 If that's what you're asking. Let me see. Talk. Okay. All right. Great. And if you can look at me as much as possible, I know you want to, it's natural to look at him, but the angle is not great. We're going to fix all this at the new studio. Very excited. Did you show her the picture of the curtains? Yeah. We're live. Yeah. Are we live now? Okay. Hey friends, you're watching behind the scenes, divine intimacy radio. And as usual, you get to see all the behind the scenes stuff because that's what it is. We're going to start to show in a minute before we head in. I want to mention a few opportunities for you for deeper formation as we always do. And one is an amazing summit next year on spiritual warfare and discernment of spirits at Ave Maria University that we're putting on. What's the date? Do you know stuff? You don't know. I didn't warn her. I was going to ask her. Anyway, it'll be around July 16th because we always do it around that timeframe. They can find it. Pardon me. Producer man, can I have a bottle of water, please? They can find it by going to spiritualdirection.com forward slash events. Right. So and we have a whole slew of exercises we're going to bring along with this to talk about spiritual warfare and discernment of spirits and how to overcome. So check that out. It was, we had sold by the end of the conference we just finished, which was called fire from above, we had sold over half the seats. Yeah. So we're about, you should get a seat because they're going fast. Oh yeah, it'll be sold out within a few few weeks, few weeks. You know, the other question stuff is Israel. Do we have any seats left there? We do. Okay. We do. Unfortunately, I don't know if it's up on the site, but it will be by the end of the show. Okay. Again, go to spiritualdirection.com forward slash events and look up our pilgrimage to Israel if you're interested in going. Yes. And Dr. Anthony Lillis as well. We have just a few seats that have opened up. And if it's not out at spiritualdirection.com events, which you can find wherever we're going to be, it will be by the end of the day. Yes. I think it's probably better if it's not out there now given all the way up going on. Okay. Last couple of things, two courses you're going to want to check out living at the hand of the Lord, the life and thought of Saint Edith Stein. And by Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell, she's amazing. And this is a School of Spiritual Formation course, I'm assuming, which means it's designed for busy people. It starts September 17th, 2021. Avala-institute.org. And then this is a graduate level course, Growth and Holiness, Doctors of the Interior Life. And by Dr. Gamma, also an amazing professor. All of our professors are amazing. And so I don't really know how helpful it is to describe them all in the exact same way, but they are. Our students love them. Doctors of the Interior Life. And so Dr. Gamma will be exploring the fruits and lessons of the grand desire in the lives of the saints, the desire for holiness, and their doctors as a church for the pursuit of God and pursuit of holiness, saints both from the east and the west. He did his PhD on divinization from the Eastern fathers, I think. So awesome stuff. Anyway, if you want to be holy and you want to follow the Lord, of course, watch EWTN. If you want courses and that sort of thing and other just spiritually-oriented content, also head out to spiritualdirection.com and avala-institute.org. Is that good enough? That is. Okay, I think I'll cover that. All right, why don't we jump in? And are you ready? Okay, and your mark, it's at go. This is Dana Stephanie Burke. 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 draw upon the wisdom of the saints, the wisdom of Scripture, the wisdom of the church, so that we might be better equipped to deal with the tumults and challenges of this life. No better reason, no better topic in relationship to what we always talk about in terms of the challenges of life and the joys of life and overcoming with joy is today we're going to be talking with the author of Why All People Suffer? Why All People Suffer? Incredibly important topic. Do you want to introduce our guest? Yes. The author of this book? Yes, Dr. Paul Shalu was born in Maine in 1960 to Paul and Dolly Shalu, the oldest of six children. He grew up in North Virginia and attended public schools after graduating with a chemical engineering degree from the University of Virginia. In 1982, Paul worked for over 30 years as an engineer manager and strategist for IBM in upstate New York. While there, he also served as a catechist for 15 years at St. Columbia, St. Columbia Parish in Hopewell Junction, New York. In 2015, after earning a master's degree in religious education from Fordham, Fordham, there you go, and retiring from IBM, Paul was accepted into the PhD program at Catholic University of America to study catechetics with the goal of teaching future catechists. However, his plans changed dramatically when he was diagnosed with early onset Parkinson's disease just after moving to Washington D.C. for his studies. His new neurologist after learning the Paul with studying theology asked him why people suffer. He