EP 5 | From Corporate Life to Priesthood: Fr Mark Basily on Faith, Family & Purity - The Salt Podcast

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to the Salt podcast. If you're just joining us, we're
on episode 5. I'm Georges Gander.
Joining me is my Co host Simon Thomas Gilto and we're very
blessed to have Father Mark fromSaint Mark's Orthodox Church in
Sydney. Welcome Father Mark, lovely to
have you. Thanks.
George, thanks, Simon. So Father Mark's actually my
confession father. So I have to make sure I take it
easy because he's going to put it on me later.

(00:21):
So as always, we like to dive into our guest a little bit in
terms of your background, your early childhood, your family
life, maybe when when your family came, if they came from
Egypt, when did you come? How was that kind of situation?
So if you can give us a little bit of a background for our
viewers. Yeah, sure.
I was simply, I was, I was born in Egypt, in Cairo.

(00:42):
My family migrated to Australia.You know, like many families
searching for a better life, mainly for their children.
Like for those who migrated, it was often harder for them.
But I think, you know, the vision for their children.
And so we, my, my parents migrated to Australia 1985.
I was about 2 1/2 years old. And yeah, we lived a lovely,

(01:06):
simple, very happy life here in Australia.
And we're so blessed and thankful to God for that.
Great, So what was your early like school life like?
Where'd you go to school here? Yeah, I went to the like local
Catholic school and and then also a Catholic High School.
But yeah, yeah, it was the usualchallenges of a little fob kid

(01:29):
trying to integrate into Australian society.
But we were blessed to have a wonderful time growing up here
at school. And yeah, do.
You have a good friend group as well.
Yeah, look, I always sort of gravitated towards my friends at
church. So I had a good friend group at
school. But you know, my, my church
mates were always my, my go to and, and I think that was

(01:50):
helpful growing up, you know, when you have friends around you
who are like minded and, and have this sort of same vision in
their life. And so that for me, I think was
was really good. Did you have any siblings?
Yes, I've got an older brother and I've got a younger sister,
Yeah. Middle child.
Middle child, I was going. To say.
I'm the same, all right? I'm number, I'm #4 out of five,

(02:12):
but it's as middle as it gets. Yeah, my mom's got 5 and I was
#4 and I was the good, I was thefavorite.
And then another one came along and I was like, we have an we
have, Where's Simon again? So it worked out.
Your parents were obviously religious.
I'm assuming growing up. When you came to Australia, were
you always in church as you saidbefore?
Yeah, look, my parents were werevery faithful and and they

(02:35):
implanted us in the church. You know, going to church on on
Sunday was a non negotiable and so we do every single Sunday and
and the usual in the home, a lotof time spent together as a
family with the Bible, with prayer house decked out with
icons, the whole yeah. So I was blessed to have that

(02:56):
sort of influence in my life. What was one thing you learned
from your mum and one thing you learned from your dad?
There's a lot of things I've learned from my parents.
They're very special people, andI'll tell you an interesting
fact about my parents, but I haven't really seen much around.
Would you believe me if I told you that I have never seen my

(03:20):
parents fight? Wow, really?
I've never seen them have an argument.
I'm sure that they had, you know, behind closed doors and
whatever, but the fact that theywere able in front of their
children to always present a unified, loving front is, is

(03:41):
remarkable. So I've learnt a lot from them,
you know, especially reflecting back, like growing up, it's just
you know. You don't realize you don't.
Realize mom and dad, you know, whatever, everything is sweet,
you know, but when you reflect back, especially when you're
comparing it to how I am in my own home or, or those who I see
in the church and the families that I visit, reflecting back,

(04:02):
I, I, I've learned so much looking back at, at how they
were functioning as a family. So the one thing I've learned
from each, I'd say, you know, that self sacrifice, that that
ability to always try to make the other person happy and and
comfortable and so important. Yeah.
And my dad is, is the one thing that stands out to me is that

(04:27):
nothing's about him. You know, he if you see with my
dad, he'll he'll never talk about himself.
He's always interested in the person in front of him and being
learning from the person in front of him.
And, and growing up, it was never about him.
It was always about his wife or about his children or or about
his service in the church. Nothing was about him.

(04:48):
And I think that level of that'sreally refreshing in this day
and age, like everyone's selves.And their unhappiness and what
they want. Yeah.
So living for others, I think is, is is a key that I've taken
from them. Yeah.
Is that your mum? My mom, my mom, you know, she
has this remarkable spirit of service even till today, you

(05:08):
know, service for her is, is #1 she bakes Christmas cookies and
Easter cookies at church. And she would be there from 6:00
in the morning till midnight formonths and months, You know,
Well, mom, why are you like, like really stretching yourself
like this? She's like, we have to make sure
that all the families have theircookies.

(05:29):
And like, who cares if like I don't have cookies?
Like, it's like I can buy cookies from anywhere.
No, no, in like certain spirit of service.
I've I've learned that from my mom.
Beautiful. So you've had a lovely simple
life. Stable home environment, stable
school life. At what stage did you kind of

(05:50):
get more drawn to God in terms of taking your spiritual life to
that next level, being more serious or considering your
spiritual life a lot more? I think I still haven't taken my
spiritual life serious to be honest, I think.
If that's the case, we're all I'm beyond.
I'm still trying to take my spiritual life serious.
I think that's spirituality is ajourney, and I don't think I've

(06:14):
reached the point where I could say that I have taken it
seriously. I think we need to continue to
grow and continue to try to, as you say, take our spiritual life
seriously and make it a real priority in our lives.
So I'm still trying to attain that, yeah.

(06:34):
So do you find that it's harder now being, you know, a priest,
being busy with kids and family and wife and service?
Is it harder now to take your spiritual life seriously because
you know you got a lot more responsibility, or was it easier
when you were younger? Now, look, I think, you know, as
a priest, we are blessed that weare forced to be in the church a

(06:56):
bit more than the average person.
Like, you know, if a normal working person would work 9:00
to 5:00 and go to church on a Sunday and, you know, hopefully
maybe one will do during the week if they're lucky in a Bible
study in the evening, that wouldbe great.
But for a priest, they're blessed because we're we're
forced to be in that environmentmore often than not.

(07:17):
And so in being in the church toserve others, we ourselves are
benefiting from that presence. And so there's a famous priest
who once said that he believed he was called to priesthood for
his own salvation. And I believe that to be true,
that it makes life easier that you get to be in that

(07:40):
environment more regularly. Yeah.
So our last guest said somethingsimilar.
They said the priesthood refines.
So I think it was Father Elijah or Father Anthony that said
that. But they were saying like when
we asked a similar question, they, they touched on that and
they said that they're, they're learning through their
priesthood and they're growing much more spiritually because
the priesthood is, is like a lesson.
Yeah, I look, I, I definitely would agree with that.

(08:01):
You know, when when I was calledto the priesthood, I, I shared
with my confession father that this is something that's not
possible because of all of my weaknesses.
And that was his response. He said that entering into the
priesthood will inspire you to take you to the next level, to

(08:24):
not stay in those in those weaknesses.
So you're right, that priesthoodgives you that environment and
that inspiration to take your spiritual life to the next
level. Yeah.
Let's, let's just escape priesthood for a minute because
we'll get back to that. I want to know about your
earlier days. So before you became a phrase,
I'm sure you had a job, I'm sureyou went to uni, TAFE, whatever

(08:45):
the case may be, probably uni. But what were those days like?
What were you studying? What were you doing for work?
Yeah, so I I studied computer engineering at the University of
NSW. Oh, this guy's intelligent.
But you know, that like those days were a real turning point.
I'm not talking, but I'd say, you know, a fork in the road of

(09:05):
life because when you finish school and you're you're
entering the big, you know, wideworld and you've got to make
some decisions about your life. And for me, I left school with a
real, you know, hope that I would enjoy life, you know,
party at university, you know, make new friends, live life,

(09:26):
travel, you know. I like it, yeah.
You're seems like that, but I went to university and I I tried
to make, you know. Those type of friends, Those
types. Of friends, but in engineering
you don't have those kind of, you know, people definitely.
He had the right idea robbing around a friend.

(09:46):
So I, I couldn't really make those kind of friends that
would, you know, sued that sort of.
Did you try to go out of your way to make those?
Friends, I did, I did, I tried hard, but I, I ended up landing
with a couple of Christian guys from the church who we're not
into that stuff, but we're more into spirituality, we're more

(10:10):
into service at church, any liturgy and, and praises.
And, and so I got so stuck with them.
And as a result of being stuck with them, it rubbed off on me
over time. And so I think at that point,
that influence in my life sort of helped me take the right
direction. And so it's really important, I

(10:31):
think as young people that we surround ourselves with the
people that we want to be more like, you know, the people that
inspire us. If I want to be more spiritual,
I can be around people who are more spiritual, probably around
people probably want to be sort of more.
On the fun side of things. Yeah, you that sing around with

(10:51):
those people you want to be morelike.
Exactly right. You are who you hang around.
With 100%, yeah, it's interesting that that had such
an impact on you, and it's interesting that God kind of
confined you to that and refinedyou through that way.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I, you know, I think it, it was
a game changer for me, Yeah. And then how'd you transition to
corporate life? You ended up getting a corporate

(11:13):
job, but what were you doing andhow?
What was the work environment like?
Yeah, yeah, I worked as a management consultant for
firstly for Price Waterhouse Coopers and then I moved on to
IBM in a strategy role for IBM. And yeah, I got to, I really

(11:33):
enjoyed that time in the corporate environment.
I I travelled a lot for work allover the world and that was a
really great experience. But yeah.
But then that sort of all ended after calling came.
Yeah. What was the struggles in
corporate life because like my wife works in in corporate in a

(11:54):
bank and there there is a lot oflike politics.
There's a lot of, you know, kindof like if you're not social,
you don't really get far becauseyou need to join their social
scenes in order to be seen by management, to be recognized.
So how do you balance that? And was there a good Christian
core or did you create a Christian environment in your
work? Look, I think in in all of our
environments, we have to be, we have to know who we are.

(12:18):
And I think that helps us navigate the environments that
we're in. Like if I know who I am, I am a
Christian, I am a son or daughter of God that guides me
in how I function. So even if I'm in an environment
that is cutthroat, that is, you know, too focused on worldly

(12:39):
things and of money and of, you know, pleasures and things like
that. If I know who I am, then I, I
can navigate through that. So I think that's important that
we know who we are and we, we know our limits.
We have a young lady in our community who gave me a cool
once and she told me that she entered a beauty pageant and she

(13:04):
won Miss Australia all right, and I'm not going to.
I'm not going to her, to Simon. I'm not going to comment.
Look to me, let let me finish the story.
Sorry, I'm trying to be a wingman, I know.
But you heard Miss Australia. You went running.
She could be Mrs. Australia. You never know.
She could be married. Sorry, Father.

