All of these are things that are unfit for a man of God.

Let’s get right into it then: here are 15 things that a masculine man never does.

15. Lose their heads when trouble comes: A big part of being a man is being able to maintain a cool head to make wise decisions when the stakes are highest. A man who breaks down under pressure or when things are going south is unreliable and unfit to lead.

14. Put down those who are struggling: A masculine man doesn’t mock or humiliate those who are behind him. Instead, he looks at them with charity and sincerely attempts to help them out, understanding that whatever talents and blessings he has have been given to him by God, and it’s his duty to give back to those less fortunate than him.

13. Make decisions based solely on profits: Money is important, yes, but it can’t be the main driving force behind your decisions. That’s a fast track pass to idolatry and materialism. As always, reason must govern. Make wise financial choices, of course, but never at the expense of your values.

12. Idolize celebrities, athletes, or politicians: A big cause of the epidemic of immaturity plaguing the world today is that many young men have made idols out of celebrities, athletes, politicians, or other public figures. It’s difficult to develop and mature properly as a man when your entire life revolves around a celebrity which you’ve chosen to try and imitate. A masculine man of God has no idols and worships no one but God.

11. Consume what degrades their soul: Masculine men guard their eyes, ears, and heart. They understand that the music they listen to, the movies they watch, and the people they talk to all have an effect on who they are, and so they stay vigilant and avoid degenerate things.

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Falling into sin can be absolutely crushing. Once you’ve seen the ugliness of sin and experienced the love and mercy of God, it’s impossible to not feel guilty and ashamed after we betray Him again.

Every sin is a lash in Christ’s back. Every betrayal a hammer blow on the nails that pierce His precious hands.

We participate in His passion willingly, every time we fall.

Maybe initially we did this out of ignorance, failing to see the hellish darkness of sin, and thus we could avoid all feelings of guilt after every commission.

But now it’s different. Now we know what we are doing. Now, the Holy Spirit has shown us both the pain our sin begets, and the unending love and mercy of the Savior whom we so readily betray.

We have seen the contrast between heaven and hell, and we can’t avoid feeling pain and guilt after all those times we’re too weak to choose the difficult light over the alluring darkness.

We can’t avoid feeling dirty and ashamed when we wake up to realize we’ve chosen to stab God in the back, again and again, even after all this time, even after we promised —once more— to be faithful to Him forever.

And while a measure of guilt is prudent, for it means that we love God more than we love our sin, and it shows a sincere heart that wants to be purified, we would be wise to remember that sin, while evil, dark and ugly, is not the final enemy.

The final enemy is despair. The final enemy is hopelessness.

The final enemy is believing your sin cannot be overcome.

Christ solved the problem of sin. He gave Himself up so we wouldn’t be slaves to it. All we need to do is believe that, because when we do, we’ll return to Him after we sin, when we sin, before we sin.

We will look at His cross and ask Him to turn our temptations into grace.

As long as you keep hoping and keep trusting God’s mercy, you’ll come back to Him and He’ll welcome you with open arms. But when you lose all hope, when you think your efforts are worthless, when you believe and accept in your heart that you are too wretched to be forgiven, that’s when you’ll quit the race and condemn yourself.

The great sinner who hopes, who perseveres, who repents, and who stubbornly returns to Christ will find salvation.

God’s mercy is always bigger than your sin.

Please don’t give up. Please don’t stop trying. Please don’t lose hope.

Persevere until the end.

God is with you, and He wants nothing more than for you to join Him in eternity.

Prayer

Lord, thank You for Your infinite mercy. Thank You for loving me, forgiving me, and strengthening me at the hour of temptation.

I’m sorry for my failures.
I’m sorry for my sins.

I surrender my heart to You, purify and soften it, free it from the disordered attachments that I’ve learnt to love more than You.

Please grant me the graces required to keep hoping after I have failed, to keep trying when I think my efforts are futile, to keep returning to You when guilt tries to get me to hide.

Make me a testimony of the transformative power of Your love,

Amen

Thank you for reading!

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The book of Job is one of the most widely discussed and cited books of the entire Bible, mostly because it presents us with a striking example of undeserved suffering that necessarily challenges our own sense of justice.

Most of us are familiar with Job’s story: a righteous man loses everything for seemingly no reason other than God allowing the devil to test him.

Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them. The Lord said to Satan, “From where have you come?” Satan answered the Lord and said, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.” And the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?”

Then Satan answered the Lord and said, “Does Job fear God for no reason? Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.” And the Lord said to Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand.” So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord.
— Job 1:6-12

After God allows Satan to attack Job, the blameless man loses everything. His children die, his property is destroyed, and even his livestock and his servants die. In one day, Job’s blessed life becomes a life marked by deep suffering, and yet, he refuses to speak against God:

Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
— Job 1:20

Job's story perfectly depicts the seemingly unjust suffering we all face at some point. Maybe you feel like Job when negative circumstances pile up without any apparent reason: losing your job, losing a loved one or facing illness. God, in His wisdom, knows too well that at some point in our lives (and possibly more than once), we’ll raise our arms up to the heavens and demand an answer to the ever painful question: “What did I do to deserve this?”

The book of Job gives us an answer.

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Undeserved Suffering

The remarkable part about Job’s story is not so much the suffering he faces, but the fact that it’s one of the only cases in the Bible in which said suffering is clearly undeserved. There are tons of stories of great sinners facing pain and struggle as a consequence of their disobedience, but almost no stories —beyond Job’s— of righteous men facing terrible consequences after having committed no sin.

A big part of what makes Job’s story so relatable is that we see in it the lack of answers from God that we often feel in our own lives. As the readers, we know what’s happening and we know that Job is being tested (chapters 1-2 reveal Satan’s test with God’s permission). But Job has no idea. And his ignorance is reminiscent of our very own confusion when suffering comes without us doing anything to deserve it.

Precisely because suffering is such a common experience between all of us who walk this valley of tears, I want to take a look at Job’s story from a different angle and try to offer some comfort to anyone who might be suffering and failing to find an explanation for his tribulations.

Bear in mind, the answers we find in the book of Job are comforting, but they are not what, in the midst of our pain, we might expect or desire.

The Prosperity Gospel and Its Consequences

When trying times come, we usually think like Job’s friends’: we assume that suffering is a sort of karmic, direct punishment for personal sin, and thus conclude that if we are suffering, it has to be because we’ve done something wrong. The theology of Job’s friends, who supposedly come to comfort him, is a version of the “prosperity Gospel”, so popular over the last decades, that seeks to minimize our faith to the following equation:

Good behavior = blessing, bad behavior = punishment.

This is a sort of theology that feels right because it makes the world predictable and controllable, and it plays on our need to feel secure: if suffering is simply a response to bad actions, then it’s in our power to avoid it completely. Many Christians unconsciously believe this, and Job’s friends certainly did:

• Eliphaz claims that he must be guilty because “innocent people don’t suffer like this”

• Bildad takes it one step further and blames him for the death of his children: “Your children died because they sinned”

• Zophar, unsatisfied with the poor man’s suffering decides to tell him, “you deserve worse”

The “comforting” words of Job’s friends end up adding insult to injury. Not only is Job suffering, but he’s now also —they claim— fully deserving of it.

Once again, we can see how this reflects our real life. Or is it not true that very often, in suffering, not only are we forced to bear the weight of pain, but also the crushing weight of loneliness and criticism from those who think we deserve what we are getting?

Job finally cracks, and rebukes his “friends: “Miserable comforters are you all!” (16:2). At this point, his faith reaches a breaking point, and he demands answers from above: “Why are You doing this to me?” (Chapters 3-31)

God hears his cry, and His response is a strong proclamation of sovereignty.

When God’s Answer Explains Nothing

When God finally shows up, He provides an answer that, on the surface, offers no comfort. It’s not even an answer. He doesn’t offer an explanation. Instead, He asks Job over seventy questions simply to show Him that there are some things he isn’t supposed to understand:

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?”

“Have you commanded the morning?”

“Can you control Behemoth or Leviathan?”

God isn’t saying all of this to beat Job down and “show him who’s boss.” No, He’s making a broader point:

“If you can’t understand how I run the physical world, why think you can understand My purposes?”

God never says why He allowed Job to suffer, or explains that His tribulations were a test to prove his faith, nor does He even mention Satan.

His answer is simply a striking proof of His greatness, and showcases the difference in wisdom and knowledge between all of us, represented in Job, and Him, who’s sovereign, and infinite.

Job’s response further proves the sheer virtue of the man:

I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.
— Job 42:5-7

Imagine that. After suffering greatly, facing the death of his family, the criticism of his friends, and the loss of everything he has, Job accepts his fate and repents, even though he didn’t get the answers that he wanted. What he got, though, was God’s presence. And that was enough for him.

Job’s book is full of meaningful lessons and reassurance for those of us who are under the burden of suffering. Mainly, there are 5 points we can extract from Job’s story, that will help us face the trials and struggles that feel unjust without breaking down, and that will help us endure them gracefully and faithfully.

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I‘ve given lots of talks on chastity to youth groups over the past few years, and it’s always interesting to realize how many misunderstandings there are about chastity. The main one is that most people view chastity as a restrictive rule that is all about what you shouldn’t do:

Don’t have sex before marriage. Don’t watch porn. Don’t lust. Don’t, don’t, don’t.

But this framing is completely backwards. Chastity is an active virtue, which isn’t even primarily about restriction, but about transformation and about properly ordering your sexuality. This ordering of your desires makes you more like God intended you to be, and it clears your intellect, your will, and your soul from the cloudiness that sin causes.

Chastity goes beyond the spiritual realm. Of course it’s absolutely necessary to save your soul (and yes, unrepented mortal sexual sin can be enough to separate you from God’s grace). But even if that weren’t true, the practical benefits alone—which most people don’t even know exist—would be more than enough reason to pursue this virtue.

I didn’t always live chastely, but thanks to God’s grace, I do now, and in this article I want to share with you all the things that change for the better when you commit to pursuing purity.

How Chastity Transforms Your Entire Life

#1: Chastity transforms your relationships

Unchastity trains you to use people for your own pleasure. Porn, hookup culture, uncontested lust, all of it conditions you to see others (especially women) as objects for your gratification. Chastity fixes this:

• With women: You stop filtering every interaction with a woman through the lens of sexuality. As you start to purify your heart by pursuing chastity, you stop seeing women as things to be possessed and you start seeing them as God made them.

• With men: Your friendships naturally deepen because you’re not enslaved to comparison, competition over women, or superficial sexual talk. Most of the conversations in groups of men nowadays are about sex and women. When you practice chastity, you make space for more elevated topics of conversation and for your friendships to deepen through the common pursuit of virtue.

The most important transformation that occurs in your relationships is that you stop seeing people through the lens of disordered sexuality and see them as integrated humans with dignity, made in the image of God. For example, those who watch pornography frequently slowly allow it to convince them that every relationship, every conversation, every interaction has a sexual component to it, when that is obviously not the case. It’s really crazy to notice just how much unchastity poisons your relationships, but this only becomes clear when you’ve practiced chastity and seen the difference for yourself.

The main point is this: When you stop seeing people through the lens of 'what can I get from them,' you can finally, truly love them. Real love: willing their good, not using them for pleasure and gratification.

#2: Chastity transforms your self-worth

Sexual incontinence destroys your self-respect. Every time you fall for the lies of the enemy and pursue disordered sexual acts, you are making yourself less human and giving into your animal nature. Slowly, you start to accept (unwillingly and subtly), that you can’t control yourself, that your desires rule over you, and that you are not good enough to have the ordered sexuality God calls you to have.

Chastity helps you rebuild your subconscious sense of dignity and agency. When you prove to yourself that you can say no to impulses, and sacrifice empty, immediate pleasure for the sake of a higher good, you develop a deep confidence that carries over into every area of your life.

Your integrity and sense of identity also change:

• You become a man of your word to yourself and God. You stop living a secret life, and become coherent in what you preach and what you practice.

• Your worth and your identity stop being tied to sexual conquests or female attention/validation. You start rooting your identity on God and not on any external factors.

A man enslaved to sexual impurity, on a deep, sometimes even subconscious level, stops respecting himself, as he knows he’s controlled by his appetites and would betray his principles when temptation comes. The chaste man, on the other hand, walks with his head held high because he knows where his identity comes from, he knows God has strengthened his self-control, and knows he’s not hiding any skeletons in his closet. Bear in mind, this confidence isn’t pride, but the healthy self-respect that appears when you know you’re doing the right thing and living coherently.

#3: Chastity transforms your masculinity

In a world in which maintaining chastity is so difficult (because the enemy has made sure that we encounter temptation at every step), the man who manages to develop the self-control needed to live a chaste life immediately stands out.

Masculinity is built by doing challenging things for the sake of a higher good, and living chastely is one of the hardest challenges to overcome in the modern era. But that just means it’ll make you a much stronger, more virtuous man.