had no answer since it was not his intended study field of study, but the question intrigued him enough to cause him to take up the subject. Five years later, after after having earned his PhD in moral theology, Dr. Shalu wrote why all people suffer for general audiences as a follow on to his dissertation, The Grace Concealed in Suffering, Developing Virtue and Beatitude, which he defended at CUA on March 5th of 2020, right in the middle of the pandemic. Wow. Dr. Shalu currently teaches theology as an adjunct professor at the Catholic University of America and serves as a catechist at St. Agnes Parish in Arlington, Virginia. He has been married for over 30 years to his wife Sue and they have four adult children and three granddaughters. Wow. What an important book. Yeah. Welcome to the show, Dr. Shalu. Thank you. Thank you for having me. If you don't mind jumping in a little bit on the personal side because I think it helps people to connect with you and with your motivations. So you had this conversation with your neurologist. Did he know that you were writing a dissertation at the time or how did it come up that he asked you that question? It came up that she asked me what I was doing and I said I was going to study neurology. I mean, theology at Catholic University. She said, oh, then you know why people suffer. I said, Judy, you're talking about it. It's not nice to be able to study. She said, well, it's very important because everybody asked me this question. I'm a doctor. I don't have any idea why it happens. I just try to fix them. She said, you need to study this. And then I kept going for a little while and then I did start delving into it in my classes and I became intrigued because I found out that most people leave the church because of suffering. Wow. And that intrigued me as a catechist. I was really interested in bringing people to the faith. So that was the impetus for me to really do it. That's awesome. Now, did you get a copy of your book back to the neurologist? Oh, yeah. That's great. The last time I met her because she passed me on to another doctor recently, but I handed her my dissertation and said, here's your answer. She was shocked. It seems that our society is bent on trying to protect people from suffering. To prevent it at all costs. To prevent it at all costs, which causes all kinds of other suffering or whatever. But in your study, because I've not gone to an in-depth level of study as you had. I had a lot of suffering as a child and as an adult as well and did a pretty in-depth study the New Testament myself. I didn't write a book about it, but just to deal with it, just to find the answers. Because I knew Jesus was the answer to the most important question. And then I was wrestling with how to deal with suffering. I was quite surprised by what I found in the New Testament. For instance, just how many times suffering is promised as part of following God is necessary and all of that. Did anything in particular, as you dove into this, did anything in particular surprise you at a pretty significant level where you, something you didn't know, hadn't thought about, that just became crystal clear for you? Well, you know, I had a lot of suffering in my life too. I started with general heart defect and I had open heart surgery twice by the time I was 17. My arm was paralyzed during one of those surgeries. I got hepatitis C with the other one and for the transfusions and that caused me to have the drugs that they gave me back then. Now you take a pill and it's all gone, but back then it was interferon and shots and ribovirin pills and it made me very nauseous for six months. And I lost 40 pounds the last month of it. Wow. And because I can try to celiac disease, celiac disease is a version of wheat and if you eat wheat it destroys your intestines. And so I was thinking I was making myself better by eating bread and stuff like that because that's what people do for comfort food, right? Right. And so it was destroying my intestines. I lost 40 pounds and that was not just for 15 years. Then I just kind of came out of that and then I got diagnosed with Parkinson's. So I won't continue to sing for pretty much my whole life. But you know, it prepares you for this kind of discussion. And I recognize in retrospect that all of this was building up to the point that I was going to be able to speak to it. But the thing that surprised me most when I started going into it was, first of all, that it's not very well covered in Catholic teaching. You know, in the Catechism thick as it is, there's only two references to suffering in the entire index. Wow. And in the summa, which is another big source for me, they don't talk about it either. There's not one question associated with why do people suffer? So it's a problem that people deal with, but it was well covered. So I was trying to fill a gap here. And the thing that got me was, John Paul II wrote a short letter on it, some of each of Dolores. And in that one, he brought out a point that really was crystal clear for me what was the driver was that evil was not the opposite of good, but was the absence of good. That was a key thought for me because I had a feeling that suffering was