BWA568 Andreas Widmer | Former Vatican Swiss Army The Gospel of Work

Aloha, welcome to The Bear Wozniak Adventure. We are stoked today to have our guest. How many times have you gotten to hear, to be someone interviewed who's a Swiss Guard for the Pope? We have with us Andreas Widmer, who has been a Swiss Guard for Pope John Paul II for 2 years. We're going to talk about that and about his new book, The Pope and the CEO. We'll be right back with more of The Bear Wozniak Adventure.

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Aloha and welcome to the Bear Wozniak Adventure. Do you know that God has a plan for your life? God has a plan, and the most essential part of that plan is relationship with him. There's a verse that I love that says, I know what I have in store for you. Plans for peace, not destruction.

A future reserved for you, full of hope.

So okay, give me the plan, Lord. Let's get off. Let's get going. We'll we'll get get to work. I know there's one more sentence, and then it's then the Lord says this: If you seek me, I will let you find me. And then he says one more thing. He says, "If you seek me with all your heart." I will let you find me. So the Lord has a plan for your life. The first and most important part of that plan is for you to know him, and the second part of that is for you to become like him. And then the third part of that is, what is the practical application of my plan? What is God calling me to do for work? Who should I marry? Where should I go to school? You know, that sort of thing is the practical working out, and God wants to walk alongside you In this adventure.

God has an—

what could be more adventurous than to walk alongside the Creator of the universe, the guy who made quasars, you know, and dinosaurs and grizzly bears and made you? So God has a plan for your life, but the most essential part of that plan is just to have a relationship with him and then to walk alongside him as a friend, because a friend doesn't know what his master is doing, and learn to abide in his will. Because when you're in his will, you're in the middle of a big adventure. You're in a story that's made just for you. And we someone with us today, Andreas Widmer, who's gonna— who's a former Swiss Army Guard at the Vatican and is now— I'm gonna see, I'm gonna limit his credentials. Andreas Widmer is an entrepreneur, professor, business coach, popular speaker, and author with 30 years business experience in international business strategy, economic development, and entrepreneurship. Andreas is the founder and director of the Arthur N. Carlisle Carliss Ciocca Center for Principled Entrepreneurship at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. So Andreas, man, talk about credentials. Welcome to the Bear Wozniak Adventure.

Thank you, Bear. That's a mouthful. It's the, it's the Art and Carliss Ciocca Center.

Okay, Ciocca. Okay, okay.

Yeah, that's how they pronounce it. Wonderful people and great benefactors.

Well, we're just so glad. You know what, we— tell, tell the people how you and I bumped into each other, how we got to know each other.

So we met, of all places, in Indiana, far away from both. We met in the middle. No, actually, it's more on my side. You had to go further than I had.

Yeah, I was generally leaving.

We met last June in Indiana at Our Sunday Visitor when we were both— you and I were both doing a TED Talk, or what they call an OSV Talk. And so we spent a few really beautiful days together, prayed together, celebrated, ate together, and went through a lot of stress together getting these talks done.

And what was the most important part of all of that?

Well, the fellowship.

I thought it was the cigars at the end.

Oh yes, we did. You know, when the pressure went away was palpable after we did the talk, because when all the cameras are on you and they don't do 2 takes, it's like one thing and you do it. And you have 15 minutes, and remember the clock right in front of you? It's very stressful. And so when the stress— when we were done that afternoon, we all went out and we had a drink and had a cigar.

That was amazing.

Some of us went outside into the 95-degree heat and had a cigar. But you know what, I, I was— you know, you speak all over the world. You've spoken all over, and I've just done— do a lot of speaking. And but there was something about that when they said, now there's over a million dollars worth of cameras here. We want to do this in one take. You're going to stand on this line. You're going to look at that director. You're going to do this. You can do that. And then when they're all done, they said, and you're going to be fabulous.

It's like, really?

You lay all this stress on us, but don't worry, everything's going to be fine. With me though, since I'm so special, we got to take 2 takes. We started. I did one sentence and I forgot where I was, who I was. And so I said, every surfer has a wipeout every now and then.

Let's start over.

So that They let me start over and then it just kind of went from there.

But also, it's a super experience and I was just as nervous as the next guy. I don't think you— no matter how much you talk, something like this is going to make you nervous and that's fine.

They should have just said, just go up there and talk, but it was all of that.

Exactly.

Yeah, but it was so great to meet everybody. And plus, you know, the night— so I flew in Jet-lagged like crazy. Oh good, I get to go to sleep, and then we had thunder and lightning. I mean, we had like— what was the windstorm like that night?

