 your life. Hey, Francis, Dan and Stephanie Burke. You're watching Behind the Scenes, Divine Intimacy Radio. And before we jump into the show, today we're going to be talking about Devil in the Castle, Spiritual Warfare and Sermon of Spirits, Progress of the Soul. No. Devil in the Castle is that we're in trouble. No, no, we're not in trouble. I'm in trouble. Devil in the Castle, Saint Teresa of Avalon, the Progress, Spiritual Warfare and the Progress of the Soul. Anyway, I wrote the stupid book and we're talking about it today. But we're going to be talking about the second mansion in this show. I need to be TN, Facebook page. And then the third mansion we're going to be talking about on spiritualdirection.com. Directly following the show. Directly following the show on spiritualdirection.com's Facebook page. So like and share, like and share, like and share, comment. You're definitely not winning the battle on the YouTube side. We need more help from you guys. So we'll be talking about that, the battles of the second mansion, the battles of the third mansion in a minute. We're a lot, a lot, a lot of Catholics fall. Huge. Actually, the majority. The majority. Don't make it past mansion three. Right. So you should really kind of pay attention. I agree. So I wanted to tell you about a couple of things. One, you can get 25% off the preorder of the books not available right now from Sophia Institute Press. I mean, it's not in stock yet, I should say. And you can get that discount, Castle 25. Of course, always you can probably preorder it from EWTN. And they'll have it in stock at some point here soon. The other thing I wanted to tell you about, well, two other things and we'll jump into the show. One is a pilgrimage to Israel. Stephanie and I are leading. God willing. And COVID don't rise. What's the dates on that? It's in May and you can find all the details at spiritualdirection.com forward slash events and it's there. And I think we only have a couple more seats left. So if you want to go and you want to go with us and that's just to fill one bus, right? Yeah. Yeah. And we keep it to one bus because we don't like those massive, massive tours where, you know, everybody's fighting for bathrooms and you spend more time on bathroom breaks at gas stations than you do seeing sites. So if you like small, intimate, real pilgrimages, deep spiritual realities, a real pilgrimage, then come join us. We have only a couple more seats. It's you and I leading it along with Father Chris Clay from Kentucky. He's going to be the spiritual director and priest with us and we're so excited to have him join us again. He's something special. Is Dr. Lillis going to be with us too? I don't believe so, not on this trip. Okay. So spiritualdirection.com forward slash events or just click on events. All of our events are listed there. And then the next one is something coming up really quickly here on January 24th, which is next Monday, right? The next Monday at 7 p.m. Central. It's called Prostrate Hearts, a webinar to prepare in advance of the Grace of Lent. So most Catholics unfortunately do this for Lent. They suddenly ask Wednesdays upon them and they go chocolate, soda or some sort of really shallow, silly thing that is not going to help you spiritually gain all the graces available to you in Lent. Before the Second Vatican Council, there was this beautiful tradition, which is known as pre Lent. And it was a weeks before Lent and helping you to prepare. And so I'm going to give a webinar explaining a little bit of that, but mostly focused on how you can experience dramatic spiritual progress in Lent and then for this year of 2022. Right. So that's also out and it's free, right? Yeah, it's free. It's free. It's free. So spiritualdirection.com forward slash events. Right. I'll let this one out of the bag. It's coming in. I don't know the specific date, but keep your eye on our events page. We will have another preparatory webinar for Lent. And that'll be Simone, Raskala, Christine, Rich and myself. And we'll be talking about a resource that you can dive into for Lent that is centered around Teresa of Avila and the Interior Castle as well. And I'm going to be promoting that exact same thing too. Great. So both of us, now it's not, that's not what the shows are about, but or the webinars are about, but certainly we're going to help you make spiritual progress in Lent. There's no doubt about that. Right. Yeah. So we're, it looks like we're ready to roll. Producer man, right? And your market tech go. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke. Welcome to Divine Intimacy Radio, your radio haven of breath. 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 fight the battle that is this life, spiritual warfare in particulars, the focus of our show today. And you've been involved with a lot of conversations about Teresa of Avila lately, haven't you? I have. It's kind of strange. I feel like she's chasing me down. Yeah, she did that. That's why I'm in the church for me. Now, do you want to talk about what you're doing in the other podcast with, and is it with endow? Yeah, it is with endow. And I'm going through their study on Teresa of Avila. You know, endow takes beautiful documents of the church or spiritual writings of the saints, and they bring it down on a, on a kind of consumable level, you know, in bite sized pieces for women to come together and studies and to study and, and have these conversations around it. And so I am joining Simone Rascala on the endow podcast, along with Christine Rich, and we are going through the Teresa of Avila study right now. And it's really wonderful. Where do folks find that? I'm assuming at the endow podcast site. So endow is education of the nature and dignity of women. Right. But it's an apostolate. But just look it up, endow. That's right. Yeah, look up their podcast. And I believe it's