The Pursuit of Wisdom: Are Catholics Losing Sight? Are we being fooled into missing the point?

I dive into themes of holiness and pursuits beyond earthly treasures, influenced by the Book of Wisdom. Reflecting on my journey as a Catholic communicator, I challenge the Catholic faithful to embrace genuine wisdom above all. Are practicing Catholics still pursuing the essence of their faith? Have we been fooled into missing the whole point? I discuss this vital question along with personal stories and observations. Stay tuned till the end for an announcement about my podcasting journey. Subscribe, enjoy, and let this episode connect us deeper with our faith.

Welcome one and all welcome to the Catholic experience.

I am the Catholic adventurer, your humble host.

This is October 13th in the year of our Lord, 2024.

And I thank you very much for joining me.

If you're wondering why this, uh, does this intro sound a little weird to you?

A little awkward.

It's because I've already done this, but I had to rerecord the intro because I forgot to hit record on the intro.

So this is what you're about to hear is a special and it's not special, but it's a, it's an exceptional Twitter X space or X spaces session that I'm also making available first on locals.

And then on my podcast catalog, I'm going to be talking about Catholic conundrums, wisdom, holiness, and foolishness.

I'm going to talk a little bit about, , today's first.

Mass reading from the book of wisdom and boiling it down this way.

Are Catholics interested in wisdom anymore?

Hmm That's what's coming right up.

Got a I also have an announcement to make it's nothing, you know, earth shattering or terribly interesting just on What I referred to as my podcasting ness Going forward.

I'm gonna be Hopefully I think podcasting a little bit more frequently , so I saved that, that information, I saved that announcement for the bottom of the show.

The bottom of this episode.

Pretty much from the top of the episode on down, I just do the topic.

if you're interested in the announcement, just hold on to the end of the episode.

It's gonna start to sound like I'm closing the episode and, you know, I roll the music, and then I stop the music and say, Oh, wait, I forgot something.

So there's that so all right, so that's enough of the intro and then we're gonna fade right into the episode itself It feels like oh boy the episode looks like it sounds like it just came out of nowhere That's because it did come out of nowhere.

It's a separate recording.

Okay on with the show.

Thank you very much I'm gonna give you a little update on my podcasting Ness I guess is what i'm trying to say This is a special x spaces episode The only thing special about it is that I usually don't do spaces sessions.

It's going to be available on my, uh, X feed at for the queen BVM.

I'll leave it there for about a day and then I'll take it down.

And, the only people who will be able to listen to it after that will be followers, , or members of my locals community.

and people who are subscribed to, or people who access my podcast catalog on iTunes, Spotify, et cetera.

You know, when I talk about subscribing to my podcast catalog, if you ever hear me say that, please don't equate that with paying for it.

Because you can subscribe to really any podcast in your podcast app.

And when a new episode drops, the podcast player app will send you a notification.

So when I say subscribes to my podcast, I'm talking, that's what I'm talking about.

I'm not, my podcast is something you have to pay for, but if you would like a little bit of extra content, that is something you can pay for five bucks a month.

On LocalsCatholicExperience.

Locals.

com And I'm going to explain a little bit about

that, but first, , I think it's best that I get to, that I start the topic.

So that I don't bore you with announcements.

This is from today's first mass reading, the Book of Wisdom.

Here we go.

I prayed, and prudence was given to me.

I pleaded, and the spirit of wisdom descended upon me.

I preferred her to scepter and throne, and deemed riches nothing in comparison with her.

Nor did I liken any priceless gem to her, because all gold in view of her is a little sand.

And before her, silver is to be accounted mire, I guess.

M I R E.

Mire.

What a strange word.

And before her, silver is to be accounted mire.

Beyond health and comeliness, I loved her.

And chose to have her rather than the light.

I chose to have wisdom rather than the light.

Because the splendor of her never yields to sleep, yet all good things together came to me in her company, and countless riches at her hands.

So here, I guess this is Solomon, is talking about wisdom.

Every time he says she and her, he's talking about wisdom.

I prayed, and prudence was given me.

I pleaded, and the Spirit of Wisdom

That's pretty serious.

To prefer wisdom to gold, gems, riches, power, authority.

That's pretty serious.

We have seen that behavior, or that disposition, a disposition informs behavior, right?

We've seen that disposition in the saints.

St.

Anthony of the Desert immediately comes to mind.

Who surrendered all of his riches to become a hermit in the desert, one of my heroes.

We've seen that story in numerous saints, right?

