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If I do not know who I am, I cannot know what to do or even what will make me happy. Joe Heschmeyer explains why Christ has the definitive answer on each person’s identity, and how meeting him settles our identity questions.
Cy Kellett:
Is it possible to know yourself without knowing Jesus? Joe Heschmeyer right now on Focus.
Hello and welcome to Focus, Catholic answers podcast for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your host, and these are without question confused times and among the things that we’re confused about, and this is kind of frightening, is our own identities. Who are we? What are we? What are we made of? What are we made for? All that is up for grabs, and the problem with it is, if you don’t know who you are, you don’t know how to act. Our actions come from our understanding of ourselves and our circumstances.
So we have Joe Heschmeyer here today with us, he’s the author of a couple of great books. So one of them, Pope Peter, is published by Catholic Answers, and, Finding Yourself in Christ, the other one, we’ll kind of focus on that one today with Joe. The question is, who am I, and what does Jesus have to say about that?
Remember to subscribe to Focus on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts so that you’ll be notified when new episodes are released. And please give us that five star review, it really helps to grow the podcast. All right. Here’s what Joe has to say about finding your identity in Christ.
Cy Kellett:
Joe Heschmeyer, author of, Pope Peter, defending the church’s most distinctive doctrine in a time of crisis. You’re also the author of another book.
Joe Heschmeyer:
I am.
Cy Kellett:
What’s the name of that one?
Joe Heschmeyer:
Who am I, Lord? Finding your Identity in Christ.
Cy Kellett:
And that’s from Our Sunday Visitor Press.
Joe Heschmeyer:
It is indeed.
Cy Kellett:
Very wonderful press. One of the top two. Do you know what the other one is?
Joe Heschmeyer:
Ignatius.
Cy Kellett:
I was going to say Catholic Answers Press, because that’s who published your other book.
Joe Heschmeyer:
I am so embarrassed, I had no idea.
Cy Kellett:
But I can’t believe you just dogged out your own publisher. Oh, that’s shameful. But there’s a question of identity right there. All right. So the question of identity, why? what’s important about the question of identity? Why do you want to get to that?
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah, so I think the question identity is huge for two reasons. And I realize that sounds so vague to people right now. Hopefully as you listen to this episode, it’ll make more sense.
Joe Heschmeyer:
We need to know who we are. And that sounds so weird. We make entire movies about how terrible it would be to go through life without knowing who you are. For instance, Bourne Identity. The whole movie is like, here’s a guy who woke up not knowing who he is and therefore not knowing how to act. And that’s the thing, identity is the foundation of action. So if you are on a soccer field, you need to know which team you’re on. You need to know what your position is. You need to know if you’re a ref, you need to know if you’re a fan who has wandered on to the field. Because knowing that question dictates how you ought to act, it dictates how you ought to behave.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
And of course everything much bigger than that in life. When Kate Middleton becomes a Royal, her whole life changes because this aspect of her identity changes.
Cy Kellett:
Right. And so she cannot act the way she might have acted otherwise.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Might have before. Right. For instance, she can’t give autographs because there’s a risk of forgery. So the Royals aren’t allowed to give autographs. There’s a whole rubric about how eating works, because you turn first to the person on your left and then to the person on your right, when you’re dining with a Royal, all of this stuff, her life is heavily regimented now because she has this Royal identity. And this book says, it’s good that we want to know what our identity is because knowing that, we know how to behave, knowing that we know who we are, which is even more fundamental than how we behave. But the bad thing is we’ve been answering this question pretty badly for a long time now.
Cy Kellett:
Okay, so for a long time, give me an idea. How long are you thinking of?
