 Hey friends, this is Dan and Stephanie Burke, you're watching Behind The Scenes, Divine Intimacy Radio. I want to tell you about an important webinar coming up, Lent, A Path to Deeper Peace. It's going to be hosted by Simone Riscala from Endow. Chris, we're... Yeah. Go ahead. No, go ahead. No, go ahead. Finish. You looked at me funny, so I don't know what you're looking at. We... It doesn't matter. Go ahead. Finish. So, Stephanie, of course. Simone, Christine Rich, did I get something wrong with... It doesn't matter. Okay. Please keep going. Okay. So anyway, February 15th, 7 p.m. central will be recorded, but to get the show, you've got to sign up. But you're going to be in it, so you want to tell people about it? Any more about it than what I just did? No, just come. You know, I have guests, Simone Riscala from Endow and Christine Rich, entrepreneur, extraordinaire, who will be joining us. She's part of our community, and we'll be talking about how to find peace and extraordinary peace for Lent and some resources for you that are going to be awesome, awesome, so you don't want to miss it because you're going to come away with a game plan. You're going to come away with resources to really enter fully into Lent and not sit there the night before and go, I think I'll give up chocolate. So great, awesome. spiritualdirection.com forward slash events is the way to get to that. And a couple of courses at the Aval Institute, the Bible and the revelation of prayer taught by a great Dominican father, Ignatius Schweitzer, and starts February 22nd. And then while people suffer, starts February 24th. And one is a graduate course, which is the Bible and revelation of prayer and why people suffer as anybody and everybody who doesn't, even if you don't have a lot of time, but it's deep and it's not shallow in any way, but it doesn't require as much in terms of assignments as a normal graduate course. So you might check that out, Avala-institute.org. And let's go ahead and start the show. You ready, Mr. Jolden? On your mark, it said, go. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke with Divine Intimacy Radio, your radio haven of brass, 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 to help us understand how to navigate and properly, you know, find our way in this difficult and challenging time that we live in. Right, right. Do you think it's difficult and challenging? Oh, heavens, you know, I think everybody out there. You know, to some degree or another feels like they're underwater breathing through a straw. Yeah, yeah. And that's not always been like that. I mean, as some people say, all times are difficult. No, this is particularly nasty. You know, I think it's, it's just, it's as if all the, all the, I don't know, the rains, the limits, the, the walls of decency have gone down. Yeah, you know, you can't listen to something without hearing all kinds of vile language, even from the people that are supposed to be on the good side. Yeah, it's, it's really bad. I mean, even, even the stuff that you see in graphics, you know, it's, you even mentioned it, it's like, that's become the word. Why do we have to hear that word constantly? Yeah. Well, even commentators that I like, who are not on mainstream television, of course, but who are, have a political bent that's oriented in my direction. It's crazy, even how often it's just, yeah, it's just, it's like, I, nobody will listen to me and I'm not relevant if I don't use this kind of language. And it's like, no, actually, it's really offensive. And, and when I hear it, I just turn it off. It's like, okay, I, I no longer am interested to hear what you say because I can't get over that. You've just polluted my mind and mind with that. So, yeah, I don't know. It's, it's a, all the violence, just everything. It's like everything's being revealed, which we know is a good sign. Right. Yeah. The end is hard, but the end is near. Everything is being revealed. Nothing, you know, everything that's in the dark is being brought out into the light. So. Which is the topic of the show. How to navigate really in these times, right? Right. And so we're talking about devil in the castle, which is, my latest book, which I love this book. I'm, you know, that means a lot to me. Why are you, I don't think I've heard you say that. Oh, well, no, I, I, first of all, it's like St. Teresa of Avila is chasing me around. I've got her coming at me from all sides, which is part of the webinar that we'll be doing soon, which this will be broadcast after. But, um, you know, I've been studying her. I've been, I did a podcast with endow on this, the interior castle and what you've done in this book is help us to understand how the enemy is working against us through the interior castle. So if you put them together, right? If you've had difficulty, if you're one of those folks that picks up the interior castle and starts reading and you get to about the second mansion and you throw it down and go, okay, I'm out. This is beyond me. This will help you understand what she's talking