 Father, are you cool with talking about the distinctions between the perspectives in the Orthodox East on grace and Roman Catholic grace? I don't want to get too deep. No, I know nothing about these. Okay, that's good. Glad I asked you. Good. We're live. Okay, we're live now. All right, very good. Okay. Hey friends, this is Dan and Stephanie Burke. You're listening to or watching a live stream behind the scenes of Divine Intimacy Radio. Before we jump in with Father Brian Malady, who you will no doubt enjoys a long time friend of EWTNs and has his own participant in a weekly show there. Stephanie will tell you about that in a minute, but we're going to be talking about a great book that is written on grace, which is very important. So before that, I want to tell you about a few things going on. One is a webinar coming up with me and Father Longenecker on his new book called Beheading the Hydra. Beheading the Hydra. It is a fascinating book, and I think you will be, I mean, just like Father Malady, people love listening to Father Longenecker, but this book I think is pretty important. In fact, once you watch the show, I'm pretty sure if you've got teens late high school age or young adults early college, you're going to buy it for them, because it really is a powerful way to equip your kids or any Catholic who's concerned about how do I deal with the culture, all of the madness in the culture. So that'll be this Wednesday, October 20th, so it's just two days away. So make sure to get your seat there. You got to go to spiritualdirection.com forward slash events. That's spiritualdirection.com forward slash events. So that's free. And it's free. And it's free. We like to do free because then nobody gets excluded. The next event I'll tell you about and that'll be it. And we'll go and jump into the show is setting the captives free spiritual. Well, that's a kind of a local event. Should I announce that anyway? Sure. Setting the captives free spiritual warfare and discernment of spirits, which is a reflection on a biblical perspective on spiritual warfare, as well as the wisdom of St. Ignatius in the first 14 rules will be Saturday, November 6th at 9am central at St. Teresa of the Child Jesus Catholic Church in Leeds, Alabama. And as always, our events are always at spiritualdirection.com events. You can look those up. You know, we have the spiritual warfare conference next summer is there. And those not many seats are left there. No, and we have a marriage retreat in February that's coming up. That's really important. Yeah. And so that everybody knows if you go there, I mean, you can see what's happening in your area, but you can also request that Dan or Dan and I come and do an event at your parish or you do yours. Yeah, I do that too. But anyway, so they can request that. So they communicate with our events coordinator, Mrs. Debbie Aguirre, and we can find a way to come serve your community if you'd like us to come near. So check out what we do and hopefully you'll come. Very good. You ready to jump into the show? I am. Okay. So Jordan, you all ready? On your mark, get set, go. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke. Welcome to Divine Intimacy Radio. Why did you not answer? Oh, I didn't say the whole thing. Oh, my goodness. Sorry. We need to start doing this every day. Because you know, it's cold out. And so I've got this weird thing going on in my throat and my nose. We'll start again. Okay, ready in the market. Thank God for what we're live streaming all of our mistakes, which is awesome. But are my mistakes, but thank God for recorded radio. So at least you can make me sound smarter when or more together when it goes. Okay, ready? Okay, 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 hearts and minds to heaven and to the wisdom of the saints and the teachings of the church to help us understand how to navigate this challenging life. Things are difficult and we'll be getting more difficult. Of course, as we know that's certainly the trend. God can always intervene and bring everything to a close. But in the meantime, we have a lot of challenges to face and we're grateful to dig into the wisdom of the church to help us to do that. And today, we have a guest who is one of the, I don't know, I think he's one of the best communicators, top 10 communicators in the last 20, 30 years in the church. And why don't you introduce him? Absolutely. And super important book. So our guest today is Father Brian Malady, his book Grace Explained. And that's what we're going to be talking on today is his book called Grace Explained. I'm so excited about it. Father Brian Thomas Beckett Malady entered the Dominican Order in 1966 and was ordained in 1972. He has a doctorate in sacred theology from the Angelicum University in Rome, Italy, and was professor there for six years. He is currently a mission preacher and retreat master for the Western Dominican province. He is taught in a number of colleges and seminaries