 All righty. Let's see. Howdy. Is there any way I can see what? Oh, I got it. Okay, great. Very good. So, welcome to the webinar on pre-Lent, Septuagesma, Mystery of Septuagesma. Great. Well, do you have you all with us? We'll be starting in just a minute. Debbie, how will folks be able to ask questions? How did that work tonight? We have a box, a comment box on spiritualdirection.com underneath the video where they can enter questions and they can also do it so in the YouTube stream. Okay. And then how do I share my presentation? You should be able to present at the bottom and share screen. All right. Present slides. You have no slides. Okay. Present share screen. Screen share is easier. Okay. All right. Share screen. Window. Very good. All right. I think I've got it. I think it's the first time I've done a screen share with stream yard. Does that work? Can you see that? Can you see that, Debbie? Yes. And then do you see me also or just the screen? Yes, you also. Okay, great. All right. Well, let's go ahead and get started. So, welcome to the Mystery of Septuagesma and how to prepare for Lent and pre-Lent and all that good stuff. It's great to be with you. I'm grateful to have you with us. And, of course, this is sponsored by Apostly VA and Habit Share app, which we're going to tell you. I mean, not Habit Share. Holy Habits app, which we're going to tell you a little bit more about it. Holy Habits a little bit later. That'll be a blessing to you. But grateful to have you with us tonight. So let's go ahead and open up in prayer. Name of the Father and Son, the Holy Spirit. Lord, we're blessed that as we exit out of Advent and Christmas, that so quickly we find ourselves talking about the great season of Lent and extraordinary graces you make available to your people by your mercy and kindness. Pray be with us. Help us to explore these beautiful realities that we might pave the way for folks to draw ever more deeply to you through this beautiful, powerful season of Lent and then Easter. We pray these things in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. So by way of introduction, if you don't know me, I'm the founder, my name is Dan Burke. I'm the founder of the Apostly VA community. I will Institute for Spiritual Formation, spiritualdirection.com and all kinds of books and on the interior life and dying intimacy radio with my wife, Stephanie. So lots of stuff all about reproposing the Catholic mystical tradition of the church. What I decided to do tonight in terms of starting out on Lent is admit to you a problem that I have and talk about the solution. Folks tend to find it very helpful when they hear the failures of others and I have failed across multiple Lents to acquire a virtue that I don't want to fail at again this year. And so though I've had, you know, some success with Lent and following the rule of life in Lent, it's been very powerful. I've had a pattern also failure and so I wanted to reveal that to you and and if it's, you know, I don't know if my problem is your problem, but I wanted to start with a problem statement and understanding of a pattern of failure and then how it is that you work your way out of these kinds of situations and really get to a place where you're availing yourself of the great the graces that come through Lent. So for one, the season of Lent, these liturgical seasons are a great gift of the church and there's a torrent of grace, which means just a huge amount of grace available to us, grace being the life of God. We have access to a much richer well of the life of God, much richer participation than than many people know. And you know that because Lent is treated, you know, pretty casually. So what usually happens is, you know, people discover they're in the week where Ash Wednesday occurs. Usually they figure out then there's, you know, show Tuesday and Carnival or they start hearing things on the news and they figure well, then they go feast and wake up the next day. They haven't thought about what they're going to do for Lent and they say, oh, I'm going to get, I'm going to give up chocolate or something silly like that that has no depth or meaning, no connection to anything related to their spiritual weaknesses necessarily or what they really need. Just another season passes by with this shallow, weak, reactionary, unprepared, sad kind of approach to Lent and then therefore the life of God is not. They themselves reject this great gift by taking it, you know, treating it so cavalierly. And so if you're here, I know that's not you or maybe it was you, but you don't want it to be you. Otherwise you wouldn't be in this webinar. And so how do we live this differently? How do we make it? How do we shift the way we normally handle these things? But most people make little to no progress in their Lent and participation. And the reason is revealed in a recent movie called nefarious, which is an awesome movie. And in the movie, there was this powerful line where the prisoner is demon possessed. He's a serial killer and he's being interviewed by this very prideful psychiatrist and totally manipulating this psychiatrist who's, you know, obviously very intelligent but not as intelligent as a demon. But he rattles the psychiatrist and the guy leaves the room and gets, he got pushed way off of his mark and he will come back into the room and the demon possessed guy says back for round two and the psychiatrist says, I didn't know we were in a fight. And the demon says, that's why you're losing, which was really, it was the money line of the movie, the entire movie. And, you know, a lot of us are losing the battle against sin. We're losing the battle. We're not making progress in our virtue and holiness. We're losing the battle for peace. We're losing the battle for authentic discipleship. And the reason we're losing is because we don't realize this is not about minor trivial seasonal things. This is about our salvation. We don't realize we're in a fight for our salvation and to advance the kingdom of God within us and in the world to yield to God and all that we are so that he can move in us and through us and sanctify us and make us holy and, you know, prepare us to be saints and help others to do the same. But the first step is realizing how serious it all is. And then the second is learning how to fight. And so hopefully learning how to fight, learning how to be more purposeful and hopefully this webinar will help you a bit. So we're not clear how to fight. We don't know where to go for support in the fight. And we don't diligently apply what we do now. Now this last one is really part of my own problem. We don't diligently apply what we do now. So I'll just be honest with you. The last few years I have had a goal during Lent to develop a habit of exercise. And every year I have failed that I've tried to do that and I don't know how many years. So that tells you it's more than two. And as I was preparing for this webinar, I was thinking, you know, it started, I started preparing a while ago. And I'm thinking, well, why is it that I'm failing? And I remembered that, well, one, I hate exercise. That's a good reason why I'm failing. But I just absolutely hate it. I don't mind working hard, which I do. We, of course, live at the retreat center. Our Lady of Mount Carmel, which is home base of the Avala Institute and the Possibly VA community. And there are a ton of projects here and there's never ending. And I'm always working outside. So it's not a matter of laziness. It's a matter of I hate single, let's call it single threaded activity. What do I mean by that? I mean, I hate activity that has only the benefit, only one benefit in the activity, meaning a love activity that has multiple benefits. So if I can get my exercise in while while building something or cleaning something up, then I have two benefits. One, I'm exercising and the other is I'm building something or cleaning something up. But the problem is when it's raining or there are health issues, which I have, you know, it isn't consistent. And if you're going to ever build a habit of exercise, it has to be consistent, just like a habit of prayer. If you're going to build a habit of prayer, you got to get up the exact same time every day and do your prayer at the exact same time. If you're going to develop a habit of exercise, you can't ever substitute this variable sort of project thing and get all the exercise you need. And so then I don't achieve the gains. I'm looking to gain in terms of taking care of the temple of the Holy Spirit, which is my body, et cetera. So I started to think, well, what is it about my approach in the past that has allowed for this failure? And I've had, but I'm actually fairly disciplined spiritually. So I get up at 4 a.m. every morning break and I always get up at 4 a.m. It doesn't matter how I feel. It's not that I have a weak discipline in that. But I started to examine it and I recognize one of the principles I have violated is the principle of three. And what does that mean? Well, it means that if you have tried three times to acquire a virtue or overcome a sin and you've given it your all and you've worked hard and you still have failed, you have to realize that you do not have what is sufficient insight will power whatever you need. You are insufficient in and of yourself to solve the problem you're trying to solve. So I would say that to people, you know, I've struggled with gluttony in the past. But I find that with gluttony, I am able to with a particular spiritual drug, disciplines make sufficient progress and solve that problem by God's mercy, but not exercise. And so if I were to follow my own principle and I try three times that the principle is you don't have what you need. Therefore, you have to get help from the outside. And so I want to talk to you a little bit about the decisions I've made and the process of why I made the decisions and and how I'm going to get help from the outside to learn. Hopefully to take care of better care of this vessel that the Lord has given me so that I can feel better because I don't feel well. Many of you may know that I've struggled with life threatening illness anyway. So I already have a deficit. I already have forces against me in terms of just being healthy and living out my life and serving the church. I have chronic lung disease, which which is hampered by any any other kind of health health issue, for the most part. So if I'm healthier in other areas, and my lungs are weak, I'm stronger overall, I can make progress. So anyway, what I want to talk to you next about is what I call the what I call the necessary conditions for spiritual growth. And