 Hey friends, this is Dan of 70 Burke, you're watching Divine Intimacy Radio behind the scenes, we're going to start showing in just a minute. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Yeah, I'm getting insane feedback. Texting, or texting, not texting, testing, testing, you fixed it? Okay, alright. Okay. Alright, you're watching behind the scenes Divine Intimacy Radio and you get to watch when we have challenges too, with me especially. But the, you know, did I, yeah, I think I turned off the, hopefully I turned off the noise on the computer. If not, we'll hear it. If not, we will hear it. Before we jump into the show, I want to tell you about some things that are timely because the programming we're doing, though it's live streaming, we can't do that on the edited version because it goes on need to be TN and but it doesn't air for a while. So, we have a couple of events coming up into the deep retreat on Saturday, June 5th in Decatur, Texas. There's a lot of false teaching out there about prayer. There's a lot of misunderstanding about prayer. And we're going to fix it. I don't know if that's a good way of promoting it. I don't know if that's true. Is that very compelling? No. What, what are the purposes of your into the deep? Yeah, so that is the fixed people is not the purpose. I didn't say people know what it's about. It's an invitation. Yeah, it's about the Lord created us for you intimacy with him. Am I on the right track now? Yes, please. And there's a lot of misunderstanding about prayer, which gets in the way of that. And so these events, I think are very powerful folks getting clarity about what prayer actually is and how we can draw near to God and all of that. Why is it important? Yeah, you know, what does that actually mean? How do you live that out on a real practical basis? Yeah, you know, all those things that listen, you know, it's really a beautiful event. Very powerful. And there's always, you know, a ton of people that really have a transformation and it really starts them on a path of encountering the Lord in a very powerful way. So June 5th and Decatur, Texas don't even have the location. What do you have any clue what besides Decatur, like what parish it is? Anyway, go to event spiritualdirection.com forward slash events and look at that the producers on it and you'll find out exactly which parachutes at June 5th and Decatur, Texas. Okay, we're the next thing and then we'll jump into the show is another stop in Texas. We're doing the divine intimacy and marriage retreat. That's June 11th through the 13th. And also don't know what parish this is at. So you can, you can check, you can check spiritualdirection.com forward slash events and you'll find out which parish that's at and we'll hopefully see you there. All right. You ready to do the show? Yes. Awesome. Awesome. Okay. Very good. So today we're going to be doing before we jump in today. Need that later? Of course. No, you don't need that. Okay. Oh, you know, I'll just do one. I'll do one. Thanks for noting that. So the psychology of St. John of the Cross lovingly moved into our right minds is the subtitle Dr. Jeff Thompson and you can get into that. It's coming up soon. Go to avala-institute.org avala-institute.org. And I think you'll grow in a tremendous way as most do when they take our courses at the Institute. I'll do really who are open to the work of the Lord. So there you go. So check those out. That's it. I want that. You do? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. All right. Okay. So we're going to do Q and A, Spirit to Warfare and Disturbance Spirits. About writing Mr. Producer Man and your mark, get set, go. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke. Welcome to Divine Intimacy Radio, your radio haven of breath. Your hermitage of the heart. Your monastery of the mind where we lift our hearts and minds to heaven and draw on the wisdom of the saints to help us understand the Lord, how we can follow him, how we can find peace in this life. And today we're going to answer some questions we actually received in a recent event called Spirit to Warfare and Disturbance Spirits, which we did. Was it in Peoria, Illinois or Princeton? Princeton, Illinois. With Father Timothy Hepner, a wonderful priest. Awesome, awesome priest. And a lot of wonderful people in the parish. Amazing. Yeah. There was a ton of people online, the full church, praise be to God. Yeah. And it was just wonderful. Yeah. So we got a bunch of questions online and we thought, you know, it'd be helpful. I think they're, they're pretty, most people would be interested in them, even if they didn't go to the retreat. Yeah. And it'll give you a sense a little bit about, you know, how to, how to fight well. Yeah. What is this battle that we're in? What is, you know, I find that these spiritual warfare and discernment of spirits events that are based off your book. Spiritual warfare and discernment of spirits. Yeah. I have just have a tremendous draw. All of a sudden people go, oh, I'm not crazy. There's other people talking about stuff. Right. Right. This stuff's going on. I thought it was just me and it's a great way for people to understand how to navigate that, how the enemy can speak into their life and into their mind and that we shouldn't listen to those voices and be manipulated by it. That it often causes wreckage in relationships and that being awake and understanding the language around spiritual warfare and how to battle it is really important. And people are