That they came from, well, I think even St.

Anthony of Padua came from money, and he also surrendered it all to go off and pray, to deepen his knowledge of theology, to be alone, and to minister to others, to bring the gospel to others.

Okay, you get the point.

We've seen this in the lives of many saints.

But it's still something to behold, you might say.

To say, I prefer wisdom to everything that brings, I don't want to say physical or emotional pleasure, but to say that I prefer wisdom to everything else in this world is a pretty serious thing.

And hello to Christopher.

Who's joining me here in this Twitter space.

Thank you for joining me, my friend.

God bless you and your family and all those you care about.

So I bring this to you today to apply it this way.

Are Catholics similar?

Are Catholics so disposed as Solomon was when he wrote this?

Do Catholics prefer wisdom to everything else?

Now, What am I talking about when I say Catholics?

I'm not talking about Every single baptized person in the Catholic Church.

I am not talking about everybody in the body in the Attached to the mystical body Because there are Catholics who were baptized Catholic.

Maybe they did First Communion Maybe they did confirmation and then they never saw the inside of a church again until their wedding They had their Catholic wedding, and then they never saw the inside of a church again until they went to baptize their first child.

Maybe, maybe, maybe they did that, baptize their first child.

We're in a generation now where that is happening less and less.

It used to be a given, even if you haven't been to church in 20 years, it was a given that when your children are born, you bring them to the church to be baptized, even if, In a way, it has just become a secular rite of passage.

Still, it was the tradition, your children are born, you bring them to be baptized.

Well, we are now entering an era, a phase, a period in human history, or in the history of Christendom, where that's no longer a given.

That a married couple will definitely, absolutely bring their child to be baptized.

So I'm not just talking, or really I'm not talking at all, to just every baptized Catholic.

What I'm talking about are the active, practicing Catholics.

When I say, are Catholics interested in wisdom above everything else, I'm talking about active, practicing Catholics.

Basically, you.

You.

You.

If you are listening to this, 99.

9 percent of you are active practicing Catholics.

Are Catholics interested in wisdom?

I'm going to take this time to explain to you what I see, what I think about that, and I'm going to explain why it should matter to each and every one of you and me.

I'm not above you, but me too.

Alright, so I'm the speaker, so I'm going to say you.

But believe, I am including myself in the bunch, just because I'm not saying we, it's just a stylistic thing.

I'm just not saying we because I'm the speaker talking to you, I'm, but I am in that mix with you, okay?

Just assume that we is understood there.

Do we value wisdom above everything else?

Let me tell you, uh, very briefly about my history.

Which is very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very long.

So I'm gonna make it super brief.

My history as a Catholic communicator.

Okay.

So I have been very enthusiastic about the faith really since I was very, very, very young.

I'll tell you, I'll tell you a story.

One time I was walking home with my brother and my sister from the movies.

I think we saw, I think we saw Indiana Jones.

Raiders of the Lost Ark, I think.

But it might, it might have been a little earlier than that, because I was, I was really very young.

On the way home, we passed our parish church, and I tripped and fell during the walk, right outside of our parish church as we were passing it.

Tripped and fell, scraped my knee.

Scraping your knee when you're a child is like losing a finger as an adult.

It's very shocking, right?

It's very, very troublesome.

it's not just the pain that you feel.

It's the shock of what just happened to you, right?

For a child, that shock is when you scrape your knee.

That little bit of pain from scraping your knee is a big deal, right?

I tripped, fell, scraped my knee right outside of the church and I was very, very unsettled by this.

I cried and I cried and my brother and sister continued to walk, walk me home and we went home and we got home.

We finished our day, had our dinner, whatever.

Now it's night time, and I'm saying my prayers and I said to God I I'm just paraphrasing.

God, you might want to have a look at at that church because I tripped and fell and I still scraped my knee.

I tripped and fell and it still hurt.

There must be something wrong with that church.

You might want to look into that.

You see, I was shocked that even when God You trip and fall in front of a church, it can still hurt, it can still bruise and injure you.

This was in my mind when I was a very little boy.

You know, obviously, you know, you understand things, Incompletely when you're that young.

So, I was shocked that you could trip and fall outside of a church and still be hurt because I figured you're outside of a church.

Nothing should be able to happen to you.

Nothing bad should be able to happen to you, right?

So, there's a very small snapshot of my orientation to the church, my orientation to God from a very young age.

Now, fast forward a little bit.

My early teen years is when I started, I would consider that's when I started really to become a Catholic communicator, a Catholic evangelizer, a Catholic apologist.

