 Hey friends, welcome to Divine Intimacy Radio, behind the scenes, and we're talking about spiritual warfare today and the lights started to dim and I'm like, what is going on here? Anyway, behind the scenes, Divine Intimacy Radio, today we're going to start a series on my upcoming book, which is called Devil in the Castle, St. Teresa of Abulah, Spiritual Warfare and the Progress of the Soul. And I think it's my favorite book that I've written, and not every book is my favorite book when I write them. Some are just, I write them for certain reasons and are helpful, whatever, but this one I really think is very powerful. The, if you want to get a pre-ordered discount, so as always, you know, you're going to find, I think all my books are at EWTN Religious Catalog, but it's not out yet. So as of the recording of this show, today is January 11th, 2022. But if you want to pre-order it, you can get it from Sophia Institute Press. If you go to their website and you, you can get a 25% off discount, which is, you can put in Castle 25 and then you'll get, it's CAST, C-A-S-T-L-E, 25, no space, I think, in the checkout. The other thing that Sophia is doing to help folks use this book is like a study group, because it has questions at the end of every chapter and a summary of the chapters. It's very, very, I wrote it very much oriented to small group discussion and very practical, is Sophia is offering, I think somewhere in the neighborhood of a 50% discount for bookspot in a case, which is a pretty significant discount if you're looking at doing it at your parish or whatever. So, but as always, EWTN's Religious Catalog, we should support EWTN because when you buy books from EWTN, two things happen. They send them to you and you help the ministry of EWTN. Okay, you ready to roll? Okay, and your mark gets set. This is Dan of 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. And today, we're going to be drawing on the wisdom of a doctor of the church, a doctor of prayer, a woman who's written probably the most important book in the history of the church on prayer. And that's St. Teresa of Abulah. A beautiful woman, a strong woman. Yeah. She's not a wallflower. No, she was, man, warrior for Jesus. Wow. Amazing woman. But the book is called Devil in the Castle, St. Teresa of Abulah, Spiritual Warfare and the Progress of the Soul. And we're going to be launching a series, actually, we are, that was really bad English. We are launching a series right now, right now on on the book. We're going to walk through it chapter by chapter. So one thing I will tell you, the the forward is written by Dr. Anthony Lillis in it. And in it, he does a beautiful job of setting up and explaining the analogy of the interior castle, which the book is based on. Right. What struck you about that analogy? I know you really loved, I know you love his writing in general. Yeah, the history and understanding the context of why she's writing this book, why is it's important, why it's important, the impact it had. Yeah. And it's just an extraordinary book, especially for that time. But it's, it's a classic for any and all, all time, who desire to grow in the interior life, right? Yeah. It's a beautiful roadmap. It's super inspiring. I read it years and years ago. I've picked it up again, time and again, and it's just beautiful. Yeah. And if folks have had trouble understanding her and her writings, this book actually will help them because it extracts certain ideas. And if you read it side by side, it will illumine things that might be hard to understand. Yeah. I think that's a great idea to do that. So the reason I named it Devil in the Castle is because the devil is in the castle. Yes. The castle is, of course, an analogy for our progress toward God, and that St. Teresa of Avila gave us in the interior castle. And the book is about how we progress in the spiritual life and how at each stage of our progress, there are different kinds of tactics that the enemy uses to get us off track. So I don't know, have you experienced any of that? Just a smidge. Yeah. Yeah. But the cool thing is, all you have to do is persevere and you win, right? Persevere in the sacraments, persevere in prayer, persevere in the, you know, following Jesus and you win. Yeah. But we can do far more than just persevere. Right. Right. We can, we can really live a life that even though we have these knits, you know, nipping at us, we can, we can find our way and in a very profound way to come to know Jesus in a, in a transforming way for us. Yeah. I mean, some of us, some could look at the title of this book and say, you know, that kind of scares me. You know, I don't, I don't want to really look at these things, but, you know, I would encourage you because it's very hopeful, right? It's hopeful in that when we understand the progress of the soul, understand how the enemy seeks to derail that, but also understand the beautiful gifts, graces, tools that were provided through, like we have everything we need in and within the church, through the church, all the sacraments and everything, plus these beautiful writings of a doctor of the church, such as Teresa, then we can rest easy because how can we possibly progress if we don't