hey I'm David Niles and you're listening to Catholic versus Catholic if you would please just tell the listeners a little bit about yourself who you are what you believe and how you came to believe it okay well I am almost 32 years old I have a beautiful wife we have three beautiful daughters Bernadette was six weeks old now so we have a lot of fun she just started smiling it's a very exciting time I am a cradle Catholic I adopted the Catholic faith as my own a little bit after college I think like a lot of people I fell away from the faith not in the sense that I stopped believing in what the church taught I just kind of didn't care and I I found myself saying yes I'll come back to that later I'll come back to that later and praise God I actually did but I know that that is treacherous territory that type of attitude but I have excellent parents it was I grew up in a very devout home so the church has always been true for me I've never not believed what the Catholic faith offers as true I've always known it was true but like I said there were just times in my life where I didn't value the truth very much and now that I'm a dad you know you really have a good perspective perspective changes when you have kids when you're the one in charge of teaching them everything that they have to know you really do come to see what's important in life speaking of very young children can you talk a little bit about your early experiences of faith and religion sure yeah this isn't necessarily my earliest memory but it's certainly one of the more impactful memories that I have I remember we were I was probably six seven we were all sitting around the dinner table just talking do normal family dinner table stuff and my dad kind of stopped the conversation and we could kind of tell that his he was about to say something and so a hush came over the table and he said you know kids nothing matters if you don't go to heaven and I remember just kind of looking at him and looking at my brothers and sisters and saying like yeah okay dad like that's cool and then we went back to just regular dinner conversation so it was kind of out of the blue it seemed like but it was just one of those memories that I never forgot and I remember even thinking about it later like yeah you know if you don't make it to heaven then you just wasted your whole life you know you just through it the whole thing away if you don't get to heaven because that's really the only thing that matters in this life and now that I'm a dad and a husband I understand I have other people I need to help get to heaven too but you cannot give what you do not have and so you you have to have the eternal life within you so to speak so that you can give it away can you compare your naive childhood faith to your adult faith and your prayers as a child to your adult prayers can you just give a quick compare and contrast yeah you know when I was a kid it was much about memorization and saying the prayers like the Rosary for instance when I was a kid the Rosary was very it would really wear me out because I felt like I had to say the Hail Mary and put everything I had into the words meaning each word of the Hail Mary I didn't have the understanding of the rosary being a contemplative prayer you know instead of focusing so much on the words of the Hail Mary instead meditate on the mystery and once you learned to do that praying the rosary doesn't become any something that uses energy actually comes a restful leisurely prayer that you know I find myself energized after having prayed or very sleepy either one but my prayer life now you know I won't pretend to have a deep mystical prayer life even if I joke around about having that sometimes but it's certainly much different your just the way that you have a different perspective on things as an adult from you know when you're a child and what like I said I don't know I brought this up a couple times being a dad when I pray the Our Father that really changed for me once I became a dad and also what time I was praying and I actually started referring to God the Father as daddy sort of like what Jesus does when he calls him Abba and you know a good translation of that his father but it's it's more familial than that you know sort of like calling him daddy and I don't call my dad Father you know unless I'm just kind of kidding around but as a kid I called him daddy so that word really had more significance to me so when I thought about God the Father as my daddy that really was a deep moment for me that's that's one example I mean the the sad thing is that we tend to see all the analogies of faith as being exaggerated when really we haven't even touched the tip of the iceberg in terms of how profound and deep the realities of God are and how shallow our little shadows are here like when you say daddy and you act sort of like a child as a full grown man a father of your own children we tend to laugh at that and say oh you're being silly and you're exaggerating your childlike relationship to go out the Father when in reality we are such pathetic and helpless and dependent creatures that even if you put on a diaper and started saying googoo gaga you still wouldn't even be close to getting at the reality of our dependence on God I totally agree with you I think God must think that we are just so cute