Life in the Spirit: Fr. Calloway's Testimony PDF

Life in the Spirit: Fr. Calloway’s Tes8mony In this video transcript, you witness Fr. Calloway’s tes9mony of what life was like before he became a Catholic priest, and how he was called and led to the Church. The Holy Spirit is the principle of movement in the life of the Church - always on the move in her members but also “calling out” to people who are on the fringes of society. Fr. Calloway used to be a rebel un9l he was called upon by the Holy Spirit to a life well-lived, a life of love and freedom from some of the most addic9ve elements the world has to oﬀer. It is now evident that Father is living his life in the Spirit. Video Transcript good evening everyone uh welcome to uh all of our parishioners as 0:09 well as the many guests who have joined us today i know some of you have come a long way for this evening so we want to 0:15 welcome you on behalf of the whole community at saint francis xavier church i'm father joe palermo the pastor and 0:22 our parochial vicar is in the back he's been hearing confessions father andrew sanchez so we both welcome you as well 0:28 as all of our staﬀ and community we'll say an opening prayer and then we'll we'll get started in the name of 0:36 the father and of the son and of the holy spirit amen lord we are most grateful for the 0:42 opportunity to gather together today during the season of lent 0:47 the season when we turn try to turn more deeply toward you and allow the holy spirit to ﬁll our hearts 0:55 with your grace so thank you for this opportunity to hear the tes9mony of father donald 1:01 calloway thank you for the opportunity to gather as church uh thank you for all the graces that god 1:08 gives us on a daily basis and we especially pray that you will open our hearts our ears our minds 1:16 to receive all the blessings you wish to give us tonight we uh say this all in the name of jesus 1:23 christ our lord and savior amen it is my privilege to introduce father 1:29 donald calloway he is a priest yes please 1:41 he is a priest of the congrega9on of the marian fathers of the immaculate concep9on 1:46 uh located in stone stockbridge massachuseWs uh the site of the 1:51 na9onal shrine of divine mercy he himself personally resides in steubenville ohio 1:57 father callaway has degrees in philosophy theology and mariology he has 2:03 wriWen 14 books and currently has two more books that 2:09 are ﬁnished being wriWen and in the process of wai9ng for publica9on 2:14 and in 2017 this catholic priest based on a documentary on his life won 2:20 an emmy award will anybody tell me how that could happen how about that 2:31 in 2019 father released a book which rocked the catholic world 2:36 consecra9on to saint joseph wonders of our spiritual father i would imagine 2:42 that many of you in church today own this book and many of you have undertaken the program 33-day process of 2:50 consecra9ng yourself to saint joseph i know i did it last year with our community 2:55 about 75 people consecrated themselves on the solemnity of saint joseph and 3:00 many others who weren't able to make it that day and i'm back on my second reconsecra9on 3:06 and i think i'm on day 23 or 20 24 at this point the book is a reﬂec9on on 3:12 the personhood of saint joseph a young strong virile man that god 3:18 called to be the head of the holy family and on the giYs the charisms and the virtues of saint joseph 3:25 as understood and reﬂected upon by saints of the church through many decades but with fresh insights by 3:32 father callaway the book has sold over one million copies worldwide which for a religious 3:38 book is staggering and has been translated into 18 diﬀerent languages 3:44 and i understand that this book was a key factor in the decision of pope francis to declare the year 2021 the 3:52 year of saint joseph in the worldwide catholic church how about that 4:04 tonight father callaway is not scheduled to talk about his beloved saint joseph because he did that on one of the other 4:11 evening talks this in louisiana or the blessed mother mary whom he talked about on one of the nights but 4:18 about his own conversion story into the catholic faith and later into the priesthood and i know for this he gives 4:25 all glory and praise to jesus christ our lord i understand that there are some people 4:31 here who have followed a father from the talk in baton rouge on monday night to 4:37 the talk in lafayeWe on tuesday night and the talk here in louisiana 4:42 in metairie tonight so we're going to give you some kind of award at the end of the evening for doing that 4:48 the story of father father's conversion is amazing if you don't know the details of it i am 4:55 certainly not going to spoil it but let you hear it from him directly so please give a warm south louisiana welcome to a 5:03 great servant of god a friend of the church a lover of the holy family 5:08 father donald calloway 5:25 you haven't heard me talk yet man you really hyped me up father 5:33 no pressure um yeah so you know how i won that emmy 5:38 because i was a bad boy that's all i was just a sinner and so they wanted to um make a ﬁlm about it 5:46 and the knights of columbus did and i thought it was a joke like they say i got some in the mail one day and it said 5:52 you've won an emmy and i was like i threw it away i did 5:57 i was like give me a break you know and then i got a phone call and they said are you coming oh i do need to turn it 6:03 on okay let me turn on another mic here they said are you coming to receive your emmy your golden calf that's what i 6:09 called it right and i'm like who are you people and they were like you won the yummy in your category and i'm like what 6:15 and i did that you know it's under my bed in a thing i you know i don't care about that man i might melt it down get 6:21 some cash from it you know but anyway so and father as you were speaking about my 6:27 beloved saint joseph i love saint joseph so much oh my goodness what he's done for me it's incredible 6:33 and what he's doing for the church right now but as you were talking father i no9ced above here i don't know if everybody's seen it if this isn't your 6:39 parish that is a gorgeous holy family with a young strong good-looking saint joseph i love that look at that right 6:45 there that is so awesome well done whoever put that up there so very very nice okay before i begin my 6:52 talk i did want to men9on something else because you people here in louisiana you are so blessed 6:58 you are so blessed you are the only state in the united states that has done 7:04 this i hope you know what that is it's amazing so 7:09 during the year of saint joseph jen angelle and her friends they did amazing stuﬀ and i did a liWle bit to 7:16 help get along but not much she's an amazing woman this is a prove from your state legislature that for every may 1st from 7:23 here to the end of 9me in perpetuity may 1st will be recognized by the state of louisiana as a day dedicated to saint 7:31 joseph the worker and that's not just something for the catholic church for the ci9zens all ci9zens of the state of louisiana 7:38 ra9ﬁed by your government oﬃcials that's amazing my friends no other state has that so you you should take pride 7:46 and honor in that okay so on my third night of my my repara9on 7:51 tour i'm calling it um because i got into a lot of trouble down here with you good people right back in 7:57 the day 30 years ago um and i'll talk to you about that and i'll tell you something kind of funny 8:04 that we did the other day um since i'm giving this talk that we did the other day that was hilarious and it blew up on 8:10 facebook people were laughing so hard i'm glad i didn't get in trouble um but it was it was a it was a funny thing all 8:16 right and hopefully i didn't run with any you people 30 years ago and you're going to shoot me aYer this talk or something you know i'm sorry i'm sorry 8:24 you know if i did something to your house or friends family all right okay so you see 8:30 me now if you don't know me from adam you're like who is this dude okay so 8:35 when i was born um my family was not catholic not chris9an of any kind 8:42 and they did not believe in god and so i wasn't bap9zed 8:47 we didn't go to church we didn't pray none of that kind of stuﬀ and my mom very beau9ful young woman i was 8:53 conceived when she was 17 born when she was 18. so she was a very young woman but her marriage had no founda9on it 9:00 wasn't based on sacriﬁcial love it was just basically there were two good looking people that shacked up and i was 9:06 the fruit of that basically seriously that ain't gonna ﬂy they didn't have a 9:12 founda9on of sacriﬁce in that marriage and so they they separated they divorced my mother remarried 9:17 another man dad number two that didn't work out either they separated and then my mother remarried a third man 9:24 now this one dad number three was a liWle bit diﬀerent he was a 9:29 military oﬃcer and he was a chris9an but not really a chris9an i mean he was 9:35 a nominal chris9an so in name only he didn't go to church he didn't pray but he adopted me 9:42 thank the lord why do i say that because do you remember what my last name is 9:48 callaway think golf right the golf clubs famous golf clubs i am so grateful that this man adopted 9:54 me and i got his last name because up 9ll i was adopted by him i had my biological father's last name 10:00 which was croc brutol right 10:08 unless that's your last name it's nice it's very nice horrible right okay so i become calloway 10:14 thank god for adop9on and he um is a nominal chris9an right he had gone to church as a young boy but he 10:20 had stopped going a long 9me ago but his parents my new grandparents and i got grandparents all over the place 10:26 right three dads i got a whole bunch of grandparents so his parents my new grandparents said this poor boy has never been bap9zed 10:33 you've adopted him he's got your last name now you need to have him bap9zed and he and my mom were like nah that's 10:39 not what we do we're not into that you know and grandparents being grandparents they were like you got to bap9ze that boy you got to bap9ze that boy 10:45 so they're like ﬁne shut up right we'll get them bap9zed right so they found a church a random church something 10:51 where it wouldn't be a long process you could just go and get her done and so that's what they did they found an episcopalian church where 10:58 there wasn't a whole lot of you know chat chat ge[ng it done just go in set up a date and you know so 11:05 that's it how many rela9ves and friends did they invite to my bap9sm 11:10 zero none how many pictures did they take of it none why waste ﬁlm on this they didn't 11:17 wanna all they wanted was the eight by eleven cer9ﬁcate to show the grandparents zip it he's bap9zed okay 11:23 be happy i remember my bap9sm i was ten years old okay babies don't 11:28 remember their bap9sm but i was 10 and i remember it was a valid bap9sm right it was legit just in a diﬀerent church 11:34 but it was a legit bap9sm what do i remember some dude 11:40 dressed weird poured water over my face and then we went outside and ate donuts 11:47 around the picnic table welcome to chris9anity right that's that was my entrance into you know 11:53 chris9anity you can get donuts any9me these days you know 24 7 at your local piggly wiggly we'll talk about more 11:59 about that later right and so you you you know you don't have to go to church and get a donut so my 12:05 parents didn't want to go to church i didn't go to church of course so we we didn't go the grandparents were somewhat appeased 12:11 and we started our family unit right now as a family him being a military oﬃcer 12:16 we moved so at that 9me we were in virginia beach virginia and then we moved to southern california 12:23 which was awesome for me as a young boy i absolutely loved it it was like so 12:29 amazing and i wanted to live there to the end of my days you know and then aYer a period of 9me because 12:35 i consider southern california my home it's where my forma9ve kind of years were and just love it 12:40 then he said we're going to move again and i'm like uh where 12:46 because we've been in virginia beach southern california i was hoping to hear honolulu right 12:52 i know what he said he said we're moving to japan and i was like no we're not you know you 12:59 