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E300: He Trains Priests to Fight Demons: Dan Burke’s Warning | Lila Rose Show · The Lila Rose Show

• 0:00
  Did you have experiences of the demonic as a kid?
• 0:02
  Oh, yeah, yeah. Sometimes when you call into the
• 0:05
  darkness, nothing come. Sometimes something does come.
• 0:08
  And in our home it did. Think of the time you were most
• 0:10
  afraid, and then you enter into a demonic context.
• 0:13
  It's a million times worse. So I know what it's like.
• 0:15
  When I read your book on the discernment of the Spirit, I was
• 0:19
  in tears. The Word of God is not ink and
• 0:21
  paper, You know it's alive. It's living, as Hebrew says, as
• 0:24
  I'm memorizing and reading and studying.
• 0:26
  It's healing. That's what kept me out of the
• 0:28
  casket. How do you mean?
• 0:29
  I think you get this spiritual life sound first, because if you
• 0:32
  don't get that first and there's demonic activity, it doesn't
• 0:34
  matter how much therapy you give a person, they're never going to
• 0:37
  get free. Thank you so much for watching
• 0:43
  the Lila Rose Show. Make sure that you are
• 0:45
  subscribed to the channel and hit that notification button so
• 0:48
  that you never miss a future episode.
• 0:50
  Dan Burke, welcome back to the podcast.
• 0:52
  It's great to be back, good to be in person.
• 0:54
  Yes, I'm so glad. I've been looking forward to
• 0:56
  this and people loved our conversation.
• 0:59
  It's been almost two years now, I think.
• 1:01
  What's the name of your organization?
• 1:04
  And give us the quick background on the why behind the
• 1:07
  organization that you founded. Yeah.
• 1:09
  So it's called the Avila Institute and it's the it's the
• 1:12
  repropose Catholic mystical tradition to the Church.
• 1:15
  So we do priestly formation in Australia, New Zealand, Canada,
• 1:19
  the United States. We teach in several seminaries.
• 1:23
  We do lay formation through spiritualdirection.com and all
• 1:28
  of the books that we did, we have.
• 1:29
  So the purpose is just, I don't know, 2009, I can't remember if
• 1:33
  we talked about this before, but in 2009 I started
• 1:37
  spiritualdirection.com because I had become Catholic and I was a
• 1:42
  little bit surprised about how much non Christian Eastern
• 1:44
  spirituality had crept into the church.
• 1:47
  And I couldn't find good web resources for authentic Catholic
• 1:51
  mystical tradition. So that's how it really started,
• 1:54
  started as a A blog and then it grew into a much larger
• 1:58
  institution that none of us had any idea would emerge.
• 2:02
  But I think the Lord just blessed it because it's such a
• 2:05
  need in the Church of how do we come to know Jesus really
• 2:09
  intimately as the Mystics teach us.
• 2:13
  And then that affects, of course, how we live.
• 2:15
  And so, you know, my, I'm most excited right now about our
• 2:20
  priestly formation because that's generation on generation.
• 2:24
  It's so needed. So I want to start with there's
• 2:28
  a lot of places we can start and in our last conversation, you
• 2:30
  shared a little bit of your background, but that was one of
• 2:34
  the things when I read your book on the discernment of the
• 2:37
  spirits, which was the first book of yours that I read, I was
• 2:40
  in tears and it deep. I deeply connected with what you
• 2:45
  shared, and it helped me better receive the message of even how
• 2:48
  to discern and how to pray and how to combat the evil. 1.
• 2:52
  So there's so much in there. But you just mentioned that you
• 2:55
  had become Catholic and that you had discovered that there was a
• 2:59
  sort of Eastern spirituality that wasn't as rooted in the
• 3:02
  truth of our faith. What were you before Catholic
• 3:06
  and how did you become Catholic? I'm the same as I was before and
• 3:10
  and a little different now but and I'll explain that.
• 3:12
  So I'm Jewish, so I'm a Hebrew Catholic, so I'm still the same,
• 3:17
  if you will, and and the my foundational faith.
• 3:19
  But of course, Jesus is the Messiah of the Jews and the
• 3:23
  Catholic Church is his church. So I came to know Jesus because
• 3:28
  I grew up in a pretty horrible situation.
• 3:30
  And by the time I was 1819, I was suicidal and I, I had left
• 3:35
  home and I thought when I left the abuse would, I would be
• 3:40
  leaving the abuse. And it really doesn't work that
• 3:42
  way 'cause all the mess remains internally in your mind and your
• 3:46
  heart, you know? And so I was quite a mess and
• 3:51
  moved to Arizona to go to school.
• 3:53
  And then that's where I hit, you know, rock bottom and cried out
• 3:58
  and said, look, if there's if you're there, if there's a
• 4:01
  reason for all this suffering, I can maybe I can do this.
• 4:04
  But if this is just it, if life is just non-stop suffering and
• 4:09
  all the junk in me never gets healed or resolved, I'm just not
• 4:13
  interested. And he answered that prayer just
• 4:16
  piece by piece with he started to bring people into my life
• 4:21
  some strangely so. And tell me about Jesus.
• 4:27
  Tell me about, you know, this hope that we can have, that
• 4:31
  there's a reason for all the suffering.
• 4:33
  And and of course, the Catholic Church, you know, fleshed that a
• 4:36
  lot more because I became a Baptist before I came to Christ
• 4:40
  in a Baptist Church, not too far from here, actually.
• 4:43
  And were you practicing Judaism growing up?
• 4:46
  Yeah, we, well, we were what's called Reformed Jews.
• 4:49
  I don't know if you know the distinctions.
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  So Reform versus Orthodox. I we had Orthodox in our family.
• 4:55
  We had Uncle Hi and Aunt Sadie in their, We're both about 5
• 4:59
  feet tall, and he had a Black Hat and curls.
• 5:01
  And we did Passover. And I was too shy to do bar
• 5:06
  mitzvah because you had to give a talk and there's no way I was
• 5:10
  going to do that. So I opted out of that.
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  But, you know, we went to synagogue and that sort of
• 5:15
  thing. But it was very much like
• 5:18
  cultural Catholicism or cultural Christianity.
• 5:22
  There was not a lot of faith. It was more about an identity,
• 5:25
  you know, in a heritage than than faith.
• 5:28
  What was it like going from that identity to then Baptist and
• 5:32
  then to Catholic? Jarring, you know, but because
• 5:39
  my the darkness, I came out, it was so bad.
• 5:42
  It I mean, it was just all good, even even though there's a lot
• 5:45
  of difficulty in it. You know, I came to know the
• 5:50
  Lord just because of pastors. Why I ended up in the back of
• 5:53
  the Southern Baptist Church in Covina, CA and it was called
• 5:57
  Glenn Memorial Baptist Church and nobody knew who Glenn was.
• 6:01
  I came and sat in the back of the church and I 'cause I didn't
• 6:05
  know what happened in a Christian Church, really.
• 6:08
  I saw I was trying to be Incognito.
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  And so I sat way in the back until after the service that the
• 6:14
  pastor pounced, you know, and he figured out pretty quick that I
• 6:18
  wasn't a Christian. And he said, can I ask you a
• 6:22
  question? I said, sure.
• 6:23
  He said, when you get to heaven, when you, when you get to
• 6:26
  heaven. And God asked, why should I let
• 6:27
  you in? He, he, he said, what are you
• 6:31
  going to say? And I, and I, this tells you a
• 6:35
  little bit about where I was. So forget the language, but I
• 6:38
  said, I don't know what the hell you're talking about.
• 6:41
  I said, but I'm hurting and I'm trying to find answers.
• 6:47
  And so if you, if you will talk to me, I will talk to you and I
• 6:51
  will listen. And so God be praised, he, he
• 6:58
  agreed to meet with me every Thursday night, came to my
• 7:02
  apartment with my cousin I was living with, who also became
• 7:05
  Christian through that experience and for a whole year.
• 7:09
  And we studied. Evidence demands A verdict,
• 7:12
  which is kind of a legal evidence's look at the veracity
• 7:15
  of Scripture in the Old Testament and then the new and I
• 7:19
  read CS Lewis's Mere Christianity, which really put
• 7:23
  me over the top sort of the Lord liar, lunatic, you know,
• 7:27
  challenge got got me in the end. But I had already come to
• 7:32
  believe that the Old Testament and the new were reliable
• 7:35
  documents and that they they could be trusted in their
• 7:39
  message first about the Messiah and then about the fulfillment
• 7:43
  of the prophecies that in Jesus in the New Testament.
• 7:46
  And so my journey and my journey to, to back to the Baptist or to
• 7:53
  Protestantism was very intellectual because I was just,
• 7:59
  I, I probably still am a bit this way if I can't somehow get
• 8:03
  my head around it, not perfectly, because you can't,
• 8:05
  right? You can't really prove God.
• 8:07
  You can just make good arguments beyond a reasonable doubt in a
• 8:11
  in a legal sense. And but I had to get far enough
• 8:16
  with my intellect to go OK, yeah, this is rational and I
• 8:18
  could give my life to this. And then once I did, of course,
• 8:22
  you know, everything changed. You know, my, my, my hope was
• 8:28
  the was the virtue that sprung up first.
• 8:33
  I didn't understand peace, you know, 'cause it was still living
• 8:37
  in a lot of turmoil from the didn't just magically solve all
• 8:41
  my problems. I did immediately have a freedom
• 8:44
  from alcohol that I, that I was using to try to sleep, you know,
• 8:48
  sleep at night was kind of stupid, you know, looking back.
• 8:51
  But I had a freedom from that and some other things, but not
• 8:55
  from the effects of the abuse. Took me a long time to get free,
• 8:58
  get free of that. I'm, you know, probably still
• 9:00
  working through it a bit. Were you going to a therapy at
• 9:03
  the time? Never really been to therapy I
• 9:07
  other than little flashes and it's all, it was never helpful.
• 9:12
  I, I believe in sound, you know, psychology with as long as
• 9:21
  there's Catholic anthropology that underneath it.
• 9:25
  Divine Mercy University is a great example.
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  The grads there have a great understanding of, of the, of the
• 9:31
  human person from a Catholic perspective.
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  But but outside of that, it's not a great doesn't it's not,
• 9:37
  you know, it's not much good. And I ran into brief, you know,
• 9:42
  I was on antidepressants for probably a year and, and just
• 9:46
  realized all it was doing was making me a zombie.
• 9:49
  And then I took myself off, which I don't advise anyone to
• 9:53
  do, but I did. And it was a tough year after
• 9:56
  that to get back to normal, but it was back.
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  You know, it's just a little. It's out of the out of painful
• 10:02
  clouds into painful clouds into painful, you know, blue sky.
• 10:07
  But it was still pain. One of the things that I want to
• 10:10
  explore with you and I find so incredible about your work, Dan,
• 10:14
  is that you know, whether it's the book Spiritual Warfare and
• 10:17
  the Discernment of Spirits or your other work you've created.
• 10:20
  You've I, I should say, explained A framework that the
• 10:23
  church and I believe the Holy Spirit has given us for how to
• 10:27
  understand God's call in our life.
• 10:29
  You know, fight the devil, stand up for what's right, follow, get
• 10:33
  more intimate with our Lord. And you've so beautifully bring
• 10:36
  drawn obviously the the lives of the Saints and their teachings
• 10:38
  to do this. And you, you're training, you're
• 10:40
  literally training thousands of people for how to discern God's
• 10:43
  voice and get closer to our Lord.
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  In the layering of that, though, there's the human experience of
• 10:49
  our emotions, our memory, our wounds, and that interacts with
• 10:52
  all of this. And you were very open in the
• 10:56
  spirit in your spiritual warfare book about you've mentioned it,
• 10:59
  referenced it a couple times, the childhood trauma that you
• 11:02
  experienced. And you even said this is
• 11:04
  something you're still navigating as an adult.
• 11:06
  It's not like the childhood trauma gets deleted just because
• 11:09
  we become a Christian. It would be nice, but but the
• 11:13
  Lord uses even childhood trauma to help us connect with other
• 11:16
  people, which is what you did so beautifully in this book.
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  Can you share whatever you're comfortable sharing about?
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  You know, what would you classify those wounds as as you
• 11:25
  were growing up? And then I want to hear how they
• 11:28
  have influenced your work to explore and learn discernment of
• 11:32
  the spirits. You know, it's hard to talk
• 11:34
  about. Last conversation was funny, a
• 11:37
  funny out outgrowth because you asked very good questions and
• 11:40
  you you dug a little deeper than most.
• 11:42
  This was our our remote interview a couple years.
• 11:44
  Ago and I it actually caused me afterwards.
• 11:48
  You did so much damage that I had to go to therapy.
• 11:50
  I'm kidding. I didn't.
• 11:51
  You didn't do any damage. But you went to therapy after
• 11:54
  our after our interview. I did because I had come into
• 11:59
  contact with a very devout Catholic therapist and and I
• 12:03
  knew of her, the effect she was having on somebody close to me.
• 12:07
  And I was really impressed. And she was doing something
• 12:09
  called EMDR, which is a fascinating.
• 12:11
  Yeah, it is. And I went because as you and I
• 12:16
  were talking, I, I had never talked about, I mean, I
• 12:20
  literally, you know, if my wife was my best friend, I don't, I
• 12:25
  still even a lot of those places I don't go.
• 12:29
  But we had talked about some of that and I, and I thought, well,
• 12:33
  I always thought I'd need, I knew I needed another round of
• 12:35
  cleanup. And so I thought, well, maybe,
• 12:38
  maybe it's time again because it, it wasn't, it wasn't
• 12:42
  traumatic to talk to you about it, but it, it did push me and
• 12:45
  it did open up a little bit of a freedom to go and, and I went to
• 12:50
  see if I needed more care And I didn't, what was interesting as
• 12:53
  I went for months, but everywhere I went to the
• 12:56
  memories, Jesus was already there.
• 12:58
  And it was like the room was already clean.
• 13:00
  And I, I thought it would be, you know, tissue boxes by the
• 13:04
  wheelbarrow full and all kinds of really difficult stuff.
• 13:08
  And it wasn't, it was, you know, I, some of the memories I was
• 13:12
  left at a daycare center when I was like 5 and I woke up in the
• 13:16
  dark on a cot. Nobody was there anywhere.
• 13:20
  This actually happened. This yeah in Covina, CA.
• 13:23
  No one picked you up? No.
• 13:25
  And they, the daycare workers, left you.
• 13:27
  There was one person in the office.
• 13:28
  I figured out how to get out of the door and of course I'm
• 13:32
  frightened to death. And then I found a worker who
• 13:35
  had just happened to be working late and then so they.
• 13:38
  How do they How does the daycare leave a child?
• 13:41
  I have no idea. And I was a little worried, you
• 13:43
  know, did anything happen, right.
• 13:46
  And, and, and I just nothing came up in in the therapy and I
• 13:50
  trusted the therapist that if something was there, we'd find
• 13:53
  it. So anyway, so just things like
• 13:57
  that, that just have a huge effect.
• 13:59
  You know, and, and in that situation, you're left, you're
• 14:02
  left at daycare because your parents were incapacitated.
• 14:06
  They were just no. Idea what was going?
• 14:07
  To you don't even you don't. Even know my dad was always, God
• 14:09
  rest his soul, was a very responsible, good provider.
• 14:13
  But he grew up in, in, in a very dysfunctional family where his
• 14:16
  dad was philanderer and A and he ended up kind of dad, you know,
• 14:23
  so I, yeah, so but my, but my mom, I don't know.
• 14:27
  She was the one. I don't know where she was or
• 14:30
  what she was doing. We are in the heart of Lent and
• 14:34
  moving closer to Holy Week and Easter.
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• 16:01
  I think this is a, a beautiful practice that there are some
• 16:06
  good Catholic or Christian therapists that have the
• 16:09
  anthropology that's Christian ultimately to walk back and to
• 16:13
  revisit those most painful memories that have to do with
• 16:16
  trauma, you know, childhood trauma, and see Jesus in it with
• 16:19
  you. Can you share what that process
• 16:21
  looks like? Because I think it's a very
• 16:23
  beautiful foundation. Yeah, So the founder of IT that
• 16:26
  she discovered, she's walking through a forest, past a lot of
• 16:30
  trees. I may be messing this up, but
• 16:33
  this is how it was explained it to me.
• 16:34
  Explained to me. And somehow she started to
• 16:39
  process her own junk and then wondered why, What was the
• 16:44
  context? And it was the rhythm of these
• 16:47
  trees going by. And so she began to experiment
• 16:50
  with, you know, tapping and creating some kind of rhythmic
• 16:55
  experience from the body that and then going into the memory
• 17:00
  as you're doing that. And it has some effect of
• 17:03
  allowing you to do that. And of course I don't really
• 17:06
  know how or why it. I don't know what it's like for
• 17:09
  a non non Christian context but I was shocked because the
• 17:15
  therapist didn't tell me this but I went into one of the
• 17:18
  memories and then Jesus showed up.
• 17:20
  Like in a vision or how did you, how did you?
• 17:23
  Experience that, I mean, I wouldn't explain it just in
• 17:26
  terms of mystical theology and something Teresa Vabel would
• 17:29
  talk about, not like that, but it's an interior experience.
• 17:34
  And he just showed up in the room and just there was just
• 17:38
  light and it was just peace, you know?
• 17:40
  But I do know from what I've been told from therapists that
• 17:45
  are part of our community and, and the, the person that is
• 17:51
  close to me that's been to read him MDR, that happens to him all
• 17:55
  the time, has happened many, many times.
• 17:57
  And Jesus, there's the memory, there's all the pain.
• 18:00
  And then he, he shows up and there's an interaction with him
• 18:04
  that clean that cleanses the wounds.
• 18:06
  It's just quite remarkable, you know, And for me though it was
• 18:10
  super simple, it wasn't as dramatic.
• 18:12
  I've had that kind of experience before with someone who prayed
• 18:16
  over me, which wasn't therapy just in, in dealing with, you
• 18:21
  know, my little me as a little boy.
• 18:24
  But but yeah, it was just for me, it was just peaceful.
• 18:28
  So that's, that's a really, I mean there's probably much
• 18:31
  better explanations I know there are of EMDR, but that's my
• 18:34
  experience of it. How did you get to a place of
• 18:38
  understanding the framework of God as Father, Holy Spirit as
• 18:42
  friend and counselor, Jesus Christ as Savior, and these
• 18:45
  relationships you develop with each of them and through prayer
• 18:48
  and you know, we're going to get into some of the what the
• 18:50
  spiritual battle can look like. But you're coming from a
• 18:54
  framework yourself personally, where there's so many wounds
• 18:57
  about your relationship in the home with mother, with father,
• 19:00
  because a lot of people, their idea of God is their parents,
• 19:04
  whether they intended or not. And you didn't even, you weren't
• 19:07
  even raised in a Christian home. So you don't even have that
• 19:09
  framework given to you of God as your, you know, father.
• 19:13
  Although as a Jewish, you know, raised culturally Jewish, I
• 19:16
  think that must have been sometimes maybe indicated for
• 19:18
  you. So how did you, where do you
• 19:21
  think that came from that framework that you were able to
• 19:24
  receive? Yeah, So when I, one of the
• 19:27
  great things about the Baptist is they had me memorizing
• 19:30
  Scripture, you know, right out of the gate, I, I was on fire.
• 19:34
  So I remembered something called Romans.
• 19:36
  I memorized a ton of scripture or something called Romans Rd.
• 19:39
  which is a, a particular way of sharing the Gospel wouldn't be
• 19:44
  totally compatible with Catholic theology, but there's a lot of
• 19:47
  good in it because it's scripturally based.
• 19:49
  So I memorized that. Is that a bunch of verses from
• 19:53
  Romans or what? What is the?
• 19:54
  Yeah, Romans 828, Romans 3, you know, all of sinned and fallen
• 19:59
  short of the glory of God, Romans 1089 and 10 you know, so
• 20:02
  you confess with your mouth that Jesus Lord and believe in your
• 20:05
  heart God will raise him from the dead.
• 20:07
  You will be saved. You know, those are so.
• 20:10
  But then I realized of course, as I started to read the New
• 20:13
  Testament. That suffering was very much a
• 20:16
  theme of the whole thing. That's not very common in
• 20:20
  Protestant, in the Protestant world, not as developed as it is
• 20:24
  in the Catholic world. But I so I actually started to
• 20:28
  go through scripture and type out tells you how old I am.
• 20:32
  Not on a computer like this, not quite on a typewriter, but
• 20:37
  something in between. All the passages in the New
• 20:40
  Testament dealt with suffering. Categorize them in terms of
• 20:44
  spiritual, physiological, psychological, just so I can get
• 20:49
  my head around the why of suffering.
• 20:52
  But in that process, I'm reading and receiving all kinds of
• 20:55
  consolations like this is true, this is real.
• 20:59
  You know, I, I, I read with, with like Ederstein or Saint
• 21:02
  Teresa, Benedict of the Cross, when she read Teresa of Avila,
• 21:06
  you know, she puts it down and says this is true, but that,
• 21:09
  that, that affirmation is experiential.
• 21:13
  It's not just intellectual. So as I'm memorizing and reading
• 21:17
  and studying, it's healing, it heals.
• 21:20
  You know, the word of God is not ink and paper.
• 21:24
  You know, it's alive. It's living as Hebrews says.
• 21:27
  So it was healing me, you know, it was, it was revealing a path
• 21:31
  of healing. And I'm getting to know Jesus.
• 21:34
  And, and that's the beginning of the, of the experiential reality
• 21:38
  or the knowing of what it means to be with God and to be loved
• 21:43
  by God and his sacrifice. And, and, and so that's the
• 21:48
  beginning. I I theologically or
• 21:50
  experientially, my experience of God beyond Jesus just developed
• 21:59
  very organically. I had a good father, a provider.
