 It is amazing, the gifts that the Lord has given so many and we've all been able to receive this amazing scholarship. And I hope you're as inspired as I am to read more, to study more, to pray more, and to benefit really from all of these wonderful men and women who have worked so hard for these degrees. And this morning at 1030, our firstborn is defending his doctorate. And I'm just so proud of him and so proud of his wife who has hung in there through many babies and many challenges. It takes a lot to get through it. But yes, I don't come with that degree. So I thank you for giving me an opportunity to share. Let me just offer one quick prayer. Lord Jesus, we thank you for the concluding talks and mass before we're scattered back to not only the four corners of our country, but other countries as well. We ask, Lord, that you would keep opening our heart to the treasures of the church and we thank you that you've not left us to just wander around and make up Christianity as we go, but that you have revealed truth through those successors to St. Peter and you continue to lead and guide your church. Bless this time together. In your name I pray, amen. You know, the first night Scott said that in scripture we've got prophecy that isn't simply foretelling the future, we have that. But even more, the norm seems to be a lot of foretelling. Proclamation, through our baptism, the Catechism tells us we've been baptized into Christ as priest, prophet, and king. And so his calling of being a prophet to proclaim the truth as a witness is something in which we share, every one of us. How do we do that today? I'm gonna give it a particular focus because this week was the 50th anniversary of Humane Vitae. If you are sitting there saying, hey, I'm not married, so I guess I could check out. This isn't gonna apply to me. I wanna tell you that our holy father wasn't married when he issued this. That there are many, many single people that married couples need you to encourage us, tell us the truth, and maybe find other ways to give us practical support. If you're sitting there saying I'm not married yet, and I'm too young to be considering these things, I wanna tell you it's so foundational. Now's the time to understand it before you are in that committed relationship. And for the rest of us who are sort of slogging it out right in the trenches, but perhaps hitting the grandparent stage, it's still important that we remain steadfast, that we can tell our children and our grandchildren the truth about openness to life, and then how, pray for the ways that we can support them in that. Now where were you 50 years ago when this was promulgated? Well, I was a 10-year-old Protestant girl. I didn't even know where babies came from yet, let alone what contraception might be. But I do have a recollection that the front page of the paper must have said something like Catholic Church rejects the pill or something like that, and my mother picked up the paper with a certain amount of disgust and said, oh my gosh, when is the Catholic Church gonna get into the 21st century? That's a pretty vivid memory. In 1968, it was in the middle of the sexual revolution of the 60s and the 70s, and with the advent of the pill, there was so much confusion. Was the church gonna change? Was the church gonna get with the times, enter the 21st century? And there were priests who thought so. And they were telling people in the confessional, you're fine, you're fine. Things are changing, you're gonna be fine. And I've talked to those people who came to a new understanding later. There was tremendous pressure on the Pope. Even the committee that Pope John the 23rd had drawn together wrote a majority report that countered what was the perennial teaching of the church, and many, many bishops even weighed in and encouraged him to see this as a new time and to have a new way of looking at things. Blessed Paul the 6th pulled back, he fought, he prayed, and he released what is only an 11 page document that rocked this world. If you have not read it, please read it. It's really a profound restatement of the perennial teaching of the church. And if it ignores, if we ignore and to a certain extent we have the very clear teaching, what you see is a prophetic witness of what will happen. And I'll get to that in a few minutes. When it was first issued, one of the criticisms was, oh it's so outlandish to say that if we don't follow this teaching, all these terrible things are gonna happen. And in fact he was very prophetic. 25 years ago we were part of a celebration of the 25th anniversary of Humanae Vitae out in Omaha, Nebraska. And a priest shared a brief testimony. He actually had been part of that group of people that had a coordinated effort to counter the teaching the day it was released. He was at Catholic University, along with many other priests and professors who gathered on the steps and basically said, we will not teach this. We will not follow this. I had no idea there was so much opposition, let alone coordinated opposition. And he was there to bear witness to it and to repent publicly for having been a part of that. And in God's beautiful way, this year Catholic University celebrated the 50th anniversary of Humanae Vitae with an outstanding conference, supporting it, encouraging it, telling people they need to follow it. In 1979 when my father, who was the Presbyterian pastor, met with Scott and made to go over all kinds of things about marriage, one question among many was, what are you doing about contraception? I told him I was on the pill in preparation for getting married. And he just had a brief comment. He said, is your dad, I have some concerns because of the medication, but he