True masculinity requires self-governance, sacrifice, and the ability to delay gratification, and chastity builds all of those at once. I recommend you read this article where I dive deep into how chastity builds true masculinity:

#4: Chastity purifies your intellect

Lust clouds your judgment. St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that “the flesh acts on the intellective faculties, not by altering them, but by impeding their operation in the aforesaid manner.” 1 In other words, sexual sin prevents you from using your brain capacity properly.

Think about that for a second: Sins of the flesh make you more stupid. When you understand that, you realize why so many people seem to have lost all common sense in the modern world: their flesh is clouding their intellect.

Chastity purifies your mind, making you sharper, more focused, and more capable of pursuing truth. The specific transformations that occur are:

• Mental clarity: Porn addiction and other forms of sexual disorder create brain fog. Chastity clears it. You can focus on difficult tasks, think through complex problems, and pursue intellectual work without constant distraction.

• Moral reasoning: Sexual sin requires rationalization in the form of constant mental gymnastics to justify behavior you know—deep down—is wrong. This corrupts your ability to reason morally in all areas. Chastity restores intellectual honesty and allows you to think and act coherently with the moral law written in your heart.

• Creativity and energy: Sexual energy redirected becomes creative energy. The great saints, artists, philosophers, and builders channeled their sexual drive into their work. You have finite energy, and when you stop wasting it on shallow pursuits, you become free to use that energy to contemplate, create beauty, pray, and develop virtue.

Chastity acts in your intellect by removing your brain fog and allowing you to see things more clearly. The man who lives chastely is able to reason better, to pursue truth more honestly, and to understand his reality more objectively. The mental gymnastics that sexual immorality forces confuse you and mislead you, whereas chastity allows you to see the world with purer, more honest eyes.

How to Live Chastely

When people understand the profound importance of the virtue of chastity, they are usually convinced that it’s a virtue worth pursuing —at least that’s been my experience in the talks I’ve given.

The question that arises naturally then is “but how?”

How can we live chastely in a world that tries so hard to ensure we don’t?

What follows is my best answer plus some battle-tested resources that will help you finally overcome sexual immorality.

Sacramental Life is the Key

The very first thing I want to make clear is that this battle will be futile if you attempt to defeat the foe of lust by relying on your own strength. You need Christ to be victorious. Only He can strengthen you and purify you. You cannot go into battle thinking that you’re strong enough to do this on your own. You are not.

But Christ is.

Learn to rely on Him and to invite Him into this battle, to ask for His grace and strength and call out to Him for help.

That’s the foundation of victory. You can’t white-knuckle your way to chastity. You need grace. The sacraments are the means by which God wants to dispense grace. So use them!

Go to confession often. Beyond helping you stay accountable, confession helps remove power from the sin, by allowing you to experience God’s mercy firsthand. Additionally, when you speak your sins out loud, they also lose some of their power over you. On a more practical note, the examination of conscience required for confession helps you understand your triggers and be more mindful of them. Of course, the most important aspect of the sacrament of confession is the grace that you receive, which is a supernatural help from God Himself. Confession is a non-negotiable if you actually want to change.

Go to mass as often as possible (Sunday Mass is the bare minimum), and receive the Eucharist (if you’re not in a state of mortal sin). Go to adoration and spend some time with Christ sacramented. Look at Him and let Him look at you. Give your struggles to Him and cry out for His help.

Practical Resources to Help You Quit

You also need to surround yourself with likeminded men who are fighting this battle, you need to pray often, read your Bible, and as we said, go to confession, and strive to remain in a state of Grace. That needs to be the foundation upon which you strive to build the virtue of chastity and get rid of this vice once and for all. But it’s also necessary to take practical, decisive actions in order to finally get rid of the vice of pornography addiction and other forms of sexual immorality.

One resource I’ve found helpful is Relay, a Christian app designed specifically for overcoming pornography and sexual sin. It provides structured accountability, evidence-based protocols, and a community of men fighting the same battle.

There’s a ton of positive testimonies of men who have found freedom from pornography addiction, masturbation, and other forms of sexual immorality with the help of the structured, evidence-based protocol that Relay offers. Many men (even some close friends) have also told me personally it made the difference after other methods failed.

If you have been trying other methods and they haven’t worked, I recommend you give this one a try and see if it helps you. You can get a 7-day free trial with the code AETERNUM:

Try Relay for free here

Additionally, and because this article is getting long enough, if you have some questions about Relay or would like me to recommend some other articles/resources, feel free to shoot me a DM or leave a comment on this article. I’ll be more than happy to share whatever I can with you.

One final piece of advice: try to eliminate all triggers from your environment. Social media is designed to show you semi-nude women. Mark every provocative post as “not interested.” Unfollow accounts (even “friends”) who post provocative content. This might sound extreme. But your soul is worth it.

Don’t just clean up your digital environment. Clean up your actual environment too. Throw away movies, magazines, or even books that serve as triggers. Stop going to degenerate parties. Stop hanging out with people who lead you to temptation and sin.

Everything around you can either aid you in your pursuit of virtue, or hinder you. Again, extreme measures are in order here. It’s 100% worth losing those “friends” who constantly cause you to sin. Make sure that your environment fosters purity and beauty instead of lust, temptation and sin.

I hope this article helps you. Stick to the advice, try out Relay, and let me know how it goes. Remember, also, that the only way to fail is to give up, and that all that Christ asks from you is the perseverance to return to Him if you fail.

God is with you, you are in my prayers, and surely too in the prayers of all the men who fight this battle alongside you.

Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
— 1 Corinthians 6:18-20

May God bless you and keep you.

Ad Maiora Nati Sumus,

Juan

Thank you for reading!

If you enjoyed this post and could leave a like or comment it would be greatly appreciated, as it will help my work reach more people.

If you liked this article, you’ll love my books.

Here are my top 15 pieces of advice that I wish I’d heard when I was younger, which would’ve saved me a whole lot of pain, trouble, and wasted time and effort.

15. Only invest in things you understand. Otherwise you are just gambling. Don’t let shiny objects and fear of missing out guide your financial decisions.

14. Don’t watch the news. The news have a clear incentive to push sensationalism, drama, and negativity. Being “informed” about things that have no direct effect on your life is not a valid enough reason to flood your mind with negativity, death, and pain. You’ll forget the beauty of life too quickly if all you see daily is everything that’s wrong with the world.

13. Stop drinking completely. Not only because alcohol will hold you back from whatever worthy goal you have, but because you probably use it as a cop-out to avoid developing the courage you know you need. Going a whole year without alcohol will show you how dependent you are on it for socializing, talking to women, and feeling comfortable among other people. You need to learn to do all those things without alcohol or you’ll forever be dependent on it.

12. Eliminate all sexual immorality. Casual sex isn’t worth it, and the praise you’ll get from other lost, desperate men won’t ever compensate the damage you are doing to your own soul. Porn destroys your mind and soul, and it will get you used to being a spectator instead of the main character of your life. Masturbation shows a lack of self-control and makes you subject to your most base, lowest desires. Defeating sexual immorality will build your character like nothing else.

11. Don’t idolize any man. All men are flawed, and while you can learn something from everyone, be wary of gurus and false messiahs, and make sure you never make an idol out of them. There is only one man you should try to imitate and that is Jesus Christ. From all other men, learn what you can and ignore the rest.

10. Don’t watch soft movies and series. Too much movie make your heart weak.

No further explanation needed.

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After five years of writing about masculinity, I've come to understand its essence in one word: sacrifice.

Most of the insights I discover in this journey of trying to provide men with an ideal to strive towards are not new at all, but rather personal realizations of truths that much greater men have grasped way before me.

This particular truth —of sacrifice as the essence of manhood— isn't a new revelation, for Scripture and the saints have taught this for two millennia. But in the postmodern world, it's a truth that's been buried under mountains of counterfeit versions of “masculinity”, which is why it’s worth stating it openly and clearly, and explaining the philosophical foundation of the claim that to be a man is to live and die for others.

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Removing the Foundation

I find it quite interesting how masculinity has become such a mainstream topic over the last couple of years. Before the woke boom, it was completely unthinkable to even try and discuss how men should behave and what masculinity entails, as the entire culture was plagued by a relentless —and at the time unchallenged— wave of feminism which sought to undermine men as a whole, making the prospect of masculine development a grave offense.

Now, however, more and more people are starting to enter the cultural arena to offer their very own definitions of masculinity, trying to guide men towards what they consider to be the optimal, morally superior standards of behavior. A few schools of thought have become widespread and strong, like the Nietzschean idea of the Superman or the materialistic idea of improvement as a masturbatory and self-glorifying pursuit. We see the latter among gurus like Andrew Tate, who promote a version of masculinity that is all about the self, all about rising so that you can accumulate power and pleasure. Ironically, the self-glorifying “masculinity” they propose is the complete opposite of real manhood: a childish ideal fit for men who never learnt to deny themselves in favor of the ultimate good.

All standards or ideas of masculinity that fail to take into account the transcendent, the spiritual and the eternal are flawed at best and destructive at worst. From a philosophical standpoint, if the concept of masculinity —as an ideal to strive towards— rests on the subjective definition of any fallible man, it will always fall short in describing the perfection we should be aiming towards.

What this means is that to define what masculinity is, we must look beyond the material world, beyond the humans that inhabit it, beyond the gurus and their empty promises, and towards the one man who’s both fully human and fully God: Jesus Christ.

The Truth

The “masculinity” that pursues the prideful glorification of the self is diametrically opposed to the ideal of masculinity that Christ —the Way, the Truth, and the Life— embodies, and is thus everything but masculinity.

Masculinity, in its purest sense, is the virtue that makes a man more like he was created to be. And a man was created to be in communion with God, by seeking to imitate Him, by surrendering his heart to Him, and by dying daily to allow Christ to live in him.

That means that every time we pursue a different goal, we are becoming less masculine. Every time we follow the standards of masculinity that aim towards gratification of our base desires instead of towards heaven, we become less Christlike, and thus, less masculine.

If Christ is to be our guiding light, we must then ask ourselves what characterizes Him and what makes Him such a unique figure, and the answer stares at us from the Cross through which He redeemed the world: sacrifice.

Christ is what makes Christianity different from all other religions and from all other attempts at defining how a man should be. Christ, hanging from the Cross, shows us the standard for masculinity: death for the sake of others. Death for love.

This is the virtue that is exemplified in the father who sacrifices his comfort to discipline his children when discipline is difficult, the husband who sacrifices career advancement to be present for his family's formation, or the friend who does something as simple as sacrifice his Saturday to help a struggling brother move, or fix his car, or help him through his breakup.

Thats the sacrificial masculinity that we should pursue: active, costly love that prioritizes the good of others over the comfort of self. Christ calls us to that:

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
— Matthew 16:24-25

Did you think that was just a metaphor? Did you think that simply meant to bear the burdens of modern life without complaint? Did you think the cross Christ mentioned was the petty discomforts and sufferings we have become so unaccustomed to?

No, to take up your cross means to be ready to die for Him. To commit to living a life of sacrifice, in which your whims and wishes go last, in which you answer the call of all of those who need your help, and serve God and your neighbor out of love.

But this love does not manifest itself as passive acceptance or as weakness. We are not called to tolerate sin or become doormats using “sacrifice” as a comfortable excuse. Once again, we can look at the example of Christ, and see that He sacrificed Himself for our good, not for our comfort. He didn't sacrifice truth or justice, but His comfort, His glory, and ultimately, His life for our salvation.

This is a teaching that is unique to Christianity, and it’s uniqueness is the very reason why it’s so hard to find men of character, grit, and sacrificial love outside the boundaries of our faith. It’s not like it’s easy to find them within them, not at all. We must admit that the enemy has been successful at emasculating even those of us who should exemplify the strength and courage of the Savior we seek to imitate and rejoin in Heaven.

But the truth is that this ideal of masculinity —the only real kind of manliness— is only found in the proper expression of the faith that gave birth to it. It only makes sense to live for something higher if you believe that something higher exists. It only makes sense to give up your life for the sake of others if you believe there is a higher good to be won by doing so.

If your ultimate objective isn’t heaven but the artificial prolongation of your life or hoarding as much gold as possible before death calls your name, sacrifice will be a pestering, senseless concept.

But for those of us who have our gaze set firmly on eternity, sacrifice and a life of service are the essential tools that will keep our path straight when surrounded by the shiny objects and the temptations that seek to lead us astray.

The small, seemingly meaningless sacrifices we make in our daily lives will be what trains us for the heavier crosses that might come: persecution, alienation, and if God wills it, martyrdom. A man who can’t say no to the selfish desires of his flesh or forgo his plans to help a friend will deny and betray Christ under pressure. A man who can’t engage in the little sacrifices that life calls him to will choose himself over others when the stakes are highest, cowardly running away from the duty to lay down his own life out of love.

The Lord calls us towards Him, but we are not to go to Him empty-handed.

