 Hey, hey friends, you're watching behind the scenes divine intimacy radio with father Matthew McDonald's definitely nine father Matthew We're talking about spiritual direction So if that interests you hang out for the show, please like share Spread the word would be grateful And since this is a new show we'll go ahead and reintroduce father like you did last time. Oh, okay okay, and You could have ready a possibly VA banner All right, you ready to roll, okay Before we jump into the show So people We have because we're completely crazy We have 50 Catholic speakers coming to an event Called etch a homo and it's for you and it's free not free to us tell you that But because we love you and we want you to be holy Prayer in the paschal mystery. It's an online retreat for Lent Father Mitch Pacqua all kinds of amazing other speakers that I can't remember at the moment because I'm too tired from travel you need to go to spiritualdirection.com events to register and You will be shocked when you see the the speaker list because I was shocked. I couldn't believe all these folks agreed to do it because they're all amazing and But please, you know because it's free. We you know, you think well, you shouldn't get things for free It's not good. You should use it. So, you know contribute back in some way One of the ways you can do that is tell 3,000 people. That's all we ask We asked each person to tell 3,000 other people About this event. That's all we asked Bishop Andrew Cousins John at Bank of Williams father Mitch Pacqua Father Joss Johnson father dr. John Berg's ma super clear Dwyer dr. Mark Merrill Valley some dude with a beard Okay, gonna be amazing. Yeah, all the speakers are up on spiritualdirection.com. Right. So check it out Yeah, spiritualdirection.com for Alrighty You're you leddie to lol as they say in my favorite restaurant on your mark It's I'm gonna get cancer for that on your mark. Get that go. This is Dan as Stephanie Burke Welcome to divine intimacy radio your radio haven of rest your hermitage of the heart Monastery of the mind where we lift our minds hearts and minds to heaven and I make Stephanie nervous on live Livestream radio and podcasting we draw upon the wisdom of the Saints to help us to navigate the tumult of this life So that we might get through it and get to the next one and spend the rest of it in glory Right like Saint Therese tells us that this life is not our home. It is our ship our ship So we yes, it is we are navigating through this life to get home to the Lord sounds like my book navigating the interior life, right? James plug. All right, we have a guest Yes, yes He is a priest of the Archdiocese of New York. He's the eldest of three children He graduated with an undergraduate degree in philosophy from Franciscan He was ordained by Cardinal Dolan in 2014 and obtained a bachelor's degree in sacred theology Masters in divinity and a masters of arts in theology from Saint Joseph's seminary in Yonkers, New York He is currently assigned as parochial vicar at St. Mary's Church in Washingtonville, New York He has written articles on topics dealing with theology history spirituality current events for Catholic World Report crisis magazine and our own Spiritualdirection.com as a priest he desires to draw people and himself close to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary through Understanding and living out the basic teachings of the church on prayer and living out the interior life And that is absolutely true. Amen sister. Yeah So father, I'm I told you in our last show. I was gonna throw you for a loop this show What I what I want to talk about is spiritual direction and community life and the power of the two together But before we jump into that I want I want you to talk about What how does commute? How is community life? Being a part of a possibly be a community helped you as a priest like what what does that do for you? And then we'll move into how do we? The the I don't know the one-two punch against the enemy and sin and all that assails us it keeps us from God where community and spiritual direction are just Amazing together So living out the charism of apicelle easy as a death and priest helps me do you better die off than priest? It helped me Be at the feet of Christ to rest near his heart To take what the Lord has given me in the parishioners I have the souls I work with both inside and outside my parish into my heart as well as the mysteries of a And also to just be mindful of that when I'm on the cross with Jesus that I'm not alone That's loving me, you know, and and that's the one thing that is necessary as AV's motto is from from Luke And I think you know when you look at the priesthood right now And I'm very blessed as a priest of your studies in New York to have some incredible priest friends that and we help each other In ministry and in life we hang out with one another we call each other on but sometimes as a priest You get very sucked up in the ministerial life of the parish and your identity just becomes about Doing things. There's a big temptation to do that and you forget who you are in Christ and When when that happens, whether you're a priest or in any vocation You become more prone to your own brokenness your sin and the workings of the evil one and I've known a bunch of priests who've gone through crosses in their ministry in their priestly life ministry all varying ordination years and With my own contact with AV during the COVID-19 pandemic it just it fit it was who I was all the threads that the Lord used in my life to lead me to him and Just came together and converged at the Apostle EVA retreat and Abba summit 2021 I was just like this is who I am This is meant to be a major part of my priesthood not the only part but a major part to help me be grounded Yeah, so what I'm hearing