On Marriage

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Perfect.

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So welcome to this Bible study on marriage. Sorry for the delay and all the complications, but we are in business now. This is the second study in a series on marriage. last time we went through some introduction. We talked about the Four Senses of the Scripture, because these are needed for us to properly interpret Scripture. We talked about the covenant.

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Yes, I think it's recording, thank you. Last time I didn't turn my recorder on, so I had to redo the whole thing by myself. Which is why my daughter is, hey, turn this thing on. Anyway, we talked about the Four Senses of Scripture and then we talked about recapitulation, which is a very important concept and that's the concept we're gonna use again as we proceed today. This time around we're going to talk about Eden and it's the marital union. All right.

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One more time, don't think Father is with us tonight, but I do want to thank Father and Paul for making this possible for us to do this study here. So it is again a study in eight parts. We've done the first part, now we're in the second. And the format, the talk is 55 minutes, 55 Lebanese minutes, especially today. It's a pretty, it's a pretty...

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compact talk. And then we'll take a break and we get into a Q &A. The audience is Catholics, adults, children at parents discretion, not because there's any specific content that's problematic, but just because the content being intense and a little bit complicated. My style is direct. I don't like ambiguity. And I address Catholic living. I'm not trying to form theologians. I'm trying to help everyone live a better life.

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by better understanding scripture. And my style is that when I say man, I mean humanity. If I mean gendered, I'll indicate that. And I'll say you, I do mean you. I don't mean a general you. And I do tend to meander, so just be patient with me as I do so. If you have questions, again, you can grab this QR code on your phone, and then you can text your questions directly on...

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your cell phone as I talk. If a question comes to mind, please write it down so we don't interrupt the flow. Let me know when you grab that QR code. It's different from last time. It's going to be different every single time. So grab it now if you are interested. You don't have to. You can write your question down, and that will work just fine.

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We're all good? Yeah? All right. If you want to grab the first stock, it's already out there. That's the QR code for it. You don't have to grab it now, obviously. And you can go to Corbono.com, select on marriage and get to the first stock. Otherwise, those stocks are also on Spotify, on Apple, on Google, on all the various channels that you listen to, you'll find those stocks as well.

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OK, we're good?

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So please stand and let's start with a word of prayer. In the name of the Father, of the Son, of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, pray with me, and kindle in the fire of your love. Send forth your spirit, and they shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth. O God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that by the same Holy Spirit,

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we may be truly wise and ever enjoy his consolations. Through Christ our Lord, Amen. May we receive the wisdom, Saint Joseph, all our guardian angels, all the angels and saints. Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. Please be seated.

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All right.

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What are we going to cover? We'll go through a recap, although I started that already, and then we'll talk about the marital covenant. And then we'll delve into Eden, and there'll be three topics I want to address. Time alone, the union, and the meaning of silence as a scriptural typology, and you'll see why that's important. And then will go through some Q &A. I had initially wanted to address or continue to address

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the notion of curses, but I had to push it out to the next talk as this one is just too loaded as it is. Okay, let's go through the recap. Recapitulation. Christ recapitulated the history of humanity in his own life to redeem us. That's a central theme to St. Paul and to St. Irenaeus and to the early Church Fathers. Christ's life, death and resurrection provide a complete picture of our lives and our marriages.

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It's a blueprint. So in a sense, we should always be hopeful that it will end well, provided we remain faithful and we try our best.

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Christ's recapitulation is the basis of our prayers of petition. Because Christ in His life recapitulated all of human history, we can petition Him because He understands our needs as a human being. And I remind you again that Christ saved us through His humanity. That's a central concept for us. St. Teresa of Avila insisted

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on the veneration of the adorable humanity of our Lord. That's what she called it. Because it is through His humanity that Christ saved us. And that's really important for us. Recapitulation is a valuable guide for married life as you're going to see today. But Biblical interpretive principles, there are four senses of scripture. I already covered all that. I'm not going to go through it all. The four senses are the literal. That's the basis.

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which is what the author of that particular chapter or book intended, and then three spiritual senses that are layered on top. The analogical is the sense of Scripture that points to Christ, the anagogical is the sense of Scripture that points to the end times and to the Church, and the moral is the sense of Scripture that points to us, our moral lives. Those are the three senses, and...

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The meaning conveyed by the words of scripture, the catechism tells us, and discovered by Issa Jesus, following the rules of sound interpretation, all other senses of sacred scripture are based on the literal. If you don't understand the literal, you will basically, you can stray. It's very easy when you don't understand the literal sense, as I pointed out last time. And I showed you this Catholic quadruga, which was used in the Old Testament, in the Middle Ages, I'm sorry, where the temple, the literal sense of the word temple,

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at the times of Jesus was the temple built by Herod. The analogical sense is Jesus because he himself said, destroy this temple and I will rebuild in three days. He was referring to his own body. analogical meaning is obviously the church. When the temple is destroyed in 70 AD, the church emerges as the new temple. And the moral meaning is us because we are the temple of the Holy Spirit. Those are the four senses and they need to work in harmony.

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when we look at scripture. So again, four senses. scripture must be interpreted in light of scripture and the living tradition of the Catholic Church. That means that when I provide an interpretation to a particular verse, I need to ask myself, where else in the Bible does this occur and will that interpretation stand? I can't pull a verse, tease it out and interpret it apart from scripture. As Karl Hahn would say,

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text outside of context is pretext. And you obviously have to pay attention to the audience as I showed you last time. When Christ said, when two or three are gathered in my name, there shall I be, he didn't mean us. That was not literal meaning. He meant the bishops. And that was the foundation of the infallibility of the councils of the Catholic Church. Because he was talking to his apostles, he wasn't talking to his disciples.