in the US. He writes for homiletic and pastoral review and is the theological consultant for the Institute for Religious Life. He is a missionary of mercy appointed by Pope Francis. He also has had many programs on EWTN and currently has a weekly radio show on EWTN radio network called Open Line. And that airs Thursdays at 3pm Eastern time. So you're going to want to check that out. Awesome. Well, welcome to the show, Father Malady. Thank you very much. So let's jump in and talk about grace. I think, you know, sometimes we presume our audience knows far more than they do. And I don't mean to, in any way, denigrate the wisdom of our audience. But I want to start at the most basic level and not assume folks know anything about grace, what it really means. Or assume that I know what it means. I'm curious. I want to know these answers. I'm not going to comment on that one. But Father, what is grace? Preaching missions and retreats around. I always talk about the three agents of the spiritual life, which you were mentioning. And this is basically how we live out grace. But what I discovered in doing this is that many Catholics, especially younger ones, have heard the word, but they have no clue what it actually means. Exactly. Or are there any distinctions involved in it? Grace is basically God's love. God loves the world into existence by creating it. He also loves things in this special sense of human beings, because he gave us a spirit when he created our immortal soul. But in addition to this, because we have an immortal soul, it's absolutely necessary for us to realize that this world is only a pilgrimage. And that the reason we exist, especially because we have intelligence, is to go to heaven to see God as he is in himself and know God as he is in himself. And I believe in Pagan's news was the case. He knew people like Aristotle. However, they never talked about it, because they didn't know there was any way to get there. Grace is a special effect of God, where he loves us and God's love of members always created. When he loves something, he makes it lovable, not like us, that has defined things that are lovable in something else. And that is, he allows us to enter into a union of communion on earth, which is what basically all these reflections, like the spiritual life of Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, three ages of spiritual life, is about forming, but then also a blessedness at the end of our lives when we see him in the face. In other words, by grace, God loves us. He creates a special quality right in the center of our souls by which we're elevated while we're on earth to know as the Trinity knows and love as the Trinity loves. In fact, that's the way we define faith, theology. Faith and theology are looking at the world as the Trinity does as a result of revelation. What we used to call in fancier spiritual books in the old times, acquiring the supernatural point of view. Grace, according to the catechism, is a supernaturally induced quality where we are changed so that we're no longer mere human beings, but we partake in divine nature. And if you've been noticing the prayers after communion for the last few weeks at Mass on Sunday, it talks about us becoming partakers of divine nature. The text for this is 2 Peter 1.4, the big text for grace, which is that we, who were flown from a world of sin, have now become a partaker of divine nature. So we're enabled every day in our lives, every moment of our day, to enter into a friendship with God as he knows himself and loves himself. So if you compare this, for example, with the Protestant idea of grace, we both believe that grace is forgiveness of sins. The trouble is, as you remember Luther, thought that we still remain depraved. Sin just covered over this depravity. So the famous line is, I don't know if Luther ever said this or not, but it was a common characteristic of the Lutheran position, that the soul in the state of grace was a loan of dung that's us covered by snow. So he used a very famous expression, the human beings in the state of grace in this cover saying the custom are one and the same time, just in the center. What Luther interpreted this text to say is that we were considered just, but really a sinner. The Catholic position is that the justification of sinners is not just the forgiveness of sins, but it's also the sanctification and renewal of our interior life. And therefore, we are really just, but we have a tendency still after our baptism to suffer from weaknesses from the original sin, which in a sense war against us living this righteousness internally, fully. So for us, grace is really equality that you can grow it. It's not a negation. And as a result, we have all these treatises and spirituality to receive divine intimacy, you have divine intimacy radio is a reflection on how we allow God's intimacy to become more immediate on an everyday level to us, whether we're washing the dishes or suffering the illness