On Marriage

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And like I was telling you before, today we are going to continue the study on marriage and we are going to head into Egypt. And recapitulation basically says that we look at scripture as a pattern for our own lives. We look at scripture as a pattern for our personal lives, but we also can look at scripture as a pattern for married life. And that's what we're going to do. We're going to look at Egypt. By Egypt I mean the Israelites going down into Egypt.

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as a pattern for marital life.

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So.

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It's a Bible study in eight parts and we've covered, in the first part we've gone through the bird's eye view, then we talked about the marital union in Eden, moral imperative with the flood, marital disorder with Jacob, but now we are going to cover Egypt, which is the material comfort.

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In essence, what we're going to focus on is what happens when a family become materially comfortable. And what is God telling us about that? If you want to grab the fourth talk, that's the QR code for it. And then the second QR code that you see there is in case you want to phone your questions. Just grab that link.

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It'll open up a small app and then you can text your questions over during the talk. We'll have a Q &A at the end.

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We're

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All right, so with that, I would like you to stand and we are going to say prayers together. In the of the Father, of the Son, the Holy Spirit, amen. 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,

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did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that by the same Holy Spirit, we may be truly wise and ever enjoy his consolations through Christ our Lord, amen. Name of the Father, of the Son, of the Holy Spirit, amen. Please be seated. And before I get into the talk, I do want to mention that we have with us today a priest who is sitting in the back with my son, my son Anthony, who's...

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in seminaries visiting us today and he brought with us Father Ian, right? Yes. So it's always a grace of God to have a priest with us and I would encourage you to go say hi to Father after the talk is done.

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All right.

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Remember, I told you in the covenant, the covenant is the key to Scripture. The covenant is the key to Scripture. And a covenant, I'll remind you one more time, this is the last time I'll do that, is an agreement between a strong party and the weak party. So marriage is a covenant, and marriage is an agreement between a strong party and the weak party. The strong party is God, the weak party is the man and the woman. Why are they weak? Because they're sinners.

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The strong party is the one who sets the condition of the covenant and the weak party must abide by those conditions. So it is not egalitarian.

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Get that in your mind. Our relationship with God is not egalitarian. It's not fair.

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If the weak party is faithful to the covenant, by the way, the covenant is an exchange of people, not a contract. In a contract, I'm gonna give you two dollars for a pound of tomatoes. You don't bring me the pound of tomatoes, I'm gonna give you the two dollars. A contract can be broken, a covenant cannot be broken. If the weak party is faithful to the covenant, the strong party will bless them.

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If the weak party is not faithful to the covenant, the strong party will curse them. That was the political structure in ancient times across all kingdoms. The Book of Deuteronomy is actually written as a covenant agreement. And what rubs people the wrong way in our modern times is this idea that God could curse. So they sort of reduced God to a gentle, kind, merciful

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Happy Golaki Santa Claus, who we go to for good things. God is only responsible for the good things of life, and all the bad things, well, it's not God doing.

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The problem with that is that it leaves you psychologically in a state of imbalance. And what happens is oftentimes when something, when an event occurs, such as for instance the election of a new pope, our focus, because we're not covenantally centered, our focus becomes human immediately. We look at it the human way. Is he going to be this kind of pope? Is he going to be that kind of pope?

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and we get into this sort of gyration instead of asking the only question that matters, the only question that matters, Lord Jesus Christ, King of eternal glory, what are you trying to do? Nothing escapes his dominion, nothing escapes his kingship, everything is according to his plan, one way or the other. The covenant centers you on God and keeps you in his presence.

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And what I did last time is I showed you, I gave you a list of citations from the Old Testament that in the scripture where God issues those curses and now I'm going to do the same thing with the New Testament because there's also this idea, the God of the Old Testament is an angry God and the God of the New Testament is loving God and it's it's fantasy, it has nothing to do with the reality of scripture. Okay, so...

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Curses pronounced by Jesus himself. I'm not gonna cover all of them. There are way too many. I'm just giving you the headings. And when you find this talk on the site, on Corbono, this deck is going to be there. And please feel free to go and verify every one of those quotations. Every one of those quotations from the scriptures. So, Matthew 11, 20, 24, woes to Kura, Zin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum cities.

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Seven was to the Pharisees cursing of the barren victory woes woes and curses are synonymous the same thing right woes the rich and satisfied and Then in Matthew 25 41 depart from me you are cursed and like I told you last time Oftentimes in scripture when Chris when Christ will say woe to you there is no subject He doesn't say God is cursing you well because in in a Hebrew tradition You do not say the name of the Lord, so it's very common to have sentence

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the sentential structure missing the subject. When the subject is missing, everybody knows, oh, you're talking about God. It's not something we do. It's not part of our culture or makeup because we don't have that restriction, not saying the name of the Lord. anyway. So in the Acts of the Apostles, Ananias and Sapphira are struck dead by Peter. Peter rebukes Simon the magician.

