Brotherhood: Learning How To Become A Man Through Communion With Other Men - With Fr. Hans Jacobse

foreign [Music] [Music] from [Music] [Music] it's my joy to welcome you to st seraphim cathedral here in dallas texas my name is jesse cohn and i'm just a parishioner here but uh i have the privilege of knowing father hans for several years now i met father um at a at a conference it's the first time we met in person we had talked on the phone and uh you would have thought that the conversation would have been academic or perhaps offering some sort of cultural critique but it ended late in the early in the morning really in the hotel lobby with us praying and uh him caring for me as a father cares for a hurting child and that is how i think of father hans so he has many things to offer many thoughts that should help guide us and direct us but he's also a man who has shown me a great deal of love and i hope that he can help us to learn how to do the same so thank you father for coming this is your second time here the first time left a mark in all the best ways and we're thrilled to have you back in dallas thank you thank you jesse ladica see i'm a blessed man i'm really a blessed man because i get to do this and and meaning and joy if you can find meaning and joy in life i mean that's really what the joy of the lord is our strength right the joy of the lord is our strength and a life is rough life is rough life is hard of course it's rough and it's hard because what we're doing we're wrestling life out of death and it begins in our heart and if that isn't rough then we don't really understand how how the devil wants to to oppress us and hold us down and eat the dust like he does so it's a fight it's a spiritual warfare but men you were created for life but you're only going to the life is given to you but you have to apprehend it and you're only going to apprehend it if you're mature sober serious and walk like the man that god created you to be so this is my guiding prayer and i pray it a lot and i pray for every guy i'm responsible for make me by saint ephraim the syrian from the spiritual psalter i love this prayer make me whole o lord and i will become whole only wise and merciful physician i beseech thy benevolence heal the wounds of my soul heal the wounds of my soul and enlighten the eyes of my mind which is really the eyes of the noose right the eyes of the heart where we really see where real comprehension comes the very knowledge the very life of god we have to acquire the knowledge of god it's the knowledge it's in the knowledge that the power that the transformation occurs be renewed by the transformation of your mind offer your bodies as a living sacrifice holy acceptable unto the lord this is the apostle paul speaking offer your bodies as a living sacrifice holy acceptable unto the lord be transformed by the renewing of your mind and go to the greek it's noose the eyes of the heart be transformed by the renewing of your mind the opening of the eyes of your heart i love the apostle paul i pray that you come to visions and revelations of the knowledge of him unto what what does that mean visions and revelations of the knowledge of him of christ this is paul praying for his people the next clause the next clause is just too good to be true let me read the first clause let me say the next clause again i pray that you come to visions and revelations of the knowledge of him the knowledge of christ through the eyes opening of the eyes of the heart the news the hearts you know is the center of the soul if you want your soul be healed okay you got to learn how to open those eyes i pray that you come so that the that the wisdom the knowledge can be first of all comprehended and in its comprehension apprehended you can't put your arms around god he's too big but you can put your arms around what he gives you and bring it in so i pray that you come to the visions and revelations of the knowledge of him second clause it's good unto mature manhood unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of christ i pray that you come to visions and revelations of the knowledge of him offer your bodies as a living sacrifice be transformed by the renewing of your mind the opening of your noose the the eyes of your heart and to mature manhood unto the measure of the stature listen to this language it's divine it's beautiful let it sink into your heart unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of christ christ became man so you could become a man so you can live out your manhood in its fullness and its fullness occurs it's never ending it's never ending because the growth into christ it's the growth into god god is infinite it doesn't stop continues in heaven too because your manhood is posited in its completely only in union with your creator but in order for that to happen in order for that to happen is that the soul needs to be healed because the reality is is that the chaos the chaos in the world has harmed us all deeply the the primary cultural and energy is towards the disintegration of the human person and the disintegration of the human person leads to the lessening of the knowledge of what a man was really created for and so he slips into a power of powerlessness and he slips into a despair the problem is is that that powerlessness and that despair it's not just words that can heal it the soul itself has to be healed we're going to get into that heal the wounds of my soul and enlighten the eyes of my mind that i what that i what i love this prayer that i may understand my place in thine eternal design when i read this prayer i'm not an academic i'm not and i don't work like an academic where i take in a lot of knowledge and figure it out i'm a priest which means that's it's pretty much ground level stuff and the way i work is and i'm wired this way it's not a it's not a dig on academics it's just the way we're wired is is that i run into stuff and it's perplexing and i see the extent and depth of problems and so well how do i solve this what do i do and that's how i learn that's how i learn because i discern what the problem is and god being good the solution always comes in one way or another right and the solution primarily it's in this in our age it's anthropological that's a 35 dollar word some of us know what