going to start in March. Oh, we're going to start airing it. Yes, it's going to start airing right now. We're recording it. I got you. And then we're also going to have a webinar through spiritualdirection.com to talk about that particular podcast, talk about that study and how they can listen to it and how they can enter in with just a really great resource on Teresa. Yeah. And we highly recommend that apostolate. It's really beautiful. Yeah. They have beautiful stuff. All right. So today we're talking about, we're going through my new book, devil in the castle, Teresa of Avila spiritual warfare in the progress of the soul, where we're looking at each of the mansions one at a time and digging into what is the unique nature of the spiritual battle in that mansion. So each mansion is a kind of summary framework for how we can understand how the progress of our soul and moving towards God. Similarly to human progress, just the maturation process, you go from infant to adolescent to childhood, toddler, adolescent, adult, whatever. All of the spiritual doctors recognize this progress of the soul. And Teresa describes it in her book, interior castle. And so we're going through each mansion and we're extracting her reflections on spiritual warfare. So it's unique. It's never been done in the history of the church that I'm aware of. And I'm quite aware of all the books, most books written by on Teresa, but to really gain a deeper understanding both of the interior castle, if you've read it and struggled, it'll help you. But then also her perspectives on spiritual warfare. Yeah, I think it's just really helpful. One of the things that's really beautiful about it is that she had these interior visions as it were of this progress of what this would look like. So then she would discuss it and fleshed it out and then was able to put it down in writing for us as a resource. And people can often say, well, you should just focus on Jesus. You just should focus on God and leave this talk of the devil aside. But if we don't know how the tactics of the enemy are working against it, then we can't fight it necessarily very efficiently or valiantly. And so what we're discussing through your writing here is another tool in your toolbox on being aware, being awake, understanding how the enemy of your soul is working against you at the different stages of your spiritual growth and your spiritual life, your interior journey, and how to grow quickly towards the Lord. So yeah, this second mansion is in the purgative way still, we're still in the purgative way. And it is focused on, Teresa is focused on helping us to gain a God word is self-awareness really is the emphasis which is which results in humility. How do you know if you're in the second mansion? I'll give you a few key indicators. One is that you're practicing mental prayer regularly and progressively drawing near to God in virtue. Another is that you have an increasing realization of the need to grow in holiness and keep moving towards God. And you have an improved God word self-knowledge that is you've become more aware of your own sin and how you need to reject sin and embrace God's call to holiness. So God word self-knowledge is different than, you know, psychological self-knowledge. It's purely based in a human perspective. It's an awareness of who is God? Who am I? What am I called to be? Where am I in relationship in that process? Am I making progress? That sort of thing. Go ahead. Yeah. And there's a huge temptation in this stage towards shame and self-pity. You know, because if we, so if it's, you know, when we look to God and we see ourselves in relation to God, there can be a bit of a shock there because I think, you know, we have a tendency, and I say we collectively as God's people, have a tendency to be pretty self-delusional about where we are and we give ourselves credit for, you know, that's very kind. You know, we give ourselves credit for good intentions. We see ourselves how we aspire to be not necessarily where we are, you know, those kind of things, right? And so as we start on this progress of the soul, we're intentional about our prayer life because one of the key indicators for the second mansion is that we're practicing daily mental prayer. That doesn't mean on occasion. That doesn't mean on occasion a rosary. That doesn't mean just showing up for mass on Sunday. We're talking about being intentional on a daily basis to pursue God, to meet him in the daily gospel readings in Lectio Divina in daily mental prayer. That's what we're talking about. So when we start on that path, all of a sudden a lot of our failings, our sins will show up. And if we're not careful, what the enemy will do is he will tempt us to shame and to self-pity, you know? And I remember going through this stage, I would go to my daily mental prayer and I went through this process of where I had a moment of recognition that in my sacred space, I had a statue of our Lady and then I had an icon of Jesus in the middle. The statue of our Lady was just to the right of him or to my left. And what I realized over time is that I was actually sitting crooked in my chair. And when I would do my prayer, I could only look at our Lady because of my shame. Because of my shame, I could not look at the Lord in that icon. And over time, when I realized what was happening, the deeper purgation of a general confession and confession and all those things and doing my spiritual studies, my body language started to change and shift. And I was able to look at the Lord in that icon and have my mental prayer there. Yeah. So the enemy in this stage, what's interesting about it is this mansion too actually feels more intense and troubling than in the battle than mansion one. But it actually isn't, which is interesting because in mansion one, you're not as aware and awake to what's going on and to your own