 Hey friends, you're watching Divine Intimacy Radio and this is Dan and Stephanie behind the scenes. We're going to start the show in a second. Today we're going to be talking about the battles of the third mansion in the interior castle and the spiritual warfare that happens in that mansion. So but before we do, I want to tell you, oh well, you can pre-order Devil in the castle for 25% off from Sophia Institute Press. You can get to that pre-order through spiritualdirection.com forward slash shop and then use castle 25 for the code C-A-S-T-L-E 25 no spaces and the number 25 and you can get 25% off if you pre-order it. You can get half off of cases, a full case if you order it directly through Sophia as well. So that's that for this book and it'll be out of February of 2022 so pretty quick here. And it's a hard copy. It's a hard back. Yeah, really beautiful too. The design is really something else. Another thing coming up soon, actually in a week is Prostrate Hearts, a webinar to prepare in advance for the Graces of Lent. A lot of people do the lame thing of showing up on Ash Wednesday and going, I'm going to give up soda or something silly that has no substantive connection to the roots in or how it is that we really need to make spiritual progress. And so we pass by all the amazing graces, the powerful graces of the season and we don't make the spiritual progress we could have made if we would availed ourselves of the graces God desires to give us in the season. So it's leveraging the teaching I'm giving and what I'm following is a traditional pre-Lent in practice that predates the Second Vatican Council that was kind of, I don't know, set aside or whatever. And we're going to be talking about that and how you can have an extraordinary Lent. And that's free. It's at spiritualdirection.com forward slash event. So check that out. And then the last thing I'll mention is the Avalos Summit 2022 is on spiritual warfare. Bishop Strickland, Father Chad Ripperger, Father Dennis McManus, amazing lineup, July 15th through the 17th Catholic University of America, the Masses at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Comaculate Conception. It'll be great. Father Ripperger, I'm really looking forward to this because I'm going to be talking about something in his new book that he's been developing now for years on the hierarchy of authority in the sense of when can a lay person, for instance, speak directly to the demonic and when can they not? What authority do they have? Like does a man have authority over his wife or his kids? What if his kids are grown? All of those sorts of things. He'll be talking about that. So specialdirection.com forward slash events. Fantastic. All right. So let's jump into the battles of the third mansion on your mark. Get set, go. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke. Welcome to Divine Intimacy Radio. Your radio haven of rest. Your hermitage of the heart. Your monastery of the mind where the hearts and minds to heaven and draw on the wisdom of the saints. And today we're drawing on the wisdom of probably the greatest writer in the history of the church on the topic of prayer and spiritual warfare. Most people don't know her for her insights on spiritual warfare because she talks about it in conjunction with prayer, but this time we're going to extract out the spiritual warfare wisdom and talk about mansion number three in her interior castles. Right. I'm excited to talk about this mansion and this beautiful, beautiful woman, fiery woman, strong woman. There's nothing weak about Saint Teresa of Avila, of course. And just amazing. I mean, I think when you think about her, you know, she was always Catholic, fervently so and everything. But when she had an encounter at that point, you know, she was in her late forties. She then goes on to to find found. She founded twenty four, seventeen, okay, seventeen monasteries at that point. So if any of you are, you know, rolling around late forties, early fifties, and you're thinking, well, it's too late for me, not a chance, no, she rocked the world. She did. It was so exciting. The latter half of her life. Yeah. The world. Yeah. So be encouraged. Okay. So entering into this battle of the third mansion. Before we go into detail, I do want to frame it in terms of the Purgative Illumination. Okay. Quickly. So this mansion is late Purgative, early Illuminated. It bridges very few people get into this mansion, which is not because the Lord hasn't provided a way, but because they haven't given themselves to the sacraments and all of the means that God has meant daily mental prayer. So by this time, daily mental, this is years of daily mental prayer has been a habit. Daily examine the person's usually living by a rule of life, and there are key characteristics that help you identify if you're in this mansion, and I bet that's where you were headed. Oh, well, why don't you go ahead and start with that? I was going to go someplace else, but you go ahead. No, go ahead. Well, one of the key characteristics here that she talks about is holy fear. It is holy fear that I think is really important for us to understand because it's very central to this part because in a holy fear, it's not the