Yeah, it was one of the great summer storms they had in Indiana, and then the fire alarm goes off in the hotel.

Yeah, there was wind.

The electricity goes out all night, remember?

Yeah, there was wind coming in through the windows even though they were closed, but That's just all part of the great adventure. And so it was really great getting to know you, and I said, I've got to have you on my show. We've been trying to get this show recorded ever since then.

Yeah.

So I'm glad you're here with me now. You know, one of the coolest things, this book, The Pope and the CEO: John Paul II's Leadership Lessons to a Young Swiss Guard, so beautiful, such a beautiful book. I've only gotten to skim it because I just got it yesterday, but such a beautiful book.

What—

tell us about how you're in Switzerland, you're in your 19 or 20 or something like that. What in the world? How did you end up becoming a Swiss Guard protecting the Pope? That's just so gnarly.

Bear, I became a Swiss Guard for all the wrong reasons, let me say first. I didn't figure life out until— it took a while with me. I'm a special case. God needs— I'm I'm getting like several tries at life. Like, I have to keep starting over because—

Yeah, me too.

Yeah, I have a long, uh, as they say, a long line. Um, in, in Switzerland, they say you have a long line when you, you don't understand something right away. But no, I saw— look, I grew up in a, in a small village in Switzerland. I'm the youngest of 6 kids, and I quite frankly just couldn't find my way. I have some, you know, I have ADD, learning disabilities like dyslexia and stuff. I'm not your poster child for academic achievement, let's say. And that just made me feel like when I was a kid growing up like this, that I was just worth nothing, you know. And I had a very bad self-image. And what do you do when you have a self— bad image? You start to become a tough guy and you, you know, you fight.

How tall are you?

I'm 6'9.

So don't fight with Andreas, first of all, everyone.

6'9, 250 pounds. You know, I can fight, I can fend for myself.

Were you the tallest person in your village?

Yeah, with my dad.

With your dad.

And I just got to ask you this question. What elevation was that village? In my—

it was about a thousand. So it was not a huge, huge— it was about 1,000 meters or so.

So 3,000 feet.

Yeah, because, you know, the Swiss, they don't live up there. You live in a more temp— lower, so it's more temperate.

So yes.

And anyway, so I didn't figure out what to do with my life. I just was basically just failing at one thing after the other until I went into the military. We have a militia. Everybody goes. Everybody has to go to the military. And that's the first thing I excelled at in my life. And they asked me to go, you know, because we have a militia, I had to go in on the bottom. And then they said, okay, you stay, you become an officer. And I'm like, whoa, that's cool. You know, first time somebody affirmed me in something.

Yeah, yeah.

And then I learned from a friend back home to say— who said, hey, guess what, I'm, I'm a bodyguard. And like, well, that's the coolest thing you could possibly do.

Yeah, it is, it is.

That is cool.

You know, when you have the bug in the ear and the gun in here, I mean, I'm in, you know.

Yeah.

And I— so I saw— I basically signed up for this without knowing anything.

You didn't know—

you didn't know the— you thought you're gonna get to have the bug in the ear, the gun in your pocket. You didn't know about the crazy cool clothes you got to wear.

a spike and a funny uniform. So I basically just applied. The guy said, this is where you apply. I'm like, I'm so in, I'm gonna do this. And then I started to learn more about it as they then accepted me. So I had to give them all my data and everything, but it's pretty public in Switzerland anyway. Once they wrote back, and this is of course before the internet, once they wrote back, I learned that, okay, it's the Pope that you protect. Can you imagine? We didn't— that kid and I, we never even talked about who you're Protecting.

You're basically—

Oh my God, really?

I'm a bodyguard. That's, you know, being a tough kid.

And you're a bouncer for the Pope?

Yeah, exactly. And so, and so then I learned, okay, it's the Pope. Well, I have nothing against the Pope. I didn't really understand anything about the papacy or so. And then it's— so then I also learned it's a foreign legion. So if I go there, I have to just— I have to give up my Swiss citizenship because you can't go of serve a foreign head of state. At the end, it was all good for me because they would let you back. You know, it's not like—

It's formality.

It's a formality. You give it up while you're there.

Yeah.

And lo and behold, they accepted me. And if I, you know, if I would have known there what the chances are of this, the selectivity ratio of how low this— the chance was that I would get in, I don't think I would have had the self-esteem to actually apply. I wouldn't have applied, but I didn't know, and I applied, and I just played along and gave them what they needed, and they— and did the tests and everything, and they accepted me. And then, and then I told my parents.