or driving the car or whatever. So that's the Catholic position. Now, just if I may one more say one or two more things to receive grace is also grace. The grace I described you as what we traditionally refer to as sanctifying grace, but we still need God's grace, not only to receive grace, his love, which support us in living it. This is called actual grace. Actual grace is not a quality. It's an external aid of the Holy Spirit enlightening our minds and strengthening our wills, either in our original conversion or in persevering in our conversion. In addition to this, the scripture struck in St. Paul especially about charismatic graces. Charismatic graces are truly graces because they're beyond personal merit. We don't merit to have them and they're directly given to us by God, but they differ from sanctifying grace because sanctifying grace truly changes us for our own union with Christ. Charismatic grace is where God uses us as a tool to bring about another's conversion. So in theory, and the person could exercise charisms and the ordinary ones of Catholicism are concentrating the host and forgiveness of sins and papal infallibility. Could you use these charisms to bring about the conversion of others while the person themselves would benefit from it at all? So they couldn't be the state of boredom sin. So this wonderful structure should point out to us that the reason we're here on earth as your radio station correctly states is to experience every day divine intimacy. Amen. Amen. We're talking with Father Brian Mulady has written a great book, Grace Explained, published by EWTN Publishing, and you can find that at EWTN's Religious Catalog. So you've covered the three kinds of grace, so actual grace, sanctifying grace, and charismatic grace. I wonder what are the major theological errors that people make when they look at the subject or talk about it or think about it? We have about a minute and a half before the break, but we can continue after. So maybe just get us started in the right direction. Well, the basic problem is humanism today, that we inherit from the Enlightenment. It's the idea that we can resolve all our issues by human science or human reason, and there is no need for another knowledge. And spirituality becomes reduced basically to your own needs. God is defined as he who fills by needs. So my need is for God to be a woman, then God's a woman. If it's for God to be a warrior, then he's a warrior. Now there is no objective God with whom I can have a communion of life. And this is the attempt to make human beings almost self-sufficient, because there's also no need for revelation. Very good. Well, when we get back from the break, we'll continue talking with Father Brian Malady about this topic of grace in this very, I would say, incredibly practical book. If you've never studied grace, and of course, the Catechism is also a good place, but you want to learn about it in a very, Father Malady has a very excellent gift for making things clear. It's called Grace Explained. How to receive and retain God's most potent gift. We get back from the break, we'll continue to explore this important topic, and we'll be right back. So I got to go to 13 on the next one. What do you want to ask coming in? Precisely what you must do to make yourself more open to grace. Perfect. All right. So on your mark. Are you going to use to cure that? Well, I did a little bit before. So real quick, folks. Oh, you'll like this, Father Malady. So we have a course at the Aval Institute. It's taught by Father Ignatius Schweitzer, OP, and it's Introduction to Spiritual Theology, which we use Father Jordan Alman's text there. That starts, so you have to apply for that course by Wednesday to graduate course. Wednesday, December 8th is the application time, and then it begins after that at some point. It's 8.30 p.m. Eastern time courses. This course is taught. So it's really a powerful course to help you understand spiritual theology. And then the second course I'll mention, and then we'll jump back into the show with Father Malady, is the Gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Divine Indwelling. And that is taught by Dr. Alfonso Pinto, and that'll start on December 6th, or you have to apply by December 6th. So anyway, avala-institute.org, avala-institute.org. And speaking of Dominicans, we have another great Dominican on the show with us, and we're going to jump back in. You ready? Okay, and your mark, set, go. Welcome back. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke with Divine Intimacy Radio, and we're talking with Father Brian Malady about OP, about grace. And there's, I don't know, in the great traditions of the church, I always speak of the Dominicans, one of the unique gifts that they bring is clarity to doctrine, dogmatic, moral theology. And Father Malady is one of those Dominicans, and he's exceptionally gifted at bringing clarity. So he's with us today talking about grace. Stephanie has the next question for you. Yeah, this really stirs in me because, you know, it requires a bit of vulnerability, which is something that in our society we are, we're not very, we don't avail ourselves of it. We're, you know, can bootstrap, do it ourselves. You know, that humanism has, has completely overtaken our society. So here's the question is precisely what do, what must you do to make yourself more open to grace, which in itself describes this vulnerability with God? How do you avail yourself to this tremendous, beautiful, amazing gift he has for us so that he can perfect us and draw us to him? How do we do this, Father? You know, when I was a little boy studying the Catechism in the 50s, the Baltimore Catechism, one of the questions was, why did God make me? And the answer was God made me to show forth his goodness and to make me happy with him in heaven. Now, it's the second part of that, especially, that has become greatly questioned today. Many people think they could create heaven on earth. And since they think that, they think somehow human technology or science is going to resolve all of our issues. Well, we saw how well that worked recently, didn't we, in the COVID problems. Science has been shown to not be that effective in the sense when it comes up against certain issues in nature. So the problem is the reducing of human beings to being able to find something that is going to totally satisfy them in their souls without recourse to human with God. And that's part and parcel to the philosophy in Europe for the last 300 years. They tried it for many different ways and it didn't really work. So I think the first thing we have to admit is that we have this tendency in us which goes beyond the material, beyond time, a tendency that can't be solved by mere human progress. And there can't be, as a result, a realistic humanism without admitting that we depend on God for many things. Most people would think this is superstition, not science, but it's actually what science leads us to. And the reason is because our intelligence has a natural tendency to know the final truth behind the world. Aristotle talked about this, the metaphysics of Aristotle begins with the sentence, all men by nature desire to know. And you could see this even little kids who always ask why. I remember we were at the seminary where I taught, then we had second-year vocations and some of them, I wasn't really sure why they were there. And one in particular, he used to sleep through all of our classes. And you think if you're going to sleep through class, you'd have the curtain, he's sitting in the back, he used to sit right in the front row. So anyway, what he left, he got ordained, was made a pastor almost immediately because they desperately needed priests. Well, he came back to the seminary. He says, I have been a pastor for one year. And in that year, no one in my parish has asked me any theological questions. Well, we had a very astute Capuchin. He was actually one of Father Angelus, a member from EWDN. He was a member of his province. And he leaned over to me as the academic dean and he said, well, evidently in the year he's been a pastor, there's one group of people he's never talked to in his parish. And that's the children. Because the children ask nothing but theological questions, because our mind has a natural dynamism to know. And it's one of the things that causes to discover the existence of God by reason. However, once you discover the existence of something that tenants seem to know is instilled, you want to know what it is, which we used to describe in the more vivid language as seeing God. Now, you have this Abola Institute, there's a story from St. Teresa's childhood where she ran away from home. Yeah. And they brought her back and they said, why did you run away from home? She said, I want to see God. That's right. And to see God, you have to die. And so I ran away to find the Muslims to kill me so I could see God. Now, how did we become available to grace? Well, first of all, we had to admit we needed, once we admit we needed, then it isn't a matter of, this is pretty clear in all the spiritual masters. It isn't a matter of spectacular experiences or methods or situation or whatever. St. Teresa is very clear in the interior castle that even though she's writing a book about prayer, she says very little about prayer in the beginning. She talks about removing sin from your life. In other words, it's gospel living. And gospel living has two problems. One is admitting you have your faults and wanting your faults to be healed. And the other is pursuing, and this is just St. Teresa's doctrine, pursuing ordinary things with extraordinary love, virtuous formation. That's how you open yourself to receiving God more. So now there are, of course, various intricate experiences that many people have. Once grace begins to work in them, this is actually God's work mostly. In the book I talk about two effects of grace, which St. Thomas