Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to crypto. So I'm going to talk about a simpler variant of UC security for the case of standard multi-party computation joint work with a rank on it in a soft coin. Probably all of you know in the setting of security computation, we have a set of parties with private inputs who wish to compute some joint function of their inputs while preserving certain security properties like privacy, correctness, independence of inputs and more and these have to be guaranteed even if some of the parties are corrupted and attack the protocol in some way. And the reason why this topic has had so much study over the last 25 years or so and is so central to cryptography is because it can model any cryptographic task or I say almost any cryptographic task. So if you prove feasibility or infeasibility or we construct general protocols and they have very very broad applicability and that's really what's made secure computation so central to the theory and and recently the practice of cryptography. We want to actually define security. We don't define it by looking at privacy, correctness and a list of different properties. But we try and think of what's the best we could actually hope for. The best that we could hope for is if there was just one person we could all trust. If there was just one person we could all trust, an incorruptible trusted party and we had magic ideal channels between each party and that trusted party then everyone could just send their inputs to the trusted party, could compute the function and return the output. And this would give us all of the properties and everything that we wanted. The problem is this is an ideal world so we don't really have such a trusted party but this is essentially what we want to emulate. And note that in this ideal world the inversory really can't do anything but just choose its input. So really there's nothing you can do to attack the protocol and everything is as we would want. In order to define security what we do is we compare between an execution of a real protocol and this ideal world and we say that very informally of course that a real world protocol is secure if it behaves essentially like this ideal execution or stated differently secure computation protocols emulate an incorruptible trusted party in a world without any trust. And so we can look at these secure protocols really as ideal boxes that are computed by trusted parties and then we can consider the world in that way and that makes things very clear and understandable. In particular we know exactly what security guarantees we're getting because these ideal functionalities are supposed to be very simple and very easy to understand. We'll see a bit later on that that's not always the case but at least that's what's supposed to be and when we have a very very clear and simple ideal functionality we know exactly what we're gaining and what the security guarantees are. A very very important property of security is that of sequential composition or modular sequential composition and this goes back to the earlier work and in particular 2000 and even earlier we consider a hybrid model and hybrid model the parties communicate with each other as usual sending messages but they're also allowed to speak to an incorruptible trusted party who will compute some sub-functionalities for them. So I may be constructing some large protocol and I may need to use commitments, zero knowledge of these transfer other primitives and I use a trusted party to help me compute those and then I build my protocol inside this hybrid model where I have both a trusted party and both regular communication. And then I prove security of my larger protocol application with these ideal calls inside to this trusted party. It actually facilitates a much easier analysis of the security of the protocol and I derive of course in the end a real protocol by replacing those ideal calls with actual secure protocols that compute those sub-functionalities. So I'll put some secure oblivious transfer some zero knowledge protocol etc etc and the composition guarantee is that the real protocol behave like the hybrid one. So and that's something which is given to me automatically as soon as these sub-function, soon these sub-protocols are proven secure they behave like ideal calls and now we can analyze the protocol in this much simpler way. And there are two really big advantages here. One is a simplified protocol design analysis which is very important. It's very hard to prove security properly so we know how to simplify that is very important. But also it's a very basic security guarantee. We want to make sure that we can run the protocol many times because if you can only run the protocol once and if as soon as you run it twice the security may break it's not going to be very useful. So this guarantees security even when I run many many times. The problem is it also has a huge limitation. The security is only preserved when the protocols are run sequentially. But in the real world protocols are run concurrently many protocols run at the same time different protocols designed by different people in different places around the world and the standard definition of security does not cover that case. And that's really where universal composability comes in and this new definition not new anymore but in 2001 it was new says that if you prove security according to this definition then security is guaranteed even when arbitrary protocols are run concurrently with your secure protocol. And so this idea that a secure protocol behaves like an ideal box like a call to a trusted party holds even in a very adversarial world with arbitrary secure and insecure protocols running together with your secure protocol. And the primary definitional difference between universal composability and the standard standalone definitions is the addition of an interactive environment entity. And this environment is essentially like an interactive distinguisher. It chooses the inputs for the honest parties and writes to their input type. It reads their outputs but also interacts online with the adversary. And the environment actually essentially captures the rest of what's happening in the world. All of these other possible protocols are running alongside a secure protocol are essentially captured by this environment and of course that's just the intuition. The formal proof of security composition tells you that if you prove security of your protocol with this environment involved then you're fine to run your protocol in any sort of setting. So that's really what the most fundamental contribution of universal composability is. This is the addition of this environment to the world. The problem is that things start to get complicated. And one of the reasons they start to get complicated is because over the years we've considered many, many types of or many different models for secure computation. We can talk about many different types of adversaries. Is adversaries semi honest or malicious? Does it are the corrupted fixed ahead of time? So is it static corruptions or are they adaptively chosen throughout the computation? Maybe they're proactive so they can be corrupted for part of the execution and afterwards the corruption goes away. Do we want fairness or not in our definition of security or guaranteed output delivery? Do we have other things in the world like common reference strings and random oracles? Is our network asynchronous or asynchronous to have authenticated or unauthenticated channels? Maybe do the parties have clocks they can use? Are we modeling only interactive protocols where parties interact with each other or maybe also local computation like an encryption and signatures and sort of random functions? And we start to look at this very, very complex world with many, many different options. And the big problem is that we have this fantastic composition theorem which tells us that if you prove your protocol secure, then everything will be fine. But that holds for whatever model is considered in the definition. So if I have a definition which holds for a specific model, then I'm in trouble when I want to go to a different model. I no longer have a composition there. So one of the things that the Universal Composability Framework does is it captures all of these models in one and much more. It's a very, very general framework and you can essentially capture, I don't know if you can capture almost any model that you can think of. And so with this composition theorem it's already proven for all the possible models that we can possibly want to study, which is fantastic. We don't need a different proof of composition for every model because as long as you can fit into the UC framework you already covered, also something additional is that what happens if I'm running a protocol in a synchronous network together with a protocol in a synchronous network? Is it okay for them to run together? If I have different composition theorems, I'm not sure, but once it's all together in a single composition theorem, then we can run protocols that are designed and actually even executed in different models. We can run them together and security will still