Latest / Claymore: Become Who You Are / #477 Concluding Episode of Spiritual Warfare; A Woman Who Thinks Herself A Cat, A Man Who Thinks Himself A Woman

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#477 Concluding Episode of Spiritual Warfare; A Woman Who Thinks Herself A Cat, A Man Who Thinks Himself A Woman · Claymore: Become Who You Are

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Become who you Are podcast, a production of the John Paul II Renewal Center.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: I'm Jack Riggert, your host.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: As always, I'm glad you're with me.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: This is the final episode in a series that we've been running called Spiritual Warfare, with Father Ryan Browning.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: It's based on St Ignatius of Loyola's 14 rules, or guidelines to guide us in the spiritual battle that we're all in.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Sometimes I think we forget that, don't we?
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: We came into a world of war.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry to have to tell you that.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry if I'm the first person that broke this news to you.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: You never notice that there's a battle going on in the human heart.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: And then you look outside and there's a battle between good and evil going on out there.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Well, st Ignatius discovered this when he was hurt in a battle and, anyways, he internalized this and so this is coming right from his experience and he realized then that that battle, that he was fighting the French against the Spanish really the big battle is this internal battle of the human heart.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: So these guidelines he set up that are good for all of us, when I look out into the world and into the individual human heart, my own individual heart, you see how crazy things have gotten the spiritual warfare.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: We've really and this is an accelerated push here we as human beings have really worked on getting God out of the public square and it's really done its job.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: This push has really done its job.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Satan is alive and well, unfortunately.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: And go back and read St Paul in Ephesians 6, say verses 10 and on, and you see the powers and the principalities that are rulers really of this age, until Jesus himself came back into the story and won again the power over sin and death.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: And so this is the battle that we're all in.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: It's pretty much a test and you see this going on both in the church and in the secular world.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: But we've allowed this to happen because at the end of the day we're all free and freedom always comes to.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: We stand at that tree, in a sense, between the knowledge of good and evil, and we're free to decide for God or for the powers and the principalities of this world.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: And when we choose the powers and principalities of the world, when we reject God, our reason becomes very unreasonable and then the power is.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: You know, satan doesn't have his own clay so he can twist and distort this.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: So let me just give you a couple of thoughts going off in my head.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: I was reading GK Chesterton not too long ago.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: He's really good.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: I love his book Orthodoxy, and that's on my mind.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: When Easter was approaching last week and the Dome of Peters, this newsflash came that the Dome of St Peters in the Vatican will be turned off to raise awareness for respect for Mother Earth, to raise awareness and inspire women and men of our time to respect our Mother Earth and to act against the climate crisis.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: It's amazing, right, working lockstep with the world elite, and while the world elite is controlling more and more land and earth's resources and just gobbling this up I think the major farmland owner in the United States is Bill Gates and, of course, china is trying to buy it up too.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: So everybody's gobbling up this as they use the little guy as useful idiots in their battle, and I say that as an old tree hugger, an old backpacker.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: I love nature.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: We're all called to take care of nature.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: It's the way they're doing.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: This is really what I have a problem with and we should all have a problem with.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: It's amazing.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: You know right before that we had Fudicia supplicants.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: You know, blessing same-sex marriage.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: You know all of this coming from the Vatican, right?
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: Well, they're in lockstep with the so-called secular globalists.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: You know the atheists, who don't do it Much different than the Vatican, right?
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: The climate hoax, the vaccine mandate hoax, the six-foot rule hoax, the digital currency they want to control your money, right?
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Socialists, marxists you know that whole hoax about worrying about the human being.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: You know that whole hoax about worrying about the human being.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: It's the opposite.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: It's amazing.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: The government, like this big hydra that has their tentacles in each one of us in the middle class that work hard, want to just raise our families, you know, with God, and to look to eternity.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: You know we're going somewhere, right?
