The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - Examination of Conscience for Fathers

Episode Date: March 6, 2020

Jeff is talking with Matthew James Christoff about how men must go deeper in confession to overcome the temptations they face everyday. They go over seven questions fathers can ask themselves in an examination of conscience before they enter the confessional. These questions are directly related to the seven attacks Satan makes on the family. Snippet from the Show “If you don’t have an explicit commitment with your bride to ascend in holiness together, disunity starts there.” Text “jeffcavins” to 33-777 to subscribe and get added to Jeff’s shownotes email list!

You're listening to The Jeff Kavens Show, special episode, examination of conscience for fathers' seven keys. Hey, I'm Jeff Kavans. How do you simplify your life? How do you study the Bible? All the way from motorcycle trips to raising kids, we're going to talk about the faith and life in general. It's the Jeff Kaven show. Hey, thank you for joining me this week for a very special episode. This is being recorded during the period of Lent. And so if you're listening out of order, I just want you to know this is for Lent. And Lent is a time where we really prepare our hearts to go deeper with God.

And just recently, I did a show on going deep in confession, deeper than you've ever gone before. And as I got to, you know, talking about it and I met with some of my good friends, I started to become, I started to become aware that men are really in need, particularly fathers are in need of going deep into confession. And so today's show is going to be talking about seven keys to going deeper as a father. Let me just say something before you say, well, maybe that's not for me because I'm not a father. I'm a woman, and I might not get anything out of this. I just want to say that we are all interrelated. We're all connected. If you're not a physical father now, you may be in the future, and now is a good time to learn. If you are a friend of a father, then you have something to contribute. If you're a woman, this also applies to you in so many ways, but it might give you a better understanding of what men are dealing with. So I guess I'm saying this is for everybody. My special guest today for this special show is Matthew James Christoff. And Matthew

James Christoph is becoming a well-known name among men's ministries in the Catholic Church in America today. And he has really been at the beginning of a powerful movement. And I thought it would be a good idea to bring him on the show today. Not only is he known nationally, he's a good friend of mine locally, and we do get together. Matthew James Christoff, good to have you on the show today. Jeff, I'm so glad to be here, and thanks be to God. This is an important topic because, you know, Christ tells us to go and make disciples, and that's the last thing he tells us. And frankly, that means making spiritual children. And if you're a man, you're called to make spiritual children and you're supposed to be a spiritual father. So we've got to take that role seriously and really

be able to examine our conscience as we think about that role. There's so much happening in men's ministries in general. We're going to talk about being a father today and examining your heart when you go to confession, and I know there's a lot of ruts we get into when it comes to confession, but there's so much happening in men's ministry, and you've been a part of a lot of this. Give us a little bit of a synopsis before we get into the topic today about men's ministry in the Catholic Church in the year 2020. Well, you know, you can look back over the last several decades, and there's been a growing understanding and increase in understanding about the nature of the man crisis in the Catholic Church.

There's been a lot of research recently, and it's picking a momentum that really defines that crisis for men, and frankly, a lot of men are coming to understand that it's really a crisis of fatherhood. So the man crisis is a generic idea is very critical, but ultimately it's our call to spiritual fatherhood that men have to come to grips with. Now, you know, we don't have time to go through all the things going on, but we have great impetus in the church to start to address the issues that men face with men's conferences. We see all kinds of things that are bearing great fruit like consecration of St. Joseph

and Exodus 90 and many other things. But we're still very early days in this, and it's going to be decades, certainly the rest of our lifetime, and I think lifetimes to come to really fully bring men back into the church in a way that's fruitful. One of the things I've heard you actually say is that when we talk about a man crisis in the world, not just the United States, but around the world, when we talk about going to confession, sacrament of reconciliation, we're not talking about every Catholic man going today, and it's a matter of making adjustments. The statistics are actually staggering, aren't they? They are staggering. If you look at it, only less than one and five Catholic men go to confession on an annual basis. Now, one in 50 go to confession every month.

