The SEEK Podcast
Welcome to the SEEK Podcast – we're so glad you’re here. This podcast is a place of community, collaboration, and inspiration, created to invite and encourage you deeper into a relationship with Jesus. Join these podcasters and many others as we encounter Jesus at SEEK25, Jan 1st-5th. For more information and to register, visit seek.focus.org.
The SEEK Podcast
Embracing The Call to Follow Jesus: Logos x SEEK
As we gear up for SEEK, we're filled with excitement to share the transformative power of following Jesus. This episode is inspired by John 8:12, this year's theme "Follow Me".
We unravel the complexities of surrendering to Jesus' call, a path that requires both external and internal shifts. We analyze the profound demands of discipleship, illustrated by Peter’s struggle in Mark’s Gospel. Our discussion underscores the tension between worldly allure and spiritual truth, drawing inspiration from the unyielding faith of St. Charles Lwanga and his companions, who remind us of the joy and humanity in steadfast faith.
Through the teachings of Pope Benedict XVI, we affirm that this journey is about inner transformation, not just external acts. Reflecting on personal testimonies from SEEK 2019, such as the powerful impact of Eucharistic adoration, we illustrate how these experiences can shape personal and vocational paths.
Register for SEEK: seek.focus.org
Welcome to the Seek Podcast, where we explore faith, inspire hope and build community. My name is John Michael Lucido and I'm excited to invite you to join us this season as we dive into topics about the faith with people from all over the Catholic world. Thank you for listening to today's episode. Know that we are praying for you.
Speaker 2:What's up, guys? Welcome to another episode of Logos Podcast. This is Deacon Max. This is Deacon Max. This is Deacon Joseph, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about a sweet event that we got coming up, a sweet reality that's unfolding before our eyes. A sweet event that's unfolding before our eyes today.
Speaker 3:A sweet event that's unfolding before our eyes.
Speaker 2:It's unfolded, Unfolding. It unfoldeth before everybody in the club. We're going to be telling you about Seek 2024 into 2025. Dude, you need to have your horn app on. Oh sorry.
Speaker 1:One second. No, no, I'll do it, I'll give you time.
Speaker 3:I will give you time to get it.
Speaker 2:This is the thing. This is worth it. Come on. Okay so here it is no, no, no.
Speaker 3:This is the only time A couple of tries, but we back, we got it, we got it. What's?
Speaker 2:up guys. So today we're going to be talking about did you even introduce yourself? Did we do that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we said Deacon Max, Deacon Joseph.
Speaker 2:Okay, cool, deacon Joseph, deaconacon Joseph, that's who we are.
Speaker 3:Welcome. What's up To Logos Podcast. We're very excited because we, as you may have intuited from the beginning of this podcast, have been invited to go to SEEK 2025 in Salt Lake City, Utah, the big conference put on by FOCUS, the Fellowship of Catholic University Students, and we are so pumped Like, I'm so excited.
Speaker 2:Some may even say, this conference is huge. Huge Joey we're going to go out into the world. Bring the Holy gospel to the world. I don't know about you, but by the gospel that I know is huge, huge, huge Joey just gigantic guys, listen, we're excited.
Speaker 2:You could tell you're three minutes into this thing. You could tell um, we're gonna be talking about in this episode, specifically these things. You ready, we're talking about an article. So here's the thing, the theme of seek this year. Yeah, that's what we gotta lay. The groundwork is to follow jesus christ, follow the lord follow me.
Speaker 3:He says I think it's like John 8, 12. Let me look. You know I think you're right, dude. Let me look. I trust in you, Josh. Yeah, yeah it's. I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. That's going to be like the theme of Seek 2025.
Speaker 2:If they're going to put that on a t-shirt, it's a little much for a t-shirt. Yeah, we'll see how the t-shirts go, but they always do a good job, so I'm sure it'll be fantastic, they do classy stuff. In order to help break that verse down, we're going to be drawing on an article by Joseph Ratzinger, as we do.
Speaker 3:I was thinking the other day, maybe we should just name this podcast the Ratzinger Podcast.
Speaker 2:Well, we're not going to do that, but we could, and if we did it would make sense. It would make total sense, that's right. We're also going to talk about my personal experience at SEEK in 2018, I believe, 17 or 18, indianapolis, and then we're also going to reflect on what it means to follow Jesus in our own lives what that looks like and ultimately, we want to invite you to come to seek so if you have the opportunity, especially if you're a college student, but actually it's open to anyone this year.
