The Christian Call to Mission | Encountering the Gospel

[00:00:00] Speaker A: I think when we're talking about conversion and all that we want to talk about, I think one of the, I think the most urgent task in the church right now is to make time to preach the gospel so that John Paul's words can actually take place. [00:00:21] Speaker B: Welcome to the catholic theology show presented by Ave Maria University. This podcast is sponsored in part by Annunciation Circle, a community that supports the mission of Ave Maria University through their monthly donations of $10 or more. If you'd like to support this podcast in the mission of Ave Maria University, I encourage you to visit avemaria.edu join for more information. I'm your host, Michael Doffiney, and today I am thrilled to be joined again by Father John Ricardo, who is the founder and director of acts 29, mobilizing for Mission. Welcome to the show. [00:01:01] Speaker A: Thanks, Michael. Great to be back with you. How are you? [00:01:04] Speaker B: I'm doing well. [00:01:05] Speaker A: I'm doing my best to advertise for Annunciation Circle right there. I'm going to keep it right proudly displayed. [00:01:10] Speaker B: Absolutely. Thank you, Father. And I love the show we did, and I think it was released in the early summer, and we went through a lot of the rescue project. And the way you've set up kind of the proclamation of the gospel over this nine part series, it's available at, I think, therescueproject.org. Is that right? [00:01:32] Speaker A: Rescueproject us. [00:01:34] Speaker B: Rescueproject us and encourage people to go back and listen to that episode or to go straight to rescueproject us. And I wanted to talk today about a couple of things, because there's some of the things that we discussed then that have actually stuck with me for the last six, seven months and have really helped me to deepen my own, not only understanding of the call to mission, the call to the gospel, really, we recognize in a way that the gospel fundamentally is that God sent his son. So the son is on a mission, and then the father and the son sent his spirit. So the spirit is on a mission to indwell the church. So the church continues that mission of the Son and the spirit. And so this sense of Mission is not only practical, it's really the most kind of speculative thing you could say, because really the Trinity itself goes on mission in creating us and then rescuing us. And so I've loved this idea. So I wanted to talk today a little bit about just deepening that sense of what is the heart of this proclamation of the gospel, and then take a little bit of time to consider how was it that you yourself, in your own story, heard that call and responded to it. And then in the last part, I really want to dive into a little bit of this theme of the ongoing conversion away from idolatry, that these things that we put before God, there's a way that they not only limit us, they make us unhappy. Not only do they take away from God the glory that he has owed, but they really take away from us the satisfaction and peace that God wants to give us. So that's kind of the structure a little bit. But just to dive in, can I. [00:03:34] Speaker A: Do something real quick? [00:03:35] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:03:35] Speaker A: Even just listening to you, I'm wondering. So this is my own experience. Maybe it's yours. I don't know. Maybe as a way to preface this. So we talk about mission all the time. It's our formal name. Mobilizing for mission. My experience is most people don't know what the mission is. [00:03:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:03:52] Speaker A: So, like, every mass ends with ite Misa s. She is sent. She's the church. The question is, what is she sent to do? And I think at least the typical person sitting in the pew on a Sunday would go, well, I don't really know. And maybe just a simple way to answer that, which I think leads into everything you're talking about, is two things. The mission is twofold. There's an internal mission and an external mission, and they both have to do with the fact that all the enemy, and there's only one enemy, all the enemy can do is twist or deface or mar. He can't create. Only God can create. And our task is to somehow do everything we can to cooperate with the Holy Spirit, to bend back into conformity what God created. So the internal mission's holiness. So it's like if I could picture a map of my life, the enemy's flags flying in different parts of my life. And the mission of holiness is to take down that flag and to get the Holy Spirit's flag flying there or the Lord's flag flying there. And then the external mission is maybe twofold as well. It's evangelization and it's recreation. So I don't know what you think of this line. I'm enamored with it increasingly so. It's nt Wright's language. He says, jesus didn't rescue us from the world. He rescued us for the world, because God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son. And so our mission is animated with the heart of Jesus, nourished by his body and blood in the Eucharist, to go out into the world and to do everything we can so as to take back territory for the father who is a good father and not a tyrant. Does that make sense? Is that right? Yeah, I think. [00:05:38] Speaker B: Beautiful way of putting it. And what I love about that idea is that I think sometimes if we think about the mission of the church or the call to evangelize, we think about it often in terms of kind of like, we think of maybe, like, our business deals, our business operations, these kind of somewhat external things, maybe getting more people to sign up for things, doing other stuff. And these are not bad things, and they need to be done. You need to create activities, you need to sponsor them, you need to participate in them. But this language of really recovering, restoring human community, is what is lost in sin, in our complicity, this sense of prideful self destruction and destruction of the bonds of community between man and woman, between parents and children, between Cain and Abel, between all of that. What happens is we end up in a state of competition, a state of rivalry, a state of, really, loneliness, a state of disconnection. And what the gospel allows us to do is to move from isolation to communion, from competition into sharing, where we have restored a new family. And so it's about kind of growing in those connections. And I think if we see that a mission to recover connection, communion, cooperation, genuine belonging, both within ourselves and then with other people, then the kind of call to mission is like, who wouldn't want that? [00:07:30] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. It's a new way of being human, or the original way of being human. Right. Increasingly important right now, because we're living in what sociologists are calling the new great Depression. [00:07:39] Speaker B: Yes. [00:07:39] Speaker A: Which is not economic. It's mental health and depression and