no the way that we think in a toddler and infant is you know a toddler says oh let me help you make pancakes and you say okay all right I'm gonna measure the flour and here you know it's like they're not really doing anything but you're kind of like letting them feel like they're helping and you know you like it and they like it and like I don't know I feel like that's a fraction of the way he probably sees us you know because he gives us the grace to do everything we couldn't do anything unless he gave us the grace to do it so you know it's like how much credit can we take about as much as my two-year-old can take credit for the pancakes that show up on the table on Saturday morning one of my favorite Saints and the Saint that converted me to Catholicism from generic monotheism is st. Augustine as I like to call him or Saint Agustin but he famously said and I found it quite controversial at the time but all the truths of Catholicism are astonishing but he said that when God turns his face from us it's not so much out of anger as to hide his laughter so he was describing a similar sort of situation with the relationship of parent to child and the just the cuteness of it and I personally I was a great sinner as an atheist for 25 years and I really feel so lucky to have been blessed with conversion and I'm blessed to have been given the grace to say yes to God when a lot of people say maybe or later like you talked about saying later to conversion as an adult and so on and so forth I really feel lucky yes I I feel that way too David you know it's interesting you're a convert me being a cradle Catholic sometimes I'm I'm envious of converts because they know very well I think they have a better appreciation for that which they have received whereas cradle Catholics like myself you know it's just oh it's kind of always been this way and so it takes extra effort I think to really sit down and meditate on the value of these gifts and what they mean in your life and I mean very physical real the way that they have changed your life in ways that you can't understand because they've always been that way but yeah the truths of the faith it's just we see through a mirror so so dimly we have no idea I like what you said that everything is grace I strongly believe that it's one of my favorite meditations and when I was talking about my conversion just now the point I'm trying to get at here is that this whole notion of sin really transformed when I found God or when God touched me and I was converted I I really have a much lighter view of sin I have a very dark and heavy and ominous and grave view of unrepentant but my view of sin really has undergone a great rehabilitation sin really is not a big deal it son repentance that's a big deal now sin we should avoid sin because future sins as st. Augustine also said future sins are very serious but the past sins don't worry about it it's in the past you know so I want to I want to just talk a little bit about the nature of sin why is it exaggerated in the minds of the non-believers I've been accused of Catholic guilt by non Catholics so many times I've never ever ever felt Catholic guilt within the church because I've had my sins forgiven it's so easy - well it's not necessarily easy but it's so simple to walk into the confessional and to be forgiven so can you talk a little bit about the psychological barrier to Catholicism - entering into the church and entering into that space that is so vast and so fresh inside the confessional what is keeping people outside of the confessional if people admit that they're wrong that means that they are going to have to change and people don't want to change there's a lot of cognitive dissonance in our heads when we realize you know what I've been wrong and there is a phenomenon that occurs psychologically when you rationalize decisions and people are often unaware that they've done this however you are your brain is incapable of making a choice that it does not view to be the best choice now sometimes you might add elements to the equation that aren't actually there you know so you say well I know this choice a might be better but if I choose choice B maybe I'll look good in front of these people and so that's what you do because the extra benefit of looking good kind of tips the scales in its direction but psychologically you're aware of the fact that you have added elements to the equation that don't exist in reality and so when confronted that B was the wrong choice you actually have like this toddler behavior when you tell them you can't have a candy bar you know like well they want a candy bar and it's a very emotional response so in my own life you know I still experience fear walking into the confessional and I always feel amazing leaving the confessional but there's just that element of I know that what I've done is wrong or I know that I need to change and I'm embarrassed I think that's maybe that's what it is I'm just embarrassed that I have failed in these ways and I'm embarrassed that you know the priest is gonna maybe he's gonna judge me and I know that that doesn't happen I've talked to so many priests many of them have told me that literally they do not remember what you said so they can't really judge you if that's the case but we just need to get over that and kind of take the