kind of fear that thinks of God as a tyrant or is this terrible monster in the sky who's just waiting for me to mess up, but rather it's a holy fear that looks to him in love and profound reverence. And we have this profound desire not to disappoint him, not to fail him. This desire to really stay within his will. We have this huge desire to get better, to progress. So it gets very intense at this point, and it drives us to distrust ourself and to start putting hedges around our behaviors, our life, what we do. So when we start feeling that very fiery fear of the Lord, that healthy fire that keeps us on the narrow way versus a disorder of fear that keeps us focused on far less important matters. But when this Godward self-awareness, fear of God in this holy way, it helps us to understand that we're moving into this area along with all the other characteristics, right? Right. There are a few key indicators, and I want to come back to your point on reverence. And one of them is that by this time, the person is completely free of habitual, mortal sin at least. So you're not in the third mansion. You're certainly not in the illuminative way unless you have overcome by God's grace and your cooperation with him, both habitual, mortal and venial sin, which means that you don't take, you don't commit them as a norm, and so that you don't take them confession as a norm. That's how you understand. With respect to reverence, what's interesting is this, when a person is in this phase, you're not, you're going to have a tendency to see them act differently in the holy sacrifice of the mass, act differently about all manners of things that are holy and all of that. Reverence begins to permeate the life because you have a deep love for God, which means you revere him and you want to please him and you recognize that a casual approach to relationship with him in the way that we live is really disordered and problematic. So you're living very deliberately in this stage and reverence also leads to how we worship. So you're not going to find somebody in the third mansion who has no concern for the holy sacrifice of the mass, how they should comport themselves, for instance. So they're not going to be looking at their cell phone during mass. They're not going to be chatting with their girlfriend or husband or husband. Yeah, or wrestling through their purse, trying to find their to-do list to review before mass starts, you know, whatever it is, they're going to tend to be people who are getting the mass early, kneeling to receive the Eucharist on the tongue, you know, women tend to be veil. It just creates this higher sense of what's really going on. And then it affects the way we worship. So yeah, I think and prior to the veil, there's and a lot of women will understand this, there'll be a shift towards modesty and it'll be a natural shift, like all of a sudden there's this self-consciousness of my dignity and my worth as a woman on how I dress and how to how I behave and that there's there's this sense of when I go to mass or even to the grocery store, when I'm out at the movies with friends or whatever, that there needs to be this shift on how I carry myself because I'm no longer quite as vain, that's starting to be stripped away. And I'm starting to understand that I have dignity and worth as a daughter of the King and it's huge. It's a huge shift for women. Here's a few others that I've listed out here that just are from three survival herself. The person works hard to avoid committing even venial sin, loves doing pennants, acts of self-denial and reparation for sin, uses time well. It practices the works of charity is very careful in the use of speech. As you noted, very careful, very careful in the manner of dress and is diligent in the management of household. So what happens is in the earlier stage of the interior life, if you're very disordered in your mind and the way you think and the way you live, the first two mansions are going to begin to really purify you of those things. And you begin in the third mansion as you're starting to exit the purgative way, your life is fairly well ordered. It's not out of control in any way. There are no passions that you have. They're out of control. There are no attachments that are controlling your life. There still may be a lot of little things that you have to overcome. No doubt. It's always the case, but predominantly God is the driver of your life. He's the one who dictates or who leads or whom you follow. He's your compass in your anchor. There's a reason that, you know, we use the anchor as a Christian symbol. He becomes our anchor and everything revolves around that anchor, you know, on the cross and how do we deny our flesh in a way to become more rightly ordered to what God's asking of us? You know, this even the regulating of speech, you know, people can be quite flippant in what they say that can be very offensive. It can be, you know, latent with curses or taking the Lord's name in vain or even slightly sore or crass or imprudent, you know, all those things. And at this point, at this stage in the journey, you start to understand, wait, I pray with this mouth, I proclaim God's praise and His goodness. And I sing to the