On Marriage

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All right, good evening and welcome to this Bible study on marriage. We're now halfway through. So before I begin, how many of you are new?

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Okay, very good. were taking, I do recommend when you have a moment, if you're interested to go to the website and listen to the prior talks. But in essence, we are following what we call a recapitulative study of scripture, where we look at scripture as a pattern that applies to our lives. And I've explained in detail what recapitulation is and how

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and how it is a really important concept in Catholic theology. So I'm not gonna cover this. We have a pretty heavy set tonight again. So I'm not gonna cover that, but I do recommend that you do that. And we've essentially went through the garden and then moved over to the flood. And today we're going to look at Jacob and essentially as an anti-pattern of what marriage is supposed to be. It's essentially, we're gonna be talking about marital disorder. And yet how God,

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remains faithful to the covenant even through these moments or phases of our lives.

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I don't know why this is not working. Okay. So what did I open? Looks like I may have the wrong study. Second.

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You're

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Okay, that should be the right one.

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Huh, okay. Very good.

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So again, like I said, we are in talk number four. we are, I think by now you're used to the format, 55 minutes give or take, all right? And today is gonna be more take than give for you or me, vice versa. We'll have a five minute break and we'll go through a Q &A. My audience is adult Catholics and children is at the discretion of the parents.

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And then my style is direct, it's a two by four. I don't like ambiguity and my aim is Catholic living. I'm not forming theologians as I told you before. Okay, so why is that not, oh maybe I should do this, no this. Here we go. So if you're interested, these are the QR codes for the talk and if you want to, as the conversation goes, you can phone your questions so that you don't interrupt the flow.

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You don't have to do any of this. This is not mandatory, just in case you like using your phone or you're really addicted to your phone, so you have to be able to do something with your fingers while you're listening to some talk. I'll give you a chance to do that. All right, we're all good.

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All right, so please stand up. We're gonna start with our usual prayer. In the name of the Father, of the Son, of the Holy Spirit, Together. Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them 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.

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Grant that by the same Holy Spirit, we may truly wise and ever enjoy his consolations through Christ our Lord, amen. Please be seated.

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on marriage. again, please don't stress. Love babies. Yes.

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There you go.

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All right.

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So today we're going to cover divine curses in the Old Testament. This is a continuation of conversation on the covenant. And then I'm going to take a little detour and cover one key question that was asked last week that I don't think I covered as well as I should. And it's germane to the conversation we're talking about. And now I'm going to dive a little bit into faith and what is faith. And then finally we'll hit Jacob's discord. So since there are many of you who are new, I'm going to summarize.

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what we've already said about the covenant. So in the scriptures, the covenant is a very key concept. And in our Catholic faith, is so. Marriage is a covenant. And a mass celebrates the covenant, the new covenant that our Lord established. The covenant follows a very prescribed structure. The covenant is an agreement between two parties, a strong party and a weak party. So by definition, the covenant is not fair. All right?

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In the scriptures, the strong party is God, the weak party is us. In marriage, the strong party is God, the weak party is the groom and the bride. The strong party is the one who sets the conditions of the covenant. This is what the weak party must do. If the weak party complies and does what the covenant prescribes, the strong party will bless them. If they don't, the strong party will curse them. That's the structure.

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That's how God deals with us, that's how God deals with the whole world. The key concept, the key principle in the entire scripture is the covenant. If you don't get that, scripture becomes opaque. You won't understand it and it will confuse you. If you get that, things will start to fall in place. And again, on Corbono I have plenty, I have...

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In the main library called the Catholic Foundation Library, I have four or five talks that detail the covenant, that go over all the five covenants in the scripture. So that's the principle we're going to follow. Now, as part of this, the thing that trips people most often than not is this idea that God curses. It is not something that most people, most Catholic, most Christians today are familiar with or have even heard, and they're uncomfortable with this idea.

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which is why I've been showing you from scripture how that is indeed the case. And today I'm going to take a quick, brief coverage, panoramic view of the areas in the scriptures where you will find divine curses. And next time I will show you the areas in the New Testament where you would find divine curses. There's always this sort of...

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interesting idea that the God of the Old Covenant is the God of the Wrath and Anger and the God of the New Covenant is the God of Mercy and Compassion and that is absolutely not supported by the Scriptures. 70 % of everything we know about Hell is taught by our Lord. It's not in the Old Testament. 70%. So that's a fantasy. It has nothing to do with the reality of Scriptures.

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So I am not going to obviously cover all this. I am going to just show you very briefly all the books where you will see consistently divine curses. One thing that might trip you is that, for instance, in the New Testament, our Lord in two very specific passages speak to the Pharisees and he says to them, woe to you. The language he uses seems to be

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without a subject, woe to you. Therefore, it doesn't imply that God is doing any cursing. But that is missing the point because the Jews were not allowed to say the divine name. And in order to get around that, they would use a sentence without a subject.

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So, in Genesis, obviously the curse upon the serpent and Adam and Eve, then the curse on Cain, the curse on Canaan by Noah, the ten plagues of Egypt, divine punishment, the curse upon idolaters and the ten commandments, God's promise to drive out the Canaanites and curse those who oppose Israel, in Leviticus, blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience, that is a blood-curdling chapter.

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read it with care. That's all I would have to say. The curses are beyond what you might expect them to be. And likewise in Leviticus chapter 20, numbers 12, 16, 21, 22, 24, you will see there's way too many for me to cover. I just want you to understand that it is everywhere. In the book of Deuteronomy, in the book of Joshua, in the book of Judges, in 1st and 2nd Samuel.

