 to obviously maging. Hey friends, this is Dan Burke. You're watching Behind the Scenes, Divine Intimacy Radio. I wanna make sure you know about two new courses before we jump into the show on evangelization in difficult times. We have two new courses that are important. Why All People Suffer by Dr. Paul Shalu will discuss why all people suffer using his book of the same title published by Sophia. You need to apply by October 25th, 2021. And it'll be Monday nights will be the time that the course is taught. So suffering is a very difficult topic and if you take this course you're gonna come to know that he doesn't speak merely out of theory but you will see his suffering as he teaches the course. And so it's deeply personal and powerful. The second course that's important is Masterpiece of the Divine Artist. So it's gonna explore the concept of beauty and sanctity presented in Edis Stein or St. Teresa Benedict of the Cross. Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell is an extraordinary professor. And I, you know, she's one of those people I could just listen to probably read the phone book and really find it interesting. But the depth of her teaching and the power of it comes through a life of prayer herself. So you've got to apply by November 5th to get into this course. Both of them are School of Spiritual Formation which means they're designed for busy people. So they're not shallow in any way but the assignments are light. So check those out at avala-institute.org, avala-institute.org. And of course for anything, you know, if you're looking to go deeper in the faith that's the place to go. All right, let's go ahead and head into the show and we'll go on your mark. Get set, go. This is Dan Burke. Welcome to Divine Intimacy Radio, your Radio Haven of Rest. Usually Stephanie says, your hermitage of the heart. And then I respond, your monastery of the mind where we lift our hearts and minds to heaven to draw from the wisdom of the saints and teaching of the church to help us to navigate this very challenging life, navigated all the way to heaven and eternal bliss with the bless of trinity. Stephanie's not here, but I do have a guest who I, you know, we've not spend, have we ever met Dave like physically present? I don't think so. I think it's been by phone and, you know, a video. But I just feel like your brother. I mean, I just feel like we're, you know, it's funny, we come out of different traditions in the church, you know, but our hearts are really, probably have different liturgical sensibilities, but our hearts are very aligned in terms of evangelism and sharing the love of God. And I see, you know, one of the reasons I believe in Christ's life and folks, you could find out more about what we're talking about today at Christlike.org. One of the reasons I believe in Christ's life is because I believe in you. I think my sense is that you're a man who's deeply converted, deeply in love with Jesus. You've given your whole life to serving the church. And that to me is the beginning of what it means to have a holy apostolate and something that really is gonna be substantive and meaningful in the church. That's right. I believe that too. I mean, it's the life of the saints. It is. We see in our tradition. Yeah. So we're on part two. The part one, of course, can be found out at once it goes live at spiritualdirection.com on evangelization in difficult times. And during the first part, we just talked about evangelization in general and the challenges in the church and different programs. Christ's life is the best program. I will just say that. And I will state it on my reputation. It is the best. And if you're considering a program for your parish and I'm not condemning anyone who's done anything else, but look, if you've used Alpha before I would just say great and I'll step up to a better program and Alpha could be a good groundwork in your parish but let's move to something that's gonna help even more to really do evangelization and that is Christ's life. So Dave, I really think for every priest listening that Christ's life should be a, and forgive me to speak to priests like this because who am I to tell a priest what to do? I spent most of my time focused on helping the laity but we do priestly formation. We have 80 guys in our program now helping them to get their feet wet and seminary life. So we do do priestly formation but I just think Christ's life belongs in every single parish in the known universe. And I'm assuming Catholic faith is spread throughout all other life forms in the entire community. So the program you can find out more at Christlife.org but during the first show we talked about one of the modules Dave, which is Discovering Christ and Dave is the founder of Christ's life and you can go to the first show to get more of his bio or go out to Christ's life but I just wanna focus on the content today Dave. So let's talk about the second module Discovering Christ is introducing people to who he is how we need to respond to that reality. Now let's go to Following Christ which is another six week module. Tell us about what folks will find in that. You know, in our tradition, when you look at the saints lives and what they did they were about a lifestyle of union with God and the trouble in a lot of times for us is there may be some kind of retreat or some kind of course that helps bring people to a deeper level of conversion, deeper level of personal commitment to Christ as Lord. However, that's another point of conversion of moving onward with the Lord and so Jesus called us to follow him and what that means is a lifestyle. So oftentimes Catholics have this limited liturgical limited liturgical mentality of church is just going to church on Sunday and that's supposed to be with the Eucharist the source and summit of our faith which means there's more to