 watching behind the scenes divine intimacy radio and just Waiting for everybody to queue up Pray that having a blessed Lent The only thing I want to tell you about today is to go check out our events out on the spirits of direction comm web page spirits of direction comm forward slash events and Are we are we advertising the women's discernment spirits retreat here? Yes, yes the The beds in the retreat center are filled But we still have more room for women and if they sleep in local hotels Yeah, so she's got all the information there So it's discernment of spirit and spiritual warfare and discernment of spirits women's retreat here at our Retreat center. I believe Mount Carmel retreat center in Montgomery, Alabama. Yeah, and it's a 20 minutes from a local airport, so it's easy to find but it's remote. It's beautiful and you and I are going to co-teach that We are very good. So check that out. Why don't we jump into the show on your market? So I go this is Dan and Stephanie Burke. Welcome to divine intimacy radio your radio Haven of rest You're hermetic of the heart. Are you sleeping at the wheel? Sorry? I Went somewhere else. You want to try that again? No, that's okay Well, we lift our hearts and minds to heaven to draw on the wisdom of the saints to help us to navigate this crazy life that we live and We have a question about Someone who's struggling with where is God? Okay? So Where did it go? I can't see it. We can't even see it on there. It's what causes what causes? Okay, here it is. Okay. Sorry. There's a lot of words on this page and caffeine. Yeah, maybe What causes the loss of the sense of God when living a sacramental life and avoiding sin? I've been wandering in the arid desert for decades and I can't seem to encounter God in prayer Okay, so let's do a little diagnosis The loss of the sense of God so the so when living a sacramental life and avoiding sin So I think we can assume That she her spiritual life is here he he or she is a spiritual life is healthy And that there's no problems there that's often a problem with aridity The absence of the presence perceived presence of God is Called aridity and it's often caused by neglect of spiritual disciplines or sin But this person is saying is indicating they're living a healthy, you know life of the faith according to What they know, right? Yeah, cuz you know that that requires a deeper conversation that go ahead Yeah, I mean we can touch on that a little bit one of the reasons in our spiritual direction Program the heart of Christ school that we require people to take a moral theology course as an example is because most Catholics don't know their moral theology and so sometimes and and even you know when people come for Healing work. I think I asked you the other day. How many times did they come to you in prayer for healing and and Liberation that sort of thing and they discovered a sin that was unconfessed that was serious You said every time so that's so there's there's there's two issues there There's an issue of awareness and then there's an issue of understanding, right? And so a lot of Catholics don't understand their own their moral Catholic moral teaching They don't know what an intrinsic evil was when I met you you thought it was you thought contraception was okay And that's actually a mortal sin So that's just an example. So one you got to make sure you understand the faith We'll assume the best here, but yeah, and I think And to be clear when we're talking about those that have come when Regarding that question that you asked me about those that have come for healing and deliverance When I say that It's it's not generally like a big old sin like they went and robbed a bank kind of thing and they just remembered it And it's like oh, I had forgotten all about me robbing that bank at gunpoint when I was 15 Yeah, that's not generally yet. It's generally some area of Unforgiveness But they would intellectually believe that they had forgiven and people will sit there and say I've done the work I've done the work. I forgot I've forgiven. I've forgiven but through that process of discernment and going through it it is incredible what the Lord reveals and Then you say oh no, I actually I thought I had but I'm still carrying that Yeah, I'm still carrying that or there's this oh, but I was having this conversation and it was I was you know I was listening to the pain of another and they didn't realize that they were engaging in gossip and Detraction and call it Calumny because that's a you know, so things like this where people don't understand That when the Lord calls us to holiness and when he calls us to be perfect as his as the Heavenly Father is perfect We're talking down to the minutiae of our behavior not in a legalistic way, but in eradicating those bad habits bad Generational practices or or we were taught to behave this way or everybody in our family acted this way or whatever That has kept us in a place where we're not free Where the Lord's grace is really just yeah able to run with us because we're holding on to something or some sort Baggage, right? Yeah, so what we're doing You know as she and I are stepping our happiness conversation is if we had a person in front of us We wouldn't just assume that well they said well, I don't have a sin problem. We wouldn't go. Oh, that's great moving on We would say well, what does that mean? What is sin? What's the difference between mortal and venial sin? Do you understand what intrinsic evil is? What do you struggle with? Yeah, what do you struggle with where you know? Where are your thoughts when you first wake up in the morning? Yeah, you know are they on that on your ex-husband who you know how he's ruined your life