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Divine Intimacy Radio - Entering into Adoration · The Quest Atlanta Catholic Radio

• 0:01
  Welcome to Divine Intimacy Radio, a co-production of EWTN Radio and SpiritualDirection.com, where we provide you with a spiritual haven of rest and explore the riches of the wisdom of the saints and the path to union with God.
• 0:20
  This is Dan and Stephanie Burke.
• 0:21
  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 to draw upon the wisdom of the saints to navigate the tumult of this difficult life.
• 0:35
  Now, before we set up the show, I said, I'm not going to tell you what we're going to talk about for the show.
• 0:42
  And she said, I'm going to talk about the
• 0:43
  I said, but you'll like it.
• 0:44
  And she says, you don't know what I like.
• 0:46
  So this is like the secret episode or the, you know, whatever.
• 0:51
  We've only been married for going on about 20 years.
• 0:54
  You don't know what I like.
• 0:55
  That was an interesting, sad comment.
• 0:59
  Well, you do, but like, I don't know, you know, going into a podcast, I'd kind of like to know what we're talking about.
• 1:06
  I don't know.
• 1:07
  Let's wing it.
• 1:07
  Let's go ahead.
• 1:08
  Well, obviously a huge portion of this show is about the interior life.
• 1:13
  But I want to talk about adoration and a question of should, and I've had this question before and I, and there's, you know, the reason why I'm bringing up right now when I'm trying to pray in adoration, should I use music, worship music to help me to pray?
• 1:33
  So is it praise and worship or no praise and worship verse?
• 1:36
  I mean, are we verse it's the verses, right?
• 1:38
  It doesn't have to be.
• 1:39
  I mean, it's just, is it, is it, you know, obviously if you shouldn't, if you're in a public or if you're in a, you're in a context wherein you're not in charge of the situation and you have no ear pods.
• 1:54
  Yeah.
• 1:54
  Don't put your phone away.
• 1:58
  So I'm going to quote Teresa of Avila.
• 2:01
  Oh, Oh,
• 2:03
  So are you ready?
• 2:04
  Yeah, we'll see if it's right.
• 2:05
  We get producer, could you get ready to look this quote up?
• 2:08
  I'm just paraphrasing here.
• 2:10
  But she says, you should do whatever brings you to love.
• 2:14
  Well, so what, I like eating donuts.
• 2:17
  That's not love.
• 2:18
  That's gluttony here.
• 2:20
  That's gluttony.
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  That's not love.
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  So the sugar rush is not love.
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  Do whatever brings you to do whatever brings you to do whatever leads you to love.
• 2:28
  Whatever leads you to love.
• 2:30
  So we had a beautiful experience.
• 2:34
  We have a priest here on retreat.
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  We have community.
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  And we did kind of a mixture of both.
• 2:41
  We would do a little bit of praise and worship.
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  And very beautiful.
• 2:47
  And then long periods of silence back and forth.
• 2:51
  Right?
• 2:52
  Yeah, so the general question is, is it good to use praise and worship music as part of your prayer?
• 2:58
  That's a good one that we can address.
• 3:01
  But it will start with adoration.
• 3:04
  But yeah, it was honestly beautiful last night.
• 3:08
  Yeah.
• 3:09
  I mean, I watched you get a little wrecked.
• 3:13
  Yeah.
• 3:13
  You know, over some really beautiful, beautiful music.
• 3:16
  And right.
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  And it's interesting.
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  I mean, the Holy Spirit groans within us.
• 3:21
  Mm hmm.
• 3:23
  when we don't know how to pray, but sometimes the Lord has gifted.
• 3:29
  And many times the Lord has gifted very talented musicians with, first of all, a beautiful voice.
• 3:37
  He's given us instruments.
• 3:39
  I think of David dancing, you know, before the tabernacle, the Ark of the Covenant as he came in.
• 3:47
  praising God.
