in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. I often get asked by young men, Father, what do I need to do to make progress, to keep moving forward, and to kind of grow exponentially and to maximize the time of growth, especially in your 20s as you're kind of rolling into adulthood, potentially you're not married, or maybe married, have one child, or whatnot. So, the number one thing to keep in mind is we are made in the image of God. This means that we have creativity, we have minds, we have a soul, we have a soul that's big enough to actually contain God within it, which is a whole another kind of metaphysical quandary that we could dive into at some point. But the main thing is that we are creative. We are made in His image. What does this look like practically? When you see one of my sons, you would say, That looks like a little Father Moses. Like people see my kids at church, and they're like, Oh, I know who your dad is. Okay, but here's the

key the question is, will you grow into the likeness. See, we start with image, and we grow into likeness. If my son grows up and makes a bunch of bad decisions, and God forbid, you know, turns away from the faith and screws up his life, everyone will say, Hey, he's in my image, he looks like his father. But he'll say, He isn't in his likeness, he's not like his father. See, when we don't have God, we don't have real manhood because all of real, genuine, authentic masculinity and manhood is based on the person of God. This is why there was a Scott Galloway character who was talking recently in a TED Talk, and he said that he was having such a hard time defining exactly what it is that makes someone a man and what is masculinity. And the reason for that is because he doesn't have Jesus Christ, right? He doesn't understand that Christ is the image of the Eternal Father. He is co-eternal with the father, but when we see Christ, he says, You have seen the

father, you have seen, uh, in a sense, all three persons of the Godhead, right? This is very important because real masculinity means that you are in touch with God, not like an idea, but like a person. And I'll give you an example for this. If you watched my videos, you know who I am, you know my backstory, you know, you know I've been vulnerable in my videos, you know about me. The question is, if we meet each other on the street, will you know me? And the question is, or the answer is, you don't really know me. You know about me, but you don't know me personally. This is the problem with how many people approach the Scriptures and the spiritual life, is they start knowing about God, but they don't know Him. They have stalker syndrome. They know all the facts, but they don't know the person. So, the number one tip, if I was to give anyone how to increase masculinity, what does that look like? It's an easy one: silence. Silence is the destroyer of all boys. When you are forced to sit by

yourself in silence and pray to God. Not only are you facing the abyss of whether or not God is actually there and hears your prayer, but you're also facing the existential reality of who you are as a man or lack thereof. And there's nothing to hide it. If you were to ask me what is the kind of most frightful, terrible, you know, reality, I would say it's silence. Because silence reveals everything about a person's personality, insecurities, fears, anxieties. All of that is brought to light in silence. In fact, they have that room. I don't know where it's at. I believe it's at a college campus. And it's considered the most silent room in the world. It has hyper levels of noise dampening. And they say that if you stay in this room, you can actually hear like your heartbeat. And they say that you can hear the blood going through your veins like pumping out from your heart because it's so silent. They make some absurd comment like no one has lasted 24 hours.

in this room, but that just highlights the fact that it's not doing something noisy and loud and boisterous and difficult. It's about being with ourselves. When we're with ourselves in this reality, we're also with God because God is everywhere present. And so, if somebody asked me what is the most manly thing to do in the entire world, I would say it's prayer. It's silence, hands down. Nothing is more difficult, nothing is harder, more challenging. Try it. Try to lay out even 30 minutes a day for silence, of just silently saying the Jesus prayer, Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, and just being silent for 30 minutes a day. You will never feel like you've run into such a rock wall of difficulty, but in that, you are actually exposed to God. That's the difference. When you're sitting in silence, there's nowhere to go, and either God is there or he's not there. Either you connect with him or you don't, but you're fighting to make that

connection that is by far my ultimate recommendation for furthering your spiritual life. What's another one? Another one is finding a spiritual father. It's like you're down here walking through life, and your spiritual father is here. You're down here walking through life, and life is like a labyrinth, right? But it's a finite amount of decisions and choices that are happening, especially kind of in your 20s and into your early 30s. You've got issues with trying to find a spouse, trying to find a career, trying to make enough money, you know, these sort of things. And so you're weaving your way through a labyrinth down here of decision-making, and you're constantly running into tees where you got to decide if you're going to go right or go left. What's what am I going to do for my career? What am I going to do? I'm not a girl. Should I pursue this and take it farther, or should I not? When you have a spiritual father up here, it's like a

cheat code. It's a cheat code for life because he literally looks out over all of what's going on in your life, and he has this amazing view where he can see things in an unconstructed way. He's able to really guide and shape you because he knows who you are, he knows where you're trying to go, and what you're trying to do, and he's able to see all the pitfalls, especially of a person's character when he's looking at them and saying, Hey, don't do this because it doesn't coincide with this aspect of yourself. Or especially when you're in your 20s as a man, you have kind of hyper-impulsivity issues. You may go, Hey, you know what? I'm ready to leave my secure job, and I'm going to go to Alaska, and I'm going to go fishing, and this is something I've always wanted to do. And you're two years out of college and $40,000 in debt, and your spiritual father's like, Don't do that. It

