 say hello, Dan. Hello, Dan. Hey, folks, this is behind the scenes. You're watching behind the scenes. Divine intimacy radio and we're about ready to kick off a show with good friend and a great writer, Vicki Burbach. But before we do that, I want to tell you about a few things coming up. As always, the reason we do this is because we care about your soul and we want you to know of many different ways you can grow in the interior life. The Avalos summit, which is held at the shrine of the most blessed sacrament in the last few years other than COVID. Has gone virtual. A COVID break. Yeah, it's gone virtual. It's still meeting in person, but that's the seats are sold out. Been sold out for two years. Right. So now we have virtual seats, which we're really excited. And the benefit of that is you don't get to be with us like physically, but you get to hear all the great talks. And not only that, you get to have them for about 30 days where you can renew, you can just listen to them over and over again and just glean every ounce of grace from them because it's going to be fantastic. Yeah, it's called fire from above. And it's an exploration of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and Carmelite spirituality combination of maybe charismatic Carmelite both contemplating and Dr. Ralph Martin, Anthony Lillis, Bishop James Wall, Father Boniface X, Dr. Kevin Boest, pretty exciting group Dr. Hullcraft, Joseph Hullcraft, and Dan Burke. Yeah, whatever, spiritualdirection.com forward slash events to sign up for that. And I'll tell you about one more thing. Let's see. Let's look at this really quick. It does not say if these don't say SOSF or grad. So we have graduate course, the Abel Institute called Introduction to Spiritual Theology. So if you're an aspiring spiritual director or you're already one and you want to grow deeper or you're a priest or religious, whatever. That just really sets your heart aflame. Yeah. If you're a human and you have a pulse, how's that? Right. And you love Jesus. Introduction to Spiritual Theology. And Father Ignatius Schweitzer OP will be teaching that. Avala-institute.org and also Bible Revelation and Prayer. It's another one. Dr. Alfonso Pinto. Anyway, if you want to get to heaven, take these courses, would you? Yeah. Okay. Great. Avala-institute.org and events are spiritualdirection.com forward slash events. And you know what's cool about the Abel Institute? What? Is that our enrollment is just like skyrocketing. It is skyrocketing over the last, over the course of the last year or so. It's been remarkable. Yeah. It's really incredible. 500 students a quarter is average, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's awesome. So come join, I think, one of the best kept secrets in the church today. Yeah. Yeah. I think so too. Okay. All right. Let's go ahead and start the show. Ready? Ready. Welcome to Divine Intimacy Radio. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke. You have landed in your radio haven of rest. Your hermitage of the heart? Should I really do it that way? No, we're gonna stop. I didn't like that. Okay. Ready? And your market set go. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke. Welcome to Divine Intimacy Radio. Oh, my goodness. Did you do the sign of the cross? Are you in the spirit, Dan Burke? We have to pray for Vicki. I don't know. She's gonna be tough. Okay. Ready? One more time. In the spirit. Come Holy Spirit. Okay. Welcome to Divine Intimacy Radio. Your radio haven of rest. Your hermitage of the heart? Wait. Why am I getting this wrong? I don't know. What is wrong with you? Dan, Stephanie Burke. How does it normally go? Welcome to Divine Intimacy Radio. Yeah. Your radio haven. This is your radio haven. No. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke. Welcome to Divine Intimacy Radio. Your radio haven. Okay. I think so. I don't know. Down at a million times. I don't know what's going on in my brain today on your market. I'm so glad to not be doing live radio, although we're live streaming this. We are. So I am in need of a limited audience. Everybody is hearing every mistake. No pressure here. Gosh. Welcome to Divine Intimacy Radio. Your radio haven of rest. Your hermitage of the heart? Your monastery of the mind where we lift our hearts and minds to heaven. To explore the wisdom of the saints, the teaching of the church. All that lights our path on the narrow way to heaven. And today, I'm excited to have a friend on who's written more than one great book, Vicki Burbach. Why don't you go ahead and just introduce Vicki? Okay. I'd love to. And by the way, this is Dan and Stephanie Burke on Divine Intimacy Radio. Did I miss that? Right. It's just, you know, what am I going to say? So for those who are just tuning in and have never heard us before, that's who we are. And we love that you're here. Yeah. Welcome. And so we want to welcome our guest today. We are welcoming Vicki Burbach. She is a passionate convert to the faith, passionate, unlike my husband, who is very passionate as well. Convert to the faith. I think converts are like the best Catholics often. I don't know about that. She loves to delve into the beauty and truth found in the Catholic spiritual traditions. Years ago, she began to notice a stark contrast between what she was reading and what she was witnessing all around her in a world in which virtually every convenience can be found at the tips of our fingers. How could joy be scarcer than ever to understand this paradox? She immersed herself in these words of Christ, unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies. It remains alone. But if it dies and if it dies, it bears much fruit, John 12, 