it before we get to the source and summit that ought to be happening in a daily life. So we wanna present after presenting the gospel for renewal, reversion, conversion for people in discovering Christ we wanna bring them into basics of following Jesus as disciple. So things about daily personal prayer, reading scripture on a daily basis the importance of the sacraments is essential means of grace learning to forgive one another. I can tell you stories for all of you and Dan just unbelievable when people understand Jesus commands us to forgive others. We talk about the enemies of the Christian the world, the flesh and the devil. We talk about the importance of going on in Christ of this daily lifestyle and so on. So it's seven talks, teachings, seven sessions as well as a day retreat. And once again, the responses of people saying I've never heard this and then they're starting to have a daily personal prayer life they're starting to read scripture in a disciplined manner. They're learning the importance of the sacraments that the Eucharist is the real presence things that we can presume happen. But they don't. They don't, but they don't. The data says they don't. And can I give you a weird story, Dave? So we were leading Christ's life in our parish and there's this atheist woman. I noticed that she was an atheist and she became Protestant and ended up in the Catholic church. She went through our CIA in an Orthodox, our CIA program. So we're in the program. She's an engineer or something very intelligent woman taking copious notes all through discovering Christ. We get into following Christ and she's at my table and she goes like, she's writing her notes. She's often kind of bent over writing her notes and she goes like this and she leaves back and she said, and I said, what happened? What's going on? She said, it just all clicked for me. She just said, God loves me like me personally. Me, right? He gave his life for me. She said, I was an atheist. I became a Protestant. It's funny because we hear this about the Catholic church. She said, I never heard the message. Never heard that. I never got that. I get it. Everything just clicked for me. Yeah. So you sort of expect that in. But here's an important thing you said, Dan. There has to be, for our leaders, clergy, religious, staff, laity, there has to be a shift in our paradigm of thinking of programmatic plug and play. What we need, the church needs to become a community, a relational community of brothers and sisters in Christ who support one another in living holy lives and are on mission together. And holiness and mission will not happen unless we have brothers and sisters in Christ where we really are sharing our lives. So the whole three courses are one relational process. It's not a program. Okay, we did that. Now we're gonna do this. But it's a core curriculum that's repeated regularly as a means of beginning to help people become missionary disciples in the context of community, of being, and so when you mentioned this lady, you're talking to her directly. And the small groups after the teaching, it's not just a teaching. It's not just didactic teaching. One of the most important parts of it is relationships in these small groups that continue to grow. But then they're at mass and they're going, oh my goodness, I've been saying, peace be with you for 20 years to this guy. I have no idea his name and all these people because as it continues, more and more people have, the culture is changing in terms of community. So following Christ is saying, here's some basic disciplines. You know, it's the school of prayer that we're called to as a parish. It's like basics of like, how do I follow Jesus in the context of community, of relationships in him in this parish? Amen, amen, I love that. And I, you know, we have lost a community because of the dissolution of Catholic culture. So following Christ, discovering Christ is really bringing us to a realization that like in the Gospels, when Jesus encountered people, we have to actually make a decision. And it's not just coming to mass is not, is actually can be even a failure to say yes to God because we're doing it our own way, right? So this really helps break through, even though, you know, I had a woman one time, I was doing my retreat on into the deep. And she came up afterwards and she said, she was in her 60s and she was just beaming. She said, if you said, you know, I've been a Catholic all my life and I'm just now getting it. She said, I've sort of hidden in Catholic activity. I've been, you know, an alter-sodality member and I volunteered every week for the church as far as I can remember. But she said, I never knew Jesus. And I've known priests. I know two priests who are friends, one diocesan, one religious, who both told me they never came to a truly life-changing encounter with Christ until around six years into both of their priestly ministry. Yeah, yeah. Which is crazy, right? But it's because we have not heard the karygma and I'll say this too. So discovery Christ really lays that out. But then following Christ also, Dave. Yes. Brings alive what it means to be an authentic disciple. So if you say yes to discipleship, it has to be yes to the person in work of Jesus as it relates to who you are and who God is and how that's all resolved, right? Yes. Authentic discipleship, as St. James says, if you say you have faith and you don't live it out in love, then I'm gonna tell you you have no faith. I mean, just to paraphrase James. But he says, if you show me that you're living out authentic discipleship, then I can say, okay, yes, your faith is real. And following Christ is a, I would say a foundational introduction, not shallow to what it means to be an authentic disciple of Jesus. That's right. That's right. All right, so we have to go to a break. Make sure you go out to