Latest / The Lila Rose Show / How Early Christianity Outlasted a Hostile Roman Empire w/Voice of Reason | Lila Rose Show (BONUS)
Transcript
- 0:00Christian religion is what built the Western civilization.
- 0:03This idea of human dignity, that idea did not exist in the
- 0:06ancient world. A lot of people don't know that
- 0:07it was the Christian community that actually invented the
- 0:10concept of adoption. They were taking care of the
- 0:13sick, the elderly, the dying, widows, orphans, and Saint
- 0:16Lawrence was like here are our treasures their.
- 0:18Faith was so strong that they would withstand that kind of
- 0:20torture. That's what we always need to
- 0:22remember the Saints. We always need to remember the
- 0:24early Christian martyrs. We always need to remember how
- 0:26old the apostles died, were killed and they were murdered
- 0:30and they were persecuted. Welcome back to the Lila Rose
- 0:33Show. We are now doing Part 2 here.
- 0:35With Alejandro Jurado. Christian apologist talking not
- 0:37just about early Christianity and what the early church looked
- 0:41like in its development. We're actually going to be
- 0:43exploring what early Christians were like.
- 0:46What was it like for the first Christians to find faith,
- 0:48Especially in the Roman Empire, which, you know, I know there's
- 0:53that me men are always thinking about the Roman Empire, but the
- 0:55Roman Empire was a pretty crazy and intense space where there
- 0:58was a lot of violence. There was certainly a
- 1:00civilization, but the moral code certainly looked different from
- 1:04a Christian moral code. So we're going to be exploring
- 1:06that and also get into the topic of martyrdom and the fact that a
- 1:09lot of early Christians were martyred.
- 1:11So lots of fascinating stuff to unpack here in this episode with
- 1:14Alex Dorado. And don't forget, we've just
- 1:17launched our own supercast. This is where you're going to
- 1:19see the Rose Report. That's where you get to hang out
- 1:22with me behind the scenes. We're going to do some great
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- 1:41All right, Alex Jorado. Alejandro Jorado.
- 1:44Oh, excuse. Me, Alejandro, practice it, OK.
- 1:48Thank you for coming back. I'm excited to do this next
- 1:50episode with you. This is the third time that
- 1:53you've had me back, so I think it's a good sign.
- 1:55Awesome. It means that I haven't bored
- 1:56you or your audience, hopefully. Not at all.
- 1:59Thank you not at all for having me here.
- 2:01I'm excited to do this. Part 2 of the first, the second
- 2:04of the first part, which is church history and the
- 2:07Christians, what they were actually like, what they
- 2:09experienced. Ancient Christianity is
- 2:12fascinating, fascinating. One of my favorite things to
- 2:14talk about. I'm a big history nerd, so.
- 2:15So for people who don't know you yet or getting to know you, give
- 2:18a quick snapshot about your background and how you've gone
- 2:21about your own studies of Christianity, theology, the
- 2:25early church, etcetera. Well, I've been studying for
- 2:27half my life, self-taught. I've read countless, countless,
- 2:31countless hundreds of books about about history, about how
- 2:35Christianity developed from the time of using the apostles all
- 2:39the way to the present day. 2000 years is quite a long time, but
- 2:43Christian, I don't think there's anything that more fascinating
- 2:45than Christian history. So I just want to know how it is
- 2:49that we got to the to where we are now.
- 2:52So yeah, half my life I'm an old man.
- 2:55So half my life now that I've been that I've been studying and
- 2:59the Christian history is very, it's very eye opening and you
- 3:03realize, you know, we always talk about it, but you don't
- 3:05really realize it until you actually go and you look at the
- 3:07history that Christianity, the Christian religion is what built
- 3:11Western civilization and Western civilization is impossible,
- 3:15impossible to even exist without the Christian religion.
- 3:20And looking into that, doing a deep dive into that it, it
- 3:23really go, it makes you it makes you proud to be a Christian
- 3:26because all of these things that that we have, that we are proud
- 3:31of, that we enjoy, that we get to experience, we have because
- 3:34of Jesus Christ and, and what he revealed to mankind.
- 3:37So. I remember having that first
- 3:39realization about Western civilization being built by
- 3:42Christians when I was reading these books by Rodney Stark.
- 3:45So he wrote Victory of Reason and these, you know, series of
- 3:48books. He's actually a sociologist, but
- 3:49he's also, you know, effectively doing history, but kind of
- 3:53tracing, obviously economic developments, but really human
- 3:56rights developments and how people associated with each
- 3:59other, how communities were built and tracing a lot of what
- 4:03we understand today as sort of more liberal human rights, like
- 4:06treatment of women and children. You know, different ways that we
- 4:10value people that are not as fortunate as the wealthy or the
- 4:14powerful, Like, you know, people who are maybe the immigrant or
- 4:16people who are poor. All of those values we're not
- 4:21did not originate with, you know, Roman civilization or some
- 4:24other civilization. They really originated with the
- 4:26radical teachings of Jesus Christ.
- 4:28It's a very cool thing to trace. It really is.
- 4:31And then all goes back to the Incarnation.
- 4:33So, you know, at the time of the day that we're recording this,
- 4:36it is actually the Feast of the Annunciation.
- 4:38So I think there is no more, there is no better day to be
- 4:41talking about this than than today, because everything that
- 4:46we hold fast to that we value comes from the fact that God
- 4:51became man, that he became Incarnate, that he became a
- 4:53baby. Your ministry, what you do, it's
- 4:55all about protecting babies. And of course we want to protect
- 4:59babies because God himself became a baby.
- 5:03God himself was in the womb of a woman And, and God himself
- 5:06started out as a, as a, as an embryo, A zygote and formed in
- 5:10the womb of the, of the Blessed Virgin Mary and was born into
- 5:13the world. And this, this woman, the
- 5:15Blessed Virgin Mary, she had to feed him and care for him and
- 5:19teach him how to walk and teach him how to talk and educate him.
- 5:22And the reason that Christianity is really responsible for for
- 5:28what we're discussing now about the teachings of intrinsic human
- 5:33value is because they saw the full picture of it in the
- 5:35incarnation. Jesus Christ becoming man Jesus
- 5:38Christ God becoming man. He was sanctifying the human
- 5:43species, the human race. He was he was making us divine
- 5:47and if we're all made in the image of God, especially after
- 5:50the incarnation. That's why the Christians, they
- 5:54they knew we have to respect all human life and we have to care
- 5:57is for the most vulnerable because our Lord was once a
- 6:01vulnerable baby that you know, the the the powers that we
- 6:06wanted. It wanted him dead, wanted to
- 6:07kill him and that's why his family had to flee.
- 6:11What was the early church like? We were talking about how they
- 6:14worshipped and Part 1 and we were talking about, you know,
- 6:17the development of liturgy, kind of an authority structure in the
- 6:21early church, how they worshipped together, how they
- 6:25saw breaking of the bread or Eucharist.
- 6:27So we were discussing all that in the first episode.
- 6:30I'd love to look into or explore with you how they saw you just
- 6:35mentioned children and and you know all people is made in the
- 6:38image of God and also Jesus Christ taking on human flesh
- 6:41like that was a foundational understanding of a new way to
- 6:45see their brothers and sisters other human beings.
- 6:48But what what does that look like?
- 6:50So you're at let's say we're in the 1st century post the
- 6:53resurrection of Christ. The early churches starting what
- 6:57what would it mean for the early Christian when they're also may
- 7:00be a Roman, you know, citizen or they're, you know, Jew person of
- 7:04a Jewish background. So they're kind of living under
- 7:06Roman rule and now they have this new way to live, right?
- 7:10It's not just how they worshipped that changed.
- 7:12Obviously they're not worshipping the gods.
- 7:14They're not just, you know, approaching it from a Jewish
- 7:17tradition. They're now Christian and how
- 7:18they worship. But how did it affect their
- 7:22relationships or their day-to-day life otherwise?
- 7:24Well, and this is something that shocks a lot of people.
- 7:26A lot of people don't realize that this idea of human dignity,
- 7:29that idea did not exist in the ancient world, The ancient
- 7:32world, that the ancient people had no concept of intrinsic
- 7:36human value that cannot be violated or should, that should
- 7:39not be violated. Ancient people did not have
- 7:41that. That concept.
- 7:42That concept came straight out of the early Christian
- 7:44community. We talked a little bit about
- 7:46this last time about the dedicated, which is 1 of it was
- 7:49the earliest written Christian document that we have that was
- 7:52written around the same time that the New Testament was being
- 7:54written. And the delicay explicitly says
- 7:59that abortion is is evil abortion.
- 8:02So this you know, the Christian community being pro-life is
- 8:06something that goes all the way back.
- 8:08The Christian community being anti abortion is something that
- 8:10goes all the way back to the time of the apostles.
- 8:12A lot of people don't know that it was the Christian community
- 8:15that actually invented the concept of of adoption and like
- 8:21orphanages. Because in the ancient world,
- 8:26when babies were born, if they had birth defects or if there
- 8:29was something, anything with the baby was born sick, they would
- 8:32actually leave the baby out in the elements to just to just to
- 8:36die because that baby was was worthless.
- 8:39That baby was no good in the ancient world.
