 We're live now. Hey friends, this is Dan, Seth and Bert. You're watching Behind the Scenes, Divine Intimacy Radio, live streamed, of course, on EW10's Facebook page. We have a special guest today, Father James de Brenna. I'm excited to talk with you about his passion, his heart, and how he's revealing it in a very powerful way, revealing the great wisdom of the angelic doctor, Saint Thomas of Poinesis. On spiritualdirection.com, so I'm excited to talk with him. Stephanie and I both are in a minute. So, you know what? I'll say this, too. There's a lot of misunderstanding out there about grace. There's a lot of distortion regarding grace and the Reformation or the Protestant Revolt. We're probably categorized, and Father de Brenna happens to be particularly gifted at explaining what it really is in Catholic tradition. So, stay tuned for that in just a minute. I wanted to tell you about one opportunity, and then we'll jump into the show. I think we'll just do one right now. And that is the Stephanie and I are leading a pilgrimage to Carmelite, Spain, and next year, 2023, which depends on when you're listening to the show, but this is live stream. So, what's the dates? June, right? In June. In June. And folks can find out about that at spiritualdirection.com forward slash events. Forward slash events. And it's more than two-thirds full already? No, 12 seats, I think. Yeah, I think 12 seats are left, which is only like a fifth, is left. Yeah, it's because you can do math in your head. I couldn't have done that. That was amazing. So, if you've never been on a pilgrimage, our pilgrimages are not spiritual vacations. They are deep dive into helping people deep dive into the heart of God. It is so beautiful. Yeah, every one of our trips have had major conversions, including a tour guide in France, which was really quite amazing to watch. So, if you want to hang out with some really amazing people, a beautiful priest, and Stephanie and I head out to spiritualdirection.com forward slash events and we'll be able to do that. I think we can jump into the show now. What do you think? Okay. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke. Welcome to Divine Intimacy Radio, your radio haven addressed. Your hermitage of the heart. Your monastery of the mind where we lift our hearts and minds to heaven to draw on the wisdom of the saints, especially the doctors of the church, to help us to understand how to navigate this very challenging life. And, wow, is it challenging in our times with the lack of clarity and doctrine and craziness. Right. I think we need grace. We need grace. You know what else we need? We need faithful Dominicans. We need faithful Dominicans. Funny you should say that because we have one with us. We do. Oh, excellent. Who is that? We have Father James Brent. Father James is a Dominican friar who was born and raised in Michigan. He was ordained a priest in 2010 and lives and teaches at the Dominican House of Studies. I should rephrase that at the beautiful Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC. He also travels the United States giving lectures for the Thomistic, Thomistic Institute and leading retreats. He is currently providing a series for spiritualdirection.com called The Kingdom of Grace. And this is a beautiful, beautiful topic. Beautiful series. Yeah. I'm very happy to welcome Father James. Thanks for coming and joining us. Thank you so much for having me on the show. It's great to be here with both of you. Yeah, so we were commenting before the show and I just have to say some, you know, I guess there is a rightly critical word to be said about dry atomism. But I find nothing of that in your writing or in, you know, all my experience with all the good guys at the Dominican House of Studies. From whence cometh the more satisfying Thomism? How does that emerge in our time so important for that? Well, that's a good question. There's no doubt that the Second Vatican Council and the renewal that came through that event in the life of the church was significant. And there was a call after the council, especially by Pope Paul VI, for a renewal of the study of St. Thomas Aquinas. And he called upon the Dominican Order specifically to engage in the study of St. Thomas and in the presentation of his teachings in a manner that was adapted to the needs of the time. And there has been a movement that's been underway for decades now by scholars in Thomas to represent his teaching. And I am the beneficiary of decades of theologians who've gone before me and have done some of that. So, Cervé Pincares, the sources of Christian ethics, Charelle has written two volumes on the life and the teachings of St. Thomas and Gilles Emory just to name a few names. And those are only a few names. There's many more out there that are working on these things. Well, and it really shows through in your writing. The series is not, the series is very practical that you're writing for us on grace. And I find it beautiful. I don't find it dry in any sense. I think it's, I think when people dig into it, they'll really come to a more beautiful understanding of how it is that God draws us to himself. And you do a great job of bringing out the beauty of grace. I think that's where I would say it. Does that make sense? Do you have a seat? Oh, yeah, no, absolutely. Really beautiful. And by the way, if you want to find them, you just go to spiritualdirection.com and type in Brent into the search bar. And it'll bring the whole series up. So you can scroll down to the bottom and follow it