Transcript

Lord, uh, we, we, in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.

And though we come again, uh, to study Your beautiful, uh, law, Your teachings, um, help us to, to realize that it's more than a prescription, it's, it's a description of what You can do for us, the freedom that You offer us.

And keep us joyful then at this, um, saving remedy which You offer to us through the power of Your grace, through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

All right, hmm.

Now, with that in mind, um, we, we, we didn't really cover a lot last time.

We just covered the first opening paragraphs.

But I really wanted to spend some time and emphasize with you some kind of, um, disclaimers, I guess, would be the word.

Um, there's a, there's a danger when we come to talk about the moral law or the moral vision of the Church that we reduce it to a bunch of rules and everybody gets frowny-faced and, uh, the world often scoffs.

And all, all, you know, people here are thinking, you know, a bunch of rules, a bunch of rules.

Uh, nevermind that everything else in life has rules, right?

I mean, when you drive, you better hope everybody follows the rules.

When you w- when you go bowling, for heaven's sakes, you better hope everybody follows the rules.

Without the rules, there isn't a game, right?

I mean, so the point is, but nevertheless that, that, all that aside, what we wanna say is that fundamentally Christian moral vision is as the catechism titles it, life in Christ.

What happens when we live in Christ and Christ lives in us?

Well, there's a transformative power that sets up in us and our life begins to look and sound and actually be different.

And there are metrics or parameters to that, so that we, we, we love our neighbor rather than hate our neighbor.

We love even our enemy.

Um, we get married, we stay married.

We, um, we have authority over our thought life or we have, uh, our feelings begin to come under, more and more under our authority and, and so on.

I, I could go on and on, but the, the, the point of the commandments and the Sermon on the Mount and all the other moral treatises of the New Testament isn't just to say, Here's the rules and you better follow them.

But, you know, well, we ought to, but the point isn't so much that, that they're just to be followed, but rather that something, they're describing something that happens to us if we're faithful to Christ.

And so that's what I wanted to emphasize with you a lot last week.

Um, just as a quick reminder, at the very end of the class, there were some vectors, if you will, that guided us in paragraphs 16, 97, that the moral vision here that we teach, uh, in the catechism lists, uh, you know, seven or eight things here.

Uh, number one, uh, that the, it's, it's a catechesis of the Holy Spirit.

That this is when the Spirit of Christ dwells in us, He will lead us to all the truth, not just intellectually, but to actually live and do the truth.

See?

So this is the power of grace.

It's a catechesis then of grace.

This is not just you out of your own flesh power better keep all these rules or else you're gonna go to hell.

You know?

That's not what's being said.

It's, it's, it's, it's, it's a catechesis of grace.

And this is what your life will increasingly look like and sound like if you yield to the power of that grace.

Likewise, it's a catechesis of sin and forgiveness.

We, we do need to acknowledge our sin, uh, but also that God is forgiving and merciful.

Praise the Lord.

It's a catechesis of human virtue.

That is to say, the moral life doesn't just happen to us.

We'll look at that in a minute here in, in tonight's notes.

It is, it does require our cooperation, but even that cooperation is ultimately part of God's grace for us.

But we do have a role to play by saying yes.

So we, it's a catechesis of human virtue, it's a catechesis of Christian virtue.

It's a catechesis of the twofold commandment to love God and love our neighbor.

Okay?

And it's a, an ecclesial catechesis.

That is to say, um, it is, it is through the Church and the communion of the saints that the Christian life can grow and develop and be fostered.

So I don't just live my moral life all by myself.

I need you to help me.

I need you to call me to account.

I need you to encourage me.

And by God working through you and through the whole Church and, uh, through the tradition as well as through scriptures and obviously all his grace, this is how I become the man, uh, you become the man or the woman that God has created you to be.

Okay?

In paragraph, uh, 1701, okay?

Um, we're going to now begin, uh, 1700 really, we're going to begin, uh, looking at the We, we, we passed over now the introduction and now it's time for us to look at these opening paragraphs.

Now again, we're still talking today about some general presuppositions and general principles.

We're gonna get into the actual commandments and so on, uh, in, in a couple of weeks.

But we need to really lay the groundwork and have the principles, uh, at work.

So what I would just talk to you tonight about, um, uh, would be, uh, is the fact that we're made, first of all, I wanna talk about the, the fact that we're made in the image of God, which is what you all were just talking about.

And a little bit then about our intrinsic desires.

Now under this c- concept of the image of God, I wanna look at it in three steps following the catechism.

That first of all, our dignity revealed, our dignity ruined, and then our dignity restored.

So these things are s- said to us now in the catechism.

So, so first of all, our dignity revealed.

All right?

Now, uh, starting with, uh, paragraph, uh, 1700 to 1702, it's, it, we're taught here in these paragraphs that by the divine image present in every person is present in every person.

Now, this is true even of the unbaptized in that we are given reason, we are given free will.

Uh, we have a, we have a, a spiritual, uh, dimension to our soul.

Uh, unlike say the animals, uh, who, who have a soul and they need to see a l- a life-giving principle, even plants, but they don't have a rational soul, right?

But we, because we're made in the image of God, have a rational soul which includes free will.

And, uh, we are therefore, we make decisions and are responsible for them.

So the divine image then is present in every person, every human person.

All right.

Now with that in mind, uh, go down.

Let's see.

Uh, paragraph 1703.

We are valued for our own sake.

So part of the dignity that, that's revealed in us is that we are valued for our own sake.

Endowed with a spiritual and immortal soul, the human person is the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake.

From its conception, we are desi- we are d- d- d- destined for eternal beatitude.So we're willed for our own sake.

What does that mean?

Well, I hope I'm a blessing to you, and I hope that g- part of God's plan for me is that I can somehow be a blessing to you, but that is not fundamentally why I exist or why you exist.

You exist for your own sake, because God thought about you, loved you, thought e- prepared for you.

He knit you together in your mother's womb.

You're wonderfully, fearfully made.

You exist simply because He desires you to exist for your own sake.

And He will, yes, endow you with gifts and help you to bless others, but you exist for your own sake, right?

Not just because you can do something good or be useful to God.

Um, God loves you.

There's nothing you can do about it.

Um, there is a, uh, uh, He loves you for no good reason.

It's very mysterious.

By the way, you know, when you were talking about original sin there, uh, a- Andy, I think, you know, I think that all of us have to finally admit that there is what Paul refers to when it comes to sin, um, there's a mystery of iniquity.

Why would two graced individuals who s- who were so had all the preternatural gifts, were in the image of God, were loved by God, why would they buy into this foolishness?

And that is There's a lot to it, but at the end of the day, we have to kind of shrug and say, It's part of the mystery of iniquity.

Why did the angels fall?

You know?

Why did a third of the angels, who at- at least at some level saw the glory of God, why would they fall?

I mean, why?

Why?

How is this Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

So again, there's a certain mystery to iniquity.

Well, there's also a mystery to our glory and our existence.

There- there's just no way of just answering, why do I exist?

Why do you exist?

Because God wants you to.

God made you.

And for no good reason.

And I, and I, and I say that with humor.

That is to say because i- you exist for your own sake, simply because God thought about you, loves you, and wants you to exist.

Okay?

This is a magnificent truth of our dignity, right?

So, um, now, re- regarding also our dignity, uh, 1704, paragraph 1704 there it says that by his reason, man is capable of understanding the order of things established by the Creator.

So, we are given this gift of reason.

Now, reason is the capacity that, uh, we, we have to, to draw meaning from what is.

Um, we are able to understand that things are not just dumbly here, but that things work together, there's an order, that things are integrated, that they, they're aimed towards some purpose.

We draw meaning, we draw purpose, we see order in ways that animals simply don't.

Um, we reflect on things like goodness and beauty and truth, and every now and again, I get pushback from people.

Well, how do you know that animals don't do all these things?

I said, Well, because you'll know something by its works, by its fruits, right?

So again, obviously the human person is in a completely different league from the animals, right?

