Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E186: A Field Guide to Faith, Finances, and Family w/Paul J Kim

Transcript

E186: A Field Guide to Faith, Finances, and Family w/Paul J Kim · The Lila Rose Show

• 0:00
  If I'm going to be totally blunt, I wasn't convinced that
• 0:02
  God was offering anything better than what my sins could offer
• 0:04
  me. Saint John Paul, once again he
• 0:06
  has this quote where our lives make zero sense until we make
• 0:09
  ourselves a gift for others. There definitely was angst in my
• 0:12
  20s, like navigating the dating world, navigating vocation.
• 0:15
  How did you discern marriage One of.
• 0:16
  The number one causes of divorce in America are financial issues.
• 0:19
  Investing is not just a nice idea, it's actually a necessity
• 0:24
  if you want to get ahead. Crazy because the vast majority
• 0:27
  of Americans don't learn about this.
• 0:30
  It is crazy. That is.
• 0:33
  Paul J Kim, welcome to the podcast.
• 0:35
  Hey, so good to be here Lila. I'm so glad you're here in
• 0:38
  person after all the social media connecting and now we get
• 0:42
  to do this in person. Thank you for coming out here.
• 0:44
  I think I last met you. It may have been when you were
• 0:46
  engaged. Time flies.
• 0:48
  Flies. And now you have three kids.
• 0:50
  Yes, my goodness. So if I was engaged when we met,
• 0:53
  you would have been, what, four years into your marriage?
• 0:56
  Five years in. I got married in 2013.
• 0:58
  OK, oh gosh, I don't even know, but maybe maybe.
• 1:03
  When did I get when did I get married?
• 1:05
  Every woman is supposed to remember this off the back of
• 1:07
  their hand. 20/18/2018 OK, so we're we're in the realm of four
• 1:11
  years and you've got six kids. I have 6 kids.
• 1:13
  Congratulations. Thank you.
• 1:15
  Amazing stuff, yeah. It wasn't in my bingo cards.
• 1:18
  I, I was telling you earlier, I grew up with this Mormon family
• 1:21
  down the street and they had six kids.
• 1:23
  And I thought only in California, I thought only
• 1:25
  Mormons have that many children. You know, apparently in their
• 1:28
  theology, they're trying to like repopulate planets.
• 1:31
  Before Elon Musk was trying to do that before it was cool.
• 1:35
  And I looked at this family going what in the world are they
• 1:38
  thinking? And then at that moment God
• 1:40
  laughed at me and he said, I will give you 6 kids in the.
• 1:42
  Future minimum you're you're still going.
• 1:44
  Hey, take it easy, you first. Love it.
• 1:47
  I'm working on it, OK, I you you have a few years ahead of me.
• 1:50
  I'm. Working on it.
• 1:51
  I I what you're doing is beautiful.
• 1:54
  So for those who haven't met you yet, Paul J Kim, you're doing
• 1:58
  tremendous ministry to younger generations, obviously on faith,
• 2:02
  but also family. You have a whole course on
• 2:06
  adulting, how to make it in this crazy world for our Gen.
• 2:09
  Z friends and millennials. Quite frankly, some millennials
• 2:11
  still need help on that. But I think what I see you
• 2:15
  doing, which is really unique, is you are out there sharing the
• 2:18
  faith passionately and speaking boldly into moral issues in the
• 2:22
  culture, which there's so much confusion on moral issues.
• 2:25
  But you do it in a really fun way.
• 2:27
  You're funny, you sing. I think you dance.
• 2:30
  I don't really dance. OK, I mean I I can.
• 2:32
  You try dancing in a video, you know, Is that why I'm.
• 2:34
  The guy at wedding parties who Just Dance is awkwardly.
• 2:38
  You have just like this. Yeah, you know, I keep rhythm.
• 2:41
  But no, I wouldn't call my friend.
• 2:42
  You should. You should try just go for it
• 2:44
  that minimum. It would be entertaining.
• 2:46
  But thank you for thank you for your voice and thank you for
• 2:48
  doing. That because my pleasure.
• 2:50
  We we need like to 10X what, 10X you because we need more of that
• 2:54
  energy in the in the. Culture, Yeah, this world needs
• 2:57
  Jesus. Amen.
• 2:58
  I mean, if, if a society and a culture ever needed Jesus, it's
• 3:02
  definitely today. I can't tell you how many young
• 3:04
  people and even middle-aged people, older people, like as
• 3:07
  you mentioned, like I, I do parish missions, I do retreats,
• 3:10
  I do conferences, I'm doing things online.
• 3:12
  But universally, the hunger for Christ, it is more relevant than
• 3:16
  ever. And one of my great heroes in
• 3:18
  life, Saint John Paul the Second, who is many of our
• 3:21
  heroes, he had this beautiful quote where he basically speaks
• 3:24
  of, it's like when you dream of happiness, it is Jesus that you
• 3:26
  seek. When you dream of fulfillment,
• 3:29
  it's Jesus. And the more I meet people, the
• 3:32
  more I hear these stories and testimonies, the more I see God
• 3:36
  at work in my own life. I realize he's, he's actually
• 3:40
  really good with mess in the sense that like he really
• 3:44
  encounters us in our mess and our brokenness.
• 3:46
  That is like pivotal in who he is.
• 3:50
  That's why he's called savior. And I'm really convinced of
• 3:52
  that. Like even the most put together
• 3:54
  devout of Catholics of Christians, like they're still
• 3:58
  kind of a mess. I'm still kind of a mess.
• 4:02
  You know Saint John Paul, once again he has this quote where
• 4:04
  our lives make zero sense until we make ourselves a gift for
• 4:08
  others. That's good.
• 4:10
  Until we make ourselves a gift for others, Yeah.
• 4:13
  Whereas our culture is like, just pursue whatever makes you
• 4:18
  happy, I guess. And ironically, as we pursue
• 4:21
  happiness, the less we actually obtain it.
• 4:24
  Yes, it's so. True.
• 4:25
  Yeah. And I, today's the feast day of
• 4:27
  actually this day of recording is the feast of Saint Thomas
• 4:30
  Aquinas. And he has this quote where
• 4:32
  essentially he talks about that topic of like the it's not
• 4:36
  pursuing happiness which makes you happy.
• 4:38
  It's actually pursuing the good. The fruit of pursuing the good
• 4:43
  is happiness because in pursuing the good, you're living a life
• 4:46
  of virtue. You're pursuing what is true
• 4:48
  good and beautiful. And that pursuit is actually
• 4:52
  what makes us as human beings satisfied.
• 4:54
  But the beauty is like, if you stop running away from it and
• 4:57
  you embrace like who you are, who I am and whose you are,
• 5:02
  namely gods, then it's not like this wrestling match of he's out
• 5:07
  to get me and take something away from me that is good.
• 5:10
  But rather no, it's like we lose nothing.
• 5:12
  We gain everything. And and there there is a
• 5:16
  process, of course, of letting go, letting go things that we
• 5:22
  think add value to our lives or make life beautiful.
• 5:26
  And sometimes the culture really gets that confused.
• 5:28
  But it's in it's in letting go of our concept of what makes us
• 5:33
  happy and embracing authentic goodness, which indeed makes us
• 5:37
  happy. So.
• 5:39
  How did how did you get into Ministry original?
• 5:42
  Ministry. Wow.
• 5:43
  So I'm a native of California. Are you a native of?
• 5:46
  California, yes, I didn't even realize that.
• 5:48
  Where you're in. Where are you now?
• 5:50
  I'm I live outside of Austin, TX.
• 5:52
  You're in Texas, OK. Yeah, yeah.
• 5:53
  So I was born and raised in California.
• 5:54
  Yeah. So left us.
• 5:56
  Why would you come back? What part of California?
• 5:59
  So I grew up in Orange County in Cypress, which is near Anaheim.
• 6:03
  Like hometown? Yeah, yeah, pretty much.
• 6:05
  Were you raised Catholic? I was, yeah.
• 6:07
  My parents, God bless them, they immigrated from South Korea
• 6:10
  1975. They were actually evangelized
• 6:13
  by Irish missionaries in Korea. They're building a church in the
• 6:17
  neighborhood my dad lived in. And my dad was just like, I want
• 6:20
  to learn English. These Irish guys probably know
• 6:23
  English. So he just sat in on, like,
• 6:25
  classes, like RCA classes, whatever.
• 6:28
  And a year in, they asked, like, do you want to be Catholic?
• 6:31
  And he's like, yeah, sure. Was he like, yeah, sure, sure.
• 6:35
  Like really into it or was? It more, I mean, it was like, I
• 6:38
  don't, I don't know exactly percentage wise how convicted he
• 6:41
  was, but he knew it was good. And so he became the first
• 6:45
  Catholic in my whole family tree.
• 6:46
  Wow. It's amazing.
• 6:48
  And so it's really cool about Korea actually, man and
• 6:51
  ancestrally, like there's so many Saints in Korea, there's so
• 6:55
  many martyrs. And Korea is the only foreign
• 6:58
  mission where it's own people evangelized in their home
• 7:01
  country. The way that worked was
• 7:04
  Christianity was not present. It wasn't being preached in
• 7:07
  Korea, but there was a group of like noblemen who were
• 7:10
  fascinated with the concept of Catholicism.
• 7:12
  And it was in China at the time because there was missionaries.
• 7:14
  And so this St. By the name of Peter Ye, he went
• 7:19
  and got baptized in China, brought back home a catechism, A
• 7:23
  crucifix, a couple of holy images.
• 7:25
  And he was Korean from and what? What brought him to China?
• 7:28
  Why did he go to China? He just was fascination with
• 7:30
  Catholicism. He wanted to like learn about
• 7:32
  it. He wanted to be baptized.
• 7:34
  And so he literally brought the faith back to his home country.
• 7:37
  And that's how the church started.
• 7:39
  And literally like it just, it grew like wildfire.
• 7:43
  And what happened was, is the government didn't like
• 7:47
  Catholicism. They didn't like the fact that
• 7:50
  in their society that basically had a class system, you were
• 7:54
  either born into royalty or you were a peasant.
• 7:57
  Catholicism in the Gospel. What it brought was this
• 7:59
  understanding that everyone in the eyes of Christ, Gentile or
• 8:03
  Jew, didn't matter what kind of background he came from, you're
• 8:06
  all equal. And they didn't like that, and
• 8:08
  they didn't like the idea of foreigners coming.
• 8:10
  The missionaries, a lot of French missionaries, came to
• 8:13
  actually serve the people of Korea and they didn't like that.
• 8:17
  And so they began persecuting Catholics horrendously, and
• 8:22
  there was an estimated 10,000 martyrs in Korea.
• 8:25
  When was this? This was in the 17 hundreds
• 8:27
  1800s. And so the sacrifice of these
• 8:30
  martyrs, it literally like prepared the soil, if you will,
• 8:33
  of many hearts to receive the Gospel.
• 8:34
  And so South Korea as a country has received more converts into
• 8:39
  the Catholic faith and like every every other country in the
• 8:42
  past, like 20-30, forty years, Yeah, it's one of the fastest
• 8:46
  growing churches in the. World And when you say converts,
• 8:47
  are these many of them raised sort of Protestant or
• 8:51
  evangelical Christians who become Catholic or are they you?
• 8:53
  Know it's hard to say I I don't. Start culturally.
• 8:55
  Christian culturally, there's a lot of Buddhists.
• 8:57
  There's maybe some, I don't know, just people who don't
• 9:00
  identify with any religion per SE.
• 9:03
  There might be some converts from Protestantism, but whatever
• 9:06
  the case, yeah, it's incredible. And and the legacy is, is quite
• 9:12
  beautiful. So I'm, I'm thankful.
• 9:14
  I'm thankful for the legacy of my ancestors.
• 9:16
  But, but also just my dad who was like, hey, I want to say yes
• 9:20
  to Christ. And because of his faith and the
• 9:24
  faith of my mom and them taking us to church growing up, you
• 9:28
  know, it planted seeds. I was like that kid who went to
• 9:32
  church for two reasons. And I joke around about this a
• 9:34
  lot. I went for girls and Donuts.
