hey we're live i'm here with zachary zachary how are you doing pretty good pretty good how about you sir doing okay i'm doing much better i just got back from confession and feeling much much better as i always do after praise be jesus christ praise through jesus christ praise be jesus christ so uh i'm just meeting you really for the first time now face to face i'd like to hear your story can you just tell me and the listeners a little bit about your faith journey like where you came from how you were raised and the whole journey yeah absolutely we can do that my name is zachary go by zachary d on youtube and my faith journey like a lot of people i was raised uh shall we say nominally theist where my family would tell you yes we believe in god but we did nothing about it we did we did not go to church we did not pray we did not do anything of the sort and that means i was kind of left to a certain degree to find out on my own what i believed about those kind of things and i went to church on and off um before the age of 10. at around the age of 10 i went to a baptist church in georgia where i lived at the time i'm currently residing in texas where i spent most of my life um but i was in georgia because my my father was in the military so went to a baptist church out there and the preacher says jesus walked on water and the whole he's telling the story by walking on water peter walked out to him the whole thing and he said has anybody here not been baptized ever raise your hand close your eyes and raise your hand so i closed my eyes and raised my hand because i'd never been baptized i think i didn't know what baptism was had no idea what he meant he pulls me into a back room and starts telling me the basic story of the gospel and i said hang on whoa wait a minute you're telling me this man walked on water how is that possible and he said oh you just have to believe well me being 10 years old and snarky as i was i was like i don't have to do anything i don't have to believe he was like no you just have to have faith and so at that point um i i recognize he couldn't answer my question he couldn't tell me how it was possible for jesus to walk on water um to be clear now i'm a practicing catholic i know better so so um to skip ahead a little bit we we solved that problem eventually but i go home that day and it kind of marinates in my brain a little bit i tell my mom a few days later i don't believe in god i don't i don't believe in god i'm an atheist she said no you're not you believe in god and that was the extent of my religious formation at that point um no it's a command that in this house you believe in god um and that was it so from that point forward i would kind of describe myself as your typical edgy atheist as the edge as a 10 year old from that from that point can get that extended through my early teenage years and then i started to look into what we'll call the left-hand religions the satanisms the thelma from aleister crowley and things like that and i started to really dive deep into those probably one of my biggest regrets by the way this is not a glorification of any of that practice it is it is to tell you that god as you say on your channel draws straight with crooked lines and he can draw you out of that and he did and i'll tell you that story in just a moment so i started to see uh different christians at my school they would tell me things like you are handicapped because you have a you have a crippled demon on you oh because by the way i don't know if it was clear but i have cerebral palsy okay so so i am i am handicapped and they would tell me uh they would tell me that i'm handicapped because there's a demon on me and everybody would try to pray for me pray the demon out and it never worked i i have not decided as of yet why uh why god hasn't healed me but i'm i'm at peace with it whatever he wants he'll do and i decided a long time ago that if uh if it's possible for god to only have a function a certain number of functional legs he might get gave it to somebody who would use them better because i'm kind of lazy anyway i don't want to climb ladders and stuff i don't want to run marathons it's nothing that i want to do so presuming the guy had a finite number of of good legs which he doesn't by the way but presuming that he does he gave them to somebody else because i wouldn't use them properly anyway so so that being that being the case i started to get a little bit angry and and a few times i became angry at god why did you make me this way but i started to get angry at the other christians at my school they were doing prayer circles and things like that at school and i started to get like angry so i decided as a way to mock them i would start a satanic prayer circle in my school and i did and one thing that i said when i was endeavoring to um endeavoring to start this project was any spirits that are going to come on to my friends should come on to me i take them all which i didn't realize how dangerous that was at the time i also didn't realize how real because honestly i i didn't know that i i didn't know that i believed anything would happen but we go through that process and from that day forward i was 16 17. from that day uh forward i started to like be really depressed and start to see shadows in the corners of my eyes when i'm driving down the road and everything had a connotation of of just very very um depressing and gray and just bad now i know that to be that i was possibly demonically oppressed i did not know that language at the time but i know that to be true now that i was possibly oppressed and this went on for several months and then i started to have dreams and in this dream a man who i can only identify as jesus was crying and weeping and he would tell me come home come home so these dreams go on and i kind of write it off huh i must have had bad pizza last night it happened a few times and things like that until one night when i was doing a ritual i had a candle in my room it was lit next thing i know from behind me there's a blinding light mind you there wasn't like a window behind me there wasn't anything that could be giving off that light behind me and i knew it was jesus and he was dispelling everything that was in my room from that moment which i was late 17 almost 18 at that point from that moment i was like okay well i don't know what to do with that information but i know i'm not supposed to be satanist so i need to go figure out how to follow jesus i need to go figure out what that means and figure out how to follow jesus so i started reading the bible i started reading um all kinds of theology books i read a book on how to read the old testament by a harvard professor who happened to be a jew so i read a book on how to read the old testament from a jew i figured if anybody knows how to read the old testament it's probably them but they're not going to believe the same thing that i that i know to be true now based on my experience about jesus they're not gonna be the same thing but they'll tell me how to read it so i realized that you could read the bible and be intelligent from that moment because up to this moment i kind of thought that you had to read the bible and like put away thoughts rigor science any kind of um any kind of criticism i guess would be a good word you couldn't be you couldn't ask questions because based on my previous experience i couldn't ask questions if i asked questions i got shut down so at that moment i i realized that you got to know what you're reading to understand it you're going to know how to read what you're reading to understand it when it comes to the bible so i started reading the bible i read a book by n.t wright called after we believe because i also realized that i didn't know what to do now that i believed in jesus because i don't know if if you may disagree with me but after you have an experience like that you can't help but believe in jesus i i have an experience like that personal experience i can't prove it to anybody i i wouldn't even try but um it is something that happened to me and it changed my life changed the trajectory of my life