Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] What's up? You guys getting ready for Christmas on a family trip? Enjoying the family chaos? Joey home from college. Amazing. Looks a little bit like John the Baptist after semester in Steubenville. That's what happens sometimes. Hi, Natalie. Hello, Grandma's work. Who's never done.
[00:00:16] Sup, Eloise?
[00:00:20] I love you.
[00:00:22] What are you laughing at? She's just a happy kid.
[00:00:25] There it is.
[00:00:27] What dream life are you trying to build for yourself? Guys, what's driving you? Look, your dreams are yours for a reason. It's a beautiful thing to have them. Here's where they get poisoned. When, for the most beautiful and best of intentions, they become primarily about you.
[00:00:43] Hey, I have this beautiful family, so therefore, I'm gonna. I mean, look, it's good to want to give your family stability. Don't get me wrong, it really is. It's good to want to give them a home, to be able to take them on a trip, to get them all together. But when that becomes, you know. Therefore, I obsess about, in an inordinate way about building my castle in the here and now, and I obsess about trying to overprotect them and build a castle and moat around them. And therefore, life can become so much about money and about work that I lose focus on them. Guys, we can do this with the kingdom. We can do this with building up God's kingdom in ministry. And I've seen this happen in so many ministries where it becomes so dang carnal in that, well, I'm doing something great for God. This is his dream. He gave me, and my intentions are good, and it's all about Him. So therefore, dude, I've seen ministries begin to act like tech startup companies where they're aggressively pursuing and crushing all the competition and dominating.
[00:01:45] And what happens is that the dream, even with the best of intentions, the beautiful thing you're trying to build is. Gets twisted and gets poisoned. It gets poisoned. John the Baptist gives us the direction in how we're supposed to build and dream in this life and how we're supposed to achieve true greatness and how we're supposed to actually build something of worth that lasts beyond us.
[00:02:10] And it's easy to say this and so dang hard to do. I know it.
[00:02:14] It's to build something that's not about us, and it's to examine our priorities and kick out the mountains of pride, level those mountains, straighten the highways in the wilderness of your heart, so that it's actually about Jesus.
[00:02:29] He's the thing that lasts. I got to have A conversation with a really famous politician. I'm not going to tell you who, but you'd know right away. But he talked about legacy.
[00:02:38] And he said, yeah, I don't care about my legacy.
[00:02:42] Which, frankly, is probably the reason that he got so dang successful. He's like, yeah, because I'll be dead.
[00:02:47] And then he laughed.
[00:02:49] You know what's funny, dude? Like, even John the Baptist, I'm talking about him right now, 2000 years after him. He doesn't care.
[00:02:57] He's in paradise with the Lord. He doesn't care about his legacy.
[00:03:02] And so it's a great thing to remember our legacy, our dreams, the priorities we have, what we're trying to do in this life, what we're trying to build at this time of year. As the year comes to a close, the calendar year, the church has us think a lot during Advent about John the Baptist.
[00:03:18] And I want to read this to you. This is from a Sunday gospel in Advent, from the Gospel of Matthew. When John the Baptist heard in prison of the works of Christ, he sent his disciples to Jesus with this question. I love this, guys. Here he is in prison. He knows Jesus is a miracle worker. His question, my question would have been like, hey, can you help me out?
[00:03:38] I'm in prison.
[00:03:40] No. All he cares about is Jesus.
[00:03:42] It's not about him. It's not about his life. It's not about whether he dies.
[00:03:47] Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?
[00:03:51] Jesus said in reply, go tell John what you hear and see. The blind regain their sight. The lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised. The poor have the good news proclaimed to them. Blessed is the one who takes no offense at me.
[00:04:07] John the Baptist, the way he faced his death, the question he asked at that moment, you know, it highlights how he defined himself.
[00:04:13] I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. Let me tell you what's so stunning about that answer. Because he could have claimed worldly power at that moment, they came to ask him, who are you? Are you the Christ? Are you a king? Are you supposed to deliver us?
[00:04:27] I am the voice.
[00:04:29] A voice is not about itself.
[00:04:32] A voice carries a word. St. Augustine reflected very beautifully on this, that when he said, on the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, the word is the thing that lasts. A word is something in my mind, in my heart. The Logos, right?
[00:04:46] The voice is something that vibrates the air. And Father Sebastian Walsh said this very beautifully. He wrote a book On John the Baptist, it's something destined to vibrate the air and then disappear, right?
[00:04:57] So it vibrates the air. It, it carries the word, the lasting thing in my heart, the concept. The voice goes away.
[00:05:05] Look, I'm speaking right now. Here's a voice, there's a voice and it's gone.
[00:05:09] But what just lasted?
[00:05:12] Elephant. Elephant. Elephant.
[00:05:17] The voice that said elephant three times is gone. What lasted? There's an elephant, probably a pink one. In your head. I called it, didn't I? In your head right now that has remained beyond the word.
[00:05:30] So when Augustine was reflecting on this, he said that John's being the voice that went away. But it was about his whole ministry. His whole life was about the Word and his ministry itself.
[00:05:43] He built something great, man. All of Jerusalem was talking about this guy. They wanted to come out and to get the baptism of John. He built this ministry, you know, trademark tm. Baptism of John.