up. And it started in July. And it's really exceptional. Maybe that's a good jump in. I'd like to start with a quote from Father Brent's writings on his first one. And I just, this just really struck me. I thought it was incredibly beautiful. And I think it's a good lead into this topic of grace that we're working on. So few people realize that the grace of God given to us in our baptism is meant to grow. God works to increase his grace or supernatural life in our souls. But God also calls us to participate in the process of growth through our free choices and various practices. Every one of us is called to go on a journey from the land of our bondages to the land of the living in God, to the land of the living God in the heavenly places. The journey is challenging. And many are the trials of the just man, Psalm 3419. Yet through them all, the God of grace is with us to lead us on the abodes of the victorious in the Jerusalem up above. To live according to grace is the road into the light. There is no other way. That's the same quote that I was going to talk about. We didn't know it, Father. We're both rereading your articles and that's the exact same quote that struck me. Beautiful. There is no other way. There is no other way. It's beautiful. You want to expound on it a little bit for us? Sure. There's a lot in that little excerpt that you wrote. The point is that God has created us for something more than life in this world. I mean, he's given us life in this world. And that's already a tremendous gift and all the blessings of nature that are around us, including our very own human nature, our body, our soul, our friends and families, our life in this world. That's a marvelous gift and it's very easy for human beings to settle with that or settle for that and life in this world and the goods and blessings of nature and things around us. But God has also given us a higher kind of life in our baptism. That's the real point about grace. I want to maybe get across in the whole series is that grace is this gift of divine love and divine life. That's of a higher order than anything in nature. It's meant to grow within us. Yeah. Very, very good. I didn't mean to interrupt you there. The one thing I think is very important that you're also bringing out in this series related to this. It's normative for it to grow. I think it's proper to say so contemplation or let's in the Carmelite tradition is essentially synonymous with this deeper union with God. And I think it carries some similar meaning in Dominican or to mystic thought. But in the end, the ultimate end of our existence is to be one with him. And it is normative, is it not for the graces of baptism to yield or to bring about that union? That's the normative end. Is that the right way to say that? Yeah, I think so. I mean, the classic comparison is with a seed. I mean, the Lord himself uses the sour goes out to sow and so is the seed. Seeds are meant to grow. They have it in their very being to be on a trajectory so that when they're planted in the ground and watered and their sunlight and the right conditions are in place, they grow. And likewise, the grace that we've been given in our baptism is traditionally compared to a seed is sometimes called the seed of glory, the seed of heavenly life. A seed from the from the gardens of heaven have been planted in our soul. And that seed is meant to grow like that just the nature of seeds. And under the right conditions, it will grow the right conditions being life in the church cooperation with God's grace. And his his working with us as well. Taking up of the practices of the faith, lexio divina, rosary, the sacraments, of course, principally the Eucharist, regular examination of conscience and going to confession. When we do those things without our even really being aware of it or understanding how the grace of God grows within our souls. Beautiful. Now, in terms of the importance of understanding grace, how does the lack of understanding hinder our coming to the fullness of how that plays out in our soul and our life? That's a great question. The principal thing in the spiritual life, St. Thomas says this in a number of places, the principal thing in the spiritual life is charity. It's love. And when he says that, when St. Thomas says that he's following scripture, he's following the fathers of the church, especially St. Augustine really emphasize that charity is the is what perfection, the fullness of Christian life and the life of grace really consists of that's the heart of the matter. So we're, we're called to have hearts that are blazing furnace of charity. Okay, well, we can't love something or someone unless we know the person. And it's when we know someone's goodness. That's when our hearts are really in kindled and we respond with love. So the more we know of God, and the goodness of God, and the love of God, and the greatness of God is grandeur, his light, his power, his wisdom, his care for us, his eternal designs for our, our salvation, our healing, our, our deliverance, our liberation, our, our coming to his, his house in the heavenly places. When we learn those things, and we come to realize how good God is, how good Jesus Christ is, how good the Blessed Virgin Mary is, it, that sets our hearts on fire. Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we're not our hearts burning within us. They were responding to the, to the lessons, the teachings of Christ with hearts that were on fire with love. So we give ourselves to listening to God as he speaks to us in Scripture and tradition. We give ourselves to meditating upon his truth, feeding on his word. And that works. The word of God is living and effective and it works to, in kindle our hearts, inflame us with love and the gift of the Spirit does, works for the same purpose. So that's a really study is a sanctifying exercise that way. It's really beautiful. And what you're describing Father is, is abiding. It's the idea of abiding, of remaining in him. Yes. For sure. St. Thomas Aquinas, when he's in his commentary on the Gospel of John, he, when he's commenting on the words, abide in me. He says this consists of two things. It consists of believing and obeying. That's really what abiding consists of, according to his interpretation of that passage. But we can understand obedience here in the broad sense of listening. It's really listening to God. So hearing his word, taking it to heart, pondering it, not just to figure it out or understand it for the sake of knowledge, but in order to act on it. Like the man who builds his house on rock rather than on sand, to build the house on earth, to act on that word. So believing and obeying, that really is abiding in God. And then a little further on in John 15, the Lord says, abide in my love. So it's really listening to the love story of God and how he has loved us. Even while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, how he loved us first, even from before the foundation of the world. And the more we learn how he has loved us, the more we can take it to heart, believe it, and then respond to it. Beautiful. Beautiful. So we're at a break now. So when we get back, we'll continue to talk with Father James Brentz about his new series that he's doing for us in a spiritual direction of Tom on grace. I have no doubt you've already been moved by his way that he thinks and that he brings out a very beautiful angle or lens through which he understands Tomistic theology. And it's definitely a need for the church today. And when we get back from the break, we'll talk a little bit more about that. We'll go on the break, a few more things for our listening audience opportunities. We have a divine intimacy and marriage retreat coming up. Only a few spots left on both ones in the Catholic Diocese are Arlington at the Psalm Damia Onno Spiritual Life Center in White Post, Virginia, November 4th through 6th. And then the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament. That's this year, of course. The Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament is next year over Valentine's weekend in Hanseville, Alabama. So if you want to boost in your marriage and get some divine light pouring into that space to help strengthen what's strong or heal what's weak, it's really been a powerful ministry. And it's deep water. It's not fluff and it's not. But yeah, we promise you that. We don't make men act like women in the marriage retreat. No, and we've seen so much fruit from it. People are really, really, their marriages are being changed to the extent that they embrace what God has led us to present this gospel. It's based on Carmelite spirituality on the mentally. It's very beautiful. How it is that we draw more deeply into union with Him and thus, as we do it together, our marriages transform because we're transformed to Tim. So I think the other thing that's going on is a second annual Rosary Crusade. We'll go back to this show here, but that's on October 7th. We have Cardinal Arborellius joining us. Dr. Dricklin, Monson New-Seddy, Dr. Mark Miravalli, Father Ignatius Schweitzer, a friend of Father James, Conn Frere, Father James, Josh Johnson, Lila Rose, Kimberly Hahn, and we're all going to spend some time together praying for reparation and against the darkness and difficulties we're facing in the church and calling on the Blessed Mother. So all of these events, you can head out to spiritualdirection.com forward slash events and find them. Love to have you join us and pray with us. Absolutely. Let's jump back into the shadow in your markets and go. This is Dan Stephanie Burke. Welcome back to Divine Intimacy Radio. We're back with Father James Branch, who's writing a beautiful series in the middle of a beautiful series for us on spiritualdirection.com on Grace. But I want to shift gears a little bit, Father. One of the things I said to you before the show that I really am not being patronizing in any way. I think if there's to be a renewal of the church, there has to be a renewal in two realms. One is in Carmelite spirituality in the realm of deeper understanding of mental prayer and what it means, the progress of the soul to be union with God. And the other is in Thomistic theology and in our understanding of, you know, all matters, moral, dogmatic. Who is God? Who are we? You know, the Thomas are just, I think, Excel above all in history so that we have clear what our object of faith is and clear what our path to that object is. How do you, how does the Thomistic Institute play into, well, one, do you agree or am I crazy? And if you agree, how does the Thomistic Institute play into that work and what is that? I agree with you. Certainly, I think that the teaching of St. Thomas is a profound theology, obviously. And it's the one that I've been formed in really my whole life long, I think you could say, in one way or another. I also have some familiarity with the Carmelites, not as deep as others. I love St. Elizabeth of the Trinity for sure. And there has been for some time a kind of project of Thomistic theologians reading Carmelites