(13:25):
Continue. Yeah.
She, she won Miss Australia and then she told me because she won
Miss Australia, she gets to enter into the Miss Universe
contest and that involved a tripto the United States, to New
York where she would compete forMiss Universe and it was like a

(13:47):
all expenses paid trip to New York.
Imagine like the what a dream, you know, and shit.
But I have a problem that I, I feel that the environment in New
York will not be a good environment for me spiritually.
So I'm thinking of pulling out. What do you think?

(14:09):
I said, look, maybe we can make some, you know, some rules
around your trip and we can maybe have some, a system where
you pray each night and you can sort of protect yourself and we
can be in touch. And, and I tried to just sort of
make it in a way where she can still, you know, go for her, her
goals, but you know, in protecting her, you know, in
from that environment. After a few days, she spoke to

(14:31):
me and said, I've decided that I'm pulling you out.
I'm not going to go to New York.It's not worth me risking my, my
Christian faith in, in that kindof environment.
They even wrote an article abouther in one of the news that,
that the Mrs. Chey has pulled out of and they had to go find
the second place to, to take herspot.

(14:52):
And that that's just really inspiring, you know, to, to, to
prioritize your faith to that level where sacrifices need to
be made. And I think we need to do that
daily in the environments that we're in, whatever working
environment we're in, we have toknow who we are, stay within our
limits and prioritize our faith.A. 100%.
A lovely story to be. Honest.
Well, it reminds me of Father Anthony actually.

(15:12):
He had a chance to really take his career in in soccer.
Illustrious career. Illustrious career.
Yeah, he tried. He was playing at the highest
level of Australian soccer. But then the games were on
Sunday, so it was a simple decision for him.
He just said church is on Sunday.
I can't. So he kind of limited his
potential because he didn't wantto affect his spiritual life.
So that's beautiful. Yeah.
Yeah. So I wanted to ask you, what

(15:34):
kind of spiritual struggles did you personally face growing up
or did you find, you know, all my spiritual struggles thought
would come on this platform? They're trying to go on for one
day. Yeah, yeah.
Look, I think, I think we all share the same struggles, you
know, navigating through our life.
And you know, I think there are just these key moments where we

(15:58):
need to make the right choices and decisions all throughout our
life. There are choices and decisions
to be made, but there are there are key moments where we need to
make the right choices. When we're faced with
temptation, making that right choice, we're faced with a
decision that'll compromise our faith.
We take the right choice and ourlife is basically an

(16:18):
accumulation of those decisions.And if we continue to make the
right decisions, turning to faith, then we'll continue to
grow. We all have the same struggles,
we all have the same temptations, but it's about
making those right decisions at the right moments that make the
big difference. Could I ask a private question
that's right for my personal gain?

(16:39):
When you're faced with a temptation where you know what's
right but you're more in love with the idea of not doing right
and you hear you've, it's very he, it's very clear.
When you hear 2 voices, the devil and Jesus you, you're
hearing both of them. What do you do in that moment in
time that really helps you try and steer the right way as

(17:00):
opposed to going and going into that temptation?
Yeah. Look, I'll tell you a a concept
that I think is is important, which is transforming temptation
to glory, you know, because it'snot just a decision that should
I fall into this sin or this temptation or not.
I'd rather look at it is do I fall into this temptation or do

(17:22):
I flip it to glory? You know, so it's not like a bad
or just a normal path, a normal path.
It's, it's, it's a bad path versus a path of glory, you
know? Can I have an example?
I'll give you, I'll give you something to think about.
Think about the the woman that came to Jesus when he was
sitting with Simon the Pharisee.And she entered the room and she

(17:47):
took the fragrant oil and put her at his feet.
She took her hair, her tears to wash the feet of Christ.
She took her hair to dry. Now that woman we know was a
Sinner woman, which means that she used these things for sin.
So she used the perfume to allure men.

(18:10):
She used her hair for beauty. She used her tears, her emotion
to connect with men. So she's taken those same
elements that were used for sin.She she transformed them to be
used for glory. She then took those same things
her her emotions and she washed the feet of Christ.

(18:31):
She used that perfume, she brokeit and put it in the feet of
Christ. She took her hair and she
washed, she dried the feet of Christ.
So we take those same temptations and we transformed
them into glory. So let's say, you know, for
example, I'm tempted to use my money for a wrong purpose.

(18:53):
Yeah. And then I have this moment.
Should I, should I use the moneyfor the wrong purpose or should
I not? That's not the question.
Should I use my money for the wrong purpose, or should I take
that money and give it to the poor?
You know, that's what I'm saying.
So it's it's transforming what was about to be a temptation
into a path of glory. Instead of temporarily stopping
doing bad, you're completely transforming it.

(19:15):
That's it. Another let's say I'm I'm
thinking of watching something inappropriate.
You know that I know it's not good for me.
Do I not watch it or do I then go and watch this podcast?
It's a good idea. Watch the.
Podcast. It's a self podcast, so good
transition. Yeah, Yeah.
Does that make sense? Completely, Yeah, Yeah, I never
thought of it like that. I always thought the temptation

(19:36):
comes, you're faced with right or wrong, but then now you're
saying instead of right or wrong, take the wrong out of the
way completely and shift your mind and balance into something
else. It's like what Abuna, our father
all said in the first episode. He goes, we need to completely
shift our our thought. We have to do something
completely different instead of saying I don't want to do this
because you're just prolonging it until the next time the devil

(19:58):
wants to come and try and tempt you so.
Thank you for the perspective. Yeah.
So when you were called to be a priest, when did that start?
How was it, like your confession, Father bringing this
up when you were younger? When did he kind of bring it up
to you that it was something that was more real?
Did they wait for you to get married?
Like, you know what I mean? Because I know some priests are
like, OK, he's going to be a priest, but we'll just wait till

(20:19):
he gets a wife and then we'll take him.
What do you reckon? Yeah, look, I think, you know,
as you know, in the Coptic Orthodox Church specifically,
priesthood is an invitation and a calling.
So it's not something we, we sort of asked for or put our
names forward for. It's something that you're
called to. For me, I, I grew up with a
spiritual father who you've had on this podcast before.

(20:41):
His name is Father Jacob and he was my confession father since
the age of, you know, 10. And he he never mentioned the
word priest to me, you know, throughout all my time growing
up. But what he did, and this is
back now, now me again, looking back at how he formed and guided

(21:07):
me. He used always used the word
consecration, right. So I don't go see with him.
He'd say to me, you know, well, tell me some good news.
I'd say, oh, great. Good news.
All right. Yeah.
You know, I, I passed my exam atuni.
I, I got a promotion at work. I, you know, and I'd share good
news that he's asking me for. And he would smile and say, it's

(21:31):
nice, this is nice. But nothing is sweeter than the
consecration of life. My God.
Yeah, Whatever the matter. Whatever.
I just got a promotion tell. Me the complication of life the
other time I found that to be a regular theme anytime I would
talk to him about anything in mylife.

(21:52):
Worldly. This is nice, but nothing is
like and sweeter than consecrating your life to Jesus.
And so that's how he would talk to me.
So when the actual calling came for consecration, I was prepared
in that sense that nothing is sweeter than consecrating your

(22:13):
life to God. He planted the seed.
Yeah. And he planted in a way that to
understand that consecration is the highest calling to give your
life to Jesus, Whatever that mate looks like, You know, yes,
for me it was, it looked like priesthood.
But for others, it's it's we're all called to consecration.
I think if we have that, that motto in our mind, that nothing

(22:33):
is sweeter than consecrating your life to Jesus.
It's beautiful. So was it a hard choice or?
I mean, of course it's a hard choice, but the reality of it
when for example, having a, you know, you were married at the
time, I don't know if you had children at the time, like the,
the shift in terms of financially everything, like how

(22:55):
did you kind of deal with that? Yeah, so it was my 28th
birthday. I was at church for a Bible
study and we had pizza after Bible study and Father Jacob was
the one giving us the Bible study and he went to his office
afterwards and we were all eating pizza.

(23:18):
And then I thought, oh, we should take some pizza to Father
Jacob. So I took a pizza and knocked on
his door. I said, oh father, we'd like
some pizza, we have some. He said yes, yes, come in, come
in. It was the worst offering.
He gave him pizza. He talked to that consecration

(23:38):
of life. But.
It's interesting that that when I gave him that pizza and we sat
down on my birthday, he didn't ask me to be a priest.
He told me, he said. Just letting you know, we've
written to the Pope to, to organize for you to be ordained

(24:00):
a priest. No notice, nothing.
No, no notice, no questions asked.
This is what's happening, all right.
And so it wasn't really my choice.
It it just I was told not to do what I'm told what?
Was your first first emotion then other than pure shock?
You know what that my first thought was This is my birthday,
you know so. Say it the next day.

(24:24):
So I I automatically feel this must be a gift, of course.
You know the best gift of all. Yeah, yeah.
How'd your you were married at the time?
Yeah, we had been married for one year.
OK, how'd your wife of one year feel about?
Yeah, So that's what I said to him.
I said, well, have you spoke to my wife about this?
Because we, we will speak to her.
Is that all right? Good luck.

(24:46):
Honestly, he must have known that you were an obedient son
because the way he approached you was just like, hey, this is
what's happening. And he knew you weren't going to
reject. So that's that's amazing.
So how did how did your wife take it and what was the?
No, look, I think for for my wife, she'd only been married
for one year. She was young.
She was, you know, 2323 year oldbeing married for one year,

(25:11):
being told with no kids yet, being told your husband's going
to be ordained the priest, you know, So you can imagine there
was shock. There was you can't comprehend.
So yeah, it it really threw a spanner in the works and unlike
most wives who were called, I think she really took time to

(25:32):
understand what what that would look like and, and how she could
accept something like that. So she knew she obviously by the
sounds of it was not super accepting of it, but loving.
So loving of you that she was like, whatever happens, it's
God's will. So on that note, you said there
was what, a five year age or a four year age gap or 6?

(25:53):
Year. Age.
My wife. Yeah, six year.
Six year age gap. So how did you go about finding
your partner and what were the qualities you looked for?
And what advice can you give to Simon?
The third part you don't need toanswer, but not every episode is
finding love for cohost. Leave it.
Here, look, I met my wife at church, which I think is a great
place to meet your life partner.I think meeting someone at

(26:15):
church is a great thing because sharing what is most precious in
common, our faith is the most precious thing in the world.
And so when you marry somebody, you want to share what's
important to you. And so I think meeting at church
is, is a, is a great thing to do.
And I, so I met her at church. I noticed her and, you know,

(26:37):
tried to talk to her and she didn't really give me much
attention. So I just thought, OK, you know,
she's not keen and just leave her at that.
Then after six months, I was, you know, give it another go.
So hey, no. Gina, how you going?
You know, how's your week? She's like, yeah, good, you
know, So she wasn't giving me much, you know, good.
I gotta go try to talk to her onFacebook and, you know, just,

(27:02):
again, I've sorry, I've got to go.
That sort of thing. So this went on for a few years,
you know. Persistence.
Just trying and trying and 1st advice, Persistence.
Yeah, there you go, persistence.So then after a certain point, I
said, look, I'm just going to drop this before I humiliate
myself. And but then again, once I was
having a chat with Father Jacob and I said, look, this is this

(27:23):
girl, you know Gina, I'm just thinking of her, but she doesn't
really give me much, you know, attention.
He said, look, I'll I'll have a chat too.
I'll see what what she's what's happening.
And at that time, there's another guy interested and
Father Jacob said to me, I'm going to test her.