so i read that book and bishop wright was okay but i didn't i didn't know even what to do with that information there wasn't a church that around me that like um had those values and i was going to i was back to the baptist church at the time um and i was living in san antonio with my now ex-girlfriend who who obviously is not my now wife but my my first girlfriend at the time we were living together which by the way if you're listening kids that's a bad idea don't do it um there's the reason the church says don't do it and i'm a living testament to why it's a bad idea because honestly it was a bad relationship but we were so tangled up together living together we had moved from my hometown near dallas to send it to san antonio we we moved there together so we were so tangled up and i'm reading these books and then along comes her dad and he says hey we're going to mass today and i said wait what we're doing what you've never talked about religion not one time not not ever in your whole life he said yeah but it's christmas and i said okay okay okay so i went and don't don't misunderstand he's he wasn't the paragon of catholic practice so we go to this mass and it was objectively um based on what i know now it was okay as far as like how the mass should go there wasn't any like crazy abuses and one thing he said to me that stuck out that told me that he wasn't like an example was hey you're handicapped you know you don't have to kneel right because i i know when everybody knows i stood when everybody stood i didn't know why we were doing it really but i felt like if that's what everybody else is doing there's a reason for it and i should do it um so he's like but you realize you don't have to because you're handicapped right and i said yeah but everybody around us is doing it so i'm not making excuses today and and uh i didn't receive communion he didn't either and so we go from there but i realized like okay well maybe the church maybe the church isn't so bad maybe maybe the church isn't all the stereotypes i've ever heard and i should start looking into that but i realized too that i didn't want to change my life i did not want to change how i was living i did not want to adjust my morals because anybody you ask who doesn't know anything else about the catholic church knows that uh no premarital sex uh no abortion no contraception and in general don't break the law and those are the things that i was definitely fond of i was i was doing drugs i was doing things i really shouldn't have obviously i was living with my girlfriend at the time and then we moved out of her dad's house because we were sharing a duplex with them we moved out of her dad's house and things are okay-ish for um a little bit and we start going we start going to a church closer to where we're living now and they kept wanting to come by and visit they kept wanting to like visit the house and i kept putting it off and i said to myself wait what is so bad about my home life that i don't want people in my house what it what is so bad what what is going what am i doing wrong and this kind of stuck with me for a while that i was putting people putting good people people of good will outside my life just because they just because i didn't want them to see what was going on because she was kind of abusive and we weren't we just weren't good for each other i won't i won't spend too long just disparaging her for no good reason i pray pray for her but over the course of this relationship uh she gets pregnant i freak out because i'm not ready to be a dad i'm like i'm like 23 24 at the time and i'm not ready to be a dad no way no how um so i freak out as anybody who's not expecting a pregnancy i think is a reasonable reaction and she said oh don't worry we'll take care of it i said no no no what do you what do you mean like no we can't you can't you can't mean that can you and she said yeah i don't think you'd be a good father anyway and so my various protests and everything that i could do to help she took her money our joint account went and had an abortion and it it was man i'm gonna cry right now thinking about it because it was terrible truthfully so that's something too that i want to since i have the space to say it i want to say one of the things that um turned me off from the left right because i was i was about as liberal as you could i support you could go through my facebook right now you'll find pictures of me uh changing my profile picture to the pride flag you'll find all that stuff in my past jesus delivered me from all that and he used the crooked line of my abortion to start that because what there is no space for on the left there's no space for somebody who has an abortion and regrets it there's no space for that they they think it's beautiful and brave and all the other positive words they can use and then also i will say that something bad that the pro-life crowd was doing around me because nobody knew i didn't i didn't say this out in public for like 10 it was it's been a while i didn't say this out in public for several years but what they would do is they would say oh people who have abortions are monsters they're terrible people well no not not always because of people like me who it happened and i regret it and i tried to stop it i did everything i possibly could and then also anybody who tries to shut down men in the abortion debate shame on you because there are people like me out here who have that experience who um our voice needs to be heard because it's a very uncommon voice it's not it's not the typical experience that you would assume so that happens and we stayed together way longer than we should have after that i asked her to marry me she says no um and that should have been that should have been my last straw i should have said you know what this is not going anywhere anywhere fast but uh we stayed together for a few years even after all that and eventually she cheats on me and we break up she leaves the house and i start doing harder drugs i'm i'm now instead of just smoking cannabis i'm i'm doing acid i'm doing mushrooms i'm doing that type of stuff as well just trying to find something bigger than myself because i'm still in the back of my mind not really sure that organized religion is the answer yes i believe in jesus but so does everybody else out there who claims and they're living the same way that i do they claim the same thing i do and they're living the same way i do so clearly that doesn't change much boy was i wrong by the way just just to skip ahead and cut to the punchline i was terribly wrong so this goes on for a little bit longer at some point i say you know what i can't stand this apartment where me and my ex lived i'm tired of looking at these four walls i packed up all the clothes on my back all all that i could carry which by the way i'm handicapped not much so it wasn't it wasn't terribly a whole lot and i leave i walk out the door lock the door knowing that i'm not paying any more rent there they're gonna come take all the stuff i leave i'm i'm homeless for like two weeks i finally call my um i finally call my cousin who lives in dallas and say hey i need a place to stay till i get my head straight and i i go home and this was i don't know um six years ago or so so at that point i'm i'm back home with my parents we we had kind of grown apart because they were never a fan of this girl in the first place and i thought they were totally wrong so we had kind of grown apart so i had to do a little bit of reparative work there to even get to a point where i could stay in their house and like not have that be a terrible thing but i get a job at a call center out here and one day i turn on the radio and i don't know why don't th there's no logical reason as to why but i turned on ewtn don't i i couldn't tell you the very first words i heard out of the radio that day where catholics come home and i said whoa wait a minute i remember that dream i remember okay let's let's start looking into this for real because i i had read uh i had read john 6 at that point and and i knew that i wanted a church who taught that and i knew that