- 8:42A mother would not have that concept, that idea of having
- 8:46that connection with her, with her child, that she would be
- 8:49found with her child being taken away to be dumped, you know, in
- 8:51the landfill. And it was the early Christians
- 8:54that went and saved all of those babies and would take those
- 8:57babies into their own communities.
- 8:58And, and that's how, you know, orphanages started adoption.
- 9:03That's how that started. Adoption is something that did
- 9:05not exist in the ancient world. You don't, you know, you can
- 9:07take people to slaves, you can maybe take someone in as a, you
- 9:12know, the way that you were taking, you know, someone that
- 9:14maybe like live with you because they're going to be your, your
- 9:16servant, a Butler, so to speak, whatever it may be.
- 9:20But the Christian community took in all of these babies and
- 9:23raised them as their own, raised them in the faith, raised them
- 9:25as Christians and, and gave them the, the love of the love of
- 9:30Jesus Christ and, and showed them that they had intrinsic
- 9:33value that we all have. And they were the ones that said
- 9:36that that that value cannot be, cannot be violated.
- 9:39And that was ancient, ancient, ancient Christians that we're
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- 10:44the code Lila. I think it's for like the modern
- 10:47sensibility. It's hard for us to sometimes
- 10:49understand what it was like. Obviously in the Roman Empire,
- 10:53that's not where we live. And you know, I know that's like
- 10:55a meme right now. What is, you know, men are
- 10:57always thinking about the Roman Empire.
- 10:58But I remember reading this letter.
- 10:59I just pulled it up and this is from a, my understanding is this
- 11:03is a man who's like a soldier and he's away from his wife and
- 11:07his home. He's in the Roman Empire.
- 11:08He's like a, you know, hail Caesar kind of guy.
- 11:10He's out there. I don't know what war he's
- 11:12fighting, but he's writing a letter about his to his pregnant
- 11:17wife, basically. And he says Hilarion sends many,
- 11:21many greetings to his sister, along with Lady Barrios and
- 11:23Apollo Niorian. Listen, we are still in
- 11:26Alexandria. Don't worry about this.
- 11:28If they go home completely, I will still stay in Alexandria.
- 11:31I'm asking you and begging you to take care of the little child
- 11:35and when we are paid, I will send it to you right away if you
- 11:38happen to be pregnant again. If it is a boy, leave it.
- 11:41If it is a girl, throw it out and then it says you have told
- 11:45Afro diciosis, don't forget me. How could I possibly forget you?
- 11:48Please do not be worried. So it's a very kind of warm and
- 11:51loving letter, but it's remarkable because it's actually
- 11:55from a father to presumably his wife or his, you know, I'm
- 11:59assuming it's a wife, but basically saying take care of
- 12:03our child, our son. I will pay, I will send money,
- 12:05I'll be there to help you. He's off at war or whatever.
- 12:08But if it's a, if it is a girl, literally throw out the baby,
- 12:12leave her to be. And this was like a normal, this
- 12:15wasn't like, oh, shocking murder a.
- 12:17Child. What's that?
- 12:18That's a pleasant letter when you just read.
- 12:19That's a, it's meant to be like a pleasant, like loving, like I
- 12:22got you, you know, if it's a boy, take care of it.
- 12:24If it's a girl, just, you know, throw it away.
- 12:25It's not a big deal. And like this was normal.
- 12:28Now I, I can't help but say, like here we are in 21st century
- 12:31America and it's super normal too, to be like, I'm going to
- 12:35abort this baby. You know, that like it's
- 12:37infanticide is normal today. Now like it wasn't the Roman
- 12:41Empire, but to the Christians it was never normal.
- 12:44It's interesting because we talk about the meme, right, that
- 12:46we're always thinking about the Roman Empire and people that,
- 12:49that criticize that they say like, oh, that's who cares about
- 12:51what happens so long ago? We're better than those people.
- 12:53We, we tend to think that we modern people are better or have
- 12:57a, a, a greater grasp of morality than ancient people
- 13:01precisely because, you know, we, we're talking about how, you
- 13:03know, the ancient people that we just throw out babies and we
- 13:05think we're better than them. But then, you know, do they not
- 13:08see what's going on, what's been going on in this country, you
- 13:11know, you know, since the 70s. And what we're doing is way
- 13:16worse than what they were doing back then because.
- 13:19The sheer. The sheer number, you mean?
- 13:20Yeah, yeah. Like a million abortions.
- 13:22A. Year, yes, Yeah. 1,000,000
- 13:24abortions a year just in the United.
- 13:25States, you know, tearing babies, ripping out of the, you
- 13:27know, ripping them out of the womb even.
- 13:29And you know, the Romans at least had the distances.
- 13:31Let the baby child be born first and and not kill them, but just
- 13:33leave them, you know, leave them to die.
- 13:35I mean, that's, I mean, we do that here too, you know, but the
- 13:39more things change, the more things stay the same.
- 13:41And, and it's good to know history like the same goes.
- 13:44You got to learn your history so you don't repeat it, so you
- 13:46don't make the same mistakes because history rhymes.
- 13:49Well, we're not that far removed.
- 13:51We still have a lot of work to do.
- 13:52The other big thing alongside the treatment of children and
- 13:56and babies was sex sexuality, because the way that the Romans
- 14:00viewed sex was very different than the way that the Christians
- 14:02viewed sex. What are your thoughts on that?
- 14:03And I actually pulled up the didiki.
- 14:04We can read from this too, if we want.
- 14:06We're actually specifically talks about this, but it's very
- 14:09fascinating to think about how dramatically different Christian
- 14:13teaching on sex was from typically what was understood in
- 14:16the Roman. Empire, right?
- 14:17What we, what the Christians understood was that sex is
- 14:20something that's that's holy and that sex is actually when you,
- 14:24you know, when you and your spouse participate in the
- 14:26marital act, and especially when it results in, in, in the
- 14:30creation of a new life, that you are actually participating in
- 14:34the life giving Trinity in the Holy Trinity.
- 14:37Because you know, as Christians, what was revealed to us by Jesus
- 14:40Christ is that the one God is a Trinity, that he's father, Son,
- 14:43the Holy Spirit. And the way that it was always
- 14:46understood by Christians about how those three persons relate
- 14:49to one another is that you have the lover who is the father, you
- 14:52have the beloved who is the Son, and you have the love between
- 14:56the father and the son that is actually a third person and
- 14:58that's the Holy Spirit. So one marriage, one family, one
- 15:03couple, one husband and wife, when they come together and
- 15:06they, they participate in the, in, in, in the life creating
- 15:09act, they are imitating the Holy Trinity and they're creating new
- 15:15life because the Trinity is life creating.
- 15:18And they understood that the early Christians, the ancient
- 15:20Christian community had the, they had that, that wisdom to
- 15:23understand the, the holiness of sex.
- 15:27A lot of people have it backwards.
- 15:28They think that us Christians that were prudish or whatever it
- 15:30may be that we don't like sex or that we, we think it's, it's
- 15:33bad. No, it's, it's actually the
- 15:34holiest thing, one of the holiest things that you can do
- 15:39when you do it in the context of marriage and when you do it for,
- 15:41for being open to life, for the purpose of creating a life, for,
- 15:44for the procreation and education of children.
- 15:47They understood it. This, this is, this is what God
- 15:49revealed to us. This is the Trinity.
- 15:51This is how the Trinity works. We all know about the, the
- 15:54excesses of the, of the pagans. You know, in ancient times, they
- 15:58were very, they were a very hyper sexualized culture, very
- 16:01hyper sexualized. And it took the Christian
- 16:04community to kind of, you know, get the world eventually, once
- 16:07Christianity took over the world, to snap out of it and to
- 16:10realize that there's a God-given dignity to sex and sexuality.
- 16:14It's an interesting question to explore of the kind of
- 16:17hypersexuality and lack of sexual morality in the Roman
- 16:21Empire and then what Christianity came and presented.
- 16:25And then today, because we have hypersexuality today, obviously
- 16:29like rampant pornography, hookup culture, shack up culture.
- 16:33But it does look different today in some aspects, I would say
- 16:36than the Roman Empire. Obviously it's still there's,
- 16:39it's not moral, right? But my understanding of the
- 16:41Roman Empire is that there was much more of a, you know,
- 16:45stratified society where there were people that were more, you
- 16:50know, in power than others based on their class and, you know,
- 16:55women as an example. You definitely had some like,
- 16:57well, very well off women who had more power, say, than like a
- 17:00slave girl as an example. But largely speaking, they were
- 17:04more seen as property than they were seen as persons who could
- 17:07then own property. Not that none of them could own
- 17:09property, but their rights were different, largely speaking,
- 17:11than men's rights, you know, in civil society.
- 17:15And this affected issues of sex because there was this view of
- 17:19children and women that they could be used as objects for
- 17:22sexual lust, basically by someone who is more powerful
- 17:27than them. And so this is where you get the
- 17:28practice of, you know, men using young boys as sexual, basically
- 17:33toys in the Roman Empire. And this was sort of a common
- 17:36practice. Not everyone did it, but it was
- 17:38a common practice. And today, we have a lot of
- 17:41sexual immorality. But there's these rules about
- 17:43consent, right? Which kind of try to put a
- 17:45veneer on it, although obviously it doesn't make it, you know,
- 17:48moral, obviously. And then you also have women
- 17:52today who are now also the drivers have sexual immorality,
- 17:56I would argue more than in the Roman Empire, because now
- 17:59they're like out there selling themselves.