Speaker 3:So usually this is just a conference put on for college students, but this year anyone can go.
Speaker 2:So if you're an 85 year old lady and you're listening to this, first of all, thank you for listening. How did you even find us? This is crazy. You, thank you for listening. How did you even find us? This is crazy. This is awesome. You have other things to worry about, but if you are, you can also go to seek, so that's sweet.
Speaker 3:My grandmother could go to seek grandma. If you're listening, uh, you probably should. It's probably going to be a little bit much. It'll be chaotic, a lot of energy, a lot of moving around, hustle and bustle but your grandmother has a lot of energy she's gonna take care of my grandfather, that's true, which means she probably can't, but she follows Jesus in her own way she does.
Speaker 3:Let me be clear. So she doesn't even need this conference. No, I'm just kidding. Even if you follow Jesus, you need this conference. That's right. So check it out. We're going to be there.
Speaker 2:We're going to have a booth live podcast, live podcast at sea. We're going Uh, it's going to be great guys Uh, I'm super excited. I haven't been in. It's probably been two or three years at least since I've been and I've never been this is Deacon Joseph's first one. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, I one time they did the year after COVID. They did like regional Sikh conferences and they brought one of those actually to our seminary in Columbus. They had like a satellite it was. Covid year so they were probably like three or 400 college students here and it was a.
Speaker 3:It was a really awesome weekend, but that was not the full seek experience, so I'm really looking forward to this one, Um so yeah, I mean, the theme of this year's seek is following the Lord Jesus and when we heard that and we wanted to do this pre seek episode, kind of leading up to the the event itself, we knew that there was this. I had read this article by Ratzinger before.
Speaker 3:Sure, short, beautiful article, just reflecting on what it actually means to follow the Lord Jesus yeah and we wanted to just share some of those reflections with you in this episode and then, like digging back, said well, he'll get to share his experience at seek and then we'll go from there. So let's do it, do it to it. This article by Joseph Ratzinger is literally called Following Christ, and it's in this book Dogma and Preaching.
Speaker 2:Or if you have this book, the Hardcover, because we bought that life, Okay that's clearly from the library.
Speaker 3:You can't see the rest of the title. You don't even have that.
Speaker 2:I have this book. No, no, no. So here's the thing about me not having this book. You're right, I don't have that book, I just bought it. It actually came in on Amazon today. The problem is, I can't find it anywhere. I've been looking all day for it, and so I resided to my library.
Speaker 3:What's wrong? What's wrong with having a book from the library? Nothing, it's really good, so highly recommend. But one of the articles that he wrote is just short. It's called Following Christ and in this article he's trying to like you know, we use this term all the time like you got to be a disciple, you got to follow Jesus. But he's trying to ask the question what does that really mean? And that's the why are you looking at me like that dude?
Speaker 2:I feel like no it's, it's a dude. I'm thinking that's a hard question to answer.
Speaker 3:Okay, okay, just making sure I didn't have something in my teeth or something. Do I have something?
Speaker 2:No, you don't.
Speaker 3:Um, let me see, no, okay. Um questions that he wants to ask in this article are one what does it actually mean to follow the Lord Jesus? And two, is that actually possible today, cause like Jesus isn't around anymore?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So we just want to like break this down a little bit, reflect on this and start with this first question what does it mean to follow the Lord Jesus?
Speaker 2:All right the way that Ratzinger breaks it down Pope Benedict XVI. For those of you who aren't familiar with his actual name, joseph Ratzinger, he draws this distinction between external dimension of following Christ and this internal dimension of following Christ. This we could call this kind of the older interpretation, maybe more ancient way of reading what it meant to follow christ. And externally, to follow christ meant literally, like you actually are following the man, jesus christ, through the streets of palestine that's what that meant.
Speaker 3:This is. He starts off very literally like that's what it meant to follow jesus from the beginning like put down your disciples and literally come follow me, because we're walking Right.
Speaker 2:We strutting down this thing. I think I read that somewhere in Mark's gospel. It's crazy we strutting down this thing.
Speaker 3:I think it's like Mark 6, like it's somewhere in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's exactly what I was thinking. Yeah, good job. I think that's the external dimension. That's what it meant to follow Christ. It took on a literal meaning, but then there was this other dimension. You want to talk about that?