the answer was either the orthodox or the catholics once you once you get down to the real nitty-gritty of john chapter six you got two options and so i turn on ewtn and i start listening every day for hours i'm listening every day for hours on hours now mind you i'm still living terribly i still i still don't want to change my morals at all and this goes on for another like two years so keep in mind jesus been working on me since i was young and and we're still we're still at a point where i'm like yeah yeah i know this is true i i get it i understand i understand where you're pointing me but i just don't wanna i just don't i'm just being stubborn at this point so i get another job i leave that place i get another job and that that goes on for a while it gets worse because at that job we were doing drugs at work we were like actively in front of every like nobody cared so we were just doing whatever we wanted right and um i meet this girl who is my now wife and the first moment i laid eyes on her i said i'm going to marry that woman from the very from moment one i said i'm gonna marry her and this this part of the story might make me sound like a little a little bit of a scumbag but we all have terrible baggage but i tell her this a about a week later and find out she has a boyfriend i said okay well fine when you're done playing games and want to get married i'm i'm going to marry you and so three or four months later we're dating unbeknownst to me she has a kid i i i had no no idea no no inclination she has a kid and and bear in mind i'm still like going home and smoking cannabis every day and all this other stuff and it comes to a point because her her uh her daughter my my oldest daughter is autistic and she has violent streaks and we're we're kind of dealing with uh raising an autistic kid uh we're kind of dealing with that because she moved in with me uh again bad idea don't do it but she moved in with me because she had nowhere else to go it was either with me or be on the streets and i couldn't do that i i couldn't do that so this goes on for a little bit because we got together in may and by christmas that year i said to her listen jamie um i don't know how to be the husband you deserve and the father that are that your daughter needs without being catholic i don't know how to do it i i'm out of answers because i was trying to live both my both lives i was trying to be the party guy and do all the drugs in the house and also try and be a good dad by the way you can't live a double life it does it doesn't work you're gonna run out of gas real real fast like that uh it does not work so that being the case i said i'm gonna go to mass this sunday little did i know it was gal that day sunday that's the day i was uh confirmed into the church into the catholic church oh wow sunday yeah that that sunday has has a lot of significance well for me as somebody who didn't know anything at all about investment color changes and what have you um i get to mask and i see this this priest and what appears to be pink and i said i i looked up at the scene of the church i said lord jesus if this is where you want me to be this is where i'll be but this man is wearing pink i hope he's not one of those priests i i said i know this is your church i've made that determination but if this is where and if this is where this is the only catholic church i can go to it's the only one around here it's where i'll go but i hope he's not one of those priests and and so um luckily in his homily he explained he explained the colors and the difference and he was like no it's not pink and i said thank you jesus and and uh two weeks later i'm still i went to mass both those two weeks i went up to him on the steps of the church you know how most parishes around here at least the priest like does the does the hand shake after mass hey nice to see you i go to him and go father i'd like to be catholic where do i start and he said wait what he said uh uh they're having rca next tuesday you should go and so i went and that was that was now officially five years ago the a year a year later um that that following year at pentecost i was received into the church a few months after that we were married in the church a year after a year after we were married me and my wife were married in the church she was received into the church because by the way this whole time she was like no this is this is a bad zack you you're going to give up and and we and i had gone on retreat and after i went on retreat um she said she saw a big change in who i was and how i was living and and um and she said from that point i realized it wasn't a fad and and i had to have that too so so we we uh both were received in the same parish and it's been a it's been a wild it's been a wild ride i looking back i hate that the whole coven thing happened um this early into my journey because it's only been five years and one of those mass was completely shut down i couldn't go at all which by the way was devastating for me but we have we have now uh we have three kids now and one on the way so so we're expecting a fourth thank you um but that's the the overview of where i came from and and i say that to say i say that to say no matter where you are um once you're convinced that the truth you're gonna end up end up there anyway so you might as well uh quit fighting it and come home yeah do you ever listen i fought it for far too long do you ever listen to uh marcus grodi the journey home oh yeah absolutely absolutely i i haven't i haven't in a long time um i i got sucked into a lot of what you would call the radtrad uh the rad trap folks and then when they started jumping ship and started like pseudo supporting sspx i was like no i can't can't do that um because i i was very surprised as a convert going to mass and not hearing any latin yeah because like i expected like these are these are roman catholics latin is what they do yeah and then there was none it was very strange obviously i understand a lot more now and uh my parish is okay during lent and advent they throw in more latin but generally speaking he doesn't because people people give him a lot of grief for that so it's it's a very strange thing and i have i kind of found uh your channel which is interesting i don't and thinking back to it i don't i don't know how long i've actually been subscribed to your channel um and i i couldn't tell you where i where i found it i i would imagine i was looking for a debate and and you popped up um what was the first video you heard or heard or watched of mine uh recently it's been recently um because i i had to stop watching i had to stop watching any debate content because i was getting too i was getting too wrapped up in arguments and not praying yeah i i said i was getting i'm getting too wrapped up in this youtube in the in the intellectual arguments and neglecting my prayer life yeah and then what got me back to your channel was the the response you were given to marcel lev and his letter to confuse a letter from a confused catholic to to confuse catholics so so there was that video um sort of let me peek at you in a way that wasn't like you weren't talking to anybody else this this was you and your opinions and you kind of get you kind of gave you her and i've kind of been uh i kind of been stepping back from other youtube personalities i i won't name names to put you in any hot water but there are some people who went a little bit too rad trad for me and i've been looking for the middle road and you seem to be like yeah i respect i respect tradition and all that but i'm also obedient yeah oh obedience is a big deal um and that that appeals to me especially where i am because if you look at church history there are plenty of uh saintly people saints who had unjust unjust rules put on them or they were they were silenced or exiled or something like that unjustly and they didn't go oh well it's an unjust law i'm not gonna obey it they said yes bishop and when god did their unjust thing and then eventually it came out that it was unjust they didn't make that personal determination so i i have had to remind