it means some of us don't it's a 35 word right it comes from the greek word anthropos anthropos means man and we carry that over into english and we talk about anthropology and when we talk about it in a theological way what we're really saying is who is man and how is he made and how can i understand man and how can i bring healing to man god who did you create man to be that's what the word anthropology is right so we the you run up against this and the answers and the solutions is quite remarkable how it happens they just come they always pull something out of the fathers boy i tell you the fathers of the church and our orthodox understanding of what a man is and what he was put on this world to do is so deep and it's so comprehensive we are blessed men we really are and i'm not taking a hint on anyone else but nobody gets it like the orthodox nobody gets it like the orthodox and so to understand to understand our place in god's eternal design we have to learn who we are and what we're made for and how our souls will be healed because the reality is as i said in this culture we're all damaged we're all damaged we're all hurt no one comes into the church undamaged and we come into the church why because the lord led us here because nobody comes into the church either unless the lord leads him here right but he did not listen to me guys he did not let he did not call us into the church so we could contribute to the church our own wisdom right our own ideas our own opinions no he called us into the church to be healed that's why we're here we're all in need of healing all of us we're all in need of healing we're damaged the culture has taught us things that are blatantly not true and being young we assimilate it we assimilate it it's kind of just an osmosis of the soul we are shaped by the age into which we are born and it's only after the mistakes after the sins after assimilating confusion sometimes even innocently that the anguish and the depth of our souls the anguish the depth of the anguish in our souls drives us to look above the place we are living and when we do that it's volitional on our part because we are free men we are free agents when we do that we begin to hear the voice of god and he brings us on the path of salvation of which your baptism and chrismation are only the beginning lasts a lifetime i've been i've been i'm i'm a convert to orthodoxy myself right and i've been i've been at it for a little while i've learned a few things one of my closest friends feel content sitting in the first second row here we were at seminary together and i hate to say this 30 years ago 30 years where did it go where did it go well a lot of it went into service to the lord that's a long time right it's a long time and you learn these things and i remember when i was younger i thought my opinions mattered but they didn't really we had great debates and all this and that but it didn't really it didn't really the thing that matters is is how do we respond when the difficulties come because it's only through the struggle and the difficulties that the real conforming to christ happens that's where it happens it happens in the struggle but you already know this because why are you here what brought you here your own struggle the despair the loneliness the pain that's what drove you to seek our savior and he in his benevolence and great love brought you into the church but we think sometimes guys that we bring a great deal of wisdom to the church we really don't i had to learn this almost everybody has to learn this honestly but we really don't we are brought into the church so that we might receive the wisdom and experience the healing that's what it's about and when we experience the healing what happens is we begin to grow into our manhood the measure of the stature of the fullness of christ unto mature manhood like paul says and we begin to understand our place like saint ephraim the theorem says in his grand design and i tell you when you figure out and he's going to show you but we grow into it right it's not just an academic it's not just an intellectual exercise it's a transformation of the soul of the heart the opening healing healing healing healing i love the healing part that's what redemption is redemption is what redemption is a restoration of the fallen adam we're all sons of the fallen adam we're all sons it's the restoration of the fallen adam the second adam jesus christ that's what the apostle paul calls him the second adam comes to redeem the fallen adam we are children of the fallen adam baptized into the second adam and our job and the healing of the soul and the re-establishment of our created manhood men it's a commission is actually the very path of salvation as well we are redeemed from death the death that reigns in our members i'm quoting the apostle paul we are redeemed from the death that reigns into our members and brought into the the likeness of the second adam jesus christ at your baptism you were baptized into his death and you were raised in the likeness of his resurrection romans chapter 6 that likeness there refers back to genesis god is you are man was created in the image and likeness of god and at the fall he retains the image but he loses the likeness the power to grow into his likeness in other words he loses the holy spirit that's what's restored in baptism that's what's completed in chrismation and that's how we sons of the fallen adam experience the path of redemption of the second adam jesus christ and the journey then the journey is what it's a movement from brokenness to wholeness make me whole o lord open the eyes of my heart the noose let me comprehend and take hold of the knowledge that you give to me because that knowledge is life it brings life into the soul and this is the part we love tell me this doesn't resonate in your soul when you hear it that i might understand my place in your grand design now ask me why does that resonate father why does that resonate i'll ask myself i'm going to tell you i'm going to tell you because it's what you were created for that's why when these words that i'm giving you resonate the reason they resonate is because it's in harmony with your creator who made you in a particular way may put you on this earth to do a particular thing there are things