right perspective on confession it's not that God is there to judge us and you know be the judge who's like well fine I will have mercy on you one more time but don't do it again God is sitting there saying please please please come to me I am begging you let me forgive you you know it's his favorite song of all is the the song of the redeemed and that's every man who walks in and out of the confessional yeah again to quote st. Augustine he said humility is the one thing that God finds irresistible in his creatures and so I guess there is a bit of a connection between humiliation and humility I mean they have the same root yeah but we are proud pride really is the root of all evil I think and I'm Chuck full of it even to this day and I pray the litany of humility I can't say it's working too well or maybe God's waiting for it you know to deliver the goods maybe it's like the checks in the mail kind of thing yeah well I'm actually very proud of my humility I don't know if you know this but I I won the 2017 international humility award and David the trophy for this last year it is gorgeous it's it's at least seven feet tall I'm actually working on building a new display case to house it in when I'm done I think you should be able to see it from the street so yeah I'm very very proud of my humility so when I spoke with Adam last night I asked him a lot of questions about friendship because it seems like the two of you have a good friendship talk to me a little bit about friendship what is it yeah so I would say that friendship is a self-giving love that you have for another person who's not your spouse and maybe I shouldn't use the term spouse in defining it but I just do that as a comparison but there's many similarities because it's a truly deep love in that a true friendship seeks only the good of the other just like you do in a marriage and I think in order to form a good friendship there must be something in common so he and I are definitely good friends he we've been best friends since kindergarten and actually he lives across the street from me so it's it's really beautiful we both have young families and now we're getting to watch our kids play together and be friends so it's it really is something that I I wish everybody had and a lot of people I think most people have a really good friend that one friend in their life that you say that guy would do anything like if I needed if I need a thousand dollars he'd give it to me can you talk to me a little bit about your struggle to be holy to be pure to be a faithful follower of Jesus Christ what is holiness what is the essence of it and how can we move towards it and can we know if we're moving towards it well in the Bible we learned that only God is holy so for us what does that mean you know does that mean that we can't be holy and that no that's not what it means but what it means is that if we want to be holy we need to become like him we need to diminish so that he can increase so to pursue holiness is to pursue a life of aligning your own will with God almost as if you cease to have a will of your own and that's something that our mother Mary the you know our lady was able to do and did so perfectly throughout her life and that's why she's the best example of holiness let me just you can look at the Saints and that's what they have done their own desires their own will fades away and they simply possessed the will of God for their own life and for others and it's only when we do that that we can truly love like he loves and that we can be the people that we were made to be we were made for holiness we were made in His image and our ultimate destiny is in heaven when we will be perfected and we will become like him so in this life we must pursue this we must seek especially as men I think we have an obligation to learn to deny ourselves especially denying ourselves if you're married for the sake of your wife for the sake of your children when you read Ephesians 5 this is Paul's great great riding on married life you know typically people especially well men will stop reading after wives be submissive to your husbands but it goes on to talk about husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church so if wives are being submissive having submission they are putting themselves under the mission of the husband what's the husband's mission the husband's mission is to love his wife and to die for her so all of a sudden when you read passage it's actually becomes a lot more onerous on the men what's the whatsit telling women women allow your husbands to serve you husband's serve your wives love them as you love yourself embracing and following God's will well what's God's will that's a big question it's hard to know I think the place that we need a start is what's your vocation are you married are you a priest are you single whatever it is knowing your vocation it's gonna exclude a lot of things that say well now I know that's not what I'm called to do and I'm kind of called to run in this Lane and so when we learn to deny ourselves to sacrifice our own will in order to embrace his that's when we can truly find peace that's when we can find joy I mean ultimately if you want to sum it up you could say if you want to be happy in this life then you need to do God's will because his will is the path to the highest