 Hey friends, this is Dan Burke and Stephanie Burke and you're watching behind the scenes Divine Intimacy Radio. We're about to start the show. Today we're going to be talking about difficulties in prayer. We've got some great questions from folks on how to deal with prayer and generational sin and being open to God and all these other things. So pray be blessed by the show before we begin. Can I say one thing before I do that? Yeah. So to everybody who's listening to us right now, our Godson is on the way. Oh right. Yeah, pray. In South Carolina. So if you would, I know that y'all pray out there. So throw up a prayer for protection for baby Zachary and for my brother JP and his wife Ashley that they would be protected and their beautiful daughters. Cool. That this would be just a day of tremendous joy and blessing. We are just so excited about his arrival. So yeah, please pray for them. Very good. Before we just out of curiosity. Oh, and happy birthday to my sister. Okay, there you go. Is that hand? That's a hand. Awesome. Happy birthday. Israel pilgrimage. Is that full? I think there's like one seat, two seats left. They did tell us to go ahead and do another shout out. Okay. So apparently there's a couple of seats left, two or three seats. It's going to be amazing. You do not have to take the jab to go to Israel. You don't have to do the vaccination. No, they just test you on the way in. I saw that yesterday when I was somewhere, it said, I believe in science. And I, of course, we all know what that's about. And I wanted to say, I believe in like real science. I believe in Jesus. I believe in Jesus. So anyway, yes, there's a few seats left. So head out to spiritualdirection.com forward slash events. And you can see the list of where we're going to go, the dates and everything. You don't want to miss it because like the deadline's coming up. We depart on May 30th of 2022 in case, well, this is before we go live. And the other thing is check out spiritualdirection.com forward slash events because we're going to be like all over the place. Right. It's going to wear me out. It's going to wear us out. It's going to be awesome. We want to meet you in person. Yeah. We're heading up to Worcester, Ohio. I don't know how you say that. Worcester. Like people are normal. They have to say it right. No, that's northeasterners say Worcester. It is Worcester. It's W-O-O-M-T. Oh, it's not, it's not Worchester. No. Mispronounced, like northeasterners. No, this is actually Worcester, Ohio. I think it should be against the law. Anyway, there is a huge crowd coming to come join us in Worcester, Ohio. But back to this coming weekend. You're jumping ahead. Back to Israel. So just a note. So Stephanie and I are of course leading the pilgrimage and we only allow 50 folks to come with us. Just one bus. Whatever the one bus is. Because we're not in it to make money. We're in it to help you spiritually and to get to know you. So it's a real pilgrimage. So the, what was the other thing about this? Oh, I wrote a book just for those who go on with us in pilgrimages. You can't get it any other way and I'll be giving it to everyone who comes and it's about, yeah, I'm not going to tell you. It's a secret. Last thing I'll talk about right now is into the deep in Mexico, July, or May 7th. So New Mexico, I'm sorry, Mexico. Wow, I'm tired. Wow. Into the deep event on prayer, half day retreat. In New Mexico. That's in the continental USA. I was just speaking with Angel and Monterey. So I am. Okay, so into the deep New Mexico, check out spiritualdirection.com forward slash events and you'll look at all the opportunities. So we'll go from there. Awesome. All right, ready roll, Mr. Producer Mayan. Okay, on your mark it said go. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke. Welcome to Divine Intimacy Radio. Your radio haven of wrath. Your hermitage of the heart. Your monastery of the mind where we lift our hearts and minds to heaven to draw on the wisdom of the saints to, yeah, to deal with this very challenging life we live. Things are tough, but Jesus is Lord. Jesus is Lord. I, you know, we recently, I don't know, it's so funny because we recently spent, I don't know, our days with an exorcist and he, and we were dealing with some very difficult things and very hard to understand, hard to stomach things. And anyway, in the midst of it all, he just kept saying Jesus is Lord and he would smile too, which I just love that. And it just, he's just going, you know what, this is big, ugly, nasty. He's way bigger, way more powerful. God is way bigger. Right. God is way bigger. All right. Let's get to questions. Okay. You ready? Yes. Your mark said go. Can you speak about generational sin and how to overcome it in the family? So I'm going to do one part of the question. You can do another. Okay. Sure. So I'm just to the very practical issue. Generational sin in the family is, means that you're recognizing patterns of sin that have been very destructive in your family line. So there's a demonic element that Stephanie will talk to, and I just want to speak to a practical element. One, you don't have to sin and you don't have to follow the sins of your pair, of your forebears. You don't have to be subject to it. And your, your very awareness and rejection of it actively will go a huge way to solving the problem. So be aware, make everyone aware who's faithful in your generation and actively live out a rule of life or a plan of love. We call it where daily you're fighting against that sin. So it, it dies a quick death in your family. So