chrislife.org and check out this great work. I promise you, if you implement it in your parish, it will transform your parish. If you follow, I will say this, if you follow their framework, a lot of people, I shouldn't say a lot of people, sometimes people like to cut corners and not exactly do it the way they say. And I would just ask, I would, as a user of the program, I would say, please don't do that. It's designed out of wisdom, of years and years of formulating what works best. So when we get back from the break, we'll continue our conversation with Dave Notar, not Dadar, Dave Notar, the founder of chrislife, chrislife.org, and this life-changing program. We'll be right back. Okay, perfect. This is going exactly the way I wanted it to. Good, good deal. All right. On your mark, get set, go. This is Dan Burke. Welcome back to Divine Intimacy Radio, your radio haven of rest. And I'm with Dave Notar, the founder of chrislife, the best, bar none, the best evangelization program. I would call it the central curriculum, the central program of any parish. I mean, you can have a lot of other good programs, of course, that reach out to people who've been through abortion or divorced. There's a lot of needs out there, but I would say there's no greater need. And I can say this with full force, with the churching of the churching, the teaching of the church behind me, that there is no greater need, that if you don't get who Jesus is, and you don't understand what authentic discipleship is, everything else is really a waste of time. So what we need is converted Catholics. And I say that as a traditionalist, in keeping with longstanding tradition, we need converted Catholics, so that when they encounter all these other things and programs and the Eucharist and everything that they need to encounter, they do so actually understanding what they're doing, what the heck they're doing. So chrislife is, I think, the best program to lay that foundation in a parish. And we're with Dave in talking through each of the modules, Discovering Christ is a six-week program, following Christ six weeks. Helps to build community in the parish, helps to, and the evangelization begins in the parish. The first session involves, at least in my way, we did it, the parish itself, and then sharing Christ. So that's the third module I wanna talk about now, Dave. Tell us about sharing Christ and how it corresponds to the other two modules. Well, let me start with a quote from Saint John Paul in Mission of the Redeemer, which was written back in 1990, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He listened to this. He said, the moment has come to commit all of the church's energies to a new evangelization and mission agendas, mission to the nations. Then he goes on and says, no believer in Christ, no institution of the church can avoid this supreme duty to proclaim Christ to all peoples. And it's incredible. Are we committing, personally, all of my energies to the proclamation of the gospel and how I live my life, the witness of my life, when I have opportunities to tell others. Are our institutions, chanceries, perishes, are we focused on this? And this has been a very difficult year with all that's gone on, with COVID. And I know in a number of archdioceses, it's easy to get your eye off the primary mission, worrying about merging perishes, lack of finances. But this is the essential mission. And if we focus on sharing Christ, on evangelization, everything follows. It's essentially seeking first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added to us. So we're to give our energies to this new evangelization. We felt like not only do people need to hear clearly the gospel presented and the call for response from all of us, whether we're faithful Catholics, all of our lives, unbaptized, dropped out, whatever. Then some basics about discipleship to get us going, understanding this is what it means, a lifestyle. And then on to what does it mean for me and for the parish to share Christ? How do we reach out? First in the pews, but then also beyond the pews. And so we wanted to give some practicals and principles of how you tell others this good news of what God has done for us in his son, Jesus. And it's just basic practical teaching that's in the tradition of our church. It's clearly in the scriptures. And we can talk about it from personal illustrations that we've had, those who are teaching the course of how wonderful it is to be able to do this. And we need help, we need help in this area. We think, oh, we're Catholic, we're liturgical, we're hierarchical, Protestants are the ones who do this. No, as one retired bishop friend of mine would say, they've stolen our thunder. This is for all Christians, the proclamation of Christ. And you see that in that quote that I mentioned from John Paul, no one can avoid the supreme duty of proclaiming Christ to all people. Yeah, I think in just speaking for the traditionalist realm, we can get pretty fat and happy in our beautiful liturgies and get very insular. And look, if you're not sharing Jesus, can I just say this to you really directly? Not you, Dave, but our audience. If you're not regularly saying to people, hey, how's your relationship with God? Or can you come to church or hear something to read or whatever, you're not actually following Christ. You look at the, if the beginning church acted that way. I mean, why did all the disciples, except for John or the apostles, except for John, why were they all crucified? Why were they all murdered? Why did all of their followers get martyred pretty much? It's because they were out, out of, so they did meet and they did gather and they did have the Eucharist as we understand it now and they did have a hierarchy as we understand it now. And of course, things have developed in a certain sense, but the reason they were