Lord with this mouth, perhaps I should be realigning what I say, you know, in the rest of the areas of my life. Right? Yeah. Being very, very careful of not to say things that I shouldn't or engage in gossip or whatever. So in terms of specific battles, one of the things that happens during this period, and just so you know, stuff, I'm on page 51. And this is this is where the key battle is, is that prayer begins to change. So what does that mean? So in the prior two mansions, which which have taken several years for the person to get through, they began daily mental prayer. And they begin things begin to transition. Whereas before their mental prayer was very life giving and peaceful and just encouraging and, you know, a lot of nice things. Now it begins to break down in its effectiveness. And I teach a class on this that covers this transition in depth. It's called Foundations of Prayer Union with God at the Avala Institute. You can find that out there, avaladashinstitute.org. But I will give you a summary in this and I do it in the book of how things begin to change that tell you that the difficulties you're experiencing, which we call contemplative oridity are not the same as oridity caused by sloth or oridity caused by lack of diligence and spiritual disciplines or oridity caused by those other human reasons or you're sick or you're not sleeping. There's an oridity that begins to settle in here as God takes us out of discursive and affective meditation into the prayer of simplicity, which prepares us for a contemplative prayer. So the question is, how do I know that I'm in that realm? So one is we've already mentioned vice and virtue, mortal sin is not present anymore in the person. Venial sin is fading and not habitual and virtue is developing detachment in the soul. We become detached from worldly things with sufficient measure of strength to an ability to endure dryness and prayer, even for sustained period. So we have distaste for vain conversation and other for other forms of worldly entertainment or engagement in the world. So things that we used to enjoy begin to fade in their interest to us. Right. All things are as as rubbish to us. Right. And that's not, you know, it's a beautiful thing. It's it's God, you know, you draw near to God and you start to realize there's nothing really that matters other than him. And while this is beautiful and good, but same time, there are different there are purifying realities in this eridity that sets in as a purifying reality for us. Right. Our spiritual disciplines have we've been exercising for a time in mental prayer in particular, sound, sacramental participation. You know, you're going to confession every other week or monthly minimum if you're at this stage. So you have neither pleasure nor consolation in the things of God. It's interesting or the spiritual world or the material world. I'm sorry. So you might call it a kind of desolation. So somebody might say, well, wait a minute, you're saying this is all glorious and good, but what does it mean that you have no pleasure in the things of God? Well, it's because the Lord is it gave you a lot of pleasure and joy and goodness in your previous mansions. As you're exiting out of this life of sin and into this life of virtue and grace. But now it's time for you to learn a deeper kind of love and a deeper kind of prayer. And so he's weaning you off of those good feelings that you have. We get back from the break. I'll finish the list and it's really provided by John of the Cross, even though Teresa reflects on it. And we'll talk about how the enemy tries to mess with you in this period. OK, we'll be right back. But it's this is the timer it went from. I touched something. That took it from the big. No, it's not. That's I always use this. It just created the change the. I touched. Oh, here it is here. There it is. That happened. Turned into a circle instead of a. So anyway, are you ready to get back? Yeah. The markets that go. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke. Welcome back to Divine Intimacy Radio, your radio haven of rest. We're talking about the devil in the castle, Saint Teresa of Avila, spiritual warfare in the progress of the soul, which is a book that I just wrote. And as if you're listening to live stream, it'll be out shortly. If you're listening to show on EWTN, it's already out. Check EWTN's religious catalog. You hold that spiritualdirection.com forward slash shop, etc. So and we're in the third man. They're in mansion. Yep. And you can find all the previous. If you're just joining us and all these, this will be in a free mini course, eventually on the possible VA dot org. You can go out there. There's course free courses on a bunch of stuff, right? And it'll be in spiritualdirection.com and make sure you subscribe to it. So you'll keep up with everything. Yep. Yep. So your desire, your strong. So the difference between aridity that is destructive and problematic. In your spiritual life to aridity that is healthy and good and indicative of a new movement of God in your soul is that you're detached from the world. It doesn't matter to you. You know, football was your, you know, your fetish. It doesn't matter to you for me. It was four