how I thought through a different approach this lent based on following the rule of three, which is that I need help from the outside. But then what does that look like? Like what do I need in order to make progress in this battle to get healthier and to honor the Lord through lent through the discipline of doing that. So my my goal in lent is to is to follow the, you know, all of the traditions of the church. But in the sense that I'm developing a habit, it is a sin to harm your body, the temple of the Holy Spirit and not to care for it. And what I want to do is live out a virtue of taking care of this temple and eliminate any sin or eliminate any imperfection. If it's not sin, certainly isn't grave sin that I perpetrate against my body. But certainly it's it's either venial or imperfection doesn't matter which because I don't want to tolerate either. So let me talk to you about these necessary conditions for spiritual growth. So there are three necessary conditions for spiritual progress. And if you want to make progress during lent, this might as I walk through this, you might realize, oh, there is a condition that doesn't exist in my life. That if I applied it, or if I followed this, then I would, this could help me set, establish my plan for lent, that sort of thing. So the three conditions are clarity, community, well, I'll get to the other two. So clarity is first a lifelong commitment to study and growth. So that I am very clear about God's will the teachings of the church, what he desires for me. So clarity understanding of spiritual growth, and the interior life, which results in a clear plan, or a rule of life or we call it in the Apostle we be a plan of love. So the plan of love is a is, you know, understanding where I need to grow where I'm weak either sinning or where I'm weak in virtue, and then setting up a plan that every day when I get up. I'm doing the opposite of the sin or the, I'm affirming the virtue I'm living out what it is that God's will is for myself. So the plan of love or rule of life is something that saints all live by most saints are, are religious and most and all religious have a rule of life. We call the plan of love in a possibly be a because it's a plan for how we're going to love God and love those who's placed in our care. So that that would include daily monthly and yearly commitments, concrete reasonable and measurable commitments. And it's something that you use as an exam and daily and look at. So what is it that I'm going to do every single day related to God's will in my life for every month or every year. And are they super clear the goals that I'm setting out super, super clear. So that's one necessary condition. The second is community. So community is a place where you have solidarity and friendship. So what does that mean? That means that when you set these yourself toward God, your, your desire to follow God, you have people around you who have the same inclination, the same disposition and the same behavior so that you're reinforcing one another and helping another as you move, move toward heaven and, and move toward a deeper love and following God. So, so this means you would we, you would meet weekly monthly and there's gatherings that you have. You have annual activities and pilgrimages and retreats and that sort of thing. So community is very important for spiritual growth. The last one is accountability. So what kind of accountability are we talking about? There's internal accountability, which we call the daily examine, which is a longstanding tradition in the church. Whereby we daily asked the question, how am I doing according to my rule of life from my plan of love that I set apart, set out to achieve that is that I've discerned as God's will for my life. So I do that examine on my own. And then external, you have community, which is other community members who know the goals that you're trying to reach and what you're trying to do and or the standards that you hold yourself to. They give you feedback. If you're out of line, that certainly happened with me and the apostolic community and change my behavior because of it, which is why it's so powerful. And then you have regular confession and then spiritual direction. So clarity community accountability. So I'm so I'm this is a longstanding set of principles and behaviors that I've articulated that I know are super powerful. They result in to the degree that they coalesce humility and God word self awareness and, you know, it's like spiritual rocket fuel. So I was asking myself the question related to my failure to develop a habit of exercise. What has been unclear related to my failure of my habit to develop commute exercise? What is what about community? Do I need to do that? And then what about current accountability? Do I need to do that? And so what I realized is that I'm sort of wired in a way that I hate ambiguity in terms of I have to do something difficult. And things are ambiguous in terms of what to do. Then I tend to be less committed to whatever needs to get done to the degree that it's super clear. I tend to be more committed, especially with respect to outcomes. So as an example, I can tell you beyond any any doubt that if you have the necessary conditions for spiritual progress, and you live the paradigm of a cent which I'll show you in a minute, it is inevitable that you will experience spiritual growth. Inevitable. It's going to happen, period. No way it's not going to happen. So because of that, because I know that I very powerful strongly give myself over to these conditions normatively regularly. And because of that, I see progress in my own life. Of course, I see it in the lives of others. So, so I know they're powerful. I know the outcomes. I've seen it over and over in my students and the Apostle via community never where else. And so I'm deeply committed to it. And I don't I'm unflinchingly. So I'm asking myself, what do I need to do to follow this framework? That will result in a change in my failure to establish a better plan of how to honor the temple of the Holy Spirit. The Lord's given me through exercise. And so what I realized is I don't have clarity. So I don't know anything about exercise science. I don't know based on my age what I should be doing or what I shouldn't be doing. I don't know what's a waste of time and what's a really good use of time. And I only have so much time every day. And so I recognize in myself that one of the reasons I have a low commitment is I there's a low precision regarding my understanding of what I should be doing. Should I be focused in on balance and flexibility on strength training? What's the best way to do strength training? I have certain kinds of equipment here. What's the best way to use that equipment? All of that. So that's I realized that's missing. Then I realized I have never had a community level commitment to exercise. Wherein I sought out solidarity with others who want to develop same goal. I've never done that. All of my goals have been individual and private. So I don't talk to anybody about it. I don't talk on a weekly monthly or whatever basis. And so I don't leverage community and that solidarity and friendship where somebody gives me encouragement. Now, when I wrote the book The Devil in the Castle, I had a great editor. I don't like to write. I knew I needed an editor. I knew I needed someone that would be encouraging. And so I hired a particular person who is that way. Well, I would have never finished the book if I didn't have her as an editor. Because I needed her fortitude. I needed her to tell me remind me when I got tired of writing it that the benefit would be extraordinary. I should keep moving and all of that. But I haven't done that in this case. And then the last thing is I realized that I had no accountability in terms of whether or not I did the exercise. And specifically, accountability related to the clarity. Like, I want to know if I commit to this program of caring for my being a better steward of my body, that I'm actually going to succeed and I'm not just wasting the very little time that I have to do it. So what did I decide to do? So I decided this year to see if I could find a coach to help me. Somebody who's trained in exercise science and who knows exactly what they're talking about. And so I started looking in local gyms to see if there are people here and just I was quickly discouraged by what I was discovering here. Talked with Jordan as he goes to the gym every day. And he said he didn't wouldn't recommend anybody at his gym, which isn't good. And I thought, well, there must be online, you know, exercise coaches and things like that. And I discovered that there are. And then I stumbled across a Catholic organization that is dedicated to a Catholic perspective on on caring for the body and for being good stewards and doing what not for the sake of vanity, but for the sake of the kingdom of God, which is kind of what I was worried about. So I have a meeting in a few days with this gentleman who spends his entire life helping people to be better stewards of the temple that God has given them. So my anticipation is with clarity, I'm going to get an exercise plan based on what I have available to me that is going to be none of it is going to be a waste of time. So if I got 30 minutes, it's going to yield maximum benefit. If I got 45, it's going to be maximum benefit. And I'm going to create a plan that's going to be a part of my plan of love, my rule of mind and what I'm going to do daily with that clarity community. I'm going to solve through the Holy Habits app. And this whole presentation is sponsored by the apostolic community and the Holy Habits app and Holy Habits is an app that we have developed to help you to develop Holy Habits. And so at the end of this presentation tonight, there'll be a little bit of a demo there and we'll do some Q&A and that sort of things you understand. So community is through the Holy Habits app. What I'm going to do is select some people who are going to watch and see my commitments digitally. And then I'm going to have to report daily whether or not I did them and then they can help me with my accountability, which is the next point. So I'll be accountable to myself in terms of my exam and my rule of life. And I'll be accountable to them in terms of what I reveal to them that I want them to give me feedback on. And I anticipate that this Lent will be completely different and I'll exit out of Lent with a habit of caring for myself better, which will enable me to serve the Kingdom of God better and live a little bit, live with a little bit. I hope the discomfort I