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and Elimas the sorcerer struck with blindness. In Apolline letters, in Corinthians, eating unworthily brings judgment. In Corinthians 16 22, anathema is being pronounced, let him be accursed. In Galatians, curses for preaching another gospel. In Romans, God's wrath on ungodliness. In Thessalonians, flaming fire of judgment and Colossians wrath of God on disobedience.

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In Timothy, Hymenius and Alexander delivered to word for word, delivered to Satan, severe judgment on false teachers in 2 Peter 2, and in the letter of St. Jude, woe to those who follow Cain, Balaam, and Korah. In the Book of Revelation, warnings to the seven churches, the seals, trumpets, and balls of wrath, the final judgment and lake of fire, and the curses for altering the book. So,

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Most of these curses are delivered without any additional commentary. The writers expected their readers to know what they were talking about. So again, I am not telling you these things to instill in you a sense of anxiety or fear, but I do think that once you understand the covenant and that the covenant really rules your life, once you accept

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that your life is ruled by that covenant and there is no escaping, you become a lot more serious about your relationship with God. Because it starts psychologically. It's the same thing as when you go to work. You take work seriously, but they're because they're consequences. This brings back consequences into your faith. So, that would be the end of this topic. If have questions, we can cover them in the Q &A. Very good. Now,

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Divine curses in the New Testament reflects God's justice. Curses often come as warning, not arbitrary punishment. And redemption is offered through Christ, but judgment remains and final judgment highlights both justice and mercy.

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All right, let's now talk about recapitulation. I'm gonna walk you through it through images. This whole section has no text, just images. And forgive my poor art, it's GPT generated, but I think it conveys the idea I want to convey. So don't look at them as, don't put an artistic lens when you get this, all right?

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because it's not the point. Alright. So, recapitulated the history of humanity in his own life to redeem us. Christ's life, death and resurrection provides a complete picture of our lives and our marriages. Christ's recapitulation is the basis of our prayers of petition and recapitulation is a valuable guide for married life. And that's the bit that I want to focus on, that last bit. And that's what I'm going to show you now.

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We're gonna start with the Garden of Eden. Here is the schematics for the Garden of Eden.

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There is a river that sources east of Eden and that waters the garden. So the river that waters the garden is not in the garden. It is outside the garden and comes from the east. Inside the garden, there are fruit trees. There is an orchard. And then God commanded Adam to till

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Hence, you see the tilled ground and guard. Hence, you see the little protective barrier in this picture. It's symbolic of the two things that Adam and hence Eve were supposed to do. Till and guard. The river that sources from outside of Eden, that flows in Eden, divides into four rivers. Why four? Numbers are symbolic in the scripture and the number four is always a symbol

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of the whole world. Why? Because in a biblical concept of the world, the world is an altar. It is an altar upon which we offer our lives as sacrifice to God. So it isn't because the ancient had necessarily a flat earth perspective. It wasn't physical. It was liturgical.

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That's why four represents the four corners. That's why scripture speaks of the four corners of the world. The world has no... the planet is round, there are no corners. But liturgically, an altar has four corners. Hence, four is always the number representing... generally speaking, it's the number representing the world. So therefore, the river that flows from out of Eden, east of Eden, waters the garden...

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Man and woman cooperates with that river to till and guard

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And as a result, the rivers that flow out of it feed the world. That is God's plan for the family. This is it.

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So, let me show you how truly Christ recapitulates the history of Adam and Eve. Because if you take that, if you see the pattern, if you see the pattern behind this picture, here's what you should see.

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You see the cross.

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The garden becomes the cross. The four beams of the cross are the four rivers. The water that flows from the side of Christ when He was pierced is that river that flows from outside the garden. And it is that river that waters the world.

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The garden is present, the garden foreshadows the cross. Functionally, the purpose of the garden was to...

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feed the world. The purpose of the cross is to save the world.

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with something that comes from outside the world into the world that flows out. You see it here.

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It is fenced because faith in Christ must be tilled and guarded.

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And it produces fruits, which are the virtue.

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I had wanted to sort of represent that orchard with the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is the devotion to everything that is good and beautiful and true about Jesus, which is all of Jesus. That's why the devotion to the Sacred Heart is such a beautiful thing. It's essentially highlighting the fruits, the trees, the garden.

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There is a beautiful prayer, I don't remember if was Saint Louis de Montfort who said it or some other saint, I don't remember exactly who, but my suspicion is Saint Louis de Montfort, I could be wrong. He said, when you go receive communion, here's what you should do when you receive communion. You have to understand that every one of us, right, we are always fundamentally unworthy of communion.