that need to be done that each and every one of us are the only ones who can do it do you understand what i mean do you understand what i mean each and every one of us have a commission and if we don't do it it's not going to get done somebody else can't step in and do it for you because they're not you they're not you which is to say ultimately if we understand our mission on the earth [Music] we are the arms and the legs of god we do some of the work that's why you're called into his church the church is his body the church is the presence of of the lord on this earth it begins here it's the church is ground zero and then it moves on it moves out and the gospel is spread you're transformed and healed in the doing of it and that transformation and healing that clarity that light that hope because it's a dark time man it's a dark time that hope floods into the world through you that's how it works that's what you're called to that's what you're called to and we don't rest in the fact that we're called to be orthodox although it's it's a cool thing to be orthodox i mean i love it i'm glad i'm orthodox i'm grateful to god like many of you um it was a hard road getting here it's a hard road getting here just was and it for me it was basically the last of all options it was it was the last of all options it wasn't the last of all options because what just happened to choose it and i didn't choose anything else it was the last of all options why was it the last of our all options because of the the obstinacy of my own soul that's why but god was merciful god was merciful and god brought suffering in my life like he's brought suffering in many of your lives not the kind of suffering that led you to death but the kind of suffering that opened up in you the recognition of the necessity for god and that if you were to make the commitment it had to be complete there's no room for the lukewarmness for softness this is serious business sometimes people who suffer a lot and know that pain know that pain are the ones who embrace it the most put more simply in my case once you've tasted hell you don't want to go back and sometimes sometimes what drives us forward forward is we just get sick of death we get sick and tired of death and we see where the path is going to go it scares the hell out of us it really does it forces us to look upward and you look back it's very painful process i'm sure a lot of you guys have gone through this it's very painful it's very painful it's it's it's it's as scary as hell it really is and i'm not using i don't use words promiscuously it is scary as hell i mean that literally and sometimes it takes some of us it takes that experience to open up the possibility of the magnificence and power and scope of god some of us have a real hard time a real hard time with love some of us have a real hard [Music] time giving love we're afraid to because we've never been rece because we've never received love some of us have a real hard time giving love because love was always mixed in with pain and it shakes us and it shapes us and it's hard it's hard for us to trust god it's hard for us to even think of god on our way to him [Music] because it just does not come natural it does not come natural because we've never really known love and so the only way that god can reach us is through the suffering we say why did i have to go through that i'll tell you why you had to go through that because it's the only way that the truth could enter it's the only way that the truth could enter because if a man does not know love if a man does not lo no love excuse me then how's he going to trust how is he going to see god we there's it's it's it's very hard for that to happen we get kind of i call it the lock down i deal with a lot of guys who are locked down they come out of the lockdown but i understand the lockdown i understand the lockdown very much it's very hard for guys who are locked down right for for light and love to penetrate most often because those who they gave life love to growing up hurt them as well and so the guy grows up alone and the guy grows up afraid to love and he craves love but he's locked down and because he's locked down he can't feel it and he can't give it and so not because he's evil or bad or his soul is disfigured or anything like that no it's it's the result of the experience this is actually what i'm talking about it's just a spiritual epidemic of our age it really is is what i'm talking what i'm what i'm describing and a lot of us come from that a lot of us come into the church with that in our background and that's why it took suffering to bring us here because it's only the suffering that can break the lock down but once the lockdown is broken light can come in remember the lord god our father in heaven is not coercive he doesn't force himself on anyone the saints don't force themselves on anyone we have to come to them but what do we do what do we do how do we come to our father in heaven if we don't really even know the love of our father here on earth it's very very difficult that's what i mean with the lockdown and the lockdown is like you know what the lockdown is a guy locks down but the lockdown what it really is it's an extension of the concrete encasement in his heart that is hiding and covering pain and so so because the pain is associated with an experience that should have been loving the guy grows up and he's afraid to love because he's afraid of re-experiencing that pain and that pain initially was brutal absolutely brutal and so he covers it in concrete and then that encasement that concrete encasement in his soul is projected outward to protect himself from experiencing that pain again and we we live kind of like we're good people we're good people i love these guys but the concrete encasement we we kind of walk like this you know projecting that encasement out and we see people we want to be friends with people and we like people say i'd like to be friends with that guy but we can't let the guy in and we can't let what we feel inside out because the pain is just too big so we walk like this we walk like this and we kind of bump into people you know the encasement right so it's it's it's it's a spiritual thing but it begins in the heart right and so how is that god loves us god loves