It would be shameful for a man to arrive at His presence without a worthy cross to present to Him. It would be an insult to see His sacrifice and assume that it means we don’t need to carry our load.

Learn to die so you can live eternally, and learn to love the weight of sacrifice so you can walk with Christ towards the transformation of your heart and soul.

Ad Maiora Nati Sumus,

Juan

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Last week, one of my close friends approached me after our Jiu-Jitsu class and asked me for some advice regarding the correct way to properly prepare mentally and spiritually for the Paschal Triduum and Easter. His question motivated me to write this article not just to provide him with a clear, structured answer (I will send him this article), but also so that I can reflect on the upcoming days myself and provide those of you who might be wondering the same thing with some guidance.

It’s particularly relevant to consider the proper approach to Easter in a day and age when most use this holiday to relax and decompress, or travel and party. As someone who never really took Easter seriously until my conversion, I can understand those who —perhaps because of cultural pressures— haven’t really taken the time to reflect on the significance of the upcoming days. For them, I hope this article serves as a valuable countercultural suggestion, so they can experience this Holy Week in the correct spirit, and avoid missing out on a time that can be of significant spiritual transformation when approached properly.

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What Easter is Not About

First off, we need to remember what this week is not about. In a world dominated by Easter Bunny prevalence (which has non-Christian folk origins, though sometimes blended with Christian customs), it’s easy to forget that these days are not about the eggs and the colors, or a vacation to be spent doing whatever we desire.

It can be very tempting to use these “free days” to travel with your friends or family, or to simply rest and recharge from what has surely been an intense first quarter of the year.

And even if it’s certainly not wrong to do those things (provided these aren’t “spring break” type trips), the fact is that Easter isn’t really about relaxing or traveling. You could, of course, do all those things, but only if they do not distract you from the real purpose of this week: to contemplate and accompany Christ crucified and resurrected.

How to Prepare for Easter

Holy Week officially started last Sunday (Palm Sunday), with a distinct liturgy in which we remember Christ’s triumphant entrance into Jerusalem riding a donkey. Those attending the Mass receive palms, as a reminder of John 12:13, in which we are told that people welcomed Jesus by waving palm branches upon His entry into Jerusalem. During the Mass on Palm Sunday, it’s also the first time we hear the reading of the Lord’s Passion (in full) according to the liturgical cycle (Matthew in Year A, Mark in B, Luke in C).

After Palm Sunday come Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of Holy Week. These three days are a good opportunity to meditate and reflect on the sacrifice of Our Lord. A good way to do this is by going to confession and attending daily Mass, while also reading the Scripture passages corresponding to the Passion of Our Lord, and meditating silently on them.

Then come the most important days in the whole year, during which we remember both the solemnity and suffering that Christianity demands and the joy that following the Lord gives us access to.

Holy Thursday:

Holy Thursday commemorates the Last Supper (the institution of the Eucharist), and the washing of the feet. In the Holy Thursday Mass, there is a moment during the service in which the priest washes the feet of 12 parishioners, emulating Christ’s servant leadership.

At the end of Mass, the consecrated hosts are left on the altar and the priest, donning a humeral veil, takes the Blessed Sacrament and processes out of the church to a chapel or other area for Eucharistic adoration, known as the altar of repose, inviting adoration until midnight.

Good Friday:

Good Friday is possibly the most solemn day of the entire year for Catholics. On this day, we remember Jesus’ betrayal, passion, and crucifixion. It’s the only day in the entire year in which Mass is not celebrated, and it’s a sad day in which we are called to fast and abstain as required by Church precept (ages 18-59 for fasting, 14+ for abstinence from meat), to unite our suffering with Christ’s and to remember the role of our own sin in the pain He bore for us.

It’s common on Good Friday to do Station of the Cross devotions and processions, where large crosses are carried (usually in a community), to remember the Via Crucis. There is a reading of the Passion and the Eucharist, which was consecrated on Thursday, is distributed.

On this day, it’s important to maintain a spirit of solemnity and contemplation, to focus and meditate on Christ’s sacrifice and on the ugliness of our sin that made His suffering necessary.

Holy Saturday:

On Saturday, possibly the greatest and most joyful Mass of the whole year takes place: the Easter Vigil. It’s a unique service that can only begin once the sun has set, and it begins with the lighting of the Paschal candle outside of the Church. The fire is then shared from this candle to the other individual candles of the parishioners. Afterwards, for the Liturgy of the Word (normally consisting of 2-3 readings), up to nine readings are read: seven from the Old Testament (at least three), one Epistle, and the Gospel.

These readings show the connection between the Old and New Testaments and how Jesus fulfilled the prophecies of Scripture and achieved salvation for us all.

This is a joyous celebration filled with rich songs and uplifted spirits. On this day we celebrate Christ’s triumph over death and sin, and the spirit with which we approach it is diametrically opposed to the solemnity of Good Friday.

Before the Easter Vigil, Saturday is a good opportunity to draw closer to the Holy Virgin Mary, as we remember too her pain and loneliness during the time between Christ’s death and resurrection.

Easter Sunday:

Easter Sunday Masses are usually more similar to the Masses that occur during the ordinary time, the main difference being that the celebratory atmosphere continues from Holy Saturday.

On this day, we continue to celebrate the triumphant resurrection of Our Lord and we look with hope towards the future, knowing that Christ awaits us in eternity.

Some final recommendations for these days are to spend them intentionally, and to truly place God at the very center of your life —every day, but even more so this week.

You can do this by taking part in a retreat, doing missionary or charity work, or spending them in a spirit of silence and prayer at home. If you have some down time, you could watch the movie The Passion of the Christ, to remember just how much Our Lord suffered for us. I would recommend you avoid traveling unless for the aforementioned purposes and that if you do travel, you make the effort to participate in the Holy Week services and processions and to remember throughout it all that the spirit of this week is not one of rest and mundane enjoyment but of spiritual transformation.

May this Holy Week be an opportunity for change and repentance, and may you draw much closer to God in the upcoming days, as we are united in the Easter proclamation that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Ad Maiora Nati Sumus,

Juan

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Great leaders throughout history have had the skill to influence, move, and inspire people to change their ways. As Christians, one of the most important aspects of living out our faith is the apostolic duty to spread the Gospel, share the good news of Christ, and in love, help as many people as possible see the Truth.

In that sense, we are all tasked with being leaders. Maybe some will be called to positions of great influence and some others will be called to lead just their home, but we will all carry some of the burden of leadership and thus should understand enough about human psychology and emotion to successfully approach those who haven’t yet found the joy and peace that comes when you surrender your heart to Christ.

You see, one mistake we often make —not just when we attempt to evangelize but also in any sort of cultural discussion—, is that we believe our task is to “own people with facts and logic”. If we demonstrate the logical inconsistencies of the opposing position, our thinking goes, they will obviously see that and change their minds.

And while this approach might work for those who are genuinely interested in actively finding out the truth, in most cases, logic and rational arguments are simply not the right way to influence someone.

People are usually not rational creatures. We don’t make decisions rationally, nor do we behave rationally the vast majority of the time. And yet when it comes to influencing others, we forget this simple fact and try to win people over by presenting exclusively scientific studies and logical arguments, only to be surprised when this only does not help at all, but counterintuitively prevents people from coming over to our side.

This is a crucial mistake that many on the more conservative side of the political spectrum make: believing that rational arguments will convince people to change sides.

Logical, rational arguments have a place and a time, and of course it’s important to understand the reasons why you believe what you believe and to be able to explain why our faith and our moral code is the correct one logically, philosophically, and metaphysically. But most times, the best evangelizers and the most influential people are not those with the best arguments or the most peer-reviewed studies.

It’s a Matter of the Heart

You see, trying to convince someone who thinks differently by presenting them with “facts” and “logic” doesn’t really work because most of the times it’s not people’s intellect that’s the problem, but their hearts.

This is why conversations about relevant cultural topics almost always end up becoming heated emotional debates filled with anecdotal examples and appeals to “empathy”.

Emotions have a strong effect on matters of the intellect, so any attempt to evangelize or convince that focuses solely on the rational will fall short or backfire tremendously.

Christ spoke in parables and communicated the deeper Truths of God in ways that were simple to understand and easy to relate to emotionally. My humble opinion is that He knew that the most effective way to evangelize wasn’t through sophisticated intellectual arguments but by speaking to the heart.

The best leaders, the ones who cause real social change, the ones who truly inspire people and lead them towards something better understand this, and while intellectual knowledge serves as the rock-solid foundation for their beliefs, they understand that they need to speak to the heart of those listening, not to their brains.

Rational discourse has no impact on a closed heart. And most people, as a consequence of the prevalent sins of our age, and due to the prideful notion that we’re now smarter than ever, suffer precisely from hardened, closed hearts.

The way to truly influence people is by softening their hearts, and there are really only two ways in which you can do that.

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A few weeks ago I returned to training BJJ after a year-long hiatus. I had stopped training because of logistical reasons and because last year I chose to prioritize working on my business over training consistently.

Even during that “sabbatical” I took from training Jiu-Jitsu, I kept training martial arts, as for some months I boxed weekly with a couple of friends. However, those sparring sessions stopped somewhere around the middle of last year, and I ended up not doing any martial arts for at least the final semester of 2025.

The malleability of the human spirit is such that one can very easily adapt to new circumstances and thus quickly forget the particular benefits of a habit or practice. As it happens —and I only noticed this after I came back to training—, I had become totally unaware of the tremendous mental and spiritual value of consistent martial arts training, caught up as I was in the rush of the daily grind.

The topic of training martial arts as a Christian man has always been the source of very heated debates, with some claiming that it’s unfit for a Christian man to practice such violent disciplines. I stand on the other side, alongside those who claim that a Christian man is practically required to train martial arts, especially in a world in which the standard of masculinity is so incredibly weak and low.

Why It’s Not Sinful To Practice Martial Arts

Bear in mind, this article is not about watching MMA as entertainment or practicing it professionally, as a way to earn a living. Those are separate topics that require a different, more nuanced approach. This article is merely about the act of training martial arts.

I felt it was necessary to clarify that, as most of the arguments against Christian participation in martial arts (that I’ve seen) are about watching it for entertainment or engaging in them competitively.

Some Christians, however, are completely opposed to any and all forms of participation in what they consider to be a “violent” and “degrading” practice, including just training martial arts in a controlled environment. I understand where this concern comes from. Christ commands us to turn the other cheek, to love our enemies, to be peacemakers. How does learning to fight fit with that?

The answer is that learning to fight and choosing violence are not the same thing. A Christian man trains in martial arts not to dominate others, but to protect the weak, defend his family, and build the virtues necessary for spiritual warfare.

I believe most objections against fighting for Christians stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of martial arts as a whole, and about what actually goes on inside dojos throughout the world. The harshest critics of martial arts are almost always those who have never practiced any form of it, and can thus very easily make up false ideas in their minds about what practicing these sports actually entails.

Few are the men who have entered a martial arts gym and emerged more violent. The complete opposite is usually true, as these places serve as training grounds for multiple masculine virtues, such as fortitude and temperance, both of which are becoming increasingly uncommon among men today.

On the question of whether or not it’s sinful to practice martial arts, Catholic doctrine provides a clear answer:

In short, as long as you don’t pursue martial arts training with the intent to hurt others, you do it moderately and safely and not in an attempt to exercise unjust violence, it’s perfectly fine to train and become competent martially.

Practical Benefits of Training

Beyond the more important spiritual benefits —of which we’ll talk about later—, there are several important practical benefits to practicing martial arts, which are difficult to find anywhere that isn’t on the mats:

• Skill. The most obvious benefit to training is learning the skill of self-defense. As protectors and providers of our families, it’ll never be a bad thing to be physically capable of defending yourself and yours against unjust aggression.

• Flow state. There are few things which can get you into a state of complete focus quite like martial arts training. When you’re in the ring or on the mats, you essentially cannot be thinking about anything else beyond the combat you’re engaged in. We are perpetually distracted nowadays, and it’s incredibly refreshing to be fully present, fully focused in the task at hand. This, in my experience, is difficult to experience outside of martial arts.

• Clarity of mind. That same flow state leads to a clarity of mind that makes it easier to then focus on your other daily tasks, on your work, and even on your relationships. Experiencing flow state clears your mind from stress, anxiety, and the worries that are so common in the masculine mind.

• Fraternity. Male friendships of the real kind are built by enduring hardships together. There is a deep longing in the masculine heart to find brothers in arms, men you can depend on, men whom you can trust in high-stakes situations; competent and loyal friendships built on mutual respect. In martial arts, you find men with actual spines because the training naturally filters for them. You can't fake toughness on the mats. You can't maintain an image when you're getting choked or punched. What you get is authentic masculine friendship built on mutual respect and shared suffering, the kind that's nearly impossible to find in modern society.

Practical benefits are cool and all, but the real reason why I believe all Christian men should practice martial arts is actually spiritual.

