Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E279: Miracles Still Happen: How to Walk in the Power of the Spirit w/Dr Mary Healy | Lila Rose Show

Transcript

E279: Miracles Still Happen: How to Walk in the Power of the Spirit w/Dr Mary Healy | Lila Rose Show · The Lila Rose Show

• 0:00
  You've chosen to never marry and instead be married to Christ.
• 0:03
  It was a profound new thing that Christ wrought into the world.
• 0:07
  Some are celibate or give up marriage for the sake of the
• 0:10
  Kingdom. We were never supposed to carry
• 0:12
  out our mission based on human resources alone.
• 0:14
  It's a divine mission, and the Lord has given us divine power.
• 0:17
  We are not as in touch with the spiritual gifts and there's even
• 0:20
  a suspicion of the spiritual gifts.
• 0:22
  Those gifts are once again becoming normal, which is
• 0:24
  actually a return to our Apostolic heritage.
• 0:27
  If you never pray for anybody for healing, know how many
• 0:29
  healing you're going to see? Zero.
• 0:31
  You got it. How does someone discern which
• 0:33
  spiritual gifts they. Have they're distributed
• 0:35
  unevenly in the body of Christ precisely so that we can need
• 0:39
  each other? If you could do me a favor and
• 0:44
  check to see that you're actually subscribed right now,
• 0:47
  I'd really appreciate it. Also, if you find this episode
• 0:50
  helpful, consider leaving it a like sharing it with a friend
• 0:53
  and comment below. I read all of the comments.
• 0:56
  Finally, please check out our Patreon to support our
• 0:58
  community. You'll get several perks as well
• 1:00
  as 30% off our new merch line. Thank you so much, Doctor Mary
• 1:05
  Healy. Welcome to the podcast.
• 1:07
  Thanks, Lila. Great to be with you.
• 1:08
  I'm so glad you're here. Thank you for coming all the way
• 1:11
  from Detroit. That's a long way.
• 1:13
  How was the flight? Well, the flight was great when
• 1:17
  I came here, the fog and smog were pretty surreal, but the
• 1:21
  temperature rose about 60°, so. I'm happy.
• 1:24
  You're welcome. Yeah, that's, that's the one big
• 1:27
  one of the big benefits being out here.
• 1:30
  You are such a fascinating person in how you're living your
• 1:33
  vocation and I want to hear about that And I'm sure our
• 1:38
  guests have will be fascinated to learn about that because it
• 1:42
  shows the work of God in all of his diversity and how he works
• 1:45
  with souls. So if it's OK, I'd love to hear
• 1:48
  you share about that. And then you've written
• 1:50
  beautiful. Books.
• 1:51
  On spiritual, the spiritual gifts, discernment, you are a
• 1:55
  professor and I'm so glad you made it out here.
• 1:59
  So thank you for taking the time.
• 2:01
  Where do you where do you teach right now?
• 2:03
  I teach at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit.
• 2:06
  Beautiful. So give us a little bit about
• 2:08
  your background and I'd love to hear about in particular, you're
• 2:13
  a consecrated woman. You've chosen to never marry and
• 2:19
  instead be married to Christ. Yep.
• 2:22
  Well, I grew up in New York, in Connecticut, in a pretty
• 2:25
  ordinary Catholic family, mostly Sunday Catholic.
• 2:30
  My parents had a huge conversion when I was about 12, and that
• 2:33
  really impacted me. But it was much later, when I
• 2:37
  went to Franciscan University of Steubenville for Graduate
• 2:40
  School, that I really came to know Jesus for myself and had a
• 2:47
  profound conversion, fell in love with him.
• 2:49
  I mean, I already loved him, but I really fell in love with him
• 2:52
  there. And that's where I started to
• 2:55
  have the thought that maybe I was called to belong to him
• 2:59
  alone. And that gradually grew over the
• 3:02
  years. And eventually the Lord led me
• 3:05
  to get a doctorate in biblical theology.
• 3:07
  And I was a member of a Catholic charismatic lay community called
• 3:14
  Mother of God Community in Maryland, and eventually
• 3:19
  discerned that I was called to be consecrated to the Lord, to
• 3:22
  belong to him alone. And I wanted to do it in the
• 3:25
  community. And through a whole series of
• 3:28
  circumstances, the Lord led me to do this vow in the Church of
• 3:33
  the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem in March 2000.
• 3:37
  Adam, Mass with Father Francis Martin, who was the chaplain of
• 3:41
  our community, with my family present and a lot of community
• 3:45
  members. And during the Mass, I was able
• 3:49
  to go and kneel right at the place of the cross where
• 3:53
  according to tradition, Christ the Lord, the Son of God gave
• 3:57
  his life for us. And I made my consecration to
• 4:00
  him there as a way of saying yes, yes to everything, to his
• 4:05
  spousal gift of himself to us. So ever since then, that's,
• 4:12
  that's been my life, that's been my vocation.
• 4:15
  And I'm just beyond grateful to the Lord.
• 4:20
  Wouldn't want to choose anything else.
• 4:21
  I know that's his call on my life.
• 4:24
  What does it mean to be consecrated?
• 4:26
  Because in a sense, all Christians are set apart.
• 4:28
  They're consecrated in a sense. Christ is the bridegroom of the
• 4:33
  church. We are part of the church.
• 4:35
  So we are all the spouses of Christ in that sense.
• 4:38
  That's right. You are though consecrated in a
• 4:41
  different sense than I'm describing.
• 4:42
  Tell us more. About that right?
• 4:44
  We're all consecrated by our baptism.
• 4:47
  We all have a baptismal consecration to Christ, and we
• 4:50
  all are the bride of Christ in that sense.
• 4:54
  But there are those in consecrated life, some through
• 4:58
  most commonly through a religious order, through the
• 5:02
  vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, but they're also
• 5:06
  forms of private vows that the church recognizes.
• 5:10
  There's the order of consecrated virgins.
• 5:12
  That's one way of being consecrated living in the world.
• 5:15
  But there's a special liturgy of consecration for those, and I
• 5:20
  have a number of close friends who are that, and then others
• 5:23
  may do it through a lay community, as I did, or by a
• 5:26
  private vow. So even though it's not very
• 5:30
  common in the US, not very well known, there are these different
• 5:34
  forms of consecration. But essentially, when you speak
• 5:37
  of consecration in that sense, you mean that you are spousally
• 5:40
  united to Christ in a way that's not compatible with marriage to
• 5:45
  another human being. You belong totally to Him.
• 5:48
  This is a tradition in the church.
• 5:50
  So in early Christianity, there are the virgin martyrs who
• 5:54
  refused to marry because they said it wasn't even that they
• 5:57
  were being asked to marry someone that they didn't like or
• 6:00
  wasn't a Christian. It was more that I'm not going
• 6:02
  to marry because my husband is Christ.
• 6:05
  That's right. And I've made a private They,
• 6:06
  these were girls, I believe, that made private vows.
• 6:09
  Do you know who I'm Speaking of that if we have a name, is it is
• 6:12
  that St. Agatha?
• 6:13
  Agatha. And also Agnes, some of them I
• 6:18
  think were private vows. And yes.
• 6:22
  I don't think they they had those distinctions at that
• 6:24
  period of history, but it was a a profound new thing that Christ
• 6:32
  brought into the world that he said some are celibate or give
• 6:37
  up marriage for the sake of the Kingdom.
• 6:40
  And that these young women, some of whom were betrothed by their
• 6:43
  parents to a a suitor would have this interior sense.
• 6:50
  I am called to belong to Christ alone was revolutionary.
• 6:55
  And it, it in a sense upset the secular social order because
• 7:01
  it's said that each individual has this tremendous gift of
• 7:06
  God-given freedom, A, a freedom that is greater than, you know,
• 7:11
  the social obligation to marry whomever your parents tell you
• 7:14
  you're supposed to marry. And that young women could make
• 7:18
  that decision and even die for it, shed their blood for it was
• 7:22
  revolutionary and eventually transformed the, the Roman
• 7:27
  Empire and transformed the world.
• 7:29
  And of course, the Church has recognized that calling as ever
• 7:34
  since then, as as a beautiful and precious calling within the
• 7:37
  body of Christ. It is fascinating that there are
• 7:40
  these incredible historical accounts of these virgin
• 7:43
  martyrs. And when you look at today's
• 7:48
  world and Christianity Today, and I don't just mean in the
• 7:50
  Catholic Church, I mean just broader.
• 7:52
  Our non Catholic brothers and sisters in the faith, Christians
• 7:56
  who are baptized and, you know, profess the name of Christ.
• 7:58
  Our Protestant brothers and sisters are Orthodox.
• 8:01
  And you almost never hear it discussed that there is a
• 8:05
  potential path for people to not be a priest per SE because if
• 8:08
  you're a woman, that's obviously never going to happen and should
• 8:11
  never happen. It's not God's design, but if
• 8:13
  you want to be consecrated, you feel called to be consecrated
• 8:17
  and never marry that there is an actual not just oh, I didn't get
• 8:19
  married, but I still like loved God.
• 8:21
  It's oh, I'm not getting married.
• 8:23
  Right. It's, it's a decision that you
• 8:26
  make that's meant to be irrevocable.
• 8:28
  I mean, it doesn't mean that in certain circumstances people
• 8:31
  can't recognize sometimes that they had not made the right
• 8:34
  decision, but in itself, it's meant to be an irrevocable
• 8:39
  decision, just like marriage, right?
• 8:41
  When you when you make your wedding vows with your spouse,
• 8:45
  that's a covenant that is sacred before the Lord.
• 8:48
  And you're saying as as long as our life endures, I will not
• 8:52
  marry another. And that's what it is to be
• 8:55
  consecrated to the Lord. So yes, what what a sad thing
• 9:00
  that many Christian traditions don't recognize that don't have
• 9:03
  a place for it. I know that some do that people
• 9:06
  would probably be just surprised to hear like there are
• 9:08
  consecrated women Lutherans, for example.
• 9:11
  There are some Anglicans and certainly Orthodox, but many
• 9:16
  Protestants don't don't recognize that way of living
• 9:19
  your Christian life. And it's, it's really too bad
• 9:23
  because I think God has called women and men in some cases, but
• 9:28
  women particularly to that vocation who don't know it.
• 9:32
  And so they're languishing in a sad single life, you know,
• 9:36
  looking for a man to fulfill them when actually the Lord's
• 9:42
  love is enough. Wow.
• 9:43
  And in even people, single people who are not called to the
• 9:47
  consecrated life but are are single through no choice of
• 9:50
  their own need to hear that message.
• 9:53
  His love is enough. I want to explore that more,
• 9:58
  what that has meant for you personally.
• 10:01
  But before that, I need to ask a clarifying question about the
• 10:04
  kind of technicality of consecration.
• 10:06
  Well, a couple questions. I guess one of them is the idea
• 10:09
  of a virgin being consecrated, because we talked about the
• 10:11
  virgin martyrs. We were discussing those a
• 10:13
  moment few moments ago. I think some people listen.
• 10:16
  I mean, in today's cultural chaos, there's a lot of people
• 10:19
  who don't end up retaining their virginity by the time they hit
• 10:22
  their 20s or they're certainly by their mid to late 20s when
• 10:25
  they might be feeling more sense of a call that they may have or
• 10:28
  not have. Can you be a consecrated woman
• 10:33
  and still make that private vow? Or have some sort of additional
• 10:37
  structure and not be a virgin. Yes, you can, in many of the
• 10:43
  forms in which consecrated life exists.
• 10:47
  Not for the order of consecrated virgins, at least that's the
• 10:50
  present understanding of that form of consecration.
• 10:54
  But in, in, in every other kind, as far as I know, it's possible
• 11:01
  to have what's sometimes called a secondary virginity.
• 11:04
  Yes, you may have sinned, you may have made wrong choices, or
• 11:08
  you you may have had something done to you that was no fault of
• 11:11
  your own. And and the Lord can
• 11:14
  nevertheless restore the the innocence of the beginning.
• 11:20
  And that's the case for the priesthood for religious orders.
• 11:23
  It's not that you have to have some sort of technical physical
• 11:28
  past or some moral past specifically, although you do
• 11:31
  want to have moral fitness. When you're entering the
• 11:33
  priesthood or a religious order, they're going to make sure
• 11:35
  you're psychologically sound, emotionally sound, you're
• 11:36
  healed, all of these things, and you're living a life of virtue.
• 11:39
  But in terms of 1's past, God doesn't judge your past and
• 11:44
  prevent you from your vocation in the future.
• 11:47
  He takes all our sins and throws them into the depths of the sea.
• 11:52
  We need to stand on that. It's beautiful.
• 11:56
  It's a. Cruel irony that most diaper
• 11:58
  companies in America support pro abortion groups.
• 12:02
  Every Life is America's only pro-life baby product and
• 12:05
  feminine care product company. Every Life offers best in class
• 12:09
  diapers, wipes and other baby products as well as their brand
• 12:12
  new women's line with pads and tampons.
• 12:14
  Made with 100% got certified organic cotton and breathable
• 12:18
  seamless period underwear. These are the products that I
• 12:21
  use for myself at home as well As for my babies.
• 12:23
  Head over to everylife.com Lila today and use my code Lila for
• 12:28
  10% off your first order. Support babies and mothers and
• 12:31
  sign yourself or loved 1U and their baby today over at
• 12:35
  everylife.com Lila. It's hard to know where any of
• 12:38
  our food truly comes from, but with goodranchers.com, you know
• 12:42
  that every box is filled with 100% American raised beef,
• 12:46
  chicken, pork or seafood, all sourced from local farms and
• 12:49
  delivered right to your door. No antibiotics, no added
• 12:52
  hormones. It's pre trimmed, cut and
• 12:54
  packaged for easy freezing and storing, making it perfect for
• 12:57
  meal prep or efficient dinner prep.
• 12:59
  And when you use my code Lila, you'll get $40 off your first
• 13:03
  order and you'll get to pick which of their best selling cuts
• 13:06
  that you want free in every order for life.
• 13:09
  That's free chicken thighs, free Wagyu burgers, or free bacon in
• 13:13
  every order for life. So go to goodranchers.com today
• 13:16
  and use my code Lila for $40 off your first order, plus free meat
• 13:20
  for life. So what has it been like for you
• 13:25
  to have Jesus meet all your needs?
• 13:27
  And what does that mean? Because again, myself as a
• 13:29
  married woman, Jesus still meets, I mean, my husband meets
• 13:32
  my needs. Of course, emotionally God gave
• 13:34
  him as Jesus to me. But I still have a relationship
• 13:37
  with Jesus and Holy Spirit and God the Father and.
• 13:40
  Yeah, yeah. I love the way you ask
• 13:41
  questions. Nobody's ever asked me that.
• 13:45
  Well, it's a tremendous gift to have Jesus only to meet my needs
• 13:52
  in a sense. Of course, He's given me so many
• 13:54
  wonderful family members and friends and colleagues and
• 13:57
  associates. But to not have a husband to
• 14:01
  meet my needs because it forces me to depend more on him.
• 14:07
  You know, it's not that I never feel loneliness.
• 14:09
  Sometimes I, I do, but because I have only him as my spouse to
• 14:17
  rely on, I have to run to him. Now, I could choose not to.
• 14:23
  And when people go in that direction and they and, and they
• 14:28
  basically can't stand having to rely on the Lord and, you know,
• 14:32
  wait for his provision or wait for his help, they can end up
• 14:35
  making poor choices and end up with human coping mechanisms.
• 14:41
  They can sometimes be very spiritually unhealthy, but I'm
• 14:45
  so thankful to the Lord that again and again and again,
• 14:49
  whatever my needs are, from the tiniest things to the biggest
• 14:53
  things, I run to Him and and He provides.
• 14:58
  Have you ever been disappointed? Absolutely.
• 15:02
  But short term disappointment, deeper than any disappointment,
• 15:08
  is the absolutely unshakable trust that His grace is greater
• 15:16
  than my disappointment and that He, whatever He has allowed that
• 15:21
  has disappointed me, whatever prayer has not been answered, He
• 15:24
  has a purpose for it and there's a greater good He's working out
• 15:28
  of it. Sometimes I see it, sometimes I
• 15:31
  don't see it. I just trust and know that it's
• 15:33
  the case because He's faithful. Did you ever have a sense
• 15:37
  growing up that you would be called to make this private vow
• 15:40
  of consecration to our Lord? Well, growing up, of course, I,
• 15:44
  I didn't, I didn't know the term private value.
• 15:46
  I didn't, didn't know much of anything.
• 15:47
  But but there was 1 instance it was after a retreat, a high
• 15:51
  school retreat. And I think I had, you know, I
• 15:55
  had some kind of emotional experience of the Lord in some
• 15:58
  way. And I was alone in my bedroom
• 16:01
  and I knelt down and I just felt moved to say, Jesus, I give you
• 16:04
  everything, everything I am, everything I have.
• 16:07
  Just take all of me. I want to belong to you
• 16:10
  completely. And as soon as I said that, I, I
• 16:14
  then thought, oh, gosh, I wonder if that means it was supposed to
• 16:16
  be a nun and it wasn't a terrifying thought.
• 16:20
  I know people who've had a thought like that.
• 16:21
  Oh, oh, no, I have to become a priest or I have to become a
• 16:24
  nun. It wasn't terrifying.
• 16:25
  It was just like, oh, maybe that's what that means.
• 16:28
  And it was only years later I came to know what it meant.
• 16:32
  But I think the Lord took that seriously, even though I was
• 16:35
  only 14. It's beautiful.
• 16:38
  What do you think is the best path to identifying whether one
• 16:41
  may have that call or not? And there might be somebody
• 16:43
  listening who says maybe they're single, they're not married, and
• 16:46
  they're like, well, maybe This is why I'm not married.
• 16:49
  Right, exactly. I think the best path is to
• 16:52
  spend time with Jesus, get to know Him, listen to him in
• 16:58
  Eucharistic adoration, in reading Scripture.
• 17:01
  Like CEO Davina, pay attention to the movements of your heart.
• 17:08
  He will eventually show you. I mean, he's so faithful.
• 17:12
  He will, he will show us if he's calling us to belong to himself
• 17:16
  in, in, in a unique way, in a spousal way, it's not going to
• 17:20
  leave us in the dark about that unless we're really not
• 17:23
  listening, which is possible. But he will eventually kind of
• 17:29
  settle it in our heart. And that's what was the case for
• 17:33
  me. So I, you know, I first made
• 17:35
  that prayer when I was 14, but then I was probably 22 when I, I
• 17:40
  was spending a lot of time in prayer, a lot of time in
• 17:44
  Eucharistic adoration. And it was then that that
• 17:47
  thought kind of became more settled in me.
• 17:51
  And at that point, I mentioned it to a priest and he said, I
• 17:55
  think you should just don't rush into anything.
• 17:58
  Take some time to get to know the Lord.
• 18:00
  Let him convert you more deeply, let him heal you more deeply.
• 18:05
  And eventually he'll show you. And it was exactly what I needed
• 18:10
  to hear. Then I was 22.
