 We are live, all right. Hey friends, this is Dan Burke. You're watching Behind the Scenes, Divine Intimacy Radio. Very excited about the show today. The topic is what I'm deeply passionate about, which is how to reach the people in the world who are struggling and suffering and on their way to hell really. And how to reach people in the church who don't know they're on the way to hell. Forgive me if that sounds presumptuous, but there's reasons why I say that because Jesus himself spoke that way. But before we jump in with our guests, I wanna tell you about a couple of things that might interest you in terms of formation that's coming up and available. One is just a beautiful celebration, October 7th, beginning at 630 p.m. It's central Rosary Crusade and Bishop Strickland, Cardinal Arborellius, Archbishop Gomez, Archbishop Cordelione. All of them are gonna be worked with us, along with many others. I mean, just the cast of characters is quite impressive. To pray a Rosary Crusade against the darkness and the difficulties that we face both inside and outside of the church. And it's free. And if you go to spiritualdirection.com forward slash events, we'd love to have you join us in this Rosary Crusade. Spiritualdirection.com forward slash events. Keep that up there, producer, because I've got a few more. We have a contemplative Rosary webinar with Stephanie, my wife, and Connie Rossini, which will be September 30th at 7 p.m., also free. And then last event, I'll say, is into the deep, Sunday, September 26th, which is coming up pretty quick here, at the Winery at Sovereign Estate in Waconia, Minnesota. I think that's Minnesota. I should know where I'm going, Dave, but I never do. And so the, but the Winery at Sovereign Estate is a winery owned and managed by devout Catholics who produce amazing wine. It's so good to be Catholic. The Baptist got me to stop drinking and Catholics got me drinking again, which I'm pretty happy about. So spiritualdirection.com forward slash events. So check those out. And then all of our events are listed out there. If you wanna see where we're gonna be next or what we're doing. And so let's go ahead and jump into the show. All right, on your mark and get set, go. This is Dan Burke. Welcome to Divine Intimacy Radio, your radio haven of rest. And usually Stephanie says, you're a hermitage of the heart. And then I say, you're a monastery of the mind where we lift our hearts and minds to heaven to draw upon the wisdom of the saints and the church to help us to navigate difficult times and to understand what it means to come to union with God and experience all of the grace and the beauty and the peace that Jesus himself paid for on the cross and paved the way for us to have, to reconcile us with God. I'm so grateful that reality my life has meaning because I'm living in him and it's the only place where we'll find peace. So Stephanie's not with us today but I do have a guest that I'm very excited to introduce to you. Let me read his bio for you. Dave Nodar, he's the founder of Christ Life. He was apprehended by God's love as a young man and made a personal commitment to follow Jesus as a member of the Catholic church in 1971. He served as a leader in the renewal movement for 20 years and after a period of prayer and discernment began Christ's life in 1995. His passion is to help others to know the love of God the Father in Jesus through the transforming power of the Holy spirits. Dave's also authored one of the first books on the new evangelization, characteristics of the new evangelization which he co-authored Discover Christ with Bert Gezzi, Follow Christ with Father Eric Arnold and Allie Escosi, I don't know if I got that right. Share Christ with Father Eric Arnold and Diane Davis and as the principal teacher and developer of the Christ Life series, Dave's a graduate from Towson University with a degree in religious studies and a minor in theology from Loyola College. He continued with graduate studies at the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family. Dave and his wife, Ellie live in Ellicott City, Maryland and they have seven children and nine grandchildren. Welcome to Divine Intimacy Radio, Dave. Dan, great to be here with you. It's great to be here with you too. I'm sorry, I didn't hear what you said. No, look forward to our conversation. Yeah, I mean, I'm a huge fan of you and your work. Really, I think what you do is heroic and really something I want everyone to know about. We're gonna do two shows today. One live streamed on EWTN's Facebook for those who are listening via radio, you can find all of the videos out at spiritualdirection.com and the second one live streamed out on spiritualdirection.com but... So, Dave, I just wanna jump in and talk about evangelization about leading people to Christ and the thing, the title of the show is, of course, evangelization in difficult times. I just wanna give you my position and then have you respond and tell me. But here's the way I see it. I have no fear in inviting people to the church. I have no shame. I'm not ashamed of the church in any way. Are there problems? Are there issues? Big time. But McCarrick was never a member of the church. He was just a predator who used the church. Now, I can't judge his soul in an ultimate sense but in terms of what it looks like, all the evidence of his life is that's what he was doing. So people like him and other bad actors are not representatives of my church, of the church of Jesus Christ, of your church, of the authentic church. And so we should have no fear, no hesitancy to say to someone, hey, if you're facing ultimate questions and issues and you wanna know the meaning of life and why you exist and you wanna know who God is and how to worship him and how to find peace and joy and how to find eternal salvation, the Catholic church is the place. Am I a lunatic or what? No, not at all. What the Lord wants for all of his people, including our brothers and sisters and other Christian traditions. And so we very much want to be able to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ as Catholics and invite people to join us. What I think you have put together and I will