So, so, so they must have made their decision based on good looks then?

Yeah, of course. Yeah, you always say that. It's beauty and charm was the key to getting No, they liked— they definitely liked my size and my performance in the military. They liked it.

Yeah, that's— it's just so awesome. We're talking with Andreas Widmer.

He is—

oh, I have all these credentials.

He was—

he was the— yeah, let's skip the credentials. No, but the coolest thing is he was in the Swiss Guard protecting Pope John Paul II, Saint John Paul II, and is now active in entrepreneurship. Did you know that as a CPA— and you probably already know this too, Andreas— is that And we're going to talk a little bit more about this when we get back, is that so many of my clients that I would say are entrepreneurs, they're not someone who manages a business, but someone who has a vision and births the business. It seems like most of them have ADD because they're thinking outside the box. They're the ones seeing what other people don't see. We're going to be right back with Andreas Widmer, and he promised us he's going to yodel. We'll be right back with more of the Bear Wozniak Adventure.

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Aloha, welcome back to the Bear Wozniak Adventure. Uh, I gotta remind you, we have something so special that we've been working on, and that's the Bear— it's the Bear's School of Manliness. It's a 3-year curriculum that you can go through with us as other men. You become a part of the man cave, and we have monthly, twice-a-month meetups, and we go through this curriculum together. But what's really special is you can lead your, your sons through this curriculum too. So we invite you to go to deepadventure.com and join up with Bear's School of Manliness. We have with us Andreas Widmer. He was Saint John Paul II's bodyguard. He was part of the Swiss Guard. And, uh, in Hawaii, Andreas, everyone here in 6th grade learns how to play the ukulele. So was it in 6th grade, did you learn to yodel, or what's the whole thing? Is yodeling—

I'm not— I was born, uh, you know, knowing how to yodel.

You were born with it? Yeah, it's part— it's built into you.

First time you hold a hammer and you use the hammer, everybody learns to yodel.

As soon as you miss the nail and hit your thumb, you learn to yodel? Okay, okay, I got it. Well, we would like to know What was your personal experience with— you had such a unique view of him, you know. What was your personal experience with the Pope?

So my personal experience was that he— the best I can express it there is that he was the most fully human person I've ever met. This can be a long discussion. I sort of resent the fact that— to me, he was Saint John Paul all along. But I resent the fact that they're whitewashing him in a sense of saying, "Did he make noise when he walked? And he never got angry and everything." That's not true. Okay.

Right.

He was the he was a manly man and the most human being I've ever met in my life. He was a real guy, and I was remember this there. I was impressed with this guy. I show up as this tough guy, this twenty-year-old. I just went through military training, and I was. I was a rough guy. He impressed me. The first thing is like, I'm meeting him. He caught me like in a moment of weakness in a sense, but he showed the kind of tenderness to me that was a manly tenderness of like saying, I will pray for you and this, you're gonna get through this. And, you know, I'm glad you're here and let's do this. And to sort of encourage me in that sense, I started to really admire him. And he became in a sense my role model. while I worked with him, because I felt that he— I remember thinking, whatever this guy has, that's what I want.

Hmm.

That was my experience. I now project a lot back to it, of adding things, of insights and so on. But I remember very clearly, I was like, whatever this guy has is what I want. Because his humanity is what Touched me very deeply.

Well, you have a quote in your book. I'm just gonna jump right into it about that, and you know, that's what God calls us to be, is to be living epistles that people— I remember when I gave my life to the Lord, I walked into a prayer group and I just said, I want to be— I want whatever these people have, and of course it was Jesus. But you quote him here in chapter 1 about knowing your vocation, and he speaks of humanity. Whatever you shall be in life, Whichever calling you choose, because we participate in that choice, remember that the fundamental calling of a human being is to have humanity, and you must always realize that fundamental calling, always and everywhere. I fulfill my calling to the extent that I have true humanity. Only one who is truly human is truly a child of God.

Amen.

We can spend the rest of our time just trying to understand that. Tell me what that— why you put that quote there and what that means to you.

I can speak as a guy, as a man who made a lot of mistakes, and what happens in your time of conversion is that you start to reject those rightfully, those changes, but then you go to confession and you also One thing is God forgiving you. You have to forgive yourself, right? And you see, I was a total idiot. I admit that in many things, in many aspects of what I did. And the humanity is that Jesus Christ became fully man and is fully God. And He's embracing all of this, actually including my mistakes, in the sense that we're wounded. And God comes and embraces the whole wounded person. You don't have to be without wounds for Him to die for you on the cross.

