 Hey friends, you're watching behind the scenes Divine Intimacy Radio, Dan, Stephanie Burke on EWTN radio all over the known universe. I don't know, does the radio reach outside of Earth? Yes, radio waves. Did they? Did you not take science? There's probably Martians converting. Did you skip science, Dan Burke? Did I skip science? Yes. I don't know. I have comments. I wouldn't be good because we're being recorded right now. Okay. About science. Yeah. But anyway, so in a minute, we have a great guest, Susan Sammons, stations across the cross in slow motion. She's going to show you, she's going to tell you how you can take the stations of the cross devotion for Lent and do it so slow that you do it every night, every day, all day, all night, until the end of Lent as a really deeply penitential thing. No people bringing you food, drink. No, that's not what's about, is it? No. I have no words for what you just said. You have no words. Okay, so that was a lot. That was like a pitiful dad joke, maybe? I don't know. I don't know. Okay. I should write a book on that. Anyway, no, it's nothing like that, but it's an amazing book that I endorsed wholeheartedly and I'm excited to tell you about stations at the cross in slow motion. We get to, Susan, I want to tell you about something coming up that you got to move on right now if you hear about it. And that is, we have our Divine Intimacy and Marriage Retreat, which is February 9th, 10th and 11th of 2024. And if there are any guys out there who have a major points deficit in your marital relationship, guys know what I'm talking about. There's a secret thing about points and I'm just, I'm pitching to you a slow, slow ball because if you buy this for your wife and you go to this retreat, she will be very happy. But that's not because it's a girly retreat. It's a retreat that's designed both for women and men, but we don't ask men to act like women, which is really common in these kinds of retreats. We let men act like men and we talk to men like men and women like women. And you know what else is important because I heard somebody ask about this. So we don't make you sit in circular tables and share your feelings and share your feelings with other couples and then sing kumbaya and then hug. And then feel really uncomfortable and awkward. That is not what this is about. It's a beautiful, deep, very extraordinarily efficacious and transformative marriage retreat. It's like nothing else that you've experienced. We didn't attend any other marriage retreats when we wrote it. This is really something out of the heart of who we are, our marriage, our prayer, what God's done in us. In our brokenness. In our brokenness and what He's done in us and what that looks like. And it's based on Catholic, what, mystical tradition and some other sources that if you're on the traditional and in the spectrum, you'll really like it. And if you're not, you'll really like it. But anyway, oh, Suzanne, sorry. Thank you. Anyway, our notes on our guests were wrong. So don't miss this. Don't miss the Divine Intimacy and Marriage Retreat. Go to spiritualdirection.com for events. And you can sign up. We got a few seat slots. It's also at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament. Annoying to the Grand. It is where Mother Angelica was laid to rest. Yeah. The other thing, just to make it super simple on the guys out there, they can sign up, print it off, print off the confirmation sheet, wrap it in a red ribbon. Go get a dozen red roses. You are done. You're like, you're killing it for Valentine's Day. Listen, it's just like... You don't need a card or anything. No, it'll be like the best thing you've ever done. Right. All right. And it has a lasting effect. So last thing I'll say about this retreat, it's for the whole spectrum. If your marriage is struggling, we've had people testify at the events that they were going to leave their spouses with their last ditch. And they decided during the event not to. And then on the other end of the spectrum, we had one man say to his wife, I never knew there were so many more ways that I could love you. And that was a beautiful sentiment in both. Yeah. And engaged, married a short time. Yeah. A long time. That's right. We've had... 80-year-olds to 19-year-olds. Right. Yeah. It's really cool. It's incredible. And for those who can't make it in February? For those who can't make it in February, we do a couple a year. Yeah. And I do know that we have one coming up in Rhode Island. And Trinidad. We're going to do one in Trinidad, Tobago, which I'm really excited. And Brismark, North Dakota. Bismarck. Bismarck. Wow. There's no R in that. Okay, Bismarck. I mean, until the end at the arc. Yeah. Bismarck, North Dakota at some point. So keep your eyes out for that because those are coming. We should sign up for the emails. You'll get it. And if you sign up for the email on spiritualdirection.com, you'll get all the opportunities for all the good stuff. And so, well, let's get the show started. Let's bring on Suzanne. I called you, Susan, earlier. I'm sorry. That's quite all right. It happens all the time. Strange spelling of lightning. That's all right. Very good. So let's go ahead and get started. On your mark, get set, go. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke. Welcome to Divine Intimacy Radio. You're a radio haven of rest. You're hermitage of the heart. You're monastery of the mind where we lift our hearts and minds to heaven. To draw on the wisdom of the saints to help us navigate the tumult of this life. And today we have a navigator extraordinaire. She's becoming a saint. I don't know if she's the saint yet. But her name is Suzanne Sammons and Stephanie's going to introduce her. But she's going to help us navigate lint better this year. So, so who's this lady again? This beautiful woman, Suzanne Sammons is a mother of seven children, count them, and young adults and the author of the Jesse Tree and Advent Devotion, which, which our listeners might remember from last year. Yeah. Around the advent time we did. Was it last year? Yeah, I think we did last year. I think it was last year or the year before. Anyway, we recommend a beautiful, beautiful book. So she is the editor of several Catholic publications and has published numerous articles in Catholic outlets on topics including child rearing and education, the dignity of the unborn holistic health and Catholic spirituality. So welcome Suzanne. It's so great to have you with us. Thank you very much. Very good to be here. It's great to have you back. Wonderful book. We were talking before on the break that when it came across my desk, I didn't have any time to write an endorsement, but I liked it so much. I went ahead and did that and I wrecked two shows. I was on back to back because I got lost and trying to figure out, okay, this is exactly what I want to say. But I, you know, your work, the work both you and Eric do is really important and great, you know, for the church. You're becoming one of those authors that I tell people, you know, whatever they write, you should read this work, Stations of the Cross in Slow Motion is a great idea in terms of helping families with small children up. But I don't, I think this is not a bad way for just anyone to dig a little deeper and let because usually Fridays is when we go to stations and I always find myself feeling cheated. Now we have stations across here at the retreat center. So not so much anymore, but I always find myself going, I didn't spend enough time in this devotion. And it's one of my favorites. I've been praying it since before I was Catholic. So I love the stations of the cross. But what, what brought the idea of, you know, taking the 14 stations, building devotions around it and then stretching across the whole of land. And I want to correct one thing. It's not just for families with young children. Did I, did I say, I think I thought I said it was for everybody. No, you said it was for families of young children. And so it's for everybody. The design. Yeah, the design. I mean, this is not, this isn't shallow water. No, it's not. It's not crayons and stuff. Right. Right. Okay. Well, thank you so much. Thanks for that, that description. And you work well under pressure because your, your recommendation was fantastic. Okay. And I really felt that you understood the book well. Praise. And to, to answer kind of how it came to be the Jesse tree book that you also mentioned, it was really well received. And you've, I'm sure you know, the Jesse tree devotion has undergone sort of a resurgence, more and more popular. People love doing the Jesse tree during advent. And one of the things I've talked about with other moms for years, and then people started reaching out to me and saying is I wish there was something like the Jesse tree for Lent. We love the Jesse tree because it's a daily thing. It really keeps us focused on advent day after day in our home. And what can we do that's, that's similar for Lent. So I looked around and anyone can look around online at what's out there. People have created things many times it's a scripture passage for every day of Lent. But one thing that I was thinking about was Lent is a lot longer than advent. And so what we love about the Jesse tree, I think, for people that don't know, it follows salvation history through the family tree of our Lord. And one thing that people love, I believe is that you're walking day by day towards something, all of the, the devotions you do each day, they all hang together because they start with Adam and Eve, we end with the birth of our Lord. And so to create something that hangs together in that way for this longer period where 40, 46 days of Lent was a little more challenging. So the idea of the Stations of the Cross being sort of the matrix for the book came from first the fact that it's the oldest, one of the oldest devotions in the church. It's probably, I would say the best loved devotion for Lent. There's nothing above the Stations. And then third, what you mentioned that it's a fairly short devotion and there's a lot of good things about that. We can pray it during a holy hour and we still have time to pray a rosary. We still have time to just sit with the Lord when we pray it in procession with our parish. This is not a big commitment. So that's good. But sometimes we find ourselves going through the Stations and, you know, they only, each station takes what, a couple minutes. Yeah. And we can kind of start out and we're focused and then all of a sudden, oh wait, we're on the sixth station. I missed the last two. I was distracted. Or even that fourth station where our Lord meets our mother, his mother, that really spoke to me. And so I'm still thinking about that. But actually now we're on the seventh station. So we want to be able to go deeper on these events on the way of the Cross. And so that's what I was hoping to provide. You know, one of the things I like about this, you use three different sources, if I remember right, for the Stations. Liguri, who's my favorite, Francis of Assisi and then Jose Maria Skriva. The thing I love about Liguri and Assisi both is they bring the reality of the suffering of Jesus home to our own. They connect it with our own, our participation in his suffering. And you know, and I think that's what's