• 9:36
  I really didn't care. I was a professional Catholic on
• 9:39
  paper, baptism, confession, confirmation, all the things.
• 9:43
  But frankly, I didn't really have a relationship with Christ.
• 9:46
  And it wasn't the church's fault.
• 9:47
  It wasn't God's fault. It was 100% my fault.
• 9:49
  Because in my mind, if I'm going to be totally blunt, I, I just,
• 9:54
  I wasn't convinced that God was offering anything better than
• 9:57
  what my sins could offer me. And so I went to my dream school
• 10:00
  of UCLA. I got in, and my game plan was
• 10:04
  to major in partying with an emphasis in hedonism.
• 10:07
  You know, I just wanted to live it up.
• 10:09
  What year were you there, Paul? I am old so I was there you.
• 10:12
  Look so young. Thank you.
• 10:13
  Asian don't raison. Thank you.
• 10:16
  So I joined in 2001. So OK, yeah.
• 10:19
  So I started my freshman. Year.
• 10:20
  You were ahead of me because I went to UCLA.
• 10:22
  I didn't realize that you went. You never talked.
• 10:24
  I was there in 2010. OK, youngster.
• 10:27
  Yeah. So yeah, I was there 2001, and
• 10:31
  I'm just living it up as all college students do.
• 10:35
  And I had a problem. My conscience was bothering me.
• 10:38
  And you know the conscience according to the Catechism of
• 10:41
  the Catholic Church, paragraph 1776 and I paraphrase is.
• 10:45
  It really 70? Two, it literally is.
• 10:46
  It's the divine law of God written in each of our hearts,
• 10:49
  which leads us away from what is evil towards what is good, true,
• 10:51
  and beautiful. There it is.
• 10:53
  Amen. And I didn't want that to be
• 10:55
  working. Can you say that for us one more
• 10:57
  time? Yeah.
• 10:57
  And I'm, I'm probably probably. No, OK, but I just, it's a good
• 11:01
  thing, love. I love the reminder of what is
• 11:05
  the conscience. The conscience is the divine law
• 11:07
  of God written in each of our hearts, which leads us away from
• 11:11
  what is evil towards what is good, true and beautiful.
• 11:15
  Something to that effect. You can look it up to confirm.
• 11:18
  But yeah, I mean that it's God's mercy.
• 11:21
  It's that GPS system that is hardwired in all of us to
• 11:25
  literally remind us that when we are in union with His will, when
• 11:30
  we are walking in His commandments, we feel peace, we
• 11:34
  feel joy, we experience that goodness of life.
• 11:37
  Whereas when we're doing the opposite, just kind of operating
• 11:41
  in our own truth, which is kind of a buzzword today.
• 11:43
  Live your truth. If our truth doesn't coincide
• 11:46
  with his, then there's kind of like this sour after taste that
• 11:50
  just doesn't sit quite right. And we can self medicate and we
• 11:54
  can do all sorts of things to make it go away, but it doesn't
• 11:57
  really go away. Doesn't you know?
• 11:59
  And it's sad because I see family members, friends, people
• 12:02
  I care about who just hasn't clicked.
• 12:05
  And so we we chase once again the happiness, whatever that
• 12:08
  means. Hey guys, happy New Year and
• 12:11
  make sure you have downloaded Halo app.
• 12:13
  Halo app is the number one prayer app in the world and it's
• 12:16
  a great way to jump start or deepen your relationship of
• 12:19
  prayer with God. Halo app has over 10,000 prayers
• 12:23
  on it. It has amazing scriptural
• 12:25
  studies and deep dives into scripture.
• 12:27
  You've got Bible in a year, you've got amazing prayers and
• 12:30
  meditations led by people like Jonathan Rumi of the Chosen, and
• 12:33
  you have sleep stories, kids content and so much more.
• 12:37
  If you're wondering on a daily basis, how do I remind myself
• 12:39
  itself to carve out time for God and maybe have the guided prayer
• 12:43
  sessions or the scriptural readings or the spiritual
• 12:45
  readings that are going to strengthen your relationship
• 12:47
  with God. Hallow App is a great place to
• 12:49
  start. And if you use the link in the
• 12:51
  description today, you can get three months free at
• 12:54
  hallow.com/lila. Get 3 months free of the Hallow
• 12:57
  App at hallow.com/lila. And so we we chase once again
• 13:02
  the happiness, whatever that means.
• 13:04
  How did it click for you? It clicked for me.
• 13:08
  I. Because of So you're saying you
• 13:10
  were partying? Yeah, I was partying, I was
• 13:11
  hooking up. I was doing all the things.
• 13:13
  I was just screwing around. I was a dumb college kid, but I
• 13:16
  I knew faith was important. I just wasn't ready to really
• 13:19
  embrace it. So that day freshman year, I, I
• 13:23
  pulled out my rosary, and I didn't know what the rosary was
• 13:28
  that well before this time. I just thought it was a
• 13:30
  repetitively long, arduous Catholic prayer.
• 13:34
  But someone later taught me that no, it's, it's actually a prayer
• 13:36
  that centered on the person of Christ.
• 13:38
  It's very biblical, you know, despite when non Catholics think
• 13:41
  it's actually centered on the life, the death, the
• 13:44
  resurrection of Christ, We're meditating on him.
• 13:47
  And yes, we're asking Mary to pray with us and for us.
• 13:50
  But Saint John Paul said that the rosary is a school of Mary
• 13:54
  where we're sitting with the one who knew him best, who knows a
• 13:56
  child better than a mother? Nobody.
• 13:59
  And Mary's role in a very spiritual, mysterious way is to
• 14:03
  lead us closer to Christ. That's all she wants.
• 14:05
  She's not just gathering and garnering attention, like, fall
• 14:08
  and subscribe for more. You know, it's like she just
• 14:09
  wants us to come closer to Christ.
• 14:11
  John, chapter 2, verse 5. Do whatever he tells you.
• 14:15
  And so as I prayed the rosary that day, it was strange because
• 14:18
  I was, like, meditating. And everyone's into meditation
• 14:20
  nowadays, right? Yeah.
• 14:21
  Whether they believe in Christ or not.
• 14:24
  And I was meditating, using my imagination to sit myself there
• 14:27
  in the mystery. And it's like the gospel is
• 14:30
  jumping off the page. But then also when I was done, I
• 14:33
  felt more peace, joy and purpose than I did from like a month of
• 14:35
  screwing around. I was like, OK, cool, let's pray
• 14:39
  it again. And so I did for that week.
• 14:42
  And then I remember I was outside of head recall.
• 14:44
  Where where were you in in on campus?
• 14:46
  Like what was your dorm? I did.
• 14:48
  I lived in the apart. I lived off campus for two of
• 14:52
  these four years, or no, for three of the four years.
• 14:54
  So only the first year I was in the dorms.
• 14:56
  But where? Where was I?
• 14:57
  Was it like? Sunset Village.
• 14:59
  I was in Sunset Village. Yeah.
• 15:00
  I was in Hedrick Hall, all the way up at the top.
• 15:03
  OK. And I remember I was sitting on
• 15:04
  a bench. It was about like 5 or 6 in the
• 15:06
  evening, and I was praying the rosary and I started smelling
• 15:09
  roses out of nowhere. Wow.
• 15:11
  Yeah. And I'm like, oh, cool.
• 15:14
  Where's the Rose Bush? There was no rose Bush.
• 15:17
  I'm like, where's that cute girl with rose perfume?
• 15:19
  She's not here. I don't do drugs.
• 15:23
  That's ruled out. I'm like, where are these rose?
• 15:26
  Where's this rose fragrance coming from?
• 15:28
  And it dawned on me that I was training the rosary root word
• 15:34
  rose. The Mother of God likes roses.
• 15:37
  She's here. And she didn't say anything.
• 15:40
  I didn't have a vision. I didn't hear her voice.
• 15:43
  But in my heart there was the absolute conviction that she was
• 15:47
  just saying, Hey, I'm here and I'm real and my son Jesus is
• 15:53
  real and I want you to continue on this path.
• 15:57
  And so I'm like, OK, I don't have a major.
• 16:01
  So sure, I'll just keep on this path and I get praying and the
• 16:07
  grace of God once again, the Mother of God leading me to to
• 16:12
  Christ. That was an absolute fact.
• 16:13
  And what this started in my life was inauthentic realization that
• 16:21
  I needed to open my heart to the Lord.
• 16:23
  And so I sat in front of my computer and I'm like, I need to
• 16:28
  go back to confession. Now Catholics, we have the
• 16:30
  sacrament of reconciliation, IE confession.
• 16:33
  And the reason we go is because in John chapter 20, Jesus
• 16:37
  breathes his Holy Spirit on his disciples and says receive the
• 16:40
  Holy Spirit. Those sins you forgive are
• 16:42
  forgiven them. It's right there in scripture,
• 16:44
  right? Literally, God was breathing His
• 16:47
  spirit and giving authority to his disciples to forgive sins in
• 16:51
  His name. That's why in the letter of
• 16:52
  Saint James, it says confess your sins to one another, right?
• 16:56
  And so this is where it comes from scripturally.
• 16:58
  Growing up, I remember my first confession.
• 17:01
  I don't know if you remember yours, but I went and I lied
• 17:04
  because I didn't want to tell the priest anything.
• 17:08
  What were you, 6 or 7? I was like 8 and I knew I had
• 17:11
  stuff on my conscience. I just didn't want to tell this
• 17:13
  guy I didn't because I'm like, maybe I'll tell my mom or
• 17:16
  something. Priests have something called
• 17:19
  the seal of confession. They can't disclose to anyone
• 17:21
  what you say, otherwise they could lose their priesthood and
• 17:23
  then get. Expensive.
• 17:24
  Did you feel like you were properly prepared for that
• 17:26
  confession? I I'd like to say that whoever
• 17:29
  was trying to teach me tried their best, but once again, I
• 17:34
  didn't. I wasn't open to it.
• 17:36
  I didn't. I don't want to fess up until
• 17:39
  now. And I attribute that to the
• 17:41
  prayers of the Blessed Mother on my behalf.
• 17:43
  And so I was like, no, I need to repent.
• 17:46
  I need to like reconcile with God.
• 17:49
  And so I printed out this I, I typed out every sin I could
• 17:52
  remember because there was no way I was going to remember it.
• 17:54
  And I in writing on your. Computer writing?
• 17:56
  Yeah, of course. And then I deleted the file like
• 17:58
  a good politician, and I was out.
• 18:01
  So I took that. You know when they when you put
• 18:02
  it on your computer. Even if you delete the file, it
• 18:04
  could suit. They think it's still
• 18:06
  retrievable. But back in 2000.
• 18:08
  Confession there. There you go.
• 18:11
  So I took this paper. I went to the local Newman
• 18:13
  Center and I asked the Father there to hear my confession.
• 18:16
  And, and it was powerful because I was ready to let it all go and
• 18:23
  say, Lord, have mercy on me, the Sinner.
• 18:25
  And, and I heard, you know, the priest gave me some
• 18:28
  encouragement, some advice, and, and then I heard those most
• 18:31
  beautiful words. I absolve you from your sins in
• 18:33
  the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
• 18:35
  And it's not the priest who forgives us, by the way.
• 18:38
  It's God who uses the priest as an instrument to forgive us.
• 18:43
  He's a Sinner like us to the priest.
• 18:45
  But that's God's mercy. And I felt it is real.
• 18:48
  The asking a Catholic, it goes to confession.
• 18:49
  There's something beautiful about it.
• 18:51
  There's something very human about it as well.
• 18:55
  It's like, I don't envy my Protestant friends in the sense
• 18:59
  of like I say, God, I'm sorry. And it's like you would like to
• 19:02
  believe and think that God forgave you.
• 19:04
  But as a Catholic in that sacrament, I have an audible
• 19:08
  reminder and a promise that indeed it's done, that I, I am
• 19:14
  sorry for my sins. I have brought them to the
• 19:16
  sacrament. And the Lord in his great mercy
• 19:18
  has absolved me through the priest.
