all right time for a little self-revelation [Music] hey i'm father mark mary father maliki we're friends we're the franciscan foreign yes we are and this my friends is ascension presents so there's a there's this thing going on where in a lot of at least in the us probably in other countries as well um there's a move towards legalizing marijuana mm-hmm right and so that i think a lot of us know at least on the basis like oh it's illegal okay you can't do it but now the question people are gonna wrestle with like okay maybe
in my state the recreational use of marijuana is illegal so can i do it and father malki what should what's the answer what should we do well um i'm going to start off maybe with like the sort of ice cold bath starter this is uh pope francis's response before i get into my own sort of further expounding on it but here's what pope francis has to say he says let me state this in the clearest possible terms the problem of drug use is not solved with drugs attempts to legalize so-called recreational drugs are not only
highly questionable from a legislative standpoint but they fail to produce the desired effects here i would affirm what i've stated on another occasion no to every type of drug use it's as simple as that end quote so before trying to like hold you in suspense what the answer might be to this question i'll let pope francis you know kind of like um but the question then is if the answer is no then why i mean because obviously like you mentioned right from the legal standpoint it's not an issue um and there's a lot of people
advocating for it and just to sort of also sidestep the arguments connected with therapeutic use so medicinal marijuana i'm not going to touch that today um there's other people out there who've done some great videos on it look them up on youtube fantastic so what we're talking about is recreational use which is a totally different uh ball game all together and why is it different because when i'm saying recreation what do i do for recreation i do things that are fun the point of recreation is to have fun to be entertained to relax to let
loose whatever that might be right so in other words the goal the purpose of this use of marijuana is to do just that to have fun and why do people want to smoke weed well you get high i mean they're not doing it because you know like i really love the smell the smoke or you know i really love coughing you know it's like no like they're doing it because there's thc in there i want to get high but when you're looking at like well is that a problem or not i mean we let people
drink alcohol has an effect on the body thc has an effect on the body it's natural etc i want to look at this from a little bit different angle bro um and i want to start from maybe a personal view of this whole situation as well you know in god's mercy 20 years ago i had a deep conversion back to my faith and it was a conversion from a lifestyle that was essentially following the wisdom and logic of the world and part of that led me into a life where i was living with real ongoing
daily addiction which included smoking marijuana daily and i was living this lifestyle and the people that i was in relationship with um good people but they were also moving in that same trajectory and i could see something begin to happen um it was part of what led actually to the the grace of conversion was this growing discontent with this something that i'm looking for that's not quite there and because it's not quite there there was this kind of experience of an angst a frustration um you know stress anxiety whatever and so the thing i'm looking
for and not finding and you know smoking this joint or doing whatever i'm doing now means that i have this interior experience where my heart's not totally satisfied even if i might be distracted while i'm high and what happens when you get high you get unhigh at some point you come down and when you come down you're back in reality with the same interior unrest the thing i'm looking for the thing that i had hoped for the thing that was promised is never fully delivered and so what do i need to do i need to
get high again and this cycle develops um and and what begins to happen what's the interior movement of the heart the interior movement of the heart is this i encounter difficulty i encounter discomfort i have something happening and therefore i need this to be able to cope with or escape from or somehow seek the answer to what my heart is desiring in this chemical substance that's altering my brain and my perception of reality and and it does it does all kinds of things that we could talk about i mean just a few that i've seen
firsthand in people's lives that i was walking with during that time and continued on that same road is it a gateway drug yeah like everybody that i know in fact i don't have a single friend who started off with that that didn't end up doing something harder is it something that has connections with you know mental health yeah i actually know somebody personally who through this constant use of this ended up suffering with mental illness also they say well you know it affects all kinds of things when you're growing up and you're younger it's like