happiness that you can have and ultimately it will bring you a great reward in heaven so that's what we need to focus on and there's a lot of distractions in life there's so much noise we need to learn to put down Facebook social media so many of us myself included are just addicted to looking at the screen all the time and it has the effect of taking our minds away from contemplating deeper mysteries deeper truths instead I'm just mindlessly scrolling through my newsfeed or checking to see how many likes I got on my last post and I do those things and I wish I didn't sometimes but it's something that I work on too you know so we need to learn to do all those things you know sometimes you'll hear a guy say oh I would die for my wife I would die for my kids I would die for whoever I sometimes I think well do you when was the last time you fasted for your wife when was the last time you gave something up silently where even she didn't know nobody knew it but you and it was your gift your death to her if we're not doing those things on a regular basis then why do we think that we would be able to do the greater God forbid none of us will ever be called to actually die physically for our wives but maybe we will and so having that practice day to day whether we're ever called to martyrdom or not is something that will help align our will with God's will we're all called to martyrdom just not all to a bloody murder Tom right yeah a few things he brought to mind first of all a minor point which is that on Facebook I downloaded an app called Facebook purity so my newsfeed is non-existent I don't have a newsfeed I don't see what any of my friends are up to I only use it for a messenger to communicate with people in to arrange interviews like this interview right now was arranged on Facebook and we're speaking right now through the messenger phone app on Facebook so it serves its purpose for me but I'm not scrolling through a bunch of kittens and Donald Trump nonsense which which gives me nothing yeah that sounds awesome man the other thing I wanted to say that you brought to mind was this idea of giving laying down your life and Scott Hahn actually made a really colorful depiction of the fall of Adam and Eve and he sort of interpreted it in such a way that when Satan said when you eat the fruit you will not die there was an implication in that that if you don't eat it you will die because he was a big scary dragon he wasn't a cute little garden snake and there's a sort of idea that Adam was called to be the husband to the wife to protect the wife and to be courageous and stand up to the dragon and he didn't and he paid the price and I'm paying the price now you're paying the price now your kids and your wife are paying the price right now every evil is a result of a sin both original and actual so we're all paying the price and who paid the biggest price of course is Jesus Christ who suffered infinitely for all of our sins whether you take that story literally in every way or just in some ways there is definitely a fall it's as GK Chesterton said it's the one dogma that we can prove just by picking up the daily newspaper yeah oh absolutely so I want to talk about purity as a married man how do you avoid looking at the sexy women that are in reality and on TV and in movies and all this sort of thing I know you can avoid explicit pornography but the problem is today that a lot of stuff is sort of soft porn and it's everywhere and people don't even notice that this was so hyper sexualized the world that we live in even billboards I've seen billboards that have made me blush how do you avoid it and what do you do to avert your eyes or what prayers do you say or how or are you just not bothered by the beauty of women's bodies well I don't know that you can avoid it aside from becoming a carthesian and living your life in a cell in utter silence for the rest of your life you're not going to avoid it and I think that part of dealing with it is admitting that there's nothing you can do to 100% avoid it the next thing and this is something that my wife has really helped me with is should we really be watching this movie you know because my attitude has been I'm an adult I'm not a child anymore you know I don't need to censor myself because I now know the difference but you know these things are wrong and I know that so therefore I can I can watch it or you know whatever just just movies you know and she really challenged me on that and said you know well should we be watching it and then I I realized after I thought about well no actually we don't need to watch this first of all it's it's probably just a stupid movie anyway you know what am I missing by not watching this particular movie nothing there are a lot better things I could be doing with my life anyway but let's talk about yoga pants yoga pants are not real pants okay they're underwear pants I think that women really don't understand the distraction that that is it's almost like someone has tied a rope onto your forehead and is sitting there just tugging on it with all their might trying to get you to look at them and it is my my greatest desire to treat this woman in this hypothetical example with the dignity that she deserves okay and even if I do look at her I won't lust after her you know I'm not gonna sit there and