be guaranteed. And that's given to us by the generality of the UC framework. We can also use modular analysis even for local computation like encryption signatures and pseudo random function. We don't have to do direct reductions to those primitives, but we can actually also look at them as ideal boxes, again facilitating a simpler proof of security. So that's the great generality, but with generality comes complexity. It doesn't come for free and it comes at quite a price. In order to model something like a pseudo random function or encryption, we're getting into trouble. The things that we normally take for granted as being simple are actually no longer simple at all. And one is just polynomial time. So machine is polynomial time. If it's a single polynomial that bounds, upper bounds, it's running time. But if you look at the definition of pseudo random function, for example, the adversary gets to query the oracle to ask for as many, to ask for the value of the pseudo random function on any number of points that it chooses. When you put this inside the UC framework, it's actually the honest parties who are computing the pseudo random function for the adversary. But the order of quantifies is that first you fix the honest parties, they're in the protocol, and then you quantify over every adversary. And that means there is no longer any polynomial upper bound on any of the honest parties because their running time depends on the adversary. So it's not polynomial time anymore. So you have to actually change the notion of polynomial time. Also, if I'm doing a local computation like encryption, it's clear that the adversary cannot schedule the delivery of a message between me and the ideal functionality because there is no external ideal functionality in reality. In reality, I'm just doing a local computation. In fact, the adversary can't even see that I'm doing a computation. So if we think about communication between me and the ideal functionality, something external, as we would in the classic standalone definition, and also in the classic way we think of interactive computation, you could no longer capture things like signatures and encryption. There's also this notion of generating or dynamically generating parties, and then you have other funny things that can happen, like let's consider every party running in linear time. And all that it does is generate another party that runs in linear time because you have to be able to dynamically, in the UC framework, you can dynamically generate parties. So now we can have an infinite execution where every party just generates another party and stops. So each party is linear time, but the overall execution is infinite, and this obviously is not what we want.  You also want to model partial corruptions, and I mentioned this sometimes you do communicate external ideal functionality, sometimes you don't, and this is actually what you get. Now, I just want a knife and a fork, but this is what I have. So I'm lying to him and I said I want a knife and a fork because doing secure computation even in a standalone world is not simple. It's much more than this. It has a plier and a screwdriver and a magnifying glass, but this is almost impossible to use. And essentially what's happened to the UC framework in order to capture that generality and enable you to get all of the benefits that I talked about, you ended up getting this. And I'm not criticizing the UC framework for it. This is the byproduct of getting all that generality, and we saw the generality has its benefits. But but now let's talk about usability as users of the UC framework, we're sort of in trouble. It's really overwhelming. And you know, we're used to it, I'm used to it. And I've been working in this for many years. And I find it overwhelming. And someone new to the field wants to use universal composability, looks at it and says, you know what, maybe I'll stay with just the standalone world. It's more, it's easy to work with. And that's actually not what we want. We want people to be able to come along and improve security comfortably in in in this world with with concurrent scheduling and the more adversarial realistic world that there is. So there's been a lot of work over the last 15 years refining the universal composability framework, different notions of polynomial time and how to formula how to formalize different different things in order to improve them. But in this work, we take a completely different approach. We don't want to come up with a different definition of polynomial time. We want to say, you know what, I want to, I want to work on the standard sort of interactive protocol setting. I don't want to model pseudo random functions and encryption. I don't want to model all these different types of strange settings that are not the standard ones. I just want to do a standard, I don't know, secure AES computation or secure online poker. I don't want this very complex setting. Can I can I get a simpler definition by looking at a more restricted restricted goal? And actually the vast majority of papers on that that use universal composability or in general see competition, especially when we talk about papers looking at efficient constructions of protocols have actually a very, very use almost all use this specific setting that have authenticated asynchronous channels, asynchronous because the adversary is in charge of the scheduling. There's a fixed number of participating parties, the number of parties in the protocol doesn't depend on the security parameter or depend on the input. We know that we're playing poker with five people. We're playing poker with five people. We know we're doing a secure AES between two parties and securities between two parties and that's it. And we don't look at fairness. And this is the model that we all used to. We don't need the full generative you see. We need a much, much we need a very, very restricted setting of it. And that's what this simpler variant of you see is giving you models only a subset of what you want of the possible settings. So it's only multi-party computation with a fixed number of parties with authenticated channels and there's no fairness. And the main design principle behind the definition was to come up with something which would be as close to the standalone definitions as possible. So if you studied the standalone definitions in advanced crypto course, the extra-tept universal conversability is there. It's not trivial. There is this additional online adversarial environment, but that's almost all you have to learn in addition. So the main properties are it's a fixed communication pattern. There aren't the way the parties communicate with each other is the same in both, in all of the models, the real hybrid and ideal models. Everything goes through a router and the adversary schedules the delivery of messages from that router. That's whether you're talking between honest parties, between the functionality. It all goes by the same communication pattern. It's a very simple notion of polynomial time. Parties are simply polynomial in the security parameter plus the length of all the inputs they get from the environment. That's it. Standard notion of polynomial time. And the order of activations of who goes when is very, very simple. It's adversary party, adversary party, adversary party. There's no complicated, no additional possibilities of parties activating each other back to the environment, back to the adversary. It's a very, very fixed set of steps. So it's easy to follow and easy to remember and easy to analyze. The case analysis that happens in a proof of security is much, much simpler because everything happens in a very, very fixed and specific way, much closer to what happens in the standalone setting. So one thing you may be thinking is, okay, nice. You gave us now another definition. We had UC. There's juicy. There's GUC. There's GNU. You see there's, and now you're giving us, and there's also a whole lot of other types of definitions. You give us another definition. That's exactly what's going on here, right? There are 14 definitions. We need a new one now to combine them all. Now we have 15 definitions. So no, that's actually exactly what we're not doing. And if this is the most important thing I'm going to say now in the entire talk is we do not want a new definition. There are actually simpler versions of UC which are floating out there. We are not this, that's not what we're doing. We're not trying to come up with another definition which is different to the UC. Rather what we've proven, and this is the most important part of the paper, what we've proven is if you work in this simpler variant of UC and you prove security there, then you get full UC security for free. So actually we're looking at a subset, at a restricted case of standard multi-party computation tasks. And if you prove security calling to SUC, then your protocol is automatically secure also in the full UC model. And this is nice because now you can work in this simpler variant and get full UC into operability. So if you're running together now with protocols that are in these other more complex models that we're not considering, security is still guaranteed because we have this equivalence for these protocols. I just want to mention there is some transformation and the functionality that you have to make because of the generality of the UC. But the protocol is still secure in the sense that you would expect it to be exactly as you would expect. And you only work in this much, much simpler variant. You automatically got the full UC security. The good thing is you can also write a paper and say UC security. I have to say in your title this is SUC secure. In fact the fact that you're using SUC can appear just in the first line of your proof of security.  