could take your liWle family there to japan i'm not going to japan but i had no choice so we go to japan and i 13:04 immediately looked for the kids who were the bad kids right easy to ﬁnd by the way today 13:10 everybody's so pc they're afraid of oﬀending people who am i to say right 13:15 uh preWy good chance that the dude who's got a taWoo on his forehead you know ain't praying the rosary i'm just 13:20 saying you know preWy good chance you know but today everybody's like who am i to judge you okay so back then it was 13:26 super easy to see who the kids were that were bad so i was drawn to them they were drawn to me and we started to partay 13:34 in japan and it got so bad that i ran away from home on the big island in the middle honshu 13:40 the big island and i i didn't seek gainful employment i wasn't working at a sushi shop you know to get money 13:47 i was running drugs and money for the japanese maﬁa the yakuza the yakuza 13:54 i mean that's serious stuﬀ for a white boy right they never fully ini9ate you know a white kid 14:00 but they used me as a drug mule because nobody would suspect if you're my age or they're about you remember back the 14:06 members only jackets with all the zippers everywhere right i would have so much yen on me 14:12 as a kid like like a million yen not a million dollars it always sounds awesome in 14:18 japanese currency but you know let's say like ten thousand dollars on me as a kid as a 16 year old kid 14:26 that is a ton of money and girls on my leY are my right because if you were a boy in the 1980s growing long hair you were bon jovi 14:33 right you were part of def leppard you were you were part of martley crew you you had it going on right you were a chick magnet 14:39 and so i was like wow it was amazing i absolutely loved it loved everything about it but there was a problem 14:45 i caused an interna9onal scene really between our government and the japanese government 14:51 between our our military presence over there and the authori9es and they were all looking for me because of the criminal ac9vity that i was doing 14:58 because here the things that i were doing we would call felonies i was some serious crime that i was 15:03 commi[ng well that was that was not going well for my dad or my mom my mom was stressed 15:10 she was so suﬀering from so much anxiety and nervousness she was on medica9on for depression and all this 15:15 stuﬀ and then my mom had a friend now what i'm about to tell you i would not ﬁnd 15:20 out about un9l much later in japan as in most countries there are these 15:28 amazing creatures called catholic ﬁlipino women okay you ever 15:33 met these people they're amazing right i call them the green berets of 15:38 the spiritual life they're the special forces of god okay they they mean business these ﬁlipino women so sure 15:45 enough there they were in japan because they marry american gis and they're all over the planet you know so so there's 15:50 this ﬁlipino woman and she says to my mother this now if there are any ﬁlipinos here 15:55 i love you salamatpo to you and your people right you're great people i love you i'm not about making to make fun of 16:00 you right now i'm about to imitate you okay so this is what my mom this is what this woman said to my mother 16:07 you got to go talk to father you got to talk to him right that's how it sounds to a white boy okay so my mom almost full-blooded 16:15 italian my mom lachito bianco was my mother's maiden name how she wasn't catholic totally weird but she wasn't so 16:22 this ﬁlipino woman's telling my mom you got to talk to father you got to talk to the catholic priest right so my mom's like what why why do i have to talk to a 16:29 catholic priest but ﬁlipino women they will not stop un9l you do what they tell you to do right 16:35 so my mom was like ﬁne i'll go talk to a priest so my mom went and talked to a military chaplain on the base there 16:42 and that priest changed my mom's life he told her about the saints about the blessed 16:49 virgin about the sacraments confession all the wonders and the glories of catholicism 16:55 and it's all it's as though he went to my mom in her italian dna and just went on with catholicism right it's there 17:02 somewhere we goWa turn it on turn it on man and my mom was like this is amazing 17:08 and she started to bring her husband my dad and from this point i'll call him my dad because i love this man dearly now 17:13 back then we rolled big 9me but now i love this man and she was gonna she wanted to become catholic and she was gonna bring him to 17:20 become catholic and their son my half-brother maWhew i didn't know anything of what i just told you 17:25 clueless how did i ﬁnd out when they apprehended me when the authori9es busted me at a train sta9on 17:32 near yokohama i found out that my mother had already leY the country because she had to 17:38 she had to the authori9es told her you have to leave because we have to have a place to send your son when we apprehend 17:45 him do you know how that broke my mom's heart she did not want to leave that country 17:51 and not knowing where her son was and i didn't know any of this so she and my brother leY they no longer lived in japan they had come back 17:58 to the states my dad had stayed back to search for me i i escaped from that brig the you know 18:04 military cell they recaptured me and they kicked me out of the country kicked me out and when they did they put 18:11 me on what's called a mac ﬂight it's a military cargo plane it's using that for personnel it's cargo web sea9ng on the side and stuﬀ and so they handcuﬀed me 18:18 to the plane and to a military police oﬃcer on my one of my ankles two big mps escorted me from yokosuka 18:25 big military installa9on there to honolulu where they took the handcuﬀs oﬀ and released me into the custody of my 18:32 father and we boarded an american airlines ﬂight from honolulu to lax 18:37 and my ﬁrst thought was thanks for the ride sucka is right i always wanted to come back to the mainland you know 18:43 and i was i was about to bolt at lax like i'm just going to take oﬀ but where was i going to go 18:49 most of my friends were military brats as well so they probably weren't even living in southern california anymore what am i going to do so i was like all 18:54 right whatever so i went with my dad on a ﬂight to pennsylvania where my mom had relocated 19:00 and there's my mom at the gate pre-911 right 19:06 she's right at the gate wai9ng for me and she is oozing motherhood all over me trying to she comes up to me she's like 19:12 donny donny i love you my donny right you know what i did to my eternal shame you know what i did 19:19 i put my ﬁnger out in her face and in front of everybody i said i hate your guts 19:26 and i meant it i was dead to this woman and i don't even know why 19:32 i can't tell you why it's just what the culture told me to do it's them it's authority it's parental 19:39 ﬁgures that jack up your life and that's so weird because you remember my mom technically is only 17 years 19:45 older than i am she's a cool mom she's the one who taught me to listen to cool music not all this lame garbage today right she 19:51 turned me onto the eagles and bob seeger and all that cool stuﬀ my mom was a cool mom my mom was an aWrac9ve mom 19:58 a very beau9ful woman s9ll is and all of a sudden now i hate i hated her 20:03 and my mom broke she started crying right there in front of everybody oh my goodness did i care i 20:09 don't care we get into the car and i said to my dad with an earshot of my mom where are we going 20:15 and he said you're going to a rehab and you know what i said because in the airport i put a dagger in 20:20 my mom's heart in the car i turned it and ripped her guts out i said good 20:26 cause it'll get me away from you the whole ride she cried i went to my 20:32 ﬁrst rehab in altoona pennsylvania it's called new beginnings at cove forge you can look it up it's s9ll there i was there 20:38 for three months i didn't get beWer in the rehab i got worse i didn't want to be there so i wasn't there my own voli9on but s9ll 20:45 nonetheless it was a joke it was a joke now i'm not saying all rehabs are a joke 20:51 but the vast majority of them you can look at the sta9s9cs of the success rates that come out of them 20:57 extremely low extremely low if they're just secular programs why because it's a band-aid to 21:04 a spiritual problem seriously all they wanted me to do in there was go to small group have 21:09 aﬃrma9on sessions play monkeys on a jungle gym outside in the woods and and just don't you know snort the sugar 21:18 make a good showing and get that chip because somebody's paying a lot of money for this program and you need to take your dosage in your dixie cup and 21:24 cooperate with the program young man seriously that was my ﬁrst rehab it didn't work i 21:31 ran away in i learned how to do more drugs in the rehab so when i got out i went to my parents house and guess what 21:36 my mom said this is crazy man donny we've become catholic 21:45 yay right i'm like great you joined a cult you've hooked up with jim jones you're going to move to you know uganda and oﬀ 21:51 yourself with kool-aid you know i have no idea what the catholic church is all about but i can tell you this it's weird 21:57 that's what i thought these people are an9-science an9-woman male-dominated hierarchical archaic ins9tu9on that 22:04 hates all things and ruins your life it's all about rules rules rules that's 22:10 what i thought because that's what na9onal geographic taught me that's what the programs on tv taught you that's what cnn will teach you right 22:17 that's what those programs will teach you about the catholic church and that's what i i believe that's what my teachers in school before i dropped 22:24 out of school it's funny i spoke at a catholic high school this morning in lafayeWe i never graduated from high school hey there's something right it's 22:30 amazing how god brings it full circle you know it's amazing who am i you know okay so 22:36 i i'm just an all i'm like i can't believe you people have done this you've joined a cult i can't you're educated people how could you be so stupid to 22:42 join this stupid organiza9on called the catholic church and so i'm like i'm out of here i can't even stay with you people and i could not stay in their 22:48 house because i didn't need to go to church with these people because my mom asked me to go to church are you high me going to church you 22:55 goWa be kidding me i didn't need to why because my mom had turned that house into a church okay 23:02 she was like a nun i might as well call her sister at this point she was so religious it was like oh my 23:09 gosh you know what i mean like every 9me they ate a cracker she was like bless us oh lord i'm like y'all crazy 23:16 what is up with this and she bought these ﬁgurines no joke liWle ones medium-sized gargantuan ones of some 23:23 angel looking thing ripped he had like a six-pack i'm not kidding you ever seen these right he had a six-pack dude had a 23:29 six-pack but he had a pitchfork stabbing like a snake in the face weird i didn't know what it was but my mom did she was 23:35 into it light liWle candles next to it i'm thinking this is the spaceship you know coming from planet xeno to pick them up and take them oﬀ to the cosmos 23:41 i have no idea weird but she would put cards of this creature in my pants pocket when i'd be home you 23:47 know totally wasted i wake up and you know i'd put my hand in my pocket or under my pillow there'd be this card of 23:53 this saint michael the archangel right i'm like mom's cuckoo for cocoa puﬀs man this is 23:58 nuts this is crazy i can't stay with i can't live with these people so i leY and this is what i look like at this point 24:04 okay now i'm not a narcissist i'm not you know an ego freak but i do 24:10 carry a big picture of myself all around the world okay i'm working on my pride pray for me i do 24:16 it because if i showed you a wallet size you wouldn't be able to see it okay so this is what i look like at this point in my life okay that was me 24:23 many of you haven't seen that familiar with it right yeah right they're clapping i love it [Laughter] 24:29 there you go right so nothing necessarily wrong with long hair right jesus had long hair not this long 24:36 but s9ll right but the state of my soul