 Does this mean that we're live? Okay, we're live. I just wanted to make sure you didn't finish your sentence. Are we live now? Hey, friends, you're watching Behind the Scenes, Divine Intimacy Radio. And we do part two today of Finding Peace in the Storm, which is a book that has just come out from Sofia, wherein I provide commentary reflection on St. Alphonsus Liguri's Great Work, Uniformity with God's Will. And today we have a special treat with Jordan's here with us. So mom, dad, son, team, which is pretty cool. Kind of a dream come true. I remember there's this guy named Steve Wood, who I think he's still doing some great work out there, a Catholic guy. And he always has a daughter on the show and he's like his family was involved. And I always thought, what a dream, you know? And now I'm living it, so it's pretty cool. Before we jump into the show, every time I sit down for the show, there's always something, some opportunity you want to give people for deeper formation, whatever. And when I read this one, I went, oh, wow. I literally said that. Because it's one of the books, one of the best books that we've been a part of getting published is by Father Robert Altier called God's Plan for Your Marriage. And he is an extraordinary holy, a narrowly holy priest, friend of ours. And the book, we believe, is actually a revelation given through the Blessed Virgin Mary, though we claim that with, how would you say it? Deference to it. Deference to the Magisterium and the Caution. We believe in it so much, we wrote the forward to it. Yeah. Yeah, we love this book. So he's teaching a course on it, January 1st, 2023 here. And wow. 24. Oh, the date's wrong. I just read what it said. So, 2024, thank you. January 1st, 2024. And it's a School of Spiritual Formation Course. It means it's six weeks. If you've been, if you have, yeah, I don't know, pre-married, married, if you're called to be married, whatever, the great marriage, this book will blow your mind. It will give you insight and perspective. It is so unique. It is not like anything you've ever read about marriage. It is, the spiritual depth of it is just quite extraordinary. So we take it with us to every divine intimacy and marriage retreat. Is our retreat full here coming up here? Listen, we can get people in. Like, I- So it's probably, that means it's full, but- Yeah, yeah. So to that end, what's really cool about this course is that it begins the week before our February Divine Intimacy and Marriage Retreat, and it ends right after it. So, technically, you could, you know, you could be- Double ready for the retreat. Double ready for this. It's incredible. So I do want to point to folks. I'm sorry, I cannot speak this morning. I want to point folks to where they can register for that course. And where can they register? Right. It's avaladashinstitute.org. You don't want to miss it. And the class starts January- First. First. So you don't want to miss that. It ends right after our next marriage retreat. And then the other thing is, is if you want to know what our events are, like where we're going to be, what we're going to be doing, how you can engage with this ministry one-on-one and really, like, plug in and get some of the graces that are flowing here, check out spiritualdirection.com forward slash events or go to spiritualdirection.com and hit the events tab. And what's coming up, I want you to know. And really, if you're listening to this, like right now, on October 31st, this is around the corner. You can still get in. Don't miss this. It will be life-changing for your marriage. Jordan and his fiance will be there. God be praised. And so it's November 3rd through the 5th, our Divine Intimacy and Marriage Retreat, November 3rd. Of 2024. Yeah, no. Of 2023. Oh my goodness. Stop it. Sorry, 2022. November 3rd through the 5th, 2023 in the Hanseville, Alabama, followed by, we will be in California directly after that. San Pedro. Yeah. November 11th for setting the captives free, swathos, spiritual warfare and discernment of spirits. After that, we're going to be in Australia. New Zealand. A bunch of speaking events. All over Australia. Australians. Amazing. Help us get the word out. Yes. So spread the word. And then we come back for the marriage retreat in February. And that's February 9th through the 11th, right before Valentine's Day. Ding, ding. Big points. Guys, are you paying attention? So check it out. Everything at spiritualdirection.com forward slash events. All right. Cool. So I noticed you do not have a copy of this book, and you cannot do this show without a copy of the book. So is somebody going to get me a copy? Is there a copy in the other room? So while we're making up for my wife's lack of copiness, table right around the corner, yeah. Producers running out to get a copy of the book. Listen, I just showed where y'all tell me. Yeah. I'm apparently I'm the queen this morning, and I should be, you know, catered to. I'm sorry about that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks to EWTN for allowing us to do this show. It's such an awesome organization. What page are we starting? We're going to start on page 12 for those of you who want to follow along. OK. Awesome. And let's go on your market set go. This is Danis Stephanie Burke. You're listening to watching live stream of, depending on what you're doing, 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 to heaven to draw upon the wisdom of the saints to help us to navigate the tumult of this life. And through the mystical wisdom and tradition that gives us what we need to deal with all of the challenges. I was reading a quote this morning from St. Teresa Benedict of