about. This will, this will help you, um, understand what you should aspire to and also how the enemy doesn't want you to get there, right? So I love it because you have all these tools and it's just a greater understanding, a greater, um, way to gain self-knowledge to, and, and just persevere, persevere, persevere. You know, this, this will encourage you to persevere because the Lord wants to make you a saint and he wants to draw you to himself and, and he loves you. Yeah, well, it's helpful to hear that because, you know, you listen to me all the time and it's, it's when things are a little more effectual regarding you, it tells me I'm on to something. Oh, it's not an ego thing. You just talk that I don't write for ego or for, you know, I just do it only to try to help people. Yeah. Yeah. So this chapter is interesting. It's a shift because we're moving into the sixth mansion, which is in the limit, the unit of way. Yeah. And it moves out of, uh, where the enemy has a little more power, I mean, into a place where it's diminishing quickly and, and, and, and a significant way. But I don't know. Is there any place you want to start in this chapter? Yeah, I want to open it up with the first chat, first paragraph, because it kind of sets the stage for the rest of it. So we're talking about the battles in the sixth, sixth mansion. Right. And just as a reminder, there are seven, um, but there are millions, probably a million rooms. We don't know how many rooms, but the Lord says there is many, I'm going ahead. I'm preparing many rooms. There are many rooms in my father's house and I'm preparing them for you, for you, Dan, for you, Jordan, for you, Joan and Smith and, you know, uh, Cindy, you know, Ed, everybody, you know, he's preparing a room for you. Okay. We don't want to miss it, right? Yeah. I mean, I just think, you know, wouldn't it be terrible to leave this earth and stand in front of the Lord and realize if you had just persevered, right, how much more there would have been for you. You know, it's cool about that. That's an ache. I know your brother listens to the show and I like him a lot. He's a really cool guy. I just had this vision of a room with a plaque that said JP. Yes. Okay. There you go, JP. You got a shout out today. Okay. So the battles of the six mansion. So the trials in the six mansion are many and great. Okay. So many trials, but relatively few emanate directly from demonic influence. Okay. That's good news. Yeah. Theresa reveals that at this point, the demons cannot, cannot through exterior trials inhibit the working of the faculties or disturb the soul in any way already described in previous chapters. I love that. The primary reasons for this is that the soul is further from sin and attachments and closer to God. So I really want to people to understand, you know, persevere, persevere, persevere, because when, when you get to the six mansion after persevering for because you're all called to it. Right. We're all called to it. We're all promise this. If we persevere, don't give up. Right. That we become so close to God that attachments start to fall away. Um, our, our proclivity to sin is falling away because we're full of grace. Right. We keep going to the sacraments and the Lord is strengthening us because our yes is so big because we keep saying, yes, Lord, give me more. Yes, Lord purify me. Yes, Lord, whatever you want, I want what you want. Lord, help me and I will follow you. Right. So we say these prayers and we, we speak it from the depths of our souls and, and he is so protective of that soul that although they may have trials and they're going to have difficulties, they are assured that they're not going to be lost if they continue on the path. Right. Yeah. They continue in charity. That's right. Right. Right. You know, that, you know, it's interesting about this and getting this far is what a lot of people don't understand is there, there are a few secrets that are really simple that if you understand and yield to and give yourself to, you're going to enter into the out of the purgative way, into the illuminative, into the unit of, and that's, that is this one, say yes to God, right? All, all be all in, not all in. You're not in at all. So there's a delusion. You want to say that again? If you're not all in, you're not in at all. There's a kind of delusion that you can be half-hearted about faith. But if, you know, Jesus gave the entirety of his being for our salvation, he gave himself up for mocking and scourging and crown of thorns and beatings and, you know, whippings and, you know, all of that. He gave it all. And if we don't really, you know, kind of get that, we can just be half-hearted about faith. So one is being all in your yes. And the second is persevere. Right. That's it. Right. And you persevere. How do you persevere? Well, you avail yourself of the sacraments. You, you pray daily. You, you know, fight against sin and you never give up. Figure out what sins are. Right. I mean, you and I had this conversation because we, we, we do marriage retreats