Now, you think, so that's like 2%. And you look at that and go, well, we also know statistics are telling us that just take one mortal sin, the constant viewing of pornography, somewhere between two thirds and 75% of Catholic men, look at pornography on a monthly basis. The number is actually approaching 100% for young Catholic men. So this need for confession, especially as we're battling sin is so critical. And, you know, I frankly think this idea of the examination of conscience for fathers is a way to really hook men into confession because every single man that's a father, a biological father, is trying hard. He wants to be a great father. But frankly, one of the things, if you go and ask people about what they use for the basis for their examination of

conscience, men will say, well, I use the Ten Commandments or, you know, maybe I use the beatitudes, or some men, you know, if they're really getting specific, they use virtues, I have yet to find a man who says, I have a detailed examination of conscience as a father. Yeah, I've never really heard that emphasized. Well, let me ask this. Before we go deeper into this, I have learned, I guess, over the last 45 years or so, that when you and I talk about something and we use words to explain truths in the Catholic Church, not everybody understands it. When you say exactly, examination of conscience. Are you saying that that's confession, or is that something else? Well, examination of conscience, I mean, to put it in layman's terms, it's like grading yourself.

You have some criteria you're going to grade yourself on it. What we're trying to think about is how we're doing against what God calls us to do in terms of a moral set of standards. You know, that should be done before you go to confession, you know, and oftentimes what people have a tendency to do in men, and frankly, I've done it myself, is, you know, I've got to get a confession, and I get in line for confession, and I'm doing my examination of conscience right before I go into the confessional. I told you not to tell people what I do. Well, you know, it's like anything else, and we talked about this before, that, you know, if your wife said, you know, finally gives you permission or agrees with you that it's time to

buy a truck, right? You finally get that truck. You can't get a new truck. You get a used truck. you look on one of these trading sites you go to pick the truck up do you just give the guy the money and drive away or do you actually go deep you're under the hood you're looking at the quality of the oil you're looking at the transmission you're testing universal joints you're looking for any kind of leakage you're looking for rust we need to do the same things with our soul as we go before our savior and confess our sins it's kind of bad a bad act actually to not do a thorough thing i'm a busy guy I mean, isn't it enough that I'm just going, you know? You know, thanks be to God, anybody that goes to confession, it's a good thing. And this is for really, you know, for every dad that has this aspiration to be a great father, you got to do a deep examination of conscience to do it. No, I agree with you. And I can't tell you the number of times.

You're convicting me as you speak because I am one of those guys, too, that I'll say, you know, to my wife. I got to go to confession today. So what time? Four o'clock. So I drive over there listening to the men. Minnesota Twins on the radio. And I get there and I think, well, I'll have some time in line. And I think about a familiar list, should I say.

And then I go to confession and I leave. And I do have that sense from time to time of that wasn't enough, really. I mean, that was a ticker, you know, I was ticking off some things. You know, you feel good after you have received that great absolution. But if you really stop and think of it afterwards and say, did I really do a good job on this? Um, another analogy would be anybody who's been in a lawsuit and you're going to go before a judge, uh, you don't casually just go in there. You are well prepared. Your case is well prepared. You've thought about the merits of your case. You've thought about the deficiencies. And, uh, you know,

we're going before the divine judge, right? Right, right. So this is an important thing to put time into. And it's going to make you a better father. It's not just about getting through the confession and coming out the other side. It's saying, hey, I want to do the things that's going to make me a great. father. And a great father is a Catholic father who takes his call seriously. What do most people think, before we get into year seven, what do most people think of when it comes to that well-worn checklist, you know, of this, this and this, forgive me, Father, for I've sinned, here's your penance, and you go back and you finish the ballgame on the way home? What are some of the common, you know, on the checklists that guys, maybe I'm

aren't thinking enough about, but they're saying. Yeah. Well, you know, there's an old study by an old Jesuit who looked at, and I don't know how the data was developed, but looked at the sins that men and women confess, and they're very different, actually. One more indication that there's really differences in the two sexes, but men tend to do physical sins. So it's lust, it's sloth, and it's gluttony.

