Masculinity & Healing | Fr. Sean Kilcawley

thank you let's pray in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit amen Heavenly Father we invite you into this space and ask you to send your Holy Spirit upon us to bind us to our Lord Jesus Christ that every thought word and work of ours may begin with you and through you be happily completed through Christ Our Lord amen in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit amen it is a great joy to be with you all today that's the most Applause I ever heard at focused efforts on pornography usually people are like oh I'm in the wrong talk um but the the title for today's talk is healing The Divided heart in in the um the reason I chose that title is that it is like the most urgent thing right it's the most urgent thing in our lives is that we learn to be completely in love with our Lord and and oftentimes you know somebody asked me last night as one of the guys one of the missionaries asked me he he just said like Father how did you end up doing what you do in the church because I do like healing intensives for men who are struggling with pornography addiction I give lots of talks I do Seminary formation days I do clergy formation days like how did you end up doing that and and my answer to that question has become just a very simple answer which is that I believe Jesus is a real person and I believe everything that he said is true and Jesus is real and everything that he said is true to include I came that you may have life and have it more abundantly right to include blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God and blessed are the pure part for they shall see God is not something that's simply for when we get to Heaven someday but it's something that's for now there's it's something that's for now and and for a lot of my life there's been this Burning question in my heart which has been a question of like what does it really mean to be in love and what does love really look like what does love really look like and and part of that is because of the family that I grew up in and God gave all of us our families and I love my family um but I don't come from like a traditional family sometimes when you're a priest people are like you must come from like an amazing Catholic Family and and my family is an amazing family but it but it's also a family that's you know my father was married and he had three children and then got divorced and my mother was married and had two children and she got divorced my father and mother got married and had me and then my mother died and then my father married my stepmother and they had three children and then they got divorced right I would say that's how I became the Family Life office priest but it is the it's the family that our lord gave me it's the family that I learned to pray in it's the family that I started to learn about what love was and and that's something that all of us have to learn right it's something all of us have to learn John Paul II says this he says man cannot live without love he remains a being that is incomprehensible to himself his life is senseless if love is not revealed to him if he does not encounter love if he does not experience it and make it his own if he does not participate intimately in it and so the deepest desire of our hearts is to love and to be loved and that's a desire that we all have as men as men we all have this desire to love and to be loved sometimes it might be harder for us to admit that but there's lots of things that we do to try to seek affirmation or to seek a place of belonging we actually become men as we are accepted by a group of men that we admire when we find ourselves in a relationship of belonging it's one of my favorite quotes from a book called emodi brewski which is an Italian study on masculinity in different cultures and and it's has this formulation that masculinity is transmitted when we're accepted by a group of men that we admire all right when we're accepted by a group of men that we admire and sometimes we think masculinity is something that we achieve instead of something that we receive like in order to become a man I have to do lots of hard things in order to become a man but actually it's not the hard thing it's being accepted by a group of men that we admire in my own life I experienced that like I was one of those guys who grew up in high school and I really like only had friends that were girls I had a hard time with peer relationships with guys I didn't play team sports I was like a cross-country swimming and track guy and uh and I was also one of those guys who like always had a girl have a girlfriend or else I didn't feel like I belonged and um and then I went to the military academy at West Point which is 90 men 10 women and I was like I have to figure out how to have friends that are guys and it still was a little bit difficult for me and I did lots of hard things while I was there and while I was there I decided to do the hardest thing that I could figure out to do which was to Branch infantry and so when I graduated I branched infantry and then we had infantry Branch night which is this event that military they have at Military Academy you find out what branch you are and you get your branch Insignia and it has like pins in it and they're the things you pin on your lapels but when you're infantry you don't put it on your the pill you don't even wear shirts you just jam it into your chest and we had this barbecue which was like two sides of beef and nine roasted pigs and 18 kegs of beer and we just ate meat and drank beer and we were men and we said Hua a lot and none of that made me a man and then I was in Ranger school and I was in the third phase of Ranger school in Florida and at that point I had shriveled down to about a hundred and 160 pounds could barely carry the M60 machine gun I was