# Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience - Bishop Barron's Daily Sermons

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 24 Jul 2026, 31 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/73038756/poverty_chastity_and_obedience.mp3



## Transcript

[0:06] Speaker 1: Well, God, bless you all.
[0:07] Speaker 2: Thank you.
[0:10] Speaker 1: What a sight this is and what a day has been.
[0:14] Speaker 3: Huh. I've been a priest for thirty eight years and
[0:25] Speaker 3: these days, these days constitute one of the great moments
[0:31] Speaker 3: of my priesthood.
[0:32] Speaker 1: I really mean that. To see that procession today.
[0:42] Speaker 3: The enthusiasm, and then that deep devotion of all of you,
[0:46] Speaker 3: to see this gathering, how could you deny that the.
[0:49] Speaker 1: Holy Spirit is here among us?
[0:58] Speaker 2: You know.
[0:58] Speaker 3: I saw the lineup for the speaking tonight, and then
[1:00] Speaker 3: I saw Jonathan Roomy backstage, and I said.
[1:03] Speaker 2: Great, I get to be the first speaker on after Jesus.
[1:09] Speaker 3: You know, I came to know him very well when
[1:11] Speaker 3: I was a bishop out in California, and in fact,
[1:13] Speaker 3: he came to my house several times, and California, you
[1:21] Speaker 3: can't all be from California.
[1:26] Speaker 2: Anyway, Jonathan came a couple of times.
[1:28] Speaker 3: I discovered he's great with voices, as you know, and
[1:31] Speaker 3: he and I share a great love for The Simpsons.
[1:35] Speaker 3: So one night we're on the back porch of my
[1:38] Speaker 3: house and Jonathan Roomy was doing the Simpsons voices.
[1:42] Speaker 2: And at one moment I thought, okay, coming out of.
[1:45] Speaker 3: The face of Jesus is the voice of Homer Simpson,
[1:51] Speaker 3: and I thought my life has taken a weird turn,
[1:54] Speaker 3: you know. Anyway, I want to share some thoughts to
[1:58] Speaker 3: it tonight, everybody. The great English Catholic apologist Ronald Knock
[2:04] Speaker 3: said something that's always stayed with me ever since I
[2:06] Speaker 3: read it.
[2:08] Speaker 2: Knac said that almost all of Jesus'.
[2:11] Speaker 3: Commands have been dishonored, or at best honored in the
[2:14] Speaker 3: breach think of you know, love your enemies, and bless
[2:17] Speaker 3: those who curse you, and don't judge, and all the
[2:22] Speaker 3: moral demand of Jesus. Time and again we disregard those.
[2:28] Speaker 3: But strangely, Knac said, there is a command of Jesus
[2:32] Speaker 3: that we have over the centuries consistently obeyed, and that is,
[2:38] Speaker 3: do this in remembrance of Me, despite our sins, despite
[2:52] Speaker 3: our failure, despite our stupidity.
[2:54] Speaker 2: And all of that.
[2:55] Speaker 3: Somehow we've known, everybody by a very deep instinct, that
[3:00] Speaker 3: we must follow that command of the Lord. We've known
[3:05] Speaker 3: somehow in our hearts how indispensable the Eucharist is. This
[3:10] Speaker 3: is my body, Jesus says, this is my blood. And
[3:15] Speaker 3: because he's not just one prophet among many, not simply
[3:20] Speaker 3: a wisdom figure, but.
[3:22] Speaker 2: Rather God from God, Light from light, true God, from
[3:25] Speaker 2: true God. Because he's that.
[3:28] Speaker 3: What he says is that's the basic theology of the Church,
[3:33] Speaker 3: the theology of the real presence.
[3:36] Speaker 1: That's why we're here.
[3:38] Speaker 3: But I want you to focus on maybe some words
[3:41] Speaker 3: that we don't pay enough attention to. Jesus indeed says
[3:45] Speaker 3: this is my body, but then he adds given up
[3:50] Speaker 3: for you, this is my blood.