Joe Heschmeyer:
Well, if you look at our last names, a lot of people’s last names are based on the job some ancestor of theirs had. That’s not definitive. That can be fine, but it often can point to the idea that someone was a little too invested in their job, that their social role, that they were the Miller or the Taylor or whatever.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Dictated how they thought of themselves. And again, if you’re trying to distinguish-
Cy Kellett:
That’s why Cohen was the best last name in the world.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah, because it means priest.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Right. Okay. So at least since we’ve been assigning these last names to ourselves, but it seems to me that the question of identity is connected to. like, okay, you gave the soccer field analogy, which is beautiful. Like, if you’re the ref, you’re going to have a whole different set of behaviors than if you’re the forward on this team or the goalie on that team.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. But it seems to me that in the modern world, we don’t know where we are at all. We are utterly confused about, is this a soccer field? Is this another planet? Because we have fundamentally conflicting stories about what the world is, what the foundations of the world are and how you know for certain what’s happening around you. So having no good theory of knowledge or metaphysics, we are just in the wind.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah. There’s something huge about that. So there’s a whole realm of philosophy that talks a lot about language in the modern age. And Christianity actually has a lot to say about that. Think about it, don’t worry I’m circling back to exactly what you’re saying. The Christian account of creation is that its creation through speech. God speaks the world into existence. The word is made flesh, Adam’s first job in the garden is the naming of animals. And there’s this whole sense of naming, of saying a thing and what it is, and identity and all of that. Like, this is X. That is critical for there to be a world at all in any meaningful sense. And it’s that, that really is under fire. So there’s a part in the book where I talk about Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll, talks about how words mean whatever he wants them to mean.
And it’s all a question of power and who is going to have power? Him are the words? And he’s very explicit about that. Humpty Dumpty has a lot of modern followers. People who say, I’m going to dictate my gender. I’m going to dictate the nature of reality, the meaning of words like marriage, all of that stuff is pretty modern kind of political issues, but it really goes to a pretty foundational thing. Is it okay to say two plus two is four? Not just for me, but for you and for everyone regardless of culture, or is that oppressive and we need to be free of the shackles of logic and identity and names of anything. Like Humpty Dumpty is in in a way the enemy of identity, because if words mean anything and everything you want them to mean, they mean nothing.
Cy Kellett:
Right. Right. So do I have to solve the … At what Walker Percy called the San Andreas fault in the modern mind is, we believe in human rights. We believe that those rights come from God or they’re conferred on us, and we also believe that the world is a purely material reality. And he says, it’s not a matter of there’s people on each side of this divide, he said, the divide goes right down the middle of us as individuals.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah. I think, yeah. There’s a way we need to at least acknowledge that exists and confront it and wrestle with it.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Do we have to have it totally alleviated? not immediately.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
But the more it’s present, the more we have falsehood mixed in with truth, and the more damage that’s going to do. If you don’t know that you’re not just a body, if you don’t know that you’re not just Adam, that you’re not just an animal, you don’t know who you are in a meaningful sense. And as a result, you’re never going to be the person you were meant to be.
Cy Kellett:
Okay. So, but then what strikes me is that we become very, almost obsessive about claiming identities for ourselves.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Ah, yes.
Cy Kellett:
Like because the world is so maybe, as I said, in the wind, it’s just being blown about, we insist on and demand that certain aspects be our identity and we’ll take no compromise on it.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah. Until a few years ago, Facebook had two gender options, male and female. And they grew that list to 72. And that was viewed as too restrictive. So now they have a fill in the blank, choose your own identity option.
Cy Kellett:
I didn’t even know this.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Because people know people couldn’t be forced into 72 boxes.
Cy Kellett:
No, that’s ridiculous. What kind of world is this?
Joe Heschmeyer:
I know. But it speaks to this, if reality is at bottom meaningless, then it’s for us to define it. The same way if you go out and look at the clouds, you say, it looks like a rabbit to me, I’m free to say it looks like a duck, because it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t actually mean anything. If all of reality is like that, then you can come up with whatever identity you want. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t matter. And it makes you feel powerful. It makes you feel special and important. It makes you feel different and unique. And that’s the appeal.