know where we're going, how we're going to get there? You know, otherwise we just kind of float around. And I think one of the, when we talk about the, you know, the forward from Dr. Lillis, one of the important things he says that I found so important to understand is that contemplative prayer without theology is dangerous, right? You don't want to go into these waters, kind of reaching around without understanding, you know, what are the teachings of the church? How can I navigate this? And these, the books that you have written, one of your giftings is really helping people to understand how to progress in this interior life, not get lost and not go reaching out into Eastern whatever to try to find answers. So everything's there, right? Yeah, yeah. Good. Well, of course, as the book, as Teresa proposes, and as I propose in the book, the devil is active in your prayer life, in your parish, where you attend mass and the lives of actions of people of good will around you. And she reminds us, you know, how it is that he works. And if you know how he works, you'll know how to fight. And if you know how to fight, you will win. And if you don't know how he works, you will be defeated. And if you don't fight, fight, you'll be defeated, and you don't get to dodge this either. If you don't, if you think you're dodging it, that's just the enemy convincing you of a strategy he really likes. And you're going to end up losing the ultimate battle at the end of your life, and which is not good. And I'm speaking, of course, through the lens of tradition. So Teresa of Abel is a great mystic and guide to this, this great battle. I think in my introduction, I give several examples of both, I think most of them are outside of the interior castle from her other writings of her direct experience with demons. Do you want to, since you are a woman and she is a woman, you mentioned it, be good for you to read it on page four, which is about her experience with demons and mass, right? Absolutely. You know, she says in one, well, you say in one instance, Teresa describes how she turns cold and tense as she comes face to face with the eyes of two demons. So here's her account of that. And I beheld my Lord in that great majesty of which I have spoken, held in the hands of that priest in the host he was about to give to me. It was plain that those hands were those of a sinner. And I felt that, and I felt that the soul of that priest was in mortal sin. What must it be, oh my Lord, to look upon thy beauty amid shapes so hideous? The two devils were so frightened and cowed in thy presence that they seemed as if they would have willingly run away had thou but given them leave. So troubled was I by the vision that I knew not how I could go to communion. I was also in great fear for I thought if the vision was from a God that his majesty would not have allowed me to see the evil state of that soul. So this comes out of her life, which is her autobiography. And the Lord goes on after that vision to tell her why he revealed it to her. And so he revealed it to her, interesting for a purpose to teach her that the Eucharist is and is not or the Holy Sacrifice Mass is not made invalid by the sinfulness of the priests, which of course was a longstanding doctrine of the church prior to this, which was mainly enunciated by St. Augustine in the fourth century, when he was writing his treatises against the Donatus, I think it was against the Donatus, but or his treatise against the Donatus. But essentially, it's just saying the Mass is priest-proof in the sense that the state of the soul of the priest doesn't impact the Mass. But nonetheless, you know, she's this woman is not a weak woman. This woman is a woman of deep prayer. And by the time she writes this book, this is this book was written at the near the end of her life. This is at the peak of her understanding of all that is good, true and holy and who God is. She's very close to the Lord and let she's terrified by seeing actual demons, two of them around the neck of a priest as he's offering Mass. Right, right. And she says that the Lord himself tells her to pray for the priest, right? And what I find, I guess, edifying in this is her description of how they cowed being in the presence of the Lord. Yeah, they were trembling because of the Lord's presence in the Eucharist. Right. And they, you know, and just from our experience in exorcism ministry, we know that similarly, or in many of the exorcisms we've been in, we have the holy sacrifice of the Mass with the victim or the inergament as before we go into the exorcism, which strengthens, which weakens the enemy quite dramatically. Right, right. Well, it's a beautiful testimony to the reality of the body, blood, soul and divinity. Yeah. In the Eucharist, right? Yeah. The power of that. Fascinating stuff. There's another vision of the encounter of her that the Lord revealed to her regarding the forces of hell and the power they hold over a soul who fails to live in a state of grace. I think we have time before the break for you to read that one. Okay. At another time, I had a vision of a different kind, which frightened me to the core. I was in a place where a certain person died who, as I