 Hey friends, you're watching Behind the Scenes, Divine Intimacy Radio, and we're just about ready to jump into the show. We're going to be talking today about dealing with nagging thoughts as we enter into prayer and how to deal with our distractions. Maybe we'll get to, you know, prayer without ceasing, what does Jesus mean, how do we do that? Those are a few topics for today, but mostly deepening our prayer lives. So I think we're, well, let me get my stopwatch. OK, ready? I think we're about ready to go. You all ready? I'm ready. OK, everything's good, producer man. OK, your market's set. Go. Welcome to Divine. And nope, that's not how you enter the show. Can you please do it right? It's so good to not be live. But we are live, but, you know, the show gets edited for trust or radio on your mark gets 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 we lift our hearts and minds to heaven, mispronounce things and talk about the interior life. Right. I was wondering. I mean, I didn't know what divine was. Oh, Lord. Divine, Divine Intimacy Radio. OK, so it's good to be here with you. It's good to be with you. You know what? I love those people at EWTN. They're awesome. Yeah, very good to us. Let us do the show and we're grateful for them. And of course, I work with them for years. And anyway, let's jump into questions about prayer. OK, Q&A today. How can I deal with nagging thoughts as I enter into prayer and then that end up distracting me in prayer? Why don't I give it a shot? And then I know you all have some good additional stuff. Oh, I don't know about that, but you know, I do. So just personal admissions here. I have huge problems with my brain. And I know you're married to me and you held back right when I said that. I can attest to that. You can attest to that. Huge problems with my brain. That's why I make sure you have all your supplements every day and make sure you eat a healthy diet because I'm just praying that we're going to protect that brain of yours. Right, right. So I think you're going to suffer a lot in my old age or vice versa. But anyway, so so I have huge issues with distractibility and there's a handful of things that that I do that are in the book into the deep, which I'm pretty sure you can get at EWTN's religious catalog. But so in that book, I'll talk about what's in the book and then something outside of the book that the other day I was doing. And I thought I'd never talked about this. And into the deep, we talk about sacred time, sacred space, sacred attention. So time always as early as possible, groggy monkeys rarely cause a ruckus. Monkeys or euphemism is a threat word for distractions. So when you're a little groggy, it's best. So early in the morning is best, especially before you start the day and your mind gets active about everything. I've just never met anyone. I don't know. Have you met anyone who prays mental prayer at night in a way where they're able to be fully present, silent with the Lord and that sort of thing? When I have, it's been a very special grace and it's been given usually to a mother who's got a lot of children. And that's like the only time that she can have. And the Lord just accommodates her and gives her what she needs. That which is so beautiful. That gives her the time. Right. So it's like, OK, all everything is aligned perfectly. And that's her time. So sacred time every day, the exact same time it trains your body and your mind. This is the time for prayer. The second thing is sacred space, which is making sure that you have beautiful space to pray in. Not a lot doesn't have to be expensive, but just with the little I mean, I started decades ago with a little icon of Jesus and Mary and a little candle even before I was Catholic when I was an Anglican seminarian. And so sacred space only used for prayer and then sacred attention like Cio Divina is what we recommend. But if you want to learn all the details about that into the deep is the book I wrote. But this morning I was thinking about what I was doing and realize I was doing something that actually helps me with this problem. Or the yesterday morning, can't remember which. But anyway, so I don't because I'm so distractible. The goal is do not look at I things or E things, nothing digital, nothing electronic in terms of not I do use a timer on my phone. I do use some prayers on my phone, but I don't have I have zero notifications. Do you know what I'm saying? The so I think notifications are evil. And some of you are going to be, you know, thinking I'm crazy. But the folks who design these things, it's it's not a secret. We read an article not too long not too long ago that even trained psychologists who who are violating their Hippocratic oath are contributing to the design of software that causes them to be addictive. So the notifications I think are part of that issue because it causes you to think in very short bursts. You can't it'll disrupt your ability to read and to pray. And I just think they're they're bad for you. So I turn off all notifications and I even have an iPad that has no extraneous things on it, except for prayer things, you know, which can help. So that's one one thing to do. But the other thing I do is usually starting as I'm rolling out of bed, one of two prayers are on my lips that I repeat over and