anxiety and despair and all that. [00:07:46] Speaker B: And I think there was a 2015 BBC, they did the loneliness experiment. [00:07:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I remember that. [00:07:53] Speaker B: They showed that, well, all across the globe, human beings are incredibly lonely, especially the older and the younger. I think, actually, the loneliest generation are like, 15 to 30 year olds, and. [00:08:06] Speaker A: That'S what they call them. [00:08:07] Speaker B: And that's what, in a way, a time that ought to be and kind of needs to be for our development needs to be time of kind of developing very strong bonds, beginning with developing our own bonds within our family as a young, mature adult, and then also cultivating those with others. And that's something, I think that's a great mission, again, to be able to try to respond to that crisis of loneliness and to say, not only does God want you to come to know him, God wants you to come to know us. We're going to go through this with you. [00:08:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I love this. I didn't mean to derail us. I think one of the things that's so powerful about this is it helps people understand the gospel isn't just relevant to get me to heaven. Yes, it's relevant for right now, to make the world more human. I can't build the kingdom of God. I can't build the city of God, but I can build for it. And I'm supposed to build for it. [00:09:07] Speaker B: And I think that's in a way, what we find in our heart. We are looking for it somewhere, but we don't know how to get there. And when we try to follow, and I think we tend to kind of fall into this sense that, well, I'll find that sense of peace and connection when I get my life in order, when I get my finances in order, when I get the right job, when I get the right spouse, girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever it is, and all those sorts of things. And again, we're kind of looking at all this stuff from the outside. And the irony is the more we keep focused on that, we stay. Let's. I wanted to kind of go then a little bit into this sense of John Paul II in this great work, catechesis in our time. He says, all a catechesis is ultimately coming to help people come to know Jesus Christ and ultimately to come to know Jesus Christ and to turn our lives over to him. Now, within that, though, he has this quote where he says, like the gospel charigma, the proclamation of the gospel is twofold, quote, the initial ardent proclamation by which a person is one day overwhelmed and brought to the decision to entrust himself to Jesus Christ by faith. And you spoke about this in our last podcast. And I said, this constantly comes up of realizing this is really at the heart of our sharing the good news and it's really the heart of our own deepening our own faith. So maybe just say a little bit about maybe a little bit of how you discovered that phrase in John Paul II's writings and how you have dedicated your priestly ministry to trying to help carry out this proclamation of the gospel. [00:11:06] Speaker A: Yeah, I think the, the quote is made in 1982, I think is when he actually wrote that document. And I'm sure I came across it shortly thereafter, maybe early 90s, but it was brought back to my attention by Archbishop Vignaron in Detroit probably in 2013 14, something like that. And it made me immediately just pause. Wasn't the right word, more like gasp. And this is how I would say it to priests and do say it with priests. Now imagine standing up at a pulpit on any given Sunday in any parish around the country, or the world for that matter. But let's think locally, our country, and just saying to everybody, no homily today. I just want to ask you two questions. Question one, how many people here have been overwhelmed by the gospel? I just don't think many hands would go up. Follow up question. How many people here have made a decision to entrust their entire life to Jesus in faith? And I think you'd be doing this was, that was scratching your ear. Maybe you'd get four or five to that latter question, depending upon the day. I'm not sure if I would answer that question in the affirmative. So I think when we're talking about conversion and all that, we want to talk the. I think the most urgent task in the church right now is to make time to preach the gospel so that John Paul's words can actually take place. [00:12:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Now you were mentioning, we were speaking a little bit before the podcast that there was John Paul II had an OD limina visit, wait. With some bishops who were bishops in Germany who were coming to visit him. And how did he talk about the new evangelization? [00:12:45] Speaker A: The new evangelization begins with the clear and emphatic proclamation of the know. By now, I hope we're familiar with the new evangelization. It's new in art or new in method, new in expression, but it begins with the gospel, because the gospel, as Paul says, is power. And every time we talk about the new evangelization, it's worth reminding ourselves the old evangelization worked like, it really worked, like we date the year to Jesus. This is pretty extraordinary stuff. And it worked because the gospel was compellingly proclaimed and it was modeled in the lives of those who were proclaiming it. And I'm not sure that we're doing either one of those very well right now, quite honestly. [00:13:28] Speaker B: Yeah. And also the sense of the new evangelization is a reevangelization of cultures that had become christian, at least in part, an inspiration, and have lost or rejected. [00:13:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:13:44] Speaker B: So that also creates a difficulty insofar as I think it was Chesterton who an everlasting man describes that kind of a post christian society, thinks it already knows what Christianity is. And I think one of the difficulties is that Christianity is such a beautiful thing that it has so many aspects. It's the new creation. So you recreate buildings, you recreate architecture, you recreate art, you recreate schools, you build schools and hospitals, and all of this sort of stuff. And so then when people think about the church, they think about all these external things, some of which are beautiful and inspiring, and others have legacies that are not beautiful and not inspiring and create obstacles. And this is kind of what it is. Or like, the church has moral teachings and people think kind of like, well, those moral teachings. Either. I don't live up to them, so I'm not really that interested in them, or who are they to judge other people in me especially. But in a way, all of that is secondary to the actual, the heart of gospel, which is, and I think in partly, maybe this would be helpful, too, is that it's. What's the proclamation of the gospel, in part, and I want you to maybe kind of like, expand on this, but it is the good news that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. For you, yes, for me, for