myself that it's not not my place to make a personal determination on um church things and my liturgical preference doesn't make jesus any less present in the eucharist if the if the mass is valid it doesn't uh i can prefer what i prefer but it doesn't make it any less the mass the the key the key for me is humility it requires a lot of humility to remain faithful to the pope no matter which pope it is because the pope will never align perfectly with your own politics it's never going to happen never even if you're a right winger rad trad and the pope happens to be a right wing or rad trad you're still going to find points to quibble about and you're never going to agree 100 about all opinions right so what vatican 2 says in essentials unity right in non-essentials diversity a healthy diversity and in all things charity so the the most humble position we can take in the most the most catholic position that we can take is that middle way where we don't get wrapped up in the left in the right or even in a centrist political ideology but we just submit to jesus christ and jesus christ's economy of salvation is such that there is a pope and there are bishops under the pope and there are priests helping the bishops and that's just the way it is and there's oh there's always been controversy there's always been ugly politics in the church and the the smoke of satan has even entered into the church we see corrupt bishops who love money more than they love jesus christ can you imagine that right well i can't because of where i came from i i couldn't possibly i couldn't possibly imagine um loving anything more than jesus and i tell i tell my wife and kids i love jesus first then your mom and then you yeah not because i love you less but because that's the order of things yeah and when once you fall out of that order things get wacky and i don't i don't um i shudder to think that there there are um there are bishops and priests and things like that who clearly don't believe what you and i believe it's clear based on their actions right yeah um but all i can do is pray for them that they have a conversion moment like i did like i did because what i can tell you is everything that i thought i was getting good from being a satanist everything i thought was good because for for a minute there it felt i was i was super confident i i felt like i had the work i had the world right everything i thought was good is really an inversion of what the true good was because i was puffed up well true good is humility true good is is being humble and being willing to hurt and being willing to suffer and that's true good so satan will take what it what is good invert it and try and fool you and let you think that that is that is um that is what is true truly good the other thing is no matter your past uh for for anybody catholic especially if you're catholic i don't care how long you've been away from confession but once you go to confession uh it's been forgiven if you if you make an honest and good confession it's been forgiven now satan will try to use your past as a lie because there's been many times oh zach why why are you leading this retreat um you're no good for that and shut up satan like quit stop shut up shut up yeah i i know where this is coming from be quiet you you have you have no business here if god's calling me to do it he's calling me to do it and what you say doesn't matter because my wife and i are about to lead a marriage group um in our parish and i ca i answered the survey in such a way that i was sure they weren't gonna pick us up i was like they were like are you interested in hosting meetings no would you like to cook for would you like to cook for several people at a time not really um and so i answered the survey in a way that i was sure that we're gonna pick us because i talked to my wife about whether she wanted to do it and we both decided like no we don't want to do it and then they called us anyway for the interview for the process and i said okay well if i did everything naturally i could to avoid it and then you call me anyway then it might be just that god is calling us to do it regardless so i'm gonna i'm gonna submit to that suck up my pride of not wanting people in my house because um for different reasons now i'm still i'm still averse to um people coming in my house because i value privacy when i shut my door to my house i like shut out the world and like this is my little insular um so i i think god is trying to help me out of that a little bit like quit being so isolated um and and trust me the little little pandemic did not uh did not help that because because now i work from home and i have for the last two years so i don't even leave to go to work anymore which by the way is good because i'm handicapped and can't drive so it make it makes a lot less burden on my wife that way because she's having to take me back and forth to work and so forth um and and the honest truth is i i could say i could say an hour's more good things about her because i couldn't do any of this i couldn't um do this podcast right now without her watching the kids in the other room i couldn't do anything anything good that i do without my wife and i'm not saying that because she can hear me even i'm pretty sure she can um i'm not saying that because she can hear me i'm saying it because it's true and it's just it's just um i i look around and i've started to see the world around us go in a in a negative direction and then i'm reminded that every prophecy we ever read or we're told or however you feel about fatima or any of the other apparitions of our lady all of them say things are going to get bad but then they say victory's on the other end and i've started to focus less on the things are getting bad and i'm like yeah things are getting bad you know what that means victory's coming yeah let's let's be positive about the things that are going bad sure do what you can to do what you can to to stave it off be the salt preserve it as long as you can but know eventually it's going to get so bad that you can't there's no more that you can do and that's in the church out of the church that's in your home out of your home you do as much as you can but it's going to get ugly before it gets better but it is going to get better because if the negatives are true of these apparitions then the positives have to be true as well you can't you can't take half a vision and go well then all the negatives are true but those positives i'm not sure because because all all the apparitions have positives attached as well for sure yeah yeah the uh i forget which saint it was probably multiple saints that said with every passing hour that's another hour i am closer to death and to going to heaven so i think it might have been saint teresa uh i can't remember which one but the idea of time passing you know time's going very quickly for me as i age i'm 51 years old now and the days are whipping past and the weeks and the months and the years but um i'm trying to adapt adopt that same attitude which is to say that every with every passing minute or hour or day i'm that much closer to meeting my maker right so it's it's a cause of celebration and uh so long as i can remain in the state of grace and that's why i said at the beginning of this interview that i'm very happy this morning because i i had a confession and i unburdened myself of sin and i'm in the state of grace at least i hope i am and if i'm not in the state of grace may it please god to put me in this state of grace and if i am in the state of grace may it please god to keep me and preserve me in the state of grace i think that was saint teresa of avila who said that one too absolutely i i am about to be 33 so okay i i i know the gray hair here my my uh my age but i'm just graying early i'm just graying very early um i'm about to be 33 and my younger brother asked me sometimes but he asked me a couple of weeks ago what's your best day um well i guess that my best day would be to go to mass or go to confession then go to mass walk out of the church and die and and die right right there just die yeah just be