and your finances and your health You know, okay. Well, then that's you know, not true forgiveness, right? So that would be one thing and then it says I've been wandering in the air of this desert for decades I can't seem to encounter God in prayer. So there's a couple of issues here. What kind of prayer? How are you praying? You know if you're practicing a discipline of mental prayer and You're not allowing distractions to take you away from it and you're being faithful to it Daily and you've been doing that for years and let's assume it's healthy under the guidance of a spiritual director, right? Let's assume it's healthy. I Can't seem to encounter God in prayer indicates a striving for something. That's not your business to strive for She'll say it nicer than me, but it's you're you're exiting out. You're you're saying I want this feeling and and That's it's a dangerous thing. It's dangerous for a couple of reasons one The enemy could give it to you when you're when you're striving for it Or two, you could get frustrated or upset with God when it's not anything that he's promised us And in fact what may be happening to you assuming all the best is That in the later purgative stage when you're past habitual mortal and venial sin Say that again when you're past when you're past habitual mortal and venial sin That means you're not going to confession for the same thing over and over again You know in near succession And you've been praying for years and your sacramental life is sound What often the Lord will do and it's it's where the realm of John of the cross is Take you through a deeper kind of purgation Wherein he removes all sensory Feelings that you would like that are pleasurable And and he takes you into the desert when the what's the desert like the desert is called the desert because it's arid It's dry. There's not a lot of life. There's not a lot of water. It's difficult It's hard to find, you know, what you need for your sustenance and so and his so But the the reason he takes us into the desert is to purify our love To to teach us to come to a place of love where we're not Expecting something back from him because of course he's given us everything and and he owes us nothing We let we desire the giver of the gifts not the gifts themselves But some but this question could indicate that opposite has happened right or or some combination there that's a little imbalanced So the key is is understanding is finding a spiritual director who knows This transition from the purgative to the illuminative to help you dissect I teach a course in the Aval Institute called foundations of prayer and union with God where I go into this transition In in some depth, but you can also find the details in a scent of Mount Carmel John of the cross book I think it's book to chapter 13 in that realm that realm of the of his writings too But the key the one key question is do you desire to pray and If you're in aridity and you desire to pray that is a and all the other things are good and right Then that's what we would call likely contemplative aridity could be yeah could be if you if the Aridity causes you to move away from God and you don't desire to pray. That's rooted in something Or destructive. Yeah oppressive or something that needs to be rooted out in in healing or You know given over to a spiritual director to discern with you that that the piece that that I find interesting here is the word decades Decades. Yeah, that's not normative. Yeah, that's not normative for for the aridity. That's the transitional Certainly been my experience, you know Yeah, but but you've transitioned, right? So I'm talking about those people that are in the transition To to be stuck for decades in aridity is is not, you know It's not normative. It generally is after about a year or so of really deep prayer with a spiritual direction They might have that for a while But again, like it's it's really hard to diagnose this not Yeah speaking to them, but that word decades is interesting. So you know, you got to talk to your spiritual director Yeah, I would do that. Okay The other course that I teach that could help you is spiritual warfare and discernment of spirits Yeah, that's if especially if your aridity Causes you to not want to pray. Yeah, or draw that's an indicator of the bad spirits messing with you If your prayer if your prayer is a prayer of centering prayer mindfulness, that's an issue too. Yeah So it's just really requires a lot more conversation. Yeah diagnosis here. Okay. What's another question you want to tackle? The difference between life coaching and spiritual direction It's an interesting issue that's becoming more and more common a lot of psychologists are Getting into the realm of life coaching Influencers are getting into the area like coaching life coaching is about organizing yourself To optimize your humanity. I think that's probably a good way to say it. So learning how to how to how to Be a better steward of your time talents and resources and spiritual direction is about discerning God's will and Understanding how to follow God's will it's about the interior. It's about the interior life. And yeah, so, you know, I I wouldn't I mean I was gonna say something and I realized that would kind of rule you out when I first Lured you into giving spiritual direction to people but Uh, you don't have to go to a school to be a director. But of course Um, you if you have the charism that with the school, that's the best Because you're you're backing up that you know, the calling of God with The formation you need to understand the interior life. But I just You're not going to get that kind of thing through a coaching school or a life coach. Yeah