the Cross. It just so moved me. And she said, the world is on fire. But it can't and it's coming for us to their monastery. She eventually was martyred, but it can't touch the cross. The cross is exalted high above the mess. And if we draw near to him in that, I'm paraphrasing. Absolutely beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. Can't touch our souls. Can't touch our souls. Unless we cooperate with the darkness. Exactly. So today we're talking about finding peace in the storm. Quite a storm we're in. And we're going to talk about a pretty difficult area of understanding God's sovereignty and how we follow him. And Alphonsus, we did an intro show. If you missed it, this is show number two. By the way, you can get all the live stream stuff out at spiritualdirection.com, Facebook, I mean YouTube page. And check that out. Make sure you like and subscribe to help us spread that around. But this section, he deals with people who are doing good, but that is not God's will, which is fascinating. It's kind of the problem. It's the bane of those who are going from good to better who want to do well. Busy people. Busy people. Busy holy people that can get way off track. Yeah, way off track. But it's really an important thing because I think, to me, I know this is obviously written in a very different time and different culture, but it's very fitting the American culture. I mean, as a Protestant convert from Protestantism, the model that we used, which was defective, is I have this entrepreneurial idea that has some good related to it in our faith. I'm going to go do this, and I'm going to ask God to bless what I'm doing. Like it's just replete with that thinking. The biblical model, and I think the Catholic model, is the exact opposite. It's asking the question the right ways to ask the question, where is God going? What is he already blessing? And then how do I join him? And that could be kind of in a macro way. There could be revivals in the church. There's movements to go deeper in different areas in prayer or whatever that God seems to be blessing. And so you can move that direction. Then in a micro, it's like your personal calling, what he's doing with you. How is he moving of the three things you're doing? Which one does he seem to be pouring graces out upon and out ahead of you, rather than you out ahead of him? I don't know. What do you guys think of the? Well, the first thing that comes to mind is really that the micro is the most important. And we sure get out ahead of ourselves. I heard somebody really recently say, I was driven because I kept thinking, I need to fulfill this mission. And that's not the drive. The drive is what is the Lord doing in me? What does holiness look like? What do I need to get rid of out of my life? How is he working in and through my prayer to change me, to restore me? Like he loves me as I am, right? But he loves me too much to leave me there. And he wants to purify me so that he can work in and through me for some of these other greater causes. But I think we tend to get way out ahead of it. And it's the work of the enemy, right? It's the work to, as we start to get more self-aware, then we go like, oh, I want to go start a school. I want to go start this apostolate. I want to go start all these things while all the way, all the time, we may have a kid way off the rails. Our marriage is falling apart. Maybe an habitual mortal sin. All of those things. And it's really a disordered way to look at things. So... You know what, it's a narcissistic spirituality. It is, I am in control of my spirituality. I'm doing these things that are objectively good, but without any recollection as to what God is actually calling me to do. It's all in here, not in scripture. It's not asking outside of ourselves. It's my will be done rather than thy will. And I think, and Alphandus does point this out in the book, and he's a big devotee of Teresa of Avila. He says, you can't get to heaven without mental prayer. You know, usually when that person's living like that, I find that they're not practicing mental prayer at all. So they're not sitting with the Lord. They're not listening. They're not learning to hear his voice. They're just doing things for motivations. There's some ways purified by the good context, but let me just say what Alphandus says here, because there's some specific examples are good. He says that it follows in that the more the one unites his will with the divine will, the greater will be his love of God, right? So that's true. But this is interesting. Mortification, meditation, receiving holy communion, acts of fraternal charity are all pleasing to God, but only when they're in accordance with his will. When they do not according to his will, he not only finds no pleasure in them, he even rejects them and utterly punishes them. He rejects and punishes when... So this is quite challenging, right? So how would he reject and punish the reception of holy communion? And if it's not really, I mean, I'll just jump out and say it. It's for instance, when you are married and maybe you are, your marriage isn't so great, because you're not spending a lot of time and you're not giving a lot of energy. There's no intimacy. There is no intimacy with your marriage, whatever. So it's kind of broken, but you're constantly running off to the parish and doing these things and to inebriate. To escape. To escape. And I'm not saying there, I'm not saying you don't need, you know, often we will tell people or unequal yokes as an example to just try to help your spouse understand, I need to go to communion so I can be strong to love and serve you. But often that's not really