just be done right there and he said whoa whoa wait he said um what about your wife and kids i said it'd be nice if they could all come with me but you asked me what my best day would be yeah and and it's hard to remember that no matter how long you spend on this side of eternity you have longer on the other side it's it's it's longer regardless and it gets harder and harder to say the best day of my life is the day that i die um the more more kids that i have the more i become attached to my wife but i i have um i watched a video by father chad ripper i don't know if you're from familiar big fan um he's he said we should pray for a virtue that i didn't consider before and it's holy detachment yeah and he said that doesn't mean you don't care about things but it means that you don't rely on created things for your joy yeah so i don't rely on my wife for my joy or my kids or my car or my house behind me here i don't rely on anything like that for my joy and that's way harder than it is because boy does coffee taste good um so it's really it's really difficult to do and it sounds counterproductive kind of when you say oh my goal is to become detached from my wife well in a certain sense yes but in a certain sense we should be looking at the only attachment i should have other people is so far as to say how can i serve god by serving this person yeah how can i serve god by serving my wife how can i serve god by serving my kids not how can my wife and kids serve god or how can i make my wife and kids happy what is the best way for me to serve my wife and kids to serve god it's and and it's it's tough but it definitely it's a whole different perspective than what i had before because and thanks be to god that i never went through it but you asked me um 10 years ago what i wanted i wanted a vasectomy i didn't want no kids i didn't want to sing i i didn't want to be a dad what do you mean me this this person i am well no that person i that person i was would have been a worthless father yeah hey i'm i'm only a good father because of grace saint joseph pray for me yeah uh it's it's a i'm i'm only a good father because of god i'm i've on my own like it would be great if if i could if i could just on my own give up and go back to the way it was it wouldn't be great really in the grand scheme of things but it would feel good in the moment if i could go back to just sitting around eating cheetos all day and watching tv and no i can't i can't do that i can't do that anymore that's not god wants more from me than that yeah well i often i often talk about the ten commandments and uh the the way that we love god and serve god and even the way we know god sometimes is through the creature so uh the ten commandments can be broken down into love of god and love of neighbor the first three are the love of god and thought were indeed in the last seven are the love of neighbor and thought word indeed and i see very much the economy of salvation set up by god in his infinite wisdom such that we have to praise god we have to glorify god by being fully alive and by being at service to god by being at service to our neighbor and there are many stories in the bible about that that exemplify that and especially most especially the life of our lord and savior jesus christ the way that he lived the way he suffered the way he died and the way it was all for god the father and the the benefit that he bestows on his creatures because we are creatures of all three persons of the trinity we're creatures of christ just as much as we are creatures of god the father and the god the holy spirit right so that's the benefits that he pours out on us and the graces that he continues to pour out on us uh through through his church and all through mary obviously all of the graces come through mary that's one of the reasons i reject uh medjugorje is because they denied that all graces come through mary are you aware of that i i am not aware of that i i am not a medjugorje fan even though uh some people who are gonna watch this video are gonna be like how dare you um no well no the church has not made um the the church is neutral on the subject at best the church has not made any any official official declaration as far as i'm aware i was actually just reading this earlier today as far as i'm aware there's not been an official declaration but it has been discouraged by uh both the um both both both the local bishop and the the investigatory body what what i last read was um mejigoria as a place of prayer is different from medjugorje whether visions happened or not yeah those are two separate issues and and the visions are kind of in that questionable like let's don't area and then the place of prayer um they said i can't deny that people are getting some kind of grace some people are getting some kind of grace from the place but it's not necessarily because there was any kind of apparition there are plenty of marian shrines where she did not appear that it exists in the world so i definitely don't um i'm not big on i'm not big on medjugorje at all i'm not i'm not a fan um and and it goes back to the obedience thing yeah exactly anybody who is unquestionably medjugorje heavy are you really being obedient to the rulings of the of the church i i need to know and the seers the seers were disobedient and the franciscan monks placed many of them were disobedient to the local bishop and see that's and that's a hard one too it's easy for me because i live in a diocese that uh i have a good bishop yeah i'm i'm in the diocese of tyler i don't know if you're familiar with the good bishop strickland no uh i'll look him up he he he is very much uh pro-life he he's not not afraid to to uh say say um say call it what it is abortion is murder and he calls the jabs what they are and he says he says what he says and he's not obviously he's not right on everything as no human could be um it's uh and and that's a that's a funny topic too we have to we have to remember that they don't send these priests to business administration school so you might find you might find a priest who you say doesn't doesn't use the parish money or doesn't manage the budget the way that you would want but if he's talking to me the truth if he's speaking the truth from the pulpit and he's teaching the truth that's a good priest like you might not be a good business person and you might need some help in that regard but you you can't fault these priests for if they're just doing nothing but speaking the truth that if they don't they send these priests to seminary not they don't get a business administration degree so i want to talk a little bit uh before we wrap up about the uh the so-called pandemic and the vaccination in particular here in quebec they just imposed a curfew so all of our new year's eve parties are cancelled uh it's a very strict regime we have here in quebec it's a very uh left-leaning political atmosphere in quebec and the different places around the world that are very strict like australia whatever germany austria um i just want to get your personal opinion about how satan and that worldliness dominates this world and the pandemic is just an obvious example of worldliness and if the if the uh if the ecclesiastical authorities are playing along with the civil authorities the godless civil authorities i think they're culpable before their creator um but i'm not saying that to condemn anyone i i pray for all of the all of those powers in positions of responsibility it's not easy to stand up to the civil authorities when the church is bankrupt it's completely bankrupt and it's also morally bankrupt in the eyes of the general population and the verdict is in from the the court of public opinion the verdict is in the catholic church is corrupt and it's not worth saving and they shouldn't even have their tax uh benefits of taxes tax exempt status and all these sorts of things so the verdict is in from the court of popular opinion especially in quebec in different places um sure but i want to talk about the worldliness of the church and how it's always been a danger to be in love with power and love with money and