sinfulness and those sorts of things. So in mansion two, you become awake because of your spiritual disciplines that you're beginning to, it's really, you're becoming an authentic disciple of Jesus is what's happening. And as you draw near to him, things reveal that are about yourself that are, as you noted, they can result in shame. They can result in self wallowing, whatever, but it can become kind of spooky and disturbing to see, wow, look at my sins. Usually, like for converts, and this happened to me and you reverted, I think it happened to you, is, you know, I did my first confession when I was received and confirmed in the church. But when I hit this stage, I did a general confession and wow, talk about hours of tears. Yeah, it was huge. And somebody can say, okay, well, what's a general confession for our listeners who do not know what that is? Because that was brand new for me as a revert. I never heard it. I would have been a Catholic my entire life. I'd never heard anything about a general confession. And so that was, that was when I made an appointment with my priest because you need to make an appointment because it's going to be much longer than you think. And I prepared for a general confession in that I went back as far as I could remember. And I just basically made a linear line from the very beginning of my, you know, ability to think and be conscious about my behavior. And I moved forward to present day. Well, like you, it was a few hours, huge tears. I didn't know tears could be that big. I was a little, you know, pile of a person on the other side of that screen. Oh, just such a holy, you know, Father Shane, God bless you for his patience with me. And I just walked through that and I just laid all my sins at the foot of the cross and heard those glorious words through the priest. I absolve in the name of Jesus, I, you know, absolve you of your sins. And it was just exquisite. And talk about stepping out of that confessional feeling like the entire world had been lifted off my shoulders. I was a different person. And it really is, if you want to begin your, you know, add a little rocket fuel, as I say, to your spiritual growth, go and make an appointment with a good holy priest. Make sure that he knows what a general confession is, don't assume, and then make that appointment and prepare and go and leave it at the foot of the cross. Yeah, it's very, very powerful. It's huge. The other aspect of this mansion. So we have this increased awareness of our own sinfulness. But we also also have increased awareness of the enemy's work in our life. And that can be pretty disconcerting. And primarily the battle ground is in the mind where the enemy is proposing to you your past patterns of sin or trying to get you to hold on to things the Lord wants you to clean up, you know, and that could be very difficult. But St. Teresa and St. Teresa revealed, I should say, but St. Teresa revealed, she calls these demons in these mansions, reptiles and, you know, vipers and things like that. But the battle of the mind begins to rage more firmly, mainly just because you don't want it to be there, you know, you, before you accepted an acquiesce to all of the temptations or many of them. Now you're realizing how many there are and you don't want them. And it can be very disconcerting. Yeah, it can be a little, there can be a almost a sense of sadness that will come over you. But, you know, we have to be careful. We have to understand that as you said, our battleground is in our mind. And so we take account to what we're thinking about, you know, are we moving into desolation, that doubt, despair, that narcissism? Are we allowing it to crush us? Or are we allowing that sadness to lead us to conviction? Conversion? Conviction and conversion rather than condemnation. And there's a profound difference, right? Conviction is of God. And so we, we make that decision to begin anew. Yeah, we get back from the break. We'll talk about some encouragement in this phase and ways that you can fight. So I'm going to go to page 30 at this point and start just going through the demonic goals and how to battle the tactics. So we can just finish with that. Okay. And you're Mark Ticko. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke. Welcome back to Divine Intimacy Radio, your radio haven of rest, talking about the Devil and the Castles, St. Teresa of Avila, Progress of the Soul and Spiritual Warfare, a new book that I wrote that I hope is extreme, I think will be extremely helpful to the people of God. It's the most comprehensive book I've ever read on Spiritual Warfare in the sense that it covers the warfare that begins when you just begin to follow Jesus seriously, all the way to union with God. Yeah, it's beautiful. Such an exquisite work. And I just love that it makes it accessible to anybody. You know, it's going to really help them. If they're serious about their interior life, they're going to be able to understand this book a little bit better because most people pick it up, get to about chapter two, put it down and go, okay, I have no idea what she's talking about. And they go back to just their prayer and their spiritual direction, hopefully, because it can be a little, a little weight. Yeah, daunting. Yeah. So if you want to buy the book, head out to EWTN Religious Catalog, where if you buy it, they'll send it to you, which is cool. And then you also help the ministry of EWTN. If you want bulk discounts, let's say you want to buy a case or something. I think Sophia Institute is providing half off 50% discount, which is huge. And you can get that through spiritualdirection.com forward slash shop and find that as well. So the summary of the battles of the Second Mansion are the enemy wants to incite you to turn back to the path of hell by fighting against every step toward becoming what we call an authentic disciple of