 Hey friends, this is Dan and Stephanie Burke. You're watching behind the scenes divine intimacy radio really excited about the guest today Eric Sammons Jesse tree You don't know what that means you got to hang out because you're missing it You're missing something big if you don't know what Jesse tree is Before we though jump into the show We have filled our pilgrimage for Spain God be praised you can get on the waiting list every year or so a couple people drop off our pilgrimages are different because They're not spiritual vacations we actually teach and form and we go slow and we pray a lot and every in the end as a result You know in in coupled with the incredible places we go in the saints that we see in touch and walk with as a result Every single pilgrimage has many many conversions. Yeah, it's a beautiful encounter. It's a beautiful encounter So you can either get on the waiting list for Spain 2023 or That we're already filling the pilgrimage to the holy land in 2024 We only take 50 people because we like to get to know you we want to make sure people need spiritual direction They get it. We always have a holy priest with us as well to help with all that so all of our events Divine intimacy and marriage retreat in 2023 Avila summit 2024 all these things going on Or the 2024 pilgrimage spiritual direction comm forward slash events now just to clarify The holy land pilgrimage is not up yet. Well, it's listed on here. It might be oh But if it isn't just you know, just subscribe and check back or whatever keep checking because it's under my understanding It's not actually posted yet, but we have already we still already have 12 people signed up, right? Six couples out of the last marriage retreat, right? That's what happens. Like all these couples like we Very cool. All right, let's go ahead and jump to the show. Mr. Burke. You ready and your markets that go this Dan Stephanie Burke Welcome to divine intimacy radio your radio haven of rest your hermitage of the heart your monastery of the mind where we lift our hearts and minds the wisdom of the saints to The traditions of all time that help lead us to God and today We have an awesome guest who has who takes part in a ministry. That's very close to my heart and and has my support As well. He's written a very cool book and For to help us get holier this christ christmas especially this advent season, especially when we have little ones Running around or yeah, or no little or big ones. I don't know big ones that want to be holy little ones that want to be holy We're good with all of them. Okay. We want to welcome mr. Eric Sammons. He is the editor-in-chief of crisis magazine He is the author of eight books including the most recent the jesse tree and advent devotion Co-written with his wife susanne. Welcome Eric. Hey, thanks so much for having me guys Well, it's great to have you with us. I uh, so we have our own shopping cart that's that uh on spiritualdirection.com and I uh, we we we talked to a lot of great authors on this show. It's not all we do but we we try to Expose materials that we think are super helpful to folks and this one this one's going to go in a new section Called seasonal, you know, that's my recommendations because I think it's a fantastic book Um, the thing I love about it and before we jump into what it is like I won't my first question I'll let you get ready for it, but I know you you're already ready. What is the jesse tree? But before that Um, what I love about it is I'm Jewish and and I'm of course catholic, but I'm not not Jewish because I'm catholic I'm a Hebrew catholic And what I love about the jesse tree and and this devotion Is that it helps us understand the It it brings it brings to light the entire our entire salvation history Not just Pentecost and beyond does that make sense? Yes, absolutely. It really the whole point of it is to kind of give the whole Scheme of salvation history in a nutshell and let us kind of see where we fit in on that Where jesus fits in on that whole scheme of salvation history as well So what the heck is a jesse tree? So the jesse tree it's a devotion that It dates back to at least the middle ages We know there are stained glass windows and paintings from the middle ages of the jesse tree And it takes its name from the father of king david jesse And from a passage in isaia where he talks about a shoot will come out of the root of jesse And of course a lot of people at the time that isaia maya said that would have maybe been thinking of david But of course, we know it mostly refers to our lord jesus christ And and so the idea here is with the jesse tree is we look at the genealogy so to speak the family tree of jesus christ And we do this with a purpose we do this with the purpose of understanding Trying more like contemplating How god prepared the world for the coming of the christ child I mean that's really the story of the old testament after genesis 3 when everything Went awfully for for humankind Then it was all about the rest of the new test I'm sorry the old testament is about how did god get the world ready to save it And so what the jesse tree does it gives us a very easy to use devotion for all ages That lets us to contemplate that mystery of what god did to prepare and what better time to do that Than advent which is when we're supposed to be preparing for the coming of christ. Amen. Yeah, you know, what's fascinating, you know Dan's a convert. So he's looking at it through his jewish background and kind of seeing this with new eyes I I have just recently in the last few years and as in my work as a catholic school principal years ago had discovered the jesse tree And you know, I think it's such a beautiful treasure that sometimes can be hidden especially if We're sunday going catholics Maybe we do an occasional rosary and maybe we go to confession on occasion and that's it We have to dive so the the catholic faith has so many riches in it There are so many