• 18:12
  So it wasn't until I was like 32, no even older than that 33
• 18:20
  that I that I knew for sure the Lord was calling me to belong to
• 18:25
  Him alone. Is that when you made the vow at
• 18:28
  33? Yep.
• 18:30
  Yep, it was 19. Yeah, 34 actually.
• 18:33
  Yep. Did you have a desire for
• 18:35
  marriage? Was there like a set of oh,
• 18:38
  maybe I there's the guys out there and you know, maybe I'm
• 18:42
  just really just love Jesus. So so how did that work for you
• 18:46
  that you had Did you have the desire for marriage even when
• 18:48
  you made the private vow to our. Little by the time I made the
• 18:52
  private vow, I I didn't. OK.
• 18:56
  But, you know, certainly there were times where I fell in love,
• 19:01
  was probably too strong, but had a crush on a guy and foresaw
• 19:10
  wonderful life of having a family, having kids, all of
• 19:13
  that. But I have to say that there was
• 19:19
  sort of an increasing recognition that that would
• 19:23
  never satisfy me. Yeah, I remember thinking of
• 19:27
  this one guy in particular. Just he he was just an amazing
• 19:31
  guy. And I had a big crush on him,
• 19:33
  but as I contemplated the thought of being married to him,
• 19:37
  I just thought he will never be enough.
• 19:39
  He'll never be enough. And it was that that the Lord
• 19:43
  partly used to lead me to knowing only He would be enough.
• 19:48
  Do you think part of that has to do with perhaps temperament and
• 19:53
  fervor or zeal? Because I mean, I think about a
• 19:56
  lot of marriages that I, I've heard the advice, I should say.
• 20:00
  Ever since I was a young girl even there's being raised a
• 20:02
  Protestant. So it wasn't even like a
• 20:03
  Catholic advice, marriage advice thing like your spouse can never
• 20:07
  fully fill you. You have a God size shape hole
• 20:10
  in your heart and only God, only Jesus.
• 20:12
  He is the only path to salvation and he alone can fill that hole.
• 20:16
  And you. You're likely called to
• 20:17
  marriage. You'll love your spouse, they'll
• 20:19
  love you, but they are imperfect and if you expect them to fill
• 20:22
  you the way Jesus only can, you will be disappointed.
• 20:25
  It's not fair to your spouse. Yes, it's so good to hear that
• 20:30
  message and it is tragically many young women and men never
• 20:36
  hear that message and they do think marriage will fulfill
• 20:39
  them. And I think I got that message
• 20:42
  as well. So I kind of knew.
• 20:44
  I knew that I knew that for nobody will their husband or
• 20:50
  wife satisfy all their needs. That would be crazy.
• 20:53
  I mean, we're talking about a finite person, and the Lord has
• 20:56
  made us with infinite desires and infinite needs.
• 21:00
  But I guess I'd have to say that there was a sense of something
• 21:05
  even more that that I would be dissatisfied with marriage to a
• 21:11
  mere man. Meaning like you'd feel you
• 21:14
  married the wrong guy. Yeah, I married the wrong guy.
• 21:19
  The right guy is a Jewish Carpenter from Nazareth.
• 21:22
  He's the only one. I relate a little bit to what
• 21:25
  you're saying in that before I married my husband, whose name
• 21:28
  is Joseph, which again, I was here with Father Mark Mary and
• 21:31
  he was talking about Saint Joseph and we were I was just
• 21:33
  sort of almost blushing because I feel like my husband Joseph is
• 21:37
  so much like a Saint Joseph for me.
• 21:38
  But anyways that that it was fun to kind of hear his perspective
• 21:42
  on their relationship. But I think about before I got
• 21:46
  married and my mom, you know, would always advise me with
• 21:51
  dating and everything and she would say, remember, no one's
• 21:55
  perfect. Like only maybe you need to
• 21:57
  marry Jesus. Only Jesus is perfect, you know
• 21:59
  we were. Just kind of she would say that.
• 22:00
  Joking, you know, about stuff. She would also say things like,
• 22:04
  you know, you got to marry, you should marry this kind of guy.
• 22:06
  And you know, she's an Italian mother.
• 22:08
  She was very, she's very hands on in a in a beautiful way.
• 22:12
  But I remember when she she said that and it was after I think I
• 22:15
  ended a relationship with some guy and you know, my mother was
• 22:19
  like, and not that she was for that guy, but it was more just
• 22:23
  like, are you do you want to get married, Lila?
• 22:26
  I think was the really question of my mother at that point.
• 22:29
  She wanted me to get married and I was a little on the younger
• 22:31
  side enough. It's very tied up in my pro-life
• 22:33
  mission. But I remember, you know,
• 22:36
  wondering maybe I am called to be consecrated in some way and I
• 22:41
  didn't knew. That that existed as.
• 22:43
  AI did, I mean I, I had my experience when I was probably
• 22:45
  12, even before becoming Catholic think thinking maybe
• 22:48
  I'm called to be a nun or you know, I or just I want to
• 22:51
  totally give myself to Jesus. That same radical act of
• 22:53
  surrender it sounds like you made after the retreat, which I
• 22:56
  think, by the way, everyone should make that radical act of
• 22:57
  surrender daily. You know, like.
• 22:59
  Jesus, I give you everything, whatever you want from me. 100%
• 23:02
  I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm yours, right? But I share that because I did
• 23:07
  go down the path of, you know, is this for me?
• 23:11
  Is this what the Lord has for me?
• 23:13
  And I had wonderful spiritual directors.
• 23:14
  I got a little more mature and wiser as I progressed in my, you
• 23:18
  know, years. And I was really was a timing
• 23:20
  thing. The Lord had my husband prepared
• 23:22
  for me. I hadn't met him yet.
• 23:24
  In some sense, it was that simple.
• 23:27
  But in that discernment process, I realized that as much as I
• 23:31
  knew Jesus could fill me 1000% because he's the Lord, He's
• 23:36
  infinite perfection and goodness and everything love, right?
• 23:41
  The Lord's my, my unique path for my unique needs.
• 23:44
  And not even desires, but just my needs and even my calling and
• 23:48
  how I'm going to live out my gifts.
• 23:49
  And you know, maybe the souls that the Lord had imagined for
• 23:52
  me to give birth to one day and everything else, like
• 23:54
  physically, perhaps the Lord had somebody in particular for me to
• 23:58
  marry. And in that sense, what I
• 24:00
  discovered was I didn't have the vocation to marriage.
• 24:03
  This is this is what I my my interpretation of it.
• 24:06
  I'm curious your thought it wasn't that I had an I had a
• 24:08
  vocation to marriage per SE. I didn't know maybe I would be
• 24:11
  consecrated. What I meant my husband.
• 24:14
  I'm like, I have a vocation to this guy.
• 24:16
  Yeah, I absolutely agree. You have a vocation to Joseph,
• 24:20
  not a vocation to marriage in the abstract, because you can't
• 24:23
  marry marriage. That's correct.
• 24:25
  You marry an individual. It's an individual and and and
• 24:29
  he has to confirm that. Of course he had to vocation
• 24:32
  believe it. Yeah, for.
• 24:32
  Me to have a vocation to lie so. But it was so freeing because
• 24:36
  when I, when I discovered that it wasn't like, oh, I have to
• 24:40
  marry, it was like, oh, the Lord has given me the opportunity to
• 24:43
  fall in love with and marry this particular man and he loves me
• 24:47
  and wants to marry me too. Because it takes 2 to get
• 24:49
  married, obviously, or three to marry as Fulton, you know, 14
• 24:53
  would say. But it was so freeing because
• 24:56
  there was still freedom and the Lord wasn't being like, you have
• 24:58
  to marry him. I would because I would talk to
• 25:00
  our Lord about it and wasn't like, you have to marry him.
• 25:02
  The Lord would say, if you don't marry him, I will still bless.
• 25:05
  You. But you're, you're, you're
• 25:08
  choosing against this gift. And at the heart, there was a
• 25:11
  sense of almost torment in imagining not receiving the gift
• 25:15
  of my husband because he was such a gift.
• 25:17
  And so I was like, even though I knew the Lord would not curse
• 25:20
  me, I knew maybe even I would marry someone else if like the
• 25:24
  Lord provided. Like it wasn't like this now or
• 25:27
  never. It was more, this is a gift.
• 25:30
  He is your gift. Do you want to receive it
• 25:32
  freely? And I was like, yes, I do.
• 25:34
  That's the incredible thing about human freedom that the
• 25:37
  Lord gives us this freedom to say yes or no to his gift.
• 25:42
  And if we say no to a particular gift, like the person he's
• 25:45
  calling you to marry, he's, he's not going to cut you off.
• 25:48
  He's he's not going to never bless you again in your life,
• 25:51
  but it may not be the greatest blessing that he had for you.
• 25:57
  That's a scary thought. Exactly.
• 25:59
  We we can turn away from that. We can miss the greatest
• 26:03
  blessing if we say no to him out of fear, selfishness, pride,
• 26:08
  whatever it might be. How does that work?
• 26:10
  I I have met some people, I've heard some people say, oh, I
• 26:14
  shouldn't have married. Well, that may be the case.
• 26:19
  It's a valid. I mean, there's.
• 26:19
  No, yeah, that may be the case. He thinks he thinks so.
• 26:23
  Yes, but once you're married. Once you're married, you've made
• 26:27
  that vow and if it's a Sacramento marriage, you have
• 26:31
  the weight of the grace of Christ and the church underlying
• 26:37
  your marriage. And so the Lord will give you
• 26:40
  the grace in that situation. It's not like you can, you can
• 26:45
  back out and say, well, let me go back and get the grace of not
• 26:49
  being married to this person that the Lord gave.
• 26:51
  No, his grace is here and now. It's not yesterday it, it's not
• 26:55
  last year, 10 years ago, it's it's not tomorrow, it's here and
• 26:59
  now. So he will give you the grace
• 27:02
  you need in that situation. Now of course in some cases the
• 27:06
  problems are so severe that that may be the grace you need in a
• 27:10
  separation, but. There's an.
• 27:12
  It's a nullable. It's wasn't an actual marriage
• 27:14
  to begin with. Yes.
• 27:15
  Yes, but you know, once you have entered into a sacred covenant,
• 27:20
  covenant before the Lord, He will give you all the grace that
• 27:25
  you need day by day by day in that situation.
• 27:28
  I think many people may feel haunted by the choices they
• 27:34
  didn't make, and I think today more than ever in our culture,
• 27:38
  we're living in a culture of regret.
• 27:40
  Or maybe we're setting ourselves up for lifetimes of regret
• 27:44
  because there's many people who are not choosing really to
• 27:47
  commit to anything. That's so right.
• 27:48
  Except themselves and their careers, or their just immediate
• 27:52
  kind of future needs. And then the enemy can take
• 27:56
  regret and make it a weapon against us to destroy us through
• 28:02
  the the worldly regret of anguish of looking back to the
• 28:07
  past and the choices you didn't make.
• 28:10
  And we have to fight that tooth and nail.
• 28:13
  And we have to say, I refuse that.
• 28:16
  I accept the mercy of Christ here and now.
• 28:21
  He takes my past and he redeems it and he covers everything with
• 28:25
  his precious blood. And he cast my sins into the
• 28:28
  depths of the sea. And I can begin today.
• 28:33
  Every day we say that I can begin anew today.
• 28:37
  He, he makes all things new. His mercies are new every
• 28:39
  morning. And so that's the Lord's call to
• 28:43
  to live in the here and now and the grace of Christ and receive
• 28:48
  his forgiveness and mercy. Because if we don't, and we're,
• 28:52
  you know, living in regret for our past choices, we're just
• 28:56
  playing into the enemy's hands. Do you think it's fair to say
• 29:00
  for people, well, this is the human condition because we all
• 29:03
  have sinned, right? But for people that feel that on
• 29:07
  a sort of existential level, perhaps they've blown it
• 29:10
  vocationally. And again, I talked to a lot of
• 29:12
  people who experienced this, whether it's marriage, married,
• 29:15
  not married, there's people who become religious, they've
• 29:19
  become, they make a, you know, they enter, they begin to enter
• 29:22
  the priesthood, they actually enter the priesthood or
• 29:24
  religious order and then they discern out because there was
• 29:27
  some big mistake with their discernment they felt.
• 29:29
  I think there's just a lot of confusion around discernment
• 29:31
  today. Absolutely.
• 29:33
  And I, I think the ideal hope would be that God uses even that
• 29:39
  horrible mistake, whatever it may have been, for something
• 29:43
  even a greater good to come from it.
• 29:46
  And I'm curious what you think about that in relation to what
• 29:49
  you said, something you said a few minutes ago, which was that
• 29:52
  if someone says no to a gift like a vocation or a marriage or
• 29:55
  whatever it is for a particular person, they might be passing up
• 29:58
  on a greater blessing than what they may pursue later down the
• 30:02
  line. So how does this work where the
• 30:04
  Lord writes straight with crooked lines?
• 30:07
  Oh, happy faults, you know, we send and we're, you know, that
• 30:10
  left the garden. But then the Lord did all this
• 30:12
  incredible good afterwards by giving us a son.
• 30:15
  But then at the same time, if we hadn't violated the original
• 30:17
  plan, it would have been amazing.
• 30:20
  Which is more amazing? I guess which is more amazing?
• 30:23
  Well, in a sense we can. We can never reason based on the
• 30:27
  counterfactual the the. We can only reason based on what
• 30:31
  is but taking it down. Can you explain that a little
• 30:35
  bit more? Yes, people will often ask that
• 30:38
  question, what would Christ have still come if we had not sinned,
• 30:42
  for example? And that's been a big
• 30:43
  theological debate in church history between the Dominicans
• 30:46
  and Franciscans, etcetera. But it's really, I think it's,
• 30:50
  it's a dead end. It it's an intellectual and
• 30:53
  spiritual dead end. It's OK to speculate on it to
• 30:57
  some degree, but it's it's counterfactual.
• 31:01
  The the plan of salvation as it exists is God's response to the
• 31:08
  tragedy of human sin, which God knows from all eternity because
• 31:13
  he's outside of time. He didn't foresee it, He just
• 31:17
  saw it because he's God and he sees and knows everything.
• 31:22
  He knew from all eternity that these creatures he made in his
• 31:25
  image would rebel against him and would incur the worst kind
• 31:30
  of damage and darkness and sin and ugliness and death because
• 31:34
  of it. And that he would send his Son
• 31:37
  to become one of us and to die for us.
• 31:39
  To lay down his life in in the the center point of all human
• 31:43
  history. To lay down his life on the
• 31:45
  cross so that we could be saved. That's the one plan.
• 31:49
  There is no other. So I think it's kind of
• 31:53
  fruitless to speculate on whether Christ would have come
• 31:55
  if we had not sinned because God always knew and and knows that
• 32:01
  that we would sin. But then taking it back to the
• 32:04
  question of vocation, what if somebody recognizes that choice
• 32:10
  I made to be a priest, or that choice I made to be married was
• 32:14
  a poor choice? Or not marry.
• 32:16
  Or not married, Yeah. Chris Lee, I have.
• 32:18
  AI know someone who shared with me they had broken an engagement
• 32:22
  in their 20s and they thought at the time no big deal I mean it
• 32:27
  was a big deal but you know it's the right decision now they're
• 32:30
  in their 30s later 30s and they're saying that was the
• 32:33
  wrong decision I should have married him well and that's
• 32:35
  really hard when you're. That's really hard.
• 32:37
  In your later 30s or early 40s and you're wondering what if I
• 32:41
  had just married that guy? Right now, cases like that can
• 32:45
  be very difficult and very, very personal, and sometimes a
• 32:50
  person's situation needs to be discerned with a good, wise
• 32:53
  spiritual director. In some cases, I think it is the
• 32:56
  right decision for people to leave priesthood or religious
• 33:00
  life or marriage, but only in rare particular cases.
• 33:05
  Again, not just by your own discernment, by the help of wise
• 33:09
  people who know what they're talking about.
• 33:12
  And I think we have to be very respectful of that.
• 33:15
  I, I honestly could say I used to be very judge mental about
• 33:19
  that. And I've recognized much more
• 33:22
  people have a story. You have no idea.
• 33:25
  You have no idea what lies underneath that whole sequence
• 33:30
  of events and that decision. So we have to respect and not
• 33:34
  judge. But at the same time, for
• 33:36
  anybody who is still discerning, I would say, you know, if at all
• 33:41
  possible, stay in the form of life in which you are, as Saint
• 33:46
  Paul counsels in One Corinthians, because the grace
• 33:49
  of God is there for you. If, you know, you feel like I
• 33:53
  should have gone to seminary. I heard the Lord calling, I
• 33:55
  should have gone to, but instead I got married because I just
• 33:58
  didn't want to live without a wife.
• 34:01
  The grace of God is there for you here and now and you are
• 34:05
  going to come become the the holy and mature and loving and
• 34:10
  self emptying person that God has created you to be by saying
• 34:14
  yes in that situation that you're in now, day by day, not
• 34:19
  by backing out and trying out another vocation.
• 34:22
  That's the the world we live in. A world of no commitment, world
• 34:26
  of no covenant, no loyalty. And it's a bit of a world of
• 34:31
  despair because you don't believe that God will meet you
• 34:33
  where you're at and give you the grace to persevere and even
• 34:36
  thrive despite the difficulties. You mentioned annulment or you
• 34:41
  mentioned in very rare cases, unique cases, personal cases, it
• 34:45
  may be a requirement to leave a marriage.
• 34:49
  In some cases, separations required because of abuse or
• 34:51
  other extreme factors and then the person will not remarry
• 34:55
  because they're divorced, maybe legally, but they're not going
• 34:58
  to break their sacrament of still being married by the
• 35:01
  church. There's other people who will
• 35:03
  leave their marriages and divorce and seek an annulment
• 35:05
  and perceive an annulment, meaning this was not a marriage
• 35:07
  to begin with. I've heard criticism of
• 35:11
  marriages today saying, oh, well, excuse me, of the church's
• 35:14
  approach to marriages today saying, well, that's Catholic
• 35:17
  divorce. The church is just handing out
• 35:18
  annulments. What's your perspective as a
• 35:21
  theologian and as someone who I think has a deeper understanding
• 35:26
  of all of the discernment pieces at play here?
• 35:29
  It may seem like that on the surface but it's not at all
• 35:32
  because the church is faithful to the Lord and it's the Lord
• 35:37
  who said what God has joined together let not man separate.
• 35:42
  It's Jesus himself who said marriage is indissoluble, and
• 35:46
  even when that means the spouses have to separate for safety or
• 35:50
  whatever serious reason, they're still married before the eyes of
• 35:54
  God and so therefore they can't marry another person.
• 35:57
  But the Church recognizes in the complex situation we have today,
• 36:02
  there are many who received the sacrament of marriage
• 36:05
  presumably, but who in fact, when, when you examine all of
• 36:10
  the circumstances, did not contract a valid marriage.
• 36:14
  And so that's when their marriage could be nullified and
• 36:18
  they can be free to marry another person.
• 36:21
  But that's that's a vast difference.
• 36:24
  And those cases aren't just oh, I changed my mind.