• 3:48
  I think of Judah meaning praise and they always led the battle for the tribes of Israel.
• 3:57
  There's power in praise.
• 3:58
  In fact, this morning I was listening to a retreat by Father Jacques Philippe.
• 4:04
  Everybody knows him as a spiritual master.
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  If you haven't read his stuff, please do.
• 4:09
  It was wonderful.
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  What he said to me solidified what happened last night for you, what happened for me, because my heart often burns when I listen to music in adoration.
• 4:22
  And I do the back and forth thing.
• 4:23
  I don't do solid adoration, but I go back and forth.
• 4:28
  When I have the opportunity, you know, it doesn't happen very often, but when I have the opportunity, I like to go back and forth, which is for me, the most beautiful form of prayers being in adoration and engaging in mental prayer in adoration, adoring the Lord, praising him.
• 4:45
  And, and so father Jacques Philippe says that praise purifies the heart.
• 4:53
  Praise purifies the heart.
• 4:55
  It was very interesting because we had that, we spent about an hour in adoration singing some incredible music.
• 5:03
  And then listening and silence back and forth.
• 5:07
  I had a very tangible experience of the presence of God.
• 5:11
  Right.
• 5:11
  And,
• 5:13
  Beyond the intellectual, beyond my faith that says, I know that God is truly present, body, blood, soul, and divinity in the blessed sacrament.
• 5:24
  He, all of him is there, right?
• 5:27
  When I left adoration, he stayed with me.
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  That presence stayed with me.
• 5:32
  Yeah.
• 5:32
  Yeah.
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  And that was beautiful.
• 5:34
  That was beautiful.
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  It was palpable.
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  It was strong.
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  His presence was there.
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  And what did that serve to do, right?
• 5:43
  My heart was set on fire for love of the Lord.
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  That spills out onto others.
• 5:48
  You know, I'm led to thank him and to praise him.
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  I have a huge heart of gratitude.
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  Lord, thank you.
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  for this life.
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  Thank you for these ministries.
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  Thank you for all that you've given us.
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  Thank you for what you have done, what you are doing, what you will do.
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  Thank you for my marriage.
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  Thank you for my husband.
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  You know, thank you for my children.
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  Thank you, you know, on and on, right?
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  If, if listening to a little bit of music that draws my heart and mind through the gifts of another musician brings me to that, to greater unity with the Lord,
• 6:21
  That's a win.
• 6:22
  Yeah, I agree.
• 6:23
  I think I'll add some, you know, not contrasting perspective, but a little different angle at it.
• 6:32
  What, you know, for me, I think, I don't know if it's being a male.
• 6:37
  I don't know if it's coming out of abuse or what the thing is, but there is a, I have a,
• 6:46
  wall, maybe, is a partition between my emotions and my emotional life and my normal external life.
• 6:57
  So you develop that as a protective mechanism when you go through what I went through.
• 7:03
  And so it's taken me a long time to figure out how to manage that because I am an emotional person.
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  And in some ways that's why the wall is there because I got, you know, I had to be afraid it's going to spill out everywhere.
• 7:16
  Yeah.
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  It comes out in the wrong way.
• 7:19
  So that's been a process for me because the emotions of course are given to us by God.
• 7:25
  But in terms of adoration, I,
• 7:27
  The one thing to be careful with is, well, one, I think what happened last night was good.
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  It was, for me, the music, because you killed me because the first song you played is probably...
• 7:43
  my favorite song.
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  And it could have been written by the Apostle John, you know, himself.
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  I couldn't even repeat any of the lyrics here without a problem getting through it.
• 7:59
  But what it did was, is the lyrics are actually what I want to say to the Lord.
• 8:07
  But because I'm a man and because I'm a conqueror, if you will, because I'm a leader, because I'm a fixer, you know, that's how I'm wired.
• 8:18
  I suppress those that side of me because it just doesn't work very well outside of bromance to have those kinds of things come up.