and we do divine intimacy and marriage. And we were thinking about, you know, the folks that we, we teach and lead in these retreats. We can't even assume that people even understand what mortal sin is, what venous, what sin is. Yeah, for catech, catechesis of our time as well. No, no, you know, I, I'm part of two generations that were lost to poor catechesis. A priest told you that. A priest told me that. Yeah. So, you know, we need to just even educate ourselves. We need to own our faith. Oh, I better get an examination and figure out what this is. Okay. So moving on in the sixth mansion, this is where she really gets into locutions, right? Sure. Locutions. So what do you want to talk about with this? So locutions are just some kind of word, phrase, sentence that can be presented to the mind or can be heard audibly or heard interiorly. And it's a kind of a mystic mystical experience. And she spends a lot of time talking about locutions and it's important to note that a lot of what she talks about in that I review in this book are not limited to the mansions that they're talked about in. So as an example, you can have a locution in a purgative way. In a pre-purgative way. Yeah. It can, it can be your launching. Right. Into your yes. It can be the thing that wakes you up. I mean, if you think about it, Paul's writing on his first soul, right, is writing on his horse, he's knocked down, you know, has a flash of light come around him and says, why are you persecuting me? Yeah. That's a locution. Right. He wasn't thinking about God. He wasn't musing. If what he was doing was right, he was off to go persecute somebody else to kill Christians and he hears, why are you persecuting me? Right. Right. That began his journey. Right. And that was a location out of nowhere. You know, no prethought on it. And it spoke a truth that he was never the same. It stayed with him forever. It was true. It had an effect on him and, you know, it changed the trajectory of his life and Holy Mother Church. Locution is a beautiful gift, you know, given from God to his people. It's, you can think of like Jesus in the first century being with someone and he says, you know, rise, take up your mat and go, your sins are forgiven. Well, and so in the word that he spoke to that person, the word brought about that which it it it signified and that is that he was would be healed. So get up and go home. Right. And so the word has in it power to do what it what it signifies in a sense. So Locutions are very beautiful and powerful things and and there are many tests as to whether they're legitimate. One of the one of the things about this mansion that she talks about in terms of demonic deception is that the enemy tries to mimic. So he stops trying to get you to sin in the in the he gets much more clever and the more overt right ways and but begins to try to deceive you through what we might call and I'm not anti charismatic, but what we might categorize as charismatic experiences, you know, spiritual experiences that then try to get you to believe something, do something, perceive something in a way that is contrary to God's desire. So we'll get back from the break. What we should probably do is just do a little rundown on how do we know if a location is true or false, which you've already alluded to. But we'll do some more of that. OK. So I've got it here. You got it. You are just. Yeah, I'll just go with it. Yeah. And your mark is that go. Welcome back to Divine Intimacy Radio. This is Dan, Stephanie Burke, and this is your radio haven of rest talking about the interior life. And today, I locations out of my book. Latest book, it is called The Devil in the Castle, Teresa Vabila's spiritual warfare in the progress of the soul. So what about locations is interesting to you or what? Yeah. So you said something right before the break of, you know, it can be a type of charismatic experience, and you've got to be careful on all this thing. So I think, first of all, you know, if somebody thinks they've had a location, one of the things they should do is seek good counsel. You know, they they should speak to a spiritual director, find a spiritual director. Yeah. We have a way to do that now. seekdirection.com. Dot app APC. Sorry. Yeah. Seek direction.app and you can find a Catholic, good spiritual directors and directors can sign up to right and to make themselves available. Right, right. So so that's so you must do that because you need a voice outside of yourself. If you're the if you're spiritually directing yourself, you were the director of a full St. Bernard of Clairvaux, right, if you want to take some self as his own spiritual director is the disciple of a full. Right, right. So listen, every everybody that I know that's worth their salt as a Catholic takes it seriously, has a spiritual director because you need somebody outside of you to help you as you start to enter into this realm of prayer and mystical experiences that you may or may not be having, which doesn't mean you're holy. It means that the Lord is drawing you