• 22:03
  He he was he was a little rough and difficult when I was
• 22:06
  younger, but but, but he was he was just fundamentally a good
• 22:10
  man. My mother who's who's still
• 22:13
  alive and, and just to be to properly honor her, you know,
• 22:19
  her, her, her mother attempted to murder her father with a kid
• 22:24
  with a knife in the kitchen. In front of her.
• 22:26
  I never asked her that, but her mom ended up in a mental
• 22:29
  institution for six years. My mother was the oldest and her
• 22:34
  dad's a her dad was actually her stepfather.
• 22:37
  Wonderful human being. And so my mom was the product of
• 22:42
  a one night stand prior to her stepfather and then he became
• 22:46
  her father. And so she grew up in a really
• 22:49
  crummy context. So neither of my parents knew
• 22:52
  how to be good parents. So I don't I don't blame them in
• 22:56
  that sense. Doesn't make it easy, you know,
• 22:58
  relationally, but some. So anyway, I lost my track as.
• 23:02
  Well, and you never had like an issue with your father.
• 23:06
  Oh, he didn't protect me from the abuse or he didn't notice
• 23:08
  that I was suffering abuse. There was never, you never had
• 23:11
  sort of resentment towards the father or the father figure that
• 23:16
  carried over into your relationship with God because of
• 23:18
  the abuse of your childhood. You know, it's interesting.
• 23:20
  He didn't protect me at times. He did.
• 23:23
  He didn't. He didn't.
• 23:24
  No, he didn't. The worst though, was with my
• 23:27
  mom. And she didn't.
• 23:30
  You know, my stepfather destroyed our home end and he
• 23:33
  was a rageaholic alcoholic. The first Catholic I ever met by
• 23:36
  the way, tried to convince me the Catholic Church was the one
• 23:39
  true faith in between putting my mother in the ER and and firing
• 23:45
  a gun in our home in in you know, just if you think about
• 23:51
  trauma for kids, parents in the top floor screaming, raging like
• 23:57
  beyond what you can imagine. And then a gun goes off and then
• 24:01
  there's just dead silence. It's.
• 24:03
  Terrifying. And you know, people, people
• 24:06
  wonder, there was this horrible story not too long ago about
• 24:11
  this mom that killed her children.
• 24:13
  And and you wonder why they don't run away.
• 24:16
  Well, because you can't process like we were when that happened.
• 24:20
  We're at the bottom of the stairs, frozen.
• 24:23
  Just you, just it's. Waiting to be shot too,
• 24:26
  potentially. But there's no there's no
• 24:27
  cognitive, there's no cognitive. There's no ability to process.
• 24:31
  You're just terrified and frozen.
• 24:34
  So that's how like you hear about these murder scenes and
• 24:38
  why didn't this one run? And how did you know there's no
• 24:42
  resistance? And you know, it's like, that's
• 24:44
  because you can't as a kid, you're just when I was nine
• 24:47
  years old when that happened still, I mean, you know, almost,
• 24:52
  you know, hitting puberty or whatever, but I still had no, I
• 24:56
  just froze. My two brothers froze and and
• 24:59
  then, you know, he came down with a gun.
• 25:01
  Still didn't know, you know, so you know that that stuff just
• 25:07
  wrecks you, you know, the, the, the, you know, to this day, I
• 25:12
  don't sleep well because I was always afraid at of the night.
• 25:16
  But the fears of the night were both fear of harm, but also fear
• 25:22
  of the demonic stuff because my mom was involved.
• 25:25
  My mother, like many people, by the way, of all faiths, when
• 25:31
  they when they encounter things they can't explain or think
• 25:36
  difficulties they don't know how to deal with in their faith.
• 25:39
  Most don't know that their faith well enough.
• 25:41
  Like no good Catholic would ever go, oh, I need to go to the
• 25:44
  occults to get answers. That's you know, that means you
• 25:48
  don't know your faith, right. But she was just a nominal Jew.
• 25:53
  So she went to the occult. And so, and, and as I say when I
• 25:57
  talk about this, some times when you call into the darkness,
• 26:00
  nothing comes because God's merciful.
• 26:02
  Sometimes something does come. And in our home it did.
• 26:07
  And and I was terrorized as a as a as a child.
• 26:10
  And so, yeah, so I couldn't sleep at night.
• 26:14
  And and that, you know, that's that it's getting better as I
• 26:17
  get older, but it's been a huge problem.
• 26:21
  So is it now obviously you have the tools of spiritual warfare,
• 26:24
  you have Jesus Christ, but so when you're scared to this day,
• 26:29
  is it less about Satan directly tormenting you and more about
• 26:32
  memory, muscle memory of being? Scared of the child.
• 26:34
  Afraid. You're not afraid of the devil
• 26:37
  now? No.
• 26:38
  But as a kid, your mother having welcomed the abuse, your mother
• 26:41
  having welcomed the chaos, your mother having welcomed the
• 26:43
  occult, did you have experiences of the demonic as a kid?
• 26:47
  Oh, yeah, yeah. And, and I, and.
• 26:49
  Yes. Yeah.
• 26:51
  And it's not, it's nothing I can explain.
• 26:53
  I mean, I know that'd be an interesting thing to talk about,
• 26:56
  but it's it if you can just think of the time, you know,
• 27:02
  whoever's listening, think of the time you are most afraid on
• 27:06
  a human level, and then you enter into a demonic context,
• 27:10
  it's a million times worse. It's absolutely.
• 27:13
  And, and it's, you know, you asked me a while ago, like, how
• 27:18
  is your, how's your suffering translated into your, what we do
• 27:25
  today? You know, when we knew her being
• 27:28
  on a this, this show with you today, a friend of ours said,
• 27:32
  would you come and pray with somebody who needs prayers?
• 27:35
  And you know, so Stephanie, my wife who's very gifted in this
• 27:40
  area, just went and met with that person and the horrors that
• 27:46
  they've been true. But just being able to be
• 27:51
  sympathetic, empathetic, being able to pray, being able to pray
• 27:56
  for an hour with someone or as my wife does with people all day
• 27:59
  sometimes, you know, that's a gift that comes out of that
• 28:04
  suffering. You really care and very deeply.
• 28:08
  And and so you can connect at a heart level, whereas otherwise
• 28:12
  you can't. I mean, was it this 2nd letter
• 28:15
  of, of, of Corinthians from Paul?
• 28:17
  Think it's the first verse as we comfort those with the comfort
• 28:20
  with which we ourselves have been comforted.
• 28:23
  And that's the part of that grace it it's both my wife and
• 28:28
  I've served an exorcism ministry and dealing with the victim and
• 28:33
  we were the caregivers for them. So they were in our home and we,
• 28:37
  we, we took them to the sessions and that sort of thing.
• 28:41
  And being able to empathize with them when they were going
• 28:46
  through their torment. You know, I'd, I think it was
• 28:49
  worse for them than it was worse because I wasn't possessed.
• 28:52
  But I, I just had a, you know, you have a taste and you go, OK,
• 28:56
  yeah, this is really terrifying. This person's not crazy.
• 28:59
  This is just insane. You know what they go through
• 29:02
  when when the enemy has power, as it did when I was a kid, you
• 29:06
  know? How did you learn to understand
• 29:09
  this is the demonic that you're being afflicted with as now a
• 29:12
  Baptist and then a Catholic adult did you know before like,
• 29:15
  oh, that must have been the devil you didn't know.
• 29:17
  So when when did you put the pieces together that, oh, my mom
• 29:20
  was involved with the occult because of the abuse she was
• 29:22
  enduring. And there was that like in
• 29:25
  intense, like incredibly horrific panic that I
• 29:29
  experienced as a kid. There was a demonic influence
• 29:32
  happening there. It's a good question.
• 29:33
  I don't know, I don't have a place in time.
• 29:35
  I do remember as a kid reading the book of Job, you know, and
• 29:39
  so there there's you have the scene of the devil meeting,
• 29:42
  having an appointment with God and talking about this serpent
• 29:45
  and, and how that would work. So I had some remote context in
• 29:50
  my head. And then, but of course, you
• 29:52
  start reading the New Testament and it talks about doctrines of
• 29:56
  demons and it talks about, you know, possession and all of
• 30:00
  that. So I couldn't prior to become a
• 30:03
  Christian, I couldn't have explained it, you know, in a, in
• 30:05
  a coherent way of what I experienced.
• 30:08
  And then as a Baptist, I did go through deliverance because I, I
• 30:13
  got to the point where I was in the day when I was away.
• 30:16
  So nights were horrifying. So I would have nightmares at
• 30:19
  night. And I of a particular halt house
• 30:23
  in a where where there was a particular area of evil because
• 30:29
  I know this is going to sound strange, but the I was told this
• 30:33
  by a chief exorcist. I won't say of which diocese
• 30:37
  that demons are are in as part of their punishment subject to
• 30:43
  matter. So they're not free.
• 30:47
  And so if there if there's an affliction in a place, it's why
• 30:50
  they have to be cast out of a place because they get in a way
• 30:55
  in chained by the matter of that place, you know, so you have an
• 31:00
  exorcism of place. So you could exercise this
• 31:04
  studio as an example or. And we have, we've had, we've
• 31:07
  had the blessings because of the pre exorcism, the blessing which
• 31:10
  includes prayers of exorcism just for spiritual protection.
• 31:12
  Yeah. So that gets rid of anything
• 31:15
  that if there any evil practices or mortal sin or whatever that
• 31:18
  happened here before. So there was a place that was
• 31:24
  the most evil, the most scary, the most in a particular house.
• 31:28
  After our interview, I went and found the house with the help of
• 31:31
  my brother. I didn't go to it.
• 31:32
  A house that you lived in as a kid.
• 31:34
  Yeah, it's in Woodland Hills. It not too well, it's a little
• 31:37
  ways from here. And what?
• 31:39
  And because of that interview, that was part of this whole
• 31:42
  process of, OK, let me look at the place and see if it affects
• 31:46
  me at all. And it didn't.
• 31:47
  God be praised. Meaning driving in front of.
• 31:49
  It No, no, no, just on just finding it on Zillow or
• 31:51
  whatever. Yeah, I'm just seeing pictures
• 31:53
  of it. I probably would never so.
• 31:55
  So just so for folks, you had lived in this house as a kid and
• 31:57
  there was a part of the house where the abuse happened, or
• 31:59
  just that part of the house that seemed the most the center of
• 32:02
  the demonic activity. Center of the demonic activity.
• 32:04
  There was no place where abuse didn't happen, you know, in the
• 32:09
  house. So when you were learning, so in
• 32:13
  this process, when you were learning about how to understand
• 32:18
  Satan, even now as a this year, you're still Baptist, though
• 32:22
  you're not Catholic yet. So you were learning these, you
• 32:24
  were doing these deliverance prayers and then you are reading
• 32:27
  Job. You kind of understood.
• 32:29
  Satan's a real guy. He helps cause suffering in the
• 32:31
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  Go to presidiocare.com. I actually, I want to get to the
• 34:17
  how you became Catholic then from Baptist.
• 34:20
  And we're going to keep obviously returning to the
• 34:22
  spiritual warfare theme, but what, what was that moment for
• 34:24
  you? How did that happen?
• 34:27
  So I am a voracious reader, always have been.
• 34:31
  And so I just, I wasn't satisfied with just what the
• 34:39
  preacher said. So I'd read the Bible and then I
• 34:42
  started to notice. So I want to say this before I
• 34:45
  do, I'm super grateful to him and to the evangelical world,
• 34:52
  Baptist world, for helping me come to Jesus.
• 34:55
  No, I have no negative feelings towards them.
• 34:58
  I don't see them as bad or evil. We certainly disagree now on a
• 35:03
  lot of things. So I wanted so, but as I'm
• 35:06
  listening to the preacher teach and then I'm reading books and
• 35:09
  like there's a lot of different ways that people teach on that
• 35:13
  passage and they're pretty contradictory.
• 35:17
  Then there was this idea presented to me that oh, we
• 35:19
  agree on the essentials and agree to disagree on the non
• 35:22
  essentials and it just isn't true.
• 35:23
  And Protestantism, you know, Lutheran, Missouri Synod,
• 35:27
  Lutheran's, you know, don't agree with Southern Baptists on
• 35:31
  many, many things, baptism, which is very important, that
• 35:35
  sort of thing. I won't even pray with them, you
• 35:37
  know, So I was seeing these contradictions.
• 35:41
  And then so I started to read deeper into history and I ran
• 35:45
  into the, what was called, what I called then the Reformation,
• 35:48
  I'll call now the revolt. And reading Calvin and Luther
• 35:52
  and their catechisms, the Westminster Catechism,
• 35:54
  Heidelberg Catechism, and trying to understand those formulations
• 35:58
  of faith and the baptism and the sacraments start to become much
• 36:02
  more important as you get back into history.
• 36:06
  They've been a lot watered down a lot in the modern
• 36:09
  evangelicalism and realizing, you know, there's just a
• 36:13
  different world. And so Calvin and Luther quote
• 36:15
  the fathers a lot. And I mean the Apostolic and the
• 36:18
  and the subsequent fathers of the Church, Apostolic Fathers
• 36:21
  being the 1st 100 years and meaning those who knew Jesus or
• 36:27
  or or knew his. So for instance, Polycarp was a
• 36:32
  disciple of, of, of the apostle John.
• 36:35
  So they either disciples, the apostles or the disciples of the
• 36:39
  apostles. Sorry apostles, disciples of the
• 36:41
  apostles or, or another generation or so.
• 36:45
  And so I read the Apostolic Fathers simultaneously.
• 36:49
  I was having difficulties in prayer.
• 36:52
  So I'd read, I worked for the largest Christian book chain at
• 36:54
  the time in California, like Pathfinders.
• 36:57
  I just remember that. And the and I'd read every
• 37:01
  single book published on prayer and I that I knew of, I mean in
• 37:06
  English in the United States and I no answers.
• 37:10
  And I stumbled on one that I discovered later had changed.
• 37:16
  Well, I'll say first that had answers for the first time of
• 37:20
  the difficulties I was having in prayer and that but I discovered
• 37:24
  later they were Catholic writers, mystical tradition.
• 37:26
  When you say you were having difficulties in prayer, yeah, I
• 37:29
  know This was all connected back to everything we've been talking
• 37:31
  about with childhood and wounds and now your work now to teach
• 37:34
  people to pray and discern what what did.
• 37:36
  What did that look like for? You to cook so heredity, meaning
• 37:40
  the perceived absence of the presence of God.
• 37:42
  So you weren't experiencing consolations.
• 37:46
  Is that fair to say? Yes, worse, I was experiencing
• 37:52
  desolation, which so and there's two kinds of aridity in terms of
• 37:58
  the that affect the soul. There's desolation, which is the
• 38:03
  perceived absence of the presence of God in a draw to
• 38:06
  darkness. And then there's contemplative
• 38:10
  aridity, which is a kind of shift that happens in prayer
• 38:13
  that's drawing you to deeper prayer.
• 38:15
  I was experiencing desolation, which was a draw to darkness.
• 38:20
  What does that mean? A draw to darkness.
• 38:22
  Doubt, despair and narcissism the which are the contrary to
• 38:27
  the theological virtues, so faith, hope and love.
• 38:31
  And so this is your you've been studying Holy Scripture,
• 38:34
  memorizing it as a new Baptist Christian.
• 38:37
  You've been baptized. So you had that.
• 38:39
  You had that incredible grace, you had the full body immersion.
• 38:43
  That's a real. Deal baptism.
• 38:44
  Glass. In this glass, you know they
• 38:47
  could see you head to toe, so you had to be careful what you
• 38:49
  wore underneath your white robe. You know, in case things get
• 38:52
  really weird. And you and you had started.
• 38:54
  I love the little just do the head within the and the duck.
• 38:57
  I love the full duck. OK.
• 38:59
  It was awesome. They're both valid.
• 39:00
  They both they both work beautifully, but you had been
• 39:03
  praying and you it sounds like you had experienced early
• 39:06
  consolation I. Did ohh 'cause I read scripture
• 39:09
  and just loved constant consolations early on.
• 39:13
  Loved Christian pop rock Christian because I was a
• 39:17
  headbanger before. Like worship music.
• 39:19
  Worship me way. Kind of just Christian rock.
• 39:21
  You know, Petra and I don't know, you've probably never
• 39:25
  heard of it. You're too young.
• 39:26
  No, no. You're just like everything.
• 39:29
  Keith Nester, Yeah. Right, That kind of stuff.
• 39:31
  Oh, yeah, of course. Christian rock.
• 39:33
  Yeah, Yeah. And you'd have people would
• 39:35
  convert, like from Kansas, the band Candace, the lead singer
• 39:38
  converted to Christianity and he had his thing.
• 39:40
  And, and so even Alice Cooper converted.
• 39:44
  Wow. Yeah, I saw that.
• 39:46
  That's amazing. That's weird, you know.
• 39:47
  So anyway, so the two paths, I had two tractor beams pulling on
• 39:52
  me. One was Catholic mystical
• 39:55
  tradition because I was finding answers in a book published by a
• 39:58
  Protestant that had hidden the Catholic roots of the So Teresa
• 40:02
  of Avila or Teresa of Jesus was called Teresa DEA Ahumada, which
• 40:07
  was her name before she was received into.
• 40:09
  The so the the Protestant author didn't give her the Saint title
• 40:12
  in the book. And and it was a priest who
• 40:14
  would omit the Father or whatever.
• 40:16
  So I was finding answers about aridity there.
• 40:18
  And I'm and I'm and the night. Is this Teresa DEA?
• 40:20
  What's her last name? Ahumada daumada.
• 40:23
  So funny. So then.
• 40:25
  So then I start to research that that and discovered, wow,
• 40:28
  there's Catholics really do because I was very anti
• 40:31
  Catholic. Yeah, because, you know, my
• 40:34
  first Catholic experience was my stepdad.
• 40:37
  And then, yeah, well, I'll go into that later.
• 40:40
  But the. So I'm getting answers from
• 40:45
  Catholic sources on my interior struggles and then I'm
• 40:50
  intellectually reading the Father's and going, this is
• 40:54
  different than what I'm taught. I mean, the, the, you know, the
• 41:01
  early church doesn't look like what the Baptist said it look
• 41:04
  like, you know, there's some truth, but it's not quite the
• 41:08
  whole picture. I remember doing this is going
• 41:11
  to sound very geeky, but I at one point I I was using an Excel
• 41:17
  spreadsheet and I counted the number of times each apostle was
• 41:22
  named and I put a bar graph together and and it and it was
• 41:27
  shocking to me because Peter cumulatively was mentioned more
• 41:34
  more than the the total of all the mentions hit one man was
• 41:40
  mentioned more than the total of all the other apostles.
• 41:43
  So I'm and I felt stupid because I thought, how did I not see the
• 41:47
  preeminence of Peter? As Pope.
• 41:50
  As first Pope. Well, but I didn't get there
• 41:51
  yet. I was just processing, you know,
• 41:54
  and then then I started to read the Apostolic Fathers and I
• 41:56
  thought these guys. So, you know, I was a fan of
• 41:59
  this guy named John MacArthur. Who's who's here.
• 42:01
  Yeah. Lovely.
• 42:02
  Just passed away. Yeah, lovely, lovely.
• 42:05
  Soul, I really liked his teaching because he he was very,
• 42:09
  he taught people how to study scripture and he taught me in a
• 42:12
  way to do that too. But anyway, so I was, you know,
• 42:18
  I'd listen to John or I'd listen to Chuck Swindoll, another
• 42:21
  wonderful guy. Great Communicator and they but
• 42:26
  then I would look at the Apostolic Fathers and how they
• 42:29
  described Christianity and it just wasn't the same.
• 42:33
  There was a hierarchical dimension where there is no
• 42:37
  Pope, there is no church or no Bishop, there is no church.
• 42:40
  I think that was Irenaeus or or Saint Ignatius of Antioch.
• 42:46
  I think so. I was, you know, doing that
• 42:52
  Clement of Rome, which was one of the first Pope's he I was
• 42:57
  really struck by his, his godliness and and I and I had
• 43:04
  the thought one day because I, I one time I decided, I don't
• 43:06
  remember why I learned this idea.
• 43:08
  It wasn't original with me, but I decided went back to the
• 43:12
  Apostolic Fathers to reread them again.
• 43:15
  And I and I asked them to to talk to me, but I had no concept
• 43:20
  of. Praying to the Saints.
• 43:21
  Yeah, but and and if there's one thing that they would want me to
• 43:26
  learn in this rereading, what would it be?
• 43:30
  And it was in it. And so the night I didn't know
• 43:32
  what it was. So I started to read an
• 43:33
  Apostolic succession just bowled me over, just came right out of
• 43:38
  the text over and over and over. Meaning that valid ordination of
• 43:46
  ministers has to come from Jesus to the 12 apostles.
• 43:51
  And then it for it to be valid, it has to come from one of those
• 43:54
  apostles to a Bishop, you know, like Timothy or and then it had
• 44:00
  to come, you know, so and then I learned that those lines are
• 44:05
  traceable theoretically. And I thought and what it did
• 44:09
  for me was it blew up any. So I evangelicals loved them.
• 44:15
  The pastors I had blessed me, but I realized they were good
• 44:20
  men and had no authority other than maybe, you know, looking
• 44:24
  back now, baptismal authority just to, of course, you know, go
• 44:28
  and make disciples. But they didn't have authority
• 44:31
  like a priest has authority. And that just wrecked, I mean,
• 44:36
  just in one fell swoop. And then I was reading, so I was
• 44:40
  studying at the time. I don't know how long you wanted
• 44:43
  me to go on this, but Orthodox. So I I believe in Apostolic
• 44:47
  succession Catholic Church out like no.