Amen.

John Paul was able to bring this across, which what he means by humanity is all of humanity, right? That we're getting saved with our faults and with our sins in the sense of that Jesus died for us with all of that. You see what I mean?

Mm-hmm.

And that includes that if I can have a sliver of the love that God has for me, for me to forgive myself too. to forget, you know, and to understand who I am. That's a lifelong project that we're all working on as guys. And I think that's what he's— that's what this speaks to me. That's what I hear out from what John Paul says about that we have to bring our humanity into our holiness.

Mm-hmm.

Because he came— because God became man, and therefore man is something Good and redeemable.

Yeah, of incomparable worth. I remember, Andreas, when I was 19, I went to a Catholic charismatic prayer meeting. My mom said she'd buy me a new pair of blue jeans if I went. She had already gone a few times, and I walked in there and I saw something so special happening, and then the next week I had this incredible conversion experience of just God just loving me. I had that experience of God, of the light, the love, the power of the Holy Spirit just Just exploding within my heart, but every little area of inadequacy and of sin, he opened every little door and forgave and forgave. I could just see, oh, you— thank you, Lord. Oh, you forgive. Then I— don't go in there, Lord. And then I just felt that sense of forgiveness. But then my dad was saying to us, who eventually became Deacon Greg Wasnik, he said to us, well, what's happening? What happened there? And we started to tell him. He goes, well, In a moment of weakness, he said to Chuck Dubow and Bob Schwartz, why don't you guys come over sometime and we'll talk about this? And they said, okay, and they showed up 3 days later. But my dad kept saying, I'm just not worthy. I'm just not worthy. I'm just not worthy. And I remember Charles Dubow looked at him, or maybe it was Bob Schwartz, but one of the two of them said, it's a come-as-you-are party. You know, come as you are. God accepts you right where you are in your humanity. So often, Andreas, I got to tell you, when you go into a church, you feel like there's a bunch of— so often you feel like the men there are neutered. They don't feel free to be themselves. I mean, like when you and I sat outside and had that whiskey and a cigar, that was 2 men. We didn't have to leave our humanity behind.

Quality time.

To be fully impressed with Christ, to be fully accepted by Christ.

This is what I mean also. We're whitewashing, we're neutering the faith in a sense when we also start to portray saints as if they were not human. But you know what? Unless you're human, you can't become a saint. There's only one way to holiness for man, and that's through humanity. If you don't live as a human, then you're not going to be a saint. Like, we are not angels, right? And so we have to go through this and find our way through our embodied Spirit in a sense.

Yeah.

To reach holiness, and again, to me this is so significant that God chose this human body to be incarnate in, which means the entirety of that is a good thing.

Even Jesus being all God and all man, he probably had indigestion every now and then. You know what I mean? He experienced a lot that we experience, and he embraced that. And he slept.

The difference, the difficulty, what I had to learn is instead of abhorring some of my impulses and trying to suppress it in a, in a negative sense, I understand my impulses and I, I almost love them like children, but I don't let them do what they want to do. So, you know, there's a difference in this.

Yes.

Because one of this, one of this leads to the suppression of all of this, which just creates a pressure cooker. That's not a good thing, right? And what you do is you, you, you manage all of these impulses that you— that God gave you, these instincts and everything, the whole body. And we are, are meant to be stewards of it. And, um, and that's something that is a beautiful thing, and that you treat it like— the best I can say is I treat this like my children, and where I— Beautiful way to say it. Scold them when they need scolding. Yeah, I manage when, you know, to do— for them to do good when good is called for.

Right, and you know, our walk with the Lord is— the key to all of that is to bring your humanity to Jesus.

Yeah.

The key to this isn't to like hurry up, try hard, and appease God. It's to become like God, and that only happens when you spend time with him. It's like people come to me, what should I do? I'm gonna come surfing. What should I do to get ready? Or, what can I do to become a better surfer? And I go, well, go surf. There's no substitute for time in the water. And the same thing is true, there's no substitute to spending time with the Lord, praying the Liturgy of the Hour, reading really great books, like reading the Catechism is a great place to start.

Yeah.