say, I know the implications of what I'm saying and I would just caution our listening audience to make sure you attribute what I say to what I say and what Dave says to what Dave says because I can say things Dave can't say. But I'm going to say there is no better evangelization program in the church than Christ's life. Nothing is even close. And so if I could say a little bit about it, there are three and I've of course led it in my own parish. There are three modules discovering Christ which is helping people to understand who he is. And I mean, not just people outside of the church but people inside. And by the way, if you think people inside don't need to know or don't need to be evangelized, all you have to do is look at the surveys and look at how many people believe in the real presence and how people vote, which is the majority of Catholics statistically vote in a way that is radically contrary to our faith. So teaching people to discover Christ, the next module is teaching people to follow Christ and then teaching people to share Christ with others. How do you do the invitation that we're talking about? So Dave, talk to me about what was the inspiration of this extraordinary series for parishes and what's going on today? Like how many parishes are you in and how is it working out? Yeah, well, the foundation in terms of why we're doing this is that the church since Vatican II has said, listen, we need to return. We need to renew the essential call of the church, which is evangelization. And it's the reason the church exists. That's what the church actually teaches. And at the heart of that evangelization is the person of Jesus Christ and a commitment to his lordship, to him being the savior of the world and our personal savior. And so the church has been very clear on that. It's been very clear on the fact that there's an urgent call. And this is since Vatican II, all of the popes have said this, there's this urgent call to return to evangelization. So that's the number one reason is the church is saying, let's do it. Number two for me personally as a young man, the reality of what happened was I'm a teenager, I'm in rock and roll bands and the whole hippie scene thinking that I'm gonna find life and joy in it. And as I go along the several years of teens, at the end of it, I'm realizing there's this great deep ache within me and that I'm not finding life in all that had been promised to me through the world, through the culture. And four things happened. My grandmother who lived with us, Irish grandmother said, Dave, I'm concerned about you, I'm gonna be praying three rosaries a day for you. Second, my mom and dad got involved in a Catholic Bible study. My mother offered me a New Testament, which I consumed. I was at a point of hunger. Third, I had newly ordained a priest who's now retired as a bishop. He befriended me and he just reached out and befriended me regardless of my long hair and the way I was. Fourth, the fellow hippie was converted. And he basically after sharing some of the things that had happened to him said, Jesus changed my life and he can change yours. And as a Catholic, I'd been trying to get back to trying to get out of a lot of stuff I was in which now I would say was clear sin, but not then. And eventually March 71, I went and I said, how do I get what you have? And he basically called me to repentance. He called me kneel down and asked Jesus for what I needed. And I experienced the love of the Father, the forgiveness of sins through what Christ had done for me and the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit where I knew I could change because of him, because of his grace. And that reality was the other reason, along with the churches, the magisterial teaching, constantly saying, we've got to do this. In practice, what I experienced, Dan, is something that both Catholics in the pews, many don't realize they need to make a renewal of their baptismal vows by surrendering to the Lordship of Christ and asking for renewal in the Holy Spirit and learning to live a lifestyle of following Jesus in the context of relationships with others in the church. So those two things motivated me and John Paul constantly saying, if we respond to the Lord, this can become a time of apostolic fervor or a springtime of new evangelization. I felt like the Lord over many years had taught me some things about evangelization and wanted to offer that. So that was the beginning of Christ's life. And Darrell, yeah. Awesome. Well, I wanna reach out to a group. We have a large following in the traditionalist realm too. So there's of course a lot going on in the church and there are those who I associate with the charismatic renewal and traditionalism and those sorts of things. So I wanted to say this through traditionalist listening. So Dave's talking a lot about Second Vatican Council and the renewed emphasis on evangelization. One of the things that I'm grateful because I'm also in that realm of traditional Catholics is that I came into the church to the Catholic mystical tradition. And one of the things that helped me to do is so I had a very much pre-conciliar formation before I became Catholic as I came into the church. And then of course in a great measure, it hasn't stopped. And then of course in the era of Second Vatican Council. But I can say to you that the language that we're using on this show about having a relationship with Jesus is deeply rooted in the Catholic mystical tradition. It is not new. What is new as Dave noted is a renewed emphasis that John Paul II in particular was a champion of. So don't get the raw, it is a lie. I'm gonna just be really bold about it. It is a lie to say that the idea of having a relationship with Christ is a Protestant thing. It's a lie. And anyone who says that doesn't understand a huge portion of the Catholic tradition. And I mean pre-conciliar tradition. It is a lie to say or to believe that Jesus, that the church has not always taught that we need to be converted and reconverted. So, and I'll say it in a more positive sense. It has always been true in the church that from the new test, from Jesus himself, and we'll talk about a little