so hungry for it. I agree. You know, just a side note on that too is we will, at the end of this show, we'll take a few live questions so people can stay afterwards on the live stream. Yeah. And then we'll also jump over to spiritualdirection.com Facebook page to do a sneak preview of my next book, which is Devil in the Castle. Okay. So we're going to do that after this normally recorded show. Okay. All right. Why don't you go ahead and ask the questions. Okay. So one. Yeah. Yeah. So our first question is was put to us and it says if we put our attention on getting rid of the evil one, are we not just calling him to us more and basically, I think what the question is getting to us. If we put our attention on how the enemies speaking to us if we draw attention to this if we talk about it if we battle it we think about it. Aren't we just getting like basically getting putting too much emphasis on him getting him to irritate us more drawing more attention to him, which kind of stirs up troubles in our lives more. You know, is this battle really necessary. Can't we just pretend that the devil doesn't exist so that he'll go away and leave us alone because if we're really quiet keep our head down. He will never mess with us. That's what this question is about. Right. Right. And it's actually fairly common. Right. I think people just get a little nervous. But it's not like going over to a short fence with a gigantic mean dog and poking the dog. Right. It's not like that. In fact, St. Ignatius describes that the enemy and also does so does scripture, prowls about like a roaring lion. But Ignatius describes him as like a military commander who's constantly looking for ways to get in. So that's always happening. If you don't fight, you will lose. So that's the bottom line. Right. And if either today or at the end of your life, but the battle's raging whether we're whether we acknowledge that it's happening or not. In fact, one of our community members said, you know, wait, wait, wait, you know, should we be praying these prayers and such and such because I thought that was only for people who were in deliverance ministry. And I, you know, and we kind of smiled about it. It's like, you know, have you been baptized? Are you part of the church militant because you are in the battle? Right. You are in deliverance ministry, whether it's in your own life, it's in the lives of your children and your marriage and your family. That is part of it in praying and pushing back the darkness and discussing how the enemies at work and staving off that. So. Yeah, I agree. So in summary, the answer is no. If you engage in spiritual warfare, are you going to draw more than you would normally know you're you're either going to fight. You're either going to grow weaker, you know, and the enemy's happy to hand you your battery, new batteries for your remote and more bags of chips. To sit in front of your TV so that you deteriorate spiritually. You deteriorate in your spiritual strength so that the end of your life when that normal temptation comes that many saints have spoken about, you will have no strength to fight and you will lose. But if you fight now and you you wrestle now at more actively, instead of you just weakening and the enemy just guarding you, which he's happy to do to guard you in your passivity. Then you will lose later. So those who are wise learn to fight now and do so. Yeah, I mean, it's part of the the journey and one misconception is that status quo is okay. Right. You know, you are either moving towards the Lord and growing holier or you are sliding backwards. There's no middle ground. You know, and and he'll often, you know, the Lord invites us into these little moments of clarity and these little invitations to to get into the battle to to become more holy to get our lives right to follow him. And sometimes we kind of engage we stick our toe in the water and then we go, you know, I think I'll go back to the couch with my chips and remote. And then we end up losing that moment of grace and sliding backwards. So really important to stay in the fight. And just to emphasize something you said, I think it's really important when you say people are either moving forward. It means we were used Jesus language. They're either on the narrow way going to heaven, which is challenging or they're on the easy wide way to hell. They're on the narrow way toward God or they're on the wide destructive way toward the enemy and toward giving their lives to the enemy. It's not. There's no middle ground. You're either giving your life to God more and more or giving your life to the enemy of your souls more and more. Right. I think it's important to put it in those kind of stark terms. Okay. All right. What's the next question? Okay. The next question is if Satan cannot read our thoughts, is it necessary to pray prayers of renunciation, for example, out loud in order for the demons to hear them? So I don't think it matters all that much. I find it very powerful to speak the name of Jesus and there's no downside to doing that. I think there's an upside to doing that. Of course, in exorcisms, they do both. They do quiet prayers in their own head and then they do very much out loud prayers. Yeah. I think one of the misconceptions here is the question says, if Satan cannot read our thoughts, do we need to pray out loud? Well, we're not speaking to the enemy. We're supplicating the Lord and the saints and the archangels and our guardian angels to come and assist us in this