 In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, come Holy Spirit, with thy sevenfold gifts and anoint us with thy divine light, wisdom, and power. Come, Lord Jesus Christ, and anoint us with thy precious blood, freeing us from every snare and stronghold of the principalities and powers of darkness. O mother of God, glorious and immaculate ever Virgin Mary, come and crush the head of the ancient serpent. O great Father, Saint Joseph, tear of demons come and annihilate the enemies of our souls. Saint Michael, great prince and commander of the heavenly army, strike down the insidious foes who seek to destroy us. Come, glorious band of the apostles. Come, great patriarchs and prophets. Come, white-robed army of martyrs. Come, pure and noble-thronged of virgins. Come to our aid. Holy Mother, Saint Teresa, our Holy Father, Saint John of the Cross, Saint Elijah, Saint Elisha, Saint John the Baptist, Saint Therese, Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity, all you holy saints of Carmel, our guardian angels, archangels, and all you holy angels and saints, come repulse the attacks and deceits of our wicked enemies, render them impotent and helpless, let God arise, let his enemies be scattered and let all those who hate him flee before him as smoke is driven away. So are they driven away as wax melts before the fire, so the wicked perish at the presence of God. Heavenly Father, pour down your holy spirit upon all who are gathered here. Watch over and protect us. Send your holy guardian angels to direct us in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Grant us your blessing. Amen. Amen. Well, I don't know that you need an inter-interruption. I'll interrupt you for sure, but I think you probably don't need an introduction, but just for those who may not know Father Dwight, although I think all of you do, he studied at Oxford and served as a priest in the Church of England before he and his family were received in the Catholic Church. He's the author of over 2,000 books, oh, 20 books and booklets on the Catholic faith and culture as well as thousands of articles for various magazines, journals, and websites. He's a popular conference speaker, podcaster and blogger, follow his blog, browse his books, and be in touch at dwightlongenecker.com and just so you get his name right, it's L-O-N-G-E-N-E-C-K-E-R, longenecker. And obviously he's a good man. He's been on EWTN. He and I have been on radio together before. We've never done this sort of thing before, but one of the things we came together to do is because both of us have published spiritual warfare books, if you will, both published by Sophia Institute Press, which is one of the best publishers out there. And Mortal Combat, which I endorsed, is a fantastic book. And then we'll hope you pick up spiritual warfare and the discernment spirits. So Father Dwight, glad that we could do this together. I think it's a really difficult time in the church. Do you think the need for spiritual warfare is greater in this time? Are you seeing movements and feeling and sensing or that the battle is intensifying? Well, I'm a keen follower of history, reader of history. I think probably, I think it's fair to say that history seems to go in cycles and it's kind of like pendulum. It swings back and forth from crisis to resolution and crisis to resolution. And when we study history, we can see that there are certainly times when the sin of the world, the powers of darkness and the powers of Satan who in the secular world seem to surge forward and trying to claim more territory. Very often that's when the church has been weak through heresy or corruption or immorality and various things. And then the church will surge back and the Holy Spirit will bring renewal and revival. So we see this back and forth. And I do feel that definitely in the 20th century, beginning with Fatima and so forth and the terrible events of the 20th century, we were in a horrible attack of evil. Then it seems we've eased off a bit for maybe 50 or 60 years, although there've been terrible things happening. Now I think there's a surge forward again. And I do think it goes along with the weakness very often and the complacency and the lukewarmness in the church. So these things are all interwoven. So is it worse now than it's ever been? No, I probably not, but it's a bad time like there have been other bad times. Yeah, I agree with you. And I've said the same thing in less eloquent words, but my sense is that the battle is stronger, that the enemy is a bit stronger now or as you note surging. And I have a connection with the number of exorcists and there's been a clear indication from them. For instance, Father Chad Rippiger, the prominent exorcists have said that in the past, what would have taken one solemn right has taken six months of offering the right every week for the victim rather than just one. And so I've heard things that corroborate what you're saying. And certainly for me, I imagine for you, writing Mortal Kombat now is part of a response to help the people of God. But for me, writing spiritual warfare and discernment of spirits was motivated because of the difficulties that I'm seeing and really recognizing that the spirit of Judas is rising, which is behind unbelief in the real presence in the... One of the things in studying church history and the lives of the saints is also to see that when this happens, God raises up warriors and raises up saints from the most unexpected places. And so Satan is sort of involved in the powers of this world and maybe attacking the hierarchy of the church or the priests or whatever else. Because he thinks that's where the action is. Meantime, God's working over here on the side with a totally unexpected person or group of people to raise up in kind of like a secret army. And I really think that at this time, it's the role of the laity as never before to do, to write and to speak and to pray and to be involved in wonderful ways. You're a layman and you're running the Avala Institute and doing all this wonderful work. And across America and the world, we see lay people actually rising up, rolling up their sleeves and doing stuff and getting involved in very practical ways. And in ways that I'm sorry to say that a lot of my fellow clergy and bishops are either complacent or cowardly or maybe even don't believe in all of this. So I don't want to judge anybody, but I can see that on the positive side, the spirit raising up a whole army of lay people all the people who are signed up here tonight to listen to us and speak to us are those who are interested in saying, hey, what's going on? I'd like to learn more about this. So God bless you. Thank you for being here. Well said. Now, in terms of perspective, a lot of people are interested in lean in when you start talking about exorcisms and some of the most sensational realms of demonic incursion or manifestation, but that's not really where most of the work of the enemy is done. What do you, how do you see that reality? Well, I've witnessed an exorcism and it isn't something I ever want to be part of again only because it's just a horrible thing that happens. And I have huge admiration for the exorcists and the men who God has called to actually do that work. But in my experience as well, I've had a couple of very disturbing experiences in talking with individuals who every outward indication was that they were successful and smooth and charming and connected and wealthy and educated and just wonderful shining successes, glittering successes. And then I've had a brief glimpse into their life in which I felt that beneath that facade was genuine darkness and evil. I'm convinced therefore that there are an awful lot of people who belong to the dark side but never manifest the typical sensational stuff we see from exorcisms of horrible voices and preternatural strength and all that sort of thing. And I believe many spiritual sort of exorcists and warriors have said, yeah, the devil doesn't manifest himself and the people who he already has. So if that's the case, then I think exorcism is, sometimes I think exorcism is rare because the Satan is not involved in very many people's lives and sometimes I think it's rare because actually he's involved in an awful lot of people's lives, but he's got them completely and therefore he doesn't manifest. You might have something to comment about that. Yeah, I mean, I've been involved in quite a number of exorcisms myself as a supporting exorcist priest. And so I've seen the worst of the worst and the suffering that comes out of that. But as you hint at or point to, so possession is rare. The activity of the enemy and the life of believers and in the world is really, really common. Would you agree with that? Oh, absolutely. And the different writers on spiritual warfare and exorcism have different categories. One is temptation which everyone falls into and then another is obsession where a person becomes obsessed with the sin and perhaps there's a level of addiction to that sin and they're beginning to lose control of their will because they've yielded so much already to the darkness. But then depending on the categories that people have, there's also a level in which the obsession moves into the will being taken over by the evil forces now and now something outside the person is dominating them. That's the sort of domination but it's not full fledged possession but possession