• 19:22
  And there's something really healing to that, you know, and a
• 19:25
  lot of, a lot of people, a lot of people take advantage of
• 19:27
  counseling nowadays, which I think is a, is a very powerful,
• 19:29
  helpful tool for, for healing in people's lives.
• 19:32
  But the fact that confession has a component of that, well,
• 19:36
  you're, you're saying it out loud.
• 19:38
  You're, you're humbling yourself to, to bring it to a pastor who
• 19:42
  represents the Lord's goodness in that moment.
• 19:45
  But ultimately it's the Lord who's hearing you.
• 19:47
  And I walked out that day and I was like, I have a soul.
• 19:55
  You know, everyone knows we have a body, right?
• 19:57
  But how often are people in our culture in 2025 asking like,
• 20:01
  what does my soul look like? You know.
• 20:03
  You you that's like you physically almost felt your soul
• 20:07
  was. Freer and lighter, it was free,
• 20:08
  cleaner. It felt good, I mean, frankly.
• 20:13
  And I knew I wanted more. I was tasting and I was seeing
• 20:16
  the goodness of the Lord and I wanted more of it because it
• 20:20
  was, it was, it was pure, it was freeing.
• 20:24
  It was leading me to joy. And so that led me to say, OK,
• 20:29
  what do I do next? I'm going to go to Mass on a
• 20:31
  Tuesday. I don't like going on Sundays as
• 20:34
  a Catholic. And it was spring break.
• 20:36
  I went to my, my parish at the time.
• 20:39
  It was like noon Mass. What parish?
• 20:41
  I was going to Saint Peter's Chanel for a while in Hawaiian
• 20:43
  gardens. And there's some religious
• 20:45
  priests out there who are just like really on fire for the
• 20:48
  Eucharist and, and confession and, and just like really
• 20:52
  evangelizing the folks. And, and I was there.
• 20:55
  I went to noon Mass and the average age was like 85.
• 20:58
  God bless all the grandmas and grandpas, right?
• 21:00
  They're all there. And I was like one of the young
• 21:03
  people there and I went to Mass and I hadn't, I had been to Mass
• 21:07
  like a hundreds of times, if not thousands of times at this
• 21:09
  point. But the difference was I wanted
• 21:12
  to be there. The algorithm had changed.
• 21:14
  And Isaiah, God says that if you seek me with all of your heart,
• 21:17
  you'll find me. And I wanted to find God.
• 21:20
  And I was dialed in. I was ready to go.
• 21:22
  I was like Mark Wahlberg on Instagram on Sundays.
• 21:25
  Hey, Catholics, stay prayed up. Let's go.
• 21:27
  You know, I wanted to be there and as Mass started, I was
• 21:32
  active, I was present, I was engaged, I was listening to the
• 21:35
  readings of the Word, right? Because the first half of the
• 21:37
  Mass is the Liturgy of the Word, where the Word of God from the
• 21:41
  Old Testament, New Testament, the Psalms is proclaimed to us.
• 21:44
  And then the Gospel. And then the homily Father gives
• 21:46
  a little expose on what the Word just said to us.
• 21:50
  And then we go from there to the Liturgy of the Eucharist, where
• 21:53
  we believe as Catholics at every Holy Mass that by the power of
• 21:56
  the Holy Spirit, Jesus is able to change bread and wine into
• 22:04
  his literal body, blood, soul and divinity.
• 22:06
  And so therefore the Last Supper, which memorialize what
• 22:10
  Jesus would do on the cross the next day, is mystically
• 22:14
  represented to us. What does that mean?
• 22:16
  Because there's a lot of non Catholics who are under the
• 22:18
  impression that Catholics think that at every Mass Jesus dies
• 22:21
  over and over and over again, which is absolutely false.
• 22:23
  It's a misconception and Jesus only dies once it's finished.
• 22:28
  It's done. But what the Mass does, you
• 22:30
  know, when he instituted the Mass of the Last Supper, he said
• 22:32
  do this in memory of me. And so therefore the Mass
• 22:36
  mystically represents. It doesn't mean he's dying over
• 22:40
  again, but because Jesus is outside of space and time, like
• 22:43
  his one sacrifice is represented to us in a very mysterious,
• 22:47
  mystical way. And we are there having front
• 22:50
  row seats to that sacrifice and we are beneficiaries of that
• 22:54
  grace and that mercy. And I'll tell you what, that
• 22:57
  day, if you've ever been to Mass, there's a point called
• 23:00
  consecration where Father says the words of Jesus and elevates
• 23:02
  the host. And I was watching that.
• 23:04
  I just started sobbing like a fool.
• 23:07
  It's like ugly crying because once again, I wanted to be
• 23:12
  there. And I think the way that God
• 23:13
  honored my act of faith was that I received the gift of faith to
• 23:18
  believe that it wasn't a symbol. It's really him and Jesus is
• 23:24
  really clear throughout Scripture.
• 23:25
  John 6, This is my body, my blood.
• 23:27
  You must eat my flesh and drink my blood or you have no life
• 23:30
  within you. You know, he's like ad nauseam.
• 23:33
  He repeats himself over and over again, so much so that the
• 23:37
  people who are listening to this are like scandalized because
• 23:39
  they think he's saying we need to be cannibalistic on you.
• 23:41
  And it says in John chapter 6 verse 66 that those who once
• 23:45
  followed him return to their former way of life.
• 23:48
  They literally took him literally, and they walked away.
• 23:53
  And if Jesus as a teacher was saying something and people were
• 23:57
  misunderstanding him, he would have a moral obligation to stop
• 24:00
  them. But he didn't stop them.
• 24:01
  He actually let them walk away. And that's odd because
• 24:04
  throughout the gospel he corrects people and tells them
• 24:06
  you're getting the parable wrong.
• 24:09
  But he didn't correct them this time.
• 24:10
  Why? Because they understood the
• 24:12
  plot. He was literally going to feed
• 24:14
  us with his flesh and blood, the bread of life.
• 24:18
  And so that day at that Mass, it was game on because I had
• 24:22
  finally received the gift of faith to believe that indeed, my
• 24:26
  Lord and my God, there he was in the body, blood, soul and
• 24:29
  divinity in the Eucharist that happened to be offered at every
• 24:32
  Mass. I just didn't care for so long.
• 24:36
  And so anyways, I'm getting lost in all the, the, the details
• 24:39
  here, but this sparked a, a massive conversion in my life at
• 24:44
  UCLA, where I was once this hedonistic party guy who just
• 24:49
  frankly didn't want that anymore.
• 24:50
  I just wanted Christ. And I was detaching myself more
• 24:55
  and more from the party culture and frankly, what everyone was
• 24:58
  into. And I was just turning into sort
• 25:00
  of like this modern day monk on campus.
• 25:04
  I just, I would go to Mass every day.
• 25:06
  I'd want to spend time with like my Catholic community.
• 25:09
  And I just wanted to grow my relationship with him.
• 25:11
  I was so enamored in his goodness.
• 25:13
  And so I actually pieced out of UCLA, I said goodbye and I
• 25:17
  transferred to Franciscan University of Steubenville.
• 25:19
  No way. Yeah, yeah.
• 25:20
  And Franciscan's incredible. It really is.
• 25:23
  It's dynamically Catholic. It's not just Catholic in name,
• 25:25
  it's Catholic in practice. And and was that because you
• 25:28
  obviously you're having this conversion, but you were like,
• 25:30
  OK, I just want to share the gospel of Jesus Christ as my day
• 25:33
  and not day job. Like this is this is what I want
• 25:36
  to do. I don't want to go be an
• 25:37
  engineer. Yeah.
• 25:38
  Or go, you know, get an English degree and try to go to law
• 25:41
  school or whatever it is. Exactly, exactly.
• 25:44
  So I just wanted to grow in my faith.
• 25:45
  At the time I was even discerning priesthood like
• 25:48
  trying to figure out is this could this be God's call in my
• 25:50
  life? And so I went to Franciscan, had
• 25:53
  great formation there. I graduated and I joined the
• 25:57
  Franciscan Friars, the Renewal, the CFRS in New York City.
• 26:00
  Picture yourself living in a 14th century monastery that is
• 26:03
  the most gorgeous setting imaginable and you're studying
• 26:06
  the good, the true, the beautiful in an epic summer.
• 26:09
  Yes, vacation effectively, but also place to stimulate your
• 26:13
  intellectual development and grow your mind.
• 26:15
  You've got to check out Franciscan University of
• 26:18
  Steubenville's amazing study abroad program in the beautiful
• 26:21
  gaming Austria. Here's a taste of the classes
• 26:24
  that are offered. Prayers and poetry, The art and
• 26:26
  architecture of medieval cathedrals, sourdough bread
• 26:29
  making and virtue formation. Apparently you get to bake
• 26:33
  sourdough bread every day and just eat it as part of your
• 26:36
  education. This sounds amazing marketing
• 26:39
  with a case study featuring an Austrian brewery, theology of
• 26:42
  the body, and more. And guess what?
• 26:44
  This is open to everyone. You don't actually have to be an
• 26:46
  enrolled student to do this amazing program, but if you are
• 26:49
  a student, this does count as course credit.
• 26:51
  This amazing trip will be happening this summer in mid-May
• 26:54
  to early June. Go to austria.franciscan.edu and
• 26:58
  Sign up today. That's austria.franciscan.edu,
• 27:00
  check it out. And so, yeah, so I had about
• 27:04
  three years in that community out in New York, and I was
• 27:07
  discerning that life. Very unique.
• 27:10
  I mean, to be in New York City, which is such a unique place,
• 27:15
  right? I mean, the hustle and the
• 27:18
  bustle of that concrete city. And I was in the middle of all
• 27:23
  that frenetic energy in a Friary where we would pray for five
• 27:28
  hours a day, and we would serve the poor in our communities, and
• 27:33
  we would live in community with other brothers.
• 27:36
  And it was a beautiful time. Ultimately, it wasn't for me,
• 27:39
  but I would like to think that it really added a lot of value
• 27:42
  to my life. And so when I tell like young
• 27:45
  adults especially who are kind of trying to figure out their
• 27:47
  vocation, there's really no harm in taking a step forward and
• 27:50
  saying, could God be calling me to priesthood or religious life?
• 27:55
  Go find out, go visit a seminary, go visit a religious
• 27:59
  community, spend a weekend in prayer with them.
• 28:01
  Like figure out, get to know the people.
• 28:02
  See, like, is my heart coming alive here?
• 28:05
  And here's here's the worst thing that's going to happen.
• 28:07
  If you go and join discern for a period of time, either one,
• 28:11
  you'll find out it's not for you.
• 28:13
  Great, then you can leave and you have all this amazing
• 28:16
  formation under your belt to prepare you for whatever your
• 28:18
  vocation is. In my case, it would lead to me
• 28:22
  later becoming a husband and a dad, and that formation is
• 28:25
  profoundly helpful for me in my walk with Christ today.
• 28:29
  Or secondly, you'll find out it is your vocation and great you
• 28:32
  can live your life as a gift for others.
• 28:35
  Some of the happiest people I know, the most joyful people I
• 28:38
  know, are actually celibate priests and nuns.
• 28:41
  It's. So true.
• 28:42
  Why? That's so true when you and, and
• 28:45
  people may be listening, if you've met someone, you know
• 28:48
  what we're talking about, what Paul's talking about.
• 28:50
  But like the infectious joy of a Sister for life kind of them.
• 28:55
  Or a Carmelite Sister or. And it's a, you know, our
• 28:58
  friends. Here, the Norbert teens, like
• 28:59
  they're just, they're the peace and the joy, the peace, clarity
• 29:02
  about what am I living? For and the goodness and it's
• 29:06
  attractive and they're not having sex.
• 29:08
  I'm just going to be very blunt. They're not hooking up.
• 29:12
  They're not doing this, that and the other because we all know if
• 29:16
  sex were the answer for all of life woes like Freud sort of
• 29:20
  alluded to, then the world would be a much happier place.
• 29:23
  And yet here we are. The world is profoundly unhappy.
• 29:27
  And yet you have these contradictions walking around
• 29:29
  who are celibate. We're literally like sacrificing
• 29:33
  the comforts and pleasures of normal life, I guess you could
• 29:36
  say. And they found something that a
• 29:38
  treasure, the Pearl of great price.