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And the example I gave you is if three guys of the mafia or all Catholic decides to come together and pray as they plan to assassinate somebody, I'm not really sure that Christ is right there in their middle. So you can delve into complete absurdity by misunderstanding the literal meaning of the text and the audience when Christ spoke or when St. Paul speaks. You need to pay attention to the audience. Okay, the covenant now.

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That key interpretive principle is a leftover, ignore that. So what is a covenant? A covenant is an agreement between a strong and a weak party. It spells the condition, the strong party spells the condition the weak party must fulfill. If the weak party is faithful to the covenant, the strong party blesses them. If they are disobedient, the strong party curses them. That's a structure of government that is known in antiquity.

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And it was used across all of antiquity. The Babylonians, the Chaldeans, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans used a covenantal structure when addressing their conquered parties, the cities they wanted to make part of their kingdom. typically a covenant will start with the introduction of the strong party, who the strong party is, and then proceeds through to tell you what you're supposed to do.

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Now you might understand a little bit better why three of the gospels start with the introduction of Jesus Christ. St. Matthew and St. Luke give you genealogies, which is typically that of kings. St. John goes to his divinity. It's introducing the strong party. That is a typical covenantal structure that is well known in antiquity. Anybody reading this would know, oh, okay, here is the boss. And now...

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He's going to tell us what he wants us to do and how he is going to bless us and how he's going to curse us. And obviously because we've completely forgotten all of that, we lost the interpretive key and therefore we don't really understand what's going on. Now, this is very important for us because what is marriage? It's a covenant. And I'm not talking about sacramental marriage, I'm talking about natural marriage. You take two atheists who go get married on the beach.

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It's a covenant. Whether they want it or not, it's not up to the weak party, meaning us, human beings. And in the context of marriage, again, I'm going reiterate that point, the weak party isn't the woman and the strong party is the man. The weak party is human beings, man and woman. The strong party is God. And that is the natural institution of marriage. That's how it's structured. And whether they want it or not, whether they know it or not, it's a covenant. Because it's an institution...

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a natural institution that was established by God. It's a divinely established institution and we can't break that. All right. So we're to talk more about that. I mentioned the five Old Testament covenants. Here they are. again, if you're interested, you can go to Corpono in the Catholic Foundation Library. I go through each one of them in detail.

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And the New Testament covenant, you hear it at mass every Sunday, where Christ said that he established the covenant which is eternal in his blood. Therefore the New Covenant has blessings and curses. And we're all under it.

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All right, marital covenant.

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So we go back to Adam and Eve.

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God is introduced as the creator of the universe. That's how Genesis starts. First chapter introduces the strong party. God creates everything. The first chapter is less about the universe and more about God. That's the key takeaway. The first chapter is less concerned with the order of creation and more concerned with introducing the Creator.

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So that's Genesis 1, 1 through 2, 6, the creation account. Then we have the introduction of the weak party. It's man. God takes some dust and forms man. And God breathes a soul in man. So man is utterly helpless. Not only is man weak, but helpless.

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That is our problem individually, that we are a creature, that's what we rebel against.

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But that's the introduction of the week party. God formed man of dust. God places man in the garden. Here's your duty. Some people think of the garden of Eden as paradise. Paradise had a different meaning. It just meant the garden. It doesn't mean a cruise. It doesn't mean vacation. Because the order was till and guard.

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And those were seven days. There were no vacations.

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So you can see the strong party takes the weak party and joins, tells the weak party, here are your duties, that's what you're going to do. And then following that, what does God do? Blessings. You till, you guard, you will live forever. Adam wasn't supposed to die. That's the blessing. Life.

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And the covenant curse, if you violate the conditions of the covenant, you will die. There you go. That is the structure of that covenant. And guess what? That structure of the covenant rules every single marriage today.

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We wish it didn't, but it does. There is no escaping that. The Jews well understood the covenant and wished many times that God will tear it up. They would sort of put their bill of divorce with God on his desk and say, could you tear this up? But he wouldn't.

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Scripture explicitly speaks of marriage as a covenant. The covenantal nature of marriage is evident in both the Old and New Testament, where marriage is portrayed as a sacred bond instituted by God. The Cargizm, 1601. The matrimonial covenant by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life is, by its nature, key on these words, nature.

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The order of nature is higher than the sacramental order. Because it's established directly by God, the sacramental order is established by the Church. So when it says by its nature, it's referring to the fact that it is a natural order established directly by God. Order toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring. So many times I've heard priests say that the purpose of marriage is kids.

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It isn't. The cataclysm is quite clear. The purpose of marriage is what? Order toward the good of the spouses. Children are the blessing.

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Let continue. This covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament. And then we'll delve into what do you get when you have a sacramental marriage. And notice baptized persons, not Catholic, baptized. Two baptized get married, it's a sacrament, whether they recognize it or not.

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Alright. Key scriptural passages. Malachi 2.14. Marriage is explicitly called a covenant. You ask, why does he not? Because the Lord was witness to the covenant between you and the wife of your youth. The Lord was witness to that covenant to whom you have been faithless though she is your companion and your wife by covenant.

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Genesis 2 24 the foundational passage for marriage therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh and they becoming one flesh right is an echo of the creation of Adam God took dust and make and gave Adam flesh He made he in fleshed Adam. So the becoming one flesh is the act of God They don't become one flesh on their own. It is God that

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bring them together and make them one flesh. So the key here, especially in today's sort of independentist mood where it's, you know, we do and then we are in control and then this and then the other, it's important to remind ourselves that God plays the act, the greatest and the most active role in every marriage.

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This verse establishes a divine institution of marriage Proverbs 2,16 and 17 Breaking marriage is breaking a covenant You will be saved from the loose woman from the adventurous with her smooth words who forsakes the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God

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So breaking a marriage is breaking covenant. What happens when you do that?

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What happens do you think when people divorce? What are they doing?

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triggering the curses.