can happen and manifest itself. Some writers also say that the manifestation of the preter natural signs can only be, might only, will always happen when possession takes place but it might only happen for a split second. Sure. And then the devil takes residence and doesn't manifest with the ugly stuff. For other people, the ugly stuff lasts longer. I can remember Father Carlos Martins saying that he had an encounter with a man who had an occult encounter when he was a child and then later on, only later on did the evil manifest itself and it did only for a split second when Father Martins put the holy water on him, the man reared back and snarled like a big beast or cat. And Father Martins, then he went back to normal, seemingly went back to normal and Father Martins said at that point, he says, at that point we realized we did not need a psychiatrist, we needed an exorcist. So, you know, and very all, I don't know if it's your experience Dan but very often the exorcists I know are really down-to-earth fellows like that who, they're not sensationalists, they're really ordinary guys and they know their faults and their flaws and they roll up their sleeves and get on with the messy work. Yeah, I have the blessing of knowing a number of exorcists from different dioceses across the country and they're often understated, quiet, holy. The one thing about them that's really beautiful and that's common across all of them is for the most part they believe with every, they feel like they believe with every fiber of their being which I suspect is why they can go in to that kind of direct confrontation of the enemy with some level of peace. Yeah. So in your book, and I think we really both agree with this very strongly, you point out that there is a war and that everyone's involved whether they like it or not, right? Yeah, if there's a war going on in the second, I lived in England for 25 years and I can remember the people there talking about the war and it was total war and there was no room for saying, well, I don't really know who's I have on, you know? Right, right. The bombs were dropping around your house and your neighbors were being killed by the Nazi Blitzkrieg and there was no tense for you and no time for you to sit around and total your thumbs and say, well, I need to decide about this a bit further. No, it was pretty clear. You were in or you were out. And I think the more Catholics and the more Christians realize that this is the reality with spiritual warfare, the better we're gonna be, that this is not a time to sit around for having intellectual discussions and having little polite theological arguments. This, you know, we need to do what we can with what we have where we are. Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. And one thing you said, when you described the war, you know, like a physical war, we have the clarity of the good and evil and who's on the right side. Unfortunately, in our time, the war, there's a whole middle ground of people that you can't quite tell who's side they're on. Or they're manipulated by either side. Right, but the thing about his history shows us that I put a blog post up not long ago saying the devil always, always overplays his hand. You see, the devil's a proud spirit and he doesn't really like working undercover. He doesn't really like working in secret. He wants to take the main role. He wants to take center stage. He wants to strut out there and be the king of the world. Now he's in bondage and he hates that. So he overplays his hand. And if you take, for instance, what happened in Europe in the 1920s and 30s, he was working behind the scenes in the whole Nazi regime and in communism and in fascism in Italy and so forth. And an awful lot of people, when they first got started, said Hitler was a great guy. He brought full employment. He got the economy back where it should be. He was bringing law and order. He was bringing high family values, all this kind of stuff. And the same with Mussolini. A lot of Catholic leaders in Italy actually supported Mussolini and thought he was gonna fight against communism and help to retain the church and all this kind of good stuff. But then, of course, the devil always overplays his hand and Mussolini and Hitler couldn't resist finally strutting and killing and doing what they did. And at that point, all of God's people said, ah, aha, okay, he's showing us true colors. We can see where the evil now is. And then the two sides formed up for the great battle. And I think we're in that moment at this present time and how long it will last. I don't know of ambiguity and sort of, is this guy good or bad? Or is this side good or bad? We're not really sure. And the lies are going on and the deception is going on. And this is why your book with discernment of spirits is important because it really requires people to pray and to discern and to listen very carefully at everything that's going on, to know their faith and to know the truth, to be able to discern the way forward. Yeah, I think you're right. I do think the times, when it heats up, of course, the impurities rise, right? When you're purifying metal, you make it hotter and hotter and then the impurities rise, move them to the top. I think now the heat is revealing and it's unfortunate. I think at times, and it's very painful to the laity, I can't speak for the priests. I know it's painful for many priests that I talk to, but being denied the Eucharist and being denied the sacraments and even the brazen rejection, certainly not by priests like you. You're on the other side of the battle, brazen rejection of tradition in the church, brazen rejection and total disregard of how it is that the church has always allowed the, for instance, communion to be distributed. I see this as an attack and my instinct is, or I see this as revealing, my instinct is as COVID settles out, there's gonna be a number of dioceses where folks are told, well, I don't really care what the church has always taught. You don't get to receive in the humblest way, you're gonna receive the way I tell you, whether it be by slingshot or baggy or whatever. Yeah, I think there is a filtering out that is going on and a discernment within our churches. We're really blessed where we are in Greenville, South Carolina to have our own parish, Our Lady of the Rosary, but also other parishes here in Greenville with some strong leadership and also strong commitment of the people in the pews. We are spared a lot of the division and the uncertainty and ambiguity, which I've sensed is in a lot of the Catholic parishes around the country. So my hats off to my people and my parish who are very supportive, but also a lot of the Catholic community in our town is supportive. So I see that, but I also recognize what you're saying about the weakness and indecision and bewilderment and confusion elsewhere in the church. All the more reason to understand the roots of evil and the roots of the conflict so clearly. And this is what I've been trying to do in my book in Mortal Kombat was to actually ask the question, what is the sin of the world? We say Jesus died to take away the sin of the world. What is the sin of the world? It's not just the naughty things we've done and not just the upheavals and the quarrels that we have. It's actually a very deep level of deceit and twisting of the truth within our whole human society and of course, within our individual hearts too. You know, I think it might be helpful to give people a taste of your book is, you know, you really approached it as you noted, not in an intellectual dispassionate way, not in high theological language, but you're really trying to bring help God's people to really understand the battle from I think very powerful analogies. Could you speak a bit about the analogy used to help to illustrate the sin of the world, the minotaur under the castle? Yeah, throughout the book, I've used imagery from Greek myth from popular literature like Lord of the Rings, movies, visual imagery from Dante and Divine Comedy and so forth because not only to keep my reader's attention which is always a worthy cause of a writer, but also because imagination gives us access to the heart and the heart is the will and the will are the keys to motivation. The words emotion and motivation are all the same route and so through the imagination and beauty and visualization and the imagination, we have access to the heart and to the emotions and the wills in addition to it being intellectual. So, but if it's only a purely intellectual theological argument and discussion, it remains at that level. There's an old saying that the longest journey is from the head to the heart and in spiritual direction, this is true. We might know all the right doctrine and know all the right rules but unless it makes that long journey from the head to the heart, it's not gonna move us. There's another Russian, old Russian saying that says the heart moves the feet. The heart moves the feet and it's the emotions and the imagination which gives us access to that part of our being to really kick us into action. Therefore, I use strong language in the book and I use lots of imagery in the book in order to get that to happen for the reader to say, whoa, this is shocking stuff. This is setting me back here and really forward to kick in and take effect of people's lives. So yes, the one of the images I use is the myth of the Minotaur from