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Welcome to Catholic Answers live. If you've been with us for the last hour, you've been enjoying open forum with Joe Heschmeier.

We are here for another hour of open forum with Joe Heschmeier.

I am David Matheson, sitting in this afternoon for Psy Kellett, a regular host. He will be back tomorrow after a few days of well-deserved vacation.

Of course, if you are just joining us, if you're not as familiar with Joe Heschmeier, who is an apologist here at Catholic Anterstaff Apologist.

Joe, of course, is the author of the early church was the Catholic Church, and Pope Peter has a forthcoming book on the Eucharist that we're all very excited about.

And he is the host of the Shameless Popory Podcast, which right now is getting about 15,000 downloads a month. It's only six months old, and it is really picking up a lot of popularity.

So if you haven't subscribed to the Shameless Popory Podcast with Joe Heschmeier, you can go to ShamelessJo.com, ShamelessJo.com, or search for it on your favorite podcast app, Spotify, Apple Music, etc.

It is on all of those different platforms. Check it out. Shameless Popory is the name of that podcast.

Joe, you ready to go back to the phones for our open forum second hour?

Let's do it.

Okay, let's go to Taylor in Florida. Taylor is on YouTube. Go ahead, Taylor, your question for Joe.

Yeah, so my question is regarding justification, and it has a couple different parts.

So the first question that I have is, as Catholics, am I correct in saying that we believe in justification as an ongoing process in which we are initially justified apart from any works of our own.

But then from that point on, we are required to cooperate with that grace, receive an initial justification through baptism in order to stay in that state of grace.

Yeah, so if you want to understand it this way, when your life begins, you had nothing to do with that, right?

You don't cause your own conception. You don't cause your own birth. There's a whole process there where you are simply a passive recipient.

But once you are conceived, and once you are born, the maintenance of that life means this.

There are certain things that you have to do. If you do them well, you'll actually grow. That growth is like sanctification.

If you don't do them, and you consistently don't do them, you won't grow and may eventually die. That's the loss of justification.

So you're either going upwards or you stagnate, and if you stagnate, you can quickly become lukewarm and die.

So you don't cause your own life, but you're required to maintain it, right? Like you eat, you drink, you sleep, you breathe air, you do all of these things.

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