That's it. So now you can work simply without all of the hassles, without all the complexities, but you're still getting the full guarantees that you want and you're not working in some other definition, which is good because UC has become the gold standard. Typically if we want to look at proof of security end of the concurrent world, we want UC security. So you can use this definition, you still have UC security. It's not SUC security. It's UC security and that's really the most important contribution of this paper. Simple, but the same. So I want to just with the time that I have left, I want to demonstrate why it's simpler to work in the in the SUC framework. And this is actually the most important reason it really has to do with polynomial time and the way it's modeled in the UC framework, but that's in order to explain that I have to go into many, many details about how the UC framework is defined and I'd rather not do that. I assume that many of you would rather I don't do that either. So I mentioned earlier on the one of the advantages of this ideal real model paradigm is that ideal functionality is simple. We can look at them and know exactly what we're getting. So this is the way we define a secure commitment in an ideal world. There's an ideal functionality FCOM. The party committing party sends a commitment message to the ideal functionality. The ideal functionality records that message and sends a receipt to the receiver. The receipt just says, here's an identifier. And you should know that this value has been recorded, but I don't tell you anything about the value. And then when the committer sends an open message with that identifier, the trusted party retrieves the original value from storage and sends it on. So this binding is clear because the value was stored by the ideal functionality. And hiding is information theoretic in this ideal world because the receiver learned nothing about this receipt until the opening happened. So this is very, very simple. It's very easy to analyze protocols, the security protocols given in a hybrid model with this commitment functionality. Everything is very, very nice and we're all happy. But if you look at full UC commitments, then you suddenly see all these other complexities that are more difficult. So firstly, when you send this commitment message, it's not sent to the functionality. Rather, actually it is sent to the functionality, but the functionality doesn't process it. It generates something called a public delayed output. A public late output is a way of saying that it gives this message to the adversary to decide when it will be delivered. So in the simple UC variant, you're interacting externally. So you send the message to a router and the adversary decides when to deliver it. So this is built in. And that's actually the way things always happen in a world where the adversary schedules messages. But because the UC framework has to model local computation, it's not automatic that the adversary can schedule. So you have to explicitly tell the commitment functionality to allow scheduling. And likewise, with the opening, but when you get to the third line, it becomes even stranger because now for some reason the functionality is processing commitment, corruption messages. But what does corruption have to do with the functionality? Well, again, this has to do with the generality of the UC framework. And it's already very far from what we used to in the standalone model. And the previous one, the previous commitment is really what we'd expect and what we'd like. And essentially that's what you're getting because again, it's equivalent when we look at the full UC framework, but you need to only work with this simpler, more concise definition. So simple UC versus UC, polynomial time is simple in UC. It's simple in simple UC. It's very complex in the full framework. There are funny things happening like you have to pad the input length and the functionality. Definition can actually depend on how you implement the protocol because of the way polynomial time is defined, which makes things very complex. Corruption is simple in SUC. It's exactly like in the standalone model. The auto-activation is fixed. It's really sort of the way that people work anyway. And I'll talk about that a little bit in the last slide. It helps a lot both with the fighting protocols, but also with the proof proving security because things are as we would expect. So in summary, we introduce a fast, simpler version of the first possibility. We call it SUC or simpler UC. It adds an environment like it has to and formalizes a multi-execution polynomial time, but in a natural way. It has a simple series of activations communication pattern and it's less difficult to work with, both for seasoned researchers who have been in this computation for 15 years and also for people who want to get into the field and want to prove security concurrency but are overwhelmed by all the possibilities given to them. Very importantly, we prove equivalence. We prove that for the subset of protocols that can be modeled in the SUC framework, it's fully equivalent to the full UC. And so this gives the properties that I mentioned beforehand. Now if you look around at papers written in the proof security in UC, almost no one or no one, actually we didn't sit in finding any paper which gives a complete full proof of UC security because it's just too complicated. So our work in some sense justifies this, but not justifies this by saying it's okay to hand wave, but justifies it in saying that, yes, you can work in a simpler model, as in the way that you think in the conceptual way, but you can also do it rigorously. Now you don't have to do that and be hand waving what your proof can now be a full rigorous proof of security. And you can get it in a simpler model by just saying that refer to the proof of the proof equivalence and the SUC paper and you can continue working in a way that you want to work and come back and work in the UC world. Thank you very much.


California has always been the pace-setter in terms of bringing the people in to the governance process. To me, the IMIT initiative process is confusing because you have a lot of jargon that's used. You have a lot of special interest groups that get involved that hide behind different words for who they actually are. The proposals are always too confusing for any regular registered voter to understand. And they probably make it that way to misguide people to sign these things to get on the ballot. After you get home and read the whole thing, the whole pamphlet, you realize, man, did I vote for that? Did I vote for that, you know? And but too late, you know, the vote is already in. Clarity and transparency are really important to me. I'm a little tired of feeling as though I have to study every initiative to find out where the financial footprints are to know who's really behind it and what they have in mind to do. Even if you see who's funding it or who's behind it, it's really, you know, someone else in the shadows who might actually be behind it or it's a group you've never heard of and it sounds all rosy and peachy but really, you know, it's maybe not something that you would really support if you knew where the real money is coming from. The money it takes to have access to the ballot allows groups or people to get to the ballot. You know, some groups can, some groups can't and their ideas aren't necessarily better. It's just that they have money and access.  I read it, I signed for it and then they have another one and another one and another one. I know they're getting two dollars for each one of those signatures and I think they don't have any heart in it. They're just getting paid for it. I personally would make it easier so that someone with less money could get something on the ballot. I would love for us to not have to have these battles about the constitutionality of an amendment after it's been voted on. They don't vet it yet until it's voted in, which is silly and then they're going to take the time to do all of this, all of the money that's done and then they go and find it's not constitutional. What a waste of time. Most places allow a legislature to go back and change an initiative after it's been passed. Like every other place but us allows that and most on the front end of initiative allow errors to be fixed in drafting, allow for compromise. We don't permit any of this. Trust in government is a huge problem in California. There's a huge distrust of government and in a way every initiative that's successful is a vote of no confidence in the legislature.