Jesus. Um, the key tactics of the enemy are similar to the first mansions. Um, discouragement regarding your ability. So the enemy wants to discourage you regarding your ability, your ability to follow God and live out the faith. And he'll do that. Because you're more aware of your sin when you fall. He has a lot more opportunities to say, yeah, you're an idiot. Why are you doing this? Yeah, told you you'd fail. Told you you'd fail. So he'll tempt you to fail and then kick you when you're down. Another aspect is worries or fear about the things of the world and the flesh, pleasure, money, control, prestige, ambition, work. It's interesting during this period in my own life, I was still struggling with anger a lot. And I remember a very good man, Ron Wilson, when I was working at Focus on the Family said to me, will you always allow anger to drive you? Will you always be motivated? Will you always be motivated by anger? That's right. You're right. And I was shocked because the Holy Spirit just pierced into my heart. And it took me a year of wrestling with this idea of my anger, my irritation with stupid business processes and all of that, motivated me to save the organization millions of dollars and break through problems and solve issues. And so I knew that I as I was becoming aware and awake, you know, and then when I, so the question was, what will I become if I let go of this? Well, it had become a source of self-reliance, right? You know, this anger, oh, this anger helps me be a good businessman. This anger helps, you know, give me my edge and and it makes me different than others. And without it, I'm not going to be as effective, you know? And it is such a temptation, such an attachment, right? And you know what? I wasn't as effective without it, but I became a better man, you know? Well, and by getting rid of that, then the Lord can take, can step in, right? So it's true, you're less effective, but the Lord is more effective because we can get out of this way. So another goal is to distract you by attempting to weaken your effort of the enemy in spiritual disciplines and encourage the deep roots of faith toward Godward self-awareness and which results in humility. So the devil has no power against the humble soul. This awareness draws you to one of two places, as we've talked about, which is self-pity or shame, or it draws you to humility, which is healthy and holy. It's the enemies trying to keep you away from humility because then he'll have less and less power over you. Yeah. And so some of the ways that we can battle this successfully, you know, we have to keep in mind always that the battleground the battleground is in our mind. And so we take those thoughts captive to Christ that we seek to heal and strengthen and be drawn deeper into the Lord that we know that he provides. His love, provision, and friendship is enough to help us to heal. And so we trust in that. So we grow and trust. We need to also understand that we need to re-align our entire life towards God. That means we're going down into all the details. What am I consuming in media? What am I consuming in my body? How do I live? We take evaluation of our friendships. Boundaries start to come into play and really understanding, wait, I can't claim. I used to draw this when I would do formation for our eighth graders when I was a Catholic school principal. And I would draw a cross, you know, like a quadrant graph. And I would put school, home, church, and internet. And I would show those different quadrants. And I would tell them if you are to be an authentic Christian, all four of these quadrants, you need to be the same person in all those quadrants. You can't be one person in church, another person at home with your parents, another person, you know, out at school or in your business, and then act differently on the internet. If one of those is ungodly or if a number of those are ungodly, you are not authentically converted and you need to start getting those aligned with what God's asking of you. So that's really important to realign the entire, and that comes in this period that Godward self-awareness, we start to go, oh wait, I can't claim to do this and then get in my car and flip off the guy because he just cut me off in traffic. That's not an authentic conversion. Yeah, right. You know. One of the most powerful tools you can use that Teresa, that all, most saints have used, most saints are religious and all, all religious live by what's called a rule of life. And you can actually do that as a layperson. We call it a plan of love in our community of apostolate VA. But it's basically every day, and I did it this morning, just like I've done it every morning for, I don't know how many years, I review and do an examine against my plan for how I specifically intend, tended yesterday to love God and to love my neighbor, most of my rule of life in terms of loving neighbors aimed at you. And it's, the, the elements I put in it aimed at you really benefit everyone else, which is gentleness and slow to speak and those sorts of things. And then in terms of toward God, it's, I'm going to spend this much time in mental prayer. I'm going to pray the Exilium Christianorum prayers. I'm going to go to mass or confession on a particular day. So if you don't, if you never heard of this rule of life or plan of love, you can go out to apostolateva.org to learn more about it, or you can pick up my book, navigating the interior life, right? Have a way of identifying your root sin, which is very powerful and in keeping with this mansion, and then develop a rule of life that helps you to acquire virtue and fight against sin in a very specific way. Yeah. And, and it's really important during this time to develop this strong disposition of will against quitting and falling backwards because this is where a lot of people never make it past. They don't get past