 to go live now, do a little behind the scenes, and then we'll start the show. The live streaming, our friends are watching us out on EWTN Facebook page, so say hello to them. And so hey friends, this is Dan Burke with Divine Intimacy Radio. You're watching Behind the Scenes, Divine Intimacy Radio. We have a very powerful and insightful book that we're gonna talk to you about in just a minute called Overcoming Sinful Thoughts. I know none of you out there have sinful thoughts. So I'm sure you won't be interested. I'm kidding, of course we all do. So a few things before we get started. There's a couple of events I wanna tell you about. Stephanie and I will be in Minnesota at the end of September, into this month. And there's a number of events that we'll be doing there. You can find that at spiritualdirection.com forward-class events. And then Divine Intimacy and Marriage, it's a marriage retreat Friday, February the 11th through Sunday, February the 13th at the shrine of the most blessed sacrament. Very powerful marriage retreat. So if you wanna refresh her for guys, we don't make guys feel dumb. It's not one of those kind of retreats. It's a man's retreat. And a woman's woman's retreat, both. It's both, and yeah. We don't make guys act like women or women act like men, which is usually not the problem. Right, and if you wanna... Yeah, we want a masculine man. Right, right. We're not going to blame you for everything. Look at that, look at that. So anyway, it's a great way to shore up your marriage and strengthen your marriage. No matter how many years you've been married and yeah, so come on out because it'd be a great way, big brownie points, huge brownie points for the guys, if you get seats for this and you make arrangements for the kids to be cared for and you can tell your wife, honey, I think this would be awesome for us and it's a beautiful place. And so anyway, big brownie points. Great, the last one I wanna tell you about is the Abilah Summit in 2022, yeah, next year. And on July 15th, Ave Maria, Florida will be spiritual warfare and discernment of spirits. And that will sell out. We've already sold over half the tickets. Well, more like a third, right? Yeah, like two thirds. So if you have any inkling that you would like to go, I would get on and look at those details now and try to figure it out because it'll be amazing, amazing speakers and so. Father Morrell, can you point your camera down just a little bit? There you go, there we go, all right. Let's go ahead and get the regular show started. In the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit, Lord be with us, bless us, help us to serve your people. On your mark, get set, go. This is Dan Burke with Divine Intimacy Radio, your radio haven of breasts. I didn't say Stephanie Burke. Last week I was alone or last time I was alone. Well, I wasn't with you. So let me start it again. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke. Welcome to Divine Intimacy Radio. Oh, I didn't do it right again. Oh my goodness, we're in trouble. We're in trouble this morning. All right, hold on. Folks, pray, there's been warfare behind this book, all morning long, so help us out. On your mark, get set, go. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke. Welcome to Divine Intimacy Radio, your radio haven of breasts. Your hermitage of the heart. Your monastery of the mind where we lift our heart to the heaven to draw near to Jesus and understand him and draw upon the mystical wisdom of the church, the spiritual traditions of the church to help us face the storm that is life, the challenge that is life and life in our time and this moment is quite challenging. So we're grateful to have a priest who has really done a lot of beautiful work in helping us to face and overcome difficult challenges in particular this book, Overcoming Sinful Thoughts. I know you'll be interested in, but Stephanie's gonna introduce him. So our guest today is Father Thomas Morrow graduated from Saint, and he graduated from Saint Charles Seminary in Philadelphia and was ordained in 1982 for the Archdiocese of Washington DC. He received his doctorate in sacred theology in moral theology from the Pope John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in 1999. He has written several books, including Christian Dating in a Godless World, an Overcoming Sinful Anger, another super important book. His writings can be seen at www.cfalive.com. So welcome, Father Morrow, it's happening. We're very grateful to have you with us this morning. Thank you, great to be here. So Father Morrow, I think the best place to start of course is defining what is a sinful thought and maybe what is not. Maybe an example would help us to understand what it is that you were getting out in this book. Yeah, a sinful thought is a wrong thought. That's more than that. It's the wrong thought that makes a difference in our spiritual journey. To think that America was discovered in 1498 is a wrong thought, but it's not likely to affect your chances of being saved. I think that Alexander the Great never existed as wrong, but it's not likely to hurt your chances to make it to the kingdom. But thinking about there's no hell or that we deserve everything we have or that we need not be concerned about venial sins could very well hamper our spiritual progress. So these are the sorts of sinful thoughts that I outlined in the book. Now out of curiosity, one of my favorite passages in the New Testament is 2 Corinthians 10. So it says, for though we live in the world, we are not carrying on a worldly war. For the weapons of our warfare are not worldly, but have divine power to destroy strongholds. So we're in a war, there are strongholds, what are they? We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. So this book is about, and I'm asking the question, if I could frame it this way, is this book about that battle and the fact that some of the thoughts and ideas we have are destructive to us and we need to replace those with the truth? Is that a fair summary or is there another perspective? Yeah, that's pretty good. That's pretty good. You can be our marketing agent. There we go, all right. What did you, where did you come up with? I