It is great to be here on the campus of Franciscan University with all of you and I've been it's been a great spring When they asked me to be a part of the team again I always say yes, but then I looked at the roster and we have Deacon Bob Rice and we have Deacon Harold and me You know we have Deacon Ralph and and I'm like what am I gonna do? so I prayed and in December I Asked the director of our deacon information program here in the diocese of student bill if they were gonna be starting a new class He said yes next month in January. We're starting and I was like, so it's probably too late to apply Yeah, yeah, we've already gone and accepted all the guys into the program that we're going to him and I'm like, okay When are you gonna start the next class? And they saw me and in two years you can you can again apply to be a Deacon I'm like great. I love it I'll be I guess I'll talk to you in two years and then as I was walking away Deacon Mark said to me is like, well, how old will you be in two years? Like what kind of question is that? None of your business But I mean I'm like, I'll be turning 60 and he said oh well We have you have to be under the age of 60 to be able to apply to be a Deacon And I was like well God I was open. I don't know your timing your will whatever God Two days later. He called me back. He said John. I went and talked with the Bishop pleaded your case We're gonna allow you to apply and In January my wife and I started our formation together for the Permanent Deacon So I'm gonna join the Deacons Club God willing and I'll tell you something even if I don't get ordained Just to be able to go through this formation with my wife has already started to just bless us And I'm excited to see what the Lord will do there. He has a lot to do We we want him to do more in our lives And so, you know, just just pray for me Pray for me that the Lord's will is done. That's all I want and that that his grace continues to lead me down Wherever whatever that path might be I've learned in a lot of ways just to surrender and let God have his way and I'm as I was preparing for this talk and I started thinking about spring of 1999 in Spring of 1999 I was sitting in a park bench outside of a hotel in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I had spent The previous weeks leading up to that traveling all over the state of Colorado where I was living at the time Tech took a few road trips interviewing for a youth ministry position I'd gotten out of youth ministry, but really it felt the strong call to get back into ministry after the church I was working at St. Oh are not working at but volunteering at some of the kids there were killed in the Columbine tragedy and I really felt like I got I've got to be doing this and and so My wife and I we visited this parish in Ohio up in Lima and we thought oh this is they had everything we want because I've done youth Ministry for seven years and knew exactly what I was looking for I had my list The church had to have a youth room had to have two priests and including a younger priest who was really interested in helping with youth ministry It had to have a very vibrant young adult community They had to be open to being a life-teen parish I mean I had the list and it went down because I was it was more about me interviewing the parish to make sure they were worthy of me And so we were traveling we'd been up in Michigan We stopped by this parish and we're getting ready to go home and I got a phone call because my wife She was so wonderful. She sent up my resume through job boards and all that and this parish in Winston-Salem, North Carolina Followed my resume called me up and they're like well, you would be great We want you to come here and would you please come here and interview and at that point? I think we were like almost 85 to 90 percent sure that that Ohio was gonna be our choice and Everything in my flesh didn't really want to do this But I felt like God was you know either God was doing it or I think maybe more at that point I just didn't know how to say no, so I said okay. I'll come in I'll come in and interview So I went there I went through two full days of interview I Interviewed with a pastor the associate pastor the parish council this group of parents the church's staff a group of teenagers. I Had like eight different interviews. They took me on a tour of the city and it was this whirlwind So I was sitting on this bench because I was tired and been really two full days And it was very beautiful. They were very wonderful and they had this great vision for youth ministry. However The pastor was going to retire in four months. He wasn't interested in starting anything new including life team The associate pastor at the time wasn't too keen on youth ministry in general They had a school I was one of the things I didn't want to go to a church with the school because Schools the problem there is takes a lot of resources and then the parents who said their kids at Catholic school Don't feel like they have to send their kids to youth ministry and you're stuck You know, I was like really hard to get the kids involved And all these things that were on my list they had none of it. In fact, they showed me what would be my office And it was a converted storage room that was that opened up to the outside and the door was under a fire escape on the back of this building and It smelled like chemicals Which is good I suppose if I wanted to just sit around getting high all day But I wanted to do ministry and this was not where I was gonna go And so as I was talking with my wife on my cell phone, I was just like yeah, they're very wonderful beautiful people But this is not the place And I said I love you I'm flying home tomorrow. I'll see you soon and I hung up the phone and you know God has an amazing way Of working in very profound and beautiful ways in the simplest of moments and as I sat there I simply got the sense like this is a big decision. God.  I Heard it in my ears. I heard it in my head. I heard it in my heart. I heard it in the depths of my soul. I Heard God say I'm calling you here I mean I can count the number of times this has happened in my life on three fingers And this was like one of the big ones.  I'm like, well God if this is really you you need to say it again And just as clear as the first time I heard John I'm calling you here And all of a sudden like The whole not the room because I was outside but the whole neighborhood started to spin And I felt like I had this wave of fear anxiety excitement. Oh my gosh But after that kind of wave hit I just felt this profound sense of God's love like God just called me by name He called me by name. But what was he calling me to do?  She put her full faith in me And said okay Two weeks later Everything we owned In the 27 foot moving truck our three babies In car seats in the minivan that she was driving while I was driving everything else behind her heading from colorado To a place she had never even been before It was the at that point the biggest step of faith we had taken in our lives And I tell you this because in this story You are all involved in some way most of you maybe even all of you And here's how When I landed in North Carolina, I was picked up By a man named jack McAleer Jack had three children his two older daughters One was going to be a freshman freshman in high school that fall The other was going to it was in junior high and I was going to be their youth minister So he was personally invested in making sure I had what I needed And he was personally invested in making sure that my wife and had and I had everything we needed to succeed in ministry He took us under his wing and showed us a lot of extra love and and care and along the way we became very good friends He helped us come to Steubenville with the youth group and while he was here. He had a powerful encounter with the lord That changed the trajectory of his life