battle. The real battle is happening through Christ. It's been won. It's the grace of the church and the sacraments and those kind of things. So we're not actually addressing the enemy. We're engaging in this battle with the saints, with God, with grace, with our lady seeking that. So we can pray that interiorly. It's going to happen either way. But sometimes we personally need to say it out loud. We're struggling. You know, yesterday was a tremendous battle for me. It was just a spiritual battle. From the moment I woke up, my eyes opened, I was in the battle all through prayer, all day long. Sometimes I needed to speak those prayers out loud. I needed to renunciate the enemy. Renounce. Yeah. Renunciate. I don't think that's a word. I think renounce is good. Okay. I'm sorry. I needed to renounce. I may be wrong. So maybe I'm okay. So I needed to renounce those spirits that were working against me and all of that. And so I would say it out loud. And I would even just utter, and I know you do this on a regular basis. It's Jesus. Right. Jesus. Yeah. Jesus, Mary and Joseph helped me. Right. And sometimes that's all you can say, you know, to stay in the battle and to get some grace and help. So if you want to order spiritual warfare and discernment of spirits, which is based on both scripture and the wisdom of the great warrior, St. Ignatius Loyola, go to EWTN's religious catalog and pick that book up. If you want to take some free courses on this, we have them out at apostoliva.org. That's A-P-O-S-T-O-L-I-V-I-A-E.org. I think our producer, yep, just popping that up for us. So if you want to take some free courses, if you already read the book, go out there and create a free membership and everything's free. No strings attached. All right. What's the next question? Renunciate is a word. Oh, dude. Okay. Sorry. I'm sorry. I was a Catholic school principal. I know my words. I just, I've never like renunciate. I don't know. I was thinking about prayers of renunciation. A person can actively renunciate something. Okay. We'll get back on track. Good. Sorry. So here we go. Are you still afflicted? Dan, this is you. Are you still afflicted by trauma or triggers or do you feel free from your past? And this person said, I received deliverance prayers, but I still struggle with old wounds every day. So I'm afflicted by sin and my sinfulness and my brokenness, but not anything from the past anymore. I mean, certainly this is important to say this exactly right. So our healing process never stops until we die. Basically our maturing process never stops until we die. Our liberation never stops until we die. So I would say that on the whole, like on the majority, I'm very free. That doesn't mean I don't have days that I struggle. It doesn't mean that sometimes old junk doesn't come up, but I am no longer in any way dominated by it. I think that's fair to say. I think I can say that again. I'm no longer in any way dominated by it. It doesn't control me. I don't not do any things because of that. It doesn't have any normative disruptive effect in my life. It just ebbs and flows at times with respect to me struggling with my own sinfulness, which may have roots in some of that. But I don't know. I mean, you live with me. Yeah, I think what's important is what you're saying is that it doesn't affect your ability to normally function during the day. But I will say real quick, if you have memories coming up, flashbacks, they're disruptive, they cause you to go into desolation, and they control you in some way with the function of your life, then you need deeper healing and deeper healing. We've got Rachel's Vineyard. They're great. They have great help for those that have done work there, the JP to Healing Center. We have until 13. We have grief to grace and a number of other healing ministries like that grief to grace. So when we get back, we'll continue with our questions from the Spiritual Warfare Discernment of Spirits conference that we did. On your mark, set, go. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke with Divine Intimacy Radio, your radio Haven of Rest. And we're talking about spiritual warfare and discernment of spirits and questions that we received during a recent event in Princeton, Illinois. All right, God thanks be to God for a wonderful priest, Father Timothy Hepner there who brought us out and many friends at that parish. And there were questions. We had some online participants and they asked us a lot of good questions. And I will ask this one for Stephanie. So this is a question. By the way, if you want to get the book, go to UWTN's Religious Catalog. If you want free, if you want free formation, you can get that at apostoliva.org or producer or pop that up on the screen. But for those listening on the radio, it's A P O S T O L I V I A E dot org. So I have a devout Catholic friend that is a Catholic therapist. She lives in constant despondency, blaming it on her melancholic personality, death of her husband and daughter, not getting things done. OCD, et cetera. She will not seek therapeutic help as a daily communicant has a spiritual advisor. Does daily sign up prayer and loves the Lord, but is caught in bondage from my vantage suggestions on how to help her would be appreciated. Um, well, so this is interesting, you know, one of the things that Dan says, one of the lines that he uses is the human person has an infinite capacity for. Self delusion, right? Right. And I think sometimes our own wounds are the ones that are most difficult to see