you know your height it's like i know somebody who you look at his brothers who did not smoke weed when they were when they were teens and they're all like three to four inches taller than my buddy i'm like it affects us it has an impact it's not some innocuous you know just kind of feels good type of a deal there's real consequences but those natural consequences are just the superficial surface level dimension of what's going on here and this is what i'd really like to get at is is everybody's asking the question is this
moral is this sinful is this wrong but is anybody asking the question is this helping me grow in my relationship with jesus christ is this helping me grow in virtue is this helping me mature is it helping me to grow in the understanding of who i really am before the lord or are all those questions that he desires to answer for me being co-opted by the fact that i'm walking around in a cloud or even that i'm occasionally making this my way of like you know unplugging and dealing with stress because here's the deals like
if i have the peace of christ in my heart the peace the world cannot give why am i looking for that peace and a pipe it's like if i know who i am before god the father and i'm living in the freedom of the children of god why do i need a brownie or a bong to give me the freedom to be who i really am which some people will say that's all i can only really be myself is like that means you're really not free if i can only be myself in an altered conscious
i am not free and we were made for freedom and so we're asking the question can i do this can i not it's not so much like oh is this you know is it legal is it illegal it's like how is this drawing you deeper into the truth of who you are in jesus christ that's the question because the fullness of life that you're looking for that i'm looking for is not going to be found anywhere else and all the other good things that do come in life the natural ways that he reveals his presence
they're not waiting for you you know in you know a van that's like made out of marijuana driving across the border with chichen chang you know it's like they're waiting for you in reality god is waiting for us in reality life is waiting for us in reality and when i smoke weed and i get high i step out of reality i disconnect myself from what is truly before me i put a shield i put a smoke screen literally between me and the world that god has gifted me with and it might be a world that
has hard things in it that are difficult that are maybe painful and yet jesus is saying hey like i want to be everything i want to be your strength i want to be your refuge i want to be your hiding place and and so that's that's really for me this deeper truth um and pope benedict kind of talked about the fact that what's happening with this movement this legalization normalization of drug use is in fact an attempt to take the place of who god really wants us to be and i just share a quick quote
um from pope benedict talking about this same issue of drug use and it's pretty powerful because he's saying for us to really grow as human beings we actually need to put forth the effort to grow in virtue and in a quick analogy before the quote um if you're working out and you want to get big muscles and you want to be like you know the ripped cut whatever um and you're lifting all of your weights in a zero gravity room how much how much growth is going to happen if there's no resistance well the weights
are all there but the room's all zero gravity there's no resistance there's no effort which means there's no growth and the same thing happens when we take a hit and we step out of the struggle to grow in virtue to face reality to live this relationship with god we stop growing and side note that actually happens psychologically i mean the actual emotional atrophy of the person happens as soon as you begin to use it habitually but here's what pope benedict has to say referring to the way it's connected to our spiritual life he says this
the patient and humble adventure of asceticism which in small steps of ascent comes closer to the descending god the god who comes to us who becomes emmanuel god with us this adventure is replaced by magical power the magical key of drugs the ethical and religious path is replaced by the technology of drugs drugs are the pseudo-mysticism of a world that does not believe yet cannot get rid of the souls yearning for paradise i got to read that again that's power packed drugs are the pseudo-mysticism the wannabe not real mysticism of a world that does not
believe yet cannot get rid of the souls yearning for paradise brothers and sisters we were made for paradise made for heaven made for this relationship with god and you could try and find a temporary fix a momentary release in flying to a state where you can get marijuana legally and smoke it or you could step into the reality of god's presence for you right now wherever you are watching this video heaven paradise it's waiting for you in reality not in a cloud of smoke brothers and sisters don't let yourselves settle for something less than what
your heart really is made for and for me that's the crux of this whole issue the whole conversation and that's where we need to be focused when we talk about this as a church that was good that was really good i got nothing to add yeah that's good yeah bro that was a good that was a really good answer all right well thank you thank you father malcolm you thank you from the popes and um now you know all right we'll see you again next week thanks for watching so much peregrinos we're gonna make it