entertain thoughts about her but it doesn't make it easy to give her that respect and that dignity you know because all of a sudden I am now looking at her not because I want to see a beautiful person but because I want to see just a beautiful body so it is difficult and the life of chastity in some ways I'm glad that it's difficult I think that it would be it would lose some beauty if it was too easy you know there's something satisfying and beautiful about accomplishing something difficult and working towards it because it's not something that anybody can just pick up and do on their first try chastity is is one of those things maintaining governance of the eyes and you do have to sometimes learn to look away and it is difficult sometimes it might be the hardest thing you do all day to not look at the girl who's jogging as you're on your commute to work maybe that's the hardest thing you're gonna do today but do it for your wife good for you know somebody else who might be struggling with temptations that are even greater than yours those kinds of sacrifices that we make seem like they don't do anything but when we get to heaven I believe that we will see every decision we've ever made and here are the good or bad consequences that flowed from them you know that a tiny prayer that we say maybe there's somebody on the other side of the world that God chooses to benefit from that prayer but and the same with our sin we are all swimming in the same pool so when you pee just a little bit in the pool you're peeing in the pool with all of us okay we're all one body and so you can't sin if the hand is injured the whole body suffers so we have to learn to maintain the basic rules of chastity you must start there because you will not grow I guarantee you that you will not grow in the spiritual life if you cannot live a chaste life and maintain a chaste heart because if you cannot keep a heart that is pure then God cannot reside in it hmm one of my favorite meditations in the Rosary is the agony in the garden I'm pretty sure you and my listeners are familiar with that painting where Jesus is praying on the rock in the garden and he's looking up and there's a light coming from above yes you know that painting right sort of in greenish gray tones in my version that I have in my little prayer room but I like to think of that in sort of like a sci-fi way where he's looking up but he's seen what he's seeing is he's seeing me he's watching me he's watching my every move he's watching the good that I do by the grace of God and the good that I refuse to do or that I omit or that I spurn in other ways and the sins that I commit and how I'm harming him he's watching me he's watching me and I really find this a useful meditation it's very powerful I'm not saying that I don't sin anymore but it does help it does help a lot and there's a book that I read before I became a monotheistic that had a profound influence on me on my conversion it was called the vision of God and it's not about our visualization of God but God's vision watching us and how he's always watching I had a very positive impact on me as an atheist and it was part of my conversion to monotheism which a lot of my friends find counterintuitive because they don't like the idea of big brother and a lot where am I going with this yeah just the idea of Jesus Christ paying for my sins I think is very powerful I think another good one also another sorrowful mystery is the carrying of the cross because I think it's good with chastity and maintaining governance of the eyes because the carrying of the cross is the only station that required Jesus's willpower to take the next step you know the crowning with thorns the the scourging at the pillar he's chained you know if you're just changed to a pillar and someone else is whipping you you know that doesn't take your own willpower you're just are sitting there being whipped now with God of course everything is according to his permissive will you know he has to allow it because he's God but the carrying of the cross it wasn't somebody abusing him he had to take the step himself it was a 100% act of his own will that had to move the cross and so that's kind of the way it is with chastity we have to you know if there's the the billboard that you drive by every day that causes you to go down a bad train of thought you have to make yourself not look at it and it is a constant action of the will that is a you know suffering in some way but you must learn to do that and when you practice it you are right there with Jesus carrying your cross just not all crosses are big some are some are big some are little but we have to carry all of them because they're ours to carry I'm really amazed by Jesus Christ I should tell you that my conversion to Jesus Christ is the last step in a long chain of conversions starting with God the Father and then the Saints drew me into the church and then the priest who gave me instruction was well aware of the fact that I didn't yet believe in the Trinity and of course therefore in Jesus Christ and the Incarnation and all that but my approach is ongoing my approach to Jesus Christ but I am amazed and astonished every day with everything that I meditate on and that I learn about Jesus Christ but one of the things I find most astonishing is that he didn't submit to