• 44:50
  You so you're like, it can't be them, right, because the abusive
• 44:54
  stepfather and yeah, we're I'm Baptist.
• 44:56
  We don't do Catholic. They were very anti Catholic.
• 44:59
  They're one of those, you know, they're they're Baptists who
• 45:01
  their identity is in Jesus there.
• 45:04
  This group I was with was a lot of their identity was we're not
• 45:07
  Catholic. And this is how why they're bad.
• 45:09
  So the theology in the wounds worked, you know, reinforced a
• 45:14
  negative. So then I went and studied
• 45:16
  Orthodoxy for a while and oh gosh, I don't remember.
• 45:21
  Oh, I I was reading Orthodox opinion because the son of one
• 45:24
  of the greatest Protestant philosophers since the since the
• 45:28
  revolt, his name was Francis Schaefer.
• 45:33
  His son, Frankie Schaefer, had converted to Orthodoxy.
• 45:37
  I didn't know that. He's since left the faith
• 45:39
  altogether. He was very negative dude, but
• 45:42
  the the. But he had the Orthodox opinion,
• 45:47
  which was a periodical, and they just dismantled Sola Scriptura
• 45:51
  in one article. And then I have felt stupid
• 45:54
  forever believing scripture alone in terms of that's the
• 45:57
  authority. But you didn't end up going
• 45:59
  Orthodox, you ended up going Roman Catholic.
• 46:01
  No, because I went to, I can't remember the seminary's name,
• 46:04
  maybe St. Vladimir or but anyway, I, I
• 46:08
  audited some courses of seminary on Mary because that was a big
• 46:11
  barrier for me and I just couldn't deal with it because it
• 46:15
  was just it, it, it was, it drew on scriptural themes, but it
• 46:20
  was, you know, I was still a little stuck in that.
• 46:23
  It's if it's not in scripture or close to being in scripture,
• 46:25
  then I just struggled with it. Didn't, couldn't trust as much.
• 46:28
  So I sort of, and then I ran into a scholar named Schmeman
• 46:33
  who's famous and I realized they were not their claim for unity
• 46:36
  is just really bogus. It's just, it doesn't exist.
• 46:39
  They're super divided by ethnic, primary ethnic bounds and, and,
• 46:44
  and they're pretty aggressive towards one another at times in
• 46:46
  a very negative way. You can see that just if you
• 46:49
  hang out the church, the Holy Sectic are long enough you,
• 46:51
  you'll actually see it in Jerusalem even to this day.
• 46:55
  So that blew up orthodoxy for me.
• 46:57
  And so Anglicanism, historic Anglicanism was, was very
• 47:03
  Calvinist, which I was by that time.
• 47:06
  And so the ecclesiology is cat is, I mean, quasi Catholic.
• 47:10
  And they're, and they're, they're soteriology, which
• 47:13
  answers the question of how, how are we saved, if you will, was
• 47:17
  Calvinist. And so that, so I became an
• 47:19
  Anglican. That was my first move out of,
• 47:24
  you know, it's sort of the event, the low evangelical
• 47:27
  world, meaning Sacramento liturgical and nothing much.
• 47:31
  Going on, how long did you stay Anglican for?
• 47:32
  A few years. And then you ended up Catholic.
• 47:35
  Yeah, because what happened was I ended up in Anglican seminary,
• 47:39
  a Bishop said. Why aren't you in seminary?
• 47:42
  And I there's long story behind why, why, what, why I decided to
• 47:47
  say yes. And I went seminary while the
• 47:49
  texts were Catholic because it was a high Anglican seminary.
• 47:52
  So the mass or the their service, you know, it's really,
• 47:57
  it's not valid, but it was beautiful and it was what I
• 48:01
  think Benedict was heading towards.
• 48:03
  Which was it it you know, it's a 2 hour mass at Orientem.
• 48:09
  So the the priest leading people to Jesus at in the cross and the
• 48:15
  you know the the Gospel of John first and last the readings in
• 48:21
  English everything else in Latin incense at every Mass.
• 48:27
  It was very high. It was like probably what this
• 48:31
  what they were looking at the 65 missile that preceded what John
• 48:36
  Paul approved in the OR Paul the six.
• 48:40
  I'm sorry for the what we call the Novus Ordo now.
• 48:43
  What was lacking in it for you that made you think this isn't
• 48:46
  it? I need to become Catholic now.
• 48:47
  The texts were Catholic and I just started studying.
• 48:50
  It just opened my heart to Catholicism.
• 48:52
  I mean, another thing happened years before that I was working
• 48:57
  for Focus on the Family and there was a woman named Phyllis.
• 49:03
  Did I tell you about Phyllis? And the last I.
• 49:05
  Please tell us again what happened with Phyllis.
• 49:08
  So Phyllis was a Catholic and so she was evil and believed bad
• 49:13
  things, and she must have lied on to get into this evangelical
• 49:16
  organization. And I used to do Dr. Bys with
• 49:19
  her and say, you know, because I was so filled with the Holy
• 49:22
  Spirit and joy and love. Drive by verbal shootings, Yeah.
• 49:26
  Like, you know, you believe in, you know, I can't remember the
• 49:31
  things I used to say. And you worship Mary that.
• 49:33
  Kind of thing. That's right, you remember
• 49:35
  better. You're an idolater.
• 49:37
  Yes, exactly. You have a good memory, yes.
• 49:39
  I've received a few. Of these, yes I was.
• 49:42
  Doing myself. So, but she, she would say,
• 49:46
  well, you want to talk about that?
• 49:48
  And, and what's funny is I did a, a talk for Catholic answers
• 49:53
  recently called they, they have, it's called a cultic Catholic
• 49:58
  and it's has, I don't know, 100,000 I mean, huge number of
• 50:02
  views. And Phyllis, the woman who was
• 50:05
  witnessing to me read it because I had said in the interview or
• 50:08
  in the talk that she was a lousy apologist.
• 50:12
  And I so and so I called her afterwards and I said, you know,
• 50:17
  did I portray the whole story accurately?
• 50:19
  I'll tell you in a minute. She said yes.
• 50:21
  And she said every time I saw you, I was terrified.
• 50:24
  Feel bad? So she wasn't able to give a
• 50:26
  defense in a way that persuaded you at all about the Catholic
• 50:29
  faith? Not a defense.
• 50:32
  Not with her words. That was her words.
• 50:34
  So you would argue with her like you believe this and you're
• 50:36
  like, I guess I could, I don't know what to tell you.
• 50:39
  You're the the smart guy here. And so then what?
• 50:41
  What happened with Phyllis? Well, I was she was leaving the
• 50:43
  organization and I was supposed to be at celebrate, you know,
• 50:50
  the going away party, but I didn't want to.
• 50:53
  And so some of one of high ranks said you're coming.
• 50:56
  And so I went and I discovered in the room, I walked into the
• 51:00
  room. The whole staff is there, but
• 51:02
  there are chairs up in front of the the room facing the staff.
• 51:07
  And Phyllis is standing there waiting for me.
• 51:10
  And the chairs were high chairs. I got a bar where your feet are
• 51:13
  off the ground. And so she sat me in the chair
• 51:17
  and she started to say how I had affected her faith in a good
• 51:24
  way, which was shocking to me. And then she took off my shoes
• 51:29
  and she washed my feet. And that moment, I mean, how do
• 51:39
  you, you know, one of the things that I talk about a lot when I
• 51:44
  get is evangelism in a, in a post rational culture, love
• 51:51
  builds a bridge over which truth can pass.
• 51:54
  And if you don't lead with love, you're wasting your time because
• 51:59
  a lot it's and it's and when I came up with that idea, it was
• 52:02
  long time ago. Now it's a million times worse.
• 52:05
  Our culture is in a profoundly radical and very fast decline
• 52:10
  worldwide because of the Internet primarily, but we're
• 52:15
  it's post rational meaning it's you can't have a logical
• 52:19
  discourse with people. I mean, I think people like it.
• 52:23
  I mean, Charlie Kirk as an example was extraordinary at
• 52:27
  rational loving discourse. You know, God rest his soul, but
• 52:33
  that's not that's an anomaly. You know, most people are
• 52:37
  convinced when you give your life for them the way Jesus gave
• 52:42
  his life to others, that you meet them in the way that Jesus
• 52:45
  would meet them. You know, that you, you, you
• 52:48
  hang out with broken people and you serve broken people.
• 52:50
  I mean, the gospel for today, for the Mass today is, you know,
• 52:54
  when did you, when did we feed you?
• 52:56
  When did we visit you in prison? When did we?
• 52:59
  And he said, of course, when you did it to the least of these.
• 53:02
  So that is the pathway serving. That's what Phyllis did for me.
• 53:08
  She touched me in a way that made me pretty quickly aware
• 53:11
  that her version of Christianity was superior to mine.
• 53:15
  Wow. But I still didn't.
• 53:17
  But still took me years because of the wounds and.
• 53:19
  All that, but it helped. I think it maybe helped knock a
• 53:21
  bit of a chip off of your shoulder totally.
• 53:23
  It undid some of the trauma from your Catholic stepfather who
• 53:25
  abused you. Yeah, totally.
• 53:27
  So so. And she had no idea about that.
• 53:29
  That's the that's the beauty of this.
• 53:30
  It's like Phyllis had no idea when she was washing your feet
• 53:34
  that Dan Burke was abused by his Catholic Catholic stepfather and
• 53:38
  as a Jewish kid and had all this trauma and now was this born
• 53:41
  again believer working at Focus on the family.
• 53:44
  She didn't know any of that. And this was essential for your
• 53:47
  path that later on the Lord would bring you even closer to
• 53:49
  his his heart in in in their Catholic faith.
• 53:52
  But why did she wash the feet? What was that like a ritual they
• 53:54
  did at Focus on the Family or she just she just had this idea.
• 53:57
  I really want to wash. Dan on Monday, Thursday, right?
• 54:00
  I mean, and there was more than one.
• 54:02
  I wasn't the only one she put up.
• 54:03
  There's several teams. She's like, guys, I really want
• 54:05
  to do this as part of my going away party.
• 54:07
  Yeah, and these and these are you the you people.
• 54:09
  These people had the biggest influence and effect on her.
• 54:13
  And that's why she did it. And you know, she just was
• 54:16
  imitating Jesus. You know, what I love about that
• 54:19
  story is that, and thank you so much for sharing it, is that she
• 54:22
  took a risk because I'm going to guarantee people listening right
• 54:25
  now have had some sort of inspiration due to something
• 54:28
  maybe a little bit crazy or a little bit weird as a as an act
• 54:31
  of love for someone. And maybe they just like that's
• 54:34
  a little too weird or crazy and so they don't do it.
• 54:37
  But just think what the Lord can do with something that's a
• 54:40
  little weird or a little bit crazy.
• 54:41
  You want to know one? We just did in Tucson.
• 54:43
  Stephanie did. What did you guys do?
• 54:44
  We were at a restaurant and we noticed there was a call girl
• 54:48
  because we could hear the conversation with a guy and and
• 54:54
  just because where the Lord seated us because it wasn't our
• 54:56
  choice. They were right in front of us
• 54:59
  and so, so. A prostitute basically like a
• 55:02
  like an. A high end.
• 55:03
  Yeah, yeah. And and so and and anyway, I
• 55:08
  can't remember if I initiated or she.
• 55:10
  I think I said, do you have a miraculous medal in your in your
• 55:14
  purse? And she did.
• 55:16
  And so afterward and she noticed the woman was Hispanic.
• 55:20
  And so afterwards Stephanie went up and said in Spanish, the
• 55:24
  virgin has told me to give this to you.
• 55:28
  And then and, and I so she would, but the call girl
• 55:32
  responded and said something like all of the Levirjian
• 55:37
  whatever, I can't, I don't do Spanish.
• 55:40
  And so we walked away and and then we heard, we heard the guy
• 55:44
  say, what is that? What do you?
• 55:48
  What that? What conversation will that be?
• 55:51
  Wow. From.
• 55:53
  Pray for her. Right.
• 55:55
  But it's just having that as another one.
• 55:56
  We were at a, we were on Halloween night, we were at a
• 55:59
  hibachi place and the only, there was one other couple
• 56:03
  there, only one. I thought they're probably
• 56:06
  Christians and of some sort because they're not, you know,
• 56:09
  doing the Halloween thing. And I can't remember.
• 56:11
  And I just decided to talk with them and struck up a
• 56:15
  conversation. Their little boy Jack was there
• 56:18
  and he was going into surgery next week or whatever.
• 56:21
  And, and they said, would you pray for him?
• 56:23
  And I said, would it be OK if we prayed right now for him?
• 56:28
  And so being able to come and put our hands on him and pray
• 56:33
  for him. And then them knowing we're
• 56:35
  Catholic, they turned out to be evangelical.
• 56:38
  I mean, it's just beautiful. It's just living your faith.
• 56:40
  Yes, it's living. I was at the shoe store with my
• 56:42
  kids getting them shoes for Easter.
• 56:45
  Or my husband is a ultra preparer, so he's like, they
• 56:47
  need Easter shoes. It's gonna be Easter.
• 56:48
  We have like 40 days, so it was up to me.
• 56:50
  We'd be there the day before. But anyways, we were at the
• 56:52
  store and I was talking about church shoes.
• 56:55
  Church shoes. This young, very young guy who
• 56:58
  is helping us out says, what church do you all go to?
• 57:02
  So I start talking about our faith and our the church and
• 57:04
  everything. And he's like, I know I need to
• 57:05
  go back to church. It's been too long.
• 57:08
  That's I think he was raised Catholic.
• 57:09
  Oh yeah. And I just felt like the Lord
• 57:11
  telling me and I said, God is waiting for you.
• 57:13
  He's been waiting for you a long.
• 57:13
  Time you said it, yes, I, I have one last one like that one.
• 57:17
  I was in an ambulance recently because I, I don't remember what
• 57:20
  happened, but I've been in a lot of ambulances.
• 57:23
  My body's not my friend, so I was an ambulance.
• 57:28
  I think my head was split open or something.
• 57:29
  Oh my goodness. And.
• 57:32
  You fell. I don't remember what happened,
• 57:34
  but I. Stephanie, what happened?
• 57:36
  You fell. Oh, no, no, I Yeah.
• 57:37
  So I lost consciousness at the edge of my bed and I did a head
• 57:42
  plant. They.
• 57:42
  Found you. You woke up.
• 57:46
  I'm calling my son. I end up calling my son and I
• 57:49
  was disoriented and bleeding like crazy.
• 57:53
  And anyway, so I end up in it. So I lost consciousness.
• 57:56
  It's a long story. I have a medical condition that
• 57:59
  that can happen. And so I'm in the ambulance and
• 58:03
  I discover the guy who's there. The Mt guys have not fallen
• 58:07
  away. Catholic and I So I said, you
• 58:09
  know, when was the last time you had been amassed?
• 58:12
  It's been a long time. I said, how often do you see
• 58:15
  people die? He said every day.
• 58:17
  And I said, and you don't go to Mass, you don't go to
• 58:20
  confession. You know, my brother, it's time,
• 58:25
  you know, So I'm sitting in the ambulance.
• 58:27
  I've I gained my, you know. Yeah, you got your wits back.
• 58:30
  My wits back but so. What did he say?
• 58:33
  He said he would and I, I told him that Paris we went to.
• 58:36
  And my my the guy that the young guy said he would too.
• 58:38
  And I said and and go meet with the priest and go to confession,
• 58:41
  I said. Crazy.
• 58:43
  Then I just walked off. I'm like, I've become that Lady,
• 58:46
  you know, but by God's mercy and grace.
• 58:48
  I hope, but it's that we're called.
• 58:50
  To do that. What it means to go and, and
• 58:53
  proclaim the gospel and to make disciples.
• 58:55
  We're called to reach out to people and it's more often it's
• 58:58
  people we know you know, but it's sometimes it's people.
• 59:02
  But if you listen and you're sensitive to I, I think it's you
• 59:05
  have a pastoral heart. We're all supposed to have this,
• 59:09
  which is that we we walk around and our primary concern when we
• 59:13
  meet people is I'm always thinking how, how is your
• 59:16
  spiritual progress? I don't say it always, but I'm
• 59:19
  always thinking, how are you doing spiritually?
• 59:21
  Where, where are you with the Lord?
• 59:23
  And I don't care who you are. Think the first time I met you,
• 59:25
  I gave you a book. Yeah, I think so.
• 59:27
  Yeah, Devil in the Castle, I think it was.
• 59:29
  But it, it doesn't matter, right?
• 59:31
  Because we're supposed to help one another.
• 59:33
  And I love it when people do that to me and they're concerned
• 59:36
  about my soul. So anyway, so I I actually know
• 59:39
  where I can actually get me back on track this time.
• 59:42
  Where Where are you going next? I have a place, but you go
• 59:45
  first. No, I want to hear.
• 59:46
  You're going to go. So there are two beams drawing
• 59:50
  me back to the Catholic Church. 1 was Catholic mystical
• 59:53
  tradition. The other was the father's that
• 59:55
  got me into Anglican seminary came out.
• 59:59
  Yeah. And but the Phyllis story was a
• 1:00:01
  little bit of a Side Story that made me open to.
• 1:00:03
  It lay the foundation. But near the end of the second
• 1:00:07
  year and if you know, I'm chronologically impaired, so.
• 1:00:12
  You were at seminary? Anglican Seminary.
• 1:00:14
  Second year of Anglican seminary.
• 1:00:15
  Yeah. And then, but I started going to
• 1:00:17
  RCIA secretly by myself and I'm, I'm single sitting in the back
• 1:00:24
  of the mast in Foxfield, Colorado the the first week of
• 1:00:33
  first Sunday of July. And I was sick of not being able
• 1:00:40
  to receive the Eucharist because I believed and I went to the
• 1:00:44
  head of the RCIA then who her name was Shirley.
• 1:00:48
  She was a third order Carmelite and we had really connected very
• 1:00:51
  deeply because I was reading Carmelite spirituality and and
• 1:00:56
  she and I said, I'm look, I'm cooked.
• 1:00:59
  I believe in the magisterium. Do not get the marry thing.
• 1:01:03
  I don't understand Catholic soteriology.
• 1:01:05
  I thought I did, but I will obey.
• 1:01:08
  I this is the church Jesus established.
• 1:01:10
  So it's not as intellectual as my, I mean, it sounds a little
• 1:01:14
  bit, but it wasn't as intellectual as my Protestant
• 1:01:16
  conversion. It was.
• 1:01:18
  It was just more of an organic kind of.
• 1:01:20
  So when you were receiving Anglican Eucharist and they
• 1:01:23
  don't believe in transubstantiation, they believe
• 1:01:25
  in consubstantiation, it's not actually the Eucharist, but
• 1:01:28
  they're kind of, you know, playing at Eucharist, not to
• 1:01:30
  sound pejorative, but they're kind of playing.
• 1:01:32
  At the orders aren't valid. The orders aren't valid and it's
• 1:01:34
  not a valid Eucharist. It is not.
• 1:01:36
  Neither valid nor nor obviously can't be licit.
• 1:01:38
  Orthodox Eucharist is valid, but not licit.
• 1:01:42
  All this to say, you knew instinctually.
• 1:01:44
  This is not it. It was.
• 1:01:48
  More this is it then that's not it 'cause I was very blessed,
• 1:01:53
  you know, similar, you know, so I didn't, it was never like a
• 1:01:56
  oh, you're wrong. It was more of a oh, that's
• 1:01:58
  right. That's the fullness of the
• 1:02:00
  truth, 'cause that's what kept me out of a casket.
• 1:02:04
  How do you mean? What do you mean?
• 1:02:07
  Truth. You know the the the truth of
• 1:02:12
  who? Jesus when he said I am the way,
• 1:02:15
  the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father, but to me.
• 1:02:20
  So truth to me to this day. I, I loved when Pope Benedict
• 1:02:24
  said truth is a person and it's Jesus.
• 1:02:29
  And so for me the whole journey was I don't care what it costs
• 1:02:34
  me and it costs me a lot. I will, I will follow the truth.
• 1:02:40
  And so that's more of the compulsion.
• 1:02:43
  It was not as much of rejecting as it no, this is this is more
• 1:02:47
  true. That's that's why I can you
• 1:02:50
  know, I, I love my evangelical, you know, friend, my best
• 1:02:55
  friend. It was was my best friend no
• 1:02:58
  longer is, but is a professor of epistemology at a reformed
• 1:03:03
  college. And you know, he, he was a lover
• 1:03:09
  of truth, but he stopped, you know, and for me, I couldn't.
• 1:03:13
  When you say it kept you out of the casket, what do you mean?
• 1:03:15
  I would put a bullet in my head if I didn't find a reason to
• 1:03:19
  live, if I didn't find a reason for the suffering.
• 1:03:22
  Is it it it's, it's, it was just too much, still too much.
• 1:03:26
  And and I'm not and I live a very much a life of peace, you
• 1:03:30
  know, but it's, it's life is, is difficult.
• 1:03:33
  So. And by suffering you mean trauma
• 1:03:36
  from childhood, ongoing medical condition, and also just the
• 1:03:39
  suffering in the world. Yeah.
• 1:03:40
  I mean, yeah. I mean, I'm a melancholic,
• 1:03:43
  melancholic, melancholic. You know what I'm saying?
• 1:03:45
  Usually people have two different ones.
• 1:03:47
  You're a. Triple, triple melancholy.
• 1:03:49
  I'm. A triple yeah, darkness comes
• 1:03:50
  easy for me. So yeah, I mean, I was yeah.
• 1:03:54
  I won't share an experience. I recently had it in Mass, but I
• 1:03:57
  feel the I feel the wounds it puts on Christ.