Sure. And women tend to be pride, anger, and envy are the... Oh, that's interesting. Circle to the top. So, you know, and I think what triggers a lot of guys go to confession, this is after talking to lots of guys and talking to guys and talking to guys who talked to guys, it's kind of like, you know, hey, I looked at porn this week. And God, I got to get to confession.

So you go and you get that one off your chest. But there's a lot of stuff that if you're not thinking about it, you're just making the same errors over and over. Right. So, again, going deeper and having a list that goes to be. that kind of standard routine that you've gotten yourself into. Well, we've got about five minutes before we're going to take our break for the show. So I just want to jump into these things, because you've got seven of them,

and I mean, we could literally do a show on each one of them, and perhaps someday we will, and each one is very, very serious. So again, we're talking with Matthew James Christoph. He is really, really one of the movers and shakers in the men's movement in the Catholic Church in America, done a lot of study. In fact, you still have those studies. You've done a lot of interviews. Lots of interviews with top evangelists around the country, around the world, have fielded the largest survey of Catholic men than I can find, some 2,000 men. So there's a lot of data behind these things that we're going to talk about. Is it accessible? It is. It's on the new emangelization.com site.

I hope you got that. He didn't say the new evangelization. You said what? New emmanelization. Manly. And you know what? It is an amazing gold mine of interviews with top leaders around the world about these events or these issues. So what you're going to be giving us here, this isn't off the top of your brain just yesterday. This is really well thought out. Let's start with number one. Now, what we're talking about, just to remind you, my dear friend, we're talking about seven areas that a father should seriously look at before he goes to confession and will give him some real guidance into what to say when he goes to confession. At the end of the show, I'm going to walk you through really briefly, like 30 seconds. How do you go to confession using this? So what's number one? So just for the setup on this, thinking about the father's role in the family, he's leading

his family on a spiritual pilgrimage to heaven under the attacks of Satan. And so these seven questions or seven keys to men's confession are in direct reaction. to seven attacks that Satan makes on the family. Wow, that's good. So the first one is Satan wants to build disunity between the man and the woman. And so the question is, is my unity with my bride in Christ strong and getting stronger? So being a father, right away, you're off target here. You're talking about your bride, but we're talking about fatherhood.

So I'm assuming, and I'm being a little facetious, there's a link. Yes, absolutely. I mean, the basis of fatherhood is the matrimony. And right, if you're going to raise children, if anything, you have to have unity with your bride and you have to demonstrate with your bride through the gift of matrimony what it means to be a Catholic man, what it means to be a Catholic woman. And that's where your authority starts, but also that's where your children learn of the beauty of the sanctity of marriage. So you could say that marriage is in a real sense. It's the stage on which your son and your daughter.

see truth. Yes, yes. And if you have that disunity, everything else is more difficult. And the sacrament of marriage is supposed to precede children. And so that's why we start with that. Wow, I know what you're saying there. You know, if you are walking in disunity with your bride, which I never have, I've read about it, but immediately the kids can see it. And it, no matter what anybody says, it affects them, but it also affects your ability to be a father. Right. And it affects your ability to be a father because you lack credibility, but also we hear a lot about complementarity, complementarity, complementarity, and we hear about the feminine genius. And we're starting to hear a little bit about the masculine genius. But ultimately, if you want to be a great father, you need the help

of your bride to make you a great husband and a great father. Wow. I mean, that's enough right there. And to be honest with you, I mean, we're being honest on the show. We always are. And by the way, this show is all about being a disciple and walking with Christ and discovering new truths that we want to put into our practice and grow. I don't know if I've ever gone to confession with that in mind of, I want to be a great

father, and I need to confess some disunity. And disunity can be brought about how. Let's go a little deeper on that just for a moment. How can disunity come about in a marriage? Well, if you don't have an explicit commitment with your bride to ascend in holiness together, disunity starts there. If your goal isn't to help each other get to heaven, you're lacking agreement on the most fundamental thing. And so if that isn't explicit in your marriage, then that's where disunity starts. Yeah. And so you mentioned earlier in the show, men confessing pornography. Well, that certainly is going to bring disunity to your marriage or alcohol. Excessive use of alcohol could bring disunity to your marriage, which translates into, I'm not being the father I'm called to.