the temptation which I'm sure every one of us would have given into when being taunted and mocked and spat upon and ridiculed and and tortured and crucified each and every one of us first and foremost myself weak and selfish and proud sinner that I am the temptation would be to use my omnipotence to just kill everybody I put myself in that situation I would have killed everyone maybe not instantly maybe I would have just planted a little seed of this disease and that one and that disease and the other one and I would just smile to myself as I'm hanging on the cross like yeah you wait and see what's happening to you right but he didn't do that you know I can't believe the restraint and the goodness and the patience and the love of God it's just mind-boggling and I think if the atheist could just sit for five minutes and think about that they would be excited to come into organized religion what's your perspective on the patience and self-restraint of and the goodness of God yes I agree with exactly what you've said and I've thought about this - about the humility of God he who has no reason to be humble like he really is all that plus a bag of chips you know I'm saying like you know and here he is appearing so ordinary and people are yes spitting on him and taunting him and you know if I were him I'd be like look I made you you little twerp okay the only reason you're here is because of me and I could kill you at any second and I think I would be tempted to just reveal my awesome glory you know and bow before me now AG who's the best now you know but he didn't do that he stayed in his humble lowly beat-up form and allowed people to spit on him it just doesn't make any sense to me I just cannot comprehend that level of love it's so obvious the the gap between creator and creature it's it really is humiliating I don't know why I'm not crushed unto death by the gap that exists between God's goodness and mine like we should be like that should totally happen right unbelievable so I'd like you to give your perspective now you're Catholic projects in particular the Catholic man show tell the listeners a little bit about what it's about what projects you're involved in and what you're trying to achieve with it okay so I'll just give you the quick version since you probably said a lot of this already it actually started out is we run the Catholic radio station here in Tulsa and then we're just kind of looking at the lineup of radio shows there was a lot of shows geared specifically to women women of grace is the most obvious one and there's a lot of other shows that are kind of touchy-feely let's talk about your feelings and just stuff that just does not appeal to men and so we just were gonna start something just a local thing it's gonna be just for Tulsa that would be for guys specifically so we started the Catholic man show and we do three things every episode we open review and enjoy a manly beverage we highlight a man gear of some kind so we just talk about like what kind of tools that we had you know why is a pocket knife manly there's something manly about it why is that so we want to talk about all those guys stuff we have and why is it so awesome and then we have a topic for the second half of the show where we just we're just really two regular guys like we don't have degrees or anything we're just guys we happen to have a radio a radio station and so nobody could tell us no you can't start a show so we did start a show but our show is all about returning to a life of virtue bringing back the virtuous man the gentleman the man of yesteryear even the word virtue vir vir it means man virtue means the power of man and so as men especially as Catholic men we need to strive to live a life dedicated to virtue so that we can live that life we talked about earlier where we are living in accord with God's will because the virtues are the things that strengthen our soul that give us the power to with and temptation give us the power to bear our crosses to offer ourselves up and so we just kind of take a layman's approach to all of these questions and at the same time we want to do that in a way that says hey we like to smoke cigars and drink whiskey too and that's okay because we're Catholic and being Catholic is the best but you know God made this earth good and he we should enjoy it for its goodness the whiskey is not bad for some people maybe they need to stay completely away from it and that's awesome you need to know that about yourself because moderation is different for different people but you know smoking a pipe awesome having a glass of whiskey great and it needs to be done in moderation everything should be done in moderation except for the theological virtues everything has a moderate use and so what is that we talked about it and hopefully you know we can all be more present I feel like there's just so many of us who are walking through life as zombies we don't think about the things we're doing we just kind of do them we don't do anything on purpose you know there's a big difference between a supernatural virtue and a natural virtue from the outside they might look the same you can have the natural virtue of honesty where I just I have learned I have the habit of telling the truth but the supernatural virtue of honesty is one that flows from love of God and that