Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00 <inaudible>. We finally considered the sixth to Ninth Commandments. Thou shall not commit adultery and thou shall not covet thy neighbor's wife. We've seen that these two commandments require each man to regulate the great creative power in accordance with reason and faith, and they prevent him, prohibit him from sinning against chastity. In thought, where to d we've seen it. The power to bring forth new life is a holy power, which God expects us to shield carefully with modest and pure behavior and most especially by means of prayer, most notably the three hell meringues. In the daily Rosary, we've seen this. Power is God's special gift, which is to be used by married couples and married couples alone. We've seen it for the unmarried, passionate kissing is mortally sinful simply because the unmarried do not have the right to those kinds of passions or pleasures. They don't have the right to this.
Speaker 0 01:11 Deliberately stir that up by thought word or d y because those passions and pleasures are reserved strictly for the merrier. We've seen it. The kisses that are allowed, 10 married people are the little peck on the cheek kind of thing. There's no passion awhile. Once we understand that, it's easy to see what all is forbid today. Let's consider it a young man or woman who isn't yet sure about his vocation in life, to have a vocation to the priesthood. Obviously we're not referring to the young women. They're driving vocation to the priesthood by vocation to the religious life, drive a vocation to holy matrimony. Am I supposed to live the single life out in the world? So this young man or woman hasn't answered those questions yet? Even though as Saint Gregory points out, eternity hangs upon our vocation or a Saint Alphonsus points out, it is evident that our eternal salvation depends principally upon our choice, our stay in life.
Speaker 0 02:25 So let's imagine that instead of praying and asking God to make the answer to this critical question, clear as clear as possible. He doesn't really give it much thought and he meets someone and decides to dater and they start passionately kissing and so forth. Now, whether he realizes it or not, he's already made a serious mistake. She just, young man or woman hasn't yet answered that most important question. The question of a lifetime, the question upon which he turned it, he hangs and yet he's kickstarted his passions. What if he has a vocation to the priesthood or to the religious life? It's not a joke at all to say that you can literally kiss a vocation goodbye. That's not a choke. You can kiss the vocation you young people, you single people, you have to guard your hearts. The first thing you need to do is just Turman your state in life.
Speaker 0 03:31 Saint John Bosco says that one third of the young people have a vocation to priesthood or religious life. One, sir, if you think or you suspect that you have a vocation to the priesthood or religious life in order to preserve that, there's one thing you must not do and that's today. Anyway, there are several things that you must do in order to preserve that vocation. We'll cover this in greater detail at a later date, but following the teaching of those great sayings and doctors in the church, Saint Ambrose, St Jerome, Saint Augusta, St Bernard, St John, Chris' system, Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Alphonsus. If you think you have a vocation, generally speaking, you must keep this a secret, a secret from everyone except from a reliable confessor or spiritual director. This is a special call from God. He only makes it to certain privileged souls that you must keep it a secret even from your parents.
Speaker 0 04:45 That sounds shocking, but parents cause this one place where your authority certainly does not extend. I'm not making this up. This is a salvation issue. It's serious. If you have a vocation, keep it a secret. Tell to a good confessor or a spiritual director. I let them guide you in the process. That's the first thing. The second place you must pray. Vocation is something supernatural. In order to preserve it, you must pray. If you mess up and wind up in the state of life to which God has not called you, it will be much harder for you to lead a good life. That's the way it works in the plan to divine providence. He has a certain path. Each of us need to follow his Catholics to get to heaven and if we go off that task, we do it. To our own peril. Even in another state of life.
Speaker 0 05:41 It's going to be harder. Eternity hangs upon your vocation, so preserve your vocation. You have to cray. Don't Blab, keep it a secret and don't date. You can easily kiss a vocation. Goodbye. Okay. What about the case when he's, sure he has a vocational holy matrimony, but then the same thing happens as soon as he begins to date right away they start passionately kissing and so forth. What is it? This couple just done? Instead of being careful to actually get to know each other instead of being as reasonable and as cautious as possible of each other, what they've done, they've just cranked her passions right up to ultimate flame thrower. This is a big mistake, a big, big mistake. See the very degree, if those passions are inflamed, which of course depends on how often this sort of behavior goes on and what all happens, just that very degree, they will each suffer increasingly serious consequences which Saint Thomas explains in some detail.