• 8:27
  So what it, but, but I do, but I do those things I do feel, but what the song did was it, it took the wall down.
• 8:39
  Mm-hmm.
• 8:40
  And it put, it overwhelmed me in a sense in terms of, and it's obvious, it's very simple, beautiful piano, very peaceful, but it involves the greater aspects of your being.
• 8:54
  It's not just intellectual.
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  And it connected my heart to my mind, if you will.
• 9:00
  And then that drew me into worshiping the Lord.
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  And then from then on, it was, you know, pretty hard.
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  But then we would go to silence and,
• 9:10
  which then the silence is beautiful because what's happening in the silence is I'm repeating that language of love that was in that song.
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  Or you're resting in the consolation.
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  Sure.
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  You're resting in the outpouring of the Lord's love for you.
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  Sure.
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  And you rest and then it kind of lifts.
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  And it's a little bit like Lectio Divina.
• 9:32
  You know, it can be where you're reading scripture and the Lord breaks through and your emotions come up.
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  It brings you to tears.
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  It opens up a space where his grace is pouring out.
• 9:42
  And you rest in that until you go on.
• 9:45
  I mean, I can liken it to that, but.
• 9:47
  I think one of my difficulties with it, you know, in terms of why I might be, I'm not resistant at this stage, but why I have a, I don't know how to call it, a cautionary thing here is that.
• 10:02
  God isn't present because we feel he's present.
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  He's present.
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  God wasn't more present in that moment because you felt he was more present.
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  He just was.
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  What happened was you by your disposition or me by my disposition, by allowing the music to do what it did,
• 10:24
  allowed us to draw near to him who was already present.
• 10:29
  So that's, I deal a lot with error in spiritual life and error.
• 10:34
  And the number one problem with, you know, discernment in the interior, like for people who are more
• 10:44
  deeply oriented or the number one problem is I feel therefore and your feelings are, you can't trust them.
• 10:51
  So, but in that context, all it is, is love.
• 10:57
  Mm-hmm.
• 10:58
  So there's no, there's no, there's no downside.
• 11:03
  If you come out of that, wanting to praise the Lord more, wanting to love, wanting to, you know, I keep thinking about this prayer that St. John Paul II had that I came across, I think it was in his givenness work.
• 11:16
  But he said, Lord, he asked the Lord, make me translucent.
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  Make me translucent, Lord, so that only your light shines through.
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  Right.
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  That your love, your goodness, your light shines through me.
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  Right.
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  And we know that the eyes to the heart, the eyes to the soul, you know, you can look into somebody's eyes and see the light of Christ and sometimes see great darkness.
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  Right.
• 11:41
  So if we can praise the Lord and in that space, rest in our praise, let his love wash over us, receive him in the blessed sacrament, you know, give that love back to him in this beautiful exchange.
• 11:55
  Right.
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  Then praise be Jesus Christ.
• 11:59
  I agree.
• 11:59
  I agree with you.
• 12:01
  Yeah, so to put a button on it, I think what's beautiful and good is that it drew my heart to the Lord and to say what I wanted to say musically already.
• 12:17
  The other cool thing was, even this morning, those songs are resonating and they're all holy.
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  They didn't disturb my prayer, but even if they entered into my prayer this morning, there are recitations of things like, you know, Jesus is my healer or, you know, Hallelujah.
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  He has a beautiful, what a beautiful name it is, you know, for Jesus, you know, that sort of thing.
• 12:46
  And that's really good stuff to be rolling around in your head instead of fears and anxieties and worrying about all the junk that you have to worry about.
• 12:55
  So we get back from the break.
• 12:57
  I want to dig in a little deeper outside of the music idea, a little more, though, about the progressive nature of drawing to silence in prayer and adoration and music.
• 13:09
  OK, we'll be right back.
• 13:12
  The beautiful fact that no suffering is wasted, that all suffering has a purpose, and to wrestle with the idea, which is that everything that happens in our lives is either willed or permitted by God.