Cy Kellett:
And maybe you need that, frankly. I hate to interrupt you, but maybe you need that, those special feelings and all that, because your father and mother didn’t live in the same house together and you’re deeply hurt. And you didn’t get a stable, at school you got crazy people teaching you. Not everywhere is that the case, but in some places it’s the case.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Well and all of us on some level need that special and unique feeling.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Yeah. But maybe it’s made worse by the fact that so many of us are traumatized by the conditions of our society, particularly, divorce I think.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah. I think you’re right on the money there. I also think a lot of people into it, that there’s something very dehumanizing and impersonal about the atheist, purely material account of the world. That if you’re just a cosmic accident and you’re just an animal, something in the human spirit will not settle for that answer. And it’s worth noting that that’s not what … The ancient cultures in the world, regardless of whether they were Christian or not, regardless of whether they were Jewish or not, they didn’t settle for that kind of answer. There’s something in the human spirit that will not brooke it. So I think there’s part of that rebellion. It’s not bad that people want to be special and unique.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, right. It’s not bad. Because they are special and unique.
Joe Heschmeyer:
They are special and unique.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Exactly. And in fact, this is the radical Christian promise, revelation 2:17, that to the one who triumphs, Jesus promises to give both the hidden mana, which is a Eucharistic reference and a new name known only to him.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Talk about special and unique.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
God has a name for you that more fully says who you are than any name you have on earth, any title you have on earth and only he knows what that name is.
Cy Kellett:
So you’re saying there’s a hunger out there for who am I and to have an identity.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
And I would say, and I don’t know if you, but you agree with me, that a lot of this hunger is exaggerated and keyed up because of social trauma.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah, absolutely.
Cy Kellett:
Because it’s very upset age to live in. Kids are upset by the time they’re three.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
And not in a normal three-year-old way of upset, but upset, like adults made them upset. Okay. So how is Christ the key to finding my identity?
Joe Heschmeyer:
Great question. If you want to know what a thing is, if you want to know the meaning of a book, you probably want to talk to the author at a certain point.
Cy Kellett:
Oh yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
So if you’re created, you want to know who you are, you need to talk to the creator. The beginning of [inaudible 00:11:38], Pope John Paul II talks about this, that we have both faith and reason. And these are the two wings by which we can reach God. And through that, he says, come to know who we are, which is a part that I don’t ever hear people talk about. You don’t know who you are if you don’t know whether you’re a cosmic accident or a creation made especially by the creator. That’s a huge difference. If you don’t know if the box you got is your Christmas gift, or just some package that was left over because there’s an empty box, you don’t know what the gift is. You don’t even know if it is a gift. You don’t know the basic things about it. So it is with us. You can know your height and weight and all of that, but you don’t know who you are unless you know whether or not you’re created.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
So in Matthew 16, and I know you and I have talked about this before, Jesus says, who am I? And it’s only when Simon says, you are the Christ, the son of God, that he can turn around and tell Simon, you are Peter. And upon this rock, I’ll build my church. In other words, only when Simon understands who Jesus is, is he able to discover who he is, who Simon is. And he sees this whole dimension, Peter, he could never have found by himself. He could spend his whole life naval gazing and never get to, I’m the first Pope. He would best be like, I’m a decent-
Cy Kellett:
You can’t get there.
Joe Heschmeyer:
You just can’t. And so if we want to know who we are and who we’re meant to be and who we’re made to be-
Cy Kellett:
we’ve got to talk to the boss.
Joe Heschmeyer:
We got to talk to the boss.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. We’ve got to talk to Jesus who knows, beCause he made us.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Exactly.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. You love Peter.
Joe Heschmeyer:
I love Peter.
Cy Kellett:
So this book, Pope Peter, is out. And then you’ve got this identity book where you use Peter as your example, and then you were telling me, Peter is your confirmation.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah. And so it’s funny, because it’s the same passage in Matthew 16, but looking at two totally different dimensions of it, we often talk about 19:16 for the papal dementia, which is of course it’s about.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
But it’s also about identity. It’s also about like-
Cy Kellett:
You know who you are when you know who I am.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Exactly, yeah.
Cy Kellett:
That’s what Jesus, that’s what the gospel is saying about Jesus.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Exactly.