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Now, we should receive it every day if we could. So I'm not being Janssonistic here when I say that. That bit is true. We are unworthy. We are never going to be worthy of receiving communion. Let's get that in our heads. All right. I have a prayer actually after communion in which this particular prayer asks our lady to ask our Lord to forgive the one who received communion for any negligence or

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destruction or inattention that were committed in the act of receiving communion. But St. Louis de Montfort has a beautiful way, this is sort of on the negative side, he had a beautiful positive way of saying it and he, I think it was St. Louis de Montfort, I'll just describe it to him, I love St. Louis de Montfort, okay. Anyway, he basically said, when you receive communion, you should promptly turn around and give Jesus to Mary.

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So he might take his delight with her because she is the enclosed garden of Eden that he reserved for himself. And I find that beautiful. So the Sacred Heart is that river that flows from outside the garden into the garden, which is the cross. And from that, it sanctifies the cross. That's why we venerate the cross. And then from the cross, the world is fed.

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You see how he recapitulates Adam and Eve in the garden and then he brings salvation through.

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All right, but it doesn't stop there. Here is an idealized architecture of a Catholic church.

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It's from this site called churchwonders.com. It's a beautiful site where the author of that site talks about architecture, good architecture for the church. And there's a reason why architecture in the church is important. We kind of sense it, but we're not usually able to put it into words. But there is a deep reason why architecture is important. So the first thing I want you to do is learn the vocabulary.

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When you walk into the church, learn to talk about the parts of the church appropriately, even if you don't see them, because we live in an age of confusion, and so architecture tends to be confused. You have the vestibule, which is the first area that you enter the church, the separation between the outside and the inside of the church. You're not yet into the church, but you're not outside.

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So that should remind you when you step there, that should remind you, that should bring to mind the fact that we are pilgrims. We're not in heaven, but we don't belong in the world. Typically, it is in the narthex, and if I'm wrong, somebody correct me. I don't claim to be a specialist of architecture, but typically it's in the narthex that you will find the baptismal found. You're not supposed to baptize somebody inside the church.

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That's incongruous because the folks who are inside the church, who belong to the church, are already baptized.

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You're not baptizing them outside, you're baptizing them in between. That's why usually it happens there. It's done properly.

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Then you have the nave. The part of the church where we lady should be is called the nave. And if there are upper levels that are called the celest... clarestory... I am... it's hard word. Anyway, you don't have to remember this. Remember the nave. That's important. Then normally you have the crossing, which is the part that separates the nave proper from the the whole sanctuary. The sanctuary.

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And then you have the north transept and the south transept, which represents essentially the size of the cross. Then you have the whole altar, which is separated into a few parts. The ambulatory is the part that you can use to walk around it. You walk around the altar, called the ambulatory. And the apse is the back of the church. And then you have the sanctuary proper with the altar and the anvil, which is the space around the altar.

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Okay. Now, this here.

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This is the garden.

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I'm gonna show it to you again. This is the space where we lay folks should not step in. Not as casually as we do.

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Here it is, the Sanctuary.

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I'm happy to hear that they are bringing back the railings. A lot of churches are bringing back the railings, which is wonderful. And what's really fascinating is that when you bring back railings into the church, 80 % of the lady will need to receive communion and most frequently on the tongue without being prompted or asked. It's just natural. By bringing the railings,

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the tendency to do what is right in God's presence happens. So in the Latin Rite, the proper way to receive communion is kneeling and on the tongue. And there's good theology and psychology behind it. And in the Maronite Rite, I can speak of the Maronite because I'm Maronite, it is standing and on the tongue. So it'd be good when you go to these liturgies to respect the liturgy. Don't kneel in the Maronite liturgy. Don't stand in the Latin one.

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Kneel. Anyway, that again represents this idea of guarding. It's a sanctuary, it's a holy place. It must be guarded. It must be tilled. That's what the priest is supposed to do. St. Thomas teaches that the graces received at Mass depends on four things. It depends on the holiness of the reigning pontiff. It depends on the holiness of the ordinary, the bishop.

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It depends on the holiness of the priest and finally it depends on the holiness of the people receiving it. All four of those things need to be there to let the grace flow. Meaning the grace is flowing, it's always flowing, God always sends the graces. Now you have pipes, right? The grace flows from Christ to our lady, from our lady to the angels, from the angels to the altar, to the priest, from the altar to us. There are pipes.

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So you have the Pope pipe and you have the Bishop pipe and the Priest pipe and the interview pipe. And we can clog those pipes.