[3:55] Speaker 2: Shed for you.
[3:59] Speaker 3: What becomes really president of the Eucharist, everybody is not
[4:01] Speaker 3: just the body and blood of Jesus. Sort of dumbly
[4:05] Speaker 3: and objectively there what becomes with the present is Jesus
[4:10] Speaker 3: body given Jesus blood poured out.
[4:17] Speaker 2: When we therefore consume the Eucharist, we.
[4:21] Speaker 3: Become what we eat, right, We become what we eat.
[4:26] Speaker 3: We become conformed to a love unto death. We become
[4:33] Speaker 3: a body given for others. We become blood poured out
[4:36] Speaker 3: on behalf of others. Here's a it's a challenging idea,
[4:43] Speaker 3: but I'll offer to all of you tonight. Your Christianity
[4:47] Speaker 3: is not for you. Christianity is not a self help program.
[4:53] Speaker 2: Something designed just to make us feel.
[4:55] Speaker 3: Better about ourselves. Your Christianity is for the world. Jesus said,
[5:10] Speaker 3: you're the light of the world.
[5:13] Speaker 2: If you put your light under a bushel basket, it
[5:15] Speaker 2: does no good.
[5:16] Speaker 3: You are the salt of the earth. Therefore you're meant
[5:20] Speaker 3: to enhance what's good in the world. You're meant to
[5:23] Speaker 3: put to death what's bad in the world. But if
[5:26] Speaker 3: salt loses its savor, who can make it salty again?
[5:30] Speaker 2: You see the idea our Christianity is not for us.
[5:35] Speaker 3: We eat the body and drink the blood of Jesus
[5:38] Speaker 3: which have been offered for the world. Think here, everybody
[5:43] Speaker 3: of dear Paul Francis the Church that goes out from itself.
[5:48] Speaker 2: Yes, yes, the.
[5:50] Speaker 3: Eucharus is not for us as a little private possession.
[5:54] Speaker 3: It's meant to conform us to Christ, who gives his body, blood,
[6:00] Speaker 3: soul and divinity for the world. It's Vatican two, the
[6:06] Speaker 3: Great Conciliar document, lumensium right, the light of the nations.
[6:12] Speaker 1: Who's the light?
[6:13] Speaker 3: Well, Christ, We're meant to be the bearers of that
[6:17] Speaker 3: light to the gentes, to the world. That's the whole
[6:22] Speaker 3: ecclesiology of the Church. That's what animated John Paul the
[6:26] Speaker 3: I benedicta sixteenth pope Francis the same idea the church
[6:30] Speaker 3: that goes out from itself.
[6:33] Speaker 2: As I look at this great throng in this room, gosh,
[6:37] Speaker 2: it lifts up my heart. The energy in this room.
[6:44] Speaker 1: I needed everybody.
[6:45] Speaker 3: The energy in this room could change our country.
[7:01] Speaker 1: It's true, isn't it.
[7:02] Speaker 2: It's true.
[7:03] Speaker 3: Do you know how many Catholics there are in America?
[7:06] Speaker 3: Roughly seventy million. We're just shy of a quarter of
[7:10] Speaker 3: the population. Think for one second, look around this room
[7:14] Speaker 3: as you do so, think what if seventy million Catholics
[7:20] Speaker 3: starting tonight, began to live their faith radically and dramatically became.
[7:32] Speaker 2: Body offered, blood poured out, we would change the country.
[7:39] Speaker 3: You know, since Vatica two, appropriately, there's been a lot
[7:43] Speaker 3: of talk about the rights and privileges and prerogatives of
[7:47] Speaker 3: the laity. And that's right, overcoming a sort of cramped
[7:51] Speaker 3: clericalism and inviting the laity and all of that.
[7:53] Speaker 1: I love it, I love it.