father that rather than it being being part of a community rather than it being Just something else that you have to do. It's actually feeds you spiritually and Protects your priesthood and helps you navigate the burdens of Which and they're real the burdens of being a pastor In a parish, you know, one of the things that has Broken my heart is the isolation and and it wasn't originally like that priests weren't to be isolated in in their Nerectories and burdened with all this administrative work, but that's where it is and so This has given you an opportunity to be fed to be accompanied to be prayed for to be Spiritually, you know surrounded by those that aren't always drawing on you, but also are ministering to you And it brings to mind the scene in the agony of the garden when the angels came and ministered to the Lord After you know after he had gone through His agony, you know, so Absolutely, and and I'm internally grateful to God and to both of you It's for you know for AV and just for the Lord putting you in my life Not only both of you, but the entire AV community And I also see where there is a need for this obviously something like a group like Apostle Evie needs to be discerned It is a charism and a charism is is a spirituality That organizes your own individual discipleship with Jesus in your primary vocation so People in AV it helps me to be a better priest the fact that I'm in AV People who are married that I know are innovate in AV help from these better husband better wife better religious Better mother's better father's better business man. Yeah better business men and there has been this tradition of the church, you know of this third-order affiliation where lay faithful and Dios and priests have lived on and It's living a charism within the world where you're Worshiping and loving God in a particular way within your primary state of life And that helps you enter it to live light and need others Along the path to you with Christ and through Christ the Father and the Holy Spirit and that's why groups like AV are So important that I'm and I thank God every day and I thank our lady every day For being a member of AV the size of being a priest the archdiocese New York, you know It seems to me like you know your primary vocation is of course priest and then In the archdiocese in New York and it's almost like you know So that that's your day-to-day. You get up. You're going to serve, but then you can come away Come spend time with the community in specific kinds of formation and Fellowship which is separate and distinct from that work But it breaks the breaks mental patterns breaks emotional patterns It it's sort of almost like you get to do a regular retreat And I'm gonna put words in your mouth But and you get loved and cared for because of course the part of our charism is caring for priests and then and then Invigorate it and then go back or if there are struggles, you know, we have a lot of priest friends who are peripherally or directly involved with us and We're a safe place Because it is part of our charism to come and rest to get prayer and then you also minister to us So there's a very beautiful symbiotic Support of the diocese and priesthood that I think is is a very powerful thing in our time Absolutely, and you know when you're working in the humanity of the church You see within the humanity of the church the church is both Human and divine like our Lord, you know and being human as you hear in the song of songs I am dark, but beautiful you know, so Yeah, there's areas of my life where I am Struggling to surrender to the Lord because I'm a sinner like anybody else But I'm beautiful because the Lord's grace has done so much for me Jesus has done so much for me and And in being a disciple of a priest, a son of Mary and I've preached the archdiocese in New York that happens to be member of AV AV just helped me To conform to surrender to cooperate and to yield to the action of Holy Spirit in my life So that I can be that alter priest juice as a priest and disciple that Jesus wants me to be Yeah, this all reminds me of this remarkable homily that we heard a few months back when we did a marriage retreat up in Virginia and the priest Father Riley. Yeah, he's a friend and Anyway, he holds the distinction of having prayed over my brother and his wife and they became pregnant He has a gifting in that area So I have a niece because of his prayer and his cooperation with the Lord in that. So anyway He said something in his homily that was so beautiful about the symbiotic Relationship between the laity and and the priesthood and he said he said without us as priests without us as priests You you do not have the Lord. You do not have the Eucharist You would starve and he said without you the laity praying for us we would slip into darkness and I think it was so striking to me and I thought yes that's true and right and And it just strengthened our conviction of how important it is to have community that in and of ourselves We are not sufficient to get ourselves to heaven and we need each other in these Relationships we need to pray for one another. We want to support one another and walk together and get each other to heaven So father we're about ready to head into a break when we come back just to prep your brain a little bit I want to talk about the one-two powerful punch if you will Against the devil in the world in the flesh That is community living community involvement and Spiritual direction and you know, of course, you know the secret sauce is Directionality in spirituality, which can be true in a Franciscan group a Carmelite group Dominican Third Order Opus day, I mean you you know take your pick of an Orthodox Third Order you combine the I want to talk about the powerful benefits of that spiritual Directionality and then