Yeah, life coaching is one thing spiritual direction is another Um, can they work very well in conjunction with each other? Sure. Sure. Um, given that, you know, if it's a really great life coach that's not focused on You know the things of the world, right? Yeah that they that they're actually truly catholic, but You know, it they are two different things. Can they work together? Sure. Absolutely Um, and they should serve one another because whatever you're being asked to do as a life coach Shouldn't be working against your interior life. Right. Um, but the most important thing is the salvation of your soul Yeah, so it's well said. Okay. How about we go to a break? Oh, let's do that. Okay. We'll be right back Okay, last segment surviving Okay 13 minutes on this one. I don't even know how much I was watching the time we could we could have done we could do one more out of these questions Yeah, so the next one we'll do is daily since we're staying let's stay on the spiritual stuff. Okay. Um Right now does daily mass attendance effect Yep You ready? Yeah any markets that go This is Dan Stephanie Burke. Welcome back to divine intimacy radio. We're talking about The interior life and questions about that Do I have one for you? You ready? Okay How does daily mass attendance affect spiritual progress? I sometimes feel guilty when I don't go given the relative availability of daily mass in my area And even though I'm still even though I'm still praying daily. Okay. Okay So there's a word right in that little tiny question That's super important that needs to be rooted out What's that guilty? I don't know. Maybe it's the good spirits No, no, the lord does not invoke guilt. You don't think he convicts. Yeah, he does not condemn guilt is that's that's not of The lord, especially because we're talking about daily mass. We're not talking about sunday mass. Yeah So, um, it would be appropriate to feel extraordinarily bad If you were not going to sunday mass if you were not making those efforts because you know I'm tired, you know, my kids have a soccer game, you know Uh, I'd rather sit on my couch and eat chips and watch the football game. Okay. There is a problem. Yeah um That's one thing and and we need to get that rightly ordered daily mass is not required It's just a beautiful Holy thing to do If it doesn't contradict your state of life Like if I was going to daily mass to the detriment of my relationship with my husband And you know, he he was asking things of me and wanted good holy things and I'm here to help him But I'm like, you know, you got to hold on because I got to go to daily mass and I'll I'll check you later Then that's that's not a rightly ordered thing So how does But if all those things are good and we're being called to daily mass The way it affects us is because of who we're going to see We're going to see jesus. Okay. So if I go and sit with jesus truly present You know body blood soul and divinity If if he feeds me with his body blood soul and divinity through the hands of the priest If I sit in his presence and I pray if I'm Engaging with the most important act of prayer This side of heaven, which is the holy sacrifice of the mass Will it increase my Sanctity Yes, yes. Yes. If I'm properly disposed if I'm not in a state of mortal sin It is going to affect my sanctity. It's going to Every every holy reception of the Eucharist watches washes away venial sin It strengthens us for the journey. It it strengthens us against venial sin and mortal sin So we are cleansed. We're we're we're more filled with the lord And every time we're filled with the lord then that grace that we've received his presence We become living tabernacles Going out into the world to love and serve those he's entrusted to us So it is absolutely transformative I've had a number of spiritual directees who when life circumstances Allowed it And they started to make that practice first we'd say, you know, why not try one extra mass a week? They would do that and then they started to feel the grace and oh Boy, this you know, this feels good. I I feel better. I feel stronger I feel more spiritually alert and awake And and I'm growing in holiness and virtue Then they'll desire more and more And I find it to be truly addictive like I Something's wrong when I don't get to be with the lord when I don't get to to receive him. So Guilt is not there. It's not necessary. It's not good So push away the guilt But as you can according to the availability according to your state of life and And your physical ability to go go as often as you can receive those graces and You'll be better off for it by Loads. Yeah, I always think, you know, if folks have the opportunity to go To mass more frequent and they don't take it that they have a profound Uh, they have a profoundly impoverished understanding of what is going on in the holy sacrifice of the mass It's not a it's not a burden for your time Yeah, the uh, every time somebody has habitual sin That I come in contact specifically serious sin You know the first thing I'm going to do is say can frequent confession frequent Eucharist Those are the greatest sources of grace the sight of heaven To help us to grow spiritually. So okay, uh, there you go Next question Okay, you can ask that one Okay, uh, what if you are separated because your spouse was leading you to sin And have grown stronger in your faith apart boy That's a quagmire of a question Yeah Right. Yeah, I mean, you know We don't know enough here to really speak to this question Um, it's a dangerous question. It is it is a very dangerous question Right. Um, now separation is allowed in extreme cases Where one or the other spouse is in You know, there's very destructive super