(27:45):
I'm like OK. It's Paul 22.
Oh my God, she's getting tested beyond limits.
Even if all the even if all the Jacobs involved now.
Sorry. Continue.
He's not my tester. I got.
I didn't know what that meant, but I said, OK, go for it, Go
for it. You know, if he's testing it,
that's probably a good thing forme.
It's a good sign. Yeah.
Yeah. So he went up to her and he told

(28:07):
her that guy that's interested in you, that's not from the
church, you should go for him. And she's like, but he's, he's
not from the church. He's like, no, no, he's, he's,
he's good. He's got a lot of money, He's
successful. You'll have a good life, you
know, with him. Doesn't matter about the church

(28:29):
thing. Maybe he'll come around a little
bit later. Wow, you should go for him.
Unbelievable. What a first psychology.
This is unbelievable. God, they know what they're
doing. Sorry.
Continue. This is cinema now.
So she said, Father, I can't, I can't I, I want to have a family
that we go to church together. I want to raise my children

(28:49):
inside the church. I don't want someone to ever
block that for me. He said to her that that guy
that's interested in you, I think you should go for him.
You, you'll have a happy life. You, he's got a lot of money.
He's successful and he's not into the church.
Maybe he'll come around a bit later.
You should go for it. Imagine you, your confession
father telling you that. And she said to him, I can't, I,

(29:13):
I can't be with someone who I'm not confident that we will share
a life of faith together. What if he doesn't want my kids
to go to Sunday school or or I need someone who who's faithful?
Listen, OK, good. I've got someone else.
Nervous. He played it.

(29:34):
He absolutely played it to AT. So, so, yeah, he helped me with
that. And and I think, you know, the
church sometimes is helpful in these areas.
Yeah. But it's similar to, if you
think about it, similar to what you wanted when you were
younger, you wanted to experience over that party life
or that eccentricness. And then eventually God just

(29:54):
told you, no, no, I'm going to bring these two people, three
people in your life. Same thing with her, she
probably thought, OK, I want to be in the church, but I also
want to date someone who's on the outside this day.
And then when someone came to speak to her, then she started
putting two and two together. Not that I've ever met Jeanie in
my life. Never met your wife, but this
sounds like that. So what advice can you give not

(30:15):
just to Simon, but to anyone that's out there available and
looking what what would you advise them in terms of how to
take, if you're interested in someone, how do you take that
first step? Yeah.
Look, I think first of all, you know, for those who are in that
stage of life, I think it's important to get your priorities
straight and what's important toyou because nobody is perfect

(30:35):
and has everything, but you needto pick for you what's really
important to you. If faith is important to you,
then then try to find someone who shares that same faith as
you. And then look and concentrate on
people's values and their qualities.
I think nowadays we are to focuson other things.
I remember I I once asked the other girl and her response was,

(31:06):
you're too boring. Yeah.
So sometimes we search for things like that.
This one is fun and outgoing andthis and that and, or good looks
and, but if we search for the things that are of value, if we
prioritize those things, then we're able to narrow down to
someone who would make for us a good life partner.

(31:27):
And to have the courage, you know, to, to, to speak and to,
to give things a shot, not to betoo worried or overthinking or
complex, you know, but give things a go all.
Right. What about the other side?
Because I think in in our community, in this particular,
the girls kind of are in the waiting game.
They kind of wait to be approached by someone.
What would you say to a girl who's patiently waiting or might

(31:49):
be interested in someone but doesn't know how to take a step?
What about their side? Look, I think, I think
definitely girls can take steps.It's just a different kind of
step. You know, guys can take a step
by being redirect, you know, youknow, approaching a girl and,
and saying that they're interested in maybe inviting
them out for a coffee and thingslike that.
You know, if a girl does that, it may be taken wrongly by some

(32:11):
people. So there's other ways they can
do it, which is an indirect approach.
Now, for example, if a girl notices a guy and thinks that he
may be suitable for her, then I'm smiling at him a little bit
more, you know, stopping him andasking about his week and, and
commenting about something that he did that is positive and, and

(32:32):
having an inspiring conversation, you know, so when
the guy leaves that conversation, you know, that
experience of this sweet, smiling, inspiring girl is on
his mind. So she's approached him
indirectly and that gives him the chance then to reflect about
the option of this kind of a girl.

(32:53):
So I think definitely girls can play a role.
How early in a relationship or in seeing someone should the
couple go to their confession father or so their spiritual
father in a sense like that? Like how early should the should
the priest be involved in someone's relationship?
Look, I, I see, I see the role of a priest as a as a coach

(33:14):
through life and as a friend andand so the sooner the better
involving a spiritual father andguide in in your life is, is one
of the greatest things assets you can have along with your
journey. And so there's nothing wrong
involving the priest really early on.
Yeah, it's. Not going to hurt you.

(33:34):
Yeah. So speaking about your wife, I
want to ask you a personal question.
So personally, as a as a husband, let's take off the
priest hat and everything. As a husband, what challenge
have you ever faced as a husbandand how did you overcome that?
Yeah, look, I think as a husband, you know, it, it's we
are forced once you are married,Sorry, Simon, this is your your

(33:58):
freedoms are going to last forever.
But when you when you're married, like, as as a single
man, like Simon, you know, you know, you get to live your life
for yourself. You know it's all about you.
To an extent. When you're single, it's it's
all about yourself. You know, you get to do whatever
makes you happy. You can wake up whenever you
want, you can sleep whenever youwant, eat whenever you want, go

(34:21):
out and come and do whatever youwant.
There's this just this sense of,I wouldn't call it freedom, but
it's, it's doing what I want to do at all times.
You know, once you're married, and I think this is by design
from God, that once you're married, you're then forced to
not have everything about your own comfort and your own

(34:42):
preference, you know, and I think that's a pathway towards
God's Kingdom because we can't enter the Kingdom self obsessed
or anything about us. We have to enter the Kingdom
refined and we have to enter theKingdom selfless with virtue.
And so entering marriage, you'llforce now to start considering

(35:06):
other people, your wife before you, your children before you.
So I think one of the biggest struggles is that transition.
We're now, I can't just do whatever I want to do, you know,
I have to make sure that my wifeis happy, my children are happy,
you know, and that involves you taking a back seat.

(35:26):
OK. And then extension to that,
you're very blessed with four children.
What is that like in terms of balancing?
I have two children myself and life is overwhelmingly busy with
work and with children and everything is, is, is quite
stressful and there's a lot of different routines and, and
things like that. And if just one kid isn't
sleeping, it could just ruin your whole week.

(35:47):
So having four kids, how do you balance, you know, making sure
you look after your wife, look after your kids, give them all
individual attention and you know, your service for God and
then your own spiritual life? Yeah, look, I think we all live
very busy lives these days. You know, everyone's super busy
with career and family and children and that.

(36:08):
And so I think what's really important is that we make the
moments that we have count. Yeah.
So it's not necessarily about quantity, it's more about
quality. You know, I can't spend the
whole evening with with just oneof my children.
I have to distribute amongst each of them and my wife and the

(36:31):
service. And So what would need to happen
is that the moments that I am with them, they really count.
You know, if I'm putting them tobed, I can quickly run into bed,
get in the bed, cover yourself up, you know, go to sleep and
sleep and walk out of the room. That's that's one approach.
Or I could maybe jump in next tothem, tell them a short story,

(36:56):
read the Bible with them, give them a hug, a kiss, tuck them in
good night. That moment is, is really
beautiful. You know, so you make those
moments count. Maybe you're not much of it in
terms of time, but the moments you do have with them, you make
them count. And I think that's that's key.
Don't count the moments, make the moments count.

(37:17):
I see it already have a quantity.
Yeah. Wow, Simon, that was beautiful.
Yeah. I just heard what he said.
I was trying to. I just worked.
Out all right, OK, well on marriage as well.
I had this question a bit later on, but I think I'll bring it up
now. So what are if I if I can have
three parts of a marriage? I think there's intimacy,
there's the emotional connectionand there's the spiritual

(37:40):
connection. So where would you rate those 3?
And, you know, sometimes being abusy parent, maybe intimacy
sometimes might take a backseat when you're so busy or the
emotional connection might take a backseat or the spiritual
life. How do you prioritize, you know,
making sure that your your marriage is happy and healthy?
Look, I, I think those, all those three are, are, are

(38:02):
critical for a happy marriage, spiritual connection, emotional
connection and physical intimacy.
The unfortunate reality is that many people, they prioritize all
three. Life gets busy, life gets
stressful. And when life gets busy and

(38:23):
stressful, often what gets hit the hardest is the relationship.
The intimacy may slow down the, the emotional connection.
You're switched off spiritually,you're not investing time into
it. You're you're burdened.
But the reality is that these three are what's needed to

(38:48):
navigate our busy stressful lives.
You know, so it's, it's interesting that we let the busy
stressful life affect those three, but actually those three
are what strengthens us to navigate the busy stressful
life. You know, if I'm going through a
lot of problems and stresses in my life and we're busy, but I
have a strong emotional connection with my partner, then

(39:09):
that's a source of strength. And spiritually we are
strengthening each other. That's a source of strength.
Intimacy is bringing us togetherin a very real way.
It's a source of strength. So what I would say is rather
than taking out our problems andour stresses on our partner and
pushing them away, cleave to them for more strength.

(39:32):
And so I think we just need to be a bit more intentional in our
marriages that we are investing in those areas.
We're taking the time out to really connect.
We are, we are spending spiritual time together and we
get into a very regular routine of intimacy because that helps
also strengthen the marriage, express the love in a very real,
tangible way. So would you say all three are

(39:54):
on par or you would say if focuson something that will lead to
the rest? I, I don't think you can
prioritize them. I think they, they just all,
they all have to be there. Concurrently as a package.
Yeah, you. Can't say, OK, we'll be
spiritually connected, but we'regoing to stop intimacy.
You can't say let's just do intimacy, but stuff spiritually.
It's all the all the three of them are essential ingredient

(40:16):
for a strong, happy marriage. OK.
Leading on to that, there's a lot of divorce coming up,
especially recently, even in ourcommunity, it's it's kind of
become more common. Why do you think that is?
And how can say there's a couplethat is, is really struggling
and feels like that might be an optional seriously considering
it? What would you say to them?