closer and wants to communicate with you. So how do we test to see if these things are false or true? Yeah, so it says regardless. So here's test number one, regardless of the soul's inclination or natural instincts, Locution should never be accepted on face value, but instead should always be tested to see if they agree strictly with the scriptures, right? So scriptures in the Magisterium and the Magisterium. So the Lord is never going to ask you to do something that is contrary to your state in life. Right. What does that mean? That means here's an example. Beautiful mother of many children happily married and she hears. I think I'm supposed to be a nun. Yeah, right? So she's married. Her vocation has been set, right? And it really does a valid marriage. Yeah, and a valid marriage and all of that. And she has children. So even though she may have tested or thought or that she should have been a nun at some point in her life before getting married, once she's married, that's ratified. That's finished. Life goes on, right? And so rightly so, she took it to a priest, to a holy priest. And he said, Oh, no, that's of the devil. Yeah, you need to reject that in Jesus' name. And it's done and it's over with. And she did. And and the effect of this kind of nebulous kind of mystery around it was lifted once she fully just took it to a priest. He said, that's not of God. That's of the devil. Dismiss it and reject it. And it was gone. It didn't bother her anymore. So she did exactly this. She did. She took it to a test. Now it had an effect because there was a supernatural source behind it, which was the enemy, right? He was messing with her. So yeah, right. Yeah, good, good. Yeah, have you ever had one of those? What temptation to become a nun? Never. Yeah, a location. Yes, I did have a profound one and I did run this through my spiritual director and it changed the trajectory of our lives of of my work life of the Avila Institute of Divine Intimacy, radio, all of those things because I I was a Catholic school principal for years and years and years. And so this is a version of this is in the book. I changed it a little bit, but you're going to tell the version that actually it's fascinating because there was two that happened to me and they're related. So when we were first married, I was going to Daily Mass and started to experience this this terrible, hunk, not terrible, beautiful, exquisite hunger for the Eucharist that I could not contain. It was just very, very intense. And I was going to Daily Mass and I was with my I would go to my spiritual director and I'd say, I don't know what's going on, but this is happening to me. And so he said, well, just listen and ask. And so I was just very attentive. I actually didn't ask. I was just attentive and I would continue to go to Mass and just kind of wait. And at one point I hear quite audibly. I want you to merge your faith with your work. At the time I was a secular. I was in the secular school system. Now, when you say audibly, did you hear it by your like outside of you or inside of you? At that point, I don't think that I could actually separate the two. OK, I just I heard it. So, you know, I heard it. It was true to my heart, my mind, everything. And I knew that it was. So I stopped and I kind of thought, well, what does that mean? And then I realized I have this intense Catholic faith and I'm a school administrator in the secular world. So I started to do research. Lo and behold, there's a Catholic school system. I wasn't even aware of it. They're strange, long story. And within a month, I kid you not, I was a Catholic school principal right within a month. So because I started to follow through and ask the questions and it happened, right? So the one of the marks of an authentic locution is, of course, it leads you to good and to God. But it also has the power to bring about that, which it proclaims, right? And in this case, it was the Lord saying, go do this. And it was super clear that the locution was true because you instantly. Right. So it gave me faith. It gave me courage. It gave me strength. And I just kept walking until it came to fruition. And I wasn't telling people that I was hearing this location. I was just doing the next right thing in faith, in conversation with you and applying and lo and behold, I become a Catholic school principal. So fast forward. I don't know how many years later, 11 years later, something like that, because that was three. Yeah, at least 10. We had moved. We were in Alabama. You were working for EWTN. Your health was starting to fail dramatically. And I had to actually take time off from work to care for you because you couldn't be alone because of what was happening. And so I'm in front of the dishes and I'm listening for you upstairs because you kept passing out because you had coughs in your teeth. Losing consciousness. Yeah. And so I was listening for you, making sure you were OK. But I needed to do the dishes. I was alone in the house, except for you upstairs. And I'm doing the dishes and I'm just kind