over and over until I get to prayer to block out intrusive thoughts and start getting on a process of thinking. I'm either praying St. Michael, the Archangel prayer, defend us in battle, depending on what my dreams were like before I woke up or how I'm feeling or whatever. Or the other one I pray is the the version of an extraction from St. Alphonse, the slippery stations across, configured my own way. I love you, Jesus, my love, grant that I might love you always and do with me as you will. So I'm repeating those as I'm brushing my teeth, as I'm weighing myself, as I'm sitting down, so that I'm taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, as scripture says we should, St. Paul in Corinthians. And I'm deciding what's in my head. Now, sometimes I'll also pray, play, chant, depending on how much I'm struggling. But I'm deciding what's in my head so that when I sit down, I'm only thinking about the Lord. And I still have challenges, but there are a lot less because of all of that. Yeah. Yeah. What do you do to? Well, I I have learned that I have to be very still. So I don't allow myself to, you know, like because I go into the. So the first thing I do is I get up and I wash my face, brush my teeth. I don't change clothes because then I become active. I go get a cup of coffee. And you pray in your PJs. I do. And it's glorious. OK. And and I go get a cup of coffee. And then I go to my my sacred space, which has, you know, icons, icons or statues that are very dear and precious to me. Candles, some, some. I yeah, I have some candles that I light. It's not 300 and I have a specific spot in our bedroom in the corner that I use as our sacred space. And and it's a it's a place of love for me because everything that's there has been chosen out of an act of love and devotion. So, you know, I have this beautiful space and this very quiet place. I also one of the things that is huge for me is I pray in the dark. So I want to keep your thought. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke with Divine Intimacy Radio. We're talking about how to stay focused in prayer. And Stephanie, you know, dealing with out of control thoughts as we're entering into prayer, Stephanie's describing her morning routine that helps to mitigate that. So you you as I interrupted you, you said you were praying, you pray in the dark. How do you read? Well, I have a little nightlight. So so if I need, if I need to see a particular prayer, I will, you know, turn on the night light and then I'll turn it off. But really, it's me and complete darkness and a candle or two. And that is it. And, you know, I've been at this so long that so many of my prayers are memorized by God's grace. You know, he's allowed me to memorize those. So I enter into prayer, I invoke the Holy Spirit. I enter into prayer and I stay in that silence and in the darkness as well. So it's it's not only auditory silence, but it's also visual silence, as it were. Except for your holy space, right? So if I open my eyes, my eyes are drawn to a beautiful Madonna or they're they're drawn to a crucifix that, you know, I got that I just think is beautiful. So it's it's very quiet. Everything about it is quiet. I also don't have conversations with you. You know, I purposefully don't go and start chattering and I don't talk about the day. None of that. It is me and Jesus. I'm up, ready, coffee, you know, light my candle, sit down. I'm down for the count for, you know, whatever amount of time that I have, and it's just me and him and our lady. That's awesome. So we both do sacred time, exact same time every day, sacred space and sacred attention. Sacred attention. And I want to add one more thing. I always invoke the Holy Spirit. And if I'm having a hard time, like if my brain is overly active or I find that I'm having disturbing or distracting thoughts, then what I do is I immediately go to my spiritual warfare prayers and pray those right after I invoke the Holy Spirit, the Agilium Christian or Agilium Christianorum. And I also use the perimeter prayer from the Deliverance Prayers for the Laity. And it's a game changer. I will tell you for the ladies published by Father Ripper. Right. The only place you can get it is at his website. We'll put a link for that. Yeah. But the perimeter prayer and the Agilium prayer doing that, it just kind of pushes back the darkness so that if any of it is nefarious because it's from the Minions, then, you know, it's going to keep it out. So it's really helpful to me. And our prayer book and the possibly via community prayer book, it also has a great prayer that I like to use, which is Jesus dispel the darkness around me. Jesus dispel the distractions within me. Jesus, draw my heart and mine to you. Yeah. Which is a great spiritual warfare prayer. If you want to take a free course on mental prayer and gain some more wisdom on this directly and a little more in depth, head out to apostoliva.org. A P O S T O L I V I A E dot a work. And there's a bunch of free courses out there. You can also take there's a course at the Aval Institute. Called Foundations of Prayer. And you knew with God that I teach on all of this as well on how to deepen your your prayer life. So, yeah, it's I think these practices have kept me really sane. I do also do the weather. One that you do that I do