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We can prevent the water, the living water to flow. We can do that at every level. But the idea is that this living water, the water, the grace basically that flows from heaven, from outside the garden, comes into the garden from, I would say the tabernacle and the invocation of the prayer by the priest. And then from there, as we see in the book of Ezekiel, there is

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rivers of flowing water that goes out to water the world.

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So that principle that we see here in Eden is never abandoned. When God made the garden, that was the pattern. That is also the pattern for the family.

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The family.

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Again, there is a river that flows from outside the family and that feeds the family. That is God and His grace. The family is supposed to be protected, guarded and tilled to produce fruits. What are the fruits we're talking about? Let me see if somebody was listening. Not you, not my daughter, she knows. Thank you, the virtues.

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The virtues, the virtues. What is the family supposed to produce? Virtues. Virtues. That's what must be produced in the family. Virtuous people. Not highly educated people, not super smart people, virtuous people. First and foremost, virtue. By the way, I am not talking about Catholic families here. I'm not talking about sacramental marriage. I'm not talking about the life within the church. I'm talking about natural families.

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Believers or unbelievers, the natural order of the family when we follow it produces virtue.

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which is why the family is the foundation of society. And then from the family, you feed the world.

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I'm sure many of you have experienced this when you have good families. You people who come to visit.

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and I stay.

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They are attracted. There is something that attracts them into the family. Why? Because it's natural virtue. We're built that way. That's what we need.

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That's what we're supposed to give the world. Alright.

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So.

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You can see that recapitulation, Christ and himself recapitulated all of Eden and made it right on the cross. This is why we venerate the cross. This is why we have the, in our Maronite liturgy, we have the feast of the exaltation of the Holy Cross. Because by the cross we've been saved. But the cross really represents our lives, personally and in our families.

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Why? Because it is Eden renewed. It is Eden with the ability to bring out salvation to the world, which is the family is supposed to do. But now what we're going to do is take a look at what happened when the Israelites went down into Egypt, again through the lens of the family, through the lens of marriage.

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And today I'm going to cover the part where they basically are settled into Goshen and they have a good life. Next time when we talk about moving into the wilderness, we'll deal with the other bit.

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Sorry, this is what I was going to cover. That slide should not be there. Alright, settling in Goshen, years of plenty. So Goshen, look at the pattern. Architecture matters. This is a snapshot of Egypt, and this here is the Nile. Goshen is a small area in the fertile delta of the Nile.

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That's where they settled. What is feeding that area? A river that comes from outside that area, the Nile.

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The Nile sources from, if I'm not mistaken, Lake Victoria, which is down where in Sudan, I think, or no, Ethiopia, right? Uganda, here we go. Way, way down. Okay? It is the river that comes from outside of Goshen and that feeds Goshen. However, that river is not sourced in the east. It is sourced in the south. So you can see the moral

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disorder in that image.

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When they settle there, what are supposed to do? What were they supposed to do? So we have one river, one river, right? What is that river supposed to do when it reaches Goshen, according to the pattern of Eden? splits into four that will feed the world. That splitting into four and feeding the world is symbolic of the action that the people who are living according to the natural law have on the world. They bring everyone closer to God.

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even without even mentioning God. Because they represent the natural order, the order as God wants it. you can't have a... It's almost impossible to have a spiritual society if you do not have a naturally ordered society. Right? Because grace builds on nature. So you're supposed to have those rivers. Where were they supposed to come from?

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Well, from the Israelites.

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Israelites are supposed to influence the society around them. That's what they're supposed to do.

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So, in Genesis 46, 28, 29, we have a passage where Joseph sent Judah before him... Sorry. I'm sorry, I meant Israel, Jacob. He sent Judah before him to Joseph to appear before him in Goshen, and they came into the land of Goshen. Then Joseph made ready his chariot and went up to meet Israel, his father in Goshen, and presented himself to him and fell on his neck and wept on his neck a good wine.

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So that's one of the passages in which we see that they are invited to come into Goshen. All right, there are others as well. The key to remember is that those four rivers, they were supposed to go out and feed the world, in this case Egypt.

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Didn't happen.

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That was the breakdown. Didn't happen.

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Okay.

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Goshen took on this pattern. The Israelites lived a comfortable life. They tilled the land, they fructified it, they had cattle, they multiplied, but they were enclosed upon themselves. They could not influence the reigning culture around them.

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That's the breakdown. That's what happens when we focus solely on materialism, when we focus on material goods. That's what happens. So, likewise today, in our own culture, if you notice, at this point,

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The Catholics are unable to really influence the American culture. We pretty much are non-existent when it comes to the culture at large.

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We're in a similar boat.

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Many families who raise their kids.

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whether homeschooling or otherwise, tend to close in on themselves.

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Either they're closing in on themselves so they don't allow their kids to interact with non-Catholics.

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They don't know much about non-Catholic culture, so they're really closing in on themselves, or open up completely.