Physical Decay, Detachment, and Spiritual Combat

Some of the most important benefits that a man will experience after training martial arts consistently for some time are not physical or practical, but more so mental and spiritual.

Some might even argue that there is no physical benefit at all, as the toll that martial arts training takes on the body significantly outweighs any physical benefits that training might offer. But we’re all decaying physically. In a few decades we will all be hurting for different reasons. So, for me, the fact that martial arts can cause some bodily damage is not a reason not to practice them, but rather a way to learn to detach from the physical, temporal world, and set our hearts on eternity.

At the dusk of your life, will you be full of scars and injuries as a result of a life lived fully, a life in which you have used your body, you have fought, ran, sacrificed, grown and suffered?

Or will you suffer the pains of inactivity, of sedentarism and cowardice, of atrophied muscles and bones as a result of a whole life spent idolizing safety?

You don’t get to choose complete physical preservation.
You just get to choose what you do while your body decays.

Besides, the pain of physical effort that helps you detach from this world also hardens not just your body but so too your mind and your spirit.

Enduring the discomforts, the falls, the losses, and the blood of combat strengthens you to endure the discomforts and sufferings that are natural and necessary in Christian life:

It’s not a coincidence that St. Paul uses combat metaphors constantly: “Fight the good fight of the faith” (1 Tim 6:12), “I have fought the good fight” (2 Tim 4:7). Ephesians 6 describes the “whole armor of God.” It’s because physical combat training teaches spiritual combat principles:

• How to stay calm under pressure

• How to endure pain without quitting

• How to face an opponent without fear

• How to lose, get up, and fight again

Martial arts training thus prepares a man for the inevitable spiritual battles he will have to fight. One of the most prevalent ones being the fight against weakness and effeminacy:

The effeminacy that plagues Christian men today would disappear in an instant if all of us committed to practicing martial arts in a spirit of Christian development, intentionally pursuing the endurance of discomfort for the sake of building virtue.

The Christian world is missing men who live like men, who balance the gentleness of our faith with the active pursuit of masculine virtue that necessarily leads us towards danger, towards risk, towards fighting against something.

We are in the midst of a great spiritual war, that has already spilled over into the physical realm.

If God ever needed warriors, competent mentally, physically and spiritually, it is now. And those warriors are built nowhere else but in the sweat and blood of combat.

Ad Maiora Nati Sumus,

Juan

Thank you for reading!

If you enjoyed this post and could leave a like or comment it would be greatly appreciated, as it will help my work reach more people.

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A common experience in Christian life is going through periods when challenges pile up faster than you can solve them, when the odds feel overwhelmingly stacked against you.

Few are the Christians who can claim they’ve never gone through such periods in which the burdens of life feel too heavy to carry. What's even worse: God often seems unconcerned with our suffering during these valleys. It’s not uncommon to feel Him far away from us, not just ignoring our difficulties but actively making them harder by sending challenge after challenge, one on top of the other, allowing them to pile up and weigh on us quicker than we can even begin to process and solve them.

It’s very natural to feel overwhelmed when that happens, and to question if God is truly on our side. After all, why would a merciful God voluntarily make our lives harder?

You know the feeling: when the financial pressure you’re under keeps increasing instead of decreasing, when you receive bad news after bad news in a seemingly endless streak of hits, when you try and try and keep hitting solid walls, until you start breaking down and crying out to God, asking Him why on earth He is making things so impossible.

While in the midst of struggle it might be difficult to make sense of it all, there is an answer, but not the one we expect.

We need to begin by understanding that our challenges are not a personal affront from God towards us, and that we are not the recipients of a cruel punishment. Rather, we need to realize that God has always tested His people, or allowed them to be tested.

From Abraham to Job, from Moses to Paul, Scripture shows us that God's greatest servants faced His hardest tests. Most specifically, we can find guidance in the Old Testament story of Gideon, who teaches us not just how to defeat seemingly impossible challenges, but also explains why God allows those challenges to come.

Gideon vs. The Midianites

The story of Gideon in Judges 7 presents a striking example of God making a situation more challenging than it needs to be:

Then Gideon and all the people who were with him rose early and encamped beside the spring of Harod; and the camp of Mid′ian was north of them, by the hill of Moreh, in the valley.

The Lord said to Gideon, “The people with you are too many for me to give the Mid′ianites into their hand, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, ‘My own hand has delivered me.’ Now therefore proclaim in the ears of the people, saying, ‘Whoever is fearful and trembling, let him return home.’” And Gideon tested them; twenty-two thousand returned, and ten thousand remained.

And the Lord said to Gideon, “The people are still too many; take them down to the water and I will test them for you there; and he of whom I say to you, ‘This man shall go with you,’ shall go with you; and any of whom I say to you, ‘This man shall not go with you,’ shall not go.” So he brought the people down to the water; and the Lord said to Gideon, “Every one that laps the water with his tongue, as a dog laps, you shall set by himself; likewise every one that kneels down to drink.” And the number of those that lapped, putting their hands to their mouths, was three hundred men; but all the rest of the people knelt down to drink water.

And the Lord said to Gideon, “With the three hundred men that lapped I will deliver you, and give the Mid′ianites into your hand; and let all the others go every man to his home.” So he took the jars of the people from their hands, and their trumpets; and he sent all the rest of Israel every man to his tent, but retained the three hundred men; and the camp of Mid′ian was below him in the valley.
— Judges 7:1-8

Gideon’s story is eerily similar to the famous battle of Thermopylae, in the number of 300 warriors, but most importantly in presenting us with the tale of an army facing off against impossible odds.

Every man feels instinctively drawn towards such stories, as they move something deep within us, and they help us remember, in the middle of life’s most difficult situations, that it’s against overwhelming odds that the greatest victories occur.

But even though we all feel inspired by King Leonidas and his 300 spartan warriors, or by Gideon defeating the Midianites, when the victory hasn’t yet come, when we feel overwhelmed by anxiety and by the shadow of the unbeatable foe, it’s not always easy to maintain our high spirits.

Here’s the pattern we often face:

1. We encounter a big challenge

2. We ask God for help

3. God adds another challenge (What?!)

4. We cry out again

5. God makes the odds seem impossible (Why?!)

6. God grants us victory (when we remain faithful)

Somewhere between steps 3 and 5 (when God seems to be working against us instead of for us) is where most of us despair. But Gideon’s story reveals why God works this way, and what we must do to ensure victory comes.

Victory isn’t guaranteed. It’s not like every one who faces impossible odds will emerge victorious. Some of us will face challenges and choose to stop trusting God, trying to go our own way and crash and burn in the process.

But we can emerge triumphant from adversity, by learning why God makes our lives harder, and secondly, by understanding how we must act in the midst of struggle to guarantee that we emerge victorious.

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I remember vividly getting into multiple heated discussions back when I was in college, when the wave of feminism and individualistic expression was at its highest peak. One of the most emotionally charged topics I ended up arguing about was the question of wanting to have kids in a world considered by the mainstream to be “overpopulated”.

Back then, I didn't have many arguments to respond to the passionate conviction of my classmates, who genuinely believed they were being compassionate by preventing future suffering.

“It’s because of people like you that the world is ending!”
”Humans are a plague and we’ll destroy the world if we don’t stop having kids!”

I understand where they were coming from: if you believe human existence is net-negative, refusing to have children seems like the obvious moral choice. But I now believe this compassionate impulse is built on a deeply flawed and ultimately evil premise.

It’s been refreshing to see that the anti-natalist position has lost a lot of its strength since my college days, mostly due to the economic predictions that prove that our system is financially unsustainable if we don’t revert the population decline we seem to be on in most western societies.

However, I believe there are stronger arguments to be found outside of the field of economics, and those are the ones that I wish to share in this article.

The Danger of Anti-Natalism

The decision not to have kids might seem like an individual choice without any implications beyond the private sphere. But like most things that seem simple on the surface, it’s much more complex than that.

An anti-natalist position requires an underlying conviction that every new human life is a net negative.

Under the anti-natalist worldview, human existence is unjustifiable. The “official” claim is that it’s immoral to bring new life into the world because all life will be inevitably subjected to suffering, pain, and eventual death. This argument, however, smuggles in a deeper, more troubling anti-human claim: that existence itself is unjustifiable. By framing all suffering as unacceptable, the anti-natalist implicitly argues that life (which inevitably includes suffering) is unacceptable. The problem moves seamlessly from suffering to existence itself, and from new life into life as a whole.

If we take these arguments to their logical conclusion, we arrive at a horrifying question:

If it’s immoral to bring someone into existence because they’ll suffer, then isn’t it also moral to end someone’s existence to prevent further suffering?

Think about it: If the problem is suffering, and death ends suffering, then by anti-natalist logic, death is always preferable to continued life. The only difference between the unborn and the living is that one exists and one doesn’t. But if existence itself is the problem, why does that difference matter?

The anti-natalist position, taken seriously, justifies not just preventing birth, but ending life.

This is why anti-natalism is, at its core, a philosophy of death.

The Pipeline of Death

We can see now why taking an anti-natalist worldview is diametrically opposed to the Christian claim that all human life is precious and worth protecting.

There’s a relevant contemporary example that very clearly illustrates where the “having kids will destroy the world” position naturally takes us:

First, under that view, kids become not only inconveniences to the parents’ life, but also immediately guilty for all that’s wrong in the world. You can see this manifest clearly when older people look down with contempt —and often hatred, disgust, judgment and anger— at younger couples with multiple kids. The kids —who are totally innocent— become the inconvenient materialization of their parents selfishness.

From that point, it doesn’t take much to see kids no longer as inconveniences, but as parasites —as we’re seeing among the “pro-choice” activists. It’s much easier to justify the unjust murder of over 73 million unborn lives1 when you stop seeing them as inconvenient humans and see them instead as unwanted parasites.

Finally, they become even less than parasites: mere “clumps of cells”. Humanity —and even life— has been stripped away. We’re there now. And to illustrate just how evil this whole argument is, let me show you what they call a “clump of cells”:

The pipeline looks like this:

Having kids destroys the world (perhaps genuine environmental concern)→ The moral choice is to not have kids (personal choice) → Having kids is inmoral/selfish (philosophical foundation) → Kids are a net negative (overarching claim)→ Existing kids are viewed with contempt (natural emotional reaction to that which is perceived as negative) → We need to prevent births (activist reaction to perceived evil)→ Unborn kids aren’t even kids (rationalization to justify extreme measures)→ Unborn kids are parasites → Unborn kids are clumps of cells → 73 million abortions every year (end result).

This is where the anti-natalist logic leads: not to a better world with less suffering, but to (at least) 73 million innocent lives taken every year. Not to compassion, but to the industrial-scale destruction of human life.

What the World Truly Needs

Even if I completely dislike the anti-natalist idea, I tend to be somewhat sympathetic towards the individuals who say they don’t want to have children. More often than not, they are victims of a propaganda campaign that is impossible to resist without God’s grace. They genuinely believe they are making a moral choice and they genuinely believe they are saving the world by not having kids.

But being a victim of propaganda doesn't make the propaganda true. And being sincere in your belief doesn't make the belief less deadly.

I don’t have children yet. I can’t speak from the experience of sleepless nights and endless sacrifice. I can only speak from the theological and philosophical truth that sees both the challenge and the profound goodness of bringing new life into the world.

I hope to have many children, if God blesses me with them. I know it will be hard. I know it will require sacrifice that many feel unprepared for. But I also know that the greatest goods always do.

There are many seemingly valid reasons not to have kids, but I believe none of them justify the anti-natalist worldview (and I believe the only moral and intellectually consistent position is the Catholic position of complete openness to life, in which all humans are made in the image of God and thus reflect the divine.

The Christian vision is the only position that actually accomplishes what the anti-natalists claim to want: reduction of suffering and furthering of human happiness and fulfillment. By seeing existence as a gift (not a curse), we learn to see suffering as formative and redemptive, through the example of the Cross. The reality of suffering doesn’t get ignored in Christianity, it gets given meaning.

My answer to those who think that the world is overpopulated, that humans are a plague, and that the world would be better off without more humans in it, is this:

The world doesn’t need less humans, it needs more good ones. It needs men and women who protect God’s creation, starting by protecting His most precious work: human life. The anti-natalist says ‘The world is too broken for children and more children means an even more broken world’.

The Christian, on the other hand, says ‘Children, raised to be good, are how broken worlds are healed.’

God knows us intimately since the beginning of time, and that He’s the author of life. We don’t get to decide to stop the souls He crafted so carefully from coming into the world.

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.”
— Jeremiah 1:5

May we all be fruitful and multiply, filling the world with good people who are devoted to the good, true, and beautiful.

Ad Maiora Nati Sumus,

Juan

Thank you for reading!

If you enjoyed this post and could leave a like or comment it would be greatly appreciated, as it will help my work reach more people.

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We’ve become weak, soft and effeminate. To become the men God needs us to become, we have to start removing from our lives those habits that emasculate us and keep us from growing into strong, virtuous men.