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, I mean.
Speaker 3:Ratzinger says that that external activity of actually leaving your job, leaving your family, leaving your home and following Jesus around first century Palestine, that was accompanied.
Speaker 3:It was necessarily accompanied by an interior activity, right, and this is where the cruoks of the argument is right. Yeah, and so the way that Ratzinger explains it. He says this. He says following Jesus meant a new direction for one's life, which no longer has business, the earning of a livelihood and one's own wishes and ideas as its central point of reference, but is surrendered to the will of another of reference, but is surrendered to the will of another, so that being with him and being at his disposal are now the really important content of a human existence.
Speaker 3:So he, just from the very outset, makes this observation that, like following Christ always had this, you know, in its original context, had this exterior dimension I'm going to follow this guy around but that demanded interiorly that my life stops being centered around me and slowly my heart starts to be centered and at the disposal of this man and is willing to sacrifice itself for this man right I mean like I'm leaving my family, I'm leaving right sometimes leaving my job like and I'm following this guy around because I'm so captivated by, I don't know, his gaze into my eyes, or he or the word, the truth that he's speaking to me right now, like yeah people left everything to follow this rabbi from Nazareth around yeah, I think, I think that's right.
Speaker 2:You, we've drawn, and we've drawn on servant of God, luigi luigi giussani. Yeah, right, and his big thing is about encounter yes encountering the event of christ right. What does this encounter do? First of all, it fills the space of your reality with the radiant light of truth, goodness and beauty and that captivity draws you out of yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like you no longer want to be in this kind of dwindling, small, limited ego. Yeah, you want to see what it was, that you who was, that you encountered right, and this is kind of this, this right, this internal dimension something in your heart is moving you outward, yeah, moving you towards that's no, that's towards the other.
Speaker 3:That's really well said. Yeah, so after rat singer just makes that initial observation, he then points to like he's throughout this article he's trying to kind of unpack the meaning of this phrase following Christ, like what does that really mean? And he's kind of meditating on it. And the next place that he goes is to this really kind of dramatic passage in Mark's gospel, not the one where he's like strutting around with this thing, but like a different one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:So you, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you know, like the other one, the other one, not the one we just said, not the one we were just talking about Not the one strung down, the thing Right, the different one, this one, I got it and this one actually comes from Mark 8, verse 31 through 33. Diggie Max, do you want to read this for us? Yeah, helpful to just kind of meditate on in a little bit of the context here.
Speaker 2:right, so peter is posed. This is this is peter. Right? This is peter and jesus talking. Peter is posed with this person of christ and, as you know, jesus and peter are walking, talking, getting to know each other.
Speaker 2:Eventually, it comes to the crooks of the matter. Yeah, that it turns out that the man he's fallen in love with, gotten to know, is actually going to have to die. Peter recognizes that his master, his rabbi, jesus christ, is going to have to die. And upon confronting this reality, upon having to confront the fact that actually following christ means this thing, namely to sacrifice, peter's appalled. Yeah, he can't comprehend, he can't understand, he doesn't want to believe that this is what it means that his master, the one who was innocent, has to die. He doesn't want to. He wants to reject that. He wants to reject that dimension of following Christ, which is a dimension of sacrifice that's essential to following this person. Yeah, right, and so here's the context, right? So Mark 8, verses 31 through 33, read this way Then he began to teach them that the Son of man must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed.
Speaker 2:And, after three days, arise again. He said all this quite openly and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But, turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said Get behind me, satan, for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things. Now, that's a pretty stark response of the all-passionate, all-loving, all-compassionate Jesus To the Prince of the Apostles. To the Prince of the Apostles, the Pope, the future Pope, he's saying get behind me, satan.
Speaker 2:Why? Because Peter's rejection of the paschal shape of following Christ is something that cannot be denied. It's essential to following this person of Christ, and I think this is a reality that many of us, including myself, in our own varying degrees of life, want to reject. We don't want to have to pick up our cross and follow him. We don't want to see our Lord suffering. We don't want to share in what it means to die to the self, because a lot of the, a lot of the times, we think that death has the final word, and yet our Lord and his resurrection shows us that's not the case. To follow him means to follow him into death and to rise with him too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and, and Ratzinger makes the point that this rebuke that Jesus issues to Peter is very revelatory of what it means to follow him right. So, jesus, he says Peter in this moment thinking as human beings, do not as God does, he is, he's trying to take the leap, he's trying to tell Jesus where to go right. Jesus is telling him I'm going to suffer and die and rise on the third day, and Peter's trying not to let that happen. He's trying to orchestrate the affairs, but what Jesus says is no, get behind me. And that's what Ratzinger keys in on. He says to follow is to surrender one's place, kind of in the lead, and to get behind, to get behind the Lord Jesus and follow where he leads. And oftentimes, as you just articulated, that means confronting terrible things, like things that we can't in our own minds imagine, but that the Lord Jesus assures us will lead ultimately to glory if we trust him.