was so bad did you guys see it over there okay yeah um was so bad oh my 24:42 goodness i'm smiling because i was you know liqueﬁed but the state of my soul was 24:47 so bad it was so bad and so i ended up following a band because i kind of looked like i belonged to the band you 24:54 know called the grateful dead following them all up and down the eastern seaboard going to shows most of which i never even got into you're 24:59 outside asking for a miracle which meant a 9cket to get in and doing acid mushrooms uppers downers snor9ng 25:05 smoking everything everything every day every day i lost my iden9ty 25:11 i lost my iden9ty i ended up in another rehab in philadelphia aYer smoking so much crack that i i passed out and od'd 25:18 in the streets and they put me forcibly in another rehab for three months which was also a psychiatric ins9tute 25:24 um charter fairmont ins9tute in philadelphia you can look it up it's s9ll there interna9onally no 25:30 i couldn't run away from this one like i aWempted to on the ﬁrst one padded facility for three months 25:35 it was a nut house basically i get out of that i go back to my parents house and i didn't want to be 25:40 sober right i go out to my parents house and guess what my mom said to me now or what they're doing now 25:46 they're going to church every day 25:51 who does this right i'm like i've heard about people going once a week that's crazy to me but you're going 25:57 every day and they enrolled my brother in a catholic school with this liWle uniform and whatnot and in my mind my 26:03 na9onal geographic mind he's being whipped across the face by a bunch of penguins with a ruler saying obey the 26:08 commandments right that is catholicism to me seriously and they're paying for this 26:14 this indoctrina9on i'm like yo i can't again i can't live with you people you people are nuts so i leY and guess 26:21 where i came louisiana it was mardi gras 9me so me and my 26:27 buddy yep so we you know hot wired a car got fake 26:34 s9ckers on the place and everything we came down and we we par9ed hard down here man real hard i don't even remember 26:39 much of it to be honest i even got a a job on the mississippi river on a tugboat 26:46 i don't remember who hired me i was tying barges together with these anvils and 26:51 all i knew was how to 9e a shoe not with these big old cables right if one of those things that broke loose and ﬂoated down the river oh my goodness 26:57 thank the lord nothing like that happened insanity and then in despera9on because you know that didn't work out and we had no money 27:03 i went to a piggly wiggly one night put two cases of bud light under my arms and ran out right and they caught me 27:10 busted me i tried to beat up the cop and then i got thrown in jail down here in louisiana right my great claim to fame i 27:17 wish i had a more manly crime on my record i got busted from piggly wiggly you know 27:22 that was a scary night though because when you're in jail and your hair looks like this that ain't good 27:29 dad no bueno right i was like get me out of here so i get out and i don't go to my court date 27:36 and it's it's it's it's a mess but here's here's the funny thing about this okay just to skip ahead a liWle bit you know what we did yesterday 27:43 over in uh was it lafayeWe or somewhere around there beau bridge somewhere around there we went to a piggly wiggly 27:50 we did because she knows what the owners have won over that and over that way and we 27:56 went in and i gave him a copy of my book right no turning back and symbolically i 28:01 took a case of bud light and i gave it back to him i was like i'm sorry i'm sorry right it was 30 years ago but 28:08 anyway it was cool kind of neat blew up on facebook people were like is that the same guy i'm like that's the same guy 28:13 come on now right anyway kind of cool so aYer that um i didn't go to my court date i went 28:19 back to west virginia and by the way that's why i say y'all i s9ll say y'all because i i grew up in west virginia for 28:26 the ﬁrst like six seven years of my life and i i say y'all even though i'm a california kid right when i'm in 28:31 california they're like excuse me why are you saying y'all i'm like i don't know it's just this is how i say it you know 28:37 i just never said anything else so i go back to west virginia to ﬁnd papa croc 28:43 my biological dad right because my mom always told me stay away from that man he's bad news so when 28:48 i'm running from the law in louisiana i thought now be a good 9me to get reconnected with my hillbilly dad 28:53 i can hide out on his land you know because the center ﬂees when nobody pursues that's what the proverbs say 28:59 right i didn't know that but i was certainly running i was paranoid so i stayed on his property found out i had a 29:05 stepmom and a half brother and half sister from that side of the family i never knew about and then my supplies ran out i go back to my mom's house they 29:12 had moved back to virginia beach virginia 10 years had gone by since we had lived 29:18 there we had lived in you know california japan now they were back there and 29:23 i lived with them for a liWle bit but i couldn't stay in their house because they were so religious it was like a convent and then 29:30 it happened i was passing through town one evening i had nowhere to go i was literally 29:35 homeless i had nothing and i'm in the room that they had for me which wasn't a bedroom because i wasn't 29:41 there enough to have a bedroom and it was small it wasn't even a size for a bed there was a love seat that when i 29:46 was there would crash on the love seat and there i am that night and some friends were calling me and 29:52 they were like dude let's go out we'll meet by the pier um this girl's smoking hot you know she dropped your name and 29:57 we goWa eight ball let's let's have a good 9me and i'm like shut up 30:03 shut up and it wasn't like i was saying because i want to meet jesus tonight i want to 30:08 have a religious experience you know no that's the last thing that was on my mind you know what i was thinking i was thinking about taking my own life 30:15 i didn't want to be here anymore on this cosmic rock going nowhere that had no point purpose meaning 30:21 creator or anything because that's what i thought really you know i don't blame this all in the 30:27 educa9on system but you know it's it's it is remarkable how most people today when they go through the educa9on system they basically are taught you're 30:34 nothing but an upright ape get over your thinking you're special in the grand scheme of the cosmos you've 30:40 been downgraded to thinking you're a monkey basically really and truly that's what me and all 30:46 my friends were taught and so i i bought into i'm sure it makes sense to me i mean 30:52 i don't see god i don't i can't hear god so who am i to ques9on the people with the phds from all these pres9gious 30:58 universi9es and such i guess they know what they're talking about i even had teachers when i was in school in 31:04 elementary school who made fun of chris9anity i remember a science teacher speciﬁcally 31:10 i remember this dude's name but i won't rat him out because i s9ll remember his name i pray for him that dude told our 31:16 class one day in science class he said yes and this whole the chris9anity 31:21 he said you know we've we've come from water through starﬁsh and other animals into monkeys and now we're called man 31:27 but we'll we'll move on past that too we're moving on so we're going to leave things like chris9anity in the dust of 31:33 history how sad that a religion is based upon god becoming man when we're going to 31:40 leave that idea in the dust seriously so i was like yeah makes sense 31:47 to me lame chris9anity of all religions is the most stupid unscien9ﬁc 31:54 and so that's how how i thought so in that room that night is i'm thinking about taking my own life 31:59 because a lot of my friends did they're not here anymore they did take their own life 32:04 and i'm thinking about doing it so as i'm in this room i panic 32:10 i'm like man what are you doing ah i go out into the hallway and i want to 32:16 just preoccupy my mind with a book not to read a book but to look at pictures 32:21 and i'm looking for a na9onal geographic literally they're yellow and when you subscribe to them they're easy to spot on a bookshelf yellow chunk 32:28 i'm out there looking i'm like all right i pull it out it's yellow but it's not a na9onal geographic it says this 32:35 the queen of peace visits medju juji 32:40 g4g heck is that right i don't know all i know is on the cover there's some 32:46 like babushka looking grandma barefoot on the rockiest mountain i've ever seen in my life i'm like get some shoes grandma all right what's up with that so 32:52 i'm like what is this huh i wonder if this is like what my parents got 32:57 suckered into believing and they're so into this stuﬀ now haha right they call me weird we'll see what they're into so 33:04 i go into the room shut the door sit down in the love seat i start reading the beginning it's about a war somewhere i can't even pronounce this country and 33:10 i'm like whatever so i look into you you know when there's pictures in the book because you can see it in the middle they stand out a liWle diﬀerent so i 33:15 cracked that puppy open and i'm like all right what i see these kids don't look american to me right and i'm 33:22 like hmm what's this all about and i tried to read their names and it said their names you had this dude named ivan 33:28 you had some other girl and then you had another girl named marijuana 33:34 marijuana mira marijuana miragina what is that right i thought 33:39 that girl's name was marijuana at ﬁrst i really did so i'm like what the so i'm looking at this and then it said this now it said 33:46 the liWle children are now seeing the blessed virgin mary seeing a what 33:53 a virgin i don't know any right i'm like what is this i don't even know what 33:58 they're talking that's how ignorant i was of chris9anity people have oYen asked me father how 34:04 could you not have known about the virgin mary i did not because see when i grew up 34:10 my babysiWer as a young child was the tv you know dukes of hazard nascar and wrestling basically you know and i'd 34:17 watch this stuﬀ and on saturday and sunday mornings between scooby-doo and popeye you know bugs bunny there'd be a 34:22 preacher man on tv talking about jesus i had heard about jesus right who hadn't heard about jesus but that dude never 34:28 talked about the virgin mary all i ever heard was glory glory in the name of jesus be 34:35 that was chris9anity to me these people need help these people need serious medica9on that's what i thought and i'd 34:42 ﬂip through that channel as fast as i could to get back to scooby-doo while the commercial was i'm like these people nuts 34:47 i've never heard them talking about the mother of jesus never heard this kind of stuﬀ so i'm like and and and jesus you 34:53 know to me was as real as the easter bunny or the fat dude come down to chimney eat your cookies and milk and leave presents 34:59 or or or the coyote that gets killed a million 9mes by by the roadrunner 35:05 right this this is a cartoon this isn't real just like this preacher man talking 35:10 about some guy lived 2000 years ago supposedly who walked on water and came back from the dead this ain't real this 35:15 dude just can't get a real job he's harder for cash goWa pay for his wife's makeup that's what that's all about that's i can see it easy man 35:23 and i'm like this is this is a joke so that night 35:28 i'm i'm reading that book and these kids start talking about a beau9ful woman that they say 35:34 comes from above heaven with a clap of thunder a smell of roses and she's so 35:40 beau9ful that they fall to their knees and they cry and i'm like whoa whoa 35:46 right because i'm a dude i'm very much a dude right so i'm like what are we dealing with 35:52 here a beau9ful woman smells like roses clap of thunder got people crying i'm in right i'm like 35:59 where where i'm looking for pictures of her like anybody where is she i want to see her but there was no pictures 36:04 there was like a statue but i'm not stupid i knew she wasn't a statue so i'm like what so i keep reading 36:10 and i can't stop reading that book i cannot put that book