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: Well, you know we're in debt.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Now to the point where our poor children, you know, have to deal with this, and we've, you know, in many cases we've allowed it to happen.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: So we're really on the line.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: We have to step up, and so that's why I wanted to redo these rules again, because as you step up against the river, the current that's pushing against you, it's quite a battle and you have to understand what's going on in the battle of the human heart, but it's the best thing to do.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: So don't get dispirited, because our hope is in where Our hope is in the Lord.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: You know, jesus Christ already came into the story.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: He already redeemed us from sin and death, and so we will die.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: You know, we're like the seed, you know, but we're united to Jesus Christ.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: We're like the seed that gets planted in the ground so that he can sprout us.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: When you see that little seed go into the ground, you have no idea that it's going to be a huge tree.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: And that's what happens.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: We're going to give up this life and become a huge tree, all right.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: So at the same time, we have Alex Soros, the son of George Soros.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: We have Alex Soros, the son of George Soros, globalist right, pushing this down the Trans Day of Visibility, honoring the bravery and resilience of trans communities.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: Let's stand in solidarity and work to create a world where everyone feels safe and accepted.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: It's amazing what's going on.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: This is the opposite of being safe and effective.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: We allow ourselves to open to Satan, to open to lies.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: It's nuts right, this blatant push to replace God with the principalities of the world.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: Well, this is in lockstep, of course, with many in the Vatican who are pushing this at the same time.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: And then, when you think about the lockstep, the same day we have Secretary Alexander Pachera from the Health and Human Services, from the Biden administration, says this.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: You know, today I'm thinking about our country's great transgender, non-binary and two-spirit leaders, who epitomize resilience, progress and joy.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: Transgender Day of Visibility is an opportunity to celebrate their accomplishments and double down on our commitment to their well-being.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Right after that, they announced National Minority Health Month.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: It's amazing what's going on.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: And they say it all at the same time.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: And, of course, the mass media is saying it all too right.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Push it down, push it down, push it down.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: So we have this polarized society, right?
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: Those that stand for God and truth, beauty, goodness in the world and those that want to take God out of the public square, and so many of them are shouting at one another.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: You know, and just look at it, though, as the parable of the weeds and the wheat God allows this to go.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: It's accelerating, something's accelerating.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: We have a sense of this, but God is in charge at the end.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: Something's accelerating.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: We have a sense of this, but God is in charge at the end, and we're not out to win debates, but to proclaim the fresh air that frees you from this dictatorship, like Pope Benedict XVI would call the subjective dictatorship of moral relativism, where there is no truth, only my truth, your truth, there's no way to live.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: The world rejects God and, like GK kind of said and I'll just paraphrase a little bit while these people live in their small worlds, when you reject God, you live in a small circle, but it may be infinite, right, you can go round and round and round up until the end, but it's still small.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: And so you know, reading GK, you know he talks about these small circles, you know, and these so-called worldly people never even understand the world because they're stuck in this small circle, going round and round and round.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: You know, people demanding the right to murder their own children, demanding the right to marry anybody of any sex, and marriage, of course, is meaningless.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: They speak about a child's right to go on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones and to have surgeons sexually or surgically, I should say well, sex organs surgically mutilate their bodies, you know, before they even enter this time of reason.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: You know we have PhDs in the school systems that demand the right to educate your children with or without the parents' support right, the right to take God out of schools and out of the culture at large and replace God and those that believe in God.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: So that, what?
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: So that they can be free in their small circles, going around and around?
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: What do we hear?
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: These so-called few maxims that they repeat over and over and over again, like the ones I just said.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: I may feel like a woman trapped in a man's body in my small circle, the self-implosion, and I'm searching for something.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Well, at the end of the day, what are these state rulers and all these people?