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Ezekiel 16 8 marriage mirrors God's covenant to love I entered into covenant with you says Lord Lord God and you became mine a lot of the scriptural text among the prophets when God speaks to Israel follows the marital covenant because like st. Paul says marriage reflects the love of Christ and his church and that is

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has been foreshadowed in the Old Testament by the love of God for Israel, which was covenantal and marital in nature. Hosea 2, 19, 20, God speaks of his covenantal love using marriage imagery, and I will betroth you to me forever, speaking of Israel. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord.

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Ephesians 5, 31, 32, marriage reflects Christ's covenant with the church. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery and I mean in reference to Christ and the church.

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Okay, so all these texts, all these passages are there to reinforce this notion that marriage is a covenant, it's a divine, it's a divinely instituted structure that God put in place, that's His will, and it has blessings and curses associated with it like every other covenant. And by the way, when I say curses, I told you this last time, but it bears repeating most of the time, most of the curses,

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most of the curses, initially at least, are meant to chastise us and bring us back. Because God desires the salvation of all. It's when we harden our hearts, when we refuse, when we no longer call on God's mercy, when we don't consider ourselves to be sinners in needing of salvation, that the curses become terminal.

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You see that in the case of Pharaoh. I don't have time to go through all the details right now, but the interesting thing in the case of Pharaoh is that for the first six plagues, the scripture says after every one of these six plagues, Pharaoh hardened his heart. Pharaoh hardened his heart. In other words, he refused. He refused. He refused, he refused. These plagues were, although they were harsh, they were also merciful. They were meant to bring back Egypt to God. They were meant to tell Egypt,

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Pharaoh is not God. None of you are Gods. I am the Lord. All these funky Gods that end with I S that you created are fake. There's only me. Truth is the greatest mercy that God can give us. And Pharaoh hardened his heart. The last three plagues, it switches. Scripture says, God hardened Pharaoh's

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So, as I told you last time, this phrase, God is merciful, on its own, is a heresy.

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You need to add a bit to it to make it true. God is merciful to those who repent. You have to repent. And God will show you mercy every single time throughout your entire life.

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But you have to repent.

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If you don't, it's not true that God is always merciful.

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So marriage, strong party, God is the strong party.

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So.

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Um,

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I'm referring here to Genesis, but even though I am actually talking about what you see in the Gospels, because in the Gospels, the Gospel introduces us to Christ and His Father. That's the epiphany. That's the great feast that we celebrate, because it is the introduction of the divine nature of Christ. This is who Christ is. The weak party is the groom and the bride. That's the weak party. They present us as sinners. If you read the Scriptures,

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All the tableaus that you see when Christ interacts with people, sinners. Sinners needing to be healed. The lame, the blind, the dumb, the people possessed, all of that. All these tableaus are there, again, not for us to focus on them, but to focus on Christ. We are them. We are blind. We are dumb. We are deaf. We are all of them. And we need Christ.

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Christ is a strong party. What are the covenantal blessing for marriage as established by Christ? Now I'm talking here really in the context of the New Covenant. The Beatitudes. Right? The Beatitudes are the blessings of the New Covenant. And what are the curses? Well, the woes. In the Gospel of St. Luke, in chapter 6, the woes follow the Beatitudes. Woe is another word of saying cursed. It's the same thing.

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And then sometimes you may wonder because it is blessed are you, blessed are you, it looks like we are being blessed. I mean, no, we are blessing ourselves because blessed are you. You do this automatically, you're blessed. But you've got to remember that this is Hebraic way of speaking because they will not pronounce the name of the Lord. So when God is the subject, the subject is unknown. Hence, will be blessed are you, but what you hear is God will bless you when...

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and woe to you, God will curse you when? They understood that. We don't because we don't necessarily think this way. Okay.

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So blessings for faithfulness in marriage, Genesis 1, 28. Fruitfulness and children are a blessing in marriage. And God blessed them. And what was that blessing? Be fruitful and multiply. That's the blessing. But that blessing is not disconnected from their faithfulness to the covenant. You understand? This is covenantal in nature. These are not separate moments.

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the covenant is established, they're together, that's the covenant, and God told them, don't eat from that tree. And then he blessed them and told them, be fruitful and multiply. That was the intention. The intention was, as part of the covenantal blessing of marriage, you will be fruitful and multiply. Psalm 128, one through four, a godly marriage brings prosperity. Your wife will be like a fruitful vine,

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within your house. Your children will be like olive shoots around your table. So vine and olive trees are representation of wealth, right? Of a sense of prosperity. You will have what you need. I'm not talking you're gonna be super rich. You will have what you need. God will provide.

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God will provide. Ecclesiastes 4, 9-12. Companionship strengthens both spouses. Two are better than one, scripture says, because they have a good reward for their toil. We're meant to be together. That's a natural order. Deuteronomy 22, 22. Adultery, those are the curses, right? Adultery brings the death penalty under the Old Covenant. If a man is found lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die.

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Now, that was physical death, representative of a spiritual death, which we call mortal sin, or a grave matter. It could be a mortal sin, it may not be, depending on how much degree of knowledge and the rest of it, so I'm not here to judge people, but it is a grave matter. Proverbs 6, 32, 33, adultery leads to ruin. He who commits adultery has no sense. He...

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Who does it destroys himself, wounds and dishonor will he get and his disgrace will not be wiped away. Here the covenantal language, right? He who commits adultery has no sense. Basically it is nonsensical because you're going against the covenant God established. He who does it destroys himself. How do you destroy yourself? Well, because of the covenant, the curses that are going to be triggered.

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Wounds and dishonor will he get and his disgrace will not be wiped away. Why? Because God at the end of the day is the one holding us.

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Malachi 2,13,16 Divorce is condemned and leads to separation from God. For I hate divorce says the Lord, the God of Israel. So take heed to yourselves and do not be faithless.