missing. What usually that's extracted in modern, you know, treatments of the Stations of the Cross. Whenever I see a new booklet from a new author, I'm always suspicious. You open it up. And of course, what you see is missing is the whole reality that, you know, the reason he's going to the Cross is because of my sin. And so I love those reflections. I think they're super powerful. So I'm grateful you kept that sentiment in the book. But then you also tapped into the Church Fathers for some of the way, like Chrysostom, origin, you know, some of the ways that we can think about this particular station, that sort of thing. How did you decide? I mean, you've had to have gone through mountains of material to pick out those quotes. How long did that take you to do that? It did take some time. But what happened in the process of writing the book, and I think this happens to a lot of authors. I was so excited that the idea was accepted. I was really grateful to Sophia and Stupress for being willing to publish the book based on my idea. And then after about a week of that high, I was hit with this, oh my goodness, what a responsibility. Who do I think I am to write about the passion? This is crazy. What was I thinking? So I kind of slowed down and thought, I don't, the thing is I don't want to share myself or my random thoughts so much as what is the Church's treasury? What is in the Church's treasury about these events? And so, yes, just the basis being St. Alphons, St. Francis. St. Jose Maria, I love his stations as well because they're modern, but they're from a saint. It's just a different perspective. And then the other one was St. John Henry Newman. That's right. Also wrote stations, which, you know, the depth there is amazing. So having those four saints as the basis was wonderful. But then trying to go deeper, I was using Scripture to dig into sort of the theme that each station brings to mind. So when Simon helps our Lord carry the cross, we tend to think of, and most of the saints write about, what cross am I called to carry? How do I help our Lord carry his cross? How do I suffer with him? So in addition to the Scripture passage where we see Simon being recruited to carry the cross, the other days where we're studying this station, I use Scripture passages from times our Lord spoke about carrying the cross. Or what did St. Paul say about carrying the cross? And then I looked at what did the Fathers say about those Scripture passages to base a reflection on for that day? So I get it. That's how you narrate it all down. That makes sense. That's smart. Yeah. So that's really beautiful. So, you know, Stations of the Cross, as we were talking about, isn't a very long devotion. It's, you know, it's these 14 stations. How did you get it to be stretched over the 40 days? What does that look like practically when you gather your family around? And can you kind of guide us through that? Sure. So what happens is, of course, Lent starts on Ash Wednesday. And we start with the first station. Jesus is condemned to death. And so we are going to study that station on Ash Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Then on Sunday we'll go to the second station. And this repeats throughout Lent. So three or four days for most of the stations. That way we're really, we have an opportunity to explore it and dig into it more deeply. So you would begin. So I'm just turning to the third Sunday of Lent. And at this point, we're at the sixth station. I'm introducing the sixth station. Veronica wipes the face of Jesus. And we start with the traditional prayers. You can choose whether you say those in Latin or English, whatever works for your family. So we start with, we adore you, O Christ, and we praise you. And then we have a description of the state of the station from one of the saints I mentioned. So on this day, it's from Saint John Newman. It's from his writing about the sixth station of the cross. Then we have a scripture reading that's not too long. It's doable with a family, doable for individuals that, you know, I need to do my other prayer commitments. And I don't have an hour to spend on this one thing. But so we're reading from Genesis. So this is actually, I just happened to open to this section, but this is one thing to consider is that not every one of these stations is found in the Bible. Some of them we know about from tradition. So this would be one of those Veronica is not mentioned in the Bible. But so we're looking at tradition for this and we're looking at scripture passages that tell us more about Christ's face. What is the station, what is the station telling us about the fact that Christ became a man with a face? So we read from Genesis about God's creation of man and woman in his image. The next day we read from John where he's talking about the word becoming flesh. We read what Saint Paul said about the gospel being veiled. This idea of a veiled Veronica took her veil and she said, Oh, my Lord, so each day we're kind of trying to get a different facet of the station to meditate on. Great. Beautiful. Thanks, Suzanne. We're going to take a break. And when we get back, we're going to continue to continue, we're going to continue to visit with Suzanne about the stations of the cross in slow motion. We'll be right back. Thank you. Okay, so that's 1319. Let's do 1230. That'll be fine. The next one. Hey, folks, just before we head back into the show, one other formation opportunity for you because you all want to be saints is theology of divine mercy conversion and suffering taught by Dr. Michael Gamma. And it begins Tuesday, March 5th, 2024. It's a graduate level course. Dr. Gamma is much beloved by his students because he lives what he teaches. He's really a special human being. So if you want to learn about the spiritual doctrine of Saint Therese of the Sioux, Saint Maria Faustina, blessed Teresa of Calcutta, blessed John Paul II, they're all thematically surveyed in relation to the realities of conversion and suffering in the Christian life. Wow. That sounds beautiful. Yeah, it's going to be an amazing course. Awesome. Check out that in all of our courses out at Avala-Institute.com. And we also have personal enrichment courses for those who are scared, afraid of graduate courses or don't have the time, one of the two. But anyway, check that out. Avala-Institute.com. Okay. Ready to go back? Yeah. In your market set, go. Welcome back. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke with Divine Intimacy Radio. And we're back again with Suzanne Sammons. She has hit it out of the park again. Is this your second book that you've written? Yes, it is. Yeah. So the first book was on the Jesse Tree, which we highlighted last year. It's entitled The Jesse Tree and Advent Devotion. And then this year, or was it last year or the year before? Anyway, it was recent. The station to the cross in slow motion. Just curious, by the way, the artwork for the stations. Yes. Did you pick that? They're beautiful. I did. Yes, I did. I love them also. They are a Flemish, I believe a Flemish artist. Yeah. It's a single artist and the colors are, the color palettes like a Tuscan, they're very rich. Very beautiful. They're very beautiful. Great. So you were on track. Yeah. Go ahead. That's right. Well, I was just thinking, you know, you walked us through what it would look like maybe for one day on a particular station. But there was more to what's in the book that can be covered in the one day. Right, right. But it's covered over four days. So the particular station may take three to four days. What was striking me about it is that, and I love that it's, that you've targeted families so that they can do this and go deeper with the stations of the cross. But I thought, man, even individuals that want to take this into their mental prayer time and use this as the jumping off point, right? The meditation material. This is really, this is deep. This is very beautiful the way you've set this up. So that was my insight, you know, as I, as I was looking at it and looking at the artwork and how you've laid it out. Did you have a new insight as you were writing this? I mean, how did it, how did it affect you? Absolutely. Well, I'll give you one, one example, which is probably my favorite discovery from writing this book. I'm so grateful for one of the things I mentioned in the introduction is that St. Veronica is, I've had a great devotion to hers since I was a child. And so this was, this was something in spite of the fact that I've always loved her and read whatever I could find about her. This was new to me. And it comes from St. John Henry Newman and his stations of the cross. He wrote, so this is regarding the fourth, fifth and sixth stations and the fourth station, our Lord meets our lady. So he meets his mother on the way of the cross and St. John Henry Newman said that it's no coincidence that directly following that station we have Simon helping carry the cross and then Veronica wiping our Lord's face with her veil. He says that our lady certainly as soon as she, this meeting ended and Christ moved on, she was praying. She was praying for help for her son like any mother. Seeing her son in such need would pray to God to send some kind of comfort beyond what she could give. And then we have Simon and then we have Veronica. So we have God answering our lady's prayer with a man and a woman. And the man providing love and compassion and the way a man tends to do, the way a man is made to do. He works. He uses his body to help our Lord. And then the woman, Veronica, she offers love and compassion in a very feminine way and a very maternal way. And it's a small thing, but it's done in great love. So this to me, the way we tend to see the stations is just their little episodes, they're separate, but he really saw these three as hanging together for a reason. So that was probably the most beautiful insight. Yeah, that's really profound. Just really extraordinary. Have you ever, just out of curiosity, have you ever heard the story of what happened to the actress in who played Veronica in the Passion of the Christ? Do you know what happened behind the scenes there? No, I don't. But I really always have thought that Mel Gibson did a fantastic job with that scene. Oh, it was. So Father John Bartunek is a good friend of ours and he was the only authorized biographer behind the scenes writer on the set of the movie. And he said that scene took 14 takes, something like that. No, it was more than that. There's a lot of takes. Yeah. And what happened was, because she had to keep coming to Jesus' face and obviously he was just absolutely, you know, just bloody and suffering and whatever. But it was somewhere in, maybe the 14 is the, I know it's the number of stations, but for some reason it's sticking in my head. And so she came in and just broke down and just started weeping. And this is a woman who wasn't a woman of faith, you know, who was, you know, but just just entered into the reality of what was going on. There was some humor to the scene in the sense that they initially she was trying to move in and there's all the commotion around and the guards and everything are going everywhere. And at first they're like dancing around her so they don't knock her over, I think. And then, you know, and then finally they got