of aching. Like I'm trapped. I don't know what to do. I'm worried about the school. I'm worried about you, my secretary and the assistant principal are trying to handle things for me while I'm at home trying to care for you. And so I'm just in angst. And you had asked me a number of times over the course of about a year. Hey, would you consider leaving the Catholic school and working with me in the Avila Institute? I need help, right? And I would always say to you, I can't leave until the Lord makes it clear because he called me in. He said, you said my vocation is Catholic education as a Catholic principal. Yeah. And I and I knew, of course, it wasn't. Yeah, but you didn't say that. I know you did. To be clear, you were very quick. You would ask me. I'd say no. I'd say I have to wait on the Lord. You know, so I'm doing the dishes and I hear audibly. That is not your vocation. I heard that sentence. Right. It was so audible and so loud that I actually like stopped and I said out loud in response. What do you mean? That's not my vocation. Like, what does that mean to me? You know, and I said it out loud. And so visually, interiorly, I saw principal, mom, wife, child of God, right? Daughter of the king, right? I had and they were all kind of horizontal, but then they moved and they became vertical. And at the top was daughter of the king, child of God, wife, mother, teacher than everything else. So they got rightly ordered. And I realized that I had been living all of these different calls, you know, calls within calls, if you want to say. But I was living them as if they were all equal and they weren't subservient to the right order. Right. And so the Lord rightly ordered them and he said, you're a daughter of the king and then you are a wife and your mother and then this, right? And I went, oh, and my husband needs me and his health is failing. And at that moment, I mean, I it was so clear and so profound. I had such peace like this is God's will for me. You wrote your resignation letter. I came upstairs and I said, I want you to know, I mean, immediately afterwards, it was so clear to me. Yeah, I said, I want you to know I'm writing my resignation letter. Right. I'll need to finish the year, but I'm going to leave and I'm going to I'm going to come home and I'm going to help you with the Avila Institute. And I took over at that point and took that burden off of you. So there's a couple of things about what you experienced. One is one of the ways that you test a location is does it have preceding cause? That one actually did, but that doesn't mean it wasn't valid when you have because you were worried and thinking, you know, struggling with what to do with me, but it doesn't invalidate pre-locution. It just means you have to take a few extra steps to determine if it is from God. Yeah, I preceding cause, I wasn't thinking, what is my vocation? OK, I was just in angst because of the situation. Right. So I wasn't thinking, what do I need to do? What do I need to do? What do I need? I was just in angst. So I would actually say it didn't have a preceding cause because I wasn't asking God. I wasn't trying to muse to figure it out. I was just burdened. So when I received that, it was that that's why I responded so quickly is like, what is what do you mean? That's not my vocation because I wasn't making the connection. Right. And I I'm not disagreeing with that. I think a more I think a more pure translation of without preceding cause means that what is given you is location has nothing to do with even the circumstances you're in. So there's no but I it was a valid location that you experience. And I think but I think when I just want to make sure to our audience because there's also a spiritual maturity where you were at the time where it wasn't difficult to discern that what's God's will right because I needed you. I mean, it was just click, click, click and then everything went well. But the more the more disconnected from any circumstance like the example I give in the book is a young man tending a garden, you know, farming or whatever and thinking about farming and horticulture and out of nowhere drops your I want you to be a priest as an example. We're running out of time. You know, I wish we had more time to talk through all of this. But I think you've given some beautiful examples. Yeah, there's some how God speaks and leads us in our lives. Right. There's some great tests in this. So it'll be really good to so if you've experienced this at all or if someone has or any charismatic right infestation. Yeah, it has all the tests there. So it's really helpful. So that is battles of the sixth mansion that we didn't like barely touch all the aspects of it. I know. And it's just huge. Yeah. So get the book, Devil and the Castles, St. Teresa of Abola, Spirits of Warfare and Progress of the Soul. OK. Until next time, may the God of peace make you perfect in holiness. May he preserve you whole and entire spirits, spirit, soul and body irreproachable at the coming of our Lord. Jesus Christ. Amen. OK.