Always defending the faith.

Always defending the church.

From people who say, well, Catholics believe yadda yadda yadda.

Well, Catholics do yadda yadda yadda, and that's not in the Bible.

And Catholics think, and Catholics do, and Catholics believe.

Now, what did I know about the faith?

Not a whole hell of a lot.

Maybe a little bit more, well, probably a little bit more than my peers.

12, you know?

But still, I was not having people battering the church.

Was not having that.

Fast forward, now I'm a, I don't know, 15.

Maybe 14.

And now I'm picking fights with Protestants.

Some of them are Protestant ministers.

Ha ha ha.

Because I don't like their anti Catholic nonsense.

I am defending the church and the faith and the faithful, my brothers and sisters, from Protestants.

We're trying to mislead them and misinform them from atheists who are trying to seduce them.

From pagans, yes, actual pagans who are trying to, now at the time they were very, very few of them, but they were there trying to corrupt my brothers and sisters.

Not having it, not having it, identifying the lies that they are telling my brothers and si I mean my brothers and sisters in the faith, not my, not my biological siblings.

Telling lies to my brothers and sisters about God and religion and faith and Catholicism in particular.

Not having it.

And ever since then, I spent a very long time as an, uh, as an apologist and somewhat, I guess, an evangelist or an evangelizer, I should say, not an evangelist, defending the faithful from people trying to mislead and misguide them.

Now over the past, um, maybe 15 years, my focus shifted, okay?

I became like a pit bull defending the church and defending the faithful.

over my life.

And then my focus kind of shifted.

I won't get into why.

I don't even know if I could pinpoint a why, but anyhow, it shifted.

And I focused, I began to focus on the Catholic faithful rather than on the opposers outside of the church.

I began to focus on my brothers and sisters in an effort and desire to better them, to make them better.

To help them to become saints.

And that has been no for Pete's sake.

And that has been my focus bettering my brothers and sisters for about 15 years.

Okay.

Now, when you are doing that, when you're focused on other Catholics, instead of on opposers to the church, you start to see them a little bit differently because now you're focused on them.

And you start to see their issues, their flaws, their errors.

And after, let's just say, 15 years of that, sometimes, often, I get very frustrated by my brothers and sisters in the church.

Very very frustrated.

Sometimes I grow a little, I don't know if resentful is the right word, but it's the word that comes to mind, a little resentful.

A little, something more than just annoyed.

Resentful might be too strong a word.

I don't know.

Anyhow, and I want, often, I want to look at many of them and I want to say, you damn fool.

You have no idea what you have.

You have no idea who the church is.

Not what.

Who the church is.

You are blind to what's right in front of your face.

I want to say to the lefties, you are separating the spirit of the gospel from the body of the church, and when a spirit is separated from a body, you can do whatever you want with the spirit.

You can manipulate it to be whatever you want.

It becomes like clay almost, or it becomes like water, and you can pour it into any mold that you want.

You separate the spirit from the body, and then what you have is a ghost, a specter.

or something more malignant.

I don't want to say a demon, but you get what I mean.

Like a malignant spirit, because you have made it that.

And how the hell dare you do such a thing to the holy faith?

And then I want to look at my brothers and sisters on the right.

Same thing.

I want to say, how dare you?

How dare you?

Turn the church into a political party.

Turn the faith into a political party.

How dare you turn the church into a social club?

How dare you?

How dare both of you, on the left and on the right, how dare you put on the trappings of holiness when your hearts are black as tar?

And you parade around and prance around with your rosary beads, you go to mass every day, or you're on the parish council, all of these things, parading holiness you don't actually possess.

How dare you?

You see these things when you're a Catholic evangelizer, or a Catholic communicator, paying extra attention to the Catholic faithful because you intend to help them to be better.

To be, to be saints.

I want to help them to get through the finish line, to get over the finish line, and to finish strong, you know, to finish really, really strong.

But you can't evangelize what you don't love, or who you don't love, if they're persons.

The what might be like a culture or a society, right?

You can't evangelize those you don't love.

And really, whatever it is that I'm feeling, it's negative.

I don't know if I can call it resentment, but it's negative.

So I have to squash it.

And put it aside, or put it away, or set fire to it if I can.

And I have to remember that these are my brothers and sisters.

They are not the enemy.

Although, some of them are.

But that's another story.

So that's my history in brief.

Okay.

And why does it bring me to this reading today?

I prayed and prudence was given to me.