24. Her study led her to a new appreciation for the art of sacrifice, the narrow path trodden by saint after saint towards holiness, happiness, and eternal reward. Her latest book, The Lost Art of Sacrifice, published by Sophia, is her attempt to share what she has learned, not from the perspective of a theologian, but from that of a wife and a mother struggling daily with a temptation towards self-gratification. Oh my goodness, is this book needed? It is needed. Welcome, Becky. It's great to have you on with us. Thank you. It's nice to be here. Nice to see you again. Yeah, it's good to see you again. I think the last time I saw you was at EWTN, and I may have seen you on EWTN. I know you've been on with, I think you've been on with Johnette Williams. Thank you, now Williams. And yeah, I mean, you're of course a wonderful writer. You did a great job in your, I think it was your first book, How to Read Your Way to Heaven. That was your first book, right? Yeah. Yeah. So we're excited to have you have another book published on this important topic. You say you're not a theologian, and of course you're not a theologian is a technical term in the church, but I have to say that you're very careful to stay deeply immersed in the tradition of the church, and I imagine you didn't get much by way of theological corrections when you wrote this. A lot of, I have Scott Hahn to thank for sending me on a path of correct reading quite a long time ago. So I've really been blessed to have some beautiful things to fall back on. Awesome. Now for those listening, I know you're going to want to buy the book and just so I don't forget to tell you, you can find it at EWTN's religious catalog, and the great thing about when you order a book from there, a couple of things happen is they actually send you the book, which is really cool, and you help the ministry of EWTN. Right. So buy the lost part of sacrifice. All right, Stephanie Burke, I know you have some good questions for Vicki, so we should probably jump in. Yeah, I can't wait to delve into this. This is such an important topic. So first of all, Vicki, can you define to us what is sacrifice? Because I think this is something that's basically lost in the current culture. There is no idea about sacrifice. It's more about me and getting what I want and all of these things. So what does sacrifice mean? Can you explain that to us? Well, I started with the definition of sacrifice. It comes from the Latin, sacchere, which means sacred. And sacchere means to do or perform. So throughout all of history, the idea of sacrifice was related. It had a religious connotation. So it was always related to worship of some kind. Now obviously, in the ancient world, sacrifice was a lot different than it is today. But it was always related to a means of worshiping God or giving thanks, some kind of developing a relationship with God. So in probably the last thousand years, that word has taken on the meaning that we often see today, which is the idea of sacrifice to get ahead, sacrifice for myself, sacrificing physically or monetarily just to make my life in this world a better thing. But in the context of my book, I tried to get back to the idea that was grounded in all of the beautiful things that I've read over many years is we were made for sacrifice. We were made for union with God, and that's ultimately what the idea of sacrifice, why we are called to that. Christ gave us his sacrifice on the cross, and we are called to emulate him. There's so many paradoxes in Christianity, but that's one of the greatest ones. The idea of denying ourselves allows us to find a greater joy than we can ever imagine. So that's the path that I went down in my book. So to back up a little bit as well, you and I started talking about this years ago, or you brought it up. I can't remember. We were in a conversation, I think it was when you were running the book club over at spiritualdirection.com. And what triggered, I don't remember what exactly triggered your interest or why now, I guess. I know you've been working on this for a few years, but what is it about this topic or this idea that really is compelling to you that wanted you to do all the work that is involved in writing a book, the painstaking work? All right. Well, it's interesting. The idea of sacrifice is what brought me into the church. I grew up a child of divorce, and I know that's common these days, but I remember when I was young, my favorite show was Little House on the Prairie, and I watched that show and thought, I didn't know if there was a God. But if there was a God, I thought this is what he had in mind when it came to the idea of family, just the idea of just the giving of self, the sacrifice that Jesus was the center of their lives. And, you know, I mean, it sounds really simple, but it just really sat with me, and sometime in college, someone handed me, I think it was a national review, it was a secular magazine, and I think William F. Buckley Jr. had written an article on one of Pope John Paul II's encyclicals on marriage and family. And when I read that, it just, it was everything to me. I thought, this is true. This is the truth. And it was all about the cross. You know, it was, it was the church's teaching on marriage and family just went, that's what it all boiled down to. And that sent me off on a path of reading and, you know, I read my way into the church. And so I've always been, I've always been inspired to write stories of sacrifice. You know, I just think we don't see it in the world today. I mean, we do in the wrong sense. But when you look around, you know, when I came into the church, I was reading just amazing things, just the, just