is what is going to be meritorious for us and what's going to benefit our souls in a deep way and so we need to have supernatural virtues not simply natural virtues we need to wake up and pursue Christ vigorously because that's what we do as men you know we we rise to a challenge and we take it head-on that's almost like our calling you know we beat our chest it's deep down within us we know we're called to do something awesome and sometimes the awesome is small and doesn't look super glorious but actually once we come to love Christ we understand that those small hidden things actually have the most glory of any other thing you bring to mind among other Saints well it's not he's not a saint yet but GK Chesterton can you just name for me very quickly three of your favorite Saints whether they have a connection to this virtue and manliness of course is optional but just three of your favorite Saints please okay well the first one is maybe cheating I don't know Saint Michel is my patron saying he's my confirmation Saint I've always loved Saint Michel the radio station we run it's called st. Michael radio also st. John Paul the second you know he's the Pope of my basically my life you know when I look back on you know most of my life he was the Pope he gave us the theology of the body which changed my life I was exposed to that listening to Christopher West tapes when I was like 12 Mike we were look we just listen to him in the car and I remember even as a kid telling my my mom you know what when I hear this I know it's true you know that just had a deep impact on me so I really have a deep love for st. John Paul the second and the other one is st. Faustina I'm polish I don't know if that like you know MIT gives me at a deeper affinity for her but I love st. Faustina like I care for she really means a great deal to me and I cannot recommend her diary enough it's one of the the deepest spiritual writings that I've encountered I just bought it on Amazon for my Kindle well it will take a while to read it's kind of long okay but the whole thing is absolutely incredible because it's from beginning to end chock full of Jesus's words to her that he commanded her to write down I mean actually she at one point was she was writing down everything that Jesus said and she said no I can't do this and she burned it all and then Jesus came to her like no that was the wrong thing and so she started a she had to start over it's like amazing she's like the mystic of mystics she would bear the crown of thorns for several hours in order to prevent someone from committing a mortal sin you know just crazy stuff like that from beginning to end it's amazing Wow if you would please just name three things that I can do to be a better Catholic just quickly off the top of your head what can I do to become a better Catholic uh you can pray more you can go to Mass one more time a week however many times you go to Mass every week add one and your life will change and three if you're not fasting I would fast on a scheduled basis the thing about prayer and fasting I don't know if that's I kind of put those in the same category but they're not exactly the same you have to have a plan you can't just say yeah I'm gonna pray more I want to do that you must say I will pray at this time it's on the calendar when I pray and I don't do other stuff at that time because I'm busy I'm praying adoration if you don't have an adoration hour I think that's a must-have so I don't know if we'll just call that three I think it's either it's either three or four or two or three you guys are both individuals very unique and different but at the same time I felt like it's just an extension of last night's interview really yeah well like I said we hang out a lot there is one more question who is better at basketball you were out of what a jerk here's what happened okay we used to play as children and then one day he went way back to like the very end of the driveway and said if I make this shot I win this game and every game we've ever played and every game we ever will play and I was like sure dude whatever because he's he's you know like at the end of the driveway for pete's sake and he just launched it and I just sat there and horror as it went off the backboard and into the goal and for years we would play and I would beat him and he'd be like yeah but we both know I win okay no sex yeah and then one day in the middle of winter in college we were just being dumb and jumping in the pool and I said if I can swim seven links of this pool I win every basketball game he's like fine because he didn't think I could do it I was gonna die before I came out of that pool and I made it so he knows fair and square anyway he's being stingy interesting very interesting well thanks for you've given me a lot to do a lot to think about hey David who is it was a joy and a pleasure you're right the interviewer thank you very much I'm an amateur as we say but like I told Adam I buy a perpetual masters for all my guests so I'm gonna buy one for you and your family oh wow thank you do you drink whisky not yet okay well yeah we have a Glen Karen glass to send you yeah that's what he told me that's very nice great idea to get a perpetual man who do you do that through the Scalabrine Fathers of st. Charles Borromeo we have a local Benedictine