• 1:04:04
  I feel when the Eucharist is not cared for and when we pretend to
• 1:04:11
  believe and, and we just say whatever prayer we want, when,
• 1:04:15
  you know, when we play a Jim Croce song during Mass instead
• 1:04:21
  of Catholic music, you know, just rips into me.
• 1:04:27
  So anyway, I don't know. Sounds like that's a another
• 1:04:31
  mission waiting to be launched. Well, my brother's really into
• 1:04:35
  that. My brother Paul.
• 1:04:37
  And reforming the liturgy. Liturgy.
• 1:04:38
  So we just did a beautiful film series with Father Boniface
• 1:04:41
  Hicks and Christopher Carson's called The Perfect Prayer, which
• 1:04:45
  folks can find on spiritualdirection.com.
• 1:04:47
  If you don't mind a commercial spiritualdirection.com/perfectprayer.
• 1:04:51
  So you said something earlier, and I think this is part of the
• 1:04:54
  key to unlock so much of your work that you're doing with
• 1:04:56
  spiritual direction and with the Avila Institute.
• 1:04:59
  You said you were experiencing desolation in your prayer.
• 1:05:03
  This is what originally drove you to explore prayer.
• 1:05:07
  And then you discover you can help but discover the Catholic
• 1:05:10
  roots of prayer and some of the Mystics that we're going to talk
• 1:05:13
  about here. And can you describe for people,
• 1:05:16
  though, what it, what you you, you began to describe aridity,
• 1:05:20
  not experiencing consolations and prayers and just having to
• 1:05:22
  persevere. And then there's like desolation
• 1:05:24
  where there's all these temptations against the
• 1:05:27
  theological virtues of faith, hope and love.
• 1:05:29
  I'm really interested in understand people listening, all
• 1:05:33
  of us together, understanding this so we can examine our own
• 1:05:37
  experience and also recognize there's a spiritual aspect and
• 1:05:42
  then there's a psychological and I know people, there's someone I
• 1:05:46
  love very much as an example. And recently we were talking,
• 1:05:49
  this person is struggling with mental health issues, but
• 1:05:52
  there's a lot of spiritualization of their mental
• 1:05:54
  health issues. And so they're avoiding getting
• 1:05:57
  certain mental health support because they're thinking, oh,
• 1:05:59
  this is just a demonic attack. And I think, well, maybe this is
• 1:06:02
  actually a mental health issue. And this is, of course, what
• 1:06:05
  every exorcist has to discern before they go into their
• 1:06:09
  ministry is this somebody that needs psychological support
• 1:06:12
  first and foremost. And the Church recommends that
• 1:06:14
  first and foremost before you show up in front of an exorcist.
• 1:06:18
  Yeah, well, I mean you, I think you had Shawn Tobin on recently,
• 1:06:21
  right? Yeah.
• 1:06:22
  So he does a good job of dealing with this big God little devil.
• 1:06:27
  And he's of course, a psychologist.
• 1:06:29
  I I'm of a little different of opinion, not of him, but.
• 1:06:33
  And now before I say this, we have, I also founded a community
• 1:06:38
  called Apostle Livier. We have thousands of members all
• 1:06:41
  over the world and we have members who have mental illness
• 1:06:44
  who are living very healthy lives, but who still struggle
• 1:06:48
  with mental illness. So I know that realm a bit and I
• 1:06:52
  also know my own progress. It just depends on the person
• 1:06:58
  and the circumstances to what they need more or less of.
• 1:07:02
  But over spiritualizing mental illnesses is a problem, but
• 1:07:08
  getting to the root of it is, is challenging.
• 1:07:10
  You know, I had, I had a seminarian who I was helping who
• 1:07:14
  became an atheist in seminary because he was hearing,
• 1:07:18
  constantly hearing negative thoughts about, you know, I
• 1:07:21
  don't believe this isn't true, whatever.
• 1:07:24
  And I, and I didn't. So my initial this, the the
• 1:07:30
  course of remedy, if you will, was first.
• 1:07:33
  I had, I wanted to stabilize him spiritually.
• 1:07:35
  So I said you have to be obedient.
• 1:07:38
  You have to go to Mass every day.
• 1:07:40
  You have to do your Liturgy of the Hours every day.
• 1:07:42
  You have to do what you're supposed to do if you're going
• 1:07:45
  to become a priest. And he was.
• 1:07:48
  I taught him discernment of spirits six months.
• 1:07:51
  He was very faithful to all of that and to mental prayer, and
• 1:07:54
  it did not help him. So you taught him, he was
• 1:07:58
  praying every day, he was persisting despite the not just
• 1:08:01
  aridity but the desolation, and he was still just afflicted
• 1:08:04
  after six months. Right.
• 1:08:06
  And then, so I began. So then I, what I did is
• 1:08:08
  eliminated it as likely a spiritual primary spiritual
• 1:08:13
  cause. And then I worked with a
• 1:08:16
  psychologist who had also worked in exorcism ministry.
• 1:08:20
  And so they knew the full dimension of care at the full
• 1:08:25
  spectrum of care and put him on some behavioral prescriptions in
• 1:08:30
  terms of how to deal with out of control thoughts and it didn't
• 1:08:34
  work. Like OCD, almost like he was
• 1:08:36
  almost having obsessive compulsive thoughts about just
• 1:08:40
  the devil and negative things in his own.
• 1:08:41
  Exactly right. Wow.
• 1:08:43
  And then that didn't help. And then and then the last
• 1:08:46
  resort was medication and that, and then it solved it.
• 1:08:50
  Yeah. And so he's living a happy,
• 1:08:53
  balanced, productive life now. So, so I believe in when I
• 1:08:58
  psychology, but I'm, I believe in a reverse that a lot of
• 1:09:02
  places, a lot of dioceses do in the sense that I think you get
• 1:09:09
  this spiritual life sound first, because if you don't get that
• 1:09:12
  first and there's demonic activity, it doesn't matter how
• 1:09:15
  much therapy you give a person, they're never going to get free.
• 1:09:20
  But what if they're they feel incapable of maintaining that
• 1:09:24
  spiritual discipline because of the mental health?
• 1:09:27
  That's a problem, Yeah. I mean, just but you have to
• 1:09:29
  work on that. And because some, because the
• 1:09:32
  word feel is a keyword, right? I can tell you when I first
• 1:09:35
  started practicing discernment of spirits, I did not feel like
• 1:09:39
  resisting the enemy, but I did it anyway.
• 1:09:42
  And when you when you do that, then what happens?
• 1:09:45
  Then the Holy Spirit begins to move and you it's, it's amazing
• 1:09:50
  what what unfolds. I can't tell you how many
• 1:09:52
  students I've had who've taken my classes on discernment of
• 1:09:55
  spirits or read my book and said I was diagnosed with depression.
• 1:10:00
  But I realized the voices weren't me.
• 1:10:03
  They were coming from the outside.
• 1:10:05
  And now I'm free. Please, nobody listening.
• 1:10:09
  If you're on medication, don't get off your medication without
• 1:10:12
  working with a therapist and a spiritual director.
• 1:10:14
  Both unique, both, but it's happened over and over because
• 1:10:20
  they realize because a lot of what is is called depression or
• 1:10:26
  whatever is an out. It's a it's a demonic.
• 1:10:29
  It does have a demonic source. I think that's my experience.
• 1:10:33
  I mean, I had, you know, temptations to self harm,
• 1:10:37
  depression, disordered eating as a teen.
• 1:10:40
  I had all these like and for me it was just dealing with
• 1:10:42
  suffering. Now I wasn't the victim of some
• 1:10:44
  huge trauma, thanks be to God, but I was for whatever reason,
• 1:10:47
  God allowed me to be attracted to the suffering of other and
• 1:10:54
  others and wanting to help heal it.
• 1:10:55
  And then I had my own issues I was trying to navigate and
• 1:10:58
  people close to me who are suffering and despite all the
• 1:11:01
  blessings I had in my childhood because again, I had so many
• 1:11:04
  blessings and things given to me, but it was so I was put on,
• 1:11:08
  I went to therapy. This was before becoming
• 1:11:10
  Catholic. So I didn't have the really
• 1:11:12
  concept of really developing a prayer life or understanding
• 1:11:16
  what that even looked like. I didn't have the sacraments,
• 1:11:17
  but I had enough of a, you know, enough of a parachute to know
• 1:11:21
  that Jesus is real and God is real.
• 1:11:23
  But so went on Lexapro for two years and then around the time
• 1:11:28
  of coming off of it getting more shaky of like I again, falling
• 1:11:32
  into just what where does where, how do I find God?
• 1:11:35
  How do I live this life? It's so blinding in many ways to
• 1:11:37
  deal with your own suffering, the suffering of others.
• 1:11:40
  What do I do? And then it was discovering
• 1:11:42
  faith, deeper faith in Jesus Christ and the Eucharist, and
• 1:11:46
  discovering prayer and discovering spiritual guidance.
• 1:11:48
  And then everything sort of fell into place.
• 1:11:51
  And then I could, I could manage it, you know, and to this day it
• 1:11:55
  I only can't manage it when I don't make Jesus the source,
• 1:11:59
  when I'm not going back to him as a source.
• 1:12:01
  And if you, if you try, if you go a few days without praying,
• 1:12:04
  you just get you, you flip upside down, you might as well
• 1:12:06
  go drive your car off the road and you know, just disappear
• 1:12:09
  because you can't handle life. I never ever ever miss prayer.
• 1:12:15
  Never fail to pray. Axillium Christian or in prayers
• 1:12:19
  Our Lady help of Christians prayers which are spiritual
• 1:12:22
  warfare ever so if it doesn't matter what the circumstance is
• 1:12:26
  because that's my sanity that's my.
• 1:12:28
  And you feel it when you don't. If you don't pray, you feel.
• 1:12:31
  It OH. You.
• 1:12:32
  Wow, never good for you. No, because I'm a really messed
• 1:12:35
  up person, Lila. So, so I, I know what that other
• 1:12:40
  place is and I know, you know, I know where my brothers and my
• 1:12:44
  siblings all went into caskets and.
• 1:12:47
  They took their lives. Well figured and and because of
• 1:12:53
  drug abuse and self abuse and you know multiple rehab centers
• 1:12:59
  over and over one one is looking like he may make it out.
• 1:13:04
  You know so yeah no I your your your testimony is mine.
• 1:13:09
  The the when I was a Protestant I I did make progress because of
• 1:13:14
  the memorization of Scripture and the the the rewiring, you
• 1:13:18
  know, Romans 12/1 be not conformed to this world will be
• 1:13:21
  transformed by the renewal of your mind.
• 1:13:23
  The Greek is it's metamorphosis. So the Lord does rewire, I think
• 1:13:29
  in a. Well, and you shared you stop
• 1:13:30
  drinking yourself to sleep almost like that when you start
• 1:13:32
  to study scripture. Yes, so the the the rewiring as
• 1:13:38
  a Protestant and then I even created my own spiritual warfare
• 1:13:41
  prayers as a Protestant from James 47.
• 1:13:45
  Resist the devil and he will flee.
• 1:13:46
  So I would say in Jesus name, the Bible says, you know, resist
• 1:13:51
  you and you must flee. Get away from me and and I had
• 1:13:54
  some success. It was still below the
• 1:13:57
  desolation, the the OR the if you want to call it the
• 1:13:59
  consolation line. But I was functional more
• 1:14:03
  functional and I had hope, but I was still fighting for peace.
• 1:14:07
  But when I became Catholic, the sacraments and Catholic mystical
• 1:14:11
  tradition, which expands scripture in an extraordinarily
• 1:14:15
  powerful and personal way, that's when my progress went
• 1:14:21
  through the roof. Being married to to the wife God
• 1:14:23
  gave me was huge. Sacramento marriage is way more
• 1:14:27
  powerful than people think as well.
• 1:14:30
  Was very healing for me. So.
• 1:14:33
  So yeah. So that got me above the line to
• 1:14:35
  where I learned to live normatively in peace.
• 1:14:38
  You know, I had a huge rage issue, which you might not be
• 1:14:41
  surprised about as a kid. It was always yellow.
• 1:14:44
  Red was my life hot. You know, green is peace.
• 1:14:48
  Yellow is, you know, anxiety and red is going to hit someone or
• 1:14:53
  you're going to yell at someone or you're going to be a jerk or
• 1:14:55
  whatever. And I lived, you know, when I
• 1:14:58
  became a Christian, I before Christianity, I was yellow, red,
• 1:15:03
  red all the time. I moved into yellow as an
• 1:15:06
  evangelical, as a Catholic, I can't, you know, it's very rare
• 1:15:11
  to Get Me Out of, into the red zone.
• 1:15:14
  It's like, and then there's none of the behavior that I used to
• 1:15:16
  have, but that's just from the transformation, the renewal of
• 1:15:21
  your mind as you draw near to Jesus.
• 1:15:23
  You know, the, the, the proximity being present to Jesus
• 1:15:29
  and him being present to you changes you.
• 1:15:31
  It, that's why I say we have mental people with mental
• 1:15:34
  illness in the community. Like I'll give you an example.
• 1:15:37
  I met with the spiritual director of a person in the
• 1:15:39
  community who has been practicing mental prayer.
• 1:15:42
  It's which is a foundational practice of, of folks, we're
• 1:15:45
  Carmelite, but we're not formally associated with
• 1:15:47
  Carmelites. And I met the spiritual director
• 1:15:51
  of this, this young person who had just had horrific problems
• 1:15:55
  and he started to talk and he began to weep.
• 1:15:58
  This is a priest. He began to weep.
• 1:16:02
  And he said you do not know what you've done.
• 1:16:06
  For for his young directee. Right.
• 1:16:10
  Because you what? It was taught them.
• 1:16:12
  How to pray? How to engage in the sacraments
• 1:16:15
  properly, how to not abuse, you know how how to not abuse
• 1:16:19
  confession and not that I'm saying this is a particular
• 1:16:21
  problem with them, but this is what we teach how to participate
• 1:16:24
  in the Holy sacrifice of the Mass.
• 1:16:25
  That's not going and checking a box.
• 1:16:28
  There is there is more to going to Mass than checking a box.
• 1:16:32
  You know you can go to Mass and receive condemnation.
• 1:16:35
  First Corinthians 11/27 says if you go and your heart is not
• 1:16:39
  properly ordered to what's happening, you drink
• 1:16:42
  condemnation, you eat and drink damnation is another, you know,
• 1:16:46
  so teaching them you need to go to confession and this.
• 1:16:50
  Is if you're in the state of mortal sin.
• 1:16:51
  That's exactly right. So just for anybody scrupulous
• 1:16:54
  listening like, well, I was, you know, my mind was wandering in
• 1:16:57
  Mass when I received Holy Communion.
• 1:16:59
  No, this is if you're in intentional and willful state of
• 1:17:02
  mortal sin and you go to receive Holy Communion when you're
• 1:17:04
  you're not supposed to because you haven't gone to confession.
• 1:17:07
  Exactly. So then there's gradations of
• 1:17:10
  proper disposition for mass. So that's the biggest one, but
• 1:17:13
  just being present and understanding what's going on
• 1:17:16
  and participating because our participation isn't about us
• 1:17:19
  singing, It's not about us reading, it's about joining our
• 1:17:23
  our own sacrifice with Jesus sacrifice, right.
• 1:17:28
  So that daily mental prayer is, is foundational.
• 1:17:31
  Like when somebody makes their first profession.
• 1:17:34
  That's the beginning, you know, and these daily examine which
• 1:17:38
  wakes you up to who you are and where God is and where you are
• 1:17:42
  wakes you up to patterns of behavior, sin, thoughts.
• 1:17:46
  You begin then you begin to enter the battle.
• 1:17:48
  You begin to learn what Paul said and sync in in Corinthians
• 1:17:52
  when he said you need to that you that we're in a war, He
• 1:17:55
  said, and in that war where you have divine power and he said
• 1:17:59
  what is the divine power for It's to it's to strike against
• 1:18:03
  strongholds. What are strongholds?
• 1:18:06
  They're lies, their distortions, their beliefs that we have,
• 1:18:10
  they're not true. There are wounds within us that
• 1:18:13
  speak to us in ways that are not true.
• 1:18:15
  And to learn how to combat those and so that they become, they're
• 1:18:20
  no longer exact because the enemy exacerbates all of our
• 1:18:23
  brokenness and will and and woundedness.
• 1:18:26
  Even if he's not the direct cause of them, he will use them
• 1:18:31
  to bring greater harm. He'll amplify the pain.
• 1:18:34
  He'll amplify. You know, I was told when I was
• 1:18:37
  a little kid, you're a piece of whatever, right?
• 1:18:39
  And, and I don't even know that it was intentionally meant to do
• 1:18:45
  as much harm as it did. But the enemy then says over and
• 1:18:49
  over, this is who you are. This is what you are.
• 1:18:53
  This yelling and screaming you heard as a kid and the words
• 1:18:56
  that were told you, this is who you are and it just wrecks you
• 1:19:00
  internally, you know, let alone all the the other bad
• 1:19:03
  experiences. But when you when you immerse
• 1:19:06
  yourself in the sacraments and in Scripture, it it Jesus said I
• 1:19:10
  came to set the captives free. He wasn't exaggerating, you
• 1:19:14
  know, he was telling, he was saying your your freedom, you
• 1:19:19
  know, what is it? John 1010 I think that might be
• 1:19:24
  faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.
• 1:19:26
  But another passage he says the thief comes to steal, kill and
• 1:19:29
  destroy. But I came that you may have
• 1:19:31
  life. He didn't say he didn't stop
• 1:19:34
  there. He said and life in abundance,
• 1:19:38
  right and and then Luke, he talks about when you give up,
• 1:19:42
  when you sacrifice for me in this life, you'll be blessed in
• 1:19:46
  the next life and in this life. So, so when we live and walk
• 1:19:51
  with Jesus, we are more and more made whole, more and more made
• 1:19:56
  clean, more and more made free because we're all supposed to be
• 1:20:00
  Saints and Saints are free, you know.
• 1:20:02
  And so that this is the process of him making us into a St.,
• 1:20:06
  taking all the wounds and taking all the brokenness and healing
• 1:20:09
  that, and then allowing us to serve others through through the
• 1:20:13
  gifts that we received because we've been through all that
• 1:20:15
  suffering. And that's also the at the end
• 1:20:17
  of the process of serving others is also a process of healing,
• 1:20:21
  so. Do you think it's the case for
• 1:20:23
  most Christians, or at least many, that they're not living
• 1:20:28
  lives in full, They're not living God's plan for their
• 1:20:30
  life, Because why? It's not my opinion, it's a
• 1:20:34
  fact. What's a fact?
• 1:20:35
  The It's a fact that most Catholics are not living as
• 1:20:38
  authentic disciples of Jesus. It's just and, and all you have
• 1:20:42
  to do is look at the survey data.
• 1:20:44
  How many Catholics believe in the Eucharist?
• 1:20:48
  But they go and receive it, which is a sin by the way,
• 1:20:51
  because they're because when we receive the Eucharist, we are
• 1:20:54
  saying, I believe this is true. So they every time they receive
• 1:21:00
  it's a lie, let alone mortal sin, and ought to sacrilege.
• 1:21:05
  Well, you look at the numbers too, like support for abortion
• 1:21:08
  politically among. Catholics contraception support
• 1:21:11
  of. Contraception, yes.
• 1:21:13
  And and then the amount of Catholics who will even use
• 1:21:15
  contraception, it depends. Some people say as high as the
• 1:21:18
  90s, but I think it can be 7080, you know, and these are people
• 1:21:21
  who identify as Catholic. You can also play this game with
• 1:21:25
  the larger poles of people who identify as Christian.
• 1:21:27
  But the amount of people that are actually practicing, what
• 1:21:30
  does it mean to actually practice?
• 1:21:33
  Like what does it mean to actually practice?
• 1:21:35
  And, and, and scriptures, You will know them by their fruits.
• 1:21:38
  What is the fruit of the Catholic Church in America today
• 1:21:42
  amongst the laity, the date, the, the everyday Catholic.
• 1:21:45
  What's the fruit of Christians? Today we'll look at the state of
• 1:21:48
  the country. The majority of America is
• 1:21:50
  Christian. And.
• 1:21:51
  Look at the state of our country.
• 1:21:53
  Well, the majority of marriage is Christian.
• 1:21:54
  But see, I used to work for James Dobson, who I know you
• 1:21:57
  because, and he was big in the pro-life movement.
• 1:22:00
  And I argued in that organization that Christianity
• 1:22:04
  had been lost 50 years prior. And he didn't believe that.
• 1:22:09
  He said. He just said the evangel, the
• 1:22:11
  event, if we could wake the sleeping giant, because our
• 1:22:14
  theology said that if you believe, which is a mental
• 1:22:18
  ascent, that Jesus is who he said he is.
• 1:22:22
  And if you use your mouth to say it.
• 1:22:23
  Yeah, right. Romans to 10:00 and 8:00.
• 1:22:26
  But but believing is the big thing, right?
• 1:22:29
  Then you're saved. It doesn't matter how you live.
• 1:22:33
  But of course, the Greek doesn't even love for that because peace
• 1:22:36
  is faith and faithfulness have no, there's no distinction in
• 1:22:39
  in, in the Greek language. If you, if you believe, you do.
• 1:22:45
  If you believe, you live as you believe.
• 1:22:46
  And of course James says if you have faith without and your
• 1:22:50
  faith doesn't work itself out in love, then you don't have a
• 1:22:54
  faith, he literally says. That you have no faith.
• 1:22:56
  Faith without works is dead. Yes, faith without works is dead
• 1:22:59
  and it's the only you know, it's funny, it's, you know, the faith
• 1:23:02
  alone doctrine of the Calvinists.