Here are the top 10 habits that are killing your masculinity:

#10: Fear of Taking Risks

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.
— Joshua 1:9

Look at the men around you and you’ll see that what they mostly are is afraid.

Afraid to fail. Afraid of discomfort. Afraid of pain and suffering. Afraid of missing out. Afraid of losing their possessions. There’s a cloud of fear hanging over all of us, and it’s made us forget that God calls on us to be courageous and walk boldly.

Masculinity thrives on risk taking and overcoming fears. You won’t ever become the man you are called to be if you keep letting fear drive your decisions.

The cure for this habit: Make it a point to do things you’re scared of. It’s only in overcoming your fears that you strengthen your muscle of courage.

#9: Living Reactively

Do not wait for leaders. Do it alone, person to person.
— Mother Teresa

It’s a sign of weak masculinity to be always reacting to what goes on around you instead of proactively building the life you want to live. Of course it’s God who ultimately decides our fate, but in the little things of daily life, in our work, in our relationships, and in everything else that goes on from sunset till sundown, it’s us who have to act.

A masculine man does not live reactively. “Oh but you said this so I said that and then you looked at me this way so I did this.” That’s not how a man should behave. You need to act, not react. You need to do the right thing regardless of what’s going on around you. Of course, be mindful and strategic and consider the information you receive, but ultimately, your actions shouldn’t be emotional, instinctive reactions to outside factors. They should be intentional, thoughtful, strategic actions, coming from inside, from your commitment to virtue and from your role as a leader.

The cure for this habit: Learn to plan and execute. Develop leadership skills and practice leading even in the small situations of your life.

#8: Sexual Immorality

Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.
— 1 Corinthians 6:18

Controlling lust is the modern rite of passage from boyhood into manhood. Until you learn to control your sexual urges, you’ll forever be a slave to them.

Yes this is difficult. Yes, we live in a society in which we are bombarded by sexual content left and right. Yes, it’s the main sin of our age.

But that just means that conquering it makes you all the more powerful. A man who controls his sexual urges is a man of temperance and fortitude. He’s a man who has very strong self-control, and who isn’t ruled by his passions. Boys are ruled by emotion and pleasure. Men are ruled by morality and virtue.

The cure for this habit: Read this article, then check out this app if you are actually serious about wanting to purify your life.

#7: Neglecting Gratitude

O my God, let me remember with gratitude and confess to thee thy mercies toward me.
— Saint Augustine of Hippo

Masculine men are not entitled. They don’t pridefully claim they “deserve” anything. Instead, they appreciate whatever they have, and praise God for it. They know that every single good thing in their lives is due to God’s goodness, so they don’t inflate their egos and think they’re in control of everything.

Gratitude is your antidote against childish entitlement. There’s nothing less masculine than a man who complains about things being unfair and about not having what he feels like he deserves. You don’t deserve any more or less than what God decides you do, and accepting this humbly and gratefully makes a man masculine, centered, and wise.

The cure for this habit: Begin each day praising God and thanking Him for all the blessings He has given you. Do the same at the end of each day. A simple “Thank you, Lord” is enough to start. Don’t overcomplicate it, just say “thank you” from your heart.

#6: Overindulgence in “Self-Care”

In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty.
— Proverbs 14:23

The new idol of many is so called “balance”. And what they call “balance” is in reality just plain laziness.

“Oh I’m tired of working halfheartedly all day so I’ll just procrastinate and watch Netflix for 4 hours straight, to relax a bit.”

Relaxation and so called “self-care” can very easily become an excuse to procrastinate and avoid your responsibilities.

Of course balance is important, but balance doesn’t ever mean you are allowed to disregard the necessary hard work that being a man demands.

The cure for this habit: Rest if you need to, but be very honest with yourself: are you really resting because you’ve worked hard or are you letting laziness take the wheel and lead you to neglect your responsibilities?

Read more

A few weeks ago, the internet was shaken by a new, massive release of the Epstein files. Some of the things on there were absolutely shocking. My Twitter feed was flooded with uncensored images and videos of the horrific things these people were doing (and many are likely still doing), and by terribly detailed emails showcasing the sheer evil of those participating in these abominations.

I’ll admit that I was quite affected by them, so much so that I had to get off Twitter for a while. If you haven’t gone down that rabbit hole, I don’t recommend you do. Just know that what’s in there is probably worse than you imagine, and all the things that “conspiracy theorists” have been saying were true.

It’s natural to feel pain and doubt when confronted by such evil. How could anyone do such horrific things?

It’s all Spiritual

You see, us Christians have known all along that this is not merely “some bad men doing bad things just because”.

No. We know it’s much bigger than that. We know there’s actual evil, and we know that there are people in high places making deals with the demonic, committing abominations in order to gain power in this world. One of the most shocking things about the Epstein files was how open they were about this, and how much of an effort they placed in mocking Christ and His Church.

Do you think that it’s a coincidence that Epstein’s bank account was named “BAAL” —the name of an ancient Canaanite demon—, that they talked about bringing down Pope Francis, and that they mocked Christ in multiple emails?

It’s always been spiritual. The emails, the satanic rituals, the demonic tint of their communications prove it. And those who refuse to accept it at this point are unknowingly helping Satan tighten his grip on this world.

With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah which says:

‘You shall indeed hear but never understand,
and you shall indeed see but never perceive.
For this people’s heart has grown dull,
and their ears are heavy of hearing,
and their eyes they have closed,
lest they should perceive with their eyes,
and hear with their ears,
and understand with their heart,
and turn for me to heal them.’

But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.
— Matthew 13:14-16

There is a spiritual war ongoing. You can unite yourself to Christ, who fights for life, light, good and beauty, or refuse to join the fight, and become one more silent, numb warrior in the army of the dead.

Because it’s not only greatly virtuous actions and terrible evil deeds that tilt the spiritual balance. No, every little thing you do either helps the light or the darkness. There is no neutral position here. Every single decision you make leads you —and all of us— closer to Heaven or further down into the abyss.

Light or darkness. Good or evil. Holiness or wickedness. Your actions don’t just affect you personally, but they also create ripples in the spiritual realm, meaning that even those “private” sins you commit damage other people, if not directly, then always at least indirectly, by allowing the demonic to keep spreading in the world.

Not even those so-called “innocent” sins are meaningless.

Going back to the question we posed at the beginning of this article (how could anyone do such a thing?), it’s not like the wicked men on the Epstein list woke up one day and decided to commit abominations. No, what most likely happened is that they left a lot of “innocent” sins unchecked, and those sins led to bigger sins and stronger depravities, slowly allowing the demonic to get a firm hold on their hearts and souls.

Maybe they started watching pornographic videos, which became stronger and more violent over time. Maybe they made little concessions and lied and cheated to get ahead, and these became larger and more evil deals over time. Disorder always lead to more disorder. What was initially just an “innocent” sin eventually becomes an abomination if you don’t stop it. Because, like we said: you either climb towards holiness or you descend towards wickedness.

The Connection Between Flesh and Spirit

In an episode of his YouTube show, Dr. Taylor Marshall talks with Dr. Dan Schneider about why and how sexual sins attract demonic possession. It’s very telling that, after occult practices, Dr. Schneider names sexual deviancy as the second most common sin leading to demonic obsession/possession. The interview is extremely interesting, and you can watch it here:

You see, those “meaningless” private sins are everything but meaningless. The flesh and the soul are connected beyond our understanding, and whatever we do with our bodies has consequences in the spiritual realm. St Alphonsus Liguori calls impurity “hell’s widest gate”, and he gives a detailed sermon on the gravity of sexual sin:1

The painting at the beginning of this article shows Dante and Virgil in hell watching a tragic couple configured in a lustful tryst. Saints, poets, painters and thinkers have been warning us for ages: sexual sin is grave enough to condemn us. And yet, after the sexual revolution, we’ve chosen to follow the desires of our flesh instead of God, and we’ve fallen for the propaganda that claims to want to “liberate” us from the shackles of chastity, when in reality it seeks to let evil spread unchecked throughout the world.

Do you ever wonder why there’s such a strong push for you to keep watching p*rn and committing sexually disordered acts? It’s not a coincidence. Powerful people in powerful places know that this is one of the most effective ways in which they can control you and also lead you away from God completely.

It starts with small concessions. A look here. A “little” sin there. An unconfessed impure thought in which you relished. A video that your peers tell you is “not so bad”. A private mistake. And before you know it, you’re slipping down the slope, unable to stop the descent into addiction. Your relationships suffer. Your marriage ends. Your soul becomes darkened.

All of this to say that you need to take this seriously. You need to purify your life. It’s not worth losing your soul over this. And if you don’t take it seriously, know that you are helping the darkness spread far beyond yourself.

The goal here is not to get you to feel guilty (although some guilt is prudent when you sin). My goal here is to be —perhaps the only— voice that tells you the truth: that it is actually bad to keep watching p*rn, it’s incredibly evil and hurtful, and you’re risking your soul if you keep doing it. You need to see this sin for what it is, because perhaps only then will you decide to try your hardest to quit it, instead of justifying it or allowing it to be a part of your life under the pretext that “it’s not so bad”.

I also want to tell you that is it possible to quit completely, it is possible to purify your life and live a life of chastity.

Resources To Quit Pornography and Other Forms of Sexual Immorality

Before I share these resources with you, I want to reiterate something: Christ is the only answer to this problem, as well as to the problem of evil as a whole. Any solution that you pursue without Him will fall short. You might make some progress, but to eradicate this vice completely, you need the help from Our Lord.

You also need to surround yourself with likeminded men who are fighting this battle, you need to pray often, read your Bible, go to confession, and strive to remain in a state of Grace. That needs to be the foundation upon which you strive to build the virtue of chastity and get rid of this vice once and for all.

It’s very difficult to get rid of this vice all on your own, so if you feel like you need that community, that accountability, and a structured , evidence-based plan to help you quit, one of the best resources I’ve found is the Christian app Relay.

There’s a ton of positive testimonies of men who have found freedom from p*rn addiction, masturbation, and other forms of sexual immorality with the help of the structured, evidence-based protocol that Relay offers.

If you have been trying other methods and they haven’t worked, I recommend you give this one a try and see if it helps you. You can get a 7-day free trial with the code AETERNUM and see if it helps:

Try Relay for free here

Additionally, and because this article is getting long enough, if you have some questions about Relay or would like me to recommend some other articles/resources, feel free to shoot me a DM or leave a comment on this article. I’ll be more than happy to share whatever I can with you.

It’s a Life or Death Thing

I want to end this article reiterating just how important it is to quit p*rnogrpahy and other forms of sexual immorality. We live in a spiritual universe, in which our actions have more consequences than we can see with our eyes. Every single evil thing you do has a spiritual consequence, beyond the materialistic consequences that sin also carries with it.

This is why Christ warns us so strongly against sins of the flesh:

If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.
— Matthew 5:29

No sin is “meaningless”. No sin is private. Sexual sin definitely isn’t. We need to face the harsh reality of the evil it contains, because only then will we understand why it’s so critical to quit.

I believe it is fitting to quote St. Alphonsus Liguori once again, this time by sharing what he says at the very end of his sermon:

Beware, brother, if you do not be converted now, you may never be converted.
— St. Alphonsus Liguori

Do not postpone this. Do not brush it off. Take it seriously. Do whatever you need to do to purify your life. Work to order your life towards all that’s good, beautiful, and true, and be radical in rejecting sin. Give it all to Christ, and let Him be your strength. Help Him too, by making an effort, by taking this purpose seriously, and by doing whatever it takes to get rid of these sins that have led so many men to eternal damnation.

God is with you, you are in my prayers, and surely too in the prayers of all the men who fight this battle alongside you.

May God bless you and keep you.

Ad Maiora Nati Sumus,

Juan

Thank you for reading!

If you enjoyed this post and could leave a like or comment it would be greatly appreciated, as it will help my work reach more people.

If you liked this article, you’ll love my books.

There’s been a lot said about the great decline in testosterone levels in men over the last couple of decades. Some studies estimate that testosterone levels among males have been declining an average of 1% every year1, with other studies showing a decline of 35% between 1960 and 20222:

This has become a mainstream talking point, and almost all who have investigated this issue agree that the decline in testosterone levels among western men is a serious cause for concern3:

Many solutions have been proposed, and many men have jumped on the “optimization” bandwagon to try and recover the fire that has been stolen from them by a hyper-industrialized society and the accompanying toxic environment it has created.

We’ve correctly identified the problem (testosterone is declining) and many men have made a committed decision to try and stop that decline in their own lives. But I’d argue that we haven’t properly identified the solution.

Yes, external factors are partly the culprits of this decline: chemicals in the water and food, microplastics in your bloodstream, blue lights disturbing the quality of your sleep, and sedentary office jobs all contribute significantly to making men less masculine by draining them from their testosterone.