But reading the rites of the early— the writings of the early church fathers, of John Paul II, just meditating and being in the presence of the Lord throughout the day. What shirt should I wear today, Lord? Nothing's too small for him, you know. So throughout the day to have just be abiding in God's presence, and when you do that, little by little these changes take place and you don't even know it. It's like in Hawaii, tourists will be here and it's a cloudy day and they get a sunburn. They don't know that even though they don't see the sun that it's there. And so often when we're praying or walking in our life, We're not aware of God's presence. We're like, Lord, where are you? But he's there, and if you spend time with him in prayer and receiving the sacraments, you're going to get a spiritual suntan. And the problem with that is, Andreas, is that this is some great inspiration the Holy Spirit gave just to me, and then I realized Saint Augustine plagiarized me years ago. You'll find those in his writings. We'll be right back with more of the Bear Wozniak Adventure and our guest Andreas Widmer, Swiss Army Guard for John Paul II, Saint John Paul II.

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Aloha and welcome back to the Bear Wozniak Adventure. We want to invite our women out there, our mama bears, to go to our website deepadventure.com and support our ministry in your prayers and with your financial blessings. And you receive from us so many good things. You receive early release of all of our radio shows, the video version. You get access to all 20— I think there's 26 episodes now of Long Ride Home and many other things. So we invite our mama bears to come and be part of our community. We're talking with Andreas Widmer, and we've been talking about how God wants us to be fully human. He likes humans. He became one. We know he likes us. And that our first vocation is to just— discerning God's plan for our life, our first vocation is just to be in relationship with him and to be his friend. He said, I won't call you servants anymore because the servant doesn't know what the master is about, but I will call you friends. And he said, you're my friends if you do it. I command you, because that God's will is basically the same thing as saying God's will. So now that we've been in this relationship and we know that God, like you quote Jeremiah, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I dedicated you a prophet to the nations. I appointed you. Each of us at the moment of our conception, even if that conception was in the very worst of things, perhaps even a rape, From the moment of conception, God infused you with a spiritual, rational soul, totally unique from anyone else that's ever existed, with gifts and callings that go together. And God said, you know, God said, he said, the gifts and callings of God are without repentance. Repent means to rethink. God's not going to rethink.

He gave you gifts.

And he also gave you some challenges that help direct your gifts. You know, where you're limited in some ways, it narrows where you're going to go with the gifts that God has given you. And he's given you calling. Tell us about how we proceed into really knowing God's calling for us. There's different levels, different depths, but tell us about that.

So as you say, the universal calling is for us to be friends of God, to be saints. The goal of life is to go to heaven, right? That's it. And be forever with God. Baltimore Catechism does a very good job on that. That's the universal vocation.

To know, love, and serve God in this world. I memorized it.

See, that is irreplaceable. We're making a mistake to drop that because this is stuff that you just need to know. It's like putting your gun together in the military. You should just know it blind. So that when you need it, you have it. This is like stuff like that.

I think that's right. In the Didache it says that we should be able to put our gun together blind.

You know, the Psalms are like this. The Psalms are like this where you should memorize them. Anyway, so then we have a primary vocation, which is our state in life— priesthood, marriage, single life, consecrated religious life, and so on. And then our secondary vocation is actually what we do for work. And so it helps. I work with a lot of students every semester to figure this out, to say first, second, third priority. You do the thing at once, at the same time, but you have to keep in mind the ranking order of these objectives: to go to heaven, to have a state of life, and to work every day. Now, this is a ranking order of your calling. And so I, of course, work a lot with people on the work life, like to say, what's, you know, what job are you doing? What company? What kind of career are you going to choose? And there I try to work with people to say, look, God is— to very, very few people, God is going to say, listen, I need you to move to, you know, Antarctica and start, you know, a seal farm or something like that. And you've never even left your country. So very few people. God equips you for what you need to be the saint he needs you to be. And just like you just talked about, and I use the terms talents and non-talents. So God gave me certain talents, and I, you know, a talent is an attribute that can be a positive attribute, like my height. He doesn't want me to be a horse jockey, I tell you that, because—

Right, he closed that door. He opens and closes doors, babe, depending on the gifts and the limitations. Exactly.

I look at some of my challenges, like I have ADD and dyslexia. I regard that like my height. You know, on one hand it's a challenge, on the other hand it's a benefit. Yeah, so I play much better basketball than I do horse jockeying. So what God will do with you in giving you this, I compare it like somebody giving you, you know, a box of crayons that you can be creative with. And what God wants you to do is to not take one crayon and only do your whole life with that one gift of his. God gave you all of these crayons and then some of these bright colors, which are your great talents that are obvious, like you with numbers and understanding the accounting and everything. But God also gives you darker colors. And those are the things where I paint with my ADHD or with my dyslexia, which actually is something that plays into my entrepreneurship.