• 1:23:05
  The you know the only passage in Scripture says the exact
• 1:23:08
  opposite thing of what is taught in faith alone.
• 1:23:12
  I think in some ways this makes me what you're saying is so
• 1:23:15
  important, Dan. And I think it also speaks to
• 1:23:18
  the political moment we're in because I often hear among
• 1:23:21
  Christians, many evangelicals, very good friends, beautiful
• 1:23:24
  people. And I say similar things in the
• 1:23:26
  sense that if we could just get the church to wake up almost
• 1:23:30
  like politically and culturally, then we, you know, game over for
• 1:23:33
  abortion, game over for. But it's actually not that.
• 1:23:36
  It's not like institutions of the church are not alive.
• 1:23:39
  It's that the individual believer is not a behavior.
• 1:23:43
  It's converted. It's not fully converted.
• 1:23:45
  We are not fully converted in the day today.
• 1:23:47
  They've never had an and that's I mean that is at the heart of
• 1:23:50
  our whole ministry. I mean what we teach, you know
• 1:23:53
  what we teach guys who are discerning seminary first mental
• 1:23:57
  prayer, how to know Jesus, then we teach them what discernment
• 1:24:02
  of spirits. I don't know when you're hearing
• 1:24:04
  your own voice, God's voice, or the devil's voice, which I mean,
• 1:24:08
  hasn't been taught. It's so fundamental.
• 1:24:10
  I've never met a priest and I know a lot of priests, good
• 1:24:13
  priests from good seminaries, who said I was taught to pray or
• 1:24:19
  my interior life was dealt with in a good way.
• 1:24:21
  They they never say they were taught to pray.
• 1:24:23
  Yeah, none of them were taught to.
• 1:24:24
  Pray. I teach a class called
• 1:24:25
  Foundations of Prayer and Union with God at the Avalon
• 1:24:27
  Institute. I had a priest priest in there.
• 1:24:29
  He's 20 years religious and he said, he said, I'm so grateful
• 1:24:34
  for this class. I was never taught to pray.
• 1:24:37
  He's a religious. Can you define mental prayer
• 1:24:40
  first? Yeah, so mental prayer, I think
• 1:24:43
  the easiest way to define it and it's a definition that seeks to
• 1:24:48
  mitigate problematic teachings about it.
• 1:24:51
  And and that is in the non Christian E it's about blanking
• 1:24:55
  your mind. It's about, you know, it's about
• 1:24:57
  mantras and you know all of that in the, in, in Christianity,
• 1:25:02
  it's about filling the heart and mind with God.
• 1:25:04
  It's first an aesthetical discipline, a practice where we
• 1:25:07
  sit down every day and we dedicate time and energy.
• 1:25:10
  You know, it's talking to God. It's, you know, the the best
• 1:25:15
  way. Mystical theology is theology by
• 1:25:17
  way of analogy. It's a lot harder than moral and
• 1:25:19
  dogmatic theology where you know, it's this thing is wrong.
• 1:25:22
  This thing is right. It's, it's harder to understand,
• 1:25:25
  but the best way to understand mystical theology, mental prayer
• 1:25:29
  and, and all of the aspects around it is relationally.
• 1:25:33
  So my wife and I, my wife's, my best friend.
• 1:25:37
  Let's say my, you know, my friend Joe is here in studio
• 1:25:40
  and, and let's say we were, we live next to each other and we
• 1:25:43
  went to, to coffee once a week. And you know, I would say, how's
• 1:25:47
  your wife, Christine? And he would tell me and what
• 1:25:49
  they just done and, and he'd say, how is Stephanie?
• 1:25:52
  And I'd say she's fine, she's wonderful, she's amazing.
• 1:25:55
  I just love her like crazy. Kind of a weird answer.
• 1:25:59
  Nothing about when we were together or whatever, but he
• 1:26:02
  just kind of blows it off. We meet again the next week and
• 1:26:05
  he says how's you know, same thing.
• 1:26:07
  How's Stephanie? She's fine.
• 1:26:08
  She's wonderful. She's just amazing.
• 1:26:10
  Love her like crazy, whatever. Where's Stephanie?
• 1:26:16
  She's fine, she's wonderful, she's amazing.
• 1:26:19
  Love her like crazy. Joe would start to go, OK,
• 1:26:23
  there's a problem. When was the last time you
• 1:26:25
  talked to Stephanie? She's fine, she's wonderful.
• 1:26:28
  But that. But that is the story of a lot
• 1:26:30
  of Catholics. Love my church.
• 1:26:32
  Yes, we love Jesus never. But if you don't talk to your
• 1:26:36
  spouse and you say you love her, you're a liar, right?
• 1:26:42
  I mean, I'm just using John's language and his epistles,
• 1:26:45
  right? So if so, if we.
• 1:26:48
  You, you don't when you what do you mean by that?
• 1:26:50
  You don't talk because I think a lot of people would say, well, I
• 1:26:52
  talk to God all the time. OK, so good.
• 1:26:56
  It's a great question. I had a friend, by the way, I'll
• 1:26:59
  never, I told the story in a speech years ago.
• 1:27:01
  I'm not sure people understood what I was trying to get at, but
• 1:27:03
  this was a story. I had this friend and they were
• 1:27:06
  always saying, I don't know what I'm supposed to do.
• 1:27:09
  God's not telling you what I'm supposed to do.
• 1:27:10
  And they were trying to figure out these things and they were
• 1:27:12
  super active. And I said, well, are you
• 1:27:14
  praying? Are you like?
• 1:27:15
  And I knew that this friend was not praying because I knew their
• 1:27:17
  life. And they said, yeah, I pray all
• 1:27:19
  the time. I said, well do you sitting down
• 1:27:22
  1020 minutes a day then are you just asking these questions to
• 1:27:26
  our Lord and listening and waiting for Him and maybe going
• 1:27:28
  from the bus to sacrament? No, but I pray all the time.
• 1:27:31
  Yeah, I had a friend who a friend, Catholic friend who who
• 1:27:35
  told me one time he said my life is a prayer.
• 1:27:38
  And then probably a year later he had come to a retreat I gave
• 1:27:41
  or something and he said. My life is not I.
• 1:27:44
  Was lying to you. I was so full of.
• 1:27:46
  It he was lying, he was. He said he didn't know he was
• 1:27:48
  lying though, so it wasn't a full lie but.
• 1:27:50
  So think about it relationally. Are there times when Stephanie
• 1:27:53
  tells me, could you do this for me and do that for me?
• 1:27:56
  Sure. Is there a problem with that?
• 1:27:58
  Maybe there are times when we text back and forth.
• 1:28:02
  Hey, I I like to send her little emojis, hearts or, or flowers or
• 1:28:07
  whatever, just so she knows I'm thinking about her.
• 1:28:09
  And then she responds back. And that's pretty good.
• 1:28:12
  Is that, is that so? Is that an out?
• 1:28:14
  Are those analogous to times types of prayer?
• 1:28:16
  Yeah. So petition prayer is, you know,
• 1:28:19
  feed me, fix me, clean my diaper or whatever, you know, texting
• 1:28:26
  would be like ask aspirate to prayer I.
• 1:28:30
  Love you Lord. If you were with me all day and
• 1:28:32
  and you listen carefully, you'll hear Jesus.
• 1:28:34
  I say it all the time. I say his name all the time
• 1:28:37
  because I'm just dealing with junk or I'm praying for somebody
• 1:28:41
  or whatever. So that's like the texting
• 1:28:43
  thing. But then there's intimacy
• 1:28:45
  between a husband and wife. There's and, and they're,
• 1:28:48
  they're stages of intimacy. There's a date night at the
• 1:28:51
  restaurant and then just talking about their life right now.
• 1:28:54
  This gets to a, this gets to a different kind of conversation,
• 1:28:58
  right? It's a, there is a transparency.
• 1:29:01
  My wife talks about intimacy is into me.
• 1:29:03
  You see, I love that kind of imagery.
• 1:29:09
  And so we're, we're discussing or maybe we're struggling with
• 1:29:12
  something, but it's, we're very unified.
• 1:29:15
  Then there is of course marital interest, intimacy to see the
• 1:29:17
  marital embrace, which is the all the Mystic use as the
• 1:29:21
  highest form of union with God. They always used that analogy of
• 1:29:26
  the of the marital embrace. Now, of course, their listeners
• 1:29:29
  who've never experienced that in a holy way.
• 1:29:31
  So I I can't solve that, but the Mystics are talking about holy
• 1:29:36
  perfect self giving to husband to wife, wife to husband.
• 1:29:39
  Well, and interestingly, these Mystics, most of them are not
• 1:29:41
  married. They've never had they.
• 1:29:43
  They're virgins. They're still a bit.
• 1:29:45
  And they still can understand and appreciate the, you know,
• 1:29:49
  sexual self gift as gift of the whole self in a marriage only.
• 1:29:54
  And they could understand that as a way to as as as an emblem
• 1:29:57
  for what the highest form of contemplation and intimacy with
• 1:30:01
  God is. Exactly so mental prayer is is
• 1:30:05
  is more akin to the date night to the conjugal embrace.
• 1:30:10
  It's more akin to that realm. It's it's dedicated time.
• 1:30:15
  It's not on the fly because you can't if you marital intimacy
• 1:30:19
  can't do it on the fly doesn't work in any in any in any of
• 1:30:25
  those from the date night to conjugal intimacy that none of
• 1:30:29
  that's done on the fly. And if it is, it's destructive,
• 1:30:33
  right, because it's just one way.
• 1:30:36
  So in mental prayer, authentic mental prayer is I'm trying to
• 1:30:42
  get to know Jesus and I'm trying to understand him and and I'm
• 1:30:48
  trying to listen to what he desires for my life.
• 1:30:51
  So whenever anyone starts out a mental prayer, I always tell
• 1:30:54
  them read the gospel of John and just and teach them like CEO
• 1:30:57
  Davina, I wrote a book called into the deep that is, I think
• 1:31:00
  the simplest, easiest that I've ever read just for that purpose
• 1:31:05
  of OK, exactly how do I do that? I I read a passage slowly out
• 1:31:09
  loud. So I'm including involving all
• 1:31:12
  my more of my senses and I'm asking, you know, why like
• 1:31:16
  Zacchaeus, Luke 19, you know, it did the the first word in that
• 1:31:22
  passage is he So who's he? Well, it's Jesus, but what does
• 1:31:27
  he look like? Rumi, you know, Caviezel, I love
• 1:31:33
  him both. I like Caviezel's got a
• 1:31:36
  majestic. Rumi's got them personal, you
• 1:31:39
  know, the Caviezel's got that majestic look with the Eastern
• 1:31:44
  garb. And, and so I envisioned him in
• 1:31:46
  that walking into Jericho. And I've been in Jericho before
• 1:31:51
  and multiple times. But then Zacchaeus wants to see,
• 1:31:54
  oh, so now I know why he's there.
• 1:31:56
  It's just this processing. Well, why would Zacchaeus want
• 1:32:00
  to know he's there? Well, Zacchaeus was a oh, it
• 1:32:03
  says he's a tax collector. Oh, that's bad.
• 1:32:06
  Look that up. What is that?
• 1:32:07
  Oh, he became a collaborator with the Romans against his own
• 1:32:10
  people. What does that mean?
• 1:32:12
  What happens when he goes to the temple?
• 1:32:14
  He cannot sacrifice. But earlier on, he doesn't care,
• 1:32:18
  right, Because he's making all kinds of money.
• 1:32:21
  And the Romans will tell you, you can add your tax on to ours.
• 1:32:25
  Just collect it. And by the way, if they don't
• 1:32:29
  pay, we will plunder their homes, their children, their
• 1:32:36
  wives. And you get a piece of that too.
• 1:32:40
  So this is a tax collector. Why would a tax collector care a
• 1:32:44
  wealthy man care because he lays in bed at night, Because the the
• 1:32:51
  the law of God has written on our hearts.
• 1:32:54
  We were we were created the prologue that the Catechism says
• 1:32:58
  with this ongoing call to conversation from God.
• 1:33:02
  And that's what's happening to Zacchaeus.
• 1:33:04
  And the good spirit is saying, Zacchaeus, this is evil and bad,
• 1:33:08
  this is destructive, speaking to his intellect and convincing him
• 1:33:12
  and making him uncomfortable. And so Zacchaeus then tries to
• 1:33:17
  go to the temple and and they won't, they spit on him.
• 1:33:22
  They won't allow him to sacrifice.
• 1:33:23
  He has no forgiveness of sins. And so he hears the messiahs
• 1:33:26
  coming and he says, I got to see if this is real because I got to
• 1:33:31
  get out. I can't.
• 1:33:32
  There's no way out. I'm trapped, you know?
• 1:33:36
  So it's just, it's, I mean, it makes me cry every time I talk
• 1:33:40
  about it. This passage, because I've been
• 1:33:44
  a betrayer of God. I've been, I have gotten myself
• 1:33:48
  into situations where I could not figure a way out.
• 1:33:50
  I have been so wounded and hurting interiorly that there
• 1:33:54
  was no answer. So I know what it's like.
• 1:33:58
  I mean I did. I cried out.
• 1:34:00
  Thunderbird in 19th Ave. in Phoenix, AZ God you have to help
• 1:34:05
  me. This is not I can't do this.
• 1:34:08
  How? Old are.
• 1:34:09
  You. Yeah, 1819 time, you know.
• 1:34:11
  You're just hurting so bad. So bad and I and I, you just got
• 1:34:16
  to help me. And then he sends me this guy at
• 1:34:18
  Pizza Hut who was a former cocaine addict and evangelical,
• 1:34:21
  and he these shimmies up beside me finish his work.
• 1:34:24
  And he said, can I help you? I'm like, sure, you interiorly.
• 1:34:28
  What an idiot. Yeah, please do my work.
• 1:34:32
  Fine with me. Next day he comes back again.
• 1:34:35
  Can I help you? Then I start to wonder.
• 1:34:39
  So initially I thought he was gay and he was hitting on me,
• 1:34:41
  you know, So I took him Outback because that's how I dealt with
• 1:34:44
  things and that's how you did things sometimes when I was
• 1:34:47
  there. And I don't remember what I said
• 1:34:49
  to him, but I remember him backing up with his hands up and
• 1:34:51
  saying no, no, I'm, I'm a Christian.
• 1:34:54
  We're supposed to be nice. He said it was the funniest
• 1:34:56
  thing. We're supposed to be nice.
• 1:34:58
  And then he told me about Jesus. And, you know, wasn't it?
• 1:35:01
  I didn't come to faith then, but it was just one of the IT was
• 1:35:05
  just a part of an answer, you know, like Phyllis.
• 1:35:07
  Part of the journey. Yeah, so.
• 1:35:09
  Anyway, and Zacchaeus, the story of Zacchaeus, it's not like he
• 1:35:11
  had conversion and everything was perfect.
• 1:35:14
  No, no, no. What do we know happened with
• 1:35:16
  Zacchaeus? Well, I mean, he has this
• 1:35:18
  beautiful thing, right? So you, you, you, he's, he's a
• 1:35:21
  little Jew. So Jews were already small.
• 1:35:23
  So, and he's trying to see Jesus, which just speaks to how
• 1:35:25
  desperate he was, because it's not very dignified for a little
• 1:35:28
  Jew to go running up a tree, right?
• 1:35:31
  But he's looking down and he wants to look in his eyes, you
• 1:35:34
  know, and see, is this, is he really real?
• 1:35:38
  Is this really the Messiah? And Jesus looks up course, knows
• 1:35:41
  his name and it and I'm that's when he was saved because he's
• 1:35:45
  in Jesus proximity. But that's what I mean, that's
• 1:35:48
  what the the the story is also a mystical kind of reflection of
• 1:35:53
  what mental prayer is and what it does to you.
• 1:35:55
  You just get close to our Lord to look Him in the eyes.
• 1:35:57
  You're seeking. Yeah.
• 1:35:58
  And then he meets you there, and he looks up at Zacchaeus and he
• 1:36:02
  says we're going to hang out. And Zacchaeus is like I'm free.
• 1:36:09
  And then he says, you know, to your point up to half of all
• 1:36:12
  that I have or our four fold. They'll get back.
• 1:36:15
  Everybody said, but that's also an indicator.
• 1:36:18
  What happens in prayer when you meet, when you encounter God, he
• 1:36:22
  changes you. I'll give you an example.
• 1:36:25
  Years ago, I was driving home when I was working at AWBT and
• 1:36:29
  I'm driving home and I started to just muse on my wife
• 1:36:32
  Stephanie and how wonderful she is.
• 1:36:36
  And I was. And I remember when I first met
• 1:36:39
  her and how she was coming out of darkness and, and how much
• 1:36:43
  progress she had made. And as I was discursing about
• 1:36:48
  her thinking, this is how we start with prayer, just thinking
• 1:36:51
  about the scripture. As I'm thinking about the
• 1:36:54
  scripture, I was thinking about Stephanie.
• 1:36:57
  I just became moved to tears because of the woman that I
• 1:37:01
  first met and loved and how amazing she is now and and I
• 1:37:05
  turned my car around because I had passed a grocery store and I
• 1:37:09
  went and bought her flowers. But that's the same thing.
• 1:37:12
  Discourses this thinking about leads to an effective change in
• 1:37:16
  our hearts. And then we do we act
• 1:37:19
  differently. I changed the course of my day
• 1:37:22
  to go express love and appreciation for her, which I
• 1:37:25
  wouldn't have done if I had not been pondering.
• 1:37:28
  So that's a natural way, although it is supernatural
• 1:37:31
  because it's it's imbued with with Sacramento grace and it's
• 1:37:35
  in every every act of service to the others, such as sexual and
• 1:37:40
  in is what allows Sacramento grace to increase.
• 1:37:44
  So it's a spiritual and A and a sort of psychological thing that
• 1:37:48
  happened to me was Stephanie, but that happened in prayer.
• 1:37:50
  John of the cross in the ascent of Mount Carmel says that he
• 1:37:54
  says you want to know the shortcut.
• 1:37:56
  He said, I mean, obviously this is a Dan slation is you want to
• 1:38:01
  know the shortcut, know Jesus, study Jesus, emulate Jesus and
• 1:38:08
  you will fall in love with Jesus.
• 1:38:09
  And then later, he says. And then that'll help you get
• 1:38:12
  through all the, all the, all the trials of purgation you're
• 1:38:15
  going to go through as an authentic disciple.
• 1:38:18
  But the key to all of that it can't be used the term fly by
• 1:38:22
  night. I think it can't be just like on
• 1:38:24
  the run like hi Jesus, OK, see you later Jesus or in your
• 1:38:27
  heart, hello Jesus. And then moving on with the
• 1:38:29
  busyness of your day. You have to stop and take time
• 1:38:33
  for the date night, the date day with Jesus and it can even just
• 1:38:36
  be 10 minutes for starters to start somewhere.
• 1:38:39
  But and that's me as right now where I'm at is like I'm going
• 1:38:42
  to do my 10 minutes. That's great.
• 1:38:44
  Partly because I have raging feels like ADHD and then partly
• 1:38:48
  because with kids and work, I just it's you know, I can be
• 1:38:52
  talking about Jesus with my kids, but then I've got my kids,
• 1:38:54
  but having that time where it's this is the date.
• 1:38:58
  Why is the date with Jesus, that mental prayer date with Jesus,
• 1:39:03
  so essential to making progress in the spiritual life?
• 1:39:07
  It's essential because you, well, I mean the if I could use
• 1:39:11
  one of the doctors of the church, St.
• 1:39:13
  Alfonso Sligori, argues in a book that I just recently
• 1:39:16
  brought into print called Prayer a Great Means of Salvation Back
• 1:39:20
  into print. Wow, it was out of print.
• 1:39:22
  Yes. You brought it back.
• 1:39:23
  I did not know that. Yeah, it's in Sophia.
• 1:39:25
  I don't think I've read it. That's a great.
• 1:39:27
  Book but I actually want to take his argument into a, into a, a,
• 1:39:31
  a better example. So I cuz I could give you his
• 1:39:34
  intellectual argument, but I'd rather give you something I
• 1:39:37
  think more relatable. What would it be like?
• 1:39:41
  So I think the chosen is a great thing.
• 1:39:45
  I've met and spent time with Rumi.
• 1:39:46
  I know you have two and he's the real deal.
• 1:39:49
  So that there's a lot to that. Are there problems with it?
• 1:39:52
  Sure. But you know, as I say to my
• 1:39:55
  glad Tratty and Matt Tratty friends, every conception in
• 1:40:00
  your mind ever, every painting in the Vatican, everyone is
• 1:40:05
  wrong to some degree or another. So it's art.
• 1:40:10
  So get over it and relax. Know what's wrong.
• 1:40:13
  Don't use it for catechesis. Test everything you see so you
• 1:40:17
  know what's back story and what really happened in Scripture.
• 1:40:19
  So that aside, Rumi. Jesus.
• 1:40:23
  We're walking to Jericho. How does that look like?
• 1:40:26
  They did a great job of talking, of illustrating, although I hate
• 1:40:29
  it, the conflict between the disciples, right?
• 1:40:32
  Because you see hints of that in Scripture.
• 1:40:35
  So he's walking with you say you're 1 of Lila's 1st century
• 1:40:41
  walking with Jesus and he says, Lila, I saw how you talked to
• 1:40:48
  Magdalene yesterday and I have a higher calling for you than
• 1:40:55
  that, you know, or what do you probably have to say to you is
• 1:40:59
  Lila, I saw the conversation and interiorly you would go, Oh dear
• 1:41:04
  Jesus, right. And you would say, I'm sorry,
• 1:41:07
  Lord. That's what happens in mental
• 1:41:11
  prayer. We begin to spend time with him.
