 the bottom. Hey friends, you're watching behind the scenes divine intimacy radio. We're gonna get started today. We're gonna be answering questions about oppression and just discern demonic oppression, discernment spirits, that sort of thing. So stick with us before we go. I want to tell you about some opportunities for you to be, for you to be deeply enriched in your faith. If you're in Louisiana, Stephanie and I will be, are you giving talks there next week or is it just me? I think it's, I actually don't know. I think you got a call to ask you to do something, didn't you? I, you know, this is the wrong moment to ask me this. That's right. I'll be in Louisiana with my wife next week. Baton Rouge in particular. You can go to, um, I'll be giving talks to priests, I think, and then to a laity, spiritualdirection.com forward slash events. You can find out the details there. And I think that's it. The other thing is that there's a new course that I'm really excited about taught by our own Dr. Joseph Holcraft. He's writing a book on this, well, he's written a book on this topic. It's contemplating the seven sorrows of Mary with St. Alphonse's Liguri. Wow. Right. Just teaching us again. Dr. Holcraft. Wow. Yeah. He's, I always say this or do I not? Do I say it with everyone? I don't know. He's, he's much beloved by the, by his. And all of our professors are. They're pretty great. They might help because they're like holy. They pray. Yeah. Right. They're the real deal. They walk and walk. Right. Talk to talk. Yeah. I'd be praise. All right. Well, it starts Tuesday, April 23rd. So it's a 6 30 p.m. Eastern course. Avala dash institute.org. Avala dash institute.org. Okay. Let's go and jump into the show. You ready? Mm hmm. Any markets that go? This is Dan and Stephanie Burke. Welcome to Divine Intimacy Radio, your radio Haven of brass, your Hermitage of the heart, your monastery of the mind where we lift our hearts and minds to heaven to draw on the wisdom of the saints to help us to navigate the stormy life that we live in storms inside the church outside the church in our hearts and our minds and our lives and our families. Yeah. In our hearts and our minds. Yeah. It's going everywhere. Yeah. So all of these questions we have today are from a group studying spiritual warfare and discernment of spirits, which is a, I think the most popular book I've written so far. I probably navigating the interior life is still so long, but it's been out since 2011 with spiritual warfare and discernment of spirits. And we also have a film series coming up soon. Your feet. Oh, am I moving too much again? You're stomping your feet. I'm sorry. We have a film series coming up soon in June. So if you're interested in a film series that will be no cost to you, very high cost to us that you can use for your parishes and small groups. I'm excited about this one getting out. Yeah. I'm excited about all of them and I love what's happening within to the deep. Yeah. But super excited about this. It's so needed. And I think probably like almost no Catholics are, you know, it's just the percentage is very small that actually study this, understand it and employ it in their day to day. Right. It's a game changer. It is. And that's not an exaggeration. So if you are interested in getting early access to that, to that series, go subscribe to spiritualdirection.com. And then you'll get a notice when it comes out. So you want to start or you want me to start? What do you want to do? You're running this. I'm running the show. Why don't you read the first question? Okay. Okay. I have a close family member that is stuck in rule number one. They continually commit the same mortal sin over and over again. The devil has them hooked. This person regularly uses the sacraments of confession and receiving the Eucharist but can't overcome this addiction. My wife and I pray regularly regularly for their change of heart and conversion. What else can we do to help our loved one? Yeah, I know you'll have some insight on this. So just to give context, they're talking about the first 14 rules of discernment by authored by St. Ignatius. The first rule is about how the demons work and the angels work when a person is going from mortal sin to mortal sin. So when they say they have a family member stuck in rule one, it means they're stuck in mortal sin. And in that even though they're participating in the sacraments, they are still stuck. So, you know, there's a couple things. One, I would see if they'd be willing to pray the Angelus three times a day, six noon and six, which is a very powerful spiritual warfare prayer right now would be the Regina Chaley. And that's something that they can do that that could help them. To daily mental prayer, if they're not practicing mental prayer, it's not likely they'll overcome this, you know, these are just foundational practices that we must we must use to overcome sin. Three would be study of discernment of spirits. The reason for that in the Ignatian sense. The reason for that is that you when you study discernment of spirits and practice it, usually desolation precedes temptation to sin. And desolation is defined as any movement of the heart to low and earthly things to the opposite of faith, hope and love, which is doubt, despair and narcissism. And when the heart is moved that way, there are specific things Ignatius teaches that can help you combat that assault, if you will, so that you you don't if they don't because usually what they'll do is oppress you with desolation. And then when you're oppressed, they will suggest that you commit the sins they've seen you commit a thousand times or whatever. So these are three very powerful things I'm sure you could add some something to those. Okay. Well, what strikes me first of all is praise be to God. The loved one is using the sacrament of confession and receiving the Eucharist, because confession is greater than exorcism. So it helps helps predispose