Greek myth and the Minotaur, if you don't remember from your English lessons was half man and half beast. He was a big muscular man with a head of a bull and he was a fierce bull, a monster that would devour young people who were given to him in sacrifice. And the interesting thing is this beastly man represents the strength of humanity but also the dark side of humanity, the dark, bestial side of us and the myth, and this is so interesting because they operate at this deep level of our imagination. The Minotaur is imprisoned in a labyrinth, this complicated maze of passageways and dead ends and false beginnings and so forth which is underneath, it's in the cellar, it's in the underground underneath the palace of King Minos and Minos, the word Minos and the word Taur, the word Taur is Greek for bull. So Minotaur is a symbol of the king but his monstrous side, which is buried way down deep. On the surface, the king's palace is full of the courtiers and full of the rich people and full of the nice people and full of the educated people but down below is this beast. And so I've used this as an image to say this is where we're going to look at the sin of the world. This is the underground level of deceit and dishonesty and lust and greed and violence which is lurking just below the surface. Now, I can't believe how the Lord has used this book to come out at this time in our history and our nation because this is exactly what's happening over the violence we've seen over the last week or so. We've seen all of the polite, orderly, good-mannered surface of America break down and the violence that's always been there erupting into the surface and it ain't pretty. No, and you do that beautifully in the book and illustrating, giving us those emotional images. One of the things we do in the, we have a high calling program at the Aval Institute where we're preparing men for seminary and 15 dioceses inside and outside. And we have a segment on holy imagination where we study, where we help the guys work through Lord of the Rings and Tolkien and Lewis in order to give them that imagination. I think what's distressing in our time, and I'd be interested in your comment on this, is that, so your position, which I agree with, is that story is what gets in when the intellectual stuff doesn't necessarily. And the mechanism in the, at least in the United States, but of course probably in the world, the primary purveyor of story now is Hollywood in absolute godless folks who of course, recently the Weinstein scandal, but we've heard much about pedophile rings within politicians as well as Hollywood, that sort of thing. But the entire storytelling mechanism has been totally stripped of Christian ideals or perspective. Yeah, I'm not quite as pessimistic as you are. I agree with you, but there are time and again in the midst of all the swamp as you point out, the good stories and good films will pop up. And what encourages me is that the good ones actually very often rise from obscurity and stay around a lot longer than the bad ones. So there might not be many of them, but they do actually tend to stick around. I'm thinking for instance of the two films by Robert Bolt, The Mission and Man for All Seasons. Mission is top favorite for me. Yeah, you see these are two great films which have become classics and they've been written by from a really deep understanding of religious issues, even though they're not Catholic films. Another one is The Gladiator, which has become a classic film and it has great moral and Christian themes running through them. What is encouraging is that, although yes, you're right, there's a lot of junk out there and really bad stuff out there. The good stuff that's there does actually survive. I'll make a little brag here about Tolkien. I was lucky enough to meet his daughter once and I was over in Oxford and my friend, Father John Sayward is the parish priest of the church in North Oxford where Priscilla Tolkien, Tolkien's daughter still lives and goes to Mass every week. So he asked me to cover the Mass for him because he was on vacation. So I stepped in and covered and celebrated Mass for him. And I said to the sacristan, is it true that Miss Tolkien comes to Mass here? He said, oh yeah, she's in the front row. So I said, well, I'd love to meet her after Mass. So there she was, she's a little lady. She's, I sometimes joke that she looks like a hobbit and she sort of was very kind and sort of gracious in her English way. And I said to her, you know, I'm very pleased to meet you but I would just like to say that I think your father is the foremost Catholic evangelist of the 20th century. And she said, oh, why do you think that? And so I quoted that line from Samwise Gamgee when he says, because there's some things in this world, Mr. Froder, that are worth fighting for. And she said, oh yes, that's how nice, you know. But this is the reason I like to use this imagery because it does access the heart in a powerful way. And of course, the scriptures are not a collection of rules and regulations or proof texts for doctrine. The scriptures are this wonderful saga of human stories of God's interaction with humanity from Adam and even Father Abraham, right down through to our Lord and the apostles. And then of course, the life of the church, story after story of these wonderful saints. So this is what motivates me and I think we need to hear more of that. One of the problems with the church today though, however, is that we have separated out doctrine and theology and put that in this little box over here which we call theology and it's all intellectual and Thomistic and Scholastic and whatever it'sistic is and you want. And over here, we have sentimentality and religion which is just pure emotion and pure feelings and nothing but emotion and feelings. And these two have been separated. And what I love about story, the right story, stories is that it actually brings these two together and a good story like Lord of the Rings or Dante's Divine Comedy or Lois's Tales or whatever, bring together wonderful doctrine and moral teaching with the power of emotion and the power of imagination and deliver it as a package which is also very attractive and able to be listened to. So yeah, that's what, sorry, you've got me going here about why I use that imagery in the book. No, it's great, it's great to hear a couple of things. One is have you seen the Chosen series yet? I have not. I've seen it's been very recommended. Yeah, I would just strongly recommend it to our audience. I have to tell you, you know, so I came, I'm Jewish, came to Christ in my early 20s and actually jumped from the Anglican Seminary to the Catholic Church. So we have some connection with that in the background but I remember falling in love with Jesus in the sense of as the answer to my anguish as the purpose, you know, the reason I came into being and all the beauty, watching the Chosen has really shocked me how it got under my skin and took me back to my original conversion because Rumi, how he portrays Jesus is so beautiful in his humanity, not denying in any ways divinity, which of course is clear. Where do I watch that? Go ahead. Where do we watch it? Where is it available? So there's some trailers on YouTube but it's actually an app. I mean, it's delivered a completely different way than anything else and it's crowdfunded, right? So it's funded by the viewers and we pay for future episodes for the rest of us to see. So I'll send you a link or maybe once we open up the chat or Debbie will email it to you but I have to tell you, I've been deeply moved by it. Rumi is a Catholic and the producers are Protestant but so far in six episodes, I haven't seen anything that's even a hint of violation of Catholic theology and I think folks will experience what Father Langnecker I think is speaking to with how it is that we bring about the entirety of our being into the theological reality because I think, you talked about Thomistic philosophy and theology but I think Aquinas would argue that the entirety of our being should be aligned to God, right? So he didn't ever intend for us to take his theology and just argue fine doctrinal points. He would say that our passions, our lower nature is all given to us by God to be aligned with him. And of course I'm not denigrating theology and St. Thomas Aquinas. I'm just saying, if that's all you have, it remains on the head and you need to be involved in the faith. Yeah, and this is what I get to in the second half of the book is talking about how explaining how the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ defeats evil and how we can actually live that cross day by day and trying to give people a new perspective on what we're doing as Catholics and the reason for it. You know, before we jump to that, can I ask you another question about your book? Why is it that the father of lies is in terms of the titles of the devil, why is it father of lies is really kind of dead center to the essence of Satan and how he works? Yeah, that's a good question. You know, I can remember one exorcist saying that the problem in the exorcisms is that he's dealing with a liar, someone who is a liar and everything they do is a lie. And therefore he said, you don't know where you are because everything that this demon might say, you can't trust. Did he speak the truth or not? He said, for instance, the demon might howl and say, oh, don't send