- 18:01In the Roman Empire, it was more that they were being sold,
- 18:04right, because they didn't have full ownership.
- 18:05And now they have, I guess you could say, full ownership.
- 18:08Autonomy Entrepreneurs. There they have a million girls
- 18:11on only fans or whatever the number is.
- 18:13It's insane. So it's like the same sexual
- 18:15immorality, but the power dynamics might look different.
- 18:20But it's still a mess, still a. Mess.
- 18:22And so it's just an interesting, I'm curious your thoughts
- 18:24because it's an interesting thought experiment of like, even
- 18:26if you change power dynamics, like women and men are equal
- 18:29under the law, that doesn't solve the problem of sexual
- 18:34immorality. Like you have to add on the
- 18:36aspect of basically Christian belief and a moral law.
- 18:39And it doesn't even have to be Christian.
- 18:41You can you can assent to the moral law even even as a non
- 18:43Christian. But I think Jesus Christ
- 18:45obviously gives us the why or why we would have sent.
- 18:48But yeah, what it what's your kind of take on that?
- 18:49The difference of today versus the Roman Empire in terms of
- 18:53sexual immorality and then the Christian response to it.
- 18:55Yeah, again, the more that things change, the more things
- 18:58stay the same. And you would think that we've
- 18:59come such a, a long way removed from, from those ancient times.
- 19:04And when you compare us to them, you actually see, again, so many
- 19:08similarities. It's really not all that
- 19:10different except that now we have, you know, women now
- 19:13they're empowered. They, they think that it's
- 19:15empowering for them to be able to be their own, be their own
- 19:19pimps. You know, that's basically what
- 19:21it is. Be the, the entrepreneurs that
- 19:22they're able to, you know, sell themselves even virtually online
- 19:26for, for the, the gratification of, of men and women.
- 19:32They think that that makes them feel empowered.
- 19:36So we're just, we're actually a lot more liberal now than even
- 19:40they were back then because a, a, a woman would not go into
- 19:42business for herself, so to speak.
- 19:44Back in ancient times, it was always the men that that run the
- 19:47show. But it we're we're really still
- 19:50in the same situation by and large, especially in this
- 19:52country. And it's interesting because
- 19:56there's no amount of laws or, or or or, you know, regulation is
- 19:59ever going to solve the sin problem, the concupiscence, the
- 20:02problem of concupiscence. That's something that no laws
- 20:05can never can never fix. Now we need to have good more
- 20:08than just laws. And I'm all for, of course, a
- 20:11complete ban on abortion, banning pornography.
- 20:15You know, banning, you know, yes, yes, it's.
- 20:19A no brainer. Yes, we need to get rid of all
- 20:21of that and we need to incur because it, you know, the, the
- 20:23point of laws is for society to be able to run correctly.
- 20:29That's what laws are for. But we've gotten to the point
- 20:31where we've lost sight of why, why we have laws to begin with.
- 20:35And we've also forgotten that the family is the, the, the, the
- 20:38nucleus of society, right? Society isn't built on, on, on
- 20:42the individual. That society is built on the
- 20:43family. Civilization is built on the
- 20:45family. So all of our laws and our ways
- 20:47of life and our philosophy needs to be centered around the idea
- 20:51that the family is what builds society.
- 20:53So we need to incentivize the family, but all of our laws are
- 20:59backwards because we allow for certain things that actually
- 21:03undermine, you know, that undermine the family.
- 21:06We, we, we, our laws encourage, it seems like our laws encourage
- 21:10broken homes and, and divorce and promiscuity.
- 21:14And it, it makes sense why we're in the mess that we're in today
- 21:18because we've lost sight of the fact that the family is number
- 21:201. So again, we need, we need good
- 21:24laws, but even then we can have all of the good laws on the
- 21:27books and that, but that doesn't change the fact that we all deal
- 21:29with with concupiscence. And The thing is that the reason
- 21:35that especially sex is something that is so that is a problem for
- 21:41everybody. And that's why that's always the
- 21:42the sin of any culture or any society is always that is
- 21:46because sex is good. It's because it's good, but
- 21:50because it's something good and even holy, we don't know.
- 21:54We, we abuse things that are good.
- 21:56We abuse things that are good. And our, our, our society has
- 22:00allowed for the abuse of something that is holy,
- 22:02something that is sacred. And when you abuse, you know,
- 22:05something that's holy, when you abuse something that's sacred,
- 22:08that's called desecration. And when we desecrate sex, when
- 22:11we desecrate the family, when we desecrate women, when we even
- 22:14desecrate babies, you think God is going to be happy with us?
- 22:19Sex belongs to God. He gave it to us for a purpose.
- 22:22He was the one that said me food for the multiply.
- 22:24He was the one that tells us how.
- 22:25He tells us how to do it right. Seven Weeks Coffee is America's
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- 23:00take your coffee wherever life takes you.
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- 23:05go to sevenweekscoffee.com. You can use the code Lila at
- 23:08checkout to get up to 25% off your first purchase as well as
- 23:12your free gift. We got sex wrong today
- 23:16societally and it's a big problem in the Roman Empire,
- 23:19though, they got sex wrong and they also had slavery.
- 23:23So you have this especially lethal combo of you got sex
- 23:27wrong. You don't understand that it's
- 23:28for procreation and unity within a marriage, right?
- 23:30The Christian teaching is like sex is designed for procreation
- 23:33within marriage, which is this loving, sacred bond, you know,
- 23:37exclusive, faithful, lifelong self gift to man and a woman.
- 23:41You know, until death do us part like this is a very sacred
- 23:43institution. It's a sacrament versus OK, sex
- 23:47is not for babies. If there's a baby, we can kill
- 23:49it, right? Which we do that today.
- 23:50But then in addition, you can literally enslave people,
- 23:53including children, certainly women, and enslave them and use
- 23:57them for sex. And this was a common practice
- 23:59in the Roman Empire. Slavery was a common practice,
- 24:01of course, but in addition to just, you know, slavery to work
- 24:04for you, it's slavery to be your sex slave.
- 24:07So that's like another. I mean, I do think as as hard as
- 24:10we should be on ourselves in the modern era for our failings.
- 24:14When you look at the, you know, this, this lethal convo of like
- 24:18sexual immorality and slavery, you open that it's it's even
- 24:21darker. I mean, there's lots of darkness
- 24:23today. It's hard to say which is
- 24:24darker. There's different ways to to
- 24:26balance it. But you know, I think about that
- 24:29in the Roman Empire. I think about the fact that, you
- 24:32know, you have these public gains of violence, you know, the
- 24:34gladiator, the games you have, you know, obviously the
- 24:38Colosseum where they would watch people die for sport.
- 24:41Culture of death. Yeah, culture of death.
- 24:43I mean, today at minimum, we don't have like big stadiums
- 24:46like in America, our big stadiums, we watch football and
- 24:49the Roman Empire, the big stadiums.
- 24:50They did watch some sports. It wasn't like they didn't do
- 24:52sports, but they also had like kill games.
- 24:54It was literally kill games and and the Christians were
- 24:56sometimes be those that were killed.
- 24:58And the other thing is the public executions, because I
- 25:01think the torture of, you know, dissidents, people they
- 25:05considered criminals, you know, political enemies, literal like
- 25:10public crucifixions, some of the like extremely gory ways they
- 25:14killed the early Christians. I think about Nero, right?
- 25:18And he, he would literally stick them on torches and set them on
- 25:21fire around the whole city. So you think about stuff like
- 25:24that and you're like, OK, super dark.
- 25:26Like today we have a culture of death.
- 25:28Like that's like very extreme darkness culture of death
- 25:32happening. But yeah, so for the for the
- 25:35Christians who are who are, you know, have this new moral code
- 25:39for how to live that Jesus is offering and also is connected
- 25:42to Judaism, like the law, you know, so there's not like it was
- 25:45completely foreign to people like they they were morality
- 25:47from the Jews that they had about sex that was then added on
- 25:50by the Christians or, or developed more like, you know,
- 25:53fulfilled more. But so there's like new law for
- 25:56how to live, right. And then in addition, there's a
- 25:58threat. Yeah.
- 26:00The surrounding society not only doesn't live like you, but they
- 26:03actively want to kill you, right?
- 26:05Everything is summed up. Everything is set up in Saint
- 26:08Paul's. There are the Galatians where he
- 26:09says, he says in his letter to Galatia, he says in Jesus Christ
- 26:13there's no longer Jew or Gentile, there's no longer slave
- 26:16or free person. There's no longer even a man or
- 26:18woman, but we're all the same in Christ.
- 26:20It's. Crazy.
- 26:22It's a crazy teaching. We read that and we like, yeah,
- 26:24yeah, of course not like we. We take that for granted, but
- 26:26people don't realize how scandalous, how scandalous that
- 26:30would have been 2000 years ago when Paul wrote that, when
- 26:33saying Paul wrote that the scandal of such a thing, it, it,
- 26:37it, it, it was, it was groundbreaking to say there's no
- 26:40longer a man or woman, no longer a slave or free person, even no
- 26:45longer Jew nor Greek, but we're all one in Christ.
