I’ve recently been noticing a drastic change in how the average person responds to Christianity. A few years ago, it seemed like almost everyone who did not profess the faith perceived Christianity as something mostly negative: any mention of religion, Christ, the Bible, or the Church would receive prideful scoffs and rolling eyes in response.

Now, it feels quite different. Now, Christianity is becoming “cool” again. Even people who do not profess the faith wear its symbols (you’ve surely seen the cross necklaces, clothing items, earrings and other pieces of jewelry), and the average response when you tell people you’re a Christian —except among those most hostile to religion— is one of approval, and often even one of slight admiration.

I believe people are starting to realize just how sad a world without Christ is. I believe this is a good thing, and I love the fact that it’s becoming easier to share the Gospel without being attacked (in the West, at least). I do think that this is a time of many honest conversions and a time for Christ to transform the hearts of thousands who used to brush Him off as a fairytale.

However, I think the fact that Christianity is becoming something “cool” now is not without risks. As with any belief system, the further it spreads, the easier it is for it to become shallow and performative. This is just what happens with any trend: it begins with a group of strong adherents, but when it reaches critical mass, more and more people start to join for all the wrong reasons.

My goal with this short article is simply to offer a warning to those of you who might be new to the faith, and motivate you to take it seriously. To adopt it not as a trend, but as a covenant, as a promise that you are making to follow Christ until the end.

You see, the early Christians were a heavily persecuted vast minority, and even though that meant that their lives were marked by great suffering, it also served as an automatic filter: only the ones who truly, truly believed in Christ and only those who were willing to lose everything for Him would call themselves Christians.

Then, with time, Christianity became more popular and accepted. Of course there were —and there still are— persecutions, but at least in the western world, after the scandals within the Church at the beginning of this millennium which so greatly hurt its image, we are now at a point when proclaiming the Christian faith receives much more social approval than it did a few years ago or, obviously, during the first couple centuries.

Christianity becoming mainstream and “cool” opens the door for people to approach it with impure intentions. There are now real, tangible incentives to claiming to be a Christian. For the apostles, there was none. They knew their faith would bring only pain and suffering, and they professed it anyway because they truly believed it. Today, a man might claim to be a Christian to be seen as moral, to be able to wear its signs for fashion, or to gain some form of approval, attention, or praise. The danger is that all of us are liable to these temptations, and thus we must beware and self-examine ourselves daily so that we do not fall into the shallow faith that gets abandoned at the first sign of hardship.

Not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
— Matthew 7:21

The main difference between the real faith that endures and the shallow faith that quits is the commitment to the most fundamental aspects of Christianity: a man of real faith will make it a point to receive the sacraments frequently, study his faith, submit to the Church's authority even when it is inconvenient, and remain faithful even when the cultural approval disappears.

While I hope and pray that all the recent conversions are sincere, I think there’s a high chance that many aren’t, but we will only know for sure once Christianity becomes hated again, once the persecutions start, and when our faith once again costs us something. Suffering is a filter that separates those who truly believe Christ is Lord from those who just say it as a marketing slogan. This is not only true on a social and cultural level, but on an individual level as well: it’s easy to proclaim the faith when everything is working out in your life. It’s not so easy to remain faithful when the deserts come. And they always do.

Do not think that you are fully converted yet. Do not forget that perseverance, fortitude, and total commitment are required to endure this race. Ask the Lord to purify your intentions daily, and remember that if you profess the name of Christ, you have a responsibility to imitate Him until the day you die.

That means that there might be a Cross for you too, and that like Him, you must be willing and able to carry it lovingly.

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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There are few things more noticeable about the average modern man than his inability to leave the precious comforts that enslave him, and to break free from the prison of perceived safety that makes him shy away from any real challenges.

We live most of our lives stuck in our own thoughts, ruminating endlessly on the possibilities, risks, and different life paths that open before us. We live vicariously through movies, TV shows, video-games, and through the false scenarios we replay within our heads. All of this provides a comfortable escape to avoid nearly all purposeful action, and it breeds a cowardice that puts on the convincing mask of prudence, so that we can justify our lack of courage and avoid the shame that should fall upon us for our cowardice.

The Habit of Cowardice

This apathy is, contrary to popular belief, not a chemical imbalance or a psychological problem needing a drug prescription, but a created habit. Every time you choose to avoid a risk (a difficult conversation, a bold decision, a creative attempt, a commitment), you’re not merely staying in your comfort zone, but sinking deeper into the cushioned prison cell that you have made your home. You are training your will to prefer avoidance, certainty, and the illusion of retaining full control over your circumstances. Over time, your “avoidance reflex” strengthens, making you feel less and less comfortable with taking the necessary risks that lead to growth with each passing day.

Even worse, with each cowardly choice to shy back from the uncertain, the threshold for what feels like an acceptable risk begins to rise. You become capable only of choosing the safest option, because safety is what you have unconsciously elevated to be the guiding principle of your life.

This can only be fixed by a conscious effort to take more risks, which is in turn only possible once you understand the theological implications of believing yourself capable of avoiding all situations of uncertainty.

The good news is that what became atrophied through habit can also be rebuilt through habit by following a surprisingly simple protocol, but first it’s key to understand why risk-aversion is fundamentally a theological problem.

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Most men instinctively know that each of us is created uniquely and intentionally by God. Each man was designed, perfectly crafted, and brought to life at a specific time and for a specific purpose.

“For thou didst form my inward parts, thou didst knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise thee, for thou art fearful and wonderful.
Wonderful are thy works!
Thou knowest me right well; my frame was not hidden from thee,
when I was being made in secret, intricately wrought in the depths of the earth.
Thy eyes beheld my unformed substance; in thy book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.”

— Psalm 139:13-16

There is however, a big problem that most men face whenever they start trying to live righteously, grow in virtue, and align their will with God’s: they don’t have a framework for understanding themselves, their potential, and the role they are created to play upon this earth.

It’s difficult to truly improve if the starting point for robust self-knowledge is missing. After all, if you don’t know what kind of clay you’re working with, how will you know how to best shape it and what to make with it?

The good news is that, as with most dilemmas we face, the Christian tradition has figured it out already. There is a way and a framework to know yourself better, to understand your struggles and talents, and thus better know what you ought to develop, and how you should approach your desire to increase in virtue.

Temperamental Theory

The theory of the four temperaments is not a personality test or a self-help typology, but a classical, well-studied framework, rooted in ancient medicine and developed by historical figures such as Hippocrates, Galen, and eventually St. Thomas Aquinas. Temperamental theory, in short, gives us a framework for understanding the dominant passions and natural inclinations that shape how a man responds to the world:

The four temperaments are:

• Choleric: driven, decisive, naturally commanding, prone to anger and impatience.

• Melancholic: deep, analytical, idealistic, prone to perfectionism and interior suffering.

• Sanguine: warm, sociable, enthusiastic, prone to inconsistency and distraction.

• Phlegmatic: calm, steady, reliable, prone to passivity and avoidance of conflict.

It’s important to note that most of us (if not all) are a blend of two or more temperaments rather than a pure type, and that no temperament is objectively better than any other, as they all have their own natural virtues to develop and natural vices and temptations to avoid.

The Four Christian Masculine Archetypes

While temperamental theory is tremendously useful on its own, it sometimes lacks the archetypal framework that allows us to grasp the meaning and ideal behavior of each predominant temperament fully. For that, at Ad Aeternum we developed the framework of the four Christian Masculine Archetypes, which serves as our formation model.

Think of it like this: if the temperaments tell you how you are wired, the archetypes tell you what you are wired for. In practice, they tell you what form your masculine vocation could take, what the specific demands of your character are in terms of formation, and what the specific temptations of your archetype look like.

The Knight: The Righteous Fighter

This is the man of action, discipline, persistence and great physical courage. His temptation is often violence or domination without justice, and the exercise of strength without charity. The Christian Knight mainly exemplifies the virtues and struggles of the Choleric, with the key distinction that he submits his strength to the service of a higher cause, and uses his persevering, competitive nature to further that cause. He understands his responsibility as a natural born leader, and he uses his fortitude to inspire and lead others, instead of using it to boast, feel superior, or put others down.

Most importantly, he understands that he owes his strength to God, and thus stays obedient to Him.

The Monk: The Patient Pillar

The Monk represents the man of contemplation, theology, and interior depth. His temptation is withdrawal from the world into the comfort of his own mind, and gathering knowledge without ever taking action. The Monk is an archetypal representation of the phlegmatic temperament.

The way in which the Christian Monk can make the best of his temperament is by meditating on the eternal questions, and by placing the knowledge that he gathers to the service of others, serving as a patient guide for those who want to find the peace of God.

The King: The Charismatic Ruler

This is the man of authority, order, leadership, and social intelligence. His temptation is people-pleasing and following a comfortable, un-sacrificial model of leadership. The King as an archetype seeks to reflect the virtues and battles of the Sanguine temperament.

In a Christian sense the King is not merely a ruler, but a servant-leader, following Christ’s model of kingship: humility, self-sacrifice, and the responsibility and commitment to lead others towards God and virtue. The Christian King knows how to lower himself, be humble and surrender to God’s will. He’s also able and determined to listen to those who look up to him, see them for what they are, and empathize with them.

The Prophet: The Just and Wise Messenger

The Prophet is the archetypal representation of the melancholic temperament: the man of moral clarity, cultural critique, and reflection. His temptation is bitterness, self-righteousness, speaking truth without love, and hopelessness when faced with the harshness of the world.

The Christian Prophet orders his passionate heart towards longing for God and towards the honest pursuit of heaven. He realizes that no amount of beauty in the world will satisfy him, so he turns his attention towards the eternal. The Prophet also seeks to share this longing for beauty and the contents of his heart with others, as he’s genuinely interested in helping others attain salvation.

Why Does This Matter?

Understanding your temperament and finding out the main Christian masculine archetype that reflects your own being is interesting on its own, but it’s also highly useful, in my opinion, for four reasons:

1. By understanding your own temperament you can grow in self love, and see yourself closer to how Christ sees you. You’ll be able to stop comparing yourself to others and understand that your battles are different and unique, and so too your victories. The essence of this self-acceptance is to see yourself as God made you: not perfect, but perfectly created, unique in your

   strange ways but just as valuable as the next man.

2. The pursuit of sanctity is a perpetual uphill climb in which you’ll need to use every tool at your disposal if you are to be successful in reaching the mountaintop. Being blind or oblivious to your temperament and to the virtues and vices towards which it naturally inclines you is to handicap yourself and make an already tough battle even tougher.

3. Knowing about the four temperaments and archetypes allows you to understand others better, to comprehend their inclinations, their struggles and their strengths, so you can grow in charity, love, and empathy. It’s easier to be empathic when you understand that other people’s battles are so incredibly different from yours.

4. Knowing your own temperament will help you to be better equipped to make important decisions in your life when it comes to choosing a career, a calling, a direction to follow professionally, or simply what to do every day with your life. You cannot hide from the particular inclinations of your heart. God gave you a specific temperament for a reason, and if your heart tugs in a set direction, it’s worth listening to it.