(40:37):
And can they kind of backtrack and and bring their relationship
back so they don't go down that path?
Look, I think sometimes we need to sort of reevaluate what love
is, what marriage is, and that sometimes can help us navigate
these kinds of decisions. I think love is not necessarily

(40:58):
a feeling. I think love is more like a
decision. And so when we love someone,
we're deciding to love them and we're deciding to sacrifice for
them and to live for them. Yeah, some people say, oh, I
just don't love them anymore. I've fallen out of love or it's
the wrong use of of love. Love is a decision and so is

(41:18):
marriage. It's a decision to lay down your
life for another of all eternity.
And that's why our Lord Jesus Christ said that what God has
joined let no man separate. Of course, there are, you know,
exceptions to that. When someone is in danger, is in

(41:40):
threat, there's some sort of abuse, there's been hurt by
adultery. Of course, there are exceptions
where divorce actually is acceptable and and may even be
for the protection of of partiesinvolved.
So there are always cases where it's, it's, it's legitimate, but

(42:04):
for just the, the the situationswe are not feeling good or
there's no better options out there or that sort of stuff is
where we need to re evaluate howwe view love and how we view
marriage as a decision, as a sacrifice and to continue to
invest in that decision that we made.
So a couple right now on the fence on that path thinking,
hey, I don't think it's going towork.

(42:25):
What would you say to them rightnow of?
Course, if there's no like factors like no.
Everything is like safe. There's no, There's no.
Danger. There's no abuse, no proximity
of. That no abuse, just just not not
feeling good. I think we need to, to sort of
first of all, get a bit of help.And I think getting help from
the church is a great place to start or, or you know, Christian

(42:49):
marriage counsellors. But getting some help, sometimes
we need a bit of help. We need a bit of guidance.
There's nothing wrong in reaching out to, to a priest to,
to a marriage Christian marriagecounsellor with the clear
intention that I want to make this good.
You know, sometimes people are switched off from the process.
But if you, if you both want to make this better, then the

(43:10):
church can help to, as you've, as you've said before, to bring
spirituality back into the marriage, to bring the emotional
connection back to to start again, the the intimacy.
All of these elements we can revive in in our marriages with
a bit of help from the church and of course, seeking God's

(43:31):
presence in that with a re sort of understanding of what
marriage is, this decision that we've made to love each other.
I want to just backpedal a little bit of marriage because
we've had a marriage talk about 12 minutes now for someone who
is yet to be who's yet to find their like their partner for

(43:53):
life, what what would you say? Because I always have this topic
with my friends and it's always different answers, but one one
sort of similar answer. What are three non negotiables
that you should be looking for in a partner?
Yeah, look, I think for each person they have their list of
priorities absolutely. But you know, I, I would say
first non negotiable is someone that shares the same faith as

(44:18):
you. You know, faith is number one in
our life and our belief in life with Christ is the most
important. So having someone who can share
that journey with you and that goal because life is going to
end towards God's Kingdom and it's a journey towards God's

(44:41):
Kingdom. So if I'm on this journey
towards God's Kingdom, I want someone to accompany me on this
journey. It's like if you, if you have a
goal that you want to travel theworld and then you choose a
partner who hates travelling, you're miserable.
All my life I want to travel theworld and now you hate
travelling. What am I going to do now?
I'm going to go by myself. I'm going to go by myself and

(45:02):
I'm stuck. I can't go.
So it's lose, lose. I can't do the I can't do the
travelling and I don't want to stay here saying that our goal
in life is to travel towards God's Kingdom and I need someone
to join me on that journey. So I'd say the first, that's the
first non negotiable. The second non negotiable is is
really simple that I'm with someone who makes me happy, who

(45:25):
inspires me, who brings the bestout of me.
Yeah, I don't need the best looking person in the world.
I don't need the funniest personin the world.
I just need someone who who makes me happy, yeah, who who
sees the value in me, who inspires me to be the best that
I can be. The third non negotiable is that

(45:50):
I would say is someone who shares lots of respect and love
and never puts me down because marriage is all about respect.
And so if I'm with someone who who hurts me or puts me down,

(46:12):
who abuses me, I can't accept that.
So someone who always shows respect.
Easy. Beautiful answer.
Very easy for you. Yeah, we've been discussing it
for months. Yeah.
OK, so as as your time as a priest, was there ever a time
that you felt lost? Yeah, look, I, I think I, I

(46:36):
always feel a little bit lost. You know, I think that I think
it's OK to always feel a bit lost because that's when God's
with us the most, you know, whenwe feel like we've, we've got
our life all sorted. I'm in control.
I know what I'm doing. Top of my game, Then arrogance

(46:56):
can sleep in. And if arrogance sleeps in, then
there's no place for God to work.
God works with those who feel lost, who feel inadequate.
There's a beautiful story in theBible of Gideon.
Gideon had a little small army and he was taking on a big army
and kind of like Australia take not America, you know.

(47:20):
And you know what God said to Gideon, did you have a problem
with your army? I didn't say your army is too
small. God said to him, your army is
too many. So I was saying to Australia,
your problem, you can't take on America.
You've got too many soldiers. Well, that makes no sense.
Yeah, because to to Gideon, yourarmy is too big, although it was

(47:41):
very small. And the reason he said that to
them, he said, lest when you win, you think victory has come
from you. So God made Gideon reduce his
army further and further and further until it was tiny.
Then he said, now you can go to battle because when you win,
you'll know it's God that brought you the, the, the win.

(48:04):
And so God works like that in our own life.
When we we feel lost, we feel that we're insufficient.
We've got big battles take on and it's all too much.
That's when God shows up, because we know that the wind,
the glory, will be from Him. It's very counter intuitive to
what the world teaches us because the world is always like
you have to be confident. You have to be, you know,

(48:27):
manifested or see it or visualize it and you know, you
can do everything and put empower yourself.
But very similar to what Father Jacob said, he's like it's in
your weakness. When when God sees your weakness
and you come to him and say I'm weak or I can't, you need to do
it. That's when you get the most
strength because he's the one that comes and carries you and
carries the situation. 100%. OK, I think now we've got to

(48:49):
know Father Mark quite well, so I think we can dive into a few
topics now. So a few topics that have come
up is about how can a young man remain pure?
Yeah, it's probably a key question for for many young men
is, is the quest for for purity.And, you know, I think that we

(49:13):
live in a world where it's getting harder and harder to to
maintain purity. But if we really have that as a
goal, then God gives us the ability to be pure even in
difficult circumstances. There's a verse in the Bible

(49:35):
that says where sin abounds, grace abounds more.
And so God gives us as young menthe grace that we need to remain
pure. We just need to want it.
We need to call upon the Lord for, for support to, to remain
pure. And like I said before, to know

(49:56):
who you are, to live who you are, we shouldn't just be
Christians just by name, but we should walk it, you know, and be
real about who we are. And so if we really have that
goal for ourselves, we ask the Lord for support and then we
walk that. You know what?
What's your thoughts like? You know your own experience and

(50:20):
you know from what you've seen around and.
I think for me, actually part ofthe reason why I wanted to do
the podcast so much is because Ifind that social media is like,
what's the word I'm looking for?Like a sitting ground for a lot
of sin because you could just bewatching some NBA clips and then
you just swipe up and something comes up and that isn't a
trigger. So what I was hoping to do with

(50:41):
this podcast is actually flood the the the feed a little bit
with some spiritual content, because the more spiritual
content you consume, the more your feed kind of picks up on
that and there's more spiritual content.
So definitely social media always saw it as such a, a
weapon that the devil uses, but there is an opportunity for it
to be like a tool that God can use.

(51:03):
And I think, you know, if you'reon social media and you're a
young person, like follow the Salt podcasts, follow, you know,
the church pages, the youth pages, there's a lot of really
great Christian pages. And the more you're on those
kind of pages, your feed's just going to completely change.
And then you just, if something always something's going to come

(51:23):
up regardless, you just say uninterested and then keeps
your, your, your, your feet pure.
And I think, you know, not always you're looking to fall.
And I think, you know, it's not like you're always searching for
it, but it could very easily come up while you're just, you
know, carrying on with your business.
And then that could lead you to sin.
So that's my. Take and To bounce on your

(51:44):
point, I think the important thing is never thinking that
like you said, you're doing anything on your own because the
moment you do that is when the devil, the devil can strike you
at most because it's it's you inyour mind versus the devil.
When in reality we are nothing but a small speck of dust in
God's almighty hands. And when we have that belief
that he is with me no matter what and it's not me, me, me,

(52:09):
then I think that's when you're able to combat these things and
you're able to try and push forward.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a Sinnerjust like the rest of them, like
every single other person in their own lives.
But I feel like in my past experiences, when I feel as
though I have accomplished something or it's everything is
from me. And that's when I feel the
lowest to be honest. Because nothing in life does

(52:30):
come from us. Anything good, bad, it comes
from God. And it's up to our discernment
to understand whether or not where, where we can go with
things. So it's not to go on a tangent,
but never, never give, never give any credit to yourself.
No matter what you do, no matterhow you do it, everything comes
from God. They say pride always comes
before the fall. So anytime you kind of have that

(52:50):
strength to yourself and say, oh, look, I've been good, I've
done this, that's when I feel that you've you're more
susceptible to form. When you, when you're talking,
George, you reminded me that I, there's a monk who's who's on, I
know who's on TikTok and that and Instagram.
And I said, how is that? Like you're a monk and you're on
these social media. Don't you like come across bad
things online? And he said, no, no, no, I

(53:11):
trained my social media. I go, what do you, what do you
mean you train it? Because I ensure that I slowed
down on the spiritual feed so itknows that I like spiritual
things. If something wrong comes up, I
quickly remove it. So I've trained it that it only
now gives me spiritual things. So maybe we can train our social
media, of course. That's great.

(53:31):
Of course, he's a monk and he's very much with himself and God,
but I feel like in this day and age, everything everyone wants
is quick, quick, quick, quick, quick.
That's why the videos that can be the most popular thing are 5
seconds long, 2 seconds long because we have such a short
attention span. We just want, we just want to
see everything quick, quick, quick.
So thank thank God our listenerslisten to a 2 hour podcast, but

(53:52):
it's for it's for good reasons. Our guests are amazing.
So staying on the purity concept, what is the problem
with pornography? Why is it so damaging and what
kind of long lasting effects canthat have on somebody who's kind
of exposing themselves to that? Yeah, look.
And so I'd say being a priest, the number one problem I, I, I

(54:15):
see it stems from pornography. The biggest issue causing
problems in, in the lives of young people and in marriages
is, is pornography. This is no longer just a
spiritual war. It's a war that, that every

(54:38):
person may be facing in their life.
And we have to sort of face it and take it seriously because as
you say, there's so many damagesthat, that it's causing for us.
The first thing I was actually watching recently, another
podcast with a professor of psychology from university who

(54:58):
said that one of the biggest issues with pornography is the
fact that it plays around with our dopamine levels in our
brain, which trigger the fact that it is so addictive.
It floods the brain with dopamine.
Dopamine is the is the reward system of the brain that allows
us to experience a sort of a pleasurable feeling, but it's

(55:23):
used for areas of our life that require reward, for example,
working and being accomplished. I'm going to the gym for a one
hour session, feeling good afterthat, That's dopamine.
Yeah. And she was saying that that as
you said, Simon, the the brain has become adjusted to wanting

(55:45):
quick releases of dopamine all the time, whereas it wasn't
designed by God for that. It was designed to reward us for
hard work. It's a natural pleasure system.
So the things that when I work hard, spend time with my
children, I feel happy about that.
And I work at 8 hour day and I, I leave my work and I've done

(56:06):
great work. I feel happy about that.
You know, I've done a long work.I don't know, I feel happy about
that. But when I've messed it up with
quick releases of dopamine like that comes from any form of
addiction, gambling, alcohol, drugs, pornography, and then it
ruins the way that God has designed our minds.