- 26:48That's a radical. That's so radical.
- 26:50And then you read another one of Paul's letters, his letter to,
- 26:53to Philemon, where he's telling Philemon who was, who was a
- 26:57Christian, who had a slave. And we're telling him, Hey, own
- 27:00SMS your slave. I'm going to send him back to
- 27:02you. And when you receive him, don't
- 27:04receive him as a slave anymore. Receiving him as a brother.
- 27:07Receive him as a brother. Philemon, you read that.
- 27:11It's what it's the shortest writing of Saint Paul.
- 27:13And when you read it, you're like you almost you're like, why
- 27:15is this in the Bible? This is kind of weird.
- 27:16Like what does this have to do with anything?
- 27:18And you it's only 1 chapter and you read it.
- 27:21And the reason that it's that that it's in there, it's
- 27:23groundbreaking that he would say to a fellow Jew and say, hey,
- 27:26the slave that I'm sending back to you, he's your equal.
- 27:29Receive him the way you would receive me as a brother.
- 27:31So the message there is, and also there's a lot of messages
- 27:35about the, the correct treatment of, you know, your servants or
- 27:39women or children, things like this.
- 27:40But the message there is, you know, he's not, he's not your
- 27:43slave, he's not your slave. And so as a Christian, you are
- 27:46not allowed to have a slave. Because we all belong to Christ.
- 27:49Yeah, yeah. We're not allowed to have him.
- 27:51There were the church that, you know, they, they'd freed their
- 27:53slaves and that that's something that even in the Jewish
- 27:55tradition going back to, you know, to, to biblical times, Old
- 28:00Testament times that every Jubilee year, we're in a Jubilee
- 28:03year now. Every Jubilee year, all of the
- 28:04slaves would go free. All the slaves would go free.
- 28:07All debts were forgiven. All debts were, were, were were
- 28:10good. The books were balanced and all
- 28:12slaves would go free. That's something that continued
- 28:15into, into the Christian community just perpetually.
- 28:18No, no more slaves. We're all one in Christ.
- 28:20We're all the same of our brothers and sisters that didn't
- 28:24exist before, before Christianity.
- 28:27What were some other radical teachings of the early
- 28:30Christians or of Jesus obviously to the early Christians and his
- 28:34his disciples that we take for granted?
- 28:36You think today I kind of want to like pull open, you know, the
- 28:40right now the letters to Paul and just start listing them
- 28:41because they're, I mean, what you're describing is it's
- 28:44fascinating when you think about the lens of Roman society and
- 28:48current traditions at the time. The treatment of women, the
- 28:52treatment of women. Here's something crazy that a
- 28:55lot of people don't realize. When, when scholars do like the
- 28:58work of figuring out if an ancient document is reliable or
- 29:03not, they have this criteria called the criterion of like of
- 29:06of embarrassment. Meaning if it's something that
- 29:10would actually hurt their credibility, like socially, but
- 29:13they include it anyway. That's actually how we know that
- 29:16it really happened, that it was true, that it was real.
- 29:19And there are so many even like non Christian scholars that are
- 29:21just historians that they understood how how history
- 29:24played out and they understood the the customs of ancient
- 29:27history. When they look at the writings
- 29:29of the New Testament, they'll tell you they're like, look,
- 29:32this we know that this happened. This had to have happened
- 29:35because there's all of this dirty laundry in these writings
- 29:39that there is no way that they would have put these in there
- 29:42if, if this was a lie, if the apostles were lying, there is no
- 29:46way that they would have actually included all of these
- 29:48details in there because it actually hurts their
- 29:50credibility. And one of the things that that
- 29:52is always brought up is that Jesus appeared to women first.
- 29:56Jesus first appeared to women and in the ancient world after
- 29:59the resurrection, after the resurrection, after the
- 30:02resurrection, he appeared to women.
- 30:04And, and what a lot of people don't know is that women, they
- 30:08could not even give like testimony in court.
- 30:10They were not allowed to give because they were seeing their
- 30:12testimonies not reliable because they're women.
- 30:14Well, Jesus, when he rises from the dead, he appears to women.
- 30:17And what these, what these historians say is they said, we
- 30:20know that the apostles could not have been making this up.
- 30:22Because if this was just a made-up story, the apostles are
- 30:25trying to just dupe everybody into thinking that this Jesus
- 30:28character was really existed and that he really rose from the
- 30:30dead. There is no way, no way that
- 30:33they would have added that detail to the gospel that he
- 30:35appeared to women first. Because it's almost like
- 30:38they're, it's almost like they're making it harder for
- 30:40themselves. And because they included that
- 30:42it shows like, yeah, everything that we read about, like the
- 30:46embarrassing things that happen with, like with the apostles,
- 30:48all of the apostles left Jesus when he was going into his
- 30:51passion, that they doubted that one of them betrayed Jesus.
- 30:54That Peter who was the leader, that he denied him publicly 3
- 30:57times. All of that is so embarrassing.
- 30:59And then Mary's the one at the foot of the.
- 31:01Cross. Mary's the one at the foot of
- 31:02the cross with John. Who John you like.
- 31:04People don't realize that the Apostle John, he was, he was
- 31:06like a teenager. He was young.
- 31:07He was a young kid and so a woman and some young kid were
- 31:12the ones at the foot of the cross.
- 31:13You know, you know, seeing this, the guy that your whole religion
- 31:17is based around was executed like a like a criminal, like the
- 31:20worst type of criminal crucifixion.
- 31:23Every single detail that we read about in the gospel historians
- 31:27have included this had to have really happened because it it
- 31:30meets the criterion of embarrassment.
- 31:32If it was just a story, they would not have said this because
- 31:34they're trying to make it look as appealing and as credible as
- 31:37possible. This had to have really happened
- 31:39because in the ancient world, all of it from the first page of
- 31:41the New Testament to the last page scandalous.
- 31:44And that's how you know what's real.
- 31:45It's like a raw look raw look at it.
- 31:47And one of the the reasons is the way that Jesus and the early
- 31:51Christian community treated women.
- 31:53When you read about, you know, Paul addressing the women that
- 31:58he addressed, like in his letters, like in his episode of
- 32:00the Romans, and he addresses women with affection and with,
- 32:02with care, and he addresses them with dignity.
- 32:05And, and he, he shows that some of his helpers were women and
- 32:09that the women, the women in the early church were the ones that
- 32:12kind of, they helped the apostles and they were taking
- 32:15care of the apostles and they were helping them with, with
- 32:18whether it was food or shelter, whatever it is, the women were
- 32:21helping the men. And that's something that it's
- 32:24scandalous. You don't put that in something
- 32:26that you're in a written document because that makes the
- 32:31ancient people, the pagans back then would probably say that the
- 32:34other Christians were, I don't know, feminists.
- 32:38I've been accused of that too. I get accused of that
- 32:41occasionally. Isn't that crazy, right?
- 32:43But what? Does it mean what does it mean?
- 32:45I mean today, because that's the thing with like even that term,
- 32:47right? Like modern feminism as we
- 32:49understand today is looks insane abortion, all of this wild stuff
- 32:53right. But this idea of women elevated
- 32:55to have the same dignity as men, which is very much essential to
- 32:59Christian teaching is a is was a wildly just shocking claim for
- 33:04the Roman Empire. Like it was not something that
- 33:07people accept it easily. Especially when you consider the
- 33:10type of women that are highlighted like in the
- 33:12scriptures, like when Jesus talks to you know, to to the
- 33:15woman cut in adultery, right. That's.
- 33:17A great point. Yep.
- 33:18That they, they had pasts, right?
- 33:20The woman at the world where the with the five husbands with you
- 33:24see that and he's still elevates their dignity and he tells them
- 33:28go and sin no more. And they become part of the
- 33:30Christian community. And and they're they're they're
- 33:34famous in the early Christian community because of how close
- 33:36they are to Jesus and Jesus was able to transform them.
- 33:40That's unheard of in the ancient world, the way that that women
- 33:44were treated and respected and and and and elevated.
- 33:47Easter is a season to celebrate Jesus Christ, resurrection and
- 33:50go deeper into our faith. That's why I'm a big fan of
- 33:52Hollow App, which is the number one prayer app in the world.
- 33:55They have a whole series dedicated to helping you go
- 33:57deeper into your faith this Easter season, and they're doing
- 34:00a special on Jacques Philippe's interior freedom.
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- 34:06by over the years to help us deepen our relationship with God
- 34:09and our freedom as God's sons and daughters.
- 34:12Hallo App also has thousands of prayers, prayers, meditations,
- 34:16sleep stories, and even worship music.
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- 34:24for them that they can do even on a daily basis on the Hallo
- 34:27app. So during this Easter season, I
- 34:29hope you deepen your prayer life and make use of the amazing tool
- 34:32that Hallo is the number one prayer app in the world.
- 34:34And you can try the Hallow app risk free and completely free
- 34:37for a full 3 months at hallow.com/lila.
- 34:41That's hallow.com/lila. The other thing that I find so
- 34:45fascinating, I love your thoughts on is this idea of
- 34:48virginity in the early church, because there are all these
- 34:52really intense virgin martyr stories coming out of the early
- 34:57church in the first few centuries where you have these
- 35:00young girls convert to Christianity and, and young
- 35:02guys, I mean, Saint Stephen is the first martyr.