• 29:41
  And they have joy. And why the crap do they have
• 29:43
  joy? Where does that come from?
• 29:45
  And that's the contradiction. It's like we weren't made for
• 29:48
  here were we were made for something more.
• 29:51
  And it's not to say that, you know, obviously sex in his
• 29:54
  proper context is a profound gift in in in marriage where it
• 29:57
  belongs, where God intended it. Preach.
• 30:00
  Yeah, obviously. Like, it's not bad to own
• 30:02
  things. We're not communists here at
• 30:03
  this table. Private property is OK, you
• 30:07
  know. But once again, are these things
• 30:09
  the end all be all? And the answer is no, they are
• 30:11
  not. Did you know that up to 90% of
• 30:13
  the meat in your grocery store is not from the United States?
• 30:16
  It might say USA on the label, but it's not actually from
• 30:19
  American ranchers. It's imported and packaged in
• 30:22
  the United States. Good Ranchers is 100% sourced
• 30:25
  from the United States. And when you choose
• 30:27
  goodranchers.com, you're choosing more than just
• 30:30
  delicious meat. You're choosing to support local
• 30:32
  American farms and ranchers standing up for transparency and
• 30:36
  safety in our food supply. At my house, chicken Nuggets are
• 30:39
  an easy and kid friendly meal. Thankfully, good ranchers has
• 30:42
  created a new seed oil free nugget.
• 30:45
  No other nugget on the market offers a pure seed oil free
• 30:48
  recipe that prioritizes your family's health without
• 30:52
  sacrificing flavor or crunch. And it because it's a new year.
• 30:55
  If you order today using the code Lila.
• 30:57
  If you order any subscription box, you will get one whole free
• 31:01
  year of a free add on of your choice.
• 31:04
  That's a free add on of ground beef, chicken breasts.
• 31:07
  I highly recommend those salmon or bacon and if you use the code
• 31:11
  Lila at checkout, you will get not only your free add on for a
• 31:14
  year, but you will get $25 off your first order as well as fast
• 31:19
  free shipping. That's goodranchers.com American
• 31:21
  meat delivered. So when you left the Franciscan
• 31:26
  fires of the renewal, you're in New York and you're like, it's
• 31:29
  not for me. I'm I'm curious because we're
• 31:31
  talking about vocation and I think this is so interesting.
• 31:33
  I'm always interested in this. What was it if you had to pick
• 31:37
  one thing, OK, maybe 2 about the CFRS and you discerning out of
• 31:44
  that vocation and at that point did you have more clarity?
• 31:47
  I'm supposed to be married. Or was it maybe more different
• 31:49
  order or different? I'll tell you everyone's story
• 31:54
  is a bit unique when it comes to vocation and discernment.
• 31:58
  It's hard to join, but I would dare say it's harder to leave
• 32:02
  because most people who join a religious community or a
• 32:05
  seminary, they have ideals where they want to serve God and do
• 32:09
  something beautiful and great for him.
• 32:10
  And when that ideal doesn't pan out, it's actually quite it
• 32:14
  feels a little devastating. Did you feel devastated?
• 32:16
  I did. What was it?
• 32:18
  Did you just feel like a gnawing sense of kind of discomfort?
• 32:20
  Like, this is not where I'm supposed to be.
• 32:22
  It was like kind of an existential level.
• 32:23
  It was more of like, I think maybe I should do this, this is
• 32:27
  a good thing to do, but I don't think I want to do this.
• 32:29
  I don't want to. Yeah.
• 32:30
  The desire. The human desire.
• 32:31
  The human desire, and that's a part of discernment.
• 32:34
  It is. It's such a good point.
• 32:35
  It's like if you're dating somebody and you're just not
• 32:37
  attracted to Yeah, well, guess what?
• 32:38
  Or you are a little attractive and it's like, I'm not really
• 32:41
  into this. Yeah, or there's like red flags
• 32:43
  or it's not that the community had red flags so much, but it
• 32:45
  was more of like, is it right for me in this season of my life
• 32:49
  in this situation? And that's why discernment is
• 32:51
  very like, personal. It's not like a clean, like,
• 32:54
  well, if this, this and that are in present.
• 32:56
  No, that's why I was journeying with like a spiritual director,
• 32:59
  you know, talking regularly about where I'm at.
• 33:03
  And ultimately, it was a free choice, which every commitment
• 33:08
  should be, right? That's what makes life so
• 33:11
  wonderful. It's a great gift that God gave
• 33:14
  each of us to choose freely. And just like in marriage, you
• 33:18
  know, literally the priest will ask the bride and the groom, do
• 33:21
  you come here freely? Like, has anybody forced you?
• 33:25
  Is there some weird legal contract that brings you here?
• 33:28
  Or are you here freely? Do you choose each other?
• 33:30
  Well, it just so turns out that God wants us to choose freely.
• 33:34
  And the cool thing about vocation, it's not like you're
• 33:36
  discerning between a good and an evil.
• 33:38
  If something's evil, don't do it.
• 33:40
  If it's against the commandments, that's that's a no
• 33:42
  brainer. But discernment of vocation is
• 33:46
  like this is good and this is good.
• 33:48
  And that is good. And if.
• 33:52
  This is good. Well, especially.
• 33:53
  Especially if you're discerning marriage, it's like there's a
• 33:55
  lot of people you could marry technically, I mean, obviously
• 33:59
  they have to want to marry you too, but absolutely it, it's
• 34:01
  sort of mind blowing. It is that there's endless
• 34:03
  opportunity. There's endless people out
• 34:05
  there. I know.
• 34:06
  And, and I think that does trip some people up.
• 34:08
  I know, you know, obviously we're married.
• 34:11
  So now we don't have to worry about these things, but people
• 34:13
  that are discerning and dating, right?
• 34:15
  I think sometimes there's a paralysis for some folks.
• 34:18
  There's so many, there's so many options and.
• 34:21
  The dating apps don't help, do they?
• 34:23
  Well, I want to hear how you discerned OK vocation and then I
• 34:28
  I am curious your take on the whole dating because I know like
• 34:30
  one of the things you do in your ministry is just kind of lay it
• 34:33
  all on the table. Here's my advice for you younger
• 34:35
  lings like I'm a I'm a, you know, I'm Paul J Kim and I've
• 34:39
  lived many years now even though I look like I'm 25I.
• 34:43
  Still feel 25 but now my back hurts.
• 34:45
  But, but anyway, so I, I, but I think that, you know, sharing
• 34:49
  your take on this is really valuable because it is something
• 34:52
  we talked about on the show a lot.
• 34:53
  And it's something I'm fascinated by because I, I
• 34:56
  remember just the pure amount, the sheer amount I should say,
• 35:00
  of angst is a strong word. But let me tell you, there
• 35:03
  definitely was angst in my 20s, like navigating the dating
• 35:06
  world, navigating vocation. I'm not saying it has to be that
• 35:09
  way for everybody. No, it it is.
• 35:10
  Yeah. It is filled with angst and I
• 35:12
  think. Maybe start with, I'd love to
• 35:13
  hear like, what is your like, how did you discern marriage?
• 35:16
  And then I yeah, what is your advice for discernment, and
• 35:19
  especially in the world of dating apps?
• 35:21
  Yeah. OK.
• 35:22
  So specifically discerning marriage with a person or
• 35:26
  generally. And the you kind of the the
• 35:29
  feeder system, yeah. What do they call that in
• 35:33
  marketing the funnel, you know, funnel, Because I think a lot of
• 35:36
  people are like, OK, sure, yeah, there's endless options, but
• 35:38
  could I just get one that's a good one.
• 35:40
  Right. Yeah, it's tough out there.
• 35:42
  It is tough out there and dating is hard.
• 35:44
  I, I was just at the seat conference and I just for fun, I
• 35:48
  went around interviewing just random young adults asking Is
• 35:51
  dating hard? And unanimously, they're all
• 35:54
  like, yeah, it sucks, it's hard. Even at a focus conference.
• 35:57
  Yeah. And these are like, yeah.
• 35:58
  Great good the the the salt of the earth, great college is it?
• 36:01
  Did they do a speeding date? Speeding they.
• 36:03
  Did do a speed dating thing. I didn't go to it, obviously,
• 36:05
  but yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, I thought it was
• 36:07
  really neat that you. Didn't like preside over it like
• 36:09
  I'm looking. At all hear you hear you get
• 36:12
  married and have children of reckless abandoned.
• 36:16
  So no, I did not go to that, but to your question.
• 36:21
  That would have been by the way. Sorry I'm going on tangent here.
• 36:24
  My fun. Well, we.
• 36:25
  If we had like a panel above, like sitting up high in a high
• 36:28
  rise and they're like putting bets on couples, that would have
• 36:31
  been funny. You can kind of tell like
• 36:36
  there's a spark happening here, but.
• 36:37
  That's right, there's a spark. Every once in a while I find a
• 36:40
  small business that I fall absolutely in love with and
• 36:43
  that's why I'm so excited to share We Heart Nutrition with
• 36:46
  you guys. WE Heart nutrition.com is a
• 36:48
  vitamin and supplement company that provides the highest
• 36:52
  quality researched back ingredients, customized and
• 36:56
  optimized to help you be healthy.
• 36:58
  What I also love about We Heart Nutrition is that this is a
• 37:01
  family owned company and they're not just any family owned
• 37:04
  company. This is a company that shares
• 37:05
  your values and they donate a full 10% back of all of their
• 37:09
  revenue to pregnancy resource centers to help moms and babies
• 37:13
  in need. We Heart Nutrition customizes
• 37:15
  their vitamin packages specifically for your state in
• 37:18
  life. So whether you are pre
• 37:19
  menopausal or post menopausal, whether you're looking to
• 37:22
  conceive, help improve your fertility, whether you're
• 37:24
  pregnant and this is a great prenatal vitamin or your post
• 37:28
  Natal Plus I'm very excited to share this with my husband.
• 37:31
  Now WE Heart Nutrition has come out with their your first line
• 37:33
  of men's vitamins. And if you order today at WE
• 37:36
  Heart nutrition.com get your vitamins, you can get 20% off
• 37:39
  using the code Lila. And if you spend at least $50
• 37:42
  you will get a free signature bamboo capsule vitamin box,
• 37:46
  which is very cute. I have one myself.
• 37:47
  So go to weheartnutrition.com today, use the code Lila at
• 37:51
  checkout to get 20% off your purchase.
• 37:53
  And when you spend $50, get that adorable free bamboo capsule box
• 37:57
  to store your vitamins in. That's we Heart nutrition.com.
• 38:00
  So very Long story short, for me, I leave religious life and
• 38:05
  I'm like, all right, God, where's my beautiful Catholic
• 38:07
  wife and God's like, no. And I'm like, what?
• 38:12
  Why? Like I'm going on dates left and
• 38:14
  right. Like I am I, you know, if I
• 38:16
  could give myself any credit, like I was proactive in asking
• 38:20
  girls out, going on dates and nothing worked.
• 38:23
  What? Do you mean you just weren't
• 38:25
  drawn to them? I wasn't attracted to them, They
• 38:27
  weren't attracted to me. I dated this one nice girl.
• 38:29
  Her boyfriend had died before she met me.
• 38:32
  So like I'm like trying to replace like this notebook type
• 38:35
  story and like no, not in the cards long distance blah blah
• 38:40
  blah. And there I was just frustrated
• 38:43
  because young adulthood and singlehood, yeah, it can be
• 38:46
  really frustrating. Why?
• 38:47
  Because I think, like, the 20s in a particular way.
• 38:50
  And I think in our generation, sadly, that's like bleeding into
• 38:52
  the 30s. Also because of the culture and
• 38:54
  economics and all sorts of issues, it's a time of angst
• 38:59
  because nothing is really settled.
• 39:02
  You know, you have so much you want to give.
• 39:04
  You want to figure out who you are.
• 39:05
  You want to figure out where's my place in this world?
• 39:07
  Like, what? What am I supposed to do?