[7:55] Speaker 2: I'm totally for it.
[7:56] Speaker 3: But can I add maybe a word of challenge that's
[8:01] Speaker 3: not been as stressed.
[8:04] Speaker 2: Along with the rights and prerogatives.
[8:07] Speaker 4: Of the laity is the obligation of the laity.
[8:20] Speaker 1: You know what Vatican two wanted.
[8:22] Speaker 3: Vatican two wanted great Catholic lawyers, great Catholic politicians, great
[8:28] Speaker 3: Catholic writers, great Catholic journalists, great Catholic parents, great Catholic educators,
[8:35] Speaker 3: going out into the world. Vatican two said, the seculum,
[8:39] Speaker 3: the secular.
[8:41] Speaker 2: Order, that's your space.
[8:43] Speaker 3: Move into it with panash and energy and intelligence and enthusiasm, and.
[8:49] Speaker 2: Become body given blood poured out. We've set that country
[8:55] Speaker 2: on fire. Look at us.
[9:06] Speaker 3: You've got rights and privileges for sure, and you've got
[9:09] Speaker 3: this great sacred obligation.
[9:14] Speaker 1: You know, Dorothy Day has long been a hero of mine.
[9:18] Speaker 3: And back in the nineteen fifties, Dorothy Day complained about something.
[9:23] Speaker 3: She said, there was a kind of two tiered spirituality
[9:26] Speaker 3: in the Catholic Church. There was a spirituality of the
[9:30] Speaker 3: commandments that was for the laity, and it meant, you know,
[9:34] Speaker 3: follow the basic ten commandments and that's all we could
[9:37] Speaker 3: really expect of you. And then there was what she
[9:40] Speaker 3: called a council spirituality for the clergy and the religious
[9:45] Speaker 3: and so on. What's that, Well, the evangelical counsels poverty, chastity, obedience,
[9:54] Speaker 3: so beyond the commandments, that's for the ordinary people. There's
[9:57] Speaker 3: a kind of you know, for the spiritual athlete, they've
[10:00] Speaker 3: got poverty, chastity, obedience.
[10:04] Speaker 1: Dorothy Day hated that. She hated that distinction.
[10:09] Speaker 3: Looks she loves clergy and she loved the consecrated religious,
[10:13] Speaker 3: but she knew they live those things out in a
[10:16] Speaker 3: distinctive way. But she also knew, no, no, there's not
[10:20] Speaker 3: a two tiered spirituality in the church. The laity too
[10:24] Speaker 3: are called to heroic sanctity. The laity too are called
[10:30] Speaker 3: to poverty, chastity and obedience. So everybody, in the brief
[10:42] Speaker 3: time I got, I just want to say something very
[10:44] Speaker 3: simple about each one of those, because I think in
[10:47] Speaker 3: this living out of a council's spirituality will see more
[10:53] Speaker 3: concretely what it means to be Christ in the world.
[10:56] Speaker 1: So, first, poverty.
[10:59] Speaker 3: The laity are not called to the poverty, let's say
[11:02] Speaker 3: of a Franciscan friar or a Trappist monk. That's a
[11:05] Speaker 3: particular religious form of poverty. If someone's whistling for that,
[11:09] Speaker 3: all right, good.
[11:12] Speaker 2: But listen to me.
[11:13] Speaker 3: Now, all the laity are indeed called to the evangelical
[11:18] Speaker 3: council of poverty in what sense, in the sense of
[11:22] Speaker 3: what all the spiritual masters call detachment detachment. Jesus said,
[11:30] Speaker 3: seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness,
[11:34] Speaker 3: and the.
[11:35] Speaker 2: Rest will be added unto you.
[11:37] Speaker 1: What did he mean.
[11:38] Speaker 2: He meant a clarity about what you want and what.
[11:41] Speaker 1: You stand for.
[11:44] Speaker 2: The Kingdom of God, and the rest of life will
[11:47] Speaker 2: kind of take care of itself.