As you can see, learning about temperamental/archetypal theory can actually help you significantly in your path towards sanctity. Whether you discover, after reading more about this framework, that you possess the bright fire of the Choleric Knight, or the sensitive soul of the Melancholic Prophet, once you learn to see yourself as God made you, it’s much easier to discover your true calling, to put your talents to the service of others, and to be more aware of the temptations that could most easily lure you towards the darkness.

One of my best-selling books is titled Knight, Monk, King, Prophet, and it’s an in-depth breakdown of the framework we just discussed. It goes deeper into the history of the theory, the specifics of each archetype, the theology behind it, the saints who embodied it, the specific vices each type is prone to, and the concrete formation path that each requires. If you found this article interesting, you can learn more about the temperaments and masculine archetypes by ordering the book here. The book also comes with a questionnaire to help you discover your predominant and secondary temperaments.

Read more about the book here

Self-knowledge necessarily precedes self-love, and the understanding of others precedes true charity. That’s why this framework is so powerful, and that’s why every man who doesn’t learn about it will be missing out on an amazing formation tool that has been fundamental in the conversion and purification of many men, myself included.

Never forget, however, the main purpose of knowing yourself: to shine the light of Christ on all your flaws, vices, and sins, so you can purge them from the depths of your broken soul, imitate Christ more closely, and become worthy of heaven.

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.

Also, if you liked this article, you’ll love my book.

This past Saturday, I married the woman I love. We’ve come a long way in the 5 years that I’ve been writing about masculinity, and it’s crazy to look back and see how much I’ve changed, how many of you have become my friends, and how providential God has been throughout it all.

I feel profoundly grateful. Grateful to God, who brought her into my life at exactly the right moment and in exactly the right way. Grateful to her, for saying yes to my proposal and for being the supportive, kind, faithful woman I had always dreamed to marry. And grateful to all of you, whose support of this project over the years has made it possible for me to pursue the vocation I believe God has called me to and be able to support my now growing family.

Just wanted to give you a heads up that there will be no articles this week. We are currently on our honeymoon (this post was scheduled beforehand), and for once I am taking my own advice about putting down the phone and being present to what is in front of me. We’ll go back to our regular schedule next week!

Finally, if you have been thinking about supporting Ad Aeternum, now is a particularly meaningful moment to do so. A paid subscription or a one-time donation or wedding gift goes directly toward sustaining the work I’m doing and, as of this week, towards building and providing for my family. There is a donation link below if you feel moved to contribute, and it would mean more than I can say.

Donate or send us a gift here: https://donate.adaeternum.com/

Become a paid subscriber here: https://www.adaeternum.com/subscribe

Thank you for being part of this and see you all next week! Please keep us in your prayers.

Ad Maiora Nati Sumus,

Juan

It can be quite heartbreaking to confess the same sin over and over again, trying our hardest to break free only to find out that the temptations of the world continue to defeat us.

You probably know how it is: you pray for strength, join accountability groups, read books on purity, make resolutions, delete apps, and promise God, once again, that this time you will really try your hardest.

And then you fall again.

The battle against sexual sin can be discouraging, as we realize the sometimes overwhelming strength of our foe. But we can find comfort in knowing that many great saints have fought the same battle, and look towards them for advice.

Most notably, St. Augustine in his Confessions details his intense struggle against the temptations of his former life, and his testimony serves as a reminder that no matter how powerful the enemy is, God’s grace is even greater.

What we learn from St. Augustine is that you won’t break free from the temptations of lust if you keep fighting the wrong battle and try to force yourself to stop doing things that deep down you still want to do. You’re asking God to help you resist temptation while secretly hoping He’ll let you indulge just one more time.

St. Augustine knew this trap intimately. This is what’s called “the divided will”, and understanding it can be the key to finally defeating the vices that still enslave you.

St. Augustine’s Struggle

St. Augustine was already recognized as a brilliant thinker and rhetorician from an early age. His status in the history books, as well as his role in the development of Christian doctrine speak to his incredible wisdom and his profound faith. We all know he was a genius, but what many don’t know is that he was a man who struggled deeply —and I mean deeply—, against sexual temptation.

From around age 16, he describes his ongoing battle with lust:

This was the age at which the frenzy gripped me and I surrendered myself entirely to lust, which your law forbids but human hearts are not ashamed to sanction.

Until well into his thirties, St. Augustine lived enslaved by sexual sin: he was trapped in lust, spiritually tormented, and living with a mistress. And yet, he was a man who deeply longed for God’s comfort, even while trapped in this seemingly endless cycle of sin.

He knew it was destroying him. He knew God was calling him to something higher. And yet, night after night, he returned to the same sin, the same emptiness, the same shame. His mother Monica prayed fervently for his conversion, his friend Ambrose preached the truth to him with power and Augustine himself longed for freedom, for purity, for God and His deliverance.

The Divided Will

The problem, however, which this great Saint soon identified, was that he didn’t truly want to rid himself of his sin. Some part of him still wanted to pursue the pleasures of the flesh, and yet another part of him genuinely desire God’s saving grace and to do away with his sinful lifestyle.

For years, he prayed one of history’s most honest —and most damning— prayers: “Lord, make me chaste, but not yet.” Augustine’s prayer was an admittance of the fact that he did not want to let go of his sin. He was addicted to his sinful ways, and even worse, he actively wanted to remain addicted.

With his will divided, St. Augustine couldn’t break free. He was asking God to change him while refusing to let go, perfectly encapsulating the divided will.

What follows is one of the most gut-wrenching and relatable descriptions of how the grip of sin makes our will become divided, by whispering and seducing us in order to make us keep desiring our chains:

Trifles of trifles and vanities of vanities, my old mistresses, held me back; they caught hold of the garment of my flesh and whispered in my ear, “Can you let us go? And from that instant we shall see you no more for ever; and from that instant this and that will be forbidden you for ever.”

What did they mean, O my God, what did they mean by “this and that?”

O let Thy mercy guard the soul of Thy servant from the vileness, the shame that they meant!
— Confessions, Book 8, St. Augustine.

St. Augustine realized after years of struggle that as long as you still want the sin, you’ll keep returning to it as often as possible. If the will is divided—one part wanting God, the other part wanting the sin—, the part that wants the sin will always end up winning.

Why The Divided Will Keeps You Enslaved

Breaking free from sin requires nothing less than a complete surrendering to God. In that sense, it requires an intentional commitment of our will to accept His saving grace.

This is why trying to fight against sin with a divided will is so problematic: being lukewarm in the battle is pretty much the same as giving into sin completely. True change requires ordering your love, not just your actions. It requires reordering your desires towards God, so that you can unify the divided will and want only God.

It’s not enough to just try harder, you have to let God transform your heart.

Some examples of how this divided will manifests practically could be:

• Confessing a sin you plan to commit again

• Apologizing while knowing you’ll probably do the same again

• Going to confession while keeping the porn app on your phone

• Asking God to help you resist while refusing to avoid occasions of sin

If we refuse to cooperate fully and to surrender our entire lives to Christ (which requires being radical in rejecting sin), we’re setting ourselves up for failure.

We have to stop wanting the sin. That’s how we break free from it. Of course that’s easier said than done, but once again, we can look at St. Augustine for guidance as to how we —strengthened by God’s grace— can accomplish this.

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All that it takes for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

I also dream of something simpler: my wife, my children, some animals, and a peaceful life in the mountains, away from the chaos and toxicity of our times. I dream about throwing my phone into a crackling fire and watching it melt away, taking with it all the anxiety and pain. I dream about returning to the way we lived before, when all a man knew was what was right there in front of him.

When I walk around my city and all I see is gray on top of gray, when the power lines distort the view of heaven and when that same heaven is hidden behind a thick cloud of pollution and dust, I think about this dream.

When I see the men around me hide their pain behind sad smiles, when I see them numb themselves with alcohol to forget the sorrow in their souls, I think about this dream. And as much as it pains me to accept it, my dream is naive and cowardly, for to live it would be to abandon the fight and run away into hiding, leaving behind all those souls who are lost and hurting. This dream is impossible in a world ruled by evil.

We are the weak men amidst the hard times. And it will stay that way until someone has the guts to lead the charge and bring about the next phase of this never-ending cycle. Someone has to do it. Might as well be us.

We were born in the middle of a silent war and maybe God's will is for us to lose ourselves in our work and dedicate our lives to some purpose that will help reclaim the culture. Even if we crash and burn in the process. Perhaps that is how we’ll get to make a dent in the world and help those that will come after us live in a world where not everything is toxic.

I accept the possibility that I won't get to see the end of this war. All I can hope for is that before my death comes, I will have done some good, and I will have fought bravely and honorably, for a cause greater than my own selfish goals and dreams. I can only hope that when I stand before God, He looks upon me proudly, and tells me I did well.

I hope that we sacrifice everything we have and secure a better world for those souls not born yet, and live our lives clawing at the belly of this beast from the inside out, so that our grandchildren can see the light outside. If we are not to see the fruits of our sacrifice, so be it.

Maybe then will your descendants and mine live in a green, bright world, and be able to enjoy God's earth without running this demonic race against the machine of evil that we call progress. Maybe then there will be virtuous wives for every man and honorable men for every woman. For us, there might be only war. Fifty years of disappointments, fifty years of pain, fifty years of necessary sacrifice to expose the horrors that lurk beneath the surface of this putrid and corrupted social fabric. 

Maybe someday will your descendants and mine be free to live as they please, without black boots pressing their necks, without tyrants watching their every step. Without this technocratic monstrosity that we’ve built tracking their every thought.

Maybe then will your grandchildren and mine return to the woods, and live out their days farming, laughing and working under the beautiful clear sky. In peace.

Maybe they will live off the land and forget the ailments of the poison that we now feed our children, and maybe they will enjoy the dream that we couldn’t. 

But not us. Not now. Not here. Not today. Our duty is to fight. If we are to give our children the freedom we strive for, we can’t cowardly retreat and abandon the fight. We must sacrifice our own peace and choose total war. Only then, perhaps, will your sons and daughters see the open sky again. 

Only then, after this silent war has ended and a fresh world has been rebuilt from the ashes of this new Sodom, will your sons play barefoot in the grass under skies that are blue again.

And we will look down from Heaven and know our sacrifice was worth it. For even if we couldn’t enjoy the blessings of tomorrow, they will, and through them we live on. 

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.

Also, if you liked this article, you’ll love my book.

One of the most effective tricks that the devil has pulled is the way he’s convinced most well-intentioned Christian men that making peace with mediocrity is actually an expression of humility.

He has convinced us that ambition is pride, that smallness of soul is virtue, and that aiming for more is always, necessarily selfish. The consequence of this scheme is that most men now operate under a mindset that justifies mediocrity: they not only have accepted smallness, but have actually constructed a seemingly valid justification for it, calling it humility.

St. Thomas Aquinas gave this condition a name eight centuries ago: pusillanimitas. Smallness of soul. He classified it as a sin, and most specifically, as a sin opposite the virtue of magnanimity.

Whereas some other, more scandalous sins are easier to recognize and treat, the sin of pusillanimity is trickier, precisely because it hides itself behind a veil of false humility that too easily blinds men to the dangers of small-mindedness and gives them a comfortable excuse to avoid the hard work that greatness requires.