us we we're not bad people we're not bad people but he loves us how is this going to change how's it going to change it changes it changes when when the isolation becomes so painful that we begin to risk its collapse but it doesn't come apart from suffering so the suffering that we here's you know the paradoxes and the spiritual life they work in both directions right they work in both directions but sometimes the isolation that causes the suffering and the loneliness right itself becomes the means by which we cry out to god out of desperation we just can't take the pain anymore and that cry is what begins the healing i bet you if you look back at your life the reason you're in the church i bet you a lot of a lot of you guys went through this i think because it's as i said it's the malady of the age it's the spiritual malady of the time but god is good god is very very good but this is also why i say we're here to heal okay we're not here to give our opinions on this and that you can have your opinions and the reason i say that is because being being good sons of the age that we are we think that the healing is having the right ideas but it's not about ideas it's about the transformation of the heart is what it's about you know and so we we i remember going to seminary bill you remember this man we just came in there ready to go to war boom boom boom boom boom right nothing got solved nothing got solved and then we started growing up a little bit and got into the parishes and we realized man it's about healing human suffering is what it's about it's about the healing of the soul and frankly frankly it's about seeing christ working in the world and shedding the protestant notion shedding the western notion that if i can just get the idea clear i'll experience what it purports to describe no it doesn't work that way if i can just conform my heart to christ and love my neighbor then i'll experience what the idea purports to describe but it's with humility and care of the neighbor so as i was preparing for this i've thought about this a lot a lot john and i talked about it over the phone existential estrangement this despair i was talking about this inability to connect that i was talking about this walking around with a concrete case around us invisible nobody's there i can even reach through it and shake someone's hand because it's really in the heart you know the philosophers talk about that the philosophers talk about that and they call that existential estrangement and all of us philosophical types i'm one of them right we love thinking about that and since i'm older than some of you guys i've seen this stream through culture the anguish of the artist excuse me the anguish of the artist which is just a romanticization of it right that the artist feels it acutely not everybody feels it acutely man everyone feels it acutely talk to homeless guys i talk to homeless guys we got a lot in the area where i live and there's one guy homelessness is after you're homeless for a while it changes you psychologically but homelessness is is primarily the loss of a father there's one guy he's 35 years old and and i like the guy a lot i like him his name's stephen and we talk and by the hand of god we always bump into each other here there the third place and so one day i'm talking to someone on the phone i'm in the car it was i was in front of a 7-eleven i was gonna buy my one of my phony lattes dollar 89 and i got a call i started talking to the guy on the phone and usually at the end of every convo i pray with the person i'll pray over the phone i said so it's a quick conversation we got to pray about this so i'm sitting in the car and i'm praying and i'm finishing the prayer the name of the father son of the holy spirit amen and there's stephen he's watching me i didn't know he was there i look up and he's he's mimicking me making the cross and so i've got to go get out of the car i talked to stephen right and we chat a little bit and i said steve and it's drug addiction and i've learned his story and the story was that his his parents divorced when he was like three and then and then his mother remarried when he was like 11 and 12. and he said those were the best three years of my life the man i said he was like my dad this is a 35 year old man telling me this he said it was like my dad he taught me how to fish i said what happened he says well he cheated on my mom and so my mom threw him out i said when did the drug use start he said after he left right and i said steve i said you need a father and he started crying he started crying he says i've never had a father so i said let me be your father let me be your father you go in i said i can't do this drug thing for you steve but if you decide that you're going to get serious about kicking the drugs i will be there for you and i will be your father i'm going to help you through this and when you get it when you get out i'll be your father this brings adult men to tears because the pain of the loss of the father is so deep in the soul that it leads to all types of problems down the road and this man if steve decides i can't i can't take care of his drug problem for my i can't do anything for anybody but i can't be their father and in being their father they can find the strength necessary to undergo the healing of the soul it might happen it might happen i have another man in my church and this is just kind of out of the blue and it's not that i deal with a lot of homeless people i don't things just happen they happen and they happen by the hand of god and when they happen you take care of it and he would come up and talk to me and i talked to him and i will i have no trouble giving people help if i know they really need the help that's my only criteria do you really need the help yeah okay okay here that's it and his name's tim well tim came to me this was like three or four weeks ago i didn't be honest with you i didn't even remember until he reminded me that i've talked to him before and he's looking better he says father i've got a job i said i got a job i'm a line cook at denny's and and he says but i need a little help to give him a little help all right um father i need i need to buy some good clothes i said okay i'll meet you at walmart didn't work out i said just take this money