• 39:10
  What, what, what am I supposed to do for a career, let alone
• 39:12
  like, who am I supposed to be with?
• 39:13
  Because I want to love somebody. I want to be loved.
• 39:16
  And dating is like frustrating. And there's like this hookup
• 39:18
  culture that's so weird and there's technology and it's
• 39:20
  like, I feel like a commodity and it's frustrating.
• 39:23
  And there's a lot of good people out there who just want to be
• 39:26
  settled. But in God's, I guess designs
• 39:29
  and Providence or maybe just the timing of things.
• 39:31
  It's not time yet. And so it is it, it's kind of AI
• 39:35
  don't miss dating. To be quite honest, I, I like
• 39:37
  being married. I like being able to rest my
• 39:40
  heart and a woman who I know is committed to me, you know, I
• 39:44
  like just being able to, you know, love her and be loved.
• 39:47
  How did you find her? I found her at my friend's
• 39:51
  wedding reception. How?
• 39:52
  Nice and organic, yeah. It was he asked me to emcee the
• 39:57
  wedding reception. And so, you know, being a
• 40:00
  speaker and a singer, closet comedian, you know, I got to,
• 40:05
  like, do all the corny jokes. And so I saw this really, really
• 40:09
  pretty girl, like laughing at my jokes.
• 40:11
  And I thought to myself, pretty girl must talk to her, my future
• 40:17
  wife. So I, you know, my opening line
• 40:21
  was she had this really cute dress and she had a little
• 40:24
  tattoo on her shoulder. And I said, what's the story
• 40:26
  behind the tattoo? That was my opening line.
• 40:28
  That's How I Met your mother, not your mother, but my
• 40:31
  children's mother. And yeah, we started dating and
• 40:37
  it, it was just, it was really effortless in a lot of ways.
• 40:40
  One way that it actually took a lot of effort was she wasn't
• 40:43
  Catholic. I was a devout Catholic and she
• 40:46
  was, I think, Protestant, evangelical, non denominational,
• 40:51
  whatever you want to call it. And so I was like, I hope this
• 40:54
  works because like, you know, if your faith, values and
• 40:58
  traditions are really important, it's like as married people, we
• 41:01
  know that it takes a lot of work.
• 41:03
  Even when you're in agreement about like the big stuff, right?
• 41:08
  There's the nuances of like, we're still different people.
• 41:11
  We have to learn how to communicate, understand each
• 41:12
  other, figure out like people's hang ups, like work through all
• 41:15
  of that. And that's just like standard.
• 41:18
  But if you don't agree on the big stuff, like your world view,
• 41:22
  your faith, your values, your morals, I don't know how like
• 41:26
  that works. That's like hard.
• 41:29
  And so anyways, while we were dating, I'm like, I'm obviously
• 41:32
  not going to force her to become Catholic.
• 41:34
  That's not my MO. But at the same time, like, I
• 41:37
  want to make sure I marry a woman who we can take our kids
• 41:39
  to church together with, you know?
• 41:42
  And so she tried to break up with me a few times.
• 41:45
  Maggie, if you're listening to this, you know that's true.
• 41:48
  Because you were not aligned on on the Catholic faith.
• 41:51
  Yeah, she didn't want to become Catholic and I don't want to
• 41:53
  become Protestant. And so it was like, OK and.
• 41:56
  That was the deal breaker for you both at the time.
• 41:59
  One had to move over to the other.
• 42:00
  Side of the Tiger, kind of without saying that, that was
• 42:03
  kind of the vibe. And so I just said, well, Hon,
• 42:07
  like, let's just keep praying about this.
• 42:09
  Let's keep growing in our relationship.
• 42:12
  And you know, at the time, my ministry started as a speaker.
• 42:15
  And so I was going to churches and youth groups and different
• 42:18
  things and giving talks and I'd invite her with me and she'd
• 42:20
  come. And it's interesting because
• 42:23
  like, God was doing the heavy lifting.
• 42:25
  Like we'd be at an event where there was like Eucharistic
• 42:27
  adoration, which is the time where the Eucharist, which we
• 42:30
  talked about earlier, is placed in special holder called the
• 42:33
  monstrance. And we get to just adore Jesus.
• 42:37
  And my wife, my girlfriend at the time, Maggie, who had no
• 42:40
  exposure to this as a Protestant, she's like there and
• 42:43
  she's praying and she's like, I feel something up there, you
• 42:47
  know? I've I've heard this.
• 42:49
  Before from other Yeah. Protestants.
• 42:51
  And it's it's and it happened to me too.
• 42:53
  What am I saying? Like as a Protestant?
• 42:55
  Yeah, going before the Eucharist.
• 42:56
  Exactly, I took her out on a date on December 12th which
• 43:01
  which is the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the Catholic
• 43:04
  Church. It was like some cupcake shop in
• 43:06
  LA. We roll in and this lady has a
• 43:08
  tattoo of Our Lady Guadalupe on her arm.
• 43:10
  And it sparks a conversation. And I'm like talking to my my
• 43:13
  girlfriend about hey, like, that's incredible.
• 43:16
  Here's a story about Juan Diego and how the Mother of God
• 43:19
  appeared to this man in Mexico and literally through him
• 43:23
  presented A miraculous image that is still here today.
• 43:27
  It should have disintegrated on this cactus fiber Toma like 50
• 43:29
  years later, but it's 500 years later and it's still here.
• 43:32
  And it converted like literally 10 million Mexicans at the time
• 43:37
  to the Catholic faith because it was just undeniably incredible
• 43:40
  and mind blowing to them. And she wasn't pointing to
• 43:43
  herself, she was pointing to Christ.
• 43:44
  And so like it started this conversation.
• 43:46
  As you can tell, I'm pretty nerdy with this stuff.
• 43:49
  And I'm like talking to her about like where in Scripture,
• 43:53
  like why do we believe this about Mary?
• 43:54
  What does church teach? And at the end of it, I'm like,
• 43:56
  is this helpful? And she's like, ah, kind of.
• 44:02
  Maggie, your your girlfriend at the time.
• 44:03
  That's so funny. And so I kind of get out of the
• 44:06
  way and the Holy Spirit helped me at that moment and I.
• 44:08
  Just like you must believe this is.
• 44:11
  Good stuff. Write this down.
• 44:14
  And at that moment I think the Holy Spirit just had me ask this
• 44:17
  question. Have you ever said a prayer to
• 44:19
  Mary and she's like, no, what in the world would I say this is
• 44:23
  like not part of the the lexicon or the understanding of a non
• 44:26
  Catholic. And by the way, when we're
• 44:29
  praying to Mary, we're not acting as though she is God, not
• 44:32
  by any stretch of the imagination.
• 44:34
  It's akin to me walking up to a devout grandma church who I know
• 44:40
  has a tight relationship with the Lord.
• 44:43
  I'm going to ask her for prayers over that.
• 44:45
  Like teenage kid in the corner, you feel me like and why?
• 44:48
  Because in the in the book of James, it says the prayer of a
• 44:51
  righteous person is effective. You know, God honors prayers
• 44:54
  when people are faithful. And so here's the thing, like
• 44:58
  the mother of God's prayers are powerful on our behalf.
• 45:01
  And so I just asked my then girlfriend, like, would you like
• 45:04
  to say a prayer to Mary? She's like, what do I even say?
• 45:06
  I said, what would you say to the best of moms, like the most
• 45:10
  loving mother? What would you say to a mom like
• 45:12
  that? That's all you need to say.
• 45:14
  And so she just said this really humble, beautiful prayer of
• 45:17
  like, Mary, I don't really have a relationship with you.
• 45:20
  I don't. I'd like to get to know you and
• 45:24
  thank you for your prayers. Thanks for saying yes to Jesus.
• 45:27
  Something to this effect. And she ended this prayer and
• 45:30
  she's like crying. And I'm in the seat going, yes.
• 45:35
  I'm like, it's working. No, but I mean, I wasn't trying
• 45:39
  to manipulate her or do anything like that.
• 45:41
  But obviously she was having an experience of grace.
• 45:44
  I said, why are you crying? And she said, well, I've been
• 45:47
  having a tough relationship with my mom, but like, the thought of
• 45:51
  me having this heavenly mother this whole time who's been
• 45:53
  loving on me and praying for me is like really comforting.
• 45:57
  And so, you know, Fast forward, we're at Mass one day, which I
• 46:00
  invited her to, and there's an announcement for our CIA, which
• 46:03
  is the initiation classes to help a person become Catholic,
• 46:08
  enter into the church. And I said, would you like to
• 46:09
  like check out this classes? And she's like, sure.
• 46:12
  And. Then you're like, would you like
• 46:15
  to go look at some rings? Sure.
• 46:17
  At that moment, I opened up the browser and started discussing
• 46:20
  the the different qualities of diamonds.
• 46:23
  So anyways, Long story short, she entered the church right
• 46:27
  before we got married. Beautiful and praise God, we've
• 46:30
  been married 11 years. God's blessed us with six kids.
• 46:36
  Another, another cool story about Our Lady of Guadalupe.
• 46:39
  Because back like circling back UCLA, when I before I made one
• 46:43
  of those confessions, I was praying in front of an image of
• 46:46
  Our Lady Guadalupe and I smelled roses again when I walked into
• 46:49
  the confessional. And I believe that to be the
• 46:52
  case because Mary was at the foot of the cross when Jesus
• 46:55
  offered himself for us. And at every confession, his
• 47:00
  precious blood is pouring out from his heart to redeem us yet
• 47:04
  again, right to renew us. And Mary is there at the foot of
• 47:07
  the cross. And so that was present when I
• 47:10
  joined the Friars, which I talked about.
• 47:12
  I lived in a Friary that had a 30 foot mural of Our Lady of
• 47:14
  Guadalupe. Amazing that incident when I was
• 47:18
  dating my now wife. And then we got married and
• 47:20
  we're like, cool, we'll have like a baby maybe a couple years
• 47:23
  from now. We're good.
• 47:24
  Like we have our plans and God's like, Nope, you're getting
• 47:28
  pregnant first year. We go to the doctor.
• 47:31
  Doctor's like, yeah, the baby's going to be born on December
• 47:34
  12th. Wow.
• 47:36
  And I'm like, yeah, she is. Amazing question.
• 47:40
  So this is the funny part, it's like 9 days before December 12th
• 47:43
  that year and I'm like babe, we're going to pray novena to
• 47:46
  Our Lady of Guadalupe. What is a novena?
• 47:48
  For those who don't know, it comes from the book of Acts
• 47:50
  where people for the disciples together with the Mother of God
• 47:54
  prayed for 9 days for the coming of the Holy Spirit.
• 47:57
  So traditionally that's where the the concept of the novena
• 47:59
  comes from. Pray for 9 days for a specific
• 48:01
  intention. So I asked the Mother of God
• 48:03
  under the title of Our Lady Guadalupe to join me in that
• 48:06
  prayer to grant that God would grant us the honor that my first
• 48:10
  born daughter would be born on that feast day.
• 48:13
  And so it's 9 days we start the novena.
• 48:15
  And as you know, since you're a mother and all the moms out
• 48:17
  there, it's like, yeah, the doctor might give you a date,
• 48:21
  but it's not 100% and. You're also like in that last
• 48:24
  week, you're like, you could come today.
• 48:26
  Yeah, like. Yeah.
• 48:28
  The contraction? Until the due date.
• 48:30
  Exactly. So there's like all this
• 48:32
  discomfort and so like a day before, like literally she's
• 48:36
  like, babe, I don't know if it's going to happen.
• 48:37
  Like the contractions are not getting stronger.
• 48:39
  And I'm like, oh, you have little faith.
• 48:43
  I'm just messing around. But I said no, we'll keep
• 48:45
  praying. I made that poor girl like go to
• 48:47
  Costco who like walked around. Oh my gosh.
• 48:51
  I took her to the movies, though.
• 48:52
  We're getting a. 10 mile hike right now.
• 48:54
  Yeah, we're going to climb Mount Everest so that you go into
• 48:57
  labor. No, I took her to the movies.
• 48:59
  We came back to our apartment. We were living here in Buena
• 49:02
  Park at the time. And she went to bed and I, I
• 49:06
  just, I started. Like where's my baby?