As we’ll see, however, the vice of mediocrity is greatly destructive, as it makes it nearly impossible to truly aim for holiness, and therefore handicaps us when it comes to pursuing the vocation of all Christians.

What is Magnanimity?

Aquinas describes magnanimitas as the stretching forth of the mind toward great things, in Summa Theologiae II-II, Q. 129:

He mentions that magnanimity is a virtue under fortitude, and the accurate recognition of one’s God-given capacity and the willingness to act in proportion to it. The magnanimous man, for example “deems himself worthy of great things in consideration of the gifts he holds from God” 1.

The important thing to note here is that magnanimity doesn’t go against humility, as it has nothing to do with boasting or feeling prideful, and it is instead a way of converging upon the same truth as humility. Humility is understanding that everything you have comes from God and belongs to God. Magnanimity is understanding that it’s because of that that you are responsible for doing something good with it. Having genuine gifts and refusing to use them isn’t really humble, but rather evasive and cowardly. In contrast, magnanimity means daring to pursue great things because you recognize and treasure the gifts God has given you, instead of burying your talents in the ground out of cowardice.

The Opposite Vice: Pusillanimity

Aquinas defines pusillanimitas in Q. 133 as the vice opposed to magnanimity by defect. It is possible to go against magnanimity by thinking too highly of yourself or by falling into prideful arrogance, but that’s not what we’re dealing with here. The pusillanimous man underestimates himself, or more precisely, refuses to engage with the question of what he is actually capable of out of fear of what he might find out. In practical terms, pusillanimity looks like:

• Staying in a phase of “vocational discernment” for years without ever committing and putting your talents to good use.

• Having a business idea, a creative project, an apostolate, or some calling you’ve been “preparing for” in private while never actually taking action.

• Consistently defers to others to make your decisions for you because stepping forward and carrying the banner means there’s a risk of failure.

• Reframing your fear of commitment as prudence, your fear of failure as humility, and your fear of greatness as contentment.

According to Aquinas, the pusillanimous man sins not because he has wrongly estimated his gifts but because he has refused to even look for and use them. He even cites the parable of the talents to exemplify the vice of pusillanimity:

Hence it is that the servant who buried in the earth the money he had received from his master, and did not trade with it through fainthearted fear, was punished by his master (Matthew 25; Luke 19).
— St. Thomas Aquinas, ST II-II Q. 133, A. 1.

The servant in the parable was not condemned for losing the talent his master gave him but for burying it out of fear. And is this not the story of the modern man? That he fears failure, and even success, so much that he opts to never dare?

We know then that pusillanimity can disguise itself as humility, so the critical questions that arise are: how does a man tell the difference between the two? And what does genuine magnanimity require of us practically?

We can look at Aquinas for answers, as he identifies the precise difference between genuine humility and the sinful smallness of soul we’ve been criticizing. Once this is understood, we can devise a practical plan to foster magnanimity and kill the mediocrity that has kept you timid and fearful all this time.

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I’ve often asked myself the question of how a Christian man should approach physical fitness. The more I think about it, the more I conclude that even though there might be valid discussions to be had as to the extent to which a man should care about it, pursuing physical fitness is an absolute necessity, especially for the modern Christian man.

Christian life is a fight. We struggle against our sins, against endless temptations, against the natural suffering of life, and seek standards of excellence that are just short of impossible. All of this demands endurance from us, and a strong back to carry our cross and help those around us carry theirs.

This is not merely a metaphorical truth. It’s a physical one. The fact of the matter is that a strong body begets a strong mind and soul. That means a fit, strong man will likely develop strength of spirit and will too. He will be mentally and spiritually ready to take on bigger challenges and bigger risks. He will be able to protect his people better. He’ll be able to speak with more authority. And he’ll be able to bring more people to Christ by becoming an image of higher values. 

The Importance Of Training For A Man

Physical development will also allow us to become more useful for those around us and to The Lord whom we serve:

• It makes you more fit to serve: Maybe right now, at your present role, you don’t see how physical fitness is of any use to you, but what if you are soon called to play a role that does require it? What if someone you loved needed your strength and endurance, and you didn’t have it because you chose to ignore this aspect of masculine development? 

• It helps give your message more weight: The messenger very often matters more than the message itself. If you want people to take you seriously, you need to embody your philosophy with every fiber of your being, and if you aim to share a message of strength, discipline, courage and honor, you have a responsibility to be seen as strong, disciplined, courageous. A powerful physique shows these are virtues you live by.

• It shows you care about virtue, discipline, fortitude, and beauty: Again, the first impression that you give can be enough to prove that you value higher ideals and are committed to living by them.

• It shows that our faith encompasses all areas of our lives, not merely the spiritual realm: Many seem to think the journey of faith is merely a spiritual one. But we are not just spiritual beings, we are physical ones too. True faith requires a constant pursuit of virtue not merely in the spiritual realm, but everywhere. As Christian men, we must be the leaders that show how holistic our faith is, and how it doesn’t keep us from pursuing greatness but rather pushes us towards it.

• It teaches you to be consistent, toughens your mind, helps you battle laziness and gluttony: There is no better way to sharpen your mind than a rigorous physical training regime. You will develop self-control, discipline, and fight effeminacy by adhering to a strict workout program.

• It helps you lead better, and provide a sense of safety for those who depend on you: Your physical presence should make others feel safe and protected. Only by developing your body will you be able to do this.

It’s important to note that physical training and being physically fit is a necessary pursuit, but it shouldn’t be the central one for a Christian man. Our mission is to pursue sanctity and perfection under Christ, and further God’s Kingdom on earth. Physical fitness is a useful tool for that purpose, but it cannot become your end goal or main focus. You are not supposed to idolize your body and fall into narcissism and self-worship. That’s a common pitfall for those who begin striving for physical improvement.

Where Most Fail

From what I’ve seen, most men tend to approach physical fitness in one of two —equally flawed— ways: they either disregard physical fitness entirely, claiming it to be irrelevant and unnecessary for anyone with a desire to grow spiritually, or they pursue it out of vanity, for the sole purpose of looking “hot” and being attractive. The former never develop their bodies at all, while the latter focus exclusively on their looks, forgetting to purify their intention and pursue fitness for the right reasons.

Very few actually take a holistic approach to fitness and pursue physical development properly, to develop their bodies so that they can move them better, use them for longer, and thus not only enjoy the full potential that God gave them when He made them men, but also to make sure that they have the capabilities to use their bodies in a useful way if their mission requires it.

Imagine your loved ones depending on your strength and you being unable to help them. Imagine them requiring your assistance physically and your muscles being just for show. We are called to serve others, to lead and sacrifice, and we will be better at this job if our bodies are not only strong and beautiful but also functional, resistant, athletic, healthy.

Conclusion

The Christian man who neglects his body has not really paid attention to the meaning of the Incarnation. God did not take on flesh as something secondary and meaningless, but to sanctify the body, and make it an instrument for holiness. Refusing to see it as such means perverting a beautiful, God-given gift. Train, then, but do it to please and honor God, not merely to look better or gain approval and attention. Do it because you have been given a body capable of strength and beauty, and you are accountable for what you do with it.

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
— 1 Corinthians 6:19-20

Just start somewhere. Pick up something heavy, run until it hurts, or simply find a way to experience what it’s like to be truly exhausted. Find a discipline and then hold it consistently. The specifics here matter way less than the courageous decision to take your physical formation seriously, with all that that implies. If you’re truly aiming to fulfill your role as a father and husband properly, you simply cannot afford the luxury of a soft, weak body.

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.

Also, if you liked this article, you’ll love my book.

Most people know C.S. Lewis as the author of the Chronicles of Narnia or through his various non-fiction books like The Abolition of Man or Mere Christianity. There is, however, a fictional trilogy that most readers don’t know about and that it’s arguably his most prophetic work.

Lewis wrote the Space Trilogy between 1938 and 1945, in the middle of WWII, and it’s quite impressive how he managed to predict so accurately what our very own postmodern ideological landscape would look like: the technocratic elimination of the human, the corruption of institutions by soft totalitarianism, the war against transcendence and meaning disguised as “progress”, and the specific attack on masculine virtue as the first line of that war.

In the first book, Out of the Silent Planet, we are told about Dr. Elwin Ransom’s journey to Mars, where he discovers that Earth has been cut off from the rest of creation by the rebellion of its own angelic governor. The second, Perelandra, sees Ransom travel to a young Venus to prevent a demonic tempter from corrupting that world as Earth was corrupted. The third, That Hideous Strength, takes place on Earth, where a young couple are caught between a demonic technocratic institution and a small community of resistance.

In this article, we’ll take a look at the top 5 lessons that the Space Trilogy teaches us about the spiritual war, and about our duty as Christian men to hold the line against the forces of confusion and chaos:

Lesson #5: The Earth Is a Battleground

Out of the Silent Planet is the first book in the trilogy, and in it, Lewis presents Earth as the “silent planet”, the one planet in the solar system that has been cut off from the rest of creation by the presence of evil. Every other planet is properly ordered and exists in perfect harmony with God. Earth, however, is contested between the forces of good and evil. Masterfully, Lewis reminds us that our world is a fallen one, in which fighting will always be a necessity. This is an important reminder for us, because forgetting the truth of the earth as a battleground will make us more liable to fall into nihilism, despair, or pleasure-seeking.

It might be painful to realize there is no complete peace to be found on earth, but it’s necessary if we are to face the challenges that we’ll encounter being fully aware of their transcendental nature. When we realize that there are actual forces of good and evil we will not be surprised by the resistance we encounter along the way, or lose our faith due to the world’s hostility, which will allow us to persevere until the end.

The lesson for us then, is that discomfort, resistance, and cultural hostility are the expected conditions of a fallen world in which we’ve chosen to reject God. While this might be a tough pill to swallow, doing so will allow us to fight the battles we’re called to fight with full awareness and deeper faith, maintaining our gaze set on eternity.

Lesson #4: Evil Often Hides Behind “Progress”

This lesson comes primarily from That Hideous Strength, the third and most explicitly political novel of the trilogy, in which Lewis makes concrete what the first two books had started to imply: that the war between good and evil doesn’t stay in the spiritual realm, but moves over into institutions, bureaucracies, and the souls of ordinary men who have stopped asking about the deeper meanings of their actions and decisions.

The main institutional enemy in the third book of the trilogy is the N.I.C.E. (National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments). The N.I.C.E. is Lewis’s portrait of institutional evil, as a bureaucratic, well-funded, and respectable entity that claims to seek progress, science, and the betterment of mankind. Mark Studdock, who is the novel’s protagonist, is drawn into it almost by inertia, simply out of an innocent desire to belong to an important , prestigious group. Lewis suggests that the N.I.C.E. does not recruit monsters but rather hollow men, men who have been educated in nothing but the “Modern,” stripped of both classical formation and genuine virtue, and thus available to be shaped by whatever institution offers them status and belonging.