me to my appointed place. Don't send me to how I'm going now, I'm going now. But he wasn't really going. He was lying to you again. And so this constant lying which is going on brought me to the point of realizing that this is the deep deception which is the sin of the world, which I also use Scott Peck's book, The People of the Lie, to say the lie, the lie, the lie, that is the problem from the very beginning, lying to ourselves, lying to others, putting up false images about ourselves to others, lying to ourselves in all sorts of subtle ways, excusing our sin, justifying our sin, making excuses for others and constantly following the father of lies because the devil is a liar from the beginning, he's a liar through and through. All he can do is distort the truth, twist the truth, twist everything that's beautiful, good and true. That's what he does. And so his title, which our Lord himself gives him, The Father of Lies and a Murderer from the Beginning, is for me, the summit of the titles and the summary of the titles for the evil one and for the evil system in the world that we call the sin of the world. The sin of the world is a complex network of lies, deceit, deception, twisting the truth, fake news, if you like, lies going on all the time. This is why it's so important for Catholics to read the Bible, to read the Catechism, to read the lies of the saints and to really listen deeply to these sources of our faith which ground us in the truth because if we don't, we're gonna be subject to all the lies that are scrolling about out there and the lies that we tell ourselves, the lies that we tell others and the lies of the media, the lies of Hollywood, as you've said, and it's very important to go to the source of the truth and ground ourselves in that truth. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. It's interesting, I've heard. So when I do a little bit of apologetics work and I don't know if that's the right way to describe what I'm doing in the sense of arguing for authentic Catholic spirituality. And as you know, we have a huge encouragement of non-Christian Eastern spirituality mixing with Catholic spirituality and creating a kind of a blend of truth and rat poison for the soul at the same time. And what I hear regularly is, wait a minute, I've been a Catholic for all my life and I've taught this and I've done that and I'd ever seen a problem with it. And I think my answer, I usually try to be patient but my answer back is, so you've lived in a period where the formation in the church is probably comparable to some of the worst times and by osmosis you're supposed to know what's true. You can't do that. You're not going to understand how to discern between the truth and the lie by just going to mass every Sunday. In fact, you can't even do it by going to mass every day. Certainly that helps because that's the primary source of grace that we receive thank God at the hand of good priests like you. But that doesn't, if we're not purifying the heart and mind through the kind of book like you've written and Mortal Kombat or through the spiritual warfare and discernment of spirits or through directly through the writings of the great saints and thinkers of the church, what's not happening is that we are not constantly taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, purifying all of the false thinking that we have and replacing it as Romans 12 one says, you know, being not conformed to this world will be transformed by the renewal of your mind. So we must engage as you say in these truths or we're going to be deceived. Our Lord says in his great high priestly prayer John 17 says, Father sanctify them in your truth, your word is truth. And the word sanctify means to set aside for holiness. In other words, to purify ourselves, we need to be sanctified in the truth, thy word, your word is truth. And of course, being brought up in the evangelical Protestant home, that line your word is truth meant the Bible. Read the Bible, learn the Bible, we had to memorize Bible verses. And that's all well and good. And I'm really grateful actually, although there was lots of error in that Protestantism from now from a Catholic point of view, there was a lot of good in it. And the Bible background that I received was a real good foundation for my Catholic faith. And however, Catholics go on to understand that when this was in John's gospel and John also is referring to the word as Jesus himself. So sanctify them in your truth, your word is truth. And Jesus says, I am the truth, therefore deeply plunging ourselves into Jesus Christ himself through the sacraments and through our devotions is also the way that we ground ourselves in the truth. And this is a deep mystical experience. I'm so grateful for the work of the Avila Institute because you're bringing spirituality to ordinary Catholics in a way which is alive and real, which is what we desperately need to be able to be in the truth in this unified way, not just with head knowledge, but with heart knowledge and with action in a way which will help us to steer clear of all the lies that are out there. Yeah, I'm grateful you said that because one of the things that we attempt to do is extend the reality of mysticogy into mystical theology and learning. So I always tell students, if you're gonna hold ideas off at a distance and sort of mull over them, this isn't gonna work for you. If you want through the saints to encounter God and to encounter the reality of his presence among us, then you're in the right place. But I don't care if you memorize where St. Teresa of Avila was born, how many condents that she established or where she traveled. What I want you to do is meet the God that she met and through which radically changed the world through her teachings. And when we do that, when we live that reality, we're a light in the midst of all the darkness. Let me ask you another question about your book. So you were speaking about truth and the central tactic of the devil is lies. And I would say the secondary one is division, lies and division I would say is the top two. And Jesus said, I'm the way the truth in the life as you mentioned. And he said, you shall know the truth and the truth will set you free. So just immersing ourselves in these truths that you teach in this very good book, Immortal Combat that just come out through Sophia confronting the heart of darkness, the reality of coming to freedom, the experience of coming to freedom in essence. And this is a tough one to ask. And so forgive me for stumbling around a little bit. But a lot of Catholics are born into the Catholic church if you will and they're baptized, but they're not taught that you really have to make a choice. Now you're, some people might say, well, your Protestant background is bleeding in, Dan. And my answer is no, no, it's replete in the Catholic mystical tradition. Mary did have to say yes. And that yes is the most important thing that we can offer to God. But if you could, Father, tell us from a Catholic lens, what does it mean to say yes to God? What does it mean to encounter Christ crucified? Would you talk about beautifully in the book? And why, and how does that work in the Catholic realm? I mean, tell the listeners here what they need to do to really enter into this deeper reality of who Jesus is and how to live in that context. Okay, I'll do that by sharing a very personal experience. And I sometimes get a little bit choked up when I tell this story, but I was five years old when I came home from church one Sunday night. And I guess the preacher must have been talking about hell or something like that. But I said to my mom when I got home, I said, five years old, right? And I said, mom, I want to get saved. I want to go to heaven. Well, she knelt down with me and she said, you need to say to Jesus that you're sorry for your sins and that you want to accept him as your savior. And he won, you want his forgiveness. And I did that at the age of five. And there were tears for both of us. But that stayed with me. And some people say, oh, you can't tell a five-year-old to do that. Well, nobody did tell me to do that. I asked for it. So that's the first step. The individual has to not be pressured, but to be brought to the point where they want to do this simple action of repentance and faith. And people will say, well, how does that happen in the Catholic faith? It happens every time we go to mass. We shouldn't be saying to confitior and bringing our sins and repenting and receiving forgiveness and receiving Jesus. Somebody said, a Protestant said to a Catholic, have you received Jesus into your heart? And the Catholic said, yeah, in my stomach too. In other words, they've received the Lord at the Eucharist and every Eucharist should be this conversion experience, this meeting of Jesus. And confession. My mom, many years later after I was Catholic, said, well, what is this about confession? So I explained to her, I said, mom, it's as simple as what we did when I was five years old. The person comes in and kneels down and they say to the Lord, they're sorry for their sins and they want to receive his forgiveness and accept his forgiveness in their life. And I think where we have failed in the Catholic faith very often is we have been dominated by this proper doctrine, which is that the sacraments operate our ex operae operato. In other words, they will work, God will work through his