• 49:07
  Where's my baby? Focus.
• 49:09
  Focus, Maggie. And it's in the middle of the
• 49:12
  night, like 3 or 4 in the morning.
• 49:14
  I was still up. I think I had just like this
• 49:15
  nervous energy of like, oh, the baby's probably coming.
• 49:18
  And she says, honey, I think my water broke.
• 49:22
  And so we have, you know, a quick breakfast and then I rush
• 49:24
  her to Saint Joseph's Hospital here in Orange.
• 49:28
  And sure enough, our our daughter's born on December
• 49:31
  12th, the feast of Our Lady Guadalupe.
• 49:33
  I wasn't sure where the story was going to land.
• 49:36
  Yeah, So like the 13th. But basically, well done, well
• 49:39
  done. Thank you.
• 49:40
  Thank. You Lord.
• 49:41
  Yeah, thank you, Blessed Mother for your prayers and so.
• 49:44
  What did you name your first daughter?
• 49:45
  Her name is Audrey. Her baptismal name is Guadalupe
• 49:48
  though. Lovely.
• 49:49
  So we're spiritually Mexican, apparently.
• 49:54
  I Our Lady of Guadalupe is so special.
• 49:58
  She's just what she did for obviously what she does for us,
• 50:02
  but what she did for North America, Mexico and what she's
• 50:06
  still doing, absolutely. I mean, she's still, she's still
• 50:09
  converting us absolutely hers, her witness.
• 50:13
  Yeah, the patroness of the unborn.
• 50:15
  Because I mean. Patroness of the Unborn.
• 50:16
  At that time in Mexico, you know, the Aztec society, they
• 50:19
  were doing human sacrifices. Well, and she's the only
• 50:22
  apparition that's pregnant. Yes.
• 50:24
  Just so crazy. Pregnant with child, she's
• 50:27
  royalty, but she's pregnant with child.
• 50:29
  And so that's was a clear symbol to the people at the time.
• 50:33
  And she was bowing her head in prayer.
• 50:36
  So she was submitting to somebody else.
• 50:38
  And she has this little Insignia by her neck necklace and it has
• 50:42
  the cross. So she was worshipping the God
• 50:45
  of the Spaniards. And there's all sorts of
• 50:47
  complexities and what was going on in the culture and the
• 50:50
  conquistadors who had come to basically enforce, you know, the
• 50:52
  culture and the religion, which never really works out that
• 50:55
  well. And there weren't a lot of
• 50:56
  converts at the time. But once that miracle happened,
• 50:59
  it was instantaneous. There was like a an ocean of
• 51:02
  flood of immigrant of, of, of converts rather to the Catholic
• 51:07
  faith. And what a miracle.
• 51:11
  And so, yeah, even in the 21st century, like she's still
• 51:15
  converting hearts such as my own, leading me to her son.
• 51:18
  And I'm so very grateful for that.
• 51:21
  And so anyways, yeah, we've been married 11 years now, and it's
• 51:26
  been beautiful. It's been a wild journey
• 51:29
  because, as I said, like we can tell God our plans and then he
• 51:32
  laughs, right as the saying goes.
• 51:34
  And honestly, like, having six kids was not my plan per SE.
• 51:38
  No, it wasn't. I was thinking like, I grew up
• 51:40
  in a family of four, four siblings.
• 51:42
  So I'm like, yeah, 4 is cool. And Maggie's like, yeah, 4 is
• 51:45
  cool. And God's like, no, I'm going to
• 51:47
  give you more. You're.
• 51:47
  Just getting started too, right? I mean, Maggie's young.
• 51:52
  She is younger. Than you could hit, you could
• 51:54
  hit 10. In theory, yes.
• 51:56
  In theory, Lila, that could be true.
• 51:58
  But. I'm curious about that because
• 52:01
  one of the things I know you you do on in your ministry is very,
• 52:07
  very give very practical advice and kind of talks very candidly
• 52:12
  about vocation like we're discussing, but also like how do
• 52:16
  you raise a family in this culture and in this economy?
• 52:21
  Yes, and be that. Generous, Catholic.
• 52:25
  And by generous, I mean we're really, we're the receivers of
• 52:28
  degenerosity of God when we accept a child.
• 52:30
  But I think there's a lot of fear around having a lot of
• 52:31
  kids. Today there is a lot of fear.
• 52:33
  And you know what? It's very fascinating, Lilac,
• 52:35
  because you know, up until about, I don't know about you,
• 52:39
  but like I know it, I've heard it in online and off online and
• 52:42
  on the news where there's like this emphasis, this narrative of
• 52:45
  like there's overpopulation, right?
• 52:48
  But the great irony right now, if you look at actual statistics
• 52:51
  in our world, reproductive rates have to be at the level of 2.1
• 52:55
  children per mother. So that means that every woman
• 52:59
  should needs to have at least on average statistically 2.1
• 53:02
  children in order for the population to replace itself.
• 53:06
  Every country in the West is failing in terms of that number.
• 53:11
  The USI think is at about. 1.6. 1.61.7 Korea, where my family is
• 53:19
  originally from, it's at .7. It's the lowest in the Western
• 53:22
  world or in the Eastern world. South Korea's at .7.
• 53:26
  Replacement, right? Yeah.
• 53:27
  So I, I did the math today on on a ChatGPT and I'm like, how many
• 53:32
  years would it take for that country to go extinct?
• 53:35
  And it was an estimate of 125 years.
• 53:37
  No way. The country would go extinct in
• 53:39
  about 3 or 4 generations. That's bad.
• 53:43
  South Korea, South Korea, if they don't, I mean, once again,
• 53:46
  it's an estimate. It depends on a lot of things.
• 53:47
  But yeah, if they keep on at this rate, they will go extinct
• 53:50
  in 125 years. And obviously, people alive
• 53:53
  today, they're like, I don't know, I got to worry about my
• 53:55
  own life, man. I got to pay my bills.
• 53:56
  I'm not worried about 125 years in the future.
• 53:58
  And that in itself is kind of a problem because we do have to
• 54:02
  kind of look ahead. However, when it comes to
• 54:07
  raising big families, it's funny because as I was going through
• 54:10
  the rabbit hole, of course, my phone and Google are probably
• 54:13
  spying on me. And so I'm getting all these
• 54:15
  random YouTube videos about young adults being asked, like,
• 54:18
  how many kids do you want? It was really fascinating
• 54:21
  because like, whether it was in East Asia or it was in America
• 54:24
  or other countries, they're like, yeah, kids are expensive.
• 54:28
  Like I, I'm, I'm, I'm in debt, I'm broke.
• 54:31
  Like, I, I have like so much crap.
• 54:34
  I'm dealing with my own life in my own life.
• 54:36
  Like, how am I supposed to ever like raise a child?
• 54:39
  And we've heard all of this narrative in different
• 54:42
  circumstances and situations. But what it boils down to as
• 54:46
  people of faith, I know you have a lot of different people listen
• 54:49
  to this program, this podcast, but at the end of the day, it's
• 54:53
  this Jesus says point blank in the Gospel of Matthew, seek
• 54:58
  first the Kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto
• 55:01
  you. God is the author of life.
• 55:04
  God is very generous. And so I've been very consoled
• 55:08
  because I, I, I know a lot of priests, good priests, and I've,
• 55:11
  I've heard this echoed in all of my conversations with them, that
• 55:15
  they have never seen one big Catholic family ever go hungry.
• 55:20
  You know, now I can't vouch for that statistically, I'm sure
• 55:23
  there's situations where people are struggling.
• 55:25
  But I think the point that they are trying to make anecdotally
• 55:30
  and I, I would like to make personally, is that God has
• 55:34
  never been outdone in generosity.
• 55:36
  Us being generous to His plan and will and saying yes to life
• 55:40
  like we have not only not gone hungry, but we have seen God's
• 55:43
  Providence in such an amazing way.
• 55:46
  And friends, this is not the prosperity gospel like coupled
• 55:49
  with some weird reproductive mission.
• 55:51
  It's not what I'm going for right now.
• 55:53
  What I am saying though, is if you trust God, if you put Him at
• 55:57
  the center of your marriage and your family life, and He happens
• 56:00
  to bless you with more children than you thought you were
• 56:03
  capable of loving and raising, then believe that He will take
• 56:06
  care of you. Amen.
• 56:07
  I mean if we trust God with our salvation.
• 56:11
  Right. Why wouldn't we trust him with
• 56:14
  our ability to bring life into the world, especially if we're
• 56:16
  we're married. We're, we're in a, in a
• 56:19
  incredible marriage that God has allowed us to have given it to
• 56:23
  us, to us to be just kind of like, well, we can't be together
• 56:26
  now because we might have a baby when God wants babies.
• 56:32
  Right, he does. Created them he loves.
• 56:34
  Them and obviously like. That's wealth.
• 56:36
  Right. It is wealth.
• 56:37
  It is actual wealth and I'm beginning to understand that.
• 56:41
  I'm understanding that even though I work very hard and and
• 56:44
  thanks be to God through his grace, like I've I've been able
• 56:46
  to be successful in a lot of different ways.
• 56:48
  The true wealth that I experience is coming home to a
• 56:51
  wife who loves me and who I love and children who are excited to
• 56:54
  see daddy and it is so beautiful.
• 56:58
  Like that is a treasure that the modern man has trouble like even
• 57:03
  foreseeing for himself. You know, obviously we're not,
• 57:06
  I'm not proposing to everyone listening to this, like just
• 57:09
  have like as many kids as possible and don't think about
• 57:12
  your searching circumstances. Absolutely no, that's not the
• 57:14
  case. Like any level of discernment, a
• 57:17
  person and a couple in marriage have to discern like, indeed,
• 57:21
  are we ready to, you know, welcome life at this moment?
• 57:24
  And if we're not, the church has this wonderful and powerful
• 57:27
  tool. It's called natural family
• 57:28
  planning, right? And it's not the calendar method
• 57:32
  where you're just kind of like counting days.
• 57:34
  No, there are different, There are several different methods
• 57:36
  like symptothermal, there's Marquette, there's Creighton
• 57:40
  that there's a lot of Billings, there's a lot of different
• 57:42
  natural family planning methods. But by using this accurately,
• 57:46
  effectively, it's more effective than contraception.
• 57:50
  It is 100% natural you're not exposing your wife or your body
• 57:55
  to harmful chemicals and hormones that cause cancer in
• 58:00
  all sorts of crazy ways. If you don't believe me, go
• 58:02
  Google lawsuits against contraceptive manufacturers and
• 58:06
  see what wonderful cases they have there of women's lives
• 58:09
  being upended because of the harmful effects of what was once
• 58:13
  told to. People are safe and effective,
• 58:16
  safe and effective, safe and effective.
• 58:19
  And it's not. And this beautiful method of
• 58:22
  national family planning, which completely respects the health
• 58:25
  of a woman, but also it, it honors God's plans because
• 58:29
  you're not introducing anything artificial into the sexual act,
• 58:33
  which is supposed to not just symbolically but physically
• 58:36
  represent a total self giving to your bride or to your husband,
• 58:40
  right? Whereas contraception is saying,
• 58:42
  I give everything to you except like 2% of my body.
• 58:45
  I don't want to give that to you.
• 58:47
  Whereas with national family planning, it's recognizing that
• 58:50
  a woman's fertility cycle is such where you know, there's a
• 58:54
  key week typically and a woman's cycle where if a couple were had
• 58:58
  were to have sex like that would be prime time to conceive a
• 59:01
  child. Whereas outside of that,
• 59:04
  generally speaking, you won't conceive a child unless of
• 59:07
  course, God's like, no, I am literally willing a child, which
• 59:11
  is possible. But at the end of the day, even
• 59:14
  on that note, it's like, do you trust God or not?
• 59:19
  Yeah. And you know, I'm not going to
• 59:21
  downplay it and say there haven't been times where we're
• 59:23
  like, Oh my gosh, we're pregnant again.
• 59:26
  Wow. We were not planning this.
• 59:28
  And yeah, this is like heavy news.