• 1:41:13
  We begin to allow his word to speak to us, to penetrate us, to
• 1:41:18
  reveal where we're sinning, to reveal where we need to repent
• 1:41:22
  and that sort of thing. So now we can go to the doctor
• 1:41:24
  of the church's argument. He said those who don't pray
• 1:41:27
  don't see their sins. Those who don't pray aren't
• 1:41:30
  afraid of sin. Those who don't pray don't care
• 1:41:33
  about venial sins. They, those who don't pray don't
• 1:41:37
  see themselves accurately. Those who don't pray don't
• 1:41:40
  understand who God is and who they are and, and, and the
• 1:41:42
  reality of that relationship in the context.
• 1:41:44
  That's what he says intellectually, but you know, if
• 1:41:48
  you play it out on that personal scenario, because even it
• 1:41:51
  affected you as I was saying it, but that's, that's what happens,
• 1:41:55
  you know, So when we go to now, that isn't always true, true in
• 1:41:59
  the, in the affect of experience.
• 1:42:02
  So that doesn't mean every time you practice mental prayer,
• 1:42:03
  you're going to cry or you're going to be moved.
• 1:42:06
  I've I've, I live in a in, I live in a spiritual desert right
• 1:42:11
  now. And it's fairly just almost
• 1:42:14
  always like that. So what does that mean?
• 1:42:19
  That means when I read scripture, if I do and and I
• 1:42:23
  because it's Lent, I do more than I usually do, I am I'm not
• 1:42:29
  moved by it, but does that mean it's not moving in me?
• 1:42:34
  Well, it's moving in you as you speak.
• 1:42:35
  That's what's amazing about mental prayer.
• 1:42:37
  You might not experience the consolation in the mental prayer
• 1:42:40
  period, but I guarantee you, you will experience touches of the
• 1:42:45
  grace in other experiences because of the time that you
• 1:42:48
  took for that mental prayer. And even in just in this
• 1:42:50
  conversation. And you know, tears are coming
• 1:42:52
  to your eyes as you're recalling what God has done for you and
• 1:42:54
  how he's touched you in some of your darkest moments.
• 1:42:56
  You might not have that gift of experiencing that in your mental
• 1:42:59
  prayer period, but God is is is showering those little graces
• 1:43:04
  and those little bits of light here and there throughout the
• 1:43:05
  day. Exactly.
• 1:43:07
  And he's he's just teaching you. And it's just like, it's just
• 1:43:09
  like what it is walking with him.
• 1:43:10
  He's teaching me. You know, I may have talked with
• 1:43:13
  Stephanie in a little bit of an impatient way.
• 1:43:15
  And, and because I'm in his presence, so, and aware of his
• 1:43:19
  presence and you come to know his voice, you know, you come,
• 1:43:23
  you know, he said in John 14MM or in John somewhere around 14,
• 1:43:28
  my sheep hear my voice. They know my voice and they
• 1:43:31
  follow. Will you learn his voice?
• 1:43:33
  And so there'll be a day when I'm a little bit short with
• 1:43:36
  Stephanie or something like that.
• 1:43:37
  And I hear, I hear it from him, whereas I wouldn't have been
• 1:43:41
  aware, aware of it if I didn't spend time with him.
• 1:43:44
  And I wasn't oriented or configured to his presence, if
• 1:43:47
  you will, or aware, you know, it's being awake, you know.
• 1:43:51
  And Teresa Vavilla says that to enter into the interior castle
• 1:43:59
  there are two things required daily is mental prayer shouldn't
• 1:44:03
  say daily, but it's implied mental prayer and the examine or
• 1:44:07
  or reflections use the word. But the camel lights understand
• 1:44:10
  that as the examine, which is a daily time of saying hey, where
• 1:44:14
  am I? How have I done?
• 1:44:15
  Am I on track What's gone well what's been problematic just so
• 1:44:19
  you're awake to to God, but mental.
• 1:44:21
  But what's interesting about that is the castles.
• 1:44:24
  So castles were often like in Avila, they have, they're a city
• 1:44:32
  that's walled in these medieval cities.
• 1:44:34
  So Avila itself, where she grew up, the walls are 12 feet thick
• 1:44:38
  around. And what year is this?
• 1:44:40
  This is in the 16th century. So now we're getting into Saint
• 1:44:43
  Teresa of Avila, also a doctor of the Church Interior Castle,
• 1:44:46
  and how she and you draw on her work tremendously throughout
• 1:44:49
  your books. But how she understands getting
• 1:44:51
  into an intimate relationship with our Lord, to put it one
• 1:44:54
  way, you know, the deepest form of spiritual union.
• 1:44:57
  And she is basing sort of the construct of how to understand
• 1:45:01
  this based on what castles are like in 16th century Spain.
• 1:45:05
  Yeah, I mean, because she grew up in in you know, and Medina
• 1:45:07
  del Campo as an example, where she met John of the Cross at the
• 1:45:10
  convent there. You can see a castle in the, in
• 1:45:13
  the distance of. We've led many pilgrimages
• 1:45:15
  there, but they were all over. There's a lot more than there
• 1:45:17
  are even now. So you have but they're often a
• 1:45:20
  walled city. And then you have a castle in
• 1:45:22
  the middle of the city. Well, what is the wall?
• 1:45:24
  What is the walled city represent the Kingdom of God
• 1:45:27
  outside of the Kingdom of God is where Satan reigns inside of the
• 1:45:31
  Kingdom of God is where is where you're baptized.
• 1:45:34
  That's how you get in. You're baptized.
• 1:45:35
  That's how you come over the Moat, if you will into the
• 1:45:38
  Kingdom or or whatever the through the walls through the
• 1:45:42
  gates, but you're in when you come in you're you're not an
• 1:45:47
  authentic disciple of Jesus. You have the potentiality in the
• 1:45:52
  grace of baptism and confirmation to be but you have
• 1:45:55
  to choose. You have to live it out right.
• 1:45:57
  So so the what she describes is OK now you're in the outer
• 1:46:02
  court. Do you want to come in where
• 1:46:04
  Jesus is mental prayer and examine.
• 1:46:09
  So if if you use you asked me earlier, well, how what
• 1:46:13
  percentage you think? I think it's 99% or 90 plus
• 1:46:18
  percent are not truly engaged in their faith and are in a
• 1:46:20
  dangerous place. They're in the outer court now.
• 1:46:22
  Is that still in the Kingdom? Sure.
• 1:46:24
  But what do we know about what happens near the end of life?
• 1:46:27
  From the Saints, temptations to blasphemy, whatever.
• 1:46:31
  And if you're a spiritual weakling because you've been
• 1:46:33
  sitting on your couch and the devil's handing you a new
• 1:46:36
  batteries for your remote and another bag of chips and you
• 1:46:39
  never learn how to fight, then how, how, what's that battle
• 1:46:43
  going to be like? Let I'd rather be, I'd rather be
• 1:46:46
  in the castle closer to Jesus. It's harder in many ways.
• 1:46:50
  You have to choose. You have to fight.
• 1:46:52
  Well, the other thing that can motivate you, everybody
• 1:46:54
  listening to this podcast right now has someone that they love
• 1:46:58
  has someone that they love everyone and do it for them.
• 1:47:02
  Because when you don't do your like, if you, if you're not like
• 1:47:05
  In Sync enough with our Lord to like do it out of love for him
• 1:47:08
  yet, right? You can love him by loving other
• 1:47:11
  people. Obviously Jesus is in the face
• 1:47:13
  of your child, your spouse, your mother, whoever it is, right?
• 1:47:16
  And think about the life you're not living that would profoundly
• 1:47:21
  impact the one that you love. And by example, you could help
• 1:47:24
  the one that you love live the life they're called to live that
• 1:47:27
  life of just really magnificence.
• 1:47:29
  I mean, the life of a believer with all of its sufferings and
• 1:47:32
  sorrows. There's magnificence there.
• 1:47:34
  The glory of God because of the fruit and the beauty and the
• 1:47:37
  goodness that God has in store for them.
• 1:47:40
  And you can live the peace that passes all understanding.
• 1:47:43
  You can get the peace, but look what you miss out on.
• 1:47:46
  I mean, we had Father John Ricardo on the show and have you
• 1:47:49
  come across his work? It's so wonderful.
• 1:47:51
  And he's just like, think about the adventure and the life and
• 1:47:54
  the calling and all the, it's not so much the, the good works
• 1:47:56
  dynamic stuff over there, but it's just being fully alive and,
• 1:48:01
  and, and all the goodness that comes from it, including the
• 1:48:03
  conversions. If you are locked in with our
• 1:48:07
  Lord. But if you're not, if you're
• 1:48:08
  just doing a routine and you're not really, it's not this deep
• 1:48:11
  relationship and prayer with our Lord where you're like
• 1:48:14
  discerning your life and making decisions and how do I love this
• 1:48:17
  person better? And what's this struggle I keep
• 1:48:20
  having? If you're not doing that in the
• 1:48:22
  daily, it's like we're not really living.
• 1:48:24
  And it's dangerous. It is dangerous.
• 1:48:26
  And Jesus, Jesus had some of his disciples were like that, you
• 1:48:28
  know what I mean? Well, so Matthew 7, it's he's
• 1:48:33
  talking to his disciples and he says, let me tell you what your
• 1:48:35
  judgement's going to look like. By the way, before he said that
• 1:48:38
  he really wanted to rattle their cages because he's concerned.
• 1:48:40
  Same problems then as there are now.
• 1:48:43
  We, we have this shallow thing and we think we're OK.
• 1:48:46
  We do a little bit of good and we check the boxes we like and
• 1:48:49
  we're OK. And he's dealing with that with
• 1:48:52
  his own disciples in Matthew or Matthew 714.
• 1:48:56
  He says, he says it says many are going the way of destruction
• 1:49:01
  and few or in heaven. Now a lot of people say he
• 1:49:03
  didn't really answer the question.
• 1:49:05
  I wanted to say then you're saying Jesus is an idiot and he
• 1:49:08
  doesn't know what he means when he says many are few.
• 1:49:11
  Because if I ask you right now and if I have 10 marbles in my
• 1:49:15
  hand and I put many in one and a few and others tell me how many
• 1:49:19
  do I have in in the mini hand? Tell me, what do you think?
• 1:49:22
  At least 6. Yeah, right.
• 1:49:25
  More than half. I have few.
• 1:49:27
  What do I have? Four or less, that's what.
• 1:49:29
  That's what the language means. So what you're saying is, when
• 1:49:33
  the Lord says that there is more on the path to destruction than
• 1:49:37
  not, he really must mean more, yes.
• 1:49:41
  Right. Well, look at the statistics we
• 1:49:44
  were talking about with Christians in America.
• 1:49:45
  Catholics. In America.
• 1:49:46
  So then he goes later on, he says, now let me show you your
• 1:49:49
  judgement because it didn't rattle them enough, right?
• 1:49:51
  Right. And he said, you're going to say
• 1:49:53
  you're going to call me Lord, You're going to do good works in
• 1:49:56
  my name. You're going to cast out demons
• 1:49:59
  in my name, and I'm going to say depart from me.
• 1:50:03
  I never knew you. The good works in my name make
• 1:50:07
  sense to me because you can like, run a soup kitchen and
• 1:50:09
  still go straight to hell. Demons is tough.
• 1:50:11
  The demons. One is tough.
• 1:50:12
  How can you cast out a demon and still go right where the demons
• 1:50:17
  go? The Jews were doing it in the
• 1:50:18
  book of Acts, right? Seven sons of Skiba, right?
• 1:50:24
  And then they, they, they, I can't remember the story, but Oh
• 1:50:30
  no, they came upon a more powerful demon and they and they
• 1:50:33
  said, well, we're, we're trying to cast him out in the name of
• 1:50:36
  Jesus. When Paul preaches, he says, I
• 1:50:37
  know the demon says, I know Paul and I know Jesus, but who are
• 1:50:40
  you? And then he beat the snot out of
• 1:50:43
  him and but. What about the passage that says
• 1:50:45
  if you are? If you're not against me, then
• 1:50:49
  you're with me. Sure.
• 1:50:51
  Yeah. I mean, what he was saying was
• 1:50:53
  don't don't condemn people who are not perfectly aligned to me
• 1:50:58
  for proclaiming my name. That's a different thing.
• 1:51:01
  So then so then he says I'm not. I never knew you.
• 1:51:03
  You know, it's interesting. I look, I that passage bothered
• 1:51:05
  me for a long time because he said depart from me evil doers.
• 1:51:11
  So I looked up the passage and it says it's a translation, the
• 1:51:14
  Greek translation of the Hebrew from the Septuagint to the Jews
• 1:51:17
  translated the Old Testament into Greek.
• 1:51:21
  And that word new is the same word as Adam, New Eve.
• 1:51:26
  It's the same, right? So Jesus is saying we don't know
• 1:51:32
  each other. We didn't have that deepest
• 1:51:33
  intimacy. Right.
• 1:51:36
  Interesting though, right. So what is intimacy in, in, in,
• 1:51:40
  in proper relations between husband and wife.
• 1:51:42
  It's fruitful. It's full, right.
• 1:51:46
  So. The It's exclusive.
• 1:51:48
  It's exclusive, yes. You don't have other idols is
• 1:51:51
  what that means. So what is what is intimate
• 1:51:55
  relationship with Jesus produce it does produce life does.
• 1:51:59
  It's not sexual, it's not birth, but it's life, right.
• 1:52:04
  So same problem with the 10 virgins.
• 1:52:08
  They're virtuous, they're virgins.
• 1:52:10
  They know who God is. They're giving themselves to
• 1:52:14
  him. They're waiting for him.
• 1:52:15
  They want to be a part of the the wedding feast, but they're
• 1:52:18
  not they're they're neglecting. I think I think that they're
• 1:52:23
  neglecting prayer. I think they're neglecting
• 1:52:25
  because it's the same. He says the same thing in the
• 1:52:27
  end. I don't know you when they.
• 1:52:30
  And the oil and their lamps, letting that go out.
• 1:52:32
  It's prayer. It's prayer, Yeah, it's pretty
• 1:52:35
  convicting what you're saying, and it's a little scary, but the
• 1:52:40
  solution is not scary. It's very just humble and simple
• 1:52:44
  and gentle. Not easy though.
• 1:52:46
  It's not easy. Do you think that these people,
• 1:52:50
  including ourselves, when we don't pray, right, when we don't
• 1:52:53
  make that, it make that it time for intimacy with our Lord?
• 1:52:58
  Does it also affect our ability to even be intimate with other
• 1:53:01
  people? Of course it does.
• 1:53:02
  So should John. This is where John's epistles
• 1:53:05
  come into play. He says if you say you love me
• 1:53:07
  and you don't love your neighbor, you're a liar.
• 1:53:10
  If you could summarize those epistles in one phrase, I would
• 1:53:13
  say as it as you are with men, so you are with God as you as
• 1:53:18
  you deal with other. This was a huge conviction for
• 1:53:20
  me, by the way, as a new Christian, because I was, I
• 1:53:22
  always had a rage problem. I mean, I, when I worked at
• 1:53:25
  Focus on the Family. I'm not proud of this.
• 1:53:27
  I know it sounds funny, but I'm ashamed of it.
• 1:53:29
  My nickname was Nuke, which is short for nuclear.
• 1:53:34
  I was very good to people below me.
• 1:53:35
  But if you were a peer or above and you came into a meeting and
• 1:53:38
  you weren't ready and you were saying things that were stupid,
• 1:53:40
  I would say that's stupid. You're, you know, and I would
• 1:53:43
  say things that I shouldn't say. So I had, I had a major problem.
• 1:53:48
  I remember that my pastor said to me one time that same at that
• 1:53:52
  Baptist Church, he said, you don't love anyone.
• 1:53:57
  And I was shocked by that because I'm at the parish or at
• 1:54:00
  the church every day. I moved nearby.
• 1:54:03
  I'm painting the place. I'm doing, I'm, you know,
• 1:54:06
  teaching. I'm doing everything.
• 1:54:08
  And he said, you don't love, you don't have love.
• 1:54:11
  And I, it caused me to weep because I, I do, I did, I just,
• 1:54:14
  I, I was converted interiorly, but the process of, you know,
• 1:54:18
  habits and everything. And he said, memorize First
• 1:54:21
  Corinthians 13 And, you know, if you speak with the tongues of
• 1:54:26
  men and angels and do not have love, you're a noisy gong or a
• 1:54:29
  clanging symbol. And so I did memorize it.
• 1:54:32
  And then I developed something that has affected my whole life
• 1:54:35
  since then, something called the implications of belief, which is
• 1:54:39
  this a principle that when you read something in Scripture, ask
• 1:54:42
  yourself the question, if I really believe this, what would
• 1:54:45
  I do? What would be different?
• 1:54:48
  And so I remember in particular a passage that said love, hopes,
• 1:54:51
  all things and it, and it. And I thought, I don't know if I
• 1:54:55
  know what that means. So I looked up hope and it said
• 1:54:59
  a joyful anticipation of good. And so then I thought, well,
• 1:55:03
  what would that look like if I believe that?
• 1:55:05
  And then? Right for like, for any,
• 1:55:08
  everybody and everything. Perfect.
• 1:55:11
  So what it would look like, we love.
• 1:55:12
  You Gavin Newsom, But I mean, it just has a kind of funny
• 1:55:14
  political example, but. It would look like this.
• 1:55:17
  Oh, it's good to see you. You know I, I and.
• 1:55:20
  You're hoping the bet like. There's going to be.
• 1:55:22
  I'm looking. Beautiful fruit from you one day
• 1:55:24
  every. Person, you know, one of the
• 1:55:26
  things I love to say in the South, because in the South
• 1:55:28
  they, they say, they say how you doing?
• 1:55:33
  They don't mean it. It's the same as saying hi.
• 1:55:36
  But when I first got there was weird.
• 1:55:38
  So I would say, oh, I'm doing well, how are you?
• 1:55:40
  And they didn't answer back. And then I realized, oh, they
• 1:55:42
  don't really care how I'm doing. And then so I thought, how do I
• 1:55:47
  get around this kind of fake greeting?
• 1:55:49
  So now when they say how you doing, I say I'm better because
• 1:55:52
  you exist. And sometimes they say thank
• 1:55:57
  you. Wow.
• 1:55:58
  Sometimes they say why and I and I say because you're made in the
• 1:56:04
  image of God, and the more of you there are, the more of God
• 1:56:07
  there is. You know, so it has this
• 1:56:10
  beautiful. So.
• 1:56:11
  But it's that's the thing. It's like showing love to a
• 1:56:14
  world. I remember I lived in the
• 1:56:15
  Northeast. I hadn't developed that yet when
• 1:56:17
  I was a head of the National Catholic Register when it was in
• 1:56:20
  Connecticut. And they, you know, in the
• 1:56:22
  Northeast, it's like everybody's just like, you know, just
• 1:56:24
  perpetually down angry. Don't talk to me, don't look at
• 1:56:27
  me. You know, all service
• 1:56:29
  industries. Yeah.
• 1:56:30
  And just, I've just forced conversation.
• 1:56:33
  How are you? It's good to see you.
• 1:56:35
  Good morning. And they're like, shut up.
• 1:56:37
  It's like, you know, I don't care.
• 1:56:39
  I I'm a Christian, you know this.
• 1:56:41
  I if joy doesn't make it from my heart to my face, then
• 1:56:44
  something's busted, right? I think the foundation of of
• 1:56:49
  this when it comes to the question of spiritual warfare is
• 1:56:52
  you can't go fight the devil in your own life or in the world if
• 1:56:56
  you're not basing it on a life of mental prayer with our Lord.
• 1:57:01
  Intimacy, to be clear, intimacy. And I think about like the
• 1:57:05
  activism that I am involved in and so many other people aren't
• 1:57:07
  involved in. And if you go into activism of
• 1:57:10
  any kind and, and spiritual activism of like, we're going to
• 1:57:13
  pray, you know, break the strongholds or, you know,
• 1:57:15
  spiritual prayer for an end to a, or whatever it is, but, or,
• 1:57:19
  or for other people. And it's not rooted in intimacy
• 1:57:22
  with our Lord. It gets weird.
• 1:57:24
  And I've seen that. I've seen it and I, I, you go on
• 1:57:27
  social media, you see it everywhere, People using the
• 1:57:30
  name of Our Lord and using the branding of Christianity or
• 1:57:34
  Catholicism or whatever to go fight political or cultural
• 1:57:37
  battles. But if it's not rooted in
• 1:57:39
  intimacy with our Lord, which requires daily prayer, it gets
• 1:57:43
  weird. Yeah, you're, you're exposed.
• 1:57:45
  And you, you, yeah, the humility isn't that needs to be there,
• 1:57:49
  isn't there? And.
• 1:57:49
  It becomes a stumbling block to other people.
• 1:57:51
  You actually become you actually become part of the enemies, I
• 1:57:55
  would say army inadvertently, even while you're saying the the
• 1:57:59
  word of the name of Jesus Christ.
• 1:58:01
  Yeah, well, I, I just did a reflection recently on a passage
• 1:58:06
  for Lent where it's where the Lord says you're fast or yours.
• 1:58:09
  They're for you. They're not the fast that I want
• 1:58:11
  from you, you know. About your Lent.
• 1:58:14
  Yeah, about. Yeah.
• 1:58:16
  And it was in the Scripture passage.
• 1:58:18
  It's an Old Testament passage. And he says, But this is the
• 1:58:20
  fast that I want, you know? But the reflection I gave was
• 1:58:25
  that the way Pharisees are created is we create a scenario
• 1:58:30
  in which we're doing a good thing and we do that thing, but
• 1:58:34
  there's no interior life. So what was wrong with the
• 1:58:37
  Pharisees? They were doctrinally sound.