sacraments, no matter whether you feel it or not, and no matter whether the priest is holy or not, God is there, Jesus is there, it's an objective truth, you receive his forgiveness, whether you feel forgiven or not. Well, yeah, that's true. It's part of our Catholic teaching and thank God that it's true and it does not rely only on our emotions. But I think that very often that very objective, legalistic understanding of the sacraments has held a lot of Catholics back from actually also encountering the Lord in a subjective way, a way which is life changing in which, yes, there might be some tears and there might be some genuine sort of grief at their situation. And we need a little bit more of that in the Catholic faith where the reality of the sacraments we're receiving are matched up with the subjective experience. And I would say to anybody listening, if you have not had that subjective experience, if you have not had that, I think the Wesley's called that distinct warming of your heart, as they called it, if you've not had that experience of the Lord in the sacraments and in prayer, ask for it. Yeah. But be prepared to receive it because it might break a few things in your life. The Holy Spirit comes in and sometimes he has to rearrange the furniture. That's not always a pleasant experience. So be careful what you ask for. But if you want to experience the reality of the sacraments and the reality of the faith, the reality of the Holy Spirit, open your heart and say, Lord, I want to receive that. I really do. So you've asked what I would say and if it's too evangelical and Protestant, forgive me. No, no, I always say that these things are so clear in the mystics. One of the things that St. John of the Cross says in his ascent to Mount Carmel is that if you want to really follow Jesus, you need to immerse yourself in his person and work, which would be something like daily lexiodivina in the Gospels, so that you can fall in love with him. And that love is the movement of your entire being, your intellect and your will and your emotions toward him. But if you don't do that immersion, you don't do that work, you will never come to that place. And if you don't ask for that encounter, that encounter is what changed many of the lives of the mystics, which then changed the world around them, was that encounter with Jesus like you're describing. People can see it behind me is my image of St. Therese of Lisieux. And one of the earliest books I wrote was St. Benedict and St. Therese, the little, little way. And St. Therese, when you read St. Therese, you encounter the same warmth of love for the Lord and she was genuinely converted like this, like all the saints were. And she speaks about it from the heart and it's so winning because of that. Amen, so you said, or in your book, you talked about what St. Paul proclaimed when he said, we preach Christ and him crucified. I think that's an important point to spend a bit of time on with our audience. Tell us a bit about why that's so important. Yeah, first of all, after discussing what the sin of the world really is, I go on to explain why it is the cross of Christ, which is the only thing that could have broken that spell and broken that bondage of the sin of the world. Because the sin of the world is such a complex network of lies, everybody believes it and they don't even know that it's there. And so Jesus comes in and the cross actually breaks that from the inside out. I explain how that happens. But therefore, if the cross is the victory over evil, then our lives are meant to be living the cross. Jesus said, take up your cross and follow me. You cannot be my disciple unless you take up your cross and follow me. St. Paul says, we preach Christ crucified. He says, I am crucified. I die daily. I am crucified with Christ. I long to know nothing but the cross of Christ. So therefore, he hammers this home all through the rest of the New Testament. And the lives of the saints would say the same. Therefore, the second half of my book is an explanation of how we actually do that. That every aspect of our Catholic life is a living out of the cross in the world today. We see it most clearly and obviously with the lives of the martyrs are people being persecuted for their faith. The cross is being lived out within the body of the church through their sufferings. But it's also being lived out in all of our trials and sufferings in life and also in all of the actions that we do and the devotions that we do. It's an identification with the cross and bringing that victory over evil into the present moment and making it live in my life and in your life. This is a mystical thing, which is very difficult to communicate to modern people who tend to be very practically minded and see things in a very sort of dot to dot connection to connection kind of way. Instead, we're talking about a deep mysticism here in which individual Christians are locked into and experiencing and living the mystery of the cross. And yet we say this in the sacraments, to be baptized, to be baptized into the death and resurrection of our Lord, to receive the Eucharist, it is to receive the crucified, the body and blood of the crucified Lord. And so I go into this and explain how each of the sacraments is living out the cross and each of our devotions and our prayers and our actions are living the cross in the world. It's, I don't know, Dan, if you thought it was a new way of looking at things, it's, maybe it's a new old way, but it's one you can tell I feel pretty, pretty strongly about. Yeah, no, it's very good. And you've done a great job, folks. Make sure you pick up immortal combat confronting the heart of darkness. I'd also ask you a favor and I'll put this one, I think both of these books are important for this time, spiritual warfare and discernment of spirits, please share these things with people. You know, I tell people when I do live streaming on the EWTN's Facebook page, we do divine intimacy radio. And I'm always telling them that there's a great pressure against what we're trying to do. There's pressure against father, father Dwight, every priest has demons chasing them around in general. Faithful priest, I should say. And what we need is you guys to be, to help us push back the darkness. We need you to say, and you know what, I'd love to, you know what, I'd love to see tomorrow, I'd love to see a bunch of you who already own this book, go on to my feed or my Facebook page or Father Longenecker's Facebook page and show that you're reading it. Take a picture of yourself reading it. Do the same with this one. I love to see those, you know, on your coffee table, I like to see a little background, you know, but show the titles clearly because people, you know, Facebook now you can't get anything else unless you pay. So we really need you guys to join in to help us get this good information out or it won't go anywhere. Now, I want to talk to the martyr, I'm sorry, the martyr, the monitor, maybe she's a martyr. Debbie, if you can make sure that the chat is now unlocked and what I want to begin to do is have you guys start typing up your questions for Father Longenecker or for me. It's the most fun, I think, of these kinds of meetings is to get your direct questions because then we can really help to apply the material or the wisdom of Father Dwight to what you're struggling with or questions that you have. So there's, it's sort of no-holes barred. You can ask anything you want. And the first question we have, Father, which is a great one, why is it so hard to root out habitual sin? Say that again. Why is it so hard to root out habitual sin? I think it's very often because people are trying through their own efforts to deal with the sin itself. And the sin itself was almost always an outward symptom or an outward habit or an outward manifestation of a much deeper problem especially if it's a habitual sin. And if that problem is very deeply rooted, it can be rooted right back into the experiences we've had maybe as children or even earlier before we were born, I believe, in my book, Praying the Rosary for Inner Healing. I go into some very interesting things about the wounds that we can receive very early on. And remember, a habitual sin is almost always a false attempt to find some kind of comfort or some kind of security that we were lacking. And someone has said every sin is a lack of love in one way or another. And so unless we have the roots of the sin dealt with just sheer self-control will probably not work. We need self-control and discipline but it's probably not the thing which is gonna really cure it. Instead, I would suggest pray a novena to the Holy Spirit. Take some time out for fasting and prayer and give yourself a set period of time, maybe nine days of a novena, maybe a three day fast or something like that where you say, Lord, I plead with you, heal the root of this sin if I need to show me what the root is and let the root of that sin be revealed to you through prayer and through silence and through contemplation and then take it to confession and ask for the forgiveness for that. It might be something that you didn't even connect with the sin. Let's give you an example. Let's say you have a problem with habitually losing your temper and being totally annoyed and irritated and it's irrational. You don't know why you're so irritable and why you're so angry all the time but it just comes up. And it's