said, as your pastor, that's fine. And we just moved on to the next topic. After we got married, August 18th that year, we headed off to Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary where Scott began full-time studies. And after a year, I began to work on a Master of Arts in theology. I signed up for an ethics course. And in this course that the professor had said, we're gonna go over general principles, but everybody will pick a current topic of interest to you. And that's what you can focus on for a special paper. I had done a number of talks against abortion, speaking at youth groups, speaking in people's homes. And there was a lot of misinformation about life, but some of it I was even promoting. I had someone who came up to me and said, what about contraception? And I said, look, you've got to separate these issues. There's contraception before a baby's conceived and abortion is killing the baby after. And then someone very kindly, politely, let me know that I really didn't know quite what I was talking about and that there were forms of contraception that were clearly abortive. And so as I gave those talks, I could see there were issues I wasn't getting into. And so I thought, ah, I can even get course credit for this. This is what I'm gonna do. So birth control was on the list of topics and a group of seven of us actually out of the class met in the back of the classroom. I guess this man thought he was sort of the self-appointed leader and he said, well, it's a Protestant seminary. I don't see any Catholics here. So hopefully we all think that contraception's fine. But he said also hopefully we're all pro-life so we wanna rule out the forms that could be abortive. So probably barrier methods are the only things we could support. Announcing the conclusion of a study that hasn't been done yet. And I said, why do you say because none of us are Catholic? And he said, well, this is something that the Catholic Church says is wrong. And so if we're not Catholic, then we don't have to take that seriously. And it was the first I'd ever heard. And I have Catholic friends. But I'd never heard that contraception was wrong. I said, well, why do Catholics think it's wrong? He said, there are only two reasons. He said, number one, the Pope isn't married. So he doesn't live with the consequences. And he said, second, Catholics are just out to make all the Catholics they can in the world. Would to God that were true. And all I could say was, I can't imagine a thinking person giving those reasons. And he said, if you wanna know why the Catholics think what they think, you go ahead but I couldn't care less. So I took it on as a challenge. I began to study and read and pray. When I came home even that night and Scott said, oh, what issue are you gonna look into? Because he had taken the course earlier. And I said, oh, I'm gonna do contraception. And he said, that's not even an issue, Kimberly. Little did we both know how much. One of the many things I read with Shumane Vitae and in the opening paragraph, just his greeting, it's so cool because he doesn't just greet the Catholic faithful. He greets all people of goodwill. And that included me. You mean he was actually talking to everybody? That was interesting. He spoke about peace of conscience following God's design for marriage. He spoke about the abundant fruits of tranquility and peace that come from self-discipline and about preserving the peace of men's souls by following truth. I mean the topic today is on peace in our homes. Could contraception or rejecting it and embracing God's beautiful design for marriage actually be part of peace within our homes? By reading the document, and we'll unpack it a little bit, it began to expand my vision about marriage and the act of marriage. And it showed me the beauty of the marital embrace in saying yes to God and no to myself. First he spoke about God's beautiful design. Man and woman created in the very image of God. And if you think about it, God wasn't alone and he created man and woman because he was lonely, okay? God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit was a communion, is a communion of life-giving persons. And it's this life-giving communion of persons that called man and woman into existence and didn't just call them into existence, but he blessed them. He blessed them and commanded them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. He made them in his image so that the two could become one and then the one they become could actually, as Scott said the other night, need a name. The two in one become three in one, a family. And it's an imitation of Almighty God. It's an invitation to become life-giving lovers and life-loving givers. Now Scott and I had used very traditional wedding vows, committing ourselves to each other, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health, in plenty and in want, for richer, for poorer, as long as we both shall live. But as I read this document, I was struck by the fact that it was giving an explanation of how we would be living out that vow because when you think about children, it demands all of it. Shared joys and sorrows, a whole lot of money. Giving ourselves, even in terms of health and possibly sickness, we were called to collaborate with Almighty God in the creation of new life. And this new life would bring joy and, as he said, difficulties and hardships. So embracing God's beautiful design for marriage actually gave new fullness to the very vows I had taken. And it did raise a question for me because I realized I had never considered how did scripture speak about children? If you have a Bible, you can turn to Psalm 127. My first revelation was every passage I