[11:49] Speaker 1: In relation to that desire.
[11:52] Speaker 3: Saint Augustine said, love God, then love everything else or
[12:00] Speaker 3: the sake of God.
[12:02] Speaker 2: Then you'll be okay.
[12:04] Speaker 1: And in there's that I've shared.
[12:05] Speaker 3: If people will followed my work, they know this, but
[12:07] Speaker 3: it's been so helpful to me over the years. The
[12:10] Speaker 3: image of the wheel of fortune not Vana White, but
[12:14] Speaker 3: long before Vana White, in the Middle Ages, there was
[12:18] Speaker 3: this great symbol, the wheel of fortune that turns inevitably.
[12:25] Speaker 3: At the top is a king, he's got everything. Then
[12:29] Speaker 3: the wheel turns and you have a king having lost
[12:32] Speaker 3: his crown. And then at the very bottom you've got
[12:35] Speaker 3: a pauper he's got nothing. And then the wheel turns
[12:39] Speaker 3: up this way and you've got someone climbing.
[12:41] Speaker 2: Up to the top.
[12:44] Speaker 3: Think wealth, pleasure, honor, power, all the things the world
[12:50] Speaker 3: tells us will make us happy. Oh, just fill your
[12:54] Speaker 3: life up with enough of those, you'll be happy.
[12:59] Speaker 2: That's living on the rim of the wheel, Am I right?
[13:02] Speaker 2: That wheel the turns.
[13:04] Speaker 3: When you're on top of the wheel of fortune, you've
[13:06] Speaker 3: got everything you've ever wanted, all the wealth and power,
[13:09] Speaker 3: fame you've ever wanted. The one thing you know is
[13:14] Speaker 3: it's going to change. You're gonna lose it, and someone
[13:17] Speaker 3: who's seeking fame, he's going to try to knock you
[13:19] Speaker 3: out of that position.
[13:21] Speaker 2: To live on the ever changing rim of.
[13:23] Speaker 3: The wheel is to live in anxiety and addiction. Now
[13:29] Speaker 3: sound familiar, fellow sinners in this room. All of us
[13:34] Speaker 3: ride the wheel of fortune to varying degrees, spending our
[13:38] Speaker 3: lives running after wealth, pleasure, honor, and power.
[13:44] Speaker 2: The spiritual masters say, don't live on the rim. Live
[13:48] Speaker 2: in the center of the wheel.
[13:51] Speaker 3: In the center is a depiction of Christ, the same, yesterday, today,
[13:58] Speaker 3: and forever, Christ, who links us to the eternity of God.
[14:03] Speaker 2: Live in Him.
[14:06] Speaker 3: And then you can watch as the wheel terms I'm rich,
[14:11] Speaker 3: I'm poor, I'm formally rich, I'm getting richer. The wheel changes,
[14:16] Speaker 3: but I'm not living there.
[14:20] Speaker 1: See.
[14:20] Speaker 3: To live in that space is to live in the
[14:22] Speaker 3: space of detachment.
[14:26] Speaker 1: Now listen, rim of the wheel.
[14:30] Speaker 3: I'm caught in anxiety and addiction. I'm obsessed with the
[14:34] Speaker 3: worldly goods, and therefore grace can't flow through me.
[14:42] Speaker 2: Fellow sinners, we waste so much.
[14:45] Speaker 1: Of our lives chasing.
[14:48] Speaker 2: After these these worldly goods that will not satisfy us.
[14:52] Speaker 3: But if we live in Christ, we live in the
[14:56] Speaker 3: center of the wheel, detach from the goods of the world,
[15:00] Speaker 3: well then God.
[15:02] Speaker 1: Can work through us.
[15:04] Speaker 2: Grace can flow through us.
[15:06] Speaker 3: Into the world.
[15:07] Speaker 1: And that's the poverty.