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and first and two kings and one and two chronicles in the Psalms you would not think that the curses are in the Psalms they are there and it's not one or two Psalms that you would find these curses in the book of Proverbs in the book of Isaiah in Jeremiah in Lamentations in Ezekiel in Daniel in Hosea in Amos and Micah and Nahum and Habakkuk and Zechariah and Malachi

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every single prophet, the entire prophetic work. So that deck will be available when the talk is made available on the site. So can feel free to download it and go check all these references if you don't believe me. All right. Having said that, I want to go back to this one key question.

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If you live according to the marital covenant, God will bless you. If you don't, God will curse you. That's the principle I've been presenting. So now this basically invites a question. The question is, can be seen in this form. I know a Catholic family that has lived faithfully to the marital covenant, yet they're their child or children, and then you can pick. Left the church.

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adopted an immoral stance, passed on in some dramatic conditions, passed on from a long sickness, and on and on the list goes. How could that be? That's the question. It's a very good question, and it deserves an answer.

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Now, I am going to give you several elements for this answer. It may not be complete and we can take it on in a Q &A. And if you have questions about what I'm going to say, please use your phone or jot them down. The first thing I want to make very clear is that we have to beware of Job's friend's syndrome. In the book of Job, he is a suffering servant.

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and his three so-called friends come about to basically convince him of what seemingly I'm telling you. You're suffering. All these woes happen to you. It must be because of your sin. And you can see it here in Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar have a very simplistic theological model. God blesses the righteous and punishes the wicked. Therefore Job must have sinned. It's very similar to what I'm telling you.

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They repeatedly urge him to confess hidden sin, believing that his immense suffering must be deserved punishment.

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So right there there is a logical inconsistency that they commit. I'm going to come back to it in a minute So here are examples Eliphaz as I have seen those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same Bill dad if your children have sinned against him he delivered them into the power of their transgression and Then so far know then that God exacts of you less than your guilt deserves

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So they're very forceful in that thinking. Now.

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They're not entirely false, but there is a logical inconsistency. Now, scripture does affirm that God is just, but their application is presumptuous and it's reductive. They assume knowledge of God's will based on outward circumstance. That's the first mistake. When I say you have to be faithful to the covenant, it is all in the heart. It is in your heart. Outward activities

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mean nothing to your sanctification. They're there for others. You could serve the poor, you could feed the hungry, you could raise the dead, and you can go to hell. I don't mean that as a swear word. I mean it literally.

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You can do all these things, it doesn't mean anything.

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Because the fruit of your spiritual life are your virtues, not the outward activities.

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So therefore, we cannot judge based on outward appearances. This is why when the church is trying to determine whether somebody should be declared a saint, they ask of God a sign.

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Because they don't know what is the interior life of that person. They can approximate, they can get a sense, they can think that they are on the trajectory, but at end of the day it is God's.

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So they assume that because of this is that all of that is happening to Job that he must have been cursed conversely. They would have assumed that prior to that he lived a sinless life because he was blessed. You see the mistake goes both ways.

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You can look at a family and you can think, oh, look at that, the husband, the wife love each other, the kids are great, everything is going well, they must be blessed by God.

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That's the mistake they make. You don't know that.

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They reduce God's justice to immediate cause and effect. God doesn't work that way. And they ignore Job's protestation of innocence and the deeper mystery of redemptive suffering. And here's the key thing.

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Well, eventually curses will lead to suffering, but curses are not conjoined to suffering.

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In fact, in most instances curses feel fine. They're very pleasant. It's the blessings that cause suffering.

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We have the wrong idea about curses and blessings most of the time.

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So to immediately imply that if you're suffering, you're cursed, or if you are happy, you're blessed, is a simplistic argument, which is exactly what they were doing. And that's exactly what I told you not to do when you're trying to reverse engineer somebody's state by looking at their situation. Don't do that. You don't know. So suffering can be due to sin.

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Suffering can be due to manifest God's glory and suffering can be due to participation in Christ's redemptive suffering. You don't know that.

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So therefore, that's the first thing we should not do.

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Now, what am I doing? In this study, what am I doing? I'm fulfilling a prophetic function. What is the role of a prophet? And by the way, we are all called to be priest, prophet and king. So I'm not being presumptuous here. But what is it exactly that the prophet is supposed to do? The common idea is the prophet is one who can foretell the future.

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But if you study the scriptures, you will see that in most cases, most of the prophets did not foretell any specific historical event. It's rare that that happens. Isaiah did. When he spoke of the Persian king, Cyrus, who he named him by name 100 years before Cyrus became king.

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But it's very rare that you will see that. What is the role of the prophet? The role of the prophet is, as the catechism teaches us in 785, the lay faithful are made to share in the priestly, prophetic, and kingly office of Christ. They have therefore in the church and in the world their own assignment in the mission of the whole people of God. They are called to be witnesses to Christ in all circumstances and at the very heart of the community mankind.

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To be a prophet is to witness to Christ. And how do you do that? It is to bear witness to the truth because Christ is the truth. So to be a prophet is to remind the people of God of the truth of God.

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That's what I'm doing. Now, if you go back and read the scriptures, most prophets did that. They would go to the kings of Israel or Judah. They would go to the people in charge and they will say, go back to what God wants you to do. Obey the covenant. If you don't, these things will happen to you.