You take the smartest primates or apparently dolphins that are apparently supposed to be entirely the in- most incredibly brilliant creatures on the planet according to some environmental people.

I don't know how they know that, but let's just, let's just say, where are there cities?

Where are there, where are there univ- where are there universities?

Where are, uh, where, where are there bicameral legislatures where they debate justice and pass laws?

Where are there courts where they hold each other accountable?

Uh, where, where, where are the great works of art?

Where is their poetry?

Where are their symphonies?

No evidence of this anywhere.

So in other words, I'm trying to show you that the human person yearns for meaning, and we seek meaning, and we, we discern meaning, and we draw from the things around us something metaphysical, not just physical.

And so this is what distinguishes us powerfully, uh, from the animals.

So this is what it says by part of our dignity is that we are gifted with something called reason or intellect.

Mm-hmm.

There, there's a capacity to our soul that we call the spirit which, again, is that part of us that's open to God, that is open also to the meaning and purposes of things that, that is able to glean metaphysical truths, not just physical truths.

We have physical sciences, to be sure, but the metaphysical questions like, why, what is the purpose, what is the final causality of things, what is the prima, the, the first causality, um, w- you know, wha- what are, what are all these different things all oriented toward?

This is part of our dignity as human beings.

Okay?

So we're gifted with reason.

1704 also says by free will we are c- we are capable, capable of directing ourself toward the true good.

The true good.

Um, so again, um, we, we, we are able to make decisions, right?

Uh, we're, and we're responsible for those decisions.

Um, now, an animal might decide to go right or left following a scent of food or this or that.

Rudimentary choices.

But I mean, fundamental decisions about what my life will be about, what good I will pursue and so on, these things belong in a special way to the human person, and they make us, uh, morally responsible, uh, for, for all that we are.

Now, it goes on to say that we also then have a conscience.

And now, we're gonna talk a little bit more about conscience in a future session.

A- and we need to.

It's a very misunderstood concept today.

Um, conscience is fundamentally, uh, a judgment of reason.

Mm-hmm.

It's a judgment, right?

And it but it ties into it says here.

Well, look at, look what the catechism says here.

Um, in, uh, well, I didn't write down the I got a I, I lost the number here.

Um, yeah, 1706.

By his conscience, man recognizes the voice of God which urges him to do what is good and avoid what is evil.

Everyone is obliged to follow this law, which makes itself heard in conscience and is fulfilled in love of God and neighbor.

Now, notice again, the catechism, in a way, poetically here, not really in a highly technical way, speaks of the conscience as the voice of God echoing in, in us.

That is not, that is not what conscience is, right?

That's what conscience interacts with.

Uh, uh, what we wanna say is that Saint Thomas uses the word synderesis, that we have a basic the voice of God echoes within us.And tho- and that's fundamentally called suiderosis or synderesis.

That we all basically know fundamental good from evil, that stealing is wrong, that adultery is wrong, that murdering, murdering the innocent is wrong.

And this is quite ubiquitous throughout all of human, throughout all of human, um, uh, you know, creation.

That's to say that, uh, I don't know a single culture that says, Well, murdering the innocent's a good thing.

Let's, let's go ahead and do that.

Or, um, that, um, uh, that, um, uh, adultery is a good thing.

Let's, let's really, you know, indulge that.

Now, now that's not to say that it doesn't happen, but almost all cultures, you know, have very strong aversions to stealing things that don't belong.

Nobody likes being lied to.

Anyone here like to be lied to?

Huh?

You know, that's, that's written in our heart.

No, we don't like to be lied to.

And there's a certain requirement that we have then to, to speak the truth to each other, uh, and so on.

I could go on.

Or even, even in terms of virtue.

I gave you the example, I think last week, there's probably no culture in the world that would not hold up as a great virtue somebody who dies so their friends don't have to.

They, they step in front of, uh, uh, you know, of a truck and push someone outta the way so that the other person doesn't get killed, or a guy throws himself on a grenade in the front trenches so his buddies don't die and he takes the hit so they can live.

Everybody says, That's, that's heroic.

That's virtuous.

So these fundamental moral norms are written in the human heart, right?

And they're, they cut across cultures.

And, uh, this is what we call these first principles, do good, avoid evil, and so on.

And Saint Thomas calls it suiderosis.

Now, it's, that's the voice of God echoing.

The conscience is our, an act of judgment by our intellect whereby we interact with that fundamental voice of God echoing within us.

Um, that fundamental grasp for those first principles, and then we decide accordingly what to do in a particular case, in a particular situation.

So this is, uh, I, I ha- I have to develop this with you more a little bit later, but unfortunately, conscience by most people today has just been reduced to, Whatever I feel is right.

That's not your conscience, that's just your feelings, you know?

And, you know, you've got, you've got, and of course because of that we always say, No, no, conscience has to be formed.

It isn't just your feelings.

It isn't just like what you think or feel is right.

Uh, the question is, um, but it, it, it does involve you using the principles that you know by both just your fundamental grasp of them, but also your teaching down through the years, um, that, um, that, that this is right and that's wrong, and here's what I need to do in this case.

Um, so that's the conscience.

And we'll talk about that more, but it's been a horribly abused concept in our, our modern age.

People have used it just for their vaguest feelings about things and, uh, uh, How can anything that feels so good be wrong?

You know, well, uh, I got, I got news for you, it does.

You know?

Some people like their anger.

Uh, some people, you know, like vengeance.

Some, uh, that doesn't make it right, you know?

Okay?

You get the idea, right?

Okay.

Now, moving on, um, just again, we're looking at the, our, our dignity revealed.

Mainly this, that the divine image is present in all of us, that in fact, uh, that, uh, we, we're valued for our own sake, that we have reason, that we have free will, that we have a conscience, and, and then by our very life, um, we also bear witness to the dignity of the human person.

That is to say that, um, that when we live a virtuous life, we allow and see the glory and the dignity of the human person shining forth by virtue, by, by, uh, by the gifts, by the glory of the human person.

I mean, look at the, just the obvious things that we enjoy today because of other people's virtue.

All the hard work that founded our churches and built the churches where we go, and the institutions, the universities, the sciences, the arts.

All these things where human ingenuity and virtue and good habits and study and just good sweat equity went together to, to do the things that, uh, that we do.

Right now for example, all of us are on this thing called the internet.

Now I'm not gonna just tell you, I don't know how the darn thing works.

I'm just gonna tell you though, that's a magnificent display of the, of human ingenuity and brilliance and, and, and virtue.

It, it comes only, all this effort only comes as the result of long, hard work.

Likewise, you, the donors and others who make th- make it possible, but don't Let, let's not forget the people down in the coal mines who are mining coal so we have electricity.

Okay?

Are you praying with me?

Uh, you know, and, and people at the power plant and, and all the folks that are keeping the lines open for, for all this kinda communication.

I simply say to you that as much as we like to sort of say ain't it awful today, people don't know right from wrong, and all that kinda stuff, but in the end of the day, there is still a glory to the human person in, in ingenuity, in beauty, in that, in that not just technology, but art and poetry and science and just all the things that God has done through us.

Uh, I simply say to you, um, it is, it isn't for us to simply pat ourselves on the back and applaud ourselves, but to say, Lord your glory really does shine uniquely and powerfully through the human person.

We have a dignity that even the, the most terrible sinfulness can't ultimately take away.

It's, um So the, the first thing we wanna see here in the catechism, uh, is, is, uh, you know, our dignity that's revealed.

Now, why is that important when we talk about the moral life?

Because my brothers and sisters, if you have a dignity and you know that dignity without a pridefulness about it, that's a summons that helps you to begin to pull yourself together and say, You know, there is something beautiful and something glorious about me that I should now accepting this aspect of myself live into it or lean into it.

If you will, Christian, become what you are.

You see?

Christian, become what you are.

Now then, we of- we have to look at the unfortunate thing that you were all talking about when I tuned in, our dignity ruined.

We have to accept the fact if we're gonna talk about the moral life that something awful happened, um, at the, um, at the very beginning, uh, of our existence as a human family.