(56:28):
We no longer actually enjoy the natural pleasures of life.
We don't feel it anymore, you know?
We come numb to it that. Makes sense.
And so you come numb to it. You don't want to work hard for
anything. You want everything to come to
you really easily. So it actually has impact on our
whole life and on the things that we're accomplishing because
all our brain has become wired to do is just receive that quick

(56:52):
hit really fast with excessive levels that numbs everything
else. Exactly.
Then when we're faced with any problem, any stress in life, it
becomes the go to because how doI escape whatever problem I'm
in? Let me go to whatever is just
going to release that dopamine really fast, really hard.
I don't go to the right sources or for healing or for stress

(57:15):
relief. I don't spend time with my my
family that give me that joy of my wife, that gives me that joy
of my partner. I'll go to pornography.
So then you disengage from the things that you should be
engaging with and you're engaging with something that is
just continuously damaging you. That's I mean, the the impacts.

(57:38):
There were so many. This is one another is it
actually damages real intimacy in a marriage because you've
developed an expectation of whatintimacy looks like, which is
not real. And so when you come to
experience real intimacy, all this is not really how it's I

(58:00):
expected it was going to be. This is not really that that
sort of enjoyable. She's not doing this, He's not
doing that. And then some partners can then
lose interest in real intimacy. Become resentful.
That's right. Yeah.
So I think it's it's a dangerouspath to take.
It changes how we view women. I think it's very degrading to

(58:24):
women. We should look to all humanity
as children of God, as daughtersof Christ.
If I'm continually exposing myself to seeing women subjected
in this kind of way, then how doI view women?
It changes the way we uses a horrible lens to to view women

(58:49):
and so on many levels. Pornography is the biggest
disaster that is hit our generation and I think we all
have to stand up against this and reclaim the natural,
beautiful pleasures that God hasgiven to us.

(59:11):
Yeah, we we pray for God's grace.
We need it. Not an easy answer, but what are
the steps people can take to try?
And of course you're not going to maybe stop an addiction
that's been there for a while but stops in order to steps in
order to slowly, slowly creep away from it.
Yeah, how can you do that exactly?
Yeah, look, this, this professorof psychology, she, she offered,

(59:33):
you know, one, one stop startingpoint where she said that you
need to start fasting from, fromit because what happens is the
brain has developed an addiction.
And so each day and each time you're stressed, it's like a
trigger that I need, I need thatnow.
And so she said that we need to rewire our brains.

(59:54):
And to rewire the brain, we needto be fasting from it for a good
period of time. When we fast from it, the brain
then starts to readjust, you know, because I'm not technical,
but you know, she said. The brain starts to readjust.
And then we train the brain to search for natural pleasures.

(01:00:16):
So when I'm stressed, I'll spendtime going for a walk with my
wife. And when I'm stressed, I'll go
do a gym workout and I'm pressured, get on my knees and
pray, you know, tend A liturgy. So I'll do the things that
training my brain to get the comfort and the happier feeling

(01:00:38):
and the strength from the right sources.
So we slowly move away from the damaging addictive behaviors
that we can get ourselves into. Then we're in a much stronger
position because no longer is anaddiction.
It just becomes a temptation. So we want to move away from the
addictive phase into just the temptation phase.
It will always be a temptation as long as we're alive.

(01:00:59):
That stuff is always going to bea temptation because it is a
quick form of pleasure. But if we at least move away
from the addictive phase into the temptation phase when we're
in a stronger position spiritually to always make the
say, they will say no, no, no. And to put things in place to
help us. You know, like there's that book

(01:01:21):
Atomic Habits, and one of the things, you know, examples he
uses to develop a good habit is to make it easily accessible.
You know, and he uses in the book the example of apples.
He says that he, you know, he's doctor told him he has to eat
more apples. So he'd buy apples, He'd put it
in the fridge, a drawer, and he'd just never eat the apples.
And then they go off and he chucks out the apples.

(01:01:43):
So he said I made one change instead of instead of having the
apples in the fridge, a drawer, I put it in a fruit bowl on the
bench. And I walk past.
I see the apples. It's one grab and he starts
punching them. It's through the apples.
So when they're hidden away in the fridge drawer, it's not,
it's not insight, it's not coming to mind.

(01:02:05):
It's it's a harder step. Open the fridge, open the
drawer, grab the apple. Too many steps.
But to develop that habit, he made it easily accessible.
One grab, off you go. And so the opposite is true.
If I want to stop a habit, it's harder to get to, not too easy.
Very simple things we can do certain blocks even like let's

(01:02:28):
say, I don't know, Instagram becomes a source of problem for
me. Let's get a blocker block
Instagram on my phone. Yes, I can go and unblock it,
but it's a, it's a. Few of the.
Processes away in a bit of a process and it gives me time to
think, is this really going to be worth it?
No. Get back out.
Well, Father Jacob actually saidsomething similar.

(01:02:49):
He said don't resist the temptation, but replace it.
So I think a lot of us sometimesfeel like we want to be in the
position to resist because it makes us feel like, Oh yes, I
resisted, but don't be so proud in that sense, like actually
escape and replace it with something else.
Because if you try and who's going to stand there and resist?
It's don't stand in the. Resistance back to pride, I want

(01:03:12):
to say I didn't. I overcame it When reality we're
nothing. So how can we bring this
conversation up to our kids? Because, and I think it's good
that you have, I think your oldest is 12.
So I think maybe you may have even had a discussion like this.
But what I worry about, my kids are still quite young, five and
two. I never want to expose something

(01:03:33):
to the kids that they don't knowabout or, you know, plan ideas
into the head because I'm just thinking if I ever bring
something like this up, it mightactually bring curiosity on
board. And and so how do we bring it up
to kids so that they're aware and they know what's right and
what's wrong, but we don't kind of open a door that you don't
want to open. Yeah.
So I think we can teach our kidsin general terms, not

(01:03:53):
specifically our pornography as such, but in general terms that
online actually in all of life, there are with every new
technology, there are policies and negatives, There is good
content and there is harmful content.
And so I think, yeah, kids that we, whenever we're online with
you, really careful what we're doing online just to make sure
that we're not getting anything harmful.

(01:04:14):
And there are different kinds ofharmful things online.
And so if we, we begin that way while they're younger, then
they're just aware that there's a phrase I like to use, which is
select and reject. So with everything, they have to
select what's good and reject what's bad.
And so we can teach them these simple things.
Anything that you're doing a lot, you have to select and
reject. If something bad that you know

(01:04:35):
is going to be bad, you reject that.
So they can begin understanding these kind of general
principles. And then as they're a bit older,
it could be a bit more direct when they know what they're what
you're talking about. So we can start with just simple
things, select and reject. Now I want to ask you a question

(01:04:55):
steering away from pornography, but more so to someone who goes
about their life every day and he understands the concept of
God, but doesn't really want to sort of go into it and believe
it as much. So what would you now like what
would you say to someone who doesn't believe or doesn't want
to believe necessarily? Because I find in our videos
that we post onto social media, there are people that say, yes,

(01:05:18):
I believe, but I don't really, Idon't really see why I should.
I don't understand this. And they they're, they're making
steps in the right direction, but there's just something
that's holding him back. What would you say to people who
suffer from that? Well, first of all, I think
nobody doesn't believe. You know, I think everyone
believes in something. Even atheism in a sense, is

(01:05:44):
believing. There's a book titled Not Enough
Faith to Be an Atheist. So I would say to someone who
doesn't believe, I admire your belief because the reality is it
takes more faith. It takes more belief to believe
there's no God. It's more of a stretch.

(01:06:05):
Because you're actually having to do research and you actually
have to try and disprove a pointsometimes.
It's it's impossible to comprehend that this
sophisticated organized universecame about by total chance.
That requires a lot of faith. You know, if I, if I tell you
today that, you know, basically I'm gonna flip this table over

(01:06:32):
and this cup of water is going to land exactly, perfectly
straight, these microphones willre land in the exact spot.
You'll say to me you're crazy. You know, So it requires more
faith to believe there's nothing.
It's more of a stretch. So it's easier for me to believe
that there is a God. We can see it from nature.

(01:06:55):
We can see it from we can see God's fingerprints everywhere.
Just look around. I think first of all, we have to
be real and understand that everyone has a belief.
It's easiest to believe in the truth.
It's easiest to believe it's thetruth.

(01:07:15):
It smacks you in the face. It shines forth.
The truth of Jesus is is beautiful.
And the story of Jesus is like no other story ever in the
world. The greatest love story in the
world it all when the truth and you seek the truth, you will
find the truth and it's the easiest path to believe.

(01:07:38):
If you could, if you could sit with Jesus for 5 minutes, what
would you say or ask him? Oh, I know that one.
I felt, I felt like that one of all questions he'd actually
think and it'd stump you a little bit.
It's the exact question I was about to.
Ask. It's the second time.
Take your time. You can think.

(01:07:59):
Look. I think I would.
I would probably. I'd be speechless, obviously in
front of Jesus. Not for 5 minutes, all right.
But I would, I would want to know if he's happy with me
because I want to be with him for all eternity.
And so I would want to know fromhim, am I on the right path?

(01:08:23):
Am I on the right path to spend eternity with you?
I would want to make sure you know when, when Son and Peter
had that conversation with him after resurrection and Jesus
said to him, Son and Peter, do you love me?
And he said, yes, Lord, you knowthat I love you.
I want to make sure that that God really believed that I loved
him and I was loving him in the right way.

(01:08:45):
You know that we can have that encounter.
You know, every day in prayer, we can have that encounter.
We can seek the Lord's feedback in our life and reflect.
Yeah. So on that point, what I wanted
to touch on was you mentioned something like you wanted to see
if you're on the right path withJesus.

(01:09:06):
There are a lot of kind of Christian denominations that
would find that very shocking because they're like, you should
know that you're saved and instantly.
And you know, I've had a lot of discussions with people like
that where they say, do you knowthat you're saved?
I said, well, yeah, I mean, God offers me salvation, but I need
to play my part and I need to not that anything that I can do
is going to lead me to my salvation.
But it's kind of like he stretched out his hand to me and

(01:09:28):
I've got to grab it. But there are a lot of religions
or denominations of Christianitythat kind of just say no.
It's the craziest thing is that you should even question for one
second. So what would you say to someone
like that? You look, I think the
questioning is not from God's side, it's from our side.
I never question the God's salvation.