is intermittently in the dark, you know, and I have a little I have a lamp that I use for my opening prayers that I don't have I don't memorize as well as you do. And then if I'm going to do any spiritual reading, I have a little amber lamp that's not glowing and waking, you know, getting me to to a wake that's helpful as well. Yeah. OK, cool. Great. So we get back from the break. We're going to continue to talk about prayer. We're going to specifically answer the question. Scripture speaks of prayer without ceasing. How is this possible? How do I how do I get to this prayer without ceasing? It's not an easy thing to do. And there are some secrets, I think, that we can share that in some way involve what we've already talked talked about. But after the break, when we get back, divine will be back with Divine Intimacy Radio. Make sure you go out to spiritualdirection.com to get thousands of articles on the interior life video as well. And audio, all of our shows are out there. All of the books that we have written or whatever are out there. Thousands and thousands and thousands of blog posts, articles. Great stuff. Awesome material, honestly. So we'll be right back. You want to talk about the. Sure, before we jump back in a couple of things that we want to tell you about the summit for summer of 2022, the Abola Summit. It's called Spiritual Warfare and Discernment of Spirits July 15th through the 17th in Washington, D.C. Yes, we're going deep into the heart of darkness in order to have a conference on spiritual warfare and discernment of spirits. Our speakers are Bishop Strickland, Father Dennis McManus. If you've been to one of ours before that were Father McManus spoke before, he'll just blow your socks off. He's awesome. Monsignor Stephen Rosetti. You know, can I just say something? Father McManus and I have heard a lot of great speakers and good speakers. He is by far the best speaker I've ever heard. Yeah, he's wonderful. Yeah, amazing. The nominal. And he helped to construct. He helped to make do some repairs, I think, on the modern rite of exorcism under Pope Benedict. Yeah, he's responsible for that addition. Monsignor Stephen Rosetti, which a lot of people will recognize as the author of The Diary of an American Exorcist, a phenomenal book. And Kathleen Beckman, our dear friend, Kathleen. And then yours, Julie, you and I are also going to be talking about spiritual warfare in marriage, which, of course, never happens. Right. So we do not have very many tickets left. So please do not hesitate. Don't don't linger. Get those tickets. Talk to your friends about coming. It's going to be amazing. We always make sure that we feed you well. It's going to be phenomenal to get together for this. What's cool about it is you get to hang out with the best people on the planet on the planet. I mean, honestly, you could flip the lights out and this room is going to glow. People become friends and it's wonderful. It's it's incredible downpouring of grace. OK, a couple of upcoming are we filled up for Israel, by the way? We are filled for Israel. If there's any seats left, it's one. It's one seat, maybe there could be. Yeah. And I mean, people always kind of fall off at the last minute. So I would reach out to them, which is kind of canter, berry pilgrimages, but they should go to spiritualdirection.com forward slash events. They'll see the itinerary there. They'll see all the info there. And we're leaving May 30th. Awesome gift for your spouse, by the way. Yeah, not to prolong this because we're going to do renew a wedding vows at Cana. Yeah, I mean, it's really going to be phenomenal. Yeah. And we only take one bus. So because we want it that way. Yeah, we want it to be intimate. And we don't want to spend all our time in bathrooms and restaurants. OK, so a course coming up at Avila Institute, the mass in the Old Testament approaching the Lord in fear and trembling as we ought. That's going to be taught by Dr. Robert Gotcher and you want to check that out. That's in the School of Spiritual Formation. And then in our graduate program, an upcoming course by Dr. David Arias, a wonderful holy man. And that is introduction to spiritual theology. So you don't want to miss that either. So head out to avila-institute.org. It will change your life. OK, and your markets that go. Welcome back to Divine Intimacy Radio. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke. We're talking about difficulties and distractions and prayer. And the next question we had is how. The scripture speaks of prayer without ceasing. How is this possible? So if you, you know, it's it's noted by Jesus to pray without ceasing and also by Saint Paul. But I think for a lot of people, prayer without ceasing is like how that I, you know, I don't even pray well as it is. And what are you doing? Are you talking all the time and in that sort of thing? Before the break, we talked about some secrets to dealing with distractions and how you can move into your morning prayer life, prayer time without mid by mitigating distractions. There's some secrets in that. So foundationally, if you do not have a set time for prayer every day where you practice mental prayer, if you don't know what that is, go take the course at Apostle V. A. A lot of that first. A lot of people don't know what that is into