coupled with spiritual direction. So when we get back We'll talk some more with father Matthew McDonald About how to make progress in the interior life how to come to union with God in this life How to know peace and joy in the midst of the storm you can know that God designed you for that he gave his life for that and he promised it to you So we'll talk more about it when we get back from the break. We'll be right back New market set go this is dana Stephanie Burke. Welcome back to divine intimacy radio We're here talking with father Matthew McDonald about spiritual direction community life Father McDonald has been just an absolute huge blessing to us and We love that the Lord has brought us together He's a diocesan priest, but he's also part of a community that we're part of And we share a common spirituality together father. Why is a common spirituality or a Or a spirituality which provides direction so powerful to a soul It's so powerful to a soul because it fits your personality. It fits your gifts things And sometimes again when you're following the Lord, you don't know who you are But when the Lord reveals it to you, you know through events, whether they be dramatic Or over time It just helps you flourish into Who he called you to be And who he calls you to be it's something that gives you freedom joy And peace and I know for me as a diocesan priest Part of the uniqueness of the diocesan priesthood is its independent nature and its spirituality um It is a state of perfection a path to union But unlike religious priests Something that is the diocesan priest has to discern is how do I order that priestly in ministry to god and the people? And how do I be that other christ? To them through my own living of the interior life and discipleship But also my service as a spiritual father offering the holy sacrifice and the mass baptizing people hearing confessions guiding souls forming souls And as a diocesan priest, you know The independent nature is so great But I think a big struggle right now is a lot of priests Some some very much do order their lives well And I know many in my own archdiocese that do that But a lot of priests I think of certain generations struggle in doing that because they get so caught up on pleasing people Or getting things that they want Or the doing and they forget who they are You know, um, and being in a community helps you realize Who you are in christ that you are loved Um that you're not just existing in a vacuum You're not just All alone. You're not the center of the universe, but it helps you find Who you are as a thread of a larger tapestry Which you're called to no love and serve christ and service church Yeah, you know what comes to mind father as you talk about this is the Say as I can relate it to the power of being married, you know So I have this vocation as a daughter of the king first, you know But then as a wife and so my my vocation gets played out here in marriage And one of the things dan and I have noted is that when we're separate when he has to go travel or when I have to go travel There's this this ease like this this, uh, we lose part of our grounding and our We fall out of rhythm We lose part of our stability when when we step out from being together Not out of on purpose, but just for circumstantial reasons And we have to be super attentive to that to in order to keep our Rhythm of life going it has a profound effect And what I was thinking is you know as as priests are called to their ministry Independently walking it in some cases being very very isolated that there's that danger of Being disconnected and becoming marthas You know, I don't think anybody really ever thinks about priests becoming marthas, but they do And so there there's so many demands around them. So it's do do do do do And then often and I and it breaks my heart, but I've I've seen it too many times and You know on the flip side, there are many priests that are super faithful to their uh canonical promises and And all of that but there are many that become so busy in the doing That the first thing to go is prayer And that's pretty horrifying, you know, it's so dangerous You know, I I knew a priest one time that you know, folks around them would whisper Oh, you know, his spiritual director must be back in town because he would become holier He would start to pray his hours Again, and then he was the priest that we desired him to be And then after a while several months and then the prayer would fall off and then grumpy Priests would come back Struggling priests would come back. You could substitute, you know, right husband. Yeah Right, you know, whoever it is, but there's but part of community Is that we have an accountability. We have a stability together and so we have this shared Charism of this is how we walk together. This is how we pray that wouldn't be contrary to Whatever canonical promises that a priest has but but it's it's supplemental and it supports It's meant to give greater strength and stability for those canonical promises that they make That that makes perfect sense and uh, that's part of the beauty of apicella eva and again, it has to be discerned and Like you said, Stephanie, you know pulling into that Martha syndrome whether you're a priest When you just fall into this activism Of priestly life, it's very easy easy to fall into the virus of Chloricalism where it's all about your own self entitlement on the pastor on the pastor on the pastor Whatever you hear a priest say that all the time That's a red flag, you know And and also you begin to disassociate You know and cope With things by clinging on to earthly things too much Whether it's, you know, drinking whether it's internet whether it's kb food gaming You know food and and again, that's not to say don't utilize those things but utilize those things