choose and exercise will reduce the discomfort I experience as a norm with difficulties with health. So hopefully that's helpful to you of how I thought through why I failed and why and the difference in approach to succeeding, why I believe it will be different because this is how I treat everything else. But I don't always need all these factors in quite the same level of intensity that I think I'm going to need in order to develop this virtue of self care that I've never been able to develop it very well. So I don't know if that's helpful to you and if you have questions about that, we'll talk about it later. So let's talk about Septuagesma and Pre-Lent and what is Pre-Lent? Septuagesma falls under a major heading of Pre-Lent. Some of you never heard of what that is and some of you may know what it is. But essentially before the Second Vatican Council, there was a period before Lent that the entire church, it didn't matter if you're an East or West, for hundreds and hundreds of years had set aside to prepare for Lent. And why would we prepare for Lent? Well, if Lent's no big deal, we don't need to prepare for it. If it's a big deal, we should. Well, what do we need to prepare for? Well, Lent is historically before our time now been way more rigorous. So way more difficult, way more stringent in terms of what the church recommended to us or required of us. And so it was, the church is dead serious about it and people needed to prepare for it. So it was called Pre-Lent. So let's take a look. So there were, Pre-Lent was a series of Sundays that preceded Easter. So set to a jesema Sunday, which is coming up January 28, was 70 days before Easter. Sex a jesema Sunday was 60 days before Easter. And then Quinn Quad jesema is 50 days before Easter. And then of course you have the countdown of the week that leads into Ash Wednesday. And then you have 40 days after that, but the days are symbolic and approximate. The point is, it's not that big of a mystery. It's a mystery why it was abrogated, why it was, why it was, and it wasn't outlawed, if you will, by the church. The church didn't say, you can't do this. It just removed it from any formal mention. And so we as the people of God are free because it wasn't specifically stated as you can't do this anymore. We can certainly resurrect this beautiful tradition so that we have several weeks before Ash Wednesday, where we're really taking care to ask the question, how do I better enter into the season? And by God's grace, of course, this Easter is coming, I think, four or five days earlier than the previous. I mean, this is Lent, which was early if I remember right last year. But SEP 2 a jesema, of course, the SEPT is seven. The sex a jesema, the sex is 60. And the Quinn is 50, 50 days before Easter, and that's how those words are constructed. So it's just a period to help us a time of prayerful preparation for a fruitful Lent and a year of significant spiritual progress, instead of stumbling into Ash Wednesday and just, you know, putting out some lame commitment that has no connection to the deeper needs of our spiritual lives. All right. So the basics of the beginning, of course, let I love these old cartoons and graphics and things like that. But Lent is a time when we're in a battle. And these and what I love about the older practice or or emphasis is they understood we're in a battle, we're in a war. And the battle, of course, the greatest warrior in the battle is Jesus himself. And our battle is his pattern after his battle with the devil in the desert. So you see him at the top there. What is what is prayer is our prayer is our weapon against the devil. What is fasting our weapon against the flesh. What is almsgiving our weapon against the world. So the world, the flesh and the devil are constantly attempting to subordinate us to their demands, their means, their values, their priorities. And Lent is a time where we militate against those forces with specific means prayer, fasting and almsgiving. So that we, if there's any aspect of who we are, that is under the yoke of the world, the flesh and the devil that that yoke is broken. And it's replaced with the yoke of us to Jesus. And so our prayer is deeper, our fasting is deeper, our self giving is deeper, almsgiving is deeper, which lessens the hold of the enemy and the work of these nefarious forces against our souls during land. So the very basics, you know, it's funny, I actually feel funny even doing this, because it seems so incredibly. Shallow, but it is the current state of the church. So abstinence, what does abstinence mean it means abstaining from meat, fish is okay. But if we're going to eat fish, it should be a penitential so if you're, you know, and why no meats, no flesh meat because that's Jesus suffered in the flesh. And the rejection of the consumption of a good that we like in meat is a symbolic of a rejection of his suffering in the flesh or joining with him in his suffering in flesh. But the challenge with a lot of abstinence in the church today you end up in a fish fry on Friday. That's like a gourmet meal. So if you're going to go to a fish fry, and you want it to be penitential, then go to the parish, it's got the worst cook, and stop going to the one who's making everything taste so good. So abstinence, no, no meat, fish is okay. Fasting is when you abstain from eating at all. So abstinence is abstaining from a kind of food and fasting is standing from food altogether in some portion. So the church presently requires one regular meal with no snacks, plus two smaller meals that add up to less food than the regular one meal is on the obligatory days of fasting. Those days are Ash Wednesday or fasting and abstinence are together and Good Friday. Ash Wednesday and Good Friday require fasting and abstinence together. And then Fridays in length require abstinence. You know, I think we should go far beyond that. I think this is incredibly easy to do. If you want to learn more about the tradition of the church and fasting, I recommend the definitive guide to Catholic fasting and abstinence by Matthew R. Police, P-L-E-S-E, which is published by Meaning of Catholic, I think, Our Lady of Victory Press. But this is an excellent book that will, you know, if you realize, as I do, this is a pretty weak and lightweight requirement that probably is resulted in a lot of feminists in our time. And you want to go back to some of the deeper teachings of the church, the definitive guide to Catholic fasting and abstinence by Matthew P-L-E-S-E is a great place to go. So I'll be, and as we go through this presentation tonight, I will be providing book recommendations for you to work. So the goal isn't that you read every one of the books. The goal is that you select the ones that seem to be most pertinent to you that you could read to deepen your, your face and what you need to do. In some part, this webinar is going to be almost like me walking you through a kind of examination of conscience based on particular categories of activity and then providing resources and perspective on how you might approach, you know, something in Lent. All right. But those are the basics. So let's, let's talk about where you are in your journey or in our spiritual journey. Because really, the other day I was giving talk and somebody said, somebody popped up and asked the question, I would like you to recommend some mortifications for me for Lent. And I said, I said, well, I can't really do that. And they said, why can't you do that? And my answer is because I wouldn't recommend anything in abstract to you personally. What does that mean? I said, your mortifications should correspond to your habitual sin or where you are in your journey. I don't know where you are in your journey. You know, for instance, if you have no issue with gluttony, giving up chocolate is kind of, it's kind of dumb. Or giving up, you know, Mike, you need to, yeah, I mean, if you have no issue with gluttony, giving up chocolate is dumb or giving up steak is, you know, I mean, other than days of fasting and abstinence. Why would you do that? Because it militates against gluttony. Maybe you could say, well, I love the taste of chocolate and I'm trying to just get rid of something I like. Okay, fair enough. But your, the way you should structure your mortification is to deal with specific sin, not in abstract. Otherwise, you're just, you may be mortifying something that's easy for you to modify and that then what's the benefit of that doesn't even strengthen your will necessarily. So my question is, we have to understand where we are in our journey. And I want to reveal to you, this is the Apostle VA code of arms. This is our illustrates in a graphic form, the community of Apostle VA. If you don't know what that is, we're a private association of priests and lay people, mostly lay people from all over the world, Australia and Canada and Singapore and Europe and Croatia and Italy. And, you know, we're all over. And we're a community that's seeking to live the contemplative life according to the Karmic tradition. And so this, what you're looking at is a portion of our code of arms and it reveals the journey to sainthood. And it just, it's one way of looking at it. There's a number of ways we can look at it and we'll look at it a few ways tonight. But the shield, which is this here in the middle is the world. It's this life you're living in this life. And then the, and I'll describe the key element. So the brown represents the narrow way to life that leads to sainthood in this life in the next. So you have the ability to become a saint, which church teaches in this life and then of course in the next. But it always has to go through the cross and through the purgation of the narrow, difficult way to heaven, which Jesus said, few are on. Then you have union with God represented by this narrow way at the top of the shield, both in and outside of this life. You have the wide way to destruction, which is hell. Jesus said, many are on that path. You have the constant action of the Holy Spirit that comes to your aid that reveals the truths of God, the comfort of God, all things that you need. You have the understanding of the three phases of the interior life. So the dots represent the purgative, the illuminative and the unitive ways, or at least the spaces in between the dots do. And for the purposes of this presentation, the vast majority of Catholics, even devout Catholics are in the purgative way. Doesn't mean you're not holy. If you're there, you can be very holy in the purgative way. But the goal is to get is to grow beyond that to become a saint. And so we've got to talk about how