I pleaded and the spirit of wisdom came upon me.

I have noticed, really across my, the span of my time as an evangelizer, whatever it is, uh, you know, you would characterize me as, I have noticed that a lot of Catholics have missed the point.

Not all of them are errant.

Right, like the liberal Lucys or the extreme conservative, I mean literally extreme conservatives.

Not all of them are errant.

Some of them are just people like me or you.

And it is so easy to miss the point, to lose the point.

The point of the faith is not to act holy.

It is to become holy.

Sometimes becoming holy requires that we act the part.

Yes, it's important that you pray.

It's important that you incorporate the rosary or other devotions.

Obviously it's essential that you go to mass, receive the sacraments, go to confession.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Even if you feel your heart isn't in it, do it anyway.

Well, then it's just an act.

That's okay because it's an act oriented to something that is good and true.

So it's not fake.

Even if it's an act, it is not fake.

Do it anyway, even if your heart isn't in it, because you need the graces that are available to us in these acts or actions.

If you are going to actually become holy.

So sometimes, the path to holiness is an act.

But that doesn't mean it's fake.

But for some people it is.

For some people, orthodoxy is holiness.

Even though those are not the same things.

The goal is orthodoxy.

I'm sorry, the goal is holiness.

Often, and I, I have suffered this too.

That's why I know it so well.

That's why I'm able to share it with you.

Often, we rest on orthodoxy and we think we have finished the race, but orthodoxy is a means to the end.

The end is holiness.

The end is heaven.

And we're not, we're not getting into heaven if we're not holy.

Holiness is the goal, right?

And sometimes holiness, sometimes it's a very high price to pay for holiness.

We see, we have, we see this in scripture, I do not remember where it is, but in scripture we are told that wisdom sometimes makes us sad.

We see, I think it was the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, that he, he became a sadder and wiser man.

And as I have said several times in past episodes, it is true that the truth will set us free, but often it must first indict us.

Often the truth must indict us before it can set us free.

Before we can become the truth.

We have to be shown how far away from it we really are.

Before we can become it, we must do it.

Before we can actively choose to do it, we have to see how far away we are from it.

And sometimes that hurts.

Sometimes it makes us sad.

But it makes us wise.

Makes us wise.

I preferred wisdom to scepter and throne, and deemed riches Nothing in comparison with her.

Sometimes we get caught up in the wrong things.

Mentally, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually.

We get caught up in the wrong things and we forget the point.

The devil gets us off, off that trail by slow degrees.

He doesn't knock us off the trail, you know, by a hundred miles overnight.

He gets us a hundred miles off the trail by slow degrees.

Sometime, well, I'll give, I'll say this, one of those Nudges in the wrong direction is convincing us that praying the rosary absolutely makes us holy.

It may not make you holy if you are not receptive to the graces available to those who pray the rosary.

It may not make you holy at all.

I know plenty of people who say a rosary every day.

I am not exaggerating.

Rosary every day, mass every day, and they're some of the most awful people you could ever meet.

Why?

If they're saying the rosary and going to mass so regularly, so frequently.

Because they are not receptive to the graces offered to those who are at mass and so on.

Now, I'm not saying they're completely, I'm not saying the graces are completely bouncing off of them, but grace is not magic.

It comes from a mind, it all in in a sense.

I'm not being literal, but in a sense there is a mind to the grace itself, and it's not going to force itself on you if you are not receptive to it.

It won't even bother with you.

The Lord may grant you a particular grace to help correct your problem, whatever it is that's making you non receptive to these graces.

You'll receive an abundance of that grace, but even that grace requires your cooperation or our cooperation, right?

And so what does it take?

What does it take to get someone from being just a Catholic to being Catholic without What does it take to get someone from being just an orthodox practicing Catholic to a Catholic oriented to holiness?

What does it take to get someone from being a mass goer to getting someone to being a saint who has come to have an, to have an interaction with, with the divine at mass, who has come to make contact with Calvary at the mass.

What does it take to get someone to no longer see the limitations or irritations that they find at their Mass, which sometimes irritations are there, right?

The priest is doing X, he shouldn't be doing that.

The priest is saying Y, he shouldn't be doing that.

There shouldn't be an army of, you know, Eucharistic ministers or extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion.

There shouldn't be an army of them.

You might even say there shouldn't be any of them.

I really don't like Eucharistic ministers.

I don't think they should be used, but whatever.

Who am I?

What does it take to get a Catholic away from a posture where they notice all of these things and instead, toward a posture where all they see is Jesus when they go to Mass.