• 36:27
  No, of course. Not like, oh, I think I thought
• 36:29
  God told me to marry them, but God actually didn't.
• 36:31
  You know to be it's. Much more a.
• 36:34
  Standard. Absolutely, that something
• 36:37
  fundamental to having the freedom to enter a marriage
• 36:40
  covenant was missing from the beginning.
• 36:42
  Like if for example, if one spouse never intended to have
• 36:45
  children, that's grounds for a degree of nullity.
• 36:50
  Even if the other spouse knew that that they weren't intending
• 36:52
  to have kids, it doesn't. It doesn't.
• 36:54
  Even if they went into it freely.
• 36:56
  Knowing that, I think. So they still couldn't make the
• 36:58
  commitment even though they tried to, because the person
• 37:00
  wasn't willing to have children. Yeah, that gets into
• 37:03
  technicalities where you need to can a lawyer.
• 37:05
  But yeah, I think that's the case.
• 37:07
  I think about the case of Robert Hanson.
• 37:10
  I don't know if you're familiar with him, but he was a American
• 37:14
  working for the government and he ended up working for the FBI,
• 37:19
  ended up being a double agent. Oh, sure, yes.
• 37:22
  He was a spy for the Russians. In Maryland.
• 37:24
  Yeah, and now he's in federal prison for life because he
• 37:28
  repeatedly betrayed his country. He was married in a Catholic
• 37:33
  marriage to a beautiful woman, Bonnie.
• 37:35
  Went to Catholic school. His kids went to Catholic school
• 37:38
  and she has been remained faithful to the marriage.
• 37:40
  Amazing. I mean the heroism of this.
• 37:43
  Absolutely. And she, I think she still
• 37:45
  visits him when she can in prison.
• 37:48
  And she's, I mean, I've had the privilege of meeting her and
• 37:51
  just a joy filled, joyful, holy person, normal, joyful.
• 37:56
  And you see that because I think people think, well, how can I be
• 37:59
  faithful to my marriage vows in XY or Z situation, whatever.
• 38:02
  I mean, there's so many a multitude of situations, of
• 38:04
  course, and so personal. And I think about her as a bit
• 38:07
  of an icon in my mind. She comes into mind, well,
• 38:10
  almost regularly when I, and we're on this topic, comes up
• 38:13
  because she's living fidelity in the worst circle.
• 38:17
  I mean truly some of the worst circumstances.
• 38:19
  Yeah, this age has such a shallow concept of what
• 38:22
  happiness is. So many people look at that
• 38:25
  situation and say she can't be happy, but they have no idea
• 38:29
  what real happiness is. And it's only when we learn
• 38:36
  imitating Christ and participating in Christ to give
• 38:39
  of ourselves radically and to love, not counting the cost when
• 38:44
  it's hardest to love, that we develop our capacity for love.
• 38:48
  We our hearts become enlarged and we become capable of the
• 38:53
  infinite happiness that the Lord has for us.
• 38:57
  So only in hindsight, you know, in heaven will people be able to
• 39:02
  see somebody like her and recognize what an incredible
• 39:07
  grace said she could live that fidelity when the world would
• 39:11
  say, forget it, go find somebody else.
• 39:15
  What a beautiful witness to the world that this life is not all
• 39:18
  there is. Yes, and she must have the
• 39:23
  graces, and they're probably fruits of the Spirit, right?
• 39:27
  I mean, when you said we don't know what happiness is or we
• 39:30
  misunderstand happiness today, what do you mean by that?
• 39:35
  We have a We have such a shallow idea of happiness that we equate
• 39:38
  it with pleasure and with the values of the world.
• 39:43
  Money, looks, entertainment, comfort, wealth, and all of
• 39:53
  those things provide at best, temporary delights, temporary
• 39:59
  thrills. But.
• 40:01
  But they can leave people absolutely empty.
• 40:03
  Who are some of the most miserably people in the world.
• 40:06
  The wealthiest, most prestigious, most accomplished
• 40:11
  people are sometimes the most miserable.
• 40:14
  But the Lord has created us for a happiness that is infinitely
• 40:18
  deeper and greater and more sublime than any of those things
• 40:23
  that's meant to last for eternity.
• 40:26
  If only we would look to that and, and allow the Lord to shape
• 40:32
  us and form us and expand our capacity and our suffering.
• 40:36
  It it, you know, seems to gouge out wells of suffering a pain
• 40:41
  within us, but it's it's actually increasing our capacity
• 40:44
  for love if we allow the Lord to do that.
• 40:48
  Hallow is the number one Christian prayer app in the
• 40:51
  world. It's been downloaded 10 million
• 40:53
  times. I love Hallow because they have
• 40:55
  sleep stories, they have the daily readings, they have
• 40:57
  scriptural commentary. You can listen to Holy
• 40:59
  Scripture. I also love that Hallow has kids
• 41:01
  content for your little ones. You can listen to stories.
• 41:04
  You can listen to prayers that are specifically designed for
• 41:06
  children. An amazing way to help you pray
• 41:08
  together as a family. A lot is at stake.
• 41:10
  We have only one life to live and we've been given each day to
• 41:13
  make something beautiful for God.
• 41:15
  And that's why prayer is an essential part.
• 41:17
  It should be an essential part of all of our days O.
• 41:20
  You can download Halo today, use the link in the description or
• 41:23
  go to Halo com Lila. You'll get 3 months free and use
• 41:27
  this incredible tool to deepen your relationship with God.
• 41:30
  It's really hard to find good content to watch with my kids
• 41:33
  for when they are allowed to have screen time.
• 41:35
  I'm always on the lookout for low stimulating, story driven
• 41:39
  and values based kids content. That's why I'm very excited
• 41:42
  about Brave Plus. Brave Plus is a new streaming
• 41:46
  platform with content that reinforces our values instead of
• 41:49
  undermining them. Every show is vetted by real
• 41:52
  Christian parents not only to screen out messages that are
• 41:55
  harmful, but to also avoid over stimulating video content that's
• 41:59
  linked to mental and behavior issues.
• 42:02
  Brave Plus only accepts one in every 20 shows that they review.
• 42:06
  When you check it out, you'll find classics like Strawberry
• 42:08
  Shortcake, Babar, Paddington, as well as new shows like Season 2
• 42:12
  of Iggy and Mr. Kirk starring Kirk Cameron.
• 42:15
  And right now, just for my listeners, you can try Brave
• 42:17
  Plus free for seven days. Go to braveplus.com/lila.
• 42:21
  That's braveplus.com/lila for a free seven day.
• 42:24
  Trial. If you don't mind me asking,
• 42:27
  have you ever regretted or questioned your decision to be
• 42:31
  consecrated since making it? I can honestly say no.
• 42:38
  I have friends in various forms of consecrated life who have at
• 42:42
  times struggled with that decision and I I think it's just
• 42:47
  a pure grace of God that I have never regretted it.
• 42:51
  It's been hard at various times, but I've never thought maybe I
• 42:57
  maybe I shouldn't have done that.
• 42:58
  Maybe I did the wrong thing. One more question about it.
• 43:00
  I know we're going to get to your amazing books, including
• 43:03
  the spiritual gifts, but what's been the hardest thing about
• 43:06
  being consecrated to Christ and what has been the most beautiful
• 43:11
  thing? Probably the hardest thing is
• 43:17
  being alone, just living alone, although, as I shared, I don't
• 43:23
  live alone anymore. But not having somebody with
• 43:28
  whom I can share on a daily basis my joys, my struggles, my
• 43:33
  hopes, my thoughts, my reflections on life.
• 43:40
  Not having, I mean, I have many dear friends, wonderful, amazing
• 43:43
  friends, but not to have somebody on a daily basis with
• 43:46
  whom I can do that. And what's been the greatest joy
• 43:49
  of that? Just intimacy with Jesus.
• 43:54
  Not that I wouldn't have that anyway, but just having that and
• 44:01
  knowing that I am fully his, that I, I don't belong to
• 44:05
  anybody else but him, that in itself is an incredible gift.
• 44:11
  You said earlier he meets all your needs.
• 44:15
  Has there been an example maybe recently where Jesus showed up
• 44:19
  in a very unexpected way? Maybe or helped you in at a time
• 44:25
  at a low point where you had just like a more practical need.
• 44:28
  Even that you're like if I was married and had a husband or had
• 44:32
  a different state in life, this would be an easier thing to fix.
• 44:36
  Yeah, he. Changes your tires.
• 44:40
  I've actually never had a a tire blown Lord.
• 44:43
  I never needed to change a tire. God is good.
• 44:47
  Or the mechanic can do it too, but.
• 44:50
  I guess to share that I would have to share my fostering and
• 44:54
  adoption journey because that's where I've seen the Lord provide
• 44:59
  so concretely, so amazingly. So as I mentioned to you, 3 1/2
• 45:04
  years ago, I became a foster mom, felt the Lord leading me to
• 45:07
  do that during COVID. It took, it took a while to go
• 45:12
  through the process of getting approved for foster care, going
• 45:15
  through all of all of the home inspection background checks,
• 45:19
  all of that. And I began to foster a, a young
• 45:25
  boy who's 10 years old. And just this year I adopted
• 45:29
  him. He's 13.
• 45:31
  And he was also baptized, confirmed and received his first
• 45:34
  Holy Communion just a few months ago.
• 45:37
  Wow, amazing. And I originally thought it
• 45:44
  would just be a temporary thing and that after a few months, I
• 45:50
  would probably not be able to anymore because I travel quite a
• 45:53
  bit and I, I teach full time. But gradually the Lord led me to
• 45:59
  see it as a permanent thing. And I became a mom to this boy
• 46:04
  named Kyle. And that's been an incredible
• 46:06
  gift. And it's, it's with regard to
• 46:11
  him that I've just seen the Lord provide in such amazing ways.
• 46:14
  And an example is there was a time probably about a year ago,
• 46:21
  I had a lot going on. I had a meeting that was
• 46:23
  happening at my house. I don't even remember what the
• 46:27
  meeting was, but it was going to be pretty intense and my son
• 46:32
  needed a lot of hands on attention.
• 46:36
  So it was going to be challenging for him to be home.
• 46:39
  But I didn't have anybody to take care of him.
• 46:42
  Whoever I had arranged just wasn't able to do it.
• 46:47
  So I just prayed, oh, Lord, what am I going to do?
• 46:49
  I, you know, it's just not going to work very well if he's here.
• 46:52
  I had to drop off something at a friend's house and went to drop
• 46:56
  this thing off. And as I drove up with Kyle in
• 47:00
  the car, his garage door was open and there was a deer
• 47:05
  hanging in his garage from a hook that he was skinning and
• 47:08
  butchering. And as soon as Kyle saw that,
• 47:12
  he's like, oh wow. And he already knew my friend.
• 47:17
  And so he he got out of the car to look and his friend said, oh,
• 47:21
  you want to help us? He's like, yes.
• 47:24
  So I left him there and he was there for the next 3 or 4 hours.
• 47:28
  Having the time, having the. Time of his life and I had my
• 47:33
  meeting very peacefully and picked him up and it it just all
• 47:36
  worked great. Another time, one of the moms of
• 47:43
  his friends at school, she just said to me out of the blue.
• 47:46
  I didn't really know her well at that point.
• 47:48
  She just said out of the blue, if you ever need help taking
• 47:51
  care of Kyle, just let me know. I'd be happy to help.
• 47:54
  It was like a couple hours later, somebody I had lined up
• 47:58
  to care for him overnight said, I'm sick, I can't.
• 48:02
  So I called up this other woman said, could you take him today?
• 48:05
  Sure, no problem. So you had the day there?
• 48:09
  I've got a good community. Well, that's the thing, you
• 48:12
  can't do it if you're alone. I have an amazing community.
• 48:17
  What a blessing. What a blessing.
• 48:19
  And the Lord, really, I think he, he loves to provide for us
• 48:23
  through each other in ways that sadly so many people don't
• 48:28
  experience, especially if they're outside the body of
• 48:30
  Christ. How much He loves to care for us
• 48:33
  through one another. Congratulations, that's the most
• 48:37
  beautiful story. And that's so wonderful.
• 48:40
  You have a son, so does he see Jesus as dad?
• 48:43
  How does that work with your vocation?
• 48:46
  In a certain sense he, he does because he, he's spoken that way
• 48:50
  before. But of course, you know, a child
• 48:54
  needs a concrete visible father figure, yes, with skin on.
• 49:00
  And he does have that. And it's another way the Lord
• 49:03
  has provided 2 couples who are my alternate caregivers, really
• 49:07
  three couples. All of the dads in those
• 49:11
  families are father or grandfather figures to him.
• 49:15
  My next door neighbor is a father figure to wonderful
• 49:19
  Catholic man. And yeah, Kyle has amazing role
• 49:26
  models who love God, love their families, men of virtue, men of
• 49:31
  character. And every child needs that right
• 49:35
  in some way. Not every child has a mom or
• 49:39
  dad, mom and dad with them in the home.
• 49:41
  And that of course is God's plan.
• 49:43
  But if they don't have mom and dad with them and raising them
• 49:48
  as a married couple, which is God's plan for those who trust
• 49:53
  the Lord and and seek Him, the Lord provides in other ways.
• 49:58
  Amen. This book that I'm excited to
• 50:02
  talk to you about is where there's a few, but one of them
• 50:05
  is a spiritual gifts handbook. And I think this is a message
• 50:11
  for the church that is so timely.
• 50:14
  I mean, it's always needed. But I do think back to kind of
• 50:18
  my perspective on American, the American church and maybe the
• 50:21
  Western church is we are not as in touch with the spiritual
• 50:25
  gifts and there's even a suspicion of the spiritual
• 50:29
  gifts. To say the least.
• 50:32
  Tell me, yeah, tell me your experience with that or do you
• 50:34
  see it that way? And and sounds like you do.
• 50:35
  What's your experience with that?
• 50:37
  Yes, well. Maybe I'm so sorry I do this.
• 50:40
  I ask three questions at once. Maybe before we start with that,
• 50:44
  define what the spiritual gifts are.
• 50:46
  Yeah, good point. So if we can lay that groundwork
• 50:48
  and then let's talk about the perspective.
• 50:49
  I love a lot of people that a lot of people have about them.
• 50:52
  Yeah, there are two types of spiritual gifts.
• 50:56
  And usually when Catholics talk about the gifts of the Spirit,
• 51:01
  they're thinking of the gifts that are mentioned in Isaiah 7,
• 51:05
  gifts that according to Catholic tradition, we all receive at
• 51:09
  baptism and confirmation, wisdom, understanding,
• 51:13
  knowledge, counsel, fortitude, piety, fear of the Lord.
• 51:16
  But we hear very little about the New Testament gifts of the
• 51:21
  Holy Spirit, the ones that Saint Paul talks about also Jesus
• 51:26
  talks about the New Testament talks about in several passages,
• 51:29
  But these are sometimes called the charismatic gifts or the
• 51:33
  spiritual gifts Paul calls them. These are gifts of the Holy
• 51:39
  Spirit distributed unevenly among the members of the body of
• 51:44
  Christ to enable us to carry out our mission.
• 51:48
  And what's our mission? To evangelize, to proclaim
• 51:53
  Christ to the whole world that is desperately in need of him,
• 51:57
  to bring him into the world. And those gifts were poured out
• 52:04
  on the church from the very beginning, from the day of
• 52:07
  Pentecost. They are essential to our
• 52:11
  carrying out our mission. Not only our mission in the
• 52:14
  sense of formally evangelizing, proclaiming the gospel, but our
• 52:19
  mission as Christians, including the mission to be a husband or
• 52:23
  wife to, to raise children, to serve the Lord in whatever
• 52:27
  calling He has you in, to bring the goodness of the Lord into
• 52:32
  your sphere of influence. To do any of those things, we
• 52:37
  need the supernatural gifting of the Holy Spirit which Christ
• 52:43
  promised and which the early church evidently had in spades.
• 52:49
  And you see it in the Acts of the Apostles, you see it in the
• 52:52
  the writings of the early post Apostolic Fathers of the Church,
• 52:56
  the whole period of the Fathers of the Church in various ways.
• 53:00
  You see them through the whole history of the Church.
• 53:02
  But it's really in the modern era, especially the last 500
• 53:06
  years really, that we have come to assign them to a kind of a
• 53:13
  narrow category of special, extraordinary mystical gifts
• 53:19
  given to a few Saints for their own edification or
• 53:23
  sanctification. And that's that was never the
• 53:28
  purpose of the spiritual gifts. So thanks be to God today,
• 53:33
  really for the last 100 years, because of what the Lord has
• 53:37
  done over the last century and more.
• 53:40
  The Church is returning to that original understanding, really
• 53:45
  the traditional understanding that the supernatural gifts of
• 53:49
  the Holy Spirit, the the charismatic gifts of the Holy
• 53:53
  Spirit are given to all, distributed among all the
• 53:58
  members of the body of Christ and necessary for carrying out
• 54:01
  our mission. The charismatic renewal both in
• 54:04
  the Protestant churches and in the Catholic Church has been key
• 54:08
  to that. And, and really by a, a, a pure
• 54:14
  grace of God, there was an outpouring of the Holy Spirit
• 54:18
  from the beginning of the 20th century, which impacted the
• 54:22
  Catholic Church, especially beginning in 1967, the Duquesne
• 54:25
  weekend that those gifts are once again becoming normal,
• 54:32
  which is actually a return to our Apostolic heritage.
• 54:35
  It's a return to normal. And many people don't realize
• 54:40
  that because they they haven't studied the whole history of the
• 54:45
  gifts of the Spirit in depth. But that is the case.
• 54:48
  It's a return to normal. We were never supposed to carry
• 54:51
  out our mission based on human ideas and human resources alone.
• 54:57
  It's a divine mission, and the Lord has given us divine power.
• 55:01
  So you mentioned in Isaiah there are the gifts of the Spirit and
• 55:05
  there are 7 often misunderstood or confused with the gifts that
• 55:10
  are described in the New Testament.
• 55:13
  What are those gifts? What are those charismatic
• 55:15
  spiritual gifts that are promised the believers for the
• 55:17
  sake of advancing the Kingdom and sharing the gospel in the
• 55:20
  New Testament? Well, the one of the differences
• 55:24
  between the Isaiah gifts in the New Testament gifts is there's
• 55:26
  there's no exact number of the New Testament gifts.
• 55:31
  There's an infinite variety of them.
• 55:33
  But when they're listed, particularly Paul lists them a
• 55:37
  couple of times in one Corinthians 12, you often see
• 55:41
  prophecy, healing, discernment of spirits, words of knowledge,
• 55:47
  gift of tongues, interpretation of tongues, gift of faith,
• 55:51
  meaning faith to move mountains, gift of miracles, also teaching,
• 55:56
  exhortation, even acts of mercy and even financial giving can be
• 56:01
  a charism, all of those things. And so I think.
• 56:05
  Having a lot of money and being able to give a lot away.
• 56:08
  Yes, not just being able to give a lot away, but I think when
• 56:10
  Paul speaks of the charism of financial contribution, he means
• 56:14
  a particular anointing to give away a lot of money in a way
• 56:19
  that advances the Kingdom of God in a way that is really
• 56:22
  fruitful, in a way that brings about great good.