looked upon children was only and always positive. In fact, even passages that talk about miscarriage or stillbirth only spoke of them in negative terms. It wasn't like a relief to anybody that they weren't gonna have to raise that child. It was sadness, but children were just joy, joy, joy. So I'll read a couple of quick passages here. Psalm 127, starting in verse three. Low sons are a heritage from the Lord. The fruit of the womb are reward, like arrows in the hand of a warrior or the sons of one's youth. Happy is the man whose quiver is full of them. He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gates. You have this picture of this man with all these hulking sons coming up together and mass to the gate of the city and someone sitting back and saying, oh wow, okay, so Scott Hahn and his sons have arrived or somebody else, one of you all out there. Look at Psalm 128. How does it describe the godly man beginning in verse three? Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house. Your children will be like olive shoots around your table. Lo, thus shall a man be blessed who fears the Lord. Is this the way we think about children in our culture? Was this the way I thought about children? Even as a committed Christian who was studying theology, I was very challenged. Children are only and always a blessing. One of my good friends, Molly Kelly, was married to a wonderful Catholic physician and they had eight children. And her children were ages 14 down to 14 months when her son was killed in a tragic sledding accident. Like one in a million odds to die in a sledding accident, he was killed. And we talked about that loss. She said, even though there were so many children to care for after he died, if I could have had more, I would have. Even knowing that he would die because every child refracted our love in a different way. And every child reminds me of Jim in a different way. Children are not a possession to acquire. You get your cat and your dog and your car and you buy your house and then you add your boy and your girl. Children are not an adventure to take. What we've done our travels, we've conquered our careers and now the new adventure on the horizon is parenting a child. Children are a gift to receive. And the catechism says this in 2366. A child doesn't come from outside as something added onto the mutual love of the spouses but springs from the very heart of their mutual giving as it's fruit and fulfillment. With every child you fall in love all over again. And the funny thing is, as you share that love and that child shares his or her love with you and then you have another child and now the love just keeps getting multiplied, the only logical thing is to be open and having another one so you can share it all over again. And this is just as true in adoption as it is from the children that come forth from our own bodies. That child isn't added on but springs from the heart of marital love. Now, there's a Vatican II document that says something really unusual about children. I just had to really think about this one. A child is a gift from the heart of marital love. Vatican II says this. God will admit it's best. Children are, quote, the supreme gift of marriage and contribute very substantially to the welfare of their parents. Now think about that. You know you contribute to their wellbeing. They couldn't survive without you. You don't walk from the hospital and say, okay, now sweetheart, your room's second door on the right. Food's in the fridge and I shop on Tuesdays. That child is dependent on almost everything except breathing and keeping their heart going and for some children they even need help with that. But do you know that they contribute substantially to the wellbeing of their parents? How? Well, when we first got married, I think Scott and I both thought we were pretty selfless. We were ready to jump in and honor this vow and you realize sharing life with another person at that level has challenges. And you realize you are more selfish than you thought you were. But I can tell you, it's nothing compared to having a child. I mean, Scott did not wake me up in the middle of the night and demand to be fed. You know, he... You find out that it's a challenge. How do we refer to children in our culture? One of the most common words that I hear associated with conception is the word accident. Accident? You know, they'll say, was this child planned? No, it was an accident. When you hear accident, what do you think of? Pain, damage, destruction, dismemberment, death. I mean, the image is pretty dramatic but if you have your Bible's open, look at Ephesians 1.4. Do you know there is no such thing as an accident when it comes to a child? Oh, you may not have lined up your thinking with Almighty God. So you may be surprised. But I love this passage from Ephesians 1, starting in verse 3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him. Before your mother and father had any awareness you were on the way, Almighty God from all eternity intended to create you, chose you in Christ before the foundation of the world. It's really not relevant whether or not someone plans to get pregnant. Almighty God did. And pregnancy is a communion with the mystery of life. I remember so many beautiful opportunities when my children would be big enough in utero that they would be moving around and I could feel it. I'd be in a crowd, somebody's talking, maybe you're hearing a talk and all of a sudden that little one starts moving around and it's like a world within you and no one else knows. You're just communing with that little one. You look at Psalm 139 and the poetic description of the creation of a child is so beautiful. It evokes