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When you read what they're saying and if you understand the covenant you go, yeah, this is bread and butter. This is what they were supposed to say, that's what you have to say. This is it. That's what I'm doing. It doesn't mean that because I told you that if you are faithful to the covenant, God will bless you, and if you're not, God will curse you, that I know how to interpret what happens in your own life. I don't. I'm just the messenger.

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God is the one who judges.

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Okay. So the prophetic mission involves being witness to the truth, not predicting the future, but speaking and living God's word courageously, often in difficult or counter-cultural contexts. Okay.

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Here's the other logical notion that you have to kind of contend with if you assume that God is not...

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going to curse someone. That God is not faithful to the covenant. If God is not going to curse, then either God is blessing you all the time, or what? Or he's indifferent. He's like, not blessing and not cursing.

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But you know God cannot be indifferent. That is not possible. And you also know that in order for you to attain to salvation, you need grace. You need grace before, you need grace during, you need grace after every action you take that leads to salvation. Without grace, you can do nothing. What is grace?

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What is this created action of grace? It's a blessing.

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So if God is not blessing you, He's withholding grace. And if He's withholding grace, what is that?

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If he withholds grace, you cannot attain to salvation. Do you understand that? It's not like it's optional. You can still do it on your own. That's Pelagianism. It's a heresy. You can't save yourself, no matter what you do. Without grace, you cannot attain to salvation.

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So if God is withholding grace.

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It's a curse.

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Now you think that this is harsh. Saint Bonaventure, I don't know if you know about him, mean how much you know about him, Saint Bonaventure was a very mild and meek saint, very gentle. And then when he studied this question of grace, especially with Pharaoh, he asked this question, God's

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Acts of grace for us, the created grace of God, the actions that He creates for us, are finite, because our life here is finite.

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There are situations, as with Pharaoh, where God withholds his grace. He stops giving these actions of grace to someone. And then St. Bonhamature asks the following logical question. Well, if God stops giving them grace, why does he keep them alive?

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And he answers to increase their pain and health.

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If nothing else, what I just told you right now should show you the distance between where we are in our Catholic theology and where someone like Saint Bonaventure was. And he mentions it without explaining. He doesn't spend time arguing. He assumes it was well understood.

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Okay.

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Now, like I said, blessings and curses are counterintuitive. Blessings are about what's required for salvation. Curses are about what our fallen nature wants. So more often than not, a curse is what you want.

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It's where your heart yields naturally.

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If you are questioning or wondering what I just said, watch next time you go to Mass. Watch the people inside the church during Mass and then watch them outside the Mass. And tell me which between these two states will give you the sense that they're alive. When they're inside the church, when they're outside, talking about things that really don't matter.

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Our nature tends down because we're fallen.

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And so curses usually feel very pleasant. And blessings don't.

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Interference from larger societal issues can also play a role, like in case of Lot's fate. He was in that city, he was living still a faithful life. The whole city was messed up and he had to suffer. But that suffering wasn't attributable to him failing the covenant. It was attributable to the fact that society at large failed the covenant.

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And so in Akita, which is a continuation of Fatima, our lady in her apparition told the sister, forgot her name, she's obviously Japanese sister, I forgot her name, told her that if essentially things don't change, God will punish the world, fire will rain down from heaven, and the good will die with the bad.

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So in that good dying with the bad, there is the mystery of suffering of Christ. He died for the bad. is the redemptive suffering therefore is built in there. But there is also the fact that we are all, like St. John Paul II would say, we are all responsible for each other. The solidarity extends beyond the family. And therefore,

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the society at large impacts the family. Hence, it may not be the case that someone is suffering because of what happens inside their family. could be because of what happened at society at large, and their suffering may be redemptive. Like I said, you cannot reverse engineer someone's suffering, and be careful not to judge.

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So in St. Faustina's diary, entry 1533, Jesus expresses his inability to endure the sins of a nation any longer, implying impending chastisement. I saw, this is her speaking, I saw the anger of God hanging heavy over Poland. Jesus said to me, I cannot suffer that country any longer. Do not tie my hands, my daughter. I understood that if it had not been for the prayers of souls pleasing to God, that whole nation would have...

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already been chastised. And guess what happened during the Second World War? Poland

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first ceased to exist and then the territory of Poland was shifted by one third to the east.

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Okay, and this was written before.

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So, in summary, we're called to obey the covenant. That's our duty. If you're married, you obey the covenant. That's your duty.

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God is active at all times and what our life will be is in His hands but He is always faithful to the promises He made and if we persevere in our obedience He will ultimately bless us. God will not be

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unfaithful. He is always true to himself. But if asks us to be faithful to the covenant, he is not bound by the covenant. He can do whatever he wants. We are bound by the covenant. But he is bound by the word he said in the covenant that he will bless us, provided we persevere.

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Alright, that now leads me to this question of faith. Why? One of the most common ways in which God curses us is through the darkening of reason. Darkening our reason is one of the most common ways. We saw it with Pharaoh, basically hardening the heart. That's what it means.

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What does it mean to harden our heart? It's to stand, it's to take a stand contrary to God's will.

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Here I stand.

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So, I will point out to you that many of us tend to do that. We do it in a variety of ways. We become, to use the Old Testament lingo, we become righteous. I'm sure if you examine yourselves, there will be one or two topics on which you may be unwilling to budge. Even in St. Michael the Archangel were to come down and tell you otherwise.