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So if you can start to see the world we live in through the eyes of the covenant and you see the state of affairs we are in, you shouldn't be surprised by all the disorders that you see around you. It shouldn't shock you. It shouldn't scandalize you because it is the fruits of the disobedience of the covenant.

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Luke 16, 18, Jesus warns again divorce and remarriage. Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery. And again this is not about what happens between man and woman, it is about what happens when God, the author of the covenant, looks at divorce. Now he acts towards it.

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These are dogmas of marriage in the Catholic Church. Marriage was not instituted by man, but by God.

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Okay, marriage was not instituted by man. Let me rephrase that slightly. Every marriage is not instituted by man, but by God.

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Marriage is a true and proper sacrament instituted by God. Every valid contract of marriage between Christians is of itself a sacrament. The contracting parties in matrimony minister to each other the sacrament. From the sacramental contract of marriage emerges the bond of marriage which binds both marriage partners to a lifelong indivisible partnership of life.

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The sacrament of matrimony bestows sanctifying grace on the contracting parties. The essential properties of marriage are unity and indissolubility. Notice it doesn't mention children. It's unity and indissolubility. The other thing that is really interesting and because of the fact that most of us don't have a proper understanding of marriage as a covenant and as a sacrament is that most baptized

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Christians who are married do not call on the sacrament of marriage to help them.

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To them, it's a one-time done deal and then they can forget about it. Yet, they call on sacraments of, for the Catholics especially, they call on sacraments of penance, the sacrament of Eucharist, regularly, but not the sacrament of marriage. It's a fount of grace that is sitting there and completely abandoned because they don't even know that they have to call on it and ask God to bestow upon them the graces that are part of that sacrament. And we'll talk more about that when we get there.

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Okay.

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Eden.

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Eden has two portions to it, there are really three. There is the time alone, the time that Adam spent alone. Then there is the time when Adam meets Eve. And then there is the time where they fall. Here we're to talk about time alone. Using recapitulation, how does that serve us? It serves us for those of us who are not married or thinking about marriage. You are right now in that phase. You're alone.

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What are you supposed to do?

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The Lord God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being. And the Lord God planted the garden in Eden in the east and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden.

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The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till and keep it. To till it and keep it. And the Lord commanded the man saying, you may freely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.

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Okay, that's the text. Let's put it into a workflow.

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And let's observe what happens. God forms man. God plants the garden, not man. God could have told Adam to plant the garden. He didn't. God planted the garden. God watered it. The river flows into the garden, but its source is outside the garden. That's the literal sense.

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The moral sense is that the river is the flow of grace and it comes from God into marriage. It doesn't source from within marriage, it sources from God.

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God puts man in the garden. God gives man a job. God provides for man. And then God limits man's ambition. Here's this garden. It's not the whole planet. It's not the whole universe. It's a garden. I just want you to till it and keep it. Not plant new trees. Not start, you know, a company. I just want you to till and keep. That's it.

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He limits man's ambition on purpose.

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Okay, let's look at it now. Let's apply that to ourselves. What is God doing? God formed you.

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parents planted the garden you didn't you came into the garden the family that's the garden came into it God waters it everything St. Augustine says what have you got that you have not been given God is the one who provides everything

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God puts you where He wants you. He chose where to put Adam. He chose the location of the garden and He placed Adam there. He does the same thing with each one of you.

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God gives you a job.

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Most of the time, like Adam, we're not happy with it.

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But God provides for you in so many ways. In so many ways, God provides. Right now, this, right now, well, if you understand anything about quantum physics, then you should be amazed that this floor is standing. I mean, why is it that the strong and weak force bind electrons and molecules together for this thing to stand the way it is? It's amazing. But we just take so much for granted. So much we take for granted.

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Like, in our society today, each and every one of us, every morning, should walk into the kitchen and hug our fridge.

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We live better than kings and queens because of the fridge and the washing machine. Those two things have such a huge impact on our quality of life and yet we just take them for granted. We do. We do. You see, those who begin on the journey of faith seeks the extraordinary out of the ordinary. They're waiting for something extraordinary to happen. Those who progress in the journey of faith

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seeks the extraordinary in the ordinary.

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Because nothing is ordinary, really. So God provides for you, and God limits your ambition.

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Okay. So, if you really want to understand what God wants from you, go back to Genesis, read that passage, sit down, pray and meditate. You're like Adam. Whether you're a man or a woman, doesn't matter. In this case, it's a pattern that applies to all of us. You're like Adam. What does God want from you? What tilling and keeping does he want? Obviously, he wants all of us to till and keep our soul.

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On a personal level, the garden is a mirror of the soul. You can look at the garden as a blueprint for your own soul. There are trees growing in there. Those are your virtues. Which virtues do you have? Which vices do you have? Can you even name them? If you can't, how are you growing in sanctity? What is the fruit of sanctity? It's virtues.

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You should at least name them. You should at least find out what are your strong virtues and the weaker ones and what are you supposed to work on, what are you supposed to till and keep.

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The water flows from outside the garden. That's good news. It means God provides it. Not you. He waters your soul with grace. Because you need grace before, during, and after for every good act that will lead you to heaven. That's the flow. You're supposed to till and guard. What does that mean? Are you spending time understanding

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where you are today in life what God wants from you. So many of us spend time thinking, we think prayer is mostly prayers of petition. We pray for our grand uncle and our grand aunt and our aunt and uncle and grandfather and grandmother and go down the list. That is the weakest form of prayer.

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That's the last thing God wants from you.

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What I want to do is just sit down and then face to face, you and him.

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That's a prayer of meditation. That's when you really reflect on your own life. And you take time to be quiet and know that He's God.

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Okay, I sidetracked. Okay, what should men do while celibate? Here some do's and don'ts. Men, be principled. That is the most important advice I can give you. Be principled. That means develop a strong moral imperative.