to get out of the purgative way because most people are there. So the normative Christian life, of course, as you come in through baptism and confirmation, the Eucharist, you know, all the sacraments. And then unfortunately we say no to God. This is not a good thing, but God be praised. We had the sacrament of penance or reconciliation that blocks the resulting end up in the results of ending up in hell because of our mortal sin. But instead we have the great grace of receiving forgiveness and strength to overcome the sin. And then we enter back on our journey again. And the normal Christian life should be a series of yeses to God where he presents us with a pathway to deeper union with him. We say yes, and then we're more deeply converted. And we say yes, we're more deeply converted. In this case, the key yes that needs to be offered to God to make spiritual progress is the yes to mental prayer. Mental prayer is just talking with the one we claim is the most important in our life in a deliberate specific way at specific times of each day. Yes to God in prayer. And we have to say yes to God in self-giving and self-denial or a cesis. Self-denial for the sake of self-giving is our yes. You know, Jesus said, you have to take up your cross and follow me. So what does that mean? That means we don't do certain things that are destructive to us and to others or that we like in order to exchange that time and energy to do things that are more necessary for us and for others to help us and to help them to heaven. That's what the crown of thorns represents. So we say yes to these sorts of things regularly. We experience renewal, which gives us strength. We experience renewal. We're constantly saying yes to God. But unfortunately, though that is the life God has called us to, it is not the life that all of us live. And so we say no. And when we say no, that means we're sinning. When we sin, we're choosing the life of the enemy instead of the life of God. It's just that oftentimes we don't hear how harsh the reality of sin is. Sin isn't just about my culpability. It's also about objective evil that we commit against God and against others. When we say no, it's a grave thing. And unfortunately, some people are stuck in this habit of saying no. And that's called the habit of habitual sin. And it's, in fact, one of the hardest things to get free of. And if you're heading into Lent, I just want to say this, please hear me very clearly. If you're heading into Lent and you have habitual sin, mortal sin in particular, there is nothing else to be focused on. There is nothing more important than getting free of that habitual sin. Nothing. Nothing. And you should do nothing related to Lent, in my opinion, that is a specific kind of spiritual discipline that doesn't help you solve this problem of habitual mortal sin. Because you're playing with fire. You're stuck circling the drain. And you're in a very dangerous place. When you say no over and over, you can get stuck circling the drain. This part of the journey, this dividing line that you see here, is between those who choose to circle the drain and those who choose to become free and make progress. And somebody's saying out there, but you can't just choose all this. You're right. You can't. But by the grace of God, you can't. Whenever I talk about effort, I'm not talking about it as a Pelagian. I'm talking about it as someone who acknowledges that I can't even see or desire what I want to do that is right without God. Just assume that. God doesn't save us without us. In this phase, we've got to fight hard and focus on what we're supposed to do and trust the Lord to provide us with the strength we need. So one of the key ways to break out of this cycle of habitual sin is mental prayer in the exam. Mental prayer is the daily practice of prayer where we draw dear to Jesus and speak to him. And the reason it's so powerful against sin is because, as revealed by St. Teresa of Avila, when we practice mental prayer, the grace that comes automatically fights against sin in us and automatically raises virtue in us. Why? Well, why wouldn't it? If you were in the first century, hanging out with Jesus all the time, don't you think being in his presence would have an effect on you? Why do you think Mary was so holy just because she was preserved from original sin? I don't think so. I think it goes much deeper than that. Mary was so holy also because she spent so much time with Jesus. If we spend that time with Jesus, we spend time with the one who is constantly opening our eyes to our sin, opening our eyes to the need of mercy and healing, opening our eyes to the right path to show us how to stay on the narrow way, giving us the strength to choose all of those things. And when we don't practice mental prayer, we get none of that. And then the other part is the deliberate battle against sin. So we've got to do both things to break through that circling the drain aspect of Christian life that is not normal, that is very unhealthy and very dangerous. All right. So how do we do that? So now we've turned to the paradigm of ascent, which is a model that I developed after asking the question over the years. Why do people become saints? Why is it that religious are saints and laity are not as many saints or diocesan priests, not as many saints as religious? And then I began to ask the question, well, what do they do to correspond to God more fully? And then what are things that everyone can do that are not just unique to religious, but that we could adopt even if we're a mother of six or a CEO or whatever it is we are? And over the years, I developed this paradigm of ascent, which is really answers the question, one, what do all the saints do and that we anyone can do? But really more fundamentally, what does it mean to be an authentic disciple of Jesus? Like when Jesus said, you know, if you want to be my disciple, you have to take up your cross and follow me. What does that mean in a practical sense? And unfortunately, in scripture, we don't have a concise definition of that. You have to go throughout scripture and go, well, he said it this way, this here and this way there. And so this equals this and this equals that. And you have to look at St. Paul and look at the writings of Peter and James and all of the New Testament to come up with this. And the first thing you need is to have a firm yes, which is your ascent to God that says, I'm all in. And I love the phrase, if you're not all in, you're not in at all. I have never seen anyone who's tackled by God's mercy, significant patterns of sin who was half-hearted, just haven't seen it. I've seen God be kind to people who are half-hearted, but nobody really makes huge progress unless their yes is big. And so that's what we're trying to do. The sacraments are the most important support for that yes, in particular the mass and reconciliation. Prayer and reflection are prayer and the examine or the next key component. And the last one is a ceaseless or purposeful self-denial for the sake of self-giving. So that's the paradigm of ascent. The question is, how do I apply that in my spiritual life? So the first question is, how big is your yes? To the degree that your yes is all-encompassing, you're going to grow. Of course Mary's yes was huge, absolutely huge enough to allow her to become the mother of God and the bearer of the Messiah. So we want our yes to be as big as possible, which means to Jesus in the work of Jesus. It isn't a yes to, oh, I'm going to be uber-catholic, or I'm going to be an amazing traditionalist, or I'm going to be a perfect charismatic or any of that. It's to Jesus himself who's the founder of the church, the reason the church exists, and the person to whom all the church is concerned with and all the activities point us to. So how have you said yes to Jesus and to Jesus' church and the Magisterium? There are people in the church, I'm sure people listening to this webinar, who would admit that their stuff they skip out on, they're things they blow off in terms of formal teaching of the church, or they think they do. We'll find out what it is. And because if you're falling short and you're failing to fulfill a fundamental precept of the church, like going to Mass on Sunday as an example, which is in the sacramental area, and it's a mortal sin if you miss Mass, well, I don't think you need to worry about a lot of other things than solving that one. Are there any teachings in the church you are dodging? Do you know the teachings well enough to know if you're dodging any of the truths? If you don't know, it's time to read the Catechism. It's time to read, if you want to read a great summary of the Catechism, that's really clear on teaching, read Bishop Athanasius Schneider's recent book called Credo, which is absolutely fantastic. So do you know the teachings well enough to know, and if you don't, maybe during light your spiritual reading should be the Catechism, or Catechism like Credo, or the Catechism of the Council of Trent, or whatever. And really, have you ever really said yes without any qualifications? Like I'm not holding anything back, Lord. And only you can answer that question. And if there's a no in your heart, you've got to figure out how to get that worked out this land. Do you really know him? Do you really know him? Nobody who really knows him remains mediocre in this life. And do you know yourself? So great books to read to help you to navigate these things recently. Some of them will be mine that I've written. Some will be that other people have written. Are they always, are mine always the best? Not necessarily. They're certainly top of mind for me and easy to remember. So I placed them here. But Devil in the Castle, spiritual warfare in the progress of the solar, finding peace in the storm, reflection on St. Alphonse's Liberia's uniformity with God's will. Why that with the yes? Because when you begin to recognize how God works in and through circumstance, you realize you're probably saying no to a lot of things that he sent your way that you need for your salvation. And that book will help you to get that right. All right. How is your sacramental engagement? So how is it the holy sacrifice of the mass? Do you go to mass frequently? Where is your head in mass? Do you arrive early to prepare? Do you stay after to give thanks? Do you receive grace or damnation? 