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you will not budge. I'll throw a few. I don't want to get into an argument with you, so I'm not gonna discuss them. I don't really care much about them, but I'm gonna throw a few out there. The most common one, vaccines.

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See how the room went still?

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There are some who are convinced one way or the other, I don't care which way you lean, it's not my business. Some are absolutely convinced you must use all the vaccines or if you don't vaccinate you're crazy and others will think that if you vaccinate you're nuts. Both of these are symptoms of heartening of the heart. When you are unable to leave yourself open to God's will, which may be contrary to yours,

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you're heartening your heart. So the devil can tickle you with these things especially when you are scientifically, socially, psychologically, emotionally right. Especially when you're right. Why? Because he's getting you habituated to the notion that if you're right you must stand no matter what.

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Now, the one area where you must stand no matter what is in morality and theology. Those things taught by the Church in morality and theology, you must stand no matter what. But other than that, beware of the hardness of heart. It goes contrary to obedience, goes contrary to humility, it goes contrary to God's will.

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Now, let's talk about faith. Most

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We live in a confused time. then, all right, I'm gonna derogate from what I usually do. I'm gonna ask you, and this is not a test, just something, it will help me better orient this conversation. What do you think faith is?

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You must think that faith is something, otherwise you would not go to the church. What do you think faith is? Yes.

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Belief sounds very good. It's very good. Believe something without seeing it. Yeah, that's absolutely true. So that's how faith is operationally, right? Okay, yes.

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Okay, very good. Thank you. Using words are really important. Anyone else would like to wager a definition? Yes.

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Okay, very good, absolutely. Thank you. Let me ask you this question.

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Which of these two statements you're more willing to adhere and then just be honest, alright? Don't fall into, oh, how should I answer? Because I know how that works. Which of these two statements feels stronger to you? Two plus two equals four or God exists?

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Okay, to me it's 2 plus 2 equals 4. Without a doubt. Because that's the nature of faith. Faith requires reason. Faith is primarily, primarily super added to your reason. It requires the will, but it's added to your reason.

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When Christ said Amen, Amen, when he say Amen, the word Amen in English means nothing much. But in Arabic, because we are inherited from Aramaic, it's the same word, it's the same root as to believe. Omen and Amin, same words, right? They mean Amen. Amin is Amen. Okay. What he meant in the Hebrew, when he says Amen, he means certainty.

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In Hebrew it means to be certain.

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That's what it means. Now why did he repeat it twice? Because in Hebrew there are no superlatives. If I want to say something that is good, I mean I'll say it's good. If I say it's better, in Hebrew I will say it's good good. And if I want to it's the best, I will say it is good good good. And we do that. There is that bit of Hebraism left in our liturgy right before the consecration.

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when we say holy, holy, holy. Why do we say holy three times? Not because of the Trinity, it's because of the Hebrew. It means the holiest.

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And that's why you had the Holy, which was the temple. The Holy of Holies is the reserved room in which you would find the Holy, Holy, Holy, the holiest. So when he said twice, he really means you better be absolutely certain, like two plus two equals four. That's the nature of faith. It requires your reason. If your reason is not illuminated,

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You do not have faith.

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Do understand what I'm saying? You are not saved by your action. You're saved by your faith.

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through grace.

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It is your understanding that saves you.

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That's what faith is. here. Faith involves three elements, the intellect, the will, and grace. Faith is an act of the intellect ascending to the divine truth by command of the will moved by God through grace. Charism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 155. So, it's an act of the intellect ascending. Why do I have to ascend? Because at the end of the day, it is something that my natural reason cannot.

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grasp. Hence I have to ascend to it. What moves me to do that? It's my will. What moves the will to do that? It's God's grace. So God's grace is like the energy that goes into the tank.

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Your will is your foot on the pedal. And ascending to is the direction where you're going.

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But without that ascent, you're going in circles. You're going nowhere.

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Faith engages the intellect. We ascend to the truth that God has revealed and faith seeks to understand. Faith seeks to understand. Many of us have been infected by the Protestant heresy. The worst thing that Luther did was switch the faith from a faculty of reason to a pure faculty of the will. I take Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and I'm saved. That's it.

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There is nothing for me to understand. There is nothing for me to grasp. I just make that act of the will and I'm done.

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And then we live in an area where a lot of Protestants have some of the Catholic understanding of the faith and lot of the Catholics have some of the Protestant understanding of the faith because I think it's the will.

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The will is secondary, it's there to move reason, but you've got to understand. So, faith does not come from human reasoning alone, because divine truths surpass human truth, and that's why it is a gift. It's a gift super added to your reason at baptism. And then you have to cultivate it. At baptism you're capable of, but God is not going to force you. So if you're not studying, if you're not thinking,

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pondering, trying to understand, you're not going to get anywhere. Now, by studying, don't mean sit down and be a theologian and open the books and learn Latin.

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There were farmers who had a deep theology just by understanding the works of God through their garden.

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I'm not saying you have to be a theologian, you have to be reflecting, using your reason to understand God and His purpose in your life.

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Okay.

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The role of the will. Faith requires the will because the will commands the intellect to ascend and the belief is a free personal decision to trust God. So your reason illuminated by grace makes a case for God and his presence in your life. Your will then gives you the power to ascend to it and then you believe. So faith and belief are

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Distinct. Faith is truly the understanding of divine realities. Belief is acting on those understandings. So really, belief is engaging your faith and your hope.