Yeah. Well, you know, preceding all these examinations of conscience for fathers is the examination of conscience for sons. So, you know, just that these are the things that we typically focus on, right? The 10 commandments, the virtues, the beatitudes. That's about being a son. But ultimately, you have to grow into this other thing, which is fatherhood, right? And so you got to tie it in somehow. And there's a lot of ways to have that disunity. Sure. But it's something to think about. To do more than stand in line and think about for 10 seconds. Right. Well, you know, I think another way to calibrate that is to look and say, you know, how was it when I was courting my bride? what was our lives, what were our lives like?

How did I act? How did I think? Where was my heart? Right. And sadly, in a lot of marriages, that fire goes out, right? And we've talked about this, and you can jump in whenever you want. But this initiation role or initiator role of the man, sometimes the man backs off and the woman is waiting, waiting for him to, you know, act with that kind of appreciation and love that he had showed early on. on. Right. When they first got together, and everything was on automatic at that point. You didn't have to work a whole lot other than to raise the money to buy flowers. Well, very good. So number one, build unity with your bride. That's one of the areas that a father should examine his heart in when

it comes to going to confession. Number two. Number two, Satan attacks in a way to build chaos and rebellion individually and among people in a family. So the second question is, have I established and maintained strong paternal authority, order, and a Catholic culture in my family? Wow. You can say that again. I mean, that's powerful. Yep. Have I established and maintained strong paternal authority, order, and Catholic culture in my family?

So that means, you know, am I, is it clear in my family that I'm the head of the family and living out that duty as the head of the family? Is there clear rules about what we do and don't do, all founded on? the truth of Christ in our family that kind of guides us. And then I'll use your terms. You know, if you were going to be on trial for being a Catholic, would there be enough evidence to convict you? Yeah. Right. The point is, you know, if you want your kids to be Catholic, there needs to be a culture at home that's dripping with Catholicism in a beautiful way, not in a smaltzy way, but in a way that inspires. Yeah. Oh, that's good. Okay, let's go for one more

before the break. This is so rich. We're talking about examination of conscience for fathers. And number three? So the third attack of Satan is to try to instill lukewarmness or apostasy in our faith lives. And so as a father, am I zealously leading my family in the practice of the Catholic faith? And this is so, all the research tells us that it's the, you know, the mothers are beautiful and they're doing their best to kind of hold the family together in the faith. when men are abdicating their responsibility, but frankly, it's not enough. And we've seen that in the last number of decades. But when the father steps up and leads the family and faith,

not in an autocratic way or in a, in a tactual way, dictatorial way, but in a real way that shows his love and commitment to Christ and to the Holy Catholic Church, the kids pick it up. And so we have to lead him. I thought I saw, you know, I thought I saw a study. years ago, maybe you gave it to me. And I don't remember the statistics, and I'm not putting you on the spot, but the percentage of children who do not continue in the faith, if the father is not active, this is not a small number. No, it's a very large number. I mean, your chances of your children staying in the faith, if either the mom or dad doesn't practice permanently, is somewhere in the probably one in 10 chance. If the mother is active in the faith, and I'm going from memory here, it's about maybe a third, 25% to a third will remain in the faith.

But if the father is active in the faith, in fact, even if the mother is not, the father is active, nine out of ten kids are going to remain in the faith as they grow into adulthood. You know, that's almost too good to be true in some ways. And I know it's true. But it's almost like, are you serious to get my kids to continue? All you're saying is, dad, getting gear. Yep, yep. It's amazing. It's, and, you know, they can see right through us, right?

And they can listen to us talk, but if our words and actions don't link together. So we can get our kids all the catechises we want, but if we're not practicing it, they're not going to believe it's real. Matthew, and right before the break here, what you're saying there, I completely agree with you. I agree with you, but I also know, that's hard hitting for some people to realize, you know, what, my kids are grown, or I am only a year or two away from high school graduation with my kids, they still have hope, don't they? Absolutely. Your children, as long as they're alive and you're alive, there's hope and there's all kinds of things that fathers can do. You know, I'm a late

convert, right? I'm very late. I was not, I was 46 before God finally, I finally listened to God, right? But even after that, you know, I still am seeing fruit into our children. And certainly for grandfathers, all this is true for grandfathers. You could call this an examination of conscience for grandfathers. That's the next show. Yeah, another show. It's for the people older than us. Yeah.