1 Corinthians 11 27 says that there are people who go forward and receive the Eucharist who are eating and drinking damnation. That that should worry you to wonder if you are doing that. And unless you understand church teaching very clearly, that means that they're going forward if they're eating and drinking damnation, they're going forward in a state of mortal sin. They're not properly disposed to receive the Eucharist and then they receive it. And that's a sacrilege. It's one of the most grave sins you can commit. So that means, well, how do you remedy that? Well, you got to get to confession before you go to the holy sacrifice of the mass. But if those are all basic teachings to you, I recommend the book Meditations Before Mass by Romano Wardini to help you to dig deeper in your preparation for mass. There's another one. So the meditation before mass was written before the Second Vatican Council. And it's applicable to the TLM, but also the ordinary form. But a more modern treatment, not modernist, but modern treatment of preparing for mass is called a devotional journey into the mass by Christopher Hurstens. And I actually commissioned that book to be a kind of modern day aid, somewhat parallel to Romano Wardini's for his time. But either of them are very rich and to help you to dig deeper into the graces you can receive and the holy sacrifice of the mass. And so you may want to get that. If you realize that your participation in mass is your weak point, then shore that up and start to work on that for them. So you could have a commitment in Lent. You know, I know some holy people admitted one holy person, good, wonderful human being admitted to me recently that they're always late for mass. And so is that a big deal? Sure it is. It's late because it's a big deal because you're not preparing your heart to receive the graces you want to receive. So, you know, maybe more frequent attendance, but on time. But if it's only, if you only go every Sunday for whatever reason, if that's all you can do, that can't be your whole program for Lent because you need something you're doing every day, but it could be part of it. The next one is penance or reconciliation. This is the absolute best book I've ever read on confession called the Confession It's Fruitful Practice. But do you go at least once a month? I don't know anyone making spiritual progress who goes less than once a month. Do you truly understand the sacrament? Most Catholics don't. Is your, are your confessions even valid? For instance, if you go and there's no contrition for sin, and you're, you're, you're repeatedly confessing habitual sin, and you have no firm purpose of amendment, the, the graces aren't there for you. It's not even a valid confession. So you're going and thinking you're doing something and you're not doing anything, which is pretty horrifying when you think about it. So it's pretty important to, pretty important to understand what, what you're doing and to dig into that. Maybe you need to purchase that book and read it through Latin as part of your Latin program and shore up your confession. But again, just like with the, with, with mass, you can, you're only going to still probably do that once a month or every other week. And you need to, it can't be the only thing you're doing for that. Otherwise you'll, you don't have a daily practice that's going to help you. The next one gets us to daily practices. In fact, the rest are all daily practices. Do you recognize that? How is your practice of mental prayer? Do you recognize that being near to Jesus is necessary for your salvation? I didn't put this book. Didn't put this book to show up on the screen, but I brought back a book called prayer of great means of salvation by Alphonsus. Great. Brought that back into print recently because it's such a great book on prayer. That might be something you read. Do you have an habitual habit of daily mental prayer? And if not this, if not, I'm telling you beyond the basics, there's nothing more important than this. Beyond the sacramental participation, there's nothing that will affect your spiritual growth more than a habit of daily mental prayer. And if you don't have that, Lent is a perfect time to get that in place. And we put together a five part video series on mental prayer called into the deep. And you can find that at spiritualdirection.com forward slash pray. I'm sorry, the builds are a little bit out of order here. And it's high quality. It wasn't free to us. It was very expensive to produce, but it's being shown in parishes all over the world. And it's a great way to learn to go deeper in prayer. If you practice daily mental prayer, do you pray the rosary? If not, start praying the rosary. But I would tell you if you have an order of priority and you were going to determine what was most, I would say mental prayer is number one, rosary is number two. Then people will say, yeah, but Mary never said to pray mental prayer. And my answer is she sure did. There's no such thing as praying the rosary and it not being mental prayer and it being efficacious. You must know, as Teresa Bible said, to whom you are praying and who you are or else it's not prayer. And so you have to be, you can't just say the rosary, you got to pray it. So either way, you need to be praying through it slowly and meditating on the actual mysteries in order to have, in order to receive the graces from it so that you're actually praying instead of just saying this stuff. So anyway, strongly recommend spiritualdirection.com forward slash pray the video series. It is free. So there's no issue of barrier of money. You can play it at your parish. You can play it in a small group or you can play it to yourself. It's designed for all of that. The best book written for daily mental prayer in terms of the material to meditate on that has ever been in print. It's called the bed part by Father John Bartunek. And that is a book that aids you in your mental prayers into the deep teaches you how to do it. The better part teaches gives you daily meditations on all the Gospels so that you know how to dig into each of those. All right. Do you struggle with peace or anxiety? Do you know the peace that passes understanding? Do you worry about the future? Do you get stuck in regret of the past or decisions and behavior? Do issues in the world or the church drive you to doubt despair or excessive self-focus? Do you struggle with sleep? And if so, you need to tackle that. You need to discover why the New Testament Jesus said, I mean of course in the Gospels my peace I leave you my peace I give you not as the world gives do I give but do not let your hearts be troubled and let them be afraid. St. Paul says in Philippians, do not have any anxiety about anything. He said that from jail. And sometimes what we don't realize is that we lack the wisdom of discernment of spirits and we don't practice daily discernment of spirits. And this is another practice that can get you to extremely powerful progress during that. If you don't know discernment of spirits and you don't practice it, maybe this is a focus for Lent. It's a time to say well I'm going to master discernment of spirits. So you pick up this book and you begin to read through and practice it. You memorize the rules, the 14 rules of discernment of spirits and that would be your goal over Lent. And I guarantee you, you do that by the end of Lent as you head into Easter you will know way more peace than you ever thought possible. Very powerful. Another book which I've already recommended to you is Finding Peace in the Storm which will also help with that process. If you've already studied discernment of spirits but you haven't taken advantage of St. Alphonse de Grey's wisdom in this area, it's Game Changer. Both of them. Alright, how is your Godward self-awareness which really comes out of both prayer and reflection and an understanding of your root sin or predominant sin. This goes back to what I mentioned before about the person who was asking me well what mortifications do I do? And my answer was I can't answer that because I don't know what your sin is. I don't know what you need to mortify, right? So if you don't know your root or predominant sin which is that sin which you will struggle with your entire life then you are unaware of the most important battle in your spiritual life back to that original discussion about nefarious. So do you know how to discover your root sin? Do you know how to root it out? So tomorrow there will be an e-book coming to all the registrants of this webinar and folks at spiritualdirection.com. An e-book that I created that summarizes how you get to understand what your root sin is. So if you're subscribed you will get that. You can also find the exercise in navigating the interior life, spiritual direction and journey to God in my book which it's derived from. So this is a time during Septuagesma and pre-Lent that you can take that guide that I provided for you and discover what your root sin is and focus on that and really then decide what your corresponding virtue will be that you might be pursuing for Lent or whatever but it will give you what you need to get a really healthy focus. And by the way just had a cool meeting. I mentioned to you that this whole thing is sponsored by Holy Habits a new app that we've created to help you with all of this and in the future this function will be in Holy Habits so I'm pretty excited about that. There's another couple of books depending on how advanced you are in this area. Some of you already know your root sin and maybe it's time to go deeper and these two books will really help you. The Seven Deadly Sins by Dr. Kevin Boest and then Rooting Out Hidden Faults by James McElhown. Both very powerful treatments of how it is that we come to understand what sins plague us and how to fight them. The subtitle of the Seven Deadly Sins is A Thomistic Guide to Vanquishing Vice and Sin which is very powerful. I've addressed the soul of Dr. Boest but all of these are really powerful means. Have you taken up your cross? Do you fast regularly? Do you avoid suffering and striving? Do you freely give your time, talent and treasure to the level of discomfort? Do you serve the poor directly? Do you give alms habitually? Do you struggle with habitual, mortal or venial sin? This is another free resource for you. There's a course. I said it to you at the beginning of this webinar. If you struggle with habitual, mortal sin, there is nothing more important than spending this time and energy during Lant of getting past that. Some of you might say, how do you get past such a deeply rooted challenge just in this short period? I will tell you. We had a testimony on Divine Intimacy Radio from a guy named Lance Mundt today who decided he was done with alcoholism and within one year he was completely free. My own son decided he was done with the realm of porn and sexual sin