good for you. And then that told me that, and he also alluded to the fact that suffering was not an action, but a sense, ability to sense evil. So suffering is the ability to sense when you're being threatened by evil, which is the absence of good. So it tells you when you need something. So suffering is a message from God that you need something that's critical to your well-being. And it's not necessary for your life, but it can be for your existence. And you're all doing existence, right? Wow. What you just said, there's so much there. I can't even wrap my head around it. But if I were to say it back to you, what you're saying is that suffering is an indication that we need something, that something's missing for our good, whether it's our spiritual good, emotional good, physical good, that we're missing something. And therefore, we are noting something evil. We're able to see it, this absence of God. And therefore, it leads us to seek Him. Is that what you're saying? Absolutely. That's right. That's the key. That's the whole key, this whole discussion. And when you think about it that way, it changes everything about how you see it suffering. You know, Steph, it's what we've talked about a lot about suffering being like a dashboard light on the car. So you have, you know, it says something's wrong here. And we often talk about Dr. Shalu suffering being an invitation. And we're talking, of course, not in a perfectly universal sense, but generally speaking, an invitation to healing or at the spiritual level, an invitation to draw near to God. Does that make sense to you? Yeah, absolutely. And what it's doing is it's an evil detector. It tells you when you're, it's like a giant smoke detector, but it's much more complicated than that, right? Because it's more, it has to be more sensitive than that. But when you suffer, it's telling you something. It's a divine message to you. You are a divine messenger. You are giving a message. God's telling you something you need, and you need to share that with everybody else because they need it too. And it's an invitation to be a messenger of God. So what is the answer to the question, Dr. Shalu? Why do all people suffer? We all have needs. And what is what, so help us to understand this, help us to get us around, especially in light of, and we have about a minute and a half before the break, in light of your revelation and what is true, that so many people leave the church because they do not understand why they're suffering. They leave the church. I'm suffering. I'm hurting. Nobody can help me. My children have gone astray. My marriage is falling apart. I'm ill. All of these things are happening, and I can't find the answer. And you know what? I don't want to cut his answer short because we're, we are running close to the break. So I'm going to remind people, we're talking with Dr. Paul Shalu. He's written a very important book, Why All People Suffer. How a loving God uses suffering to perfect us. I would add to draw us near to him, to heal us, to help us to heaven. When we come back from the break, he'll help us dig a little deeper into this very challenging topic, but one that certainly needs to be addressed more fully and he's done so in this great book published by Sophia Institute Press. You can find it at EWTN's religious catalog, and you that you can find all good books there. They're all well vetted, and you can trust EWTN to only present the best material. So check out EWTN religious catalog. We'll be right back after the break. Jordan, we went to 1240. Okay. Dr. Shalu, do you need her to restate the question or are you ready to roll? Restate the question. Okay. I'll do so. When we get back from the break, you're going to restate the question. Okay. All right. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke. Welcome back to Divine Intimacy Radio, talking with the author of Why All People Suffer, Dr. Paul Shalu. Stephanie, you had a really important question before the break, and I wanted to give it time. Can you restate it real quickly? We want to dig into the question or into the answer to the question of why all people suffer. Why do they suffer? And especially in light of the fact that so many people leave the church in the midst of their suffering, their suffering because their children have gone astray, their ill, their marriages are falling apart, their finances, whatever it is, the suffering is happening. They don't find their answers and they don't feel like anybody either hears them or can help them. And so they leave, which is the absolute opposite. Right? So why do people suffer? Why do all people suffer? What's the answer? And where do we find the relief for it? What is it trying to get us to do? Well, first of all, suffering is something that you heed. It's not something you avoid. It's something, it's a message from God saying what you need to do. And so people get, most people who leave the church because of suffering feel like they've been punished for something they didn't do by an unfair God or that there's wrath, that he's a wrathful God. But it's exactly the opposite of what's happening. And that's what, why this is important to understand is that what he's doing is