devotions so many things that if we dive in Our faith breaks wide open and it's exquisite and I just um I just want to say that for those that are out there and they're going wait I've been a catholic my whole life and I've never heard of the jesse tree Well, we we need to dive into our faith because there's just so much there And so I just applaud you for bringing this to the surface so that families can dive into this Because it's just such a a beautiful thing So, you know considering that who's the book written for? It really is written for primarily families. I mean really any any type of family Can do as well. I mean even a single person But I will say the the book was developed out of our personal experience So I grew up Protestant pretty non liturgical And I had never heard of the jesse tree and I know a lot of cradle catholics haven't heard of it either But my wife her mother Practiced it in her family her mom and dad did it and so when we got married 27 years ago our first advent my wife said, okay, we're going to do jesse tree I'm like, what's that? I had never heard of it And so her her sister had got her some ornaments because we'll talk about that in a minute But includes ornaments and we we found this book that was written in like I think the 1970s and It shows it was kind of flaky. It wasn't that great, but at least gave us the structure of what it was So we did the jesse tree that first year And then we've been doing it every year since and I have seven kids ages 25 down to seven And so we've had a lot of different Scenarios each year with how the how old the kids are the the range of age and stuff like that So we practice the jesse tree every year though And basically the book came out of that was that okay, you can do this We did this when we were a young couple didn't have kids yet We didn't we did this when we only had we had three kids under five We did this when we had an 18 year old and a newborn and and six in between or five in between So all these different configurations we did the jesse tree and that's how we tried to write the book was like, okay Whatever situation you're in There's a way you can use this book that you can really dive into advent more fruitfully Beautiful. I was gonna ask you, you know To share about your family. So you were you started this in 1995. Did I remember right? Yes, that's correct So you've you've been practicing all these years and and I imagine You've improved a lot from that first book. It's funny. You said the book was written in the 70s I'm thinking that's when they were trashing all the tradition. I don't know how it helps something published in the 70s You know appeared in your hands But what have you improved on have you looked at any more ancient sources of this devotion to to create this book It really did evolve over the years because the first year we did it I it was just my wife and I we kind of read through the book and and It was very 70-ish. I mean it just had these weird like Reflections that had to do with like mother earth and just some crazy stuff And so we realized, okay This isn't really going to cut it and so when our obviously when our kids came then we're like We obviously can't do it with our young kids. We can't say this So we just started developing each year and really every year I would just what I would do is I would do the bible reading From the book and then I would just I kind of jokingly say I just freestyle the reflection And then and then my wife would say something and we each year we'd feel like oh we got a little bit more out of this We we found we discovered something new because obviously when you read the sacred scriptures Every time you read it you can get something new out of it And so we started to write down some notes and and and develop what we did each year So we wouldn't forget from the year before and then probably about 10 or 15 years ago Some of our friends found out about what we were doing. They're like, hey, could we we'd love to do that too So we just wrote up a word document printed out gave it to some of our friends and told them. Hey, you know Here's what we're doing And then we realized oh we could do this better and better and eventually we're like this really This is something a lot of people could really use and so that's how the book eventually was written So unlike most of my books I've written I have an idea I pitched it to a publisher then I write it This was like literally 27 years into making that because every year we had something new and I just find I just get excited every year doing it because I know even though Like we're literally going to use our own book this year with our kids But like my kids know that something will stick out at me on a scripture reading one night And I'll just start talking about that instead And in fact my kids they kind of laugh when they see the book now because like I'm really your dad thought of that When mom mom said that or something like that. So it really is just a labor of love over the years I really love that it is a labor of love and to know that it's it's been birthed out of the use Year after year of your family that makes it incredibly personal and incredibly rich. I would think because Um, it's it's out of that beautiful tradition with your family It's literally getting birthed out of the scriptures and in the domestic church of your home And how beautiful that is so I'm I'm excited to dive into it So how let's get down to some practicals for those moms out there that are going Okay, I got to put up the tree. I got to do all this stuff I got to worry about who's coming over and planning meals How do we practically use this book? When do we start it? What do we need to do so? You know all that stuff Right. So we tried to make this as easy as possible because we know some families The real crafty they can do a whole bunch. They got time and other families They're just trying to get by each day and we get that