our heart and the receiving the Lord. Yeah, more, more powerful. close family member. So the question would be is, are they a child under the age of 18 for males? So if they're under 18, and they're a male child, then the husband and wife still have the the spiritual authority to command to bind and to drive out the spirit of affliction of addiction of whatever this is, I'm gonna, as you know, I'm just gonna jump in here and make an assumption that maybe it's it's pornography, because we hear about this a lot. So let's just say it is pornography. And so so this is husband and husband and a wife could get together and pray against that addiction of pornography. You know, from their son, if he's under age 18, if it's a female, a daughter, they have that authority until she's married. So wow, you know, like that leaves a lot of years to work with depending on you know how late they get married. So that's one thing. The other thing is addiction tends to have a handle to it. So addiction tends to come out of some sort of woundedness, some sort of unforgiveness, something in that individual from their past could be from their childhood, something that they were exposed to that was done to them, that they were party to that they were afflicted by or whatever, maybe it's you know, the death of a loved one or a tragedy or a witness of something horrible. So the enemy uses that woundedness to create a handle for the addiction. And and so then in that whatever that addiction is, they're feeling the adrenaline, the endorphins that come from caving into that, and it gives them a temporary reprieve from the pain that they're dealing with that they probably don't know is there. That's a that's another piece of this puzzle. So you know, what are some of the resources that you can use if you have a family member in this in this state? Well, outside of deliverance prayers. So there's deliverance prayers for the laity. That's that black book that's that's published out there. There's also an exorcism app called Catholic Exorcism. And it's put out by the St. Michael Center. It has prayers for the laity that a husband and wife can pray for the individual, even if it's siblings to and this is the other thing is if it's your siblings, you can also pray for them with a lot of power and and success. So you've got the deliverance prayers for the laity, you can fast for that individual. I love our Lady of Sorrows, combining her her novena with fasting, super, super powerful. And then the other thing is to deal with the woundedness. If you don't have access to some really great healing prayer. There's the organization of the JP to Healing Institute. So things like their book called be healed, their conferences called, you know, healing the whole person really can start to help move and make room for grace that needs to be that needs to come in to help with the healing of of the individual. So addictions a terrible one. Because if they could just will themselves out of it, they would. Yeah. And and so there's something underneath it's holding on there. Last thing that I'll mention, because it is a real thing that needs to be dealt with. If there's any kind of freemasonry in the family line, that does need to be renounced and ratified by a priest so that it's gone. And it has a tremendous hold on families and we're seeing a lot of it come up in those that are dealing with deliverance ministry. So there's a lot to do there. Lots of at least lots of movement forward of things that you can do. And using sacramentals, of course. Yeah, I think one last thing I'll say about this because it's so common is the rule of three, we call it the rule of three. And that is that when a person seeks to overcome a particular sin, three times with all of their effort and energy that they can muster and all the wisdom they can muster and all of the safeguards, whatever it is. And you don't, you don't succeed. That means you cannot succeed by yourself. You need help. You need help. And that doesn't mean you need to take a class and become smarter. It doesn't need you need to read a book and become wiser. It means you are unable with all the information in the world, whatever you're doing to get yourself free. You know, it reminds me of a of a statement from God, the Father through St. Catherine of Siena that I've created you in such a way that you are incapable in and of yourself to get to heaven. And a lot of us like to be boot strappers, especially if you're older American, you know, it's very much or do that to our kids. Sure. And it's just not a it's not a it's not a way to love. Just stop. Yeah, just stop cut it out. You're better than this. You can do this. It's not I mean, if they did, if they could, they wouldn't be in the situation they are. Yeah. And we need to help. We need to be that bridge, help, understanding compassionate and help them find a way through. And it's going to take investing yourselves into the mess of that problem. Yeah, you can't just keep rolling down the highway and pretend that if you give it five minutes a week and yell at your top of your lungs or lecture that it's gonna get it's gonna happen. Yeah. And that's not happening in this family, obviously, but you see to way too much of that. We have a free course available on overcoming habitual sin at possibly va.org. It's a P O S T O L I V I a e dot org free course for overcoming habitual sin when we get back from the break, we'll jump into how the enemy watches us day and night without rest. You learned our sins and weaknesses and how to deal with that. So we'll be right back. Okay, we need to go. Was that you stopped at 12? Oh, okay. That was a little early. So we need to go to 13 five. Okay. Alright. Just for those who weren't with us as we started, if you want to learn about events and where we're speaking, spiritual direction.com for slash events. And to a new course on seven sorrows, contemplating the seven sorrows of Mary with St. Alphonse's degree taught by Dr. Joseph Holcraft, you can get that starts on April 23. So go out to avaladashinstitute.org if you're interested. Okay, on your mark, it said go. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke. Welcome back to divine intimacy radio. We're talking about oppression and discernment of spirits and harassment and all that. So I'll read this rule. Since you read the first one, I mean, this question. In your book, under rule 14, you state that the enemy watches you day and night without rest for he needs no rest. He learns your sins, your weaknesses, etc. Sometimes in our dreams, we do and think about things that are wakeful, rational minds would quickly reject in a poor. We wake up disturbed and then relieved that it isn't real. These nightmares feel as if they're managing as if they are not in our control. But Satan's we utilize good success with good success, many of your tips and advice for managing spiritual warfare during our conscious and rational hours. But in dreams, we don't seem to have much control. Do you have any warfare tips for our subconscious minds? Oh, wow. Well, this is this is timely because I had a horrible nightmare last night. And God forbid I was the dream and I'll just share what it was. I was in a church and somebody hollered that there was an active shooter. And it was super, super vivid for me. So much so that I was I was, I was like helping people. And we were all running towards away from the shooter to hide back and behind a piano of all things like I like I knew, like I could feel everything and, you know, very, very vivid. So, you know, obviously what's going on there, there's violence, there's threat, there's death, you know, all of those things. And, you know, I just really, I recently came out of deliverance ministry. So I was like, Oh, I've got slimed, you know, I need some extra prayer from my priest to get this off of me. Well, you know, I'm not inviting that in. I'm not asking for it. It's not part of my conscious mind during the day. That was afflicted on me last night. And I've had other dreams before, even though I don't dream much. And so when that happens, we need not worry. Number one, we need not worry. So when we have weird dreams or whatever, you know, I think it's helpful to kind of discern a little bit about like what kind of was afflicting me there, and then just pray against it. In the name of Jesus, I renounce any and all afflictions and violence and spirits of violence or death or whatever in the particular one that I was dealing with. And in the name of Jesus, please fill me with faith, hope, love and peace. And I surrender this to your will. If it's about a particular person, I might pray for that person, right? So the enemy doesn't, he can inspire our dreams. Because if we know by St. Ignatius, that the enemy can, you know, suggest thoughts, can put thoughts into our minds, things that are contrary to God's will, things that invoke fear or, or despair or whatever it is, any kind of doubt, despair and narcissism, then we can pray against it the same way, and just surrender it to the Lord. If it's consistent, if it happens a lot, and we can't, like it's, it turns into being kind of an affliction where it keeps repeating itself over and over. I'd probably go do a really great confession. I put some holy salt around my room around the whole, you know, perimeter of the room, put it around the house, use some holy water before I go to bed and pray my rosary. Usually, you know, I know a number of, of exorcists priests that they keep their rosary right there on their nightstand. And they often go to sleep with their rosary going, because that provides spiritual coverage through our lady. There's a prayer in our prayer book. Do you have it over there? The, the producer looked like he was going to pull it up. Punishing prayer for sleep. Punishing prayer for sleep. Can they hear you on the radio? Yeah, they can hear me. When you say it, I was just going to repeat it from memory. Go ahead. Lord Jesus Christ, I ask that from now on until I fall asleep while I sleep and during my dreams that if an evil spirit tries to affect me, that that would punish him by making him focus on the thing that causes him the most pain during the entire time he tries to affect me and for 10 minutes more. I also ask thee not to allow him to retaliate in Jesus most powerful name. Amen. Amen. Where, where did you get that? I prayed every night. No, but right, but do you know where, I mean, I don't know if I wrote that or is that from your prayer book or I have a note of prayer. I pray the prayer against retaliation was the other one I was going to mention. Can you point, can you publish that at the bottom of this published on the EWTN live stream? Yeah. Great. Yeah. I mean, just any prayer like that, you don't even have, it doesn't have to be, you know, we're not witches. They don't, the prayers don't have to be exact. Yeah, we don't believe in, you know, it's not, it's not sort of counter magic. Just use the Lord's name. Yeah. Ask, ask in the name of the Lord that if it's demonic, that the enemy be that suppressing you would be punished by requiring him to think about the thing that he, that causes him the most pain for 10 minutes and that he'd be sent to the foot of the cross to be done with. And then that they're at a key point to on that is not to allow any retaliation as well. Yeah. So be not afraid, be not afraid, be not afraid. It's interesting. You know, do you know where I found that prayer, by the way? So after the first exorcism we were in. It was when we served in exorcism industry. Yeah, it was after the first one. And this was, we were not, you know, lay people can't perform exorcisms. Of course, we were assisting a priest. But the first meeting disturbed me. Well, they all were disturbing. But after I prayed that never had issues again. So it's a very powerful prayer. Okay. All right. Next question. I would go to