down i didn't understand tons of the lingo in it i'm 36:16 clueless about catholic lingo at that 9me but all i knew is there's this beau9ful woman who then starts talking 36:21 to these kids allegedly right i'm not the pope on these maWers and stuﬀ but i'm just like 36:26 what and that blew my mind because i was actually into stuﬀ like ghosts 36:33 and sasquatch and nessie in scotland 36:38 right when i was growing up we watched a show called in search of right wa wah-wah-wah-wah- wah-wah-wah-wah-wah and they'd be looking for the specters in 36:43 the closet and stuﬀ and i was like yeah we'll get them we'll get them i'm gonna go to oregon i'm gonna get that sasquatch right that was my goal in life 36:48 was to kill sasquatch you know go over to scotland drag that s9nking monster out of the lake you know why can't these people ﬁnd this thing you know so i'm 36:54 reading this and i'm like wait a minute we're probably dealing with like a specter a ghost or something but then 37:00 the ghost starts talking and i'm like well that's like next level i'm like okay i keep reading and then 37:06 she's saying that god sent her from heaven with a message of repentance and conversion and that she's the mother of 37:13 jesus the mother of jesus i'm like what fairy tales don't have a mother what are you 37:18 talking about this is crazy talk i keep reading she says you're not happy and it's like she's talking to me and 37:24 i'm like lady you don't even know you have no idea how unhappy i'm about taking my life here okay you have who 37:31 what what who are you i keep reading she says if you want peace and happiness you got to go to a catholic priest and 37:37 confess your sins and i'm like [Music] 37:44 i keep reading i read that whole book in one night it's it's about the size of this book here right big book and i knew that this was 37:51 true i knew what this woman was saying was true and i i didn't go to sleep six o'clock about six o'clock in the 37:57 morning my parents were in a duplex my mom comes down the stairs i'm wai9ng for at the boWom freak long hair at the boWom 38:02 right and there's my mom and i tried to tell her this it's about six o'clock in the morning mom i goWa 38:08 oh i could not formulate this because it took humility 38:14 for me to say something churchy to my mom right 38:19 and she's looking at me half asleep because i'm trying to say it and i can't say it and she goes what are you trying to tell me and i said mom i goWa talk 38:25 to a catholic priest okay you know what she said to me and no no joke we joke about this to 38:31 this day me and my mom she looked right at me and she goes yeah right 38:39 hello all right i just humiliated myself so she's like 38:44 what and i'm like i got the book and i said what mom what the heck is this thing is this what you 38:50 guys are mom i'm freaking out what is this stuﬀ and she goes she she just ran right to the phone 38:55 like 6 15 in the morning punched in seven digits and had a conversa9on with some dude that went like this because i was standing right next to her yes 39:01 father this is legit i know father it's very early i'm very sorry father father can i need to bring over my son father 39:07 no not eight o'clock father father father right mom's like strike man do it now but he 39:13 he's he priests are human beings they have to get up have a cup of coﬀee put their pants on use a bathroom like 39:18 everybody else right so he's eight o'clock no she calls another one he's saying nine o'clock she's like no 39:25 so i said to them my mom i said mom there's one of those things see they lived at that 9me on norfolk 39:32 naval air sta9on the largest naval facility in the world at that 9me it had two catholic chapels on them on the base one was right by the main gate how 39:38 did i know because when i came to their house i would walk on the other side of the street to avoid it seriously 39:44 because you'd have to walk like prac9cally through the yard to get to where my parents lived so i was like there's one of those things and she knew 39:51 exactly what i meant and she said to me run donnie run and i did i threw the book down the 39:57 hallway i bolted at that front door long hair ﬂying in the wind psychedelic i mean you could have got a contact high if you stood close enough to me right i 40:03 was like it was nuts i get there huﬃng and puﬃng because my lung capacity was nil 40:08 i'm like i look up and you know what the name of it was s9ll is it's s9ll there naval chapel our lady of victory 40:16 how perfect right so i'm like but i don't do church donny don't do church i'm like okay awesome but 40:23 i'm not going in this is a trap main gate traﬃc right here no way no how i see another building around the corner i 40:28 look over there and it says chaplin's oﬃce so i'm like all right i go over there 6 30-ish in the morning and i yell 40:36 i open the front door i'm raw man socially i didn't i couldn't communicate well with people at that 9me so i 40:42 opened that door and i yelled into this chaplain's oﬃce catholic priest 40:50 i freaked that joint out heads are popping out of cubicles and 40:56 they're looking at each other like i don't want to do you want to talk to i don't i don't i don't know i don't know and i'm like hello i see you right 41:04 so ﬁnally some dude has the courage to come over to me with this white navy uniform on with this cup of coﬀee and he's like can i help you i'm like i need 41:11 a priest get me a priest he's like who are you and i'm like don't worry about who i am and he goes okay hold on so he 41:16 comes back with another dude that i i don't know what a catholic priest is supposed to look like okay 41:22 but in my you know charlton heston movie watching mine kind of thing i'm thinking moses long beard 41:28 barefoot come down the mountain chucking commandments at me you know i'm literally thinking he's going to be like be healed in the name of jesus uh right 41:35 i'm gonna do a liWle freedom jig we're gonna get saved right i don't know so this dude looks just like the other 41:41 dude white navy uniform on a cup of coﬀee and he says hi i'm father john 41:46 and i'm like uh dude you're like a preacher and he's like 41:52 and i'm like all right get it out get it out man and he's looking at me like excuse me 41:58 and i'm like get it out dude i'm freaking out man i read this book dude i'm seriously tripping right here man i 42:04 don't i'm scared and he's like what what are you talking about i go i don't know the woman said i got to go to confession 42:10 and he's all of a sudden he's like oh great right so we go down the liWle corridor and we he we go into his oﬃce 42:16 but he's scared that dude he pulled his chair like halfway out into the hallway because i i looked horrible so he pulled 42:24 out a chair and i'm like all right man here's the thing here's the thing and i'm so embarrassed by what i'm about to tell 42:31 this dude that i can't even look at him i'm looking at the carpet at his feet and i'm telling him perverse sick disgus9ng 42:38 things that i've been doing for years that i can't break paWerns of behavior and i'm not even sure what a sin is but 42:43 i know these things are bad and i'm like dude and i'm saying all this stuﬀ and he's not saying anything and i look up 42:49 and he's like 42:55 you did what and i was like yeah and he's like oh hold on a minute he goes when's the last 43:01 9me you went to confession and i'm like i don't know 43:08 and he's like she's trying to help me he's like heist was it high school did we been a long 9me been a long 9me and 43:13 i'm like dude i have no idea and he goes well you're a catholic right and i'm like oh heck no 43:20 yeah that didn't go so well he was like whoa wait a minute what you're not you can't do this and i'm like i don't know i 43:26 don't know your rules i said the woman said he's like what woman i said the virgin dude there's a virgin 43:31 [Music] this woman says she's a virgin and she's 43:37 the mother of jesus you know about this and he is he's looking at me like oh 43:44 lord right and so he pulled he pulled a move i was very familiar with from the counseling 43:50 sessions i had to go to in rehab he was like look i'm aware of the 9me i've got you know things to do i'm like no no 43:56 don't pull that on me man i've been there people bailing out because they don't know what to do i'm serious man 44:01 i need help and he goes okay look i have to go celebrate mass 44:07 i have no idea what you're trying to tell me bro if you're not a catholic like i was not 44:12 and he told me he's going to go celebrate mass i'm thinking he's going to go you know dance and trance around and 44:18 celebrate neutrons and protons and gravity celebrate mass yeah we're going to celebrate man 44:24 bringing cheech man you know i don't we talk about man so he's like you don't know what that is 44:30 i'm like i have no idea what you're talking about so he goes do you see where the chapel is i said yeah i saw it he goes look do 44:35 me a favor go over there and aYer i'm done we'll meet back here okay and i'm like you serious he said yeah and i'm 44:41 like don't bust me man because i just told that dude sinful things but also some criminal stuﬀ and 44:47 i'm thinking that's his way of ge[ng me out he's as soon as i leave he's gonna be like 9-1-1 yo get over here quick 44:53 so i was like don't bust me man please don't call the cops on me he's like no i goWa call the cops so i said all right so i'm gonna go over there and he goes 44:59 yeah he goes look do me a favor though this is what he said to me he said when you go over 45:05 sit in the back that's what he said to me right 45:10 actually he and i he's now deceased but he and i would talk about this aYer the episode i went to seminary it was 45:15 amazing stuﬀ and so so i go over there and i walk in the door slams behind me 45:20 like somebody had just wd-40 that sucker it was like a shotgun blast right i thought i was like 45:26 jesus got me you know and so i guess who was in that church guess who was in that church 45:32 there were there were ﬁve people in that church in the front pew nobody else in the en9re church i walked in the door like over here i walk in the door 45:38 slams behind me i turn around ﬁve ﬁlipino women 45:43 good lord i'm dead right one took down my family 45:49 i got an army you you didn't have to ask me to go to the back i went to the back so fast it was ridiculous right i went to the back 45:55 i sat down i was like oh i can't believe i'm in a church i cannot believe i'm in a catholic church and all of a sudden if 46:00 you're familiar with ﬁlipino culture which i am i've been to the philippines many many 9mes love ﬁlipinos but it's 46:06 a very matriarchal culture the men are preWy passive and they just do what the women tell them to do right 46:11 that's just you know happy wife happy life you know so that's what they do so sure enough there was the matriarch of 46:17 this liWle ﬁlipino unit she goes up to a table i didn't know it was an altar ﬁres up two candles on the 46:24 table on the altar there's a boat hanging from the ceiling because it's a naval chapel she goes back to her seat she goes into 46:31 her purse and she pulls out a necklace just like this right that's what i saw 46:36 and the other four in obedience to the mother right mother superior pulled out their necklaces and they started some 46:43 mys9cal tagalog english canta9on to the boat i thought i don't know what's 46:49 going on right i'm just a white boy in the back look at checking this stuﬀ out and all i hear is this okay again if you're 46:56 ﬁlipino i love you salamat i love you okay i really do but this is what white boy in the back heard that day 47:06 what then the other four holy mary man 47:13 what in the world gibberish completely unintelligible 47:18 hail many ﬁgures sold to the highest bidder right it's like what 47:24 is going on in here i had no idea what i just walked into 47:30 then the woman ﬁlipino women are bold people man aYer a few minutes this woman turns around to me 47:36 she holds up her necklace and she goes young man young man would you like to parade the next decade 47:42 please next decade i'm like a deer in headlights man i'm 47:48 like what i was i was not educated i dropped out 47:54 of high school but i wasn't stupid right decade means 10 years that's it 48:01 so she could see i was like