Speaker 0 06:47 In order to understand Saint Thomas as point here, we need to quickly review some of the things we know already about our imagination and our intellectual. Real quick, think about number two. Now in a mind's eye, we might have a little squiggle that number two, or you might have Roman numerals are to apples to oranges or two bananas to two bears or two babies or whatever. Let's just step back from ourselves mentally for a moment and look at what we just did. We had whole bunch of images running through our minds, at least after I listed them. Apples, oranges, Roman numerals, heres the things, whatever these pictures which are changeable before mind side, those are in their imagination. They're called images in our imagination, the picture of the apples, the picture of the pairs, whatever. They're under imagination, all those images, apples, oranges, watermelons. All these images that we have in our mind's eye are changeable.
Speaker 0 07:44 They have different shapes, colors, and so forth, right? What do they all have in common? Something unchangeable. Even though all those images were different, they were all tubes, all those changeable things. Whether we're talking about apples or watermelons or oranges, what have you are to have something, but what it is to be to what we might call Tunis, what it is to be to do this doesn't change. You can pick your apples, you can mutate them from mackintosh to green apples, delicious apples, right in your mind. Just like this red, green, you can make purple apples in your mind. That all changes, but Tunis doesn't change, okay? The images are an imagination. That's the place for changeable material representations of things, but Tunis doesn't change Tunis. This doesn't have a shape or a color size. We were looking at different examples of to the tune.
Speaker 0 08:38 It's never changes. That's an idea that resides in our intellect. Ideas or an intellect. Intellect is a place where ideas can be found or ideas don't have any material qualities. Okay? Tuners, that constant that we can see in these pairs of apples or oranges, whatever before eyes two fingers. Tunis never changes the apples. They changed. So images like apples or fingers or whatever. These are changeable material representations in our imagination, but Tunis, ideas like Tunis. These are unchangeable concepts, spiritual concepts in our neglect. Okay? That's our view. We've all heard that before. The images were just considered like apples or oranges. Those images we just drew up from our memory because we know what apples or oranges or pineapples look like. We already know what an apples and oranges already, so we can draw that image up from our memory. But how did those images first get into our imagination?
Speaker 0 09:40 How did they ultimately land in our mind? Through our senses? Through our five senses. Okay. Our knowledge of something and outside world like this at apple comes first, flowing in through our senses, through a sense of touch, through our sense of taste, smell, sight, hearing, all those things come flowing in and then they're assembled in this material image in our imagination. Okay? It comes to our senses and flows in and then it's present to us in our mind, in an image. We can store that image and I remember Ian later drawing it, but first we got it from outside world. Okay? Our intellect and here's the important point right here. Our intellect, which is the spiritual part of the soul, the part of our soul by which we can do things like think and know and judge what is this? Is this an apple or an orange or you know, we can judge things.
Speaker 0 10:30 The things that we can think, no judging or understand our intellect. The place of ideas relies on imagination to stay in contact with reality. Imagination. Realize the next year world to the senses that are you stay in contact with reality and our intellect in order to understand he's in contact with our imagination. That's how it works. Okay, so what that means, the clear, the image we have of something. This exterior object, your imagination, the clear. We understand that apple by all the information coming in, better grasp we can have of Apolis. This is whole idea of science. You're sitting here studying some things, try to get a better and better knowledge of it as you're tearing apart, which is a fancy title. Mechanically you're breaking something part and looking at it where you know studying anatomy to know how all the parts fit together and something. What are you trying to do?
Speaker 0 11:21 You're getting better images so that you can better understand what it is. This thing that you're dealing with, whether it's an app, when you're cutting it up and seeing how the seats fit together, whatever. What a case study. Okay, so our intellectualized direct and our imagination to stay in contact with reality. The more clear the image of this exterior yogic is portrayed in our imagination, the clear we can understand it. The more confused or hazy the image, the less clear grasp we have on the exterior. For example, take the example of a hose. We're walking across the lawn. When we go home we step on homes. Big Deal, we see it's a haute. This very event in the dark tonight might be quite different. When we're walking a day time, we have a very clear image of what we're doing at night. We're walking along what kind of sensory information we have, just what's coming through the souls of our feet and if we have shoes on that's not particularly very high degree of resolution.