and working together with Carmelite theologians in order to bring together the insights of these two different schools. Gary Goulagrange was a classic example of that and he had a teacher, Father Juan Aaron Tarot, who did something very similar. I don't know if I would limit things to the Carmelite school. Totally, I think there are tremendous riches of the contemplative life, both in the ancient church among the Desert Fathers and authors like John Cassian, who I personally like to read and so did St. Dominic and St. Thomas Aquinas himself. And there's also the eastern side of the church, which I think we tend to forget, and they have tremendous riches as well. In fact, in that quote that you read from the article, when I talk about the abodes of the victorious up above, I actually took that from the Maronite liturgy. That's one of the prayers in the Maronite daytime prayer. So they have a lot of beautiful things and what I think what's needed is an integration of systematic theology, especially according to St. Thomas Aquinas, and contemplative life. And the real aspiration that we should have is to become contemplative souls, really, and that contemplative prayer or contemplative love union with God in the depths of our hearts, that's the destiny, that's the destiny of the baptized. And we should wake up to that and go in pursuit of that with great zeal and energy and also great peace of heart. And that's what we really need. But to give an example of what you're talking about, a great little example would be a book that I recommend to everyone called The Presence of God by Ansel Moynihan. He was an old Irish Dominican who wrote this book and it's clear what he's up to. He's writing in exactly the tradition you're talking about, bringing together St. Thomas and Carmelites. And the first half of the book, it's a short little booklet. The first half discusses the presence of goddess in nature, the world around us, and in the soul according to St. Thomas Aquinas. And then the last few chapters of the book talks about living in the presence of God according to the practical instructions of Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection. So that little booklet, which was kind of a classic in its own time and has gone through many reprintings, and is still available through New Hope Publications, that's a great example of the theology of Thomas Aquinas and the spirituality of Carmelites come together in this very happy way. And of course, Garibor Lagrange was my source for my first book that I wrote on navigating the interior life. Three Ages of the Interior Life you mentioned is a classic, I think. It is just a monumental work of wisdom from a domestic perspective exploring Carmelite spirituality. I want to talk about the Thomistic Institute. Tell us a bit about that. I think it's a very important effort that you're involved in with Father Leg and others to revive and help people understand Thomistic theology. So that's it. Thank you for asking. The Thomistic Institute is an apostolate that we have coming out of the Dominican House of Studies. This is where it started, but it's now spread throughout the world and there's a branch in Rome and in various other provinces and all over the place. But it's an apostolate that's meant to make available the Catholic truth, the truth of the Catholic faith, according to the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas. And it does what a lot of academic institutes do. It sponsors conferences and workshops and various things. But the thing that has been kind of explosive for the growth of the whole thing was several years ago. The Thomistic Institute started a system of campus chapters where undergraduates who are interested in learning the wisdom of St. Thomas and understanding the Catholic faith. According to St. Thomas, they could start a chapter on their campus as a legitimate student organization dedicated to studying an important figure in our civilization and our history. And Thomistic Institute supplies a menu of speakers and topics that they will fly into local campus chapters. And so what happens is because of this system of campus chapters, students on secular campuses who are otherwise exposed to a lot of garbage, frankly, in their classrooms and from their professors. They now have access to Catholics who are full-time professors at other institutions, either Catholic schools or other secular institutions, or Dominicans or other religious who are qualified. And these lecturers are flown in and they give talks on these campuses. And the talks can be on any one of a number of topics. There's a vast array of topics, but the students get to pick the speaker and the topic based on their interests and their needs. And the talks are then recorded and put on the SoundCloud site where they are made available for free to anyone who wants to listen to them. And the SoundCloud site for the Thomistic Institute is now getting really a huge volume of traffic. And a lot of people are very appreciative that they can get basically an education in the philosophy, the theology of St. Thomas, but also many other figures. There's talks about St. Augustine, other fathers of the church, other talks about the spiritual life, about sacraments, about neuroscience and the soul, all those sorts of things. And yeah, it's a light right now and a lot of people are flocking to the light. I agree. I agree. We can also, I found Thomistic Institute first, even though I knew some of the folks involved, I didn't know about it until I stumbled