that's practically speaking, you don't have to be a victim to it spiritually in terms of spiritual warfare. Why don't you talk about that? Sure. So to be clear, what we're talking about are patterns of sin. So let's say, wrath, that, you know, your grandfather had huge anger issues, your father did, and now you do. And you're in all sudden you're going, Oh, wait, I'm seeing a pattern here, right? It's noting that the pattern that goes back generationally in, into your family line, it could be pride, it could be suicide, suicidal ideation. I know families that have had that in their family line and they recognized it. miscarriages, which sounds strange, but it does, it can have a spiritual element. Doesn't mean anybody is sinning, it can just have a generational element to it. Um, difficulties with, uh, you know, just all kinds of things, spirit of death, spirit of death, abortion, um, all kinds of things, you know, you just peek it, yeah, just pick it, you know, um, if you see any kind of pattern in it, it can have a generational pattern to it, generational source, source to it. Yeah. So how do you do that? Like Dan said, first of all, you deal with yourself. And you know that you don't have to capitulate to that sin. You have the, the single act of the will and going to confession is powerful enough to break it, you know, with all of your might, um, totally saying, Lord, I don't want to have anything to do with this eradicate it from my, my life. Confession is powerful enough to, to rip that out of your own life, but there's still the generational effect, right? And so, um, I think we've talked about the, uh, deliverance prayers for the laity. Census Fidelum publishes the book. There's a new addition, by the way, in leather cover really nice. So he's up, uh, Father Ripper has upgraded that. So that'd be beautiful. Um, so deliverance prayers for the laity. There is a prayer against generational spirits there. And you can pray that for the sake of your whole family. They don't have to be present with you. They don't have to agree with you. They don't have to, you know, cooperate with you. You can pray that in authority, uh, in your family and to break that. Um, so that's something to do. You can also look to deliverance ministry. If, if it's really, you know, oppressive and you see all kinds of patterns, um, I was just recently speaking to someone the other day, they noted that, um, back to their grandfather or their great grandfather, there was Freemasonry. Yes, it's a problem. It's forbidden by Holy mother church to participate in Freemasonry. And it does have an effect. It actually goes back five genera- it's the, the, um, the participation in it is, um, the promises that people make are for five generations. So it has this huge effect on your family. Um, there are some that don't believe in it. We know exorcist priests that absolutely believe in it. I absolutely believe in it. I've been in a deliverance session with an exorcist priest and I saw the effect of it. It was, it was heartbreaking. You saw the, you saw the demons manifest that were related to Freemasonry. Yes. Yes. So this is not opinion. No, no, this is not. Yeah. Uh, and, and it was, it was very heartbreaking. And the, the oppression that had to cause in, um, in this young woman's life was huge after the session, after she broke all the Freemason prayers with, with the prayers of the priest who broke it, you know, in his, um, in the power and authority of his priesthood, uh, her transformation has been remarkable, right? So sometimes it requires that there are Freemasonry prayers that you can pray that you have to pray three times full on, full time, full on for three times, um, and then have a priest ratify it and break it. Where can they, well, I do, I don't want to, you know, that's, that's in that deliverance prayers for the, for the laity. So yeah. So the, the key is you can break it yourself. Now, if you try to over and over and you can't, you got to get a spiritual director and that's when you know you likely need deliverance prayers. But deliverance prayers are never harmful, right? Done properly. Yeah. And one more thing about generational sin with any of this, with any sin, with any deliverance that we're talking about, you have to understand that sweeping the room is not enough. The room, the room of your spirit and soul and intellect and life of sin is not enough. You must fill it with the Lord. Yeah. We know scripturally that if you sweep out the room and you leave it empty, your nemesis is going to float around, go find seven of his buddies and come back to harangue. And you don't want that. So if you reject sin with all that you are and you want to be clean of the effects of generational sin and the sin in your life, then you must actively choose the Lord. You must say your fiat. You must say, Lord, I choose you and I renounce all of this brokenness from my past and my family. I choose you, Lord Jesus, fill me with all that you are. And then you must live that way. Daily mental prayer, frequenting the sacraments and confession, taking the Eucharist as much as possible. You know, following the Lord with all you are and don't ever forget the Holy Rosary, you know, our weapon that we should be carrying in our hands and in our hearts at all times. So that's how you get rid of generational sin. You'll need some help and accompaniment, but you can fight this and be free of it. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke with Divine Intimacy Radio. We're just doing Q&A today talking about how to deal with difficulties in prayer and difficulties in family life. For someone who doesn't understand what you said about living, once you sweep the house clean and you need to fill it, we have a free course out on apostoleva.org on what's called the paradigm of ascent, which is just basic. What does it mean to follow Jesus, which isn't always clear, unfortunately? And so you can find that at apostolivie.org. Next question. How do we have an open spirit to God rather than remaining stubborn in ourselves? This is an interesting question that has some depth to it, I think. I'll take a shot at it, and then I know you'll have a better answer than me. But in terms of being open to God, one, you have to practice all the things that create openness, or if you will, fertile soil and loose soil. Doing that is doing all of the things Stephanie just mentioned, fighting the other thing. But it's also, I think, daily mental prayer is absolutely vital to this because you can't even see how you manifest and how these problems manifest and keep you from this openness when you are not practicing daily mental prayer. You're just clouded intellectually and all of that. So, Steph, why don't you dig into that one? I know that you've thought about that a lot. Yeah. Well, we deal with it a lot. And so the one thing that we need to keep in mind beyond that paradigm of ascent and all those sacraments and prayer is that we also need to grow in self-knowledge, that the person even had the presence of mind to say, I'm stubborn against God is a great gift because they even recognize it. That in and of itself is a gift. So, self-knowledge is crucial for the spiritual life, for growth in the interior life. There's a great book written by this man, Dan Burke. He's kind of cute. I'm kind of sweet on him. And he wrote this book called Navigating the Interior Life, which was really the impetus for the entire ministry that we serve in now. And in it, there is a section on discovering your root sin. And so stubbornness can be rooted in pride. I know better or on a sin of self-reliance or isolation or control, which by the way, all of those are rooted in fear. So if we, in some form or fashion, most of our sin is actually rooted in fear, fear of letting go, fear that God isn't who he says he is, fear that if we're vulnerable that we'll be crushed or whatever. And so we need to dig into what are our root sins, start to eradicate that through confession and then grow in self-knowledge. And when you come to situations where you go, you know, my spiritual director is telling me or has helped me discover that I'm just stubborn and I don't want to give in to the Lord. Well, how do you do that? Sometimes it's just through an act of the will. And sometimes what we can't actively do, we can do with an act of the will through the Holy Name of Jesus. Like, and down to forgiveness even is, Lord, in your Holy Name, Jesus, I renounce a spirit of stubbornness. Lord, help me heal me of this. Blessed Mother, heal me of this. I choose Jesus. I choose to be vulnerable to the Lord. Just doing that is the slightest turn to the Lord. All of grace rushes down on you and you will find that the power that it has over you will start to lift because you were choosing to eradicate it from your life. Great. When we get back, we'll continue to talk about answers, answers to questions and prayer in the interior life. You're listening to Divine Intimacy Radio. We'll be right back. Um, let's see. Okay. On your mark, it's a, it's a trigger word. Okay. Let's see. On your mark, it's set to go. This is Dan. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke. Welcome back to Divine Intimacy Radio, your radio haven of rest. Question and answer day. It's good to have my wife here because I can just, I didn't even have to answer any of them. I can just let her answer them. So it's a good day of rest for me. But are there times when it might be more appropriate to direct our prayers to the Spirit versus God the Father of Jesus? And I would say yes. The yes is that we need, all of us need renewal in the Holy Spirit as frequently as we can get it. And so the prayer, come Holy Spirit is a very good prayer to pray all the time. Come Holy Spirit, come Holy Spirit because you're welcoming the Holy Spirit and all that the Holy Spirit brings. So it is appropriate to do that regularly and, but in, in general, I mean, you can direct your prayers to whomever you want and the Blessed Trinity. Right. Right. It's interesting because people, depending on their own woundedness or background or struggles or whatever it is, can have different difficulties with different parts of the Holy Trinity. Right. Some have a huge problem with God the Father. You know, they may have woundedness with their own Father. They may have a fatherlessness that they're dealing with. And so, you know, communicating with God the Father, they shy from that. They can't look at Him. Sometimes people have difficulty with Jesus. I did for years when I first started to pray. In fact, I prayed facing the Blessed Mother in my prayer area. I turned my body sideways. I could not look at Jesus in the face. And it wasn't until I had a real deliverance through prayer, not with the deliverance team, but just the Lord coming upon me and setting me free of that shame and that brokenness there that that was lifted and my body shifted. And I was able to look at Jesus full on in the icon that I have. And that was such a fascinating revelation to me. And then others are like, you know, I don't know, Holy Spirit, this makes me a little