such wonder and awe. This is a soul that will exist for all eternity, no matter how brief a life, no matter how brief. Now, Cumana Vitae refers to natural loss several times and that was something new for me. I benefited greatly from a book by John Kipley called Sex and the Marriage Covenant. He explained it for me. He said there's an order to things. A purpose God has given everything and so for us to have moral, sexual health we need to act in accord with the purpose that God has made for sexual intimacy and here was his image, okay? He asked the question, why do we eat? What's the purpose of eating? Well, we can give lots of reasons why we eat, right? We're hungry, it tastes good. We wanna celebrate, we're sad. It's there and looks inviting. I mean, there are just so many reasons to eat, aren't there? But why would we eat something that's almost repulsive? What would make you eat something horrible if it meant life or death, right? In other words, we eat for nutrition. That's the primary end of eating. In Roman times, we know that in some of their feasts they had tall vases in the corners. They were called vomitoriums. Yes, they would sit and feast and if they wanted to eat more they would go over in the corner and empty their stomachs and then come back and sit down and have more. Now today, if someone eats and makes themselves throw up or if they deny themselves the food they need to sustain their life, we call those eating disorders. It's not ordered for the purpose of eating. It's a very good use of that natural law term. Well, what do we do in sexual relations? We experience oneness. We say that we want to give ourselves to each other and yet in the same act in which I'm saying to my spouse, I am totally yours, you're totally mine, I am saying, except for your life-givings firm, I reject your life-nurturing womb. We have the possibility of speaking one of the most profound truths we can speak with our bodies. That complete gift of self. And yet with contraception, we are vomiting out the contents. We're damaging the sides of the uterus in some cases even affecting an abortion. So instead of speaking that most profound truth, we actually are speaking a lie. We're deciding what's good and evil and doesn't that ring a bell? Doesn't it take you back to the garden? Where is God in this decision? You know, the interesting thing I realized at this point in my study, Scott and I had talked about children but we had never even prayed together about when or how should we get married and be open to life? It, for us, we thought contraception was actually an act of Christian stewardship. This was all new. It was really fascinating. Then I discovered something else. Do you know that before 1930, every single Protestant denomination agreed completely with the Catholic Church's teaching. 1930, think about all the centuries even when there was disunity from the Reformation. Every one of those people and the denominations that spun off from them were in union with the Catholic Church when it came to the act of marriage. What happened in 1930? The Lambeth Conference over in England, the Anglican Conference decided that just for life of the mother, a couple could use contraception. At the end of that year, St. Pius XI gave a beautiful document. If you've not read it, I would urge you to read it on marriage and it covers much more than just openness to life. But this is what he stated categorically, quote, any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature. And those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of grave sin. I don't know to what extent you have understood this before, but in my prophetic call due to my baptism, I am declaring to you today, this is the truth of Almighty God and you and I must live in conformity with it and our culture desperately needs us to speak the truth in love about this. The Catholic Church, and I want to be very clear, condemns contraception and non-medically necessary sterilization. I actually had a man come up to me at a conference once and say, I know contraception's wrong, but sterilization? Like, yeah, yeah, but at a different conference, I had a wonderful woman who came up to me afterwards and I had said something about, you can't be a cafeteria Catholic sort of picking and choosing. She slipped me a note and walked out and the note said, I have a sterilization scheduled for next week. I'm canceling the appointment, the cafeteria is closed, which is so beautiful. Yeah. One of the things Pope Paul VI does in the beginning of this document is he says a number of different current issues that were part of bringing this issue of contraception to the fore and saying, does the church really have the right, the authority to speak to the culture about these particular issues? And he makes it so clear that the church has the authority of Christ to always speak timeless truth into the current time. Now, when I read that, I remember thinking what church? I mean, yes, Jesus founded the church, but what church? I mean, do you really think the Catholic church? The Catholic church is willing to take this stand on this issue, even though it's not popular, even though many Catholics are not following it, she never stops proclaiming the truth to us and it's impressive. I remember saying to Scott, doesn't that blow your mind that a church this big risks saying this? Can I quote you? And he said, even a blind hog finds an acorn, Kimberly. But we both know that as our minds began to be changed and our hearts, this ended up being a part of our journey, opening up our hearts to the fullness of the faith within the Catholic church. Marriage isn't a human invention, it isn't something we made up. God has a design