and our behaviors are the most difficult to see. That's why marriage can be powerful to have a healthy marriage where you can speak into the life of your spouse and say, Hey, you know, I'm seeing these things and it's we need to address them or I love you and I'm worried about you. Um, you know, I think starting from a place of love is always important praying for you to be able to speak into that person's life because just because somebody is your friend doesn't mean that they are open to receiving the information or the light. So you ask for supernatural help, you know, I would pray and fast for your friend, do rosaries for your friend, offer masses for your friend and then ask the Lord to ask them or to impending to prompt them to come to you and ask. And that's happened. And it is happened time and time again, because then if they're coming to you and they're saying, Listen, I am struggling. But because I'm a therapist, it's hard for me to ask for help or whatever. I need some help. What do you think, you know, and then try to get them on the right path, but you have to pray for supernatural help so that your voice can even be heard because when we speak into somebody's life, and they haven't asked for that. Don't be surprised if they completely shut you down or or don't want to hear it. Yeah, I would also, you know, look for an opportunity to give him spiritual warfare and discernment of spirits. It's a fairly non-threatening book. I open up with my own struggles and I think it can bring down barriers pretty quickly. And in it, they'll discover that doubt, despair and narcissism are all destructive patterns that the Lord doesn't desire from them. Ignatius, of course, reveals beautifully to us. So go to EWTN Religious catalog for that. And after the show, just want to remind you of something. If you're listening live stream, we'll be asking, answering a few questions, live stream live questions. And then after that, we'll pop over to spiritualdirection.com's Facebook page and do a sneak peek at the devil in the castle book and give you a way to be the first on the list to get that book. Hope to see you out there. So you want to do the next question? Okay. I will be seeing my sister next week at a full funeral mass. How do I approach her about receiving the Eucharist when she has publicly declared that she doesn't believe in God? She also keeps telling me that we have our different beliefs. Gosh. There's a lot of telling information in this little question. Go for it. It sounds like you really kind of tapped into it. Well, that last sentence, she also keeps telling me we all have our different beliefs. That means that this person has been trying to convince their sister of something that the sister does not want to receive because she's saying, we have our beliefs. There's already a wall up, right? You know, you can't convince somebody of something they don't want to hear. And that's the most, I think that's the striking thing is people often say, what's the one line? What's the zinger? What's the bumper sticker thing? What's the perfect sentence I can say to this loved one that I'm aching for? That I don't want them to sin or I don't want them to cause damage or do something that's irreparable in their life, right? We all ache with that. And we need to understand that that ache and that pain that we have is the Lord's suffering in us for that person. What is that call? That call is to prayer and sacrifice for them, to fast for them and not to try to convince them with words. Love builds a bridge over which truth can pass. If you want to change somebody's life, sacrifice for them. Love them heroically, not with your words, with your actions, with your sacrifice for them and with your own holiness. Where you are cooperating with all the graces that you've been given to become as holy as you can. So that when that day comes when they're in enough pain and they're enough bondage to their own sinful behavior, they will turn to you and say, you know, you've never lectured me, you haven't, you know, beat me down when I was down. You just loved me. And I know that you're safe. Can I come and ask you something because I'm struggling and I need to find a way out. So on a scale of 1 to 10, the quality of that question, that answer, bam, you nailed it. There you go. It was a 10. Okay. That was beautiful actually. I want to add one component to it and that is I would just go to your pastor and let them know that you have some family members that are not in right relationship to the Eucharist and beg him to be explicit and clear the basis upon which someone should or should not receive the Eucharist during the funeral mass. Yeah. And then it's just a blanket statement and it's not from you. Right. Exactly. That's right. All right. The next question. You want to read that one? Do you think there is such a thing as generational sin? Can the devil influence a family and make life more haunted for something an ancestor did? If so, how does one deal with that? So I'm going to cover one part of that. You cover another. Sure. It says, do you think there's such a thing? Actually, I know there is such a thing because scripture is really clear about it. There is generational sin. You can see in the book of, in the first five books of the Bible, the, is it the Pentateuch, the repeating over and over of the sins of the fathers and the next generation, they repeat the same sins over and over. And of course we even see that scripture passage that speaks of the sins of