bit of this after the break. From Jesus himself that we are constantly called to examine where we are in relationship to God. How we're making progress and deeper relationship with Him. And to convert over and over again, meaning we're constantly become aware of who I am, who is God, where I am and what hinders our union with Him. And then each conversion is essentially saying yes to God and no to a particular sin, yes to God and no to a particular attachment. Whatever it is that hinders us, these are conversions, some large, some small, but we're called to this constant conversion. So Dave, I know we're on the exact same page with all of this. When we get back from the break, we're gonna jump in. I think what I'd like to do is dive in to the Discovering Christ module and have you walk us through what priests and laity can understand is in that module and what can it do in their parish and then we'll keep walking through. So we'll be right back with Dave Nodar from Christ Life. Okay, when your markets at go. This is Dan Burke. Welcome back to Divine Intimacy Radio. And with Dave Nodar, he's the founder of Christ Life, Catholic Ministry for Evangelization. I would say again, the best evangelization program out there. And some people might say, well, Dan, but have you seen Alpha and do you prove of Alpha? Dave's not saying this, this is me saying this. I have seen Alpha, I used it as an Anglican. I was surprised when I became Catholic that they had something called Alpha in a Catholic context. So I bought it and was gonna pursue it in a parish. And when I opened it up, it was the exact same material, just with a new skin on it. I think that Christ Life is far superior to Alpha because it was constructed out of a Catholic framework, theologically ecclesiologically. It is a Catholic product from the Catholic heart, from Catholic hearts. Alpha came out of the Protestant context and some people have Catholicized it in the way they implemented in their parish. So explaining away some of the problematic statements of Nikki Gumbel with respect to ecclesial understanding of the church and all of that. So set that aside. So I'm thoroughly familiar with Alpha, but I will say that I think I much prefer, my endorsement goes to Christ Life, which is a thoroughly Catholic program. So Dave, let's jump in and talk about, there's three modules, Discovering Christ, Following Christ, and Sharing Christ. For the priests out there, I want them to hear this. And I'm sorry to keep talking so much. You're more important than me in this program. But I so believe in this, I'm excited about it. For a priest, I would say to you, this is not something you implement one time in your parish. This is something that should become a norm, a, I don't know, what was the words you used, Dave, about- A core curriculum. Core curriculum of the parish because it will lead you through all the things at a fundamental level that Catholics need to know to understand who Jesus is, how to follow him and how to live out their life in the Catholic Church. And then, so you iterate through it over and over and then you can branch off and go deeper in different subjects. But let's start with Discovering Christ, Dave. Tell us a bit about that module. Well, let me start by saying, one of the difficulties in our church currently, and it has been the case for 50 some years, is that we have great teaching on evangelization, John Paul in a particular way, and Benedict really articulated very clearly what it is and what we need to do. The problem is the theory, the theology and the practice, there's a huge gap between them. So we wanted to be able to offer a relational process, not programmatic because we get sucked into, we'll do this, now we'll do that. But the practical relational process of evangelization, whose goal is to make disciples who are on mission. And that's what the church is called to be from the beginning. And so the first seven teachings, actually it's nine total with a retreat, but it's focused on what's called the karygma, the basic gospel message. And we do that in a way that's orthodox, that's true to the gospel, to the true to the teaching of the church in a relevant manner. So we start with what is the meaning of life? We talk about what did Jesus come to reveal to us, which is that there's a father in heaven who loves us and wants to see us reconciled to him. We talk about, why did Jesus have to die? You know, what is this whole thing about? He came to save us in expressing, articulating the importance of Christ's crucifixion for our sins, for the forgiveness of sins. Then we go on and talk about the resurrection, the importance of his rising, not only in terms of validating that he is the Son of God and everything that he said was true, but also for our personal lives, that it brings us into this promise of resurrection at the end of our lives, at the end of time. Additionally, that there's the power of the Holy Spirit. So we talk about the spirit of God that's given in baptism and how important it is to live holy lives. If we want to do the will of God, which is a simple way of talking about holiness, we can't do it on our own. We need the grace of God. We need the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives. And we also, if we're gonna ever be able to tell others about Christ, we need his power. That's what Jesus told his apostles. You need to wait for the power of the Holy Spirit. So that's given in baptism, but for many of us as adults, that's not evident. And so we wanna be able to talk about this whole thing of the gospel, the call of what Christ has done to bring us into reconciliation with the Father, to give us his Holy Spirit, allow us to truly be children of God and to do what the children of God are called to do, which is tell others. There's a Father in heaven that loves us and Jesus has made the way through his death and rising for us to be able to be reconciled and to ultimately be led to eternal life. So that's the framing of the first course that leads us then from the gospel into okay, you make this commitment to Christ, now what? It's not a one and done thing. Yeah. It's a lifestyle of following you. Yeah. So