Beyond the external factors, however, there is another layer to this problem, one that doesn’t get spoken about nearly as often: the spiritual dimension. Our bodies and souls are interconnected, tangled beyond our understanding, and there is no physical problem that isn’t mirrored in the spiritual realm, or vice versa.

The decline in testosterone is very real, but I believe we won’t stop it by tackling it with a naturalistic solution. After all, the decline in testosterone —a physical reality—, reflects a spiritual vice —effeminacy—, and until we take a holistic approach to masculinity, we’ll always fail to solve this problem that is plaguing most young men.

What is Effeminacy?

Effeminacy, as St. Thomas Aquinas defines it, is the vice that is opposite of the virtue of perseverance, namely, “when a man is ready to forsake a good on account of difficulties which he cannot endure.” St Thomas continues and explains: “This is what we understand by effeminacy, because a thing is said to be ‘soft’ if it readily yields to the touch.” St Thomas also describes effeminacy as a reluctance to suffer due to an attachment to pleasure.

Effeminacy, then, is when a man refuses to do what he needs to do, out of fear of dealing with hardships or losing his precious comforts, to which he is disorderly attached. He is a slave to comfort and his worldly pleasures become more important to him than the pursuit of virtue or acting righteously as a man.

This showcases a sort of spiritual “softness”, in which the actions of a man are determined not by morality, values, or principles, but by that which is easier and most comfortable. In other words: the effeminate man chooses comfort over duty, ease over effort, pleasure over perseverance.

You can see how this is connected to the decline in testosterone: effeminate men do less hard things, just like men with low testosterone. Like we said earlier, the spiritual vice of effeminacy becomes mirrored in the physical world, manifesting as low testosterone, with all the negative consequences that it carries.

It’s genuinely worrying to see the downward trend of both fortitude and testosterone, and if we look backwards, at our parents and grandparents, we can see what this great decline looks like:

The Generational Decline

Your Grandfather: Woke up at 4:30 AM without an alarm because his body was a finely-tuned machine completely submitted to his will. Ate three eggs, black coffee, and yesterday’s bread without scrolling through his phone. Worked 10 hours of manual labor, lifting heavy things repeatedly until his back hurt and doing it again the whole week. Came home, fixed the car, built half a shed, ate whatever your grandmother put in front of him without commenting on the seasoning, then went to bed at 9 PM. Never once mentioned being tired. His hobbies included smoking and “sitting quietly.” He could open any jar in the house with one hand.

Testosterone: 800 ng/dl

Your Father: Woke up at 6:30 AM to an alarm clock that didn’t even have a “snooze” button. Kissed his wife good morning and ate a simple breakfast before commuting to his office job, dressed impeccably and clean-shaven (maybe sporting a mustache). Worked 8 hours without a single complaint, walking around the office, reviewing physical papers and visiting client’s offices. Occasionally wore a Hawaiian shirt on the weekends while he grilled and mowed the lawn. Opened all jars easily (with both hands).

Testosterone: 600 ng/dl

The average 30-year old modern man: The alarm bell rings at 7 am and he snoozes it 5 times until 7:50. Wakes up in a hurry and eats sugary cereal (or an avocado toast that he posts to Instagram if he has some time) and a soy milk latte. Goes to work in a pastel-colored scooter, dressed in something that is basically sweatpants and a hoodie. He works from his laptop for 8 hours, under blue lights, and never once moves from his desk (except to go to the bathroom or cafeteria). Comes home “exhausted” from the zoom calls to binge watch “Friends” and order thai food alone or with a his dog/cat. Can’t open jars without the specialized rubber grip tool he bought on Amazon. Loves being “comfy”.

Testosterone: 400 ng/dl

Yes, yes, I know I’m exaggerating. Not every man fits these exact descriptions. But the pattern is undeniable. Our grandfathers lived completely different lives, much less comfortable ones, and not only did they have more testosterone (as shown by the earlier graphs), but effeminacy also wasn’t a problem for them: it was simply impossible to go through life without enduring some form of hardship and discomfort, and that forced them to become stronger men. We don’t need —in the most literal sense— to be strong to survive or even thrive in a world that has made sure that weakness in men is normalized (or even incentivized). And because of that, whereas before fortitude was the natural baseline, now the baseline is effeminacy.

So how do we actually reverse this? How do we break the generational decline and recover the fire that’s been stolen from us before it's too late, especially for those of us who’ll raise the next generation of men?

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I remember when I first started Simple Men Blog, back in 2021. I was instantly introduced into a side of the internet that I didn’t even know existed: a bunch of mostly anonymous accounts creating content about masculinity, traditional values, and the pursuit of virtue.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that I wasn’t the only one who felt there was a widespread masculinity problem, and it was reassuring to find myself surrounded by a lot of other men —many of whom have since become friends— who were committed to restoring the virtues we had lost.

But somewhere along the line, the conversation about masculinity became mainstream. It became popular and crowded. What used to be a niche side of the internet composed mostly of men who were sincerely devoted to sharing a message of strength and honor among men became flooded with scammers, frauds, grifters, and ill-intentioned men and women who saw an opportunity to get rich by preying on lonely, alienated young men.

“Trad masculinity” accounts started spawning left and right, crusader pics all over the place, each one promising young men a more effective solution to their problems. Many of these accounts were exposed as frauds living double lives: preaching virtue online while living a life completely opposite to the values they promoted. What’s even worse, many of these “based, masculine accounts” claimed to be Christian, confusing the message of the Gospel with pseudo-Christianity built on resentment and self-glorification rather than love and sacrifice, essentially the masculine version of the feminism they claim to oppose.

Lots of young men, desperate for guidance and mentorship, jumped on the bandwagon and started following these dogmas, idolizing the anonymous crusader accounts spewing comfortable lies and sad excuses for sin passing as “theological truths”:

I’m not writing this article to claim I’m “one of the good ones” or throw shade at anyone. If you’ve been reading my work for a while, you know that’s not the way I like to operate, because many of these men started with good intentions and got lost along the way, while others are genuinely trying but have fallen into traps they don't recognize. I've caught myself in these patterns too: caring too much about how an article will be received, checking engagement metrics, feeling superior. The temptation to perform rather than practice the more challenging aspects of our faith is very real, and I'm not immune to it.

Thus, my goal with this article is to raise a call for coherence between what we preach online and what we practice, not just for those of us with some sort of public forum, but for any man who calls himself a follower of Christ.

It’s become too easy to signal traditional masculine values without living them, too easy to critique stuff online without ever trying to build something meaningful.

The real problem lies in the fact that many men have unwillingly internalized the false notion that the performance is the virtue, leading them to pursue the appearance of strength instead of the real strength all Christians are called to.

Three Types of Incoherence

In my years writing online, I’ve come to identify three profiles in which the problem of performative masculinity is exemplified. Before I describe these three patterns, let me be clear: I'm not writing about specific men on the internet I want to mock. I'm writing about patterns I've seen and even noticed in my own life and journey as well.

I share these not only for you to be able to recognize potentially misleading accounts, but more so to warn you against becoming them. Like I said earlier, I’ve caught myself acting like this multiple times, and I know firsthand how important it is to be aware of these “archetypes” so as not to fall for them:

• The Crusader LARPer: This is the guy who’s obsessed with medieval Christendom, who reads about the crusades constantly, uses crusader imagery, loves warrior saints, and “Deus Vult” memes. Now, these things are not bad in and of themselves —we should all learn from the warrior saints and crusader imagery is phenomenally motivating—, the problem is when these things become a sort of escapism from a life of laziness and effeminacy. It’s hollow and performative when the guy with the crusader profile pic can’t even fast on Fridays or won’t make a genuine effort to discipline his body by practicing asceticism and self-denial.

• The Trad Aesthete: I love the Latin Mass and traditional forms of worship. They're profound, reverent and incredibly beautiful. But I have seen many men who, in their desire to restore the reverence and depth of the more traditional Catholic practices, fall into a sort of spiritual superiority and pride in which everyone who attends a Novus Ordo mass or who doesn’t know every single liturgical detail is dumb or inferior. And again, it’s okay to be opposed to the lack of reverence shown in some modern forms of worship, and it’s okay to speak up against it. It’s also okay (and recommended, and necessary), to study the history, tradition, and doctrine of the Church. But never is it okay to do it from a position of prideful superiority. The incoherence here lies in the excessive desire to appear pious and traditional, while ignoring or forgetting the much harder work required to achieve holiness through humility of the heart.

  The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank thee that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!
  — Luke 18:11-13

• The "Redpill" Christian: This is the guy from Exhibits A and B, who uses an erroneous interpretation of the Gospel to justify sexual immorality and his tendencies to capital vices. He posts constantly about masculine/feminine roles and “sexual dynamics”, and yet doesn’t pursue the virtue of chastity, and conveniently ignores all the Bible verses that contradict him. More often than not, these men are also consumed by pride and have molded “their Christianity” to justify their preferences and sinful inclinations rather than conforming their lives to Christ.

What they all have in common is that these profiles of men feel strong and masculine, without actually doing the hard things that masculinity requires. Their virtue signaling gives them the dopamine hit they want, without the cost and without the necessary humiliation that always accompanies actual growth.

The consequence of prioritizing appearance over reality is almost always the same: these men become profoundly prideful, as they receive the reward of feeling masculine without the struggle and humiliation that comes as a byproduct of the pursuit of virtue and serves to balance the tendency to think ourselves hotshots.

How Pride Creeps In

This performative masculinity inevitably leads to pride because pride feeds on the appearance of virtue: by aiming to be seen as virtuous, we slowly start to believe we are, even if we live hypocritically. Thus, slowly, pride gets into your heart, and you start caring more about being perceived as virtuous and “based” than about actually becoming virtuous.

It all comes down to intention: are we acting to please God out of love for Him? Are we pursuing virtue to glorify Him?

Or alternatively, are we acting to gain approval and recognition from the world for being so pious/strong/moral/”based”?

These are questions that every man needs to be asking himself constantly, to avoid the subtle temptations of pride. Pride is very sneaky, and it can mimic every virtue. But contrary to actual, sacrificial virtue, the prideful substitutes are always about the self: how I appear, how I'm perceived, how superior I am to those other weak/liberal/effeminate men.

True Virtue Requires Humility

Without humility, you’ll never be able to look at your strengths and weaknesses honestly, and recognize what you need to work on. Real growth always requires some form of humiliation, or at least the risk of it:

• The beginner risks looking foolish

• The man learning to pray risks stuttering and stumbling through the words

• The man building a business risks failing

• The man asking a woman out risks getting rejected (or even mocked)

• The man confessing his sins must admit them aloud

Pride, hiding behind performative masculinity, on the other hand, offers an easy cop-out: “you’re so based. Thank God you’re not like those soft liberal men. Modern women are degenerate so why even ask any of them out.”

Pride convinces you that you’re already there and gives you comfortable excuses to avoid the effort and hard work required to become a man of real, solid virtue.

Deep down, the internal monologue is something like: “If I can convince others (and myself) that I'm already the strong traditional Catholic man, I never have to endure the humiliation of actually becoming one.”

Prideful Judgment

Finally, what usually happens when a man falls for the counterfeit version of masculinity that only performs in public without any real foundation is that he becomes too comfortable passing judgment on others.

Because the performative man isn’t really building anything (not his own life, not a business, not a marriage), he spends all his time focusing on the sins of others, passing judgment and criticizing those who are at least trying but often failing.

Critique protects the image of virtue that pride has constructed, and it allows the performative man a way to continue virtue-signalling without ever taking any real risks:

• Starting a business might fail

• Leading a ministry might reveal my inadequacy

• Getting married means someone will see all my flaws

• Having children means I can’t hide my weakness

Yet these are precisely the risks that all men must face when they enter the arenas of life. The prideful, performative man is really masking a deep cowardice, pointing and laughing from the stands at those bleeding in the arena.

The Way Forward

Humility is tough man. It’s a hard virtue to acquire because pride is so subtle that we often cannot even notice the hold it has on our hearts. I believe it’s always wise to examine ourselves thoroughly and ask the Holy Spirit to help us see.

I want to propose an exercise for you (one that I’ll do myself too), so that we can analyze objectively if we’re falling for the trap of performative masculinity. Ask yourself these questions, and try to be as honest as possible when answering them:

• Do you spend more time criticizing or making fun of weak men than helping them?

• Do you sometimes feel superior to other Catholics who aren’t as “trad” or “based” as you?

• Do you feel someone might “expose you” for not practicing what you preach?

• Would someone watching your life (not your feed) call you virtuous?

• Can you go 30 days without posting about masculinity and still feel like a man?

• When was the last time you did something genuinely hard that no one saw?

• Are you building anything real? (Business, family, ministry, skill)

• When was your last confession?

If you answered honestly, you probably noticed areas where you need to grow. I certainly did. And that’s the point: we need to shift our focus from appearance to reality, from performance to practice. We need to align our public preaching with our private deeds, and not merely online, but most importantly, in the hidden moments when only God is watching.