and he tells his testimony about this and within a year he was completely free. Those who are all in get free. There's a free course though. It doesn't mean it's easy. Some of you tried over and over and so I get that and I have sympathy for that. It's a free course. It's in apostoleva.org. You have to become a member which is free and the course is free, but it's a little bit longer investment. Perfect thing to focus on during Lant. Watch each of the videos and implement the habitual breaking free of habitual sin worksheet that you can fill out and then you can use a lot of the principles we've talked about in here with clarity about specificity, community and accountability and you can use the Holy Habits app to help someone hold you accountable, especially if it's habitual and mortal sin. If it's mortal you're going to need help and it's too serious to try to do on your own. A deeper kind of dive into all of this of course if you can't go any more deep than John of the Cross. My oldest son, it's always quite amazing when the last two books that I've read that have been recommended to me have been his. He's recommended them and one I created a book out of which is Finding Peace and the other one is this Holy Science book which I am reading for Lant and it is a very hard hitting treatment on silence and recollection in God and all the different aspects of your life. It goes through and it's published by Sufi Institute Press of course it goes through silence on the body, silence in speech, silence in the senses, imagination, memory, conversations, heart, self-love, spirit, judgment, will, union. And it is hard hitting, fantastic. So if you're a little more advanced maybe it's time to dig into the Holy Silence or dig into if you're going to start with John of the Cross and you've never started I'd read spiritual canticles or a living flame of love and then you can move to a scent of Mount Carmel don't read Dark Night of the Soul until you've read those texts but those are some recommendations there. So the key to success which is what we started with and then I'm going to jump out to questions and we're going to give you a little demonstration of holy habits here but the key is you got to have clarity which is you got to know specifically what you're aiming at and then that has to translate into specific daily items that you are going to track daily commitments that are personal and unique to your needs that are concrete reasonable and measurable. You got to have community which is support especially if it's mortal sin and habitual mortal sin and it's difficult and you got to have accountability you got to have internal and external accountability and the holy habits app facilitates all of those even it's present form and we're just in the first release. So as you start to get focused and then we'll jump out to a little demo on the holy habits for you focus on two things for Lent one that you will gloriously and joyfully abandon at the Feast of the Resurrection at Easter so you want to make sure you pick a discipline a spiritual discipline that is difficult that will help build the strength of your will that helps to deal with your sin or all of these things that we've discussed today but that once Easter comes you'll have that resolved and you don't need to focus on it anymore and then one you'll retain as a spiritual focus point for the remainder of the year so one example would be if you don't have the practice of mental prayer that's one you need to focus on for the year for me on the exercise front that's the one I want to adopt during Lent and then keep with me after Lent okay so that's my one I don't know yet what's the one that I'll do and then give up it might be giving up alcohol different kinds of foods or whatever that's difficult in terms of fasting that sort of thing so just focus on two things that doesn't mean you only pick two things but two categories of activity but try not to pick more than two things in each category or you're just going to overextend yourself and frustrate yourself alright getting serious so make a solemn commitment and write it out address to God ask the Lord for the grace you need to fulfill your commitment and use internal and external accountability the holy habits app or some other form to help you be accountable and I've prayed that I like to pray that I think is very powerful for these commitments it's here for you you can take a screenshot of that but it says my beloved Jesus my Lord and my strength please help me to keep my commitments to you you are the vine the source of any good that I can do from you I can do nothing with you I can accomplish all you ask of me by your grace I resolve to do all that I can to keep my commitments to you and to rise and fight again no matter how many times I fall I also commit to bring each failure and success to you for my successes I will offer you my gratitude for my failures I'll offer you my humility and desire to get up and fight again I thank you that you promise to be faithful to complete the work you have started in me Lord Jesus I trust in you and it's the scripture passage that's based on that Philippians 1-6 and I'm sure that he who began a good work and you will bring it to completion of the day of Jesus so make a commitment write it out to the Lord ask for the grace you need at every mass and every day and then use the necessary conditions the clarity and in the internal and external accountability community and I promise you this Lent will be dramatically different than any of you experienced before if you want ongoing we're going to do questions and answer so we're going to jump into the demo on holy habits but if you want to join a resource that gives you insights every day on the interior life or weekly spiritualdirection.com if you want to join a community that's pursuing living the contemplative life in the Carmelite tradition check out apostolabia.org we free live worldwide formations second and for Saturday and we also have what will soon be hundreds of small groups but we have a lot of small groups now already all over the world but we're studying introduction to the devout life and we'd love to have you in that study alright is Nathan are you on can you hear me how you doing I'm doing wonderful just to introduce folks to you Nathan Pinto is an entrepreneur and a businessman who's also a devout Catholic and a good friend and we're collaborating together to work to bring resources to you to help you to grow in the interior life so we've already by God's grace created seek direction.app which is a way of finding a spiritual director but I'm actually most excited although very excited about the direction about this new project that's just released this past year called Holy Habits which helps you to achieve what we talked about tonight so Nathan I think you have the ability to present or share your screen or how do you want to work it sure if that works I'm going to share my screen and here we go this should be should work out perfectly alright I think my screen is live fantastic well thanks for having me here really excited to share about Holy Habits an app that really started from a personal need that I had to find a way to hold myself more accountable and really focus on my spiritual growth and it was during a silent retreat I was on a year and a half ago that this came to me while I was in adoration and someone who's been an entrepreneur for years and built various different technology products it was the first time I ever wrote the requirements for a product in adoration and I can definitely feel the Holy Spirit continuing to work on this and we'll touch on some of the things that we're doing next to kind of take this to the next level which I think Dan's alluded to so just here's a quick presentation I have then I'm going to jump into a demo and show you all how Holy Habits works so the first question here is sort of why Holy Habits, why did we create this and I think it starts from just our experience building seek direction Dan and I were able to meet in late 2020 and early 2021 and start working on building a product to help Catholics find spiritual direction something that I'm sure many of you who have saw a spiritual director have found the challenges and the hurdles of finding the right spiritual director and so by God's grace now with $0 spent on advertising it's been purely word of mouth the product has even been live for two years we've been really blessed to have over 2,400 people match and message different directors on our system and one of the things that we saw is that there's just a massive demand for spiritual direction but not a whole lot of directors out there and obviously the Avala Institute and others are doing a great job of getting directors trained but without any advertising any sort of effort we just continue to see this the number of people showing up looking for direction just growing Do you have a rotating fan in your room? Yeah It's hitting the mic How about now Sun noise gone? Okay, terrific So this is seat direction we continue to see wow there's a lot of demand for spiritual direction and so when we started to talk to people especially those who are unable to match the director and we asked why did you come here what are you looking for? What we saw was two things that really stood out one somebody people were looking for a guide someone to help them grow in their faith and the second was a mentor and someone to hold them accountable and so we took all of that together and we said okay what can we build to help people who are either currently working with the director and are looking for that accountability or somebody who's looking to grow in their faith how can we help make this create a product to really help people achieve what they're seeking for and so we have a really ambitious vision with Holy Habits and I'm really grateful to God to be able to be working with Dan on this and it's to find a way to build an actual guided system for folks to move and navigate their way through the purgative stage and enter into the illuminative and so with this app which has only been live now for three months you'll see if you download it and start using it you'll start to see these new features coming out we're going to have a rule of life generator by the end of Lent which will then put people on a monthly examination and a questionnaire which will then help generate their next goals and their next set of things and so we've built the product and right now what we have is at its core and I think with its core what we have is something that's really unique this started for something I always wanted