you. [00:15:15] Speaker A: That's what's so, like, increasingly so around the country, because we just live on the road as missionaries. One of the greatest single needs that we see in everybody, it doesn't matter. The age, especially, maybe the young, but not just the young, is a longing to be seen, like to be known. And at the heart of the. I think it's George Weigel. In one of his books, which I've never forgot, he says, you know, the gospel is this simple. You are. This is the quote. You are far, far, far more important than you ever dared to realize. And the way we would say it is, you're worth dying for, to God, like, you matter. That's the heart of the gospel to me. And so the proclamation of all that the father has done for us in his son is that these events didn't just happen, like for humanity, because God doesn't see crowds. God sees individual people whom he made in his image and likeness for friendship with himself and with each other. And so God thinks you're so important. I'm so important. I don't know why. Like, God loves me so much. I don't know why. Because it certainly isn't a reward that he thinks it's worth becoming flesh and going to battle to liberate me from sin and death so that I can actually be loved and love and share in his own life for all eternity. That's not most of people's experience of the gospel. So when people go to the rescue project or when we share the gospel with people, their response should be something like, why have I never heard this before? And that's not the God I knew growing know. Benedict talks about know to be a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lifestyle. It's the result of an encounter with a person in an event that gives an entirely new orientation to your life. That hasn't happened for most people. I think in a sermon he gives on Augustine, he talks about, you cannot become Christian by birth, and you can't even become Christian by baptism. You can only become Christian by making a choice or by conversion. And how do you make a choice for someone you've never met? And so our efforts in evangelization are continually got to be about. Can I tell you about the one I've met who's changed everything for me? [00:17:56] Speaker B: Yeah. That's so beautifully, so well expressed and reminds me of Galatians 220, where Paul says this, right, I've been crucified with Christ is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, the life I now live. I live by faith in the Son of God. This is the key line. Who loved me and gave himself for. Right. Why is it that Paul finds his life totally turned upside down by the appearance of Jesus Christ to on the road when he know. Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? He discovered that when he was persecuting Christians, he was persecuting Jesus Christ. And then what he learned is that the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me, that pro may for me is really, I think, changes. You know, you were talking a little bit, too, about how. Why haven't I heard this before? This isn't the God I know now this is just kind of an idea, so feel free to push back or to adjust it. But the catechism in paragraph 399 says that one of the effects of original sin, I think the effect of original sin that we're used to is that somehow we become wounded, we become disordered, because that's pretty easy to recognize. But the effect that it describes in 399 is that we lose the proper image of God, and we now have a false image of God. We have a false understanding of who God is. Instead of seeing God as a loving, trustworthy father who would do anything to come and rescue his son and daughters who get lost, instead we have a notion of a God who is jealous of his prerogatives, of kind of a tyrannical master from whom when we get in trouble, we should do what Adam and Eve did, and which, of course, really is telling us what we do in sin is we hide. [00:19:56] Speaker A: Right? [00:19:56] Speaker B: Who told you that you were naked? Well, I was afraid from God because so. And you'll talk to a lot of people, and I've spoken to many people who grow up, usually, often in a catholic community, but sometimes in a christian community, non catholic. And they will say that they grew up with a very judgmental God. That was what they heard. And what I want to suggest in a way is that what the catechism is actually helping us understand is that's the image of God we have. Due to our fallen nature, we ourselves are fallen, and therefore we project upon God a fallen image of God. And so unless we have that corrected by the clear and ardent proclamation of the gospel, the clear and ardent proclamation of God as a loving father who has rescued us, we will be in church and we will still have that fallen image of a God who doesn't like us, a God who does not delight in us. But of course, this is not actually a certain sense, what the church is proclaiming. It's that what we in our wounded state are receiving. And of course, sometimes the church may not be proclaiming the gospel. Well. [00:21:16] Speaker A: Three quick thoughts as I'm listening to. First is that's exactly the enemy's temptation. I mean, that is the lie that the devil says to Adam and Eve. Either he's not good or you can be happier apart from him. That's the Root temptation, and it's really the only play he's got at the heart of every single temptation is that lie spun one way or the other. God is not good. You'd be happier apart from him. This might be pushing it somewhat, but maybe part of the wound of original sin is that that lie has crept into us in a remarkably powerful way. And I think know, I heard a friend of mine say one time, I think this is true, at least my own experience. Every priest has one homily. That's it. And it's just a variation on a theme. Well, Jesus is the only real priest, and I think Jesus has one homily. And I think his one homily is something like this. You have my father wrong. You don't know him. I know him, and I've come to talk about him, to reveal him and to make him present to you so that Jesus can say, when you see me, you see the father. And we should think of that when we see the cross. But here's the third thing, and this is increasingly important, too, that we make sure we get it right. Because I think if we don't understand what's going on in the passion accurately, what we do is we go, okay, so we sinned. God got ticked. Jesus steps in absorbs God's wrath. So now I can get free because the father beat the crap out of his son. That's not what's happening. No, but that's, I'm afraid, how a lot of people are understanding the passion, that Jesus is the gentle, kind, gracious, good part of the trinity. The father is everything you just described, and the Lord absorbs the blow. And so somehow I go free because Jesus steps in and takes the child abuse. So we want to make sure, as we talk about this image of God, which is so deeply wounded, that we always remember the Trinity as a trinity, are involved in our creation and our redemption. [00:23:45] Speaker B: John Paul II would often quote gaudians best. I think it's 22. But where he says, basically, it's only in the mystery of the word incarnate, that is man revealed to himself. And that's the first part that people often say. But as it goes on a little farther, it says, and Jesus does this by revealing to us the mystery of the Father. And so we, in a way, I think on the cross we can see both our sin and our wounds and our inability to fix ourselves, but we see on the cross also the Son's perfect love of the Father. So Christ does for us what we can't do, basically love God amidst suffering, trust God amidst suffering, which shows our path of healing. And at the same time, God looks at us from the cross as we are killing him, as we are killing him. And he looks on us with love. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. And so in Christ, we see God the Father's love for us seen through Jesus Christ. And then we also have restored to us in Christ the ability not to curse God or to curse ourselves or to curse our neighbor amidst suffering, but amidst the suffering and brokenness of the world, to just trust in God and love. So in a way, the cross, right, is that perfection of love. And I think you're right. And it's only in the cross that we really begin to see. But we have to see the cross truthfully for what it is that the enemy is Satan. The enemy is our complicity with Satan's lies and the willingness to kind of let Christ speak to us and tell us who the Father really is. I love that idea. You've got my father wrong. [00:25:40] Speaker A: Yeah. You don't know who he is. [00:25:43] Speaker B: And because we don't know who the father is, we don't know who we are. [00:25:46] Speaker A: Right. And whose we are. [00:25:48] Speaker B: Yes, because once we begin to recognize whose we are, then in a way, one we're going to. In a way, the deepest struggles that we go through are just going to be totally transformed when I know that God, the father who created me, loves me and has a plan for me and gave his son for me so that I might know his love for me and so that I might be able to be restored to him. So I think that's a great way of trying to kind of unpack a little bit of that. [00:26:28] Speaker A: I think the root wound for all of us, right, is identity. So to know this is the first, most significant step to healing. Ignatius would say God doesn't so much work linearly. He doesn't go from a to b to c to d. He moves more like a spiral. He finds a topic and he just keeps going deeper and deeper and deeper. And the topic for like it is for me and I think it is for everybody, is identity. Do you really know who you are? We try to hide behind titles, career, appearances, houses, clothes, body, whatever, right? But all that just melts away when you know who you are. I think one of the things that annoys Jesus to no end or annoys the Pharisees about Jesus to no end is he's immovable and he's immovable because he knows who he is. I just don't care about your opinion. It doesn't matter to me because I know the Father loves me and that's enough, imagine to live that mean, like, that's like, I just don't care what you think of me. [00:27:38] Speaker B: Yeah, it's beautiful. In Augustine's day, trinitate on the Trinity, which is fascinating. It's this book of immense kind of erudition, this speculative, really deep dive into the Trinity. But it's also really just a deep dive into what does it mean to experience being human in a fallen end, in a redeemed way. And one of the things he says is that the problem is that we don't know ourselves because we've forgotten who we are. And he actually says we can't remember who we are on our own. So even he says the platonists who knew a lot, didn't know enough. Because the only way we can really discover who we are is through the incarnation. We have to go through the human nature of Jesus Christ, to the divine nature of Jesus Christ in order to recover who the Father is as the one, who is the one sending the Son and the spirit. And so then when we come to know and love God the Father, sending the Son and sending the spirit, we begin to recover our true knowledge of ourselves. And therefore the true knowledge of God. But in some ways, if we're a mirror, we're only as good as what we're reflecting. And so we need to reflect the communal, eternal love of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. So we're going to take a break now, and when we come back, I'd love to ask you a little bit about your own kind of discovery of God's call in your life, a little bit, maybe, of your call to the priesthood, but also how you heard, or perhaps were one day overwhelmed, right. By the proclamation of the gospel. And how did you come to make this decision to entrust yourself to Jesus Christ? By faith? [00:29:26] Speaker A: Love to. [00:29:26] Speaker B: We'll return in a couple minutes. [00:29:28] Speaker A: Sounds great. [00:29:35] Speaker C: You're listening to the catholic theology show presented by Ave Maria University and sponsored in part by Annunciation Circle. Through their generous donations of $10 or more per month, Annunciation circle members directly support the mission of AMU to be a fountainhead of renewal for the church through our faculty, staff, students and alumni. To learn more, visit avemaria.edu slash join. Thank you for your continued support. And now let's get back to the show. [00:30:07] Speaker B: Welcome back to the Catholic Theology show. I'm your host, Michael Doffiney, and today I've been so happy to be speaking with Father John Ricardo, founder and director of acts 29 project, mobilizing for mission. [00:30:22] Speaker A: Well done. [00:30:23] Speaker B: Yeah. So glad to have you here. And I got the whole mobilizing and mission all in there. [00:30:27] Speaker A: Love it. [00:30:28] Speaker B: Right? And I love that sense, too, by the way. There is a sense we've been talking about a lot of different themes, but just that sense of finding purpose, finding agency, it's just such an age where I think so many people kind of lose that. And even the things they enjoy, they don't know how to, or even the things they value in a way they don't know how to get connected with. And so I think this idea of mobilizing for mission is a powerful idea, again, becoming restored into this community that has a purpose, because when we have a purpose, it's so much easier to go through the day to day. [00:31:07] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think it's personally, it's one of the reasons why I love coming to college campuses and I love seeing what happens on a college campus when it's done well, because if you can help a young person at one of the same time have an encounter with Jesus which transforms their life as they're awakening to those gifts that God's given them so as to go change the world, then they just get catapulted out, because then they understand how everything integrates, because faith should integrate our lives. What happens otherwise is okay, I live a christian life, and maybe at best, I'm