leading you to it. He's showing you what you need. So if you're hungry, you need food, right? If you're in pain, you need relief. And there's four tasks of suffering that, that four reasons that suffering occurs. The first one is for just to bring people to virtue and it teaches virtue, but simple feedback loops, you know, it teaches temperance because if you eat too much, you feel sick. If you drink too much, you'll feel sick. And so you try to avoid those things. If you're not, if you're not just with people that you're working with, they will, they will complain to you and that will make you uncomfortable and that will make you not do that. And all the, all the classical virtues, temperance, prudence, justice, and, and I can't remember the fourth one, but Fortitude. Fortitude, yeah, that's it. Thank you. Are all taught by, are all taught by these simple feedback loops. Now the second, second set of task of suffering is to, is to bring you closer to God, to, to align you to God. And, and it happens in one of two ways. One way is with what we just talked about, you build virtue, you start seeing that, that good things happen when you follow that and you start recognizing that it comes from God and you start following God. The other way is the way that St. Paul who found it knocked off his horse and blinded, right? The other way you can see the light was to be, was to be put in a position where he couldn't see anything else. Well, if you get sick enough or you get, you're getting that same situation. You have no place else to turn but to God and you'll start aligning yourself. Then the, then the third task of suffering is to, is to unleash your love of neighbor to, would you see somebody that's suffering to help them and teach you to love and to be love? So the first one teaches love of self, the second one teaches love of God, the third one teaches love of neighbor. And the last one is redemptive love, which teaches you love, to love like Jesus did, where, where if you, you were willing to suffer for the sake of somebody else, which is what Jesus did, right? And that takes you from sin to salvation, those four tasks. So that's why, so, so any of those four tasks can be the reason why you're suffering. No, obviously suffering is universal. And so I'm guessing I know the, the answer to this question, but I think it's a good one for those who are listening to make sure, you know, you didn't write this, you wrote a thesis on this, but then you created a more popular work. Who are you aiming this work at? Who are you trying to help? Why, who is it written for? It's written for two sets of people. One set of people is the people who have fallen from the faith. And the, and so for them to understand why they, why this is, why they suffered and, and that it was leading them to something, not leading them away from something, not pushing them away from something. So they could embrace the suffering and, and, and understand it. The second was for people who were just trying to understand Catholic theology. So it all fits together with all the pieces. So what I've, what I've shown in this book is how, how suffering is part of the plan and how God's plan comes to fruition. And in us DC, in the beatific vision, which I defined for the, for the new generation is as a supercharged internet where you, you absorb all that is good and true. And as, which is much different and with, with complete bandwidth and everything else. So, so, so, so it all fits together. And that's one of the things that's important to me when I started out doing this. I was looking to make sure it was true, right? Because I didn't want to be liable to heretic at the end of the thing. Which leads to our next question. Dr. Shalu. So what, who are your sources for figuring out, like, you know, who are, who are way to say, you know, why we suffer to have those kind of answers? So where did you go for those answers? Who, where's your theology based out of? Well, in the end game here, where there's, there's a 438, 538 references in this book, 140 of them from Scripture, 100 for the Catechism. And in St. John Paul II, 50 of them and 50 of them from Thomas Aquinas and 100 from all the various other doctors of the church and, and even some secular authors and some other things. So it was built basically on four door pillars. Scripture, John Paul II, the Catechism of the church and, and, and the Thomas Aquinas. All pretty reputable names. Yeah, I would say so. I would say so. I think the Holy Spirit is the one who brought a Scripture. So I think that's a good source for my own, in my own journey. And I want to get your reaction to this. As I mentioned, I went through a lot of suffering. I can't remember if I did it before the show or during when I was a kid, and then even to now in terms of health wise. And I did a in-depth study of the New Testament. I came out with a summary. And I'm just curious your reaction. So I typed out every verse related to suffering and then asked myself, well, how would I summarize this? So here's the summary. If I've not been in pain, he has not relieved me. If I've not been sad, he has not lifted my heart to heaven. If I've not been reviled, he has not comforted