[15:08] Speaker 3: If you want that, all of you are called to.
[15:12] Speaker 3: That's the poverty that will indeed change the world. Can
[15:16] Speaker 3: I give you one little thing from Pope Leo the thirteenth,
[15:20] Speaker 3: This from Rareum Navarum, you know, the document that founded
[15:23] Speaker 3: the church's social teaching tradition.
[15:26] Speaker 1: He said this, when the demands of.
[15:29] Speaker 3: Necessity and propriety in your life have been met, everything
[15:34] Speaker 3: else you own belongs to the poor. Now, can I
[15:40] Speaker 3: suggest you that'll change your life if you let that
[15:43] Speaker 3: sink in again, When the demands of necessity and propriety
[15:48] Speaker 3: in your life have been met. So I think now
[15:50] Speaker 3: in terms of wealth, pleasure, honor, power. When you've got
[15:53] Speaker 3: enough of those things to you know, all right, you
[15:56] Speaker 3: have enough to live well, then everything else belongs to
[16:01] Speaker 3: the poor. You can't say that if you're living on
[16:04] Speaker 3: the rim of the wheel. You can only say that
[16:07] Speaker 3: when you're living in the center, in the place of detachment. Okay,
[16:12] Speaker 3: so that's poverty. Secondly, chastity. Now there's celibate chastity, which
[16:19] Speaker 3: is lived by religious and by priests, and people often
[16:22] Speaker 3: just conflate.
[16:23] Speaker 1: Those two things, celibacy and chastity.
[16:26] Speaker 3: But chastity is a much more general term. It means
[16:31] Speaker 3: living one sexual life in a morally and spiritually responsible way.
[16:38] Speaker 3: It means sexual uprightness, living your sexuality in a morally
[16:43] Speaker 3: and spiritually upright way.
[16:46] Speaker 2: Everybody is called to that.
[16:50] Speaker 1: Let me put it this way. Yes, you may.
[16:52] Speaker 3: Applaud for chastity. The church gets such a bad rap
[17:03] Speaker 3: on this, I know. And listen to the disaffiliating.
[17:06] Speaker 2: Young people when they tell you why they're disaffiliating.
[17:09] Speaker 3: How often they say something like, the church is sexual teaching.
[17:13] Speaker 3: You know, it's just not fair and it's too puritanical,
[17:16] Speaker 3: and they're always wagging their finger.
[17:19] Speaker 2: This is the church's sexual teaching.
[17:22] Speaker 3: To bring one's sexuality completely under the aegis of love.
[17:29] Speaker 3: Let me say that again, to bring the whole of
[17:32] Speaker 3: one's sexuality.
[17:34] Speaker 1: Under the aegis of love. What's love not a feeling?
[17:41] Speaker 3: Love, Thomas Aquinas said, is willing the good of the other's.
[17:48] Speaker 1: That's the whole Christian life, love one another.
[17:51] Speaker 3: Right, So now your sexuality live in such a way
[18:01] Speaker 3: that it's not primarily for your good, but for the
[18:05] Speaker 3: good of the other, that your sexuality becomes an act
[18:09] Speaker 3: of love.
[18:10] Speaker 2: Can you see, everybody, all.
[18:12] Speaker 1: Of the churches teaching in the sexual.
[18:13] Speaker 3: Arena has nothing to do with Puritanism. Now the Church
[18:17] Speaker 3: celebrates sexuality. We're not a dualistic Puritanical system. But we
[18:23] Speaker 3: want to bring the whole of life, including your sexuality,
[18:27] Speaker 3: under the aegis of love. Think about some of the
[18:32] Speaker 3: classical issues, abortion and sexual abuse, the objectification of both
[18:38] Speaker 3: men and women, adultery, the hookup culture, pornography. What do
[18:44] Speaker 3: all those things have in common? None of them falls
[18:48] Speaker 3: under the aegis of love. All of those are to
[18:52] Speaker 3: varying degrees, a sexuality turned in on itself. Church isn't
[18:57] Speaker 3: against sex, it's against.