and go and he did and he got us good clothes right and he says i want to come to church i said you're welcome to come to church and he was in church this sunday right and the sunday he had his new clothes on he was a different man and i i think i'm witnessing a miracle i think i'm part partaker and partner in a miracle of god here the healing of this older man who i'll tell you is in his situations because he walked for a long time with the big concrete case around his soul okay somehow it it it broke one time i was talking to him about a week ago he came by the church and love filled my heart for the man this is how it works love is a gift it's a gift it's not something you muster up when i brought my daughter home when i brought my daughter home from the hospital you know it was a little odd at first because you know the delivery the birth and this and that you go through all that and i brought the the car seat in the hospital put the baby they put the baby in the car so you know son you're looking you're bringing this human being home they give it to you oh they let you take her home right for a woman the child forms inside her and that connection is never broken for a man you're a witness to the child being formed and not until it's there is it really real oh shouldn't they give her to me no i take her home right take her home put her on the bed it was a c-section it's real hard to labor and delivery and we didn't have any help but i'm the oldest of seven so i told my wife don't worry i know diapers i know feeding and i really do i know all that stuff i'll take care of her put her on the bed and love filled my heart for her it was a divine miracle i had never experienced anything like that in my life love filled my heart and it was a revelation to me i didn't know that this could happen but subsequently love fills my heart for other people too just fills my heart and tim love filled my heart for tim you know it's kind of an older guy he's really trying i think he's going to succeed but love filled my heart for him and i think he's going to become orthodox love filled my heart for him so i went up to him and this is what i do when i love someone i put my hands on the side of his head and i kissed him on the forehead so i show my love the man started tearing started crying and right away he looked down right away he looked down and i said tim look up and he looked up he looked at me shane filled his face shame filled his face because in coming out of the darkness into the light right he realizes he did really waste his life and did things he regrets and all that stuff but i told him i said tim the longer you walk this path that shame is going to dissipate away and you're going to be filled with self-confidence right and if you could say this i could say this to him and i knew it was heard i said it to him because it's true i knew it was heard because the connection that i made with him when i showed him my love which was given by god i do love this guy now i love him it's permanent right which was given to my god did reached into his heart did reach into his heart and that's how his healing is going to continue so guys we're here and we're here to be healed in the only way that we're going to be healed is through love is through love here's what happens i deal with this a lot i know what i'm talking about so just listen we go through a life like this we can't handle the loneliness and the anguish it kind of starts crumbling we feel like our whole life is crumbling and sometimes it does don't worry guys you're not the only ones who have experienced this okay and sometimes it does but that's what enables us to rise from the dust and the ashes the dust in the ashes is where the devil lives by the way that's all he does that's all that's left for him is just eating dust and ashes you know back into the glory of god into what adam was created to be defined our place in this life right and it's actually part of the healing of that soul putting away the childish things as the apostle paul says and growing into mature manhood but what do we do about the pain what do we do about the fear to connect i'm telling you the only way the healing comes is in the connection all right and it's not connection with a woman it's connection with a man because the way a man assimilates his own he discovers his own masculinity and grows into it is only in communion with another man it's the only way part of the reason part of the reason for for sexual chaos in our culture is because is because it's driven by i'm speaking to men here it's driven by this need to connect but what the guy thinks the guy thinks is that i gotta connect with a woman in order to understand what it is to be a man women can't teach men that and the reason it's sexual is because the craving to be loved by a father is so deep that it reaches it reaches so deep that craving that need is so deep that we confuse eros guards god's vidifying life-giving love with eroticism you know why you know why the culture is just sex crazed the real reason is because they're looking for the life that can only come from god eris gets collapsed and confused with eroticism because eris in the love between a man and a woman is actually for the creation of new life it's something given by god but it's something we woefully misunderstand and what gets pushed into that action and that category of sexual activity is our own desire to be begotten by god the father fathers beget men don't give birth women do and our god is father not mother father and father's beget and we being created by god desire to be begotten by him the craving the need the strongest desire to be begotten by a father to know the father who has given life must be met in relationship with him but it only occurs in relationship with other men that's what it is we are men we beget we are men we are begotten the father does not give birth only women give birth how can you find your sonship and thus your manhood in relationship in a sexual relationship with a woman when properly understood in in a relationship with your wife properly practice you are the begetter and she's the one who gives birth you can't find it you can't find it in one who gives birth you have to find it in one who gets one who begets because you are the begotten because