ethical in my work, as opposed to whether I'm a doctor, I'm an attorney, or I'm a coach, or I'm a professor. Whatever it is, I'm going to do it in such a way that, having been overwhelmed by Jesus, I'm going to do what I can to bend that sphere that I'm involved in back into conformity with how God created it to be. And that's what happens here. That's extraordinary. [00:32:07] Speaker B: Well, that's great. And that's a good encouragement, I think. It's my 23rd year with Avima University now, and so that's a wonderful never to take it for granted and to really give thanks each day for the wonderful work we have an opportunity here to do. So tell me a little bit again about your own story. And how did you encounter the gospel? How did you make this decision to entrust yourself to Jesus Christ by faith and eventually discerning this call to the priesthood and this later call to help run this project, to help people recover the gospel? [00:32:46] Speaker A: Yeah. So the decisions ongoing. So I have a habit, which I actually encourage everybody to do, but I begin my time of prayer. My confessor gave it to me months ago, and I've just done it ever since, of just lying prostrate on the floor, just like I did the day I was ordained, and saying to the Lord, present, because that's what we answer when they call your name at an ordination. It's like John, Ricardo. And you stand up and you go, present. I'm here. And I do that because a classmate of mine was asked a few years ago, I'm 27 years ordained, and he was asked, when did you decide to become a priest? And he said, this morning, wow, that's powerful. That's a great answer. Right? So I'm still deciding to entrust my life to Jesus every day. That's a decision just like marriage. It doesn't do any good to say, well, I got married such and such a year. Like, well, what are you doing today? It's not enough to have the ring, so I pray the surrender novena incessantly, and I think I probably will until I die. And it's a challenge not to just mouth the words, but to actually do it and surrender. So I'm very much a work in. [00:33:57] Speaker B: Progress, and that has that beautiful line of the surrender novena. Where if I have it, right after you say a little bit for each day, and then you say ten times. Right, Jesus. I surrender myself. I add the word entirely, but I surrender myself entirely to. You take care of everything. [00:34:14] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Take care of everything. [00:34:16] Speaker B: Yeah. So that really is a great thing. And again, it's that acknowledgment that I can't. You grew up. [00:34:22] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:34:22] Speaker B: I think I've you exposed to the catholic faith. [00:34:25] Speaker A: Yeah. My mom and dad were extraordinarily devout people who went through profound conversions. My mom was Methodist. My dad was Catholic. I have three older sisters, an older brother. My parents are passed away, and my brother passed away now, too. But I grew up in a home that I would describe the way John Paul's home was described, as one where there was the normalcy of faith. So I didn't know any when I went to seminary, finally, I knew no rituals, I knew no set prayers. I mean, we didn't have any of those things. We had no devotionals. My mom and dad just had a living, vibrant relationship with God. They read scripture constantly. I always saw the word of God out. We talked about God. We prayed spontaneously all the time. And I think I grew up, I'm the youngest in the family, probably with the gift of faith is how I would describe it, because my earliest memory is of a crucifix. I don't remember how old I was, maybe six, seven years old. I had some traumatic stuff happen in my early youth, and I don't remember much of that, but my earliest really serious memory is of the crucifix. And looking at it and knowing that happened for me. For me. And somehow my life's supposed to be a response to, like, I can remember where I was in the church, everything. It would be great to be able to tell you, like, from the moment of that encounter, I just walked with Jesus. And it's been the steady upward crescendo to sainthood. Such has not been the case. But I grew up. I've prayed as long as I've been conscious, like, I've just had a friendship with God. Not always a faithful one, but I've had a friendship with God. And then I had a couple really powerful experiences. I had a very powerful experience when I just got out of college. I went to the University of Michigan, went through a real deep conversion there, or began it there, I should say. And I remember being in my car one day, and I had just come home from telling my dad, who's my hero, that he was trying to help me get a job in all these different places where he had great connections. And I went home to tell him, you know what? I don't think I'm going to take one of those if they offer it to me. I'm going to stay in this community of guys that I've met, and I think I'm going to work in a little co op and bake bread. So it's kind of like saying to your dad, hey, thanks for the 150 grand you just shelled out. I have no idea what I'm doing with my life, but these guys have helped me meet God, and I need to live with him. And my dad, to his everlasting credit, said, son, whatever you do, I will bless. You. Could be a priest. And I'd bless it. And I'm like, dad, I don't want to be a priest. I was in a serious relationship with a woman at the time. And I'm driving home, and as I'm driving home, it was the first time in my life I had ever made a decision for God that cost me. Like, I could feel like, ooh, okay, there's some weight to this decision to give my life to you. And I just started to weep. Not to cry. I mean to weep like I couldn't. See as I'm driving and as I'm sitting there, I don't know what to describe this as, so I'll just tell you. Like, I see Jesus sitting next to me in the car, like, I see you. And he just looked at me. I have no idea how long this lasted. And as he looks at me, at a certain point, he stretches out his hand and he sticks it into my chest, and he grabs something and he said, john, these are all your dreams and all your goals and all your desires and everything that you want to do with your life. And then he pulled it out and he just tossed it out the window, and he said, I'm going to give you my dream and my goal and my desire and what I want you to do with your life. And then he was gone again. You would think the response to that would be like, run to the church and surrender to God. I did a total Jonah. I went to Tarshish as opposed to going to Nineveh, and spent the next year just living like a yo yo, praying every day, but not living like somebody was praying every day. And I was working at the time, and I was restless. As I'll get out with my life, all I knew was I wasn't happy. Like, I wanted more. I think every man, I can only answer for men. Every man wants to do something great with his life. And I knew I wasn't doing something great with my life, so I was going