So 1707, it says, Man, enticed by the evil one, abused his freedom.

And at the very beginning of history he did that.

He succumbed to the temptation and did what was evil.

He still desires good.But his nature bears the wound of original sin, so that now he is inclined to evil and subject to error.

Now, let's stop for a minute.

This, there's a $10 word that we use in the church for this called concupiscence.

But don't we love our $10 words, you know?

Concupiscence.

Um, look, uh, it basically, it says, it says strong inclination that we have to evil.

And you say, Oh, not me, Father.

Yes, you.

You.

I'm gonna tell you right now, all of us know that, uh, we, we are just strongly inclined to stuff that we know is bad for us.

I mean, we can know it's bad for us and we still want it in abundance, you know?

No matter how many warnings, no matter i- we still want it in abundance.

Um, you know, again, it, it's not just things like alcohol or illicit sexual union or, or indulging our anger or even just venting, you know, but it's other things like, for example, um, um, we have this, uh, you know, the, the kind of indulgence.

The Lord says, How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.

That's nice, Lord, because I still win the lottery.

Dummy, dummy, dummy.

You know?

I mean, we still, no matter, we, no matter how many times the Lord warns us about wealth, we all still seem to have a very strong desire for it.

Um, I could go on and on, but you know, we've got a screw loose.

You hear it rolling around up in there?

You hear it?

I mean, it's, there's just something wrong with us.

We desire that which we know is harmful, and we desire it in abundance.

And we tend to be averse to things that we know are good for us, like prayer or reading Scripture or sitting here listening to a loud-mouthed priest.

You know?

Um, th- th- th- we tend to resist what we know is good.

It goes back to when you were a kid and you're, you didn't wanna eat your vegetables.

You wanted Twinkies.

And, you know, no matter how many times your mother said, That isn't good for you.

You eat your vegetables.

I want the Twinkies.

I don't want the vegetables.

Okay.

Now, that's what, uh, is being said, that our dignity i- by original sin, something became very wounded in us.

Um, our intellect, our heart is wounded, uh, and, and we, we, now, we start to see that our passions, our emotions and so on, begin to come to the ascendancy.

And it's a very long journey for our intellect, our reason, if you will, to master the, uh, the emotions and, and to hold them at bay and the passions and, and to keep them moderate and reasonable, right?

So, it goes on to say in 1707, Man is divided within himself.

As a result, the whole life, uh, the whole life of men, both individual and social, shows itself to be a struggle and a dramatic one between good and evil, between light and darkness.

Welcome to the drama of your life.

Welcome to the drama of every human life.

Welcome to the drama of every civilization.

Welcome.

The great drama between battle, b- between evil and good, good and evil.

It's right down the middle of your own heart.

It, it cuts across civilizations.

It's, it is the great battle that the Catechism simply calls it the dramatic battle, mm, it is a dramatic one for man.

So, I'm afraid brothers and sisters, that we have lost a sense today of the drama of our lives.

Um, we can, well, well, you know, there's kind of this bland universalism that's crept in, right?

Yeah, basically everyone's just gonna go to heaven, you know?

God won't, you know, ah, you know, my decisions aren't that important.

You know, we just kind of, no matter how many Scriptures I could line up, I could show many people 500 Scriptures, they'll just still at the end just say, Well, I know, I know this, this and that.

It'll all be okay.

You know?

It's gonna be like the typical American movie, the happy ending, you know?

I haven't watched a lot of European movies, but people tell me they don't always have happy endings.

All right.

But anyway, you, you get the idea.

We- we're, we're in the situation where we are very myopic today.

We, we have lost a sense of the drama, but Scripture warns us over and over again that, you know, I, I have set before you life and death.

You know, I, you know, blessing and curse.

Choose therefore life.

Right?

Or again, uh, as the Catechism says, there's a dramatic struggle between light and darkness, between good and evil, um, it is a great and cosmic battle.

Um, go to Revelation 12, right?

A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet, a crown of 12 stars around, around her head, and, uh, and the moon under her feet.

And, and he goes on to say, A great red dragon came after her to pursue the child that she was evi- to be born, would be born by her.

And it's, it, it just shows that great cosmic battle once again, um, between the forces of light and the forces of darkness and, and so on.

So, my brothers and sisters, mm-hmm, I don't want to become, uh, I don't wanna go on too long for this 'cause we have to get through some material.

But please realize something, that your life is caught up in a drama and the lives of your children, your grandchildren and people you know and love, we're all caught up in this drama.

Do not trivialize it.

It has, it, it, our entire destiny comes to this question of how we approach this question of the great dramatic battle that we're caught up in.

We're either gonna battle it with the Lord or we're gonna, we're gonna go to hell.

You know?

We've got to choose the Lord and we've gotta ask His help.

And He says, No one who calls on me will I reject.

See?

But again, so many today are just, you know, doesn't matter, uh, and they've lost any sense of drama or decision.

All right.

Now, uh, we'll cover one more section and I'll stop for questions.

All right.

So we've seen our dignity revealed, we've seen our dignity ruined, and now our dignity restored.

So in 1708 it says, By His passion, Christ delivered us from Satan and from sin.

He merited for us the new life of the Holy Spirit and His grace restored what sin had damaged in us.

Okay.

It's all right to say hallelujah.

I, I'm not, I'm not seeing a lot of people going, Hallelujah.

You're supposed to be, right?

Do you understand we have been delivered?

What, what is deliverance?

Pe- people ask me sometimes, What's all this talk about deliverance ministry in the church?

Listen, deliverance is what happened to you when Christ took you out of the kingdom of darkness and put you into the kingdom of light and death.

That's deliverance.

Now, all of us, of course, you know, there are going to be That happened at our baptism- but there are going to be, if you will, healings and things that still need to take place even after baptism.

So there's a kind of, there is the deliverance, and then there's an ongoing deliverance or a healing that is needed for us.

Now sometimes people say to me, I don't get it.

Original sin for all of us, the problem is, so I get baptized and original sin is taken care of.

Why am I still weak?

Why do I still need deliverance, why do I still stray?

Why do I still feel weak?

So all I can say to you is, let's take an analogy.

There's a man who has brain cancer, let's say.

And the doctor says, You've got it bad and that ain't good.

But don't worry, we got, we caught this cancer early and, um, we're gonna use radiation and chemo and shrink it, and then we're gonna have to go in and cut out the tumor.

So he goes through all the chemo, the radiation, and finally he comes the day of the surgery.

They go in, they cut out the tumor.

Then the guy's coming out of the, out of the anesthesia and the doctor says, Good news.

We think we got all the tumor, um, uh, and so on.

But now does the guy get off his table right then and go right back to work that afternoon?

Of course not.

He's got a lot of healing to do, so the doctor says to him, Look, you still, you're still weak.

Um, the radiation, the, uh, the chemo and so on, likewise, um, uh, you know, you need to heal up from the surgery.

So I simply say to you, plenty of rest, good food, uh, see me regularly, and don't go to back to work for six months.

So again, for us, the same thing.

Original sin is removed but the Lord says, You still need to heal.

Now therefore, plenty of rest.

That's prayer.

All right?

Plenty of good food.

That's scripture and the Holy Communion.

Uh, see me regularly.

That's, that's confession and prayer, huh?

A- and, and so if we will do this, he said, We'll get better.

But if we don't, we may go from bad to worse.

That doctor might say to the guy, Look, you just had brain surgery.

And, uh, the very first thing that happened to a person with brain surgery who doesn't, you know, take good care of themselves is they get a stroke.

It's very common after brain surgery, people get stroke symptoms and things.

So, um, you gotta rest.

You gotta be careful and don't, you know, and you gotta take it easy and, and grow stronger day by day.

And this is the way I would describe it.

So again, it is true that Christ by his passion has delivered us from Satan.

However, even still, there is a healing, an ongoing, a weakness in us that we call concupiscence that needs ongoing healing.