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In Vatican 1, Dei Ophilius, we believe not because of the intrinsic truth seen by reason, but because of the authority of God Himself. At the end of the day, it is God and His authority that makes us believe. In other words, really the nature of God, by which and from which all grace come to us, make us believe.

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Grace is essential. It moves both intellect and will toward God. Without grace, we're dead in the water. We don't have gas. We're sitting in a car, roasting in the sun, going nowhere. Without grace, we cannot make a true act of faith. So faith is a supernatural virtue. It's a gift of God. A gift of God is synonymous with grace, a supernatural virtue infused by Him. Okay.

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think of it this way.

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In the intellect, the role in faith, the intellect ascends, not assets, ascends to divine truth, and it's moved by the will. The will commands the intellect to ascend, and it's moved by grace. And grace moves the will and intellect, and it's moved by God.

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So the faith requires your intellect, your will, and grace. so faith is a free, reasonable, and graced response to God's self-revelation. Now I'm going to do something that I did a few times before. I'm going show you that this idea, this principle, this pattern of faith exists elsewhere. And it exists, in fact, in math. And I am going to give you a simple example. And relax, it doesn't require a lot of math.

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It's pretty basic. But it's interesting because I'm going to show you something. You'll follow my argument. You'll understand it. But you can't understand the conclusion. You can't grasp it. It remains beyond your grasp, which is the structure of faith. You can understand the argument for God, but you can't grasp God in your intellect. He remains outside of it because God nature is divine.

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and we need a divine mind to understand a divine being. So, here is an interval 0 to 1. So the open brackets mean exclude 0 and 1.

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Alright, so I'm going to ask you this question. Find the smallest number. What's the smallest number in the open interval between 0 and 1? So you might go at 0.1. And I might say, what about 0.01? Or you say, okay, this is the smallest. If you say this is the smallest.

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What about 0.001?

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and 0001.

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There is no smallest number.

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And you can see, you followed me here, right? You can repeat this argument yourself. You can say, this is the smallest number. You just insert another zero right between the zero and the first digit, and you have a smaller one. And you can keep doing this. So you can see your reason ascends to the whole argument, but when you think about there is no smallest number, your mind goes tilt.

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Why? Because reality around us has always the smallest thing.

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All our experience bears the idea there's a smallest thing. So we're not constructed to understand the lack of a smallest thing. It just doesn't work. But reason led you here, and you ascend to this. You agree there is no smallest thing, but you're always going to be uncomfortable about it. You'll never be comfortable because it's not like two plus two equals four.

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Touch that. You can't touch no smallest number.

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In that sense, faith works exactly the same way. You understand the steps, you don't understand the conclusion. You believe because you trust the rules of math.

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So, Jesus Christ is God and man. Here's the statement. God is omnipotent. He can do everything. He created man. He can provide the seed for creating a body. He can deliver that seed to fertilize an egg. He can create the human soul. He does it in all other cases. Jesus has two natures and two wills.

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You can understand each of those steps, you can ascend to them, you cannot understand how somebody can have two natures and two wills. Because there's nothing in our experience that work that way. You know, when we say Jesus has two natures and two wills, people think, oh yeah, I get that. Understand this, we are one person, yeah? A person, a human person has what? A body and a soul. Therefore, if you have a body and a soul, you have a person.

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Yes? No.

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Jesus is one person. One person. Not two persons. One person. Therefore, His human body and His human soul are not a person.

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Do understand that? No. There you go. You see the pattern in math and the pattern in faith are very similar. You reach a conclusion that your reason can't grasp. But that's okay. Every other step led you to it. You trust the foundation, the whole structure behind it, and you accept it. Now, in the case of math, you accept it purely logically. In the case of the faith,

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You need grace. It is grace that makes you ascend to it. Without it, you

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Alright.

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You believe because you trust that God is all God, that He doesn't deceive nor can be deceived. That's why you trust. But it's grace that enables you to do that. Without grace you can do nothing. Now I hope you start to understand why remaining in a state of grace is so important.

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All right.

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Oh yeah, I forgot a step. Now, when I take all of this and see it in the life of Jacob, anyone here doesn't know anything about Jacob in the scripture? It's okay if you don't, because this will help me figure out what I'm supposed to do. Okay, you all know? All right, very good. Thank you. Thank you for your honesty. That helps me. Because otherwise I'm going to assume, and I'm just going to go a lot faster. So let's talk about Jacob.

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Jacob is the son of Abraham, the son of Isaac. He comes, obviously, after Noah. And he is the one who will be called Israel.

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Here's his life.

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I kind of

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I struggle with Jacob. I love Isaac. Isaac is my favorite Old Testament, him and actually Shem. They're my favorite Old Testament guys. Noah is also not too bad. And Melchizedek. Well, there's a bunch. But anyway, Jacob is not one of them. He's not one of them.

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Alright, first he deceives his older brother to get the blessings from his dad. And then being afraid, he runs away. And he goes and works for Laban, who is essentially a guy living in the area from which Abraham came. So he went back there as far from Esau as possible, and then he lived there, and while he was there, he fell in love with Rachel.

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Laban had two daughters, Leah and Rachel. He fell in love with Rachel. And he wanted to marry her. And Laban, being also a conniver, said, yes. So it's the conniver deceiving the conniver. God has a sense of irony. And when he walks into the tent, instead of Rachel, there's Leah, her older sister. What does Jacob do?

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He goes, well.