the very intimate level of sacrifice and suffering and what we were called to. And then I'd go into a church and it was really a kumbaya, everybody hold hands, you know, kind of Christianity. It wasn't at all what I was reading. And, you know, I told a story recently, my husband and I taught CCD to sixth or seventh graders. And I read through the, before we had children. So this was early on when I was in the church. And I read my way through this curriculum. And this was, you know, in the Chicago area. And everything in the curriculum was about Jesus loves me. That was it. It wasn't, you know, how did Jesus demonstrate his love for us? How can we emulate his love for us? How can we love him in return? It was just Jesus loves me as I am. You know, it's kind of the I'm okay, you're okay philosophy. And I, you know, I said to my husband, why would I have ever become Catholic if this is all it was, if this was it? And that's what I had it, you know, I mean, honestly, that's what I had learned growing up in the Protestant church, you know, and there's just so much more depth in our faith. So, so anyway, that that just has always sat there. And I know you and I had a conversation and you asked me if I were going to write about anything I'd want to write about, what would it be? And I said, it would be sacrifice, you know, we live in a world where you have dual heating and air in your car, you know, we don't have to give up anything ever. Everything is immediate. And, you know, just the idea of getting back to what we are called for, you know, the biggest piece is this world is going away, you know, this life is, you know, it's about eternal life. It is not about life in the here and now. And we just really need to get back to that understanding. Yeah, that's really remarkable. When you talk about everything's about the here and now, you know, that that just permeates everything in our culture. It's, you know, how can I do it all? How can I be a mother and have it all? How can I be married and have it all? You know, you're not expected to give away anything. And when we consider that our model, our model, par excellence is Christ. He's our ideal. You know, he gave away everything down to his life. His sacrifice is perfect selflessness, right, for our salvation to the point of pouring himself out on the cross. That's who we're to be. And what's remarkable, the paradox of it is, as you do that, as you pour yourself out for your loved ones, you start with your husband, your children, you know, those that are entrusted to you, that it becomes life giving and people don't understand that. We're miserable when we're constantly saying, what about me? What about my needs? You know, who's going to give me what I want? And when we're so busy giving ourselves away and that's generating love and grace, then it becomes really life giving. So what are the lies? You know, in this book, you talk about the lies that inhibit the art of sacrifice. What are some of those lies? I think the greatest one is modernism. You know, just the idea that we are living in a world that's, that as we've already been discussing, it's about the material world. You know, we've lost sight of the spiritual world altogether. So I think that is probably the greatest one because all the other lies stem from that. You know, we have another is the prosperity gospel. We've been taught that, you know, I mean, anybody's heard Joel Olstein, right? There's so many pastors out there and it's actually sadly infiltrating the Catholic church, the idea that God wants us to be healthy and wealthy, and he doesn't want us to suffer. And that's another lie, you know, the lies about suffering, that it's meaningless, that we need to get rid of it altogether. There is the lie, one of the greatest lies that's, you know, spreading like crazy right now in this culture is the lie of socialism. And that also stems from the modernist heresy, just the idea that we can create utopia on earth. And, you know, that lie is particularly deceptive to Catholics, because... I we're about ready to head to a break when we, when we come back from the break, let's pick up on that lie of socialism, which I think is an important thing to explore and we'll be right back. So it's 1235. What do you want me to go to, Jordan? 1213? Okay. All right. So we'll head back into socialism. Okay. Let's see if I can get the intro or the re-intro, right? Ready? All right, let's go. This is Dan Stephanie Burke. Welcome back to Divine Intimacy Radio. We're with Vicki Burbach, who's written a wonderful book, The Lost Art of Sacrifice, The Spiritual Guide for Denying Yourself in Bracing the Cross and Finding Joy. And we're talking about the lies that inhibit our understanding of the beauty, the truth and the goodness of sacrifice. And before the break, Vicki began to speak about socialism, which I think Dennis Prager has said is the most popular religion of our time, which I completely agree with. And it's unfortunately permeated much of the Catholic Church and many have been infected by it. But tell us a bit about socialism and how it, what are the problems there related to the lost art of sacrifice? Well, I think the first place we need to start is how deceptive it is for Catholics, because they use language with which we are very familiar. The idea of the common good, doing things for the common good and human rights and care for the poor and the vulnerable, they take all that and they twist it. And one of the things that inspired me, I almost didn't include a chapter on socialism because I, you know, this was a book about spirituality and I didn't want to get it into the political, but really it is a huge spiritual