I don't wanna jump into following Christ yet. Yeah, fine. So the thing I loved about discovering Christ, as I mentioned, in contrast to Alpha, you have six weeks and you cover a lot of different territory. In discovering Christ, it's six weeks of just focusing on the person in work of Jesus as taught by the Catholic Church from the beginning and helping people to really break through. I don't know if you can articulate this just on the fly, probably easily, but you built this to overcome barriers in the way people think about Jesus and what it means to respond to him. What are the biggest barriers now to people coming to, and I would say both in the pews and outside. Right. But maybe in the pews is more important because we have a lot of people in the pews who don't believe or follow the faith or why they're in the pews is confusing to me, but we want them to come to a saving relationship with God and that doesn't come just by sitting in the pews. One of the things of the Second Vatican Council that most people don't read or especially the critics, Lemon Gentium 14 basically says that if you don't believe all the teachings of the church and live them out and then live them out in charity for your life, not only will you not be saved, meaning you're gonna go to hell, not only will you go to hell, but you'll incur a stricter judgment. And so for those who think the Second Vatican Council is all just like pastoral week, it says that go read it for yourself. So Catholics need to know this. They need to know that just showing up is good, but it is not enough because you can be religious and you can show up and be going to hell, for instance, by taking the Eucharist in a state of mortal sin and then dying. I mean, you can commit the worst sins committed in the universe, in the world, every single day are people taking the Eucharist in a state of mortal sin. That is the worst sin, it's worse, it's worse theologically than abortion. So, here's what I'd say, Dan. I'll begin by illustrating. We have had of something like almost a quarter of a million people who have been involved with Christ's life here in the States and Canada internationally. I've heard testimonies personally of 70 and 80 year old people saying, I've been a faithful Catholic all of my life, went through Catholic education, through university, but no one ever explained to me the gospel. Right. And then all the utterly changed to them. So, the preaching of the gospel, the koregma has not been real clear and in terms of what has been communicated in terms of the doctrines and theology of the church, it's often left at an intellectual level without a call to response. And John Paul was really clear on this need for this shift in our paradigm to understand that most fundamentally, most essentially, this has to do with union with God. That's what it's about. And so, when we say, for example, the creed, it has a universal and objective level, I believe. But it also is intended to have a personal, subjective reality to it. And for many, it doesn't. So, Easter Vigil, the priest says, do you believe? And the congregation goes, I do, you know? And one friend who's a bishop now says, I just longed for the day when there will be, I do, because they held it in their hearts. They believed that they understood it intellectually. They joined with a universal creed of the church, but objectively goes to the subjective. Now it's in their hearts, as well as in their minds. They believe the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. That's what's critical. And so, what we're trying to do is give a process which is relational to help people to understand the gospel, respond to it in the context of our parishes. So, if I could contrast some traditional education or formation ideas, pedagogy is really teaching facts. And the relationship between facts, classical education, grammatical, didactic, and rhetorical. Facts, the relationship between the facts and the ability to talk about them. Mystagogy, that's pedagogy. Mystagogy is entering into the reality of what you're talking about. I love when Pope Benedict said Christ encountering truth, he said, as person. So he bridged pedagogy and mystagogy. And pedagogy is only a door. And it does tell you, this is the right door. Jesus is the Messiah. He said, I'm the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father, but through me. So pedagogy and orthodoxy and dogmatic theology will say this is the right door, it's Jesus. Mystagogy says, now let's enter into it in this deep and transformative way. Jesus didn't come to give us ideas. He didn't come to give us a philosophy in life. He didn't come to give us a particular liturgical framework. None of that. All of those lead us to him. The liturgy, which many in my camp worship as God himself, the liturgy is really important, but the purpose of the liturgy is to lead us to encounter God. It's not, we don't, and many in my camp worship rubrics. I mean, really do. And it's what the Pharisees did. They worshiped the structure of the faith. And what did Jesus criticize them for? He didn't say they're wrong in doctrine. He didn't, he actually said they're right. But their hearts are corrupt and they're not converted. We're coming to the end of the show. I want to encourage people who are watching live stream to head out to spiritualdirection.com, Facebook, and we'll get the rest of the show. Both of these shows will be out on spiritualdirection.com as well as they are on UWTN. So what we're gonna have to do is continue the show and go to Following Christ and then Sharing Christ, which is the full program. So we'll finish that out there. But I just want to say to you, Dave, and to your whole team, thank you. You guys are doing some of the most important work. There's multiple pages of priorities in my mind about the church. You're on page one. I'm grateful for you and all you're doing. Thank you so much for Christ's life. Thanks so much, Dan. Hey, listen, if anybody wants to find out more about how to actually do it, Christlife.org. Christlife.org. All right, now as we end the show, 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. All right, Dave, great show.