 really take that class. Hey, friends, you're watching behind the scenes, Divine Intimacy Radio. And in a few minutes, we're going to talk. So we're going to talk about questions and answers on communion, receiving communion, reverence, that sort of thing, communion on the tongue, all that. Before we do that, though, what were you just saying? You were hitting and? Oh, I was just saying I would love to monitor that class. Oh, this is actually a good commercial then. So she was saying she'd love to monitor the class at the Avala Institute, Avala-institute.org. Saint John of the Cross in our journey into the mystery of God. So this course, we'll explore the writings of Saint John of the Cross as a guide to our interior life. And it'll be taught by Father Ignatius Schweitzer. Yeah, he's an amazing priest. I mean, Saint John of the Cross, Father Ignatius. Schweitzer? Yeah, that kind of makes it a win-win. He's a Dominican of the Eastern province. He was a Carthusian. And the priest knows very much about prayer. Yeah, he's a beautiful priest. Yeah. Wonderful holy priest. He really is a good priest. We actually tried to partially steal him from the Dominicans, not really, but if we had our way, he'd be working at the Institute full time. So about a beautiful priest. The, if you're just joining us, as I mentioned, our show today is going to be on questions and answers about reverence and communion on the tongue and reverence and worship and spiritual progress. We have still have a few seats left at the Divine Intimacy and Marriage Retreat, February 10 through the 12th of this year, Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Hensville, Alabama. If you've never been there, it's absolutely amazing. Should guys consider bringing their wives to stand? I wouldn't do it. No, I mean, yes, of course, for guys, this is it. The great thing about this retreat is we don't ask men to act like women. And it's not, it's a retreat based on Catholic mystical tradition, primarily. And it's not, it's not a kind of retreat that'll make men uncomfortable. It will challenge everybody. So in that sense, I guess it can, you know, make some folks uncomfortable. But the reason that guys like it, the reason that guys like it, and actually we've had the, one of the national leaders of fraternice, which is for young men and their dads learning virtue, he did not wanna go to the retreat. He's actually a friend of ours, but he didn't wanna go, his wife wanted to go and he went, like raved about it so much. And he's a real manly guy, but he loved it because it was so concrete and helpful and based on tradition. He loved it so much. He brought an entire crew here to the retreat center in order for a day retreat. And we ended up doing a women's and men's separate husbands and wives retreat for the day because he found it so incredibly impactful. And there's still fruit being birthed from that retreat, that secondary retreat. So listen, it's incredible, you know, the men do a breakout session with Dan, the women do a breakout session with me. Mine's better though. Well, I don't know about that. For men. Yeah, for men, yeah, yeah, right? So anyway, the Lord just does a mighty thing. He's just doing a mighty thing. So huge emotional inventory deposit, if you surprise your wife with this retreat. That means just a man talk, that means you get a lot of points. Yeah. So spiritualdirection.com, the events area, navilladashinstitute.org for courses on the interior life. So let's go ahead and jump into the show. Oh, I need a timer. I forgot my timer. Let's see. Do not disturb. And timer. Okay, you ready? On your mark, get set, go. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke. Welcome to Divine Intimacy Radio, your radio Haven abreast. 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 to help us understand how to better navigate the tumult of this very challenging life that we're all in. It is indeed challenging. One of the challenging, most challenging topics is the topic of worship, communion on the tongue, you know, receiving kneeling. Should I do it? Should I not? All that stuff. And we occasionally do talks where, look at the Avalos Summit where we cover liturgy and reverence and things like that. And we get accumulation of questions. Some of these questions, I was reading them this morning, I think are from more of them are from one person than not just because of the way they're worded, but I didn't think they were all worthy of being addressed. So why don't we just jump in? Okay. Before we do though, I will say this, that we as part of our own spirituality and I just think it's generally healthy, we're not big on criticizing priests, having all kinds of trouble with my throat today. We're not big on criticizing priests. So if you're a priest listening or if you're a person who tends that direction, we don't like it. We don't recommend it. Our approach is usually to assume the best and pray like crazy for your priests, support good priests, that sort of thing. But there are a few negative questions here and we just want to address them, but I wanna make sure folks know we should be supporting our priests. Now in fact, I'll say this at the outset. We had a beautiful priest in one of our parishes in Birmingham, Alabama and we had a great rapport with the priest, great relationship, we supported him in many, many, many ways. Asked him for very little, but there were times, but because I think we were so supportive and asked him for very little, one time I said, father, you know, sacrosanctum concilium says to retain the communion patent in mass, which allows for the capturing of any particles that can fall from when somebody receives Eucharist. And he did it and it was no big deal. It was an easy ask and an easy implement. I don't know in our parish that we intend now in Montgomery, Alabama, our priest made that change not too long ago as well. So if you're respectful and patient and if you give, if you tie, if you are supportive of your priest, if you're constantly a source of encouragement, you're much more likely to be heard than if you're a negative Nellie constantly complaining or you have just a bad