the fathers. So it is a fact that there is such thing as generational sin. Now then the question is how do you deal with that? Absolutely. You can fight it. And I think you can overcome it as well. What do you think? Yeah, absolutely. You know, you see that with divorce. Yeah. One of the things that Dan and I dealt with when we first got married is that we both came from generational lines of divorce. Right. You know, and not to disparage anybody in our family, but both of our parents had, you know, multiple marriages and divorces. More than, yeah. Yeah, I mean, yeah, from, from my biological father to, you know, my mom forward, you the same. Yeah. And it's, it's incredibly painful. It did a lot of damage, you know, to us individually and collectively as the family, you know, and then when we, we both came from divorce, you know, we both had had divorced and had our first marriages annulled. So that was painful, you know. So then we combined our family. And so we gathered our children and we shared with them that we were going to do everything that we knew to do through the sacraments of the church, through spiritual formation, through all of those things, mortification, teaching, formation for them and for us to break that generational sin in our family. Yeah. And it hasn't been broken. Yeah. You know, it's still lingering. And that's painful. That's painful. But you keep addressing it. You keep praying against it and know that it is real. So be as holy as you can. Pray for your, your former family members. Use those generational breaking prayers and keep going. Be as holy as you can and do all that you can for your family. Yeah. The last question is not about spiritual warfare. I guess it is a kind of spiritual warfare. So maybe, um, maybe we could do it anyway. It's probably something on the minds of many, even though it's a little bit off topic. You want to do that? Sure. Okay. I recently visited a church outside my archdiocese where reception is only allowed in the hand. This is regarding communion. Yes. I agonized over whether or not to receive and finally heard in my head that I needed the healing of the Eucharist and Jesus would not hold it against me. The moment the Lord was placed in my palm, I felt desolation and I struggled not to cry as I made it back to my pew. I knelt. I apologized profusely to the Lord and I prayed an act of reparation to the Sacred Heart. I believe I was deceived. Was my response to this deception correct and was it enough? You know, it's interesting. Initially, I didn't see the spiritual warfare in this, but it is. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, it's very, very prevalent. Yeah. It's interesting because this is a tough one. We obviously don't believe in receiving in the hand. When you look at Memoriali Domini, which is the document that Paul VI promulgated to even allow it, he pointed out in that document. I'm not making this up. You can read this, that the initial practice came through disobedience. So we're pretty uncomfortable with it. And he himself said the most reverent way to receive is kneeling and on the tongue. Yeah. It's funny. Yeah. The Pope argued. That document argued. The very document that allows for the other alternative actually argued and said it was more reverent. It's funny. I've heard people being criticized for thinking they're more reverent. I want to say, well, you've never read the document then because it actually says it is. It's objectively more reverent. So anyway, I, you know, I don't know, Steph. I would tell this person, don't worry about it. It was a moment in time. It's past. Follow your conscience in the future. Right. And you can receive the graces of being at mass without receiving the Eucharist. Well, and I would say they did discern it properly because they followed a train of thought. Right. They realized when they felt desolation and sadness that they were probably deceived and they made a reparation. They did the right thing afterwards. They did the reparation for that. So. Yeah. Good. Well, if you want to learn more about that sort of thing and how to fight spiritual warfare, head out to apostoliva.org, A-P-O-S-T-O-L-I-V-I-A-E dot org. Create a free profile. It is, you'll be joining a community of faithful Catholics from all over the world in a very private and protected environment that costs nothing, but gives everything, gives you weekly free formation live online with Stephanie and I. A lot of little mini courses of compilations of these shows and other things and many, many ways that you can grow in faith, young adults, adults, priests, religious laity. And with that, we've got to run, but stay connected with us and we can ask what you can answer questions live online in just a minute, but we got to finish the show formally. So with that, Stephanie, I think we're out of 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. All right. You have any questions get up for us yet? Nope. Any spiritual warfare questions? By the way, while we're waiting, if any don't appear, that's fine. We did try to make it easier for you to edit on that one. Yeah. If we don't have any folks can also pop over to spiritualdirection.com. A Facebook page and we're going to do a sneak prove preview show of devil in the castle on a book that I have coming up in the next months or so. And you'll be the first to hear some of that content. So spiritualdirection.com Facebook page. Any questions? Nope. All right. We can roll over. We can kind of roll out and roll over there.