I mean he became so invested in the youth ministry program He and another group of adult guys started doing all the games for us on our retreats. They were great And as jack and I grew into her friendship You know, he ended up being The godfather he and his wife jamie godparents to my son john paul who was born while we were living in north carolina And when four years later, I got a call from father dave At the time father dave was directing all the youth conferences and he was getting moved into a vice presidency position with the University and asked me if I'd be interested in applying for his job And of course the opportunity to come back to my alma mater and serve. I love franciskin university I couldn't say no So I applied for the job And in 2003 I began working for franciskin university at the very time. I said yes to this job Jack's daughter laura lauren was trying to decide where she was going to go to college It was down to two choices auburn or franciskin and when I chose to come here to work She chose to come and be a freshman here that fall and so in the fall of 2003 Jack came to campus with his daughter I should say something about jack just because His family owns crispy cream donuts and he And he came to me with this. I want to make a donation to the university. Who should I talk to? And I didn't know who they he should talk to so I just said I'll introduce you to father dave Now father dave in his own way because he's so awesome became very good friends with jack and jamie And when lauren was here she fell in love with a great guy named dan who was a com arts major And upon graduation he and jack Developed this media company called four p.m. Media And one of the very first projects they worked on and produced was the wild goose series Which is so true of my life most in the major ways that god has intervened in my life and spoken to me and dealt with me personally It's never been about me never But I can look back and say I didn't start in the wild goose. I didn't appear in the wild goose. I didn't write the wild goose But god used my life to bring together two awesome people Who produced something that have literally changed the course of thousands and thousands of people's lives and helped them experience more of the holy spirit And I can just sit back and say god Why do you work this way? What is it that is about you that you choose to work this way? I'm not trying to pat myself on the back. In fact, I look at myself in the same lens that the blessed mother saw This is what she said when when looking at you know all the things that she was being called to do as she Was giving back The praise That elizabeth was giving her who am I that the mother of my lord should come to me? She says look my soul magnifies the lord and my spirit rejoices in god my savior For he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed for the mighty one has done great things for me and holy is his name Now look, I know that When I die I probably won't have any statues any devotions No one's going to coin a metal and wear it around there with my picture on it with reverence And that's fine with me I'm not looking for that But I do know that I can stand up here tonight and say to you because of my yielding Because of god's intervention because god has done great things for me And he came to me on that night and spoke into my heart that great things have happened I could speak for the next 10 hours on the great things that have happened to me personally But that's not what I'm here to do. I'm here to say any one of us Can experience this God wants to come to each one of you and do something great in your life That's what he's dying to do. He made you for for greatness Why wouldn't he you're created in his image and likeness Your soul was purchased and set free from the gates of hell from the power of sin and death By the blood of his only begotten son Jesus christ And he has poured his love His very essence into you through the power of the holy spirit and asked you to join his family as an adopted son or daughter Amen We should all want to say lord. I want to magnify you. I want to glorify you I want to give you everything for you've done great things for me If somebody calls me blessed, it's only because god you've done it It's not about me. It's about me receiving You know st. Faustina had this beautiful relationship of our lord Jesus christ Such a beautiful intimate relationship with her and with him and and and this is what jesus said to hurry He said the graces of my mercy are drawn by means of one vessel only and that is trust the more a soul trusts The more it will receive Trust is first and foremost a choice for us to receive The unconditional love of god for us his mercy And be willing to let that love penetrate the deepest part of us and transform us And embolden us and empower us to say yes to incarnate that love in every part of our lives It's a decisive choice, but it's also a response to grace The catechism speaks of our need for trust and surrender through the holy spirit We are adopted as god's children, but that gift demands demands a response It says in article 27 84. It says the free gift of adoption requires It's not optional It's required on our part continual conversion in new life. It requires two fundamental dispositions I love this it requires two fundamental dispositions So this should be the posture of our soul before god first the desire to be like him Jesus you're my everything including Who I want to be The whole purpose of us coming forward to receive the Eucharist is that in the end we would become What we consume And be consumed by the love that's there It says though created in his image We are restored to his likeness by grace and we must respond to this grace We must respond to the grace of christ It goes on to say in the next article 27 85 It says second a humble and trusting heart that enables us to turn and become like children For it is to little children That the father is revealed So we come before the lord Not in our greatness, but in our smallness smallness not in our richness, but in our poverty And mary said it best He has looked upon the lowliness of his servant. That's why every generation calls her blessed She's the handmade of the lord. She never wanted the glory She wanted to be the handmade And she knew everything that she was Was just a reflection of the great things that god had first done in her And she is our template. She is our guide. She is the role model St. Faustino went on to write a humble soul does not trust itself But places all its confidence in god We are called to empty ourselves of all our self love all of our self righteousness all of our self longing all this Clinging and empty ourselves before god Pope Benedict the 16th. I love this what he says. He says it's only in accepting god's love that we come to know who we truly are This is what he says. He says man comes in the most profound sense to himself not through what he does But through what he accepts And one cannot become holy In any other way than by being loved by letting oneself be loved We will not become who god Made us to be Until we just surrender to the fact that we are unconditionally Unlimitedly loved by god And have the trust to sit in the father's hands and let him hold us close to his heart This afternoon. I had this image As we were praying in christ the king uh during the life in the spirit seminar of of Jesus just coming to each person And placing his hands on his shoulder While they're praying like this just leaning forward and touching his forehead to to their forehead and just breathing life into their heart Breathing life into them The breath of god the rua of god The spirit of god. He was breathing it into the people there And in that souls and hearts were coming alive St. Catherine of sienna say the devil fears a heart that's on fire with the love of god And this is why satan will do whatever he can to keep us from just fully surrendering to this This to every part of us Like this thing of trust is so vital you know Father dave talked about st. Peter stepping out on the boat That was a step of faith a step of trust And and what i love about the story is there was no downside st. Peter walked on water He was walking towards the lord and it wasn't until he took his eyes off Jesus and started looking at his circumstances again That he began to sink. But where did he end up?  