you are the begotten so the healing that most of us need remember i gave you the example of steve i gave you the example of of tim the healing that most of us need is to know the love of a father that's what we're missing that's what we didn't have and i would say it's it's part of the epidemic of today as i said spiritual epidemic it doesn't mean that our biological fathers were bad men or evil men doesn't mean that at all it's just that the west the west in its development is coming to the end of its misconceptions because the whole thing about existential estrangement that i'm talking about the loneliness i always thought it was philosophical until i [Music] looked for a philosophical antidote to the problem and i realized it's not philosophical at all we use the language of philosophy we use the categories of philosophy to describe it and it's a pretty adequate description but you can't come up with a philosophical cure there's no language and there's no categories within philosophy to describe what the cure should be so what is the problem really what is the problem where does our anguish come from why do we feel alienated and that alienation is real the suffering's real the loneliness is very real a lot of you have experienced it that's why you're in the church how do we describe that in the end in the end we don't know love we've been deprived of the love is what it is and the healing of the soul the healing of the soul really that's what we just ache for inside ache for the healing of the soul comes in the relationship ideally with a spiritual father which is not always possible but even if it's not possible authentic love between brothers can supply much of what is needed as well so the apostle paul he talks in scripture all the time about the love of the brethren the love of the brethren the love of the brethren the reason he talks about it so we got to step out of our protestant in some ways and latin mindsets that have shaped the culture the reason he talks about it is not it's not just a moralistic bromide this is the way that christians should live and they will behave thusly it's not that at all what it is it's the it's the means by which god delivers his healing creation has structure the human soul has structure it's within that structure that god's healing power transformative power salvific power the the movement from darkness to light from death to life the redemption of the human person it all occurs within that and the dynamic energy and it's a structured energy it's a it's an energy pregnant with personality and possibility is love is love and god's transformative power does not exist as a construct it exists in direct experience within the structure of that brotherhood so when we learn to love the brother and when we learn to receive the love of the brother sometimes that's harder we will see within that relationship god's transformative power in our own lives it does not occur outside of that relationship because it does not exist as an abstraction it exists at concrete experience which means that we have to love we have to learn how to love and we have to learn how to receive love now i know that some of the conflict this isn't this isn't a moralistic evaluation it's a sociological one but i know that some of the conflict between guys you know the sparring i know it's because people are trying to connect but they're trying to connect this way instead of this way so i'm going to give you a warning guys i'm going to give you a warning virtual orthodoxy is not real orthodoxy okay virtual orthodoxy virtual orthodoxy what's what's the difference between the virtual and the real in the virtual you're not really experiencing it but you are receiving stimulation that feels like you are okay so you go see a movie the movie i like the hunt for red october i just love that movie yeah man yeah yeah yeah and i feel excited when i watch it it's one of these movies i watch again and again right i know the story but i like it [Music] but what am i doing and i'm really there in the conflict no i'm just passively sitting on my couch being stimulated i just happen to like the stimulation i like the excitement i like the conflict right video games man i love this video game you can't believe how good i did and i feel like the hero and i feel like the conqueror you feel like the hero you feel like the conqueror you're not a hero you're not a conqueror you're a guy sitting in front of the computer getting fat and pushing buttons and when i get bored with that i'll just segue into the porn and come back it feels real feels real [Music] but it's not it's not in in virtual in the virtual life you receive sensations that appear real but they're not really real okay and what happens is it's a big problem big big problem and some social scientists got to start doing the research on it so we understand it more the virtual blends into the real and a guy goes out into real life is totally unprepared to live it in a real way he feels weak he feels weak in his virtual life amen i'm a hero look at me in the real world this is what happens you know start living like that like this and you start retreating from life this is carried forward into orthodoxy it's carried forward into orthodoxy it really is and i mean i see some of the the wars the wars right on the internet and i go i'd you know i tell you i've less and less patience and tolerance for it because i know that these that guys are really investing a lot into these arguments but the investment is is a lot like the video game where i can shoot down the enemy plane okay yeah but father these ideas are important [Music] ideas don't exist as independent entities all right ideas are always impregnated with a spirit and that spirit is the spirit of the one who holds the idea people think that ideas have an independent existence they don't ideas exist in your your head so they really exist as a cultural force [Music] that's how it works that's how propaganda works and sometimes people get swept up into this and into that and it's not really about the idea at all it's about the projection of the person who holds the idea and so the conflict then ostensibly is high and pure because we're talking about important things when it's really nothing more than a video game in terms of the heart