so she tried to clarify she goes this is the second set of mystery second stari i'm like 48:07 what so i they carried on with this and it seemed to go forever and i'm literally thinking that i have walked 48:13 into like some wicked coven of some i'm thinking i'm thinking they don't know that that priest is coming because he 48:19 told me he was coming over here and i'm thinking when he comes in it's going down sister you look your liWle wicked 48:25 sisterhood here oh you're about to be smoked right and seriously i expected it so when they 48:31 ﬁnish he comes in with his white robe on now he looked like a hippie ﬂower on the front he wasn't like a military 48:37 oﬃcer anymore and i'm thinking he's going to be like you know be gone in the name of jesus or something but he didn't 48:42 he was like morning morning how you doing right and i'm in the back like oh oh i want to tell them like these are 48:48 witches you know there's something wrong with these people but i i didn't want to you know come up front so 48:54 i i'll tell them later so he goes up and he starts doing stuﬀ up here from this 49:00 which was oh my gosh it was horrible because it was charlie brown church all i heard was this 49:05 the lord you you ever been to a catholic church like that it's like get that bunny in there 49:11 and replace them baWeries man horrible it was horrible i couldn't understand him i couldn't 49:16 understand them now i can't understand him and he's a white dude right i was i was insane so then he goes over to that and there 49:22 was a microphone there that worked thank god they got down on their knees for some reason he 49:27 i could hear him bent over at one point picked up a liWle white circle about that big 49:34 and he said i heard it take this all of you and eat of it 49:40 this is my body 49:47 what i heard that man tell us that that's his body that's what he said 49:53 and we goWa eat it you a nut bro 49:59 seriously i'm like what did that mean and then he showcased it he was like [Music] 50:08 i saw this and they're all into it they're like yeah you know they're like 50:13 i could not believe this and then all of a sudden he just stood there he just stopped he just stood there and it's like somebody came in the room and 50:19 pressed pause as he stood there and then i heard a voice i'm not a mys9c i'm not padre pio trust 50:26 me but i heard a voice and it wasn't spoken to my ear it was spoken to me 50:32 i can't even explain that to you and the voice said to me as he's standing there 50:38 worship you know what happened next this only way i can describe it to you i asked god to give me some kind of 50:44 analogy or way of describing it to people years ago when i started giving these talks this is what happened to me 50:52 an injec9on of knowledge i knew what that dude had in his hands 50:58 was god i didn't know terminology eucharist bless the sacrament holy communion clueless about that stuﬀ but 51:03 that was god he put down god he picked up what i thought was a really 51:08 sweet looking medieval goblet you know i know what a chalice i had no idea and he said take this all of you and drink from 51:15 it this is my blood and he liYed it up i heard the same voice 51:21 worship and then i knew that was jesus christ i knew it 51:28 100 i didn't know how but i knew it was that was the most amazing thing to this day that i've ever heard in my life 51:37 now i was gonna see the most amazing thing that i would ever see in my life and i've never seen something since so 51:42 amazing that dude came down they met like in the middle and that dude one by one 51:50 said to each one of them the body of christ 51:56 the voice was right he didn't say my body he didn't say my body to each one of 52:03 them he said the body of christ and i watched that man put god on their tongue 52:09 i saw it with my own eyes then he came up he got the chalice he came down and he said what 52:15 the blood of christ he didn't say my blood he said the blood of christ and 52:21 they drank it you have no idea what was happening to me 52:27 it was like my body my soul was exploding with knowledge of what was happening why because i had done this so 52:34 many 9mes not in a church at a dead show 52:41 a liWle liquid lucy on the tongue it's placed on the tongue a liWle circular object so you can dance with the bears 52:47 and search for the meaning where love never fades away i did this so many 9mes in my quest for 52:54 happiness and meaning and purpose and wan9ng to be more than a monkey and how many chalices did i drink 53:01 of the world so many so many and it was blowing me away that 53:08 the last place i ever thought that i would ﬁnd meaning purpose for everything would be a catholic church i 53:14 thought the catholic church was the great deceiver of the na9ons the thing that ruined socie9es and true educa9on 53:20 and knowledge i had been lied to my whole life 53:26 this was the truth i oh my gosh i thought it was going to explode that dude seemed to have god s9ll there 53:35 right i didn't know the terminology he had god s9ll he went up to a gold 53:40 box he put god in that gold box with a liWle red candle next to it and he said 53:46 a few things and then he leY at the same door that he came through the women stuck around a few minutes they got up and they leY and there i was alone with 53:52 god in a box i knew it i knew it i couldn't even i didn't want to turn my 53:58 back to that box i went out the back puke because i was in the backﬁeld i walked backwards i hit the wall behind me like six feet 54:03 behind me and i saw a curtain and i had a sign above it and the sign said 54:08 confession i didn't hear a voice but 54:14 knowledge i knew immediately what it was immediately what it was with total clarity 54:19 oh i was in a church for sure right can't deny that this is god's rehab 54:25 this is god's hospital for the broke the wounded those who are dying 54:31 how many 9mes i've been to a hospital oh my goodness i get kid i'm one of those poor people to get kidney stones about every ﬁve 54:37 years i'm on the ﬂoor in the fetal posi9on begging for death kill me now right kidney stones man if you never have one you have no idea what it does 54:44 to a grown man make him turn into a liWle baby crying for death i get those frequently i've been to the hospitals 54:49 cracked my head open surﬁng gigan9c waves in baja mexico you know spraying this fractured that motorcycle all kinds 54:55 of stuﬀ every 9me i go to a hospital they put me behind a curtain with a doctor and his team saved my life 55:03 that's what this is folks that's what this is i went to that priest's oﬃce aYer 55:08 this and told him this stuﬀ i freaked that dude out royally 55:13 i was like dude did you hear that did you hear it and he was like hear what and i'm like worship you didn't 55:20 hear that he's like no and i'm like oh i'm like dude you made god you made god that circle that's god he's s9ll 55:26 over there in that box bro oh my gosh and you gave it to the women bro bro bro sign me up 55:34 sign me up you know what he said to me no 55:40 that was a shock i thought he'd be like save the soul today right but he's like you don't just sign a piece of paper and 55:46 become a catholic and this is what wait it slowed down and i'm like oh my gosh dude i'm selling i'm not having a bad 55:52 trip for my acid days dude i'm for real right now i am like oh my gosh 55:58 oh my gosh it's coming so strong and so fast that i didn't even had to formulate this stuﬀ 56:04 to him and he goes okay look this is overwhelming you need to go home come back tomorrow but i'm going to give you 56:10 some things he gave me a cruciﬁx for he took it oﬀ of his wall i'd been there so long that it made the mark on the wall you know 56:16 gave it to me and i'm like are you serious you're going to give that to me he's like yes yes yes he took oﬀ a pain9ng of jesus gave it to me a big 56:22 one right and then he went over to another one took oﬀ a portrait literally a portrait of his grandpa 56:30 totally random i'm like i get the jesus jesus thing but i don't know i mean 56:35 is we're a white hat looked like you've eaten one too many cookies liWle pudgy looking fellow right 56:42 i don't know i'm like 9me for me to shut up and obey authority so i'm like okay thanks man right so i go to my 56:47 mom's house and i go into the room they had for me and i threw away everything in the room and my mom didn't stop me what was in 56:54 that room mrs january february march issues 56:59 liWle resin scrapers liWle hit screens taken from many sinks to get that last liWle hit a liWle toke up last liWle 57:06 liWle piece or or my grateful dead music i chucked it all 57:11 in ﬁve big black heYy bags into the front yard ins9nc9vely my mom tes9ﬁes to this whole thing i didn't 57:17 even throw them in the trash i threw them at the front door i went into the room shut the door and i was like i'm not gonna mess this up i am 57:24 not gonna mess this up if the phone rings i'm not gonna answer it if it's a girl i'm not gonna answer it i'm gonna sit here un9l tomorrow 57:32 and i'm like that ain't gonna work i get bored real quick so i'm like what do i do man what do i 57:37 do oh my gosh i don't want to mess this up i got that book and i looked at them liWle kids and i'm 57:43 like okay i got to do what they're doing i got to do what they're doing so i got down on my knees i put my hands out and i'm literally like rub a dub dub 57:50 scratch and sniﬀ like where are the roses where's the clap of thunder i'm expec9ng that's going to happen to me it didn't 57:56 and i'm like grun9ng like you know like how you know shazam where are you how's this work you know how because i'm about 58:02 to talk to somebody that i can't see i've either just got serious religion or 58:08 i'm i'm a luna9c right so i'm like i don't know how to do this man so i'm looking at the big 58:14 pain9ng of jesus where i had before that uh a big pain9ng a portrait a pain9ng of bob 58:20 marley smoking a big old spliﬀ right so he got replaced with jesus 58:25 and i'm looking at this and i am so surprised that that pain9ng he was not like locked and loaded you're going to 58:32 die right because to me i i was horrible and i'm looking at this and it's not 58:38 like that he's like this and his heart's on ﬁre and the eyes oh 58:43 man the eyes they penetrated me and i lost it i started to cry 58:48 like a human being can't cry fountains of ﬂuid coming out of my face 58:54 pouring oﬀ my chin into the clothes below me on that drawer that i had pulled out do you know how long that experience 59:00 lasted all day i was on my knees all day 59:07 my mom tes9ﬁes to it i wasn't aware that i was even on my knees you know what i call it in the book there's 59:12 actually a chapter uh divine romance the bridal chamber god romance my soul i 59:17 needed it i needed so much aﬃrma9on to know that i was loved that there was mercy for somebody like me because i had 59:23 hurt so many people emo9onally and in so many other ways 59:28 oh my gosh i was so messed up and it was incredible i got up the sun had already gone down 59:36 when i got up my knees didn't hurt i got into that liWle loveseat thought i was gonna rest for the night go see 59:42 that priest in the morning guess what happened next now i pray this never happens to you 59:48 but maybe you need it to happen to you guess who came into the room 59:54 satan i didn't believe in the devil i did not believe in lucifer that whole 59:59 stuﬀ to me was another thing the catholic church had created to scare people right boo give us your money pay up we're going to 1:00:05 tell you about a place that you turn over ﬁre unless you pay up that's what i thought this was created by this because right isn't that what 1:00:11 na9onal geographic and all those history channel teaches you once or twice a year when easter and christmas 9me 1:00:16 catholic churches makes this stuﬀ up to scare you the history of the devil they call it right [Music] 1:00:23 all of a sudden i could not deny that there was a creature beginning to manifest take on a physical form in my 1:00:29 room that scared the daylights out of me 1:00:35 i was i've never been so terriﬁed in my life i've had bad acid trips i watched the 1:00:41 shining when i was a kid on massive doses of acid and that messed me up big 1:00:46 9me jacked that up about a gazillion 9mes the