Speaker 2:And, admittedly, friends, I can't pretend to know where you are all in life right now.
Speaker 2:You may be a college student, you may be a high schooler, you may be a middle schooler, you may be a married person Right, you may be an elderly person listening to this. And so the cross is going to take on different forms depending on where your life is. Maybe you're looking for a job. Maybe you're suffering from a breakup. Maybe you, maybe you're going through a rough path in your marriage. Maybe things are going well in your own relationships. Maybe you have a great job right now. Maybe there's not that explicit, let's say, dimension of the cross, but there is, there's always that, and our Lord always calls us to pick that up. And so I guess what we don't want to do also is undermine the fact that following Christ is a radical thing, right, but also make it so radical that it's, uh, that it shatters you, because sometimes I think we can be scrupulous to to believe. Well, that means I have to do everything the gospel says exactly how it says it, or have to do everything exactly how that saint says to do it.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And so we also have to kind of walk that thin line of like discerning what God's will is for my life, right, but also choosing, acting, doing the thing that we know, at this particular moment in time, that we've judged to be the will of God, and live according to that.
Speaker 3:Right, so, yeah, so Ratzinger, again, he begins with this recognition that following Jesus has this exterior dimension at first, and then an interior dimension to this inner transformation that takes place as I surrender my life and my preferences to this man.
Speaker 3:Then he draws attention to the fact that following Jesus means getting behind him and trusting him, even as he leads you to the cross, which is terrifying.
Speaker 3:And then this is kind of the last reflection he has on this question, before he gets into addressing whether or not we can actually follow Jesus today, 2000 years later. He gets into addressing whether or not we can actually follow Jesus today, 2000 years later. And what he says is he actually points to the gospel of John and verse chapter nine, verse 22. And in this verse it says this it says it's talking about Jesus and it says the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. Right, so the Jews who were hearing Jesus' teaching, who were frustrated by it, who were angry at it, they had made the decision to kick Jesus out of the synagogue and anybody and anyone who was following him. And so what Ratzinger says? He says this this is a quote he says Anyone who joins Jesus enters the company of the outcast and must be prepared to be condemned as Jesus was and to end up on the cross.
Speaker 2:So this is the important element of following Christ to be a part of a community who's willing to share in his cross, to willing to be in the group of the outcasts.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that is as you pointed out earlier. It's a very hard reality.
Speaker 3:It's understandable why a lot of people don't want to follow Christ.
Speaker 2:But it also shows, I think, to my mind, a level of credibility of those who did follow him. Oh for sure His existence must have been so palpable, and compelling that they're like okay, what is he taught? Who is this man?
Speaker 3:Like I'll follow this guy, even though the Jews are kicking me out of the synagogue, which is like the center of my life. This man and his love and the truth that he is speaking into my life is so real that literally what I have held most important in life right now my worship at the synagogue even that becomes relative in relation to him, which is closely related to the early Christian community.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this early Christian community is marked by not just early Christians. This early Christian community is marked by not just early Christians. This continues to some varying degree. Today was marked by martyrdom. Exactly yeah, literally being thrown out, sometimes of their own family, right Thrown out into the dust, being murdered, not murdered, being martyred for the faith. For professing their belief in this god man, jesus christ, they shared in the cross of christ in a way that I mean perfectly in a way in a way that we probably want, want sharing in a specific way, at the very least, and so you.
Speaker 2:So you have this element right from the beginning to literally follow christ right, to turn your life to christ, to follow him, to get behind him, to put your ego aside, to pick up your cross and to share in his cross as a community yeah, and this is why, as you just said, you can that, from very early on, christians began to intuit that, that the martyrs were the perfect like, the, the best disciples of the like.
Speaker 3:Those were the people who were truly following Jesus.