the motive. The motive is I got to get out of here instead of I got to deal with this. Yeah, the motive is this hurts too much. What I'm saying, doing, begging, pleading isn't working. So I just got to go sit with the Lord. I just got to go, you know, all the while the duties, responsibilities that we're called to are being, you know, thrown to the wayside. And that's not to minimize the pain, but there is a particular, and that's why I love marriage ministry so much. That's why I love the retreats that we offer because we really need to be awakened to what does God ask of us? You know, it says the more it follows then that the more one unites his will with the divine will, the greater will be his love of God. It increases our love for him when we're in obedience. When we're in obedience to the Lord, right? And where do we find out what that means? That means we're reading his scriptures, we're reading his commandments. Nobody talks about the commandments anymore hardly at all. Or the moral theology. Right, you know, and that's breathtaking. If you just contemplate, what does this mean to honor my mother and father? What does it mean that only God is my God? I will love the Lord my God alone, right? Above all things, but not against the design that he's created for me, right? Well, and I think because this is a really complicated topic, and this whenever I've talked about this in the past, a lot of it catches a lot of people because it's so hard to understand. So would it be safe to say, to help kind of break this down a little bit further? What we're talking about is escapism versus devotion or sustenance, a devotion that sustains you. But also just, you know, I mean, you guys have talked about it before where you'll have a busy mom who wants to engage in mental prayer, and she can because she has six kids running around the house, and your answer is usually, you take care of your kids, and there's merit in that because you're fulfilling what you've been called to do. We usually tell them while they're nursing, or just, you know, whatever you can do, is all you can do. Or dad giving them 15 minutes away. So the understanding is within the context of whatever the person is struggling with. You have to take this and put it into the context of where you're at. Primary state. Right, because each one of us is called to something different. So someone who's listening to this may be dealing with something that's really hard and not able to wrap their head around it with the examples we've given. It's more of it. What is the context that you're in? What is your primary state? What are you being called to? And then apply this. That's where self-awareness is so important. And really the core understanding here, it's been interesting that this came up in prayer within the last 24 hours. Sure, it's for this conversation. But God won't call you to something that is counter to your vocation, your primary state. So, you know, I'm a daughter of the king, but next I'm a wife. And if there's anything in my life that hinders my ability to love and serve my husband, that takes time away from him, that neglects his needs, that neglects my calling as a wife, that includes intimacy, includes all of those things, physical intimacy, then it's not of God. It's not of the Lord. And we need to understand that. And it's so hard because that's where we learn to die to ourselves. But you know what's beautiful? The divine secret in that is that when we live our vocation fully, the Lord sets us on fire with his love, our love for him increases, he purifies us, he sanctifies us. And then you see many miracles everywhere. We have to live by his design. It's the best way. Yeah. It's the best way. So, let's make this harder because Liguri does. He doesn't make it easier. He goes on to say, so he gives an illustration of a man who has two servants and one works hard and diligently all day long. But according to his own devices and the other works less, but he does what's requested of him. The latter, of course, is gonna find favor with his master, the other will not. So why should we perform actions for God's glory if they're not gonna be acceptable to him? God does not want, this is the answer. God does not want sacrifices, the prophet Samuel told King Saul, but he does want obedience to his will. Jesus repeated similarly another passage from the Old Testament. But the passage that Samuel spoke was, does the Lord desire Holocaust and victims and not rather the voice of the Lord should be obeyed? Obedience is better than sacrifice and hearken then to the fat of Rams because it's like a sin of witchcraft to rebel. This is crazy, witchcraft and idolatry, right? And like the crime of idolatry, to refuse to obey. Right, to obey, exactly so. So this is the crazy part. And this is where I went into my own commentary. So who created the sacrificial system? God did. So he's saying, I want a properly ordered heart and obedience more than I want the outward comportment to the law. Now, the law should always be obeyed. That's not what he's saying. But what's crazy about this, and we gotta go to break, is how God is clearly saying, your relationship with me, your obedience to me, and what I'm asking you to do is more important than your outward religious comportment in terms of the way you construct it and you define as pious, good and holy, which could be contrary to everything we've been talking about. So we get back from the break, we gotta dig into that and explain it a little more. And I think what we'll do it is in the context of Matthew 7, 22. So we'll be right back. 13, so we gotta go 12 and a half. One, two, point, five. And for those