understood, had led a very bad life and that for many years, but he had been ill for two years and in some respects seemed to have reformed. He died without confession. When the body had been wrapped up in the winding sheet, I saw it laid hold of by a multitude of devils who seemed to toss it to and fro and also to treat it with great cruelty. I was terrified at the sight for they dragged it about with great hooks. But when I saw it carried to the grave with all the respect and ceremoniousness common to all, I began to think of the goodness of God who would not allow that person to be dishonored, but would have the fact of his being, his enemy concealed. So just to pause there, what she's saying is that she saw that this guy's going to hell. He didn't settle up with confession before he died. So she saw the demons kind of rejoicing and getting ready to take him to hell. But the Lord protected his dignity in that that was not revealed at a particular portion during the funeral. And then she goes on after that. During the whole of the funeral service, I did not see one of the evil spirits. Afterwards, when the body was about to be laid in the grave, so great a multitude of them was there in waiting to receive it, that I was beside myself at the site. And it required no slight courage on my part not to betray my distress. I thought of the treatment which that soul would receive when the devils had such power over the wretched body, would to God that all who live in mortal sin might see what I then saw. It was a fearful sight. It would go, I believe a great way towards making them lead better lives. So let's go to the break and then we'll talk about this when we get back. Okay. Just while we're in the break, I forgot to tell you guys on the same topic, 2022 Avalos Summit is going to be on spiritual warfare by the chair. It's going to be amazing. Yeah, it's going to be at Catholic University of America, Masses at the Basilica, the National Shrine of Immaculate Conception. If you haven't been to that shrine, it's just, you could spend days in there exploring all the chapels and dedicated to different aspects of Mary and apparitions and the life of Mary. Honestly, if anybody come, I mean, the people that come should add on a little bit of time. There are so many riches there just at CUA in the Basilica and the Shrine of JP2, which is just across the street. Amazing. Yeah, it's beautiful stuff. And then there's the Dominican House of Studies, which is pretty neat too. You can visit their chapels, beautiful over there. So it'll be Bishop Strickland, Father Rippiger, Father Inkmanus, Monsignor Rosetti wrote The Diary of an Exorcist, Kathleen Beckman, Stephanie and I. So July 15th through the 17th, you can sign up for that at spiritualdirection.com forward slash events. Last spiritual warfare thing that we're doing is that I'll mention and we'll jump back into the text is setting the captives free, which is about discernment of spirits are going to be two events in one in February in Nebraska and April in Ohio, and they can find out those out those in both at spiritualdirection.com events. So let's jump back into the text to the devil and the castle on your mark get set. Go. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke. Welcome back to Divine Intimacy Radio. We're talking about the devil and the castle spiritual warfare in the progress of the soul, according to St. Teresa of Avila. And before the break, Stephanie was reading an account of a man that the Lord revealed to her died in a state of mortal sin. And I just, it's so disturbing, I have to say, because the way she describes it is, there's just a bunch of demons and I just see them in the bottom of the casket. And as they're lowering the body after the funeral, waiting to receive him. Right, right. Wow. You know, and it's, it's distressing because you understand that he led a very bad life according to, to what she wrote. Yeah. And that through his illness, he got a little bit better, but he never went to confession, went to confession, or he never requested that, or maybe his family didn't call a priest, right? So it's, it's just such an important understanding that the battle at the end is fierce. Yeah. And not only do we need to live a holy life, but we also need to ensure that we have those final graces of, you know, last rites and confession and all of that. We must take care of, of our, our loved ones as they leave this world. Yep. Yep. God be praised. My dad was baptized and confirmed and received into the church and received last rites just before he died. Yeah. That is not common though, you know, the priest who we were dealing with noted like this man in this situation that most people die how they live. Say that again. Most people die the way they live. The trajectory of the soul at death maintains itself. So if your trajectory is toward hell, you go to hell, you know, the Lord is always ready to receive us and receive our repentance and our, and our requests for, for forgiveness. And that's what my dad responded to. I said to him, you know, you're a good man, but that doesn't solve the problem of sin. Would you like to be forgiven? And he said, yes. Yeah. Yeah. And then so we baptized him. And it's