Right.

Let's also say God gives you certain illnesses, or he allows certain illnesses which amount to as much as having a darker color. Maybe some of the parents are not ideal. Maybe you have an idiot sibling, or you know what I mean? Like all these kinds of stuff that can happen in your life. And I consider those to be the darker colors in the box of crayons.

Hmm.

The point is not to just— the point of life is to paint With all the crayons God gives you. And then the question becomes who you're drawing for. The goal of life is to use everything God gave you and draw and paint with broad strokes a painting for God that you can give back to Him at the end of life. And that is what holiness entails. And there's no way to get there unless you're using all your crayons.

Yeah, and holiness means to be set apart. And so God has set you apart. He's given you gifts. He's given you limitations. It may not be physical or mental or emotional limitations, but certain things in your life. We start our day off here, my wife and I, by— we go out and get a cup of coffee. We pray part of the Liturgy of the Hour together, and then we sit down by the beach and we pray briefly. And I always pray, Lord, open doors and close doors. It's really important that God close doors too. And then I always pray for my wife that her wildest dreams will come true, because God has an adventure for us in those dreams.

Absolutely.

Those wild adventures are because God's wild. You know, people go, I'm gonna go out in nature. I'm gonna get out in the wilderness and get close to God. Well, somewhere in the word wilderness is the word wild, and so when we give God free rein in our lives, get ready for the ride of your life. And that may not be just, you know, the circumstantial things you'll find yourself in, but there's a great inner journey that God will have for you too. But a big part of knowing God's will is where has he— owning, you know, there's certain crayons God didn't give you, you know, so you have to use those gifts that God has given you. And, you know, the thing is, the Bible says, I will give you new and right desires. I'll give you a new heart.

New heart, yeah.

And so, God— so it's not just your gifts and talents, but it's your desires. You know, what is it that— I remember, Andreas, when I was in Baylor University as a junior, I took a radio class. And I became discouraged because I said, well, so if I wanted to do radio, where would I start? Well, you're going to start by selling advertising. I thought, well, I don't want to do that. I need something more practical because I already had a vision of being a father, even though I didn't know who I was going to marry. And I said, I need to get a— I need to be a hired gun. I need to make a good living. I need to be able to take care of my children and my family. And then, of course, I had this natural inclination to go into business and into the CPA world. But Even back then, I had this desire for radio, and even though it was years and years and years and years later, then this opened up. So there is this adventure, and there are these twists and turns. You know the Sistine Museum, those beautiful tapestries?

Yeah.

I'm sure you've heard this, but if you look at those tapestries like I had the opportunity to do, not there but someplace else, if you look at them from the back, they're just a massive confusion and knots and dead ends. We tend to look at our lives from that perspective. We don't see the end result that God's weaving into our lives. Wow, that's good. And so, no matter what the confusion is in your life, or how many times have you gone, oh Lord, please make this happen. I want to marry this woman. I want to date this person. I want to buy this house. I want to get this job, and it doesn't happen. And we look at God and say, God, what are you doing wrong? I thought you loved me. You know, it's only until years later that we realize, oh, Wow. Thank God that I prayed and said— because when we say to Jesus, be my Savior and be my Lord, we always kind of just run through that Savior and Lord. We forget what Lord means. So, we're talking with Andreas Widmer. He's a Vatican— was a Swiss Guard for John Paul II, and he is with the— can you say it? Because I can't pronounce it very well, the center that you work for.

It's the Art Art and Carlise Sioka Center for Principled Entrepreneurship.

And the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Do you ever go to the NAPA Institute meetings? I do.

I went there this summer, and now we actually have a principled entrepreneurship conference coming up in October, mid-October in New York. They also have a New York event, and I'm actually going to be speaking there about Michael Novak, you know, A famous Catholic theologian, and he actually— most people don't know this, but he was my first hire at this center. So I hired him when he was 80 years old.

Oh wow.

He came back from retirement and he worked with us for 3 years before he passed away.

Oh, Andreas, how wonderful. We're talking with Andreas Widmer, and if people want to find you, by the way, how can they find you?

Very easy. If you do Widmer and Catholic University, I'm very easily findable, but I also have a website called Andreas and that's the website for my latest book.