uncomfortable. Isn't it only for the weird people that, you know, invoke the Holy Spirit and then they end up rolling around and acting strange. And that's just not true. We want to be completely open to the Holy Spirit. It's fully part of the Blessed Trinity and that fire of His love that is the exchange between Jesus and God the Father can be invoked by us. And we want to have more and more of Him so that He can cleanse us. He can purify us. He's a sanctifier and He can fill us with the breath of God and enable us to become more of who God is calling us to be. Good. Very good. Are Catholics allowed to pray for non-Catholics who have died or for Catholics who we know died without being in the state of grace? Well, you're allowed to pray for anyone you want. There is a kind of strange idea that which I've never found doctrinal support for, which is God is outside of time, therefore you can pray backwards in time. In a sense, you know, that's an interesting idea, but it shouldn't be proposed as something that's true or that's taught by the church. But generally speaking, we should pray for the dead. We pray for the dead, I don't know how many times a day. In our first morning prayer, we pray for the dead at meal. Every meal we always pray, may the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace. And so it has always been a norm and a traditional practice for Catholics to pray. And here's the thing, you know, they said, well, what have you, can you pray for someone who we know died without being in the state of grace? Well, that's hard to know sometimes. I mean, if they've been out of math, out of the church, and they were Catholic, you know, there's times it's easy to know. But you never know what goes on and people's heads in the last minute, a second of their life, they don't have a second chance. That's a, that's a heresy as well, in the sense that they don't die and then get another opportunity. Right. But there's always hope. There is always, that's the thing. For me, like I've had loved ones far too many die when I was young. And what do I do with that? Right? Because, you know, my brother died, he wasn't walking with the Lord. But in the end, there's no reason to be dour or sad about it. It's because only God knows. We still believe what we believe. And that is you have to repent and turn to Jesus and live, you know, to get to heaven. But only God knows what is going on in every person's heart. So we always have hope and we just pray for them. And God, you know, the, the graces will come on somebody else if, yeah, if that person doesn't need it. Yeah, the grace of prayers is never wasted. And we can also invoke the help of Saint Dismas, you know, who was the good thief that was hanging on the cross with our Lord. And at the last moment, he said, Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom, right? So we can invoke Saint Dismas in that help. So don't ever stop praying. Excellent. This is a really good question. Is it possible to develop, delve into the particular differences between venial and mortal sin? I'm especially interested in what the saints thought could be a mortal sin and how to form our modern anesthetized consciousness. So it is true that modernism and its effect on the church in our time has dramatically watered down since. I mean, there was just a German bishop who is saying that the Catholic Church ought to approve, change its teaching on a particular sexual activity that has always been condemned by the church. That's grave and egregious, right? I think the best book ever written on this that I've ever read, frankly, is by Dr. Kevin Boost, and it's called The Seven Deadly Sins by Sophia Press. So in that book, he goes into this in great depth and all, and it's not watered down, but it isn't hard to read. We have a whole class on it at the Aval Institute called Breaking the Chains that Find Us. But I think that's probably the best way for a person to go who's very interested in this topic. So anyway, I don't know if it's helpful to go through the progression of the distinctions because I think they're looking for a much deeper treatment that's just myself. Yeah, and I don't know. I would say this, knowledge is good, understanding is wonderful, and we ask the Holy Spirit to refine us and help us and give us wisdom and all of those things. At the core of who we are, it's very important that we strive to be holy, that we strive to arrive to that place where the Lord is calling us to be and pray for deep contrition for our own sins and know that that is the most powerful means of evangelization that can ever happen in your family is your own deep and radical conversion to the Lord. So anyway. One other thing that might be helpful to you is I worked with a priest in England. We developed an examination of conscience based on the summa, St. Thomas Aquinas and the Deadly Sins. I think you can find that out on apostoleva.org forward slash examine. I think that's right. If you just go out to apostoleva.org, you don't even have to be a member, I don't think, and just search for exam or examination of conscience. And that's there and that'll help you get greater clarity. It's also a great book by Father Robert Altier. Awesome examination of conscience. Yeah, it's a little tiny one and I don't have the publisher. It's liturgical press liturgical press. So you just look on there for examination of conscience. It's a little tiny blue book, bluish purple, and it has the face of Jesus on it. And if you look at Father Altier, ALTI are examine or examination of conscience might be