I've been somebody who's used I love sort of habit tracking I love keeping kind of a to-do list and checking it off and feeling that sense of gratification every day but what I've learned over time is that the habit tracking apps as they exist today they're so easy to fall off the wagon right they you have to open it you have to log back in you have to remind yourself to go in the app and update it it's always kind of ask myself I was like well if there's one thing we all check on a consistent basis is our text message it's really unlikely that someone's going to text you and you're going to miss that versus a notification if you're like me you swipe those to the right and you clear those away but what if we created an app where every day you could get you can get asked if you completed your goals via via SMS and what if we could create a way that you could actually now respond to that SMS and automatically updates your habits and finally for people especially if you're struggling with various moral sins we know that working as a group working together really really minimizes the power that Satan can have over us and so trying to combine the strength of faithful together and we wanted to build a group accountability in a unique Catholic way and so what I would like to do is demo to you all the app I'm also going to just show quickly kind of what it's like to get started because mine has already been set up so you're not going to see the exact sort of sign up flow but you'll get into the app if you download it and essentially we'll ask you a handful of different questions and then from there we want to also understand some of these things will factor into your state of life and in terms of your program of life so we ask some questions up front and then the goal here is for you to set up goals and build a group for accountability and then leverage some of our best practices so what you'll see is some suggestions on different goals and that once we develop our program of life we'll actually be presenting unique goals and habits for you to help you contest your roots in and also help you build virtue and so you develop you you're able to select your different habits and then you get to decide when do you want to be contacted each day to see how you did you get to set your own time so some people like to be contacted in the morning to update on what they did the day before if you're like me I like my message to come at 9 p.m. as I'm starting to wind down for bed and I can report in on what I did for the day and then what you'll see is you'll you'll be able to see the different goals and you'll be able to see your different group but from here I'm actually going to go ahead and switch to my phone this is my group and with my group we have our different group goals we have a daily examine and praying for each other I'm part of an encounter group with Reignum Christi and so we've created these two different goals and the other thing we also have is a forum so you have to have a forum with your different goals and what we've seen with different groups that we've worked with especially people that maybe are dealing with some of the sins of sensuality they actually pray for me button so you can actually hit a pray for me button in your group that you know you're either struggling with something or you need prayers and it's a way to sort of alert the entire group sorry coming down a little cold but you press the button and alerts the entire group so on a daily basis a great note about that is if you know discernment of spirits one of the most powerful rules is rule 13 and that is when you struggle tell somebody and don't keep it a secret and that diminishes the power of the enemy so by using the app and I already do and before the app I did this through like a what-tap group and I still do the same thing but this is a great way to do it around your specific things that you're pursuing for the Lord for people to pray for you about which is awesome yeah definitely thanks Dan and so you're also able to set up your personal goals so there's two types of goals you have you have personal goals you can create your own three goals and then you also will have group goals one thing I'll state is that everybody's identification in our system is fully anonymized so we encrypt everybody's name so there's no way that I could know whose goals or what it's all fully encrypted there's no way for anyone of us to know what Dan's goals are what my goals are so you'll see here I've got three goals family prayer practicing chaseness and also wearing my seatbelt something I recently had our first child two months ago whose name is Avila actually so as a responsibility to my daughter I really need to start wearing my seatbelt the habit I'm not very good at so I created my own personal one prior to this I've done hang my clothes which is now a real habit that I do every day when I get down with the day I no longer get tired and throw my clothes on a dresser I actually get it on the hanger and it's built a habit as they say 27 days to build a habit and you know this app has really cool things that if you miss two days in a row which is another sort of cardinal sin in the habit building world you never want to miss two days in a row and we'll actually send my goals and now every day I will receive an SMS from the holy habit system so the holy habit system will send me a text message every day and I'll be able to respond so it's a daily check-in they'll say okay here are my individual goals here are my group goals this is for the 22nd so this is for yesterday but I purposely didn't respond because I knew I was going to be on the webinar today I wanted to show you sort of how it works and so yesterday we did our family prayer I was able to keep my my chase policies I actually didn't drive anywhere so didn't wear my seat belt necessarily but prayed my exam and I prayed for each other so what you'll see in the app right now is that from Monday this is blank both on this and on the group side these are blank so once I respond now you'll see once I respond to this so I don't have to go back into the app this automatically now if we go first with tracks you see how this now logs in there so you don't have to worry about okay did I log in do I do I have to push notification you're going to see your text messages they're going to come to you as as simple as responding which of the numbers you completed I responded one two I didn't respond three for seat belt and as you'll see seat belt did not log also on the group side you'll now see that it logged for yesterday that I did my daily examine and I pray we prayed for you I prayed for the rest of the group so it's a great way to create a group with a goals with with people that you're you're striving for the spiritual sanctity with as mentioned you can create up to three goals with each group there's a forum and then you can create your own personal goals as well and a feature that's going to be live within two weeks here is going to be insights as well so you'll start to be able to see your longest streaks for each of your goals so how long have your streaks been how's your percentage been and you can see that for both the group and for your personal goals and that'll be out in about two weeks so as the last slide obviously wanted to just share this here for those of you who are on your phone if you scan the qr code it will take you to either app store depending on your device and so just wanted to get that up here on the on the screen if any of you are interested just make your lives a little easier just only a thousand dollars right Nathan it's actually believe it or not free we are today really just trying to our goal is to help save souls and bring people closer to Christ and we want to get people on we really appreciate the feedback of our early users there is a cost to text messaging and doing that but that's a cost we're willing to sort of incurred today for our early adopters who will be grandfathered into the app for free now with the future features we're developing with trying to emulate as much of the best practices of spiritual direction for those who can't find a spiritual director that will actually be there will be a cost associated with it but I think we're probably three to six months away from really trying to turn on paid features and it will be a discernment that we take along the way and the goal is just to be able to hire you know have a full-time developer exactly you know the funds have to come from somewhere but the goal is to also keep it keep it low cost is there a holy habits app for android users and I think Google Play out there right yep yep exactly if you scan the QR code according to the website I used to create that it should take you if you're an android user to the exact place in the Google Play store to download it could the reminder be set up at random because after some time it become accustomed to the notifications or timers I mean that's sort of why we went with the SMS it's because it's different then it's hard to ignore an SMS and our users have kind of said that versus a notification you can easily kind of swipe it to the right but every time you open your phone to text people back chances are you're going to see that message sitting there and you're going to get it the next day right as well and it won't go away until you answer it you'll have that little dot right yep exactly are the group size limited or are they focused around a certain goal they're not limited today as as far as I'm aware if maybe you guys will push the limits of that and we'll find out that there's a limit as far as I know we built it without a limit and no you can you can create any type of goal you want as I mentioned we've we've given this app to people who are in essay people dealing with sort of the sexual addiction groups is up like that and they've created their goals around that but we don't have any prescription yet post the program of life creation it will be able to generate suggested goals for you based on your roots in your virtues your personal goals and stage of sort of spiritual maturity but today it's it's left open for you and your group to decide good question is there any way to access something of this nature when you don't have a cell phone but use with computer Google Voice desktop use a Google Voice number yeah you can sign up with a Google Voice number it's not restricted great very cool it's not available in Canada will it eventually be I I think it's available in Canada we just made it available in Australia and that's just simply allowing the country code to be used so we can