over little things but you know that's not really the problem, it's just anger. Well, if you go through this time of asking the Lord to reveal it to you, he might reveal it to you for instance that it has to do with, I don't know, something that your mom did to you when you were seven years old. And you thought that didn't really matter but maybe it did because in the seven year old imagination and mind it was locked away as a real hurt and wound. You, well, if that's what the Spirit reveals to you, you might bring it to confession and find that the Lord is actually healing the root of the sin which then the habitual sin eventually evaporates because it was only a symptom of that deeper problem to start with. Very good. That's a short answer but I hope that helps. I'll add a couple of things. One, one of the reasons I'm so grateful for the priesthood is confession. A lot of people don't realize that confession is actually more powerful than exorcism. The purpose of exorcism is to beat up the demon to free up the will of the individual to fight. And it's a sacramental but what Father Dwight can give you in confession is more powerful than that. So frequent confession, there's a great little book called Confession. It's Fruitful Practice which is a, it's a tiny little booklet. It doesn't even have a spline. It's published by Tan. And it is an amazing treatment of confession and learn how to better orient your heart and mind to that sacrament not because that sacrament doesn't just provide forgiveness of sins. It provides strength against the sins. You can think of it sort of like a trampoline. So it's not like you walk in and you thud and you get forgiven it. No, you walk in and the harder you go at it, the higher you're gonna bounce out of it. So when you're properly described. Then the other thing about confession is that very often I will tell people confession itself is so beautiful because God knows the relationship between the external sins and the root sins. And that just by bringing those external sins to confession is kind of like that weed killer that you put on the leaves but it goes down and kills the roots. And if it's a habitual sin, don't be ashamed of bringing it habitually to confession. Because the habitual sin, the habitual confession will actually begin to minister and even if you don't go through this session I was talking about trying to find the root cause even if you just bring it to confession and the absolution will go into the leaves and go down to the root and bring the healing. Amen and thank God again for the priesthood and for giving your life to the church and your priesthood father that you could be a part of setting the captives free in that way. One of the things I'd say is I put together one of the things about habitual sin that perpetuated as a lack of awareness. The church teaches the idea of a near occasion of sin. And often people don't think enough about how to break patterns of sin. And so they're not aware of what are the things that trigger the sin. Father spoke about past wounds but it can be circumstances people. And then when you become even more aware of that you begin to be aware of things that drive you to the near occasion of sin. And for that I've put together something called habitual sin combat worksheet. You can find that out at pustuliva.org a pustuliva.org and it's in the sojourners group but if you go join sign up there it's free and it's just full of resources. And it helps you to begin to think through how is it that I'm why is it that I'm constantly falling? So there's the sin, the near occasion and then things like wounds that Father's talking about discernment of spirits can be very powerful in helping you fight habitual sin as well. So the next question Father is are the laity allowed to pray the long version of the St. Michael prayer? You got me there. Yeah, me too. My priest who has some knowledge of this realm indicates that that isn't to be prayed for by the laity but I haven't studied it well enough recently to be definitive so we'll leave it at that. Anne asks how can we support you in preparing men for seminary? Well, financially you can support us. We have parishes like the Diocese of Fairbanks which is a mission, mission diocese that doesn't have the money to pay. And so we turn their guys away and tell them too bad. No, that's not true. We say come bring them anyway and we'll figure it out and we'll raise the money. So that's how you can help us. Prayer is the most important thing. You know, pray for good priests like Father Dwight. We do that in our community every day. Pray for us at the Abba Institute but beyond that financial support and you can do that out at spiritualdirection.com if you go up to the top right there's a little donate button there and you can donate to us. That'll help fund, cost us about $5,000 a year to put a guy through our program. And that helps him to get ready for seminary to discern the priesthood. And what we hear from seminaries is that the guys who enter in after going through our program are way different and way better prepared, way more likely to be successful in getting through seminary of their ordination and also making it through the first five years of priesthood because we have a current problem in society and that is that there's no more Catholic culture. So essentially we provide the ramp up to that difficult work of the seminary. So financial and prayer would be great. Patricia, how do you speak this in your parish? So Father, obviously this is for you. So how do you, I think she's asking, I don't know if she's asking how we do it or how you do it, but I know you're pretty outspoken. Your blog, which I follow and see regularly you don't really hold a lot back and you're pretty clear in what you think. You don't know how much I do hold back. Well, you're at least very prudent and clear. I'll say that. What was the question again? How do you speak about this in your parish? And I don't know if you have an answer to that. Maybe she's asking, maybe she can ask a clarifying question. She means how did the lay people speak about it in their parish? You mean speak about spiritual warfare? Maybe that's it. Why don't we answer that question? Well, it varies from the parishioners. I see one parishioner here, Janice. Hey Janice, who is actually one of my parishioners and she's very keyed into spiritual warfare and spiritual direction. And a range of parishioners are also very motivated in their prayer lives and in supporting all of this. But then of course, there's a whole gamut of people who are right down to those who are fairly complacent about the faith, but they still come to mass every week. And then there are others and people are moving along that continuum, of course. And it's our job in the parish to be able to motivate those who are more tuned in and more involved in their spirituality, to invite the others to join their prayer groups and to join the men's group and the ladies' group and so forth to be able to nurture and cataclyse and encourage people. So that's part of parish life. And we're lucky our parish is, I believe, a very vibrant parish full of really committed lay people. Our parish is in a needy part of town with prostitution and drugs and very challenging socioeconomically and racially, but our people involved in the food pantry and in the Mother Teresa house and the missions as well as the prayer and the spirituality in the school. So we're really blessed, really, really blessed with a lot of lay people who are keyed up on these things and tuned in. Yeah, and I would also just say, I've never been to Father's parish, but I've seen pictures of it. And it's absolutely beautiful. And I think he's also an exceptional example in our time about how the ordinary, the form of the mass in particular can be celebrated faithfully. And I would strongly recommend you visit there. And I really wanna come visit you sometime, Father. You need to come in and lead a retreat. I'd love to do that. We should do one on a discernment of spirits. Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah, our parish also, the church building that we have there, if you go online, it's Our Lady of the Rosary, Greenville, O-L-R, Greenville.com, I think is a website. You see pictures of it, but it was really exciting on how our people rallied around to build a church that in the Bible Belt in Greenville, South Carolina, which is built in a traditional style and is a church that is beautiful and simple in its beauty and dignity. And our people, we're a small parish and not a wealthy parish. And our people rallied around to really believe in this project. And it was very encouraging in our building committees at the start of the process. I said to them, what kind of church do you wanna build? And they said, we want a church that looks like a Catholic church. I said, well, I thought this was just nostalgia. You know, oh, we like a church with stained glass windows because we were brought up with one when we were kids. No, and our people said, we want a church that looks like a Catholic church because we're in the Bible Belt and we want our church to make a Catholic statement. So I was like, just knock back by that because they do the right reason for building a beautiful church. Not cause it's pretty and we like pretty things, but because it was a visible statement in a needy community of beauty, truth and goodness in brick and stone. And the beautiful thing is, I've had comments from the non-Catholics who live around our church a lot who are Hispanic and African American and so forth. And they'll see me and say, you're the pastor of that church up there. I said, yeah. And they'll say, thank you for investing in our community. And boy, that really makes me proud of our people. That's awesome. Debbie, Deborah has a question. It says, is a lay person allowed to bind or cast out a spirit in the name of Jesus? In the name of Jesus, can I cast out a spirit of anger? This is a question which is controversial because we're talking about a difference between the deliverance ministry and the exorcism. And lay people are not permitted to conduct exorcisms. Indeed, a priest who is not licensed and authorized by the bishop is not permitted to conduct an exorcism. An exorcism is a very, someone compared exorcism as kind of spiritual open heart surgery. It really requires special permission, special authority and no one's meant to dabble in that and to go into that territory because it's dangerous spiritually. However, the ambiguity comes in because very often people in the deliverance ministry which is an aspect of the healing ministry will talk about the spirit of anger or the spirit of lust or the spirit of greed or whatever. And they use language that sounds like they're talking about demons that are there. And they say, I cast out the spirit of anger. Sometimes this can get ridiculous. I can remember one charismatic prayer group. There was a child who had a habit of thumb sucking and the people were casting out the demon of thumb sucking. Okay. So this is where there's all kinds of fuzziness and bad teaching going on. So I discourage lay people from participating in that ministry because very often what we call a spirit of anger or a spirit of alcoholism is not really a demon. We're using demon type language to talk about what is a human failing or a human addiction. Sometimes it's a human failing and human addiction which might have a diabolical aspect to it, a diabolical influence on it. But again, this calls for real experts to be able to discern this, to priestly expert, but it'll require a psychologist or a psychiatrist to also be able to discern exactly what's going on. So no, I would say lay people should not, although they're not, I don't think they're legally banned from doing it for the church. Instead, lay people should pray for the Lord to heal that person and to reconcile that person and to lead them to a point when they ask for forgiveness. I think that's wiser. You know, to provide not a different perspective but to add a little bit to that, the Father Ripperger, who's a very prominent exorcist in our time, has noted, and I was taught this in terms of exorcism, that echoing what Father Langnecker said, and that is that you can only do that where you have authority. And so the bishop has to give a priest authority and that's the power. Demons are very legalistic. And if you attempt without authority to speak to a demon, you are in trouble, in my opinion. Yeah, because the demon may know that you don't have the authority and may attack you or attack your loved ones, which is, you know, you don't wanna go there. So the other thing I would stress is that exorcism and deliverance prayers are not magic. The priest who's administering healing and deliverance and exorcism, he's not a magician. He's not in there, he always needs to have the engagement of the will of the person who is being ministered to. So you can't go into somebody else and say, I'm casting out the spirit of anger from you as if that's gonna solve the problem. The person themselves who has a problem with anger needs to also be, their will needs to be involved and be asking for the deliverance and asking for the healing because our human will. He, we need to engage the person's will in this process. That's why when people come to me for healing ministry or deliverance ministry, sometimes they will come for a third party. Father, you need to come and pray prayers of deliverance over my son. I say, I would like to have your son, but he needs to come and ask me for that help. And so this is one aspect which we sometimes forget. And it's frustrating for those of us in ministry because I wish I didn't have a magic wand, but that was not part of the ordination, right? And so we need to also remember that the Lord wants to engage our will in this process. Yeah, a little bit more on this as well. There are two kinds of prayers with respect to demons and there's technical language of imprecatory and deprecatory, but I'll use common language. Common language would be like a petition prayer. So that kind of prayer everyone can pray, which is Archangel Michael, defend us in battle, be our protector against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, do thou, Prince of the heavenly host. So we're asking God to do the work, right? So that's one kind of prayer. Then there's a command prayer and that's the one you get in trouble with if you don't have authority. Now, Father Rippiger contends that where you have authority, you can do that. And Father Longenecker, if I understood you right, I think I heard this in what you're saying in the sense that you can fight directly. Now I tend, you can fight directly in terms of your own struggles or with a child, you can do that when they're desirous of you praying over them. But generally speaking, I do not like to use command prayers in those contexts, even when I have authority though, as you know, it's not prohibited, but I would never use it for someone else where I had no authority. Yeah, the command prayer can be used against this diabolical spirits. We don't seek to engage their will. But what I'm saying is we don't violate the will of the person who is suffering. And even if it's only in a small way, the person needs to give consent and needs to say, I want this ministry to take place. Sometimes people's will has been very damaged and sometimes they're under psychological bondage and they can't give much consent, but the consent needs to be there, even if it's only as small as being able to recite a prayer with you or as small as being able to say, please help me or something like that. But the will needs to be engaged because God cannot violate a person's will. Perfectly stated, that answered Tammy's questions. She said, talk more about oppression and the connection with trauma and mental health. In terms of the lines, it's difficult because I helped a seminarian who actually became an atheist when he was in seminary. And we went through this process where he left seminary and said, I need help. He was docile. So that's one, he said, I need help. Two, he was docile. I said, stay in the sacraments. Don't change a thing. So he stayed in daily mass even though he said, I don't believe. I taught him discernment of spirits and it helped him a little but it didn't quite get him free. Then I explored in his life whether or not he had trauma. He had no trauma. So he had no trauma and discernment of spirits wasn't helping the sound foundational Catholic participation in the sacraments wasn't helping. So to me, it's like, okay, we're in a mental health realm. So I found a Catholic psychologist. She tried behavioral methodology with him and it didn't help. Then we went to medication and guess what? The guy is just happy as can be. Why? Because he had a chemical imbalance. So as father was speaking of earlier, you can start casting out demons here or there. That guy had a physiological issue that caused his mind to be out of control. And sure, do I think the devil was probably messing with him? Yeah, but that wasn't the essence of the issue. The essence was chemical imbalance. Any other thoughts on that? And this is why in the healing ministry, yeah, this is why in the healing ministry, we stop and listen to this person very carefully and if they have a doctor and they do have a history of mental illness, we talk to them about that. If they have relational problems, we talk about that. If they have mental problems, intellectual problems or emotional problems, we talk about that because the human person is a very complex network of all these different influences and the diabolical is only one aspect which may be there. So to assign everything to the devil is very unprofessional and not thinking, but it is wrong to rule out the diabolical because that is one of the elements and all of that. It's wonderful to work, for instance, with professional psychotherapists and mental health professionals and physical health professionals who understand these things. A lot of them dismiss it, but when you find the ones who do, it's a great joy to work with them who understand the complexity of the human person and can work with you to discern what is really needed. And when these other things are ruled out and it is a diabolical influence or a spiritual influence, the effects and the power of the church are extraordinary and that's what we should expect. You know, and I have to, just as a testimony, that's how I came for you and I came out of abuse and my mind was out of control emotions out of control for a long time at a pretty severe level and my deliverance came through authentic Catholic spirituality through relationship with God and that happens a lot. I have, we have a number of psychologists, psychiatrists in our programs at the Avala Institute and