[18:59] Speaker 1: The sex divorce from love.
[19:02] Speaker 2: Can let me give you a quote from Saint Paul PAULI.
[19:06] Speaker 3: This is from the much maligned Humani Vite and Paul Paul.
[19:11] Speaker 3: Here he is talking indeed about contraception, but I want
[19:14] Speaker 3: you to hear the principle he articulates. It's exactly what
[19:18] Speaker 3: I've been talking about. This is from Humani Vita. Another
[19:24] Speaker 3: effect that gives cause for alarm in this area of
[19:28] Speaker 3: contraception is that a man who grows accustomed to the
[19:32] Speaker 3: use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to
[19:37] Speaker 3: a woman and disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce
[19:43] Speaker 3: her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of
[19:48] Speaker 3: his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner
[19:53] Speaker 3: whom he should surround.
[19:54] Speaker 2: With care and affection. Not bad. That's the principle, everybody,
[20:00] Speaker 2: That's the principle.
[20:09] Speaker 3: John Paul said the same thing when he said, never
[20:12] Speaker 3: treat another human being as merely a means and not
[20:16] Speaker 3: as an end in him or herself, again, reducing her
[20:21] Speaker 3: to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his
[20:24] Speaker 3: own desires. That's what the Church is against. Chastity means
[20:30] Speaker 3: living your sexual life in opposition to that that all
[20:34] Speaker 3: of it becomes a gift of love.
[20:37] Speaker 1: Now listen to me.
[20:39] Speaker 3: What would happen fellow Catholics here, if, beginning.
[20:43] Speaker 1: Tonight, seventy million.
[20:46] Speaker 2: Catholics decided to live according to chastity? What would happen?
[20:56] Speaker 3: Abortion, sexual abuse, pornography, the hook culture, objectification of men
[21:02] Speaker 3: and women. All of that would be attacked, All of
[21:07] Speaker 3: that would be undermined. You know, if we wring our
[21:11] Speaker 3: hands at our wicked, fallen society, and you know it
[21:15] Speaker 3: is in many ways, but do we turn the blame
[21:18] Speaker 3: on ourselves that seventy million of us have not lived
[21:22] Speaker 3: according to this great evangelical council. Oh that's that's for
[21:27] Speaker 3: the clergy, No, says Dorothy Day. No, say I tonight,
[21:31] Speaker 3: that's for everybody. That's for everybody.
[21:34] Speaker 2: Poverty and chastity.
[21:44] Speaker 3: Just one more then I'll stop poverty, chastity and obedience
[21:51] Speaker 3: maybe the most important talk to priests will often tell you, you know,
[21:55] Speaker 3: if the vowels they take or the promises, the toughest
[21:58] Speaker 3: one is obedience. I remember years ago when Cardinal George
[22:03] Speaker 3: was my great mentor and hero, appointed me as rector
[22:07] Speaker 3: Mondoline Seminary.
[22:08] Speaker 1: It was maybe a month later, hey.
[22:10] Speaker 3: Mondo line, maybe a month later, and there was a
[22:17] Speaker 3: big fundraiser, and a lot of your wealthy people.
[22:20] Speaker 2: Are there, and the cardinal was there wearing his cassick
[22:23] Speaker 2: like this and his red cape, and everything well up.
[22:25] Speaker 3: To me comes a lady and she was just indignant,
[22:29] Speaker 3: and she said, Father Baron, this is the dumbest appointment
[22:32] Speaker 3: I've ever heard.
[22:34] Speaker 2: You have this ministry word on fire that's.
[22:36] Speaker 3: Going out around the country, and you're doing your evangelical work,
[22:39] Speaker 3: and now they got you out that little seminary pushing
[22:42] Speaker 3: papers around. I think you being a rector is the
[22:44] Speaker 3: dumbest decision ever made. And I said to her, there's
[22:49] Speaker 3: a little man in a red cape in the next
[22:51] Speaker 3: room that can answer.