it right to where, you know, there's a huge amount of commotion, but she somehow glides right through it. Yes. And then wipes his face. Yeah. And she talked about how that tunnel vision of looking at the face of her Lord over and over and over and glancing and looking at the face of Cavizel, you know, bloody, dirty, you know, all that was happening to him. And at one point she, at the end she looked on his face full on, she saw Christ and she was completely converted. So it was really this beautiful setup of the Lord of just bringing her to himself over and over again till finally it breaks through and brings her to conversion. So it is a beautiful story. There's one more element to the book and I think if we haven't covered them all, just remind me, but you have questions for reflection too at the end of each to have conversation with your family or your kids. Yes. That's one of the ways I felt that the book could become flexible for individuals and families because the questions, well, after the meditation that I was talking about there's a prayer to end the station. The prayer comes from the saints, the four saints I mentioned. And then after that there are questions for further reflection. So every day there are two questions and these are something to think about on your own. Parents of young children could reserve this part for something they do on their own. I think if you have older children it would be it's an opportunity to give them more to ponder or to discuss as a family. It's something that could be discussed in a prayer group. So yes, that's another piece of the book. Yeah, I think just a personal recommendation. It doesn't matter what age it is. If you have two adults alone you could use this and would strongly recommend that you do a kind of lexio divino with it where Stephanie was kind of hinting at this earlier I think where you read it slowly. One person reads the other with eyes closed or whatever and try to put yourself in the scene and try to engage because then when you go to do the stations with your parish and as we noted in the beginning of the show you're running through these things way too quickly and you're enamored with something that happened a station or two ago but when you slow down with the station to the cross last year we were leading them here on the property and there's nothing striking about the artwork we have it's actually quite simple. They're just little brass pieces from our first chapel that are because we were taking time at each station, we weren't rushing we weren't doing anything fancy we weren't doing guided meditations or trying to stir up any emotion the devotion itself is so extraordinary that if you just let people enter in but I think this book done outside of that context is going to be a really powerful aid to people getting a lot more out of the group group devotions or even private devotion in front of each of the stations. I would even encourage people I was a Catholic school principal I was teacher for years that never leaves you but I think about how to create the environment to allow this to really enter in even Catholic school teachers could do this with their students. That would work for their class but I think also as you read the scripture passage allowing silence to enter in we are so busy filling every single moment of every day with words or thoughts or reflections and allowing a little silence in as you're going through these beautiful reflections that you've written is just it's going to allow it to have its impact to get in and then you rise from that silence and you go to the next thought or the next scripture or the next activity so I would just really encourage that. I like it so much by the way I'm going to buy a copy for all of our employees here at the Avala Institute because some of them have little tiny kids but some of them are big kids like me and I think we're all going to get something out of this together during that. I think I appreciate you bringing up the lexiodivina idea because I saw that with the Jesse tree. You do it year after year we've been doing it for many years and there will be because of what else perhaps is going on in our family or in my life there will be one meditation that really sticks with me that year and it's not the same one that perhaps did last year but it's there's something about it that I just carry with me and I think the stations can be the same way. I know they can because that's why I carried Saint Veronica with me through my life but sometimes it might just be that lent you just really needed to think about that station and I hope that by slowing it down and really taking days to carry one station in your heart for that day people will have that opportunity. So the book is the stations of the cross in slow motion by Suzanne Sammons and we've also referenced one for Advent I'd recommend you head out to spiritualdirection.com hit the shop button and you can search for both of those books I'd buy them both you're going to want the one for Advent if you haven't already looked at it for next year this year for the end of the year anyway and this will really help you deepen your devotion during lent. So Suzanne thanks for putting this together and for helping us to be holier than we are by drawing us more deeply to the Lord in his passion it's really a gift to the church. Thank you thank you for all the work that you do as well God be praised and we're out of time okay until next time may the God of peace make you perfect in holiness may he preserve you whole and entire spirit soul and body irreproachable at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ amen amen all right