issue for us, because we need to understand that, you know, I read a book, I'll start here, I read a book several years ago called Nothing to Envy. It was about six people who defected from North Korea and in the book Barbara Demek, the author, profiled very, had very detailed profiles of the lives of these six people, you know, and they, their families were tortured, they were starved, people went through unbelievable sacrifice and suffering. And what really caught me was in the beginning of the book, because I have such this, this love for what the Church teaches on sacrifice. At the beginning, they talked about, you know, this is all state-run media in North Korea. They have control of the billboards, television, movies, etc. And everything that you saw, they said promoted sacrifice, promoted laying down your life for the good of your neighbor, promoted, you know, doing everything for the common good, being willing to work harder, being willing to have less, being willing to, you know, sacrifice. And I was so disturbed by that. I mean, honestly, I was almost in tears as I read the horrors that these people went through. And then to see, you know, how, how could, I couldn't understand, how could something so beautiful be so twisted? And it looked so aligned to what we, what we read, you know, what, what our faith teaches us. And then as soon as I finished that book, just by Divine Providence, the next book I picked up was, was Fulton Sheen's Life of Christ. And within the first three pages, he answered that question because he said the east has taken the cross without Christ. And so that's how you get internment camps, and, and death, and cruelty. And the, the west has taken Christ without the cross. So that's where we get this kumbaya idea of Christianity that doesn't need suffering. So we really need to get back to an understanding of what, you know, love is what inspires sacrifice. And we need to really understand it because that is the foundation that we need that will help us to really understand the dangers that are inherent in socialism. You know, what's fascinating about that, if you think about the cross without Christ is that he says to us, you know, my burden is easy, you know, my burden is light. And if we try to sacrificing without love, without a higher purpose, and understanding it's, it's united to that suffering of Christ for the salvation of souls is just so remarkable, such a complex set of ideas there to deal with. Yeah. One thing that's interesting as a convert, I think you'll notice this and I'm curious, I'm sure you do. So when I came up as a young man in Christian, in the Protestant world, I noticed, of course, the dramatic decline of the older Protestant denominations, all of them took on this line of softening Christianity, softening the message, you know, oh, and, you know, the greatest value of culture also became the greatest value in Protestant churches, which is tolerance and making people feel welcome and all of that. And tolerance is good and making people feel welcome and all is all good. But it's twisted, right? It's not the tolerance, it's not the acceptance of the New Testament, which breaks down all barriers between Jew and Gentiles, slave and free and all of that. But it's this sort of shmarmy, as Stephanie said, it's a faith without or Jesus without the cross or you said it, Jesus without the cross. And it just, it attracts no one and the church is empty and they think, well, let's do it more and then the church is empty more. And now, frankly, we're doing that all over in Catholicism and, you know, no surprise, churches are empty. The Germans seem to be the best at this. And their churches are beautiful and completely empty. But now what do they want to do? Blast same-sex unions, give communion to anyone. There's no substance to the faith anymore. Right. I mean, what's the point of being Catholic if everything's okay? What's the point of being, you know, Protestant Catholic, whatever, if there is no cross for the sake of Christ, if there is no sacrifice, that means more, right? Denying myself for the good of salvation of souls. Well, and I think it's worth saying that this modernist heresy has really brought a lack of understanding to what we have in the church. You know, we have this spigot of grace that we receive through the sacraments and through prayer. And those, you know, those have been really undermined in such a huge way in past decades. So, and I think a piece of that is we don't, we're not even taught why they matter. You know, we don't understand as a culture that there is more than the physical world. You know, there's this great spiritual world and we have this unbelievable amount of grace that is, you know, I don't want to say it's tangible, but you know, when we think about ourselves as part of the body of Christ with Christ as the head, you know, I was used to understand that as, oh, we're part of a family, you know, when I first understood the term. And if I go to mass often in many churches, that's the idea I get. But there's actually this thread that connects all of us so that my sin infects the entire body of Christ, but also my gifts, my gifts of love, my sacrifices also build up the entire body of Christ. So if we can understand that there's this supernatural amount of grace and an unbelievable connection between all of us, you know, when I give up my morning coffee, there is a substantial amount of grace that God, you know, God can use that gift for, you know, the salvation of souls for many wonderful, wonderful things. And if we don't understand that connection, then we tend to think none of it matters. You know, so we lose the understanding and the