of the person and it's real easy to take when we're talking about orthodoxy because we love the faith we love the faith we love what we have been given but we use it we use the language of the faith and some of the concepts of the faith as promiscuously promiscuously which we live instead of lifting ourselves up out of it and aspiring to what it teaches so you got this guy arguing this you've got that guy arguing this you've got the third guy arguing this and they're pounding it out it's a drone right it's a drone it's like somebody beating a drum doom doom doom and no one's being transformed no one's being transformed there is no healing of the soul there's no healing of the soul it's it's you know i mean in a sense it's something that it it's something that can ensnare almost anyone because i look back to to to our seminary days that was pre-internet and and you know the professor would say something and we'd all go i can't believe he said that right forgetting the sacrifice this man made to give us an education wasn't paid properly had to go out on the weekends to speak to supplement his income when you forget the humanity it's a problem you look at the man and you look at the sacrifice he made so you don't agree with this idea okay that idea is not going to change the world or destroy and don't look at the man through that that particular lens because ideas have no independent existence they really don't and as i said they're kind of impregnated with a spirit or personality you're going to end up hating the man you're going to end up hating the man and your arrogance is going to cut you off from the love of god and actually start living back in the concrete case but this time the only reason what's going to trap you in there is your own pride stop it just stop it the church is ground zero the church is real and the virtual orthodoxy is not real orthodoxy now can the internet provide us information absolutely that's a lot of good that it can do but if you're coming into church on sunday and your heart is stirred up by the debate you had during the week and you're thinking about how you're going to best this guy or even worse how you are the savior and protector of orthodoxy right by beating this guy out you are i don't like the condom condemnatory finger pointing but you're not on the path of the orthodox i'll tell you that you are the on the path of the sectarian and sectarians always end up outside the church their orthodoxy is not about a perfect form orthodoxy is about the love of the neighbor and humility christ conquered the devil by ascending the cross he did not call down 12 legions of angels how do you think the spiritual life really works because if you think it works by calling down the 12 legions of angels you're the one that's going to end up in hell that's how it works that's how it works how do you think that that the battle that that is raging all around us we know it's political expression we know it's cultural expressions ultimately it's going to be one it's going to be one if we repent and move closer to christ i gave a sermon on this people don't understand this but go back to solzhenitsyn who drew it from dostoevsky who drew it from orthodox anthropology that's that word again the line between good and evil rests in every man's heart it's not in the constellation of the ideas it's in the structure of reality and the structure of reality is this at the very center of the universe is what do you know the answer i'm going to give you the answer say maximus the confessor told us is a human heart and the way the human heart goes so goes the cosmos the way the human heart goes so goes the culture the way the human heart goes so goes politics if you think that arguing especially on the base level of politics is going to change the world you don't understand the faith you don't understand the faith the strongest thing a man can do is purify his own heart because when he purifies his own heart the cosmos is cleansed so put in in military terms we purify our heart the angels are strengthened and the demons are defeated and yet we think we think we're going to get all worked up in the corners of our in of our internet right and that's going to win it it's just adding to the noise it's just adding to the confusion that's what it is that's what it is and we're not healed we're not healed so what we're really doing guys i'm very clear on this because it's being recorded i want people to hear this but what we're doing guys is we're kind of bringing our own dysfunction back into our lives and we're dressing it up in an orthodox bow the reason we're doing it is because the life of transform transformation is harder than the politics and if you're like me i kind of like the fight i kind of like the fight i do but this isn't the fight that we're to fight because the fight is against the devil and his angels you know the transformative power of god the healing power of god which really comes in through the relationship that we cultivate with with other men it has to be a relationship of love i really wish there were more spiritual fathers i really do because you know when a father pours his love into the soul of his son the son right comes alive and the son returns the love to the father and the father rejoices when he sees his son become a man but we can do that with brothers too we can do that with brothers too and and your relationship with your brother is one of mutual edification all right you help your brother you help him and you support him and you respect him and you do not guys you do not revert into adolescent competition competition is good guys like to fight guys like to be challenged we're made that way we're wired that way challenge each other okay but the mature the maturity is really important because what happens is guys can get together and they kind of kind of descend into what i call adolescent competition trying to one-up one another don't do that you're called to be mature men strive for the maturation other cultures and other times in this culture young men knew that and they they strove to be like their elders in the days when america was still civil for example you've seen that news that that that picture from the 1940s early 50s of men going to a yankees baseball game and they were all wearing