on it in YouTube, on YouTube. So if you got to YouTube and just do a search for Thomistic Institute, you'll see the videos. They are not boring as folks listening can hear Father James Brent is not boring. They're very interesting. They're very well produced and they're not overproduced, but they're just well put together. And if you really want, if you don't have time to become a student at the Abel Institute or the Dominican House of Studies, but you really want to get a good diet of formation in the foundation, the most important theologic foundation to the church, check out the Thomistic Institute on YouTube or on SoundCloud and listen to them daily. There's a lot of them and you will really find yourself enlightened and with some perspective that it's hard to find today. As Father Brent mentioned, he was kind in describing the junk that students are exposed to in colleges these days. But just generally speaking in the church, we don't have a lot of, we need more clear lights like Thomistic Institute. Great. So Father, wrapping back around to this beautiful series called The Kingdom of Grace that you're working on at our own spiritualdirection.com. Can you tell us a little bit about how the inspiration for it came about and then some of the biggest lessons you want people to learn about Grace? Sure. Thanks for asking. I think the inspiration was kind of first came when I was talking one day at breakfast with some of my Dominican brothers. Sometimes we sit around and dream about things and we say, if you were elected Pope, what would be the first encyclical you would write or something like that? We'll ask questions like that. One of my Dominican confers said, if I was elected Pope, I would write an encyclical on Grace. You think that's like the number one thing that Catholics lack a sound and clear understanding of. And there's just a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about Grace, what it is, how it works, how God works, and the whole mystery. And since it is the principal thing in the spiritual life, the grace of God. I mean, that's what establishes us as living the supernatural life. We need to have some clarity on that. I sort of tucked that away in the back of my mind and thought that was an interesting remark. If I was ever elected Pope, I would write an encyclical on Grace. And then I didn't think much about it anymore. But last fall, it was the feast of St. Albert the Great. And I was really, I was praying and sort of soaking up the graces of the feast day. And the thought came to me, what about instead of writing an encyclical, why not just write a series of articles on Grace? Like short little articles, kind of like Aquinas 101 in some way. But maybe ordered more towards entering into prayer. And that will be a little bit more like spiritual reading, maybe. And just sort of lay things out. And yeah, it wouldn't be a comprehensive treatise on Grace, but it would be a deep introduction. Or a deeper introduction than maybe people usually get. So as I was sitting with that and we're praying with that, all of a sudden I really got like just a clear understanding of like the table of contents. Here's how the whole thing would go. It would start with the first part would be just about the mystery of grace in itself. And then the second part would be on practicals like how do we live according to grace and how do we grow in grace? What are the steps that need to be taken? And then the third part would be on more interior mysteries about the depths of the heart, the image of God in us, the renewal of the image, invisible missions of the word and spirit in our soul, those sorts of things. And really, I mean, it was really astonishing to me that really like the table of contents just kind of came out and I just sort of typed it out. That's awesome. Father, I apologize to interrupt you. We're actually out of time. And I'm sad we're out of time. But certainly folks can find this great series out at spiritualdirection.com. Just type in the search James or Brent and you'll find the series. Thank you so much for being with us on Divine Intimacy Radio today. And was that with that 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. So we will get we're going to give the the editor of some fits here because they're going to have to decide what to cut out. So I'm just instruction to the editor cut out what I said and have more of what Father said in there. But before we jump off the live stream, I wanted to tell you about one more thing. And that is a course called contemplative prayer and the beloved disciple. That's going to be taught by Father Matthew McDonald. Wednesday nights at 8.30 p.m. starts October night, abola-institute.org. Once again Father, thank you so much for being with us. My joy. Thank you for having me on. And I really appreciate all the good work you're doing and I hope to meet you sometime soon. We have so many friends in common and really, really appreciate all the great work you all are doing. We do. Thank you for having me on the show and thank you for taking the series on the Kingdom of Grace. Great joy for me to be able to share the good news. Awesome. All right. Well, God bless you. Can we have your blessing before you go? Sure. May Almighty God bless all of you. May the precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ come down upon you. May the spirit of the living God rush upon you. Fill your hearts with the divine light. May Almighty God bless you. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. Thank you so much.