to go back to school to get another degree. I didn't want to get another degree. I didn't want money. I wanted meaning is what I wanted. I wanted purpose, right? And so I'm walking around. I would bring my Bible with me to work. I wasn't going to church, but I would bring my Bible with me to work. And I was walking around at lunch, and I open up to Matthew 19 where Jesus says, some men are born incapable of marriage. Some men are made incapable of marriage by others. Some men make themselves incapable of marriage for the sake of the kingdom, who can accept it, should accept it. And I threw my Bible on the ground. I'm like, you got to be kidding me. What does that mean? And like, I hear the. In this room, I heard a voice just say to me, john, I'm inviting you to live single and a dude as a priest. So I don't go to church. I knew maybe two priests my whole life that I thought anything of. Like, I knew nothing about priesthood, didn't want to be a priest. And I said that to the Lord. I said, lord, if that's rid of you, you got to give me a desire for it, because I don't have a desire for that. I want a family. And I think that was a Tuesday. I think I woke up Thursday that week and knew, as I've known nothing in my life, I knew. I think God created me to be a priest. I don't know what you do. I don't know where you go. I don't know how long it takes. But I think I was just told what I was supposed to do. It was as if I was walking that direction and someone tapped me on the shoulder from behind and said, what you're looking for is actually over there. And I turned around and I went, wow, I'll be. Maybe because I was the way I was growing up. I didn't think you just decided to become a priest. I thought you had to get invited. So maybe that's why God invited me. I don't know. That's where everything happened. Now the wrestling match continues, right? Because Augustine talks about. There's two conversions. There's a conversion of the intellect and there's a conversion of the will. Well, my intellect got converted pretty quickly. Like, I knew God was real. I knew Jesus was Lord. My will is still very much in the process of undergoing conversion. But I love that passage from Galatians that you read because that's very much Philippians he talks about, like, I strive to take hold of the one who has taken hold of me, and that's very much how I feel. I feel like the Lord just grabbed me. And now to fight against him is to fight against happiness. [00:41:51] Speaker B: Yeah. I love that image of that. It's faith in a person. This is so obvious in the gospel that it's believe in me, Jesus Christ, and then believe in the one who sent me, the father. So we have this element, and yet it's just like you're so excited to see someone at Christmas when you haven't seen a loved one for a while, or when you get to see someone, you're so excited. Well, that's the attitude we should have about going right to heaven, is getting to see the one whom I have loved and who has loved me so much more. Yeah. Going to mass, getting. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Like every day. Getting to develop this personal relationship with our Lord, this friendship with Jesus Christ, not only in his divinity, but also in his humanity. I love the kind of the fact that Jesus appeared to you in his human nature so that you could kind of see him and smell him and touch him. And I also love just the beautiful honesty in that story as well. Right. The slowness with which we often respond to these things. It might take us a year after something, and I think, seeing that in our own lives, that it often took us a while to come to faith, and it takes us a while to come to a deeper faith is also one to be patient with other people and to encourage people to be patient, so that even when we have this kind of ardent proclamation of the gospel and help people to bring them to the decision, that decision may or may not be able to happen. Like that night, that week, that month, that year, perhaps that decade. But you do know at some point when you've made it and when you've made it, you get that sense of peace. Because in a way, then you know that whatever else happens, I don't have to kind of follow these kind of somewhat false and empty promises of the world. And I think that's, in a way, what a lot of people, and at least I can speak for myself, especially, I think growing up, I had a certain sense of these false promises of the world. If you make money, you'll be happy. But it turns out it's actually hard to figure out how to make money. How do you do it? And it seems awfully risky. There's no sure way. Even the american dream is like, oh, own a home, have a little family. Well, those are actually pretty hard. What if you can't do that and you can't realize, well, what a silly dream. What a silly dream to own property or to have. I mean, these things are not bad. I mean, I understand why we dream them, but these are just sometimes out of our control. Right? You become very, well, you go into a field and you're good at it, but it becomes obsolete now, what, in five years? Well, just not going to happen. Or you have a global recession or a global inflation, and all of a sudden you realize, wait a second. Maybe I had the wrong dream. Right? And so it's this kind of idea of recognizing things. So maybe we could talk then a little bit about this other theme as you talk about in the rescue project, as you move towards kind of the end of the story, which is both mission, but also kind of discovering that in our heart, we have actual, like, we're not fully committed to God. We have kind of idols that we build up. And I think the word idol is just so unfortunate because it names something that is pervasive. And so if we could only see it, it would help us find happiness, find meaning and purpose. But idols seem very old testament. [00:45:39] Speaker A: Golden calf. [00:45:40] Speaker B: I don't worship golden calves. Right. These sorts of things. But the Book of Wisdom in chapter 14 says this. The worship of idols, not to be named, is the beginning and cause and end of every evil. So in that sense, if. Okay, if the Book of wisdom says that this is the beginning, cause, and end of every evil, and you can also put there every frustration, everything that kind of harms us, makes us unhappy, and turns us away from the only one who can make us happy. Right? So tell me just in kind of simple terms, what's an idol? And how can I kind of see them in my life, and then how can I learn to kind of combat them, turn them over to God? [00:46:31] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a great question. So a couple of thoughts come to mind. The best description of an idol I've ever heard comes from Timothy Keller, who just passed away not too long ago in a book he wrote called Counterfeit Gods. And he says, an idol is anything more important to you than God, which should immediately go nuts. A whole set of things are coming to mind, right? Anything you look to give you what only God can give you, anything