there. Yeah. Yeah, it anyway, it's really, really good. We like it a lot. Right. The next question in reading, writing from the saints, it seems God speaks in different ways to different people. Does this follow the same love languages that are talked about or is each relationship with the Father unique? So love languages are a human attempt to identify and understand the patterns of our design, you know, and then to correspond to those patterns in a holy way. Right. So they're all very good. And that is true. But we have to, we can't deify psychology or deify love languages in the sense that they're imperfect ways of describing how things work. So the Lord is not bound to those ways. Even so, it is true that God deals with us each in the way that would best be to deal with us in terms to get through to our hearts and to help us know His will and all of that. So I see in your eyes something. Well, I was thinking of something that Pope Emeritus Benedict the 16th said, and he was asked, I think by George Weigel, how many ways there are to heaven? Oh, Sebald. Sebald. Sebald. Sebald. Anyway, it was in an interview. It was in an interview. Yeah. And how many ways are there to heaven? And he looked at him and he said, as many as there are stars in the sky. As many as there are people. Yes. Yeah. So it's endless. The answer is, according to each individual, the Lord has a particular path for that person and speaks to them in a way that is true to their heart. Unlike the enemy who is not creative and his patterns repeat themselves over and over again to the point where you can see him coming a mile away. I heard a priest describe it this way, that he winks at us, that he's in the details, that there's these little ways that he moves our hearts. He knows the desires of our heart. He's placed them. He knows what's important to us. He cares so much about all of you. Down to your minutiae of what matters to you and what makes you happy, that he has such a beautiful design and plan for your life and you can trust him with it. So can he speak through your love language? Yes. How do you avail yourself to all the graces that he has for you? Open yourself up to the Lord. Trust him. Run after him with wild abandon through the sacraments, through any means that you can find that are holy and that are protected through Holy Mother Church and through good spiritual direction and healing if you need it or whatever. But just run after with him with abandon and he will never, never, never fail to meet you in your pursuit of him. Beautifully said. Beautifully said. I have nothing to add because what you said was perfect. As we conclude the show, for those who are watching Live Dream, be sure to hang out just for a few minutes after we're done. I have another announcement that's kind of exciting I want to tell you about. But this has been Divine Intimacy Radio, your Radio Haven of Rest, where we explore the wisdom of the saints. I want you to know that if your heart is stirred by our conversation, there are thousands of articles available to you on spiritualdirection.com. There are more courses than we can count on the interior life at Avala Institute, Avala-Institute.org. And there are free courses at possiblyba.org. Our desire is to create a saint making engine where anything you need to grow spiritually you can find. So thank you for being with us today on Divine Intimacy Radio. Okay, until next time. May the God of Peace make you perfect in holiness. May he preserve you whole and entire, spirit, soul, and body irreproachable at the coming of our Lord, Jesus Christ. So what I wanted to tell you guys about was time bound for watching Live Stream and I didn't want you to miss these opportunities. There's a new course at the Avala Institute and it's School of Spirits Formation, which means it's designed for busy people. And it's called The Mass in the Old Testament, Approaching the Lord in Fear and Trembling. So this course will explore the way the liturgy we celebrate has been shaped from themes in the Bible, including participating in the life of the Trinity, sacrifice in the wedding feast, gathering of all creation, approaching the Lord with fear and trembling. So it's Dr. Robert Gotcher. So if you are really interested in renewing your devotion and holy sacrifice to the Mass, this is really one of the ways you can do it. It starts on May 13, which is why I wanted to talk about it now. It's a short term. And the last one I'll mention is Exploring the Source and Summit, another School of Spirits Formation course, and also increasing your encounter, deepening your encounter with Eucharist. So we're really trying to support the movement of rectifying the unbelief. And go ahead. Well, I have one more. What is it? It's the The Summit, the Avala Summit. It's our yearly gathering. This year it's going to be up in Washington, D.C. at the Catholic University of America. It's going to be amazing. Spiritual warfare and discernment of spirits. Yeah. Spiritual warfare, discernment of spirits, a bunch of good exorcists will be there. July 15 through the 17th. And we only have 90 seats out of 500 left. Actually, yesterday it was 87 seats left. 87 seats left. So we've probably had 80 right now. Yeah. So we're already, we've already moved over the 400 mark. Yeah. And we're, you know, our capacity is just 500. So you're not going to want to miss this because the speakers are amazing and we're working hard on the menu. And yeah, all of the menu and it's just going to be beautiful. Awesome. All right. That was it. God bless you all. Be holy.