just beautiful. But the trajectory. So what Teresa is trying to do here in this book, well, in the interior castle, and then what I'm trying to do in this book is extract out her wisdom that helps us understand from the very beginning of the first stages of the interior life, meaning when somebody really first begins to say, you know what, I'm going to take this seriously. And they become an authentic disciple of Jesus. That means not just attending mass, but, but really deciding to enter into daily mental prayer, begin to become aware through the examine and that sort of activity where they really are in their spiritual life and stop making their faith secondary or tertiary or whatever. But primary in their life, and they begin to journey toward God, then this book will walk you through her wisdom about, okay, on your first steps into the interior castle, which is what it means to be an authentic disciple of Jesus. And these are the way the demons will work against you. And in it, what I've done is I take, I talk about her references to different demonic deception. And then at the end of the chapter, I summarize the fundamental strategy of the demons, and then how it is that we can fight against it, and then questions for reflection. So it's super practical in that way. But she, it's not easy to, you know, she writes like a woman thinks, and women think in a very global sense. And it's a gift that they have, right? It's, they're not a men tend to compartmentalize and that sort of thing. It allows us to care for children and households and, yeah, do a lot of different. Yeah, right. Yeah. So it is, it is, there's nothing wrong with it. But it can be difficult because she writes Stream of Conscious and doesn't edit her work. She never edited her work. So, so she'll, she'll talk through the book and then go off on a bunny trail and talk through the book. And if you don't know the context of what she's talking about, you don't know the history. And you don't have a lot of time, like I spent in this book to kind of go back and say, okay, now we're back to it's hard to extract these things. But this book lays them out, extracts them in a very systematic way and complements her global thinking with very systematic perspective. So God be praised, we have this great doctor of the church doctor of prayer, who helps us. And what is her motivation? Her motivation is, I want you to know the fullness of Jesus who's at the center of the castle. And I want you to understand that there are ways that you need to, things you need to do to cooperate with God. There are things that you need to do to fight the enemy at each stage of your interior life, so that you can reach the, reach the, the place where you're in union with him. Yeah. And I, you know, you think about, well, why would she take the time to recount these visions that she had? And why would the Lord allow it? But I think it's so important for us to, just as we need to understand that God is real, that he's calling us to this beautiful union and relationship with him, that the enemy is also real, and that his end goal is to derail us and to keep us from getting to the one, to the lover of our soul, who's at the center of that castle, right? That beautiful, faceted diamond that she describes in the interior of cast, interior castle, and that, that the more that we journey towards discovering him, and if we can overcome these different tactics of the enemy, that his line shines all the brighter and then we'll draw others, not only ourselves to him, but draw others to him as well. Amen. Amen. So if you want to understand how to fight, well, there's no better guide than Teresa. She was a fierce warrior for Jesus, really turned the world upside down in her time and then after, and has brought, I don't know how many people to, to, to the Lord. But the one thing I want to mention before we close out the show today is one, just practical, you can find the book at spiritualdirection.com forward slash shop. You can also find it at EWTN's Religious Catalog. There are discounts for bulk purchase available at Sophia and Stupress. But the thing, the thing, what I would strongly encourage you to do is that you first read it, but then also you get a study group around it and read it. The reason I wrote it now, and I didn't write it years later as well, years before I was one, I wasn't ready to, I'm like, like many people, I, when I first cracked the interior castle, I, I sort of, I read maybe 10% of it and then entered into the normal fog that was, that settles in just because I was far too immature spiritually to understand it. But also, it's important because in our time, the spiritual darkness is really, really heavy and it is not going to abate. There's no sign of it abating anytime soon. And there are all, every, all indications are it's getting worse as, as we've talked about before. We, God has given us a sort of a weird life in the sense that we're, we have many exorcists friends and there isn't a single one who would say it's easier now. Every single one and their lay support teams would say it's harder now than ever before. And I think at, at one of our exorcists friends who helped us develop, helping us develop a