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: Well, I believe in myself, my feelings.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: It has nothing to do with truth anymore, it's all subjective.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: I believe in myself.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: Napoleon and Caesar believed in themselves.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden, hillary Clinton, the FBI, the CIA, aoc she believes in herself.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: The women on the View pushing abortion and other things.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: They believe in themselves.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: Tony Fauci, stalin, pol Pot, mao 100 million people were murdered and these surgeons today removing the breasts and creating a non-working penis for a woman.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's just amazing.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: We demand the right to be able to do this.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: The Supreme Court justice, who can't define a woman.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: But now she's the Supreme Court justice, so that puts us in charge of justice for the rest of us.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: A woman who thinks herself a cat right a furry believes in herself.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: A cat woman believes that she's an ordinary cat.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: Dick Levine, who's the assistant secretary at the HHS, he believes he's an ordinary woman.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Life in the small circle of self must be so dull, to the point of insanity.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: When I ask a woman why she, a cat, does not eat cat food and she speaks English, she has no answer.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: Do you not think this is odd?
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: But then it dawns on me that oddities only strike ordinary people.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: See, oddities don't strike odd people as odd.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: This is why ordinary people have a much more exciting time, while odd people are always complaining.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: Right, they were so dull, but they don't know it.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: And so you have this insanity going around and around and around.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: So imagination, a poet, someone seeking the truth, that doesn't breed insanity.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: It's reason that's no longer a compass toward the truth, toward the north, that it breeds insanity.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: Reason for the ordinary person.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: You know, say, for example, the ordinary Christian will seek the truth, but in a small circle.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: The self is the arbiter of truth.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: And so the woman goes inside seeking the truth inside her own head, and goes round and round in a subjective little circle.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: It's infinite but it's small, until insanity is reached by an exhausted mind and a cat Becoming a cat seems to be the answer.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: The solution to all this, of course, is a reconnection to our roots, to the reality that we're a body and a soul that must be infused with God and grace.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: That's how we were created.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: Only then do we relink with the bridegroom that came back into the world that said I am the way, the truth and the life.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: There was a time in my life where I had gotten down on my knees.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: I said God, do you have a plan?
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: And it led me to my brother's bedside as he was dying, who asked us to pray with him.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Pray with him.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: When we were praying that day, quite a few years ago now, I was in my late 30s.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: I had an encounter there with God himself and I've described that in the past.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: It was the next day at the Mass, at his memorial Mass, that I encountered him again in the Eucharist, and I knew that God was present in the bread.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: So I want to finish this intro, which is a little long and I realized, with a reading from just the other day in Luke's gospel, chapter 24, the road to Emmaus, and I'm just going to.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: Maybe I won't read the whole thing, but you should really go back and read chapter 24, the road to Emmaus.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: It's really something.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: That's the day where, that very day, the first day of the week, two of Jesus' disciples were going to a village seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus, and they were conversing about all the things that occurred, as it happened that while they were conversing and debating, Jesus himself drew near and walked with them, but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: He asked them what are you discussing as you walk along?
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: They stopped looking downcast.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: One of them, named Cleopas, said to him in reply are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place in these days?
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: And Jesus replied to them.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: What sort of things they said to him?
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: The things that happened to Jesus the Nazarene, who was a prophet mighty, indeed, word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers both handed him over to a sentence of death and crucified him.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: But we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: And besides all this, it's now the third day since this took place.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: Some women from our group, however, have astonished us.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: They were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find his body.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: They came back and reported that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who announced that he was alive.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: Then some of those with us went to the tomb and found things just as the woman had described them.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: But him they did not see.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: And he said to them Jesus did.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, how foolish you are, how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things, enter into his glory?