Speaker 2:And so, to this day, we model them right, we have them in our stained glass windows, we have them depicted in our statues in our churches, we have their mottos all over our little prayer cards. People get them tattooed on themselves To this day, these quotes of these martyrs, these saints, reflecting the demands of love to be sacrificed, and sometimes that means to be a sacrifice of blood.
Speaker 3:So that's the way that Ratzinger begins to answer the question of what it really means to follow Jesus, but then he transitions into the second major question that he's trying to address in this article, which is this you know, like Jesus is no longer walking around planet Earth, like he's not in Palestine anymore, we can't get up and follow him around Judea, and also like some places in the world, this is still happening, but in most places martyrdom isn't really going to be like a reality for most of us, or red martyrdom at the very least.
Speaker 2:Right, right, right. This is actually like dying for you right now, correct?
Speaker 3:To be fair, I'm not so sure that that's going to remain the case for the rest of our lifetime. I agree.
Speaker 2:And that's again just to point out what you said earlier. It's also not to undermine or to reject the fact that that still happens in some countries, yeah Right, but in most of the Western world that's not the case right now.
Speaker 3:So I, so Ratzinger, asked this question and I know a lot of like. I've had this thought before and I know many of our listeners probably have too like, okay, if Jesus isn't around anymore and if you can't really get martyred? You know too often anymore in a lot of countries and those are like the most essential aspects of following Jesus and the clear right, the clear ways of following Jesus. Is it still possible to follow him today, 2000 years later? And, surprise Ratzinger's, ratzinger, pope Benedict the 16th? His answer is yes, it is, and the reason that he says that it's still possible to follow Jesus is well, firstly, the essence of following Christ, even in the first century, even when he was walking around Palestine, was not the exterior movement of like walking behind him. The essence of following Christ was always the interior transformation.
Speaker 2:Which is why, by the way, jesus Christ is known as the new Moses, which we talked about in our episode with Bishop Fernandez. Right, as the new Moses, the law is no longer simply fulfilled by external acts. Right, the person of Jesus Christ is here to give us our hearts back right. So, again, essential to the Christian life, essential to following Jesus Christ, is being in tune with our heart's movement towards him, not simply our external acts.
Speaker 3:Yes, we can still surrender our heart and our life to him and to make him the center of our life, rather than ourselves and our own preferences. And part of the reason that we can do that, which is the second big point that Ratzinger makes, is that, even though Jesus isn't physically still here, he is still alive, which you know. Christians know that intellectually, but it can become easy to forget that he is even more present to us now than he was when he was walking around on the earth.
Speaker 2:And he loves you and he loves you, friends. He loves you.
Speaker 3:He not only allows you to share in the ability to follow him as a Christian community, but he loves you so much that he's allowing you to meet him face to face in the holy sacraments yeah, which is where he's supremely present, right in the sacraments, in his word, in in the community of the church, um, in your neighbor and in all of these, in all of these places, he's still looking you in the eyes, like he looked, looked in the eyes of St Matthew and St Peter and Andrew and he's saying follow me. Like he's still saying that to us today, which is why Ratzinger insists that, yes, it is still possible to follow the Lord Jesus. And then, and then he moves to help us understand what that looks like a little bit more clearly. He moves to just one final scripture verse that we wanted to draw your attention to, which is John, chapter 10, verse 4. And this is actually very related to the verse for the theme of seek, which is kind of cool how this worked out. But this is what John 10, verse 4 says.
Speaker 2:He says when the Shepherd has brought out all his own, he goes before them and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice this is what we, as Christians, are called to do to be able to again I use the word earlier to be attuned to his spirit, to be attuned to his voice, to know when our shepherd is calling us.
Speaker 2:And I'm going to hear read a quote, uh, by ratzinger on this idea of knowing his voice, what it means to know his voice to follow means to recognize jesus voice and to follow that voice through the confusion of voices with which the world surrounds us.
Speaker 2:To put it even more clearly to follow means to entrust oneself to the Word of God, to rate it higher than the laws of money and bread and to live by it. It means making a radical decision between the two and, in the final analysis, the only two possibilities for human life bread and the word. Man does not live on bread alone, but also and primarily, on the word, the spirit, the meaning. He has to make the radical decision to stake his life either on profits and gain or on truth and love, to live only for himself or to surrender himself. This points to something we've already kind of talked about earlier right To follow Christ means to take up the attitude of a servant, to say I will serve Because, contrary to that statement is Satan's statement that he will not serve, and part of serving, part of following, is again tied wedded to the cross.