• 56:25
  Live action guys, it's. Great.
• 56:28
  If you have that charism, OK, I want to.
• 56:31
  Can you list those once more for us healing?
• 56:34
  You did a great job already, but just to re emphasize healing
• 56:38
  prophecy. Words of knowledge.
• 56:39
  Words of knowledge. Words of wisdom.
• 56:41
  Words of wisdom. Discernment of spirits.
• 56:43
  Discernment of spirits. Faith, Mountain moving faith.
• 56:47
  Not not just basic salvation faith, but mountain moving
• 56:49
  faith, miracles, teaching, exhortation, hospitality, acts
• 56:58
  of mercy administration, financial giving.
• 57:03
  I think your average Catholic or even non Catholic Christian
• 57:06
  today, when they hear those, they all sound nice.
• 57:10
  Some of them sound wildly out of reach.
• 57:11
  The gift of miracles, the gift of knowledge, meaning you like
• 57:14
  know hidden knowledge about other people without them
• 57:16
  telling you tongues. And I think there's skepticism
• 57:22
  that I've noticed for some people about what does this
• 57:25
  mean? So I think maybe a good next
• 57:29
  question for us to go to would be, what do we mean by these
• 57:32
  words? OK, what does it mean?
• 57:36
  Probably recognize from the list that I just gave that some of
• 57:41
  them are more obviously supernatural.
• 57:44
  Like, like the gift of teaching would be an example of where you
• 57:47
  could have a natural gift of teaching, but there's also a
• 57:50
  charism of teaching, but with, say miracles or prophecy or
• 57:56
  healing in the sense that Saint Paul means it, that's purely
• 57:59
  supernatural. So the these gifts of the spirit
• 58:04
  can sometimes build on a natural gift.
• 58:07
  Like, for example, I have often seen that people who are in the
• 58:10
  medical professions, nurses, doctors, have a particular
• 58:14
  aptitude for the charism of healing, supernatural healing
• 58:18
  through prayer, which is not the same as having a, you know,
• 58:23
  natural gift to be in the medical professions.
• 58:27
  But it's like they have an aptitude or take something like
• 58:31
  teaching or preaching. You can have a natural gift of
• 58:35
  it. People can be rhetorically very
• 58:38
  gifted, but that's not the same as the charism.
• 58:41
  It's a charism when it is supernaturally efficacious.
• 58:46
  So for example, somebody could have the gift of preaching and
• 58:50
  they they could preach, say a priest at mass.
• 58:52
  People could say, oh, father, loved your homily.
• 58:55
  That was so enjoyable. Loved that story.
• 58:57
  You're so good at giving homilies, yeah.
• 58:59
  Yeah, but it it didn't actually have much power to draw people's
• 59:06
  hearts to the Lord. But what if after the homily
• 59:10
  they say, wow, father, that really convicted me.
• 59:14
  Can I make an appointment for confession or I just wondered,
• 59:18
  want to run to the Chapel and pray or tears in their eyes.
• 59:23
  I'm overwhelmed by the love of God.
• 59:26
  That's where you know there's a charism.
• 59:28
  When you see the, excuse me when you see the response, like a
• 59:32
  good test litmus test for whether or not you have a
• 59:34
  charism is if it produces fruit in other people.
• 59:38
  That's right, spiritual fruit produces spiritual fruit.
• 59:41
  If there's no fruit. Yes, you probably don't have it
• 59:46
  or it's not activated in you yet.
• 59:48
  Right, exactly. You may have it, but you haven't
• 59:50
  activated. It exactly.
• 59:51
  And that's the case for so, so, so, so many Christians.
• 59:55
  They've been given charisms, but they don't know it.
• 59:57
  They don't know what charisms are.
• 59:59
  They don't know how to activate them.
• 1:00:00
  They don't know how to use them. They don't know how to discern
• 1:00:02
  which ones they have. And so they're dormant.
• 1:00:05
  And the church is comatose in some places because those gifts
• 1:00:10
  are dormant, but they they're there and they need to be
• 1:00:13
  activated. Or to take one more example,
• 1:00:16
  hospitality. Some people have a natural gift
• 1:00:18
  of hospitality. They can throw a great dinner
• 1:00:21
  party. They can make people feel
• 1:00:22
  welcome. But when you have somebody who
• 1:00:25
  has the charism in a Christian setting, others will come and
• 1:00:29
  encounter that person and they feel the welcome of Christ.
• 1:00:34
  They feel loved, honored, understood.
• 1:00:38
  Somebody remembers my name, they want to come back.
• 1:00:42
  That's a charism. So as I said, some of them, some
• 1:00:47
  of the charisms build on natural talents.
• 1:00:49
  Some are just purely supernatural.
• 1:00:51
  From what we can see. They're distributed unevenly in
• 1:00:54
  the body of Christ precisely so that we can need each other.
• 1:00:59
  I don't have all the charisms. You have some that I don't have.
• 1:01:02
  I have some that you don't have precisely because God wants us
• 1:01:05
  to need each other to be interdependent, like the organs
• 1:01:09
  in the human body, as Saint Paul talks about.
• 1:01:12
  So when when a body, when a Christian community, whether
• 1:01:16
  it's a church or prayer group or whatever it is, is alive with
• 1:01:21
  people operating in their charisms, is just this beautiful
• 1:01:26
  Symphony, like people are being built up by the charisms of
• 1:01:31
  others. And if somebody has a great
• 1:01:33
  charism, like say you have the charism of miracles or the
• 1:01:36
  charism of music that leads people into worship, I don't get
• 1:01:40
  jealous that I don't have that charism.
• 1:01:43
  Your charism is for me. My charism is for you.
• 1:01:47
  You know, it belongs to me as your sister in the body of
• 1:01:50
  Christ. So when the body is functioning
• 1:01:53
  the way it's meant to, those charisms are so edifying.
• 1:01:58
  And that's a word that Saint Paul uses.
• 1:02:00
  Edifying literally means house building.
• 1:02:03
  The charisms help build the House of God, the temple of God.
• 1:02:08
  That the that's what the church is gets built up when people are
• 1:02:12
  using their charisms. There are so many places to go
• 1:02:15
  to from here. We could do a whole episode on
• 1:02:17
  each spiritual gift. Absolutely.
• 1:02:20
  So I'm like, which one do I pick for the time we have left before
• 1:02:24
  we go into specific gifts and also how to discover a discern
• 1:02:28
  if one has one? Then I got to ask you a little
• 1:02:32
  quickly about the fruits of the Spirit, because I think there is
• 1:02:36
  a sometimes confusion between the gifts of the Spirit.
• 1:02:39
  You mentioned the gifts in Isaiah, the charismatic gifts
• 1:02:41
  that are shared about by Saint Paul, and in the New Testament.
• 1:02:44
  And then there's the fruits of the Spirit.
• 1:02:46
  What are the fruits of the Spirit?
• 1:02:48
  Well, Saint Paul lists them in Galatians 5.
• 1:02:50
  Lovejoy, peace, patience, kindness, self-control,
• 1:02:54
  etcetera. And the fruits are just like
• 1:03:00
  ordinary fruit is something that grows of its own accord if the
• 1:03:03
  tree is kept healthy. So if we are putting down our
• 1:03:09
  roots into the soil and receiving the Word of God and
• 1:03:16
  allowing the Holy Spirit to fill us and guide us, drinking from
• 1:03:20
  the living water of the Holy Spirit, we will bear the fruit.
• 1:03:25
  You don't see? Yeah, all of it.
• 1:03:28
  You don't see a tree striving to produce its apples.
• 1:03:32
  They come naturally. If it's being watered and it's
• 1:03:38
  it's in the sun and it's in good soil, the fruit comes naturally.
• 1:03:43
  And that's the case with the fruit of the Spirit.
• 1:03:44
  It if a person is living by the Spirit and they're practicing
• 1:03:49
  the ordinary disciplines of the Christian life, prayer,
• 1:03:52
  Scripture, the sacraments, etcetera, fellowship in the body
• 1:03:57
  of Christ serving that fruit will grow and sometimes it will
• 1:04:03
  grow almost imperceptible to the person, but their life will
• 1:04:07
  start to exude peace and joy and kindness, etcetera.
• 1:04:13
  So I think about Christians who might say I struggle with
• 1:04:16
  impatience or they're easily aimed.
• 1:04:18
  I don't know anything about that.
• 1:04:21
  I, I thought I was patient until I had kids and I'm like, OK, I'm
• 1:04:24
  not patient anymore. Or they're easily angered or
• 1:04:27
  they are, you know, easily offended or whatever, right.
• 1:04:32
  I think this is what can trip some Christians up.
• 1:04:34
  They think, well, the Holy Spirit must not be operating in
• 1:04:37
  me. I'm not cooperating, I should
• 1:04:39
  say with this, because I don't have this fruit, but I want this
• 1:04:43
  fruit. Oh, how do I get this fruit?
• 1:04:45
  They go to spiritual direction. OK, you got to do this.
• 1:04:47
  You got to do that. So it's kind of like you're,
• 1:04:50
  you're, you're gardening. I mean, if we're going to go to
• 1:04:52
  the apple tree, you know, metaphor, you're going to go and
• 1:04:54
  you got to like. Brood out, you know.
• 1:04:55
  Prune the tree you got to make, you know, till the soil,
• 1:04:59
  whatever and it and there's a work element to it.
• 1:05:02
  So it's not just you grow it naturally, you have to work at
• 1:05:05
  it. Yes, you work at cultivating the
• 1:05:07
  tree. Yeah.
• 1:05:08
  You don't work at the fruit itself.
• 1:05:12
  You work at cultivating the tree.
• 1:05:14
  So you shouldn't say I'm going to work on being more patient.
• 1:05:16
  Instead, you should say I'm going to work on getting closer
• 1:05:19
  to God and practicing these spiritual disciplines.
• 1:05:22
  I think there's a real wisdom to that.
• 1:05:25
  Yes, I do. I think if we focus, I mean,
• 1:05:28
  yes, it's, it's good to recognize virtues and to seek to
• 1:05:31
  grow in individual virtues, especially the ones you don't
• 1:05:34
  have. And I can honestly say
• 1:05:37
  weaknesses, my weakness, one of them is impatience.
• 1:05:41
  So it's not that it's wrong to focus on the virtue, but I think
• 1:05:47
  it this biblical image of the tree, which is throughout all of
• 1:05:52
  Scripture, we, we are like trees or we are the field, the
• 1:05:55
  branches, we are the, the, the garden that the Lord cultivates.
• 1:05:59
  We are the Olive Garden, we're the olive tree, etcetera.
• 1:06:05
  There's something about cultivating the tree itself by
• 1:06:10
  yielding more fully our hearts to the Lord, opening ourselves
• 1:06:15
  more fully to the Holy Spirit, giving him permission to do what
• 1:06:19
  he wants to do in our life, giving a radical yes and I love
• 1:06:25
  the biblical word he Nene in in the Old Testament.
• 1:06:29
  That's a word that's it's usually translated here.
• 1:06:32
  I am. It's a way of saying to God, I
• 1:06:35
  am totally at your disposal. Your wish is my command.
• 1:06:39
  I am I am available. I am totally attentive to you
• 1:06:43
  whatever you want. I say yes, I think when we do
• 1:06:48
  that the those virtues will grow more naturally.
• 1:06:52
  So again, it's not that we'd never focus on the virtue
• 1:06:54
  itself, but too often Christianity is white knuckle
• 1:06:58
  Christianity. It's about self effort.
• 1:07:01
  It's it's about my improvements, my efforts to grow in this or
• 1:07:07
  that way in, in virtue, etcetera.
• 1:07:09
  And that is not the gospel that Jesus came to give us.
• 1:07:15
  In a sense, that was the preparation for the gospel.
• 1:07:17
  That was the Old Testament. The Old Testament was given to
• 1:07:21
  to reveal our need for grace. And then, then the new covenant
• 1:07:26
  came to fulfill that need. Christ came to save us and based
• 1:07:32
  on our our own efforts to combat, to overcome our sinful
• 1:07:37
  habits and our deep, deep, deep rooted selfish tendencies, we
• 1:07:44
  can't do that ourselves. I mean, you might as well fly to
• 1:07:47
  the moon by your own power. It's by His grace.
• 1:07:51
  So focusing more on his grace rather than self striving is the
• 1:07:58
  way to grow. It's a paradox.
• 1:08:00
  In a way, the more we rely on Jesus and we don't try to do it
• 1:08:04
  of our own strength, the more success we'll see.
• 1:08:07
  But I think it's tempting to just try to power through.
• 1:08:11
  I mean, I've noticed anecdotally in my own life the times when I
• 1:08:14
  am less worrying striving towards a specific good human
• 1:08:19
  end of like a virtue or even accomplishing something even for
• 1:08:22
  God. That is, you know, technically
• 1:08:24
  for God. It's like this is for you, God.
• 1:08:27
  But my disposition of my heart is not fully really vulnerable
• 1:08:31
  to Jesus is is the experience of it for me like like letting him
• 1:08:35
  carry like, you know, come to me all you who are have a burden,
• 1:08:37
  like my yoke is easy. I will give you like in my
• 1:08:40
  burden is like I will give you rest like the Lord does it in a
• 1:08:44
  sense. It's this paradox, but I've
• 1:08:46
  noticed when I when I'm like totally surrender, Lord, I can't
• 1:08:48
  do it. It's all for you.
• 1:08:49
  It's all you like, whatever you will, Lord, here I am, like you
• 1:08:53
  said. What's the word again?
• 1:08:55
  Hineni. Hineni it's like this.
• 1:08:57
  Very strange, very quiet supernatural thing happens where
• 1:09:03
  the Lord just does it. Yeah.
• 1:09:05
  And I'm along for the ride in a way.
• 1:09:07
  Exactly. That's a phrase I often use too.
• 1:09:10
  Yeah, that I, I remember a specific time in my life where
• 1:09:13
  it really turned from the self striving white knuckle version
• 1:09:19
  of Christianity to the I'm along for the ride and Jesus is in the
• 1:09:24
  driver's seat. And it's his power, his grace at
• 1:09:27
  work in me. Because he didn't come just to
• 1:09:30
  give us a higher bar to get over, just to give us a higher
• 1:09:33
  standard to have to live up to more hurdles, more, you know,
• 1:09:38
  more virtue. Like, you know, don't even be
• 1:09:41
  angry with somebody because that's like killing them.
• 1:09:42
  Don't even look lustfully because that's like adultery.
• 1:09:45
  Yes, he gave us that, but he gave us the power to live it,
• 1:09:50
  the power of his Holy Spirit. He came to give us newness of
• 1:09:53
  life, not just to call us to a high standard.
• 1:09:59
  Such such a misunderstanding of the gospel that many people
• 1:10:04
  have. How does someone discern which
• 1:10:07
  gifts they have? Which spiritual?
• 1:10:09
  Gifts they have. I love that question because I
• 1:10:12
  struggle with that myself for a long time.
• 1:10:15
  And I, I assumed I just took for granted that you have some gifts
• 1:10:20
  that were given to you like in a package when you got confirmed
• 1:10:24
  or baptized and that's it. Either you have it or you don't.
• 1:10:28
  But then I gradually, as I really have studied this in
• 1:10:31
  depth, I've, I've come to recognize the spiritual gifts
• 1:10:35
  are analogous to natural gifts. And if you take a natural gift
• 1:10:39
  like athletic ability, like, say, the ability to play
• 1:10:42
  basketball really well, how do you discern if you have the
• 1:10:45
  ability to play play basketball well?
• 1:10:48
  You don't go into your prayer room or the Chapel and say,
• 1:10:52
  Lord, please show me, do I have the gift for basketball?
• 1:10:56
  You get on the court. You get on the court, you play
• 1:10:58
  the game, and you can actually grow in the gift.
• 1:11:02
  How do you grow in the well, first you activate it.
• 1:11:05
  You activate it by actually playing.
• 1:11:07
  How do you grow in it? You learn about the game.
• 1:11:10
  You get coaching well, practice. In that metaphor, to each
• 1:11:14
  physically get on the court and dribble the ball, you have to
• 1:11:16
  know there's a ball to dribble. That's where you have to know
• 1:11:19
  that this is how you like shoot a hoop.
• 1:11:21
  Is that the phrase or you know, you have to know the basics of
• 1:11:25
  the game? That's right.
• 1:11:27
  I think a lot of people don't know the basic basics of a lot
• 1:11:31
  of the spiritual gifts. Yes, absolutely.
• 1:11:35
  And so they hear about the gift, spiritual gift of miracles, and
• 1:11:39
  they're like, I don't know what that is.
• 1:11:40
  Yep, not for me. Exactly.
• 1:11:43
  That's a really good thing. Familiarity with baseball.
• 1:11:46
  That's right. That's right.
• 1:11:47
  That's a really good insight. And I would say take a gift like
• 1:11:50
  prophecy. Like how could you discern if
• 1:11:53
  you have the gift of prophecy? I mean, what even is that?
• 1:11:55
  Yeah, what even is that? It's it's the ability to speak a
• 1:12:00
  word from God under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit,
• 1:12:04
  A word that comes from God. A word that doesn't come from
• 1:12:06
  you, doesn't come from your preparation or your reflection,
• 1:12:11
  your education, things you've read comes from God.
• 1:12:14
  For other people. For other people.
• 1:12:17
  So how could you possibly discern that?
• 1:12:20
  Well, very simply, it begins with hearing God's voice.
• 1:12:23
  Do you know how to hear God's voice?
• 1:12:26
  Took me so many years to even understand what that meant, and
• 1:12:30
  the really simple thing that I came to learn is that God's
• 1:12:34
  voice usually sounds like your thoughts.
• 1:12:37
  That's scary. Yeah, it's not like God doesn't
• 1:12:41
  speak audibly. In the vast majority of cases,
• 1:12:44
  He speaks in a very, very quiet way that sounds like your
• 1:12:47
  thoughts. Now that raises the question,
• 1:12:49
  well, how do you know it's not your thoughts?
• 1:12:53
  Only by practice. How do you feel like if you feel
• 1:12:57
  like the Holy Spirit is prompting you to do something
• 1:13:00
  and it's usually very simple but often cuts against our self
• 1:13:05
  standardness or our pride, it may be call up that person you
• 1:13:11
  haven't talked to in three years and ask how they're doing.
• 1:13:16
  It may be something a little bit more risky.
• 1:13:20
  Go ask that person that you see sitting over there if he would
• 1:13:24
  like prayer for anything. But that's the gift of prophecy.
• 1:13:28
  Or how does that hearing God's? Voice that's hearing God's
• 1:13:30
  voice, I see, and then God's. Voice.
• 1:13:32
  But so are you asking the Lord, like Lord, do you?
• 1:13:35
  Is there anything you want me to say to this person?
• 1:13:39
  Would that be the prayer to like?
• 1:13:40
  Is that the most simple? Prayer to pray if you're
• 1:13:43
  discerning if the Lord has a prophetic message.