- 35:04He's this young man who's like, you know, kill me now because I
- 35:07love Jesus and like he's stoned to death, right?
- 35:09So like, it's this young, young man.
- 35:11And then you have these early Christian martyr girls who were
- 35:15being told that they needed to get married and they literally
- 35:19died over being forced to marry. Like this is very interesting to
- 35:24me because their love was obviously focused on Jesus
- 35:26Christ. They'd made a promise to Jesus.
- 35:28They were a consecrated virgin and consecrated virginity
- 35:30existed before Christ. You know, the Jewish tradition
- 35:33had it. But my understanding is with
- 35:35early Christianity, this was this new thing of now I'm like
- 35:38married to Christ, like I'm imagining today, right?
- 35:40Let's just like for the thought experiment today, someone comes
- 35:44to a girl who's like, it's totally in love with Jesus and
- 35:46they're like, you got to marry this guy.
- 35:48He will treat you, you know, pretty nicely.
- 35:51He's not a Christian, but you know, he'll probably come around
- 35:54if you just work on him and pray for him.
- 35:56Or you can go be like stabbed to death, right, like burned at the
- 36:00stake, right, or, or whatever, you know, violent torture over
- 36:03here. And, and like, imagine a woman
- 36:05today being like, Oh, I'll choose the mayor.
- 36:07Like we'll do the, we'll do the work on this Pagan man and like,
- 36:10love him. And I'll try to like, you know,
- 36:12take. And usually he's like a faint,
- 36:13like he's in in these virgin martyr stories.
- 36:16It's usually like the emperor's son or like someone, you know,
- 36:18someone like of high rank and stuff.
- 36:20And so, but it's so fascinating to me that they're upheld, as,
- 36:24you know, martyrs for our admiration when they were
- 36:26literally dying, obviously for love of Christ.
- 36:29But I might be misreading the stories though, because I think
- 36:31obviously part of it was you need to now come under our
- 36:33religion. It's not just like.
- 36:34You can be a Christian. It's not like you can go
- 36:36worship, you know, Jesus Christ and be married to the emperor,
- 36:39you know, nobleman or something like this.
- 36:41So that's a very important detail, of course, but it's
- 36:43still fascinating to me that they were so in love with Jesus
- 36:48and I it was all about their unwillingness to submit to this,
- 36:53you know, man that wanted them both sexually and obviously
- 36:56wanted their their religious devotion.
- 36:58Yes, and you hear so many of these stories in the early.
- 37:00Years there's countless stories of of the virgin martyrs and
- 37:04that's because they they understood, they understood the
- 37:07purpose of sex, that sex is reserved for your spouse.
- 37:12They understood that. So for them that it was out of
- 37:14the question. Never think I could give myself
- 37:16to someone that isn't my spouse. So the way that they were
- 37:19thinking about it was if I am completely have given myself
- 37:24consecrated myself to Jesus and I'm he's my spouse now I cannot
- 37:29give my body to someone that isn't my spouse.
- 37:32That's why you know, in in in in Christianity, we have the
- 37:36beautiful discipline of our ordained ministers.
- 37:39It's it's the tradition of celibacy.
- 37:42Ordained ministers. You know, the church ordains men
- 37:45who who take vows of celibacy, you know, ordains them to
- 37:48ministry, ordains them to the priesthood because we understand
- 37:51that our ministers imitate our Lord Jesus Christ and our Lord
- 37:55Jesus Christ. He was celibate virgin who never
- 37:59took a wife, who was completely devoted to God.
- 38:02He himself tells us like in Matthew 19, where he says that
- 38:05there are people that got a cause to this life to be
- 38:08celibate for the Kingdom. And Saint Paul, I mean, tells us
- 38:11in First Corinthians 7, he literally says that it's better
- 38:14to be like him in celibate. St.
- 38:16Paul was celibate as well for the Kingdom because we offer
- 38:23everything that we have to to our Lord and sacrifice.
- 38:27The new talks, the New Testament talks so much about sacrifice,
- 38:31right? And and that's another thing in
- 38:33the ancient world when we talked about sacrifice, it was always
- 38:35like animal sacrifices. You, you sacrifice animals or
- 38:40even with some pagans like the like, you know, the, the
- 38:42indigenous pagans, like the Aztecs, they would sacrifice
- 38:45even other humans, human sacrifice to appeal the gods.
- 38:48But in the Christian community, it was we sacrifice the things
- 38:51that we love, the things that make us feel good.
- 38:54We sacrifice food, drink, sex, you know, sacrifice taking a
- 38:58wife. We sacrifice all of those things
- 39:00and we offer these sacrifices to the true God.
- 39:04So we, we understood that we give God our very best.
- 39:07We give God our very, very best. And then people in the ancient
- 39:11Christian community that they said, I would love to be
- 39:14married, I would love to have a spouse, but I love Jesus Christ
- 39:17so much more than that, that I would even offer that to him.
- 39:19And I'll give that to him. The thing that you love the
- 39:22most, give it to God. It's.
- 39:25Beautiful. And they, they did that and a
- 39:28lot of them got, were, were killed for it because all the,
- 39:32all the women, all of the beautiful women who love Jesus
- 39:37Christ, they knew something that no one else knew in the ancient
- 39:41world, that their dignity and the, and their, their virginity
- 39:47was something that could be given to God.
- 39:49Yeah, I'm, I'm so humbled. Like I feel so incredibly
- 39:52humbled when I read any, any martyr story.
- 39:54And you're like Lord Jesus, like I can't, I can't eat like, you
- 39:59know, that I may have a little bit of faith if I ever face any
- 40:01kind of trial, like, I don't know, I would crumple in the
- 40:03first instance. And these people like I, this is
- 40:05the story of St. Agatha.
- 40:07And she said, I consecrated, you know, my, my, my body to the
- 40:11Lord from infancy. She's saying, like for her, it
- 40:12was like from the beginning of my life, I was for the Lord
- 40:15alone. And it's Quintin, it's
- 40:18Quintianis who's a consular official of Sicily wanted to.
- 40:22You know, not even marry her per SE, like just wanted to like
- 40:24wanted to have her, like basically her.
- 40:27She refuses. They they brutally torture her
- 40:31and continue to torture her again and again and eventually
- 40:35she obviously dies without at any point reneging.
- 40:38She's saying like no, it's it's her.
- 40:41Saint Agnes is another one, of course, who refused to be, you
- 40:46know, she was dragged to a brothel, refused obviously to
- 40:50give in to her tormentors. So it's a, it's an incredible
- 40:54legacy in these early church to look at the courage.
- 41:00It's just hard to imagine like today, you know, we have so many
- 41:04blessings. We're so free.
- 41:06We're so comfortable as Christians, at least here in the
- 41:08West, especially in the United States.
- 41:11It's incredibly humbling because their faith was so strong.
- 41:15They really had something so powerful in their faith that
- 41:19they would withstand that kind of torture.
- 41:22The love of Jesus. Only the divine love of God.
- 41:24Yes, only an infusion of love for the Holy Spirit that could
- 41:27allow you to withstand something like that and to go to willingly
- 41:31go to your death or that. Yeah, I also think about the
- 41:37fact that there were so many martyrs, not just the virgin
- 41:39martyrs, but just even whole families that were martyred
- 41:43because fed. To the Lions.
- 41:45Yeah, fed to fed to actual lions again in in public as a as
- 41:48bloodsports. As a spectacle.
- 41:50As a spectacle and looking at the early church, you know for
- 41:53the first before Constantine, right in the first few centuries
- 41:57there was Christianity was illegal, right correct.
- 42:00And so but it grew. I think some of the numbers are
- 42:03is it you might know this better than me.
- 42:05I think it's a it's a few 100,000 by the time of
- 42:08Constantine and then it got to the millions once it was
- 42:10legalized. Yeah.
- 42:11Does that sound? Right, Yeah, yeah, it would be,
- 42:13I think around the time of of Constantine.
- 42:17It was something I think a little under 300,000, I think.
- 42:19Yeah, but the time of Constantine.
- 42:21But what's so fascinating is that the, and, and you know, Joe
- 42:25Heschmeyer, who's a great Catholic apologist, he had a
- 42:27video recently, he put out a video where he's looking at the,
- 42:30at the evidence, you know, about why the Christian community was
- 42:33able to grow so much. And the reason that it grew, not
- 42:36only that was it getting so many converts, you know, during the
- 42:40time of persecution, so many people were converting during
- 42:42times of persecutions, but also the Christian community, they
- 42:45were having so many babies. Not only were they having kids,
- 42:48they were adopting kids that were going to those landfills
- 42:50and they were taking in all of the babies that were abandoned
- 42:53by their Pagan parents and, and raising them in the faith.
- 42:56And the community grew out of love, grew just out of pure
- 43:00love. Let's make babies, let's adopt
- 43:02babies and let's just make our whole community centered on, on,
- 43:06on babies and show them, educate them and teach them the ways of
- 43:08our Lord Jesus Christ. And that's why it was growing
- 43:12even during times of persecution that it was growing.
- 43:15And that phenomenon, you only see that in in, in Christianity,
- 43:20the phenomenon of even during times of persecution, the
- 43:22community is still growing. Usually the reason that whole
- 43:25communities get persecuted is to suppress the community so that
- 43:27it doesn't grow. But it's only in Christianity
- 43:30that it'll, it'll even grows more.