and it involves one man and one woman as husband and wife, not cohabitors. And we are, quote, ministers of the design established by the creator, Humanity 13. To do what? To give ourselves exclusively to each other for love and for life. To cooperate with God to create new life who we also commit to raise faithfully as sons and daughters of God. And to nurture an enduring and fully human love that meets the demands of the vow and grows into very deep unity. We're not just one because we have sex. We are becoming one, one in heart, one in mind, one in spirit, never ceasing to be to individuals. But there's a beautiful plan and you can read more about it in Kasti Kanubi of really growing into what does that unity of life mean? It's exclusive, fruitful and faithful union. In number 11 of Humanae Vitae, Blessed Paul, the sixth is clear, quote, each and every act of marriage must remain open to the transmission of life. God's will is to be done God's way. And it is a prophetic sign for us to live this and proclaim the truth to it. Like there was one time we were on the plane and we had all six children, so we were on, I think, three different rows, scattered a little bit, but each one was helping each other and it was a lengthy flight, I think, from California. At one point, the woman behind me said, how many children do you have? There are a lot of people calling you mom. And I said, oh, I have six. And I think it's always important to communicate the joy you have in your family. People are not as quick to give you a consolation about a large number if you seem joyful. And it's easy for me, I was joyful. And so anyway, as the plane landed, I overheard a conversation between two women. One woman said, how can she be so happy with all those children? And before I could answer, the other woman said, don't you get it? Because she has so many children. And it was like, yes, that's awesome, that's awesome. It's not just against God's law to deprive this gift even partially of its meaning and purpose. It is, quote, repugnant to the nature of man and woman. We are not animals. Don't buy into the idea that we're just monkeys who think a little better. We were created and designed in the image and likeness of Almighty God. And we've been called, if we've been called into marriage, to reflect that life-giving love. This message is not just for Catholics. It's not even just for Christians. This is a human thing. Jesus said in Luke 9.23, if any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. And yes, at times, you may have to insert and take up your baby daily and follow me. It is challenging, but this is what brings the Lordship of Christ into such sharp focus. Scott and I took the Lordship of Christ so seriously. We prayed about tithing even though we had so little money. We gave up our Lord's day and didn't study, even when we had finals the next day because we thought we needed to honor God on Sundays by laying down our work, which at that time was our studies. We wanted to honor God with our resources and we opened our little tiny apartment and had people over and were hospitable. But we didn't even pray about whether or not he needed to be Lord of our fertility. What were we thinking? We were thinking like Americans. We weren't thinking like Christians. Jesus calls us to embrace discipleship more deeply. 1 Corinthians 6 19 to 20, St. Paul says, do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit within you which you have from God? You are not your own. You were bought with the price, so glorify God in your body. We need to glorify God in our bodies through chastity. Marital chastity, which means we commit this beautiful, holy act within marriage to him as well as chastity outside of marriage, not giving our bodies in an act of marriage apart from marriage. Many Christians do not know this because we are not living this well. We have to find the way to share this and we have to find the way to live this. We have a mission. This is what Humanae Vitae says in number 10. Conjugal love requires in husband and wife an awareness of their mission in responsible parenthood. Now what is responsible parenthood? From a contraceptive mindset, it's make sure you don't have babies when you don't want to, plan when it's gonna be convenient and make sure you end it when you're done because you don't wanna have a child you haven't planned. According to the document, it actually means understanding how our bodies work. It's not possible to get pregnant every time you make love. So God's design revealed in nature is not that you get pregnant all the time. If we pay attention to how our bodies work, we will understand a particular rhythm and I'm not talking about the rhythm method. I'm talking about a particular rhythm. Second, we engage our reason and our wills to exercise self-control. Third, considering physical, economic, social, and psychological conditions of both husband and wife, both are valid, both need to be considered and we pray together. Responsible parenthood is exercised either by the deliberate and generous decision to raise a large family or by the decision made for grave reason and with due respect for the moral law to avoid for the time being or even an indeterminate period, a new birth. Yes, we engage our minds. Yes, we engage our self-control but understand that responsible parenthood isn't even reducible down to using natural family planning. Natural family planning is wonderful. I highly recommend people understand it for all kinds of reasons. Responsible parenthood is also saying yes to Almighty God. I will serve you. I will be open. It's developing a right conscience and being faithful. What were the predictions, blessed Paul VI