• 1:58:38
  They believed in the resurrection of the dead.
• 1:58:40
  They're. Preaching their truth.
• 1:58:41
  The satirist didn't believe it and Jesus exposed it, right?
• 1:58:44
  He said. You, you talk about giving and
• 1:58:47
  this sort of thing, but you don't even take care of your
• 1:58:49
  parents or, you know, whatever you deprive people close to you
• 1:58:52
  need. You talk about mercy and
• 1:58:54
  whatever. And then somebody is healed on
• 1:58:56
  the Sabbath and you're worried about that, but you would bring
• 1:58:59
  your animal out of a ditch. But I can't heal somebody, you
• 1:59:02
  know. So he's revealing that they have
• 1:59:03
  this external comportment of a particular way.
• 1:59:07
  And, and I, I see this, I'm on the traditional end of the
• 1:59:10
  spectrum. So I see this a lot in
• 1:59:12
  traditionalism where you have people who are good people, but
• 1:59:16
  they are very oriented, checking all the box, how I look when I
• 1:59:20
  go to Mass, I go to the Latin Mass.
• 1:59:22
  And of course Latin is better than everything.
• 1:59:24
  I'm not saying it's not, but I mean, there's just this real
• 1:59:27
  kind of obsession with the externals, but most of them
• 1:59:30
  don't practice mental prayer and and a lot of them struggle with
• 1:59:34
  pornography. A lot of you know why.
• 1:59:36
  And this is a scandal. And now I'm not the only one
• 1:59:39
  talking about it. Father Ripper primarily is is is
• 1:59:42
  the one talking about it. Why is it such a scandal?
• 1:59:45
  What's because there's an interior.
• 1:59:47
  There's there's a there is. So are there are there masses
• 1:59:50
  more reverent? There's nobody on the planet who
• 1:59:53
  has a brain who could ever say argue they're they're not more
• 1:59:57
  reverent. They are, of course, are more
• 1:59:58
  reverent. People are more reverent, but
• 2:00:01
  that's an external behavior that if it's not matched by an
• 2:00:04
  internal relationship with Jesus, an interior life.
• 2:00:08
  Oriented to him, which means Lovejoy, peace, patience,
• 2:00:12
  kindness, gentleness, goodness, self-control, self-control.
• 2:00:15
  Those external realities are not there.
• 2:00:18
  But there's judgmentalism. There's, you know, my daughter
• 2:00:21
  went to a Catholic Mass one time or liked Latin Mass, which was
• 2:00:25
  that, A Latin Mass one time. She's wearing pants.
• 2:00:28
  Somebody doesn't know her, says hey, this isn't right, what's
• 2:00:34
  wrong with you? Well, I think about the social
• 2:00:36
  media space because people listening are on social media.
• 2:00:39
  See this, there is the Catholic brand online amongst some that
• 2:00:43
  is a brand of just judgement. It's just pure judgement.
• 2:00:46
  And I, you know, God forbid that I, I do this myself because we
• 2:00:49
  are calling shots about moral issues all the time on the show.
• 2:00:52
  But you know, and, and please, if the, if, if you're listening,
• 2:00:55
  you're like Lila, you're getting judgy in your, in the way your,
• 2:00:58
  your, your posture, right? Not just calling discernment,
• 2:01:01
  but in your posture. Call me out because I, I'm a
• 2:01:04
  work in progress here, but I, I see this and I see, you know, I,
• 2:01:09
  I've even experienced this and I'm, I'm a Catholic, but I've
• 2:01:12
  experienced some of the greatest hate I've received, even online
• 2:01:16
  has not been from pro aborts, you know, pro abortion activists
• 2:01:19
  or whatever. It's from other Catholics who
• 2:01:20
  say I'm not Catholic enough because of XY or Z.
• 2:01:24
  You're and you're not. And often what it is, is you're
• 2:01:26
  not doing what they want you to do the way you they want you to
• 2:01:29
  do. They're saying the things that
• 2:01:30
  they want me to say. I just I just.
• 2:01:32
  The way they they want me to say it.
• 2:01:33
  Oh, so one correlation to where we were.
• 2:01:36
  So we're heading into the interior castle.
• 2:01:38
  So in the first we're. Still stuck outside kind of
• 2:01:41
  trying to figure this out. Which is.
• 2:01:42
  Well, but we know the two things, right?
• 2:01:44
  So sound Sacramento life and then mental prayer and the exam
• 2:01:48
  and the Sacramento life is presumed.
• 2:01:50
  Yes, meaning you're going to Mass, at least on Sundays.
• 2:01:53
  You've been baptized. You're not going to mortal sin
• 2:01:55
  to receive communion. You go to confession and also
• 2:01:58
  really quick on the mental prayer and the examine of
• 2:02:00
  conscience that can be one in the same in that when part of
• 2:02:03
  your mental prayer is you ask the Lord, how am I doing?
• 2:02:06
  Where have I fallen short? Forgive me my sins.
• 2:02:08
  You know, you obviously go to confession too, but this is your
• 2:02:11
  time to really take stock of where you're at and you're
• 2:02:13
  shortcoming so you can work, make progress, you know,
• 2:02:16
  hopefully. So as you come into the interior
• 2:02:19
  castle, one of the things Teresa, Saint Teresa of Avila
• 2:02:22
  speaks of is a temptation that happens, which is related to
• 2:02:26
  what we were just talking about, and that is you begin to become
• 2:02:30
  aware of your sins. That is very concerning to the
• 2:02:34
  devil. So what does he do?
• 2:02:37
  It's a spiritual judo move. If you know about anything about
• 2:02:39
  judo, it's using the the momentum of the other against
• 2:02:43
  them. So the devil's great at judo and
• 2:02:47
  so he wants to take your awareness of sin because now you
• 2:02:50
  see it, it's real, it's in your life.
• 2:02:53
  And he wants to go look at them, look at what they're doing.
• 2:02:57
  It's not just bad character, it's demonic.
• 2:03:00
  One of the things I wrote about in, in Devil in the Castle is I
• 2:03:04
  wrote a kind of, because I was dealing with this, because she
• 2:03:09
  speaks about critical spirit. And, and I don't know where it
• 2:03:13
  is, I don't know if I'll find it, but I have a list of ways
• 2:03:17
  that in the New Testament, the Holy Spirit has indicated we're
• 2:03:21
  to talk up with other people. And I have a friend who's a
• 2:03:24
  tratty and, and of course we're aligned liturgically, but he
• 2:03:29
  mocks the idea of, oh, tone, like tone you're not.
• 2:03:34
  But what does kindness sound like?
• 2:03:38
  Because we're exhorted to it in Scripture?
• 2:03:39
  What does patience sound like? What does meekness?
• 2:03:42
  Look like, what does meek and what does harshness sound like?
• 2:03:45
  You know, and so, so love does have a tone and it is true and
• 2:03:50
  true sometimes can be hard. As an example, if one of your
• 2:03:53
  little ones is running toward the street, you're going to yell
• 2:03:55
  at them because if you're too far to get them right away,
• 2:03:57
  you're going to yell at them and you know, you're going to say
• 2:04:00
  stop. You know, it's going to be
• 2:04:01
  aggressive, whatever. But most of the time, that's not
• 2:04:04
  how you deal with your little ones, you know?
• 2:04:06
  So you know, well, then it's Jesus, you know, going into the
• 2:04:09
  temple with his whip. That was a uniquely prophetic
• 2:04:12
  act, prophesied specifically in the old and the new for the
• 2:04:15
  Messiah, not you. You're not Jesus.
• 2:04:18
  You're not so. Are you never supposed to flip a
• 2:04:20
  table as a believer? I, I, I don't see it in the New
• 2:04:24
  Testament. It's not there.
• 2:04:26
  We're we're. Saint Peter didn't flip a table.
• 2:04:29
  Yeah, I well, there were, there were confrontations between the
• 2:04:35
  the apostles, right? There were, there were arguments
• 2:04:38
  and there were confrontations. So there is a time for that.
• 2:04:43
  And it was, you know, it was, it was because of some hypocrisy.
• 2:04:46
  But was it? Did it involve literally
• 2:04:48
  flipping the table? No it didn't.
• 2:04:49
  And. The confrontation was the tone,
• 2:04:51
  one of like shouting at one another.
• 2:04:53
  I doubt it. I doubt it was probably very
• 2:04:55
  loving and in fact we're exhorted to that kind.
• 2:04:58
  You know, when you see someone and saying correct them, but be
• 2:05:00
  careful, you yourself, you know, there's so many passages and,
• 2:05:03
  and I, I, I captured most of them in devil in the castle that
• 2:05:08
  do a kind of examination of contents against the critical
• 2:05:11
  spirit. But you know, and I heard, I
• 2:05:13
  heard one commentator the other day say, you know, well, let's
• 2:05:18
  be honest, This is supposedly a Catholic.
• 2:05:19
  The, the, the New Testament would have you act like a woman.
• 2:05:25
  And and I'm just going, you've never really read Scripture and
• 2:05:30
  you don't know you're. Not a Christian, are you?
• 2:05:32
  I mean in terms of what it means, like literally die and.
• 2:05:35
  There's one passage in Chris. Got up on a cross naked.
• 2:05:38
  Right, and Paul said act like a man.
• 2:05:40
  I mean modern translations aren't like that, but act like a
• 2:05:44
  man. Man up, you know, it's nothing.
• 2:05:47
  It's not effeminate at all at all.
• 2:05:49
  Scripture isn't at all. And I mean, effeminacy is the
• 2:05:52
  traditional use of the term is the, the, the abhorrence of
• 2:05:55
  doing something difficult, not like a woman, but just to do has
• 2:05:58
  a different meaning. So no, and to, to, to live
• 2:06:02
  according to Scripture is of is, is very hard to do for men and
• 2:06:06
  women to live and to walk. And as Jesus told us to walk and
• 2:06:10
  to follow him as he asked us to follow him is, is very
• 2:06:13
  difficult. And it's very manly.
• 2:06:15
  It's very courageous. It's very, you know, but it's
• 2:06:19
  just those people don't study Scripture.
• 2:06:21
  They just don't know. They don't know the God they
• 2:06:24
  talk about. I was talking with a head of a
• 2:06:27
  major kind of conservative news outlet recently, one of the
• 2:06:30
  heads and we were having disagreement about this tone
• 2:06:33
  question because this person was saying some people are just
• 2:06:36
  these, you know, balls of anger basically, and fury and sarcasm.
• 2:06:40
  And that's how they make their impact through anger and fury
• 2:06:43
  and sarcasm. And I'm they do good work.
• 2:06:46
  And then there's other people who have a more.
• 2:06:47
  So it's like a personality. He talked it up to a personality
• 2:06:49
  difference. And I was saying, well, if
• 2:06:52
  you're a Christian, there is a personality that is universal
• 2:06:57
  for Christians, and it's a persona of Christ.
• 2:06:59
  And if you are prone to anger, as an example, you got to learn
• 2:07:03
  to sanctify that. Because if you're also prone to
• 2:07:05
  never get angry and never be upset about, you know, you're
• 2:07:07
  more prone to inactivity about, you know, lack of courage, I
• 2:07:11
  should say, right, then you need to work on that.
• 2:07:13
  Whatever it is, you got to work on it.
• 2:07:15
  And there is an end game as a Christian.
• 2:07:17
  There is a virtue that you're trying to live out and that
• 2:07:20
  you've received from God. And if you're not marked by that
• 2:07:22
  virtue, then you're not showing the fruit that you're called to
• 2:07:25
  show as Christians. And.
• 2:07:26
  You cannot find one single instance in the New Testament
• 2:07:29
  where you see shouting and anger in dealing with whatever it is.
• 2:07:34
  Even when Paul speaks about the coppersmith who treated him
• 2:07:37
  wrongly, he doesn't call him, you know, this, that that.
• 2:07:40
  He doesn't speak about him. He just says be careful.
• 2:07:43
  This guy is, you know, a little bit dangerous.
• 2:07:45
  He's not one of us, you know, But it's not vitriolic.
• 2:07:49
  It's just more factual. You just don't see it.
• 2:07:51
  But you see over and over in the New Testament and particularly
• 2:07:54
  the epistles about how we're supposed to speak to others, to
• 2:07:57
  talk to others, and it's never, it's, it's always going to be,
• 2:08:02
  you think of red, yellow, green or green, yellow, red from the
• 2:08:05
  bottom up. It's always going to be a kind
• 2:08:08
  of discourse that's in the green can go to the yellow to get a
• 2:08:11
  little intense at times, but never red, which is where we get
• 2:08:14
  to vitriol, where we get to mocking and that sort of thing.
• 2:08:18
  It's just not there. Because the red is sin.
• 2:08:21
  The red. The red is sin.
• 2:08:23
  Act on the red. The red is sin.
• 2:08:24
  The red is sin and that level of anxiety or that level of anger
• 2:08:29
  is is you've left the presence of God.
• 2:08:32
  You just cannot because what it does to you psychologically and
• 2:08:35
  spiritually, psychologically, we know what happens when you get
• 2:08:39
  into the red. Like if, like if I got T boned
• 2:08:41
  by a drunk person and my wife was in the passenger side and
• 2:08:44
  that's the side that got hit, what's going to happen?
• 2:08:48
  He's might not live, right? Why?
• 2:08:51
  Because I'm going to go into red 1st, I'm going to make sure my
• 2:08:54
  wife's fine and then I'm going to go make sure that person is
• 2:08:57
  permanently sedated for killing or or arming my wife, right?
• 2:09:00
  So that's the kind of behavior that happens when there's no
• 2:09:03
  prayer in that space. There's no love in that space.
• 2:09:07
  You've exited the presence of God.
• 2:09:09
  So that, so that's, you know, you just can't live that you
• 2:09:13
  just you, it doesn't work to claim you're a Christian and do
• 2:09:16
  that. I think a lot of Christians
• 2:09:18
  today who are waking up to the evil in the world, which is, is
• 2:09:20
  good, because if you slumber as a Christian and sin is not sin,
• 2:09:24
  how can you? You're not in the castle yet,
• 2:09:26
  right? Mortal sin isn't mortal sin yet
• 2:09:28
  evil is not evil. The devil's not real yet.
• 2:09:30
  So you're not even in the walls, you know of the city where the
• 2:09:33
  castle is, right? But when you wake up to the
• 2:09:36
  awareness of sin, there's a fear that grips you that we're not
• 2:09:39
  taking sin seriously enough. And you look at something like,
• 2:09:43
  as an example, the Epstein files comes out.
• 2:09:45
  People left and right are just horrified.
• 2:09:47
  I'm horrified reading the accounts of the abuse of
• 2:09:51
  children potentially and, you know, imagining what what it
• 2:09:53
  could have been and who are these kids and where are they at
• 2:09:55
  every you know, And then you see, you know, apathy from our
• 2:09:58
  leaders, by the way, the fact that we have had abortion for
• 2:10:02
  decades, 1,000,000 babies killed every year.
• 2:10:04
  And people are just like, yeah, everything's great.
• 2:10:06
  You know, there's a fury that can rise up and that's actually
• 2:10:09
  healthy instead of an apathy. Because it's it's God-given
• 2:10:12
  energy to do the right thing. Yes.
• 2:10:14
  Not to go yelling and screaming at people.
• 2:10:17
  That's the distinction. That's that's it.
• 2:10:19
  I mean, and I but I think people lose that distinction sometimes
• 2:10:23
  and the fury in them, the righteous indignation, instead
• 2:10:26
  of it being channeled towards do the right thing in love, it
• 2:10:30
  becomes channeled towards literally Rage Against the
• 2:10:33
  machine. Burn it all down.
• 2:10:35
  Exactly. So when you so let's say we have
• 2:10:37
  the mental prayer in we have the sacraments, you know, we're
• 2:10:41
  we're avoiding mortal sin are going to confession for it.
• 2:10:45
  And then the battle is according to Saint Teresa and and a lot of
• 2:10:48
  what you're explaining in your work.
• 2:10:49
  OK, directing that righteous energy against sin at your own
• 2:10:54
  sin first, then what what are what are some of the key
• 2:10:58
  principles in the spiritual battle that we're all engaged in
• 2:11:01
  that come next. Well.
• 2:11:02
  What happens is you become aware of sin, so you start to fight
• 2:11:05
  your mortal sin and that's very difficult.
• 2:11:08
  Mortal sin is typically has psycho psycho psychological
• 2:11:16
  dopamine, right, as it has effects in your body that it
• 2:11:19
  almost like taking a drug, especially sexual sin, that sort
• 2:11:22
  of thing. But then you're also in in a
• 2:11:24
  typically intertwined. So if it's substance abuse or
• 2:11:28
  just excessive kind of behavior in any way that's not holy or
• 2:11:32
  doesn't contribute to holiness, You usually have family systems,
• 2:11:35
  you have cults, you know, broader systems of people you're
• 2:11:38
  involved with. And as you begin to follow
• 2:11:40
  Jesus, you have it. You have to make a choice and
• 2:11:42
  you have to start to disentangle yourself from those webs of of
• 2:11:46
  sin and things that reinforce sin and it's very painful.
• 2:11:50
  That's why John of the cross calls it a night.
• 2:11:52
  So when you decide the day, you say, yeah, I'm all in for Jesus.
• 2:11:56
  I this is it my life. Whatever he tells me, I'm going
• 2:11:59
  to go wherever he tells me I'm going to go.
• 2:12:03
  John says that's when you enter into the night, the dark night
• 2:12:05
  of sense, which means the night of purification, A sensible
• 2:12:10
  purification. That's you choosing to begin to
• 2:12:13
  fight against those structures in your life and the sin in your
• 2:12:17
  life that keeps you entangled with the devil and all that he
• 2:12:21
  has for you and all of his plan instead of the plan that God has
• 2:12:25
  for you. Is that what you experienced
• 2:12:27
  when you were fighting desolation?
• 2:12:30
  So you were, you had just had the big conversion and then
• 2:12:34
  you're seeing the sin and then you're just caught up in your
• 2:12:36
  own wounds and, you know, habits and so then you're kind of stuck
• 2:12:40
  in desolation. How do you get out of
• 2:12:42
  desolation? Saint Ignatius speaks of in his
• 2:12:46
  14 rules, there's one rule for one kind of person and two
• 2:12:51
  through 14 for another. So rule #1 is from somebody
• 2:12:55
  going from mortal sin to mortal sin, which is also the same
• 2:12:58
  early place in the interior castles.
• 2:13:01
  And he says that when you're going from mortal sin to mortal
• 2:13:05
  sin, the enemy proposes the pleasures that, you know, it
• 2:13:09
  gives you a false sense of peace is what it really is.
• 2:13:11
  And I wish people would stop saying if you have peace, it's
• 2:13:14
  the will of God. That's only true in a proper,
• 2:13:17
  proper context. But when you're in that rule
• 2:13:19
  that the the good spirit is telling you he's, he's saying
• 2:13:23
  Ignatius says he's biting and disturbing you, So he's making
• 2:13:27
  you uncomfortable. So you're not, you know, so the
• 2:13:30
  Holy Spirit, the good Spirit is not giving you peace.
• 2:13:34
  It's the devil giving you a false peace to stay in sin, to
• 2:13:37
  stay in intertwined and all of that.
• 2:13:39
  So that's rule #1 for the, the conversion then happens to the
• 2:13:43
  person between rule #1 and rule #2 which with this is what we've
• 2:13:46
  been talking about, a true conversion.
• 2:13:48
  I'm going to follow Jesus. When that happens is Ignatius
• 2:13:52
  says, now you're intensely going from good to better and then
• 2:13:55
  things flip and then you begin to fight sin and the good Spirit
• 2:13:59
  helps you to do that. So I don't remember your
• 2:14:02
  question, but that's the that's how you begin to make progress
• 2:14:06
  is following the impulses or the inspirations of the good spirit,
• 2:14:10
  rejecting the inspirations of the bad spirit.
• 2:14:12
  But this is a very difficult period because you're you're
• 2:14:16
  very, you're far from Jesus, who's at the center of the
• 2:14:18
  castle, although you're in the castle and now you're fighting,
• 2:14:22
  but you're entangled. It reminds me like the image if
• 2:14:26
  you remember in Lord of the Rings, the movie when Frodo is
• 2:14:29
  in the with that spider web thing very hard and sticky and
• 2:14:34
  messy to get out. The good news is you're designed
• 2:14:37
  to get out. You're designed to not be in
• 2:14:39
  that place. You have what's necessary within
• 2:14:41
  you to get out. God is going to help you, but
• 2:14:43
  you must act. And so acts of acesis, which is
• 2:14:49
  I buffet my body. Saint Paul said to make it my
• 2:14:51
  slave, which means my intellect is ordered to God, what is true,
• 2:14:55
  right and good. My will chooses that and my
• 2:14:59
  passions are trained to love what is good and beautiful and
• 2:15:05
  true. But that process takes a lot of
• 2:15:08
  wrestling, a lot of fighting, and both of us have been through
• 2:15:11
  it from, you know, the deeper the hole you come from, the
• 2:15:16
  harder it is to get out of the hole.
• 2:15:17
  But you're destined to get out of the hole.
• 2:15:19
  That's the good news because Jesus said or, or the Holy
• 2:15:22
  Spirit says through Paul in the New Testament that he who
• 2:15:25
  created a good work in you will be faithful to complete it, but
• 2:15:28
  we must correspond to his desire.
• 2:15:31
  O that's the hard part of that first stage of of conversion.
• 2:15:36
  There's a lot of people that maybe listening that don't
• 2:15:39
  didn't have the dramatic in the deep hole habitual mortal sin.