Andreas, A-N-D-R-E-A-S, and his last name is W-I-D-M-E-R. This is the Bear Wozniak Adventure. We'll be back with Andreas Widmer, more of the conversation about the gifts and callings of God.

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Aloha, welcome to the Bear Wozniak Adventure. We're so stoked to tell you that our YouTube channel has so many followers, and there you find our radio shows, the video version of our radio shows. You watch Cindy and I, we have a special channel within our channel called Adventures in Paradise. All of the entire catechism I taught through all— I taught 3 years and went through the whole catechism on the beach. Every day, and all of those videos are there in sequence. And then also Long Ride Home, our TV show, our motorcycle TV show, is up on Prime Video. It's also on EWTN every week. But if you want to power watch Long Ride Home, you can go to Prime Video and you can watch right now. There's 22 episodes up. But if you become a member at deepadventure.com of the Man Cave or the Bears or the Mama Bears, then we send you the latest TV show sometimes a year before it even airs on EWTN. So right now we're up to episode 26, so you can have access to all those. And then just kind of sneakily— what it is, you get to unlock the YouTube version of that show. And so while your brother-in-law is walking through the house, you can just sneakily turn on our TV show, and he'll start wondering, what is this about motorcycles? And next thing you know, he's being evangelize. So a great way for the Monicas, the Saint Monicas out there to evangelize. We're talking with Andreas Widmer, and he is the author of the book The Pope and the CEO. Is it with an ampersand? The Pope, the CEO. And it has a foreword by George Weigel, so you know it's legit. And his— what 2 years being with the Pope taught him about leadership. So now, so as we discern our vocation, tell us about leadership. Not management, but what is leadership? How do you define leadership? And everyone— God's calling us all to be leaders, whether you know it or not.

You're a leader.

Someone's watching you. Someone's following you, either for the good or for the bad.

So John Paul had this way of saying this story. About what it means to be a leader is to love your employees, let's say, in a company or the people on your team. Except that love is a weird term in our language. It's been overused. And, you know, you love pretzels, you love your dog, you love your wife. And that becomes a very squishy term. Italian isn't like that, and John Paul always pointed that out. That the kind of love that you would, if you would want to say, like if we work together, you hire me into your company, the way you tell me in Italian that you love me is you would say, ti voglio bene. I want your good, which is actually what love is. Ti voglio bene. And John Paul could never get enough of that expression. Because he says, "What's the good you want for them? The highest good I want for you, and I could possibly want for anybody, is for them to forever be happy with God." And he says, "Therefore, when you love people and you work with people, you tell them, 'Ti voglio bene,' and in that sense, I wish heaven upon you. And then if you're doing that, and why would you ever engage them in anything that would move them even an inch away from heaven?" from their path to heaven. And he says that is how you do leadership. The people you lead, you want their good. You wish them into heaven, and that tells you the path you're walking. Not always everybody's gonna like it, but it's because you love them that you bring people on that path. I think it's a beautiful way to see this.

It's just so profound. You know, Thomas Aquinas defined love that way. It's willing the true good for the other. But John Paul II also said that love is self-donation, in essence. So it's not— it's to wish, but also to do for others, by laying down your life for them, their true good. So it's not just a wishing, it's stepping across the line and giving of yourself in a way that will—

Yeah, one of the things again that he I learned, or I overheard him, uh, I'm not sure if I read it or I heard him say it, but basically the bottom line is they asked him, you know, when you show up somewhere, people always think like they— you're the reason why they got up in the morning, you know, because you pay attention to the person and you're— you might be in, in a million people and the person in back in, in the middle of it thinks like you're talking to them. Why is that? And what are you doing? And he says, it's very simple. It's not me. I basically, before I go into a meeting, before I give a talk, before I meet somebody, I pray for the Holy Spirit. And I say, Lord, you love these people or this person, or they wouldn't exist. If God doesn't love you, you're snuffed out like that. And he says, my prayer is this: Lord, let me see this person like you see them. With your eyes, Lord, let me love them the way you love them. And he says, that's what I do before I go into a meeting, before I meet somebody, or before I talk to a million people. And I am convinced that that is the reason why people feel like this when they met him. That— and I myself felt like this, like I felt like he got up in the morning just to talk to me.

