph's Way. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Joseph's Way. Yeah. I actually, there was four volumes to that. Two of them I didn't publish. Yeah. Did you ever put them together? Yeah. One or?

The two first two were in the first book. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. The one on Moses and David, I never published. The one on David I really love. Why didn't you publish it? So I'm not a theologian. I'm not a writer, at least I don't see myself as that. I'm not an academic scholar. So I think after the first one came out, I went through this like weird phase where I felt very inadequate. I don't have any credentials behind my name. I'm an oddity.

I'm a total oddity. Like I write all this stuff and I don't have any theological background. And so I got a little nervous, I think. Did you get any pushback or legitimate, hey, you got this wrong? No, no, no. I mean, some of the criticism was with Joseph's way that it was too deep, you know? But then Jason Everett was like, too deep? How can it be too deep? You know, he's like, I love it. That's a problem. Yeah. Yeah. He was great. He published, uh, show us a father. He loved, he said that was his bestselling book, uh, show us a father and, uh, did you do the front cover? Yeah.

Keith Nestor shot the photo. Did he? Who is this? Um, friends of his. Beautiful. Back in the day. That's a beautiful photo. Yeah. I love it of his. Beautiful. Back in the day. That's a beautiful photo. Yeah, I love it. Yeah. Yeah. So Joseph, just there's so many secrets to Joseph in the scriptures. If we would just mind them. Yeah. And if we would imitate him or invite him in to lead us, we fathers would just be so different husbands. Devin, thank you very much for coming out all this way and leaving your wife and daughter. I hope they're okay.

Oh yeah, yeah, they're fine. I don't do this very often, but yeah, they're doing well. Thanks Matt. Matt is just awesome being with your brother. Yeah, good to be with you too. Thanks. Yeah. Hey there, Ryan Reynolds here.

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