No, we all, we have grandkids. Hey, we're talking with Matthew James Christoff about Catholic father's examination of conscience. We've got four more things for you to think about when you go to confession. And we'll put these seven in the show notes for you. By the way, if you want the show notes and you're driving, I don't want you writing this down right now. It's going to be an accident. I don't want to be responsible. for that, but you can get the show notes of every show by just simply texting my name, Jeff

Kavins, one full word, Jeff Kavins, at all you got the number is 33777. It's a very biblical number, 3377, and you'll get all of the show notes from here on out. We'll be right back with four more things to think about. For fathers, go into confession as far as an examination of conscience, you're listening to the Jeff Kaven show. Imagine this. You're walking down the street and a Christian at a table with a bunch of pamphlets ask you, have you been saved? What would you do? Would you know how to respond? Hi, I'm Dr. Andrew Swofford and I'm co-presenter along with Jeff Kavins and Ascension's new Great Adventure Bible Study, Romans, the Gospel of Salvation. In this study, we teach you the biblical foundations for the

Catholic teaching on salvation, how to explain salvation quickly and easily to non-Christians. What St. Paul really meant by works not leading to salvation and how we can. can enter more deeply into Christ. Paul's letter to the Romans has been at the center of reflection, conversion, and controversy from the very beginning, and it's widely considered his greatest work. I invite you to start a small group in your home or parish and embark on this great adventure. Romans, the Gospel of Salvation, is available for pre-order right now and for purchase on September 1st, 2019. To order, visit ascensionpress.com. Hey, welcome back to the Jeff Kaven show.

We're talking today with Matthew James Christoph, who, by the way, has played a big role in a brand new, brand new film teaching series from the Knights of Columbus. And you sent it to me, Matthew, the other day. Unreal. What the knights are doing for men right now. It is astounding. Probably many have heard of Bishop Olmsted. apostolic exhortation into the breach, it's a powerful call to men, frankly, one of the most

powerful calls that I've heard from any clergy, any bishop in the church. And the Knights of Columbus have taken that apostolic exhortation and built a series of 12 videos, which focus on different things, with a who's who of evangelization, including you, Jeff. I mean, you played a, you played a big role in it, too. And it is produced by an Emmy Award-winning producer for the Knights of Columbus, I believe this is going to be transformational for a lot of men, because it's going to take that important apostolic exhortation and put it in a digestible form, in a very inspirational form. Yeah. And so some great guys are participating on that, former Viking, and the guy that played for some Baltimore team, Matt. What's it named Burke? Burke. He's on there. Dr. Scott

Hahn, Tim Gray, Curtis Martin, you. I'm on there with. you and deacon haroldberg civers i don't know who all else but there was a list of i think 60 men 60 right so it's uh it's worth checking out we'll put that in the show notes yeah it's it's coming out on ash wednesday all 12 really yep so right i got to get that from you and i'll put that in the show notes for everyone listening all right we're talking about seven things a father needs to think about for an examination of conscience and by the way if you're in the middle of lent this is the time to get serious and go deep when it comes to confession So we've been talking about building unity with your bride, establishing authority,

order and culture, leading the family and the practice of the Catholic faith. Your family should be dripping in love in the Catholic faith. And number four. Well, Satan, again, all these are corresponding to seven attacks that Satan makes on the family. Satan wants us to be ignorant and heretical, right? So what a father needs to do is to be continually both evangelizing and catacobes. his family, to draw them closer to God into his Holy Catholic Church. So that is number four.