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: Then, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them what referred to him in all the scriptures.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: As they approached the village to which they were going, he gave the impression that he was going on further, but they urged him stay with us, for it's nearly evening and the day is almost over.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: And so he went in to stay with them, as it happened that while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it and gave it to them.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but then he vanished from their sight.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: Then they said to each other Were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: So they set out at once and returned to Jerusalem, where they found gathered together the eleven and those with them who were saying the Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: Then the two recounted what had taken place on the way and how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread, the gospel of the Lord, how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: So much of the evil that we've seen unleashed in the world today is because we stopped going to Mass, we stopped praying, we stopped believing in the Eucharist, and I know this, I know the Eucharist, I know Jesus Christ is in the Eucharist.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: I've been given that beautiful blessing and so, actually, I'm going to finish the rest of this recording now and then head off to Mass.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Hey, god bless you.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Buckle up for the rest of this recording now and then head off to mass.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: Hey, god bless you.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: Buckle up for the rest of today's final episode on spiritual warfare with Father Ryan Browning.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: I'm excited to be with you.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: This is our final episode in the series, which has been a fascinating journey with Father Ryan Browning, our spiritual director here at the John Paul II Renewal Center, and Father has been taking us through the discernment of spirits and Ignatian guide to everyday living, shedding light on the spiritual battle that we, as members of the human race, we are all in.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: And, as Father said previously, this series can be summed up as God has a plan for our lives, but so does the evil one.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: As a quick, maybe a brief, review.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Father has been leading us through the teaching of St Ignatius of Loyola, who gave us 14 rules or guidelines for the discernment of spirits, which simply have to do with the ups and downs in the spiritual life of each of us.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: All of us have times when God feels close to us.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: We feel a high energy level, desire to pray, our hearts are warm, scripture comes alive, marriage and family seems to be flowing along smoothly.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: Then, at other times, for no reason, the bottom seems to drop out.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Our energy level goes down, it's harder to pray and when we do, it seems drier.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: It's a chore to get up in the morning and even stream morning mass.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: Perhaps God can feel distance.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: We lose that closeness that we may have felt just the day before.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: Perhaps we more easily lose our patience with others, our spouse, children.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: Maybe we don't have the energy to check up on a sick or struggling friend.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: And these ups and downs are going on all the time in our spiritual life.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: And along comes St Ignatius of Loyola with a teaching on exactly these types of up and down that we're going to experience in our spiritual lives A feeling of closeness that St Ignatius calls consolation, and times of discouragement and the struggle that he calls desolation.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: This clear and practical and I stress the word practical teaching comes out of St Ignatius' own experience, and he crafted 14 rules or guidelines to help us understand these experiences and teaches us how to deal with them.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: Finally, so important, this whole teaching is about setting us free to find the peace and joy that Jesus promised us.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: And these final three rules 12 to 14, are so powerful.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: Us and these final three rules 12 to 14, are so powerful.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: All about learning and understanding the enemy and learning and understanding more about ourselves.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: So, father Ryan Browning, welcome.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: It's so good to be with you today.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: How are you?
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: Thanks, jack, doing pretty well, so it's good to be back with you and to finish up these rules, or guidelines of St Ignatius.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: I think they're extremely important in where we find ourselves today, in the midst of a pandemic that we're going to need these rules to help us in temptation, to help us in spiritual desolation, to know how to combat it.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because we're going to be alone a lot right, dealing with our thoughts and our ups and downs, with our family and our family life.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you what, father.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: I'm a practical person.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: I mentioned that to you a number of times and, man, just these rules in the last month or so have come in so incredibly handy to me.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: It's been a powerful, powerful experience and I'll go through some experiences maybe as we go through these rules Just in this last month very liberating, very powerful, you had mentioned before.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: So we're just not caught up in this ebb and flow of our emotions all the time.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: We have a place to go with them, we have tools in our toolbox.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: It's beautiful to have that.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: It feels good.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: So, father, thank you for taking the time to do this.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: It's been a great experience for me and I hope, for everybody else listening to these podcasts.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think you know, just as a reminder you went through a nice summary of St Ignatius that very first thing that he talks about in how he came about these came about from him, was that he became aware of those movements of the heart right, and then he began to understand at least a little bit, as he says, and then he knew how to take action, whether it was to reject it if it's desolation or to accept it if it's consolation, and so those are always kind of the foundation of how we are able to apply to the different situations those rules is to be aware and ask the Lord for help to be aware more and more of those movements of our heart.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: Sometimes we become aware only after a while of sitting in it, and that's fine.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: You get better and better at it as you practice.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just for me, I'll just give you a quick example.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: I just moved last weekend and I have a spare room in my mom's house because my new place isn't ready yet, and so I'm moving a lot of things and boxes all around and I have this morning routine that I do very important prayers that I do first thing in the morning, and I got away from them for a couple of days when I moved here and I'll tell you, I got into a funk.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: I got into a funk where some weird things were going on.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: I was wasting some time.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: There were things that I needed to get done that I wasn't getting done and I was reading through and of course you're going to go through this now.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: I was reading through rule 12, and this is kind of your segue for rule 12, father and there was a couple of things in there, and I'm not going to bring it out in the open, but as soon as I read Rule 12 and I was reviewing it for today's podcast I caught myself right away and I go oh my gosh, this is exactly what's going on.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: So maybe you want to jump into Rule 12 and with that thought in mind, father, yeah, absolutely so.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: Just as a precursor to these last three rules is, St Ignatius shifts his focus from spiritual desolation and what to do, which is a tactic of the enemy, to how the enemy tempts us, which is just the flip side of the coin, so to speak.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: So it's just the same enemy that we have and these are the different ways that he tries to attack us.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: And so now he's shifting to like how does the enemy attack and then what do we do to combat those attacks?