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Be competent.

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Be presentable. Dress properly.

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Comb your hair, shave, take a shower more than once a month.

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Be amiable. Somebody talks to you, be present to them. Stop focusing on yourself, focus on them.

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Be learned.

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So, young men.

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Fight like you would fight the plague or like you fight cockroaches. The word like. Like is a cockroach in your brain.

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Like, know, like I was like, like, like. I feel like I wanna have a swatter and swat that person. I just can't stand that. I have no patience for that. No respect, zero. You think it's funny and cool and no it's not, it's not. It's dumb and foolish, cut it out. That's part of being principled. Learn to speak properly. Learn words.

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Listen to people who know how to speak and imitate them. Learn to speak properly.

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Be hopeful!

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That's a virtue, right? Hope, faith and charity, that's a virtue and that's the greatest thing you can give people around you. Be hopeful, no matter what. Be hopeful and then be charitable. That means stop focusing on yourself, focus on the people around you. God places you somewhere and you meet somebody, just be open. What has God wanted for me right now? That's what charitable means.

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I don't understand when you meet people, they stop talking about themselves.

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as if they're original.

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Guess what? We're all like each other and we're boring. Stop talking about yourself. Focus on the other.

42:32
Okay, don'ts. Please, don't be a wet noodle. What am I referring to? If you look at the early Greek art, you would see that the sculpture reflected manly men. Strong, standing, muscular. Towards the end of the Greek empire, as it was going into decadence, men looked like wet noodles.

43:01
And just don't be that. What do I mean? If I'm talking to you, shake my hand properly, don't do this.

43:10
On the flip side, don't destroy my hand either. This is not wrestling. Just saying hi, alright?

43:19
Then be present. Just be present. Stand firm, know yourself, and then be present. Don't be a wet noodle. Don't be unqualified. You have no idea what's going on. You can't talk about anything.

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Don't be shabby. Present well.

43:42
Don't be forlorn. Somebody look at you and oh, he's depressed. You have no idea why he's depressed, he's depressed. I don't know. Doesn't have the right running shoes or something. Don't be ignorant.

43:54
Don't be a bore. And then finally, don't be indifferent.

44:01
Okay.

44:04
Women.

44:08
again.

44:13
Be principled. Have a moral imperative. And I'll talk more about moral imperative. I am not defining it right now on purpose. I want you to think about it. Be competent.

44:28
Be modest.

44:32
Don't walk into a room and then when we look at you we think, whoa, it's a Christmas tree.

44:44
Now, men, I'll key you on on something that you're completely ignorant of, especially young ones. You have to understand that when women walk into a room, there is a silent and secret battle going on between them. The hair, the makeup, the shoes, the pants, the bag, the handbag, they in a second classify each other.

45:08
Because most of the time when women dress, not dressing for you and me, they're dressing for each other. Women, cut it out.

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If our lady were to walk in the room, that's not how she would behave.

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Be modest, be tender.

45:31
Be learned, be hopeful, be charitable.

45:36
Don't be overbearing. had other terms in mind, but I decided to...

45:42
run it by a few women and I kind of tone it down but I'm sure you can replace it with other things. Don't come across as if you're going to wrestle me. Don't be aggressive. Young women, believe me, there isn't a good man who wants an aggressive woman.

46:08
Not one.

46:12
Don't be unqualified. Again, the likes, cut the likes, cut the you know. And then don't talk too much about yourself.

46:25
Don't be subabsorbed.

46:29
You, yourself, your problems, this, you, that, the other. Nobody cares.

46:36
You bore people when you do that. You suck the energy out of them. Don't do that. Don't be ignorant. Don't be difficult to please.

46:48
And then finally, don't be cruel.

46:53
These are examples, you don't have to take them literally, I just put the ones that over the years I've seen on both sides of the aisle and some which I had to fight myself and continue to fight. But these are examples, you can make your own list. What do you want to be? This is the time when you're alone, this is the time to be formed. Don't waste that time, use it to be formed properly.

47:20
Alright, now let me go back to the recapitulative sequence because there's something really interesting in it. God forms man, God plants the garden, God waters it, God puts man in the garden, God gives man a job, God provides for man, God limits man's ambition. What is the end result? What is the end result of this? What happens to Adam when all of these things take place? Remember, God is walking in the garden, God is talking to Adam face to face. What's the end result?

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Man is alone.

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Even though God provided for him, even though He gave him what he needed, even though He is talking to him face to face, He's alone.

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Now don't take that... It's not my interpretation. This is what God says. It's not good for man to be alone. Man is alone. What is the implication?

48:30
There's a far-reaching implication here for us to understand.

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So how could Adam be alone when he doesn't suffer from original sin? Guy is perfect So you can't blame his loneliness on vices

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Loneliness is an interior subjective state and or external objective reality. You might say, okay, but it's nobody else. But God is in the garden with him.

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And he's alone.

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The other thing is that he didn't have parents, so you can't blame his loneliness on some trauma he lived because of his parents did this or that. Right?

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He's alone.

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How could Adam be alone when God speaks to him face to face? You see?

49:36
You see, there is this really important lesson here. Piety is a very good virtue. Piety is giving God his due. And many Catholics are very pious. So they go to daily Mass, they sit a rosary, they go to confession, they do all these things.

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But if they're not working on their virtues, it's wasted. It's not enough. It's not enough to be in God's presence.

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Not enough. There's something you have to do.

50:16
So, how could he be alone? Well, by ignoring God, right? therefore, you have to be weary of the sense of sentiment of loneliness. The devil wants to do two things. Actually, at the end of the day, the devil wants to do one thing. Satan wants to do one thing only. Satan doesn't care about all the vices. He really doesn't. He's not interested in any of them. He's only interested in one thing. One thing only. You know what that is? Despair.