All they hear is God's Word when they're at Mass.

What it takes is patience.

Is exposure to correction, right?

Wherever the correction may come from, it may come from the Holy Spirit, it may come by grace, it may come by, you know, someone else's example, someone else's word.

And then a person has to be open to that correction.

And they have to be willing to live what we see in the first reading.

I prayed, And prudence was given to me.

I pleaded and the spirit of wisdom came to me.

I preferred wisdom, I'm filling in her, I'm filling in wisdom where, where the, the author has her.

I preferred wisdom to scepter and throne, and deemed riches nothing in comparison with wisdom.

My friends, it is the wise who come to see God, not just in heaven.

That's the ultimate.

It is the wise who come to see God on earth.

To see things as God sees them, to see things through the lens of the divine mind, through the lens of revelation, through the lens of, of a sacramental worldview.

It is the wise who have that vision, vision, and the proud are not granted wisdom.

The proud will not be wise.

They reject wisdom.

My brothers and sisters, there are a lot of prideful people in the church.

Again, I am talking about active practicing Catholics.

There's a lot, a lot, oh God, there is so much pride in the church and I have really, really seen it over my years as an active evangelizer.

Oh man, have I seen it.

I've seen, I don't say this pridefully, this is just, I have a certain You know, a set of experiences and a certain overall experience, right?

So all I'm saying is I have seen it more than the average Catholic.

How much pride, how much error there is in the church.

And I mean in the faithful, in the laity.

I've seen it more than the average Catholic has seen it.

I have seen it.

It is dense.

It is thick and it is deep.

Why?

Because Catholics Just can't get over themselves.

And they prefer the appearance of knowledge.

Whether or not they actually have knowledge is another conversation.

They prefer the appearance of knowledge to the reality of wisdom.

Because wisdom takes humility.

And humility is very, very hard.

It's hard for all of us.

They prefer to quote and cite Vatican documents about knowledge.

Not even really knowing what they are or worse, they know what these things mean.

But they're distorting their meaning to suit their purposes.

Unbelievable to me.

Unbelievable to me.

Happens on the left, and it happens on the right.

And then sometimes our faith gets intertwined with our politics.

Boy, do I know that!

I know that from my personal experience, because I've done it.

We intertwine our faith with our political,

perspectives and opinions.

And then what happens?

The faith becomes just another political party.

It's not really divine revelation.

It's my interpretation.

It's the Catholic faith filtered.

Through my politics, and then what's, what comes out of that filter, that's what the faith is to me now.

That's really what, what people do.

And then, there are, there are, I will say many, and probably this is many of you, okay?

There are those who, they're not trying to get it wrong.

They're not trying to block themselves from wisdom.

They're prideful.

They just haven't had the kick in the butt that we need.

That's it.

When we begin to get relaxed along the journey, and we all need that several times in our lives, right?

Not just you, me too, right?

We all need that.

Sometimes we need a kick in the butt to remind us.

Sometimes we need a slap in the face to remind us of who we are, where we're going, where we need to be in order to get there, right?

We need to be on the road in this way in order to get to where we're going.

Sometimes we just need a reminder.

If I may, this is the reminder I want to offer, all, all, all, everyone listening, whether you're at the center, you're at the left, you're at the right, everyone listening.

We were made to be like God.

We are not like God because of sin.

there Is a broad set of mechanisms and organs in the church to get us to where we need to be.

The sacraments, the teaching of the church, God's divine revelation, which comes to us because of the church.

Jesus Christ, obviously, the gospels, again, that's tied to the church.

Right?

The church, the church is the pillar and foundation of truth.

The church is at the center of all of this.

And I don't know if I mentioned it already, I probably did, but sacraments of life, Prayer, devotions, things like this.

There's a lot, there is a lot that we can put to use, that we can participate in, that we can surrender ourselves to, that are meant, that's meant to help us, to get us to where we're supposed to be.

That's meant to help to get us to holiness.

Because the holier we are, the more real we are, the closer we are to what God had in mind when he thought us up, before he placed us in our mother's womb, or wombs.

The holier we are, the more real we are.

And the holier we are, the closer we are to God.

I don't mean in proximity, but probably that too, but I mean in like, in, in, in, in likeness.

The closer in likeness we are to God.

We can call it holiness, but you can call, or it is holiness, but you can call it whatever you want.

The whole point of this thing we call Catholic is to get to where we're supposed to be.

Right?

Union with God.