Cy Kellett:
That I’ll let you know who you are. You got to just know who I am and then I can confer that on you.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah. And it’s okay. It’s okay to want to know that. It’s okay to say, I want to be special and unique. I want to have a mission. I want to have a role.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
That’s not arrogance. That’s just recognizing you exist for a reason.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Yeah. All right. So tell me about the structure of the book, Joe.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Okay. So the structure is what’s called the diptych, which is based on this. So in medieval art, they would have these paintings that belonged together. They were often hinged together.
Cy Kellett:
Oh yeah, yeah. I know it’s talking about it.
Joe Heschmeyer:
You know what I mean? And so someone just, like the Gint [crosstalk 00:14:17].
Cy Kellett:
I was just going to say, yeah, good, good.
Joe Heschmeyer:
That’s a triptych. So it has three.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Diptych has two.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Joe Heschmeyer:
So it’s paintings that belong together. They have something in common and they have something different. So there’s one I actually use an example in the book that you can see what it looks like, and it shows the crucifixion on one side and it shows the last judgment on the other, because the crucifixion appears to be the triumph of evil over goodness, the triumph of evil over even Christ. So you see Christ elevated on the cross, on the left. On the right, you have the last judgment, where you see Christ enthroned, judging the living and the dead. And a lot of the same people who are condemning him now very clearly evil is no longer in control. And the people who were mourning are now rejoicing, that sort of idea.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Joe Heschmeyer:
So you’re seeing these two things that belong together and they inform one to the other. You don’t understand the crucifixion fully without understanding the last judgment. You don’t understand the last judgment fully without understanding the crucifixion.
Cy Kellett:
Got it. Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
So this book is kind of structured in half. There’s eight chapters, the first four chapters look at aspects of Christ’s identity. For instance, Christ is the image of God. Colossians 1:15 says he is the image of the invisible God, but Genesis one says we are made in the image of God. So the first four chapters are Christ’s identity. The last four chapters are our identities, but they are built in structure and in parallel. So it’s-
Cy Kellett:
Clever you. Joe, good work. So you explore the identity of Christ, the who he is.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
I got to get this book, man. And then in the second part, you-
Joe Heschmeyer:
Look at the corresponding identities for us. What does it mean? You don’t understand what it means to be made in the image of God if you don’t know Jesus Christ is the image of God.
Cy Kellett:
Right. Right. So what are some of the things that you explore?
Joe Heschmeyer:
So that’s the first pair. The second pair is Christ is the son of God. And we are made children of God.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Well, and that’s pretty self explanatory. How are you and I sons of God, how is that different than saying Jesus is son of God. What is different also what’s the same, and what is sort of analogously related. The third is he is the name above all names. And so we talked a little bit about the role of names. Names are huge, and there’s this constant reference to the name of Jesus and baptizing in the name of the father and son and the Holy spirit and Christ being the name above all names. What does that mean? And then what does it mean that he promises to give us a new name?
So oftentimes, even very good Christians spend a lot of time not thinking about names. It’s just something that goes totally whizzes by, but names are critically important. Actually, if I may, there’s this great description in Helen Keller’s autobiography. It’s really powerful where she talks about that famous scene. I think it’s in The Miracle Worker when Ms. Sullivan teaches her how to sign the word for water. And she suddenly understands what language is, and understands that, because she’d been confused what the difference was between water and mug and all of these things are cup and, because she couldn’t figure out the difference between these words. So she takes her out and just runs water over her hands at the pump. So now there’s no cup to get confused, and just signs water repeatedly into her hand.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
This is a pivotal moment because Helen learns the power of language, she understands for the first time in her life what language is. But what’s shocking is reading her own account of it. Shortly before that, she had thrown a fit and had a ceramic doll and broke it, just threw it on the floor and it shattered. And she said, she felt no remorse. And the way she describes it, she basically didn’t have object permanence. She said she lived in a dark universe.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
In which nothing lasted, nothing was permanent, because there was no name for anything. There was no way of distinguishing one thing from another thing. And after she learns how to sign the word for water and after she realizes things have names, things have identities. She was then struck with sadness at this broken doll.