- 43:31It, it's worse. It's almost like we don't even
- 43:33want to persecute the community because if we do it, you know,
- 43:36it'll, it'll slow them down if we just leave them alone.
- 43:39But for some reason with, with, with the Christian Church,
- 43:41whenever they're persecuted explodes.
- 43:43And we see that even today happening in Africa and in Asia,
- 43:47where some of the most, the worst, most terrible atrocities
- 43:51are occurring in those in, in, in Africa.
- 43:53And then and in Asia of, of things that are happening to
- 43:56Christians of the communities there are exploding.
- 43:59I think that by the end of, I don't, I think about like the
- 44:02year 2050, I think they said Africa is going to be the, the
- 44:06biggest Catholic country continent in the entire world,
- 44:09that there will be more, more, more, more Catholics in Africa
- 44:13than anywhere else in the world while they're being persecuted.
- 44:17Same thing in, in, in in Asia and it just grows.
- 44:22Why do you think that is? Why?
- 44:23Why is it that persecution, especially in the early church,
- 44:27was the driver of conversions? More conversions.
- 44:30There's, you know, we're talking about the, the stories of, of
- 44:33martyrs. There are so many stories from
- 44:36the early church, from ancient Christianity of Christians being
- 44:40martyred and the people that were there witnessing the
- 44:44martyrdom, seeing that, hey, the, the Christian martyrs, they
- 44:48don't behave like the other non Christian martyrs.
- 44:51They're happy to go to their death.
- 44:53They have joy in their hearts. Why?
- 44:55Why, why do they have so much joy and just the people that are
- 44:58there that are just the spectators that are just the
- 45:02spectators. They, they say, maybe I need to
- 45:04look into this. What is it that these people
- 45:06know? What is that they have that
- 45:08would allow them to willingly kiss their executioners before
- 45:12they, they get executed? You know how many stories we
- 45:15have of that of, of, you know, Christians that are about to be,
- 45:17you know, you know, have their, have their heads cut off and
- 45:20they kiss their, their persecutors 1st.
- 45:24And then they go and they put their head on the, on the, on
- 45:25the, on the guillotine and they get their heads cut off.
- 45:29And people see that and they think, maybe I should look into
- 45:34this and see what it is. Why, Why do they behave in such
- 45:37a way? Because the non Christian
- 45:38motors, they didn't behave like that.
- 45:40They were dragged kicking and screaming to their execution.
- 45:42Meaning it's just like the political prisoners or the
- 45:44criminals. Others that were being.
- 45:45Murdered. But the Christians?
- 45:48You you heard of Saint Lawrence? Oh yeah.
- 45:50Roman Deacon. Oh yeah.
- 45:52I remember first hearing this from like a Catholic friend
- 45:54years ago because I, I knew about Saints, you know, before
- 45:57becoming Catholic, but I also didn't really know about Saints.
- 46:01And they were saying, you know, the famous things like turn me
- 46:03over. I'm not done yet.
- 46:04I'm like, oh, what's that? Yeah, they grilled them.
- 46:07They grilled them. Like, literally.
- 46:08Grilled them to death, yeah. This is like he.
- 46:10Was making jokes. This is like 3rd century.
- 46:13What was this 3rd century? This was 2nd, 2:15 or 3rd
- 46:17century. OK, so 3rd century.
- 46:18And, and and he was, what was his story?
- 46:21I can I can pull it up too. Because his story was doing.
- 46:23Catholic. We're doing the early church
- 46:25bingo right now. Tell me about Saint Lawrence So.
- 46:28Saint Lawrence. Jeopardy, I should say, not
- 46:30bingo. Jeopardy.
- 46:31We're doing early Jeopardy. Yeah, he was a Deacon in the
- 46:32Church of Rome and he got, he got intercepted basically by the
- 46:36Roman authorities, Valerian. And then, yeah, they knew that
- 46:38he was, that he was a minister of the Christian Church.
- 46:42And, and they thought that the Christians were like hiding like
- 46:46treasures that they had like all this gold or whatever.
- 46:48They had all these riches. So they were, they wanted to
- 46:50confiscate the riches. And they told him to take us to,
- 46:53to, to the riches of the church. And he took them to one of the,
- 46:56the, the, the houses where they were holding all of the poor,
- 46:59all of the like the Pagan babies and everything that they threw
- 47:02out, that the pagans are thrown out.
- 47:03He took them there. And he said, here are the riches
- 47:05of the church, all of the poor people that the, that the
- 47:07Christians, you know, the, the first nurses were nuns and you
- 47:11know, that they were taking care of the sick, the elderly, the
- 47:13dying widows, orphans. And Saint Lawrence was like,
- 47:16here are our treasures, the people that we get to take care
- 47:19of and the people that we serve this, this, these are our riches
- 47:21right here. And they thought that he was
- 47:24being cute. So they killed him.
- 47:26And the way that they killed him was that they, they literally
- 47:28grilled him to death. They put him on a hot grill and
- 47:32he was making jokes while he was being, while he, while he was
- 47:36dying, while he was. And one of the jokes that he
- 47:38made was he said, you can turn me over.
- 47:40I think I'm done now on this side.
- 47:42He said, turn me over. I'm done on this side.
- 47:44I can't even imagine. Imagine, Saint Lawrence, pray
- 47:47for us like grace. The faith and the grace.
- 47:50Yeah, laughing and having joy, making jokes about it.
- 47:53That's. Grace builds in nature.
- 47:58Yeah, we talk about this. At the show, live on nature,
- 47:59Absolutely. And that's our mom was like, how
- 48:01do you grow your virtues? Cuz you're, you know, the
- 48:04theological virtues can grow on your natural virtues and you can
- 48:08develop these and then God confuse them with these
- 48:11supernatural graces for love, for faith, for hope.
- 48:14You know, only a man madly in love into Jesus Christ will like
- 48:18submit himself to be grilled alive.
- 48:20Like that's love right there that's driving him.
- 48:22And it's faith and it's hope. It's all of it.
- 48:24But what do you like? What did it look like in your
- 48:27view? You know, based on what you
- 48:28know, the history, and then also just your, your, your, your
- 48:31opinion on this. You know, theologically
- 48:32speaking, for someone to develop the natural virtue to them be in
- 48:37the position, the state of grace, to receive such an
- 48:40infusion of supernatural virtue and grace that you can say, turn
- 48:44me over. I'm not done yet when you're
- 48:45being tortured to death. Well, let's see.
- 48:52That's the project, right? Like how do we do that?
- 48:54I just like. That can only come out of joy.
- 48:58That can that, that right there is the because the theological
- 49:02virtues are faith, hope and love.
- 49:04The the only thing that could drive a man to to make jokes
- 49:08about being grilled to death or being, you know, or killing
- 49:11your, you know, kissing your executor before he executes you
- 49:14is those those theological virtues of faith and hope and
- 49:18love. You're being so ingraced so
- 49:21perfectly, so full of grace that those virtues are just
- 49:24overflowing that they're able to, that nothing that happens in
- 49:31the world will be able to take your, your, your peace away.
- 49:35Because if you have faith, hope and and love, you will have joy
- 49:37and you'll have peace. But like, even on a human level,
- 49:40if someone is like, you think about somebody like trains for
- 49:43marathons, right? Or they train for like the
- 49:45Olympics, they're like physically, mentally tougher
- 49:49than me, like, you know, than your average person who doesn't
- 49:51do that, right? Yes, it's a virtue of virtue,
- 49:55which isn't a theological virtue.
- 49:56Like a lot of the Romans, like Spartans, they had fortitude
- 49:59like we're going to like, literally like go to our deaths
- 50:01if we need to, like Sparta, like whatever it takes.
- 50:04And we're tough. So you can develop that on a
- 50:06natural level. But I wonder, like these
- 50:08Christians who are giving their lives for Jesus so joyfully,
- 50:11they must have worked really hard on their, their natural
- 50:14virtues in order to receive the OR maybe not because God is
- 50:19power, right? So he could literally give
- 50:20somebody who's like, a couch potato, had never like, you
- 50:23know, really been physically tough, and they could still go
- 50:26to their death with a smile on their face.
- 50:28Think about the apostles. They were cowards.
- 50:30That's true when Jesus was comforting.
- 50:32They were, they ran away when they arrested our Lord.
- 50:34They ran away like cowards, right?
- 50:36They ran away like cowards. But then what happened?
- 50:40You know, You know, on the third day our Lord rises and then 40
- 50:45days later he ascends into heaven.
- 50:48And then for, for about 9 days they were, they were still in
- 50:51the upper room and they were still afraid.
- 50:53But when the Holy Spirit in Acts chapter 2 at Pentecost and the
- 50:58Holy Spirit held upon them. Then you keep reading the book
- 51:02of Acts and you see what Peter and, and all of the apostles
- 51:05and, and, and what Paul, what they were saying to the face of
- 51:08their, of their oppressors. That's divine.
- 51:12That's just divine. There's no other.
- 51:14There's no other way. How you know?
- 51:15How you know? Did the apostles really work on
- 51:19their natural virtues for 40 days while Jesus is with them?