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open up completely. remember at one point I was introducing my kids to a series of movies from Japan by a director called Hiyo Miyazaki, is just animation, and it's beautiful stories about virtues. And one of stories touches on a girl who in that context is a witch.

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The reaction I got from some of the folks I knew was that they would never ever let their children watch these movies.

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Well, it's very good to be guarded and protective, absolutely. But it's also good to keep an open mind and see what is good and what is not good, and be able to properly introduce your children to these concepts and discuss them with them. I use these movies as an occasion to talk about Shintoism, about the Japanese religion, compare and contrast and explain to my kids what was good in it and what was lacking.

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Being open to friends who are not Catholic is important. Because how are going to water the world if all your friends are just Catholic? But you do it with care. You do it with precaution. You're always prudent.

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So, the same context that the Israelites face in Egypt, we are facing today. America is the new Egypt.

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That's what happened.

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And that's a risk that faces us today more so than prior cultures. In the past, at least I would say in Europe, you could look around and have a more Christian culture prevailing. Then, things were perfect, but at least there was a common understanding that it was Christian. Now, that's gone.

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So we are back into that concept. The family today is threatened just as it was when Israelites were in Goshen.

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Now here's what's really interesting, thus Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt, in the land of Goshen and they gained possessions in it and they were fruitful and they multiplied exceedingly. I added the they. I'm highlighting one thing and what I'm highlighting is the silence of God.

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God, in a sense, recedes into the background.

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just as he receives into the background in the world we live in.

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And the silence of God, when God becomes silent this way, when you're left to your own devices and you're trying to make sense of the world, when things fall apart, that silence of God leads to an obscuring of reason. And when reason is obscured, faith recedes.

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So in a sense, it's a curse.

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But like Christ said in the Gospels, when you are the light of the world, you're supposed to shine in the darkness. That's what you're supposed to do.

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That's what happened to them while they were in Goshen.

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Now when you go back and look in Genesis, there are a few passages when God speaks about Egypt. He tells Abram, before he named him Abraham, to go down to Egypt during a famine, but that leads to moral peril. Because Abram then lies and says that Sarai is his sister, not his wife, because he wants to protect himself, which leads to moral peril. Isaac,

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who in a sense is the favorite, is commanded by God not to go to Egypt.

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Do not go down to Egypt. Isaac was commanded not to go down to Egypt. God permits Jacob to enter Egypt. Why did he permit Jacob to enter Egypt, not Isaac?

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Isaac was faithful to the covenant. He had one wife.

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Jacob had a harem.

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You understand? Like for like.

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And yet God, who is always faithful to his own word, told Jacob he will be with him and he will protect him.

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But Egypt represents worldly provision without divine promise.

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And so only Isaac, the child of the promise, is explicitly forbidden from going to Egypt. And so the pattern reveals Egypt as a place of temptation and spiritual compromise. Now you can take out Egypt for the United States of America and the text doesn't change.

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Okay.

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So now let's look at a day in the life of an Israelite family in Goshen before the enslavement. How did they live? What would their life look like? Well, they had agricultural prosperity and rural stability. Goshen in the Nile Delta was fertile and well watered, ideal for farming and livestock. Just as the United States of America is ideal for...

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having a good life.

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Israelis raised sheep and cattle, cultivated wheat, barley, onions and vegetables. Essentially they were involved in the economy of Egypt, just as many Catholics are involved in economy of United States. Men worked the land or tended herds, women ground grain, wove linen and managed the home. So what was going well for them, much more so than us, is that the structure of the society was still more...

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more friendly with the needs of the family. It is interesting to note that Pope Leo XIII wrote the only encyclical in which he names a heresy after a country. And that heresy is called Americanism.

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So the United States of America has this dubious honor of being the only country named after a heresy. And what is that heresy that he mentions? Individualism. Individualism. You see, the social doctrine, the Pope emphasizes is that the Church is neither... mean, the Church condemns socialism because socialism is always sinful. But also, the Church is not completely in favor of capitalism.

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something that John Paul II condemned when he spoke of unbridled capitalism. But what the Church wants is familism. The Church wants an economy that allows a family to flourish.

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That's what the Church wants because the family is the fundamental unit of the natural order. The Egyptian influences on culture and dress. You think that the Jews living, the Israelites living in Israel, in Egypt kept their Israelite identity? They were born there. What do you think they felt like? Egyptians.

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How many Catholics in the United States feel Catholic first, American second?

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Over time, many Israelites began to adopt Egyptian customs, styles, grooming habits, shaving. You're not supposed to shave as an Israelite. They shaved. And language. They spoke Egyptian. It was the language of Franco at the time. That's the language. That's what you're supposed to speak. And that's what they did.