love with being comfortable and living a worldly life rather than following the narrow and painful path that christ says we have to follow by picking up our cross so can you just talk about covid the vaccination the mandates the pressure that's being exerted and uh what it means in terms of the bible the spiritual battle between christ and his followers on the one hand and satan and his followers on the other hand just talk about that from your perspective sure and and i'll i'll give a little bit background on my perspective because what i put what i'm about to say colors the rest of my commentary i contracted what we believe would be the delta variant of kobit back in august okay and was hospitalized for five days wow out of work for three weeks still dealing with a blood clot right now in my left leg from coving so i i got it objectively i got it pretty bad i'm still not getting a jet no i won't and here's why because there are things in the testing that go directly against the morals of our faith they're using aborted fetal cells in the testing and i i don't care how remote you want to make it you can quibble about some theological well it's okay and and listen everybody has to follow their own conscious but i'm telling you from my perspective based on the story that i just told you for the last however long we've been here i can't i won't do it kill me yeah i'd rather die yeah and that's that's the energy i'm coming to you with with what i'm about to say it made me so incredibly sad to see how quick every bishop on this planet said yeah sure we'll shut down the church as soon as the secular authorities said hey you guys should shut down the church there wasn't a fight there wasn't a there wasn't uh there wasn't people like rioting in the streets over it there wasn't anything nobody thought this they said oh we're sorry you don't have access to the sacraments uh while this is going on um so oh i'm sorry no public masses no nothing and i didn't i didn't know any priest who was doing like private masses or still had the church open or anything like that but as far as as far as i know for that year that we were shut down shut down here in texas we were shut down completely and it sort of to to get at the heart of your question it exemplifies how hard it is to fight um against the comfort of just going along because could you imagine even one bishop who said no my diocese is not shutting down even one their bishops conference would have been like what do you mean you're ridiculous they would they would have they would have had the worst time and trust me that weighs on that weighs on all of our decisions if we really think about it in in a basic way if you say um hey i want to go get some food and the the uh place where you want to go hassle out traffic you're not going to go there because oh i don't want to wait in line that long so it's it's little things like that where i don't want to rock the boat or i don't want to i don't want to inconvenience myself even a little bit to do the right thing and even even my good bishop shut the world quickly quickly shut it down it wasn't even a question um and something that a good friend of mine reminds me of a lot is there was a time in history where you could live and die and not know who the pope was so in a certain sense your personal practice of the faith the hierarchy has very little bearing on that you are bound to your parish priest to your local bishop and to the pope and until either of those three people impose something on you what the bishops conferences say and that there it's good to be informed it's we're way better now because we can be informed but i can look at that and go i'm sorry your excellencies but you were wrong in that and i'm not happy about it and we can't let it happen again because i'm very afraid it's gonna it's gonna happen again maybe not here in texas but um but i'm very afraid that they're going to try and lock down again using this new variant as the reason but also also in light of um in light of what happened with the traditional custodis dubia and the if the thing you're talking about there in quebec for new year's the world wants to take away joy it's very clear to me that the however however much i have to obey the dubia and whatever whatever um restrictions come out of that from my local bishop i have to obey but you released it right before christmas there's something there that tries to steal my joy a little bit tries to make me not happy so what do we have to do we have to smile and say praise be jesus christ we have to smile regardless you're not going to steal my joy because my joy is from god and you i'm not letting you or anybody else in this world take my happiness away from me just because uh you there in quebec say that we can't go out for new year's we're about to have the most joyous new years at my house that we possibly can because i'm gonna be happy regardless huh you're not gonna steal my happiness from me i may not be able to get out in the streets and be happy with other people which by the way they're trying to separate people they're they are they are trying very hard to make this idea that online interaction is the same as face-to-face interaction because if we weren't an entire continent apart because we're literally about as far apart as you could possibly be and be on the same continent i'm in texas you're you're in quebec but if we want the entire continent apart i'd prefer to have this conversation in person because it's just a little bit better oh yeah now i'm thankful that we're able to have this conversation because not that long ago we wouldn't even have been able to do it for less than six dollars a minute or whatever it was to make an international phone call it was it's a whole thing so i'm thankful in that regard but they're trying to make this metaverse and this whole thing to to act like um to act like digital is the same as in person and we are incarnate creatures the second you the second you start separating the physical not only do you run into some some uh really old school heresies namely gnosticism uh you start saying like the body is bad and all this other stuff you start running in gnosticism and they start they're going to start doing things like metaverse mass i i c i can't wait to see it it's going to be terrible it's going to it's that's not the mass i'm i'm sorry and i i understand during the pan they make all we had access to was online masses but that scares me too because i know a lot of people would say well i could go to online mass back then why doesn't it counter my sunday obligation now and now satan has used this lockdown to put people in a situation where they're not fulfilling their sunday obligation so it is definitely a war but i i have come to understand that i can't go to i can't go to work for jesus with the world until i until i go to war with myself yeah so so during advents um i started the exodus 90 program for advent okay because i play i plan on doing exodus 90 starting january 17th i don't know that exodus 90 is a program that um it's an ascetical program of prayer and scripture reading okay so so for the 90 days from january 17th to easter sunday you read the entire book of exodus you commit to an hour of prayer a day you fast on wednesdays and fridays regular exercise three times a week um what uh no sweets no alcohol no tv you you give it up give it all up to go do other things yeah and uh by the way cold showers so no no hot showers so cold cold showers only so so and that's usually the one that gets people and i started i started um doing that during advent and at first it was it was difficult it was very hard but i started to say as a little prayer to myself i love jesus more than i love being comfortable so this discomfort that i'm feeling right now i love you more than my comfort so i'm giving you this discomfort and that is what put me in a spirit of like okay well i can i can sacrifice i can be uncomfortable so i don't know what the lord is preparing me for but i can definitely tell you that he's preparing goodly goodly catholics all over the world for something big or maybe