The Church doesn’t need any more men living double lives, preaching a message and living another. God knows how much damage this has already done.

And it’s not about never sinning. We will always stumble and struggle. Some more than others. It’s about being open about your battles, about the fact that you’re not “the perfect crusader”, but just another man doing his best to find, love, and honor Christ. Not a perfect example of virtue, but a sinner saved by grace.

May we all muster enough courage to take the risks necessary for growth, may we all enter the arena strengthened by our love for Christ, and offer a helping hand to those who are struggling even more than us.

May God grant us the grace of a humble heart, one that surrenders completely to the Lord, one that leads us towards purposeful action, not to gain applause or recognition, but to honor God with total self-denial and a life of humble sacrifice, thus walking firmly towards the highest peaks of masculine virtue.

Ad Maiora Nati Sumus,

Juan

Thank you for reading!

If you enjoyed this post and could leave a like or comment it would be greatly appreciated, as it will help my work reach more people.

If you liked this article, you’ll love my books.

A man must live by a code. In our age of subjectivity and relativism, even Christian men have lost sight of the principles that should guide us. Here are ten tenets of Christian masculinity for the modern man.

10. Thou Shalt Live to Serve God and Others

A Christian man must recognize that his purpose in life is to serve. He understands that his life should be a living offering (Romans 12:1), meaning every action, every decision, every hour is consecrated to God's purposes rather than his own comfort or ambition. Thus he is willing to sacrifice his own desires for the sake of those he loves and in order to fulfill the mission God has entrusted to him. He serves God by using his gifts and talents in a way that glorifies Him, and he serves others by ensuring his life is productive and his example and endeavors help others move towards the good.

“Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
— Matthew 20:28

9. Thou Shalt Live Intentionally

In this epidemic of inertia, where most men just drift through life letting circumstances determine their fate, never actively choosing a direction, a man of faith must be mindful and aware of the decisions he makes. He must pray on them, discern carefully, invite God into his decision-making process, and commit to a course of action voluntarily. He doesn’t let inertia or outside influences lead him, and he lives intentionally every day, knowing why he does what he does.

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.
— Ephesians 5:15-16

8. Thou Shalt Not Use Thy Faith As An Excuse for Weakness

It’s a shame how so many Christian men use their faith to justify their effeminacy, their acedia, or their overall lack of fortitude. They quote 'blessed are the meek' to avoid confrontation, cite 'turn the other cheek' to excuse cowardice, or appeal to 'God's mercy' to rationalize refusing to fight their sins. But this is a perversion of the Gospel.

Our faith is the faith of martyrs, warriors, kings, prophets and saints. None of them have ever been weak. We all sin, we all struggle, but sanctity will never be accomplished by those too weak to fight. Christian men must strive to become mentally, spiritually, and physically stronger, understanding that the life of man on earth is warfare (Job 7:1), and we need to be prepared for that reality.

Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the equipment of the gospel of peace; above all taking the shield of faith, with which you can quench all the flaming darts of the evil one.

And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
— Ephesians 6:13-17

7. Thou Shalt Live Chastely

Men do hard things. And in a society that constantly pushes sexual sin as “freedom”, fighting to remain chaste is one of the hardest battles we could undertake.

Sexual immorality wrecks you. It clouds your intellect, confuses your understanding, makes you prideful and disobedient. It’s a terrible sin.

Christian masculinity means being radical in rejecting sin, and that includes sins of the flesh. We must give God our entire selves, not just pick and choose what’s most convenient for us. A real Christian man strives to live a life of chastity, understanding not only how it damages his own soul, but recognizing that when men pursue disordered gratification they become incapable of genuine sacrificial love, faithful marriage, and selfless fatherhood. Sexual immorality destroys individuals, and slowly erode the foundations of a healthy culture, gravely harming society as a whole.

For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like heathen who do not know God.
— 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5

6. Thou Shalt Accept the Burden of Leadership

Our God-given leadership —over our families and communities— is in many ways a heavy burden. Being a leader implies being responsible for those who follow you. That means that if you make a bad decision, it’s not just you who suffers, but all of those who love you and trust your leadership. This is a heavy weight to carry. A Christian man, however, carries it willingly. He doesn’t seek to burden others with a responsibility that is his, he doesn’t make his woman carry it, and he does his best to imitate Christ in his leadership.

Christian masculinity demands that we step into the role God has created us for, attempting to act according to His will at every step of the way.

Tend the flock of God that is your charge, not by constraint but willingly, not for shameful gain but eagerly, not as domineering over those in your charge but being examples to the flock.
— 1 Peter 5:2-3

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In the aftermath of Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show, there have been many opinions shared online. Those against the show mostly criticize the terribly vulgar music or the lack of English spoken in what should be a very traditional American stage. Those in favor argue along the lines that the show “gave a voice to those oppressed or suffering unjustly under the Trump administration” and was a great way of “representing Latin-American culture”.

I don’t care to comment on the strained logic required to convince oneself that the guy who sings the following lyrics “actually does it for the oppressed minorities”:

Instead, I want to focus on a less-commented aspect of the show, which annoyed me personally even more than the twerking or the the reductive stereotyping that treats all Latin-Americans as a monolithic culture defined by its most vulgar expressions: the misuse of the word “love” to once again further sin and vice under the pretext of tolerance.

There was one particular billboard which many praised and celebrated:

I don’t doubt that Wesley and those who agree with him genuinely believe they’re on the side of love. The problem isn’t their intent, but the fact that they’ve unknowingly accepted a counterfeit definition of what love actually is.

On the surface, this sounds like a good, loving message. If we didn’t know any better, we would think that promoting “love over hate” would be the moral thing to do.

But the problem is that we do know better, because for the past few decades, the word love has been perverted and misused in order to shut down any voice that dares reject the notion that human freedom should be ordered towards virtue instead of vice. And the word “hate” has been arbitrarily assigned to anyone who seeks to promote any form of objective morality that requires self-restraint and self-denial.

This is a rhetorical strategy that the left has successfully deployed for decades. The tactic works in two steps: First, claim the moral high ground by branding your own side as "loving," "compassionate," or "on the right side of history."

Second, label anyone who disagrees as "hateful," "fascist," or "Nazi." Once this frame is established, rational debate becomes impossible. Disagree with their policy? They don't need to address your argument, they just point to their label ("We stand for love") and yours (which they've assigned you: "bigot, racist, nazi, intolerant, ____"), and the conversation is over.

The shocking thing is how effective this tactic is. Just look at the guy from the earlier tweet. He actually believes that because a billboard says “love is stronger than hate”, those who placed the billboard are the loving side and those who disagree with it are the “hateful” side. This rhetorical strategy works perfectly on those who don't examine language carefully, who remain at surface level instead of engaging the deeper philosophical and metaphysical meanings. They accept the most comfortable interpretation because critical thinking about words requires effort most people don't even realize is needed.

Another user very accurately commented on that post with a popular meme:

Another Tweet I saw explained this problem very eloquently, and motivated me to write this article:

In this article, I want to talk about the concept of love, what it truly means (and what it doesn’t), and finish with some words of warning about the huge responsibility that we all have to use words correctly.

I will do my best to write this from a place of Christian charity, trying my hardest to speak the truth lovingly. I encourage you to read with that same spirit, and if something I write challenges you or strikes a nerve, I ask that you pause and consider the argument on its merits rather than reacting to how it feels in the moment.

What Love Isn’t

Deacon Garlick further Tweeted:

The liberal, new-age concept of “love” has a simple meaning: the unrestricted acceptance of any and all human choices made by anyone in exercise of his or her freedom. The problem with this definition is that it treats freedom itself as the measure of goodness. If someone freely chose it, the thinking goes, then it must be morally acceptable. But this is obviously false, and nearly everyone would agree: not all freely chosen actions are good.

This is precisely the distinction Deacon Garlick makes in his follow-up: there are two competing visions of freedom.

True, good, freedom means pursuing virtue by disciplining disordered desires. And only that freedom leads to love.

The other form of freedom (maximizing options to satisfy base desires) leads to sin, decay, and suffering, not just for the one acting freely but immorally, but for society at large.

This is where the disagreements over the word “love” come from. Many have unknowingly started to understand “love” in this counterfeit manner, as mere acceptance or tolerance, instead as the active virtue of desiring what is good for someone else. This leads to thinking that “accepting” someone’s choice to act in a self-harmful way (by pursuing a sexually deviant lifestyle, for example) is the loving thing to do.

True freedom (disciplining desires to pursue virtue) leads to love because love, by its nature, is directed toward the good. As the Catechism puts it: 'Only the good can be loved.'1

Thus, we cannot simply call tolerance, empathy, or acceptance “love” and be done with it. Love has a specific, much more demanding meaning, one that requires far more from us than mere tolerance or acceptance ever could.

So what is love, properly understood?

What Love Is

Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote “To love is to will the good of another.”2 The Catechism of the Catholic Church continues: “All other affections have their source in this first movement of the human heart toward the good. Only the good can be loved.”3

We can immediately see why the post-modern liberal version of “love” falls short. Their version of love is passive and unchallenging: “just allow everyone to do whatever they wish and don’t make moral claims about their choices.” This sounds compassionate, but it’s actually a comfortable, passive abandonment of the other to the negative consequences of their actions (which isn’t loving).

But love demands an active willing of the good of the other, and that requires us speaking up when someone is acting in a way that would cause them harm. It requires us rejecting harmful ideologies and inmoral choices, and it demands wanting the best for our fellow men.

The loving thing to do is willing the good of another, even when that requires us disagreeing with their choices. Love, then, is by definition intolerant of evil, intolerant of sin, and intolerant of all those things that harm ourselves and our neighbor.

Why This Matters

I believe a big reason why culture has decayed so much over the past few decades is that we’ve failed to preserve language and we’ve fallen for the rhetorical tricks that are so characteristic of the dark forces of evil and confusion.

Consider how every major cultural battle of the 21st century revolves around language: The abortion debate redefines “human life.” The gender debates redefine “man,” “woman,” “sex,” and “gender.” The immigration debates redefine “nation,” “country,” and “dignity.”

Every cultural battle starts with language, and that is why it’s so important for us to be precise in our speech, to not give up linguistic ground and to fight for the proper use of words.

I wrote an article towards the end of last year diving deeper into the importance of proper language. You can read it here:

The billboard said “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.” And they're right about one thing: love is more powerful than hate. But they're catastrophically wrong about what love actually is.

Real love is far more demanding, far more costly, and far more beautiful than the shallow acceptance or tolerance they're peddling. It requires courage to speak truth to people who don't want to hear it. It requires sacrifice to desire someone's genuine flourishing over their temporary comfort. And it requires wisdom to discern between the compassion that heals and the sentimentality that enables destruction.

This is the love that the world desperately needs. True, Christian love. Not the tolerance that says “do whatever you want, even if it hurts you”, but the charity that says “I want what's good for you, even when you can't see it yet.”

May we have the courage to love like this and to continue speaking the truth firmly and charitably.

Ad Maiora Nati Sumus,

Juan

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Sometimes I think about all the great men who’ve lived and died before us, and wonder if they feel pain and disappointment when they look down on us from heaven.

I think about the great kings, saints, martyrs, prophets, and warriors of old, about the way they suffered, about the harshness of their lives, and about the fire that moved them forward, towards conquest, towards the highest peaks, towards heaven.

These are men who ventured into the deep, always seeking to expand the frontier of human knowledge, fueled by a God-given fire too strong to ever die, surviving the constant onslaught of war, sin, disease, and suffering. They weren’t perfect, but they were men who dared.

And then I look at myself in the mirror, and at all the men who live today, and the contrast shocks me to my core. We have more opportunities than they ever did, more tools at our disposal, the entirety of human knowledge available to us, and we aren’t even half the men they were.

I look at the men of our time and I see deep-rooted apathy, a refusal to dare and cowardly excuses to remain mediocre in the name of false “humility”.

Christian men are especially guilty of this. We hide behind layers of excuses, avoiding the burden of leadership, comfortably using our faith as an excuse to never strive for something great. Small minded and small souled. We’ve believed the lies of the enemy, who whispers in our ear that a “real Christian man” would tame his fire, would avoid standing out, and would choose to live a life of no influence, forever a spectator, sitting in the sidelines watching the world decay. What’s even worse, we have started to believe that mediocrity is moral, and the desire for greatness a terrible sin.

But is that truly so? Do you really believe God’s will for you is a life of cowardice? Do you really believe a “real Christian man” devotes his life to safety and comfort? Do you really believe he created you to watch the arena from afar, refusing to participate as you hide behind false piety?

Were the men responsible for the expansion of Christendom “not real Christians” because they had big goals not only in the next life, but also in this life of flesh and blood?