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And then the following day he tells her, he asks her, what did you just see of me? He goes, you know what? Work for me another seven years and I'll give you the second. So he does. And after seven years, he then marries Rachel as a second wife. Now he has two. God said, a man and a woman. Right? So he is in violation of the covenant.

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That covenant is universal, remember I told you that. It's a natural law, applies to everyone. There are no exceptions.

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God sees that Leah is unloved and opens her womb and Rachel then doesn't have any kids. What does she do? She makes the situation better. She gives her husband her maid. And what does Jacob do? Oh well.

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And now he went from one to two to three.

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Layer becomes incensed and well...

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messes it even further. She gives him her mate.

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And now he has four.

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That's Jacob. That's Israel.

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And then Rachel steals Lebanon's household gods. When Jacob leaves, she goes obviously with him. This is the woman he loves. This is the one he fell in love with. And sitting on the camel, she literally is sitting on pagan gods that she stole from her father's house.

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And as a result, family rivalry will intensify among wives and children. But still, God reaffirms the covenant with him. Because God is always faithful, even for now.

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And then despite all this disorder, he becomes the father of the 12 tribes of Israel. However, I would argue that had he done the right thing, I mean, first of all, had Abraham done the right thing, we would not have the mess we have right now in the Middle East, which is between his sons. And had Jacob done the right thing,

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we would have avoided quite a bit of human tragedy.

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That's his life.

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So we're going to go through a few questions. Why did Jacob accept Leah? Walks into the tent, he knows this is not the woman I love. Why did he not step back out?

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Well, there are good reasons. Good reasons. Jacob was deceived by Laban after working seven years for him. I mean, I'm sorry, after working seven years so that he could marry Rachel. But he was deceived.

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Culturally, refusal may have dishonored Leah or brought shame to the family. So he had good reasons, see, proper reasons, honorable reasons to do this. And I told you before, we tend to hide behind our virtues.

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What's the right thing to do? You don't step back outside the tent. That's dishonorable. To the woman, you're rejecting her. Maybe nobody else will marry her. And to her father, to her family, you're creating a huge strife. You must do the right thing. You must be man enough to do the right thing. You see this language of honor?

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and he may have believed himself bound by custom or duty. So he said nothing. Adam, when Eve presented the fruit, said nothing.

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Abraham, when Sarah presented her maid to him, said nothing.

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In marriage,

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A man must... his role is to always be faithful to the covenant. We saw it with Noah. Noah did one thing. He was obedient to God. What God said, he did. That's the role of a man. He has to protect the family and that's what he's called to do. And a woman has to be godly. And she has to also be faithful to the covenant in her own ways.

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by not caving into social pressure.

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I remember once years ago, I don't remember who someone from a community invited me to their wedding.

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Oh, it was a grand wedding, alright. As far as I'm concerned, it was sinful.

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But they were following customs. That's what they do. Yes, you're following customs, sinful ones.

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And typically it's the woman who drags the man in there.

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Don't get me wrong, the guys have other issues. I'm just talking about that side. Obedience to the covenant requires the cross. Even if you were deceived or if your action will dishonor or shame your family of origin or her family of origin, you cannot acquiesce to human customs that contradict God's moral law. You can't.

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It takes guts, takes courage, it takes training.

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And then Jacob.

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for whatever reason, keep them.

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So then why did Jacob take Rachel? Seven years later, you're already married, you have a wife for seven years.

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Put yourself in Leah's shoes for a second. You're married to a man who for seven years keeps glancing at your sister. How does that make you feel?

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Great guy, isn't he?

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That's the reality of what we're dealing with here. And then seven years later...

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So now if you think about it, either he was married to Leah, that marriage is real, and therefore he is now in a situation of adultery with our sister, or he was living in adultery with her, and now he's married to her.

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Choose your poison.

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This is Jacob.

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So, is human love always in conformity with God's will? You fall in love with this woman. You love her. You love her. You love her.

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Is it always in conformity with God's will?

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Obedience to the covenant requires the cross. Again, can't let go of that.

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I love that, by the way.

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Is it a boy or a girl? He's agreeing with me, Yeah. So a man may feel a romantic love, but that love must be disciplined by reason, virtue, and grace. If this love leads him into lust, adultery, scandal, or idolatry, it is disordered, even if it feels right. In 1 Thessalonians 4, 3, 5, for this is the will of God, your sanctification that you abstain from unchastity.

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not in the passion of lust like heathen who do not know God. And St. John Paul, in Love and Responsibility, a person's rightful due is to be treated as an object of love, not as an object for use. Now, there is a really key important ingredient here that I want to bring up again to avoid ending up in the camp of Job's brothers. I am not trying to tell you that

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unless you live a saintly life with no sin.

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Your

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You're wretched.

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The emphasis isn't on what you do or don't do. The emphasis is on the ascent of your reason. What is it that you really would like to do? That is absolutely key in God's eyes.

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You might come from a situation where for whatever reason you fell into some habitual sin. But is your reason consenting to that sin? Or is your reason sorrowful and wish you were not in that sin? There's a big difference between these two. What I'm talking about is your reason.

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You can't ascend to falsehood, but your action, you might fail. Does that make sense?

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So there are two extremes we must avoid. One is the extreme of laxity. Anything goes. God loves you. Doesn't matter. Do whatever you want. Another one is extreme rigor. Unless you live without any sin.

01:00:07
Then you're damned.