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Homes were likely mud brick structures similar to Egyptian peasant dwellings, so you can distinguish between homes of Egyptians and homes of Israelites, they all look the same. And daily activities would have aligned with Egyptian rhythms, such as sunrise work, rest during midday heat, and communal meals in the evening. So they adopted the customs of the Egyptians.

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The worship. Families were large and multi-generational as reflected in rapid growth of the Israelite population. And though patriarchal traditions remained, religious identity began to blur. Some families remained faithful to God, but others didn't. Others incorporated Egyptian deities such as Hathor, Ra, or Osiris into their practices. Household shrines may have included Egyptian symbols alongside ancestral tokens. Very much what happens here in Catholic families.

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The education and the social integration.

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Israelite children likely spoke Egyptian fluently and may have had access to basic education. Their families were affluent. Many Israelites likely observed Egyptian festivals, food and agricultural rights. The golden calf, by the way, the reason why it was a problem is because it the god Apis. So it was an Egyptian god which was worshipped because of fertility. So essentially you have a party.

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when you have that God. And that's what they built, because that's what they were used to. It might sound surprising to us that they would do something like this, but not really. It's not different than today, when you try to explain to some Catholics that you should not be contraceptive. That's their apice. Or try to tell Catholics that you should be dressed modestly. See how that goes.

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The attitude towards Egypt. Egypt was safe and familiar.

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A land of stability, fertility and abundance. So when you hook into that culture, you become part of it.

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you become part of it and it's very difficult to unhook. It's very difficult to make sure that your lifestyle doesn't get blurred, doesn't get influenced by that dominant culture.

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Many Israelites may have felt no urgency to return to Canaan despite knowing Azlan the promise.

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You're in the empire. You're wealthy. You're established. Why do want to go to Canaan? There's nothing there.

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This comfort will become a spiritual danger, making later deliverance more difficult.

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So what happens is that the tilling and the guarding get taken over by the weeds of a culture that is in many ways set against God. The Egyptian culture overall, and I'll show you that in a minute, wasn't awful. It wasn't a terrible culture. It was much better than the Romans and the Greeks.

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But it wasn't oriented towards God.

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So.

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Before the enslavement, life was good. Farming and raising livestock, wearing Egyptian dress, assimilating to Egyptian culture and customs, assimilating to Egyptian culture and pagan worship, and blurring lines between covenant and pagan worship. You just do it slowly, generationally. It took hundreds of years before we got to the point where we had to exit.

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So comfort and assimilation can lead to forgetfulness of God's promises. We began as refuge, what began as a refuge became a place of complacency, blurring the identity of God's chosen people. This sets the stage for the Exodus, not just as physical liberation but as spiritual reawakening for 400 years. 400 years God was completely silent.

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There were no prophets. No one was sent to them. They were comfortable.

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So when you look at this and you look at our lives, you see there are a lot of similarities, a of parallelism.

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Marriage and family, Egypt vs. covenant Israel.

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Obviously, covenantal Israel monogamy is ideal, but polygamy was there with Abraham and with Jacob. Practiced by royalty, culturally permitted, common among elites, sexual use of slaves, condemned in Genesis 1.27. The view of children, the children for the Egyptians are always valued. Now, obviously there's always preference for sons because of the social economic structure, but the children were valued.

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The children are blessings. There's a difference. You see? They're valued, they're blessings. When you hear blessings, you hear covenant. That's how you hear blessings, always in the context of a covenant. Child sacrifice was rare or absent, contrary to what you would find in Rome.

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It was obviously forbidden for the Israelites. Abortion and infanticide, there was primitive contraception among the Egyptians. And infanticide was rare, contrary to Rome.

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It was obviously forbidden for the Israelites. The marriage for Egyptians is a social contract. It's a contract, not a covenant. That notion of covenant doesn't exist. For the Israelites, obviously, it's a sacred covenant. And there is no divine symbolism in marriage or the family. None. Whereas, it reflects God's covenantal love. So now, we can take that one step and throw in the...

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21st century United States.

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The marriage norm, it is a monogamy in United States but it's declining rapidly. And it makes complete sense it will decline because there is no reason when you break, when you take marriage away from a covenant, there is no reason to keep it monogamous.

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Okay? It makes no sense.

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Polygamy is obviously illegal still, but it's normalized in the media. The sexual use of slaves, well, we have human trafficking.

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The view of children, the children are valued, well, often valued. How many times you hear people saying, oh no, I got two and that's it, we stopped. There's always this notion that it's a huge burden, it's a huge inconvenience.

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But there's a fundamental declining birthrate, right? The rates now in United States is like 1.76.

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There is, well, child sacrifice. was rare or absent in Egypt. It's well alive in the United States. We sacrifice millions of babies every year. But we don't even need a God to sacrifice the babies.