50:47
That's what he wants. He wants you to despair. And what is the precursor to despair? Loneliness. When you feel alone. So beware of that.

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Nevertheless, there is something else that is very important here.

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God didn't wish for Adam to go to him directly.

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The loneliness is an intrinsic part of the human nature and it can only be resolved through marriage.

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That is the natural order. God wants us to go to Him through each other.

51:35
You know, widowers, 80 % of widowers remarry within six months after their wife passes. 80 % of widows do not remarry. And then, I heard a lot of cynical things being said.

51:55
explaining the reasons why but the fundamental reason is because widowers tend to be tend to suffer from loneliness for a variety of reasons so when they remarry it's because they can't stand being alone it's the loneliness that is the killer so the part of marriage this unitive part is not something we can disregard it is foundational to our nature we are meant to be united

52:24
It is built in us. That's how God wants it. That's a natural order. So if you feel lonely right now when you're not married, it's natural. It's a good thing. It's a time of preparation. It's a time when you're making yourself ready for that step to take on that responsibility.

52:44
Okay, let's talk about the union now.

52:49
So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib which Lord God has taken from the man, He made into a woman and brought her to the man. And the man said, at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. This at last, that's the key word.

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Adam knew all along that he was alone, but never said a word. Never went to God and said, I'm feeling out of source. I don't know why.

53:29
No conversation. But it is God who brought Eve to Adam. And Adam recognized himself in her.

53:42
That is part of the natural order of marriage is that you find yourself in your spouse and often times what you find in your spouse is your own faults that you throw on your spouse.

53:59
It's always very telling for me when I'm talking to people if they're complaining more about themselves or they're complaining about their spouse. It tells me a lot about their spiritual life.

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More often than not, what bugs us in our spouse is what's in us.

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And it is made this way because God intends us to go back to Him through marriage. Marriage wasn't meant like that when God created it with Adam and Eve. It became so after the Fall. It became mostly curative. It became a medicine. It wasn't supposed to be medicine. It wasn't supposed to be medicinal before the Fall. It became medicinal after the Fall. It's the tool that God uses.

54:49
to bring us back to Him, if we're willing to cooperate, if we're willing to be humble and recognize and focus on our own misgivings and our own misdeeds more so than we focus on whatever our spouse is doing.

55:07
So, what does it mean for us? Courting, anticipating what will come, God builds into the covenant countermeasures to sin. You see, the reason why God took Adam out of... The reason why he took Eve out of Adam is because he already anticipated what Eve was going to do. And the subjugation of Eve to Adam after the fall is the curse that was imposed on her because of her part.

55:37
Now Adam gets the biggest blame because, why? Because death doesn't enter the world because of Satan or Eve. It enters the world because of Adam, his failure. And I don't have time to go through this right now, but if you're interested again, go through the book of Genesis. I go through that into detail. But at last, Adam's anticipation and relief. But he never voiced any of his concern to God before. And then,

56:04
Adam was lonely with God, but no longer so with the woman. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that kind of intuitive? We all think if God was with me, if God talked to me, if God was present to me, all that sort of thing, I won't be lonely.

56:21
But that's not in the natural order. Now, there are a select few that God calls to himself to be priests and nuns. And they tend to short circuit the symbol, marriage, which is a representation of the final union of the soul with God. And they go straight to the end. Those are the few and the elect. But for the most of us, that's not the case.

56:51
wants us to be with our spouse. That's how he wants it.

56:57
By design, we are each other's way back to God.

57:01
So there are four essential dimensions to courting. I want you, I'm going to point out that I am going through order of exploration, not order of importance. So when you meet a young man, when you meet a young woman, what should you be looking for? First, second, third, and fourth. First, intellectual compatibility. Education, finance, interest.

57:29
Are you on the same page, more or less? And that compatibility has to grow as the years go by.

57:39
Second, spiritual alignment. Notice I put it second, not first. Because before you can be spiritually aligned, you have to be able to talk to each other. If you can even talk.

57:50
The rest is gone, right? But it may be small at the beginning, but has to grow. Now, generally speaking, if you're a Catholic, I will say look for a Catholic husband or a Catholic wife. Nevertheless, I've met, I've seen a number of people who married a non-Catholic and it ended well for them. I won't say it ends well in every case, but in some cases it did. So maybe at the beginning, one of them is not Catholic, but eventually there needs to be a spiritual alignment.

58:19
They need to be on the same page, and it has to grow.

58:24
Third, emotional fulfillment. That is very important for both men and women. Men and women express emotions differently but both have a need for emotions. Both have a need for emotional contact. And it grows as the ages go by.

58:48
And then lastly, physical attraction. It doesn't take much for a man or a woman to figure out if they have some level of attraction. It happens pretty rapidly. But I would say when you are trying to speak to someone, you need to address these things first before you get there. Because this typically, unfortunately, when people start there,

59:18
and they go all the way, they kind of muddy the entire field. Aside from the fact that they are committing a grave sin, they muddy the field. Which is why the church wisely, and God wisely, set that union to after they're married. Not before. But remember, as we grow older, that becomes less important. It's going to dwindle. It's just a natural order of things.

59:48
So it is more important to consider these three things which for the main part of your life are going to play a much more important role than the physical bit. So just keep that in mind. So that's generally speaking the order of exploration when you are meeting someone.

01:00:11
All right.

01:00:15
And all of this must be within a moral imperative. That's the bit that most married couple forget about. The moral imperative. What's the moral imperative? Moral imperative is... Here's what I you to think about it. It's a mission statement for your marriage. So in the case of St. Joseph and Our Lady, what was their mission statement? What was the moral imperative?

01:00:43
one would say holiness unto the Lord.

01:00:47
Be holy. That is the moral imperative. In your case, first as an individual, what defines you? What is important to you? What will you do, no matter what? What will you do because you believe that that's what you should be doing, regardless of what others do?