Come on. Let's get back in the boat. So now they're walking together I mean he walked on water and the other 11 just i'm sure they were just picking their jaws up off the deck of the boat Going Why didn't we get out there? That could have been me Why didn't I take a step of faith? They weren't thinking oh, look at peter. He tried and he fairly like He walked on the water with jesus Because when jesus is teaching us as long as we're in his arms as long as he's by our side We can do it Anything including walking on water because god doesn't want us to walk alone. You've never walked alone. You never will walk alone And if you let jesus love you with his unconditional love, you will walk on water with him He will do amazing things in you and through you But we have to ask god i think To take us to a place even if it requires us to cry out to god tonight as we pray heal me because my trust has been broken We have a culture of misplaced trust broken promises damaged lives We all need to return to the singular reality That the love of jesus is the only unshakable unchangeable Unmutable everlasting thing in this world and it's the only thing worthy of our trust amen in fact When you go back to the very beginning What was the first thing that died in the garden of eden? The catechism says in article 390 said it says man tempted by devil By the devil let his trust in his creator Die abusing his freedom. He disobeyed god's command. This is what man's first consisted of First sin consisted of all subsequent sin would be disobedience towards god and a lack of trust in his goodness Every sin that we have ever committed can be traced back Towards a lack of trust in god's goodness And us thinking that we know better for ourselves what will make us happy I think of all the years I've wasted my life pursuing happiness on my own terms all the times I go in and out in and out But what has gotten me over humps and into greater freedom is the power of the holy spirit He's the only one that can do it article 154 in the catechism says believing in god Having faith in god is impossible without the holy spirit He's not the the the luxury item in the luxury car. He's the engine. He's the fuel He's the fundamental driving factor that animates us in our life in christ that keeps us moving forward with jesus And we can't do it It's a supernatural call and we need supernatural grace Jeremiah 1778 says blessed are those who trust in the lord whose trust is in the lord Whose trust is the lord They shall be like a tree planted by water sending out its roots by the stream It shall not fear when the heat comes and its leaves shall stay green in the year of drought It is not anxious and it does not cease to bear fruit I think oftentimes we are when we're when everything's going well And our circumstances are are comforting Then we thrive but when when we get into these seasons of life where where things are dry Where the heat is on and we're under pressure we have a tendency to wither But to be trusting in the lord means to be rooted Like a tree that sends out its roots by water by the stream by that stream of the holy spirit And what does that mean? It can mean it means we can live live without fear That we can trust in god And even if our circumstances Are saying one thing god is dictating what's going on in our hearts We can have faith Confidence we can have that hope we can have that love We can stay connected and bear fruit I have had many experiences and I just want to share one real briefly Some of you have heard this story Five years ago 2018 I'm in Rochester Minnesota running one of our youth conferences About ready to sit down for lunch when I got a call from my son Andrew's girlfriend at the time And she was frantic And she said we were in a car accident. They just took Andrew to the hospital. I'm not sure what's going on And I and I tried to get as many details as possible But she was just so upset So I had to call my wife and we're and she was on her way to figure out what was going on Which we didn't even know what hospital he was in and here I was Hundreds of miles away in Minnesota and trying to figure out how am I going to get back to Ohio as quickly as possible I got the next possible flight But it didn't it had flight delays. I mean I didn't get home till two o'clock in the morning I didn't know when I was in the air if my son was dead. My son was alive. I didn't know what was going on But this I didn't know while I was in the airport I sent text messages to the hosts of all of our conferences that were happening And there were six conferences happening that weekend across the united states and canada And that night while I was in the air flying home Over 10,000 teenagers were before the blessed sacrament praying for my son The next day when my wife and I sat down with the doctor He was not giving us any kind of hope He said look 19 fractures in his skull We had to do an emergency craniotomy. We took the upper one third of his skull out He's in a baited He hasn't woken up We're not sure if he will or when that will happen. It could be weeks When he wakes up he may not remember how to talk He may not remember his name. He might not remember who you are We're really not sure what the extent of his injuries are but we want you to be prepared For it's going to be months if not years of rehabilitation and therapy and I remember like listening to the doctor And not making light of a single word. He said it hit us hard But also knowing underneath all that God's just saying to me I've got that and so They had a chapel at the hospital. We spent some time there and I just surrendered I said god I didn't put my faith in a desired outcome at that point. I just said god We don't know but here's what I do. I put my son in your hands And I want you to give me the strength to do whatever I need to do Sacrifice whatever I need to sacrifice to get him well again Just whatever it takes god just give me the strength to do that because I felt If it were up to me, I would fail for sure, but god you can be my strength in this And my wife prayed the same thing with me.  He was able to breathe on his own But he still hadn't woken up. He hadn't said anything But and she she's just trying to clean him up and she's a nurse And so she was being very kind and gentle and she's wiping his face off and saying Andrew It's gonna be okay. I'm just cleaning you up a little bit And he started to twitch like like he could feel it and he didn't like it And after a couple of minutes He just kind of opened his eyes and looked at her and said will you please stop that In god's plan. There are two powerful things prayer And the ability of one sibling to annoy another Even wake them out of what might have been a coma Long story short in less than a month. Andrew was home with us I don't have time to go through all the miracles and minor miracles and everything But I will tell you this Once again, it wasn't about me I stand before you not because I've ever done anything great for the lord I stand before you and I am who I am because god has done great things for me And tonight god wants to do great things for each one of you Perhaps the the most beautiful thing that he can do is just reveal his heart to you In many you might still be holding back You've been burned you've been hurt Maybe you're still angry with god because something that you wanted him to do It didn't work out the way you hoped it would you placed your faith in jesus