“His education had been neither scientific nor classical—merely “Modern.” The severities both of abstraction and of high human tradition had passed him by: and he had neither peasant shrewdness nor aristocratic honour to help him. He was a man of straw, a glib examinee in subjects that require no exact knowledge (he had always done well on Essays and General Papers) and the first hint of a real threat to his bodily life knocked him sprawling.”
— C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength

There are a number of quotes that seem too contemporary to have been written in the 1940s, such as:

“Isn't it absolutely essential to keep a fierce Left and fierce Right, both on their toes and each terrified of the other? That's how we get things done. Any opposition to the NICE is represented as a Left racket in the Right papers and a Right racket in the Left papers. If it's done properly, you get each side outbidding the other in support of us - to refute the enemy slanders. Of course we're nonpolitical. The real power always is.”
— C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength

There are two lessons for us here: One, that organizations can very well be infiltrated by evil on an institutional level, and two, that their evil ways are designed to be invisible to those who are inside. A man who cannot recognize the spirit of the N.I.C.E. in its contemporary forms (corporations, universities, media organizations, cultural movements, Hollywood), is a man who will serve it without ever knowing what he’s doing or understanding why it’s wrong.

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When the first news of “The Odyssey” casting came out, I was tempted to boycott the movie altogether. I did not want to financially support Hollywood’s latest effort to further their progressive agenda, and it felt wrong to give my cash and attention to a movie that so clearly perverted Homer’s masterpiece.

After giving it some thought, however, I decided that I would watch it with a critical eye, because if I was going to speak about the movie, it would be hypocritical to do so without having watched it. And, as a cultural commentator, I thought it was appropriate to write this piece sharing my thoughts on it.

If I could describe the movie in one word, it would simply be disappointing. It’s not a bad movie, but it’s definitely a movie that does Homer’s epic no justice. The Odyssey is one of the greatest stories ever told, one of the most significant and foundational texts of Western culture and European literature. It’s essentially critic-proof. And that’s what makes the movie Nolan produced all the more frustrating: it’s an average film from perfect raw material.

Matt Damon Starring as Matt Damon

Let’s quickly discuss the elephant in the room: some of the casting choices were absolutely preposterous and insulting to the source material. Lupita Nyongo might be a good actress, but she clearly fails to fit Homer’s “white-armed” description of Helen of Troy.

Ellen/Elliot Page is not a man, and yet we are supposed to believe and accept that she is, and Nolan goes so far as to make sure that the character of Odysseus calls her “the bravest man I ever knew” at one point in the film. Athena is mixed-race, Eurylochus is Indian, one of Odysseus’ sailors is asian, a few are black, and all in all, the casting choices make sure that you cannot ever truly believe this story takes place in Greece.

But even if we do a titanic effort to ignore the ridiculously obvious ideological cast that Nolan chose, there are many other meaningful problems with the rest of the actors, even though they might physically look somewhat at home in the ancient Greece of Homer’s story.

The main problem here is that Nolan chose the same actors we’ve seen ad nauseam in every single Hollywood movie of the last decades, and for a story as impressive as The Odyssey’s, this makes it difficult to buy into the world that the movie tries to create. Worst of all is the fact that the director apparently didn’t really care about making the actors resemble the characters, opting instead to adjust the characters to match the actors.

The result of this is that Jon Bernthal acts exactly as he does in all his other movies, Tom Holland stars as Tom Holland, Matt Damon as Matt Damon, and so on with every single main character. I don’t seem to remember Menelaus having such a thick New-York accent in the books.

When you use such well-known, established actors, you make it impossible for the audience to not be aware that they are watching actors perform a role, destroying the immersive potential of a production of this magnitude. You are too aware that you’re watching Jason Bourne, Spiderman, and The Punisher put on costumes and play pretend. This might be okay for less “epic” movies, or for those productions that take place in contemporary times, but for a historical (even a mythological) film, using actors this famous and this repeated make it impossible for the viewers to be transported to the time period the movie tries to portray.

An Uninspiring Hero

The character of Odysseus in Homer’s books is a man of great ambition, cunning, proud, witty, incredibly smart, and deep. Damon’s representation? Emotionally distant and just plain unremarkable. He lacks the weight of a hero like Odysseus, presented more like a war veteran with PTSD than as the profoundly masculine yet emotionally complex hero that makes the story so great.

Much have I suffered, labored long and hard by now
in the waves and wars. Add this to the total—bring the trial on!
— The Odyssey, Homer, Book VIII1

Nolan’s Odysseus is bland and boring, and you watch him move through the film without ever feeling the specific gravity (the “aura” if you will) that Homer's character carries from the first book to the last. He is competent, occasionally clever, and yet entirely forgettable. This is almost an achievement in its own right, given the source material.

Matt Damon’s representation showcases a veteran haunted by guilt, so much so that he doesn’t actually want to go home because he’s afraid of what he’ll find there. By the time that he finally reunites with his son, his wife, and dying dog, we don’t really care, because the man at the center of it does not seem to feel the weight of what he has returned to.

An Epic World Made Ordinary

A bland main character and a cherrypicked diverse and repetitive cast are problematic enough for the immersion experience, and the final nail in the coffin comes from what I can only describe as Nolan’s middle finger to anyone who wanted the Odyssey to inspire and fill them with wonder: the “ordinarization” of what should be a world filled with poetry.

YouTube user The Critical Drinker accurately mentions in his review how the film is “a clinical, precise, finely engineered movie made by a man of great technical skill who seems to lack the romantic soul and the wonder and the sheer humanity to bring it all to life.”

The movie is technically well-made, the cinematography is stunning, and sometimes, almost accidentally, you feel something move within you. But that feeling fades away almost instantly when Odysseus, back in 1200 BC, on the shores of Troy, tells his crew: “Ten years on this fucking beach. Let’s go home.”

Nolan took the mythological world of Homer’s poem and brought it down to the most ordinary representation: in the dialogue, in the accents, in the lack of interaction with the Greek gods and in the way that it feels like just another action movie.

The Odyssey should have been one of those movies that remained timeless, but the dialogue and ordinary adaptation of the source material makes that impossible.

The clunky, modern dialogue and accents ensure that this movie will only be relevant for a few months or years, a modern, ordinary portrayal of a timeless story that will fade away with time.

Contributing to this is the removal of all interaction with the gods, a central point in Homer’s book. Whereas in both the Iliad and the Odyssey the gods are physically present, intervening in both the war and Odysseus journey, in the movie they are portrayed more as forces of nature with which the characters never interact directly. The only god that appears is Athena, portrayed by Zendaya in a strikingly insipid way, who acts more like Odysseus’ conscience than as an active participant in his story, simply showing up to give him a dissappointed look which further fuels his guilt.

Nolan made sure to create an uninspiring world without trascendence, an entertaining movie without a soul, and a set of characters clearly unwilling to help the audience believe the story.

Subtle Feminism

Finally, one thing in particular that bothered me was the subtle feminism evident in certain scenes and interactions, of which I’d like to briefly mention two in particular:

1. The first is a scene involving Penelope and Telemachus in which she delivers what amounts to a small political speech, claiming that the throne of Ithaca is not empty because she has been sitting on it for twenty years, and dismissing her son’s claim to rule with the remark that “her experience amounts to nothing more than the bristles on his chin”. Apparently Nolan’s Penelope hates the idea that only a man could or should rule Ithaca, and she feels as if this was a huge injustice that she has been enduring. This doesn’t reflect Homer’s Penelope, a faithful wife whose fidelity is the moral center of the entire epic. Rewriting her as a proto-feminist was not only unnecessary, but an insult to what should be an exemplary traditional female character.

2. The second is Circe. In Homer’s Book X of the Odyssey, the transformation of Odysseus’s men into pigs has no ideological motive, it is a divine and symbolic act, representing the loss of reason and self-control that comes from yielding to temptation. Odysseus proves himself before Circe, and she becomes his ally, his lover, and ultimately his guide providing him with the knowledge he needs to visit the underworld without which he could not complete his journey home. Nolan’s version imports an entirely different reading: Circe transforms the men into pigs because she believes that is what men fundamentally are. This is a filtering of Homer through Madeline Miller’s feminist novel Circe, which explicitly set out to reshape and reinterpret the source material from a contemporary ideological perspective.

At this, Circe, taking her wand, went out of the hall and opened the gates of the sty, and drove out what seemed to be full-grown pigs. They stood there and she went among them smearing each one with a fresh potion. Then the bristles, that Circe’s previous hateful spell had made them sprout, fell from them, and they became men again, younger and handsomer and taller by far than they were before. They knew me now, and each man clasped my hands, and all were wracked with weeping, till the walls echoed, mournfully, and even the goddess was moved to pity.’
— The Odyssey, Homer, Book X2

Conclusion

Perhaps there are other things that are wrong with the movie, but these are the ones I remember most vividly. And to be fair, there are also many good things with it: the cinematography, the music, the story (obviously), and the production quality. It’s not a terrible movie, it’s just a dissappointing adaptation of a text that means a lot to anyone who cares about history and literature.

All in all, however, I came out of the theater feeling somewhat sad. Not because the movie hadn’t fulfilled my expectations, but rather because it was exactly what I expected: a well made movie that takes Homer’s poem, twists it significantly, removes the soul from it, and regurgitates it back, in Nolan’s words, to a “modern audience”, who are ready to consume it without noticing or caring about the subtle ideologies hiding behind the impressive takes.

It’s sad that this is what we got from one of the most significant and foundational texts of Western civilization. A movie exclusively created to win an Oscar and appease the Hollywood elites.

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.

Also, if you liked this article, you’ll love my book.

A big part of being a man is developing the strength to govern your impulses and maintain your integrity under pressure. Sadly, most men today have been formed in the opposite direction: toward emotional reactivity, fragility, and softness, and have accepted this as the ideal.

To become the leaders God is calling us to be, we need to understand the influences and habits that are producing that weakness and effeminacy and root them out.

Here are the top 10 things that are making you emotional, fragile and delicate:

#10: Weak Movies and TV Shows

Don’t underestimate how much the media that you consume affects the depths of your character. It’s impossible to watch “Friends” reruns for years and not start to internalize the childish masculinity those characters present.

That show is just an example, but nowadays most TV shows and movies are deeply disturbing, and very few of them actually present positive role models. What they usually present are immature, feminine men or sidekicks to some “badass female lead”. Again, even if you don’t intentionally try to imitate them, if you flood your subconscious with such examples, you’ll slowly start to become like them.

The cure for this habit: Be more mindful of the entertainment that you choose.

#9: Softness in Faith

He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust.
— Saint Thomas Aquinas

Lukewarm Christianity is a bigger danger than atheism. The lukewarm Christian perverts the good name of the Lord by failing to stand firm in His Word and values and by failing to be radical in his stance against sin.

Contrary to what some might think, this absolutely does not go against the commandments of charity, but instead, as Aquinas puts it, supports the precept of Christian justice. Good is Good and Evil is Evil, not everything is subjective, and while Jesus does love everyone, that doesn’t mean He likes or approves of your sins.

Give your entire life to Christ. That’s the only choice. And you bet it’s a radical one. But being radical in favor of Truth is a good thing.