And if we will take our medicine, we'll get stronger as we go.

But if not, we may go from bad to worse.

We'll get the moral equivalent of a stroke.

So, I would say to you that, um, this deliverance has taken place and it is taking place.

It's already, but not yet, in the sense, not, it's n- it's, its fullness has not yet taken root in us.

Uh, but hopefully you're witnessed with me that if we're serious about what the Lord offers us, that our life gets better and stronger and, and so on as we go.

At least I'm a witness, I'm gonna say that has, that's happened to me.

Now, goes on to say here, in terms of our dignity being restored, eh, he goes on to say in s- 1709, He who believes in Christ becomes a son of God.

This filial adoption Look at this now, transformed, there's our word.

Transforms him by giving him the ability to follow the example of Christ.

It makes him capable, there's another important word, of acting rightly and doing good.

In union with the Savior, the disciple obtains perfection of charity, which is holiness.

Having matured in grace, the moral light blossomed into eternal life into the glory of heaven.

So, notice again, we are, uh, taken by Christ and, um, we, he doesn't, you know, he, he, he transforms us.

So the whole moral life is a description of the transformed human person who's moving, moving out of anger and, and into peace.

Who's moving out of fear and into trust.

Who's moving out of darkness and into light.

Out of confusion and into clarity.

Who's moving out of unchastity into purity.

Who's moving, um, out of, um, I don't know, um, a tendency to acquire and steal and be greedy to become generous and giving and so on.

I could go.

All of the moral commandments, all of the moral law are fundamentally saying, Do you understand the glorious gift I'm offering you, and how your life will move out of darkness and into light?

Now you walk with me, says the Lord.

You're my son now.

Uh, and, and you are a son in the Son, and, um, you now share his nature.

And therefore you can come not just to a human perfection, but to a Godly perfection.

So, not only has our dignity been restored, it's been elevated.

You see, God, in, in healing us, didn't just put us back into an earthly paradise.

He's promised a heavenly paradise for us.

We don't just come to have our human nature restored.

We now come to share in the divine nature.

Oh necessary fall, oh happy sin of Adam, that merited for us so great a redeemer.

Uh, and again, that, that, that, that, that, that, that we were not just put back to our original condition, but actually elevated.

I mean only God, only God could be that good.

Are you praying with me?

Okay, so I need to stop here.

I hope we're not getting too lost in the details.

I just want you to see that the first thing the catechism wants us to know is that we are made in the image of God.

And so there's a summons to increasingly become that very image.

So we first of all see that our dignity is revealed.

That's what the catechism starts with.

It does recognize that our dignity was, in a way, ruined.

Not totally, but ruined, uh, in original sin, and now it's been restored.

Not just restored, but even elevated in Christ.

So, comments, questions, rebuttals?

Thanks, Monsignor.

Uh, we've got a question from Lori, who wrote in here, and then, um, as I'm kind of laying this question out, feel free everyone to write your questions in the Q&A box, or if you're a panelist, just kind of get my eyes, raise your hand or something, you can be next here.

Lori's essentially asking the following.

Um, look, let's say a parent is, um, you know, commits some sort of awful crime, right?

And the policemen show up to the house, um, and then arrest the child.

Right, and drag him off to jail or whatever.

What do we say, um, that policeman's ask, acting kind of inappropriately, and Lori is kind of asking analogously here, w- help us understand why d- why do, um-Why do Adam and Eve's descendants inherit this sort of consequence of Adam and Eve's sin?

Okay.

Well, I think, if I could, um, say, uh, this in charity that the analogy's all wrong.

The analogy needs to be adjusted.

Here's the analogy that I would see it.

Let's take a child, and let's just say that, um, uh, she's still in her mother's womb.

She's a, let's say, her name is Mary and she's in her mother's womb and in three months, she'll be born.

Now, her parents are very wealthy and they, they, um, they had the best to offer her.

But about a month before she's born, through, uh, through foolishness and crime, um, they, um, they lose all their wealth and, um, the father is actually put in jail.

All right.

Now, she's therefore born one month later into the poor house.

.

Now, is that her fault?

And the answer is no, it's not her fault.

She didn't do anything wrong.

Mm-mm.

But is she still in the poor house?

Yes.

Yeah.

Because what her parents had to offer her, they no longer have.

I know that we like to think we're very individualistic in our culture.

We like to think, Well, I'm responsible just for me and no one else.

And, you know, uh But it's not that simple.

We are We live in community and, uh, what our parents do affects us for better, for worse.

I am my father's son and my mother's son.

Uh, they were good to me.

They were great parents, but I They were not perfect and I, I have some of their faults and I have a lot of their gifts, you know.

And I'm grateful for my parents, but I have to simply say, um, um, this is part of our, our we are interrelated and to the degree that, uh, we can be a blessing to each other, we should.

But we also unfortunately negatively affect each other.

Um, I A, a couple of other quick thoughts on that, you know, before you ask God to be fair, I'd be very careful because frankly, if God were fair, we'd all go to hell, right?

We need God to be grace We need grace and mercy, is what we need.

So it may not seem fair in our modern w- w- you know, Western way of thinking, but at the end of the day, the bottom line is what Adam and Eve did affected their children.

They no longer had paradise and a perfected human nature, uh, to offer us.

They gave us They, they bequeath to us with fallen human nature and, and paradise lost.

And that's what we're But ag- again, God did not leave us in this condition.

So I wa- I wanna find a way of putting it, um, to our, to our questioner.

And I don't mean to be too tough on you.

This is a very common question.

Um, but I tell you what, if my parents had a zillion dollars to leave me, I would gladly accept it.

I wouldn't say, Well, gee, I did nothing to earn this.

I mean, what does this have to do with me?

That's their money.

It's not my money.

I would gladly take it.

But when it comes to deficit to come from my parent, I, I don't have anything to do with that.

What's that got to do with me?

My only point is that I think at some point, um, we just have to accept the fact that we've affected each other, so And again, I mean no incharity.

Please, uh, I'm being a little comical in the answer only because I think it's, um, it's a question we all have and it's, it's, we need to be used.

We need to use a little humor as well.

Okay.

I see Kathleen raising her hand.

Thank you, Monsignor.

I've never heard that, uh, analogy before and it was phenomenal.

Mm.

Uh, so thank you.

Okay.

But as far as the moral life goes and free It, it seems to me like the hinge point is free will, right?

That free will is the one thing that God has given each one of us that makes us unique-

Yes.

who we are.

Mm-hmm.

And it cannot Even by God, it will not be taken from us.

Yes.

It can only be freely offered-

Mm-hmm.

to God even through somebody else.

Correct?

Exactly.

Yeah.

It's, it's our It's one of our greatest dignities and yet one of our greatest responsibilities.

So it seems to me, and I haven't thought about this too much or developed it, but it seems like the moral commandments then from God are simply communication by God of what He desires us to do and if we cooperate with that and then we submit our will to His-

Mm-hmm.

we surrender our wi- our will and receive the benefits because He can see better than us where we are.

Is that-

I think so.

I would probably prefer the language of uniting our will to His.

And also, I might add that I think God doesn't just tell us what He wants us to do, but what's actually best for us.

So He's for us and all that.

And I think you would accept those qualifications.

It's just, I think, a question of But it's not so much surrendering our will.

I would like to argue, for example, that the souls in heaven are not They have not lost their freedom.

Uh, they're still free, but they don't wanna sin because their, their mind and heart are so united with God now that their u- their will is united fully with His will.

What He wants, they want and so on.

And so that's the glory of finally giving, if you will.

In a c- certain sense, you're right.

We surrender our will, but not in the sense of losing our freedom, but we-

I-

we give it to Him.

I'm sorry.

I think, I think I was thinking surrender our will in the sense that what we often will for ourselves is, um, disorder.

Yes.

And so if we If we're willing to relinquish what we think we desire and want-

Mm-hmm.

Good.

to accept His will, then that's, that's what we're conforming.

Good.

Good.

Thank you for that.

That's good clarification.

Thank you.