said, if people did not follow this? Marital unfaithfulness will become easier. Do we have any wonder in the last 50 years how much infidelity has occurred, how many divorces have resulted? Second, abortion. At the time he wrote this, only four states in the United States allowed abortion in the early part of pregnancy. Colorado, California, Oregon and North Carolina. Since 1973, it's been legal in the States all 50 states, all nine months. Third, premarital intercourse will become more frequent and moral standards will lower. How many couples engage in casual consensual sex? I remember one time Jay Leno was walking around doing his Jay walking thing and I don't know why but he was asking people, do you go to bars to get picked up? And he asked one particular woman and she said, every weekend. And he was a little surprised at the response and he said, do you even know their names? And she said that would be much too personal. Too personal to know the name, but not too personal to give your body. How many couples who are coming to be married in the parish are already cohabiting? When you think they're practicing NFP, the sin of having sexual intercourse outside of marriage compounded by the sin of contraception, compounded by a very lousy witness to anybody who is aware that they are living together, they're getting married with strikes against them. They're already cutting off the grace that they might be thinking they're getting as they go to mass. And I've had people tell me just the goal is to get them to get to the wedding altar and then it'll be okay. It's like they need to understand there's something to repent of. Men may lose respect for women. Using a wife for selfish enjoyment rather than loving her as a respected and beloved companion and using women outside of marriage. I mean, do we actually even need to go through the litany of how in this bizarre time where women are supposedly pushing for greater respect? At the same time, they're permitting unbelievable objectification of us. The whole Me Too movement shows how much objectification is going on. Increased human trafficking, even in little Steubenville. And certainly pornography is an example of that. And finally, he spoke of the danger that if contraception is legal, political authorities might possibly impose it on people. And there's certainly been a lot of conversation about whether or not justices could impose sterilization for people with mental illnesses and mental handicaps. We have got to address our culture. Blessed John Paul, the sixth knew what he was talking about. And for all those who mocked him for being extremist, we now sadly have the facts about what happens when you don't follow the church's teaching. The church defends the dignity of man and woman and the act of marriage. She proclaims the truth about marital love and she wants to help all faithfully proclaim the truth that she has received from our Lord and gives to us. This is how we have a truly human civilization. Now, he closes with all these incredible pastoral directives. And the first one is speaking to married couples and he talks about the mission we need to embrace to come alongside other married couples. And there are a lot of wonderful ministries that are active, you may be active in them. Couple to couple leagues one, people who teach the Billings Method is another. There are other resources, parish programs that encourage marriage in general and then address this. But what we need for self mastery, sorry, what we need is to develop self mastery. And that's what will bring greater peace and serenity to the family. It helps people become more thoughtful and less selfish. It deepens our sense of responsibility and it gives our children a great example. It's not about the numbers and I think that's really crucial. You know, Mary and Joseph had one child to raise and no one says they didn't do their part. Okay, I once was at a conference where a woman introduced herself and you know, I wanna give anybody credit who has 12 children, okay. But the way she introduced herself was speaking as a woman who's been more generous with God than most. I was sitting next to a woman who had conceived eight times. She had miscarried six times. She only had two children to raise and I just watched her physically wilt. And I leaned over to her and I said, you can't be more open than open. I will give this woman who had 12 credit for continuing to be open, but let's be frank. God's the one who gave her 12 children, okay. Now she said yes and she's raising those 12 but let's not get into a numbers game. I remember one time my sister, Carrie, had called. We had just had a baby, I think our fourth and Carrie called to say she was expecting number six and my Gabriel turned to me and he said, we're losing. I'm like, Gabriel, we're gaining, we're gaining a niece or nephew but they're going to have more kids than us. It's not about the numbers. We need prayer. We need to develop our prayer life and deepen our prayer life. We have access to the sacraments and Pope Paul the sixth says, get to the sacraments, get to confession, get to the Eucharist and in his admonition to the priest, he calls my beloved sons. He's like, make these sacraments accessible to your people, encourage them, strengthen them. Now how do we live this beautiful design? I've got six and a half minutes. I'm gonna see how fast I can get through this. My favorite passage, if I signed a book I'm likely to have referred to this one as Romans 12, one and two. And I'm gonna read verse one and verse two and just flesh it out a little bit. Okay, St. Paul begins, I appeal to therefore brethren by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. This is