The cure for this habit: Quit the DIY Christianity and stop picking and choosing which laws to follow based on your own convenience. Make a conscious choice to give your entire heart to Christ.

#8: No Serious Male Friendships

It’s very easy to remain immature and emotional if you don’t have friends around you who can call you out when you’re acting effeminately or immaturely.

Most male friendships nowadays are extremely shallow and revolve around getting drunk and chasing girls. That’s what most friend groups talk about and that’s all they really do together. That doesn’t help you mature and build yourself into a real man of God.

Men need other men to call them out, to compete with, to push them towards higher things. If your friend group doesn’t align with that, take it upon yourself to lead your friends there.

The cure for this habit: Join or create a group of likeminded men. Invite your friends to do manly things. Have a serious conversation with them and tell them why you want to do it. Make it a regular practice.

#7: Defeatist Mindset

Whenever I mention chastity, both in the real world and online, most men brush it off because they genuinely think it’s impossible to control their sexual urges. If you think something is impossible, of course you won’t ever accomplish it.

There’s few things weaker than this sort of defeatist mindset, where you choose to be defeated before you even start trying. Chastity is just one example, but this mindset poisons everything else.

If you don’t truly believe that your vocation as a Christian is holiness, you won’t ever strive with all your might to get there. You’ll make excuses for your weakness and lack of integrity. You'll justify your sins and your lack of effort.

If it wasn’t possible to be a Saint, Christ wouldn’t have told us to be perfect. Bear in mind, this indeed wouldn’t be possible if we were to try to get there on our own, but have you forgotten that it’s not your strength that you rely on, but that of God Himself?

The cure for this habit: Set higher standards for yourself. Stop falling for the lies of the enemy that tell you it’s impossible to triumph over the sins that hold you hostage. Christ makes the impossible possible, but you must ask Him to help you.

#6: Emotional Oversharing

Look at those images. Do they show the kind of man you want to be?

The Christian tradition has never asked men to be emotionless. We read in the Bible that Christ wept, the saints did too, and manly believers throughout history raged with righteous anger, and suffered deeply. However, it has always asked that a man's emotions be ordered by reason and directed toward God rather than expressed without discipline or restraint, which is what the images above seek to promote.

Maybe crying is not something to be ashamed of, but it’s definitely not something to seek actively.

Like any habit, the more you do it, the more difficult it is to quit it. If you constantly cry, you’ll become a man who is used to crying all the time. The same goes for being emotional in general: the more you give free rein to your emotions, the more often you’ll be controlled by them.

The cure for this habit: When a strong emotion arises, pause before acting on it. Ask whether the feeling is pointing toward something true that deserves attention and expression, or whether it is a passing reaction that needs to be controlled.

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There’s a new hot trend online in which men are deliberately tuning out metrics, news cycles and social comparison, and trying to break free from the social conditioning that tries to keep them fearful, anxious, overanalytical and mediocre.

This trend is known as “retardmaxxing”. There are books about it being written, podcasts being recorded, and thousands upon thousands of videos being created where men explain the benefits of this mindset and promote moving away from overthinking, overcalculating, and becoming too analytical for our own good.

Regardless of what you think about the name of this trend —I personally find it quite funny—, it’s undeniable that there is some truth to it, and it actually points to something that Christians have known for ages, and one of the aspects of faith that allowed Christendom to spread like it did.

What is “Retardmaxxing”?

The “retardmaxxing” movement arises as a response to overthinking, overanalyzing and the fearful paralysis that keeps most modern men stuck in their own head, afraid of taking risks, afraid of living, and afraid of doing anything that even barely pushes them out of their comfort zones.

Under a seemingly justifiable caution, many men have become slaves to fear, and “retardmaxxing” thus appears as a reaction to this slavery: stop thinking so much, do what needs to be done, take risks, live a little.

This movement has been popularized mainly by YouTuber Elisha Long, and it has grown so much that it has even become a talking point in some of the biggest podcasts in the self-improvement sphere:

This trend has correctly identified that the modern information environment is hostile to purposeful action. When I first found out about it, my mind immediately went to a quote from the book Fahrenheit 451 that seemed to capture the cultural moment we find ourselves in, in which “retardmaxxing” appears as a sensible, rebellious option:

“Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information.

Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change.

Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.”
— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Is it not true that the average modern man is so incredibly distracted by useless information and facts that he cannot get himself to act purposefully, being so preoccupied with many things he knows but doesn’t ever use?

“Retardmaxxing”, then, points to an actual truth: sometimes to move forward in life you need to stop thinking so much. However, as is the case with most movements and ideologies, it lacks the metaphysical depth that a belief system like Christianity offers. And as you’ll soon see, this movement reflects certain principles that the Christian tradition has known all along.

The Tradition of “Retardmaxxing”

Throughout history, Christian men have seemingly been the ones most determined to take risks, defeat impossible odds, and take purposeful action even when being shunned and shamed by the world. Western culture was built by such men, who focused not on the seemingly impossible odds of creating works that would last for centuries, but simply on the inner voice that called them forward. This is actually perfectly logical: when you are convinced of the metaphysical reality of a world beyond our own, you necessarily have to accept and be content with outcomes that exist beyond our control and are thus more willing to risk without concerning themselves with the odds.

The overthinker and the excessive analyzer believe on a certain level that it’s their efforts and strategy which will determine the outcome of a certain project or action. The Christian, in comparison, knows that God’s will goes before him, and simply tries to act in a way that pleases Him, leaving the end result to Him and being content with whatever happens.

Whereas the materialist bases his life and his choices exclusively on calculations, the Christian understands there are things beyond our understanding, and is thus much more willing to take the bold risks that lead to greatness, knowing that even if he fails, his security is found on God, everlasting, ever-present.

Christian men have always been willing to attempt great deeds, because they are free from the paralyzing fear that tells them that, statistically, they are probably going to fail. They don’t care about such stats, because they know that if God wills them to succeed, they will, and if He doesn’t, they won’t, and both outcomes will be good, since they will both be aligned with God’s will.

Christianity as a belief system practically demands that we “retardmaxx”, because overthinking carries with it a subtle underlying conviction that as long as you think long enough about something, you can bend the world to your liking.

Acting from a place of faith closely resembles what “retardmaxxing” proposes: do what needs to be done with the information you have available, try your best, enjoy life, and be content with the outcome.

What We Should Actually Be Dumb About

The Christian version of this trend is not random disengagement or rash, uncautious action but rather principled selectivity and a voluntary choice to reject those inputs which distract you from the important things in life:

• News cycles which only produce anxiety and outrage. Knowing every detail of every political development does in no way make you a better husband, father, or Christian.

• Courses, programs, and valuable information that sometimes, when consumed too frequently, leads to paralysis due to the sheer volume of advice and recommendations your brain tries to process.

• Social metrics like follower counts, engagement numbers, or even revenue. A man whose sense of progress is well-being by external validation is a man who depends on many things that aren’t God.

• Other people’s progress, whether spiritual, financial, physical, or social. Comparisons not only lead to envy and resentment, but directly distract you from your duties and your own unique journey.

• Even seemingly true statistics and success probabilities. If in your discernment you find God wants you to attempt something, you shouldn’t shy away from it even if it’s statistically unlikely that you’ll accomplish it. Life cannot be measured by a spreadsheet.

True wisdom includes the discernment to know which things to ignore, which ones to analyze, and which ones to consider and disregard.

The “retardmaxxers” have identified a critical problem: we suffer from information overload, overthinking, and paralysis by analysis. Their recommendation is to just stop trying to control everything, trust your intuition, and put yourself out there. The one thing they forgot is that before taking action you should always try to, in prayer, find out God’s will for you, so you can then act accordingly.

Only this will allow you to focus on the things that really matter: the people in front of you, the work God has given you, your spiritual life, the sacraments, and your mission. This will also allow you to truly live, to enjoy even the downturns of life and to experience all the beautiful things this world has to offer without needing a mathematical equation to explain them.

The retardmaxxer who is merely escaping the thoughts in his head has achieved nothing of note. In contrast, the man who deliberately controls and filters the endless streams of information proceeding from the world makes himself available to what’s in front of him: his wife, his children, his mission, his life.

The men who coined this term are noticing something real: total, unrestricted, compulsive engagement with the modern information environment is not wisdom but a form of slavery. The answer they propose lacks only the spiritual considerations that would make of their proposed action-taking and life-enjoyment fruitful, virtuous, and good.

We “retardmaxx” because we trust in God throughout it all, and we know that as long as we seek to do His will, every outcome —even seemingly negative ones, even suffering, even failure— will be okay.

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.

Also, if you liked this article, you’ll love my book.

As you may know, I’m getting married in less than a month to the love of my life, an amazing, beautiful, faithful woman. I know this is a huge blessing that I probably do not deserve, and I know this is something that many men long for and yet something that many men consider to be an impossible desire in our postmodern landscape.

Looking back, I realize that I have been —almost involuntarily— preparing for marriage for years, even before I met my wife-to-be. A close friend of mine who also recognized this approached me recently to ask if I could give him some guidance as to how he should prepare for marriage, since he’s considering proposing and wants to take his vocation to marriage seriously.

For that reason, I decided to write this article, giving all of you who feel called to the vocation of marriage a structured, step-by-step plan to follow. Keep in mind two things as you read:

1. This “protocol” is intended to be followed both by those men who have a girlfriend and those who don’t. It’s possible that you’ll already have completed some steps, but keep reading because I assure you there are some that you haven’t.

2. The decision to send you a good woman to marry is up to God and God alone. You can and should be prepared to receive her, but I cannot guarantee that you ever will. In my experience, however, following the steps below makes it highly likely that you do.

With that being said, here are 10 steps to prepare for marriage (even if you don’t know your wife yet).

Step 1: Put it to Prayer

The very first thing you need to do is to make sure you invite God into this process of preparation. This is important for two reasons: one, it ensures that you are being intentional about preparing for marriage, not merely going through the motions and hoping without a plan. Two, it keeps you centered on the Lord and ensures that this whole process is done out of love for Him, trusting Him and humbly accepting His will for you. It’s different to try and brute force your way into finding and marrying a good woman than it is to lay it at the foot of the Cross and asking God humbly to lead you, help you, and direct you.

Tell Him that you want to prepare for marriage and that you want His help with it. Tell Him that you’re going to start making an effort and that you want Him to purify and strengthen you. Tell Him that you accept His will no matter what and that you will do everything you can so that He can be assured that you’ll care for the woman He decides to send you. Tell Him that you accept His timing and that you won’t force your own.

Step 2: Make a List

Not a list of the qualities that you want in your future wife, but a list of all the things that are wrong with you. You are in no position to demand anything from God, and you surely have a lot of things to fix. So, take the time to identify them so you can then proceed to fix them.

List toxic behaviors that you need to cut out, vices that you need to get rid of, sins that you still persist in. Be honest and strict with yourself. Set high standards and list even those behaviors that you think you couldn’t possibly change. Remember that it’s God who changes you, and He absolutely can.

Step 3: Start with Chastity

I’m going to go ahead and bet that somewhere in your list there is something about quitting sexual immorality. If there isn’t, that’s great. But chances are there is, because most men nowadays struggle with addictions to pornography and other forms of sexual immorality.