01:00:10
Scripture shows us it's neither this or that. Jacob fell. But God didn't abandon him. He still blessed him. He still called him Israel. He still renewed the covenant with him. He still established it with him in spite of all his sins.

01:00:29
Saints who loved but had to let go. Saint Francis of Assisi gave up potential marriage to follow Christ. Saint Rita of Cassia submitted to a troubled marriage out of obedience. Personally, I think she could have had an annulment, but that's a different story. Saint Therese of Lisieux felt human affections, yet offered them to God in purity. And Saint John Paul II, as a young man, had strong emotions and attachments, but entrusted them to the Lord as he discerned celibacy. So there are times where you need to let go.

01:01:02
Love in itself is good, but it must be rightly ordered. A man's love for a woman does not automatically conform to God's will simply because it feels deep or sincere. It must be purified by grace, ordered by reason and faith, confirmed through prayer and discernment, tested by time, virtue, and the cross.

01:01:23
So if you read these things, ordered by reason and faith, confirmed through prayer and discernment, tested by time, virtue and the cross, a lot of people who live out there would look at this as a curse. Way too much.

01:01:40
Especially if you're on, you know, if they're on, you know, in situations where all they want, what they're cared for is the fast and easy. This is, whoa.

01:01:50
You see?

01:01:56
Now, Rachel stole Laban's household idols. Welcome to the occult, in your family. She stole them, called the terafim. They were used for divination, or as a token of inheritance, these little statuettes. Their theft and concealment showed a continued influence of idolatry within Jacob's household.

01:02:27
and she stole them, didn't tell her husband, nearly got him killed. And she swore that she had nothing to do with them when she literally was sitting on them.

01:02:44
That's the woman he loved. Lea had nothing to do

01:02:53
Her concealment of the idols, ironically, leads to silence and spiritual bareness.

01:03:03
She couldn't conceive and she died.

01:03:11
She never reached Hebron, the land of covenantal rest. She was buried outside. But not Leia.

01:03:27
Rachel's act of stealing.

01:03:32
highlights the spiritual confusion and compromise that had taken root in Jacob's household. And you think, oh, we don't do this. We don't have statues. We don't need statues. We don't need statues. Do know how many Catholics read their horoscope?

01:03:48
It's the same principle. Reading your horoscope and giving into them is highly sinful. Don't do that. Read how many, do know how many in my culture, the Lebanese, without even thinking, these are devout women who go to mass and say the rosary, drink their coffee and then switch it around, turn it around, do divination in the little cups and they think it's funny. This is exactly what Rachel thought.

01:04:15
She just enjoyed the Terafin the same way they enjoy these little cups. And they see horses and butterflies and I don't know what else they see in them. And they give credence to it. Those are women who go to church and say the rosary. you see, a life that is not illuminated by your intellect, you don't understand what you're doing, you fall into habits. Your faith becomes cultural.

01:04:43
You do stuff because that's what you're supposed to become, like a car wash Catholic. You get your car to the car wash, sit in on neutral, and then sit and just enjoy the ride. That's how they do it.

01:04:58
How many people knock on wood?

01:05:02
Do you understand what you're doing when you're knocking on wood?

01:05:09
or this and that happened, knock on wood.

01:05:14
Do you know how?

01:05:18
Weird, that is.

01:05:23
You see, we are all full of these contradictions, which is why I chose Jacob. We're all full of contradictions. We all want to do the right thing and we fall. We all fall short of the grace of God. None of us, none of us is above that.

01:05:46
Okay. So.

01:05:51
Nevertheless, be careful with this stuff. It destroys. It destroys families.

01:06:00
So her heart remained tethered to her past. There was no action of purification on her part to sort of really be joined together to her husband.

01:06:17
And so many cases, so many cases we stick, we hold to things that hamper that union and marriage. Not initially, initially everything is beautiful and it's roses and you know, butterflies. Later on, few years later in the marriage where these things come back, they come back and then they can become an argument. Why? Because we want to harden our hearts, because we are going to stick by

01:06:47
the things that are important to us. Because those things that are important to us, which are really not important at all, become more important in our own salvation.

01:06:59
Rachel was the beloved wife, but in this moment Leah becomes a more faithful figure. She never touched the idols. Rachel instead concealed them, literally and spiritually, by sitting on them as if trying to keep two allegiances, one to Jacob's God and one to her father's world. Rachel introduces spiritual confusion and compromise into his household. Her heart remained tethered to its pagan ways and yet from the outside nobody could tell.

01:07:26
She was dressed modestly. She behaved properly. She was a fine woman. There was absolutely nothing wrong with her behavior.

01:07:42
So the secretive act reveals much about the disorder of divided loyalties within the marriage and the household, which is why it's so important to have this idea of a moral imperative shared by the husband and the wife. I have another series of talk I told you about this called the 7%, where I discuss this notion of moral imperative in far more details. And I would recommend you actually listen to them. There's quite a bit you can learn from it. OK.

01:08:09
What happened to her, like I said, because she did what she did, God closed her womb and she was no longer able to conceive.

01:08:22
And then because of that, there was a domino effect with the maids and the whole breakdown of the family. Watch how one little secretive thing destroys a family.

01:08:37
So why did Jacob accept the maid? And notice where I put the responsibility all along, not on the woman, on the man. He's ultimately responsible for all this mess.

01:08:49
Why did he listen? All he needed to say was no.

01:08:56
No to Leia. No to taking these stupid statues. No to the maids. No.

01:09:06
Was he acting like a man or like a wet noodle?