check on that okay maybe you can't find it in the interesting so you probably can't find it in the place or it does work in Canada check back tomorrow I'll ask my developers to push it into make sure it's available in the play store but we did set it up because we have a few folks in Australia that Dan works with and they've all been using the app so yes it should work we'll get that fixed other questions any in your welcome to ask any questions whether about the app or anything that we've talked about tonight as well if not we can wrap it up any recommendations for a small parish group that are beginners well I mean I think it's a great way to do it I mean just like anything any new thing you'll stumble around a little bit but the app is super simple so if you're a small parish group that are beginners and if you're saying beginners in the interior life then let's make mental prayer in the exam and your focus for a lint and you can just put those two things into the app so it's self accountable to those two things so I'm assuming all your sacramental practices are sound but maybe they're not so you can talk to the group and say what do we want to hold each other accountable for as a group and you can have just one thing if you want it doesn't require a lot of complexity it requires a little work to learn these things technology wise or just spiritual discipline wise but this is why we're doing this prior to Septuagesema so that you've got a few weeks before you hit Lent and then you hit the ground running on Ash Wednesday so you've got plenty of time to set all that up how do I get into a group you create a group right Nathan exactly there will be a prompt you'll have two options you can either create a group or join a group you need to play the role of the creator of the group so once you create the group you'll have an invite code and you can share that with everybody else to join your group you do the invite code to share it through text or do you add them and how do you do that it's been a while since I've added anybody to our group it's a group code so you get a group code at the top of your screen like for instance you can see here maybe on mine there's a group code that I have and with that group code I'll be able to add people if they put in that group code they'll join our group I think you're muted Dan so you create the group then the people have to add themselves to the Holy Habits app and then you send them the group code in the Holy Habits app or through text messaging I think you can do it both ways let me just test it here oh yeah cool we built new stuff so there's actually a if you add something to the group there's a whole form you can put in there so I could put Dan's name his phone number and he'll get a text message saying hey friend I discovered the Holy Habits app and it says it'll put the group code and everything so cool my developers are adding new features it's awesome so Nick the Norbertine asks what's your most fruitful Lent and what did you do to achieve it you know I don't remember of all the Lents what the most fruitful Lent was but I can tell you the disciplines we talked about in this webinar answers the question of what did we do to achieve it it's clarity community accountability so it's I'm super clear about what my goals are I'm getting help from other people as far as support and then I'm accountable internally and externally in terms of my daily examine and then accountable to other people and those are for me and anyone you're going to find that those are the most fruitful kinds of and if you're a Norbertine you probably know if you're a religious Norbertine you know the power of living in community and religious life right and you have a shared rule of life and you have a shared way of life and just the more we can create that amongst people who don't have those structures the more likely people are going to be successful what other questions what is the name of the Catholic exercise organization that you found so I'm going to say this to you because I'm not going to say that I recommend them because I haven't used them yet but it's called uh hypero fit H-Y-P-U-R-O F-I-T hypero fit and so I have an appointment with one of their trainers so Nathan I know you probably weren't on before but I may have shared with you in our meeting today that I hate exercise and then I was asking I went through this process of telling everybody why I've failed in past years and then you because I didn't use the very mechanisms that I preached to everyone because I just don't have that much trouble you need all the structure you can get when you have trouble and I just haven't applied it and so it's sort of like a duh you know why don't you do what you say and I walk them through how to do all of that but anyway so I'm going to hire a coach for clarity which will give me specific goals that I have confidence will achieve the goal I'm trying to achieve and then accountability I'll be meeting with them regularly and then community and I'm going to see who else in the possibly VA maybe might want to join in and set some exercise goals and really end up being better stewards of our bodies through Lent and gain the spiritual benefits of all of that so so that's the name of the company and again just so you hear it again it's hypo-ro fitness I don't know what it means H-Y-P-U-R-O fitness it's probably some kind of Latin or something hypo-ro I'm sure do you have to find people to be in your group how does that work Nathan yeah today you would invite others so I think somebody mentioned parish groups I do with my Bible study we have a few people that have done this families so that we see quite a few families that have signed up and have rosary as sort of their goal or something around that nature will I be able to see this again and I was not able to join on time yeah this entire webinar will be sent out to everyone who's registered via email and then remember tomorrow that we will have a a rule creating a rule of life e-book that'll be coming to you via email as well so you'll get more than just the content in the webinar you'll get if you don't have my book navigating the interior life I created a a guide that's derived from the book that will help you to get your create your your rule of life Nathan it might be helpful to you as well based on our work yeah you got the book I don't know if there's value add beyond the book and the guide but I don't remember it's been so I wrote it in 2013 how do you get the text message do you get into the app the text message automatically when you build your rule of life in the app it automatically goes to your you know set it up it automatically goes to your text message is there a better way to answer that for Donald Trump I mean Tracy how this this so I think if you're asking to get in the app when you when you download it you should select the option to sign up you'll put in your phone number you'll get a one-time passcode and then at the end of your goal setup it'll ask you what time do you want to receive your SMS each day and that will be in fact I'll just pull up that will show that will allow you to select the time that you'll receive the daily SMS so you'll go through these steps here so you click the sign up button if you had a group code that's when you can enter the group code you'll put in your phone number here and then you'll verify your phone number here so these are these are the screens that you should be seeing in the app great and then at the end is where you select your time to receive your daily reminder or check in good do I have to scan the QR code can I just search it in the Play Store I tried searching and I can't find it I you should probably use the QR code then but it should be in the Google Play Store or it is in the Google Play Store yeah if you just type in all the habits so it should be here I'll be here the link for both so it looks like named after our patron soon to be Saint Carlo Coutis yeah Coutis Technology Group is the app available in Trinidad and Tobago unfortunately not yet but I can if you get a group together I don't know if you'll be able to share my email it's just Nathan at seekdirection.app and if you get a group together and you guys actually want to use it shoot me an email and my developers turn on Trinidad and Tobago it's not too hard to turn it on it just takes a little bit of effort we're going to be doing a marriage retreat there soon so might be good to get that set up there sure right Carlo Coutis would be proud I agree Debbie can you share Nathan's email to everyone I don't know how to do that any other questions we will email it out so if they're in an area that we'll send it out to them and I welcome all the feedback the good, bad, the ugly it's we first put this out to seek direction users after Labor Day and some of them really beat it up and we've made changes consistently and every week we push new updates so what if one of your goals is to say I front so actually a future feature that we have is we are experimenting it's an R&D is that we will actually lock certain apps on your phone so for instance we've heard feedback from people they really struggle with time management because of the Instagrams and the Facebooks so we're actually going to set up one where you can lock those apps until you complete your rosary or do your exam it's an R&D phase right now we'll have to probably bypass a couple things but I would be shocked if it's not live at the end of the year God willing yeah alright any other questions we'll take one more if it comes in if not Nathan thanks for all your hard work and for all of you who signed on you really have a great opportunity to have an extraordinary lent and then teach others to do the same if you need to rewatch some of the webinar to get some of the insights you'll be getting that in email and then of course all of the opportunities we presented to you for ongoing formation with apostoleva or spiritualdirection.com just lean in lean in it can be an extraordinary year was it Thomas the Kemp has said that you focus on one virtue a year you'll be a saint in no time and it's not because we're plagians because we say well we're going to become a saint because we think our effort gets us there it's because we're cooperating with what God already desires and he put the desire in our heart and that desire is also a promise that he wants to fulfill so may you correspond with all the graces that God desires for you and may you have the greatest lent that you've ever had and may Jesus Christ be praised now and forever amen God bless you see you Nathan take care thanks Dan thanks everyone