fear that was in my soul of this 1:00:52 being manifes9ng in my room guys i wasn't a satanist 1:00:58 i wasn't into any kind of spirituality i never went to some cult prac9ce around a pentagram and slashed a chicken's 1:01:04 throat i never did anything like that right but you know what i did do open myself up to all kinds of things 1:01:11 tarot cards ouija boards really bad movies 1:01:16 all kind of stuﬀ all the drugs i use you're opening yourself up to things that you don't have to believe in for them to be real y'all breathe in air 1:01:23 right now you can't see it but if you deny it's there you're dumb same thing in the spiritual life i was 1:01:29 dumb i had opened myself up to so many things that the devil thought that i belonged to him 1:01:36 and i was terriﬁed i couldn't even i couldn't do a thing where am i going to punch the devil am i going to take a 1:01:41 swing at the devil that ain't going to do nothing i made a dust we're talking about a fallen angel here 1:01:46 what am i going to do i was so petriﬁed i could not even vocalize something i wanted to cry for 1:01:54 my mom so bad i was an absolute terror do you know what i did from my soul 1:02:01 i gathered up like a cry and i just threw it into the heavens and i cried out from the depths of my soul 1:02:07 mary [Music] do you know what happened 1:02:13 the devil was annihilated i'm talking obliterated man why did i do that because that woman had brought me to 1:02:19 jesus christ man let me tell you something i then heard the most pris9ne pure 1:02:26 female voice i've ever heard in my life i would die to hear that voice again 1:02:32 i haven't and it said to me not to my ear said to me 1:02:37 donnie i'm so happy nobody calls me donny but my mom that's 1:02:45 the cute form of my name right another dude tries to call me that i'm like yo man right that no 1:02:51 who is it it's not my mom right my mom's in the house somewhere doing something or is it a mom i never knew 1:02:56 it sure was by calling me that she's saying she's my mother i knew it was the mother of jesus christ 1:03:02 and my mother too i slept that night like a liWle baby safe secure up against his mother's breast so safe that 1:03:09 not even satan could touch me because i was in the arms of mary i got up the next morning and folks my 1:03:15 life radically began to change i went to that priest and freaked him out of course at ﬁrst 1:03:22 i signed up for the classes and everything snowballed i went and cut my hair remember my hair 1:03:28 when i was 21 was all the way down to my belt this and this is short it was all the way down to my belt i went to get it 1:03:34 cut they didn't want to cut it the lady cu[ng she was like shaking she's like are you sure i'm like get rid of it 1:03:40 and you know what happened when it when i cut my hair i lost all my power 1:03:47 kind of like samson but in a diﬀerent way i wasn't cool anymore 1:03:52 i wasn't a chick magnet anymore back then girls were aWracted long hair on a dude right i lost it i became a dork 1:04:00 a geek loser it was awesome it was the best thing that could have 1:04:06 ever happened to me because the cores that i couldn't cut by my own willpower god and our lady came in and said yeah that'll be enough cut sniﬀ gone all 1:04:13 your friends gone the thing that the programs do get right or you got to change the people places and things 1:04:19 god did it just blew it all up and i began to fast on wednesdays and fridays on bread and water 1:04:25 prayer squared prayer with a punch my life i went deep 1:04:31 i got a job i got normal human being clothes i treated women with respect i cleaned up my language everything 1:04:37 changed radically i would be at church in the morning before the ﬁlipinos 1:04:46 that is radical behavior for a white boy right because i was in love 1:04:52 i was saying earlier today at that high school i spoke out you know when you're in love you're on the phone with with your your you know the one you think 1:04:58 you're going to spend the rest of you turning my bﬀ right so you're no you hang up no you hang out no you hang out 1:05:03 babe i was doing the same thing with jesus i couldn't get enough and i wasn't even 1:05:09 catholic i wasn't going to holy communion i went to mass every single day during my lunch break because i was in love 1:05:15 and at the end of the day when they had to lock the church doors i would peer through the window for one last look at 1:05:20 the tabernacle i'll see you tomorrow i love you so much 1:05:26 i've never been so in love i have never loved somebody as much as i love you i was buying ﬂowers with my 1:05:32 paycheck for the statue of mary and saint joseph and i was buying all the books by the chubby dude on my wall who 1:05:37 was john paul the second right i ﬁgured that out aYer a period of 9me i got booked up with the saint 1:05:43 louis to monaord saint maximilian kolbe and i learned about the sky i had ground brown green red scapular i tell people 1:05:50 you could shoot me a point blank with a 38 he would not penetrate i was the devo9on king right i was like mr t remember back in the day 1:05:57 mr t all the medals i had so many medals around my neck it's crazy i would do the sta9ons of the cross un9l i passed out 1:06:04 seriously nobody told me you did them once right i would nascar that sucker like indy 500 1:06:10 man i just keep going around and then i'd get so 9red i would just take a nap right in the church 1:06:15 and people would come up to me they wake me up they'd be like hey hey thinking i had like some seizure you okay i'm like 1:06:21 this is great right i was in love you do crazy things when you're in love so as i'm praying 1:06:26 and praying and we're gonna we're gonna wrap it up here so we can we can get going through the evening so i'm praying about what to do is i'm becoming 1:06:32 catholic i don't know what to do and this ﬁlipino woman comes up to me one of the ﬁve they became like my 1:06:39 mentors right they taught me and before long i was praying the decades right i was leading the seconds out of a mystery 1:06:44 right all that she said to me one day goWa love it ﬁlipino women man she goes young man so if you 1:06:51 uh i think you should be a father you should become a catholic priest for the young people they need a priest like 1:06:57 you and i'm like oh vi thank you so much but you i can't i couldn't do that right 1:07:02 and i'm like vi i'm i'm i'm not even catholic because i didn't tell everybody my sins they'd see me in 1:07:08 church every day and then i said you know i i can't do that she goes oh is that why you're not going to holy 1:07:13 communion i'm like yeah right and i'm like i'm becoming catholic but i got a lot of problems by i really do she goes 1:07:20 oh you seem like such a good young man and she you know she said to me goWa love it man she goes so if you don't become a father 1:07:26 i have a beau9ful daughter 1:07:33 no no right that's what i'm trying to get away from i'm like oh i've been down that road many 9mes the thriller from manila 1:07:40 right i'm good i'm good so i prayed and i prayed and i prayed and i would watch 1:07:45 that preach a mass i'd see him go behind that curtain the line people coming in coming out oh it was amazing and then i 1:07:50 felt it i felt it i'm not going to be sa9sﬁed women are awesome what a giY right the 1:07:57 feminine mystery to be married to a woman and and have babies what a giY what what what a blessing 1:08:02 but i felt it would be restric9ve to me i need something more i need to give birth to like a ton of 1:08:08 people man i need to take this ﬁre and spread it everywhere and that's when i discerned the call 1:08:14 and you know i contacted people at ﬁrst and they were happy about my conversion right yay conversion and then i was like 1:08:20 i think i want to be a priest they're like whoa whoa whoa okay 1:08:26 and i get it and the funny thing is now i'm the voca9on director i deal with the same stuﬀ 1:08:31 you know so i learned how to be a liWle more compassionate than some of the guys did when i called them but anyway 1:08:37 so eventually a community accepted me reluctantly and they said look your forma9on's going to be very long i had to get a ged because i dropped out of 1:08:43 school had to go to community college i had to go to regular college then seminary then i ended up going to 1:08:49 post-seminary stuﬀ it took 10 years for me but i needed it i needed to mature i 1:08:54 needed to go into the desert i needed to shut up and it was hard because you know when i was ordained a 1:09:00 deacon they were like all right you've been boWled thunder for 10 years go you 1:09:05 know and i did man i was like out of the gate strong man you know and now i've been a priest almost 20 years 1:09:11 and why am i telling you this story because father calloway is something great and special nope i suck 1:09:18 i do i'm no beWer than you i put my pants on just like you god doesn't love me any more than he loves 1:09:24 you i'm s9ll a sinner a work in progress but i know the truth 1:09:30 i know it now you can't take it from me right you can lock me up that would totally be a bummer right i don't want 1:09:35 to be locked up but you could i got it i understand now 1:09:42 this is all temporary this is passing there is something more it's eternity and i want to be in 1:09:48 paradise not on the other side i want to be in heaven and that's what i want for you i don't know you 1:09:55 i may never see you good people again in my life but this i want you to know 1:10:00 jesus is real and i don't know what your rela9onship with him is like if it's been superﬁcial or your wife dragged 1:10:06 you here tonight to hear this radical priest who got busted for shopliYing a piggly wiggly right that happens a lot honey you got to hear 1:10:12 him i don't want to go to church the game's on i know these are tough 9mes 1:10:18 but my challenge is to you is this take it seriously take this you have been given a giY in 1:10:25 your catholic faith you know when i was becoming catholic one of the most disappoin9ng things for me were catholics 1:10:30 because they took it for granted they went through the catholic educa9on system a lot of 9mes you know sister or 1:10:36 social jus9ce wasn't on ﬁre and didn't give them the fullness of the truth she was worried about you know saving trees 1:10:41 you know a lot more to tree than trees my friend you got a soul 1:10:47 and this is serious stuﬀ and right now you're in a trading ground you beWer train well 1:10:52 because there are consequences to your ac9ons and they are eternal and i'm not saying this to scare you but to warn you 1:11:00 as a father you call me father i say this because i love you i don't 1:11:05 want any of my friends from the past i pray for them i now might see myself as a spiritual 1:11:10 hippie i got a volkswagen bus and i'm like get in boys right you come kicking and screaming i 1:11:15 get it i did too and it may take some 9me but i'm praying that i can help you get 1:11:20 there and i pray that if if god had done the same thing for you that he did for me that you would do it for me 1:11:26 so i'm gonna pray for you guys i know it's not easy i know it's tough i know your marriages are suﬀering i know you're probably the majority of your 1:11:33 children are delinquent seriously there's hardly any leave it to beaver 1:11:38 families leY i'm da9ng myself now when i say these things right i don't know the modern family certainly ate the 1:11:43 modern family on tv right it's tough man pray 1:11:49 please pray pray the rosary this powerful prayer consecrate yourself to our lady to saint joseph 1:11:56 go to confession please go to confession 1:12:01 look i know it's tough yes it can be humilia9ng and embarrassing ﬁnd some nigerian priest 1:12:07 who's visi9ng town sorry father 1:12:13 you know what i mean though i do it 1:12:23 yeah baby that's awesome that worked out well 1:12:29 seriously i do it all the 9me man when i'm like in a bad place i'm like all right where's that vietnamese do that hardly 1:12:35 understands english all right i'm going to him take that back with you to saigon baby you know 1:12:42 just go okay and and stare at the carpet like i did ini9ally and just get it all out you 1:12:48 will feel sweet freedom whatever it is that you're struggling with whether it's lust so many are today 1:12:54 the