the deep. My book also covers that, but that's the most important kind of prayer because that's the prayer that draws you closest to Jesus. The rosaries up there, too. And of course, you should pray the rosary every day. People always want to make sure I say that. And I do. And we do pray the rosary every day. But daily mental prayer is the most important kind of prayer outside of the mass for the lady and I think for priests and religious. So as you practice that, especially mental prayer, what will normally happen is it will bleed out and affect your life as a whole. I mean, St. Alphonse's agree, we just brought a wonderful book back into print by him called Prayer, A Great Means of Salvation. And you can get that at EWTN Religious Catalog and spiritualdirection.com forward slash shop. And in that, he notes that, you know, if we don't practice mental prayer, we won't see our defects. We don't even care about them. We'll be blind to who we are. No self knowledge. You know, we won't have the virtues rising up in us, sin, decreasing all of that. So when all of that occurs, of course, it is normal to become more aware of God and more present to God in our life in general. And so you've been doing mental prayer since 2005, six, seven? Probably 2006 as well. Right. Yeah. Somewhere in there when we started in spiritual direction together before we got married. And so, yeah, it's it has transformed my life. It has transformed me. It has transformed our marriage. It's transformed our relationship with our children, with our family members. I can't even tell you all the effects of just making the decision to walk with the Lord and get to know him. Right. Yeah. It's such a beautiful grace. And one of the things and I, you know, I haven't read this anywhere, but I'm telling you, I've seen it over and over and over again through all of my directives, through these, I don't know, how many years, 17 years or 15 years or whatever. My math is terrible this morning. I have watched this happen in person after person when an individual decides to undertake mental prayer to draw near to the Lord and believe that the Lord will draw near to them, which is a scriptural promise. I have watched them be transformed and then watched their relationships be transformed and grace be set off in and around them in crazy ways, crazy ways that they would not think possible. Yeah. It is mystical. It's true when we draw near to the Lord and he purifies us and heals us and draws him to our self to himself. Then he sets loose graces in and through us. To those around us, it's beautiful. So perfect foundation for. How do I pray without ceasing is to begin every day with a specific time you set aside for prayer and specifically for mental prayer. OK, and then I described why it's so important, right, you know, the effects of it, right? So one of the ways that I practice praying without ceasing is I ask because that's a grace. You know, it's not something that I can will myself to do because there's a million distractions, a million voices in my life. What do you mean by you ask? What does that mean? I actually ask the Lord as I rise from prayer for that. Please allow me the grace to abide in you and to stay with you. Stay with me, Lord, and allow me to stay with you as I go throughout my day. And so how does that end up playing out? Well, for one thing, the things that I can do that are within my control that I've done specifically over the years is I've gotten rid of the noise in my life. Yeah, there was a time in my life the TV was on 24 seven. It was some news program, whatever, right, something constantly going. I no longer have a TV running in the background. I have music on occasion, but it's music that draws me to worship or or or it's to draws me to worship, you know, to sing because I'm I used to be a vocalist. So, you know, it'll draw my heart to pray that way. It'll draw my heart to a stillness with if it's in chant or it's just silence and it's an interior dialogue. And I find that the prayers of my morning are offering are often echoing in my mind. And I I believe that that's a grace. You know, when we talk about going into prayer and that it spills out into our day, I believe that the Holy Spirit prays within us. And you just said something really beautiful and powerful. The prayers of the morning echo in your mind. Right. And that's that's really awesome. The other thing we do and I don't I want you to keep going if you have more, but I want to make sure, you know, is that we pray the liturgy of the hour. So every day, for instance, at another portion of the day and at noon, we come together as an avalanche, the staff of the Aval Institute who are local and then we zoom people in and then we do noon prayer, midday prayer, basically. And of course, depending on the season, we'll sing the Regina Chaley or we'll do the Angelus together, that sort of thing. So we interspersed formal prayers at at three, three different, at least three different parts of the day, formal prayers. So that also helps to push out little extensions from those. And did you want to add anything? So I want to make sure I get one more in, I think. No, I think that's that's it. It's what I find is when I go into deep, deeply into mental prayer and I ask the Lord to stay with me, that he honors that