01:09:16
So, the war of the maids. Rachel can't conceive. She's been eaten by jealousy. Not because Lea is rubbing it in her face. Lea is a very gentle woman, but because of her own inability. And so what does she do? She resorts to the maid business. Hey, take my maid. Think about it. You're the maid. How does that make you feel? Loved, cherished, cared for?

01:09:48
What are you exactly? You are, what do we call them today in this amazing metaphors and allegories that we use to cover our sins? Yes, we have these fancy words, surrogate.

01:10:06
What's a surrogate mother? What is that exactly? It's adultery. You understand? That's what it is. It's nothing short of adultery. Which is why it's unacceptable to the Church.

01:10:24
We couch them in these fancy terminology. Yeah, we want to give women the right to choose. What is that? Killing babies. That's what it is.

01:10:40
Anytime, anytime you hear these fancy metaphors

01:10:47
on it. There are statues being hidden somewhere. There are pagan gods being hidden somewhere.

01:10:56
So.

01:11:00
The maids are being used in a war between the two wives. They're used. They're objects that are used to satisfy someone's ego.

01:11:16
Of course we don't do that, do we now?

01:11:23
Have you been to a soccer match involving kids?

01:11:30
I was shocked when I brought, I don't remember which of my kids we brought to a soccer game. The kid must have been three or four, couldn't care less about soccer. They couldn't even see the ball. They would just stand looking at it whizzing by. like, oh, that's nice. I had to sign, there was a whole declaration I had to sign. You'll not scream at the parents. You will not scream at the coach. You will not bite the coach. You will not kick the coach. You're just like, what is this?

01:11:58
I'm walking in a civil war.

01:12:03
What are the kids in those situations? Are they really there to play soccer or are there to tickle the parents' pride and vanity?

01:12:16
What about the mothers who take their kids from ballet to music to this to that to that and the other? What do we call these kids? There's a word that they use for these kids. They're there to just be on display for the mother's vanity and pride.

01:12:39
We don't do that? Oh yeah, we do. Big time.

01:12:43
We do it with our cars, with our homes.

01:12:50
with everything we own, with our phones.

01:12:58
Oh, he has this phone.

01:13:03
It's a social status to have a phone. It's the funniest thing.

01:13:12
We do the same thing. We do it with people, we do it with kids, we do it with objects, we do it... So again, you can look at this, you have two ways of looking at this. One, looking at this and saying, oh no, I will never do that. This is horrible what they're doing. I'm so much better than them. It's like the Pharisee in the back, right? In the front. God, I want to thank you for being not like this guy in the back. I'm so much better than him. I fast, I tithe, I am righteous.

01:13:41
You can have that attitude or you can go, huh.

01:13:46
I'm part of the club. God have mercy on me.

01:13:53
So.

01:13:56
Love is replaced by emotional manipulation and control, permitted by Jacob's silence and compliance.

01:14:07
The descent and strife is a mirror image of the descent and strife, I'm sorry, the descent and strife of the children, especially when they try to sell Joseph, that descent and strife is nothing more than the mirror image of the descent and strife between the mothers. Therefore, one of the key ways in which you see these curses is that it's not that the kids are cursed because of the parents' sin. That doesn't happen, but it is the action of the kids that highlight.

01:14:38
The curse is because it breaks the parents' hearts. Because they are breaking God's heart.

01:14:47
Alright, so how does God respond to all of this mess?

01:14:53
It's a messy situation. How does he respond? God remains faithful to his covenant, which he reaffirms with Jacob. He changes his name to Israel. He blesses all four women.

01:15:08
and he gives them children.

01:15:11
God's grace works through human weakness to advance salvation history. Marital disorder does not overturn divine fidelity. And that is consoling. Which is why I go back to what I told you last time. If you can just do what God commands you to do. Even if you're irascible, even if you have a temper, even if you are weak, even if you have all these other issues.

01:15:40
as long as you're doing what he asks you to do, because he asks you to do it.

01:15:47
You're being a change. It's a good start.

01:15:53
Rachel's bareness caused her deep anguish, and God eventually remembered her and opened her womb, and she bore Joseph and Benjamin, the favorite sons of Jacob.

01:16:07
But Lea knew she was unloved. Imagine living all your life knowing that your husband doesn't love you.

01:16:15
and then essentially his mistress lives with you in the same house.

01:16:30
God saw Leah. She was unloved and as a result, he opened her womb. Her son's names reflect her desire for Jacob's love and God's compassion.

01:16:45
and then lay aboard Judah through whom the Messiah would come.

01:16:51
I think if I was an inkling as to who was really Joseph's wife, I think you know where I'm going with this.

01:17:00
What did we learn from all of this? As the head of the family, a man should not compromise on questions of faith and morality ever. But if you do, pick yourself up and fix it. All right? As the heart of the family, a woman should not disobey the covenant for culture fad or conformity, fear or shame or desire to fit in.

01:17:25
Still, God's faithfulness to the covenant brings blessings in abundance, though undeserved. And God's faithfulness prevails. He works through brokenness, not because of

01:17:40
Which is why He is, in David's words, the Rock, the Rock of our salvation. He is the Rock. Why? Because He is firm. It is that stability that gives us consolation. No matter how many times we fall, no matter how many times we sin, provided we're willing to get back up and trust Him, He will always be there.

01:18:09
That's the consoling thought.

01:18:18
We'll take a break for five minutes and we'll come back for questions.