pornographic ﬁlth perversion that we 9mes that we live in whether whatever it is go 1:13:00 go as as as as a priest and and as a friend i beg you to go to confession okay and 1:13:07 pray for me and for us priests we need those prayers we're not perfect you see our ﬂaws and 1:13:13 it's easy to see us you got a million eyes looking at us constantly pray for us poor men that are wearing these 1:13:18 things around our neck and so much is expected of us we need your prayers all right so i'm 1:13:23 going to end with that and i'm going to beg you one more thing please get the books i don't make any my 1:13:30 father calloway rich all the money goes to my religious community for the books seriously you can ask my superiors i 1:13:36 don't make anything oﬀ these things my superiors are very happy because they're doing quite well 1:13:41 right praise the lord but get the books books have power look at saint augus9ne right he read read a 1:13:47 book totally at leger he heard and he read he read so get the books they're in the back i'll be back there signing um 1:13:53 we can't take them back with us so please buy one for a friend and give it to a friend give it to your delinquent son 1:14:00 leave it under his pillow or in the bathroom i don't care where it's red you know let him read it anywhere you know power of these books get the books 1:14:06 and i'm going to give you a priestly blessing and aYer i do that father is going to come up and say a few closing 1:14:12 things so don't leave aYer the blessing okay all right please stand 1:14:19 in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit amen heavenly father you're so good to us we 1:14:27 thank you for this evening we thank you for this joyful event 1:14:33 we ask you to bless everyone here present in this church and all those that are on their heart 1:14:39 maybe for spouses who wouldn't come who don't prac9ce the faith for children who are who who've wandered away we pray 1:14:47 for conversions we pray for a falling in love with you like they've never known you before 1:14:53 we pray for blessings to take away anxiety and stress in these crazy 9mes we pray for world peace and the whole 1:14:59 situa9on russia ukraine we pray for peace father we pray for your comfort 1:15:05 you're so good you're so good father you're a good good 1:15:10 father bless us with the protec9on of our lady with the cloak of saint joseph 1:15:16 and help us to be good like you and may almighty god bless you 1:15:22 the father the son and the holy spirit amen god bless you guys 1:15:50 you no 9mestamp Transcript good evening everyone uh welcome to uh all of our parishioners as well as the many guests who have joined us today i know some of you have come a long way for this evening so we want to welcome you on behalf of the whole community at saint francis xavier church i'm father joe palermo the pastor and our parochial vicar is in the back he's been hearing confessions father andrew sanchez so we both welcome you as well as all of our staﬀ and community we'll say an opening prayer and then we'll we'll get started in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit amen lord we are most grateful for the opportunity to gather together today during the season of lent the season when we turn try to turn more deeply toward you and allow the holy spirit to ﬁll our hearts with your grace so thank you for this opportunity to hear the tes9mony of father donald calloway thank you for the opportunity to gather as church uh thank you for all the graces that god gives us on a daily basis and we especially pray that you will open our hearts our ears our minds to receive all the blessings you wish to give us tonight we uh say this all in the name of jesus christ our lord and savior amen it is my privilege to introduce father donald calloway he is a priest yes please he is a priest of the congrega9on of the marian fathers of the immaculate concep9on uh located in stone stockbridge massachuseWs uh the site of the na9onal shrine of divine mercy he himself personally resides in steubenville ohio father callaway has degrees in philosophy theology and mariology he has wriWen 14 books and currently has two more books that are ﬁnished being wriWen and in the process of wai9ng for publica9on and in 2017 this catholic priest based on a documentary on his life won an emmy award will anybody tell me how that could happen how about that in 2019 father released a book which rocked the catholic world consecra9on to saint joseph wonders of our spiritual father i would imagine that many of you in church today own this book and many of you have undertaken the program 33-day process of consecra9ng yourself to saint joseph i know i did it last year with our community about 75 people consecrated themselves on the solemnity of saint joseph and many others who weren't able to make it that day and i'm back on my second reconsecra9on and i think i'm on day 23 or 20 24 at this point the book is a reﬂec9on on the personhood of saint joseph a young strong virile man that god called to be the head of the holy family and on the giYs the charisms and the virtues of saint joseph as understood and reﬂected upon by saints of the church through many decades but with fresh insights by father callaway the book has sold over one million copies worldwide which for a religious book is staggering and has been translated into 18 diﬀerent languages and i understand that this book was a key factor in the decision of pope francis to declare the year 2021 the year of saint joseph in the worldwide catholic church how about that tonight father callaway is not scheduled to talk about his beloved saint joseph because he did that on one of the other evening talks this in louisiana or the blessed mother mary whom he talked about on one of the nights but about his own conversion story into the catholic faith and later into the priesthood and i know for this he gives all glory and praise to jesus christ our lord i understand that there are some people here who have followed a father from the talk in baton rouge on monday night to the talk in lafayeWe on tuesday night and the talk here in louisiana in metairie tonight so we're going to give you some kind of award at the end of the evening for doing that the story of father father's conversion is amazing if you don't know the details of it i am certainly not going to spoil it but let you hear it from him directly so please give a warm south louisiana welcome to a great servant of god a friend of the church a lover of the holy family father donald calloway you haven't heard me talk yet man you really hyped me up father no pressure um yeah so you know how i won that emmy because i was a bad boy that's all i was just a sinner and so they wanted to um make a ﬁlm about it and the knights of columbus did and i thought it was a joke like they say i got some in the mail one day and it said you've won an emmy and i was like i threw it away i did i was like give me a break you know and then i got a phone call and they said are you coming oh i do need to turn it on okay let me turn on another mic here they said are you coming to receive your emmy your golden calf that's what i called it right and i'm like who are you people and they were like you won the yummy in your category and i'm like what and i did that you know it's under my bed in a thing i you know i don't care about that man i might melt it down get some cash from it you know but anyway so and father as you were speaking about my beloved saint joseph i love saint joseph so much oh my goodness what he's done for me it's incredible and what he's doing for the church right now but as you were talking father i no9ced above here i don't know if everybody's seen it if this isn't your parish that is a gorgeous holy family with a young strong good-looking saint joseph i love that look at that right there that is so awesome well done whoever put that up there so very very nice okay before i begin my talk i did want to men9on something else because you people here in louisiana you are so blessed you are so blessed you are the only state in the united states that has done this i hope you know what that is it's amazing so during the year of saint joseph jen angelle and her friends they did amazing stuﬀ and i did a liWle bit to help get along but not much she's an amazing woman this is a prove from your state legislature that for every may 1st from here to the end of 9me in perpetuity may 1st will be recognized by the state of louisiana as a day dedicated to saint joseph the worker and that's not just something for the catholic church for the ci9zens all ci9zens of the state of louisiana ra9ﬁed by your government oﬃcials that's amazing my friends no other state has that so you you should take pride and honor in that okay so on my third night of my my repara9on tour i'm calling it um because i got into a lot of trouble down here with you good people right back in the day 30 years ago um and i'll talk to you about that and i'll tell you something kind of funny that we did the other day um since i'm giving this talk that we did the other day that was hilarious and it blew up on facebook people were laughing so hard i'm glad i didn't get in trouble um but it was it was a it was a funny thing all right and hopefully i didn't run with any you people 30 years ago and you're going to shoot me aYer this talk or something you know i'm sorry i'm sorry you know if i did something to your house or friends family all right okay so you see me now if you don't know me from adam you're like who is this dude okay so when i was born um my family was not catholic not chris9an of any kind and they did not believe in god and so i wasn't bap9zed we didn't go to church we didn't pray none of that kind of stuﬀ and my mom very beau9ful young woman i was conceived when she was 17 born when she was 18. so she was a very young woman but her marriage had no founda9on it wasn't based on sacriﬁcial love it was just basically there were two good looking people that shacked up and i was the fruit of that basically seriously that ain't gonna ﬂy they didn't have a founda9on of sacriﬁce in that marriage and so they they separated they divorced my mother remarried another man dad number two that didn't work out either they separated and then my mother remarried a third man now this one dad number three was a liWle bit diﬀerent he was a military oﬃcer and he was a chris9an but not really a chris9an i mean he was a nominal chris9an so in name only he didn't go to church he didn't pray but he adopted me thank the lord why do i say that because do you remember what my last name is callaway think golf right the golf clubs famous golf clubs i am so grateful that this man adopted me and i got his last name because up 9ll i was adopted by him i had my biological father's last name which was croc brutol right unless that's your last name it's nice it's very nice horrible right okay so i become calloway thank god for adop9on and he um is a nominal chris9an right he had gone to church as a young boy but he had stopped going a long 9me ago but his parents my new grandparents and i got grandparents all over the place right three dads i got a whole bunch of grandparents so his parents my new grandparents said this poor boy has never been bap9zed you've adopted him he's got your last name now you need to have him bap9zed and he and my mom were like nah that's not what we do we're not into that you know and grandparents being grandparents they were like you got to bap9ze that boy you got to bap9ze that boy so they're like ﬁne shut up right we'll get them bap9zed right so they found a church a random church something where it wouldn't be a long process you could just go and get her done and so that's what they did they found an episcopalian church where there wasn't a whole lot of you know chat chat ge[ng it done just go in set up a date and you know so that's it how many rela9ves and friends did they invite to my bap9sm zero none how many pictures did they take of it none why waste ﬁlm on this they didn't wanna all they wanted was the eight by eleven cer9ﬁcate to show the grandparents zip it he's bap9zed okay be happy i remember my bap9sm i was ten years old okay babies don't remember their bap9sm but i was 10 and i remember it was a valid bap9sm right it was legit just in a diﬀerent church but it was a legit bap9sm