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: So getting to know the enemy a little bit, huh.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you got to know your enemy and how he works so that you can thwart those, because he's much more intelligent than we are.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: He's a pure spirit and so he knows he actually knows us better than we know ourself.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: Right, and that can be.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: So as we learn these rules, it's going to help us to combat those things, combat those temptations, and that's as we look at these three rules now.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: The first one, and the way Ignatius expresses it, will not go over well with our ladies today.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: So this is rule 12, right?
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so let me just sum up the three rules, simply speaking, so that we don't get bogged down in thinking Ignatius is a misogynist or something like that.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: It is not what he wants to show us in these.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: To sum it up, without having to go into how he puts it, is that, for all of these things, these three are unnatural and not what God wants for us.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: So he doesn't want fighting.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: He wants true love and not this false love in 13.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: And then he wants us to lead in service, not for evil purposes, and so what Ignatius is using are these situations that are unnatural and not what God intends.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: So the best way to understand rule 12, then, instead of using Ignatius as language, which is controversial.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: So it would be to kind of see it as the spoiled child with their parents, Right?
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: So I mean, sure that when we were children, we are all acted like this occasionally, and you know the the kind of the child that would want something from the store as you're going around, and and If you didn't immediately stop them from saying, nope, that's it, we're shutting this down, and you kind of let them go on to where they get more and more agitated and they're rolling around on the ground and they're screaming because you won't get them this toy or whatever it is.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: If you don't stop that in the beginning, then it just gets worse, right.
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: But if you stop it at the beginning no, you can't have that, Not this time, you know.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: And you you shut that down then you're able to to move forward, All right.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: So it's the same way with temptation.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: The key is to stop it immediately.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: Whenever you recognize it, immediately put it, put a halt on it.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: If you allow it to continue without strongly facing it, then it's going to eventually win.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: But if you face it strong in the beginning, it's going to immediately weaken.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: So when you're strong and firm with your child on a no and there's no wishy-washy.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: That child stops immediately.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: But if you're weak in the beginning, then it's going to get worse and worse as you go along and then the tantrum starts and then everybody's embarrassed.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: So it's important with the enemy just to say, hey, I see what's going on over here.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: And it gets back to my example.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: We're getting up in the morning and instead of dropping to my knees and praying, what I did is I said I'm going to do that later, I'm going to put that off a little bit later.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: And it bothered me all day and I finally got to it at the end of the night.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: But then the next day, after reading this rule, I said, nope, I hear what you're saying, but no, I'm just going to get down, I'm going to go through the routine and I put an end to it and I'll tell you what.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: All day, the day before that, was bothering me.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: And this time, boom, 10 minutes later, 12 minutes later, I was finished with my prayers, they were out of the way.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: I felt so much better, right, and it's just that bang.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: No, I'm going to just do this, I'm not listening to this.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: I put a stop to it.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: And what a beautiful thing.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: And you know, it's just like that.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: You know I'm not going to eat a piece of cake, you know.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: And then all day long, ah, maybe I will, man, no, I don't think I will.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: No, just boom.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to today.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: You know, today's Friday, I have it on Saturday, right, and it makes it so much easier.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I like to use the image of the snowball effect, right.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: So when the snowball is at the top of the mountain, right, and it starts to roll, it's really easy to stop it at the beginning.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: But as that thing rolls and it goes faster, it gets bigger and bigger and faster.