Uh, Daniel.

Um, actually, sorry.

Uh, Tessie had her hand up first there.

So, sorry, Daniel.

Okay.

All right.

We're going to T- Tessie, I'm sorry.

Okay.

Thank you.

Um, my question s- is on conscience.

Uh, you said that our conscience is a judgment of reason.

So when we're discerning a situation- or whether to do something or not to do something or say or not, how do we know that we're, we're coming to a judgment of reason and it's not a conclusion from disordered thinking?

Yeah.

Well, one of the reasons why we need to stay in, in dialogue, both with the Church and, uh, with our, you know, with, with the Lord through His scriptures and prayer, is that, that we don't always know that.

We have to, uh, we have to make the best decision I think we can, um, but we're always learning as we go.

I make, I make better decisions now, uh, using my conscience, um, uh, better judgments now using my conscience than, uh, than I used to as a younger man.

I would imagine you do as well.

As, as we make our journey, hopefully we learn, but we also study .

we, we, conscious needs to be formed.

Um, we, we also, um, try ourself to very, listen very carefully to the authority, the teaching of the Church, the teaching of the Scripture, and, and so on, so I think that your, your question is one that we can't absolutely know.

We, but we do have to make the best decision we can based on what we do know.

And sometimes that's, and we wanna be careful because we're going to be very subservient to our feelings in what we want to do in a case, you know?

And we have to, therefore, I think, you know, be very careful and cautious to simply say conscience isn't just, that's not what we mean by knowing or making the best decision.

It really is, what, what are the moral principles involved here?

And what is, what is, what does it, what am I to do in this case?

And to, to make the very best decision we can, but always be humble enough to admit that we may be in error or we may need to refine our decision.

So, uh, so, that, that, that would be it.

Is that okay, Tessie, as far as We're gonna talk a little bit more about conscience, uh, in another-

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

session, but for now And by the way, what happens is, I didn't see your hand up first, 'cause you're at one side of my screen, and I, Daniel was right here, right above where Kathleen was talking, which I, I don't always, you know, my panorama is, I got a wide screen here, so.

Okay.

Now, Daniel.

Yeah.

Uh, thank you, Monsignor.

Um, my question is, um, in relation to grace.

Mm-hmm.

And, um, free will.

Basically, I was, um, having this conversation with a Lutheran friend and, um, he was saying, We have no free will and even if we have to make a good choice, a good decision, we still need God's grace.

So my question was, um, 'cause I understand that, um, what distinguished us from all other God's creatures is because we have free will-

Mm-hmm.

which is, um, the decisions we make, uh, we choose to love God and that's why, um, this is so special.

So, my question is, if, if we don't have, if we can't be free to choose God, we still need his help by grace to choose God?

I don't know if that, uh, kinda makes sense, but

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Uh, well, there, you're, you're getting to a point where I, normally Lutherans don't talk like this.

It's more Presbyterians who are rather frowny-faced when it comes to the capacity of, uh, the human person to freely choose what's good.

Um, I will say that, um, all of us agree, all, all of us, Lutherans, Catholics, Presbyterians, that whatever good choices we make depend very much on God's grace to do them, um, but, uh, in terms of, you know, eternal salvation.

Um, but, um, non- nevertheless, the Catholic Church emphasizes more, maybe more strongly, certainly than the Presbyterians and somewhat more than the Lutherans, that even the human person without grace does have a capacity to know fundamental moral norms, we call them the natural law.

And are, are, are accountable and, and they really make decisions based on what those, whether to follow those laws or reject them.

So, I, I think that, um, the, the question of whether or not we need grace to be saved is, all of us agree that we need that, but the fact that we are free is a human quality.

Uh, the absolute rejection of human freedom and the double predestination and so on, uh, of the, um, Calvinists and so on, um, is, um, is not, is not widely held among Christians and it ought not be.

It's completely, um, it, it, it's, it's completely against every other Scripture that speaks to us, you know, of our dignity, of our freedom, and so on.

So, that's the best I think I can do, Daniel, 'cause he's not in the room with us.

But I would say to your friend that, um, uh, we do have free will and, um, we are accountable for our decisions.

It, it's, we need grace ultimately to, to make fundamental choices for Heaven, for God, and for glory.

But, uh, but God offers that grace to everyone.

So.

Yeah.

I think Hayden, is that right?

Yeah?

Okay.

Thank you.

Um, isn't Sorry, aren't we all by being created by God, in essence, been given the grace already?

So the grace is already present, um, regardless of our choices.

Uh, even before baptism you mean?

Well, yeah, because, because we are created in His image and likeness-

Mm-hmm.

regardless of if we are baptized or not baptized.

Mm-hmm.

He, if we are not baptized, He perceives us so that we could turn towards Him and learn or come into, um, the fullness with Him.

So, there is grace abound in that, in His love for us by our mere being created by Him.

Well, y- you're using grace in a very extended sense, maybe.

Grace something more than a gift.

Yeah.

But normally we restrict the word grace in its more theological sense to those who are baptized or getting ready for baptism, so we do admit of a certain previenient grace for the catechumens and those who are hearing the call to come to Christ.

And the other things that you're talking about though, I think, Hayden, would be, we would call more virtues.

Uh, there is natural human virtue as well as supernatural virtues.

For example, Saint Thomas Aquinas says, um, you know, remember when Jesus, he's commenting on Jesus' without me, you can do nothing, right?

I'm the vine, you're the branches.

Without me, you can do nothing.

Now, Thomas distinguishes here.

He's saying, he's saying works of grace because he says, you know, he uses the example of .

Uh, you know, any unbaptized person can plant vineyards and build houses.

That's not what the Lord's talking about when he says anything.

He's talking about, you know, works of grace, you know so that, that, they order us to salvation.

So, I think that the better word to use for you, what you're describing, Hayden, is virtue.

Uh, there are certain basic virtues that are given to the human person, that we all desire happiness and what's fundamentally good and true and beautiful, and even though that's distorted by sin, it's still there somehow in every human person .

uh, even if clouded over by lots of layers of sin.

And that, that a person can act virtuously and move towards what's good and true and beautiful is part of how we're made.

Okay?

So, all right.

All right, well we better get back into the text.

Um, we wanna talk next about not just the fact that we're in the image of God, but that there's an intrinsic desire within us, within every human person.

Now, that intrinsic desire is what we call happiness.

Now, uh, let's talk about, uh, we're in paragraph 1718, all right?

Uh, I don't know if I wanna get too much into this given the time, but let me, let, let's just read what 1718 says.

We all want to live happily.

In the whole human race, there is no one who does not assent to this proposition, even before it's fully articulated.

Um, so again, Saint Augustine, for example, says that.

There's a I'm sorry, I'm, I'm reading from that little s- the little indented section there, uh, at 1718.

So if you skip down to the little, the paragraph with the smaller type, and it's, it's a quote from Saint Augustine.

So again, Augustine says, We all want to live happily.

In the whole human race, there is no one who does not assent to this proposition, even before it's fully articulated.

You know?

We move towards that which makes us happy.

Okay?

Likewise, Saint Augustine says, How is it then that I seek you, Lord?

Since in seeking you, my God, I seek a happy life.

Let me seek you so that my soul may live, for my bro, my body draws life from my soul and my soul draws life from you.

So again, we, we, we all want to be happy, but some people think, Well, a new car will do it, or, um, a new girlfriend, or, uh, you know, you get the idea.

It, it, it's We know that's ultimately not true.

There's something deeper that we're longing for, a completion, a happiness, and that's written in every human heart.

Um, our desires are powerful and they're oriented towards a long for happiness, for completion, and it's a universal human truth.

In fact, I would argue that I'm surprised that among his five proofs, he didn't actually have six proofs, the desire, the, the, the proof for the existence of God from the, uh, the argument, I call it the argument from desire.

So let me pre- present to you a proposition.

You want to be happy and your desire, your desires and, are, are infinite.

They're infinite, aren't they?

Come on, admit it.