Speaker 3:But also the redemption of our lord, yeah yeah, um, that, in a way that only you know that rat singer can do, just to distill things down to their simple like this. This decision, like following jesus make means making this radical decision in favor of the word over simply bread, in favor of meaning and love and truth over simply material possessions and gain. If I'm living my life simply seeking money and pleasure and power, then I'm not following the lord jesus. But if I'm submitting myself in humility and trust and loving obedience to his word, then I will get to experience the joy that did compel even the martyrs to like joyfully embrace death. Yeah, because they were loved that much, because they knew that they were loved and they knew that death was not the end.
Speaker 2:I'm reminded of a saint we've spoken about before on our podcast, st Charles Luanga. Oh yeah, right, and companions, when they're all walking together they're kind of high-fiving cheering. They're all singing, they're excited about what's about to happen to. They know they're about to die and they're cheering their way forward. That is a. They're following christ, right, they're taking up the cross, but they're also taking up their humanity, yeah, and living in joy and friends. You know, I have to qualify this a bit Sometimes as Christians, when we use this language of denying the world, we can oftentimes assume well, that means everything in the world is bad.
Speaker 2:And that's not what we're trying to say. That's not what our Lord is trying to say either. You need bread to survive, it turns out, and he wants you to survive and it's good. It is good. Unless it's gluten-free, then it's not good at all. Dude big development in my life.
Speaker 3:Can I just share this real quick? Yes, okay, so maybe our listeners didn't know this, but I've discovered that I have a sensitivity to gluten and that a lot of some medical problems I had have disappeared that's what he says After I got off of gluten, which has been really great. But recently I discovered that, um, sourdough bread is like during the fermentation process, a lot of the gluten breaks down, so people who have sensitivities to it can sometimes eat sourdough bread.
Speaker 2:And, uh, my family just started making sourdough bread and it's, it's, so it's it sourdough bread and it's it's so, it's um, it's so good and I'm so, you're fine. So bread is good and if you have a gluten tolerance, intolerance, sourdough bread seems like your answer it's sourdough bread you're welcome.
Speaker 2:Sorry, I cut you, so man doesn't live off bread alone, but he sometimes does also live on bread. And that is the end of that conversation. No, no, I'm just simply saying that our Lord doesn't want us to deny everything in the world. Our Lord wants us to order it, to put it in its place, to help those small things. What's up? Alarm? Yeah, go ahead. Our Lord doesn't want us to deny all of the things in the world, right, he wants us to order those things. He wants us to place them in their proper order. He wants to make those lesser things subservient to us, as we're being subservient to God. To him, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's really well said this is the way that the ordering of creation works. It turns out yeah.
Speaker 3:So, deacon, max, just in light of this discussion I'm curious about you mentioned. You know I've never been to SEEK before, but I know you've shared with me that you have been to SEEK before and that you've had some actually pretty powerful experiences there and I'm wondering if you would be willing to share some of those experiences right now.
Speaker 2:So I lied oh, share some of those experiences um right now. So um, I lied oh, I said that seek 2017, 2018, it's actually seek 2019.
Speaker 2:okay, in indianapolis you gotta go, I will, um, although it wasn't, it was a mistake, not a lie. So it was a mistake, not a lie, which means I don't have to go ever, not not ever. This specific for this specific thing. Um, yeah, I know I had a profound experience, I gotta say. I just want to recall it for those of you who maybe have never heard of seek or are familiar with it. Yeah, it's put on by focus. I'm not going to try to pretend to know their full name. Uh, I got you you right.
Speaker 3:Yes, fellowship of catholic university students. Is that the name you were thinking of?
Speaker 2:Well done. I suppose that's about five days where, up until very recently it was college students were invited and there's approximately 15 to 20,000 college students. It's beautiful. I mean, I've had the opportunity to go to. Now maybe three.
Speaker 3:This will be my fourth one. I didn't realize you've been to that many yeah.
Speaker 2:I haven't been, like I said, in a few years, but in 2019, I was given the opportunity by my diocese to go, and I was given the opportunity by my diocese to go and I remember I think it was day three they'd had Eucharistic exposition and adoration and they processed our Lord through the conference center and I remember him approaching me very vividly as I'm kneeling in the back, wrestling with some sins, with some things that I experienced.