out there who are listening and wondering where the previous show is, there's, this is part two. You can find it out at spiritualdirection.com Facebook page. I mean, I keep saying that. Website. Website. Yeah, spiritualdirection.com website. We always put them up there. And then YouTube page. All right, let's go ahead and get started again. On your mark, get set, go. Welcome back to Divine Intimacy Radio. This is Dan Stephanie Jordan Burke, all three triple threat today, talking about uniformity with God's will. My most recent book, which is called Finding Peace in the Storm, which is a reflection on university uniformity, God will and it contains all of that text. So we're talking about just some really challenging stuff for devout Catholics, devout Christians. So we're talking about this issue of, isn't the sacrificial system established by God? How can it be the assertion that He doesn't want sacrifices? And of course, it's hyperbolic, right? I mean, it's not saying don't sacrifice because that's part of the law and you must have your sins forgiven, but just like going to confession or that sort of thing. But what he's saying is that obedience is more important and people are going, but how do I get, like how do I get to clearly seeing whether or not I am understanding God's will? I mean, and I think the easy answer, like glaringly easy is, don't judge yourself to be doing God's will because you have constructed a list of your own making, of your own religious practices and then you check off the box and then you determine I'm doing the right thing. Especially if those things make you feel good. Right, talk about that. Well, I mean, I just gave a talk this weekend talking about one of the things was regarding prayer and how there's a lot of people, especially men because mental prayer is generally harder for men in my experience in the conversations that I've had and they'll go into prayer and the response is, I've heard this so many times, I'm not getting anything out of it. It's like, okay, and then they stop and when I said, well, that's a femininity in prayer. You're too attached to good, what you think feels good. Well, mental prayer as Alfonso says in one of his other books is a great means of salvation. Other saints have said, good luck in and the heaven without it. So what does that mean? Okay, well, you're gonna have to do something that doesn't feel good to you in order to do what God wills of you, just to have a relationship with you. So it seems that a lot of this, like in these examples, the example he gave, you're choosing one thing over another. So it's not, I'm doing the rosary and I'm folding laundry. I'm doing seven decades of the rosary and I'm completely ignoring all my other things that I'm supposed to be doing. Does that kind of? There's another one, just quickly. Because I've been sort of framing this almost in terms of more traditional orthodox Catholics. You could frame it also in terms of the charismatic movement, Catholicism, which I know I'm not speaking negative at all, but each has their kind of imbalanced reflections on extremes and one being excessively focused on I'm doing all these outward things in devotions, but my family or other things are fall, or I'm in habitual sin and I'm not like, I don't have a massive effort to get past it, or in the charismatic realm where they're blessed to be more open to experiences and kind of worship settings that feel good and all of that, but we've seen the exact same issue and when we're counseling people and even in deliverance ministry where you have people in deliverance ministry, people doing all this praise and worship and all this evangelism and actually possessed and or deeply oppressed and deeply disordered, addicted to pornography. And we're going, you need to set aside all this ministry and you need to set aside all this outward work and you need to go after your porn, your mortal, your mistress that you take every day, even though you also take your wife to bed every day. And that's a common trick of the enemy, as if you're recovering from something or you're struggling with something, and the enemy says, you should start a ministry to help people when you haven't recovered. It's super common. Right, you had something on your mind. Well, I, you know, that, so what comes to mind is what, what does this? And I, I think we should go back to this quote in here because I think it's really important. Let me show you what your final judgment will look like. You will call me Lord. Matthew 722. Yeah, you will have prophesied in my name. You will cast out demons in my name. You will have done mighty works in my name. Then he says, I will say to you, depart from me, I never knew you. Depart from me, evil doers. That word new, and you know, those who follow our work or go to our trees, we talk about this all the time, but there's going to be somebody else that's going to listen to this who's never heard it. That word new is, I believe it's, is it Greek or Hebrew? It's the Greek. The Jews translated the Hebrew of the Old Testament into Greek, and that's the word they use. Okay, so it's, it's the Greek word for Adam, new Eve. Okay, that's intimacy that is, you know, soul to soul, like hearts, minds, bodies, souls, everything. And intimacy that is beyond comprehension, right? And people go, oh, but that's God, you know, how do I have that with God? You know, don't I need to just follow his rules and then just kind of hope everything else works out? Well, no, we need to know our Lord and our God and that comes through mental prayer. And then through that, we come to that self-awareness that says, oh, no, my life, my relationships, my