• 1:13:46
  Yes, sometimes you, you don't even need to pray that he'll
• 1:13:49
  just give that to you. But it it starts on a simpler,
• 1:13:53
  more basic way, by hearing God's voice for yourself.
• 1:13:57
  Like are you spending time in prayer every day?
• 1:14:00
  Not just reading, reciting prayers that you you have
• 1:14:05
  memorized, but actually listening to God's voice,
• 1:14:10
  reading his word, pausing, just listening to the Holy Spirit
• 1:14:15
  speaking back to him. And that's Lexio Davina, as we
• 1:14:18
  Catholics call it, because that's how you learn to hear his
• 1:14:23
  voice. And only when you learn to hear
• 1:14:25
  his voice and you, you might hear the Lord say something
• 1:14:29
  like, I want you to move to another city.
• 1:14:32
  And sometimes people hear a very specific direction like that.
• 1:14:36
  And it doesn't mean you should necessarily just do it like
• 1:14:38
  that. Sometimes you need help to
• 1:14:39
  discern it. Sometimes it takes time and it
• 1:14:42
  needs to be confirmed by circumstances.
• 1:14:45
  But by obeying the Lord, you learn to hear his voice.
• 1:14:51
  And once you've learned to hear his voice, and of course, we're
• 1:14:54
  not perfect, we're not infallible, but we can get
• 1:14:56
  better at it. Then you can get prophetic words
• 1:15:00
  for other people. And again, they're not
• 1:15:03
  infallible either, but usually they're very up building.
• 1:15:08
  In fact, they always should be up building, encouraging, even
• 1:15:13
  sometimes when they're convicting of, of sin or, you
• 1:15:17
  know, word of exhortation or word of caution or warning,
• 1:15:22
  they're always up building. They always impart grace.
• 1:15:26
  So it's it's kind of a, a spiritual skill that many, many
• 1:15:32
  Christians have never learned. Is it appropriate ever to use
• 1:15:36
  the gift of prophecy publicly about someone if it's a gift for
• 1:15:42
  someone? If it's a gift for a specific
• 1:15:43
  person, not just an assembly of people.
• 1:15:46
  Yes, there could be unique circumstances.
• 1:15:48
  Yes. I mean, it would depend on the
• 1:15:51
  situation. I would say normally, no.
• 1:15:53
  If it's a gift for an individual person, why would you not just
• 1:15:56
  give it to that person? But maybe there's a circumstance
• 1:16:00
  where it would be valid? I've had people say to me all
• 1:16:05
  kinds of things, but some people that are good and bad, but some
• 1:16:09
  people that I, I respected spiritually come to me and give
• 1:16:13
  me saying like I had this sense that God is maybe calling you to
• 1:16:18
  do this thing. And they're usually extremely
• 1:16:21
  not usually this has happened a few times, but they're very
• 1:16:23
  dramatic things that I think I don't, I don't think there's
• 1:16:28
  any, you know, there's any way. And I and then I also wonder if
• 1:16:32
  people's imaginations may get into play here.
• 1:16:35
  Absolutely. That's why we need good
• 1:16:38
  teaching, people. People need good teaching and
• 1:16:41
  they need to see the gifts of the Spirit in action on the part
• 1:16:44
  of mature people. Because anytime prophecy is in
• 1:16:48
  question, you also need discernment.
• 1:16:50
  You don't do prophecy without doing discernment.
• 1:16:52
  How do you do discernment around prophet prophecy?
• 1:16:54
  Well, the first person to discern a prophetic word is the
• 1:16:58
  person who gets the word. So if I think I've heard a word
• 1:17:03
  from the Lord, I have to say, OK, is this in keeping with
• 1:17:06
  church teaching? Is this in keeping the
• 1:17:08
  Scripture? Is it loving?
• 1:17:11
  Will? Will it build up the person I'm
• 1:17:13
  speaking to in love or could it cause them to be confused or
• 1:17:17
  scared? Is it appropriate for the
• 1:17:21
  occasion? I mean, you know, if, if if you
• 1:17:24
  give a word to somebody about say a vocation and the Lord told
• 1:17:27
  me that you're going to be married this year, say in most
• 1:17:33
  circumstances that's totally inappropriate.
• 1:17:35
  Really. Absolutely.
• 1:17:36
  Why? Because we don't know that our
• 1:17:40
  word is is certainly from God. We're not infallible, so we
• 1:17:45
  always have to have that kind of humility and caution.
• 1:17:48
  We have to give any word we give in a sort of tentative way that
• 1:17:53
  leaves the other person free and and the other person then needs
• 1:17:58
  to discern it as well. You know, if I hear a prophetic
• 1:18:02
  word from somebody, I don't take for granted that it's true, even
• 1:18:05
  if they claim it's a prophetic word.
• 1:18:07
  I think, does that resonate with what I'm hearing from the Lord
• 1:18:11
  or not? There have been some prophetic
• 1:18:13
  words I've received in recently that brought me tremendous
• 1:18:16
  consolation, like instant tears. Wow, a sense of peace.
• 1:18:21
  Good sign is from the Holy Spirit.
• 1:18:22
  Yeah, I know it's like this. This is from the Holy Spirit.
• 1:18:25
  But there also have been things that people have told me that
• 1:18:27
  bring me trepidation and not like, oh, I'm rejecting God's
• 1:18:31
  will trepidation, but more of just like, this sounds weird.
• 1:18:33
  Agitation, lack of peace. And those are signs, those are
• 1:18:37
  not like fail proof, right? Exactly.
• 1:18:39
  They're not fail proof, but they are good signs.
• 1:18:41
  They're signs that it's not not from the Holy Spirit.
• 1:18:43
  And then in the case of this person saying God told me you're
• 1:18:46
  going to get married, again, that didn't happen to me per SE.
• 1:18:48
  We're just figuring this as an example.
• 1:18:50
  If you get feel a sense from the Lord that He is encouraging you
• 1:18:53
  to encourage someone else that they're going to get married or
• 1:18:56
  something, what would be the proper way to share?
• 1:18:59
  That, well, I'd say first of all, I wouldn't share that with
• 1:19:02
  anybody unless I already had a strong relationship with them.
• 1:19:06
  Oh, really? Uh huh.
• 1:19:08
  I would not share a word like that with a stranger.
• 1:19:10
  You don't have a right to to share a word that is that
• 1:19:13
  significant and and order to a vocation with a stranger, unless
• 1:19:19
  you're somebody like Padre Pio who has such a proven gift that
• 1:19:24
  you know it's always turns out to be correct, which is very.
• 1:19:28
  Rare his his state in life, though, was to be a shepherd to
• 1:19:30
  any soul that crosses path. So it's a little bit.
• 1:19:33
  Different where it's fully dead. It's like if you're like a mom
• 1:19:36
  or a dad or you're just, you know, going about your life,
• 1:19:39
  like in a sense, we're called to be missionaries to every person
• 1:19:41
  we meet. But you're, you're, you're not
• 1:19:44
  going to be sitting in a confessional for 15 hours a day.
• 1:19:47
  And then he's given, you know, knowledge about this person and
• 1:19:49
  then prophesize to them in the confessional or something.
• 1:19:51
  So exactly you're what it sounds like what you're saying is you
• 1:19:54
  have to be very careful. You have to be.
• 1:19:55
  Because you can. Really hurt and and maybe not
• 1:19:59
  intentionally manipulate other people.
• 1:20:01
  That's right. You can rob them of their
• 1:20:02
  freedom. So I mean, say, say you get a
• 1:20:05
  word that a young person is called to a religious vocation,
• 1:20:08
  to the priesthood or religious life.
• 1:20:11
  You should give that in a very tentative way because if they
• 1:20:16
  look up to you as a more spiritual person, you could be
• 1:20:21
  robbing their freedom because they they would then say, I
• 1:20:25
  guess I'm supposed to do this. And they might not have that
• 1:20:27
  level of discernment themselves yet.
• 1:20:30
  And they could think, well, I, I, I guess that's what I have to
• 1:20:33
  do because this wise person told me or it got a prophetic word
• 1:20:37
  for me. So it sounds like what you're
• 1:20:40
  saying is let let's go with the example of you're supposed to
• 1:20:42
  marry or you'll get married to the specific person.
• 1:20:44
  This has happened to me by the way.
• 1:20:45
  I have a lot of crazy stories. Well that I haven't shared yet
• 1:20:48
  on the show. 1 of them. I'm like anonymizing some of the
• 1:20:51
  details. Someone that I didn't know but I
• 1:20:56
  like knew 3° of separation. So there was a sense of trust
• 1:20:59
  there. Social trust told me, I think
• 1:21:03
  you're supposed to marry this person.
• 1:21:05
  And then it kind of spiraled into ultimately what was not a
• 1:21:08
  good situation. There are a lot of other
• 1:21:13
  factors. But I think there was a hyper
• 1:21:15
  spiritualization, a very human situation that didn't need to be
• 1:21:20
  so complex if it had been discerned without having these
• 1:21:23
  like spiritual trappings. And I have observed and just
• 1:21:26
  stories that people have confided in me when spiritual
• 1:21:29
  trappings are placed on something that from a human
• 1:21:31
  perspective, you could make, you know, call balls and strikes and
• 1:21:34
  kind of figure out. But there's additional spiritual
• 1:21:36
  trappings that ultimately feel like burdens because you're
• 1:21:38
  thinking, oh, God said God wants this.
• 1:21:41
  God doesn't want this. It does cripple freedom.
• 1:21:45
  And when it feels almost like your reason is at war with what
• 1:21:47
  God said, but it's not God telling you personally.
• 1:21:50
  It's like God telling the other person that you kind of trust.
• 1:21:52
  Yeah. It can get very weird.
• 1:21:54
  Yes, indeed, quickly it can get very sticky.
• 1:21:58
  So a basic rule of thumb that is often taught when people are
• 1:22:02
  taught to hear God's voice is no prophetic words about births,
• 1:22:06
  deaths, sickness, vocation, or any directive word even like you
• 1:22:13
  should go to college or you should not go to college.
• 1:22:17
  You just don't have a right to put that kind of weight on
• 1:22:20
  another person's life. So keep it simple.
• 1:22:25
  What does simple mean if it's not about any of those decision
• 1:22:27
  points? It can be a a word about, say, a
• 1:22:32
  particular gift the Lord is giving you.
• 1:22:35
  Or maybe bigger picture, calling like the Lord is preparing you
• 1:22:39
  to like convict the hearts of many or something.
• 1:22:42
  More like that. Exactly, exactly.
• 1:22:45
  In more general terms, that leaves the person free to
• 1:22:47
  overtime discern it and and let it either settle into their
• 1:22:52
  spirit or brush off like water off a duck's back.
• 1:22:56
  And anytime you receive a prophetic word, you have to, you
• 1:23:00
  have to do one or the other. You have to kind of hold it
• 1:23:02
  lightly and again, realize we are not infallible.
• 1:23:06
  You know all, anytime we hear the the word of the Lord, it's
• 1:23:12
  mixed with our own thoughts. It comes through our own ideas
• 1:23:18
  and sometimes our own wishful thinking, so we have to hold it
• 1:23:21
  lightly. But all that is not to say that
• 1:23:23
  the Lord doesn't speak through us.
• 1:23:26
  He does. And prophetic words can be so
• 1:23:29
  powerful and so encouraging. I think with anything in life,
• 1:23:32
  the greater the risk or the greater the reward, the greater
• 1:23:35
  the risk often or the greater the risk of the reward.
• 1:23:38
  But it's true in the spiritual life too, in the sense that it's
• 1:23:41
  safer and easier to not engage with the messy work of
• 1:23:44
  evangelization, the dangerous work of like stepping out on the
• 1:23:48
  water off the boat when Jesus saying, you know, you know, come
• 1:23:51
  and you're like, there's a storm.
• 1:23:54
  Or the messy work, quite frankly, of discerning and
• 1:23:56
  employing the spiritual gifts. That's right.
• 1:23:59
  Because it requires like, total reliance on Jesus, of course,
• 1:24:03
  but also like the fact that, yeah, you might make a mistake,
• 1:24:05
  it might not work. God forbid their scandal.
• 1:24:10
  And that has happened and does happen.
• 1:24:15
  And so I think some people are like, it's easier to just not go
• 1:24:17
  here. And if the Lord really wants me
• 1:24:19
  to have a gift, he'll just like, really give it to me.
• 1:24:21
  But I'm not going to like pursue this or like, like, sort of
• 1:24:25
  involve myself with this. Have you had that experience?
• 1:24:28
  Absolutely. But the Lord didn't call us to
• 1:24:31
  just stay safe and to just keep to ourselves and never open
• 1:24:37
  ourselves to the Holy Spirit. You know, if you read the New
• 1:24:41
  Testament, then the New Testament gives us the paradigm
• 1:24:44
  for what it means to live as the body of Christ, the church.
• 1:24:48
  And you don't see the Christians of the New Testament saying,
• 1:24:51
  well, we're just going to stay away from the whole spiritual
• 1:24:53
  gifts thing because they can be dangerous and we can be
• 1:24:56
  immature. Certainly in in Corinth, that's
• 1:24:59
  that's like the the test case of a church that was immature in
• 1:25:05
  using the spiritual gifts and Paul never says just stop it
• 1:25:09
  with the spiritual gifts. Just what were they?
• 1:25:11
  Remind us what? What were they doing immaturely
• 1:25:13
  with the spiritual gifts in Corinth?
• 1:25:15
  They were doing practically everything wrong that you can
• 1:25:16
  think of. Like.
• 1:25:18
  There was heresy in the Church. Some of them didn't even believe
• 1:25:20
  in the resurrection. There was a chaotic liturgy.
• 1:25:23
  Some people were getting drunk and some people were, well, they
• 1:25:28
  had it with an agape meal, probably right after the
• 1:25:32
  Eucharist. So they.
• 1:25:33
  'D have a dinner. Some were going hungry and then
• 1:25:37
  when they were using the spiritual gifts, sounds like
• 1:25:40
  when you read the letter, some people were talking,
• 1:25:43
  interrupting as others were giving a word from the Lord.
• 1:25:48
  Some were thinking that using the gift of tongues is proof of
• 1:25:53
  how spiritually advanced you are.
• 1:25:55
  So yeah, there were all kinds of pastoral aberrations.
• 1:26:00
  And Paul never says, I, I want you to suppress all the
• 1:26:04
  spiritual gifts. Just stop that.
• 1:26:05
  No, he says, I, I want you to all the I I wish you all spoke
• 1:26:10
  in tongues as much as I do. I thank God that I speak in
• 1:26:12
  tongues more than you all. Strive for the spiritual gifts
• 1:26:16
  eagerly. Desire can be translated.
• 1:26:19
  The spiritual gifts. I want you to want these and use
• 1:26:22
  them. I just want you to use them
• 1:26:24
  properly. Honestly, that's such an amazing
• 1:26:27
  description that you just shared, which I just love.
• 1:26:30
  Thank you for doing that 'cause you can read Corinthians and,
• 1:26:32
  and just like, it kind of like goes right over your head while
• 1:26:34
  like what's really happening? And so I'm imagining all these
• 1:26:36
  like hyper zealous new baby Christians and they're all like,
• 1:26:41
  you know, crawling over each other to like do the spiritual
• 1:26:44
  things and they're totally messing up.
• 1:26:47
  And but there that. But there's such a beautiful
• 1:26:49
  zeal there. Yes, exactly.
• 1:26:51
  They were like all on fire, but they didn't have discipline.
• 1:26:54
  Exactly. And by discipline, I don't mean
• 1:26:56
  punishment, I mean direction and guidance.
• 1:26:58
  And then Saint Paul. Shows up.
• 1:27:00
  Yeah, and it's yeah, or and and and habits of good, habits of
• 1:27:03
  virtue and understanding. And Saint Paul shows up and he's
• 1:27:06
  like, you know, you want these gifts like we and I, and God
• 1:27:09
  wants to give them to you ultimately, is what he's saying.
• 1:27:12
  So I mean, my average experience, and I think the
• 1:27:15
  person lists people listening to their average experience with
• 1:27:17
  like their church or their parish is that this is not even
• 1:27:20
  a conversation. Exactly.
• 1:27:22
  It's not even a conversation. It's so tragic.
• 1:27:24
  And we we have to realize and be convicted of how far that is
• 1:27:29
  from what our Lord Jesus told us to do.
• 1:27:33
  He said go proclaim the Kingdom of heaven, heal the sick, raise
• 1:27:38
  the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons.
• 1:27:41
  I want you to proclaim my good news the way I do, not only in
• 1:27:46
  beautiful words, encouraging message, rhetorically excellent
• 1:27:51
  homilies, and outstanding systematic arguments.
• 1:27:56
  I want you to demonstrate it with my power that I'm giving
• 1:28:00
  you to share in my mission. I've got to ask you about the
• 1:28:04
  miracles now, because you just mentioned a few.
• 1:28:07
  And what our Lord commanded, raise the dead.
• 1:28:12
  That's a miracle, obviously. Resurrection.
• 1:28:15
  Saint Xavier was a St. in the 1500s, I think.
• 1:28:20
  Let me see if it. Is a savior.
• 1:28:23
  Yeah, 1500s. He raised the dead multiple
• 1:28:27
  times and canonic or there's a habit of the church about how to
• 1:28:32
  prove that this actually happened and they ran through
• 1:28:34
  the IT wasn't like some folklore about him.
• 1:28:37
  It was like an actual thing that was documented.
• 1:28:39
  And there's other examples of this in Christian history.
• 1:28:43
  Certainly in the time of Christ there was today.
• 1:28:46
  In our meantime. We had Dano McCollum on the
• 1:28:49
  show, who is from Bethel up in Reading.
• 1:28:55
  Are you familiar with him or his work?
• 1:28:56
  OK. I love Bethel Church though.
• 1:28:59
  You love Bethel Church. Why?
• 1:29:04
  Because Bill Johnson has an amazing gift of getting
• 1:29:09
  revelation from God and preaching and teaching on it in
• 1:29:13
  a profound way. Doesn't mean I agree with
• 1:29:15
  everything he says. Sometimes I don't quite agree
• 1:29:18
  with what he says, but a lot of most of what he says is
• 1:29:22
  marvelous and based on scripture.
• 1:29:24
  Yeah. But you think just because there
• 1:29:28
  is a lack of central command when it comes to the teaching on
• 1:29:33
  faith and morals, he can maybe tend to go off the reservation a
• 1:29:36
  little bit here and there. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:29:39
  So resurrections, I've never heard of anyone personally in my
• 1:29:43
  life and my maybe a few 1000° of connection being resurrected and
• 1:29:49
  Dan and. McCollum had a few stories of
• 1:29:52
  resurrection, but they're not like, you know, a Eucharistic
• 1:29:55
  miracle that's been tested and like proven.
• 1:29:56
  And he had the whole case study there for it to he was saying,
• 1:29:59
  well, this happened in this country and then this group of
• 1:30:01
  people saw this happen. And it's like the word of mouth
• 1:30:03
  of the believers and the larger body of Christ.