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  Okay, God, why would you permit these things?
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  I know that you're a good father and you're a loving father, so there's something there.
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  So I have to bridge this gap between your permission of my suffering to your love for me as a father.
• 13:43
  And Uniformity with God's Will, the book, by St. Alphonsus Liguori, bridges that gap.
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  And he explains as only he can, because he's such a hard hitter,
• 13:53
  The reality that these are all moments of growth, of virtue, of, Hey, your legs are weak, you're like a newborn deer.
• 14:04
  You can't stand on your own.
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  We need to get you to stay on your own.
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  Know those sorts of things.
• 14:08
  Even, even desolation, you know, the day to day kind of the ebbs and flows of the spiritual life.
• 14:14
  Those things are all permitted for a greater good, whatever that might be.
• 14:20
  Check out the brand new updated version of Uniformity with God's Will titled Finding Peace in the Storm with commentary by Dan Burke.
• 14:38
  This is Dan Stephanie Burke.
• 14:39
  Welcome back to Divine Intimacy Radio.
• 14:41
  We're talking about music and prayer.
• 14:45
  So back to the cautionary side.
• 14:48
  I've had this question of somebody asking, should I use music during mental prayer?
• 14:56
  And the answer is, I think I'm softening up on the yes to that.
• 15:01
  But what we have to be careful with is in both contexts, mental prayer and then also adoration is just because you feel good doesn't mean you're focused on God.
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  That's a big issue because some of these songs can be, they're just good music.
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  They're beautiful.
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  They're about good things.
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  But yeah.
• 15:24
  we can get wrapped up in, because that actually did happen to me last night.
• 15:30
  There were a few of the songs where it drew my attention to Jesus, and a few where I noticed I'm like, I'm just in the song.
• 15:40
  And so we have to be careful, just like with spiritual reading, as an example.
• 15:44
  If you use spiritual reading for mental prayer, that's fine.
• 15:48
  But if you allow the spiritual reading to become a focus, which means it becomes an intellectual exercise where you're going, well, I wonder, because this happened to me probably a thousand times.
• 16:01
  Well, I wonder where that happened in scripture.
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  Oh, I wonder, was this on this part of the Jordan River?
• 16:07
  You know, I've been to the Jordan River a few times.
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  Is this here or there?
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  And it's like, what does it have to do with you loving the Lord?
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  Nothing, you know.
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  So that's allowing the exercise to take you away from the Lord instead of to him or into something, even though it's not necessarily negative, it's into something that isn't focused on the Lord.
• 16:28
  It would be like you and I going to dinner on a date and me picking, you know, reading a book about being on a date with my wife instead of just being on a date with my wife, which nobody would ever do.
• 16:42
  But we do that to God.
• 16:44
  And so similarly, if you listen to music, be careful that it helps you actually to draw to him.
• 16:54
  Right.
• 16:54
  And I think, too, that we, you know, when we think about how the Lord spoke to us through the word in his presence when he was here, he walked the earth, and now his presence within the church and in the tabernacle is,
• 17:09
  He says to us time and time again, remain in me, remain in me.
• 17:14
  Right.
• 17:14
  And, and so what you're talking about is there's a, there's a moment in prayer and adoration and praise.
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  And when we are with him, he's within us.
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  He's in us.
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  And,
• 17:31
  He's not out there.
• 17:33
  He's in us.
• 17:34
  He's in the blessed sacrament.
• 17:36
  But even when we're praying to him in the blessed sacrament, it's deep calls into deep, right?
• 17:40
  It's the Lord calling into the presence of the Lord.
• 17:43
  And we're in that beautiful exchange of love and communication and worship and praise and atonement and reparation and all of that.
• 17:53
  That's part of that.
• 18:01
  All of my mind, all of my spirit, all of my being is united to him, right?
• 18:08
  I want all of me to be united with all of him.