(01:09:49):
I never questioned that that's offered to us.
Definitely God has come down to earth in Jesus, has given his
life, has shed his blood to offer salvation.
He has come to take on my punishment and my sin upon
himself so that I can be saved. That these are facts, non
negotiables, non negotiables from God's side.

(01:10:12):
The part, the variable is not God's side.
It's me. I can accept that or I can
reject that. I can walk that path or I can
deviate from that path. And so, and it's not in a
moment, it's not a moment's decision.
It's a life, it's a journey. You know, in any journey, you
can go off the path. And so while some people say

(01:10:34):
that salvation is earned in a moment, the moment you believe,
yes, it's earned in that moment as you accepted Christ and his
salvation, but you need to continue to walk that journey,
that path. I can step off it at any time.
And so to to our last breath, weneed to be begging God that we
remain on that on that path. That's simple as that.

(01:10:57):
Is it ever too late to come backto Christ?
The the story of the thief on onthe right hand of Christ when
he's crucified really gives us insight into that.
You know, he, he was, you know, obviously living a sinful life
to the point that he deserved his his punishment, but he

(01:11:18):
turned to Christ in his last breath and said, Remember Me
when you come into your Kingdom And the Lord said today you'll
be within my Kingdom. So we get insight that it's
never too late to the on our deathbed, we can be accepting
Christ. However, we shouldn't take too
much literally. Yeah.
Well, no, we shouldn't take too much comfort in that because as
we get older, we can grow coolerand harder.

(01:11:41):
You know, we can't rely on the fact that for my deathbed, I'll
be ready to accept Christ, get him now in the moment that we
have with the energy that we have.
We keep God the the best of our days, the best of our years.
Not when I get older, I'll go tochurch or you know, when I'm
lucky, you know, whatever, I'll start taking it seriously.
You're giving him the leftovers of your life.
You never keep a king of the leftovers.

(01:12:02):
You give him the very best. And that's why in the Bible it
says remember the Lord. Remember the Lord your God in
the days of your youth, not in the days of when you're an old
man or an old lady. Remember Him in days of your
youth at the time. Energy and passion and emotion
and zeal and give God those days.
Don't rely on the fact that He'll accept me later when I'm

(01:12:25):
old. Start now.
Listening to a podcast where oneof the hosts was Hindu and he
they were having a Christian discussion and what he is
concern about Christianity was he found it unbelievable that
Jesus can accept anyone even if they're a pedophile, even if
they're a murderer, even if whatever, as long as they come

(01:12:45):
to him, then he's accepting them.
But somebody, for example, that could live a very good and
virtuous life but just doesn't have Jesus, could end up in
hell. So that a contradiction to him
was like, OK, how can God acceptthe people that have done
physically so much bad and so much evil, but in the last
moment they say, oh, I love you Jesus, and then they're in
heaven. And then someone who's lived
their whole life virtuous, looking after the poor serving

(01:13:07):
people, but just didn't have Jesus, how can they miss out?
What would you say to that? Yeah, look, I think that it goes
back to the Lord's compassion and mercy.
One of the attributes of God is compassion, you know?
And so when Jesus came, he. If you're looking through

(01:13:29):
scripture, you'll find that the word compassion appears 9 times
in the New Testament, and each of those times it's referring to
Jesus in a parable about the work of Christ.
And so Jesus came to show God's mercy and compassion to mankind.
This is the definition of Christianity.

(01:13:49):
And so yes, it can be shocking that that God will accept
someone who's lived a bad life all of their life.
It is shocking. The fact that it's shocking
makes it even more beautiful, you know, because we have a Lord
who is so compassionate, so merciful and always waiting to
for us to come back. There are so many parables in

(01:14:09):
the Bible, the, for example, theparable of the prodigal son.
You have a father just sitting there waiting for the return of
his son. You know, the son himself in the
parable of the prodigal son losthope.
He he, he actually said to himself, you know, I'll go back
and I'll tell my father, I'll come back.
I know you can't take him back as your son, but just take him

(01:14:31):
back as one of your workers in your house.
But the father wasn't like that.The father said, no, you come
back as my son and celebrates his return.
And so that's the reality of theChristian God.
That's the reality of Christ. I actually had a Hindu mate that
I went to university with reallygood mates.

(01:14:53):
News had a great time at university.
And after we finished university, we, we sort of went
different ways and hadn't seen each other in a long time.
And then I bumped into him many years later and oh, how's life?
What have you been up to this that, you know, here's a look
I've had, I've had a really tough run.
I've, I got married and I made some mistakes, got divorced and

(01:15:18):
now I'm just being, you know, really miserable.
I don't know how to sort of let go of the shame.
And, and I spoke to him about the concept of forgiveness.
I said, why are you holding on to the shame?
There is forgiveness for your mistakes.
He said, no, no, we don't have forgiveness.
Like, what do you mean? Isn't that we like you?

(01:15:39):
You live with your the consequences of your mistakes
and it comes back to you in yournext life.
They're a Hindu belief. And I spoke to him about the
forgiveness that Jesus offers, that Jesus came to give us
forgiveness, to give us new life, to wipe away, to take away
the shame took upon himself, to give us a new chance, a new

(01:16:01):
start, a new life. He really struggled to
comprehend that. And we, we as Christians, we, we
talk about that, you know, we'reso used to that kind of
language, but for someone who hasn't understood that, they
struggled to comprehend it. But that's, that's the power of
Christianity is that it grants new life to us.
Christ himself took the punishment and took the shame so

(01:16:24):
that we don't have to hold on toit anymore.
We become liberated, we become free.
You know, imagine you can give your life like that, you live
free. That's what Christian That's the
gift of Christianity. So what would you say to the the
flip side of, you know, what if you lived a good life but didn't
know Jesus and then you don't end up in heaven, for example,

(01:16:45):
That's the flip side that they take.
What would you say to that? Well, I think these matters of
judgment are in the hands of God.
He knows how to judge every human, whether there are
exceptions or no exceptions or you know, all we know is that
salvation comes through Jesus Christ.
And that's the path we need to seek in our life.

(01:17:07):
How God will judge all humanity.That's, that's for him to, to,
to do and to know like it's outside our scope.
All we can do is attach ourself to the source of our salvation,
which is Jesus Christ. So I heard a take on that, which
is like Jesus is never going to impose himself.
If you lived your life without him, why?
Why would you want to go to heaven and spend your life

(01:17:28):
praising him? So heaven probably isn't where
you want to be if you've spent your whole life not wanting to
know Jesus. Yeah, it is definitely a
relationship with Christ. So this next segment I want to
do an advice from Father Mark. So a few a few people that I
want you to give advice to. The first one is husbands.
What's your number one piece of advice?

(01:17:49):
You know, I'll, I'll, I'll tell you a little story that when I
was getting married, I went to my spiritual father, Father
Jacob, we've mentioned a few times and I asked him that same
question. I said, father, you know, I'm
getting married and you know, give me like your top piece of
advice. And he's a very wise, profound
person. I was expecting like a like a a
blow away kind of piece of. Probably, he said.

(01:18:09):
Just stay quiet. He's actually pretty close, he
said. OK, my number one advice is when
you come home in the evening andyou're hungry and she's made no
food, don't comment. Spot on.

(01:18:31):
That was his advice, right? I was like, that's your advice.
Like that's a number one piece of advice.
You know you. Ought to be dumped.
This is what? I'm getting told now what about?
But I can't tell you the number of times that has played back in
my mind, not just about. In everything in.
Extrapolated. Not just about about the meal,
but it's not about you. You have no right.

(01:18:54):
You have no right to a meal cooked for you.
You have no right to clothes washed for you and your shirts
ironed. You didn't marry a slave.
Yeah. You entering marriage to serve
another person, to sacrifice your life for the other person.
You have no right for anything. So never open your mouth for

(01:19:17):
anything. Food doesn't taste good.
There's no food. Where's my clothes?
Where's this? No, you're there to serve.
You're there to serve your wife and to serve your children.
And don't open your mouth about things.
And I, I think that's top advicefor, for, for men is to, to know
your role. Don't expect anything.
Don't make comments. OK, advice to dads.

(01:19:43):
Don't comment any men. Don't comment.
Don't talk just. Stop.
Advice to that, I think connect with your children.
You know, I think a lot of people are busy, Dad's busy
chasing dreams and, and pursuingbusiness and career and, and

(01:20:05):
that and, and we're not present enough with our children.
We need to be present. We need to be connected to be
close to our children that that connection from a very young
age. There are so many statistics out
there now that, that the first five years, very formative, the
1st 10 years and the, the whole character's already formed.

(01:20:26):
And so in these younger years, we're, we're young fathers are
busy, they're not forming their,their children.
So I think #1 advice to, to dadsis be close, prioritize and
spend time with your children. Connect.
Advice to wives. I'll ask just in case you get
in. Trouble.

(01:20:47):
What's your advice to wives? You know, there's, there's a
basic advice in in the Orthodox,Coptic Orthodox wedding
ceremony, which says to women again, it, it sounds a bit odd,
but I think it's also a game changer is do not frown in his
face. That's one of the pieces of

(01:21:08):
advice in the ceremony. You know, officially they're
not. Frown in his face again.
If if you think about that practically when your husband
walks through the door and you smile.
It's big. It's beautiful, it's beautiful.
It sounds so simple, but it's beautiful.
You walk the door and your wife smiles to you and and maybe a

(01:21:28):
hug and a kiss. Do you guys comment after that
so that? It sets the tone, of course, for
the whole day, for the whole evening, 100%.
You know, so just smile to him, make him feel cherished,
respect. You know, a smile, a hug and a

(01:21:50):
kiss shows a lot of love and respect.
So I was a top, top tip to two wives.
It's not that that men are are simple.
They just want to see you happy and smiling and to show them a
lot of respect. Men need to be respected.
When I frown in their face, likehe's serious, like, and I'd roll
my eyes and I'd lick my head on,you know, the men feel

(01:22:12):
disrespected. When men feel disrespected, they
don't feel like men because the number one need for a man is to
be respected. And if my wife is disrespecting
me, I don't feel like a true man.
So enable your husband to be a man by respecting him.

(01:22:32):
You'll see the best that will come out of him.
Smile, a kiss, a hug and not frowning.
You bring the best out of your husband.
I love that. Beautiful.
What about to mums? Mums are the backbone of a
family. They're familiar.

(01:22:53):
And I think to mums is I know the the role you are playing
with your children is, is powerful.
You know, the love, the tenderness, the emotional
connection that you are playing in your home is critical.
Never let anything get in the way of that.