01:01:14
People who have strong marriage understand that they will continue to love not because their husband or wife are lovable, but because they want to love. That's a moral imperative. And you need to know what your moral imperative is, what defines you at your core.

01:01:38
That's who you are. That's who you... And then when you meet your spouse, together you have to have a moral imperative. And that moral imperative is going to protect your marriage. Anything that brings you closer to this moral imperative, you keep. Anything that threatens it, you let go of.

01:02:00
I'll be talking more about that later.

01:02:04
Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh and the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Now there's a lot to be said about that, but that's not what I want to do right now. However, if you are interested in understanding shame in the modern world with a Catholic perspective, you can grab it from Corbono, you can grab it from this link. It's a short nine pager that sort of summarizes the issues in the modern world related to shame.

01:02:34
which complicate matter quite a bit. Quite a bit.

01:02:41
OK, so that's the union.

01:02:50
The natural marital union, marriage is a divine covenantal institution, a threefold meaning of one flesh. Physical union, total self-gift of the spouses to one another, unity ordered toward procreation, physical intimacy is a radiant jewel cast within marriage. Emotional and spiritual unity, marriage is a complete union of body and soul. It is exclusive, where one man and one woman commit for life to each other.

01:03:19
In becoming one flesh, men and women not only give themselves to each other physically, but signify the deeper reality of their spiritual communion. St. John Paul II. Marriage is a lifelong commitment. Cleavage, dapak, that's the Hebrew word, means to be permanently joined, glued, or bound together. It's a very strong physical, there's a very strong physical connotation to that word. Can be broken, because of its covenantal nature.

01:03:46
And it's affirmed as such by our Lord in Matthew chapter 19, verse 4 to 6.

01:03:53
Natural marital love. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the expiation for our sins. Threefold meaning of one flesh. In 1 John 4, 10. I don't know why I have that. This may be a cut and paste mistake. Ignore that. The love of spouses points to and reflects the love of Christ and His Church. As Christ died for His Church, the husband dies for his wife.

01:04:23
By his passion, Christ gave a new meaning to marriage as the sign of his love for the Church. As the Church receives and announces Christ, a wife supports her husband as he dies for her. Now, I'll let you in on something that is important. Guys know that. Gals less so.

01:04:42
A man?

01:04:44
wants to love. A woman wants to be loved.

01:04:52
That is the natural order.

01:04:55
A man wants to be respected and trusted. Those two are very high in his conception of what it means when a woman loves him. Respect and trust are very high. But what he wants is to love his wife. And a woman wants to be loved.

01:05:20
This is the structure that you see here.

01:05:26
Leaving father and mother forming a new family the phrase the man leaves his father and mother symbolizes the transition from one's biological family to forming a new independent family unit and marriage spouses Prioritize each other over all earthly ties. That's part of that moral imperative. I told you about Anything comes between them. It need to be cast away immediately

01:05:51
In marriage, then Popeyes XI, Castic-Canoobie 1930, the family is more sacred than the state and children are to be raised in the security of their parents' love. So the state is sacred, is important, but the family is above the state.

01:06:11
Marital moral order. A marriage is ordered toward love and life. The Catholic Church rejects views that distort marriage such as cohabitation, adultery, divorce, and contraception. Humana Vitae, 1968. Each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life. And oftentimes I get questions about, well, how many kids am I supposed to have? 20? Well, first of all, who do you think you are for God to bless you 20 times? It's kind of a pretty presumption on your part, don't you think?

01:06:41
No, it's not a number game. Doesn't matter whether you have one kid or 16. What matters is this. The marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life. Who is the author of life? God. So what is that supposed to mean? It means that before every, each and every marital act, the spouses should go in prayer and ask God, do you want to bless us with a child? It's a conversation with God.

01:07:10
That's how they remain open to God's presence in their life. And it's God who decides whether it's the right time or the wrong time. And they need to listen. That's one of the most fundamental aspects being open. It doesn't mean, okay, whatever God says, we'll take. God wants us to use our reason, wants us to understand the situation we're in, what makes sense, what doesn't, and go to Him, unlike Adam,

01:07:40
Go to him and say, here's the situation, this is what dealing with. This is the budget, this is the work, this is the work. Should we have a kid now? And not presuming that we know everything. We don't. God knows. And then being compliant and accepting what God is going to do. And when a kid comes, it's a blessing. So it's a conversation with God. That's the important bit.

01:08:05
Marriage requires sacrificial love and fidelity. Since spouses become one flesh, they must act in unity and self-sacrifice. Pope Francis. Love endures all things, hopes all things. True marital love is an icon of God and conditional love. That is after the fall. The sacrificial bit is the consequences of the curses that God imposed on all of us because of original sin. And they're meant to bring us to Him. So marriage is sacrifice.

01:08:35
Simple as that. It's sacrifice. You will sacrifice of yourself and your spouse will sacrifice of themselves in order for the marriage to be successful. Marriage is a path of holiness. So that's the supernatural bit. These two bits are part of every natural marriage. This one is part of the supernatural. That's the sacramental bit. Marriage is not about self-gratification, but about leading each other to heaven. St. John Chrysostom, when husband and wife are united in marriage,

01:09:04
They are no longer seen as something earthly, but as the image of God Himself.

01:09:11
So that's the sacramental side. The fascinating thing is that when you read the lives of famous people who became Catholics, St. John Henry Newman, for instance, and many others, in almost every case, there was a Catholic family on their path to conversion.

01:09:37
They met at Catholic families.

01:09:40
So that's what St. Jean Christ is reflecting, is talking about, the image of God himself.

01:09:50
Head and heart, complimentary authority. Wives be subject to your husbands as the Lord. As to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body and is himself its savior. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Ephesians 5 22 25 Ladies, I'm gonna lead you in on a little secret.

01:10:20
Any good man, any good man doesn't want that.