• 18:12
  The moment that I step out of that reality, I made it an intellectual exercise or about the rhythm and the music or the way it makes me feel or whatever, then I've stepped into something else that's not him, right?
• 18:27
  And like you said, if you're on a date and you're reading about the date on how to be on a date, then you're not on a date.
• 18:34
  The same thing is, you know, we we speak about in marriage ministry and our divine intimacy and marriage retreats that the mental prayer is akin to being in this moment of the of the marital embrace.
• 18:49
  The church speaks about it all through the catechism, the mystics, the mystics and all the teachings on prayer.
• 18:57
  Um, well, if I'm in the marital embrace with my beloved husband and I'm thinking about the laundry or I'm thinking, or I'm worrying about something else, then I've just departed that moment.
• 19:11
  Right.
• 19:11
  So we have to think about this really incredible divine intimacy of remaining in the Lord.
• 19:18
  Right.
• 19:18
  And we can pray for that, by the way, we can ask him Lord, as I go about my day, as I, as I,
• 19:26
  you know, author my prayer, Lord.
• 19:28
  And then as I rise from this part of prayer, this, this moment of prayer, grant me the grace to remain in you, just to remain in you.
• 19:38
  And as I go about my day, whether I'm worshiping or not worshiping, but when I'm serving, I'm loving, I'm working.
• 19:45
  And you're, that's all beautiful.
• 19:48
  And that's, we can talk about that too, for a few hours, but the, I want to get back more to the moment and just
• 19:55
  talk a little more on the cautionary.
• 19:58
  So I think we're doing a good job of going back and forth to the benefits and the cautionary thing.
• 20:05
  The other cautionary element with this is we do have to allow it to lead us to silence.
• 20:10
  Why is that?
• 20:12
  Because if I took you on a date and all I did was say, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I like your eyes, your hair, your nail, you know, it just gets goofy weird, right?
• 20:23
  Yeah.
• 20:24
  And, you know, I have a friend who, very holy guy.
• 20:29
  who I never was a spiritual director, but he was constantly pinging me on different things.
• 20:35
  And one day he came back and he said, Dan, I realized I talk way too much in prayer.
• 20:42
  And which is a wonderful revelation, right?
• 20:45
  Because what he's doing is he's just going, you know, he's, he's just, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.
• 20:53
  And that's, and, and that's not normal.
• 20:58
  It's not a relationship.
• 20:59
  It's not a relationship.
• 21:00
  That's just me yapping because I feel, you know, I'm fulfilling something in me that needs to yap, but it, it, at some point it gets in between me and the other, whether it be my spouse or, or God.
• 21:12
  And so when we use something like music or spiritual reading or scripture, it's,
• 21:21
  a maturation of that reality is it leads us to silence listening in a mutual reality instead of a one way right and this is where i think sometimes with some of the and i'm not anti-charismatic at all but some of the where the charismatic component can come in where there's this sense
• 21:51
  I'm not in the presence of God.
• 21:54
  And the elation of the experiential reality is music or some kind of stimulation that, you know, makes me feel good or triggers dopamine.
• 22:06
  That can actually be a profoundly selfish, self-centered kind of reality.
• 22:12
  And that's why we have to lean on tradition and the understanding of what the Holy Spirit said through scripture, which is be still and know that I'm God and, and the understanding of contemplative prayer, which is a prayer, a place that leads us to silence.
• 22:29
  So for me, I'm,
• 22:32
  I will never spend a lot of time using praise music, though after last night I've thought about, well, maybe I should, at the beginning of my mental prayer, you know, play a song or something like that.
• 22:45
  But it needs to be,
• 22:47
  pretty quickly move, at least where I am in prayer, to quiet and just being in the presence of the Lord.
• 22:55
  Yeah.
• 22:55
  And so that I'm availing myself to hear, not just to express myself in some way that makes me feel good.
• 23:02
  Yeah.
