Ave Maria Radio presents Christ is the answer with Father John Ricardo.

He's a priest of the archdiocese of Detroit and is currently the executive director of a nonprofit

organization called Acts 29, which exists to work with pastors on their teams to transform their

parish culture and reclaim the church's missionary identity.

He was ordained in 1996.

I work out to Sports Center.

There's been a commercial that's been on Sports Center for a year plus now of all these former athletes who have gained an awful lot of weight.

So they talk about how this new diet plan that they're on now has helped them lose, you know, 75 pounds

or 50 pounds or 45 pounds. And here's, you know, Dan Marino out there and his pants are out to

here and now they're in here. Here's a picture of somebody else and here's him on a golf course

and his pants are out to here and now they're into here. And he's telling you, you know,

you got to try this because you can try this. You You get to lose 35 pounds. You're going to be in great shape. And I know lots of people who do this. They try this diet or that diet. They're on the Atkins diet. They're on the chocolate diet. They're on whatever diet they can find to try to get their body in shape. And they often have the before picture and the after picture. This is what I used to look like and life was miserable. My life was going nowhere. Now I've lost 45 pounds, and look at me. I look great. Life is fantastic. Well, that's not true. It's important to be in shape. That's why I work out every day. But once you get in shape, then what? So the image that I had today was something like a before or after, before was my life used to be a mess.

My desires were haywire.

I lived life. image that I had today was something like a before or after. The before was my life used to be a mess.

My desires were haywire. I lived life kind of out of a knee-jerk reaction. Temptation came and I remember my first pastor, someone asked him, what the best thing to do to fight temptation? He says,

give in and then just repent. I thought, wow, I kind of like that, actually.

I don't know how theologically sound that is, but that appeals to me.

He's a wise man, you know?

He's 80-some years old now.

Most of us lived life for many years like that, and some of us, most of us still live life that way.

It might be wrestling temptations to eat, might be wrestling temptations to gamble,

might be wrestling temptations to pornography, might be wrestling temptations to anger,

...