Evangelizing, catechize the family. What's the difference between evangelizing your family and catechizing your family? Well, evangelization, at least in my mind, is that description of the corigma, where you're expressing the truth about God's work in our lives, and also giving that personal testimony of what God is doing in your life. So when I say evangelization from a father's standpoint, his wife, and often, by the way, the wife can be lukewarm, right? And just like the father and the husband can be lukewarm, your wife and your children should know how important that Christ is in your life and the blessings, the many blessings that you've received through prayer and the sacraments in the Catholic Church. So that's really the explanation of, you know, why you should be Catholic.

but the how you should be Catholic really is the catechesis part. Catechesis comes from the word that means to echo, right? And so in essence, when we're catechizing, we're basically recalling to our family what the church teaches. And there's all kinds of levels that you can go to on that, right? I mean, the catechism has 2,800-something paragraphs, which, you know, is a lifetime effort. But there are basics that we need to teach your children.

Well, you're mentioning two things that are important. and they're evangelizing and catechizing. And often I've heard people say, well, we, you know, our families may have been catechized. In other words, someone taught them what we believe at some point, but they haven't been evangelized in that they never have really caught fire and said, Lord Jesus, I love you, I'm going to follow you, you know. And you put them together, you've got the, you've got a winning combo.

Yeah, well, you know, if I was going to err on one side or the other, I'd err on the side of evangelization because people have got to believe that it's real and it's making a difference in your life. And that conversion, conversion of heart, if that is real and deep, the catechetical part of it will flow out of it because you will want to express yourself and what the church teaches. So on this one, the fourth one,

what's the question that a father should ask himself prior to going to confession? Am I evangelizing and catechized in my family? In the last week, what have I done specifically to lead my family? What have I done or not done? not done and there's a lot of things right i mean um you know some of us uh we have faith in church and we have faith in our parishes and we think that if we just drop our kids off for catechesis we've done our job well the answer is no you cannot outsource catechesis of your children you can

get some help on it but it's ultimately you know at the end of the day when you go to the judgment and god goes you know last thing i told you was make disciples show me your disciples uh you're not going to be able to turn around and go, well, my kids aren't here because, you know, the DRE didn't do a good job. Yeah, it's you. Yeah, you're the one that's going to be standing before God. Wow, we've got three more to go in our time. Number five. Well, Satan wants to attack the family with sin and suffering. He wants to draw us into sin and cause us great suffering. And so as a father, am I protecting my family not only physically, but mentally and spiritually? A father naturally is going to protect his family. It's instinctual.

Somebody comes to do it. You don't even have to be taught. Yeah, you don't have to be taught. You know, it's that your story I've heard you tell or the parable I've heard you tell about how what a father does at three in the morning when somebody tries to break into their house, I mean, he lays down his life for his family. But there's so much more that we need to do as fathers to protect our family. So would you say that the battle spiritually when it comes to our children is equal to a physical threat? Oh, it's more. You can only kill the body. You know, the spiritual threat is the death of the soul in eternal hell.

So it's the eternal life is the thing you really need. You need to do both, right? But you need to protect your children spiritually. And there is so much, right, as we look at the culture that we're living in, that is exactly opposite and satanically driven. All you have to do is turn on the television, watch the halftime show at the Super Bowl, anything, right? And you're going to see things that are not consistent.

with what it means to aspire to holiness. Yeah. Well, I know how to take a baseball bat in the middle of the night to someone who's coming into my home, but how do I take a baseball bat spiritually? You know, do you have a couple of things you might suggest on how a father could protect his family? Because someone might say, I do want to protect my family, Matthew, but frankly, I don't know what that means other than I do go to church, you know?

Well, if I was going to pick one thing, I would be, I would say that you need to be, countercultural in terms of all forms of media. We're swimming in a tsunami of sewage. How's that for alliteration? Tsunami of sewage in media. Not only the television that we allow our children and we watch too, but all the internet stuff. So we've got to be very cautious about what we allow in our home. We wouldn't allow people selling drugs in our home.