and he let you down I think when it comes to god, we don't put our faith in a desired outcome Because we don't always get what we want because god knows what's truly best for us And what's best for us at any given moment is surrender trust and surrender believing hoping Continuing to take these steps even if it's a baby step tonight You know each one of us has a door on our heart The door has a handle, but the handle's on the inside All that god can do is come and knock And you have to open your heart to him Tonight, I believe the lord wants to heal Wants to restore trust in so many of us Wants to take our belief and our confidence and his perfect love to the next level Some of you have been through a lot of storms Tonight, all I'm asking you is to take your eyes off the storms And let's place him on jesus because in a few minutes he's going to be brought into this room And then he's going to be possessed through this room and when jesus comes near A simple gesture of trust reaching out to him a simple prayer of surrender Jesus, I give my heart to you fill me with your light and life and love through the power of your holy spirit Give me everything I need to know you open the eyes of my heart so I can see Experience taste and see your love tonight in this room god I give you everything I surrender everything God is going to call a lot of you To do great things for him Things that will seem beyond your capacity and even tonight he wants to prepare you for those moments by Building trust and confidence in his power We will do great To the extent that we receive greatly to the extent that we surrender and let god do something first So that's my invitation to each one of us tonight. Let us ask god to do something great in our lives because you were made for that greatness You have a capacity for that greatness you have a hunger for that greatness the greatness of his love To be poured out you in abundance. Let's just Without hesitation tonight without reservation give it all to jesus. Amen Amen


It's about that time of the year boys, it's that time of the year as the Madden season winds down and every single Greatest possible card in the game has officially been dropped. The market is tanked.  So as a nice send-off to an amazing year for Madden 23 I'm about to use the most cracked golden ticket 99 everything squad that you're gonna see as you can see We've got 99 offense 99 defense. We even have 99 special teams. That doesn't factor into your overall But let's check out this squad number one huge shout out to my amazing editor kzo He's also editing this video So if you think this video is a banger you love his videos too so check him out He hooked me up with the squad and one thing you're gonna notice as we go into this squad It's not the players that you would expect for example My whole offensive line is all rookies plus Larry Allen and my wide receivers are Dion Sanders Collin Johnson Michael Pittman Jr. My backfield is Michael Vick Travis Kelsey and William Perry. Okay This is one of my biggest issues with EA the way that they release cards is through promos And they slowly up the overalls which makes sense But what they don't have is all of the best current players in the league Consistently having the best cards for example What I like that 2k does is invincible.  How does that not exist a gold 99 justin jefferson? Where are they? Also got a brand new shipment of glasses right here. It comes from warby parker They're sponsoring today's video and I know you're gonna want to see what's in the box And if you're not familiar warby parker is committed to providing exceptional eye care both online and in stores They've got eyeglasses sunglasses eye exams contact lenses their glasses start at $95 including prescription lenses And most importantly this box is the literal best way to shop for glasses Let me show you why so this is the home try-on kit warby parker is gonna let you go online and choose five pairs of glasses They will ship them to your house for free Let you try them on and you can even ship it back for free since they provide a prepaid shipping label Let me show you what I ordered to try on and honestly This is such a game changer because glasses always look good online But you never know what they're gonna look like on your face So let's take a peek here. This is Simon and polished gold pretty similar to what i'm wearing Yeah, these go hard this next pair is called a right. I wanted like a spartan green pair and this is Simon as well But in a silver I think my favorite was the Simon and gold and if I wanted to buy this right now All I do is I keep this with the rest of the glasses back in my home try-on kit Ship it back to warby parker and I only have to pay for the glasses I kept It is literally the best way to shop for glasses So to reiterate you can try five pairs of glasses from warby parker Completely for free. It's at warbyparker.com forward slash MMG and of course there's a link in the top of the description. You can always click that check it out It's that easy and enjoy the rest of the video There is though this rookie premiere promo which gave every single rookie a gold 99 for the most part So our whole offensive line is those gold 99s Some of these positions don't even have gold 99s unless you go for the rookie So this is the best way to do the gold 99 tight end that I went for is tray mc bride 94 speed 98 catch 98 short round 97 medium and 78 run block is all right I actually was gonna put william parry the fridge at tight end, but it messes up the overall If I put him at tight end, I can't get a 99 overall Someone made a prime time wide receiver golden ticket. It's insanely insanely good as you can imagine It's 99 most every stat for the most part gold 99 collin johnson now. I'll admit i'm a casual I don't know much about collin johnson collin johnson is six foot six with 97 speed Which isn't that crazy, but the fact that he's six foot six is is actually ridiculous and then michael pittman I actually love michael pittman. He's a stud 64 97 speed and a ton of the remaining stats are our wide receivers are cracked There are so many good golden ticket halfbacks. It's really hard to choose one of my personal favorites is a jay dillon I just love a jay dillon partially because i'm biased and I really liked him in fantasy this year He was an awesome fantasy halfback for me But the better gold 99 halfback is probably this michael vic six foot 99 speed insanely elusive He gets absurdly good abilities. We're running three abilities on him backfield mismatch grab and go and evasive So backfield mismatch is to make sharper cuts and we have hot rod master on our quarterback grab and go gives you human joy stick After a catch so we're gonna use them out of the backfield as a receiver a lot and then evasive quarterback is the same But there's only so many quarterbacks you can use but low key one of my absolute favorite golden ticket quarterbacks Is travis gelsey and this is a god squat So i'm gonna use my absolute best and favorite cards either way look at his stats bro 99 all of these throwing stats That's all of the accuracies.    This is like the opposite end of the spectrum insanely good stats This actually isn't that good of a card.  This isn't a guy. You hear a lot about an actual NFL But he ended up getting an easter card and a golden ticket as a six foot four corner He's massive plays kind of like ted henricks What's insane about ted henricks is you could use him at any position and he's insane You could use him at corner and he's insane. You could use my strong safety. He's insane You can use him as your sub and a linebacker. He's insane Detackle is jordan davis, which i love people weren't exactly rushing to the idea of making a golden ticket Detackle so they didn't a loading on is a little bit better. So I actually have both on the squad But jordan davis is still a beast. He's also like physically just insanely big Like some cards have good stats, but they're small like he is a six foot six three hundred something pound Detackle. He also got came on timido chanting tindall dav robinson patrick kerney I really wasn't happy with the outside linebackers or the left end, but there's just no other options This team composes the players.  