[22:53] Speaker 1: All your questions.
[22:56] Speaker 3: Like, lady, I didn't decide this. Well, okay, that's priestly
[23:01] Speaker 3: obedience when you really hand your life over to your superior.
[23:05] Speaker 3: When I was ordained, I put my hands in the
[23:07] Speaker 3: hands of Cardinal burning and I said, I promise obedience
[23:10] Speaker 3: to you and your successors. Okay, that's priestly obedience. But laity, laity,
[23:19] Speaker 3: you need to practice the evangelical council of obedience too. Now,
[23:23] Speaker 3: in what sense, what voice do you listen to?
[23:28] Speaker 1: There are so many voices.
[23:31] Speaker 3: They're in songs, they're in movies, they're in politicians speeches,
[23:34] Speaker 3: they're in the culture.
[23:37] Speaker 1: What are they saying?
[23:40] Speaker 3: Wealth, pleasure, power, honor. Once you see those big four
[23:45] Speaker 3: I learned them from Thomas Aquinas. Once you see those,
[23:48] Speaker 3: you see them everywhere. That's what All the voices they
[23:51] Speaker 3: are telling you how to get more and more and
[23:52] Speaker 3: more of those things. Do you listen obeydira right, I
[23:58] Speaker 3: used to listen obedience. Do you listen to those or
[24:03] Speaker 3: do you listen to a higher voice? That's the whole
[24:08] Speaker 3: Bible of the way, everybody, It's the whole Bible. Think
[24:11] Speaker 3: of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses and Joshua,
[24:16] Speaker 3: Peter and Paul.
[24:17] Speaker 2: And Isaiah Jeremiah. What do they all have in common?
[24:20] Speaker 2: They heard the hubbub of voices around.
[24:24] Speaker 3: Them, for sure, But then they also heard that tiny
[24:30] Speaker 3: whispering voice, that higher voice, the voice of God.
[24:38] Speaker 1: What is that voice?
[24:40] Speaker 3: The one that tells you, don't seek after these worldly goods,
[24:45] Speaker 3: but do the right thing. Don't seek after what the
[24:49] Speaker 3: world tells you, but be.
[24:52] Speaker 1: A good person.
[24:54] Speaker 3: Don't worry about wealth, pleasure, power, honor. Rather do what
[24:58] Speaker 3: God wants you to do. Especially you know, young people here,
[25:02] Speaker 3: listen to me.
[25:02] Speaker 2: That's all that matters. Everything else in your life is
[25:06] Speaker 2: a footnote. What matters is which voice.
[25:10] Speaker 1: Do you listen to? Obedience?
[25:13] Speaker 2: Ob You know, a great.
[25:16] Speaker 3: Modern telling of this biblical story is one of my
[25:19] Speaker 3: favorite movies, Field of Dreams.
[25:22] Speaker 2: Do you remember and feel the dreams? When he hears this?
[25:27] Speaker 2: And Iowans are probably cheering for that.
[25:29] Speaker 3: Huh. My diocese is just north of Iowa, my Monona
[25:37] Speaker 3: Rochester diocese. But you know, he's going about his business
[25:43] Speaker 3: and he hears this strange, tiny whispering voice.
[25:48] Speaker 2: If you build it, he will come.
[25:51] Speaker 3: And despite the the opprobrium of his neighbors, despite the
[25:56] Speaker 3: rejection of his family, he listens to the voice.
[26:01] Speaker 1: He builds that baseball.
[26:03] Speaker 3: Field, which becomes a conduit to a higher world, connects
[26:09] Speaker 3: him to past and future, connects him to the sacred.
[26:13] Speaker 1: There's the metaphor, everybody, what are you listening to?
[26:18] Speaker 2: Which voice are you following?