(01:23:15):
So I would just say to to mums, you have a calling and and never
lose that sight of that calling,you know, So, yeah.
And then what's your advice to parents on how to raise kids
knowing right from wrong and being engrossed in the church?
Yeah. Look, I think the best thing we

(01:23:35):
can do as parents for our children is to raise them in the
church. I think to, you know, embed them
in the church, make Sunday sacred.
Like make Sunday as it ought to be the Lord's Day.
You get up as a family, you all get dressed nicely and you head
to church nice and early as a family and then living out the

(01:23:59):
rest of your week taking opportunities to talk, to embed
the Christian values into the lives of the children.
Yeah. So if every day, every night as
a family, we get together and and and pray and read the Bible,
we have an opportunity to talk, you know, talk about the Bible.
How can we apply to school and how can we apply in their life?

(01:24:19):
So the kids are growing up learning that first of all,
church is the most important thing in the world.
It's a non negotiable we go as afamily and then the Bible and
prayer is guiding our life and the Bible is only applied to
their life. I have two mates who are
priests. I grew up with them, Father
Daniel and Father Paul. They're they're brothers and

(01:24:43):
they're both priests and there'sonly two boys in the family.
So and then their dad you were. Destined to be a priest?
Your group of friends is all priests.
All right, it's a priest. And then their dad is also a
priest, Father Michael. So you have Father Michael has
two boys and they're both priests, Father Daniel and
Father Paul. So once I was having a chat to
Father Michael and their mum, Mona, OK.

(01:25:07):
And I was talking to Father Michael and Mona and I was
saying, look, your two boys became priests.
Your two, your two kids consecrate their life to God.
What would you say like happenedin that house, in your house to
create an environment where 100%of your children are consecrate
to God? And then Father Michael, very
humbly, he said, oh, it was all their mother you.

(01:25:29):
Know he didn't comment, Yeah. He.
Was smart, he was. I can already tell he was.
Smart, he knows. He didn't say a word.
He's like, I was all their mother, you know, And I said,
OK, you know, so And then one ofthose, no, no, no, no, no, I
will tell you. She said Every night their dad
sat with them to read the Bible,and every night he explained how

(01:25:51):
to apply the Bible in their life.
That's it. That was her.
That was her, you know, explanation of how that
happened. And so I think as parents, if we
embed them in the church and in the home, we have that
opportunity to spend time with them.
With the Bible. We'll raise very strong
Christian young men and women. Absolutely.
And last one, before George moves on to another segment,

(01:26:13):
what's your advice to someone who feels, maybe not necessarily
a guy, but a woman who feels rushed because of their age and
wants to get married, like wantsto rush to get into a
relationship? What's your advice to someone
like that? Man or woman, Obviously.
Yeah. Look, I think it's fair that,
you know, many of us desire to be in a, in a good loving

(01:26:34):
relationship, but approach it with faith.
I approach it with faith and with patience because we believe
that God will guide us to the right person at the right time.
We don't know what's best for our lives.
Sometimes we think we know what's best.
But if we just pray about it, have faith that God is guiding
us, he'll guide us to the right person at the right time.

(01:26:55):
And that gives us a lot of peace.
When I leave the challenges of my life in the hand of God, that
gives us a lot of peace to know that it will end up in the right
way at the right time. Very awesome.
Thank you. All right, so moving on, if
you're asking God for something and you feel like he's not
answering, we feel like this is a question that comes up a lot
and we want to get your advice on it.

(01:27:16):
Like if someone is really seeking something from God and
or going through a hardship and feels like there's no hope, or
they're in a cycle of despair orthere's just no traction, no
light at the end of the tunnel, what's your advice to them?
I thought, I think we feel like God's not answering us because
we want him to answer us in a particular way.

(01:27:37):
Sometimes non answered prayer isanswered prayer and that we
don't actually realize me praying for something that
either is not good for us or thetiming is not good for us.
So I think it's good that we develop the kind of faith that
we believe that every prayer is answered prayer.

(01:27:59):
If I've asked something of God, then it is answered in his way,
not in my way. Yeah, let's, let's give a, you
know, an example. Simon likes a girl.
He prays to God for this girl. The girl says no, that's an
answer prayer because maybe thatgirl wouldn't have been

(01:28:21):
suitable. He sees her as suitable, but
maybe God knows she wasn't rightthe right one for him or wasn't
the right time for him. It's an answered prayer.
I'm applying for a new job and Ireally, really wanted, and I
plead with the Lord and I don't get the job.
There's answered prayer because probably there's a better one
around the corner that's more suited, you know what I mean?

(01:28:42):
So I would encourage that to have the faith that every prayer
is answered prayer in God's answer.
That's the one we want. We don't want our answer, we
want God's answer. Does that make sense?
Makes sense. I guess going off that, one of
the things that I feel that is something that's very hard for
people is the concept of having kids because I guess everyone

(01:29:04):
gets married and just thinks kids is the logical next step.
And there are a lot of people, Ithink in our community, it's a
bit too taboo to even talk aboutthese kind of topics.
But the the concept of, you know, people trying to have kids
and they can't. And it's maybe a cycle of
despair thinking, OK, So what are we going to do?
And we touched on this in our last episode a little bit, but I
want to get your opinion on it because sometimes people go down

(01:29:26):
the path of IVF and there is twoschools of thought.
Some people say, OK, but are youmaybe God doesn't want you to
have kids. And now you're twisting his arm
and saying, OK, well, we're going to medically intervene.
Even though if someone was sick,you medically intervene.
So what's your opinion about IVF?
And is it anyway compromising God's will or is it not, you
know, should you just leave thatto prayer?

(01:29:46):
What would you say? Well, look, I think when we talk
about God's will, we need to go back to the very beginning of of
Genesis and God's very first command to mankind.
Do you know what it was? Multiply.
Yeah. Be fruitful and multiply.
So God's will is to be fruitful and multiply.
And so if there is a treatment like IVF that is enabling, being

(01:30:10):
fruitful and multiplying, then it's totally acceptable.
Of course, there are, you know, requirements for that, but it's
still within the Christian marriage.
You know, IVF is, is not acceptable outside of Christian
marriage for us as Christians. It's inside of a Christian
marriage between a husband and awife within those confines.

(01:30:36):
And so then it becomes a treatment enabling God's will
using, using, you know, science.So I think if we look at it that
way, then IVF is definitely an acceptable and holy option
because it's enabling a husband and a wife to execute God's will
to be fruitful, multiply. Next point would be more about

(01:31:00):
mental health because I think a lot of kids these days are
getting exposed, like kids are getting diagnosed with anxiety
or depression and they're just, I mean, we never had things like
this growing up. It was kind of like you felt sad
for a second. Just get over it like it wasn't.
But now it's like it might be the social media impact, the
dopamine that you were expressing about previously.

(01:31:21):
So there has been rises in suicide and depression anxiety
in younger kids. So what?
What's your opinion about that and how can we address that to
our kids and move forward? Yeah, look, I think you're
right. I think we need to look into the
root causes of of these rises and and you've said an obvious

(01:31:41):
one, which is social media. I think that's is probably the
most damaging input for our children growing up, the level
of comparisons that are taking place and the reliance on these
kinds of means of communicating,being socially accepted, the

(01:32:04):
negative impacts coming in from the unsatisfied lives that have
been developed. So I think social media is
causing, I believe, a dramatic rise in children growing up
feeling depressed and anxious. So I think the way we need to
approach it is to protect them from these kinds of input, so we

(01:32:25):
don't leave the children completely free to engage online
in these kinds of things, but tonurture them in a way that they
grow up to be healthy spiritually, physically,
emotionally, and protecting themfrom all of these negative
impacts on their life. Some parents you know are busy

(01:32:51):
and leave the children to do whatever.
One child came to me in a confession session and said my
parents put me to bed and they think I'm sleeping but I have
the phone with me and it's undermy cover.
I'll spend the next few hours online.

(01:33:12):
So, you know, the parents think that he's, he's fast asleep, you
know, but he's taking all of this negative input, you know,
So we have to be, I think, vigilant to ensure that our
children are protected from these kinds of things to so they
grow up emotionally healthy. So Father Mark's advice on when
a kid should get a smartphone iswhat age.

(01:33:32):
As late as possible, As late as possible, I think, you know,
obviously, as as the children enter into high school, pressure
mounts. You know, my son continue tells
me I'm the only one without a phone.
I'm the only one without a phone.
I'm like, surely there's someonenot I'm the only.
One, my little brother is 14. He has a he has a MacBook and

(01:33:53):
I'm like a MacBook. I don't even have that in in
duty or tape MacBook. I'm like, what can you be
learning? But that's the kids now.
Everything Before we used to go buy our books for each term each
semester. Now it's all on the laptop.
Like we can't get a $100 laptop.Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Oh goodness.
Yeah, it's as late as possible, as late as possible to protect
them. Right in this next segment, I

(01:34:15):
want to show a few clips so thatwe have two clips to play.
The first clip is about a guy that has been claiming a lot of
attention online, claiming to bethe legitimate Pope, the
successor of Simon Peter, the successor of Muhammad, the
successor of Jesus. And he's kind of calling people
to to band with him and form this new faith.
And I don't want to give him more of a platform, but I think

(01:34:36):
it's important that we are awareof these kind of things because
it's very easy to be misled because there are a lot of
people claiming he's done these miracles and this and that.
So what I'll do is I'll play it on the laptop and we can just
watch it quickly and then I'll get your comment on it.
I am Abdullah, the successor of Imam Al Mahdi Alayhi Salaam, the
successor of the Comforter, Ahmed, the successor of Simon

(01:34:58):
Peter, the successor of Muhammad, the successor of Jesus
Christ. I am the true and legitimate
Pope. I am the proof upon the
Christians. I am the son of the Muslims
through my father, and the son of the Christians and the Jews
through my mother. I am the son of the East through
my father and the son of the West through my mother.

(01:35:20):
I'm like Sulkarnain, who with one horn in the East and one in
the West, and I am the inheritorof all that lies between.
I am more knowledgeable than anyfalse Pope, and I am appointed
by name and the will of the prophets.
My name is also on the tongue ofIsaiah, who've prophesied of the
righteous Servant, and he said he will see his offspring and

(01:35:43):
prolong his. Deep stuff.
So what are your what are your views on something like that?
And like, how do people not get confused by this?
Yeah. First of all, you know, even
just looking or listening to that makes you feel a bit
uneasy. You know, his way is makes you

(01:36:05):
feel a little bit intimidated. He never smiled.
He didn't show any love or compassion.
Just claiming authority. Authority and so when you look
to Jesus, who is the true Son ofGod, this beautiful,
compassionate, inviting, life giving person, the truth, as I

(01:36:28):
said before, it, it stands out. It's not hard to see it.
You put all the, all the prophets, all the, all the
claims of the world next to eachother, you find 1 shines and
that's that's Christ. It's not hard.
This is not surprising. You know, our Lord told us that

(01:36:48):
there'll be many that will come that will claim to be some sort
of prophet or, or Christ. The Book of Revelation is filled
with prophecies about antichrists, people that will
come claiming to be successes asthis man is suggesting.
So we, we expect these sorts of things.