Speaker 0 12:12 So you're walking along, you step on something rounded and soft and the line, the image is very rough. You could easily go, I've stepped on a snake. It's very easy to do that kind of thing at day. You wouldn't even think of it. You could see it's a garden homes at night because you have a rough Ramage. Again, we're making a point. If we have a poor image, we won't be as clear contact with reality. Our intellect won't be able to say, what's going on here? Okay. The clear, the image we have of anoxic, they cleared the understanding. We can come to the more confused or messed up the image. The more hazier understanding. Okay, father, but what does this have to do with passionate kissing? We're talking about garden hoses and apples and oranges. Okay, let's go back. We've been talking about a young couple with a vocation to have holy matrimony.
Speaker 0 12:59 It came right off the gate, passionately kissing and so forth. Right from the beginning of the relationship. What does this do? It stirs up and violent excitement and the passions. That's why it's called passionate kissing. Those are part of your sensory input. Okay. What happens in the young man's image that he has of the young lady and vice versa? The image in his imagination of this young lady he's trying to get, no, it's totally coated. It's totally covered with these have violent, passionate feelings. All this excitement, these raging passions distort the image so that the image of the other person imagination is steamed over with passion. Okay? What does that mean? Because the image is so Stevie, his intellect, which is relying on his imagination to stay in contact with reality, to get to know this person is inlet isn't getting a clear focus. It can't get a clear focus.
Speaker 0 14:00 His intellect is unable to because his passions have whacked his whole thought processes out of kilter. The more repeated, the more perverted or the more to crave the passionate behavior, the more than passions will fog up the image, and so the more steamy this whole mental picture becomes, the more unreal it becomes as it were. Okay? St Thomas Calls this very problem, intellectual blindness. The clear, the image we have of some object, the clear, the understanding, more hates. You're confused. The image we have the more hazier confused in understanding. Okay, now think about what this means, this intellectual blindness for this young couple. It means that each one of these parties and fault doesn't necessarily have a very clear picture of the other person when he looks at her, thinks about her, she looks at him or talks to him. What happens instead of being able to make a relatively calm, hopefully fairly balanced and reasonable judgment of this other person that he's thinking about marriage or that she's thinking about marrying, they're not able to make that kind of thing.
Speaker 0 15:12 What have they done? The flames of passion have distorted that image that they have or the seventh person more excited. They've allowed themselves to get the more skimmed over and fogged the glass becomes, so to speak, in imagination, and so the more profound the blindness, they've blinded each other with their passions, but putting the passions out in order and not following divine plan, they're causing themselves intellectual blindness. Okay? They've actually gummed up the ability to properly judge whether or not this is the right person to marry because they've steamed up their mind with diligent pleasures and the more repeated, the more perverted and where do crave those pleasures? The more of those passions have steamed up and distorted that image instead of the more gummed up their judgment has become. This is a judgment which will directly impact their happiness in this life and then the next intellectual blindness is a very serious problem.
Speaker 0 16:18 St Thomas points out, yet another very serious consequence of problem known as in constancy. What does that mean? It means that the young man or woman can't stick to decisions concerning the option of passion. That means the other person, he can't decisively command something to be done, even though he knows it's the right thing to do. He has a lot of trouble. Three examples. Suppose it dawns on this guy one day, you know, this relationship just isn't working out. We ought to break up. He may very well decide to break up with a girl. He may even tried to break up with her, but because he's such a slave because he passions, it's very likely that he might not be able to, if he's letting stuff get too carried away, he may even take her down the aisle. In spite of these misgivings. Obviously this sort of problem also has a direct impact on the happiness of that couple and this slide and the next, the same time as Liz, eight problems. We've only looked at two, they're all serious. It doesn't take much to look out at the world and see how this impacts the lives and marriages of people that we know. It's more than enough just from what we see to see that once again, either we have to lead our passions, our passions are going to lead us. We need to guard our hearts. Let's close.
Speaker 0 17:46 You know, if I were the devil and I wanted to cause huge problems, problems that would make it very difficult for a young man or woman just hearing their vocation life. If I were the devil and I wanted to cause huge problems in marriage and contributed greatly to the breakup of marriages. If I were the devil, and I wanted to make it very difficult for a young man or woman to even respond to a clearly heard call to the priesthood or the religious life. If I were the devil and I wanted to cause all that galaxy of social problems that slow directly, naturally from sins against the sixth and Ninth Commandments. If I were the devil and not wanting to do all those things, all I do is just convince young people. The passionate kissing isn't really any big deal, but everybody does it. You don't know what you're missing till you've tried it. So I really did. I just do something like that. I could just stand back, let things to fall naturally. It's a good thing. I'm not the devil.