• 23:04
  I don't use music in my mental prayer time.
• 23:08
  I'm super sensitive to music.
• 23:10
  I was a musician growing up.
• 23:12
  I have a bachelor's in vocal performance and not that I sing anymore, but it affects me deeply as it does you, but in a way that it can really profoundly hinder me.
• 23:25
  I have to actually be very careful to what I listen to, but I don't use it.
• 23:30
  But I have found that the Lord has used it in my mental prayer time.
• 23:34
  So I will go to that place of passive receptivity to remaining in him, to resting in him, where I've had to learn to be comfortable with being still.
• 23:47
  Not the physical stillness, but the interior stillness, the not having to read or pray or do something, but really just be with him.
• 23:59
  Because you don't, you can't do anything else.
• 24:02
  If you are properly engaged in the marital embrace with your spouse, nothing else is coming into the picture or mentally or whatever.
• 24:11
  So it should be beautiful and, and wholly giving over oneself to another and receiving the other.
• 24:18
  So that beautiful space of we need to quiet our mouth, not speak, not do any kind of emptying of the mind, but just not ruminate on things and just allow ourselves to be loved and love him in return.
• 24:34
  And then let him do what he's going to do in prayer.
• 24:37
  And sometimes that has shown up as a song in my head where he will bring a song to my heart.
• 24:47
  And I had a very good holy friend said, the Lord speaks to you in music because I probably talk about it too much.
• 24:56
  And it's true.
• 24:57
  It's true.
• 24:58
  I can be resting and a song will come.
• 25:00
  And I know that it's of the Lord because I don't get fixated on the song.
• 25:06
  I get fixated on him.
• 25:08
  That's the key.
• 25:09
  I get fixated on him.
• 25:10
  You just said the key.
• 25:11
  It's important to repeat what you just said.
• 25:13
  Right.
• 25:13
  When, when it comes of the Lord, I don't get fixated on the song or how you're feeling or how I'm feeling.
• 25:21
  It has me fixate on him.
• 25:23
  It draws my heart and mind to pray to the Lord, to praise, to greater love and into this, you know, kind of going out of myself to the Lord and then the Lord coming to me in that moment.
• 25:36
  So I think we going back to Teresa of Avila, you know, do what leads you to love, but don't get stuck in whatever that is, you know, do whatever leads you to love, but don't get stuck on that thing.
• 25:52
  thing.
• 25:52
  Training wheels on a bike can make you crash at some point rather than helping you stay upright.
• 25:57
  That's right.
• 25:58
  Yeah.
• 25:59
  That's right.
• 25:59
  Love him with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your spirit, with every fiber of your being.
• 26:06
  And when you don't know how, ask him to help you.
• 26:08
  If this conversation has been encouraging to you and you would like to be a part of it,
• 26:15
  We meet on the second and fourth Saturdays.
• 26:18
  We have a community called Apostoli VA. And all we do is talk about the interior life, how to draw near to the Lord.
• 26:26
  At present, we're going through Father Wayne Sattler's Remain in Me book, which is extraordinary.
• 26:32
  And you can find information about that at apostoliva.org, A-P-O-S-T-O-L-I-V-I-A-E.org.
• 26:40
  And that means Apostles of the Way.
• 26:42
  So apostoliva.org.
• 26:45
  We meet on the second and four Saturdays, most second and four Saturdays.
• 26:49
  And it costs absolutely nothing for an hour, and it'll draw your heart and mind to heaven.
• 26:56
  Until next time, may the God of peace make you perfect in holiness.
• 27:00
  May he preserve you whole and entire, spirit, soul, and body, irreproachable at the coming of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
• 27:08
  Amen.
• 27:11
  Learn more about the interior life.
• 27:13
  Visit spiritualdirection.com.
• 27:16
  Divine Intimacy Radio is a co-production of EWTN Radio and spiritualdirection.com and heard worldwide on the EWTN Global Catholic Radio Network.