their their hats and they looked good wait man those men man those men think about that think about that and now you know it's just well at the game how drunk can you get it's exaggeration but basically it's it is and the young men wanted to emulate the older men because the older men knew that mature adulthood especially mature manhood was a gift from god and a good space in which to live but that's no longer exists so we who are growing into that what we'll tend to do sometimes is we'll we'll prolong the adolescence and even in the church we do this and instead of looking for the maturity these are the people you should emulate right what we do is we we stay in that kind of like adolescent competition and we get stuck there don't do that the love between men is a love that vivifies gives love that gives life you know it's it's difficult to talk about this sometimes because we hear these and so we lose the import and sometimes the meaning of the word gives life your soul desires life and the life that god gives us it's right and we grow and become strong occurs in a relationship with other men it does it doesn't happen by itself even the hermit has a relationship but you aren't hermits you like the social life or you wouldn't be here i like the social life i wouldn't be here i like being with people all right but the relationships the relationships have to be be be one of mutual edification as i said but don't be afraid to love don't be afraid to love everybody i love i kiss on the forehead i did not grow up this way my whole stock is from northern europe kind of like this although i never like the potatoes but we're kind of like this when we kind of walk around like this right but then i became orthodox and i was thrown in with the greeks it's even worse married to greek and this became this and now i kind of like walk like a regular person and i even kiss the people i love and it's a good way to be it's a good way to be be that way express it express it oh man i've got so much more to say but i don't want to wear you out either i'm going to close with this the culture the culture usually when i come into a church i always kiss the icon of if i'm speaking in a church i kiss the icon of saint john the baptist but he's way up there so what i did was when we were saying the prayers i looked at saint john and i made my cross if he was right here where you normally is i would go up there and i'd venerate his icon and the reason i do that is because i don't want to get my head chopped off or something i say like he did seriously because the truth is much of what i say people don't like but i always look at the opposition the opposition i get is it like a contraindicator who's opposing me and how strongly are they opposing me tells me that what i'm saying must be really hitting the target i do that with spiritual attacks too i was just telling michael this i get spiritually attacked for stuff like this a lot really a lot and especially before i give a talk boom boom boom boom right and afterwards afterwards it happens too but i've learned at first it really used to freak me out but a friend of mine said you know you don't get flack unless you're over the target right and so i go yeah that's really the way to look at it now it's not that i don't want to say it's not a big deal it's a big deal but it's not you're not so vulnerable to the fear factor right and you learn how to how to deal with it which means that a lot of this stuff is so powerful that i'm telling you it is the way of christ it is the way by which that a redemption occurs it's the way i'm telling you man i'm telling you it's the way your soul is going to be full you hear me it's the way your soul is going to be full it gives us what we desire it gives us what we crave and what we crave is love especially the the the love of god the love of god and the love of god through the love of a brother [Music] it's huge you know david and jonathan the gays have stole that gay inc has stole that as they try and rewrite the christian narrative for their own benefit but it's not theirs it's ours and you know what david and jonathan had a relationship of the deepest love man to it's hard to say talk about this nowadays because of the counter narrative that's being pushed push push pushed right i don't care about the counter narrative but david said the love of a man is sweeter than the love of a woman and he was talking about the soul to soul connection because that soul to soul connection is the conduit by which that vivifying soul regenerating fullness of god is given to us and that's what we need men and that's what you've got to apply and learn and do and that's what the world doesn't want you to know because this is what the purpose ultimately is to destroy you and to destroy me and to destroy this is what the devil's trying to do destroy the church because if he he knows he can't kill christ he tried and failed right so what he wants to do is very serious what he wants to do is he wants to destroy fatherhood and the way that he's going to destroy fatherhood is by destroying men distorting their souls because if he can destroy fatherhood he in the end can erase the cultural memory of god as father and hopes to subvert the work of christ in that way ultimately it's really spiritual at the at bottom so don't let him do it to you don't let them do it to you take what i'm telling you more and more people will start talking about this as the years go on i know it it's already happening but take what i'm telling you and apply it and and you will have life amen [Music] all these treasures [Music] us and cleanse [Music] us oh [Music]

Channel: AMEN DOMSE

Views: 1,820

Keywords: Orthodox, Orthodox Christian, Christian, Eastern Orthodox, Antiochian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Antiochian Men, AMEN, AMEN DOMSE, DOMSE AMEN, DOMSE, Fr. Hans, Fr. Hans Jacobse, Johannes Jacobse, Interview, Michael Baclig, Men's Ministry, Ancient Faith, True Faith, Authentic Worship, Ancient Worship, Early Church, Original Church, Manhood, Masculinity, War on men, War on manhood, Jesus Christ, Spiritual Warfare, Responsibility, Brotherhood, Men's Retreat, Retreat, Man, Men, Communion

Id: 7yx6-W0B53k

Length: 80min 26sec (4826 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 26 2021