this stage because as they begin, they fall and then they throw up their hands in despair. And while all is lost, obviously none of this was authentic, none of this is real. I can't do this because I keep sinning or I keep confessing the same thing or whatever. So whatever, whenever you fall, you have to have this very, very strong disposition of, okay, I've fallen, I am weak, I acknowledge that I am a mess without God. And we begin again, we get up, we go to confession, we make an amendment, you know, this, this conscious amendment of our, of our behavior and say, you know, I'm not going to do this again. I don't want to do this again. And so we fight. This is an time when we must fight or we will get lost because the enemy is just looking to see, you know, and if he can keep us down and we need, we need to understand that these trials that God allows during this time is to help strengthen us, right? Because it can feel like, wow, why do I keep getting all this opposition? And my temptation seemed to be increasing. Everything is difficult. Well, it's because the Lord is saying, get strong, get strong, get strong. And every time he allows that trial is an opportunity for you to practice the virtue that he wants you to grow in. Yeah, not to quit. Right. Or, and even every time he allows the enemy to, to tempt you, it's for the purposes of your holiness, you learn to fight and get strong. Yeah, it's like a spiritual exercise program. So one of the cool things about this book and one of the things I like about it is that I really worked hard to provide a whole series of resources in the back for everything we recommend, you know, root, identifying roots and a rule of life or learning how to practice mental prayer and all of that. So don't worry if you're listening in your car or something, you're not writing something down. All of it will be in the back of the book as well out at apostoliva.org, A-P-O-S-T-O-L-I-V-I-A-E.org, which is our community, our Catholic community. This, all the recordings of these shows will be there eventually in a little course, a free course. And we have other courses on how to fight spiritual warfare, how to practice mental prayer. They're all free. All the resources in Apostoliva are free. So we're really providing you everything you need to get through this mansion and hire. But as Stephanie said, unfortunately, most Catholics get stuck here and don't progress any further. And I would say the vast majority, which is not good because if you don't get through this, that means you're stuck in habitual sin and your salvation is very tenuous. Yeah, and you're circling the train. Yeah, so spiritual encouragement. I want to end with that today. One of the things that's encouraging about this mansion is that each mansion you leave and move into a new one, you're closer to Jesus. So this one does feel harder than the first one, even though you had all of the demons of the outer court coming against you. This one, you're more aware and awake. And so you're seeing more and you're going, oh, Lord, how do I win this? But he gives you everything you need in all of the gifts and graces of the church and community life and whatever. So be encouraged. If you find yourself in this mansion, you are closer to Jesus, and you're in a better place, even though it may not feel that way. And so as we wrap up the show, head out to spiritualdirection.com. Make sure you subscribe. The shows will be there. But also if you want free courses and community to help you to be accountable, make sure you go to apostoleva.org. Order the book, start a book club at the end of every chapter. I have a good solid list of questions for reflections that you can talk with other people about. And you'll be blessed and you'll help others to be blessed. And with that, I think we've got to end the show. 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 irreproachable at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. So for those who want to hear right now the Battle of the Third Mansions, head out to the Facebook page of spiritualdirection.com. And as always, please don't forget to support EWTN. There is no organization in the world that is doing more, that is in more ears and eyes in terms of the news and faithful Catholic teaching than EWTN. In spite of what some of my traditional friends, traditionalist friends claim they ought to be picking on other people, other organizations. EWTN's doing a great job and make sure you support them. We're grateful that they have us on the air. Right. Okay, take care. Answer one question. Yeah, I could answer one. So most all being in the group, they're just asking. Yeah, I think it does. You know, the key is the leader, and we have a whole training program on how to lead small groups and somebody that can help you keep things on track with a specific kind of framework that's also free out of the possibly VA. So I'll offer that to you. But also, if you just stick to what you know and make sure you don't speculate and you don't allow the the group to speculate and you focus on the material itself, you'll be fine. Yeah, and I would also encourage folks that if they haven't started on the path of mental prayer, that they can start with something like into the deep. Do that. It's a shorter study. Yeah. Start there. Get everybody moving. You know, discernment of spirits is huge. Yeah, that's kind of second in line. And then this one, you know, if I had to do them in order, it would be into the deep spiritual warfare, discernment of spirits, then devil in the castle. Right. But if you've been through the other two and you have a daily practice of mental prayer, you're in the sacraments, you have a general knowledge of the teachings of the church, you're going to be fine if you just don't speculate or allow for a lot of speculation beyond the text. Yeah. So there you go. Great question.