a little worried that nobody was going to want me to be their Ranger buddy and we had to reorganize and for some reason I was still in the class I hadn't recycled or anything and I'm thinking to myself like nobody's going to want to be my Ranger buddy what am I going to do and then this guy Dave Parks walks up to me and he's he's wake stronger than me faster than me better officer than me and he walks up and he's like hey kokali you be my Ranger buddy and in that moment I never doubted my masculine identity again I never felt like I don't belong again I was accepted by this guy that I admired right I was accepted by this guy that I admired and and that's something that's supposed to happen in all of our lives right it's something that's supposed to happen in all of our Lives it's something that's supposed to happen between every father and every son that at a certain point Our Father who is maybe a distant figure who calls us forth from our relationship with our mother who calls us to be something more finally accepts us and then there's this kind of rate of Passage that happens but but for many of us that hasn't maybe that hasn't happened for us and we can kind of get stuck in life and then we try to figure out life on our own we try to like Forge our own way we try to create our own identities and we can do that in lots of different ways most common way that we like try to seek an identity or try to find our masculinity is when it gets all wrapped up in the kind of sexual distortions that exist in the world around us and I think that I'm a man if I can date lots of women or I think that I'm a man if you know I measure up to other men I think I'm a man if I'm desired by lots of people and and we get stuck in that place and I think one of the biggest challenges in the church today is that there is this person who wants to walk up to you and say will you be my Ranger buddy and that person is a real person that person's name is Jesus and he's the one that desires to bestow your identity on you because he's chosen you and we hear that language all of the time in the liturgy you are a chosen race a royal priesthood a holy nation a people set apart it's not you who chose me it's I who chose you it's not that we have loved God but that he loved us and and our Lord is the one that desires to bestow on you your identity is men and yet our hearts sometimes can be divided and and we don't always like trust in that and and whenever sin enters into our life sin is the thing that we entrust ourselves to instead of entrusting ourselves to the Lord right sin all sin is simply I'm going to entrust my heart to a thing instead of that person who's chosen me and we do that in lots of ways and we do that with lots of things the other week I was It was Thanksgiving and I was visiting my brother and there was some I don't know like something we have family Dynamics right I'm sure I'm the only one that has weird holiday Dynamics in our family right you ever have a holiday where sort of like the goal is to eat your meal and get a movie on as fast as possible right successful holiday no drama we got the movie in so so I was I was at my brothers and and I had a I had a little bit of a difficult interaction with someone and uh and I found myself managing a lot and then I'm driving home and I'm feeling kind of stressed and uh feeling kind of agitated but I wasn't really wanting to deal with it right because we all loved negative emotions right like grief sadness like I like feeling those things and I pulled over on the side of the road and I got up my phone like a crack addict and I ordered a pizza because I'm gonna fix my family by eating a pizza that'll work right and all I was doing was sort of replacing my negative emotions with a positive sensation all right I was replacing negative emotional experience with a positive sensation I was taking refuge and pizza I was entrusting my heart to a pizza it's what I was doing if we call that a sin we call that gluttony and it's the same thing whether it's gluttony or it's lust or it's Pride or it's control like it's they all happen when we entrust our heart to a thing instead of a person and and again the Lord is the one who desires to choose you and the battle for Chastity that happens in our hearts the battle for our divided heart the healing of our divided heart happens when we learn to surrender our heart to our Lord you know sometimes people ask me like like okay what do I have to do to be free from sexual sin and my answer is like there's only one thing you have to do which is surrender your whole heart to our Lord that's it your heart has to learn that Jesus can answer all of your desires and there's lots of tools that we can put into place to learn that lesson but that's the only lesson that we have to learn and if we aren't there yet if we're not free yet that's the only thing that we have to focus on because once we learn it that's where that's where the really good stuff happens like that's where we actually start to experience joy we start to experience the Abundant Life that the Lord has promised us and when we look at scripture there's a couple of examples of how that process takes place and that process of being chosen and the example that is most pertinent or most kind of in my heart is the example of the rich young man who goes to the Lord and he says this he says Master what must I do to gain eternal life and so so there's this first step to Freedom which is a desire for eternal life right a desire for eternal life so in other words he probably heard the gospel proclaimed and Jesus said something like I came that you may have life and have it more abundantly and he said I want that I want that and so he goes to the Lord and he asks him what must I do to gain eternal life he has a desire to live right a desire to live and and so we all have to ask