me. If I've not been abandoned, he has not come to me. If I've not been broken, he has not healed me. If I've not been lost, he has not shown me the way. If I've not been in sin, he has not redeemed me. If I've not been without a friend, he has not walked beside me. If I have not mourned, he has not comforted me. If I've not been betrayed, he has not restored me. If I've not been in chains, he has not set me free. If I have not wept, he has not dried my tears. If I have not been in the depths of darkness, he has not brought me into the light. If I have not suffering, I have not known him. How does that strike you? The strikes me as being true. And the point is that suffering is leading you to, God is leading you to where he wants you to be with suffering. And so all those things that you listed are things where you start deviating when you fall from the path, ledges you back on the path of suffering. And when you stay on the path, you get joy. Right. And so joy is not an opposition to suffering. Joy is the culmination of suffering. It is when you suffered properly and taken heed and acted on it in a positive way, then you get joy. I can't agree more. Are you, just to be sure, because I think it's a point worth reiterating, are you saying that it is possible to have joy or to know joy during or after the most difficult kinds of suffering, maybe elaborate a bit more on your perspective on joy and suffering? Well, so joy is the, is God, when you are doing what God wanted to do, you feel joy. And so when you're suffering, if you see, if you think about it as God is pointing you to where you want to be and that God is taking an interest in you, then you can have joy because you can see that that's part of the plan. And after the fact, after the suffering's over and you've cheated it and you've done what you need to do, then you of course will have joy. But if you run from the, if you try to inebriate in whatever way, so we can avoid it. And I would call that inebriation like any, any avoidance, whether it be drugs or, or alcohol or, you know, whatever it is that turns you away from facing the suffering. What does that do to you, Dr. Shaloo? How does that affect you? Right. It just adds more suffering because God is persistent. God is not going to, God is not going to give up on you. He's going to continue to push you with suffering until you either die or you, or you come back to the faith. And, and that's a matter of your own choice. You, there's, you have personal choices to whether you heed the suffering, whether you fall with, with, with, with being asked of you. And So it's the hound of heaven. Yeah. He pursues us until we turn back to him. You're not going to outlast God. You're just not going to outlast God. You know, he's going to, he's going to, he's going to be there with you until you, until, until the end. Do you think, you know, when I did my study on suffering in the New Testament, I was a non-Catholic and of course the new, I was a scripture alone guy at the time, which is problematic. The scripture is not problematic. And that really gave me hope, is it gave me a sense of purpose and reason behind suffering. I suspect then, given so many references in your book to scripture that this book might also reach non-Catholics, is that something you had in mind or tell us a bit about that? Yeah, absolutely. This book is, is the truth is for everyone. And the message of hope is good and gracious God is universal. So there's no reason that, that people cannot understand this. In fact, the first stage of, first step of suffering is to self-love, which doesn't require any faith at all. Just fall, it just requires you to do what, what suffering tells you to do. So, so this book to me can appeal to everybody and it has appealed to people because who have not no faith or, or other faiths because, you know, they talk to me, you know, after, after they've read it. And, and the thing is the truth is truth. And, and like you, if they follow the truth and they see all these old things interact with Catholic teaching, it'll bring them back to the church too. Amen. Amen. Well, so you, everyone listening has suffered or is suffering or will suffer or will suffer or know somebody who also is, has or will. And if you want to help them, I strongly recommend this book. Why all people suffer? How a loving God uses suffering to perfect us by Dr. Paul Shalu. You can find it at EWTN's Religious Catalog and any of the books, of course, that we promote are important. And we're pretty picky published by Sophia, who's doing amazing work. Thank you, Dr. Shalu, for being with us today and for doing all this work. And I hope everyone out there will go pick up two copies, one for yourself and one for that person you love who's struggling. Yes. 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. Amen. Thank you for being with us and thank you for doing the webinar with Jordan. Outside of EWTN, this will also be promoted through our list of 120,000 people or so. So this is important to us and we're grateful to you for writing the book and giving us some clarity, which is so desperately needed. Well, thank you for helping me spread the word. All right. Absolutely. You'll be