talks about in Masuma, justification and merit, which were great problems during the process of Reformation. In justification, God works with us, in us, and in merit, God works with us. And God working in us is a marvelous thing, but all we do is basically show up for duty. In fact, there's a statement from St. Augustine that's quoted both in the Summa Anima and the New Catechism, where St. Augustine said, because of the greatness of the work, the conversion of one soul to grace is worth more than heaven and earth all put together. And then when it comes to merit, both of us work. In other words, we allow God to work in us, and then we stimulate ourselves to work according to his own divine life. We acquire the supernatural point of view. So there are actually two people that work in merit. There's the Holy Spirit and ourselves. Now our participation is very small. God's is very big, but it's still our participation. And so that's why you have two contradictory parables, one in which they all receive the same reward, the 11th hour, which is about receiving grace and the vision of God in heaven, the other of which is where some get more depending on how much they put into it, because in my house there are many mansions. So there'll never be anyone, for example, who cooperates with grace, but whose love got as much as our lady, because she's his mother, and she's also the bride of the Holy Spirit, the spouse of the Trinity. But all of us are called to have the same spiritually, the same conversion, a heart take place at an everyday level in our souls, as Mary experienced physically when she conceived Jesus in her body. So how do you prepare yourself? It's not hard to say, but I find it, I don't know about you. I've lived in the religious life for 56 years. Believe me, trying to root out your faults and grow in the virtues isn't easy with the monks. But we thought we thought you were all levitating all the time, just dancing around in the spirit. I did enjoy some of the comment about Catherine in Siena, because I don't know if you know much about how Catherine in Siena's sister used to treat her, but according to Raymond of Capua, they were jealous of her favors. So in those days you had to have permission to go to communion from the priests, so they incited the Dominican priests against her, so they forbid her to go to communion. Remember they used to live at home, but they come together in the church. And when they did allow her to go to communion, they used to insist she leave immediately, but the poor thing would fall into an ecstasy, and that didn't stop them. He says, these women, true daughters of Eve, says her biographer for her canonization. They picked her up like so much garbage and threw her out in the piazza under the hot sun, and they kicked her while she was in ecstasy. And it says that even though she thought it was terrible, she always excused them, because she understood they were motivated by strange desires. Wow, that's a heroic virtue there. Well, I have one question. We have a couple of minutes left, Father, and so before we leave, what are the two theological errors that most people of goodwill mistakenly believe? What are these theological errors? Okay, we have time for everyone's of Lutheranism and Pallagianism. Okay. Lutheranism is that, you know, grace doesn't change you at all by merely over-looks your depravity. Pallagianism is that we can do it all ourselves, and grace just helps us to do it more easily. And so they, in history, the Council of Orange, the Mechanicism states this, the Council of Orange answered Pallagianism, and of course the Council of Trent answered Lutheranism. It's a true change in us, which is a supernatural change. And against Pallagianism, it's not a matter of how much you beat yourself. And suffer. It's not, we do have to suffer in Christianity, but it isn't the harder it hurts, the better it is. It's the more, remember, it's the more love with which it's done. Today we have the Canadian martyrs, and that's very true. It's the love with which something is done. Amen. So, Father, Brian Malady has written a great book, Grace Explained, How to Receive and Retain God's Most Potent Gift. You can find that at EWTN's Religious Catalog, and whatever's easiest for you to remember, you can also find it at spiritualdirection.com forward slash shop. It's one of many great books that EWTN is publishing these days, though they've always published good books. Father Brian, as Stephanie mentioned, is also weekly on EWTN's radio network on Thursday, I believe. Is that right, Steph? Yes, 3 p.m. Eastern on Open Line. If you want to hear him answering questions in a manner that he's done here, that is always so helpful, check that out. And thank you again, Father, for spending time with us today on Divine Intimacy Radio. My pleasure. All right, with that. 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. Thank you again, Father. God bless. Thank you, Father. Thank you. Take care.