[26:21] Speaker 1: You know what the biggest problem is today?
[26:23] Speaker 3: I think in our culture, it's what I call the
[26:27] Speaker 3: culture of self invention.
[26:30] Speaker 2: It's rampanned everywhere.
[26:34] Speaker 3: What I mean is, hey, I decide who I am,
[26:39] Speaker 3: I decide the meaning of my life. I decide what
[26:42] Speaker 3: it's all about. Don't you tell me. No authority tells me.
[26:46] Speaker 1: I decide.
[26:47] Speaker 2: Yes, even my gender, I'll decide.
[26:52] Speaker 3: The self inventioned culture is repugnant to what I'm talking
[26:56] Speaker 3: about and what the Bible's talking about.
[27:00] Speaker 2: When we hear the voice of God. God tells us
[27:06] Speaker 2: who we should be, how we should.
[27:08] Speaker 1: Live, which voice to follow.
[27:11] Speaker 3: Everything else will be a footnote I've shared before Hans
[27:17] Speaker 3: or Is von Baltasar is great distinction between the ego
[27:20] Speaker 3: drama and the theodrama. The ego drama, that's the one
[27:26] Speaker 3: I'm writing, I'm directing, I'm producing it, and I'm the
[27:30] Speaker 3: star right the Bishop Baron story now on the.
[27:34] Speaker 2: Road in Indianapolis. That's the ego drama.
[27:38] Speaker 1: Bore me to death with the ego drama. Bore me
[27:41] Speaker 1: to death with that. What's the theodrama?
[27:46] Speaker 3: The drama that God's writing, God's producing, God's directing, and
[27:50] Speaker 3: He's got a role for you.
[27:52] Speaker 2: That might be nothing in the eyes of the world,
[27:55] Speaker 2: but who cares.
[28:08] Speaker 1: Whom do you listen to? Which voice? The laity are
[28:12] Speaker 1: called to be.
[28:13] Speaker 3: Obedience in this radical spiritual sense, and that's how you
[28:18] Speaker 3: find your holiness. Just the last thought go to the
[28:22] Speaker 3: very last book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation.
[28:28] Speaker 3: The heavenly Jerusalem comes down, representing the culmination of Revelation,
[28:36] Speaker 3: the world being now what God wants it to be,
[28:39] Speaker 3: the shining city. And curiously, in that heavenly Jerusalem there's
[28:45] Speaker 3: no temple.
[28:46] Speaker 1: And you think how strange that is.
[28:50] Speaker 3: The temple was why people came to Jerusalem. There's no
[28:55] Speaker 3: temple in the heavenly Jerusalem. Because listen, the city has
[29:00] Speaker 3: become a temple. Think of a city with educational institutions
[29:07] Speaker 3: and businesses and sports arenas like this, and symphony theaters
[29:13] Speaker 3: and all the activity of a city. What if every
[29:17] Speaker 3: bit of it was turned to the praise of God.
[29:21] Speaker 3: What if every bit of it found its fulfillment in God, Well,
[29:24] Speaker 3: then the whole city would be a temple. There's the
[29:31] Speaker 3: job of the laity, everybody, and I'll close with this.
[29:34] Speaker 3: Your job, bring the lou men to the gents, bring
[29:38] Speaker 3: the light of Christ out into the sect.
[29:40] Speaker 1: Of the world.
[29:41] Speaker 3: This great revival will have been a failure if we
[29:44] Speaker 3: don't change our society, if we don't stream forth from this.
[29:49] Speaker 1: Place with the light of Christ. Hmmm, become the people.
[30:05] Speaker 1: You're meant to be.
[30:07] Speaker 3: And Catherine Sianta sa, it become the people God wants
[30:10] Speaker 3: you to be, and you will set the word on fire,
[30:12] Speaker 3: the word on fire, the world on fire.
[30:15] Speaker 2: Yeah, USSA, thanks

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