a matter of the grace of God, the mercy of God. St. Paul doesn't say, so buckle up, dig down deep, it's gonna be really hard, but you can do it. He is saying by the grace of God you can be a living sacrifice. This is an invitation to the cross. God's mercy helps us keep the law rather than exempting us from it. I remember one of my friends was in confession and she was confessing the sin of contraception and the priest said, you've got five kids, God love you, you've done enough. No, he couldn't, he didn't have the right to authorize what isn't authorizable. That was not the mercy of God. The mercy of God speaks to our hearts, gives us strength to say yes, I will follow you. Yes, I will pick up my baby and follow you. God reveals truth to us, how to honor him. And we get to be a living sacrifice. Now, when you say yes to God, you say yes to everything, but we don't know what all of that entails. I remember thinking about this when I was pregnant. I said yes, I want to be open to life and God blessed us with a baby. I really didn't plan to be nauseous most of the day and could I be nauseous as I get up to go to the bathroom before I even get back to bed in the middle of the night? That would be good. That could we add stretch marks, the kind that are so deep, I will probably have those little reminders the rest of my life. And then let's not do that birthday old fashioned way. Let's do C-sections, we'll go low with the first few and then just to change it up, we'll go up and down for the next ones so that as the doctor said after he finished and I came to, he said, well, look at it this way, it's like an anchor. Yeah, that's what I hope to have on my body for the rest of my life, an anchor. We say yes, but we have no clue actually, all that we are saying yes to. And yet we don't have to know. It's an invitation to put ourselves upon the altar. This is an act of worship. I am giving you my very self and this is both husband and wife, even though obviously as the woman carrying the baby, I have the most challenges physiologically, both of us are up with the baby at night. Both of us are facing the challenges of parenthood and for us, he felt those additional financial pressures. It's man and woman saying, yes, I will follow you. And you know what's so difficult is that we aren't dead yet, okay? So when those challenges come, when those pinches come, our tendency is to wanna crawl off the altar. Okay, I said yes, but I'm not this much, I don't think I can do this. And God in his mercy, especially through the sacrament, says yes, you do. You want to conform to the image of my son. Come on, get back up on the altar. And verse two is such a crucial part of understandingness. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. We are so close to our time in culture, we don't realize how much we're influenced, how we view women, how we view men, how we view the act of marriage. And it should be called the act of marriage, not just sex, because it's only supposed to be in marriage. How we view that intimacy, how we define marriage. We are swept up in misunderstanding, and so we've gotta have our minds renewed. Part of why you come to this conference is to have your minds transformed to think God's thoughts after him. I have a friend who works at a bank, and I said, how do you catch counterfeit money? She said, well, when they first train you in a bank, they have you touch a lot of real money, and then they slip in a little counterfeit, but it's only when you touch a lot of real money that you can, by feel, you can know what's counterfeit. I thought, that is the perfect illustration for us. The more truth we touch, the more we dig into sacred scripture, the more we read these documents that come from our holy fathers, the better we grasp truth and then when we see or hear error, we can address it. We want to do God's will. This is what proves God's will. Now, 50 years later, where are we? Four final thoughts. We have to be who we have been called to be, faithful and fruitful. We must embrace God's beautiful design for marriage. This is what will bring hope to our families, peace to our families, even peace to our society. Second, we need to grow in our trust in Almighty God for the sake of our souls, our lives, our marriages, and our children and grandchildren. Fertility is a blessing to be embraced, not a disease to be cured. Third, we recognize that compromise limits our freedom to prophesy to our culture. We are called to be prophetic witnesses, where we have ever committed the sin of contraception, sterilization, or abortion. We must repent. We've got to get to confession and do business with Almighty God and walk in the freedom that we will have. He will give us grace to be obedient. And fourth, we need our priests and our bishops to proclaim faithfully the truth and to offer us real help in the grace of the sacraments. For Scott and me, we are so grateful for the church's teaching, for her prophetic forth-telling to us, even as non-Catholics, the truth about marital love. We did change our minds, we changed our practices, and we are so grateful for the children that God gave us. We actually conceived nine, but three have gone before us. And I remember talking to my Joe, who's our fifth, he said, when did you lose the baby right before me? And I said, it was only six weeks before you. And he said, so if that baby had lived, I wouldn't be here. And I said, that's true. And he said, I'm really sorry that baby died, but this way you got to have us both. Close with this verse, Proverbs three, five and six, or five to eight, trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones. God bless you and your prophetic witness as you go forth. Amen.