we'd be finding it outrageous or we wouldn't allow people doing all kinds of evil acts in our home. But when we're allowing it in the media to enter our home, it's the same thing. It's affecting the minds and hearts of your children. At the risk of sounding old fashion, I've said to my daughter when she was 12, 13 years old, my sweet daughter, fat three sweet daughters, or I remember saying this to the oldest one, I wouldn't let Mick Jagger come into my daughter's bedroom and shut the door and talk to her about his philosophy for an hour. It's not happening. It's not happening. And so I remember when I was younger, when I was younger, which was every day before this one, I guess. But my daughter wanted to buy music and we had a rule. The

rule was, I'll buy it with you. I'll go to the store. We'll listen to it together. And that really kept a lot of stuff out. And I remember saying that to her. I said, honey, I love you so much. I wouldn't allow the stones to sit alone with you in the room and tell you what they think about you. and life. And I was very unpopular. Well, you know, music is a incredibly sophisticated attack on the family because it's not only embedded with all the lyrics, it's the sound of the music. It's the lot of it is kind of drawing us into the deeper, you know, stomach and genital region, right, in terms of what drives us, right? Just the beat and everything. And in contrast to that, we have to also do things to explore and help our children have an appreciation for beautiful things,

beautiful music. And there's all kinds of it. You know, if you ever ask yourself, how powerful is music, just, you ever get that song going in your head that you can't get out of? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it happens all the time, right? Some people have an audio ability to kind of recall things. If it's running like that and you're aware of it's running, there's all kinds of things you're not aware of. They're below the surface that are affecting what you're thinking and the synapses and your brain, the way they're connected. So we have to be very countercultural. We're not always going to be popular, but we have to have grace to help us fulfill that role. And if you go about it as a dictator, you're not going to pull it off,

but if you go about it as a father who loves like God loves, that's going to be a good thing. Okay, we've got two more in the time we have. What's the sixth one? Satan wants to draw us into materialism. He wants to get us to think that all there is in the world and acquiring material things in the world are going to make us happy. And what I Catholic father needs to ask himself is, do I provide for the material necessities of my family while avoiding materialism? You know, the American dream is buy as much stuff as you can, and you go into a typical home, and, you know, there's stuff stacked everywhere.

And instead of the idea of giving our children everything, what we should do is teach them material poverty, right? We need to be frugal. We need to have a life of simplicity. We need to be prudent about what we buy. And it's not only what we buy for our children, but it's what we buy. You know, all the toys, all these things, these signal to the kids that material things will make you happy. And they won't.

And by the way, it's also connected to, you know, the other thing about providing is to be a good steward of the things, both financial and material that God's given you. And to the extent that you're constantly, and this is a very big crisis in American family, and families around the world, too, I'm sure, that we're overextending ourselves to buy stuff. And this has a ripple effect, right? If you overextend yourself, not only you can have all the stress, and by the way, there's major stress with men and women, right? That number one issue of building unity is financial stress, right? So if we're not being a good gatekeeper on materialism, we're going to open ourselves up to all kinds of things. And just the sheer time that you put in on the internet looking at stuff and finding stuff that's not spent

praying and being a father and an example. And a lot of times people say, I don't have time to read the Bible. Well, how many things you've been searching for to buy on the internet, you know? And that can interfere. And number seven. Number seven, Satan wants to lure our children into worldliness. In other words, to not think about the heavenly things on earth. but to think about the world. So what a father's got to do is he's got to cultivate the family's spiritual and worldly talents and vocations. So this is understanding your children on a deep basis, loving them, listening to them,

helping them discern and understand the talents that God has given to them, giving them the context of what are all these talents about, right? They're not about making money. They're about serving God. And ultimately, every child, you need to be able to help, them find their vocation in the world, which includes a very explicit exploration of a priesthood or religious life for every single Catholic child. Every Catholic child should be exposed to that and consider it in a significant way. It's not for everybody, obviously, but if you don't

expose your child to that, chances are they may not find it. But ultimately, most kids, what they're going to do is they're going to find their way, and you've set the pattern with your wife about the beauty of matrimony, the beauty of fatherhood and motherhood and children, you're going to help them do that, and you're going to help them also find that material work in the world will allow them to run and lead the domestic church military. You know what I'm thinking about as you say this, point number seven, cultivate talents and vocations of the family. The odds are that a good portion of the people, the kids growing up, are going to get married, and they're going to have kids. What would be, what would