so important to you that should you lose it, your life would hardly feel worth living. [00:47:19] Speaker B: That's powerful. [00:47:20] Speaker A: So hit pause right now and just think about that. Anything more important to you than God, anything you look to give you what only God can give you. Anything so important that should you lose it, your life would hardly feel worth living. Could be my children, could be my reputation, could be my mean, these are all good. We. So we quickly can put things out of order or get things out of order, right? Lewis was fond of saying, like, first things first, like God first, and then everything else afterwards, right? So that's the first thing. So lest we think we don't have any idols, just ponder that for a while. And unfortunately, I can fill up pages of what fits into those categories, at least some days for me. The second thing, and you might be able to shed light on this that I don't have. I've never forgotten this. In fact, I just went back and looked at this the other day. I had a fantastic woman professor when I was in seminary in Italy. And I think my italian is good enough to understand what she was saying. And I went back and looked at the notes I had, but I don't read Hebrew. And she was saying that there is at least a way of understanding the first commandment that goes like this. You shall not make a molten image. A molten image for yourself. And not just you shall not bow down and worship it, but you shall not let it make you bow down and worship it. In other words, there's something in that commandment that the Lord gives that says, you only bend your knee to me. Because when you do that, it's actually not degrading, it's actually fulfilling because it's right. It's just. It's proper for you to worship me because I created you and I love you. And so I'm not asking you to worship me because I'm some thrill seeking egomaniac. I'm asking you to worship me because that's good for you. It's the right thing to do. Everything else that tries to get me to bend its knee or bend my knee is not interested in my fulfillment. It's interested in my slavery. And I can think of. I'm thinking of countless people. I'm thinking of a friend of mine right now who's a crack addict, who knows in his mind, I will never physiologically be able to replicate the high that I first got, and yet I will do everything I can to get another hit. This thing has made him bend his knee to it. That's the second thing that comes to mind. The third thing is, I forget who it is who said this, but he was talking about mission. He says the reason we do mission is because God is not worshipped, which I just love the simplicity of that, which means it's not like people aren't worshipping anything. It's they're worshipping the wrong thing. And if I'm not worshipping God, I won't be happy. And so we want to lead people to the Lord because to come into an encounter with him is to be genuinely happy, fulfilled. Right. Which is not their image of God, of course. So it's not that people aren't worshipping. They're worshipping the wrong things, the wrong people, the wrong whatever. And only God deserves our worship. And so we want to go on mission because the core wound of the human person is idolatry. That's what's wrong with me. I'm giving reverence to something that's not God. [00:50:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't remember who it was, but somebody described human beings not as homo sapiens, but Homo Adirons, the adoring one. And we do worship. And in this worship, the question is right. When we worship created things, they cannot save us because they are part of the fallen created order. And it's that simple. We have to be restored. [00:51:23] Speaker A: And they're cruel and they're demanding, and God is neither. He might be demanding, but he's not cruel. [00:51:27] Speaker B: Yes. And it's almost, in a way, they become cruel, even if they themselves are not. When we begin to worship them, whether or not this is a loved one, a family member, if I love them, as you put it, so much so that life is hardly worth living without them. Well, I will live without them. I will die or my family will die. And I don't make light of this. This is one of the hardest things that many people have to bear, right? And yet it's still one of those things that we have to recognize that my loved one can never raise them back. My loved one cannot raise me back, but God can raise me, because God has raised his son. There's that beautiful line from Romans 811 where it says that the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead now dwells in you. And so that gives me hope amidst death and suffering. And it's not fair, in a way, to burden my loved ones with that deepest hope in my heart. C. S. Lewis from the weight of glory has just this one line that I just love. When he talks about there are things in the world that are good images of what we really desire. This beauty, music. He loved the northern ness in Ireland and then in England, other people, grandchildren, now for me, right? Children, all sorts of different things, parents, whatever it is, these beautiful things. But he says they are images of what we really desire. Think about it, actually, this is what the Bible tells us, that the world is actually not supposed to be iconic. It's supposed to reveal God. Other people are supposed to be images of God. So when I see you, when I see my loved one, I see, whoa, there's a little reflection of God. There's a little reflection of God. And so he says this, but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols that break the hearts of their worshippers. And that's just where I just love it. It's like these things are good. And so one of the things we do then, with this proclamation of the gospel is we restore the world from being an idol to becoming an icon. So the world now can be like Jesus Christ is. Colossians 115 says he's the true image. But the Greek is icon, becomes the icon of the invisible God. [00:54:01] Speaker A: Yeah, I think you said something, too, that's really important, just to stress, because, again, this has to do with our image of God. People will try to diagnose the problem, and sometimes people will say, and some philosophies or religions will say that the problem is you desire. So the solution, therefore, is to eliminate desire. You can't get something farther from Christianity. The problem is not desire. The problem is you're not desiring enough. [00:54:27] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:54:28] Speaker A: You're content with that which actually doesn't satisfy. And so to see the world and creation as an icon and then also as a gift, like the father just says, like, this is yours. Like, everything I have is yours. I'm a generous father who loves to give. He pours gifts on his children while they slumber. The psalms say, right. And so to sort of see creation this way, as opposed to something that we either exploit, don't care about, or aren't supposed to enjoy, it's like, no, you're supposed to