and so a couple things first of all There's really three things you need for the jesse tree devotion. You need the book Obviously you need ornaments and I'll explain that in a second You also need a tree and it doesn't have to be your christmas tree A lot of people they just basically what they do is they might get one of these Artificial small trees put it on their table doesn't need to be a large tree And that's their jesse tree and you can use it each year. That's why I said artificial You could just use the same one every year or you know, we used a felt banner. Yes, I will admit it publicly We use the felt banner with hooks We're if he came joking our family, but you know, that's okay I'll own it. I guess that's a good good use of a felt banner. There's never been one except for that one Yeah, right When later in life we I would start when my kids got older and I kind of make fun of felt banners in front of them They'd say but dad, what about the jesse tree? I'm like, oh shut up So you just make do but the ornaments that's kind of the key And just so you know, uh, people know that we sell the sofia institute.com is written by the book You can also buy ornaments pre-made ornaments. They're very nice high quality will last basically your whole lifetime They have the exact same symbols as in the book. So and it come with a set With yeah, you can get both you can get it as a set You can buy the book separately you can buy the ornament separately or you can buy it as a set Both the book and the ornaments at sofia institute.com And so what what the ornament is each day you have a symbol So for example for know, it might be an arc For jacob might be a ladder some some symbol for that day and that's an ornament And so you have these now you can make the ornaments too If you want to we actually have the symbols in the back of the book as well That you could even cut out if you wanted to and make the make your own however you want to do that So basically though you start on the first day of advent first Sunday of advent And then you you put you actually don't put an ornament up the first day But then you put an ornament up every day and one of the things that's very confusing I'm actually proud of this because I thought of this idea Myself was that Advent's a different length every year this year. It happens to be the longest possible because christmas is on a sunday But some next year christmas will be on monday. It's the shortest possible time for advent So there's a variance in how many days so the number of ornaments matches a full advent So what do you do when there's less than a full advent? What you can do is you double up Exactly. Yeah, you're showing the chart there exactly So you double up certain days and we kind of and we suggest what days to double up the ornaments so that it all works out Because the last week is special We want to make sure you do that in a special way and talk about that later But so the the point of it though is you get the book You get the ornaments and you get a tree you have those three things You start the first Sunday of advent and it's a daily reflection and it takes five to 15 minutes This is something you have to worry about taking forever. Let's go to the break when we get back I want you to think of a family story that you was really mean meaningful to you as you were developing all this This is divine intimacy radio. We're with eric sammons the jesse tree. We'll be right back so we got a We got a we got a fit to the next segment at like 12 12 15 Is that right? No, normally it's 12 and a half right So you went 45 over So give me the number then so 11 45 Okay, so somewhere 11 45 to 12. Okay, okay 12 you think okay, that's fine There's one edit. I know already Okay, uh friends. Hey friends. I hope you're enjoying the show with eric Before we jump back in I want to tell you about a course that you can't miss Introduction to st. Elizabeth of the trinity. 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This course will be a great opportunity for you avala dash institute.org Avila a v i l a dash institute dot org now The other thing I want to tell you is that If you are spiritually hungry And you want to enter into the largest spiritual candy store in the known universe Make sure you're you're you're subscribed to spiritualdirection.com because That's the funnel through which all of our events and uh, we have thousands of articles videos like All of our shows like today end up uh, eric will end up out on spiritualdirection.com as well So much rich content. Yeah, it's amazing rich. And in fact, mr. Producer If you could work with maggie to make sure this one gets up really fast In all of our channels including email and then we should put it ahead of the line From last shows for uh, ewtn radio. So we make sure we get it as easy early as we can up there. I'd appreciate that All right friends On our live stream do me a favor for our live streamers Please like and share this as well. Um, it's also It's recording at the same time for facebook. I mean for youtube, right jordan Yeah, so you can find it out on youtube share it like crazy because people need to know about This book and also because uh, we've lost so many beautiful traditions because of the cultural and and ecclesial kind of hurricane of of the Of the 60s and 70s And what eric, you know, eric's dedicated his life really I don't know if he'd describe it this way to helping us to recover those things But this book is a beautiful and I would say a very positive purely constructive addition to our time It's I think the best that I see and appreciate out of the traditionalist movement Is this kind of active this kind of Work where we serve the church To help them recover the glory and the beauty rather than complaining about You know folks who took it away. So really grateful for eric To put this together. So let's jump back into the show On your market set go this on your market set go this