(01:37:10):
We're not shocked by it. We, we were told that it's going
to happen and it is happening. Not just him, but many other
people come out claiming things.The other funny thing about this
is contradictions. You know, how can you be a
successor of the Pope, of Son Peter, of Muhammad, of all of

(01:37:32):
these prophets that have come? They they are not.
Conflicting. It's.
Conflicting prophets. I think you read everything at
once and was just, yeah, just just connected off.
Yeah, connected for that. One, so I look, I wouldn't be
too disturbed by these sorts of things.
We expected them. They are signs of the end, as as
the Bible tells us. But there is no successor to
Christ. Christ himself said that he will

(01:37:53):
himself will come again. There was no one else that need
to come after him. The prophets came before him to
point to him, and he was the last one.
The second coming will be his return.
And that is the truth. And it's very easy to see the
truth, yeah. OK, great.
So then the second clip I wantedto show you actually is a

(01:38:16):
podcast called the Flagrant Podcast.
Andrew Schultz had a guest called Wesley Huff, who is Bible
scholar and the historian. And what I find very interesting
about this clip is the comedian,which is Andrew Schultz is he
sees something special in orthodoxy where he he, he he's
kind of trying to push Wesley Huff on this point about how

(01:38:37):
orthodoxy seems to be like the real faith because it hasn't
changed. But Wesley Huff is kind of not
really buying it. And it it's kind of very
surprising to me because with someone with his amount of
education, you would assume thathe would he would think that
that was more accurate. But he is leans a lot Protestant
and I guess thinks that the the the closest thing to the church

(01:38:57):
is what came maybe 1600 years later.
So let's watch the clip and thenmaybe I'll get your comments on
it as well. And that created the division.
So just so I can understand this, Orthodox have been holding
it true this entire time. Then the Catholics kind of
change it up a little bit, it's trigger, and then the thing that
the Catholics create gets changed up again.

(01:39:19):
And then, well, it gets changed up again and gets changed up
again and gets changed up again.But them Orthodox have been
holding it true this whole time.I mean.
Kind of crazy how that you? Got to talk to the cops.
I'm just saying. They got Jesus's house in the
Cairo. So yeah, I was there.
So that's the Coptic. So they're they're another
group. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

(01:39:41):
So you got you got a bunch of different factions, right?
But yeah, but I think you have acentral core which we would all
adhere to approximately. But then you have
differentiations in like theological disagreements.
The Protestant Reformation was to reform all of that and go
back to the primitive Church. The primitive Church is.
Well, like what Scripture teaches, which would be.
Closest to I don't think. It's necessarily closest to any

(01:40:03):
of them, like I don't. Claim that feels kind of
orthodox. Jesus feels like you don't want
to admit it. No, no, I'm not orthodox.
No, this guy is like a die hard orthodox.
As of I just went to, I just went to Turkey and I had a tour
guide and he was breaking the whole thing down to me.
I was like, oh, I've been lied to him my whole life.
The Orthodox are really the realones.
Yeah. So what are your thoughts on
that? Yeah.
Look, I think that's a really interesting discussion.

(01:40:25):
I think it's a very important question to ask about where
authenticity lies the most. Now, I think we can break it
down a little bit, you know, andalso to clarify some of the
language that that they've used.Like you mentioned the Coptics
in Egypt and they're another group.
I wouldn't say they're another group.

(01:40:47):
Coptics in Egypt are Orthodox, They're Coptic Orthodox.
Really, if, if we just simplify it all down, you have three
major groups of Christianity, Orthodox Catholics.
And for instance, you know, of course there are different
denominations within and that sort of things, but three
general groups of, of Christiansand we're all united as, as

(01:41:10):
brothers and sisters, as Christians, we follow the same
Bible. We believe in the Holy Trinity
and so Orthodox Catholics and Christians are all brothers and
sisters in Christ with a lot of love and respect.
But if we just look to how thosethree were formed, it gives us

(01:41:31):
insight into what the question that they're asking is.
Where do you find the most authentic?
So basically for the 1st 450 years after Jesus Christ, the
church was one it. It was not divided.
There was no Orthodox, there wasno Catholic, there was no
Protestant. It was just the church, the

(01:41:51):
Christian Church for 450 years undivided.
In the 450 there was a council in Chalcedon that caused the
first split in the church. That of course there was some
theological discussions that caused that split around
Christology, but mostly some of these splits are sort of

(01:42:16):
influenced by political factors.The emperor himself used to be
part of these discussions. So you can imagine the emperor
of Rome is involved in in churchdiscussions and theology.
And of course, when you have theemperor involved, there are
political reasons, you know, whyyou may want to shift the
headquarters of the church from 1 area like Alexandria and Egypt

(01:42:40):
to Rome as the capital of the empire.
You could see why an emperor would like that shift to take
place. So nearly 450, you had that
first schism of the church whichresulted in the Eastern Orthodox
and Oriental, what's called now Eastern Orthodox and Oriental
Orthodox. Yeah.

(01:43:00):
Approximately 500 years later, again, Rome slid off from the
Eastern Orthodox. Some theological discussion
fuelled by politics. You have another schism that
resulted in the Catholic Church.You know it's just the Church of
Rome, which is always there but now isolated as the Catholic
Church. Another 500 years.

(01:43:21):
You have Martin Luther, who was a Catholic monk, decided to
start a reformation to reform the church from some of
corruptions that he may have been seeing in the church at
that particular point in time. Not corruptions that exist now,
but corruptions at that point intime that he he saw that he
might not wanted to reform. And so he started the
Reformation. the Reformation essentially stripped away church

(01:43:47):
hierarchy and gave autonomy to alot of the churches.
Well, in in theory that sounds good.
It resulted in thousands of different kinds of churches, but
we we can say that we can lump them all into the Protestant
group. So what you have today is the

(01:44:10):
Orthodox, the Catholic, the Protestant family.
Yeah. Now they're all beautiful.
But the question is to, to wherecan we find the most, like,
authentic? Where, where do you find the
church today as Christ had left it?
And that's the question these guys are sort of trying to, to

(01:44:31):
debate. You know, 1 is suggesting all
the authors they've been around the longest, so that must be
them. And then the other one is
saying, Oh no, it must be the process because they, they
reformed it back to what it should have been.
That conversation is, is great and and good, but the simplest
way to answer it is to go and study the early church, to study
that first 450 years, even the first 100 years.

(01:44:54):
Because if you were to think where in which period of time
would the church have been most authentic, closest to the to the
way that Jesus had left it? Where would it be the closest to
Jesus of? Course the what the apostles
instituted. If Jesus had intended the church
to be a certain way, what periodwould that be?
Right where he had left it before there was time to change

(01:45:15):
anything. 1st 100 years, 200 years, The 1st 400 fifties, when
the church was united as one That becomes the reference
point. Simple.
So any discussion now about how things should be in the church,
no one has to debate it. It's very easy.
We go back and study the 1st 450, the early church, you find

(01:45:37):
the answer. There was there priesthood.
It was there was there church hierarchy.
It was there was there the veneration of Saints and the
involvement of Saints in our life.
It was there was there priesthood and and and
sacraments in the church, it wasthere.
It's all there. It's not hard to to
differentiate. So we can always go back to that
period as a reference point. There's a great book called

(01:46:00):
Becoming Orthodox by Father Peter Gilquist and Father Peter
Gilquist was a a Protestant pastor in America.
He's passed away now, but the book tells his story where him
and his mates, who were all pastors of different churches
got together one day and we're asking that same question.

(01:46:21):
How can we prove that the Christianity that we are
practicing today is the most accurate?
So they, they came up with a conclusion, which I just said,
which is let's go back and studythe period with which it would
be the most accurate, the early church.
And we'll come back together andwe'll share notes and we'll
prove that what we're doing today is the early church, which

(01:46:45):
is that guy's suggestion. So they all went off, they did
their research, they all came back, and they all agreed that
the faith they were living out, it was nothing like the early
church. So they said Part 2, let's go
off, study all the churches and come back and see which church
today on earth is closest to theearly church.

(01:47:06):
They all left, did their research, came back, they all
had the same conclusion that theOrthodox Church is the closest
to what the early church looked like from their research.
They then approached the Orthodox Church.
They became Orthodox, their whole congregations were
baptized Orthodox, and it's all written in this book called

(01:47:27):
Becoming Orthodox. And so whilst all churches are
so beautiful, all following Christ, all doing remarkable
work, we're all learning from each other, it's always good to
go back to the early church and just have a look at what was
taking place. Beautiful summary.
Now, I know you're an unbelievably busy person.
I want to thank you for giving us these two hours of your time.

(01:47:50):
However, we're not going to finish until the last questions
asked, which is what we ask all of our guests.
So each time we've had a different answer from, well, six
different guests now. So I guess so you're our 6th
guest now. So question is, what does it
mean to be the salt of the earthand how can somebody become the
salt of the earth? Look, I know there are so many

(01:48:13):
explanations to this beautiful verse by our Lord Jesus Christ
told us encouraged us to be the salt of the earth.
But one thing that that stands out for me is that salt is such
an essential part of many thingsin life.
It's essential for food. It tastes good.

(01:48:34):
It's essential as a preservative.
It's essential in in many forms of life.
And so I see Christianity as an essential part of society.
I see Our Calling in our life tobe an essential part.
We shouldn't feel that our Christianity is just something

(01:48:54):
that, you know, I hold deep within my heart and but that I
live it out. It's an essential part of your
life. It's an essential part of this
world that we're in. We need salt.
We need Christians. We need Christians to stand up
for the values that God has given to each of us.
We need Christians to live out their calling.

(01:49:17):
This world needs that. This world needs people to speak
about their faith, be bold abouttheir belief in Jesus Christ.
We need Christians to share the truth to all people.
And so as salt is needed for so many parts of life, well, this
world needs salt. And Jesus said that you are the

(01:49:39):
sort. You are what's needed in this
world. And so let's live out our
Christian faith boldly speak up about what we truly believe.
Share the beautiful gift we havebeen given from Christ.
You are needed. Don't sit back, don't be
passive. Contribute, serve, speak,

(01:49:59):
comment, be bold, comment, but not your marriage.
As a little more, forgive me. He's taking something away.
Thank. You something.
Now, beautiful. Thank you so much, Father Mark.
It's been a pleasure having you and we look forward hopefully to
sitting with you again soon. Thank you so much.
Thanks so much for for, you know, doing this, this podcast,

(01:50:20):
the salt podcast. I think it's wonderful to be
able to, to be sharing faith with so many people.
So we, we thank you for your efforts and your labour and we
encourage listeners to, you know, to like, subscribe, share
and all that we didn't have to say.

(01:50:41):
Spread the word more. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Thank you guys.

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EP 5 | From Corporate Life to Priesthood: Fr Mark Basily on Faith, Family & Purity

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}EP 5 | From Corporate Life to Priesthood: Fr Mark Basily on Faith, Family & Purity