purely Catholic method of deliverance called Liberazio, he revealed that he, though it's harder, God gave him new means in prayer and in the sessions to free people that he had never availed himself before. They're, they're always there in terms of specific ways of praying to archangels and, and things like that. But similarly, I think this is a time where we need to extract new tools, both in my book, Spirit to Warfare and Disarmament of Spirits, which is attempting to provide an easier front door to the, the wisdom of the great warrior, Saint Ignatius and his wisdom on Disarmament of Spirits. And now this book, which is attempting to illumine this great warrior, Saint Teresa of Avalos Wisdom, so that in this time we can fight and really not be overtaken by the darkness. Right, right. Yeah, I mean, it's just, it is such a time of darkness. And one of the things that you've said over the years, and I just think it's, it's a little, it's a little direct, but it's true. And it doesn't, it's not intended to be dismissive of people and their suffering and their mistakes they've made and, you know, the paths they've chosen. But sin does make us stupid. Yeah. It clouds our intellect and our mind, our ability to understand. And you see it, there's like, you know, I, and I don't know who it was that was writing about like almost a mass psychosis that's going on with all the craziness that you see out there. All the stuff that's coming through social media that is just dragging our young people and, you know, everybody else that's engaging in it, you know, the purpose is to just drag them to hell. Right. And, and it's just so difficult. How do you navigate that? How do you get some clarity? Well, the way we do that is, you know, getting some silence in our life, getting some of these influences out of our life, and then engaging in prayer and these, these other means like this book, like your other books on into the deep and spiritual warfare and discernment of spirits and really saying the Lord has provided all these means. I need to study and understand. We must be intentional about our pursuit of God. You know, the, the church through scripture tells us and we see it over and over again to that we need to love God with our whole heart, our whole mind, our whole spirit, all that we are, right? Why does it tell us to do that? You know, for, for what purpose? Because it benefits us because it's necessary. And he deserves it. Right. You know, it's just, but it's also, you know, we can't do this secondarily. We can't pursue God as a hobby or a part-time, you know, thing that we do on the weekends. We must understand that the salvation of our soul, the salvation of those entrusted to us depends on our commitment, perseverance and, and nurturing of the desire that's been placed in our hearts for God and to fight. And we must fight. We must fight in a holy way, but we must fight and we must pursue and we must persevere. And if we don't do those things, we're going to go to hell. I mean, that's just the bottom line. If we're not in, if we're not all in, we're not in it all. And you see that with the encounters of Jesus with, you know, the rich, rich young guy who was reasonably holy and he wouldn't, he wasn't all in, he was parts of him he was attached to, which is how demons control us. And he walked away and Jesus, of course, was sad to lose that soul. And, you know, that's an example of what, what it means if you're not all in, and you not only need to be all in with respect to your goods and the material resources God has given you, you've got to be all in for prayer, all daily mental prayer, all in for the rosary, the exam, living as an authentic disciple of Jesus, not just checking the church box, not just, you know, three dollars worth of God, just enough to make me feel like I'm okay and, you know, all of that. But if you don't fight and you're not all in, you're going to end up in hell and there's no, I don't like saying that. I have no, there's no pleasure saying that. But the reason I say it is hopefully to shake you up a little bit and get you moving. So I hope you pick up the book, Devil in the Castle, I know it will help you. And I know that you'll learn to fight and you'll help others to do the same. You'll be a light and light the world around you in a very difficult time. Okay. 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. Before you take us off, if you haven't yet, we're going to pop out. So we're leaving EWTN's Facebook page for this live stream. You can find us also on YouTube on spiritualdirection.com, YouTube. Make sure you like and subscribe there to help get us, you know, a little bit more traffic to that page. We're, I think we've been shadow banned for a long time now given the decline. But the, we're going to pop over to spiritualdirection.com, Facebook page, live streaming, and we'll also be live streaming out on YouTube, spiritualdirection.com. So to do, we're going to go into, after this, we're going to go into the first chapter. So we covered the intro. We're going to go into the first chapter in the battles that people face, as they're just beginning to enter into the interior castle. Okay. All right. Thanks guys. See you. God bless.