attitude, does that make sense? Or a negative Ned. Negative Ned. I've told folks in our community in the Apostle A.B.A. community, you know, people write in and say, I've had trouble with this in my parish. What should I do? First, fast and pray for a month. Fast and pray for your priest for a month for the graces of God to be fall upon him. And the reason I tell people to do that is because I know for a fact, as they pray for their priest, they will be changed as well. And sometimes people just change their attitude completely and don't deal with it. And of course, the context of our conversation in this show is novus ordo parishes, ordinary form parishes, because this is not an issue in Latin mass parishes. And we do attend both. We attend the Latin mass when it's available, which is not as much down here in Montgomery. And then we also attend an ordinary form church. So we live in both worlds. So here comes the first question. Are you ready? If the church teaches you can receive on the hand standing, how can you say that a person is more reverent or humble if they receive on the tongue kneeling? So I guess they heard me say or you say that it is more humble to receive on the tongue kneeling than standing. What are your thoughts on that? Well, if we, it's interesting, the first image that came to mind when you read the question was Moses when he discovers the burning bush. Yeah. And how the Lord speaks to him and says, remove your shoes. Yeah. You're on holy ground. You're on holy ground. You know, this lowering of self, this making yourself vulnerable, you know, because to remove your shoes in the desert is to make yourself vulnerable because then your feet aren't protected anymore. So this sense of lowering yourself before your God to become smaller, to place your vanity aside. Yeah. Which I think is a big thing is a lot of people are concerned about how they're gonna look in front of other people. Are people gonna stare at me? You know, is the priest gonna look at me strangely or whatever? That certainly is a humiliation that you embrace and you put that aside as well. So it's this dying of self and lowering yourself in front of, in the presence of your God. And I think we would all probably agree that if the Lord came and presented himself fully, you know, visibly incarnate in front of us, standing as he is in say one of the scenes of the chosen, we'd all go to our knees. Right. To who he truly was and fully and understood fully. Right, we would buckle. It would just be an immediate lowering of ourselves and lowering of our head, lowering of our eyes. And that's the stance. You know, when I go and kneel to receive, I am lowering myself in love, in devotion. Please God in humility before my Lord. You know, it's funny. I remember Cardinal Lorenzi was head of the congregation for divine worship and he said, if it's really the Lord, why won't you crawl in his Nigerian accent with all this energy? Why wouldn't you go on your knees? Why wouldn't you crawl? You know, I just love that guy. Well, here's what's cool about this is you and I have opinions, but what does the church teach? I'm gonna read it to you. It's from the document, Memoriali Domini, which most people haven't read, unfortunately, who have ideas about all of this. And they throw around a lot of ideas and opinions, but this document has a lot of clarity in it. Here's what it says. A deeper humility was felt to be demanded when receiving this, when receiving the Eucharist. Thus, the custom was established of the minister placing a particle of consecrated bread on the tongue of the communicant. So, Memoriali Domini was the document that allowed for communion in the hand standing, which is fascinating. But the document itself argues explicitly that it is more humble. So this isn't my opinion or even your opinion, though the our opinions are in keeping with church teaching. It's the opinion of the church in this official document from Paul VI that there was development of practice because of this sense of the reality of what's really going on. And so it says there was a deeper humility was needed and thus it was instituted that folks should kneel and receive the Lord that way. So it's official church document, doctrine, which is very cool. So let me just read, if the church teaches you can receive it, how can you say a person is more reverent or humble? So we're not saying that, the church says that. It's, humbling is lowering, right? So standing is the full height of a person. When you kneel, you cut your height in half. That's an act of humility. And hopefully your internal humility is matched with what you're doing externally, but it's humble. So that's- Yeah, and certainly you hope in time that it then affects the heart, right? But I think the first thing is overcoming yourself, basically getting over yourself to kneel, to make the commitment to kneel. And as you do, then it starts to affect your interior. I have a direct, we just had this conversation a couple of days ago and it was really fascinating because she could not kneel. She would think about it. And when it came to that moment, something like, she's like, I can't do this. I can't, she couldn't overcome herself to kneel. And so she finally in prayer. And listen, I have not convinced her, I have not imposed it. I never do that. I just leave it totally to the free will of person. In fact, we'd never had a conversation about it. I didn't even know she was struggling with it until a couple of days ago. And she said, I just want you to know that I prayed. And I said, Lord, if you want me to kneel, you have to give me the grace to kneel because I can't do it. And I just have to let you do this. And so then she goes to Mass and it was over the Christmas season. And she goes to a parish that was in her own and something moved in her or someone. And she knelt and she was overwhelmed with the grace. It was absolutely beautiful to her. She said, and I just kept kneeling. And I knelt and I knelt and I knelt and she said, Stephanie, that didn't come from me. That came through a grace. And she said, Lord, I had so many consolations and so much just an outpouring of the Lord from