Cy Kellett:
At the loss of the doll.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
The world of names opened up the world of identity for her.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
We never talk about names as being important like that. So there’s a whole mess to unpack there about names and identity. And then the last pair, Christ is Lord and God, and we are destined for divinization.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
We are destined to be what Saint Peter describes as partakers of the divine nature. So what does that mean? What does that look like? What does divinization? How does it differ from the Mormon idea that we’re going to become gods of our own universe?
Cy Kellett:
Right. Totally.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
It does totally differ.
Joe Heschmeyer:
It does.
Cy Kellett:
But it needs to be explained.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Right. Because there is something that even the Mormon ideas is trying to get at, but taking kind of a weird, basically pagan vision of, whereas what’s the actual Christian promise, because when you read what the catechism says about divinization, for instance, the first time you read it, it’s shocking.
Cy Kellett:
I’m so glad to hear you say that, Joe, because I don’t think enough people are shocked by it. Divinization is the weirdest idea in Christianity, because it’s the most basic and people don’t know it. They don’t know what it means that you are going to be made partakers of the divine nature.
Joe Heschmeyer:
It sounds like, Oh yeah, that sounds nice. I was talking to my brother in law and he was saying, as a kid, he imagined heaven is just sitting on a cloud and looking at God. And he was just like, it sounded so boring.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
And he’s right. That sounds terrible.
Cy Kellett:
Now how about being God?
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
How does that strike you?
Joe Heschmeyer:
That sounds pretty good.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. That’s the way I’m John on the cross said, I’ll be God by participation.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
Is what he said. Not by nature, we can never be God by nature, but by participation.
Joe Heschmeyer:
And if you think about it, even certain words we use, like good, we don’t use these words with the import that they have. So when Jesus says, who is good, but God alone.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
What this means is that when we say someone is good, if we mean it, what we mean is they’re already in some limited way, participating in a divine attribute.
Cy Kellett:
Wow. Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
That’s a cool thing to recognize, like, oh wow, you’re participating in divinity in some limited sense. And we’re going to do that a whole lot more in heaven and it’s going to be meaningful. Like it matters that every person you come in contact with is made to share eternity by participating in divinity.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
That matters. And you should maybe not cut them off in traffic.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
And if they cut you off, you should maybe give them the thumbs up instead.
Cy Kellett:
Did you ever hear what C.S. Lewis said about that?
Joe Heschmeyer:
I quote it actually in the book.
Cy Kellett:
Oh you do?
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
Because it’s a beautiful quote.
Joe Heschmeyer:
In the weight of glory.
Cy Kellett:
He got it.
Joe Heschmeyer:
It’s so beautiful.
Cy Kellett:
Right. That you’d be tempted to worship, if you saw what, I think he says the lowest or the most common person, if you saw what they will be when they’re finished, you would be tempted to get on your knees and worship.
Joe Heschmeyer:
And this is, so in revelation, when John sees the angel, John who has known Jesus, John who understands Jesus in this radical way, twice, he finds himself starting to worship the angel in spite of himself, the angel has to be like, hey, cut it out.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
And Luke 22 says the apostles judge the angels in heaven. Like they are through grace offered something more. Mary is enthroned as queen of heaven and earth. Like if you are not a little tempted to worship Mary, you don’t know who Mary is according to the Bible.
Cy Kellett:
That’s exactly right. It’s a temptation you have to resist, but you should, a healthy person is tempted to worship, an angel is tempted to worship Mary, because the glory of God is shared with them. They’re not just pointing at the glory of God. They are participating in the glory of God.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Exactly. It’s here with the Corona around us.
Cy Kellett:
I see where you are going, so if you know that about your identity and other people’s identity, a lot about how you should live is answered.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Exactly, so my friend, Carlos, I invited him to do something or we were offered, I don’t even remember what it was. It might’ve been camping. He hates camping. And he said, it doesn’t seem fitting to my dignity as a son of God. And he was half joking, but it was such a-
Cy Kellett:
But there’s a lot of things that are.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah. Imagine if every decision you made, like does this buffet fit my dignity as a son of God?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, does Netflix. Does what I’m currently bingeing on Netflix fit the dignity of a son of God.