I remember a long time ago I began to Pray this prayer as I was just in my life. Lord, tell me secrets, just the good secrets about this person. And but it would— I would be more aware of the fact, oh, they have a limp. Oh, that means they're in pain physically. Oh, they— that means there's also been a loss of mobility and it's changed the very nature of their life, you know. Or you see someone who's helping you and you say— and you see for just a moment a glint. That shows you there's a worry in their life, you know. It's just to be— Lord, show me this person the way you see them is a better way to say that prayer. And, uh, wow, it's amazing how it opens up your heart to people and to pray for them and to be able to affirm them, to say things to them that, you know, so often— Andreas, as I'm walking along now, my wife and I, we see so many couples with babies, with a baby in the carriage. I always stop and we say hi to the baby and then I look at the man and I just say, I'm so proud of you that you're a father and you're taking care of your family. And no one tells people that, you know, to be able to look at people and to affirm them. And so leaders, tell us more about what you teach because entrepreneurship by its very nature, you're taking people into the unknown.

Right.

You're starting something, you're expanding something.

But you know, Bear, business is a very simple thing. We shouldn't overcomplicate it. Business is one sentence: how may I help you?

That's business.

And if I use my talents to help you and I create value, meaning I— you're willing to pay more for what I did than it cost me to create it, then I created value.

Yeah.

That's business. If I do— if I help you through my talents and you value it more than what it costs me, you have a business. That's it. And so the idea of that usually is— and I work with the students, I actually start a business with every freshman at the Catholic University of America's Busch School of Business. Every freshman, first thing they do. I have 250 of them right now. They just started the business 4 weeks ago and they come up, they show up having no idea that this is going to happen. Because think of this. How may I help you? And all you need is 1,000 people that you can help and you have a bit— you're done. This is— we're overthinking it. This is— this should be a pretty, pretty easy equation to take care of. And it— the beauty of it is when you're also seeing this, to say that I can now use my talents to create value, which is to create value that was not existing before, then you're making something out of nothing.

It's creative.

You know, only one person can do this, and that's God. So when you're doing this, you're participating. God allows you into his creativity, and it's, it's like you continue to the, the creation of the world through being a business person, to create value. And it's just, that's a holy thing that we can do. And when we're doing this for the right reasons, then we imitate God. We create goods that are truly good. You know, we provide services that truly serve. Ti voglio bene, right? To help people to go to heaven and to become holy, and that is the core of what John Paul taught in his Theology of the Body of what business is all about.

So powerful. So the purpose of business in essence is to provide value, to add value, to provide—

Create value.

Create value to serve others. Yeah, and so how can you have the social justice warriors come yelling at you to say you're a capitalist and I don't care if I bought my shirt from you. I still, you know, it's a jaded concept.

Yeah, and that's why there are valid issues, but one of the things that John Paul objected to is to say, look, as soon as we say there's only one set amount of money in the world, we're already Right, we're creating. We create money every day.

It's not a zero-sum game.

Never who has how much money, it's who has access. And what, what John Paul defined, he said poverty is not having limited resource— limited— a limited amount of what he says are imagined finite resources. He says that's not it. It's not being poor is not having little money. And, and then they said, well, what is it then? And he said Being poor is to be excluded from networks of productivity and exchange because that's where the creative— that's where—

That's true. Yeah.

And that is always connected with work, right? And so being poor is to be excluded from work. So if you want to solve poverty, guys, let's create work and let the human spirit become creative and create this value, which, by the way, we measure value with money. And that also reignites in the person who's not working this ability to imitate God through their work, which is a part of the heavenly kingdom.

Well, wait a minute, but God doesn't work, does he? He just sits around with his arms folded and judges us? No, Jesus said, even now the Father and I, we work, and he gets things done. He doesn't— with all the determination and fortitude it takes to be on the cross and say these words, it is finished. He got the job done and he works, and work is a blessing. But you know, we got to have you back because we're running out of time. Give me your wrap-up statement.

Give me one plug. So, if you're interested in this concept, I just developed this project called The Gospel of Work. It's at siocacenter.com, one word, siocacenter.com. And in it, I provide 8 videos that really lead you along the way to go deeper with your work, with your daily work, to make it more spiritual, to understand how this, this is this God-given power where you participate in the continuation of creation. It helped me a lot, and I want to share with everybody so they can watch this series and, and benefit from that as well.

Well, maybe we can have you back and we can talk a little, talk story more about that. We've run over by a minute and 30 seconds, but when you're talking to a Swiss Army guard who was Personal body protector for Pope Saint John Paul II, you give him the extra time. Until next week, Andreas Widmer, your website again is?

andreas-widmer.com.

Till next week, may the breath of the Holy Spirit aloha you.

Aloha!

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