• 1:30:06
  And these are largely Protestants, you know, non
• 1:30:08
  Catholic Christians. And among Catholics, we don't
• 1:30:13
  even have a lexicon for this. That's right, but we need to.
• 1:30:16
  There's a book called 400 Saints Who Raised the Dead.
• 1:30:19
  Oh, that's a lot of testimonies. 400 Saints who raised the dead.
• 1:30:23
  Yep. What's the most recent do you
• 1:30:24
  know? No, I don't.
• 1:30:27
  I don't remember. But I mean, there were certain
• 1:30:31
  Saints like Saint Vincent Ferrer who who raised many, many people
• 1:30:35
  from the dead. What year was he he Ferrer?
• 1:30:38
  He was the 14th century. OK.
• 1:30:41
  A lot of people around that. Time but I I can think of at
• 1:30:44
  least three instances of Catholics, not the kind that are
• 1:30:50
  provable demonstrable, but you know, not every miracle the Lord
• 1:30:55
  does has has the you know, can meet all the criteria to be
• 1:30:59
  absolutely demonstrated without fail doesn't mean it wasn't a
• 1:31:02
  miracle right. One of them was a priest in
• 1:31:07
  Pittsburgh who was called urgently to the hospital to
• 1:31:11
  minister to a family that had just had a stillborn baby.
• 1:31:15
  Was this? Someone you knew or this was.
• 1:31:18
  No, but I heard about it from somebody who knew him.
• 1:31:21
  And this is recently or in. The last couple years ago and he
• 1:31:25
  went and when he got there, the doctor was signing the death
• 1:31:28
  certificate. The baby was like blue or Gray.
• 1:31:32
  The parents are weeping. He felt led to read the account
• 1:31:37
  of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, which you might say is
• 1:31:40
  pastorally maybe not the best thing.
• 1:31:43
  It's a risk, but yeah, it's a risk.
• 1:31:44
  A. Big risk, pastor.
• 1:31:46
  Who knows why he was led to read that, but he did and he prayed
• 1:31:50
  for them, prayed for the baby and left.
• 1:31:53
  And then a little while later he, he gets this urgent, urgent
• 1:31:57
  phone call, Father, after you left.
• 1:32:00
  And I think he may have given the anointing of the sick.
• 1:32:03
  Not not sure but it probably he did.
• 1:32:06
  Father, after you left, the dead baby started crying and he's
• 1:32:11
  fine. Did he like command the baby to
• 1:32:14
  be resurrected? In the not that I know of, I
• 1:32:17
  think he just prayed, yeah. So the Lord used that.
• 1:32:20
  He used that. When we had Dano Dano in the
• 1:32:23
  studio, he was saying that, you know, typically you, you, you,
• 1:32:27
  you try to ask the Lord obviously to do the thing, the
• 1:32:30
  miracle in his name and with authority.
• 1:32:34
  You know, you're using his authority and you, you're,
• 1:32:36
  you're trusting him. You're believing in his power to
• 1:32:38
  do it. But it it in part is invoked by
• 1:32:41
  the intention of the believer to ask for this grace.
• 1:32:44
  That's right. But it sounds like in this case
• 1:32:46
  he wasn't even specifically asking for resurrection.
• 1:32:48
  Well, I yeah, I don't know enough to to know.
• 1:32:51
  Maybe he maybe he was OK in that case.
• 1:32:53
  I would be. I'm curious cause what I'm
• 1:32:55
  getting into here is in a sense, the mechanics.
• 1:32:57
  It's like the basketball metaphor again.
• 1:33:00
  This is how you dribble a ball. Yeah.
• 1:33:02
  And and again then mechanics of prophecy.
• 1:33:04
  Like what are the mechanics of miracles?
• 1:33:06
  Yeah, I know. And Iris particularly
• 1:33:08
  resurrection in Mozambique had a course raising the dead one O 1.
• 1:33:13
  I mean it sounds absurd, but this?
• 1:33:14
  Was a diocese, you said, or? No Iris Ministries is the
• 1:33:18
  ministry of Heidi Baker. Yeah, oh, Iris Ministries.
• 1:33:20
  OK serves the poor in Mozambique.
• 1:33:23
  Is that evangelical or? Yeah, OK.
• 1:33:25
  Well, I don't know if they'd call it evangelical or non
• 1:33:27
  denominational, but. There's no Catholic courses
• 1:33:31
  there. Should there be a Catholic
• 1:33:33
  course? The closest thing to it, which
• 1:33:35
  is amazing and I highly recommend is Encounter
• 1:33:38
  Ministries, which is not a course on miracles are Raising
• 1:33:42
  the Dead per SE, but it is a course to equip, teach, equip
• 1:33:49
  and activate Catholics in demonstrating the love of God
• 1:33:52
  through the power of the Holy Spirit in their sphere of
• 1:33:55
  influence. And that includes using the
• 1:33:57
  supernatural gifts, particularly healing and prophecy.
• 1:34:02
  And if you do, if you go through the whole thing is 3 years, but
• 1:34:06
  you could do one year or two years.
• 1:34:08
  And they literally have campuses all over the world now.
• 1:34:11
  They started only about 10 years ago.
• 1:34:14
  They have an online school. It's the Encounter School of
• 1:34:17
  Ministry. And I know so well I'm involved
• 1:34:22
  with them. I'm their theological advisor.
• 1:34:23
  But I know so many people who say it has transformed their
• 1:34:27
  life to learn to walk in the power of the Holy Spirit, to
• 1:34:33
  carry out their mission to bring Christ in the world into the
• 1:34:36
  world through the power of the Holy Spirit.
• 1:34:39
  And to become aware of how we are a living Tabernacle equipped
• 1:34:46
  by the Holy Spirit with supernatural gifts to
• 1:34:48
  demonstrate God's love. Not just to talk about it and
• 1:34:52
  not just to demonstrate it in in a human way by acts of kindness,
• 1:34:56
  but to demonstrate it supernaturally.
• 1:34:59
  That's the normal. The supernatural is the normal
• 1:35:01
  Christian life. That's what the church is
• 1:35:04
  supposed to look like. Does I've heard in that bad
• 1:35:07
  encounter, we know we've had Doctor Sean Tobin on the show.
• 1:35:11
  OK. He's involved right now.
• 1:35:13
  He's a good friend of mine. He's amazing and, and others, it
• 1:35:16
  sounds amazing, the ministry, this idea of, of teaching how to
• 1:35:22
  do these things. Let me back to the miracles for
• 1:35:25
  a minute because this in some ways is the most dramatic 1 to
• 1:35:30
  see a resurrection happen. I mean, what's more dramatic
• 1:35:32
  than that? And also cause for belief, like
• 1:35:35
  instilling belief in other people.
• 1:35:38
  It is, but also like the Lord doesn't perform for the TV, you
• 1:35:42
  know, he doesn't perform for the medical examiner to like confirm
• 1:35:46
  the. Receipt like sometimes.
• 1:35:47
  He wants it to be pretty hidden. Yes.
• 1:35:50
  But not completely hidden, that's.
• 1:35:51
  True. Yeah, it might be for the
• 1:35:53
  edification of just a few souls. That's not the whole world to
• 1:35:55
  see. So that's the mystery of God.
• 1:35:57
  Like we can't fathom his ways in that sense.
• 1:35:59
  But but for miracles like should how do people discern if they
• 1:36:03
  have the gift of miracles? Well, going back to that analogy
• 1:36:07
  with basketball, how do you discern if you have the gift?
• 1:36:10
  By doing it. So in the case of miracles, how
• 1:36:13
  do you discern well as as you learn to obey the Holy Spirit
• 1:36:19
  and to share Christ at every opportunity with whomever you
• 1:36:23
  can? You pray when there's a need,
• 1:36:26
  you pray for the sick. And if there's a, a need that
• 1:36:31
  only God can meet in a supernatural way, you pray for a
• 1:36:35
  miracle. And as you do that and you're,
• 1:36:39
  you're learning to pray in alignment with Christ, not just
• 1:36:43
  praying from your own human idea.
• 1:36:44
  This is what needs to happen. But your heart is getting more
• 1:36:47
  and more conformed to Christ. You're praying in in tune with
• 1:36:52
  him. You're praying in alignment with
• 1:36:54
  Him and you start to see healings.
• 1:36:58
  If if you're evangelizing people proclaiming Christ and praying
• 1:37:03
  for healing, you start to see healings might not happen right
• 1:37:07
  away. Sometimes you have to persevere.
• 1:37:10
  I know people who persevered quite a bit before they saw any
• 1:37:13
  healings or miracles. But if your heart is pure and
• 1:37:17
  and you're obeying the Lord, it will happen.
• 1:37:20
  Is there a right way or and a wrong way to pray for miracles
• 1:37:24
  or healing? Definitely, and that's one
• 1:37:27
  reason for the value of a school of ministry, because it teaches
• 1:37:32
  best practices, so to speak. If you don't know how to have a
• 1:37:37
  respectful, loving encounter with another person, especially
• 1:37:41
  a stranger, then don't start praying for miracles.
• 1:37:45
  If you don't have a deep sense of who you are as a son or
• 1:37:50
  daughter of God, beloved of God, your incredible dignity, your
• 1:37:55
  value as a person, and therefore you're vulnerable to being
• 1:37:59
  insecure with other other things that could cause problems, you
• 1:38:03
  first need that. You first need to get rooted and
• 1:38:07
  grounded in the love of Christ, in your identity as his
• 1:38:10
  disciple, as a child of God. And then you learn how to have a
• 1:38:16
  loving, respectful, faith filled encounter with another person.
• 1:38:23
  Like you discern as you're talking to another person, are
• 1:38:27
  they open? You don't just kind of bulldoze
• 1:38:30
  your way through. Open to a miracle?
• 1:38:33
  Well, even open to proclaiming Christ, open to any kind of
• 1:38:38
  faith conversation. You know, you, you respect the
• 1:38:42
  other person if, if they're shutting down and, and they're
• 1:38:45
  saying I'm not interested, you don't, you don't try to bulldoze
• 1:38:48
  your way through. You also don't give a guarantee
• 1:38:54
  that you are not authorized to give.
• 1:38:57
  I'm going to pray for you and you're going to be healed
• 1:39:00
  immediately. We can't guarantee that.
• 1:39:04
  So instead you, you have to approach it the right way.
• 1:39:07
  You say something like, I'm a Christian and Jesus is the
• 1:39:12
  healer and often when we pray in his name, he heals.
• 1:39:17
  Would you like me to pray for you?
• 1:39:19
  And that way you're giving the person freedom to say yes or no.
• 1:39:23
  And you're not giving them a guarantee that I could leave
• 1:39:26
  them disappointed if they don't see anything happen right away.
• 1:39:30
  So you're you're inviting faith, you're opening the door, but
• 1:39:33
  you're not kind of clobbering them with it.
• 1:39:37
  So those kinds of best practices and just human virtues, human
• 1:39:45
  qualities in how to how to be a good ambassador for Christ are
• 1:39:50
  crucial. Like something really dangerous
• 1:39:53
  is to have an immature character and a high degree of
• 1:39:56
  supernatural anointing. But you could have.
• 1:40:00
  Yeah, some people do. Authentic, supernatural,
• 1:40:02
  anointing, but you have an immature or even a a flawed
• 1:40:06
  character you have. Even an evil character, Jesus
• 1:40:08
  said that on the last day some people will come to him and say,
• 1:40:11
  Lord, didn't we do miracles in your name, prophecy in your
• 1:40:13
  name? I never knew you depart from you
• 1:40:17
  evil doers. What does that mean when the
• 1:40:19
  Lord says I never knew you to someone who did miracles in his
• 1:40:21
  name and raised the dead in his name?
• 1:40:24
  He didn't know them person, they didn't know him personally, they
• 1:40:28
  weren't in an intimate relationship.
• 1:40:31
  Master to disciple, learning from him, obeying him.
• 1:40:36
  Not everyone who says Lord, Lord will enter the Kingdom, but only
• 1:40:39
  those who do the will of my Father in heaven.
• 1:40:41
  So if you're doing your own thing, if you're building your
• 1:40:42
  own empire, Jesus could say those scary words to you on the
• 1:40:47
  last day. But you're saying you can still
• 1:40:51
  have spiritual gifts and use them and not know Jesus?
• 1:40:56
  Yes, really. Yep, it's a rare thing and you
• 1:41:02
  know, please God, it's not. It's not the norm, but Jesus
• 1:41:06
  himself is saying it's possible. Could this be where we've seen,
• 1:41:09
  I'm not going to name anyone name because I don't know
• 1:41:14
  whether they're false prophets or not, But you do see in
• 1:41:18
  American and Western culture and politics, people take a, you
• 1:41:25
  know, rise in influence and there is something that seems
• 1:41:28
  very spiritual about them, a giftedness, people would call it
• 1:41:33
  maybe charisma. But there's.
• 1:41:34
  It's like feels more than charisma, but then there's some
• 1:41:38
  other elements that seems so dark or just not right.
• 1:41:43
  And it's very confusing to people because they're very
• 1:41:47
  enchanting, but at the same time and they might even profess the
• 1:41:51
  name of Jesus. But then there's these things
• 1:41:53
  that are like, this is not right.
• 1:41:55
  Something is off here. That's right.
• 1:41:56
  And and you see maybe some really grapefruit, and then you
• 1:41:59
  also see some really rotten fruit.
• 1:42:01
  That's right. And I think that's confusing for
• 1:42:04
  people when you see the fruit there, that the good fruit next
• 1:42:08
  to the rotten fruit, because it's like, what?
• 1:42:10
  What does this mean? The tree is bearing fruit, and
• 1:42:11
  some of it's good. I know, yeah.
• 1:42:15
  It's 'cause for being very sober and to recognizing the the
• 1:42:21
  enemy, Satan is prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for
• 1:42:24
  someone to devour. And just because somebody has
• 1:42:26
  extraordinary gifts doesn't mean they're not vulnerable to being
• 1:42:30
  LED astray by the enemy and even subtly drawn into his camp
• 1:42:36
  through whatever vulnerable spots we might have might be.
• 1:42:40
  Love for power, love for money, ego, whatever it might be,
• 1:42:46
  anybody can be drawn away by the evil 1 And so we have to be very
• 1:42:52
  careful about putting people on a pedestal.
• 1:42:55
  We have to be very on guard against that and recognize that
• 1:43:00
  if the Lord gives somebody an extraordinary gift, it's not
• 1:43:03
  about them. It's not about that person at
• 1:43:05
  all. It's just about the people the
• 1:43:08
  Lord wants to touch through them.
• 1:43:11
  And so we shouldn't be putting anybody on a pedestal because of
• 1:43:14
  their extraordinary gifts. We should look at the fruit in
• 1:43:20
  terms of is this glorifying Jesus?
• 1:43:25
  Is this drawing attention to him, drawing people's hearts to
• 1:43:30
  him? And if it is, Hooray.
• 1:43:35
  But if we see there's some mixture and as as you're saying,
• 1:43:38
  there's some shadow mixed with the light, then it's probably
• 1:43:42
  good to lean on the side of caution.
• 1:43:45
  What about the gift of knowledge?
• 1:43:48
  What is the gift of knowledge? What does it look like?
• 1:43:52
  We don't know for sure what Saint Paul meant by that word of
• 1:43:55
  knowledge, but I think it's likely that he meant something
• 1:43:59
  like the way it's used today, which is supernatural knowledge
• 1:44:02
  of something you could not have known in an earthly way.
• 1:44:07
  And so great example of that in the Gospel is when Jesus was
• 1:44:10
  talking with Samaritan woman, go call your husband.
• 1:44:15
  I don't have a husband. That's right.
• 1:44:17
  You don't because you've had five and the guy you're living
• 1:44:20
  with now is not your husband. Whoa, I see that you're a
• 1:44:25
  prophet. That's that's the word of
• 1:44:27
  knowledge. It's it's the Lord, as we
• 1:44:31
  sometimes say, reading somebody's mail.
• 1:44:33
  Have you had that happen to you? Ever someone had a word of
• 1:44:35
  knowledge about you that I've never had that happen to me.
• 1:44:38
  Oh. Really.
• 1:44:40
  It's an What was it for you? Can you share?
• 1:44:44
  Let's see, I don't think I can remember anyone that was
• 1:44:49
  striking enough. No, I I know of some that the
• 1:44:53
  Lord gave me for another person. Is that one?
• 1:44:56
  Of your gifts. Yeah, I would say it's more of
• 1:45:00
  an occasional gift than a regular gift, but it's very
• 1:45:04
  often connected with healing. Those two gifts work together.
• 1:45:09
  So very often when I'm in a group of people in a church
• 1:45:14
  retreat, whatever it might be, praying for healing, the Lord
• 1:45:17
  will give me a specific word about something he's healing
• 1:45:21
  right here and now. I remember one time having a
• 1:45:25
  very specific word about somebody who had something
• 1:45:29
  terrible happen as they were in a barn milking cows and somebody
• 1:45:35
  came up to me afterward, just wrecked in tears.
• 1:45:39
  That was me. It was an abuse situation and
• 1:45:43
  the fact that the Lord. You said it during a speech.
• 1:45:45
  And they were, yeah, I said it, It was during a time of prayer
• 1:45:49
  with a group of people. The fact that the Lord saw that
• 1:45:53
  specific situation and knew that situation was just an an
• 1:46:00
  incredible open door for that person to recognize the Lord's
• 1:46:03
  love and his, his care, his and his healing grace in that
• 1:46:08
  person's life. I'm curious how many people were
• 1:46:11
  in that prayer group. If you remember a.
• 1:46:14
  Couple of 100, OK, yeah. So you could say, well, maybe it
• 1:46:17
  was coincidence, you know, maybe.
• 1:46:19
  And sometimes that may be the case sometimes.
• 1:46:23
  And that's why a word of knowledge that's more specific
• 1:46:26
  can often be more powerful if it's sort of indisputable that,
• 1:46:32
  that the Lord knew something about this person.
• 1:46:34
  And I, I know of many cases like that as well.
• 1:46:37
  I don't have the the gift to that degree of being very clear,
• 1:46:42
  sharp and specific, but I I know other people who do.
• 1:46:46
  The people that you know who themselves have a very clear
• 1:46:50
  gift of knowledge and they've developed the gift and they're
• 1:46:52
  developing to sermon how to use the gift and they're doing all
• 1:46:54
  the things right. Like back to this idea of the
• 1:46:58
  body of Christ working together and shoring each other up as we
• 1:47:00
  were meant to. Not all the gifts are given to
• 1:47:02
  1. They're given to each other to
• 1:47:03
  help each other edify each other.
• 1:47:06
  Is it would it be the ideal like in a parish setting or a small
• 1:47:09
  group setting? Like you've got the gift of
• 1:47:11
  this, I have the gift of this. You kind of have this gift, but
• 1:47:14
  you have this gift more. Let's all help each other out
• 1:47:16
  like, hey, I'm really struggling with this.
• 1:47:18
  You have you have a word of knowledge for me or do you have?
• 1:47:21
  AI guess it would be more a word of prophecy for me.
• 1:47:24
  Yeah, that's the way it's meant to be.