If that’s you, I suggest you start your process of preparation by focusing your energy on trying to free yourself from those behaviors. For you to live chastely, you naturally have to build a ton of complementary virtues like discipline, fortitude, charity, and patience. Chastity is a cheat code for masculine formation.

Additionally, chastity allows you to discern more objectively, because when you remove sexual intimacy from the equation, you can be more honest and unbiased about whether or not the person you’re dating is a good fit. Lust, as we know, clouds your intellect, therefore chastity clears it.

Step 4: Learn to Commit

Most men are deeply afraid of commitment, and this becomes apparent in many areas of their lives:

• Relationally, they jump from one girlfriend to the next (or never even date anyone), always waiting for a perfection that isn’t real, or simply chasing novelty.

• Professionally, they stay at a job for a year or a few months and then jump to the next one.

• Spiritually, they never truly commit to living their faith fully, knowing that that will mean giving up certain things for good.

You want to be the exception to this rule. Commitment is a muscle that you train. Marriage is a lifelong commitment, and if you haven’t learnt to commit to something else before you give yourself completely to your wife, it’ll be difficult for you to keep that promise. I think that this is one of the reasons why it’s so critical to live a faith that is radical in the best possible sense: it trains you in commitment and actively teaches you what it means to choose one thing and reject all others.

When you surrender your entire life to Christ (not just what comes easily to you), you will learn what it takes to give yourself completely to your wife when she arrives.

Do not be a lukewarm Christian. Learn, study, and most importantly, practice the faith fully.

Step 5: Clarify Your Direction

After that, you need to engage in the difficult but incredibly rewarding process of finding out your calling, or at least the direction you feel compelled to walk towards over the foreseeable future. A man is the leader of his household, and if he doesn’t provide clarity and direction, the entire household will drift into chaos.

What this means practically is that you should analyze the talents God has given you, and think about how He’s calling you to use them. What sort of job do you think you can be good at that also helps others? What kind of missions or apostolates can you partake in to ensure you’re giving back? What do you imagine your life will be like in ten years?

How do you think God wants you to impact the world for the better?
What cause sets your heart on fire?

Ask yourself these questions in prayer, preferably before the Blessed Sacrament, because even if the answer doesn’t come with complete clarity, you’ll find in your heart at least some guidance as to the path that you should begin to walk.

Step 6: Determine Non-Negotiables

Now that you know your mission (or at least have a general direction), and now that you’re learning how to be a committed man who strives to live chastely, you can start —yes, only now— to think about the woman you’d like to marry.

You can begin to think about the things that you’d want for the mother of your children, in order to help you discern whatever dating/courtship opportunities appear in the future.

The reason why we didn’t do this sooner is that it would be hypocritical to start listing the qualities you’d want in a wife when you aren’t even in a solid position when it comes to your faith, purity, and life’s mission. Now that you are doing some things right, your mind is clearer, and thus you can start to consider what kind of woman you’d like to spend the rest of your life with. It’s important to do this because otherwise it’ll be much easier for you to ignore obvious red flags and persist in relationships that shouldn’t have a future.

List the virtues you’d like your wife to have, what you imagine her relationship to God being like, and list all the behaviors or beliefs that would make you say “no” to a potential relationship.

It’s only after you’ve done this that the real work begins.

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I had a friend who used to be an important guide for me in matters of faith back when I was only starting to open my heart to The Lord. He had been in the seminary discerning his vocation, but eventually decided that God wasn’t calling him to be a priest. However, the time he spent preparing for ministry made him very knowledgeable, and thus he was someone that I considered to be somewhat of a mentor in matters of the faith.

We became even closer when we did the Exodus 90 challenge together a few years ago. As part of the challenge, we were called to have weekly fraternity meetings to discuss our struggles and victories, and share the insights we had gathered through practicing asceticism.

In one of those meetings, I mentioned how I was a bit concerned about the new direction this project was taking. At that point I was starting to really take my faith seriously and felt called to be more open about Christianity in the content I produced. I was on the verge of deciding to give up my income in order to do what I felt in my heart was what I was truly called to do: write. And more specifically, write about Christian masculinity.

You can understand why I was concerned. It’s never easy to give up a stable income to pursue what you feel in your heart God is calling you towards.

So I mentioned this to my friend. How I was concerned about losing my income. How I didn’t know if people would appreciate the new direction of the page. How I didn’t know if anyone would pay for the subscription that I hoped would replace the income I was ceasing to receive.

What Guides Your Decisions?

And he simply asked me: “What do you think the Lord is calling you to do?”

I told him that deep in my heart I felt a calling to write about Christian masculinity, and to try, again, as I did when I first launched this project, to just help as many young men as I possibly could find their way in this sometimes hostile world. But I also wanted —and needed— to earn some sort of income, I said.

His answer provided me with clarity, and what he said gave me a framework I have returned to ever since.

You see, I had become somewhat disenchanted with the content I was putting out and with what my project had become. And the reason for that is that I had let myself lose sight of the true intention of Ad Aeternum (back then called Simple Men) and had let it become just a job, just a source of income. And that’s when you feel disconnected from what you’re doing. The main thing guiding our choices cannot be simply to make money.

My friend suggested that I should do what I felt God was calling me to do, and to ask Him for the grace of purity of intention. That a man ought to do things for the right reasons, and trust God to take care of the rest. After all, that is what we pray every day: “give us this day our daily bread.” God provides.

This reminded me of Matthew 6:33:

“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”
Matthew 6:33

Purity of intention. That resonated with me. It was a virtue I had never explicitly asked for, but it was definitely something that I didn’t always have. I’m too human, and that means that sometimes I do things, even seemingly good things, for the wrong reasons.

Do Things for The Right Reasons

This is not a new concept. St. Ignatius of Loyola built the Spiritual Exercises around what he called the First Principle and Foundation, which states that “man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God, and by this means to save his soul, and that everything else on the face of the earth is created for man to help him in attaining the end for which he is created”.

From this foundation stems the Jesuit motto Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam (for the greater glory of God) which points again to purity of intention, as it reminds us to ask before any action "does this serve the glory of God?", not “will this succeed?” or “will this be recognized?”

To have purity of intention means to do things for the right reasons, and not let yourself be motivated or seduced by the temptations of worldly success. It means that when it’s time to act, you shouldn’t think mainly about what will increase your reputation, gain you the most praise, or fulfill the desire to be seen as virtuous, but rather consider simply what pleases God the most.

This means placing God at the very center, and letting everything you do in your life honor Him first and foremost. It also means following the path He wants you to follow, and not the one your human mind thinks will bring the most success.

As Saint Paul says:

“Whatever you do, work at it from the heart, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward.”
— Colossians 3:23-24

I’m still human. I still fail and make mistakes. But more and more I’m praying to God before I act: “Lord, go before me, take my hands, and help me make sure that what I do and say is done with purity of intention, for the right reasons.”

And it’s been working so far. To ask for something with an honest heart is to start receiving it, and as I ask, I am noticing greater peace, and a clarity I had not experienced before. And interestingly enough, business-wise, it’s working too. Not only am I once again finding it a joy to sit down and write, but the financial aspect is also picking up speed too.

It’s not always easy to follow God, but being conscious of the motivations behind your actions, and remembering to act with purity of intention makes it considerably easier, as when you do, God usually shows you clearly what the right path is.

Ask today for purity of intention. Pray to God to give you wisdom and discernment to see your own blindspots and false idols, and to free you from them so you can surrender your life and actions to the service of The Lord. Not only is this right, but it is freeing too, as we are all created for this purpose, and only when we accept this fact will we find the elusive peace that all men long for.

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.

Also, if you liked this article, you’ll love my book.

In a modern world that seeks to strip men of nearly all virtues, there is one specific quality which seems to be almost completely absent.

It’s the virtue that gives a man weight, conviction, solemnity, and integrity. The average man exists on a superficial level, occupied with useless facts, focused on entertainment, celebrities, politics, news that don’t affect him, or simply too caught up in the hustle of day to day life to ever leave the surface. This man ends up treating everything with the same register of casual levity, speaking words that carry no weight and shifting his positions casually, almost involuntarily, depending on whoever he last spoke to.

In this ocean of lightness, the mere presence of a grave man causes discomfort and awe, sparking both envy and a hunger to possess such seemingly natural poise and influence. That’s a man who has the virtue of gravitas, whose interior depth becomes visible in his presence.

What Is Gravitas?

In the Roman world, gravitas was one of the core virtues of the aristocratic ideal alongside severitas, pietas, and virtus. It meant weight, the quality of a man whose words and presence carried natural authority because he himself was deeply rooted on something bigger.

A man of gravitas was not someone who made an effort to try and seem serious and solemn, but someone who, because of his interior depth, simply was serious, composed, and grave (in the best possible way).

Many mistakenly think that gravitas is sullenness or being joyless all the time, and some others mistakenly think that gravitas is the pomposity of the man who performs seriousness to try and look cooler. True gravitas is neither. True gravitas is the natural outward expression of a man who has developed interior depth and is thus not easily swayed by the surface turbulence of the world around him.

The Baptism of Gravitas

As is the case with most Roman virtues, the early Christians did not simply reject them, recognizing their intrinsic value, but they did reorder them, also understanding that a virtue expressed in a pagan environment could easily be misunderstood and sought for all the wrong reasons. In ancient Rome, gravitas was ordered toward social authority, political influence, and pursued for prideful reasons (power, praise, etc).

The Christian tradition kept the substance but redirected the foundation: a man of Christian gravitas should carry weight not because of his status or achievements but because he is grounded in something solid, eternal, and unmovable: Truth.

This is reflected in St. Paul’s instruction to Titus:

“In all things shew thyself an example of good works, in doctrine, in integrity, in gravity.”
— Titus 2:7

In the original Greek, the word used is semnotes, which translates to gravitas: dignity, moral seriousness, weightiness.

As we can see, the Church has always understood that there’s a virtue which imbues certain men with an authority that can only come from the seriousness and depth of their character. That is gravitas.

What We Lose When We Lose This Virtue

I believe that there are three main forces that have specifically eroded gravitas in modern men.

First, the entertainment industry, which undoubtedly rewards levity, relatability, and the performance of casualness. Under the influence of Hollywood, seriousness becomes systematically penalized. Think about it: all modern movies or TV shows always try to include some form of “comic release” to avoid presenting situations as truly grave. Watch modern movies long enough and you’ll slowly start to act like the characters portrayed on screen.

Second, the therapeutic culture pushes for unrestrained emotional expression as the highest form of authenticity. What naturally follows is that we become convinced that our emotions are the source of truth, and slowly start to believe that interiority and restraint are forms of harmful repression.

Finally, the disappearance of rites of passage into manhood has left us with a vacuum of formation in which men never learn how to approach life with a weighty, solemn spirit.

The cultural consequences of these influences are dire, and we are seeing them play out in real time: men no longer have any authority in their own households, fathers are not capable of correcting and being taken seriously, and Christian men cannot speak the truth with authority, as Christ did and instructed us.