Has there, was there ever really a time when you sort of got it all completely set?

I can exhale.

You know, and then, you know, you need something else.

So we all know that our desires are infinite, but we live in a finite world.

So how can something give what it doesn't have?

Can, can, can something finite give that which is infinite?

No.

It Nothing can give what it doesn't have.

So therefore, wherever this desire came from, this infinite desire, it could not have come from the finite world in which we live.

It must have come from something which is infinite, and that something, we call God.

So I've just sort of proved to you just by your desires that God exists.

And Saint Augustine says, you know, Our hearts were made for thee, oh Lord.

The, the Book of Psalms says, My heart within me says, 'Seek always the face of the Lord.' It is your face, oh Lord, that I seek.

So the cry goes up that there's this infinite longing, and God wrote his name in our heart.

There's a God-sized hole in your heart and only God can fill it, and nothing in this world, no matter how much gold, no matter how much, you know, fame or popularity or sex or whatever you pile in there, it's never enough.

It's just, it's just never even close to the God-sized hole that's in your heart.

So we have this powerful desire for happiness, for completion, and it's an infinite desire.

It's all saying, God, seek the Lord.

Seek God.

And, um, sadly, sadly, we all get shipwrecked on things and, and not even just always sinful things, but just good things, but which are limited and can't really complete, uh, you know, complete us.

So, uh, this is where, again, we wanna see that something glorious is written in our heart, but it's a deep yearning and a longing as well.

Um, and it sort of hurts, but it hurts so good.

It's calling us to God.

Now, therefore, again, at the, at the top of the, um, 1718 there, it says, The Beatitudes respond to the natural desire for happiness.

The desire is of human Or, The desire is, is of divine origin, see?

God has placed it in the human heart in order to draw man to the one alone who can fulfill it, which is what I was just saying to you.

All of your desires are ultimately pointing to God.

Okay?

And, uh, even what we call sinful desires, the desire is usually not, is almost never itself not sinful.

For example, it's not s- desiring food is not sinful.

Desiring sex is not sinful.

Uh, you know, n- but, but what happens is we want it either too much or the object is inappropriate, you know?

And, um, so, but the desire itself is, is still fundamentally a good thing that God gives us.

Now, with that in mind, um, we're gonna turn our attention to the Beatitudes.

Now, I wanna say something though, um, that something has happened to Catholic moral theology in the last 500 years, and, uh, when I taught this class in, um, back, um, a few years ago, uh, at the institute there, um, we, we, I f- I brought up Pinckaers' book, and I'll, I'll show it to you next week, or maybe, uh, Andy, I can send you a link to the book.

But Father Pinckar is a, the, the Dominican wrote in the '80s that, eh, you know, he, he was concerned and I think rightfully so, that up until about 500 years ago, Catholic moral theology had a very different basis than it does today.

Um, and that basis was the desire for happiness.

That's where we began.

Um, that is to say that the, um, um, uh, the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount were the go-to text all the way from the, from Scripture itself, all the way through the fathers of the church, all the way up through and including Saint Thomas and the Scholastic period.

There was, there was always the, it was The Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount that were the go-to text .

for all of moral theology.

After the Reformation broke out and the Catholic Church began to have to kind of hunker down and, and get into a very more defensive stance, we went back to the Decalogue, namely the Ten Commandments.

Nothing wrong with the Ten Commandments, but the problem is that we moved back to, we moved out of grace and back into law.

We needed a very r- we needed a very technical framework in which to speak.

But over these last 500 years, there's a tendency we've had to become very casuistic and legalistic so that the moral life becomes, How do I stay out of trouble and not go to Hell?

Rather than, How do I learn to love God and become happy?

So it, it, it's no longer how can I be more happy, in other words, by keeping the commandments and loving God and my neighbor, which is what I'm made for; no, it's how do I stay out of trouble?

And so what happens is that we, we become, if you will, very focused on thou shalt not rather than, here, receive this grace to love your neighbor, to get married and stay married, to have authority over your anger, receive this grace to have authority over your thought life and over your sexuality, to love your neighbor and love your enemy and, you know, this is the gift I'm offering you, says the Lord, is the key to your happiness.

We don't, we, we stop talking like that, and we kind of hunker down to more of a bunker mentality where we were trying to, you know, hue out the law, uh, but from a very much more legal point of view.

Now, not wrong, but it was a something of a reversal of our tradition.

So what the catechism is doing here at the very beginning of the moral treatise is trying to remind us, even though it's going to use the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, uh, as our framework, it wants to remind us that first and foremost, God gives us the law to make us happy and to point the way to happiness for us.

So, that's why we begin with the Beatitudes.

Now, I cannot give you an entire sermon here on the Beatitudes, um, I, I wish I could but, I mean, we, we don't have the time.

Um, but I would, I would ask you to ponder with me, I'm, I'm at 17:16 in your catechism, and they're listed there.

And you know who does a very good job, I think, on this to some degree is, is, is Bishop Barron, uh, in his, um, in his, uh, treatment of, what was it?

What's it, The Strangest Way.

It's a book called The Strangest Way.

So I'll be using some of what he does but also some of my own thoughts and things that I've studied over the years from Thomas and others.

But the word blessed are the poor in spirit, now, uh, sometimes you'll see a translation says happy.

Now, the reason I think a lot of modern English translators moved away from happy is that happy is kind of a flat word in English today, it's kind of a cheery, sort of dopey, I just heard a joke kinda chortle motion.

Whereas in, in the more ancient tradition, happiness, charite, um, joy, was a deep, serene, stable, confident joy.

Okay?

See how much, there's much more than I just heard a joke and I'm emotionally giddy and, you know, I'm feeling zippy do.

But rather, it's a deep, serene, stable, confident joy.

All right?

So when the Lord says here, the Greek word here is makarios, it translates to Hebrew אָשְׁרֵהּ‬ and that, that best first translation for these words are happy.

Happy are you if But you have to hear the word happy in a richer, fuller sense.

And so most modern English translators have chosen the word blessed or blessed.

Um, and that's fine, but the fundamental translation, אָשְׁרֵהּ and makarios in the Greek, um, and beatus, uh, uh, beati, uh, you know, uh, uh, Beati pacifici, blessed are the peace mer- blessed are the peacemakers.

So beati or beatus means happy.

All right?

But again, please understand happiness more richly.

All right?

Now with that in mind, happy are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.

Now here too, we always get, well, what does it mean to be poor in spirit and so on.

I wanna just fundamentally say, the Lord is trying to say something.

Look, you're going to be happy and blessed if you no longer are obsessed with all the things of this world, but that your treasure is in Heaven.

You're poor to this world because your treasure is God and the things waiting for you in Heaven.

You don't need all the r- l- latest, the g- n- the newest upgrade.

The, you don't need the riches and fame and so on.

None of that really rocks your, you know, it just, it doesn't really suit you.

You're, you're much happier to pray and to be rooted in God, love your, love God, and love your neighbor, and stay more rooted in the simple, beautiful gifts of God, and you can't wait to one day go home and be with God.

Lord says, happy are you if you are no longer obsessed with the trinkets of this world, with the, with all of its, the diversions and all of its demands upon you.

Blessed, happy are you when you are no longer obsessed with those things.

Okay?

See the vision?

Right?

So you see it's more than like, um, uh, I gotta be poor in spirit, whatever that means.

Um, that doesn't, I don't like to be poor, I wanna be rich.

Uh, you start to get nervous, right?

And the Lord is saying, Look, I'm not trying to tell you so much something for you to do.

I'm telling you some, something for you to receive.

That is to say, if I start to live my life in you, you're not gonna be obsessed with whether the market is up or down, or all the different political ups and downs, and the latest outrage or whatever the world's all, you're gonna be more focused and stably focused on the things that matter.

You and me, your family, your wife, your children, your husband, your, your, you know, the things that are most fundamental in your life, this will be your focus, and you will love them, you'll love the gifts I've given you, and you'll long for Heaven, and you'll, your, your treasure will be there.