ourselves that question do I have a desire to live right do I have a desire to live because everybody who has any kind of addiction or attachment to sin if we're really honest that's just it's a desire to not live my life for at least a couple of hours every Netflix binge is I don't want to live my life for the next couple hours right every time we're checking out I just don't want to live my life for a couple hours and this became very apparent to me a couple of years ago I went to visit a friend of mine who runs an apostolate and he's pretty charismatic in his approach to prayer and I'm not used to charismatic prayer and uh and so he says to me like Father everybody in our organization like we all want to pray over you before you leave okay I'll let you pray over me before I can leave a little bit uncomfortable I'm sitting there and they're all praying over me and they're saying beautiful things about my Ministry and my apostolate and all these amazing things and and these amazing images are coming to mind and then Andy starts praying and he's like starts talking about death and dying and spirits of death and heart disease and and I'm just like what the SE somebody hands me a pamphlet on my way out exercising the spirit of death I'm like what in the work so I'm driving home and I realize I kind of have that kind of have that like my mother died when I was really young my father died young my father's family has all died young sometimes I fantasize about my funeral I fantasize about cranking out my Summa at the end of my life I kind of have an attachment to dying I don't say for retirement because I'm just going to die on the job what I haven't been to the doctor and what am I doing and I realized like I have to live every single day Desiring to live my life and I have to remind myself every single day I want to live all right I'm gonna live so I go to the doctor and I find out I have high cholesterol and I have like pre-diabetes and I'm really overweight and I have sleep apnea I have all these health problems oh so I started taking medication and some things and I'm working on that desire to live so when the rich young man asks that question what must I do to gain eternal life Jesus's response is this stop sinning like stop sinning you know the Commandments honor your father and mother don't kill don't steal don't commit adultery stop sinning and stop sinning is really important right it's really important because sin always gets in the way of discovering our desires like sin gets in the way of discovering our desires sometimes when I talk about addictions I'll say addiction is when we replace negative emotions with positive Sensations so I don't want to like feel my desires and so if I eat food or if I like use masturbation in pornography or if I'm drinking I'm really just not wanting to feel my feelings I don't want I don't want to know what's going on in my interior life and all negative feelings are unmet desires and so if I stop sinning it might reveal my desires there's seven key desires that we all have and these are seven desires that all of us have as sons and daughters they're to be heard and understood to be Affirmed to be safe to be included to be chosen to be blessed and to be touched and when those desires go unmet it results in those kind of negative emotional experiences like feeling rejected feeling unincluded feeling unwanted feeling like I don't matter feeling invisible wanting to be invisible not wanting to live my life and so when we stop sinning it reveals the desires of our heart it reveals the desires of our heart and again this this became very apparent to me a couple years ago because it was about a year after I went to the doctor finally and I want to live my life that I woke up on my 47th birthday weighing 240 pounds and I'm looking at myself in the mirror and I'm like you are disgusting what and I was like I need to lose weight and I have a friend who lost like 100 pounds on a food program and so I like looked it up on the internet and I went on this food program where you eat like five 100 calorie protein bars a day and you eat one salad so it's like Ranger school all over again so so I go on this food program and uh and something happened like I got really agitated by somebody I lived with now because it happens right and um and I'm like super mad at some circumstance that happened and I'm staring at this bag of dug chocolates that are on my table and I was like man if I wasn't on this food program I'd be eating all of those right now like I need Jesus like I had a problem and and what it revealed was oh wait I need to go to our Lord to meet my needs I can't be going to Chocolate to meet my needs because I had to take that off the table right so stop sinning reveals the desires of our heart and then we can go to the Lord and ask him to meet those desires and so with regard to Chastity that means that there are certain behaviors that we need to learn how to put them in the I can't do that category all right let's put them in the I can't do that category we all have and I can't do that category okay there are certain things there are certain lines none of you are going to cross like for instance one of you might come up to me and say father I have this really like problem where every time I go home my mom she just really gets on me she gets on my nerves and she's kind of always wanting to know my business and she wants to like she's always asking me questions and and it's just like super annoying and I can't stand it and it's really triggering okay here's what you do next time you go home just wait for your mom to go to sleep get a pillow and go into a room and smother her what I can't do that right I can't do that that's ridiculous like smothering your mother is in the I can't do that category right we all have that category so that means like we have