Winning the Spiritual Battle: Mind, Sin, and Grace

1. "Brothers, if you're here and you're married, if you're here, you're single, you're here, you're a seminarian, like me, a priest, he wants to keep us from our settled purpose. What's our settled purpose? Second Peter makes it really clear. St. Peter says to be divinized, to become holy, to become a saint, to be the man that, that we know that God's called us to be, that deep inside that we know that we long to be, that we yearn to be. The evil one wants to keep us from our settled purpose, whatever state in life that we're in." [03:33] (35 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


2. "There are so many opportunities for the evil one today. To just fill our minds. To fill our minds with junk. He, I think for, for a good number of us, he has a field day. He's a field day with the mind. So I think like this conference is titled Mastering What Matters. As we talk about mastering what matters, I think a lot of it is about winning the battle of the mind because the mind, right? What's in the mind, what's in our thought is how we act, how we act continually and continuously. It forms our habits. Our habits form our character. Our character is all the way. Who we become, but it starts in the mind." [05:18] (47 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


3. "I think with, with, with chastity over the last 50 years, I talked a lot to my people at my parish about being desensitized to sin and how. In a general way that's happened over the last 50 years of us becoming desensitized with sin, but maybe no, in no other spot, are we being, have we been desensitized to sin in the area of sexual immorality, like the things that are, that we continually see, whether it's through like even just TV, whether it's movies, whether it's social media, even like ads that one can see on, on CNN or Fox news, where it's like, I just become desensitized when reality, it's like. It's essentially, it's soft porn, but we just say, well, it's just the way it is. Now. It's just the way it is. That's a way that he just kind of sneaks in. He sneaks in at the cincture to pull it. That's a temptation it's going on." [07:20] (64 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


4. "Some of us brothers were coming in here discouraged. And I know for my own life personally, as well as being a priest now for eight years, like it is not hard to slip in a spot of discouragement. Like discouragement can come quick and it can come heavy. And the next thing you know, it like, I'm just. Under this cloud of discouragement and evil wants to keep us there. It's like, someone's just up there, just beating us with a head, beating us with a hammer, just wailing and having a field day. I want you to, I want you to take a look now here before we move on from this image here. Look at his face, notice the light notice. Like it's the lightest spot of the image, but look at his face, like light coming from it." [09:16] (52 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


5. "Look at his face. Look, he, he, he doesn't have a look. He doesn't have a smile, but he's. He's got this look. It's not a smile as if like this false thing. Hey, I'm a, I'm a Christian. Everything will be easy, but he's got this look of like, these guys can't touch me. They can claw, they can pull, they can beat with a bat, but they can't touch me. It's just this look of confidence. He's steady, he's anchored, he's at peace. Why? Because he's at, he's in communion with a person. He's in union. With a person. So he's just, he's just, he's just at peace. And notice, I got, I love the interpretation of this, that it's, you think that they're trying to pull him away. The demons are trying to pull him away, but I think it's actually, he's just floating and they're trying to pull him down because he's so in communion with the Lord that he's just floating. And so they're just pulling them down." [10:18] (63 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


6. "Brothers, we don't want to just manage sin. We don't want to just manage sin. We want to kill it. To put it to death, to slay the damn thing. Am I slaying the dragon or am I feeding it? Am I managing sin or am I killing it? Brothers, it's a lot easier to manage sin. It's a lot easier to manage sin. That's where it was just like, we just get used to it. I'm an angry person. I've been angry. My dad was angry. I can, I blow up and it's just who I am. It's what I, it's kind of just, it's just the way I am, or I struggle with lust and it is, I fall. It's just the way it is. It's who I am. And I just get used to it. And we enter in this time of managing sin and we manage repeated failures. We manage the patterns. We manage the tendencies. And what that is, is that I just end up just feeding the dragon sheep. Managing sin never works. Sheep ultimately, dead sheep ultimately leads to dead princesses." [17:46] (68 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


7. "Brothers, we can subdue sin and become its master because of, because of Christ and his victory and him living in us. We can subdue sin and be its master. We can grow in discipline and self mastery. Paul, one of my favorite verses or Paul in Hebrews chapter 12 says, After he just talks about, we're surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, he says, Rid yourself of every sin and burden that clings to you, that keeps you from running the race, that keeps you from being the man and that keeps me from being the man that God's called me to be, that I long to be, that the princesses in my life that are, that long for me to be. Rid yourself of every sin and burden that clings to you." [20:28] (43 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


8. "Poverty, our neediness, our weakness, right? Becomes the little cracks. They become the little cracks in which God's grace can flow and he can touch us and he can heal us. He is where he squeezes into our hearts. The weakness though, for us to be able to get in that spot of weakness and an impoverished spot. And again, in the book of Hebrews chapter four, the author says, we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses. But as Paul says elsewhere, he who knew no sin became sin so that we may be reconciled to God. He who knew no sin became sin, went to the weak spot so that us and our weakness, we can go there and we can meet Christ there and we can be transformed and we can be renewed. We've been given new life." [26:36] (53 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


9. "It's authentic love that changes him. That's what Christ offers brothers. That's what he offers every one of us. Surrender to him who went to the cross. Surrender to that authentic love. Let it penetrate those impoverished, weak areas. Brother, there's a lot of dragons out there needing to be slayed. A lot of princesses waiting just like that upper corner. There are a lot of princesses out there waiting. There are a lot of princesses out there waiting. There are a lot of princesses out there waiting. Longing, hoping that somebody would slay the dragon. Take this image home with you. Pray with it. Pray with the princess. Look at the, pray with the princess and ask, Lord, who are the princesses in my life? Pray with the dead bones on the ground. What are the dead bones that are packing up, piling up on the ground there? Pray with Saint George on the top of that horse, the sword going through the dragon. Brothers, combining the power of grace in the sacraments and in prayer and the mass, combine that with discipline and self-mastery. There are no limits. There are no limits. Sins that we once struggled with that were master over us, you start becoming a master over it. And then we'll begin with Christ mastering what matters." [32:03] (97 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)