Order the Clear Creek monastery here in Oklahoma they're hardcore contemplatives I might see if they could do that because that's a great idea yeah yeah yeah yeah look hack that you have right there I highly recommend it to everyone and I just think it's so amazing infinite Grace's every day til the end of time you can't get much better than that can you that's how much I need I need that much yeah cuz I'm really don't want to spend too much time if possible in purgatory so I'm kind of hoping that maybe some of these Grace's will redound to my glory and shave off some of that time in purgatory I'm sure they will yeah that's it that's like one thing you hear people say I'm just hoping to get into purgatory it's like well fine I'm hoping not I'm hoping to skip it okay like I think you should you know aim a little higher dude hey yeah I I did by perpetual mass for all the holy souls and Purgatory's too so every day there's a mass being said for all the holy souls in purgatory I'm pretty sure that that's gonna bear some fruit for me not that I'm being mercenary here I'm trying not to be I mean my tendency is to be a mercenary but I'm trying not to be with God's grace but still just objectively speaking I mean I think that can't hurt right and I need all the graces I can get so because they know whose prayers got them out of purgatory and so they will pray for that person you know they have a special fondness for that person I would imagine I would imagine yeah I mean I found a dog on the beach that was stranded by the tide that came in and he was so happy when I made this small sacrifice of like getting wet and going and swimming over and saving him but he was so happy and grateful I mean I think it's just human nature and obviously yak-9 nature too I mean so if a dog can do it how much more a soul who has just obtained perfection the economy of salvation it's so amazing the way that God allows us to be causes this is what Pascal famously said that the reason we have prayer is because God wanted us to have the dignity of being causes so that's it really is amazing the Catholic faith I'm glad to have found my way in and I'm glad to have met you and now that I've interviewed you both I can have the pleasure of going back and actually listening to your podcast because I never have I didn't want to be prejudiced you see ah I see so I'll go and I'll listen to do you have a recommendation for any particular place to start or oh I know I like I'm awfully fond of our episode we did on leisure he and I take turns coming up with the topic also like he'll do all the research and the other one of us is kind of intentionally ignorant that way maybe we'll ask the questions that the listener is thinking anyway so the episodes that I've done there were two episodes that I did that were just like mind-blowing for me one was on beauty and then one on leisure and both of those I realized I didn't know anything about beauty or anything about what leisure is until Adam explains here until I read about it and kind of research you know it's like we're made for leisure we're made to rest you know eternal rest that's what we're made for and so it just like changed my whole perspective amazing it's really amazing so keep up the good work I'm really proud of you guys for doing that and I thank you for your service as they say but at the end of all my interviews I just asked my guests to give a little closing thought a message of hope really for the listener so what do you think you might be able to say to someone that might be out there listening now oh man I would tell them whether you believe in him or not God created you and loves you more than you will ever fathom and you may feel like your life has no purpose sometimes and I guarantee you that your life has a purpose and that he has given you a mission that is far greater than anything you can imagine and that your purpose on this earth is specific he has a job for you he has things that he earnestly desires for you to accomplish great things things that will bring you greater joy than you can even imagine and if you would only open up to him and allow him to enter your life I promise you that he will and that you will know him and that your life will change David I think this has happened to you it has happened to millions of people throughout history the god of the universe has built you with love and his love for you is intense he is pursuing you and all you have to do is let him in and if you've done that the beautiful thing is that it you can do it over and over and over again and every time you fall more in love with him because you come to learn how much he loves you deeper and deeper and deeper and if you would simply try it you will live a life of beauty and love and sacrifice it will be hard the living the Christian life is not easy but it is worth it it is so beautiful you will come to learn the joy of dying for somebody else the joy truly loving and learning to give yourself away and the peace of knowing that everything that we do in this life all of all of our small sufferings we will be rewarded for if we would simply suffer for love of our neighbor and for love of him if we would pursue a life of virtue and a life of God's will then your life will change and I pray that it will happen for you because God is real and he loves you