to put masturbation and pornography in the same category right there needs to be certain things that we just can't do anymore because if I put it in that category that means I need to find other things to meet my needs all right I need to find something else to meet my need and then I need to learn how to let our Lord meet my need my need to be chosen might need to be included my need to be blessed many to be Affirmed and and we learn to do that and then we can experience him choosing us and and so so the rich young man goes to the Lord and he says I've kept all the Commandments from my youth and Jesus looks at him and he loves him it's an important detail so Jesus looks at him and he loves him and so when we stop sinning we notice The Look of Love we notice The Look of Love we notice that we're chosen we notice that we're included we hear our Lord say I've got you and as we hear our Lord say I've got you then he just says one more thing he looks at him and he loves him and he says go sell everything you have and follow me give me your whole heart right give me your whole heart and and so the conversion process it follows that process of the Rich Young Man right Desiring to live being willing to say I'm done with sin I'm done with these things and now I'm going to let the Lord meet my needs so that I can experience him bestowing on me my identity right bestowing on me my identity and so how do we how do we make that happen in a practical way right how do we make that happen in a practical way another like quote from John Paul II that is really dear to my heart is in divas of Missouri accordia when he says this the church professes and proclaims conversion and conversion to God always consists in discovering his Mercy that is in discovering his love which is patient and kind is only the Creator and father can be the love to which the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ is faithful to the uttermost consequences in the history of his Covenant with man even to the cross and death and resurrection of the sun conversion to God is always the fruit of the rediscovery of this father who's rich in Mercy and so receiving Mercy is that path of being chosen right receiving Mercy is that path of being chosen receiving Mercy is that moment of noticing The Look of Love right noticing The Look of Love and the thing about Mercy is that we receive Mercy when we're prepared to receive Justice okay so common question that men ask me is like sometimes I go to confession but I don't really feel forgiven or I don't really feel like anything happened in that moment and and like you talk about like Mercy is supposed to transform our hearts but I feel like I just kind of go to confession I confess my sins I was asking a group of high school students you know when you go to confession like how do you conceptualize that do you think about the fact that you've broken a relationship with a person who's a real person and you're going back to make amends to that person no I just kind of feel like I'm dropping stuff off oh that's interesting in scripture people receive Mercy when they're prepared to receive Justice because they're going to make amends so the prodigal son goes to his father and he says father I want my inheritance now I wish you were dead already the father gives him his inheritance he goes off and he squanders it and then he heads rock bottom and he realizes like my life is horrible like this and I would be better off if I was one of my father's hired servants and so he formulates this confession and his confession is honest and it's complete it's honest and it's complete so he goes to the father and he says father I've sinned against heaven and against you and no longer deserve to be called your son treat me as one of your hired servants I know who I am and I know what I deserve he doesn't sort of think to himself the father is merciful and he's surely going to let me back in his home if I just go and ask him and so he goes back to the father in that disposition of the heart father of sin against Heaven against you I no longer deserve to be called your son stop the father interrupts him bring a ring and put it on his finger but a robe on him but his handles on his feet because the son of mine was lost and now he's found again the son of mine and those words my son they resonate and he's chosen by the father and his identity is restored to him and there's no room for presumption there's no room for excuse making there's no room for anything else it's just this is who I am and this is what I deserve and then the Lord's Mercy like lands in that place and it changes his heart you know and as we prepare to go to confession tonight it's something to think about is like like do we confess our sins in a way that's honest and open and complete or do we kind of skate around them like do we confess our sins in a way that we hope that the priests won't realize how bad we are I used to do that I used to give the priest a moral theology lesson at the beginning of My Confession bless me Father for I've sinned it's been three weeks since my last confession I want you to know all the circumstances that make me not culpable so that you think I'm less of a bad person instead of just saying this is what I did you know in the last like really great confession that I had was when I just went in and I said this is what I did and there's lots of people in recovery their story is going to confession and just saying like I did this and there's no like excuse making there's no circumstances there's just like this is what I did and this is what I deserve and then like our Lord says I choose you anyways I choose you anyways and in that moment there's no room for the yeah but demon you ever have the Yabba demon like when you listen to a talk on this thing and everybody's like Jesus loves you so much and you're