request. Right. And so then I find myself drawn back into prayer or or I'll hear a hymn or I'll hear the court, you know, the line of a of a song that always draws my heart and mind. That's why and I and I'll say this, if we want to abide in the Lord, be very careful what you subject yourself to. What kind of content you put in your head? Yes. And what and what you listen to, what you see down to the minutia. If you want to abide in the Lord, you need to purify your senses. And the way to purify your senses is to get rid of it and to guard yourself from it, because I can tell you that the more you go into prayer and you allow yourself to be subjected to some of these things, even mundane or even not trying to do anything wrong, you see something and it ends up showing up in your prayer and you're like, what? What? You know, why am I focusing on that? It has nothing to do with the Lord. Lord, I'm sorry. Blessed Mother, take this out of my memory and allow me to stay with the Lord in that supplication to our Lady to come in and purify and to help me stay centered on the Lord is always a great help as well. So this is not just about strength of the will. It's also about supplicating our Lord and our Lady to help you in your desires to stay with them. So the last one I think we have time for, I may maybe we'll get to. And one that I think is really important that I want to say is that when you practice daily mental prayer and that's a norm after a time, it does naturally spill out into your day. But you can purposefully do something that will help it to spill out. There's two things you can do. One is if the Lord reveals anything in prayer, make sure you or you have any graces, Saint Francis the sales talked about taking a nosegay, which is a strange old word, but it's basically a tough fit of flowers or a little group of flowers from your prayer out into the day, meaning if he moves and he reveals something to you, keep it on your mind and think about it all day. The other thing is, is something we talked about on the on the first half of the show, which is leveraging the wisdom of the Christian East. They used the Jesus prayer where they talk about Jesus, Son of God of Mercy on me a sinner saying that over and over. That's one version of the Jesus prayer. But I do that using the Saint Alphonse, the curry phrase, I love you Jesus, my love, Grant, that I might love you always and do with me as you will. And so I try to constantly say that or pray that throughout the day, especially when I'm on the tractor or on the lawn mower here at the retreat center. I was just saying it over and over. And then as I will do a new task, offering up that task as an act of love to God, because he's given us stewardship over these things and graced us with these things. And so now we're caring for them. Or we can do our jobs that he's given us to care for our families and take care of our needs and offer that up for him. And so my goal by the time I'm ready to leave this earth is that phrase will be endlessly in my heart and mind or on my lips all day, every day outside of formal times of prayer. And what is it? I love you, Jesus, my love, Grant, that I might love you always and do with me as you will. Yeah, yeah. Saint Alphonse, the sacred station to the cross. Well, if you are moved by these things and you're wondering, what is this mental prayer that you're talking about? Because it's not gimme prayer. It's not, it's not supplication. It's not Lord, do this, Lord, fix that. Lord, remove this problem. Lord, solve this issue. It's about being intimate with Jesus. About knowing him. As he said, we must in order to get the heaven in scripture. If you want to learn about that, we have free courses and formal courses free in. So free informal. You can find out at apostoleva.org on prayer, the, in other aspects of the interior life. And then if you want formal live online courses, you can get those at the Avala Institute. And I teach a number of courses, Foundations of Prayer and Union with God and Discernment of Spirits. But also we have amazing professors from all different walks of the Catholic Holy Sphere, right? Right. That are teaching courses every day, just about at the Avala Institute. We have about 400 students a quarter. No, we have almost 700 students a quarter. Thank you. Yeah. So we have a lot of students and 90 countries. So it doesn't matter where you are, you can get the formation you need. We have priests, God be praised, religious, laity. We, we do, and they study side by side. We, we also do formation for priests in at least 37 dioceses. So if you want to join in this holy clan of, of formation that really is endless, check out the resources we provide apostoleva.org, abaladashinstitute.org, spiritualdirection.com. Our whole life is oriented to providing you with what you need to get to heaven and to help others do the same. And to get us there, please, Jesus. Well, that's how we get there, right? It's helping other people. I hope so. So we hope you'll, you'll check those. By his grace. Okay. Well, 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. Amen. So we want to let folks know to join us on spiritualdirection.com. On Facebook. On Facebook. We're going to be jumping over there to do a second show on Q&A. Yep. Very good. We'll see you there.