• 59:30
  But at the same time, we're like, OK, thank you, God,
• 59:34
  because obviously your ways are higher than our ways.
• 59:36
  And we have. We were not planning this, but
• 59:38
  we trust you. And honestly, that trust has
• 59:40
  been vindicated because like, we have seen God time and time
• 59:43
  again. Be like, hey, let me show you
• 59:45
  how generous I am. I remember it was our first year
• 59:48
  of marriage. Lila and I looked at my bank
• 59:50
  account and I got mad. And the reason I got mad was
• 59:54
  like, 1, there wasn't a lot of money in it, but two, I knew all
• 59:57
  that money I owe to my college debt.
• 59:59
  You know, it's tough. It's super tough.
• 1:00:02
  And. UCLA or Franciscan?
• 1:00:05
  It was like, yeah, a couple of things.
• 1:00:07
  Yeah, my wife had a nursing school.
• 1:00:10
  Yeah. So, and I'm, I'm like, what?
• 1:00:12
  And how are we going to even do this?
• 1:00:13
  Right? And that's a lot of people's
• 1:00:15
  situations because like, here's the thing, young adulthood, it's
• 1:00:17
  like kids are told from like elementary school, go to
• 1:00:19
  college. And I'm not saying college is
• 1:00:21
  bad, but it's not for everyone either.
• 1:00:22
  It's. Expensive.
• 1:00:23
  It's terribly expensive and like absurdly expensive and to the
• 1:00:29
  point where I'm like wondering is the value of a four year
• 1:00:32
  college nowadays on average, is it going, is it worth all the
• 1:00:35
  money? I don't know.
• 1:00:36
  Like I'm still wondering that as my kids are getting older and
• 1:00:39
  I'm thinking like, where do I send them?
• 1:00:41
  But anyways, all that to say, like college can be valuable,
• 1:00:44
  but it has to be really calculated on what am I going to
• 1:00:47
  study and why and what kind of career am I going to pursue?
• 1:00:50
  So anyways, I'm in debt. My wife and I are in debt and
• 1:00:55
  I'm like, I don't know a thing about personal finance.
• 1:00:58
  So I stormed out. I didn't storm out, but I told
• 1:01:01
  my my wife, I'm like, I'm going to go to Barnes and Nobles and
• 1:01:03
  I'm going to learn personal finance.
• 1:01:05
  I'll be back. Dave Ramsey.
• 1:01:07
  Hello. Literally I I I.
• 1:01:09
  Was that guy? Looks like he knows what he's
• 1:01:10
  doing. I said I'm gonna look for the
• 1:01:11
  richest looking guy on this shelf.
• 1:01:13
  It's this white, this bald guy with glasses, Dave.
• 1:01:15
  Ramsey that's funny because you're I don't know that is that
• 1:01:19
  it's like you might might do well to put it put his Bugatti
• 1:01:23
  on the cover. I'm just kidding.
• 1:01:24
  Yeah, exactly. No, but.
• 1:01:25
  He's too frugal. He doesn't drive it.
• 1:01:27
  Good for him. So anyways, I I made it my first
• 1:01:29
  good financial decision that night.
• 1:01:31
  I didn't buy the book, I read it for free in the coffee area.
• 1:01:34
  I know. And I drank tap water.
• 1:01:35
  Amazing, right? So I read the book and it had
• 1:01:38
  like really great concepts in there that frankly taught me the
• 1:01:43
  game plan. And the game plan was like,
• 1:01:45
  let's get out of debt, let's start budgeting, let's save for
• 1:01:48
  an emergency fund. Let's from smallest to biggest,
• 1:01:51
  let's start attacking the loans and the debt in our life from
• 1:01:54
  credit card, car payment, school loan, etcetera.
• 1:01:57
  And then let's start investing and let's start thinking ahead,
• 1:02:01
  right? It's crazy because like these
• 1:02:03
  basic concepts, depending on what school you went to, the
• 1:02:05
  vast majority of Americans don't learn about this.
• 1:02:08
  It is crazy. That must be like I scandal UCLA
• 1:02:12
  never mentioned once. No, I wasn't studying economics,
• 1:02:14
  obviously, but yeah, the home Eck or you know, home economics,
• 1:02:19
  not a typical thing that most people are taught.
• 1:02:22
  Absolutely, and that is a huge scandal.
• 1:02:25
  Why Bitcoin? Right.
• 1:02:27
  I mean, if you had bought Bitcoin when, when, when it
• 1:02:29
  first came out, this was probably when was this.
• 1:02:32
  I wish I bought Bitcoin when I got married.
• 1:02:33
  Oh my gosh. And I'll, I'll get to that in a
• 1:02:36
  second too, Lila. You have a Bitcoin?
• 1:02:38
  I do. Yes I do.
• 1:02:39
  Like I did buy 10. I wish, but the the point is
• 1:02:43
  like we got in control, we learned personal finance, we
• 1:02:50
  started coming in alignment with our goals.
• 1:02:53
  We need to get out of debt. We want to secure a future, we
• 1:02:56
  want to raise a family. We don't want to be just like
• 1:02:59
  buying crap that we can't afford.
• 1:03:01
  We don't want to be like that. And so we started working very
• 1:03:04
  hard. Thanks be to God, once we
• 1:03:07
  started having kids, I was able to just, you know, be the the
• 1:03:10
  only one working and provide for my family, but I had to put in
• 1:03:13
  the work like I had to hustle. I had to learn my craft as
• 1:03:18
  someone running a ministry. I had to get better at it.
• 1:03:21
  I had to learn the business side.
• 1:03:22
  I had to like find mentors and I hustled and it reminds me of
• 1:03:27
  this verse as I kind of like was preparing for today.
• 1:03:31
  It's a verse that there's a lot of wisdom actually about
• 1:03:33
  personal finance in Scripture. People actually wouldn't think
• 1:03:37
  this. In Proverbs 22 seven, it says
• 1:03:40
  the rich rule over the poor and the borrower is slave to the
• 1:03:44
  lender. And that has a lot to do with
• 1:03:47
  how a lot of people feel being in debt, right?
• 1:03:49
  But then there's also this Proverbs 21 five, the plans of
• 1:03:53
  the diligent end in profit, but those of the hasty end in loss.
• 1:03:59
  And I'm like, yeah, hard work guys.
• 1:04:01
  Like there's no, there's no way around it like hard ethical
• 1:04:05
  work. And that's a temptation because
• 1:04:07
  like in our culture, in the world of only fans and all this
• 1:04:10
  like garbage modern day prostitution, like these easy
• 1:04:14
  ways out and there's all sorts of unethical ways to earn money.
• 1:04:17
  There are still upright, novel ways to earn money and doing
• 1:04:22
  something that you believe in doing something that adds value
• 1:04:24
  to people's lives. And it doesn't necessarily have
• 1:04:27
  to be your dream job either, right?
• 1:04:29
  That that's thrown around a lot to students, if you find your
• 1:04:32
  dream dream, dream job, praise God, thank him for it.
• 1:04:35
  But there's nothing shameful or embarrassing about working hard
• 1:04:40
  at a job that's noble. I mean, look at Christ for 30
• 1:04:45
  years of his life, humdrum basic life, Carpenter, construction
• 1:04:48
  worker. The Lord of the universe is a
• 1:04:51
  blue collar worker. Hello.
• 1:04:53
  And he sanctified the world by doing that.
• 1:04:56
  I mean, think it's mind blowing. It is.
• 1:04:57
  It's absolutely. I mean IKEA furniture.
• 1:05:00
  Jesus furniture. No, his was prettier.
• 1:05:03
  It was probably. It lasted probably way longer as
• 1:05:05
  well. Way longer and it looked way
• 1:05:07
  nicer. Nicer.
• 1:05:09
  Divine quality. But either way, he's probably
• 1:05:12
  cut. I mean, he's working that wood.
• 1:05:13
  He is working that wood and there's something beautiful and
• 1:05:16
  noble about that. And anyways, we had to work hard
• 1:05:18
  and thanks be to God, we were able to get out of debt and we
• 1:05:22
  were able to afford buying a house even in California at the
• 1:05:25
  time, which is like nuts here, right?
• 1:05:28
  And also to begin investing. A lot of people don't understand
• 1:05:33
  this, but obtaining the ability to manage your personal finance
• 1:05:39
  is not only necessary, it's wildly important.
• 1:05:43
  One of the one of the number one causes of divorce in America are
• 1:05:47
  financial issues. So imagine as a young adult or
• 1:05:50
  as a single person or even as a married person now, like you
• 1:05:53
  literally taking the step to say, I don't know this, but I
• 1:05:56
  want to learn this. And so instead of binging on
• 1:05:58
  Netflix, I'm going to literally scour the Internet.
• 1:06:01
  I'm going to go and look at that rich guy's book, Dave Ramsey.
• 1:06:05
  I'm going to be like Paul and not buy it and just read it or
• 1:06:07
  whatever. It's like I'm going to take my
• 1:06:10
  life and be wise about it. I'm going to be diligent.
• 1:06:14
  And honestly, by doing that, it can not only change the life of
• 1:06:19
  your marriage and your family, but to leave a legacy for your
• 1:06:23
  children. And so, you know, Dave Ramsey,
• 1:06:27
  I'm grateful because once again, he gave me these baby steps.
• 1:06:30
  And so then we started to think, OK, we should probably invest as
• 1:06:34
  well. See, modern day man, when it
• 1:06:37
  comes to economics and personal finance, this is how most people
• 1:06:40
  operate. They have a job and they spend
• 1:06:44
  their hard earned money, which they traded all these hours for,
• 1:06:46
  right? 50 hours a week, 40 hours a
• 1:06:48
  week. They traded their hard earned
• 1:06:50
  money in their time. And time is the most limited,
• 1:06:53
  scarce asset for all of us because it's not forever, right?
• 1:06:57
  If time was like infinite on this side of eternity, like we'd
• 1:07:01
  go to the gym 10,000 years from now, we'd we don't, we wouldn't
• 1:07:05
  care. But because we all know we have
• 1:07:07
  finite time, time is very valuable.
• 1:07:10
  And so the fact of the matter is most adults, like they trade in
• 1:07:13
  the brunt of their life working, right?
• 1:07:16
  So imagine this, we go to work for 40 hours a week.
• 1:07:19
  We trade it to earn money, right?
• 1:07:22
  But here's the irony. We use that money oftentimes to
• 1:07:25
  buy stuff, one that we can't afford.
• 1:07:27
  And instead of buying assets, we buy liabilities.
• 1:07:30
  Now, what is an asset and what is a liability?
• 1:07:33
  A liability is something that does not grow in value.
• 1:07:36
  OK, so, and not all this is bad, but your car is a liability.
• 1:07:40
  Going out to eat is a liability. Shopping for random stuff,
• 1:07:43
  usually a liability. What is an asset?
• 1:07:46
  An asset can look like a stock, it can look like real estate.
• 1:07:49
  It can look like Bitcoin. It can look like a precious
• 1:07:51
  metal. An asset and an asset grows in
• 1:07:54
  value. So imagine this.
• 1:07:56
  If most people in our world today, and young adults
• 1:07:58
  especially, are earning all this money, but they're using it to
• 1:08:03
  buy liabilities which go down in value, they can't ever get
• 1:08:07
  ahead. It's called inflation.
• 1:08:09
  Most people don't understand this.
• 1:08:10
  If the value of the money, the US currency, goes down because
• 1:08:15
  it's being printed more and more than the value of scarce assets
• 1:08:20
  like real estate are going to go up.
• 1:08:23
  It's simple economy. And so the money is broken
• 1:08:26
  because the US government has been printing more money than
• 1:08:31
  ever before. There's some crazy like
• 1:08:33
  statistic out there. I don't know the exact 1, so I'm
• 1:08:36
  going to probably just estimate right now.
• 1:08:37
  But they're, they're saying like something to the tune of 80% of
• 1:08:40
  all dollars in circulation were printed in these past five
• 1:08:43
  years. That's insane.
• 1:08:44
  Yeah, so the the value of one U.S. dollar four years ago, you
• 1:08:50
  basically lost 1/4 of its value. So what you could buy for a
• 1:08:54
  dollar, you can only buy $0.75 worth today.