dan and stephanie burk. Welcome back to divine intimacy radio My wife's laughing at me Back to eric sammons the book the jesse tree If you don't get this book and use it this advent you are totally going to hell. That's a joke But I know it'll help you get to heaven My wife's thinking what did you drink for the show? Nothing actually, but um, I know it'll help you get to heaven So eric before the break I posed a question to you which was Can you give us a story? about You know, uh, one of those Advant seasons where one of your kids may be lit up and went, uh, I get it Or you just had a lot of fun with the family Tell us about your encounter with the the beautiful truth of god and in the history of our salvation Well, I could tell a story about the fights my kids have on who gets to put the ornament on No, no eric eric eric this we're we're trying to family you have a perfect family You have no issues. You know, you're a firm believer in the church Or you could ask my kids for the reality It is actually a fun thing that each year what we do is the the younger kids They they take turns who gets to put the ornament on the tree each day And the funny things they've even got to point where they've calculated. They know Based on how many kids will be doing that because we Four of our kids are not out of the house. So it changes, you know over the years They figure okay, whoever puts it up first now who will be the one who puts up the last one That's how they they figure out that by the by the uh in the first day or so Which is always funny because that's the one that's the that's the one everybody wants is who puts it up on christmas eve But the story though that I I think of the most is that one year my son who's now off in college And this is when he was about eight or nine years old We're doing jesse tree mate was afterwards something around that time and all of a sudden he just came to me He said dad The old testament's like one big advent I'm like, okay, there we go It's all worth it. It's all worth it because he gets it. He got I mean at an eight-year-old level In fact the way he said I'd never even thought of it like that myself And here he is at eight and he realizes, okay, that's right. The old testament is this big preparation It's god's way of getting the world ready for the coming of the christ Getting ready to save us. I like to make the joke You see on the internet that meme of the conspiracy theory guy the crazy guy looking like this and he's got all these Like connections behind them the the the board and and all that and I like to think that The old testament really is kind of showing god's conspiracy theory his conspiracy to save us That all these things tie together and that's what I love actually about the jesse tree and studying this stuff Is that you you get these new connections every year some new connection comes up where you realize oh, yeah, okay Like one year I remember we were studying the patriarch joseph And we were thinking we were talking about how that points to jesus But then all of a sudden we realized it also points to joseph the foster father of jesus That it went to egypt stuff like that. And so it's like one doesn't obliviate the other one doesn't trump the other It's like they're all right there and in god's Wonderful providence he connects all these things together And so when my son was able to see that that's what the old testament's about is preparing us for jesus I was like, okay at least some some of my work here has has been fruitful. That's awesome You know when you said your son said it's like the whole of the old testament is the advent You know as a as a jew I have a slightly different lens that I look through You know at the church and it's a good one, you know Um, but the most powerful like visceral for me Is this period because there was a time when You know This this is hard to talk about but there was a time when I was into spare There was a time when I needed the messiah, you know There was a time and I didn't even know who he was right and I didn't know You know how I was going to get free from the junk In in my own soul in my own heart, but I knew I was I needed a savior and I cried out to him but That that drama of salvation the church is so brilliant, right The drama of salvation god blesses us with to play it out every year to remind us, you know There was a time when you were in darkness There was a time when you didn't have the fullness fullness of revelation There was a time when you didn't see clearly and god be praised all you have to do is constantly draw near to him and avail yourself of the great gifts of the church and sacraments and and tradition And what he does is he creates this ache in your heart and john of the cross talks about this That can only be fulfilled by him But that that ache is I don't know rekindled for me Every advent and I start going I need jesus. I want jesus to come. I want him to come fully I want him to come finally, you know, I want him. I want him more in my heart I want him more in my life more and more in the church purify us lord heal us Restore us, you know And so this kind of devotion like when I saw your book come out. I'm thinking there is no way we're not Getting him on I almost wish we had a time to do four shows on it on it But I know you got something on your mind below Well, it's just beautiful the way that you were describing that because the connection that I was making and talking and thinking about this idea of advent or the the old testament being like a long Advent, you know Is a beautiful idea and I was also making the connection that every every Difficulty every storyline everything that goes on into in our own lives Is bringing us also it's like a long advent Until we encounter the lord till we receive him in his fullness It's these trials and these missteps and these difficulties and the lord is always working everything for good To bring us to him. He's just calling