love creation. That's why we care for it. And I just reread the weight of glory over the weekend. Again, my favorite essay. I go back to it at least once a year, and I love that image. And then he goes on to say, to imagine. So what it would it be like to actually get into those things? Because that's one of the ways he describes entering into the kingdom, is it's not so much that things in the world are what you want. They're icons of what you really want. But one day, we're going to enter into the beauty that they are iconic of. And that's the kingdom. And it's like, whoa, that blows my mind. [00:55:39] Speaker B: Yeah, he has that beautiful line. Right. Our Lord doesn't find our desires too large, but too small. We are half hearted creatures fooling about with money, sex and ambition. When infinite joy is offered to us, even psalm 16 at the very end says, you show me the path of life. The path of life. Who is Jesus Christ? The path of life has you show me Jesus Christ the way, the truth and the life in your presence there is fullness of joy. In your right hand are pleasures forevermore, right? [00:56:10] Speaker A: I don't think most people think of God at all like that. Fullness of joy, pleasures God. Are we talking about the same person here? [00:56:15] Speaker B: Yeah. So it is this deep sense. I think in some ways maybe your, that quote from Dr. Tim Keller was that sense, know, what do we love more than God? What are those things that we think about or we maybe obsess about? And then what are those things? If we were to lose them, life would barely be worth living. I think it's a great kind of call for us then to, it's in certain sense to really just discover, kind of take a little time for meditation, time, prayer. Write down those things, what are those things? And then kind of just look at them honestly, like, lord, help me to see them. And if we could see them in a way as God sees them sometimes it's like when you're in the picture, you can't see the picture and you have to get out of that bird's, the worm's view of the world to the bird's eye view of the world to recover in a way. There's a quote that I remember, I don't remember where it came from, but somebody shared it with me. It's like only when we suffer the unbearable do we learn to love as God loves and see as God sees. And I think ultimately that really is because it's only if we suffer the unbearable with the one who suffered and with the hope of the one. And then really Christ gives us his mind in his spirit. So we begin to see the world as Christ sees the world. [00:57:38] Speaker A: You'd asked about how do you move? Yeah, I'll give you a really earthy example. So I love college football. I love college football. And I have a particular love for certain teams and one in particular who at a my prayer during football season is, this is how disordered this is for me because it can be so idolatrous. I have to pray. Lord, teach me how to enjoy this as a game. Like, restore to me the ability to just enjoy it. I love that because there was a time in my life where I couldn't actually watch the game because says, if they didn't win, my day and my week would be ruined. Wouldn't be too strong a word, depending upon how old I was at the time. But I'm talking about, even as a priest, it would have a control on me. I'd be less charitable, less patient, less kind. And so that's something that, it's a good thing, but it had made me bow down and worship it. And so I have to pray, Lord, we can do this with children. We can do this with spouses. We can do it with anything. Lord, teach me again and give me permission again and give me the grace again just to enjoy the gifts you've given to me as gifts and not gods. [00:58:58] Speaker B: Wow, that's great. There's a line also from the Book of Wisdom which talks about the worship of idols, the beginning, cause, and end of every evil in 13. It says this, though, if it was through the delight in the beauty of created things, men assumed them to be gods. Let them know how much better than these is their lord. For the author of beauty created them. And I love that sense of going back to God and saying, teach me how to love my family well. Teach me how to enjoy a game as a game. There was a prayer also that a friend of mine shared with me once, which I think sometimes can speak to the familial heart or the tendency to. It's hard not to love. I think in some ways, we don't ever want to love our families less. We just need to love God more. But this prayer, which is that, Lord, before they were mine, they were yours, and I put them back in your hands. And how silly to think that our hands are big enough to hold ourselves right. We ought to throw ourselves into hands so well. Father John, Ricardo, thank you so much for spending time with us today. Great being with you. I love that deeper sense of reencoaring the proclamation of the gospel, allowing ourselves maybe to be overwhelmed, right, by what Jesus Christ has done for us to die and rise again. For me, as we discussed. Thank you so much for sharing your own story of your own discovery of that and making that decision and reminding us that we have to make that decision, to entrust ourselves to Jesus Christ by faith every day according to our baptismal vocation, whether it's a priestly or a marriage vocation or our vocation as a confirmed really saint in the church, holy one in the church. And then also this aspect in which maybe we can look a little bit at what are some of the idols in our life, and when do they become dumb idols that break our hearts? And when can we restore them in a way to being just good icons, good little things that God has created, maybe some of the most beautiful things you could ever imagine, but God is infinitely more beautiful. So again, thank you so much for all you're doing with the acts 29 mobilizing for mission project. People that are interested can find the nine part series at rescueproject us correct? And where would they find more about acts 29? [01:01:23] Speaker A: Acts 29. Org just make sure you spell 29 in roman numerals. So acts xxix.org yes, and for those. [01:01:32] Speaker B: Who are interested, there is an earlier podcast with Father John Ricciardo. So please take a look at that and thank you again for being with us during this show. If you found what you heard helpful, please consider liking the show. Please consider recommending it and sharing it with friends and family, and helping us to reconnect and restore relationships and ultimately restore our relationship and our knowledge of the truth, of who God is and his plan for us. [01:02:00] Speaker A: Great. [01:02:01] Speaker B: Thank you. [01:02:03] Speaker C: Thank you so much for joining us for this podcast. Podcast if you like this episode, please rate and review it on your favorite podcast app to help others find the show. And if you want to take the next step, please consider joining our Annunciation circle so we can continue to bring you more free content. We'll see you next time on the catholic theology show.