what do i remember some dude dressed weird poured water over my face and then we went outside and ate donuts around the picnic table welcome to chris9anity right that's that was my entrance into you know chris9anity you can get donuts any9me these days you know 24 7 at your local piggly wiggly we'll talk about more about that later right and so you you you know you don't have to go to church and get a donut so my parents didn't want to go to church i didn't go to church of course so we we didn't go the grandparents were somewhat appeased and we started our family unit right now as a family him being a military oﬃcer we moved so at that 9me we were in virginia beach virginia and then we moved to southern california which was awesome for me as a young boy i absolutely loved it it was like so amazing and i wanted to live there to the end of my days you know and then aYer a period of 9me because i consider southern california my home it's where my forma9ve kind of years were and just love it then he said we're going to move again and i'm like uh where because we've been in virginia beach southern california i was hoping to hear honolulu right i know what he said he said we're moving to japan and i was like no we're not you know you could take your liWle family there to japan i'm not going to japan but i had no choice so we go to japan and i immediately looked for the kids who were the bad kids right easy to ﬁnd by the way today everybody's so pc they're afraid of oﬀending people who am i to say right uh preWy good chance that the dude who's got a taWoo on his forehead you know ain't praying the rosary i'm just saying you know preWy good chance you know but today everybody's like who am i to judge you okay so back then it was super easy to see who the kids were that were bad so i was drawn to them they were drawn to me and we started to partay in japan and it got so bad that i ran away from home on the big island in the middle honshu the big island and i i didn't seek gainful employment i wasn't working at a sushi shop you know to get money i was running drugs and money for the japanese maﬁa the yakuza the yakuza i mean that's serious stuﬀ for a white boy right they never fully ini9ate you know a white kid but they used me as a drug mule because nobody would suspect if you're my age or they're about you remember back the members only jackets with all the zippers everywhere right i would have so much yen on me as a kid like like a million yen not a million dollars it always sounds awesome in japanese currency but you know let's say like ten thousand dollars on me as a kid as a 16 year old kid that is a ton of money and girls on my leY are my right because if you were a boy in the 1980s growing long hair you were bon jovi right you were part of def leppard you were you were part of martley crew you you had it going on right you were a chick magnet and so i was like wow it was amazing i absolutely loved it loved everything about it but there was a problem i caused an interna9onal scene really between our government and the japanese government between our our military presence over there and the authori9es and they were all looking for me because of the criminal ac9vity that i was doing because here the things that i were doing we would call felonies i was some serious crime that i was commi[ng well that was that was not going well for my dad or my mom my mom was stressed she was so suﬀering from so much anxiety and nervousness she was on medica9on for depression and all this stuﬀ and then my mom had a friend now what i'm about to tell you i would not ﬁnd out about un9l much later in japan as in most countries there are these amazing creatures called catholic ﬁlipino women okay you ever met these people they're amazing right i call them the green berets of the spiritual life they're the special forces of god okay they they mean business these ﬁlipino women so sure enough there they were in japan because they marry american gis and they're all over the planet you know so so there's this ﬁlipino woman and she says to my mother this now if there are any ﬁlipinos here i love you salamatpo to you and your people right you're great people i love you i'm not about making to make fun of you right now i'm about to imitate you okay so this is what my mom this is what this woman said to my mother you got to go talk to father you got to talk to him right that's how it sounds to a white boy okay so my mom almost full-blooded italian my mom lachito bianco was my mother's maiden name how she wasn't catholic totally weird but she wasn't so this ﬁlipino woman's telling my mom you got to talk to father you got to talk to the catholic priest right so my mom's like what why why do i have to talk to a catholic priest but ﬁlipino women they will not stop un9l you do what they tell you to do right so my mom was like ﬁne i'll go talk to a priest so my mom went and talked to a military chaplain on the base there and that priest changed my mom's life he told her about the saints about the blessed virgin about the sacraments confession all the wonders and the glories of catholicism and it's all it's as though he went to my mom in her italian dna and just went on with catholicism right it's there somewhere we goWa turn it on turn it on man and my mom was like this is amazing and she started to bring her husband my dad and from this point i'll call him my dad because i love this man dearly now back then we rolled big 9me but now i love this man and she was gonna she wanted to become catholic and she was gonna bring him to become catholic and their son my half-brother maWhew i didn't know anything of what i just told you clueless how did i ﬁnd out when they apprehended me when the authori9es busted me at a train sta9on near yokohama i found out that my mother had already leY the country because she had to she had to the authori9es told her you have to leave because we have to have a place to send your son when we apprehend him do you know how that broke my mom's heart she did not want to leave that country and not knowing where her son was and i didn't know any of this so she and my brother leY they no longer lived in japan they had come back to the states my dad had stayed back to search for me i i escaped from that brig the you know military cell they recaptured me and they kicked me out of the country kicked me out and when they did they put me on what's called a mac ﬂight it's a military cargo plane it's using that for personnel it's cargo web sea9ng on the side and stuﬀ and so they handcuﬀed me to the plane and to a military police oﬃcer on my one of my ankles two big mps escorted me from yokosuka big military installa9on there to honolulu where they took the handcuﬀs oﬀ and released me into the custody of my father and we boarded an american airlines ﬂight from honolulu to lax and my ﬁrst thought was thanks for the ride sucka is right i always wanted to come back to the mainland you know and i was i was about to bolt at lax like i'm just going to take oﬀ but where was i going to go most of my friends were military brats as well so they probably weren't even living in southern california anymore what am i going to do so i was like all right whatever so i went with my dad on a ﬂight to pennsylvania where my mom had relocated and there's my mom at the gate pre-911 right she's right at the gate wai9ng for me and she is oozing motherhood all over me trying to she comes up to me she's like donny donny i love you my donny right you know what i did to my eternal shame you know what i did i put my ﬁnger out in her face and in front of everybody i said i hate your guts and i meant it i was dead to this woman and i don't even know why i can't tell you why it's just what the culture told me to do it's them it's authority it's parental ﬁgures that jack up your life and that's so weird because you remember my mom technically is only 17 years older than i am she's a cool mom she's the one who taught me to listen to cool music not all this lame garbage today right she turned me onto the eagles and bob seeger and all that cool stuﬀ my mom was a cool mom my mom was an aWrac9ve mom a very beau9ful woman s9ll is and all of a sudden now i hate i hated her and my mom broke she started crying right there in front of everybody oh my goodness did i care i don't care we get into the car and i said to my dad with an earshot of my mom where are we going and he said you're going to a rehab and you know what i said because in the airport i put a dagger in my mom's heart in the car i turned it and ripped her guts out i said good cause it'll get me away from you the whole ride she cried i went to my ﬁrst rehab in altoona pennsylvania it's called new beginnings at cove forge you can look it up it's s9ll there i was there for three months i didn't get beWer in the rehab i got worse i didn't want to be there so i wasn't there my own voli9on but s9ll nonetheless it was a joke it was a joke now i'm not saying all rehabs are a joke but the vast majority of them you can look at the sta9s9cs of the success rates that come out of them extremely low extremely low if they're just secular programs why because it's a band-aid to a spiritual problem seriously all they wanted me to do in there was go to small group have aﬃrma9on sessions play monkeys on a jungle gym outside in the woods and and just don't you know snort the sugar make a good showing and get that chip because somebody's paying a lot of money for this program and you need to take your dosage in your dixie cup and cooperate with the program young man seriously that was my ﬁrst rehab it didn't work i ran away in i learned how to do more drugs in the rehab so when i got out i went to my parents house and guess what my mom said this is crazy man donny we've become catholic yay right i'm like great you joined a cult you've hooked up with jim jones you're going to move to you know uganda and oﬀ yourself with kool-aid you know i have no idea what the catholic church is all about but i can tell you this it's weird that's what i thought these people are an9-science an9-woman male-dominated hierarchical archaic ins9tu9on that hates all things and ruins your life it's all about rules rules rules that's what i thought because that's what na9onal geographic taught me that's what the programs on tv taught you that's what cnn will teach you right that's what those programs will teach you about the catholic church and that's what i i believe that's what my teachers in school before i dropped out of school it's funny i spoke at a catholic high school this morning in lafayeWe i never graduated from high school hey there's something right it's amazing how god brings it full circle you know it's amazing who am i you know okay so i i'm just an all i'm like i can't believe you people have done this you've joined a cult i can't you're educated people how could you be so stupid to join this stupid organiza9on called the catholic church and so i'm like i'm out of here i can't even stay with you people and i could not stay in their house because i didn't need to go to church with these people because my mom asked me to go to church are you high me going to church you goWa be kidding me i didn't need to why because my mom had turned that house into a church okay she was like a nun i might as well call her sister at this point she was so religious it was like oh my gosh you know what i mean like every 9me they ate a cracker she was like bless us oh lord i'm like y'all crazy what is up with this and she bought these ﬁgurines no joke liWle ones medium-sized gargantuan ones of some angel looking thing ripped he had like a six-pack i'm not kidding you ever seen these right he had a six-pack dude had a six-pack but he had a pitchfork stabbing like a snake in the face weird i didn't know what it was but my mom did she was into it light liWle candles next to it i'm thinking this is the spaceship you know coming from planet xeno to pick them up and take them oﬀ to the cosmos i have no idea weird but she would put cards of this creature in my pants pocket when i'd be home you know totally wasted i wake up and you know i'd put my hand in my pocket or under my pillow there'd be this card of this saint michael the archangel right i'm like mom's cuckoo for cocoa puﬀs

Life in the Spirit: Fr. Calloway's Testimony PDF

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