Not just in heaven.

Amen.

But even here on earth, by transformation of our minds, by the transformation of our natures, our fallen natures, by surrendering and transformation of our will, our desire, you understand?

By changing how we act, changing how we behave.

That's how we get there.

And it's very easy and it's very tempting to say, I went to mass, I go to mass every Sunday.

I'm good, man.

I'm with you.

I wish it could be that simple.

But I'm telling you it isn't.

I'm not saying it has to be grueling.

I'm not saying it has to be awful.

All I'm saying is it's not as simple as I go to mass every Sunday.

It's, it is that simple when we're in, you know, when we're children, little children, but no one listening to this as a little child.

And so everyone listening to this.

I beg you, please start taking this much more seriously than you've been.

However seriously you've been taking it, take it much more seriously than that.

Don't take yourselves too seriously.

One of the greatest pieces of advice I ever got from a priest, which I've gotten a lot, but this, this is one of the greatest pieces of advice I ever got.

Take what you're doing very seriously, but do not take yourself too seriously ever.

And he was right.

Don't take yourself too seriously.

You're going to fail here and there.

You're going to fall here and there, okay?

Okay.

Don't beat yourself up.

Pick yourself up and carry on.

We have to take seriously this thing we call Catholic.

Because in a church, and this has been kind of throughout the history of the church, but in my opinion, because I've only lived my lifetime, so in my opinion, I feel like we're seeing it worse today.

There's a lot of foolishness in the church, tremendous, profound foolishness in the church.

And often it comes from people who talk a good game about what the Mass is supposed to be, what the Pope is supposed to be saying, and this and that.

A lot of these people talk a very good game.

From my perspective, and from the perspective of a lot of people with similar experience, these people are the biggest fools walking earth, and they have the biggest voices.

And sometimes they have small voices, but they're small voices that are very loud.

They don't have much prominence or platform, but they're very loud.

That's what I mean by they're small voices, but they're very loud.

Unbelievable to me.

There, I'll close with this one point.

There are Catholics out there.

I know a couple in real life, and What I had in mind are a couple, in the, I guess, Catholic social sphere, Catholic blogosphere, Catholic podcastosphere, whatever you want to call it.

they're definitely idolaters.

A hundred percent, they're guilty of the sin of idolatry.

But if you ask them, they're faithful traditional Catholics.

My very informed opinion?

They will 1, 000 percent be judged by Jesus Christ for their commission of the sin of idolatry.

1, 000%.

I'm confident that that's going to be the case.

And I'm fairly confident that that, perhaps to lesser degrees, but that is a problem we are seeing growing throughout the church, the sin of idolatry in the form of Catholicism.

Oh, oh yes.

Oh, oh yes.

My brothers and sisters, I'm not important, and I'm not important.

I do not do this for fame, I do not do this for glory, I do not do this for money, okay?

I am not important, but I'm begging you, really take what I'm saying to the bank.

There are a lot of problems we're seeing in the church that I saw coming decades ago.

I'm not saying I'm a prophet, I'm just saying I'm very stupid in a thousand different ways.

And the skill sets I have, I have pretty well.

You've heard me say this before.

And this was something that, this is kind of a skill that I have.

To see what's out there and project where it's going.

So this is me telling you, that many in the church, uh, some in the church, are guilty of idolatry in the form of Catholicism, and that problem is spreading and growing like a wildfire.

If I'm still doing this in 10 years, I'm going to remind you, remember 10 years ago when I said blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah?

Look around you now.

You're seeing it now, aren't you?

So please, and I'm not saying this for bragging rights.

Look, you see, I'm always right.

No, no, no, no.

I'm just saying this so that you understand I do have some rhetorical credibility here.

I do have some believability, okay?

So take what I'm telling you to the bank.

There are gross errors out there that are infecting ordinary, well intentioned Catholics.

And I'm begging you, please don't be one of them.

Take what we're doing, we're doing seriously.

Don't take yourself too seriously.

But take what, take this thing we call Catholic a little more seriously.

Part of that taking it seriously is be at peace, Part of it is, be people of joy.

It doesn't mean you're doing cartwheels and going yippee, yippee, yippee, all day long.

That's not what joy is.

That's foolishness.

Be joyful.

Appreciate what you have in being Catholic.

Appreciate what you have in being able to receive Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.

Be joyful.

Keep your chin up and be happy and thankful and joyful about it.

Be at peace.

Be joyful.

And spread the light of Jesus Christ.