• 1:47:26
  And of course. It's meant to be that way.
• 1:47:28
  Yeah, absolutely. Cool.
• 1:47:29
  But but it's not that everybody only has one gift.
• 1:47:32
  Sure, we all have different gifts and different measures and
• 1:47:35
  we're growing at different levels in different ways, but I
• 1:47:39
  am so thankful to God for my parish, which is a charismatic
• 1:47:43
  parish by its bylaws, it's Catholic parish, Christ the
• 1:47:46
  King, Ann Arbor, MI, but it's charismatic by its bylaws, and
• 1:47:51
  it's certainly not. It's not all that it could be,
• 1:47:56
  but the gifts of the Spirit, very normal there.
• 1:47:59
  And there have been at least four times, I think, where after
• 1:48:02
  Mass on Sunday, somebody has come up to me.
• 1:48:06
  Usually it's an acquaintance, not somebody I know super well,
• 1:48:08
  but somebody I know a little bit who says during mass, I got this
• 1:48:13
  word for you, would it be OK to share it with you?
• 1:48:16
  And they've spoken the word. And each time it's like right to
• 1:48:20
  my heart, an incredible encouragement, specific clear,
• 1:48:26
  like exactly what I was struggling with, exactly what I
• 1:48:29
  needed to hear. I mean that that's happened 4
• 1:48:32
  times. That's that's amazing.
• 1:48:35
  It's so awesome. It's so awesome so.
• 1:48:36
  Is there a sort of an inventory that people take and like
• 1:48:39
  classes that they take at this parish, at your parish for how
• 1:48:41
  to discern and activate these gifts?
• 1:48:45
  We do give classes periodically, not on a regular basis because
• 1:48:48
  we're not far from the campus of Encounter Ministries.
• 1:48:51
  Beautiful. They do that.
• 1:48:52
  So a lot of our personers have gone through their school of
• 1:48:54
  ministry, but I don't think you can quite do an inventory the
• 1:49:02
  same way. I know the Catherine of Siena
• 1:49:04
  Institute does a inventory of charisms, and that's wonderful,
• 1:49:08
  and that's helped a lot of people discern their charisms.
• 1:49:12
  But when you're talking about the more obviously supernatural
• 1:49:15
  gifts, you can't necessarily discern them if you're not
• 1:49:18
  already using them, right? They only appear in action.
• 1:49:24
  And it's a process through a relationship as well to kind of
• 1:49:28
  talk to other people about it. Your spiritual guide.
• 1:49:30
  Etcetera. But also a key is turn up the
• 1:49:34
  risk factor. Turn up the risk.
• 1:49:36
  Factor. If you never pray for anybody
• 1:49:38
  for healing, you know how many healings you're going to see?
• 1:49:40
  Zero. You got it.
• 1:49:43
  So if you want to see healings, then be very serious about the
• 1:49:48
  Great Commission. Go proclaim the gospel to all
• 1:49:51
  nations. These signs will accompany those
• 1:49:54
  who believe in My name. They will lay their hands on the
• 1:49:57
  sick, and the sick will recover. If we're never doing that, we're
• 1:50:00
  not going to see the supernatural.
• 1:50:02
  If we're doing it and we're stepping out in faith with trust
• 1:50:06
  in the Lord, we're going to see the supernatural.
• 1:50:09
  Do you think of more people were taking these risks and also
• 1:50:14
  developing the discernment to use these gifts?
• 1:50:18
  It would be a normal conversation to have in our
• 1:50:21
  parishes. Oh yeah, so and so was raised
• 1:50:22
  from the dead. Oh yeah, so and so was healed
• 1:50:25
  completely of their infirmity. Yes, it would.
• 1:50:28
  It would and it's. Like everyone would know that.
• 1:50:31
  Sally Q over at you know, whatever.
• 1:50:34
  Saint Catherine's was a resurrect story.
• 1:50:38
  Yeah. It's not that that would become
• 1:50:40
  common. I don't.
• 1:50:42
  I'm not sure it would ever become common, but that it would
• 1:50:46
  become something known. I think so for sure.
• 1:50:50
  What is common? Was it like one in 1000?
• 1:50:53
  Do you think One in a million? I we don't.
• 1:50:55
  Know who could say? I think the more I, I guess I
• 1:50:59
  would say this, the more the world goes bonkers away from
• 1:51:04
  God, heads toward the Cliff, head heads toward, you know, the
• 1:51:08
  precipice of rejection of God and his will and his ways.
• 1:51:13
  The more brokenness there is and the more brokenness there is,
• 1:51:17
  the more the Lord is pulling out all the stops to equip his body,
• 1:51:22
  His people to heal the broken, the broken physically,
• 1:51:28
  emotionally and spiritually, to go out in the in his power to
• 1:51:33
  proclaim the gospel to the poor, the poor in every sense.
• 1:51:37
  And that's where we are right now in in a world of insanity,
• 1:51:42
  in many ways, a world of brokenness, a world full of
• 1:51:45
  spiritual orphans, a full of The Walking wounded, anybody who
• 1:51:52
  will say to God, OK, I'm not much, but sign me up.
• 1:51:56
  You know I'm ready. I'll do it.
• 1:51:58
  I'll take risks. Show me what to do.
• 1:52:00
  Fill me with your Holy Spirit. He nanny, the Lord says, OK, you
• 1:52:05
  got it. And things start to happen.
• 1:52:10
  I mean this, this really is a return to what the Church was in
• 1:52:14
  the beginning and is meant to be at all times and has been in
• 1:52:18
  various times and places, but we lost sight of that in recent
• 1:52:21
  centuries. What is the biggest miracle that
• 1:52:24
  you've seen being a part of this charismatic movement within the
• 1:52:27
  church? I think it's the healing of my
• 1:52:30
  friend Danny. She's since become my friend.
• 1:52:32
  It didn't know her at the time, but she was in a wheelchair for
• 1:52:35
  13 years with POTS and several other diagnosis and she couldn't
• 1:52:41
  breathe without a ventilator. And she came into this parish
• 1:52:44
  mission in Lansing, MI, in her wheelchair attached to a
• 1:52:49
  ventilator. And, and before that healing
• 1:52:54
  service, somebody said to her, Danny, pray big.
• 1:52:58
  She thought, gosh, never really done that, never really thought
• 1:53:02
  of that, you know, always been my prayers, like not too big,
• 1:53:05
  like maybe just something, a little God, something that I get
• 1:53:10
  through this day, Right. Exactly.
• 1:53:12
  So she came in with that attitude and and another
• 1:53:19
  beautiful thing about that healing service is that the
• 1:53:21
  parishioners had invited people off the street that day to come
• 1:53:25
  to the healing service as a way of evangelizing.
• 1:53:28
  It's a way of inviting people to encounter Jesus, and Danny had
• 1:53:32
  actually gone out with the youth group that day in her
• 1:53:35
  wheelchair, breathing through a ventilator to invite people to
• 1:53:39
  the healing service, even though she was not exactly an
• 1:53:42
  advertisement for Jesus's power to heal.
• 1:53:44
  Dumb question, breathing through a ventilator.
• 1:53:47
  Not oxygen but a ventilator. A ventilator like but isn't that
• 1:53:50
  mechanical? Yeah, mechanical.
• 1:53:52
  So she had a trach tube connected to the ventilator on
• 1:53:55
  the back of her wheelchair and was breathing.
• 1:53:58
  And she's, like, Wheeling around.
• 1:53:59
  Yeah, Wow. So what happens?
• 1:54:02
  So when she got there, she she saw that somebody she had
• 1:54:05
  invited on the street that day was actually there and she was
• 1:54:09
  thrilled and she thought, this is not about me, this is about
• 1:54:12
  him. And to think that she had that
• 1:54:15
  depth of self emptying love like nobody there needed healing more
• 1:54:21
  than she did. But she just thought of this
• 1:54:23
  other person encountering the Lord.
• 1:54:26
  And so we we praised the Lord for a while.
• 1:54:30
  We began to pray for healing and I had the whole youth group,
• 1:54:34
  they they had all been trained in the gifts of the Spirit.
• 1:54:36
  So they were giving words of knowledge.
• 1:54:38
  Couple other mature parishioners were giving words of knowledge.
• 1:54:41
  I was giving words of knowledge. And after the words of
• 1:54:45
  knowledge, we would pray for those specific things.
• 1:54:47
  But one of them was the Lord is inflating somebody's lungs
• 1:54:51
  tonight. Who got that word?
• 1:54:53
  I didn't and I didn't know this. But when Danny heard that word,
• 1:54:59
  she suddenly felt something happened.
• 1:55:00
  She felt like water started flowing down inside her and she
• 1:55:04
  just had this sense that she was being healed.
• 1:55:06
  So she she then took a risk in faith.
• 1:55:09
  And if I had known this, I would have cautioned her please don't
• 1:55:12
  do this. But I didn't know this was
• 1:55:14
  happening. She unplugged her ventilator and
• 1:55:18
  normally that would become a medical emergency within a few
• 1:55:21
  minutes, but she found that she was breathing.
• 1:55:25
  And. On her own.
• 1:55:27
  And she began to weep and she turned to her mom who was
• 1:55:30
  sitting next to her. And her mom's like, oh, Danny,
• 1:55:33
  it's OK, Maybe tonight's not your night.
• 1:55:35
  And then her mom began to realize she's unplugged, she's
• 1:55:38
  breathing on her own. And her husband was also with
• 1:55:41
  her and he's like, she's breathing.
• 1:55:43
  So they they began to realize the Lord was doing a miracle.
• 1:55:46
  And then at the end, toward the end of the healing surface, I
• 1:55:50
  always invite people to come forward and tell everybody what
• 1:55:53
  the Lord has done if he's healed them, so that it builds people's
• 1:55:57
  faith and gives glory to the Lord.
• 1:55:59
  That's the whole point, right? And so I called people to come
• 1:56:03
  forward. And she's like, let's go.
• 1:56:06
  And her husband began to pull the wheelchair up to the Pew.
• 1:56:10
  And she's like, no, let's walk. And she stood up out of the Pew.
• 1:56:13
  She put her hand on him. They walked forward.
• 1:56:16
  And she later said, I felt like I was floating.
• 1:56:19
  And by the time they got to the front, she's uncontrollably
• 1:56:23
  sobbing. Her husband is crying.
• 1:56:26
  She couldn't even speak. He, he explained to everybody
• 1:56:30
  what her conditions were and what the Lord had just done.
• 1:56:34
  The youth group all knew her. And they're at the front
• 1:56:36
  watching the Lord do this. And they're all sobbing.
• 1:56:40
  And you can imagine they will never forget this.
• 1:56:43
  They'll never forget this. And she, the only thing she
• 1:56:48
  could say for the rest of the night was this is real.
• 1:56:51
  She just had this deer in the headlights look.
• 1:56:53
  This is real. Is she still healed?
• 1:56:55
  Yes, she she walked around for the rest of the night.
• 1:56:58
  She never stopped walking around.
• 1:57:00
  Later on, her husband told me she was jumping on the bed.
• 1:57:03
  How old, How old was this woman? Early 40s, I'd say something
• 1:57:10
  like that. Did you She had she had spent
• 1:57:12
  no, they didn't have kids. She had actually spent her 30s
• 1:57:16
  in nursing homes with people decades older than her and her
• 1:57:19
  husband was a nurse in one of them.
• 1:57:21
  They fell in love. It's a whole beautiful story of
• 1:57:24
  what the Lord did. So she met him through her
• 1:57:27
  illness? Yes, her husband.
• 1:57:28
  Yes. The Lord used to ask for.
• 1:57:30
  They weren't practicing their faith at the time.
• 1:57:33
  They began to practice their faith.
• 1:57:35
  They got their marriage regularized in the church.
• 1:57:39
  Yeah. So they were already like
• 1:57:41
  several months before this healing service.
• 1:57:43
  They were already moving forward in the Lord.
• 1:57:46
  Then the Lord did this. And then another cool thing is
• 1:57:49
  that she still had the the trach pipe tube and, you know,
• 1:57:55
  attached to her. She was breathing through her
• 1:57:57
  trachea. And months later, there was
• 1:58:00
  another healing service led by my friend Damien Stain at the
• 1:58:04
  encounter conference. She was healed of that.
• 1:58:06
  What does that mean? She took it out and she was
• 1:58:09
  still able to breathe. And then after a few weeks, her
• 1:58:12
  hole closed up and now she breathes normally.
• 1:58:15
  And she and her husband are a that's insane.
• 1:58:18
  They're dynamite. And they're doing.
• 1:58:20
  They're now leading healing. Services should Would she come
• 1:58:22
  on the show? Absolutely, in a heartbeat.
• 1:58:25
  We should have her on the show. That's crazy.
• 1:58:27
  Yeah, and they are. They are such servants of the
• 1:58:30
  Lord, and they're doing a lot of pro-life work as well.
• 1:58:32
  Beautiful. Oh my goodness.
• 1:58:34
  I'd love to talk with them. And you saw this with your own
• 1:58:37
  eyes? Yes.
• 1:58:38
  I didn't know exactly what was happening because I didn't know
• 1:58:40
  what her condition was or how long she'd been in the
• 1:58:42
  wheelchair. I only found that out later, but
• 1:58:44
  I was like, wow, I, you know, I saw this lady in a wheelchair
• 1:58:48
  breathing through the ventilator and now she's walking.
• 1:58:52
  Wow, it's amazing. For the other gifts, another
• 1:58:56
  gift that you mentioned that I'd like to just get your thoughts
• 1:58:58
  on here is the one about belief. Ultimately the kind of mountain
• 1:59:03
  moving belief of the all the gifts just in an immediate
• 1:59:07
  moment when you were listing them.
• 1:59:09
  That one resonates the most with me personally, because I feel
• 1:59:12
  like the Lord has given me visions of what he wants for us.
• 1:59:21
  And I say that lightly, of course, because I see them
• 1:59:24
  imperfectly through my imperfect that, you know, humanity and,
• 1:59:28
  and person. But I, I, and I'm constantly
• 1:59:31
  kind of given these visions of what I, yes, how I'm supposed to
• 1:59:36
  show up and what I'm supposed to do and like where things are
• 1:59:38
  heading and they're always good and they're always beautiful.
• 1:59:43
  Like there's always hope in them.
• 1:59:46
  I know of other, and I'm not going to call myself a Mystic,
• 1:59:48
  but I know of Mystics who who have met wonderful people who
• 1:59:53
  who have also visions, but they're very dark, you know,
• 1:59:56
  they feel like they're. Lord.
• 1:59:58
  Their Lord is warning them and this bad thing's going to happen
• 2:00:01
  and, and sometimes the bad things don't happen and
• 2:00:05
  sometimes they do happen, but because a lot of bad things just
• 2:00:07
  happen. And some prophecies or prophetic
• 2:00:10
  visions are conditional. Sometimes the Lord gives them to
• 2:00:14
  us as a warning. Yes, but depending on our
• 2:00:17
  response they may not happen exactly.
• 2:00:19
  A warning or an opportunity, right?
• 2:00:20
  Yeah, exactly because. The Lord may be offering this as
• 2:00:23
  an opportunity if my people do these things, but if you don't,
• 2:00:25
  then you're not going to get the blessing.
• 2:00:28
  So what? Tell me more about this gift
• 2:00:30
  because I guess the I guess this is these two gifts connected
• 2:00:33
  prophecy and belief. Mm, hmm.
• 2:00:35
  Mm hmm. Yeah.
• 2:00:37
  The charism of faith, it it's not the same as the virtue of
• 2:00:41
  faith, which is infused in US at baptism and then grows through
• 2:00:45
  our own personal decision of faith, which is necessary for
• 2:00:49
  salvation. No, the charism of faith is like
• 2:00:52
  a specific faith that the Lord is going to do something
• 2:00:55
  specific in a particular circumstance.
• 2:00:59
  So a story that I love is from Raymond Arroyo's book about
• 2:01:03
  Mother Angelica. And she had that charism big
• 2:01:06
  time. And she one time felt like the
• 2:01:09
  Lord was leading her to buy a commercial satellite dish.
• 2:01:11
  And I don't remember the exact amount, it might have been
• 2:01:14
  $700,000 or something. And she was still back then a
• 2:01:18
  nun with a little garage just beginning this network.
• 2:01:23
  And she she ordered the satellite dish.
• 2:01:28
  And one day the truck came with this gigantic commercial
• 2:01:31
  satellite dish. And the driver said, OK, it's
• 2:01:36
  COD, it's cash on delivery. I need, I need cash.
• 2:01:38
  And she's like, I don't have it. And she, she thought maybe I, I
• 2:01:44
  blew it. I heard the Lord Lord wrong.
• 2:01:46
  I, you know, I took this step in faith, but must have misheard.
• 2:01:50
  And she ran into the Chapel to pray And on the way, another
• 2:01:54
  sister, sister, mother, the there's somebody on the phone
• 2:01:57
  for you from overseas and it's urgent.
• 2:02:00
  Take the phone. All right, She takes the phone
• 2:02:03
  and she hears this voice say, Mother Angelica, your, your
• 2:02:07
  program has radically changed my life and the life of my son, my
• 2:02:11
  family. I want to give you a donation,
• 2:02:13
  $700,000. And she's like, can you wire it
• 2:02:17
  this morning? And she got it.
• 2:02:20
  And she got the satellite dish. Now, if she had, when she first
• 2:02:25
  heard the Lord saying, I want you to buy a satellite dish, if
• 2:02:27
  she had said, no, that's crazy. I don't have money for that.
• 2:02:30
  I'm just going to wait until somebody gives me money and then
• 2:02:32
  maybe I'll get it. She would not have seen the
• 2:02:35
  provision of God, but she exercised the gift of faith.
• 2:02:40
  Now, some people make mistakes that they think is exercising
• 2:02:45
  the gift of faith. They think the Lord is telling
• 2:02:47
  them to do something. They do something that doesn't
• 2:02:48
  come through. And we just have to acknowledge
• 2:02:52
  we don't always hear the Lord rightly.
• 2:02:54
  And we step out in faith, beginning with little steps.
• 2:02:58
  And as we're obedient, we grow. But some people have that
• 2:03:03
  charism to quite a great degree, as she did.
• 2:03:07
  Yes, her belief that she was called to do these things and
• 2:03:10
  that they could be done and that they would be done.
• 2:03:13
  And despite all of the the human frailty and weakness, I, yeah, I
• 2:03:17
  that story, I actually included that story in my book because it
• 2:03:20
  was such an inspiration to me, her faith.
• 2:03:23
  And there have been times with Live Action where, you know, one
• 2:03:26
  time I needed $3,000,000 to do something, a bunch of Planned
• 2:03:31
  Parenthood expose work. And this was a few years ago.
• 2:03:34
  And Live Action was a much smaller organization.
• 2:03:36
  And so I prayed these novenas to Blessed Don Alvaro, who was kind
• 2:03:41
  of the financier for San Jose Maria.
• 2:03:43
  He kind of dealt with all his practical needs.