super destructive behavior or whatever. Um, but it's not You know, it's it's not god's will right It is not god's will To be separated from your spouse Um, normally under normative circumstances now if if You know, there's just so much here Right because leading you to sin. Um, nobody can Lead you to sin you have to cooperate with sin, right, you know So if dan decides to go rob a bank Um, and and says come with me I don't have to follow I don't have to follow And and so if I'm if I'm not strong enough in in my own spiritual practices That I'm capitulating to sin. That's you know, that's a Then I need to you know get right with the lord both spouses need to be right with the lord And what what I would say is You need to come to a marriage retreat Yeah But together or separately because we've even had we did have one woman She said my husband can't make it can I come alone and it's not normative but we said sure And it affected her so much the next year. She was there with her husband So it just kind of woke things up and shook shook out some of the leaves and the The fogginess of what was happening in their relationship and they came back So, you know, there's just too much here and and you can't yeah, you couldn't you can't confirm somebody in this and Without really understanding what's going on But it is the lord wants to heal you in and through Your marriage. He loves your marriage. He He wants it to be restored and if we think about The revelations to the children at Fatima Sister Lucia said in the end The battle will be be between Be against family family and marriage So if you don't think all of hell is trying to break up your marriage um You're delusional, you know another another thing about that. I think that people Most actually I would say 99.9 percent of Catholics don't know Is that apart from the Eucharist and reconciliation The greatest grace is a married couple can receive is is in and through their sacramental marriage. Yeah the It is a sacrament. It brings grace. Yeah, we always talk about At the beginning of our marriage retreats that an exorcist asked us to assist him And he the reason he gave shocked us both. I mean, we were in that 99 percent until he said what he said and he said I want you to help to participate in the exorcism because Your the way you live your life and in your marriage Will protect me as an exorcist in the right. It was absolutely shocking, you know, and and it's it is really um propelled our own I I think um doggedness about the importance of marriage and the sacrament of marriage Um, it it affected our own the way we lived it out. I think it became more um just all the more at the four of We're not going to let the devil come in here We're we're not we're going to fight towards one another and not allow the enemy to destroy us or Or to tear us down. Um, that doesn't mean there aren't terrible difficulties but um The lord loves you as individuals He loves your marriage and he wants to do something profound in and through it Yeah, one of the other that you got to fight for that one of the other things we say in the retreat that I think is inspired If I might be so bold is this this It's a saying it's I have the spouse I have Because the need I need the spouse I have for my salvation. Yeah, however incredibly difficult that can be And there are some cases where when there's abuse, we're not saying, you know, that you That you don't separate in that sense, you know, that's different. Yeah, we're not talking about Occasional bouts of anger and yelling and and having a few fits here and there Uh, we're talking Life in danger physical harm. Yeah life in danger kind of abuse Sexual abuse. Yeah. Yeah, those kind of things, but there are so many resources So check out divine intimacy and marriage retreats Where can they find that they can find that it's spiritualdirection.com forward slash events. There you go. Next one is Well, it's I'm time stamping this podcast, but we will be having some Upcoming in the in the northeast area Trinidad, you know around the world So check those out keep an eye on that Um, and then there are just there's a number of other resources good. Holy Catholic resources So what I want to say is don't give up. Don't give up. Don't give up, you know We have we've had people come through here And and where the one spouse wasn't cooperating but the other was and they received profound healing Went back. We we continued to coach and work with them And they are now after almost two years um Reconciled the divorce proceeding was was stopped And they're planning on attending a marriage retreat coming up and all of heaven is rejoicing. Yeah, and their children Um will now witness what it means when you hit a trial you don't give up and run Yeah, you find a way through because you made a vow to god and each other And you're you believe in the power of god to heal and restore and even divorce is no Point of no return. We know several couples who have actually divorced and then remarried Which is a beautiful uh thing to hear about when you know, we're all broken We're all we're all humans trying to figure things out and we we often don't do the right thing but god be praised We have a god of forgiveness Of healing of healing And there's always a road there's always a way to follow him and we just need to say yes And and he'll help us to figure that out and cry out to him. So We're grateful to have you with us on divine intimacy radio. We're grateful to ewtn For allowing us to air this show on their networks all over the united states in the world And we're grateful to you for listening and supporting us And with that we're out of time 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