It’s absolutely imperative that we become men of authority again, and that we learn to speak with conviction, so that we can communicate the Truth effectively and make other masculine men capable of doing the same. Recovering gravitas can be done through four concrete practices you can start doing right now:

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One of the main reasons why so many men seem to be losing the fight against lust is that they fail to identify the triggers that lead them to acting immorally. While some triggers are easy to identify (provocative content in social media, for example), others are much subtler, and thus sometimes completely unrecognizable unless you know beforehand how to spot them.

A few years ago, a very wise priest told me something that completely changed the way I understood the battle against lust.

Since it was a while back, I don’t remember what he said word for word, but the central concept was that lustful actions are very often consequences of pride.

He mentioned how it’s common for lust to creep in when you’re feeling high and mighty, maybe particularly proud for something you accomplished, because that’s when you most often let your guard down, begin trusting in your own power, and forget that it’s God who strengthens and protects you.

This is something that usually happens to those men who have made solid spiritual progress: they start to grow in confidence, and then, almost without warning, they find themselves falling for a temptation they thought they had largely defeated. And the fall seems completely random, but that’s precisely because the prideful trigger was carefully hidden and was therefore not recognized on time.

A Hidden Trigger

Like we mentioned earlier, those who struggle with lust usually learn to recognize its most obvious triggers: boredom, social media, certain TV shows or movies, stress, loneliness. And those are all real and worth keeping under control. But because they are obvious, they are also the easiest to eradicate.

Pride, on the other hand, is very subtle, very quiet, and thus, much more dangerous. The reason why pride is a trigger for lust is that when you have just succeeded at something or gained recognition or praise, it’s common to start believing that you have it all under control. You look back at your accomplishments (which aren’t really yours), and you start to believe that you are just great. That belief carries with it a subtler one that claims that you don’t really need God’s help. And as you can probably imagine, that’s the crack through which lust enters.

What pride does, in essence, is that it displaces God from the center. And when God is displaced from the center, everything becomes disordered: the lower appetites rush in to fill the space, you lower your guard, you become careless, and you forget that you’re too weak to be flirting with temptation. By letting yourself believe you are strong enough, you lose the very strength that was sustaining you. The moment you forget that God is the source, you lose the source.

The Solution?

1) Humility

The good news is that now that you know that pride serves as a hidden trigger for lust, you can be aware of it and seek to remain humble even when the world tries to make you believe in your own greatness. One thing I’d recommend is that you train yourself to react with a short prayer any time you start thinking prideful thoughts. Whenever you begin to contemplate your own successes or imagine all the praise you’ll receive or have received for a certain accomplishment or action, instantly shift your focus to praying the Jesus prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

The discipline of following every prideful thought with a prayer that reminds you that you’re a sinner saved by Grace is extremely powerful, not just to avoid thinking too highly of yourself, but also, as we’ve seen, to prevent pride from becoming a hidden trigger for lust.

Now, this doesn’t mean that you won’t ever fail again. You probably will. That’s the race we run, and we must persevere. But discovering this subtle trigger will undoubtedly help you be more aware and remain more vigilant against lust.

It’s also encouraging to remember that God is so good that He turns even your mistakes into grace. Even though He never wants you to sin, sometimes falling can become a blessing because it keeps you humble and aware that you cannot make any real progress without Him.

2) Accountability

Accountability works because it also fosters humility. It forces you to recognize your failures and mistakes to others (whether that be confessor, a spiritual director, or a fraternity of men), which directly combats pride by making it impossible for you to ignore all the flaws you have and all the ways in which you are fully dependent on God. You simply cannot pretend you “have it under control” when you persistently show up and admit to other men that you’ve failed again. This is why the sacrament of confession is so powerful.

The accountability relationship itself is what keeps pride from settling in, which in turn keeps the door closed that pride would otherwise open to lust. A common problem men have nowadays is that they don’t have likeminded men around them who can provide this structure of accountability. You should start with confession, sure, but sometimes you also need a group of other men who are fighting the same battle so you can face it in a fraternity, not alone and isolated.

There’s an amazing app called Relay which provides precisely that accountability structure. They are official partners of Ad Aeternum, so you can try it out for free and see if it helps you with the code AETERNUM here. Some of my closest friends have told me it has made a huge difference in helping them quit pornography after many other methods have failed, so I strongly recommend you try it out.

Conclusion

Understanding the connection between pride and lust gives you a tool to combat sexual immorality that most men never receive: it’s a line of defense that works even before lust appears. You can now recognize a “higher-level” trigger beyond the obvious ones, and thus prevent lust from arising even earlier.

Additionally, the awareness that you’ll build from now on, held consistently, will itself be a form of the humility that protects you.

Just remember to maintain God at the center, by being grateful for all the blessings He’s given you, by directing all praise for Him, and by admitting that everything you’ll ever accomplish is thanks to Him and His everlasting love for 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.

Also, if you liked this article, you’ll love my book.

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.

Effeminate is different from femininity —which is a virtue women should pursue—, but effeminacy does make a man less masculine, as it makes him softer, less perseverant, and incapable of leading properly.

What Causes Effeminacy?

“This effeminacy is caused in two ways. On one way, by custom: for where a man is accustomed to enjoy pleasures, it is more difficult for him to endure the lack of them. On another way, by natural disposition, because, to wit, his mind is less persevering through the frailty of his temperament. This is how women are compared to men, as the Philosopher says (Ethic. vii, 7): wherefore those who are passively sodomitical are said to be effeminate, being womanish themselves, as it were.”
— St. Thomas Aquinas

For the purposes of this article, we’ll focus on the first one, because that is the main cause of effeminacy in our postmodern world. It is true that some men, because of their temperament, will be more or less inclined towards acting effeminately, but that’s a matter for another article.

In this one, the goal is to expose the main attachments that the modern man has, that are considered generally “harmless”, and yet aren’t harmless at all, and provide strategies to fight against effeminacy effectively.

We know that effeminacy is an excessive attachment to comfort, which leads to spiritual softness and an incapability to do the hard things that a man must do. There are a lot of obvious sources of effeminacy: addictions to junk food, video games, social media, entertainment, pornography, and so on, but there are a few that aren’t so commonly spoken of and yet are very strong attachments that need to be removed from your life. For the modern man, from what I’ve seen, aside from the things already mentioned, there are 3 unspoken and distinct attachments that make him effeminate.

I anticipate that some readers will dislike what I’m about to explain, because these are things that most men are profoundly hooked to, so much so that they can’t even begin to consider removing them from their lives or seeing them as a source of effeminacy. I encourage you to read the whole article with an open mind, and ask yourself honestly if the things I’m about to describe could be things that are keeping you addicted to comfort or attached to the world and if getting rid of them could be a step forward in your journey towards sanctity.

I will explain what they are, and then provide both general and more specific strategies to combat them and remove effeminacy from your life.

So what exactly are these things that are making you effeminate?

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“Judge not, that you may not be judged”
— Matthew 7:1

A long time subscriber recently reached out to me and asked me if I could write an article on the concept of “judgment”, since he was both confused and concerned at the lack of clarity surrounding this term. I thought this was a great idea, because I’ve also seen a lot of people —both within and without the faith— misunderstanding what it means to “judge” someone.

You have probably also been faced with many who believe that the Christian command is to never “judge” anything, meaning that we shouldn’t make any moral judgments at all, because we are all sinners needing God’s grace. And while that is true, when Christ tells us not to judge, He doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t hold firm moral convictions (as is evident by the much more abundant examples of Him commanding us to live righteously and proclaim the Gospel), but rather saying that we should not take up a role that isn’t ours, as the final judges for someone’s fate or intentions.

This explains it best:

Matthew 7:1 is a passage that is used ad nauseam mostly by unbelievers or lukewarm Christians to try and guilt trip you into not correcting them or naming the sin they are committing. Ironically, it’s often those who despise religion who use this passage and this shallow understanding of one Gospel phrase as a sort of shield against any behavioral or moral critiques.

“Who are you to judge me? The Bible says ‘do not judge.’”

Yes, that is true, but the Bible also says about a million other things about judgment and correction, for example:

“Judge not according to the appearance, but judge just judgment.”
— John 7:24

“But if thy brother shall offend against thee, go, and rebuke him between thee and him alone. If he shall hear thee, thou shalt gain thy brother.”
— Matthew 18:15

It’s problematic enough that the mainstream understanding of Christianity is that it’s a philosophy that calls us to “just let everyone do whatever they want”, but it’s even worse when so many Christians also believe this to be the case. At the core, this stems from a fundamental error that equates “judgment” with “condemnation”, and love with tolerance.

When you believe that the Christian duty is all about “tolerating”, you will naturally be led astray.

Tolerance is Not a Christian Virtue

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput explains why this misunderstanding can in fact even lead to grave sin:

Tolerance comes from the Latin words tolerare , which means to bear or sustain, and tollere , which means to lift up. It implies bearing other people and their beliefs the way we bear a burden or a really nasty migraine headache. It’s a negative. And it’s not a Christian virtue.

As Catholics we have a duty to treat all people, regardless of their beliefs, with justice, charity, mercy, prudence, patience, and understanding. We’re not asked to “tolerate” them but to love them, which is a much more demanding task. Obviously, tolerance is an important democratic working principle. Most of the time, it’s a good and vital thing. But tolerating lies about the nature of the human person is a sin. Tolerating grave evil in a society is an equally grave evil. And using “tolerance” as an excuse for not living and witnessing Jesus Christ in our private lives and in our public actions is not an act of civility. It’s a form of cowardice.

People who take the question of human truth, freedom and meaning seriously will never remain silent about it. They can’t. They’ll always act on what they believe, even at the cost of their reputations and lives. That’s the way it should be. Religious faith is always personal, but it’s never private. It always has social consequences, or it isn’t real. […].1

The key point here is that we’re not called to merely tolerate others, but to love them. And love, understood as “willing the good of the other”2, often requires a clear moral judgment of those actions that are causing them harm. It demands fraternal correction, and it demands speaking the truth boldly.

Now, none of this negates the fact that we ought to look at ourselves first and foremost, because it is wrong to focus exclusively on other people’s sins while remaining oblivious to yours. But it is not wrong to, in humility, look at the self-destructive vices of someone else and lovingly calling them out on it.

Hate the Sin, not the Sinner

It’s key to understand what the Church tradition clarifies about passing judgment. Perhaps the clearest interpretation of Matthew 7 comes from St. Thomas Aquinas, who explains:

“First, therefore, he ordains that there be not rash judgment, and he says, do not judge, i.e., out of the bitterness of hatred; you have turned judgment into bitterness (Amos 6:13). Or in this way: do not judge as regards those things which are not entrusted to our judgment. Judgment is the Lord’s; he has charged us to judge about exterior things, but he has reserved the interior things for himself. Therefore do not judge about these things. Therefore do not judge before the time (1 Cor 4:5); the heart is perverse above all things, and unsearchable, who can know it? (Jer 17:9–10), for no one should judge about another that he is a bad man; for the doubtful things should be interpreted on the good side. Likewise, judgment should be fitting as regards the person of the one judging. Hence if you are in the same sin, or a greater, you should not judge; for wherein you judge another, you condemn yourself (Rom 2:1).”3

A few important points here:

1. We are called not to judge out of bitterness or hatred, but out of love, meaning that any moral judgments we pass must come from a place of wanting what’s best for someone else.