doesn't make any sense. You're derailing the next five years of your life for something that you think is temporarily fun and exciting. So another easy one is find a spiritual father. We could get into all the criteria for a spiritual father, but I'll tell you this in essence, which is your spiritual father has to be somebody you want to emulate, and they have to be somebody you want to become like. This doesn't mean that you'll ever take on their personality. If you're an introvert and your spiritual father is an extrovert, you're not going to become an extrovert, right? His guidance is going to not lead you out of your personality. What I mean is when you see your spiritual father and the way that he conducts himself in public, the way that he conducts himself with his family, his relationship with his wife, his relationship with his children, that's his character. And the word for character is actually chiseled into a tablet, is basically what it means. A character, your character is chiseled into you, and you

take it everywhere you go. Your spiritual father is seeking to endow you with the same character that he has. So, if there are things about him that you're like, Ah, I can't go there. I'm not seeing eye to eye. He's got these views and we don't really line up, you got to find a spiritual father who you can line up with, and the two of you can be in harmony because he's going to take you where he's going. That's why he's up here, you know, leading the way. He's leading you through the labyrinth to develop into the type of man that he is. Actually, like, that's his guidance. So, the number one thing is find a spiritual father that you love, that you respect, that you love and respect his way of life, and that you want to emulate the things that he has because that's where he's going to lead you. If he's a lazy, slothful, unproductive person, forgive me, does happen, he's not going to teach you how

to be hyper-productive and competent in a bunch of areas of life if he's never worked a corporate job, if he's never made any real money, then you're going to need to find mentors who can help and shape you in that way because he may not have all the answers for every aspect of your life in terms of those things. The last one, and this is a biggie, this is a biggie, acceptance. Somebody said acceptance is the key to all of my problems today, but really when you're in your younger years, it's acceptance of self. This does not mean that you accept your bad behavior, your character flaws, your faults, your sin. That's not what we're talking about. What I've noticed, especially in young men, is that, and myself included when I was in my 20s, is that we often want to be someone different. So if somebody is quiet and reserved, they go, you know what, I wish I was more of an extrovert. I wish I was more loud and boisterous and had a bigger personality. Then you get somebody

who's like loud and boisterous. They're like, Oh, I just wish I could be silent. I wish I could be an introvert. Or you've got somebody who's like geared towards business or finance or something, and they go, I wish I was more of an artist. I wish I knew how to use those talents. Your personality is so hardwired into you, and I can tell you this as a dad of five sons, which is so much of personality is developed in the first year or two. I mean, you can go back and look at photographs of your kids when they're 2, 3 years old, and the things that they're doing, and the way that they're behaving and acting, and all these different things, and then 6, 7, 8 years later, like it's the same personality. Personality is not a defect. Your personality is actually gifted to you by God. It's the unique makeup of how you are and how you see the world. It doesn't mean that it isn't flawed, and that's why we need character, but the

core aspect of who you are as a person. The things that you like to do, the things that energize and excite you, um, they can be harnessed for good or for evil, and you've got to come to accept that your personality is very much set. I can't remember who said, I think it was St. Pius, and he said something like, There's no cure for personality. You know, my whole life, people were always telling me, like, You're too intense, you're too intense, and it was always the too intense part, too intense part for me. It was just who I am. I, that is a hard wiring within me. What's ironic was that I, you know, I read the lives of the saints, and all the saints are too intense, but they harnessed all that intensity for good. And so, it wasn't the intensity and my desire to get after life and to crush things and to succeed and my competition and my drive and all that. That wasn't the issue. The issue was that it was so

often directed towards negative things, and so when you have a character quality like intensity, it's great, it's a gift from God, but it has to be utilized in the right way. And this is why, especially in your younger years, you've got to learn to accept who you are with all your strengths and the corresponding weaknesses. All of your strengths are also your weaknesses; that's the definition of how a human being works. If you look at anybody else and you say, Hey, this person has a strength, they're very go with the flow, they're able to accept things, they're very laid-back, well, you know, they're going to be a corresponding weakness where, you know, they're not on time, they're not good with time management, you know, um, they don't pay attention to tracking, uh, their spending and other habits that are corresponding to that same strength. So you've got to understand, Hey, my personality has strengths and weaknesses. I have a core personality that's given to me by God, and I've got to find a way to manifest and use that.

personality for God's glory and direct it to good things and cultivate my character because I am who I am, and that acceptance, I believe, is a superpower. Because in a world where everybody wants to change themselves, and people don't like themselves, and people want to be somebody different, if you can accept yourself and truly be at peace with who you are and make peace with yourself, as St. Isaac the Syrian said, make peace with yourself and Heaven and Earth will make peace with you. What does that mean? It means when you accept who you are with all your strengths, your weaknesses, your foibles, your insecurities, your anxieties, everything that's good and the bad and everything in between, you bring a certain peace and harmony to life because you're not trying to be anybody else; you're just trying to be yourself. I pray that these tips help you to fully embrace your masculinity, to develop your masculine character, and to become the man that you could be. God bless you.

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