mean, in the book, you list out a whole number of, no, I guess what you have experienced probably in your life as sinful thoughts, false thoughts, lies, whatever. Where did you come up? How did you come up with that list? Actually, half of the list was given to me by the publisher. Okay. But the other half, I came up with myself just based on what people seem to say and what people seem to think and what thoughts dragged them down, especially in spiritual direction or confession. There's just a lot of things that people latch on to that hold them back. And so the half that I provided are things that I've heard or that I've seen people live as if they believe them. Yeah, it's fascinating. Stephanie and I do spiritual direction and do a lot of spiritual formation. And it's really quite amazing how often or how common the set of lies, when I was looking at the list in this book and Stephanie could probably point out a few herself that she's heard over and over. One lie as an example about spiritual direction is the priest is too busy. And what's fascinating about that is I hear the exact same thing over and over. And it's almost like the enemy of souls is placing that in their minds. No, that priest isn't gonna help you, he's too busy. But it doesn't matter socioeconomic status, location in the world, that is a common lie that people allow to hinder their approach of a priest who may actually, and I have no priests like this, may actually desire to give them spiritual direction. So it seems to me a lot of these, and I don't know if the part of the list that you came up with are like this, but they just repeat over and over. Is that what you have found or is there another source for you? Yeah, a lot of people do tell me they've had trouble finding a spiritual director, but they're around. And a lot of priests, you know, the most prayerful priests generally will say, yeah, well, I can do that. We can meet once a month or whatever. And, but people tend to be discouraged if they go to one priest and said, well, I can't do it, too many things going on at this point. But they go to another priest and find someone that loves, loved the Eucharist, loved the Blessed Mother, loved the church and likes to pray. Yes, what a novelty. May we all have those qualities. You know, fathers, I'm looking at this list and I can't say that I'm ashamed to admit it because this was prior to what I consider my reversion. But as I'm reading this, I had these thoughts. I had these thoughts. You're gonna share one or two. Heaven sounds boring to me. You know, heaven sounds boring to me was one of them. Since I already committed a mortal sin, I might as well commit some more. Like, honestly, I would challenge anybody to read this list and not find something pre-conversion that they had rolling around in their head. Pre-or post, really. Pre-or post, right? So what did you find? Like, what was the one that really struck you? The one lie that you seem to find over and over again that really had an impact as you were writing the chapter. Well, I think the fact that people say with all the suffering in the world, how can they be a God? That's not something that's embraced by regular Catholics, but it's an argument that people that don't have the faith tend to hang on to. And it's very harmful. And of course, it adds to the suffering of the church because of the world, because suffering is related to sin, as we see by looking at Christ on the cross. And Father, how are thoughts related to feelings and how can that relationship cause us difficulties with respect to managing our thoughts? A thought, I'm sorry, a feeling is something that we can't control. It comes in about a thought is when we embrace that thought and that feeling and let it be accepted in our mind and define us in a certain way. So we have all these feelings and some are good, some are bad. And so we have to discern between the feelings that are gonna enrich us and the feelings that are gonna drag us down. There's some feelings that we have to just say, well, yeah, I should feel angry. I should feel resentful, but I'm not gonna let that define me and I'm not gonna dwell on that. I'm not gonna let that take over. So I'm gonna focus more on positive feelings and gratitude, especially gratitude. People that are grateful that thank God for several things a day, they don't get depressed and then clinical studies on that. So that affects, we do that in our community, part of our nightly examine is, we identify three things we're grateful for and we share that with one another. And it's very powerful because it puts good thoughts in our head, right? Which orient our heart and mind to God. And I think that's the argument you're making if I'm hearing you correctly. You're saying, just like the Holy Spirit said through St. Paul, you can manage the thoughts in your head. You can choose what to dwell on. And it's not always easy because as you say, they are connected to feelings, but we're commanded to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, which means we have to decide which thoughts are destructive and which thoughts are holy. And then when we begin to do that, Father, I think your argument is, and maybe elaborate a little further, I think your argument is when we begin to recognize what the thoughts are, what the lies we may believe, and fight against those, then that affects our feelings and our feelings and emotions get healthier. Am I on the right track or something? Yeah, absolutely, yeah. We have the power to choose what thoughts are gonna define us, what feelings are gonna define us and which ones are not gonna define us. So we have that power and we have to exercise it in order to find peace, in order to find happiness. Yeah, and it seems like often people define their feelings or their sins as though they are their feelings or their sins, right? I'm a sinful person or I'm an angry person and such. And do you find that that plays a role in these lies that roll around in our heads? Yeah, I have a friend who often tells me, I'm a very emotional person. I said, so am I. A lot of people are emotional, but that doesn't mean we have to be controlled by our emotions. The more emotional we are, the