small because i'm of the i'm of the mind that the church may lose a lot of its it's already lost its uh power or influence over the world people don't look at the catholic church's opinion on anything anymore but i'm i'm not opposed to saying that it might lose its uh some of its real estate perishes may close it's going to get a lot smaller before it gets holier i'm afraid yeah but but in that process it's going to get holier so at some point we've got to stop looking at the world and go within the sphere of people under my authority what can i do to be holier how can i get holier and for me it's been through uh silent prayer i i was i was okay with vocal prayer but try to just sit silently and think about god for 10 minutes and then realize how much other stuff can come into your mind how much how many thoughts do you have you when you're trying to think about god how uncomfortable is it just to be in silence and just just sit it's really really uncomfortable to some degree we've got to understand that ultimately on your dying day it's going to be silence between you and god because you might not have the ability to speak you're going to lose the ability to speak so you better get comfortable in that valley of silence you bet you better get comfortable there because a lot of people make a lot of noise that they make noise they say words just to just to fill up the space and not deal with their own mind to deal with um why does not getting exactly what i want to eat make me angry why does why does a little bit of inconvenience at work make me grumpy why does why do i get um dissatisfied when i hear other people's opinions why why am i letting other people's opinions uh make me dissatisfied and why am i still watching stuff that is clearly upsetting me like i had to turn off a i had to turn off a show that i watched for um i i watched for 18 seasons you may be familiar with grey's anatomy do you know the show i yeah i hated it always hated it right well i was a huge fan and then they went well then they went woke on me this last episode um one of the characters said it's okay i don't think uh thanksgiving is a is a holiday we should celebrate anyway because the natives are probably more worried about being colonized and having their land stolen and i know you as a canadian might not well this thanksgiving that's a very american holiday there zach well yeah but it's also a very catholic holiday uh eucharist means thanksgiving and everybody who came over were catholics and that whole narrative that you hear that christopher columbus was a terrible person well no he was just the guy doing his yeah let me see if i can find the passage but it does it does say um here in canada we only have two other than sundays we only have that's it that's it we we don't have many more but it is it is um not it's not not like it used to be for sure but we but we are we are supposed to fight for all of our holy days of obligation to be national holidays and that some days account for that to some degree i have started to be very weary about do i really need to shop on a sunday yeah well that's not a problem in quebec cause starting uh today there no more sunday uh everything's shot on sunday here come back now oh oh really yeah even the churches are shut hold on they always take it too far they always go from really good to really bad real quick yeah it's insane so so just on sundays though well there's a new policy i don't know exactly what it is i think all all churches have to close by 4 or 5 p.m and sundays i i heard that there's no church allowed on sundays i don't know why that i mean i'm i'm okay closing everything else yeah but like but does that mean you you you can still go to a visual mass on saturday i guess you could no but no because you can't go after 5 p.m everything shuts up yeah i think it's it sounds like it's strategically planned to keep us away from the sacraments and you know what's funny is um even if they're not going to say that right because most of them won't say that out loud it's very clear to me it's being used that way by whatever principalities or powers that are in the or in the uh in control of that and that's the other thing too ultimately people are just mouthpieces like people who are being used are just mouthpieces so this battle is light against flesh is against principalities and powers so says sacred scripture um and when you start thinking about it that way you say well he might not say that it's to keep us away from the sacraments but it's pretty obvious that it is and unfortunately some of these politicians would claim to be catholic yeah it's a it's a very where was that i'm trying i'm trying to find the uh exact rules but i can't find them quickly and easily so well and that's bad too like if these are rules that go into effect like now then you probably should be able to you should be able to find them it's very strange that you it's very strange that you wouldn't i'm just i'm gonna i'm not gonna multitasking i'm sure as soon as i have a call i can find out pretty fast oh i i i understand that too um where where is it where is it that they say um you checking the catechism no yeah i'm i'm checking the uh the catechism for that piece on um on um fighting to make every holy day of obligation oh yeah here it is uh 2188. in regards to really in regards to religious liberty and the common good of all christians should seek recognition of sundays and the church's holy days of obligation as legal holidays they have to give everyone a public example of prayer respect and joy to defend the traditions of previous contributions to the spirit life of society if a country's legislation or other reasons require work on sunday the day should be nevertheless be lived as a day of our observance which lets us share in the fest uh the festival gathering this assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven so catechism says 2188 says that we should be fighting for every sunday and holy day of obligation to be legally recognized by the state and yet i don't see anybody making that fight yeah and interesting and don't get me wrong i would i was just made aware of it it's just funny because these bishops wrote that document how long ago almost 30 years ago now yeah and they're not even making that fight so they said it in the document and it's it's good when i that's what changed my mind on shopping on sunday by the way because before i really truthfully did not make um i didn't have any doubts about it i i kind of thought about it as like a pious thing to do and it's good to do but you don't have to worry about it but now it's like well if everybody just stopped purchasing on sunday then all of a sudden businesses wouldn't make any money on sunday and they'd have to shut down yeah yeah yeah i'm just going to read you i'm going to read you i found the thing it says the problem the province of quebec also announced non-essential stores will need to be closed for the next three sundays and that the return to class will be delayed for uh school children uh places of worship will also need to close other than for funerals with a maximum of 25 people blah blah blah so uh it's just for the next three weeks but you know it's uh the hardest part of two weeks to flatten curve is the first two years right right right right so so i wonder if a if a if a priest has the has the uh has the wherewithal to just call every they're just going to say it say it if you're say just say it just say it's a funeral most people wouldn't know the difference between a regular mass and a funeral mass anyway yeah so i i i wonder if there's going to be a priest out there that goes for the next three sundays all masses will be funeral masses excellent excellent idea that uh that that seems to be don't the only only logical decision well there was a thing here in quebec where the the archbishop i think he's a nice holy man but he's just uh you know he sort of believes in the covet thing but he said uh that he would offer masses for the unvaccinated but outdoors and you know how cold it is here in quebec in the winter right 20 below uh celsius so uh