relationship with my husband or my parents or my children or whatever is not in accord with his will because I'm angry, I'm addicted, I'm just, I'm, you know, upset, I'm frustrated, you know, they're not doing what I want them to do, right? They're not following God. So I'm just gonna get really angry and I'm gonna go do all these pious practices while my family's falling apart, you know? So there's a much deeper call of, I need to know my Lord in such a way that it becomes like a mirror in front of me, my relationship with him, where then I allow him because really I have to let down, I have to be vulnerable with him, I have to really, truly say, Lord, show me where I am out of your will, where I'm outside of your will, show me that. And that's a courageous prayer. Because you're saying that you're giving him permission to show you where you're out of line and then give me the courage to do what you desire so that, and the grace to be free of this so that your grace can inebriate me, fill me, pour itself out through me to those that I love. And they need you. And you know, yeah, and I love what you say is if we really truly know the Lord, we will change and then the world will change around us. And that doesn't mean, it could mean out in ministry but what it first means is in your most yourself and your interpersonal circles, that's where it's gonna change first. So because it's so hard, I think it's worth just doing at least one more example. And that's one I gave in the book where I had a woman who came up to me after an event. And I don't know how much of the revelation she had prior to the event or during the event. She had this big smile on her face and she slipped around in 65, beautiful smile. And she said to me, I finally figured it out. I really get it about what it means to have a relationship with Jesus. She said, I've been hiding all my life in activity in the church and joining this sodality and that one and taking care of altar linens and blah, blah, blah. And she said, I was doing it all to, I was doing it all to see, I'm doing, so he wants my heart, not my scurrying around on the pretense and I'm doing it all for love of him. I do it to hide, not for him. But I see so clearly now he loves me. I want to love him back. I want to give him the time I have left, but in a way that's truly worship of him and not a hiding in my wounds. And I would say not an inebriation, which is really what a lot of people do in religious life is an inebriation. Avoidance. Avoidance. It's the spirit of avoidance. So she had a real conversion, which is absolutely beautiful. So Liguri says, the man who follows his own will independently of God's, it's guilty of a kind of idolatry. Instead of adoring God's will, he adores his own in a certain sense. The greatest glory we can give to God is to do as well and everything. Just, you know, absolutely a game changer. But the key, so the biggest problem, which is what you pointed out is, you know, learning to know the voice of God. How can I know and love God and give him my whole life? But authentic love is a really deep challenge and there's no quick way. So, you know, people always ask at events and I'm on page 17 if you wanna know where I'm at, but people always ask for at events, how do I know the difference between the voice in my head and God's voice? How do I know? It's, you know, like, I think let's get really personal. Like, I didn't really know how to love you, Stephanie. Probably about five years into the marriage is when it really started to click in where I'm going, I'm going, and I, you know, just because I'm so broken, this is, you might be surprised what I'm gonna say. I'm still surprised you're there, like you're still coming home. You know, I'm like, why would anybody be with me? Cause I'm just so screwed up. And why, and do you really love me? You know, cause I'd been through such a profound and deep betrayal, now I'm a problem, but I've been through probably the worst betrayal in my life. And then my youth was just a whole series of betrayals from the people who were supposed to care for me. So I keep going. Why is this beautiful, amazing woman just keep coming back, you know? But so getting through that, and then, and then I'm praying with you every day, going to spiritual direction together. Finally, I began to learn it's gonna be okay. And I learned what it meant to love you and to love you in a way that you received love. And I don't know, but it took, it's the same with God. I mean, we don't, you can't, there's no, my answer when people ask me that is, there is no quick answer. I don't have any quick answer. Now you can do the Galatians five test and say, does the voice sound like love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, self-control? Well, the enemy can mimic some of those things at times in a partial way, or we can sort of construct good things that mimic those things. You still, there's still a different kind of knowing the other person that only comes with a lot of time and energy. And in this case, Liguri would point us to mental prayer. Yeah, yeah. But I think also with mental prayer, you need to understand who this God is, right? You need to study. And for whatever reason, the commandments are really coming to the fore. So commandments, virtues, study these things. You need to understand that God's will is virtue. God's will is His commandments. God's will is love. God's will is that He wants your heart and He doesn't want your sacrifices. So I don't know, there's a lot there. We could go on and on, which we will. We're gonna continue with this series. And 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.