also in our community in Apostoli V.A. And the more devout they are, the longer they, the more they immerse themselves into authentic Catholic spirituality and life, they come to realize that's the greatest power. So that has to always be at play foundationally for anyone to be free. Then you can deal with, so with that seminary and that's what we dealt with first was what does the spiritual landscape look like? Let's make sure that's all solid. Now, if that isn't solving the problem, then there's some other factors that are extraneous to that that need to be dealt with as Father Vincenzo. The importance also of belonging to the local community is very, very important. Sometimes people will come to see me because they have a problem they want to receive the Lord's healing, but maybe they are not Catholic or maybe they belong to a different Catholic parish and I'll say, well, we can talk, but you need to belong to this parish and they think I'm being territorial and trying to steal sheep from the priest. It's not that at all. It's that, I would say to them, part of your healing is actually coming to mass here with these people who are worshiping together, who are praying together with me and with you. And it's a weekly, daily process which you need to belong to. You can't just stop at the Catholic church and ask for a quick healing like you'd go to McDonald's and get a cheeseburger, okay? This is, it doesn't work that way. This is a holistic ministry, which is part of the spiritual life and part of your daily life and daily routine and belonging to this community here. So if we can, we welcome people into the community to belong and we give them someone to help to mentor them and so forth. But it's difficult to get through to people that that's what it's really all about. Yeah, I agree with you. So I want to just remind folks, Father Dwight Longenecker has written an excellent book called Immortal Combat and I've written one called Spiritual Warfare and the Disturbing of Spirits. And I think it's a difficult and challenging time. I'm pessimistic about the world and the flesh and the devil but I'm not pessimistic about the power of God. I'm very optimistic. Saints always emerge in this time and the darker it is, by the way, even a dim bulb is bright in a dark room. So listen, light it up and get ahold of some of these works. Dig deeper in your faith and I know you'll grow and you'll do well. Marta says, I wholeheartedly recommend Spiritual Warfare and the Disturbing of Spirits. Our prayer group is reading it now. It's powerful. I look forward to Father Longenecker's book. And by the way, Marta, just as an offer, I do what are called drop-ins. So if groups are studying my book, I'll agree to do something like this for your, in your last meeting where you've compiled the questions and I'll do Q and A. So if you're interested in that, Debbie will put the email of our event coordinator down there, Kristen Priola. And we can schedule that for your group. It's a lot of fun. I think the last question, Father, we'll probably have time for is how do you root out the sin of pride? My priest told me to practice the virtue of humility, but I don't know how to do that. Come on, Virginia, just be humble. Yeah, my pride is, my humility is the thing I'm most proud of. No, you know, I define pride in the book as the underlying assumption that I'm right. The underlying assumption beyond all things that I'm right. And if I'm right, you're wrong. Pride is not, shouldn't be mistaken with arrogance, which is a symptom of pride or boasting, which is a symptom of pride or vanity, aren't I great, a symptom of pride? Pride is the deep, much deeper sin and assumption that I am right and everybody else is wrong. So the very essence of correcting pride is to have a penitent heart to be, to repent because at the very foundation of repentance is saying to the Lord, I'm not right completely. I need help, there's a problem. And as soon as we say that, pride begins to evaporate. I would therefore say, if a person actually is saying they have a problem with pride, they're almost halfway there from getting it accomplished because people who are really proud don't know they're proud. They don't think they're proud, okay? Because pride is at the core of pride is self-righteousness. And self-righteousness is what me, I'm not proud, okay? But a person who says, I'm proud, I have a problem with pride, they're on the way to conquering it right there because they're able to say they have that problem. They may be also mistaking pride with vanity, which is just a more shallow symptom of pride or with boasting or putting other people down. Those are all symptoms of pride. But if a person admits that they have a problem with pride, they're already on the right path. You said something earlier, I just wanna echo it because I believe it wholeheartedly. Virginia and all of you who struggle with sin or habitual sin, it is inevitable that if you remain in the sacraments, that you're practicing daily mental prayer, that you're following Jesus, taking up your cross, that means exercising spiritual disciplines. It's inevitable that you will be made more and more whole. To the degree that you draw near to Jesus, you will be healed. To the degree that you draw near to the grace that he gives out of his own person, in and through the priesthood, in and through the sacraments, in and through communal life, as Father mentioned. You will be healed, it's inevitable. Absolutely, I would just add one other thing about the habitual sin. If it's truly a habitual sin, to the extent that we don't have complete our will over it. In other words, if we're coming away from it saying, why did I do that? I didn't wanna do that. This is, something came over me. That means that we're in a form of bondage for whatever reason. Maybe a deep root in our life somewhere that needs to be healed. And God has mercy on that. God looks on us with pity, not with blame. He says, here is a person who is in bondage. Even if there was an element in which we said, yeah, I'm gonna do it anyway. Okay, but if there's an element of habitual sin in which we're in bondage, God wants to heal that and he will be very patient and merciful until the final healing is given. Wonderful, so we're gonna wrap this up. So the two books that we're talking about tonight are Father Dwight Longenecker's Immortal Combat, Confronting the Heart of Darkness and my book, Spiritual Warfare and Discernative Spirits, both published by Sophia Institute Press, one of the best publishers in our time. The entire staff of Sophia Institute Press, and I know this because I have a close connection to them. They're all sold out for the Lord, all deeply committed Catholics and it shows in the kind of the books they're producing. I wanna do a couple of things. One, I'll tell you all that you're gonna get an email. It'll have Father Dwight's, it'll have Father Dwight's information where you can find more about what he's doing, about what he meant, he was very generous in mentioning the work we're doing. We'll give you some of that. So we'll give you some good stuff and an email that you can follow up on what you've learned here and order more books. Please give them away. But what I wanna do as a thank you to Father and really as a representation of what it means to be a good and holy priest in an incredibly difficult and confusing time, I'd like you, Father, just to sit back and relax. I don't even want you to pray with us. I just want you to receive, okay? Because you don't get to do this very often. You're always being drawn upon. I want you to receive, I want everyone here for us to pray a Hail Mary prayer for the Lord to bless him and in our thanksgiving for him and for the good that he does, both in his parish and through his work in the church and helping be a light in a difficult time. So we pray, and then when we're done with that, Father, we will ask something of you, which is that you give us your priestly brought blessing as we conclude in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit for Father Dwight and for all good priests who are striving to be holy and to be a light in the darkness and who are often being assailed, some who are tired and beaten up, give them strength, give them peace, protect their prayer time, help them to always draw ever more deeply to your heart through mental prayer, help them to guard the time they need to rejuvenate because they're asked to give so much with so little often. We pray with these intentions that you would raise up good voices like Father Dwight's that their voices would resound above the noise, that you would bring to repentance those who are in the church who are sowing confusion and discord and that you would silence those who will not repent. We pray this for Father Dwight because he's one whose voice needs to be heard more clearly. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, amen. Father, your priestly blessing, please. The peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and level of Christ and in the peace of the Holy Spirit in the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, amen. God bless you. Thank you for the invitation. It's been great to be with you all tonight. It's been a blast, Father. Thanks for doing this and God bless you and all your future endeavors and I hope to come see you sometime further east. Thank you. God bless you all. God bless you all.