• 1:08:57
  Does that make sense? And it doesn't make sense.
• 1:09:00
  It's mind blowing, right? And so here's the thing.
• 1:09:04
  People meanwhile are trying to get ahead.
• 1:09:06
  They're trying to work really hard, they're trying to buy a
• 1:09:09
  house, they're trying to get situated, they're trying to pay
• 1:09:12
  off their debt. And meanwhile, the government is
• 1:09:15
  printing all this money and everyone is getting the rug
• 1:09:19
  pulled out from under them, and they don't realize it.
• 1:09:22
  And so investing is not just a nice idea that some people
• 1:09:28
  should consider. It's actually necessity if you
• 1:09:31
  want to get ahead. You mentioned Bitcoin earlier.
• 1:09:34
  It's funny because about five years ago, a friend of mine
• 1:09:36
  said, do you know about Bitcoin? I said, isn't it that
• 1:09:38
  cryptocurrency? It's like, really risky, right?
• 1:09:40
  Like that's literally all I knew about it.
• 1:09:42
  And it was interesting because at that time I was considering
• 1:09:46
  maybe looking into real estate to invest in it.
• 1:09:48
  And but then I learned about Bitcoin.
• 1:09:50
  And as I started learning about it, it was quite fascinating.
• 1:09:52
  I don't want to bore everyone with the details, but it was
• 1:09:56
  created about 15 years ago and it's the most scarce asset in
• 1:10:01
  the world. How is that possible?
• 1:10:02
  Because the way it was created and engineered is that there's
• 1:10:06
  only 21 million Bitcoin that will ever exist, ever, OK?
• 1:10:11
  And every single day it's mined by these like computers all
• 1:10:15
  around the world. They're basically like called
• 1:10:17
  miners. And just like you would mine
• 1:10:18
  gold, they're trying to mine Bitcoin by solving these complex
• 1:10:22
  algorithms and things online. But the amount that these people
• 1:10:26
  can mine every four years drops in half.
• 1:10:28
  So there's a built in like scarcity.
• 1:10:31
  Anyways, without getting too nerdy, what was once considered
• 1:10:34
  like this Internet funny money what politicians not too long
• 1:10:38
  ago we're calling like terrorist number one form of currency,
• 1:10:41
  which is an absolute nonsense statement. the US dollar is
• 1:10:44
  actually the number one form of terrorist money in the world for
• 1:10:47
  transactions, shady things, but I digress.
• 1:10:51
  This Internet money that was created has literally become the
• 1:10:56
  fastest growing asset in the world.
• 1:10:58
  It by leaps and bounds. It has outpaced every asset in
• 1:11:03
  the world from real estate to stocks to gold to precious
• 1:11:07
  metals, you name it. I'd I'd looked up a statistic
• 1:11:10
  before I came here. Over the past 14 years, it's
• 1:11:12
  grown annualized about 150% a year and 2nd place is at like
• 1:11:17
  16%. And that was like a group of
• 1:11:19
  stocks. So what is that right?
• 1:11:22
  But what's interesting is now government, like the government
• 1:11:26
  wants to buy it. You know, Trump obviously
• 1:11:28
  recently came to office and the big news is he wants to put the
• 1:11:31
  country on what's called a strategic reserve, a crypto
• 1:11:35
  strategic reserve. Anyways, all that to say, like
• 1:11:38
  governments want to buy it. Now Wall Street wants to buy it.
• 1:11:42
  And it's the first time in history where like everyday
• 1:11:44
  people have the chance to front run nations and governments and
• 1:11:49
  huge corporations. And the thing with investing is
• 1:11:53
  like, I'm not a financial advisor.
• 1:11:54
  I'm not telling people they should put their life savings in
• 1:11:56
  this. But what I am saying is they
• 1:11:58
  should at least consider what investing is and why it's
• 1:12:01
  important. Because once again, if you're
• 1:12:04
  hard earned, money that you are working so hard for every week,
• 1:12:07
  40 hours a day is melting away due to inflation.
• 1:12:10
  Like think about it, four years ago, whatever you had saved
• 1:12:13
  melted by 25%. That's highway robbery and it's
• 1:12:18
  due to inflation. And so if you're not trading
• 1:12:21
  your dollars for an asset that's going to grow in value more than
• 1:12:25
  the inflation rate, you're being robbed.
• 1:12:29
  And so what's really neat about an investment like Bitcoin is my
• 1:12:33
  wife and I, we're not like some savvy like day traders or we're
• 1:12:36
  not like some genius, you know, investors or anything like this.
• 1:12:40
  All we've done is we've traded our hard earned dollars for
• 1:12:43
  something like Bitcoin. So every month we like by
• 1:12:46
  default, we'll put like 15% of whatever we earn into something
• 1:12:49
  like this. And rain or shine, we do this.
• 1:12:52
  And then guess what? It's grown a lot and we've been
• 1:12:56
  blessed for it. And it's just that mindset of
• 1:13:00
  like, I'm going to stop buying crap that I can't afford.
• 1:13:03
  I'm going to stop trading my hard earned dollars for things
• 1:13:06
  that I just want to get because it's going to impress somebody.
• 1:13:09
  You know, the fancy bag, the fancy car, the fancy this and
• 1:13:12
  that. And instead of trying to impress
• 1:13:14
  people who I don't even like and I don't even know, I'm going to
• 1:13:18
  take care of my family and myself, myself.
• 1:13:21
  And I'm going to be a wise steward of the gifts that God
• 1:13:24
  has given me and even my finances so that I'm not going
• 1:13:27
  to be foolish. But I am going to trade my hard
• 1:13:32
  earned money for an asset that's going to work for me even as I
• 1:13:36
  sleep at night. And that is incredibly powerful.
• 1:13:39
  Having the ingenuity to say I'm not just going to sit on my butt
• 1:13:43
  and like watch every season of every show.
• 1:13:47
  Maybe I'm going to look into a side hustle.
• 1:13:49
  Maybe I'm going to think of ways where I can add value, start a
• 1:13:52
  service, get entrepreneurial. I mean, America truly is a great
• 1:13:57
  country for that. And most people don't understand
• 1:13:59
  this like it's the dream of immigrants.
• 1:14:02
  That's why people are trying to come here all the time.
• 1:14:04
  It's because you can actually come here, come from nothing,
• 1:14:07
  have a little like ingenuity, start a service or a product and
• 1:14:11
  you can earn a living. My parents, God bless them when
• 1:14:14
  they immigrated in 1975, like my mom was a nurse, but then she
• 1:14:17
  got pregnant, so she had to stop working there.
• 1:14:20
  My dad was working at a machine shop.
• 1:14:22
  They literally came from nothing.
• 1:14:23
  They had like $500 in their pocket.
• 1:14:25
  And it's like, good luck, right? But then my mom, she started
• 1:14:29
  knitting blankets and she would take them to a local flea market
• 1:14:32
  and sell them on the weekend. And they started selling really
• 1:14:35
  well. And that grew so much that she
• 1:14:39
  was able to have dad quit his day job.
• 1:14:41
  And they eventually, like, started a whole fashion
• 1:14:44
  business, like in the 90s. Imagine that.
• 1:14:47
  This is like, literally the American dream.
• 1:14:49
  And yeah, people can say, well, there are a lot of things in my
• 1:14:52
  life that hold me back and this and that and privilege and this,
• 1:14:55
  that and the other. But no, like, if, if we live in
• 1:14:58
  America, we are privileged and we have an opportunity to, like,
• 1:15:01
  go get it. But there's a difference between
• 1:15:04
  those who just dream and those who actually set goals for
• 1:15:07
  themselves. People who dream are asleep.
• 1:15:10
  You got to be diligent. And so, yes, God will provide.
• 1:15:14
  He is faithful. He has shown that to me and my
• 1:15:16
  wife and my kids time and time again.
• 1:15:19
  But we also need to be wise stewards and be disciplined.
• 1:15:22
  And if we have goals, you got to get it.
• 1:15:25
  Like you got to go and get it. And so, yeah, that message is
• 1:15:29
  near and dear to my heart. And that's one of the reasons
• 1:15:31
  why, you know, I created my, my course for young adults called
• 1:15:34
  Catholic Guide to Adulting, where like I'm hitting on all
• 1:15:37
  these topics from like, how do I grow in my faith?
• 1:15:39
  How do I discern? How do I do personal finance?
• 1:15:42
  How do I do marriage? Well, you know, how do I do, how
• 1:15:47
  do I deal with the issues that come up in my life in regards to
• 1:15:49
  mental health issues? How do I have hard conversations
• 1:15:52
  and create boundaries for myself with family members and people I
• 1:15:55
  care about? Like, these are all things that
• 1:15:57
  I don't know how often they're taught.
• 1:16:00
  And it takes a time to learn them, but can to consolidate it
• 1:16:03
  and learn it as simply as possible because like you said,
• 1:16:07
  the most valuable, valuable resource we have in many ways,
• 1:16:10
  at least one of them is time, of course, a limited, a limited
• 1:16:13
  amount of time on this earth. Limited.
• 1:16:15
  Very limited. So go to Mass, get married, buy,
• 1:16:18
  buy Bitcoin. Where can people follow you
• 1:16:22
  Paul, and find your stuff? It's awesome.
• 1:16:25
  Yeah, yeah, they can check me out if you want to just check
• 1:16:28
  out my ministry website, youcantypepjkmusic.com or just
• 1:16:32
  Google Paul J Kim, you can find me.
• 1:16:35
  I'm most active on Instagram. I do have videos on YouTube.
• 1:16:38
  Just type in my name, Paul J period.
• 1:16:40
  Kim, my Instagram handle I think is Hey, PJK.
• 1:16:44
  I also wanted to share really quick because we've been doing a
• 1:16:47
  lot of Q&A about like Catholic things.
• 1:16:48
  I actually just, I, I partnered with the company That's really
• 1:16:52
  exciting. It's called Truthfully.
• 1:16:54
  Oh I love truthfully my brother told me about them.
• 1:16:57
  Crazy. Power download it guys.
• 1:16:59
  I'm I cosign that? Yeah, that's.
• 1:17:02
  Not I don't know them like personally, but I love I love
• 1:17:04
  what? They're doing.
• 1:17:05
  Yeah. So truthfully, OK, everyone
• 1:17:06
  knows about ChatGPT. I think by now it's like this
• 1:17:09
  whole AI thing that's kind of like making its mark.
• 1:17:13
  And whether you love it or hate it, it's here.
• 1:17:15
  But my, my friend Jacob, who helped start this company,
• 1:17:18
  truthfully, he devout Catholic, he wanted to leverage this tool
• 1:17:22
  for the good. And So what he did was he was
• 1:17:25
  able to program the AI chatbot and basically imagine ChatGPT
• 1:17:31
  joined our CIA, got baptized, and it's just fully on fire for
• 1:17:34
  the Catholic faith. That's what Truthly is TRUTHLY.
• 1:17:39
  And so you can download this is in the iOS store.
• 1:17:42
  It's going to be released on Android soon.
• 1:17:44
  But I can't tell you how many times I've typed in random
• 1:17:47
  questions about my faith. Why does the Catholic Church
• 1:17:50
  teach this? Where is it in scripture?
• 1:17:52
  What would you recommend for a person struggling with this
• 1:17:55
  issue? What is this?
• 1:17:57
  What would you recommend in this obscure moral situation that
• 1:18:00
  someone I know is dealing with? Who is a St. that you could
• 1:18:03
  recommend for a person who needs inspiration in this area in real
• 1:18:07
  time? Literally within seconds?
• 1:18:08
  It gives you the answer and it's solid.
• 1:18:11
  Anyways, Lila, I appreciate you making time for this.
• 1:18:13
  Thank. You.
• 1:18:14
  Absolutely good to see you too. God bless.
• 1:18:18
  Thank you to our partner. EWTNEWTN is the largest
• 1:18:22
  religious network reaching millions of people with the
• 1:18:25
  truth of the faith, entertainment and news.
• 1:18:28
  Check them out at ewtn.com.