appreciation for the sacraments for our prayers for, you know, I was talking to somebody recently about the holy souls and purgatory. We just received a letter from our parish not too long ago saying that I think, you know what, out of 365 days in a year, over 250 of them, there were no masses offered yet. They were not reserved at all. So people aren't offering masses that they're doing that rarely anymore. So, you know, I think we really need to get back to understanding the danger of that. And that feeds us into the idea of socialism and other things if we don't get that straight. Wow, that is just so important. I love that you brought up the connection between all of us that nothing is isolated. Every one of my actions affects you, you know, affects Dan, affects our children, affects our family, our everybody in the body of Christ, our sacrifices and our sins. It's just remarkable. And it just shows us the importance, especially in this society where we've lost a sense of everything. Dan, did you have a, well, let me, let me ask this. How do we, what's this idea about the art of sacrifice? What's this idea that you brought up of the art of sacrifice and how do you cultivate it in your day to day? Well, in, you know, in, in my book, I separated into three sections. So the first section is kind of defining what is sacrifice? What is it? How do we unite ourselves to Christ, which is our greatest calling, right? And then how can we join him in offering our sacrifices to his sacrifice on the cross? And through that section and through the second section where we kind of discuss the lies, I go through all of the lies of the culture that, you know, of the devil basically that inhibit our, our desire for sacrifice to kind of, you know, just hold us, it keeps us at bay. And I talk, we go through at the end of every chapter is a piece called cultivating the art, you know, and it starts off just where we're at, you know, one thing we need to do is kind of gauge the territory. Where am I in my ability to sacrifice? We all do make sacrifices, but then I need to gauge, am I, you know, is it easier for me to sacrifice at work? Is it easier for me to sacrifice, you know, for my family and my relationships? And kind of just understand where we are and why, you know, are my sacrifices easy because they're based in love? Do I enjoy certain sacrifices because they'll get me ahead? You know, what's my motivation? What's that interior motivation I have? And, you know, I need to kind of gauge all those. So you just piece by piece, you kind of cultivate the art by, by walking through taking baby steps and to, and to get to where we want to go. And then the, the third section of my book, I lay out the art of sacrifice, you know, this is where we get into, now we're going to put our money where our mouth is. Now we're going to actually, you know, we're going to go to the mat for this, we've decided that we've, we're, you know, stepping away from the call of the world and we are going to pursue a relationship with Christ, you know, an intimate relationship through, through love, you know, that love and sacrifice. So then we talk about the dispositions that are necessary for a life of sacrifice, you know, this, you know, the first one is to have a horror for sin. How much have we lost that in the world today? Flannery O'Connor has a great description of this little monkey sitting in a tree, kicking fleas off his skin and eating them as though they are a delicacy. And that's her, that's her analogy for how we treat sin in our culture. And I think it's, it's a beautiful picture, you know, we, it's repulsive, but she gets her point across. That's how we, we kind of sit in our sin. So that's the first step is understanding that, that, you know, sin is, we've got to get away from that, that connection that, that almost a love of sin, you know, we have it in our culture, a love of just pursuing pleasures, just allowing our passions to run wild. And then another would be, you know, to, to have a desire for a love of Christ, what are you going to put in place of that sin, this desire? Now, we may not be there right this minute that we have this great love of Christ. But, but we need to pursue that. And the first step is to ask him, you know, ask the Holy Spirit to give us that desire, you know, and then we have to have a, we have to have, we have to make a decision that we're willing to undergo mortification and penance. You know, we have to have that mindset that says, you know, I am going to deny myself. And I am going, you know, and these are, this is an important piece of my life. And then, you know, and then on top of that, we have to have a life that allows for that interior, that interior discernment and that interior, we have, we must have time for an interior life that allows us to, you know, progress in all those areas. Amen. Amen. Very good. Vicki, this is, it's been great spending time with you. And unfortunately, we're running out of time. But I strongly recommend the Lost Art of Sacrifice. Sophia Institute Press, by the way, is just killing it right now with the quality of books that they're offering to the Catholic world, faithful and deeply rooted in tradition. Vicki's book is just another fantastic book. The Lost Art of Sacrifice is a spiritual guide for denying yourself, embracing the cross and finding joy. Thanks for being with us, Vicki. And thanks for all the hard work you put into this book. Thank you. So until next time, may the God of Peace make you perfect in holiness. May he preserve you whole and entire, spirit, soul, and body, irreproachable at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen. Thanks again, Vicki.