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: It's virtually at some point impossible to stop right.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: So you end up falling into that temptation, and so the key is to stop the snowball at the beginning, don't let it get going down the hill.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: And that's the face strongly, as soon as you recognize you're being tempted in whatever way, right, we all got our weak points and so, whatever way we see that we're being tempted, to immediately shut it down by prayer, right, by sticking to our routine.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: Sometimes I think even St Jose Maria Escriva, he had that this little thing called the heroic minute, where he said you know, when your alarm goes off in the morning, get up right, because that's a win.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: Like you've got to win that first moment of the day.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: And I, you know, I tested this because I'm one who likes to get this, don't keep hitting the snooze button.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah Well, I like to do that occasionally and then so I tested the and I paid attention to those days when I failed and hit the snooze button a couple of times, versus the days that I said, no, I'm going to get up.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: I consciously made that effort to get up right when my alarm went off, and there's a big difference in how the rest of the day went.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: It's a very simple little thing, but also very powerful and helpful, and so it's kind of like that snowball effect.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: Stop that thing in the beginning.
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: That's what Ignatius wants us to do, one of the little prayers I like to use whenever there's a temptation.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: I got a few of them.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: But one of them is I give the temptation to the Lord.
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: So I'll say Lord, I don't want this temptation, I give it to you for the conversion of sinners.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: He always answers that prayer and if it's coming from the evil one, he's going to stop sending it because you're using it for good and it's bringing grace into people's lives who somewhere around the world need it.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: Or you can look at one of the rules of St Benedict, I think rule 50 says as soon as wrongful thoughts come into your heart, dash them against Christ and reveal them to your spiritual father.
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: So it comes from that psalm, you know like, dash the temptation against the rock that is Christ, and that's a good one too.
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: It's a good image to keep in mind when we're facing temptation.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: All right, beautiful.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: So just kind of to sum that up, father, so if I'm feeling a temptation, you know, stand up to it pretty fast, right Before that snowball gets bigger, and the other thing is just to get it done, right.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: So what else would we say to that?
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: I know that one of the things I think that St Ignatius was talking about is that Satan can be pretty strong if we're weak, if we have a weak response yet he'll back down pretty quickly.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: If we come on strong, if we ourselves become almost kind of not only firm but maybe a little aggressive ourselves and backing him down, right yeah.
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: Well, there's an idea.
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: He's created this idea of himself as scary and he can do anything he wants to us.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: And none of that is true.
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: Right, he's a liar from the beginning, like he's way more intelligent than us, he is more powerful than us, but he's also strictly prohibited by God.
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: Right, he can't do whatever he wants.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: And so to recognize that you in a state of grace, he can't do anything but tempt you.
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: So just stop those temptations as soon as you recognize it.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: The easiest time to resist is in the beginning.
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: And you just stop that temptation.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: You say be gone Satan.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: You say Mary, crush his head, and you move on.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: Right, you don't give him too much time a day.
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: You stop it immediately with force, by prayer.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: Right, because that's all he can do is make a lot of noise and tempt and try to create fear.
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: And when you're a child of God, you don't have anything to fear.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: You place yourself in his protection.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a big deal, I think.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: I think that when you made that clear, I felt really good.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: It's like, hey, you know what I could stand up to him.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: And of course I'm not doing it on my own.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: Of course you know, I'm doing it again, like you said, with grace.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: I'm calling upon Christ, I'm calling upon our Blessed Mother, my guardian angel, st Michael, there, but at the end of the day, I don't have anything to fear as long as I do that, that's a big deal.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: That's a big deal for people.