That doesn't mean hit people over the heads with it.

But spread the light of Jesus Christ in your words, in your actions.

Remember I forget which saint it was who said it, you know, always preach the gospel and sometimes use words or something like that.

Preaching the gospel doesn't, isn't limited to talking about the gospel or talking about Jesus.

Preaching the gospel can happen many, many times throughout the day, every day, simply by your actions.

The kindness you show to others, the compassion you, you, you give to others.

The charity that you show others in your actions, in your words, in the things that you do for them, in the things that you refrain from doing.

You know, you don't always have to point out people's little flaws.

Sometimes just let it go.

You don't always have to tell someone they're wrong.

Sometimes just let it go.

Unless it's really, really critical, right?

Then, then tell them charitably.

But you don't always have to do.

Sometimes, many times charity is in what we resist doing.

It's not just in what we do.

Many times it's in what we resist doing.

Every time you do this, every time you put this into practice, be at peace, be joyful.

Spread the light of Jesus Christ.

Every time you do this throughout the day, you're moving closer and closer to being like God.

You're moving closer and closer to holiness.

And yes, over the course of the week, you're going to screw it up.

100%.

You're going to screw it up here and there over the course of a week.

But I'm telling you, if you pick yourself up, And, and you just carry right on, doing what you know is right, and good, and true.

I'm telling you, each and every week you're going to be holier than you were the week before.

And the week before, and the week before.

And over the course of 52 weeks, you're going to be considerably holier than you were a year ago.

I'm telling you, it's true.

Yes, you're gonna screw it up here and there.

Okay, don't take yourself so seriously.

Get up and keep going.

Thank you.

But take it seriously.

Get up and keep going.

My last thought, I want to leave you with this.

Here's a bit of wisdom that I paid a very, very heavy price for over my lifetime in, in, in little installments, but they, they, they were, they were difficult installments.

And here's what I want to tell you.

A movement toward holiness by one inch, by one inch.

If you were to think of the path to holiness in spatial terms, right?

The movement toward holiness of just one inch, from God's perspective, from the celestial perspective, one inch toward holiness has the value of a thousand miles toward holiness.

You may see yourself, you may look at yourself week, maybe let's say you, you do like an examination of conscience and it doesn't have to be deep and spiritual, it can be just considering, what did I do well today, what did I do poorly, could be that simple.

Let's say you do that every week, I'm sorry, every night and every week, you kind of recap and then over the course of a month, you might say to yourself, man, I'm trying like hell, but I've, if I'm at all holy or it's only by a hair.

It's only by hair.

Let me tell you something, my friend.

It could be the, the distance of the, the width of a hair, and it's a lot from the perspective of God, because we are so wicked.

I'm trying like hell, and I'm only, you know, further along the road, but maybe by an inch, if I had to put a value to it, that inch is like a thousand miles.

So don't lose heart.

If at the end of a week, the end of a month, the end of a year, whatever, you take an honest look at yourself, and you decide, or you come to this conclusion that I'm only slightly holier than I used to be, than I was a year ago, or whatever.

Only slightly.

That's a lot.

That's a lot.

And sometimes you're gonna say, I see ways in which I'm holier than I used to be by the grace of God.

I see that, but I also feel like I see a lot more vice In myself than I did a year ago.

Well, that, you'll likely come to that conclusion.

That does not mean that you're more evil than you were a year ago.

It just means that as you progress in holiness, you're seeing your own vices more clearly.

And they were always there.

So, a hundred percent you're going to get to that conclusion.

I'm just a little bit more holier, and there are some ways where I feel like I'm a lot more wicked.

Well, a little more holy is a whole lot of holy.

And when you see that you're just more vicious than you used to be, in almost all likelihood that is not actually the case, you're just seeing yourself with greater clarity.

And that's a good thing, because then you know what to correct.

Be wise, don't be foolish.

Pursue wisdom and value it above and beyond all things.

Remembering that the truth will set you free.

The truth will bring you to where you should, you should be and it will bring you to who you're supposed to be by God's design.

But often the truth has to indict you before it can set you free.

And that is the price we pay for the wisdom that comes from heaven.

This has been a special episode slash a special spaces session.

Oh, I forgot the announcement.

Not much of an announcement.

Shoot.

Sorry, I wanted to put this in the middle, but it was going so well.

I thought, lemme not distract people.

Lemme just continue.

So, he, long story short is I'm finding my legs a little bit more with my new job and I'm going to start working in some more time to do some podcasting and stuff.