us all so we have this this huge story Of salvation history We have the macro story and then we have the the micro stories in each one of our individual lives That if we sat down and actually wrote it out, we'd see how god's been at work From the very beginning to draw us to himself. So this is really beautiful So yeah, have you seen eric any of your kid? I mean, I think the one thing I longed for I think it's harder to it's easier to come from where we came from Than it is for our kids. Uh, it's easier for us to get it. I don't know about you I don't I don't I can't recall if we I've ever talked to you about your story, but You know, I came out of a lot of darkness Uh came to christ, you know in a baptist church But really, uh was blessed with struggle, you know, and then I came to the fullness of the church and and received so much healing and grace But I think for for families where their kids grow up in the context of it It's hard for them because they don't have the contrast. They're not blessed with You know that sort of light and darkness which helps you to see with greater clarity Does this have you seen this devotion help any of your kids? Light up beyond that one story where they're kind of catching a deeper glimpse of of Of what it means to be in relationship with god I think so, I mean, I really obviously there's there's the mystery of faith in each person that we can't really get into somebody else's But I I think I see it outwardly sometimes I think what the The biggest takeaway I have for how it's helped my family Is that we have been able Uh better some years and other years to really escape from the secular christmas season craziness That our family we identify advent with the jesse tree. We identify that time kind Between thanksgiving and christmas not as okay. Let's go crazy With shopping and with all the christmas decorations, and I'm not a fundamentalist about when you put the tree up You know, I know some people wait till christmas eve some people do it earlier We kind of do it after sometime at your saint next day. I everybody does their own thing But we definitely we really try to make advent advent and I've seen my kids do appreciate that Like they know what advent is because they know that means the jesse tree They know that means okay. We're we're trying to be quiet And that's a big part of advent is we need to be quiet And so we get this few at least a few minutes every evening where we're like, okay Let's contemplate on on these mysteries of the sacred scriptures. And so I feel like that's something That I hope and pray Really sticks with them Throughout their lives and it's exciting now like my one of my daughters is getting married next year And uh, we already plan on making sure she gets a copy of the jesse tree and the ornaments If she's watching this, I hope she doesn't it might have been a christmas present anyway, oh But the idea is like the idea that she will be doing this and My mother-in-law is the one who really gave the the devotion handed it on to my wife And then to our family now my kids and then hopefully one day my kids kids And I think there's something beautiful and catholic about that. That's how tradition is handed on after all Is this just that the the My mother-in-law had this great devotion to it She handed it on to her daughter who handed on to me and to her kids and now my kids will be handing on to theirs And so my hope and prayer is that this is a generational thing that not just my kids Really appreciate them, but now their kids Will and and it just goes on and that's what the whole point of catholic tradition is is that we that this is How things are handed on so I I really am appreciative that of my mother-in-law I mean, that's who we dedicated the book to because if not for her devotion to it I might not even have known about it. And so it makes me thankful For how these things are handed on Yeah, I really I really want to encourage everybody in this because you know If if we can't say that well, I've been doing this for generations or it's been passed down to us We can start now We can start now to exit Um the cultural lie that you know Christmas is about an excess of food alcohol spending and decorations, right? Where we all end up exhausted, you know on the other side and into the darkness of winter and then it just turns into depression Um, so I really love uh, I love this and I really would encourage folks to spread it in their families Make it a gift now because if you can if you can get it now and start spreading it and say hey You know, I just really love you and I discover this and I want to share this gift with you and Spread it in your family spread it in your communities Make sure your pastor knows about it at church and all of that Because I think we need to reignite this idea that this understanding of this beautiful Advent of the of how the god of the universe has been conspiring since the very beginning to bring us salvation and Draw us back to himself. It's just such a merciful God, you know, uh, if you want to get the book in the in the uh, the ornaments As always all good things can be found at EWTN's religious catalog Where two amazing things happen if you order the book and the and the uh ornaments They will give them to you. That's one good thing. The second thing is you help the ministry of EWTN Uh, so if you institute, uh press is doing great work. You can also get the book And a lot of things I personally recommend or we personally recommend at spiritualdirection.com forward slash shop Thank you, eric sammons for your good work and helping us recover The beautiful traditions of the church your work at uh folks can find you out at uh editor you're the editor-in-chief of crisis magazine And uh, we're grateful to have you have you with us today. It's been great to be here I I love promoting this and I hope everybody has a blessed advent Absolutely 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