2. Most importantly, we are called not to judge those things not entrusted to our judgment, like the heart or the intentions of someone else, which we do not and cannot ever know.

3. Additionally, we are not to judge the person as a whole, and those things which are negative we should try to interpret on the good side, meaning that we are called to give others the benefit of the doubt.

4. Finally, we are not to judge those who are in the same sin as us, as that would be hypocritical. Humility, understood as the proper understanding of one’s current position, serves us here to know when we are and aren’t qualified to offer advice and correction regarding particular sins or behaviors.

It is fitting, however, to judge actions, because we have a clear moral standard to compare them against: we can know if an action is sinful and it’s not judgmental in the negative sense to call it as such.

It’s not wrong to tell someone who cheats on their wife that they are doing something wrong. It is wrong, however, to condemn the person as a whole, because even though we can recognize, name, and attempt to correct a specific behavior, only God knows the person’s wounds, story, struggles, and heart.

As long as the judgments we make pass Aquinas’s four conditions (doing it out of love, judging only those things entrusted to our judgment, not judging the person as a whole, and not taking it upon ourselves to judge behaviors that we ourselves engage in), it’s not wrong to offer clarity as to the morality of a particular action, ideology, or mindset.

Like most theological principles, this requires nuance. It is not as simple as refusing to make moral claims and practicing unrestricted tolerance of sinful behavior in yourself and others. It’s also not as simple as the pharisaical position of judging and condemning everyone out of pride, resentment, or to prove a point.

The Christian call is neither cowardly silence nor prideful condemnation but love expressed through truth, which is a much more demanding standard than either.

In this age of relativism and rampant immorality, we need more loving judgment, more fraternal correction, and more moral clarity.

That is also a Christian duty.

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.

Also, if you liked this article, you’ll love my book.

It’s a terrible tragedy —and an undeniable truth— that most men feel deeply lonely. Even when surrounded by kind, welcoming people, most men share a quiet and yet fundamental notion of being alone and unknown. It’s as if something inside of us always remained carefully hidden, regardless of how rich our social life might look like on the outside.

Too often, this feeling of solitude becomes so sustained that we start assuming that it’s just an inescapable condition of being a man in a fallen world. We start to believe and accept that we will always feel, on some level, alone and misunderstood. And while I’m not going to argue against the very real struggles that we men face, it’s important to understand that frequently, the specific sentiment of social isolation is made worse —and even, in some cases, caused— by sexual sin.

This is not, however, mainly an article about sexual sin (I’ll link a couple of those at the end of this article), it is an article about the specific effects that sexual sin has on a man’s capacity for authentic human community, which is a consequence that is rarely discussed. Most writings on chastity focus on the individual, but there is a great saint who chose to address something the individual usually fails to recognize: the social cost of sexual immorality.

Who Was Peter Damian?

Saint Peter Damian was an eleventh-century Benedictine monk who later became Cardinal Bishop of Ostia. On September 27, 1828, Pope Leo XII officially declared him a Doctor of the Church. One of his most important works is the Liber Gomorrhianus, which he wrote around 1049 AD and addressed directly to Pope Leo IX. This seemingly simple action actually required a lot of personal courage, because the text named and exposed specific forms of clerical sexual disorder at a time when doing so could be dangerous.

While the text is widely used in culture-war contexts to speak against homosexuality (both within and without the clergy), some of its most relevant anthropological arguments are largely ignored or unknown. However, the structural argument which Damian makes about what sexual sin does to the interior life of a believer and therefore to the possibility of genuine community and fraternity is, in my opinion, extremely powerful, and worth knowing.

How Sexual Sin Leads to Isolation

Sexual sin has a particularity that makes it different from all other sins: it is by nature uniquely self-enclosing among the passions. Other sins like anger, avarice or pride are often visible to others and are thus somewhat subjected to social control or approval. Sexual sin, in contrast, usually operates in secrecy. It requires concealment to survive, and that concealment over time creates within a man an entire interior region that is systematically hidden from everyone around him. This is not merely a secret that you possess and keep private, but a completely secret “self”, another you that is completely different to the you that your community, family, or friends know and love.

This vice […] defiles in secrecy and dishonors in public. She gnaws the conscience like worms, burns the flesh like a fire. She fears to be exposed, to come out in public, to be known by others.
— St. Peter Damian, Book of Gomorrah, Chapter XVII.

The consequence that naturally follows from this fragmentation of your identity is that you slowly start to lose the ability for authentic human community, because it requires an interior transparency that you now feel you can’t afford to have (because they would know the other you who is deeply attached to sexual sin).

The effects of sexual sin, as you can see, are terrifying, and reach much deeper than most people realize. Not only does it cause great harm socially, isolating you and filling you with shame, but it also destroys you internally:

This plague removes the foundation of faith, enervates the strength of hope, breaks the tie of charity, destroys justice, undermines fortitude, banishes temperance, and blunts the sharpness of prudence. And what more shall I say? Since indeed it expels every cornerstone of the virtues from the court of the human heart, it also, as if the bolts of the doors have been removed, introduces every barbarity of the vices.
— St. Peter Damian, Book of Gomorrah, Chapter XVII.

Damian is clear: sexual immorality expels the virtues from your heart and opens it up to every barbarity of the vices. Thus, if your faith has been undermined, your hope weakened, your charity broken, and your prudence blunted by sexual immorality, you don’t have just a private problem, but a structural one that leads to isolation and the feeling of being unknown. These are the social consequences of lust’s destruction of the interior life.

When a man is consumed by sexual immorality, he stops being capable of developing genuine relationships, because any authentic relationship requires the mutual knowledge of each other’s interior.

The goal of this article is not to make you despair, however. Quite the opposite. Damian’s Book of Gomorrah has a more positive, practical second half, in which he provides a step-by-step protocol to quit sexual immorality and thus begin to thrive not just interiorly, but socially too.

Read more

Earlier this year, I read The Life of Francis of Assisi to learn more about this great Saint, whose grave I had visited towards the end of last year. I realized that I didn’t know much about him, and I felt in my heart a calling to draw closer to him, perhaps precisely because St. Francis so clearly exemplifies the virtues that I lack the most.

It’s stated in the book that St. Francis made it a point to always give something to those who begged him for alms as he walked around 13th century Italy preaching the Gospel. Even though this seems like a simple enough practice, I felt directly called out by this. You see, I live in a somewhat dangerous city, and the cultural agreement we all seem to live under is that it’s always wise to completely ignore and turn away from those asking for alms on the street, lest you get mugged, robbed, or worse. So far, that’s how I had been living my life.

Ever since I learnt about St. Francis’s incredible generosity and commitment to serving the poor, I have been trying to change that mindset by saying yes to every single request for alms. This has proven to be both much easier and much harder than I would’ve thought: it’s easy because so far, I haven’t gotten mugged, but I have received looks of profound gratitude instead, by other children of God who have fallen into misfortune. It’s simultaneously hard, however, because my instinct whenever someone stops me or talks to me on the street is still to turn away from them and continue on my way so it takes a moment of grace to recognize that I’m supposed to help them.

This practice has been tremendously fruitful in my life. Being more aware of my duty to give keeps me humble and detached, helps me remember how grateful I should be, and it makes me aware of the fact that my possessions are not my own, but God’s, entrusted to me to manage virtuously. I highly recommend you do the same, even when you are short on cash. Whenever I don’t have any cash on hand, I just go into a nearby store and buy some fruit or a bag of peanuts and a bottle of water to give to whoever is asking for alms. There is always something we can give, and most of the time whatever we can give is more than enough.

This practice has also taught me something much more important, which is the main point that I want to communicate in this article: your life is your apostolate, and the proper way to spread the Gospel is by being a living embodiment of it.

Many men of faith often end up unwillingly behaving as though their faith was something they can turn on and off, like a light switch: it’s on every Sunday or when you consciously sit down to pray. It’s off at work. It’s on when you’re praying the rosary or in adoration, it’s off when you are running errands or having coffee with an old friend.

The problem with this view is that it misunderstands the role that our faith should play in our lives, viewing it as a mere complement or “segment” of your life, instead of as the fuel that should drive your every action.

Total Integrity

We should strive to live with total integrity, in a way in which our faith permeates and guides every single little detail of our lives. This doesn’t mean that you should focus on performing visible acts of piety constantly or seek to be in a state of deep prayer 24/7, but simply put, it’s a life in which faith operates as the organizing principle beneath every action, whether or not the action looks explicitly religious from the outside.

Thus it is evident to everyone, that all the faithful of Christ of whatever rank or status, are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity.
—Lumen Gentium, 40

Total integrity means that you are honest in your business dealings out of fearful love of God, or that you stay patient with your children after a long stressful day.

Every time you invite God into the ordinary moments of your life, and every time you consciously seek to act as Jesus would, you are living with total integrity. It’s difficult to detach from the religiosity that receives praise because it’s explicit and public, but the hidden actions that no one but God will see are the ones that truly allow the Lord to purify and sanctify you. There are thousands of opportunities to be a testimony of God’s love, in the beggar on the street, in the annoying coworker, in the treacherous friend, in the dishonest business deal that promises quick riches. All of these are crossroads at which the lukewarm will push out their faith so they can follow the ways of the world, whereas the genuinely faithful will stay true to the motions of the Holy Spirit in their hearts and let their faith make the choice for them.

Your faith is not supposed to sit quietly in a separate compartment, waiting for Sunday, but should instead go before you into every room you enter from the moment you wake up until the moment you go to sleep.

Of course this is not easy. You could argue that it’s the ultimate goal of our life here on earth: to become so Christlike that we reflect His Gospel in every word, thought and deed. But that’s precisely the point. Unless we’re totally committed to aiming at sanctity, our faith will be a just a compartment that we open at Mass or when we pray. We will become fragmented men, wearing different masks and relegating what should be our guiding light to a secondary role that does it no justice.

Total integrity requires you to be radical in the best way possible, to truly make it your life’s mission to become a saint, to refuse the temptations that the world offers, to stop ordering your life around the opinion of others, to understand that your possessions are not really yours, and to live with a rebellious spirit that rejects the promises of the world and aims instead for the highest possible goal: holiness.

St. Francis did not compartmentalize because for him there was nothing left outside of God. He had given everything so completely that there was no domain of his life that belonged to himself rather than to Christ. That is the endpoint of the integrated life, and most of us are nowhere near it. But the direction is what matters most. Simply trying to live with total integrity means that you are already living your mission.

So, begin by saying yes to the beggar on the street. If you don’t have cash, take two minutes and buy something for him. Hand it to him and pray for him, letting him know that God loves him and cares for him. Everything we have is God’s, and I like to think that He’s pleased every time we use what He’s blessed us with to bless the other souls we encounter, especially those who are less fortunate.

When you do that, your life becomes already the proclamation of the good news of Christ. The world will read it whether you intend it to be read or not.

Ad Maiora Nati Sumus,

Juan

Thank you for reading!

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