- 51:21The resurrected Lord, I'm sure. Special boot camp, but you know,
- 51:24special. 40 day boot camp for, for natural virtue, but for when
- 51:27you read about what they did in the book of Acts, you're like,
- 51:30there's no, there's no way there's no way.
- 51:34Like that's just a supernatural. That's just a supernatural
- 51:36grace, a gift because that's part of the strength of the of
- 51:40the the the credibility of the faith and why we should believe
- 51:44it to be true is because most of the early Christians, the
- 51:48ancient Christians that they would willingly go to their
- 51:51death willingly in the in masses.
- 51:57Like when else do you see that in history where where where a
- 52:00large group of people, a a community, a religion, whatever
- 52:03it is that they all at the same time willingly.
- 52:05Let's go to our death because we're.
- 52:09Crazy. Wills does that.
- 52:11The other big teaching that was so I think earth shaking was the
- 52:17treatment of other people in terms of when they've wronged
- 52:20you or are your enemy. Because again, in the Roman
- 52:24Empire, it's like you conquer your enemy, you Vanquish your
- 52:28enemy, you loot and rage your enemy.
- 52:31You know, you, you ransacked the town, you know, like, and not to
- 52:35say there were no rules of engagement in terms of warfare,
- 52:37because there were, but the Christian, you know, and
- 52:40obviously pacifism can maybe be an extreme element of, you know,
- 52:44an extreme taking it too far. But the Christian way was, you
- 52:47know, and you, you turn your cheek right.
- 52:50You give someone asking you, you know, pressing on you for your
- 52:53stuff. You give it to them, to them,
- 52:55You know someone asks for something of you, you give it
- 52:57freely. It's radical.
- 52:59It's radical. That's something else that did
- 53:01not exist in the that that that didn't.
- 53:04Honestly, I didn't even exist, like in Judaism, an ancient, you
- 53:07know? Yeah.
- 53:07It was an eye for an eye. It was an eye for an eye.
- 53:09Tooth for a tooth. Yeah.
- 53:10They hit you on one cheek, you hit the other cheek because.
- 53:12It's justice. It's justice.
- 53:14Right. But our Lord, you know, again,
- 53:16like you said, grace, you know, grace builds on on nature,
- 53:21right, right. But you, you need a whole lot of
- 53:25grace to be able to trend the other cheek when somebody when
- 53:30somebody slaps you, you need a whole lot of grace for that.
- 53:34But all of the early Christians did it.
- 53:38So why can't we do it? We should do it.
- 53:42We honestly, there's a lot more of us now in the world back then
- 53:44and we and we live in these circumstances.
- 53:46We're so relaxed and we're so, you know, we have so much
- 53:49liberty, so much freedom. Why can't we live good, You
- 53:52know, virtuous Christian lives. It seems like it's always, it
- 53:56isn't until we get persecuted that we kind of wake up and
- 53:58realize like this is something that we, we should be willing to
- 54:01die for. I think that's the, the, the,
- 54:05the problem with getting a little, a little too
- 54:07comfortable, a little too comfortable is that you kind of
- 54:09get lazy and you kind of forget. You start to forget.
- 54:12That's what we always need to remember the Saints.
- 54:15We always need to remember the early Christian martyrs.
- 54:17We always need to remember how old of the apostles died, how
- 54:20they were all killed, how they were martyred, how they were
- 54:22persecuted not only back then, but today.
- 54:25I know. It's still happening.
- 54:27Today and still happening today. I think about, you know, Saint
- 54:30Clair of Assisi and Saint Francis.
- 54:31Oh my goodness, I. Remember going to Assisi and
- 54:33then I did a little pilgrimage there and there was this little
- 54:36Chapel for of Saint Claire's. And it's like, you know,
- 54:39learning about her and her words, her life.
- 54:41Obviously Saint Francis too. And their spiritual friendship
- 54:43was so beautiful too, and so like and so dramatic too.
- 54:46It's like that there are these profound spiritual friendships
- 54:48between men and women that were consecrated and celibate instead
- 54:51of part. The writings were that they
- 54:53wrote to each other. It's beautiful.
- 54:54Beautiful. But one of the things she said
- 54:56that like just really caught my eye was with you, Jesus, the
- 55:01suffering is sweet. The sickness is sweet because
- 55:03she suffered a lot. She had all these physical
- 55:05maladies. And then in addition to that,
- 55:06she actually wore, you know, I don't remember exactly if it was
- 55:09like a chain or basically a mortification to remind them of
- 55:14their need for Jesus and to offer those sufferings for him.
- 55:17But anyway, she had a lot of sufferings and she was like,
- 55:19suffering is sweet with Jesus. And I just think about like the
- 55:22modern sensibility in my, in my own life, like, oh, you know, I
- 55:25have to do something tough. And I'm like, you know, there's
- 55:28like this, like, you know about it.
- 55:29And it's like, no, like with Jesus, you can allow like the
- 55:33martyr is the ultimate example, right, of that of, you know,
- 55:37save. But Christ, like Christ is the
- 55:38example of it. But the martyr dying for Christ,
- 55:41that suffering is sweet to them because it's for Jesus.
- 55:43But anything in our life can be an opportunity to suffer for
- 55:47Jesus. Being a good spouse is a great
- 55:49way to do that. Being a good parent, being a
- 55:51good, a good, you know, son, daughter, being a good citizen
- 55:56of your country, that's hard. That's a That's a forgotten art.
- 55:59That's hard, you know, suffer. Well, a lot of people don't
- 56:02realize how much the New Testament talks about suffering.
- 56:05Read the Epistles of Peter, read, read James.
- 56:07And it's all about fortitude. It's all about Christian
- 56:10fortitude and it's all about suffering and suffering Well,
- 56:13and how, you know, read Second Corinthians.
- 56:16What I believe it's, it's in Second Corinthians, it's a whole
- 56:19chapter where Saint Paul, literally, he's lists out all of
- 56:22the terrible things that happened to him, all the
- 56:24terrible things that happened to him during his and everything.
- 56:26Else the. Shipwrecks and everything.
- 56:28It's the Second Corinthians. I want to say the second
- 56:30Corinthians. You can pull it up. 13 is it?
- 56:32That's the final chapter of that, of that epistle.
- 56:34But he goes through every everything that had happened to
- 56:38him, everything, all the ways that they try to kill them, the
- 56:40way they try to murder him. And he and he just like, like
- 56:45nothing. And he says, and you keep going
- 56:47because for, for Christ, you know, you do all of this for,
- 56:50for Christ. You can't go wrong.
- 56:53Learning about the early Christians and their faith, or
- 56:57the martyrs or the Saints and their faith like it, can only
- 56:59increase our faith and inspire us to love God more.
- 57:03Right. Oh, I found it at 2nd
- 57:05Corinthians 11. 11 OK read. Read it to us.
- 57:08So if you go to 2nd Corinthians, So if you go to 2nd Corinthians
- 57:1111, starting in verse 16, this is all about Paul's sufferings
- 57:15as an apostle. And, and before he gets to this,
- 57:18he talks about the importance for, for the importance of, of
- 57:22charity, the importance of generosity and giving.
- 57:26So he's talking about all of these virtuous things, this.
- 57:28Is to the early Christians. And this is to the to the
- 57:31Christians in Corinth, this is the second appeal to them.
- 57:33He says you need to be generous. You need to be generous in
- 57:35giving, you need to give all of yourself to to each other and to
- 57:39God. And then in 2nd Corinthians 11,
- 57:41starting in verse 16, he says this.
- 57:43He says, I repeat, let no one think me foolish.
- 57:48But even if you do, then accept me as a fool.
- 57:51So I too may boast a little what I am saying.
- 57:55I say, not with the Lord's authority, but as a fool in this
- 57:58boastful confidence, since many boast of worldly things, I too
- 58:01will boast. So I, I love the way that Paul
- 58:03sets things up, the way he sets things up.
- 58:06He says, OK, he says, I'm going to brag a little bit because I'm
- 58:10going to brag a little bit. I'm going to show you what,
- 58:11what, what I like to boast about.
- 58:13Let me tell you what, what, what I'm proud of what my boastings.
- 58:17And then he goes on to say in verse 19, For you gladly bear
- 58:20with fools, being wise yourselves.
- 58:22So he's kind of being like you. You're so wise.
- 58:24Well, bear with a fool like me, he says, for you, bear it.
- 58:27If a man makes slaves of you, or preys upon you, or takes
- 58:30advantage of you, or puts on airs, or strikes you in the
- 58:33face, to my shame, I must say we were too weak for that.
- 58:38But whatever anyone dares to boast of, I'm speaking as a
- 58:41fool. I also dare to boast of that.
- 58:45Are they Hebrew? So am I.
- 58:46Are they Israelites? So am I.
- 58:47Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I?
- 58:49Are they servants of Christ? I'm a better one, and I'm
- 58:52talking like a madman, With far greater laborers and far more
- 58:56imprisonments, with countless beatings and often near death.
- 58:59Five times I have received at the hands of the Jews the 40
- 59:02lashes, less, 1/3 times I have been beaten with rods.
- 59:06Once I was stoned. Three times I have been
- 59:09shipwrecked. A night and a day.