wheeling at one point that really I love to do and outdoors stuff. And, you know, when that begins to fade an interest and it's a little shocking when it happens. But at the same time, you're drawn to be alone with God and prayer. So the aridity, that's the key indicator that helps you know that the aridity is probably healthy. Yeah. And, you know, one thing that she stresses during this particular stage, and it's forever, right? But in particular, during the stage, we must be humble. Yeah. Humility is really key because there's can be attention a temptation to pride. Sure. Or to becoming overly critical of, you know, or disdain or all these things, you know, we need to understand when we start to go through this, that we nurture this desire to go to prayer. But we stay very, very humble. We don't criticize others that are engaging in things that no longer attract us or anything. And we're being purified of these attachments. They are attachments. And so we're being purified. We need to be very, very humble and low and understand that if we're not growing in love while we're growing in humility during these stages, then something's off. Right. If we start to see others as the problem and only God is the answer, we need to be very careful that we're not treating others poorly. Yeah. It's a bad sign. If you think you're in this phase and you look at others with disdain as a norm or you judge them because they're not where you are, you are falling prey to one of the enemy's key tactics, both in the second and third mansion, which is to look down on others. You know, because a person is in the third mansion doesn't make them better in essence or more loved by God than the person who's just starting out. They're not. Their life is more oriented to God because of God. And God wants the other person to come and what they'll do if you're not succumbing to this evil is you will look at the other person with love and say, hey, come and join me. Let me show you, you know, you know, I know you're struggling with sin. Don't worry about it, but, you know, let's let me let me show you how to get free of habitual sin or whatever it is. And there's no judgment. It's just love. So in the last thing I already mentioned, which is indicative of this there's a lack of desire or inability to practice discursive meditation or receive satisfaction from it as before and a lack of desire to use imagination and prayer, those are all those. All of those signs together indicate that you're on. You're making a lot of spiritual progress and the Lord is taking you from a different into a different kind of into a different place. Right. And I just want to say one quick thing in that when they go through the serenity, you know, this they still have a desire to go to prayer. It's not something that you can overcome by strength of the will. Yeah. Right. This this is supernatural. We just have to continue to show up, just show up for prayer. Just continue your practices. Don't get to stir it discouraged and perseverance is key. And availing yourself of the grace that the Lord wants to pour out upon you. So I think we're going to go into the summary of the battles of this stage. Yeah. Pardon me. So the demonic goals here are to cause discouragement, you know, to get us to turn back and to crumble in and to lead us into desolation due to this aridity. You know, what's happening? I don't feel God anymore. And so we can get we can end up going into doubt or despair or narcissism. And that's really something we have to guard against. Well, and then this aridity is is what is aridity? It's the perceived absence of the presence of God. So whereas before we we sense the presence of God in our prayer, we were blessed by our expiration of the Gospels or things that we see in Jesus that we had never seen before and conviction that we've never had and joy that we've, you know, all of these great things happen and then suddenly we go to that same scripture. Maybe even our favorite passage and nothing emerges. So what the enemy does in this stage is sit, tell you, you know, everything you experienced before that you thought was of God was an illusion. You're you're delusional and you really need to go back to your old way of life. And apparently this God that you love so much is abandoned in you and you're good. Why is he abandoned you? This is unjust. You know, all of these kinds of accusations will come or temptations will come to get you to stop mental prayer as a big part of the one of the most powerful ways of wrecking you in your progress is to get you to stop practicing daily mental prayer. Yeah. And this this next tactic of the enemy is can be very disconcerting. Yeah. So not only the enemy is accusing you, but it can also be a period where you find that you're getting persecuted. Right. Know that that's a very good sign and it is so stinking painful. Yeah. And and you're just thinking what in the world is going on? And sometimes the world is crumbling around you. And all you can do is keep your eyes on Jesus and keep walking. Right. You know, stay on your knees in prayer, get up and walk the next day. So if if you're being persecuted, criticized, attacked from others that that's tempting you towards