• 2:03:45
  And the Lord very miraculously gave me 4 and a half million
• 2:03:50
  more than I asked for. But I really felt like, and it
• 2:03:53
  the way that it worked, it was like not this was not me, you
• 2:03:57
  know, from hell or high water raising every penny.
• 2:03:58
  This was the Lord just giving the the resources when we needed
• 2:04:01
  them. And I've seen that, I've seen
• 2:04:04
  that time and time again. The Lord always provides.
• 2:04:08
  Yeah, he loves to provide when we do his will and we trust him
• 2:04:13
  to provide. Yes, he loves to be a a dad who
• 2:04:16
  provides for his kids generously, but most of the time
• 2:04:19
  we don't give him a chance because we rely on ourselves.
• 2:04:22
  Yes, exactly. That's great that you have that
• 2:04:25
  gift and I hope it grows. And yes, well, you're, you're
• 2:04:27
  convicting me to be more intentional about using it in
• 2:04:32
  the sense of asking God for the faith, employing the faith,
• 2:04:35
  employing it for other people. And it's not just for, I mean,
• 2:04:38
  the the work I'm involved in is for other people, but being more
• 2:04:41
  just intentional about it because I think it's very rare
• 2:04:46
  for most believers, even those that are very faithful, to
• 2:04:49
  really take a regular inventory of what may be my gifts and how
• 2:04:54
  am I deploying them. But the parable of the talents
• 2:04:58
  is very clear. And the talents, I think, are
• 2:05:00
  also a reference to these spiritual gifts, not just our
• 2:05:04
  human. Natural.
• 2:05:05
  Gifts that God might have given us and abilities.
• 2:05:08
  And that's a scary thought that we may be faithfully trying to
• 2:05:10
  follow our Lord or doing our best, but we're just totally,
• 2:05:15
  yeah. And yeah, playing it safe,
• 2:05:17
  burying your talent in the ground so that you don't lose
• 2:05:20
  it. It's not what the Lord asked us
• 2:05:22
  to do. Does every Christian have
• 2:05:24
  spiritual gifts that they need to use?
• 2:05:27
  Absolutely. I don't see any indication in
• 2:05:29
  Scripture or tradition anywhere that some people are just
• 2:05:32
  without spiritual gifts. In fact, Saint Paul says, to
• 2:05:36
  each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common
• 2:05:39
  good. Do you think most people are
• 2:05:41
  given more than one? Yes, I think so.
• 2:05:44
  But but again, I don't think it's like a package that's just
• 2:05:47
  deposited. At like you said earlier.
• 2:05:49
  Baptism, I think you can, you can ask for a gift you don't
• 2:05:52
  have because Jesus told us to ask the Father for good things.
• 2:05:58
  Ask the Father for the Holy Spirit and his gifts.
• 2:06:01
  So if you lack a certain spiritual gift, as long as
• 2:06:05
  you're sincere and you're not doing it for self, you know,
• 2:06:09
  puffing up of ego, ask the Lord. You know, if you're asking for
• 2:06:15
  the sake of the people you want to reach with the good news of
• 2:06:18
  Christ, then ask and look for opportunities to learn about the
• 2:06:24
  gifts. Activate the gifts to practice,
• 2:06:26
  to watch other people who use that gift, and it will come.
• 2:06:32
  I've got to ask you about the gift of tongues before we talk
• 2:06:34
  for a few minutes about Christian unity.
• 2:06:36
  That, I think, is a very misunderstood gift.
• 2:06:41
  What is the gift of tongues and can it be used improperly where
• 2:06:46
  people are just babbling and they're not actually deploying
• 2:06:49
  the gift? Yes, with all the gifts, it's
• 2:06:53
  important to say there's a counterfeit.
• 2:06:54
  The enemy can counterfeit any of the gifts of the Spirit.
• 2:06:59
  Ultimately, it's it's usually not hard to show or to to know
• 2:07:04
  when there's a counterfeit gift with the gift of tongues.
• 2:07:09
  We see it at on the day of Pentecost.
• 2:07:12
  There it's in a specific miraculous form in that the
• 2:07:17
  hearers all heard the apostles preaching in their own language.
• 2:07:21
  So even though they were speaking in various tongues as
• 2:07:25
  the Spirit gave them utterance, as it says in Acts, people heard
• 2:07:29
  them in their own language. But the way Paul talks about it
• 2:07:32
  in First Corinthians, you see that it's commonly a gift that
• 2:07:38
  is not speaking in another human language, not a language known
• 2:07:44
  to other human beings. In fact, he, he mentions the
• 2:07:46
  language of men and angels and he, he, Paul, speaks about the
• 2:07:50
  mind being inactive. So the way I would describe it
• 2:07:54
  is that it's a way of praising God, worshipping God that goes
• 2:08:00
  beyond verbal and conceptual ideas.
• 2:08:06
  So it's in a way, it's a contemplative gift exercised out
• 2:08:11
  loud. So you're you're praising God in
• 2:08:14
  a way that the Holy Spirit is just flowing through your words.
• 2:08:18
  And it's no longer in articulate speech or speech that can be
• 2:08:24
  interpreted as a human language, but it's the Spirit overflowing
• 2:08:29
  in you. And when you see it that way,
• 2:08:31
  you recognize that this is something that's been talked
• 2:08:34
  about through the history of the Church.
• 2:08:36
  Only they've given it another name, which is jubilation.
• 2:08:40
  And if you read what Saint Augustine says about it and some
• 2:08:44
  of the other fathers, it's nothing other than what we mean
• 2:08:47
  by the gift of tongues. It's praising God aloud but
• 2:08:52
  without words. But it's still with noise.
• 2:08:56
  Still with noise, that's what. Yeah, aloud.
• 2:08:58
  Aloud and and there's interpretation of tongues.
• 2:09:01
  Yes, there's interpretation of tongues and that's it's not
• 2:09:04
  translation. People have that
• 2:09:06
  misunderstanding. It's not like word for word or
• 2:09:09
  syllable for syllable translation, but it's sort of
• 2:09:12
  like a prophetic interpretation. This is what the Lord is saying
• 2:09:17
  through this language, this speech in an unknown tongue or
• 2:09:23
  in an angelic tongue. This is the message the Lord has
• 2:09:27
  for this group of people. And I've seen that gift used.
• 2:09:31
  It's not very common, but somebody will give a message in
• 2:09:36
  tongues that is very articulate and very powerful.
• 2:09:41
  And it's like it strikes to the heart.
• 2:09:42
  It it's not verbal. So it's not like you can you,
• 2:09:46
  you get a clear idea out of it, but it strikes the heart.
• 2:09:50
  And then Paul says when that happens, you're supposed to pray
• 2:09:53
  for an interpretation. So then somebody will give an
• 2:09:57
  interpretation and it's like right on.
• 2:10:00
  And it it puts a conceptual reality to that which struck
• 2:10:07
  your heart. What are your gifts, Mary?
• 2:10:11
  Well, I have the gift of tongues.
• 2:10:13
  It's probably the most common gift.
• 2:10:16
  Some people call it the least of the gifts.
• 2:10:18
  I don't know, Scripture doesn't say that.
• 2:10:20
  I think it's often a doorway to other gifts because it teaches
• 2:10:24
  us to yield to the Holy Spirit, but without being passive.
• 2:10:30
  The gift of healing. Sometimes I I exercise the gift
• 2:10:34
  of prophecy. Words of knowledge, That's the
• 2:10:40
  main ones. I'm like, I got to pray with you
• 2:10:42
  after this. I know we're, we're running
• 2:10:43
  short on time. I've got to ask you just for a
• 2:10:45
  few minutes about Christian unity.
• 2:10:46
  We've touched on it multiple times, but you do some beautiful
• 2:10:49
  work in this space. And I as a former Protestant,
• 2:10:52
  but everything good that I learned as a Protestant is with
• 2:10:57
  me, of course, as a Catholic. And it wasn't a Protestant in
• 2:11:01
  the sense that my faith was defined and by what I was
• 2:11:03
  rejecting of Catholicism. I was a Protestant in terms of
• 2:11:06
  what the Bible says about Jesus and, you know, in terms of
• 2:11:10
  really a fervent desire and zeal for living the life of a
• 2:11:15
  Christian. And so that's the kind of church
• 2:11:17
  I was raised in. And I think that's the
• 2:11:20
  experience of the majority of Protestants who just love the
• 2:11:24
  Lord and they're actively, earnestly seeking the spiritual
• 2:11:27
  gifts. They're in the word every day
• 2:11:28
  reading Holy Scripture. They're taking their version of
• 2:11:31
  communion in that it's not Jesus Christ, body, blood and soul and
• 2:11:33
  divinity, but they're they want to do the breaking of the bread.
• 2:11:37
  And so, and they have they baptized, they have baptism and.
• 2:11:40
  The Catholic Church recognizes their baptism as valid.
• 2:11:43
  My baptism as a Protestant as a little Protestant girl was
• 2:11:45
  recognized when I became confirmed and received first
• 2:11:48
  Eucharist and everything. Got my sacraments as a Catholic,
• 2:11:51
  so I was already a Christian, of course, you know, both through
• 2:11:54
  my desire and receiving of the Lord and also through baptism.
• 2:11:57
  So I'm curious what you think about Christian unity today.
• 2:12:02
  Do you think we're going to see a moment when most of our
• 2:12:06
  Protestant brothers and sisters come back under one church and
• 2:12:09
  we are united? What sort of allowances or
• 2:12:13
  accommodations should the Catholic Church make for all of
• 2:12:17
  these like thriving Protestant churches, denominations where
• 2:12:21
  you really. See, the work of the Holy Spirit
• 2:12:23
  is. Being done, this is not
• 2:12:25
  something that the devil could sustain.
• 2:12:26
  This is like the spirit is working.
• 2:12:28
  There may be some things that are not quite right, but there's
• 2:12:30
  a lot that is right. How do we become one?
• 2:12:33
  Yeah, that's a huge question. First of all, I think we have to
• 2:12:36
  recognize this is the heart of the Lord who prayed the night
• 2:12:42
  before he died. His last prayer before laying
• 2:12:45
  down his life for us on the cross the night before he died
• 2:12:48
  was that they may be one. Father, as you are in me and I
• 2:12:53
  in you. So we cannot see Christian unity
• 2:12:57
  as something peripheral, something that only some people
• 2:13:00
  need to be concerned about. This is something every
• 2:13:04
  Christian lot to be deeply concerned about and the Catholic
• 2:13:08
  Church teaches for Catholics. It's not optional to to promote
• 2:13:13
  Christian unity. To be concerned about ecumenism
• 2:13:16
  is not optional. It's part of the Gospel.
• 2:13:19
  And we also have to recognize that the fact that we're not
• 2:13:22
  united is a disaster. It's a scandal to the world.
• 2:13:27
  Here we are trying to tell the world, come believe in Christ
• 2:13:30
  and the world looks and says you're not even united with each
• 2:13:32
  other. Who is Christ?
• 2:13:33
  And you don't even love each other sometimes.
• 2:13:36
  Why should we believe what you say?
• 2:13:38
  And you're all saying different things.
• 2:13:39
  I've just got to say a word right now.
• 2:13:41
  The backbiting from some Catholics against Protestant
• 2:13:45
  brothers and. Sisters to.
• 2:13:47
  Make fun of them to not understand them, to reject them,
• 2:13:52
  the ill treatment and usually it's on social media.
• 2:13:54
  It's not in real life, thanks be to God, but social media are
• 2:13:57
  evil. Like the evil of it is that we
• 2:13:58
  just say ridiculous things like shame on us.
• 2:14:01
  And so people listening, if you've seen it yourself or God
• 2:14:03
  forbid we've been a part of it, you have to say that is a sin.
• 2:14:07
  I'm not going to do that because it is a scandalous it's wrong.
• 2:14:11
  It's like saying. Raka to your brother, you know,
• 2:14:13
  just because. But it's also like this horrible
• 2:14:14
  form of spiritual hypocrisy, because your faith is a gift.
• 2:14:17
  That's right, you're. Not smarter than them.
• 2:14:19
  Your faith is a gift. That's right, and we will be
• 2:14:22
  judged by every evil word that comes out of our mouth.
• 2:14:24
  And I'm just, we're out of our keyboard.
• 2:14:26
  I'm remembering something that went viral on X recently where
• 2:14:30
  this beautiful woman who, you know, I think has a very sincere
• 2:14:33
  heart, shared about how she hadn't learned.
• 2:14:34
  And you know, she went to Catholic school for 12 years and
• 2:14:37
  she never really heard the Gospel.
• 2:14:40
  And then she heard it and became born again when she was 20,
• 2:14:42
  which by the way, is exactly my mother's story.
• 2:14:45
  And and you're like, well, how could you not hear the Gospel?
• 2:14:47
  What what went wrong and all that catechism and catechism and
• 2:14:50
  formation. And there's that whole
• 2:14:51
  conversation there. But these people mocked her like
• 2:14:54
  Catholics that I think are otherwise good Catholics trying
• 2:14:56
  to do the right thing being like, ha, ha, ha.
• 2:14:58
  You weren't paying attention. You're because they they took
• 2:15:01
  her comment as just a dunk on Catholicism.
• 2:15:04
  Like we got to defend the tribe. And it's like the Lord's big
• 2:15:07
  enough. He can.
• 2:15:08
  Defend himself we need. To get over that.
• 2:15:10
  Love your brother and your sister and to earnestly want
• 2:15:14
  them to be welcomed into the the full communion.
• 2:15:17
  Absolutely. We've got to get over that.
• 2:15:19
  We've got to get past our us them mentality and recognize
• 2:15:24
  what a high priority unity is for the Lord.
• 2:15:28
  Now, that being said, I think we have to recognize how far we are
• 2:15:31
  from it. It's not something that's going
• 2:15:33
  to happen overnight, because disunity did not happen
• 2:15:36
  overnight. It happened over centuries of
• 2:15:39
  distancing ourselves from each other.
• 2:15:42
  But really, the First Division was between Jewish and Gentile
• 2:15:46
  believers in Christ, then the Oriental churches, and then in
• 2:15:52
  the 11th century the Catholic Orthodox split, and in the 16th
• 2:15:55
  century the Protestant Catholic split, and then many Protestant
• 2:15:59
  splits since then. We're not good at staying
• 2:16:03
  unified, but it happened over a long period of time, and unity
• 2:16:09
  is not going to happen easily. It's not going to happen
• 2:16:11
  overnight. And I think many Catholics
• 2:16:15
  especially have a very superficial idea of unity.
• 2:16:22
  You could say that in a word, they think it it just means come
• 2:16:25
  home to Rome. Everybody just come home to
• 2:16:26
  Rome. That's we're done.
• 2:16:29
  I think they think there's no unity unless you become a
• 2:16:31
  Catholic in a. Certain sense, that's true.
• 2:16:34
  But what that is not acknowledging is how radically
• 2:16:38
  we Catholics need to be converted.
• 2:16:40
  Exactly and how they might be. In a sense, your Protestant
• 2:16:43
  brother and sister, If you as a Catholic have a Protestant
• 2:16:45
  brother and sister, they might be further advanced in the
• 2:16:48
  faith. That's right.
• 2:16:50
  And in and in particularly in holiness and and in and in and
• 2:16:53
  in working, collaborating with the Holy Spirit than you are.
• 2:16:57
  That's right. And you need to be humbled and
• 2:16:59
  learn from them as opposed to saying, well, you don't have the
• 2:17:01
  Eucharist. Exactly.
• 2:17:03
  Unity is never going to come through smugness.
• 2:17:06
  It's never going to come through beating people over the head
• 2:17:10
  with our doctrine. It's going to come from humility
• 2:17:15
  and acknowledging and recognizing the gifts in others.
• 2:17:18
  And all the recent popes have been saying that Pope John Paul
• 2:17:21
  the second, when he was asked, why do you think God allowed all
• 2:17:25
  these divisions in the body of Christ?
• 2:17:27
  He gave a kind of astounding answer when he talked about sin.
• 2:17:31
  He's, you know, it's sin that's at the root of this.
• 2:17:34
  But couldn't it be that God has allowed this because without it,
• 2:17:41
  there are dimensions of the gospel or aspects of the gospel
• 2:17:44
  that would not have come to light?
• 2:17:46
  And so we can, as Catholics, we can look at our Orthodox or
• 2:17:50
  Protestant brothers and sisters and say, I thank God for you.
• 2:17:54
  You. You Baptists have taught me to
• 2:17:57
  love the word of God. You evangelicals have taught me
• 2:18:00
  the incredible obligation I have to evangelize to bring others to
• 2:18:05
  Christ. You Lutherans have taught me the
• 2:18:08
  the, the principle of the, the salvation that we've received
• 2:18:13
  through grace alone by faith. You Anglicans have taught me the
• 2:18:19
  the sublimity of, of, of your prayer and and and worship.
• 2:18:23
  You Messianic believers, you Pentecostals, you
• 2:18:26
  Neocatechumens, you sorry Neo charismatics have taught me the
• 2:18:31
  power of the Holy Spirit and his gifts.
• 2:18:34
  You could go on and on. You Orthodox have have shown me
• 2:18:39
  the, the heavenly beauty of the liturgy and the power of icons,
• 2:18:43
  etcetera. So we can and must learn from
• 2:18:49
  each other, receive each other's gifts, which doesn't mean
• 2:18:52
  compromising on the truth. Unity will not come through
• 2:18:55
  compromise. It won't come through least
• 2:18:58
  common denominator. You know, let's, let's, let's
• 2:19:00
  put aside anything where we don't agree.
• 2:19:03
  Sacraments, hierarchy, priesthood, communion of Saints,
• 2:19:08
  purgatory, all this. No, unity won't come that way.
• 2:19:11
  But it also will not come just by saying, oh everybody come
• 2:19:14
  home to to us. We need to realize how deep a
• 2:19:18
  conversion we need. Amen.
• 2:19:22
  Doctor Mary Haley, this has been amazing.
• 2:19:24
  Thank you so much. How can people find your work?
• 2:19:27
  I have a website drmaryhealey.com and a YouTube
• 2:19:31
  channel. I think it's Dr. Period.
• 2:19:34
  Mary Healey. Yeah, those are the 2 main ways
• 2:19:38
  it's been amazing talking. To have you back on so much more
• 2:19:42
  to discuss. I know you just scratched the
• 2:19:43
  surface. What a blessing.
• 2:19:45
  Thank you. Oh, a blessing for me too.
• 2:19:47
  Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Lila Rose
• 2:19:49
  Show. I hope you enjoyed it.
• 2:19:50
  I always do. Make sure that you're
• 2:19:52
  subscribed, if you haven't hit that subscribe button already
• 2:19:55
  and go over to our Patreon to support the mission of this
• 2:19:58
  show. That's patreon.com/lila Rose
• 2:20:00
  Show. A huge thank you to our partner
• 2:20:02
  EWTN, the largest religious broadcaster in the entire.
• 2:20:05
  World EWTN is reaching millions of people every single day with
• 2:20:09
  the beautiful truth of the gospel.
• 2:20:10
  You can watch new episodes of the Lila Rose Show 24 hours
• 2:20:14
  before they hit podcast app over at ewtn.com slash on demand.