martyred is because they went out. Yes, yes. I mean, there's no greater witness to the reality that they understood. And they had an urgency day. That's right. Let me tell you a story, Dan. This guy up outside of Pittsburgh in the diocese there, elder gentleman, I can say that as an older man. He was in his mid-70s. He said, he goes through discovering Christ. He says, in faithful Catholic, never heard this. So he's made this commitment, come into this deeper encounter with Christ and the Father in the Holy Spirit goes through following Christ. Oh my goodness. I'm having a daily prayer time, all these things open up to him. Then sharing Christ. And he says, they're gonna start the new discovery, the next series, the core curriculum. They're gonna start over with discovering Christ in January. His wife asks him to go shopping for Christmas gifts. And he's thinking, oh God, the mandate has been made. So he goes and he's sitting on the bench where all the guys sit while she does the shopping. Yeah, the man chair. The man chair. And so this woman comes up to him, walks by and they recognize each other. She starts, he knows her. And so he starts talking. She's having some difficulties. He shares what's happened to him and says, listen, we have this talk, this course on the meaning of life and about how to follow Jesus. Would you come with me? And then a second time he goes back to the man chair. He's sitting there and another guy comes up to him. He starts talking with him, same thing. Guy's going through some things in his life. He says, I am a Catholic all my life. I've never evangelized anybody now because of this joy of knowing Christ personally, even though I've been faithful all my life to the Catholic church. Now this joy prompts me. And with the help of some basics about how to do it, here he is, inviting two different people to come to the next Discovering Christ course. That's awesome. Wait, wait, Dave, you mean they don't have to have a PhD in theology and to do that? That's an important point because a lot of us think I don't have a theology degree. This is talking about your personal life. It's for me, it's always Jesus has changed my life and he can change yours regardless of where you are coming from. There's so much more for all of us. My friend, Steve, who founded St. Paul's Street of Evangelization, says that if you can stand around and preach theology and abstract all you want, it's not gonna bring people to Christ. He says, what you do the most powerful way is, you can say to people, God loves you and they go, yeah, I know. But if you say, can I just tell you my story? Yes, yes. I was going to hell and my own story is I was in despair and I was considering suicide and cried out to the Lord and said, give me a reason to live. I can't think of one, but I just have a sense that maybe if I ask, you'll tell me and he did, he showed me and the reason of course is Jesus. Listen, I'll say this to our audience. If you are, here's how you know whether or not you've had an authentic life changing encounter with Jesus. And that is if you are changing and the world is changing around you. And if you wanna know the test, go ask somebody who knows you the best and say, have I gotten holier in the last year? Have I, do I love you better more? Do I love others better more? Do I love God better more? And if they say no, I just have to tell you you're in trouble. It's a fact. Go read and meditate on Matthew seven because Jesus says, you can do all these good things, but if you don't know me and that word no, I'd like to repeat this a lot, but it's true. It was a powerful discovery for me. The word no, and Jesus says, depart from me, I don't know you or I never knew you. He said that in Luke, I don't know who you are. And in Matthew, he said, I don't know you. I never knew you. The word new or no is the same word that the Jews use to translate where in the Greek translation of the Hebrew of Genesis where it says Adam knew Eve. It's not sexual fundamentally in this context. It's relational. And the fact is that for us to get to heaven, we can do a lot of things in an empty, shallow way. We can follow it. We can be in the most highly liturgical, traditional Latin mass community and go every Sunday and every day. And I will say to you, if you can do all of that and still go to hell, the way you accomplish that is because if you do it without a recognition of who Jesus truly is, without a recognition that you doing all of that is not what saves you. Jesus saves you. Those are the means, but you have to know the heart, the one who gave you the means, who paid for the means. I don't know, Dave. What are your last thoughts? Christlife.org. Look at the priest faithful, tell your priest, go do it. You can do it online. All the COVID you see should not stop you. Dave has made a shift in their ministry because of COVID and there's nothing in the way of you doing this in your parish, except just agreeing to Dave last words. Yeah, we're happy to serve at the diocesan and parish levels in terms of the training because this is so different to do something like this. So we really encourage you to get the training. You can find out more as Dan mentioned at Christlife.org. We're happy to serve the church. That's our mission to equip it, to really be able to pursue the mission that Jesus has given us from the beginning. Hey listen, one last thing, Dan. Yeah. Who are challenged by what Dan said or some of the things I've said, there's so much more for all of us. God wants to draw you into deeper union with himself through what Christ has done. And if you're sort of shook or you're thinking like, I don't know if I'm there, you can just get alone with the Lord and tell him Jesus. Help me. Help me. He's there for you. Amen, amen. All right, folks. 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. All righty.