- 59:10I have been adrift at sea on frequent journeys, in danger
- 59:14from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own
- 59:18people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in
- 59:22the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brethren, and
- 59:26toil and hardship through many a sleepless night, and hunger and
- 59:30thirst, often without food and cold and exposure.
- 59:34And apart from other things, there is the daily pressure upon
- 59:37me of my anxiety for all the churches.
- 59:40Who is weak and I am not weak. Who is made to fall, and I am
- 59:45not indignant. If I must boast, I will boast of
- 59:48the things that show my weakness.
- 59:51The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, he who is blessed
- 59:54forever, knows that I do not lie.
- 59:57So he goes on to talk about everything that he's suffered as
- 1:00:00as an apostle. So he's kind of like being a
- 1:00:02father, admonishing, like, hey, you guys are going to complain.
- 1:00:04You guys, you know, almost almost be the biggest fool
- 1:00:07you've ever seen because look at everything that I willingly went
- 1:00:09through for this. And that inspired the church.
- 1:00:14I mean, that's what's so incredible and it should inspire
- 1:00:17us today. It was it was what he wrote
- 1:00:19there in 2nd Corinthians 11, that all of those early murders,
- 1:00:22they've got that letter in the head and they're like, I want,
- 1:00:25let me, yeah, let's do it, Let's do it.
- 1:00:27You know, Paul was Paul was like that coach in the locker room
- 1:00:29that just, you know, hypes up the football team and gets ready
- 1:00:32to go out there and and how do you send?
- 1:00:35These letters, when they're under persecution, I mean that
- 1:00:38in that in and of itself was a dangerous task.
- 1:00:41It was communication, very dangerous.
- 1:00:43Text messages. Yeah, it DMS very dangerous.
- 1:00:46So they would write the letters in secret.
- 1:00:49So Paul, there's a wonderful movie maybe you've seen it's
- 1:00:51called Paul the Apostle of Christ.
- 1:00:53Paul the Apostle of Christ is such an amazing movie.
- 1:00:55And you see that when he's in prison, when he's, when he's in
- 1:00:58a Roman jail, the way that it worked in that's another thing
- 1:01:01in the ancient world when they would imprison people, the, the,
- 1:01:06the, the people that ran the jails, you know, whatever you
- 1:01:10call them, they did not have the obligation to feed them.
- 1:01:13They'll put you in a Roman jail and you don't need, we're not
- 1:01:15going to give you clothing. We're not going to give you
- 1:01:17food. We're not going to give you
- 1:01:18anything. No, no bed to sleep on.
- 1:01:20You're going to be in a hole in the ground.
- 1:01:22And we, you better hope that you have somebody that loves you to
- 1:01:25bring you water and bring you food because we're not giving
- 1:01:27you anything. And if you die in that, in that
- 1:01:29jail, it's your fault because you're the one that got yourself
- 1:01:31in jail. So it was the early Christians
- 1:01:34that they, they would go and they would actually feed all the
- 1:01:37imprison, not just the Christians, but also even the
- 1:01:39non Christians. They would go and they would
- 1:01:41give them food and they would share the gospel with them.
- 1:01:43They'd give them water, you know, they would bring them
- 1:01:46clothing and they would share the gospel with them.
- 1:01:49So that the prison ministry started also in the ancient
- 1:01:52church when they were ministering even to, to non
- 1:01:54Christians, when Paul found himself in prison, which
- 1:01:57happened a couple of times. It shows that like Luke, his,
- 1:02:01you know, Saint Luke, who wrote the Gospel of Luke, that would
- 1:02:03go and that Luke would actually be writing down.
- 1:02:06Paul would be like preaching and Luke would actually write down
- 1:02:08what Paul was saying. And then he would, you know, he
- 1:02:10would hide them in his, you know, in his, in his bag,
- 1:02:13whatever it was. And then he'd go and he'd give
- 1:02:15copies of the letters to, to different churches.
- 1:02:17And that's how it spread. And they did that so much that,
- 1:02:21you know, each church that got a letter, they would copy him
- 1:02:23down. As you know, they would make
- 1:02:25multiple, multiple, multiple copies of each letter.
- 1:02:27And then they would all pass them around and eventually all
- 1:02:30of the letters got passed around the entire universal church.
- 1:02:32And they'd be read in homes like during their liturgy of the
- 1:02:35like, around the time of the Liturgy of the Word or their
- 1:02:37gatherings or the Liturgy of the Eucharist in the gatherings.
- 1:02:40They would even read them like in the, you know, like the
- 1:02:42Christians that were in Jerusalem before the temple was
- 1:02:44destroyed in the year 70. They would actually read them.
- 1:02:47You know, they would read the Hebrew Scriptures and then they
- 1:02:49would read the writings of the apostles, you know, during the
- 1:02:52Liturgy of the Word. And that's exactly what we do
- 1:02:54today. We read in the, in the, you
- 1:02:56know, in, in church, we read the, the like in the Roman
- 1:02:59literature, we have a reading from the Old Testament, A Psalm,
- 1:03:03a New Testament reading, a gospel reading.
- 1:03:05That's exactly what the ancient Christians were doing back then.
- 1:03:08And even having, even having those writings was bold because
- 1:03:12if you got caught that you were, that you were, that you were
- 1:03:14copying, that you were ascribed, that was copying these writings
- 1:03:16down so that you could distribute them to all of the
- 1:03:18churches. There were penalties for that,
- 1:03:20including even even death. So if you got caught with one of
- 1:03:23those writings on you, it would not be good.
- 1:03:27And they risked it. They risked it.
- 1:03:28It was like the Scriptures, the New Testament writings of the
- 1:03:31apostles. It was like contraband, you
- 1:03:33know, And so crazy. If you get caught with him,
- 1:03:35you're cooked, as the kids say, like Saint Lawrence got cooked.
- 1:03:40He got grilled, right? He got literally, you're
- 1:03:42grilled. Yeah.
- 1:03:44All right, voice of reason, what is your favorite?
- 1:03:46Let's let's close out this fascinating conversation.
- 1:03:49Thank you. Always so good.
- 1:03:50To talk to you, what is your What would be a favorite book
- 1:03:53you would recommend on this stuff to people listening?
- 1:03:55On what specifically about and? Just early church that you like
- 1:03:58or the the impact of Christianity and western
- 1:04:00civilization? There is a great book I'm.
- 1:04:03Gonna see if you're gonna do my I have.
- 1:04:05One you have one you want me to go first?
- 1:04:07You go first. I'm gonna see.
- 1:04:08So there's actually a a just it's a very on the north title.
- 1:04:12It's called the Catholic Church Build Western Civilization.
- 1:04:15That's what it's called. That's the one.
- 1:04:17That's the one. That's the that's the one.
- 1:04:19OK, I don't know. If I've read that one, it's
- 1:04:21called the Catholic Church Built.
- 1:04:23Western Civilization. Right.
- 1:04:25That's the one Catholic who who wrote that. 10 Woods.
- 1:04:29Thomas E Woods, yes. All right.
- 1:04:30That's the one. Guys, get this book.
- 1:04:32It's fascinating. My book, my wreck.
- 1:04:34My shout out is going to be to the OG Rodney Stark.
- 1:04:38And he wrote a ton of books, but one of them that probably best
- 1:04:41encapsulate a lot of this stuff that I love is The Triumph of
- 1:04:44Christianity. How the Jesus Movement, what's
- 1:04:47his full title here, How the Jesus movement became the
- 1:04:48world's largest religion? But it's very cool.
- 1:04:51Like he looks as a sociologist, like tracking how civilization
- 1:04:55changed and why it changed. And I love his stuff debunking
- 1:04:58the dark ages. Right.
- 1:05:00Oh yeah. Like it was not dark.
- 1:05:01The dark ages were not dark. There were some massive rapid
- 1:05:04development in civilization. Yes, that was and the reason.
- 1:05:07That's another episode the. Reason they call it the Dark
- 1:05:09Ages because it was the church that was spearheading, yes,
- 1:05:12everything, all of the advances in science and art and
- 1:05:15everything. It was all the church that did
- 1:05:18it. So they call it the Dark Ages
- 1:05:19because it was. I guess they don't like that it
- 1:05:20was the Church of Jesus Christ that that did that.
- 1:05:23Awesome. It's amazing voice of reason.
- 1:05:24Thanks again for sitting down. Always a pleasure to talk to
- 1:05:27you. La de Rose, thank you for having
- 1:05:28me. It is always a pleasure to be
- 1:05:30talking to you and we'll, we'll keep going.
- 1:05:31We'll keep up the good work. You as well.
- 1:05:33You, just so you know, you are one of my heroes.
- 1:05:35Thank you SO. That's very nice.
- 1:05:36Thank you for everything that you're doing.
- 1:05:38Thank you for the one for inviting me to this wonderful
- 1:05:40event this past weekend. The live action summer was
- 1:05:43amazing and anything I can do for you, you let me know.
- 1:05:45You got it. Thank you.
- 1:05:46God bless you. Keep it up and a huge thank you
- 1:05:53to EWTN Eternal Word Television Network, which is the largest
- 1:05:56religious broadcaster in the world.
- 1:05:58You can get access to Lila Rose Show episodes 24 hours in
- 1:06:03advance at ewtn.com. Slash on demand and a big thank
- 1:06:06you to EWTN and their incredible mission to bring souls to Jesus.