A real Christian man is precisely he who walks the line between this world and the next, never settling, always seeking more, not for self-glorification, but in a sincere effort to make of his limited time on earth productive and meaningful. A real Christian man doesn’t put out the fire in his heart, but orders it correctly, towards sacrifice, towards submission to God’s will, and towards expanding His kingdom on earth.

I refuse to believe we are called to live as spectators. I refuse to believe our faith, when lived properly, makes men apathetic and mediocre.

Christ wasn’t. Nor were any of the great men who proclaimed His Gospel and expanded His Church. It’s not prideful to pursue greatness, and I dare to say that it’s more prideful to claim we know better now, and that all of those men of great ambitions who successfully ordered that ambition instead of killing it were acting immorally.

It takes great humility to accept that God calls you towards a life spent striving, under His command, to accomplish great goals for His glory. It takes humility to be His instrument, to step into the arenas of the world and fight for His name and honor.

Greatness is our calling, our heritage, and our duty. But greatness properly ordered. And that virtue has a name, one that we have forgotten and one which we desperately need to remember again: magnanimity.

Magnanimity

Look at the above description and ask yourself if that’s a virtue you embody. Chances are, you don’t. Because I don’t either. Nor do most modern men.

To break it down into a few key aspects:

1. Magnanimity involves a disposition to strive for excellence and to undertake significant endeavors for the sake of God and others. It encourages us to set high goals and to pursue them with determination and integrity. St. Thomas Aquinas describes the magnanimous person as one who recognizes their worth and potential, aiming to achieve great things in virtue and service1. It’s key to mention that this pursuit is not for personal glory but for the greater good and the honor of God.

2. Magnanimity demands generosity: This virtue calls us to rise above our base desires and to act in ways that bring about good beyond ourselves2. It’s a virtue that is sacrificial in nature, forcing you to forgo your own preferences and put your life to the service of others.

3. Magnanimity requires perseverance and toughness: It involves a readiness to confront obstacles and to persevere in the pursuit of good, even when faced with adversity.

The virtue of magnanimity is proof that Christian men are not called to make themselves invisible, but rather —and this aligns perfectly well with Scripture— put ourselves in the frontlines of the fight against evil, make of our lives public examples of virtue, and seek to be mirrors of God’s glory and bearers of the light of Christ.

You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
— Matthew 5:14-16

The World Needs Magnanimous Men

If our faith is facing a crisis among young men, it’s because we haven’t been doing our job properly. Men need other men to inspire them, motivate them, and push them towards greatness. As I wrote in Christian Vitality:

Young men are full of fire; they are full of life! It’s a terrible shame that every time they try to approach the Christian faith, they encounter within it male role models that have no fire, and too often, no life at all.

They go to church only to find, more often than not, soft-spoken priests preaching confusing messages of a hippie kind of “peace and love” Christianity, and soft, pudgy, middle aged men who clearly live under the leadership of their wives.

Our job as Christian men includes becoming leaders: first to ourselves, so we can control our base desires, second to our families, so we can guide them with wisdom and justice, and third to our communities, cities, and nations, so we can contribute to the eternal fight against evil and leave a mark on this world that lasts even after we’ve perished.

The world needs more magnanimous men, men who are committed to the pursuit of greatness, the right kind of greatness, for the right reasons. It doesn’t need any more cowards passing as humble, and it doesn’t need any more degenerates in positions of power and influence, where they can idolize themselves and sell their souls for wealth, pleasure, and status.

The world needs you, and me, and all the other men who’ve been gifted the spark of life to step up and make a choice to become magnanimous and influential, to stop hiding behind false, comfortable, convenient versions of Christianity that do not require you to demand more of yourself. It needs men who stand firm on their beliefs, and actually pick up their crosses and carry them.

Only when we remember to strive for magnanimity will we arrive at the kind of greatness that matters, and reach our final days resting on the certainty that we did all we could, that we lived for something higher, and that we will be remembered by those who knew us for daring to step up and seek greatness at a time when most wouldn’t.

How to Become Magnanimous in a World that Wants You Mediocre

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Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, a 40-day period of spiritual preparation for Easter. Easter is perhaps the most important liturgical season for us Catholics, as we celebrate Christ’s triumph over sin and death. Lent is of great importance too, as it serves for us to prepare spiritually for the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection.

The main reason why I wanted to write this article is because partaking in Lent in an intentional manner has been transformative for me. It was during Lent a few years ago that Christ found me, and it has had an even more special place in my heart ever since.

I believe that participating in Lent in an intentional manner, to strengthen your relationship with God, know Him more intimately, and practice detachment from things of the world can be incredibly meaningful for all of us who are striving to become saints. Thus, I wanted to offer some simple advice regarding how to partake in Lent meaningfully.

What is Lent?

Lent lasts for 40 days, from Ash Wednesday (today) to the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday evening.

Lent is a time of penance, fasting, prayer, and almsgiving, intended to prepare us for the celebration of the Paschal Mystery—the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is the very center of our faith.

The 40 days of Lent mirror the 40 days that Jesus spent fasting in the desert before beginning His public ministry. Because it’s a period of renewal and reflection, we are encouraged to engage in practices that strengthen our relationship with God, mainly those related to Fasting, Prayer, and Almsgiving, as well as frequent participation in the sacraments.

Lent is, in summary, a time for the faithful to prepare our hearts and minds for the joy of Easter, by engaging in ascetic practices, stronger prayer, and devoted, intentional acts of service.

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Why is Lent so Important?

As mentioned earlier, Lent is a time of preparation for the celebration of Easter, the most important feast in the Christian calendar, which commemorates the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We aim to come to Easter with a heart that is ready to receive Christ and let Him transform it.

During Lent, there’s also a strong emphasis on repentance and conversion. On Ash Wednesday, as the priest marks the faithful with the ashes —representing our sinful, mortal nature and our need for God’s grace— on our forehead and he tells us to “repent and believe the Gospel”. We are thereby encouraged to examine our lives, recognize areas of sin, and seek reconciliation with God.

Lent is also important because by intentionally practicing acts of self-denial we learn to express solidarity with Christ's passion and develop a greater appreciation for His love and sacrifice. This connection to Christ's suffering also encourages empathy and compassion for all of those who are suffering in the world today.

Finally, Lent has a strong communal aspect within the Catholic Church, as we come together to participate in liturgical celebrations, such as the Stations of the Cross, and to support each other in our Lenten commitments. It’s a time that, when approached intentionally and with a willing heart, can transform you, renew you, and draw you much closer to God.

How Should We Participate in Lent?

A simple yet meaningful approach to Lent is to engage in specific actions related to the three principal means of attaining Christian perfection: Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving.1

Think about what you can do for each one of those three categories:

What attachments do you have that you can fast from?
How can you introduce more prayer into your daily routine?
How can you give more and be more charitable?

This is a great opportunity to be intentional about strengthening your relationship with God by the means described above. You can use this as an opportunity to give up those attachments that keep you enslaved, to increase your spiritual strength in prayer, and to be of more service to those around you.

If you need some ideas, here are my Lenten purposes for this year:

My Lenten Purposes

Prayer:

• Pray the rosary every day.

• Attend Mass every Sunday and one extra day during the week.

Fasting:

• Give up sweets and desserts.

• Give up sweet drinks.

• Fast on Wednesday and Friday (no meat, less food).

• No curse words.

• Cold showers throughout the entirety of Lent.

Almsgiving:

• Donate to charity an amount that is enough to make me a bit uncomfortable.

• Volunteer during Easter by going on missions.

A final —necessary— warning if you’re participating in Lent: always remember the purpose of Lent. It’s cool to participate in challenges and engage in ascetic practices, but you have to remember that the purpose of those challenges is to draw nearer to God. The challenges themselves can very easily become idols, causing you to become hyper-focused on accomplishing them just for the sake of victory, not in a spirit of repentance and humility.

It’s easy to forget why we are doing this, because we can get easily caught up in the challenges themselves and forget the reason behind them. A good tool to avoid this is offering whatever sacrifices you’re making to God every day, in prayer, and asking Him to keep your intentions pure.

One more thing: I know many of you will make purposes in Lent that relate to maintaining purity, practicing chastity, and getting rid of p*rn and other forms of sexual immorality. If that’s the case, I would like to recommend that you check out Relay, a Christian men’s health platform specializing in helping men overcome p*rn addiction through Christian principles and evidence-based psychological practices. Relay is an official partner of Ad Aeternum, so you can get an exclusive free trial by downloading the app here and using the code AETERNUM.

Lent can be a period of great transformation, and sanctification. But only if you approach it mindfully and with clear intentions. I encourage you to set aside some time to think about the changes you want to make in your life that will help you be a better man of God, for Christ, your family, and for yourself, and to let God help you make those changes during the coming 40 days.

Finally, if you’re looking for something to read during Lent, take a look at my books (I personally recommend Unbreakable Faith or Knight, Monk, King, Prophet).

May this Lent be an opportunity for change and repentance, and may you draw much closer to God in the upcoming weeks. I’ll be praying for you, and please keep me in your prayers too.

Ad Maiora Nati Sumus,

Juan

One of the things that nobody prepares you for when you start following Christ is the endless mental battle that is threading the line between scrupulosity and spiritual pride, and being too lax and permissive with yourself and your own sinful nature.

“Is thinking this a sin?” “Was that thought impure?”

or alternatively,

“God is merciful, so He’ll forgive me anyway.”

I don’t know about you, but I have found it quite challenging to find the sweet-spot between scrupulosity and laxity. It’s as if you’re always going too far in one or the other direction, forever looking for the correct middle where true virtue and humility lie.

Both extremes are far from ideal: scruples act as false guilt loops that paralyze good men, and laxity becomes a comfortable reason not to strive for holiness.

Thankfully, most modern problems have ancient solutions. In this particular case, we can look at one great saint who solved this problem 500 years ago with a counterintuitive strategy: St. Ignatius of Loyola.

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Who Was St. Ignatius & Why He Matters

St. Ignatius of Loyola was a Spanish soldier whose leg was shattered by a cannonball during the siege of Pamplona. During his long recovery he experienced a radical conversion that would forever change the history of the Church.

Once a very ambitious soldier, his conversion led him to forgo his dreams of military and earthly glory, chooisng instead to spend years in intense prayer and self-examination, eventually founding the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) and writing the Spiritual Exercises, a handbook for spiritual warfare and discernment that has guided souls for five centuries.

But like many ambitious converts who replace earthly goals with a strong longing for holiness, St. Ignatius began to struggle with crippling, severe scrupulosity. After his conversion, he became obsessed with confessing every tiny imperfection. He spent hours examining his conscience, confessing the same sins repeatedly, unable to find peace. His scruples grew so intense that at one point it’s said that he seriously considered throwing himself from a cliff out of sheer despair.

But what makes a man great is his capacity to endure and persevere during times of darkness. St. Ignatius didn’t stay trapped. He understood that his scruples were a form of spiritual temptation by the devil, and he fought the battle he was called to fight.

Through prayer, spiritual direction, and hard-won firsthand experience, he learned to defeat the enemy’s tactic and get his scrupulosity under control. Thankfully for us, St. Ignatius recorded and shared what he learned, so we can use his example and learn how to defeat scruples (and laxity) and avoid the paralysis and the temptations of the enemy.

The Enemy’s Tactic: Pushing You to Extremes

What St. Ignatius identified is that the enemy studies your conscience so he can control you. The great trickster knows us well, and thus he knows exactly which buttons to push to get us to go too far in either direction (scrupulosity or laxity). St. Ignatius explains it better:

The enemy looks much if a soul is gross or delicate, and if it is delicate, he tries to make it more delicate in the extreme, to disturb and embarrass it more. For instance, if he sees that a soul does not consent to either mortal sin or venial or any appearance of deliberate sin, then the enemy, when he cannot make it fall into a thing that appears sin, aims at making it make out sin where there is not sin, as in a word or very small thought.

If the soul is gross, the enemy tries to make it more gross; for instance, if before it made no account of venial sins, he will try to have it make little account of mortal sins, and if before it made some account, he will try to have it now make much less or none.1

Simply put, if you’re sensitive and careful in avoiding sin, the enemy will do his best to push you towards scrupulosity, to the point where you find yourself fabricating sins everywhere, and becoming paralyzed.

On the other hand, if you’re careless and lax, he’ll try to make you more reckless, so that you end up minimizing real sins.

The goal of the enemy is to keep you away from the balanced “mean” where peace and wise action live.

And he’s usually very successful. He convinces careful minds to see sin where there isn’t, and he convinces relaxed minds that there is no sin where there clearly is.

The problem for us is that it’s only really possible to lead ourselves and ours properly, make good decisions, and move forward in our spiritual life if we manage to defeat the temptations of scrupulosity and laxity and find the correct middle where true virtue and wisdom lie.

Thankfully, St. Ignatius can guide us, and this great saint developed a clear, practical, instantly applicable strategy to defeat the schemes of the enemy and avoid going too far in either direction, thus defeating self-doubt and anxiety.

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