ridiculously well one of the churches that i've been going to which is uh more conservative i guess you could say they just shut down and they said we're not going to treat the second class citizens like dogs having them freezing outside and you know it's just not it's just not right so they decided to just shut permanently well not permanently but temporarily just shut the church down until the segregation stops because the segregation has to stop and and i'm i'm surprised at that because i mean we have saints and missionaries who went into like leopard colonies yeah and like the spanish flew and listen i'm the last one to tell you that uh the the the pandemic the disease can't be serious for people i had a serious reaction it's pretty clear um there's no there's no debating that i had a serious reaction but um you know oh and i guess that's another point i had to fight to get uh anointing of the sick while i was in the hospital oh i i i had to uh so they told me the night before they said yeah no problem your priest can come give you anointing the sick my priest gets there the next morning because i i legitimately like um when i went to hospital i went i went in because my leg had swollen and i'm pretty sure i had a blood clot and i thought i was gonna die i legitimately was like this is it game over blood clots are deadly like i'm gonna die so i need anointing the sick really bad so i called my priest and he said yeah no problem i'll be i'll be over there in the morning do you think you can wait i said yeah i don't think i'm going to die overnight or at least i hope not and cross myself and i said well wait till the morning no problem and um he gets there the charge nurse comes in and as she comes in he's calling me and he says to me zach i'm here but they won't let me in and the charge nurse says hey your priest is here but no visitors he can't come in and i said um no i was told last night that he could absolutely come in this is a priest are there no religious exemptions like this is a religious thing i i need i need you to be clear though i'm not asking for a visit this is a religious ceremony she said no no visitors i said listen to me very carefully and at this point i'm raising my voice and and i said i'm sorry father for raising my voice but this is not just i said listen very carefully you're denying me jesus christ you're literally denying me jesus christ yeah and that is just as important as if not as if not more important than all the medicine you're pumping into me right now and you will not deny me jesus christ yeah and i i'm i'm like in tears my priests could hear me on the other end of the phone and i said i'm sorry father but this is unjust they're denying me jesus and he's like you're right this is unjust you need to have them come talk to me now because bear in mind my priest had taken all the precautions including he he even got in the jab like he he got he got the jab after considering it for himself as you said on this channel consider it for yourself and make your own decision um he he did everything he said i'm going to go in full ppe do whatever they want me to do i'll do whatever they want me to do but you need the sacraments right now and so she leaves for a little bit and uh comes back about five minutes later and says your priest is on his way up i said praise be jesus christ you made the right decision and um so i get the anointing and the sick i feel better i'm like ready if i'm if i'm gonna die right now okay fine um and then another another nurse comes in and says hey side note if she just said no i'd have put you in a wheelchair and we're going to meet your priest outside the doors nice and i said good for you thank you for understanding because i don't care if you think it's hocus pocus what we're doing putting me in a better mental state is good for my health even just that i i don't i don't care what you believe i'm not asking you to believe what i believe but i'm i'm telling you that it's going to put me in a much better spot because i was i was feeling bad i was like i haven't been to confession in a while it's been months it's like it's been bad so i i need i need to go yeah so it's a it's a very it's a very strange thing um having a having a fight for that yeah do you know where hocus pocus comes from no i don't this is my body this is my blood puck est corpus meio whatever it's like no it's it's so yeah yeah wow so that's uh the sort of it was interpreted as gibberish to the people that didn't understand the the consecration in the mass right and they were just like the consecration is hocus pocus yeah yeah wow that changes that phrase a lot doesn't it yeah so now i like using okay okay it's the real presence that's that's fantastic i had no idea there's there's literally nothing better than hocus pocus it's like i work i worship hocus pocus right it's that's the okay all right i i could and i i am recently i have been uh i've said can we get a crusade on the word christmas please because p people um people who i know don't don't believe in the don't believe in jesus still say they're celebrating christmas right well why why why why now i'm okay with you celebrating secular winter holiday gift giving season that's what you want to celebrate but like you you don't get to use my you don't need to use my oh what's the term they use on the left cultural appropriation you don't need to appropriate my culture no not today no uh because because um i've had to take it so far as uh we don't give gifts on uh christmas day we give gifts in this house on the feed to saint nicholas nice because i've i've started i started my kids from the moment they were born hey listen this this man named santa claus is not real and it's a it's a perversion in some sense of a real catholic bishop who lived but this whole christmas narrative they're telling you is to cover up the real reason so we we leave uh christmas day for going to mass and reading the gospel of luke and doing doing catholic things yeah and it became obvious to me this year because i don't know if you have any experience with this once you tell people you're having a fourth kid that's when they start uh they start really uh telling you how they feel about your life that that's the that's the time when people are like all you guys do is have kids well well no no that's not all we do we'd have a lot more we have a lot more if that was just that um it takes nine months to it takes nine months for god to knit one in the womb so you can't always be having them anyway it's a there's a natural deterrent to that you gotta pray you gotta pray for uh sextuplets next time well well and and that would really that would really throw him off because um i i told my sister i said i said i'd be happy with ten kids yeah and she said that's stupid and i said i'm sorry you don't like kids yeah that's all i all i can say i'm sorry that you don't like kids and and i look i look around and all my family um they only have two kids and they're like they say things like uh oh yeah my wife got fixed and i say is she broken or a dog because it's one of those two this is this is if it's a term you're using like i i met your wife she's not a dog so she must have been broken um what what was broken well we didn't want any more kids well it's a natural process so she wasn't broken you do realize uh self-restraint is an option as well like if you really don't want any work if you really don't want any more kids self-restraint well what do you mean uh i mean never having sex wait what you mean never yeah i mean never yeah i mean i mean legitimately never and that and like giving up a good well first off giving up and bad can seem off the wall to the world but especially if you give up something that's good yeah if you're like nah i don't uh i don't take hot showers anymore i only take cold showers they're like what is wrong with you that's crazy and you're like well yeah that's called sacrifice like it's fine you'll be okay you'll you'll live um and that's it's really it's really interesting because i i realized going back to my point i realized going to these christmas gatherings there