Okay?

Happy are you when you're no longer carried off by all of the distractions and, uh, momentary delights of this world.

Happy, how happy you are to be free of all that.

Okay?

So it's something he wants to give us as a gift.

You see the vision?

Now-We just, we'll do a few of them, we won't do all of them, but, uh, Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Now, at one level, I wanna talk about this at two different levels.

First of all, to use Bishop Barron's approach, I would say, um, you know, we're, we're, we're all, we're all kind of obsessed with m- being comfortable and happy and cheerful, and we're terrified of grief or any sorrow at all.

And so, the Lord says basically, Happy are you, blessed are you, if you are not obsessed with your emotional condition from day to day.

That you, you just trust me and you make this journey with me.

There will be days when you weep, there will be days when you're joyful, there will be days when you're happy, other days when you're feeling sad or a little discouraged, but you just keep journeying and you're no longer obsessed with your emotional life.

You're freed from, you know that life has its ups and downs and you're going to have to sometimes say farewells, and you're going to have to sometimes lose people that you love, but you're not obso- obsessed with being happy in the emotional sense, that you just lose it when, when the slightest little wrinkle comes into your life.

How happy, how blessed you are when your emotions don't drive your life.

Okay?

So there's a freedom that the Lord is announcing there.

Now, I would go on to say this, though.

I think there's another dimension to it.

You know, if you really love God and the Kingdom of God, and that's, it's, it's, your whole life is focused on God and the things waiting for you in heaven, and then you look out and you see so many people who are basing their lives on things that do not matter, foolish things that are not going to last, wealth or sex or good looks or whatever, and you see that they're headed for disaster, and you weep for them and you mourn.

Now, it's not a depressive mourning.

The text says, Blessed are those who mourn, for they'll be comforted.

Now the word comfort here, we have to rescue.

It doesn't mean pillows, it means strengthening.

It comes from the Latin confirmo, confirmare, means to strengthen.

So who are those, who are those who are m- mourning, mourning?

They are those who see the awful state of God's people, that God's people, many of them do not know Him, they do not really love Him.

They're, they're basing their lives on things that don't matter, they're building their house on sand rather than on the rock of Christ.

Their lives are heading for a disaster and so th- they mourn, but it's not a mourn like you get depressed and go in your room.

But you pray and you work and you're motivated and you're, you're encouraged and you're strong to go out and preach and teach and rescue as many as you can and bring them back from the edge of an abyss and put meaning into their life and get them to focus on all of the right things so that they're no longer majoring in all the minors and, and, and, um, of, of things, and, and they're no longer maximizing the minimum and minimizing the maximum, and you get them back with Christ, and so you're motivated, see?

And so it's a mournfulness that motivates you.

You care.

You care about God's people, you care about your son or your daughter or your spouse or your, your sibling or even that person across the street who doesn't go to church and seems grouchy all the time.

You care about people, and so you mourn for them, and that mourning motivates and makes you get to work, you see?

Okay, do, do you follow me?

So, Blessed are you, happy are you, one says, one says the Lord, When, when you join me in weeping over Jerusalem.

And because of that weeping, you're motivated to go out and love God's people even more, see?

That you're sorrowing for them, it becomes an act of love, and you, 'cause you care about them.

So blessed are you, all right?

So you see, these are gifts to receive from the Lord, right?

Gifts.

Um, blessed are the meek, um, now, this Greek word is ʺprootes,ʺ and, uh, uh, Aristotle says that prootes, meekness, is the proper middle ground between not enough anger and too much anger.

So you, you notice that the virtue meekness is that virtue that governs anger, so that we have, uh, not too much anger, but also we have not too little anger.

You know, if you're never angry, there's something wrong with you.

You know, anger is an appropriate response when we see injustice or when we see people losing their way, and we're motivated and that, that anger's like an energy and, and we, we take it and we use it for creative ends.

Um, so we don't wanna have no anger, but we don't wanna have angst, so much anger that we're just yelling and screaming or getting depressed.

So what we wanna do is that the Lord says how happy you are, how blessed you are when you have authority over your anger, see, and, um, you can make that, you can make use of that anger, um, to, to draw the whole earth to me, you see?

And so you've got that as well.

Um, so you see what the Lord is trying to do is He's trying to paint a picture for us, that when I start to live my life in you, you will have your treasure in heaven and your whole focus will be on what really matters in your life, you know?

Knowing me, knowing yourself in me, uh, knowing me, loving me, serving me, and, uh, working with me to bring other people, uh, to the kingdom of heaven.

Um, your, your, your treasure will be in heaven and your, your, you know, everything that you aim for, uh, will be stored up there.

You will no longer be obsessed with the toys and the trinkets and the distraction of this world.

So as I start to live my life in you, that's just gonna happen to you, and you'll be happier, you'll be more fulfilled.

Likewise, you'll mourn, that is to say that you'll see the awful state of God's people, but again, you'll, you'll, you'll, you'll pray for them and you'll work for them, and you won't be obsessed with the negative feelings in your life.

You just keep journeying with me.

Um, you won't be controlled by your emotional life, you see?

Uh, how happy you are, and likewise again, you'll have authority over your anger.

Or again, finally, I'll just take one more here, um, blessed are the pure in heart.

Now very often people hear pure there, they think, you know, you're morally upright and that's, that's nice, it's a good idea and I think that, but the, the, the Greek word here really means more literally single-hearted, blessed are the single-hearted.

That is to say people who have their mind and heart set on one thing.

You know, that's the secret to life, isn't it y'all?To have your heart and mind set on one thing, one thing.

You know, um, I've we've gone through this before, right?

The movie City Slickers.

Remember, we talked about that?

The guy's out there on a horse and, you know, he goes, You want to know the secret to life?

And he goes and he holds his finger up.

And the guy says, A finger?

He goes, No, one, one thing.

He goes, Oh, really?

Just- He says, Yes, one thing.

You know, you find out, uh, you know, you, you, you find out that one thing you want to do and you set yourself to it, and everything else don't mean shoot.

Wow, he says.

That's nice.

You know, how do I know what that one thing is?

He goes, That's what you gotta find out.

And yet, Saint Paul says, This one thing I do, I, I press on to the high prize marked out for me in Christ Jesus my Lord.

Everything I do is focused on getting to Heaven and getting to glory to be with God.

Everything I do is part of that goal.

Everything is all about that one thing, just to worship, to serve, to love the Lord, and be with him forever.

Whatever he asks me to do, I'll do it because I'm heading home.

Uh, I'm working for the kingdom and everything I do.

So that one thing says The book of James says that double-minded man is unstable in all of his ways.

So again, How happy you are, says the Lord.

How blessed when your life is increasingly about one thing.

Right now, as it is my brothers and sisters, we're too easily pulled in 85 different directions, not just two.

I mean, we got, we've got all these contrary drives and desires and they're pulling us in all these different directions.

We have, we have And it just, it's our life is just shredded before our very eyes and, oh, what a blessing to just increasingly say, No, everything I do is about this one thing.

And to consciously, joyfully, freely just move in that one direction, and whatever else I do is all oriented towards that one thing.

That is a great, great blessing.

Because I'm gonna tell you right now, that phone just keeps ringing.

Doesn't it?

All kinds of demands on you and not all of them are of God.

See?

And how blessed, how joyful, how much happier you will be if your life is increasingly about one thing, and you serve one master, not many, you know?

No one can serve two masters says the Lord, right?

This is all related to something called the fear of the Lord, right?

The Lord has this He goes, I got a simple, I got a simplification plan for you.

You just fear me and you only have to fear one.

If you don't fear me, you're gonna, you're gonna fear 10,000.

You decide.

It's up to you, you know?

In other words, Let's, let's keep your life simpler, says the Lord, right?

One thing.

Saint Paul again says this, One thing I do.

I press on to the high prize marked out for me in Christ Jesus my Lord.

So again, we wanna see that, um, the, um, um I can I wish I could go through all these beatitudes with you, but I just wanna say that I hope what you're seeing about them is that they're not just, Oh my gosh.