[00:05:54] Where is John's baptism today? It served its purpose, then it went away. It's in Christ's baptism that we believe, because as big as it was, no one does the John baptism thing anymore. Just the pure baptism of repentance. It pointed to not only his life, his words, his legacy, the thing he was building, the very structure of his ministry was a pre figurement. So it all pointed to something bigger than him. It's not about me, guys. This is the key to great leadership. This is the key to building anything that actually lasts. It's not getting caught in the gears of making it about you or even about the thing you're doing for God.
[00:06:31] Father Ripiger said that the demon's motto, he's my exorcist friend, right?
[00:06:37] The great motto of the demon, the great rallying cry is anything but God. And this can include things of God.
[00:06:43] There's the jiu jitsu move of the devil that sometimes people get so wrapped up in the stuff that comes from God that they'll over debate liturgical things and obsess on it, and obsess on who's wearing a veil and who's not. Right? As if that's all important and put that to front and center to where they go to pray at Mass. And they're thinking all about that, which is that the Evil One would rather you think about the stuff of God. I'm not saying it's unimportant, I'm really not. But it's not all important. The Evil One wants you to think about the secondary things and forget the first things. This happens in everything in life.
[00:07:19] But the Baptist's pattern of life is to say all the secondary things, they will all pass away.
[00:07:26] Let's make the legacy the thing I care about the most about the main thing, and this is even in John the Baptist's, the way we celebrate his birth in the liturgical calendar, it's six months on the other side of the calendar from Jesus birth. Why is that? Because the longest days of the year come right in midsummer, right, when John the Baptist is born, when the church celebrates his birth, the longest days, and from his birth, they get shorter and shorter.
[00:07:53] May I decrease what's on the other side of the calendar that he's pointing to? And by the way, if you're in the southern hemisphere, in Australia watching me, this whole thing is messed up. But you'll follow the point. You get what I'm saying? The other side of the calendar, you got Jesus birth.
[00:08:06] The light that's coming to the world from his death. Birth. All the days get longer and longer. All this. All this is that pattern. See, John the Baptist's life is a pattern of Christian living, a pattern of true legacy. A pattern of how to do something awesome and actually great in this world. And it's to stop trying to do something awesome and great in this world for you. Think small, drain your legacy. You're not going to care.
[00:08:28] Examine your conscience, examine your dreams, scrutinize your own dreams and say, what am I actually trying to build here?
[00:08:35] Because the stuff that lasts.
[00:08:38] First things. Keep first things first. C.S. lewis said. Get second things thrown in. Put second things first. Lose both first and second things. The stuff that lasts is what the stuff of going on a nice family trip. Thank God for the ability to do that, what it's all about. But I could be in a place in life where I don't have the ability to just get a little house with the famous Airbnb for a week.
[00:09:02] What would we still have? We still have love.
[00:09:04] We still have joy. We still have the ability to pray together, play a board game.
[00:09:09] The stuff that lasts.
[00:09:12] God help me not get lost in the stuff that supports the stuff that lasts. Do you follow that Rick Warren? He's talking about building a legacy. And he said he wants, in his tombstone, words written about King David.
[00:09:24] He served God's purpose in this generation.
[00:09:30] He served God's purpose in his generation.
[00:09:34] And then what happened?
[00:09:36] Well, if I'm a good preacher, if I'm effective for you right now in 2025, then I'm going to be so good for this generation that in the next generation, they'll Say that guy's lame.
[00:09:48] He's irrelevant. Fine. That's great. There's something beautiful about inherently beautiful about my calling as an itinerant preacher. Itinerant preachers throughout the history of the church, they make an impact on their generation, then they fade away.
[00:10:01] That's it. You know, Chris, you're going to build like a monument, a real life Catholic monument. Let's build a lot of brick and mortar that lasts after you're dead. That'll be a legacy. Who cares, man? Seriously, who cares? I'll be dead.
[00:10:13] No, no, no. The beauty of itinerant preaching is that they walk along the shore with Jesus.
[00:10:19] They leave some temporary footprints, but then get washed away pretty quickly by the water coming in and out. That's how all our lives will be.
[00:10:31] But if you want to build something again, this is the great irony that truly lasts, that's truly worth paying attention to in future generations, then make your legacy about Jesus.
[00:10:43] Be a voice that focuses on the word hard. Stop.
[00:10:48] I don't know what that means for you. I don't know how that translates to your life. Whether you're in ministry or you're just, you know, if you're. You're a mom or a dad raising a family, you're building your business. However that applies. That principle applies across the board.
[00:11:03] Make it about love, make it about service, make it about other people.
[00:11:08] That's truly the path to greatness.
[00:11:11] Amen. With that, I think it would be appropriate at this point to show you something really cool. I'm going to walk on water.
[00:11:17] Yeah. We could do anything. We believe. So here we go.
[00:11:21] Wish me luck.
[00:11:23] Take the first step and come with me, guys. This is great. If we trust in the Lord, we could do all things and I'll take the next step in a sec. Take one other step.
[00:11:33] Yeah.
[00:11:34] Yeah. Oh, my gosh. I'm doing it. Thank you. Hallelujah. This is so cool.
[00:11:41] Sorry, I'm a nerd. Okay, Advent's almost over, guys. Keep leaning in. It's a period of joyful repentance, not like Lent, specifically of joyful penance. Keep leaning in. Keep examining your spirit. Keep celebrating, keep praying. Keep upping the fasting and the almsgiving. I love you guys. Merry Almost Christmas.