Speaker 2:For those of you who know some of my story, I'd also gone through rehab, so I was at that point, just over a year clean, and so I was kind of also thanking God for those things.
Speaker 2:And I remember him coming to me and there was something, a particular intention that I'd been praying for for a very, very long time and I had particularly been asking for courage to face this wound. And as he came to me this was a Sikh 2019, our Lord, in one of the handful of times in my life, spoke clearly, spoke clearly to what I was asking. It was very, very piercing and he touched upon the specific wound that I asked him to help me confront, that I asked him to help me confront and that gave me the courage to speak to others about it and then, because of opening that up, I finally had the courage to open up about that, but then also to decide that seminary is what our Lord wanted for me. That was a big part of my vocational story that I sometimes have just forgotten about because I've been through so many things about, and that was one of the big things that I told our Lord.
Speaker 2:I said, lord, unless I open up about this, unless I share this in a confession, or unless I share this with friends and family, this isn't. I don't think this seminary thing is going to be an honest pursuit, and so, um, that's, that's one of my profound experiences that I had with seek.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, the conference has beautiful things. Yeah, the conference is like it's professional, they, they're, they're, they're, I mean, they're calm. This focus always puts on. I went to the pilgrimage, it was put on by focus, you know, I mean, they always do a good job, but, but, but see, the only thing that they're doing they're instruments of facilitating, facilitating people with an encounter with our Lord, so that you can follow him. That's what they want. They want us to you know the fellowship that they, they want us to to, to enter into union with our Lord. That's what they want.
Speaker 3:And you might be thinking to yourself you know, okay, deacons Max and Joseph, like you're telling me, I can follow Jesus even today, in my everyday life. So why do I need to go to this conference to do it? Why can't I just like follow Jesus here where I am, or like at my church? And the answer is, of course you can. But there's something significant about again sacrificing, you know, four or five days of your time and money to fly there to buy the tickets, yeah.
Speaker 3:Making that decision is doing exactly what Ratzinger is talking about in this article that we just read where it's it's subordinating my desire for bread and stuff and luxury and possessions and pleasure. It's subordinating that desire for my desire for Christ and I'm actually putting my resources at the service of my desire for Christ. I'm sacrificing, I'm creating. This is the way I think about all these conferences. This is the way I think about like Lent or the season of Advent which is coming up, or any retreat that you go on.
Speaker 3:A lot of times we think like, oh, we gotta like do a bunch of stuff to receive a bunch of grace. But really what we're doing when we go to a conference or a retreat or we enter into the season of Lent or Advent is all we're trying to do is just create space in our hearts for the Lord to come flooding into. And I have found in my own life and I know this is the case for so many people, I mean you, just, I mean you're a clear example of that is that when we make that sacrifice for the Lord and we open up our hearts by opening up our time to dedicate it completely to him, he responds with generosity and people regularly have like significant life-changing encounters at events like this.
Speaker 2:Amen and friends, look if you, if you can't afford it cause I know this is expensive, I'm not, we're not trying to undermine it there's in two locations. There's one in Utah, which is the one we'll be going to, Salt Lake city, Utah, and there's one in DC. You know, um, uh, contact your diocese. Your diocese may be sponsoring people to go. That's the way I went in 2019.
Speaker 3:Or, if not, Seek will be posting all their videos, all the videos of the speeches our podcast that we're going to get to do over there.
Speaker 3:That'll be posted. Dude, I'm so excited, that's going to be so sick, that's going to be fun. They reached out to us. We were thinking about going. We had to tell that, okay, all right, so here's what. Here's what's happening.
Speaker 3:Basically, deacon Max and I were like you know we should cause we went to the Eucharist in Congress this past summer and it was. We didn't plan like to have any significant stuff going on with like logos podcasts, but then when we got there, there were all these people who listened to logos podcasts and we were making connections. Like we met father David and Michael Moses, we were meeting some of these other speakers and stuff. And, uh, you know, we've been brainstorming. Like you know, we should like go to seek, to try to like network and meet people and and and interact with our audience base too, cause that was just so life-giving at the Eucharistic Congress. And then we looked into it. We were like thinking about setting up a booth or something and we looked into it and we were like we cannot afford that because we are poor seminarians. We are poor seminarians still as it is.