• 2:15:43
  And by mortal sin we're talking about like sexual sin, we're
• 2:15:46
  talking about like, you know, serious fraud and, you know,
• 2:15:50
  living a life of deception, like very yeah, contraception,
• 2:15:53
  abortion, pornography, right. All of these things, cheating,
• 2:15:58
  different kinds of cheating, lies, you know, you know, really
• 2:16:01
  bad gossip, like constantly like tearing other people down,
• 2:16:03
  whatever. People, by the way, don't seem
• 2:16:05
  to talk about gossip and other sins as much today, even though
• 2:16:09
  those are sins of the tongue, you know, as opposed to sins of
• 2:16:12
  the flesh. But those can be very serious
• 2:16:14
  and even mortal. So abortion, the worst social
• 2:16:19
  sin, you know, on our culture, I believe that sins of the of the
• 2:16:25
  mouth in terms of what we say and my son is the one who
• 2:16:29
  proposes to me is the most replete and normative in and
• 2:16:35
  because of social media now. So it's not as grave as
• 2:16:39
  abortion, but it's the most common.
• 2:16:42
  Does it become mortal, do you think?
• 2:16:44
  Oh, of course it does, yeah. And what what how do you know if
• 2:16:46
  a sin of the mouth of the tongue is mortal versus just being your
• 2:16:49
  own by mortal? It's so serious you need to go
• 2:16:51
  to confession books for receiving holy.
• 2:16:54
  When you are doing harm at a level that to another person's
• 2:17:00
  reputation, you're stealing their reputation.
• 2:17:02
  I mean, that's when you start to see breaking of one of the 10
• 2:17:04
  commandments when, when you're, I believe in interpretation of
• 2:17:09
  do not take the Lord's name in vain is a better interpretation
• 2:17:12
  is do not live out your life as a believer and then act contrary
• 2:17:20
  to that because you're carrying with you the Lord, the name of
• 2:17:23
  the Lord as a moniker of who you are.
• 2:17:26
  And you're radically denying that by acting in ways that are
• 2:17:29
  not consistent. So that's another, that's
• 2:17:32
  another violation of one of the 10 commandments.
• 2:17:36
  Just when you, when you harm the reputation, you hurt other
• 2:17:38
  people. You talk about conspiracy
• 2:17:40
  theories when you don't know. You can't know you if you assert
• 2:17:43
  things. You assume so The thing is, I
• 2:17:46
  want to do all your books right now.
• 2:17:48
  And that that's what I, I going into this conversation.
• 2:17:50
  I know it's impossible, but what I what I think then what we can
• 2:17:53
  do next is because so many people right now are just living
• 2:17:57
  in steps one or two, right? So what would be your advice for
• 2:18:03
  people listening who maybe they're on Step 2.
• 2:18:06
  They're not live recurrent mortal sin.
• 2:18:09
  You know, maybe they have a fall sometimes and go to confession,
• 2:18:11
  but they really want to discern God's voice.
• 2:18:15
  And I often think about people who are having to make decisions
• 2:18:17
  in their life. These are younger people or
• 2:18:19
  they're newly married and they're trying to figure out
• 2:18:21
  what to do with their lives. We had Father John Ricardo, we
• 2:18:23
  talked about him earlier and he was kind of giving people some
• 2:18:25
  sort of a template for this. But in terms of discerning, is
• 2:18:29
  this my voice, is this God's voice, or is this the enemy's
• 2:18:33
  voice? Yeah, the easiest path is what I
• 2:18:35
  wrote about in Spiritual Warfare and Discernment of Spirits,
• 2:18:38
  which we've been talking about. It's a simple book.
• 2:18:40
  You can read it in an hour, take you, you know, about a year to
• 2:18:43
  learn it and really implement it and live it.
• 2:18:46
  But what it does is it teach you how to be awake to the movements
• 2:18:50
  first to begin to identify, Oh, I'm feeling this way.
• 2:18:52
  What is that? Oh, it's in doubt, despair,
• 2:18:55
  narcissism, or it fall or it's anxiety or it's a sadness or a
• 2:18:58
  darkness. It's a leading away from God.
• 2:19:00
  That's all desolation or oh, I'm feeling this way and I'm sensing
• 2:19:05
  I should move this direction and I'm in consolation, which is
• 2:19:08
  faith, hope and love. Or I'm, I'm orienting my heart
• 2:19:10
  towards God and I can move that direction.
• 2:19:13
  But learning the the rules of Ignatius and is incredibly
• 2:19:17
  powerful. I've actually used to think it
• 2:19:20
  was ancillary to what it means to be an authentic disciple.
• 2:19:24
  But the reason I think you've come to a similar conclusion
• 2:19:26
  about spiritual warfare and is because I used to think that all
• 2:19:33
  if I could summarize the gospel or what it means to be an
• 2:19:36
  authentic disciple of Jesus, It's one saying yes like a real
• 2:19:40
  yes, big yes, 2 sound Sacramento participation in the bottom of
• 2:19:44
  the triangle. 3 is prayer, which is mental prayer and the examine
• 2:19:50
  and four is a CSIS. So now you have a triangle.
• 2:19:53
  And a thesis is. Self denial for the sake of self
• 2:19:56
  giving. That's the best definition I
• 2:19:58
  think, but I used to it. But OK sacrificing for other
• 2:20:01
  people in one way or? Another, but I used to put
• 2:20:05
  discernment of spirits outside as an ancillary good.
• 2:20:09
  But because of the amount of evil that is present in our
• 2:20:12
  society and in us, that afflex afflicts us, affects us,
• 2:20:15
  influences us, I've come to believe you can't make it on the
• 2:20:20
  narrow way and stay on it unless you know how to fight.
• 2:20:23
  Because of how evil the world is today.
• 2:20:26
  You think it's more evil today than it's been in the past?
• 2:20:28
  Yeah, I mean, I, I do, I, I, I've never been a reactionary
• 2:20:32
  about that, because when Doctor Dobson used to say that and I
• 2:20:36
  didn't think so then I think the 60s was a huge cultural
• 2:20:39
  upheaval. Now we're in one that makes the
• 2:20:41
  60s look like a NIT. You know, we're in a global
• 2:20:45
  meltdown in culture when how you feel, if you're a dolphin and
• 2:20:49
  you know, you get fins and you get to go to class and they'll
• 2:20:51
  give you a little pool pool to play.
• 2:20:53
  And I mean, it's a real thing how crazy, you know, things are
• 2:20:57
  getting. So, so I was talking with Father
• 2:21:00
  Ripper, who's who's one of the most prominent exorcist in, in
• 2:21:02
  our country in the world. And I was asking him about this,
• 2:21:05
  like, why are there so many exorcisms now when there were
• 2:21:08
  why are exorcisms way harder now than ever before?
• 2:21:12
  And, and I was in a particular country that had a a pattern of
• 2:21:15
  sin that kind of was interesting to me.
• 2:21:18
  So I called him and I said, is there like, are there more
• 2:21:23
  demons here that relate to that sin are associated with tempting
• 2:21:27
  people that way than normal? And how would that happen?
• 2:21:30
  And he said yes. And the answer is all the same,
• 2:21:33
  right? He said the more we sin, the
• 2:21:36
  more we give power to evil, the more we give strength to evil,
• 2:21:41
  presence to evil, authority to evil, the more evil there is.
• 2:21:46
  So that's why I believe we're in that.
• 2:21:48
  So learn Discernment of spirits and I and I have a we have a
• 2:21:52
  free film series. It was very expensive for us to
• 2:21:54
  produce. That's my wife and I did
• 2:21:56
  together in a particular parts that she's very good at.
• 2:22:01
  But it's spiritualdirection.com/warfare
• 2:22:05
  and it will teach you the most important of the rules of
• 2:22:08
  discernment of Ignatius. And I'll give you we'll just do
• 2:22:11
  a few here to close. I know we're, I know we're
• 2:22:13
  running out of time. Rule #5 is absolutely vital.
• 2:22:17
  And that is that you never make a change when you're in
• 2:22:20
  desolation to commitments you made while you were in
• 2:22:23
  consolation. So all divorces happen.
• 2:22:26
  My wife says in when in desolation.
• 2:22:30
  Yeah, you don't divorce when you're like, everything's I'm in
• 2:22:32
  peace, you know, I feel good. All sin, I believe, and I don't
• 2:22:37
  know until we get to heaven, I think occurs, especially mortal
• 2:22:40
  sin or serious sin, occurs when a person is in desolation
• 2:22:44
  because they're the presence of God, feels distant.
• 2:22:48
  You know, you're not really aware or awake to the presence
• 2:22:51
  of God. And so you're in your own thing,
• 2:22:53
  you're in your own dopamine and you're thinking about or
• 2:22:56
  whatever, or you're caught up in a fight and you do something
• 2:22:58
  rash, whatever it is, you're outside of the presence of God.
• 2:23:01
  And so that's, that's when you act as a Christian.
• 2:23:05
  We can be drawn into that. It all the good that we do
• 2:23:08
  doesn't protect us from that. So we have to, and it's part of
• 2:23:11
  our own sanctification as well. The, the, the angels were
• 2:23:14
  created to help us to heaven and they, they, they said no.
• 2:23:18
  And God said, fine, you're going to do it anyway, but a different
• 2:23:21
  way. And so when you learn that too,
• 2:23:24
  and you're tempted and you're struggling, you don't get
• 2:23:26
  discouraged, you go, OK, I know, I know, I'm in this for a
• 2:23:29
  reason. OfferUp the suffering.
• 2:23:32
  You fight, you learn how to fight.
• 2:23:33
  Rule #5 you never make a change when you're in, when you're in
• 2:23:36
  desolation, when you're feeling doubt, despair, narcissism,
• 2:23:40
  anxiety, negativity of any kind, you got to get out of that first
• 2:23:45
  before you make major decisions. So that's a big one.
• 2:23:50
  Rule #13 is huge. And rule #13 is that when you're
• 2:23:56
  in desolation, tell a holy person.
• 2:23:59
  So we have a retreat center in Alabama and we have these
• 2:24:02
  security lights in various places.
• 2:24:05
  And if you go into the zone, the light comes on.
• 2:24:08
  Well, if you're a bad guy, they don't like the light to be
• 2:24:10
  shined on them and they're going to run away and not try to break
• 2:24:13
  in. So similarly spiritually, when
• 2:24:15
  you, when you tell someone who's holy, who's not struggling, that
• 2:24:20
  you're in desolation, you just put the lights on the burglar
• 2:24:23
  who's trying to do bad things. And so that is, that's why it's
• 2:24:27
  so powerful. So tell someone holy, not your
• 2:24:30
  gossipy friend or not the one who's going to say, Oh yeah,
• 2:24:33
  your husband's a jerk. I know, you know, you should
• 2:24:36
  have, should have left him a long time ago.
• 2:24:37
  It's to say, no, your husband is struggling.
• 2:24:40
  You need to stay in this. God is in this with you.
• 2:24:42
  You're going to make it through whatever you know.
• 2:24:44
  So that's rule #5 or that's rule #13.
• 2:24:48
  Rule #12 is big too, because it says he uses a Ignatius uses a
• 2:24:55
  pretty sexist language, so I'll use a different one.
• 2:24:59
  It it, it says that when an aggressive dog approaches you,
• 2:25:05
  rather than cowering, you need to, you need to man up and face
• 2:25:08
  it. You need to Joan up and face it.
• 2:25:10
  If you want on the female side, Joan of Arc, face it and don't
• 2:25:14
  run if you cower when the enemy starts to tempt you, he says.
• 2:25:18
  There's no dog so fierce on the earth as it as the one who's
• 2:25:23
  coming after you in that moment and you're and it's going to get
• 2:25:25
  to you. What does what does that look
• 2:25:26
  like, though? What is the what give me a
• 2:25:28
  practical example. What does the dog look like?
• 2:25:30
  And and give one that's maybe not like a sexual sin, that's
• 2:25:33
  maybe more obvious, but something like sins of the
• 2:25:35
  tongue or something like this where the dog is attacking you
• 2:25:39
  or about to attack you and then you're a coward and then he like
• 2:25:41
  just gets you. That's a good question because
• 2:25:45
  the examples I have are more sensational and I don't know if
• 2:25:51
  it's going to relate to somebody, but I'll just say it.
• 2:25:54
  We, we, we purchased a retreat center that used to be a party
• 2:25:58
  place, you know, and then, and when we did and we had our first
• 2:26:01
  Mass, they're all hell broke loose and we had to have, I
• 2:26:05
  don't remember if it's three priests for two days or 4
• 2:26:07
  priests for two days exercising every square foot of the place.
• 2:26:11
  What do you mean all hell broke loose?
• 2:26:15
  You heard screams like. Meaning this is hard to talk
• 2:26:21
  about in a short form. The The Exorcist was the chief
• 2:26:25
  exorcist of a diocese was very had very unique gifts and he
• 2:26:29
  could see them. The demons, yes.
• 2:26:31
  Running around your retreat center.
• 2:26:33
  Yes, and from. All the drugs and premarital sex
• 2:26:37
  and abuse and everything else that was happening.
• 2:26:38
  Exactly. And so they were hidden before
• 2:26:43
  the Mass, and the Mass is what provoked them to come out of
• 2:26:48
  hiding. And so then we had to call in
• 2:26:51
  these other priests and then they every I mean, the attic
• 2:26:55
  space soffits and any place where a human could go or it
• 2:26:58
  ever been was exercised hours and hours and hours and hours
• 2:27:02
  and and at the direction of this priest who could tell us what
• 2:27:05
  needed to be dealt with and how and whatever.
• 2:27:08
  So after it all been done, of course, we learned a lot from
• 2:27:12
  that. We had been in exorcism ministry
• 2:27:13
  before assisting exorcist, but that was a new experience to us.
• 2:27:18
  We knew. So there the place wasn't
• 2:27:21
  perfectly clean because no place ever is in the sense, you know,
• 2:27:25
  probably even here. And now we have our place
• 2:27:28
  exercise once a month. We always have it blessed every
• 2:27:30
  year, but there was a one time I was heading up to the Chapel to
• 2:27:35
  go to Mass or to go to pray. We have a Chapel on the 3rd
• 2:27:39
  floor and I felt a distinct presence and it was very strong
• 2:27:43
  telling me not to go to the Chapel, giving me fear.
• 2:27:47
  It actually, and I am not a fear is not a big thing for me, but
• 2:27:51
  it was actually palpable fear. And my answer was tell with you,
• 2:27:56
  I'm going to the Chapel because if you give in to that, you're,
• 2:28:01
  you're giving them power over you.
• 2:28:04
  You're, you're, you're, you're, you're cowering to them and
• 2:28:08
  they're just going to come after you and make it worse.
• 2:28:11
  So then what was interesting, as I took a picture of the area of
• 2:28:15
  where it was happening, because I didn't know if it was truly a
• 2:28:17
  demonic thing or a psychological thing, I sent it to this
• 2:28:20
  exorcist and he said, no, there's something there.
• 2:28:22
  This is what you do. Took a picture he saw from the
• 2:28:25
  picture. He could see it from the
• 2:28:26
  picture. You can't see it in the picture,
• 2:28:28
  but he could see. You could see the demonic in the
• 2:28:30
  picture. Wow.
• 2:28:31
  Yeah, crazy stuff. So here's a more mundane
• 2:28:33
  example. I I have, my body is not my
• 2:28:38
  friend, you know? So fasting is challenging
• 2:28:41
  because of all the medication I take.
• 2:28:43
  So one night I was fasting and I was suffering quite a bit.
• 2:28:46
  And I was, it was near the end of Lent and I'm at morning mass
• 2:28:50
  and I love Chick-fil-A breakfast and, and Chick-fil-A is one way
• 2:28:54
  and my house is the other. And so I'm in mass and I'm, you
• 2:28:58
  know, I hear, you know, you need to go to take care of your
• 2:29:03
  stomach. It was, it was a, the bad spirit
• 2:29:05
  trying to coax me into and to and reminding me of how bad I
• 2:29:10
  feel. And you know, at the same time
• 2:29:13
  trying to tell me you need to take care of your body, but in
• 2:29:16
  but it was dark, you know, it was more towards the passions
• 2:29:19
  and you got it and you need to go eat and.
• 2:29:22
  Even though you'd committed to not eating.
• 2:29:23
  And not eating yet. So, so I just do what I always
• 2:29:28
  do, shut up and go to hell in Jesus name.
• 2:29:30
  Get away from me, I don't care. You know, got out of the
• 2:29:34
  driveway and I turned the wrong way.
• 2:29:38
  So I heard that the evil one in the Chapel.
• 2:29:41
  But then I hear as I'm going the wrong way.
• 2:29:45
  It is true that you've done well during that and it's almost
• 2:29:48
  over. And I, it's actually gives me
• 2:29:51
  the chills to say it because it when the Lord speaks and you
• 2:29:54
  listen, it actually gives you power.
• 2:29:56
  And as you correspond, you're coming under his yoke, you're
• 2:30:00
  coming under his strength, under his power.
• 2:30:03
  And I just turned the car around and went the other way.
• 2:30:05
  So it seems like a small thing but the enemy was definitely
• 2:30:09
  there trying to get me to break my fast and but the good spirit
• 2:30:13
  was there too saying no and and as soon as I so I fought off the
• 2:30:17
  negative but I still hadn't I was going the wrong way.
• 2:30:20
  But then the Lord tells you in your heart, you're doing a good
• 2:30:23
  job, my son. Basically, yeah.
• 2:30:24
  And then what do you do? I just turned around and went
• 2:30:27
  home. OK, so you did not go to you?
• 2:30:28
  Did not go to Chick-fil-A. Sorry, I didn't tell everybody.
• 2:30:31
  I thought you were going to say. Then the Lord said you overcame
• 2:30:33
  the evil 1 go to Chick-fil-A. No, no, no, no would.
• 2:30:37
  That ever happened, do you think?
• 2:30:38
  No, I don't think so. No.
• 2:30:40
  I mean unless I was fasting too much or something.
• 2:30:43
  If you had to pick one of your excellent books that you
• 2:30:46
  recommend the audience to start with, which one would it be?
• 2:30:49
  Spiritual warfare and discernment.
• 2:30:50
  Of spirit, I was hoping you would say that.
• 2:30:51
  Can you hold that up again? This is your first book I've
• 2:30:54
  read of yours and deeply moved me and I highly recommend it.
• 2:30:59
  I think it's a must read for every Christian.
• 2:31:01
  Yeah, I think the discipline, I mean it will have a huge effect.
• 2:31:04
  And then we, I teach a course at the Avalanche to the six week
• 2:31:06
  course on it. And then Stephanie and I teach
• 2:31:09
  discernment of spirits in marriage, which is awesome.
• 2:31:11
  Best book Father Timothy Gallagher has ever written.
• 2:31:14
  He's written a ton of extraordinary books, but
• 2:31:17
  Discernment of Sirits and Marriage is incredibly owerful
• 2:31:20
  for married couples getting on the same page language wise.
• 2:31:23
  I'm so excited. Aren't you working on a book
• 2:31:25
  about that? We are working on a book called
• 2:31:27
  Divine Intimacy in Marriage, which which mentions that, but
• 2:31:31
  it's not but Tim, Father Gallagher wrote there's nobody
• 2:31:34
  needs to write another book on that.
• 2:31:36
  What's his the name of his book? It's called discernment of
• 2:31:38
  spirits. You're.
• 2:31:39
  So good you're telling other people about another guy.
• 2:31:41
  No, it's okay. Well, what we always do is say
• 2:31:43
  if you're gonna, if you're gonna read a book and you're if you
• 2:31:47
  want to work on your marriage, read the two together because
• 2:31:49
  they're both easy reads. We should have them on.
• 2:31:51
  We have not had on Father Timothy.
• 2:31:52
  Oh, he's, oh, he's fantastic. OK.
• 2:31:54
  That's a great a great guest recommendation.
• 2:31:56
  Yeah, he's fantastic. And where can people find your
• 2:31:59
  work? Spiritualdirection.com is the
• 2:32:01
  easiest. It's the portal Avala Dash
• 2:32:03
  Institute dot dot com as well. Our community is a possibly
• 2:32:07
  va.org, but spiritualdirection.com is kind
• 2:32:11
  of the big funnel where you can find thousands of articles,
• 2:32:14
  videos, insight on the interior life and that that you can, if
• 2:32:18
  you subscribe there, you'll find our YouTube page and everywhere
• 2:32:23
  that we are events where we where we're speaking next, that
• 2:32:26
  sort. Of thing and last question this
• 2:32:27
  has been amazing. Thank you for the time and I
• 2:32:29
  think it's going to help so many people.
• 2:32:31
  What do you, what is the hope that you have through the work
• 2:32:36
  of Spiritual Direction and Avila Institute and everything else,
• 2:32:38
  your books for every Christian? Jesus said I came to set the
• 2:32:42
  captives free. It's it's, you know, he's we're
• 2:32:45
  called to be free. We're not called to be bound.
• 2:32:48
  We're not called to be live in despair.
• 2:32:50
  We're called to be light bearers in the, in the, in the right
• 2:32:54
  sense of that. We're called to to emulate
• 2:32:56
  Christ, to know him, to live, live him.
• 2:32:59
  We're called, you know, when you pray, when you're an authentic
• 2:33:03
  disciple of Jesus, you change and the world changes around
• 2:33:06
  you. It's always happens that way.
• 2:33:09
  And that's what we're supposed to be.
• 2:33:11
  And that's the hope that all that we do would result in,
• 2:33:14
  whether it be priests or lay people or religious.
• 2:33:17
  Amazing. Dan Burke, thank you so much
• 2:33:19
  been. Great being with you again.
• 2:33:21
  A big thank you to our channel partner.
• 2:33:23
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• 2:33:28
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• 2:33:31
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