I kind of like dav robinson, bro. I was I'm not just born in the 50s I don't care about that guy chanting tindall.   Gosh, that was an awesome promo and I really do miss it I don't know.  Give them a 99 jack their stats to 99 everything and just call it quits.   It's a mat or aza and a Justin Tucker Tell me this Justin Tucker isn't a savage actually kind of a nasty card. It's hilarious It is truly a 99 in every position a true 99 overall god squad My boy kzo is one and one and obviously we should have some really good competition because the only people who play right now Are people are really good at the game and have god squad So hopefully we play another god squad stingly prime time and he's got career tribute bronc But he's probably got more like a 95 or 96 overall Our top three is kelsey tyreekill and prime time all three of them were in the wrong position I just realized that all three of them were not in the right position All right, kelsey with gunslinger hot rod master long range dead.  Oh, I'm gonna throw the seam right down the middle To prime time wide receiver. No heat. I can roll out right. Oh, is that open? I'm beaming it It's not open, but I'm beaming it go up prime time The boys need to be close to but you know what he's on the two which is actually really fun I rarely get safeties. It'd be kind of fun to get a safety. Does he hand it off? He does He just lost the yard. He just lost the yard. Damn. He's got ap back there, too. I like that He's probably gonna pass here. Oh, he does it. It does that a safety one Oh my god I think he fell forward at the end for like a literal big point one yard Oh my god. He wants something short right here right here right here Damn good delivery on third and 12 did not get as much pressure as I was hoping for He does like the run game. Ooh, I dove a little early there retiree kill. Uh cross drag I love this play. So I definitely know it goes to his curry tribute ground.  Look at how big jordan davis is.  We can't have we can't let him have time to set this play up, right? Well, exact. Was that jordan day? Oh, it's k-line timido off the edge. Beautiful.  Oh my god. I actually successfully perfectly joked three dudes That is a rare occurrence. One of those dudes is usually gonna tackle. I'm gonna throw b Oh, beautiful throw from lc. Nothing.   It's adrian peterson because I have on the adrian peterson unis That's how I associate these unis. All right. We got palamalu and he threw out of this formation last time read option Yes, sir. Oh, I wanted to rock t-boat. I respect his game plan. It's just not working. Get there jordan davis. No way I am so embarrassed right now. I'm so embarrassed. Okay. I see the half back. Oh, he doesn't throw it Just did jefferson in the back of the end zone great throw. I think I can stuff it if he runs it. Yes, sir I just outlined said I think I can stuff it if he runs it and he ran it and I didn't stuff it The golden ticket prime time. Okay. Oh my god.  Oh, I was one good move from a touchdown right there Easy throw to collin. Wow. He is huge collin johnson for five yards. Keep it simple, right? Oh prime times wide open on fourth and five.  Oh, he didn't even fumble. Oh my god. That's the beauty of having jefferson galsy at quarterback I'm going back to the touch pass. Let's see if his user snicks with it.  All right. Let's see what we got here prime time underneath beautiful He's been our bell cow.  Yes get out there I really didn't expect him to fly to that so well All right 16 seconds left. Let's see what he does Get there. It was calculating you guys. It was calculating.  Ah, okay. He's out about I'm here. I'm here. I'm here.  Oh read option one more time But we're on it. Oh, it's a triple option.  I'm not even mad All right, he goes to cross drag again beautiful play How can you be upset with this guy? Dude, this guy is a super sad Dear me. Shit. What are you doing?  He's pressing prime time. I'm in play action.  Come on Is he there? No, he's not.  I might be a pick at least the animated. Well done, Pittman I didn't think any of his db's could run with that. They very much could Zach Erts back up tight end for 18.  Look at Vic Wide open wait wait Michael vick. Oh my god. He's so good Halfback Michael vick. This is what people want to do with Lamar Jackson. Oh my god That had so much room. It wasn't even funny. I had x. I can't throw it now.  I thought that was so money. Oh, he can't guard that prime time wide receiver Kelsey has no passing touchdowns. I feel a little bad. Wait for it. Wait for it. Oh Beauty Collin Johnson with the deep corner out. This is my most efficient drive. No question Oh, you guys want to get Pittman some love? I say we get Pittman some love Let's get a double team on this left end here. Oh, look, he's usuring it too. See what he's made of here Oh, oh my god, that's so damn good Michael Pittman We're really distributing the ball to Collin Johnson's getting reps Vic's got a touchdown McBride Pittman prime time I'm going across to be oh my god. He's open.  Oh my god. I shouldn't have I should have racked that That's my fault. He caught it, but he was rolling out of the end zone All right, let's see if he's got first and 10 It's gonna be tough to run read option right now with this clock very much not on his side. Oh, I'm on this Oh What a bomb Thank god Ted Hendricks could catch up to that. He's he's taking advantage of my cover too right now He goes out short. Let's go low a little too. He keeps it table. What are you? Wait, wait, wait Did he reach for that?  I couldn't claim that I tried to main him up and I couldn't the out route cooked me Dude, I respect my opponent. He's got a deep really cool playbook. He won't onsite I think he wants to be able to stop me here, but I plan on putting up another touchdown I'm not going to chew clock against an opponent. I respect all gas. No brakes.  They were too far on the edges. We're gonna rush for about 20 right there All right, let's go Vic to the edge was unsuccessful last time But look at the blocking this time the juke in the middle goes for nine four rushes 28 yards and a touchdown Oh, he's sending the cavalry Michael Vic. What a route We got it into him I actually tried to stop and go and go around him and totally didn't work Would have been really cool though. And you know what we haven't done enough of we haven't used William Perry as a lead blocker enough yet I can't believe I talked all about it. I didn't use it.  Get to the edge block his user.  Dude, we we're so efficient with who we pass to and everything I'm so proud of our boys. Everybody gotta pass. Oh, William Perry William Perry William Perry William Perry now is two yards.  All right, let's go boys 26 to 15 kind of a bizarre score, but yeah, this god squad is a true god squad Damn that print on my receiver is so much better than I thought Dude to think we started this game out with literally a free interception. So we started All right, taking a peek here at the stats dude. He had a better qbr But uh, kelsey 16 for 24 181 66 completion two touchdowns one interception But the rushing game is where I'm so proud of our squad bro eight for 51 average 6.3 a touchdown No fumbles receiving prime time 7 for 72 j jettas 4 for 150 solid game Collin johnson 2 for 27 mike vick 2 for 44 William Perry 2 for 5. Don't you forget about it. Michael pimpin had literally one catch, but it was a touchdown Hey big dog, but you guys know, I love using the god squad. That's so fun to use the god squad So I hope you guys enjoyed that's it for the 99 overall god squad Thanks for watching as always and I'll see you guys in the next video. Peace