Man, how am I gonna do all this?

He says I'm supposed to be pur- poor in spirit.

I don't exactly know what that means, but it sounds hard.

Mourn?

I don't, I don't know.

I don't like to mourn.

Um, meek?

I don't even know what that I'm not quite sure what that means.

Hunger and thirst for righteousness?

Oh man.

I don't know.

This is getting harder.

Let's turn the page and see what else we've got here, you know?

And we're worn out because what we're hearing is, we're thinking, Oh my gosh.

This means that I, out of my own flesh power, have to pull all this off.

No, no.

You're missing the whole point.

The Lord is saying, Look, you come to me and you, you open the door.

I'm gonna stand at the door and knock, and you open the door and I'm gonna come in, and I'm gonna set up a relationship with you and as you begin to live your life in me, and I live my life in you, you're gonna start to see these things come alive in your life.

See?

So he's painting a picture.

He's saying, Look, this is what the transformed human person is like.

Um, and you see, he develops it more in the Sermon on the Mount even here than in the beatitudes, but the point being is that he's painting a picture.

Now, that doesn't mean that we have no cooperation in it, but there are metrics.

Being a, uh, being a disciple of the Lord, being happy in the Lord is one thing versus another.

But at the end of the day, it is fundamentally his work.

Hey Lord, I don't exactly know what it means to be poor in spirit.

This crazy priest tells me that my treasure is in Heaven.

So I'm poor to the world, I'm not obsessed, I'm probably not gonna make a killing.

I probably won't die with $10 million in the bank.

Okay.

Um, help me to want this.

I don't even know exactly what that means for me today, but help me Lord.

I want this.

I want I don't want my life to be obsessed with the toys and the trinkets of this world, because I know that ultimately, they don't make me happy.

Um, Lord, please help me.

And the Lord goes to work, you see?

And, um, and, and you get the idea.

It's not so much something you do, but rather something he does as he lives his life in you and your life becomes increasingly this.

Okay?

So this is a picture of the transformed human person.

So the moral life, before it is a prescription, is first and foremost a description.

Okay?

Lord is painting a picture of what he's offering for us.

Does that make sense?

Now then, um, I think it's time for us to stop for another set of questions and, um, and, you know, prepare for next week.

Um, but let me just read a couple more things here.

Um, look at 1721, 'cause we're still talking about beatitude.

This is very similar to the old, um, Baltimore Catechism answer that a lot of people remember.

God put us in this world to know, to love, and serve him, and so to come to paradise.

God made me to know him and love him and serve him in this life, and be happy with him forever.

It's kind of nice to know why you were made, isn't it?

Why do I exist?

I mean, what, what, what am I made for?

In other words, I, I know I exist for my own sake, but on the other hand, you know, God does have something I'm something rather than something else.

So it's nice to know what's, what's the point of my life?

What's the purpose?

What will make me most happy?

And, and so it says here in 1721 that God put us in the world to, uh, to know him, to love him, and to serve him, and so come to paradise.

Right?

As it, the old Baltimore Catechism said, To know him, love him, serve him, and be happy with him forever.

That's why you were made.

The book of Uh, if, if you were at Mass last weekend, you heard the Ephesians read, and the letter to the Ephesians says that we were made for the praise of his glory.

Right?

You see?

You get, you get it?

See, we, we, we were made to know him and praise him and love him and be with him forever.

That's why we were made.

And when you're praising God-When you're, when you're singing a hymn or you're being moved in a gloria or you're, you're, you're, you're, you're just getting a word or you're, you yourself are preaching or teaching, you're in the groove and you feel great because that's why you were made.

You're doing what you were made to do.

Hallelujah.

You see the vision?

I don't know.

Hang on.

We're gonna God knows it's getting late, huh?

Looking for a seat and we get, yeah, I get it, man.

You, it's our happiness is to do what we were made to do, right?

We're not going to be happy.

Well you should Let me just give you a qui- an example.

Um, um, you know, let's say that, um, I try Here's a coffee mug, right?

Now, let's say I, I A coffee mug has a purpose and, um, it's main purpose is to hold coffee or some sort of a beverage.

What if I decided, no, I'm going to use it for a hammer?

I'm not gonna be very happy very quickly then.

First of all, the, the mug is not gonna be happy.

But I'm not gonna be happy 'cause it's gonna break.

It's not what it's made for, right?

So I'm most happy when I use this thing for the purpose it was intended, not for something it wasn't intended for.

Well, how much more so my own life, right?

My life was made, I'm made to know God, to love Him, to serve Him.

Not Uh, life is more than watching reruns of Gilligan's Island, right?

It's, it's more than, than, than, um, you know, just, just sitting there and watching the Tube or, you know, I know we all love football or whatever, but it's, let's be honest y'all, it's a bag full of air going up and down a field.

All right?

Let's not get too worked up about football.

Um, but yet we do.

Uh, and yet, you know, me- the point is, you know, what we, when we wa- what we were really made to do is to know God, to love Him and serve Him, and to be happy with Him forever.

And the more you're doing that and the things you're doing are related to that, that's where you're gonna be happy.

You see the vision?

So, uh, I wanted to end with that idea.

Um, so again, the New Testament uses some expressions to characterize the Beatitudes to which God calls man.

For example, the coming of the Kingdom of God, the vision of God.

Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.

Uh, that we will enter into the joy of the Lord, that we will enter into God to rest.

Then we shall rest and we shall see and know love and praise God forever.

Such a beatitude surpasses our understanding, right?

I've tried to tell you before, I, you know, I, I hope there's a part of you that just can't wait to get to Heaven.

I know that maybe you're raising kids or, you know, there's a few things you'd like to accomplish before the Lord calls you home, I get that, but I hope, man, you say, Man, every day that get, I get older, I'm, I'm more blessed.

That mean I'm getting closer to home.

You know, I just had my 57th birthday last week and I said, I'm almost getting close to 60.

Man, I mean, I can, I can't even believe that I feel like I just got outta high school, but I can't wait.

It means I'm getting closer to the goal, closer to home, closer to glory.

Other people say, Oh, I'm getting old.

I'm getting old.

I wish I was young again.

I don't wanna be young again.

I'm getting closer to the goal.

I'm getting closer to home.

Are you praying with me?

So the idea of our happiness and meditating on the glory of heaven and being with God forever, that I was made to know Him and to love Him and to praise Him and serve Him in this life, and so the whole moral vision presents a framework for us so that we can do that and be more what we're made to be so that we, we don't misuse our life and get very unhappy very quickly, you know?

This has a certain purpose, certain rules associated with it.

Like, I shouldn't slam it down or, uh, and so on.

Um, and I shouldn't turn it over where there's liquid in it, you know?

Th- these things are for my happiness.

And if I follow those rules, I'll be happy.

If not, I'm gonna be unhappy and very wet.

So you see the vision, right?

Um, I have to end.

I mean, it's getting late, so we'll end, but I, I wanna say we're gonna have to pick up the pace a little next time.

Um, but these are important foundations that we're laying though, because I don't want you to miss that the moral life isn't, Oh God, here come the rules.

Oh, ah, man, that's hard.

It's not.

It's a joyful gift from God that He gives us as sort of the defending walls of our life and He's helping us to be what we were made to be and not become what, not do things that we're not made to do, and therefore to be happy with them.

If we could, uh, receive your blessing here we'll conclude.

All right.

Lord, we thank you for your Law.

It is a guide for us and teach us, uh, to, uh, grow in it every day, and, um, not by way of obsession, but by way of joy and, uh, openness to receive, uh, its, its freedom, and we ask you to help us to remember always, Lord, that, um, you put it in us, all of us, a goal for happiness, uh, true happiness, not just, um momentary emotional happiness, but deep and lasting happiness.

And so help us to know that it is Your law and ultimately, uh, You Yourself, um, as our goal which will bring that true happiness to us, and keep us on that path through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Amen.

All right.

May Almighty God bless you all, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Amen.