01:10:28
He doesn't want that. What he wants is to able to be on a lake, in a boat, pretending to fish. But not really fishing. He basically wants to sit down and do nothing.

01:10:48
Good men don't look at this and go, whoa, I'm the boss now. Good men look at this and go, man, I have to do this. It's a chore. It's a cross to bear. It's not a gratification.

01:11:11
Paul compares the husband's role in a family to Christ's headship over the church, which is not domineering but sacrificial and self-giving. So this is an order of love, not an order of power. Man doesn't exercise power over his wife.

01:11:27
It's a structure of love, not of power.

01:11:32
Pope Pius XI cast a Kenobi. The unity of marriage established by God requires that the husband requires, notice the word, requires as he knew most of us would take off if we could. That the husband be the head of the wife and the family and that the wife be subject to her husband.

01:11:50
What does that mean in practical terms? It means that the wife should show deference to her husband, should show respect, and should show care for him, provided that he himself is learned and wise and sacrificial and loving.

01:12:11
However...

01:12:14
Pope Pius XI again continued,

01:12:41
For if the man is the head, the woman is the heart, and as he occupies the chief place in ruling, so she may and ought to claim for herself the chief place in love.

01:13:03
In practical terms, most often than not, the Holy Spirit will go to the wife and the mother in relationship to the good of the children, and will go to the man in relationship to the good of the family and the direction. And it's a complementary role between the two.

01:13:24
Okay, now the last bit. I want to talk about silence. The reason I'm talk about silence is because of the silence of Adam. And there is quite a bit of silence in marriage. Oftentimes people end up silent, not talking. So there is a typology of silence in the Bible. And there are six types of silence that you find in the scripture. There is the silence of interior disposition, receptivity, or union with God.

01:13:55
Example, Mary at the cross, Eve before Adam, when she saw him the first time. Mary at the foot of Christ. That silent is... that's a blessed silence. There is silence of sin or cowardice. Failure to protect, speak truth or witness. Adam during the fall. So oftentimes you hear in the scripture, and he listened to his wife, or he did what his wife wanted.

01:14:22
Scripture didn't mean by that that man should not listen to his wife.

01:14:30
What scripture meant was that in specific situations where the moral code is being threatened, it is the duty of the man to enforce it, even at the risk of his own life, not the duty of the woman. And so when he gives up, he listens to his wife and he let go of the moral code. That's what Adam did. That is a silence of sin or cowardice. So in your own family, I got to tell you one of the hardest things

01:14:58
So I was blessed with six girls and one boy. One of the hardest thing with my daughters was enforcing a dress code.

01:15:11
It's very hard in this society to enforce a modest dress code.

01:15:19
But if your daughter is walking out dressed immodestly and you do not speak, you're a coward.

01:15:30
Talking to the guys.

01:15:36
That's the silence of sin or cowardice. Silence of judgment or mystery. Divine silence expressing mystery or judgment. For instance, Christ before Pilate in Psalm 22. That silence of Christ is a silence of judgment.

01:15:54
The silence as preparation for revelation. It makes space for divine truth. Zachariah, Elijah, Christ writing in the dust when they brought that woman who was caught in adultery. He didn't say anything and he wrote in the dust that silence prepares for revelation. Silence is solidarity or compassion, accompaniment and sorrow. Job's friends, Mary's pondering heart.

01:16:22
And finally, eschatological silence. It's a cosmic pause before divine intervention as we see in Revelation where there was a silence for half an hour. And it's a hard thing to explain. Why am I bringing this up? Because it is within a family, within marriage, within a couple, it is not only important to manage the discourse so that they're both listening to each other with compassion, with love, with care.

01:16:51
with presence but it's also just as important to manage the silence. So don't give the cold shoulder. Don't go silent as a form of punishment. Don't use it as a tool to bully your spouse.

01:17:13
Be aware that that has a sinful structure. It's never a good thing.

01:17:21
studying your own silence where does it sit when you are silent what does it mean what are you saying when you're silent

01:17:32
And you'll notice there's quite a bit of work in the virtues to manage silence appropriately.

01:17:42
I remember at one point, would be sitting on the table and thinking to myself, okay, I talk too much, I talk all the time, I'm going be quiet. So I go on being quiet, half an hour in the middle of this. The kids will look at me and say, hey, dad, is something wrong? It's bothering them because they're not used to this, right? Well, obviously, I wasn't doing it right way. I wasn't doing it the way I should have been doing it, which is by being amiable.

01:18:10
and being charitable and being hopeful and being all those things I told you about. Instead of just sitting there like a pressed lemon, right? Showing a frustrated face, which obviously is getting them to kind of react nervously. So it takes, it's an art to be silent. It's not easy.

01:18:29
Alright. Silence in marriage, reflection. Silence can build or break communion in marriage. Is my silence reverent or resentful? Does my silence prepare the way for truth or does it avoid confrontation? Is my spouse's pain met with presence or withdrawal? Two different types of silences. Do I use silence to punish

01:18:59
or to pray.

01:19:02
Is our home filled with contemplative peace or emotional distance?

01:19:08
Let all that you do be done in love. 1 Corinthians 16, 14. Examine your silence. Does it mirror the silence of Christ or does it mirror the silence of Adam? And I bet you, many of us, tend to flip-flop between the two. But that self-reflection, knowing your vices, knowing your virtues, knowing where you are in the presence of God, where you have to work on, is the foundation for Christian living.

01:19:38
and for a good marriage. Okay, if you'd like more on silence, you can also grab this two-pager where I go through little bit more details, what I just told you about. It's a short read, but you don't have to.

01:19:54
Very well, that's all I had for tonight. have no idea how long I went, probably longer than I should.

01:20:01
Oh yeah, yeah, 20 minutes. So we'll take a break for those of you who need to leave and then we'll try and address some questions that you may have. Thank you.