Joe Heschmeyer:
I’m sweaty at 2:00 PM in the afternoon and I haven’t gotten out of bed and I’m just watching Netflix, is that when I’m called to as a partaker of the divine nature?
Cy Kellett:
I don’t know, you make it sound good the way you describe it.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Covered an Oreo crumbs.
Cy Kellett:
Now you’re making it sound really good. Joe, I get it now. So the understanding our identity is we’ll direct our action in large part because our identity is in fact such a great gift bestowed upon us, a glorious gift. One that really, really calls for gratitude and action that comes from gratitude, not from grasping.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Amen. And I think that this is kind of the antidote to a certain kind of moralism, by which I mean, it’s not just like do this stuff or you’re going to be in trouble.
Cy Kellett:
No. Do you know who you are is more like what it is.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Right.
Cy Kellett:
Would a person like you behave like that?
Joe Heschmeyer:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
That’s not pride.
Cy Kellett:
No.
Joe Heschmeyer:
There is a worldly form of that that is.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
But to know who you are and to live in that is not pride. It’s honesty. It’s truth. And humility is living in the truth. The best expression of this comes from the Magnificant. Mary acknowledges her holiness while simultaneously saying all generations will call her blessing.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
She’s like, everyone is going to think I’m amazing, excluding the Protestants.
Cy Kellett:
Now they don’t-
Joe Heschmeyer:
I’m just kidding.
Cy Kellett:
Be mean to Protestants, speaking with your dignity as a son of god.
Joe Heschmeyer:
-my dignity as a son of god. All generations are going to call her blessing, while simultaneously talking about her loneliness as a handmaiden.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Right.
Joe Heschmeyer:
That’s what it is to live, there’s a false humility that can creep in and make us shy away from this radical identity.
Cy Kellett:
Right. Right. It’s like a Saint Paul bragging, but bragging in the Lord.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Absolutely.
Cy Kellett:
Not bragging.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Because ultimately in the parable of the talents, some guy gets five talents. But even the guy who gets one, a talent is an enormous sum of money.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
So if you said, Oh, I don’t really have that many talents. That is not humility. That is in gratitude. Like if you bought your child a car for their 16th birthday and it was a beautiful top of the line brand new car, and they said, yeah, it’s pretty crummy. That’s not humility because that’s just rude.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Yeah.
Joe Heschmeyer:
So much of what we think humility is, is just shying away from our identity. It’s living in gratitude rather than saying no, no, no, no, no. God made me to be more. He’s empowered me to be more. And I need to just revel in that and live in that.
Cy Kellett:
Joe Heschmeyer, I love your mind. I really always enjoy talking with you. In all, you’re going to think I’m just saying this. Like I said, I always feel like I learn from you. I feel like there’s an order to your mind that is very attractive. I’m so glad that you’re a guest with us from time to time, and I hope you sell a million copies of these books.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Well, thank you. I really appreciate it.
Cy Kellett:
Thanks brother.
Joe Heschmeyer:
Thanks.
Cy Kellett:
In various ways, Pope John Paul used to say things like, Jesus came to reveal God to man, but just as important, he came to reveal man to man, he came to reveal to us who we are so that we would know ourselves. And when we meet him, we begin the process of meeting ourselves. It’s worth doing. If you haven’t met Jesus, you can. Just ask him, say, Jesus, I haven’t met you, I’d like to meet you.
Thanks for joining us on Catholic Answers Focus. Again, our guest was Joe Heschmeyer. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. And we’d love to get emails from you. If it’s a complaint, that’s fine. If it’s a suggestion for a new show, just send it to our email address, focus@catholic.com, subscribe to Focus so that you’ll get notified when new episodes are out there. And if you’re watching on YouTube, please don’t forget to like, and subscribe. That helps as well.
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