discouragement or desolation, the enemy is trying to get you to go back. He's gone. Don't go this way, you know, but it's the way of the cross. And we know that if we deny ourselves, we pick up our cross. We follow the Lord that through the crucifixion, there will be a resurrection. There is no salvation without the cross. The cross is huge during this time and you must pick it up and keep walking. Keep your eyes on. Don't set it down. Don't set it down because they've already picked it up pretty well. Not correcting what you're saying. Just adding and the enemy wants you to set it down. This is this is too hard. This isn't working the way, you know, we thought it was going to go. And, you know, you're really wasting your time and sitting in this silence and prayer. Well, and people can say, well, if this is really, you know, this experience that you're having with God, if that's really true, you wouldn't be experiencing these difficulties out in your personal life or in your work life or whatever. And it's just that temptation to follow the world, the flesh and the devil, to be comforted, to to avoid the cross and the enemies. He's just so stinking, wily during this time. And you just must keep your eyes on the cross during this time. Don't give up. You and I have both faced huge persecutions during this time. Things that people would be shocked to find out from people that you thought you could trust or, you know, you were there to serve or whatever. It can be very, very ugly. Keep your eyes on the Lord, wake up every day, go to prayer, do your exam, regular confessions, regular sacraments and keep walking. You know, I never it takes a lot of years sometimes to gain perspective on certain things. And that what I'm about to say may seem obvious, but I watched it actually. So it's one thing to believe something conceptually. It's another to watch it. And that is a little bit of what you said earlier. There's no resurrection unless there's a crucifixion that precedes it. But I've watched over the years, holy people following the key events in Jesus' life. Right. Right. And it's and I just come to believe that what it means to take up your cross is it means to embrace the same path that Jesus walked, of course, not with the same severity, because we can't suffer the way he suffered. But mystically, in many ways, there is an agony. There is a scourging. There is a crowning with thorns. There is a carrying of the cross. There is a crucifixion, a kind of death to self in the world and the way things were going to be crushing and then resurrection and then the joy after that, which is really followed in the it isn't fully resolved in, you know, the first three mansions. But, you know, you're going to your your it's normal to experience these these difficulties because both the enemy will use it to try to scourge you. But God is using it to purify you to heal you of things that are in the way of you drawing near to him and to becoming free from attachments and to be to purify you. And what's really beautiful is that the bigger the storm is generally the bigger the grace on the other side. So so let's talk a little bit about how to make sure we battle these tactics successfully of the enemy. One is you can never, ever, ever, ever stop practicing daily mental prayer. You need to make sure that you never give that up. I'm on page 54. If you're following along, if you happen to be doing this while when the book's available, you never give up on daily mental prayer, no matter what. And with Persephone and I and those in our community, we always tell people, worst case, even if I'm hospitalized, if I'm conscious and able to pray, I'm practicing mental prayer and Auxillium Christian norm. Those are two things that I'll never give up. One is a spiritual warfare prayer. And the other is just being with with the Lord in mental prayer. Right. And then pay attention to what the Lord's trying to free you from. Right. Stop holding on to the things that the Lord is trying to detach you from and pay attention because he's trying to get you to pull to to let go of those circumstances, those attachments, those relationships that are not good for you, that are holding you back from what he desires to pour out onto you. And some of those things can be very surprising, but look for attachments. Look for where the Lord is creating discord and ask him, what are you doing here? What's going on? What do I need to let go of? Am I attached here? We can't get through all of them, but begin to identify virtues that you're not that are not yet habitual in you and have a particular specific plan to acquire those virtues, active, actively develop strong spiritual relationships. Community is really important, which is why we're in community in a possibly VA. And the bottom line is if you get this far, frankly, you're ahead of ninety nine point nine percent of Catholics. All are invited. All are empowered. Few answer the call to authentic discipleship of Jesus. But if you're this far, you're way closer to him in the in the castle than you were when you began. God, be praised. God, be praised. OK, 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 at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.