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We don't have to have a liturgy to sacrifice the baby. We just sacrifice the baby for convenience.

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The inventive side is rare, but it's politicized. And I would not be surprised if we start to see it here in United States. There are teachers of social studies who are essentially saying the logical thing, which is, hey, there's really no difference between a baby in the womb, baby outside the womb, until the baby is socialized, which is about the year three or four. Therefore, parents should be allowed to kill their babies until they are fully human beings, which is when they're completely socialized. This is being taught in

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wonderful universities such as Stanford.

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And again, I am not surprised. There is a certain logic to when you move away from natural order of the family according to God. It just... You start to cut away anything that is inconvenient. The young and the old, the marginalized, the one who have some challenges bodily or mentally, you cut them away because it's... Selfishness grows. It's just a normal thing. Marriage status is social contract. It's now a legal contract in the United States.

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Most people don't understand marriage as a covenant. And it's often redefined. yeah, know, marriage didn't work. We divorce, get married again. It's just a social contract.

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And then finally, it's a secularized thing. Symbolic meaning varies. It is no longer normative in the United States. So you can see the 21st century USA is very similar to ancient Egypt, although ancient Egypt was better in some ways. Because it still had a normal structure. The people were connected to the land more than we are. And they had at least

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the dependency on the weather was more understood, so on God being able to provide. Because you can plant all you want. God doesn't want it. There's nothing that's going to grow. So at least you're still connected to that. But we are so removed from it that it makes it even more difficult place to be in. So if you feel that you're living in exile while you're living here, that's because you are living in exile. Whether you came from a different country, you're born here.

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If you are oriented towards the natural virtues and the natural law, you live in exile because society is not structured this way anymore.

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So, having said all that, if you're married and you live in the United States, how are you supposed to live? Well, no different than what you're supposed to do when you're on the No difference.

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I'm gonna give you a few...

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principles that I think apply to all families. And again, those are not Catholic principles. I'm not talking about sacramental marriage. I'll address that in the last lecture. I'm only talking about natural marriage. So, you have to live faithfully under God's covenant in a secular society. We're drawing from Familiaris Consortio and Pope Leo XIII teachings, as well as we use Israel and Goshen as a model. We have to be distinct, but we're integrated. We're not of the world, but we live in the world.

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One, fidelity in marriage and parenthood.

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That may be easy to say, it's easier said than done. So in Faminearist Consortium, our Pope John Paul II reminds us that the covenant between spouses mirrors God's fidelity.

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And God expects us to be faithful because God will make it possible for us to be faithful. And I can tell you that the idea of marriage, the idea of marriage, marriage is a mechanism, it's a machine designed by God, right, to correct us.

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to heal us, to bring us to Him, to prepare us to meet Christ. That's the purpose of marriage. Most of us don't want to do the hard work. So, you have people who've been married for a long time, but they live side by side.

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because they don't want to do the hor- it's a hard work no matter what, what no matter how good your marriage is, it's gonna be hard work because of you because of you are a sinner and marriage is going to force you to confront that sinfulness and then work on it you're either going to collaborate and accept in humility to be changed and transformed or you're gonna harden your heart but fidelity in marriage and parenthood is called

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by all because God will make it possible. Like he made it possible for Isaac and Rebecca, right? So he will make it possible for all of us. Faithfulness to one's spouse and children reflect covenant integrity and living fidelity in a culture that promotes disposability.

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And you know, if people ask you, you my wife and I just celebrated our 32nd marriage, and ours is not the oldest, I'm sure there people here married longer than us, people take note. In a world where things shift and if you have a problem, you just move, people take note. It's a form of witness. The family as a sanctuary of life, that's the second principle. Familiaris consortio. The family is the first and vital cell of society.

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Be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth. Daily life affirms the dignity of each person from conception to death.

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It's a natural principle, again, it's not Catholic. Now, in this age of confusion, we seem to be the last rampart and the ones defending it, but in many societies of the United States, this is still very much the case. The family as a school of virtue. Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, parents are the primary educators. I don't care if you send your kids to school or if you homeschool them.

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You must understand you are the primary educators of your kids. Not in technical matters. You may not be the primary educators in technical matters. You are the primary educators in virtue. In virtue.

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Women, when you get together, it's alright to brag a little bit about your kids and say what they're doing, but don't spend your time doing that. Don't waste that time that God gives you to get together.

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by talking only about incidentals. Talk about virtues. Talk about vices. Seek advice. Find better ways to transmit virtues and help your children correct vices. Virtues must be central. I told you this before and I'll say it again. You can go to church every day. You can say the rosary every day and you can go to hell.

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Because that is the energy, that is the strength to form virtues.