just kneeling before him in Mass. He made it possible for her. Awesome. Awesome. Next question, I think we can do this for the break. If not, we'll answer it after the break. Why do you insist? Why do you insist that a person is more spiritually mature if they receive the Eucharist kneeling on the tongue? So I don't. This is, so a doctor of the church does, which is Teresa of Avalik actually teaches that the more mature a person is spiritually, the more reverent they are. So to kind of give the corollary to that, the less cavalier they are, the less informal they are and the more formal because formality is a sign of reverence. Whenever, you know, when you look at like the most important funerals like Queen Elizabeth's or St. John Paul II or Pope Benedict's, there is a huge amount of formality around it. And in terms of how people comport themselves, how they look, how they move, because all of these movements and the way that we comport ourselves have to be oriented to the gravity of the moment that we're in. And Teresa of Avalik teaches a doctor of the church that the more mature you are spiritually, the more you're deeply oriented to the gravity and the reality of the moment you're in. I'm of course translating, but she did say that in the interior castle. So when we get back from the break, maybe you can comment on that, but just to be clear, I'm not the one who made the assertion about reverence. Teresa of Avalik, doctor of the church made the assertion. And frankly, I've never encountered people who are spiritually immature, who take lightly the Eucharist. Does that make sense? There are other, they tend to be very mature spiritually, the more they take it seriously of what's going on in Eucharist. So we'll be right back from the break and continue our conversation about communion on the tongue and kneeling and the tradition of the church and what the church actually teaches about it. All right. So about 1245 on your market said go. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke. Welcome back to Divine Intimacy Radio. We're talking about the interior life, the spiritual maturity and how we receive the Eucharist. So did you have a comment before the break about the person who was, I think they're upset with me for insisting that a person is more mature spiritually if they receive the kneeling and on the tongue. More reverently, you could say generally, which is that more accurate to Teresa's statement. Yeah, yeah. I think when you consider that your actions speak volumes about the importance or the reverence that you have for the activity that you are undertaking at the moment, right? If I come in with my clothes all wrinkled and I'm popping gum and I show up in flip flops and I go up and I reach for the Eucharist, my actions, my comportment, my dress, my behaviors speak to the irreverence that I have. I mean, honestly, same direct D, same thing. She went to a number of different churches, went into one church that she had high hopes for because it was a grandmother's church and she hadn't been back since her funeral and people were eating, they were eating a snack before they went up to receive the Lord. They were looking at their cell phones. They were doing all the activities of the world within the liturgy, within the holy sacrifice of the mass. And it is a fact that you will never see that in the Latin mass parish. It's just a fact. But she was horrified. Of course. Absolutely horrified. And it spoke to the irreverence of the entire parish because it wasn't one person. It was a number of persons, right? So all those things speak to irreverence, right? So we're going to assume that they don't understand or they don't hold the Lord to be in high regard or they're not really serious or something or they're oppressed, who knows what it is, right? That speaks to how mature they are spiritually. So spiritually mature does not say perfection. It does not say, it doesn't say that they're by locating. It doesn't claim that the person is a saint. What it says is that person has a disposition of heart that their actions convey that they have some sort of understanding of whom they are about to kneel in front of. Or be received. And receive and whose presence they're in and that they believe that that is truly the body and blood. So in divinity of our Lord, not that it is simply a symbol. Well, so I think this question was written by the same person. Because it feels a little bit irritable. How can you say, how dare you? Doesn't say that. How can you say that one approach to receiving the Eucharist is better than another when the church allows for both? So, and this is another instance where I can say, I don't say that. I only repeat the church's teaching on that same document. Morioli Domini, let me read you a little section of it. Further, the practice which must be considered traditional, which is kneeling in on the tongue, ensures more effectively that Holy Communion is distributed with the proper respect, decorum and dignity. So, I mean, does it have to be any more clear than that? The church itself says that the traditional approach is more respectful has more decorum and more dignity. So, I'm gonna leap into these waters because it is what is right in the forefront of my mind as you speak about this. So, at the forefront of this, we are talking about reverencing the Lord, worshiping the Lord, receiving the Lord in a manner that is dignified. And protecting the Lord from being desecrated, protecting the Lord from being desecrated. We recently found out by a dear soul who used to be a Satanist, converted on their own journey of healing and deliverance, working with the team, just really working hard to rectify the horrors of what was both imposed on them by their family, by generational issues and their own choices later in life through ignorance, right? Who is really on the path to try to- Beautiful soul, by the way. Right, that's what I said. Beautiful soul really working hard, right? But this person shared with us that there is a contraption that Satanists use in their mouth and it is, it can be seen if they open their mouth. So they stick it in their mouth and then they