more power of the will that we have to determine how we're going to live and what's gonna be foremost in our minds. That's the key is that we have to govern those feelings and emotions with intelligence and a strong will. So the emotions are in a properly ordered soul, if you will, or a holy soul or subservient to or ordered to serve the intellect which is oriented to God in terms of the truth that we should believe or the lies we should reject as you noted in your book. And then you exercise your will and your emotions then follow. Is that am I on time? Absolutely, absolutely, yeah. Yeah, great, great. Exercise your will to allow good thoughts and good feelings to be more dominant. Fantastic. When we get back from the break, I'm gonna ask Father, what is the next most common lie that he hears? He'll tell us maybe even from devout Catholics or committed Catholics will be right back on your mark. So Father, we're on a pseudo break. Everyone can hear us who's live streaming but when we come back from the break, if you might all restate the question but I'm gonna ask you again, what is another really common lie but maybe one that is held by those who are devout or practicing Catholics. So we'll go, we'll jump in now on your markets at go. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke. Welcome back to Divine Intimacy Radio. We're talking with Father Thomas Morrow has written a really, I think insightful book and one that will really help you gain I think self-awareness is huge, right? So when you look at St. Catherine of Siena, a spiritual doctor of the church, St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, all of them speak to this idea of the importance of self-awareness. Till our last breath, we need to always be growing in self-awareness because it's the only way that we can understand how we need to respond to God's grace so that we can get to heaven. And one of the aspects of self-awareness is becoming aware of how we think. Instead, and we're creatures designed by God and in his image, we have this ability to actually think about our thinking which is totally unique. Dogs don't think about their thinking, humans do. So we think about our thinking and part of growing spiritually is becoming aware of thoughts in our head and deciding. Evagrius wrote this book, he was a desert father, wrote a book called Talking Back which is fighting against thoughts the enemy who's constantly placing in their head. St. Teresa of Avila even said that the enemy when somebody's beginning on a spiritual journey places a lot of evil thoughts in their head. So what Father Moro has done in this book with the help of the publisher as well is outlined a good number, there's 29 or so thoughts that are common that are destructive to the person because they have a negative effect on their spiritual journey. And it would, I think it'd be very powerful for most people to really go through this because you're gonna look at one and go as you did Stephanie and think, oh, wow, I can't believe. Yeah, I do have that thought and that's destructive. I actually think it would be incredibly powerful for parents because when they're struggling with their teens or as their young adult children grow up and they're struggling with the world and its effect on them and the messaging that they hear through social media and they're programming, whatever they're watching. A lot of these thoughts as I read through them are things that come to us through the media. Since you feel it, you should follow your feelings. You should do whatever you wanna do. You need to be free and this idea that freedom is doing whatever you wanna do. So I think it would be incredibly helpful to have those conversations. With your kids. So Father, before the break I mentioned I wanted to see ask you about another thought that is really common that is very destructive that you've encountered. What's next on the list for you? Well, I often hear people say, I always commit the same sins. And I usually say, well, so do I. And I have a list of the top three sins that I commit and I look at that every night before retiring and every morning when I get up. And that helps me to be aware of these things that I fall into a lot. And I insist for myself to always mention those if I have fallen into any of those always mention those again and again. I usually go to the same one or two priests all the time and they kind of know me. And so I insist on forcing myself to mention those things and being embarrassed by those sins that I mentioned so often. And but that by the way is a way that I've encouraged other people to overcome their habitual sins, the sins that they commit so often is to write them down. No more than three. I mean, psychologically we can't work on more than three things at a time. And I think that list every night and it could be two, it could be one, but look at that list every night and every morning. So it's foremost in our minds and we know it's something we have to work on that day. Right. So Father, if I know that I always commit the same sins it seems like I'm in this pattern and I keep circling the drain as one of our friends used to say spiritually circling the drains with these same sins. Shouldn't I just, you know, and I'm being facetious here but shouldn't I just give up confessing because, you know, it's obviously not working. I'm going to confession. I'm trying to fight this and it just never changes. Yeah. Well, I give the example in the book of St. Camillus who struggled with fighting and gambling and all kinds of sins for years. And he converted, he went to become a monk somewhere and they accepted him but then he had to leave because he had a wound in his leg and he went back and forth, back and forth between sin and reform. But in the end, he stuck with it and he didn't give up. And that's one of the things that people have to say that no matter what happens, I'm never going to give up on these sins that I have in tendency to commit over and over again. Never, never, never going to give up. And if that's our attitude, we're going to do pretty well. Yeah. And I think we have to remember that, you know, being in of ourselves, we can't do it alone. We need God's