Okay, sometimes I get very ambitious and I want to start up the newsletter again and this and that but man I'm, just so tired.

I'm so tired of begging people to sign up for the newsletter.

Nobody does I think I only have like I think I only have like 230 subscribers to the newsletter and I think most of them came organically from uh from sub stack when I was doing sub stack of that 230 I think only like 20 of them You Actually responded to all of my begging Please sign up for my newsletter.

I'm offering this and so on and so on and then I did the same thing with locals like I tried to 50 i'm still trying to get 50 subscribe free members to my locals.

It's unbelievable.

I'm still not at 50 sometimes I get very ambitious because there's some so many things I want to do Some things take a long time and some things don't like writing a little newsletter doesn't take an awful lot of time You know, if I do one design, and I just go with the same design instead of redesigning it, right, I just go with one design, and then I just write, I don't know, maybe a, like a blog post, but in the newsletter, you know?

Four or five paragraphs.

Sometimes I think, let me, I should start doing that again, but, nah, that, that was such a fail for me, it's like, no, I'm not going through that again.

So sometimes I do get a little ambitious.

And then, I have to kind of, uh, temper my ambition a little bit, but an ambition that, that is still there is I still want to do podcasting and I still want to offer, you know, extra things for people on locals.

Uh, I really wish my locals following was big enough that I can say I'm only ever going to podcast on locals ever again.

Because I do like that.

It's like a private sandbox kind of a thing.

Well, for the time being, I'm still going to publish the occasional thing on my public, channels and I'm going to still do some things first on locals, some things exclusively on locals for paid or free members, and then I'm going to add, extra content for people who are paying five bucks a month to join me on locals.

Okay, but I just wanted to let you know that things are moving in, in, in a, I guess, a constructive direction.

Direction and I'm going to try and go back to that once a week routine that I was publishing something once a week at least.

but if you're only getting me on socials, if you're only getting me on the public podcast feed, like an iTunes, Spotify, whatever, you're going to see things last and some things you won't see at all.

I will continue to prioritize, uh, locals.

Some things are going to, everything's going to hit locals first.

Some things will be locals only, and some things on locals only will be only for paid members.

So if you really like what I do, if you really want to get in on this gravy train, go to catholicexperience.

locals.

com You can sign up for a free account, catholicexperience.

locals.

com

In the future, the very near future, one of the things that I do want to talk about is, you know, in today's reading, Jesus kind of, Jesus kind of gets really difficult for me.

It's like, Jesus, that's annoying.

I wish you hadn't said that.

Well, what did he say?

This is a little foreshadow of probably the next episode I'm going to do.

They were exceeding, this is from the gospel today, they were exceedingly astonished and said amongst themselves, then Lord, who can be saved?

Jesus looked at them and said, for human beings it is impossible, but not for God.

All things are possible for God.

I have to tell you, my friends, I don't believe all things are possible for God.

What?

Yeah.

And I've talked about this before, but this is like early on in my podcasting apostolate here.

So you may or may not have heard me say this, but I don't believe that nothing is impossible for God now.

But Jesus just said all things are possible for God.

So how do you make that work?

I can make it work.

I can make it work.

That's going to be the next episode of the podcast.

It'll hit, locals first.

I might do an extended episode on locals.

I don't know, but it'll be locals first, maybe, or maybe not extended.

And it'll hit the public podcast feed maybe about a few days to a week later.

Okay.

I don't believe.

All things are possible for God.

I know that's like a crazy almost sounds like a heretical statement, right?

I know it does I know but I'm gonna I'm gonna explain in that episode I'm going to explain that to you.

But what I want to do is not just explain it.

I want to work out How how does my philosophy or my theology?

Pertaining to that.

How does that reconcile with what we just read?

Jesus Christ saying, all things are possible for God.

That's going to need a little more theological work for me to kind of lay that, lay that down for you.

Okay, it's not just a mentioning.

I have to really lay down some theology.

And I have to do some research, a little bit of research in the scriptures.

And then, Then I'll put that episode together.

M'kay?

This has been a rockin sockum episode of The Catholic Experience.

I have been your host, the Catholic Adventurer.

Thank you for joining me.

God bless you all.

God be with you all.

And for those of you who were praying for me through this past year of absolute hell I was living, God bless you.

You know with unemployment and everything that was going wrong in my life those of you who are praying for me To keep me on my feet and to help To ask God to move my life in a better direction Thank you so much for your prayerful support, and I thank you in my family's name to God bless you God be with you all bye bye