go up and they receive in their hand, they take the Lord, step away from the priest and slip the Lord into the contraption in their mouth, which then encapsulates the Lord and protects it from the saliva. They close their mouth, they go back and they sit down and then when they leave, they can remove that contraption from their mouth, remove the Lord from it, wholly intact, not broken down by saliva and then they can use it in black mass to profane the Lord, right? Insane. That can't happen if we go up and receive the Lord on the tongue because the priest would see it in their mouth. You know what's great about you? What? Like I do all the formal study and you just kind of live on intuition and you do some formal study, but I do it more, but what you just said is the official teaching of the church. So let me read to you the actual words, which follow on exactly what I said and you didn't know I was gonna read any of this before the show today was created. I didn't even know what the topic was gonna be today. So it says the traditional practice ensures more effectively that Holy Communion is distributed with the proper respect, decorum and dignity. It removes the danger of profanation of the sacred species in which the unique way of Christ, God and man is present the whole entire substantially and continually. Lastly, it ensures the digno, well, I won't keep going on because that's another, but the formal church teaching says that communion on the tongue, kneeling, removes the danger of profanation. Now, certainly somebody can have a dry mouth, but listen, the way it's stolen isn't by people who put it on their tongue. The way the Eucharist is stolen is by people who use their fingers to somehow either hide it in their hand or put it in one of those devices. Or stick it in a pocket or whatever. And here's the thing to me, like if you knew that you were eating at a restaurant, for instance, that was part of a child trafficking network, right? And you discovered it one day. There were little weird things that would happen. You'd see a lot of kids with adults and in distress, but one day you saw something in the back, through the little slats into the back room that shocked you and you discovered it. And then you started looking around and realized, so this place is a child trafficking hub. Would you keep going back to that restaurant and giving them money? There's no way anybody would do that, who's moral and ethical. How is it that we can comfortably distribute communion in a way that leads to the profanation of God himself to the desecration of the Lord himself who makes himself so vulnerable? How could you do that knowing that this possibility could occur? Right, right. I just don't think, yeah, I just don't think we think like that. So your intuition is exactly what the church teaches. So let me look at this question again and see that we got it. How can you say that one approach is better? Yeah, so it's because the church says it. Memoriali Domini, if you haven't read it. Are you serious? This, these questions are so good. People are so irritated and so obvious. Are you serious when you assert that communion on the tongue standing is a fruit of disobedience? How can you say that when the church approves it? So let's go to Memoriali Domini again. Let's see, let me get to the section on that. And it says, in quotes, indeed in certain communities and in certain places, this was in, I think in Norway, is that right, Jordan producer who studies this stuff? It was in Europe. Indeed in certain communities and in certain places, this practice, which was communion in the hand standing has been introduced without prior approval having been requested of the Holy See and at times without any attempt to prepare the faithful adequately. So what does that mean? It was introduced before it was approved in disobedience. Right, and I think the confusion here is, because people say, you know, you're saying I'm being disobedient when I was raised to think it was okay. Frankly, I was raised to think it was okay. We're not condemning people. I received in my hand until I was like, I don't know, in my 40s, because I didn't know any difference. We sang Kumbaya. I mean, that's what I was raised on. We were all just all happy, clappy Catholics, you know? And so I didn't know any difference. So at that point was I disobedient. So people tend to hear that comment and they're applying it to the individual. Are there people who do this in disobedience? Of course, but what we're saying is the origination of this practice happened in disobedience. It began in disobedience against seeking approval from the church and wasn't approved till later. So that's where that's talking about that. It does, and really, we're not speaking to the individual heart of an individual unless we know that to be true. We can't claim that somebody's in disobedience. We cannot judge, you know, the soul of a person, but we can look in an action and say, you know, in church history, this originated in disobedience. Yeah, I mean, and it says it right in this document. What's crazy, and it's not part of the questions that we're gonna get to today, but we'll do a second show out on spiritualdirection.com, Facebook page, once this show's complete. But most, there was a survey and it shows it in Memoriale Domain. I used to not believe this until I read the document, but the document itself says there was a survey of all the bishops of the world. Should we retain the traditional practice or should we not? And the vast majority said we should retain the traditional practice, which is absolute, so the question is, well, why then did it, was it approved? I don't know, but I will say, I think anyone who is really deeply converted and who really loves the Lord will, I think take these, read Memoriale Domainy, and I think you'll discover we've really got to do something to change this in the ordinary form and we're out of time. Yeah, as we go out, share this with your priest, share it with others, because most people don't know. Yeah, with respect, et cetera, so. Okay, well, 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. All right, I have to.