with crying and I think some priests just they're looking for support among their brother priests You know because sometimes when you face things as a priest You need the support of solid brothers who Know the struggles of the priesthood, but they also need a wider support to help You know hear the call of christ and remember who they are When christ's risk called them to be open to the mystery of their own particular priestly vocation One of the ways this plays out in apostolate va This accountability is we have two gatherings a month where all members from all over the world Log in together and we for those who are professed we have an hour and a half of formation Together, but we all publicly state Whether or not we are fulfilled in our primary promises Which are the are the most essential foundational prayer practices And examination practices that help us and this helps us Whatever our state priest mom dad executive whatever um helps us to To orient our spirituality and maintain momentum and receive help when we're stumbling Because when we see people who have you know multiple times when they're not fulfilled or when we have Forums and all kinds of formation and encouragement groups and prayer groups and We're always praying for one another one at nausea right. We have so much We have local groups all over the world Australia and canada and united states that meet on alternative saturdays But all of this is designed the power of it and and why spiritual direction is so powerful in it Which we really hadn't gotten to yet is because when you have a spirituality Instead of a hodgepodge of seven different spiritualities, but a spirituality ours happens to be carmelite It's a lot easier to I mean i'll ask you father. Isn't it a lot easier to direct someone who has a spirituality? Yes, it is because There's a particular order and rhythm to their life That even though they're unique and they're facing different things That is kind of like guardrails Along the road that isn't an end to themselves, but a path that leads them to christ And when you have that It makes things a lot easier and you're not like this tug-of-war rope being pulled By the latest fashion or whim in the church of the world There's there's a path and there's a this constant integration That spiritual direction gives to community life so that you can live out this charism within your primary vocation and help And and then become the saint that the lord is calling you to be Yeah, it's so beautiful too because when you know What the path is and you start to walk it? I mean it just really makes all those distractions and all the the whims of the world and And your own concupiscence and your own weaknesses and all of that It falls away because it's like okay. I I know that when I get up This is the path I walk and when I walk that path the lord meets me in that Because I'm being diligent because I'm persevering I'm because he says I I I withhold myself from no one who perseveres saint Teresa Vavilas says he withholds himself from no one who perseveres So when we persevere he meets us in that and He pours out his grace and it strengthens us for the journey The effect of it has been nothing less than miraculous in my life And I just can't imagine how people even get up every day And without it because it's just it's been really extraordinary for me personally so father I guess the question would be uh, so we have priests out there that would listen to our show and When they're getting ready for mass and I I could hear them saying I I it's really hard for me to get anything done Saturday mornings are a little rough. How am I supposed to make an hour and a half meeting? And you're there. I'd say 99 of time. How do you pull that off with all the demands against you? So I have good boundaries Um, I know how to say yes know how to say no um, I make time for it And when I can't make it I don't make it, but I still In try to live out the charism especially through the basic promises of the daily exam and Based off of rural life and mental prayer time Is that always easy? No, and sometimes, you know, I try to make adjustments Within my day-to-day grind and schedule so that I have those moments of escape to be at the feet of jesus um, and to seek his face and to allow Him to be present to me and to minister to me, you know And I think also something with spiritual direction and community It helps you realize within the context of the christian life that perfection is not something that I do Perfection is the end game. It's something that I cooperate with But it's something that god wants to do in me and how I'm called to perfection Within my own vocation and community life is different than another person, you know And that's very encouraging because sometimes we have these high-falutin ideas And make the perfect the enemy of the good Whereas god's ideal of perfection is not this external imposition But one of peace one of joy one that allows me to just receive And just be authentically The the mayor or the woman that he created me to be Very good father, so We'll put up a silly va up on the screen so you know how to spell it And for our radio listeners a p o s t o l i v i a e dot org a p o s t o l i v i a e dot org You want to check out the website membership is free. You can create a profile You can reach out to father mcdonald father jim boland um A priest who are active in a possibly va if you're looking for Questions and support if there's any way we can support you and pray for you even as a priest Even if you're not a member of the community it's part of our charism So our goal our desire is to live the contemplative life To light the way to others and to personally lead and guide those who desire union with god Okay, and so until 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