four. Okay. Well, let's see. Yeah. Yeah, whatever you want is fine. Okay. Where does complacency fit in the consolation, desolation cycle? Yeah. So rule number four in the rules is what is desolation and St. Ignatius uses terms like tepid, sad. I can't remember similar words like that. Downcast. Yeah. Well, you can use synonyms like that. He didn't use that word, but there are synonyms that are properly applied. So slothful would be another one. Yeah. So the the that word and where is that I've lost it. Number four. Oh, right. Where does complacency fit in the consolation, desolation cycle? So it is desolation. Complacency is desolation. Yeah, it's a type of it. Yeah. Because it keeps you from doing the right thing. It's I think the best synonym you said it is sloth, which is the disinclination to do a spiritual good. The so I mean, it's a simple question with a simple answer. Des complacency is desolation and you have to fight it by when it comes usually it's going to come and try to attack a spiritual commitment that you made when you were in consolation. And so the rule number six is what you employ. Rule number five is never change. Right. But then you're right. Rule number six is that you should put come against that complacency, which is hard. Yeah. Because you don't feel like it doing that, you know, it feels heavy. The enemy would love for you not to feel like doing anything. Right. He's happy if you sit on your couch with a bag of chips and your remote control. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or Facebook. Right. So don't do that. You too. Yeah. Don't do that. Push against it. So which are the most important rules among the 14 given by Saint Ignatius for discernment in the first set of rules? OK. And one thing you can also renounce complacency in the name of Jesus. Yes, you can. Lord, Lord Jesus in your mercy, give me a spirit of fervency. Give me energy. Give me. Yeah. You know, perseverance. By the way, if you're interested in this subject before you enter the question, we do have a free mini course, digital mini course in Apostle Eviade, where we Stephanie and I go through spiritual warfare and discernment of spirits book. You can also take a course that I teach at the Avalon Institute called the Sermon of Spirits 101. So this is interesting you and you think it will help you check those courses out. So back to the question. What are the most important rules among the four discernment that Ignatius gives? OK, so I'll give it a shot and then you can add whatever you want. So the number one rule that you never, ever, ever, ever forget is number five. Yeah. When in desolation never make a change. I've never heard a disagreement, by the way. No, that that's the most important. And I and it says spiritual change or to a spiritual commitment. Yeah, I would tell you, I can't think of any change other than whether you're going to use oat milk or almond milk that you would make a change on anything. You just really you're not in a you're not in a good state. You are doubting, despairing or statistic, your downcast, your your tepid, you know, you're anxious, you know, all kinds of stuff going away from God, inclined away from God. So why would you trust any of your decisions at that point? For me, you you wait until until desolation passes through the other means that we're going to talk about before you make a decision. And I I believe to the core of my being that ninety nine point nine percent of divorce, the decision to divorce someone to leave them or whatever happens in a state of desolation. And we all know the fall out of that. So after rule number five, this the next most important rule is number six. So when you are in desolation, you pray more, you push against more, you you persevere, you hold fast. And so that means if you're you have a commitment to pray the rosary, you pay you add an extra decade. If you've got a commitment to do a holy hour, stay an hour and five minutes or stay an hour and 15. If you have a commitment to go to mass, you know, get in your car and go to mass, you know, whatever it is, continue on that path and then add just a little bit more against the desolation. And then rule 13 is to shine a light on it. And that means you reach out to a holy friend, to your spiritual director, to your spouse that's walking along with you somewhere on the path and ask them to pray for you and to let, you know, just to let them know I'm in the state of desolation. Please pray for me and and you do that, you know, and it and it helps lift it because it causes the enemy to flee. Yeah, so I would agree with two of those rules being the most important. Six is very important. I would put it in the top, but the top two is and this is more. This is pretty universally agreed upon, though, you know, if you like one or the other, it's fine. Rule five and 13, which Stephanie mentioned. Rule five is never make a change when you're in desolation to the spiritual commitment you made while you're in consolation. Rule 13, I won't speak the whole rule because it's complex, but it basically says that the enemy likes to work in secret. And when you expose him to a holy person, he's dissuaded. You know, demons can be dissuaded. They can be harmed. They can be, you know, even encouraged. They can be encouraged. I mean, to do a harmful thing that the the translation I like to use for that rule is that the enemy is like a like a dangerous dog who, you know, if you if you turn and run, you're in trouble. But if you face them down, you're likely to win the conflict. So rather than turning and running. So anyway, we're out of time. But check out my book, Spiritual Warfare and Disarmament of Spirits, also the free class on ApostleEva or dot org or the, you know, you can pay for a course at the Aval Institute or the upcoming film series upcoming film series that subscribe at spiritualdirection.com. OK, 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. I do not have the energy.