grace. So we need to go back to confession, receive that forgiveness, but also the strength of the sacrament that will help us fight that sin in the future. So we keep going back to the Lord begging for his mercy and his help to overcome this and to give us the graces that we need to be holy. So, you know, it's just so important. Never, ever, ever give up. You know, another lie or sinful thought that is corresponds to that one that I've heard a lot is, and this is chapter 28, is I'm just aiming for purgatory. And now we tell people, well, then you've got a hell of a backup plan and I'm not interested in that. But tell us a bit about this lie or this sinful thought and your experience. Yeah, the devil loves to have people think that way. And, but that's totally opposite to the most important passage in all of scripture. When they asked our Lord, Luke 10, 27, what must I do to be saved? To be saved, he said, you must love God with all your heart, soul and mind and love your neighbor as yourself. So those are important words and they typify the whole of the gospel that we've got to give everything to the Lord. And so we are not preparing for, well, first of all, anybody who knows what purgatory is like, who would not want to go there. Yeah, they've never studied it if they're, yeah. It's extremely painful. St. Augustine said that suffering there is worse than anything we can suffer on this earth. Thomas Aquinas said the same thing and people have appeared to the saints from purgatory. He said, please pray for me. Get me out of here. This is very, very painful. So anybody who really wants to go through that needs to take another look at what purgatory is really like. But the whole point of the gospel is that God is so holy and we're gonna be in a marriage with God, as it says in Isaiah 62. That if you're in a marriage with someone and one person is holy and the other is not, it's not gonna work. You gotta become holy to be worthy of that marriage. And that means you're striving for the kingdom, you're striving for the holiness that our Lord said we must have. It says in Leviticus 19, be holy for I the Lord your God am holy. And Peter quotes that in his letter. And it also says you must be made perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. So when you start sewing all these quotes together, you realize that God is asking a lot of us, but he's also gonna help us. He's willing to help us get through all that as Stephanie was saying, that life of prayer, sacramental life, and especially our participation in the holy mass, these are things that give us power to do what God has called us to do. In fact, in Augustine said, the law was given that we might see grace, grace was given that we might keep the law. It's so very important for us to remember and nurture in our hearts. So Father, one that I hear a lot and I think it plagues mothers in particular is, especially if they've got wayward children, you've got the prodigal children that have left the faith for one reason or another, that God doesn't hear my prayers. I've been praying this same prayer. I've been begging for the conversion of my child for years and years and years. And I think there's this nagging doubt, this nagging whisper of the enemy that says, God hasn't really, he doesn't listen to your prayers. You should just give up. What do you say to that? Yeah, well, God does hear our prayers, but he doesn't always say yes. But St. Augustine's mother, St. Monica, she prayed for him for 14 years before he converted. I have a friend who was a schoolteacher, very developed woman. She was in charge of our adoration list of people making it to adoration every day. And she prayed for her father for 25 years and he converted on his deathbed. So we should just trust that God knows what he's doing, that he's gonna answer our prayers in the right way. And, but God is not gonna force himself on anybody. So, but he does make things easier if we say certain prayers. In fact, the Divine Mercy Prayer, well, Blood and Water of West Forth in the heart of Jesus as a final mercy for us. It's kind of an amazing offer of mercy because our Lord told St. Maria Faustina that if you pray that soul for a sinner, they'll be given the grace of conversion. Now they still have to accept the grace because nobody gets saved without doing something, but it'll be easy for them to accept that grace if we pray that prayer for them. So I pray that prayer for my sinner friends every day, several times. Father, I think we have time for one more and that's chapter 27, a sinful thought. I pray a little every day and attend Sunday Mass and that's enough, talk to us about that. That's pretty much the same as the one that says, I'm trying for purgatory. God asks a lot of us and we got to read the scriptures with an open mind and be ready to realize that he's asked some very powerful things of us and he's given the grace, giving us the grace to do what we need to do. So getting to Sunday Mass is important. Praying a little bit every night, some people just pray in our Father, Hail Mary, glory be every night. And I said to one guy, I said, how long you been doing that? Have you been doing that since third grade? He said, yeah, I have. I said, I bet you're not doing the same math you did in the third grade or the same reading that you did in the third grade. He said, no. I said, well, you got to get somewhere with God and God wants a lot. He gives a lot, but he asks a lot. And he asks so much that we'll be happy to be a holy person and lift it up. I was just thinking recently about Aristotle, people say, well, if I lived, there were no God, I could do what I want. But in fact, Aristotle who wasn't a Christian for sure, he said, the virtuous life is the happy life. So we live, we virtually, we're gonna be happy. And of course that is the goal of every person on earth is to be happy and to be happy forever. Oh, with that wonderful thought of virtuous life as a happy life, we wanna thank Father Moro for writing overcoming simple thoughts, how to realign your thinking and defeat harmful ideas from Sophia Press. So 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, amen. Amen, amen. Thank you again, Father, for being with us.