Speaker 2:And but not only that, like it's, it's also, like you know, traveling from where we are to Utah. That's a long ways away and there's other commitments we have. There are other things in our own diocese that so, you know, these kinds of boundaries started coming up time and time again and but we, you know, we were kind committed, so we're like we got to make this happen as best as we can. And I mean, I'm no kidding, that day I had spoken, or maybe the day before I just spoke, into joey, I'm like dude, uh uh, there's some, there's something about diocese. I don't know if I'll be able to go figure it out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did, and I I overbooked, as I want to do because I'm silly, um, and so I was like I don't know what to tell you know, father, so-and-so about the situation. And he's like, well, just, you know whatever, talk to him and see what happens.
Speaker 3:And I was like, okay, and I was kind of hesitant and, uh, because of my own ignorance, and cause we had decided, like my diocese had ended up deciding, that it was going to take a group.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 3:So I was going to get to go.
Speaker 2:Whereas necessarily the case, they were going to help pay for some of the. But. But then there was this other situation that was really the. This other conflict was like, and I was like I don't know man, I don't know, and I'm literally in here editing an episode and I see the email from focus. Yeah, I'm like wait, wait, what.
Speaker 3:I mean cause.
Speaker 2:Literally I was in here that night kind of contemplating like should we go, should we not go? I, as I'm in here, like right now chillin and from. Alex, from Alex yeah shout, alex, thanks for what you're doing for us. And then I in the morning tell Joey. I said hey, we got a. We got to check this out. I don't know what this is about, but we just seems interesting.
Speaker 3:No, you called me, you're like hey, dude, um, oh, that's right. I think we just got invited to go to a podcast seek. I was like what?
Speaker 2:so anyways, beautiful, yeah, so it worked out, we're gonna be there we're so excited we are.
Speaker 3:If you're going, we're like definitely gonna be let you know like we'll be having a hangout while we're there meeting up with our, our listeners and our audience base. But we're just, we're just really excited for this opportunity and I'm looking forward to what the Lord is going to be doing more than what we're going to be doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we'll be there, it'll be cool, but we want you to just encounter our Lord in similar ways that we've encountered him.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so pray for us, Pray for everyone who's going to seek. If you are going to seek, we'll going to seek. You know what? We'll be praying for you and, um, that it'll be a a life-changing encounter for you with the lord jesus. Amen. Um, I thought that it'd be fitting to kind of conclude this episode with just reading the last couple paragraphs of this article from rat singer, because, um, he says things better than we do oftentimes. Well then, you do definitely and me sometimes.
Speaker 3:He ends up making this point that you know, even though martyrdom isn't necessarily happening left and right nowadays like it was in the early church, the inner essence of conversion, the inner essence of following Jesus, is this kind of daily martyrdom, of self-surrender to the Lord right. And it's after he makes that point that he says this, and I'll just read this last paragraph of this chapter it should be about 20 minutes or so.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so just buckle up. Just 20, 25 minutes, I might read it twice. No, I'm just kidding. He says this To follow Christ means to accept the inner essence of the cross, namely the radical love expressed therein, and thus to imitate God himself, his glory, in order to be present for us, who desires to rule the world not by power but by love, and in the weakness of the cross, reveals his power, which operates so differently from the power of this world's mighty rulers. To follow Christ, then, means to enter into the self-surrender that is the real heart of love. To follow Christ means to become one who loves as God has loved. That is why St Paul can make the astounding statement that to follow Christ is to imitate God and to enter into the basic movement that characterizes God himself. God has become man so that men might become like God. In the last analysis, following Christ is nothing other than man's becoming man by integration into the humanity of God.
Speaker 2:Well, good job. How are we supposed to like? I don't know what to say after that dude thanks a lot.
Speaker 3:Joseph Ratzinger stole our thunder. Dude, actually we took his just kidding. Please pray for us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, guys, we hope that motivated you. We hope this, this episode, has motivated you to go to seek to, above all, really encounter our Lord, to follow him. That's, that's the message here to follow our Lord. We hope you're an instrument of that, and we hope above all really encounter our Lord to follow him. That's the message here to follow our Lord. We hope you're an instrument of that and we hope, above all, that we brought you closer and closer to the Lord of us, to our Lord Jesus Christ, and, as always, god bless.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us for this episode. We hope you learned something and encountered Christ in some way. If you enjoy what we do, please subscribe and share this podcast with a friend. This helps us reach more people with and for Christ. Until next time, this is John Michael Peace.