the world be like? What would the church be like if we discouraged our kids from having kids? You know, and say, it's too much of a problem. It's too much of a burden. It's costly and so forth. That's one thing to think about, but what if we discourage them from becoming priests? Right. Well, you know, to make spiritual children, there've got to be children, right? And to have the sacraments, there's got to be priests. So it's every Catholic father's duty to ensure that, number one, he's open, and this goes back to unity with your bride, being open to the beautiful gift of children and to raise them in an environment where children are loved and appreciated and joyful. And, you know, both you and I have gone through or are going through

the transition of our parents and as they prepare for passing on to the eternal life. And at the end, we both know what they care about. They care about their children. And we as parents, as fathers, ultimately our joy will not come from the fact that we sold an extra million dollars of whatever product or we went around the world in a boat, but that our children are with us and love us and we've done our best to be a parent to them. I heard a couple say and kind of wrap up with this. I heard a couple say one time, I said, what's your goal? What's your goal in life?

And you know, you can always argue for a deeper goal. But I thought it was a beautiful statement that they've made. They said, our goal is to dance with our children before the Lord in heaven. And I thought, wow, that's actually a beautiful thought. You know, maybe my kids don't dance right now, but they will, you know, in heaven. And I want to dance with them and I want to be with the Lord. And what joy it must be to suddenly realize in heaven before God Almighty that my two, three, four, five, seven children are with me. Absolutely.

And I don't want to be too negative here. at the end. But the other way to look at this is, what is it like to be in heaven if your children aren't with you? Right? And, you know, we have, through the grace of God, a divine calling to headship of the family and to be fathers, right? And now is the time for us to assert that both right and obligation to lead our children to heaven. You are right. And my friend, I have, I said at the beginning of the show or somewhere in the show that we'd quickly go through confession. If you've never been to confession before as a father and maybe you're a mother and you're listening and you say it's been a long time since I've been to confession, I want to encourage you to

look up your local parish, find out when they have confession, and do, especially if you're a father, do what Matthew James Christoph is talking about here, these seven points. I'll put them in the show notes for you. To go over these seven points before you go to the line, and when you're going to the line, even go deeper as you're standing there. But if you don't remember how to go to confession, you simply go. And the first thing you say is, Father bless me, for I have sinned. And you can find this online anywhere. And just be honest about it. It's been, you know, five years since you've gone, 10 years. I've heard people say it's been 40 years since I've gone to confession. Say it, you know. And as Matthew says sometimes, be a man. Say it. You know, I've been 40 years since I've been to

confession. And then tell Father, either I don't remember exactly how to do this, and I don't know of a priest in the world who wouldn't welcome that and say, let me help you. But if you want to, you just say, these are the things in my life that I want to confess as sin and allow the priest to guide and direct you at that point. And the priest may talk to you a little bit, and then he will give you a penance, and that is a rep, you're trying to repair some of the behavior in your life, make it right. And then he will give you absolution from your sins. You'll hear it with your own ears. You'll hear that as from the Lord, and that is very, very powerful. But you can find this on Google anywhere.

You can go to the USCB anywhere and find out the basic formula, but I encourage you to do it. It's been great talking to you today, and we could talk about any of these points, and perhaps we'll come back and go deeper into some of these areas. Anything you want to leave my good friends with before we go? my brothers and sisters out there have a blessed Lent and use this time to really examine your conscience and draw closer to Christ. Amen. Amen. Let me close in prayer in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Lord, I lift up to you, my friend, right now, and ask you to bless all of my friends who are fathers, and particularly in this podcast, may you go deep into their

hearts and challenge them to be the man, to be the father you've called them to be, to be honest and thorough in their examination of their own heart before they go to confession. And may their confession be real, may it be real deep. And may it be real deep cleansing in their heart. I thank you for this. In your mighty name, I pray. Amen. Name of the Father's Son and the Holy Spirit. You have a wonderful week. And pray for me. I'll pray for you and want you to know, I love you. And we'll talk to you later. God bless. Thank you.