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Being virtuous is not optional. Being pious is very good. It's one of the virtues, but it's not the only one. You must become virtuous.

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So, cultivate honesty, temperance, patience, generosity and forgiveness. Learn the virtues. Learn the words for virtues and ask yourselves which of these I should be working on? Which of these should my kids be working on? Take them seriously. The formation and the virtue is the most important thing. That's what you are the primary educators of.

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Four, work and simplicity of life. Pope Leo XIII, family sustenance must be rooted in just labor. So society must offer the ability for a family to have a just labor. And that's the problem that we run into living in United States and other places. We live in very dysfunctional places. We have to avoid consumerism and unjust gain.

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Unjust gain is a concept that we may not be very familiar with. But if you have the ability to loan money to somebody, you can charge some minimal interest, but beware of unjust gain.

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Honest work, fair wages and trust in divine providence. You need these three. Honest work, fair wages and trust in divine providence. There should be a simplicity in your life. I'm not going to tell you what simplicity looks like. It's different from family to family. But overall, you should always ask yourself this question. Is this thing that I own or is this thing that I do good for my...

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the life that I share with my wife? Is it good for my children? Is it good witness? If not, why am I doing it?

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I don't, I mean I can throw examples and I'll give you some examples of things to think about. Do you really need to buy a car that is $60,000? Really?

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The purpose of a car is to get you from point A to point B. That's its functional purpose. Snobbery, the word snobbery, snob, comes from the French. It's a contraction of two words, sans noblesse, without nobility. So you take something, you empty it of its purpose, it becomes a snobbery.

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Do you need a card that's $60,000? Really? Ladies, do you need to go to church with a handbag that costs $1,000? Really?

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If you're wondering why they're laughing, it's because my dear daughter is shaking vehemently her head.

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Notting, not shaking. Do you really need that to put your belongings in it? Is that reflective of simplicity of life? Do you have to have a haircut that costs $100? Really?

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Seriously?

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Now, I am not going to tell you, don't use me as your yardstick. Don't say, Najee said we should not, that's not the point. The point is, if you're not asking these questions, you're not constantly purifying your own life. And if you're not constantly purifying your own life, what are you doing? You need to ask these questions. In your case, the answer might be A or might be B, but at least,

01:00:19
you would know that you're trying to live the right way before God.

01:00:27
Witnessing without assimilating, you shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt. Leviticus 18.3 Living modesty, chastity, and truth in contrast to prevailing norms. I have to tell you, I was really surprised, but I had tried to talk about modesty to women. I had a pushback that was harder than when I talked about contraception.

01:00:59
Like when I challenged women, I told them, you really need to wear a pair of pants? That didn't go very well.

01:01:08
at all. I'm not saying, I'm not telling you what you should be wearing, what you should not be wearing, but those are questions you need to ask. And why is it, for goodness sake, we don't have a group of Catholic women who are able to come with, to develop a fashion that is beautiful and modest. Why?

01:01:33
Some of you here are swimming with money. What are you waiting for you to do something like that?

01:01:45
That's a problem.

01:01:49
Most of the time society degrades because we are passive. We don't step up to the plate and do what we can.

01:02:00
Participation in society without compromising moral conviction.

01:02:06
It was true in Goshen, it is true today. Hospitality and care for others, care for others, familiaris consortio, the family as a domestic church open to others. So you should be able to have a family that is open to others, even if it is others of a different faith, different creed, without compromise. You witness to the truth. You extend mercy, generosity, and openness to the vulnerable.

01:02:35
the home as a place of welcome and service, not isolation. We don't live in ghettos. I owe a friend that always tell me, oh, if I win the lotto, I'm gonna buy a big patch of land and build a Catholic village. And I tell him, no, you're not building a Catholic village, you're building a ghetto. Not gonna work that way. That's not what God wants.

01:02:59
And finally, Sabbath and worship in daily life. Six days you shall labor, but the seventh is a Sabbath. Even without discussing sacramental life, rest and reverence should structure your time on a day of rest. The family calendar ordered by spiritual priorities, not worldly ones.

01:03:22
Just as Israelite families lived in Egypt without becoming Egyptian, so too can families living in modern world without compromise. The family remains a beacon of natural law and divine order. And that's a summary of everything I've told you right here. So again, we are carriers of Eden. Eden never ceases to be the go-to place in our reflection, in our prayers. It is the place that God created.

01:03:52
as a pattern for our lives. And we should strive to structure our marriage and our family according to that pattern. Do as much as we can and God will do the rest. Right. So we're going to take a break and come back for questions. And if you have to leave, may God be with you. And otherwise, after a few minutes of a break, we'll come back. Somebody generously provided some cookies.

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Please avail yourself of those and then we'll return in a few minutes. God bless you.