thinking yeah but you don't know my life he loves everybody in this room except for me because I'm super special there's no room for that because like we're completely honest and open and repentant right repentant means like we go to our Lord in that disposition of the heart and then and then he's able to look at us with love and sometimes there's other tools that we need you know like like sometimes we can struggle with Chastity because maybe like most people your age you were exposed to pornography when you were 10 11 or 12. if you're exposed when you're 10 or 11 or 12 Guess What like it's almost impossible to get help by yourself it's like almost impossible to help yourself like there is nobody who gets exposed at 10 11 or 12 that gets sober without going to group I've never met that person and so so it might mean okay I have to go and find somebody I can trust and start talking to them and then it might mean I might need to go to counseling it might mean I might need to go to a 12-step Fellowship like the most successful people that I've seen are people who are willing to do whatever it takes to be free right whatever it takes to be free and whatever it takes to be free means I'm willing to do the thing I don't want to do and we and we've everybody has to make that Journey like the biggest like surrender of my own heart was I had to start going to 12-stop meetings and and little secret I started referring people to 12-step meetings before I started going to 12-step meetings and then I'm like oh no I have to go to meetings but I can't go to meetings unless there's like 15 people I referred to the meeting what the heck am I gonna do and so I got on the phone and there's phone meetings happen all the time and and you do whatever it takes and and that might mean again it might mean going to meetings it might mean going to counseling it means getting a spiritual director but it means like the most important thing in my life is that I learned to surrender my heart to our Lord and it's in that place of of being chosen by him and it's in his gaze that our hearts are healed on my retreat recently I was praying over you know the Good Samaritan and how the Good Samaritan is this unexpected healer somebody's like beat up they're on the side of the road they look dead the priest walks by the levite walks by they're not going to help him the Good Samaritan the unexpected person goes and picks that person up and sometimes we need the unexpected person to come and pick us up or we get healed in the unexpected place or the unexpected way the other thing I was praying about was the manger in in this Christmas season which was kind of an amazing thing so I was in adoration and uh and there was a nativity scene right next to the altar and I kept looking between the monstrance and the manger and I realized the manger was the first monstrance like the manger was the first place the body of Our Lord was a dork and Mary was the first adorer and I and I realized that like our Lord's experience there was this experience of being a child who like opens his eyes and notices the eyes of his mother looking back at him with love that he was always in her gaze and his first experience of being chosen our Lord's experience of being chosen happened in that scene and it's a place where like he learned to abide in love and he remained in the love of his parents in that place and then that Good Samaritan sort of meditation became the Good Samaritan comes and picks us up in that place like he's not afraid of our wounds he's not afraid of what we've done he's not afraid of our sin he picks us up and then he carries us and he lays Us in the manger which is kind of like the first field Hospital and all of us have to spend time there just allowing ourselves to abide in the love of Mary and Joseph and our Lord and when you go to adoration later on today I just encourage you to to reflect on that and and to think about the fact that like you're looking at the same Jesus that Mary and Joseph looked at in the manger but also that he's looking at you in that way that he's looking at you and that he's the one that desires to choose you and he's the one that desires to meet your needs he is the Good Samaritan who picks you up because it's there that our divided hearts are really healed and and we learn that he's better than everything else like he's better than food he's better than drinking he's better than sex he's the one that can heal everything and ask him for the grace of of being truly repentant when you go to confession tonight and starting over and experiencing that moment of being chosen by him and the willingness to do whatever it takes in order to come to know what it means to remain in his love in the name of the father and of the son of the holy spirit amen Lord Jesus we ask your blessing upon each of these your sons we ask you to send your Holy Spirit upon them and then Kindle in them the fire of Your Love give them hearts that are truly willing truly honest truly open to receiving your mercy strengthening them the desire to truly live the Abundant Life that you've called them to grant them the courage to do whatever it takes in order to remove every obstacle to heal whatever division exists in their hearts be still on them the gifts of masculinity which is a share in your own masculinity that they may glorify you in every thought every word every work of their lives and through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary Saint Joseph and all the saints May almighty God bless you the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit amen [Music]

Channel: FOCUS Catholic

Views: 6,790

Keywords: masculinity guidance, fr kilcawley, how to be a man, catholic masculinity, sexual sin forgiveness

Id: nruqeq8OGNU

Length: 35min 16sec (2116 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 01 2023