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he likes you to think that he's more powerful than he is, but he doesn't get to do what he wants because he has rejected God and he is under God's thumb.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: So, if he's allowed to tempt you, and even in certain senses like take, for instance, the great saints like St Padre Pio, where he would beat up St Padre Pio.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: I think that's where we get that from a lot, because we hear about those stories and go, oh my gosh, I'm next.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I mean God allows that to the holiest of people, but not very often.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: And also if God allows, whatever he allows in your life is for your holiness.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: And so to remind yourself in the midst of that, like, even if I do get physically beat up by the devil, then God has allowed it and it's for my good, and so I'll trust the Lord versus worrying about that.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, all right.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: So we're going to stand up, we're going to stand up to them, we're going to say no, and we're going to do it right away before the snowball gets big.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: Right, correct?
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: That's the thing I think to carry over at 12, right?
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: So stand up, stay firm.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: In the beginning.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: And allow me to add just this real quick for people that hear a little noise in the background it's not a demon in the background, that's a lawnmower going around where Father is at.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: So when you hear that it's coming through the walls a little bit, so don't let that frighten you.
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: So we're going to move on to 13, then, and 13,.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: Father is really the power of exposing the enemy's efforts, right, that the enemy likes working in the darkness and that we ourselves, we don't want to keep it in the darkness, we don't want to keep these down, we want to bring these temptations into the light.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: I guess we have to be careful who and how we do that, but that's what I'm hoping you're going to unpack for us here today.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: So the image he uses is kind of this false lover who comes to a person and just say you know we could do this, you just keep it secret, don't tell anybody about it, and you know.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: And it kind of gets to the point where they have power over the other person, and so it's in the 13th rule.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: To sum it up, it'd be like the enemy wants temptations kept secret.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: He doesn't want you telling anybody, right?
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: I mean, we all experience this.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: There'll be times when we were tempted and we'll think, oh well, this is just because I'm a terrible person, and how in the world am I being?
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: Why would I be tempted like this if I wasn't that?
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: And I shouldn't tell anybody about that.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: Nobody understand me.
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: They'll think I'm weird or all those lies that he puts into our mind, and so he knows that he can't succeed if we bring it to the light and to the appropriate spiritual person.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: So, for instance, in confession, like you, bring something in confession to the light of Christ, it no longer has power over you as long as we keep it hidden, he'll have power over us, and so that's what Ignatius wants us to know is that we need to bring that to the appropriate person, tell them about it and almost immediately, sometimes without them saying a word, you begin to experience the freedom of that, because he just wants you to keep it secret and think that's yeah.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: So confession and reconciliation.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: You know I I know that saint ignatius talked about a spiritual director, but certainly the first place it seems to go right would be the confessional and to be able to unpack this huh, bring it out into the, into the.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you, it reminds me when a new guy joins our men's group and he's been struggling with his spiritual life, with all these temptations for so long by himself, and the first time he begins to trust us, this group, this small group that we have, and he starts to unpack things.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: It's a very emotional response for so many men because they've been burying this stuff so long and to be able to bring it to the surface and find out that they could share it with us and that some of these guys are pretty wise in our group.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: They've been at this for a long time and been very helpful, almost like an AA group where we understand where you're coming from.
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: We know we all have these temptations and I'll tell you what I've had.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: We've had many men break down and just to bring this to the light, powerful stuff.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, cause, I mean, it really is a burden that you're trying to carry that the Lord doesn't want you to carry.
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: He just wants you to give it to your confessor, to your spiritual director or to a to a person you know, like in your men's group, like to your spiritual director, or to a to a person you know, like in your men's group, like, they begin to understand that you guys have been doing this, walking this journey for a long time and you have experience and you have knowledge.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: When it comes that, find a spiritual person who knows about these things, that can immediately tell you like, oh yeah, those I've faced that.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: Those are the lies that the devil tells you to keep you from telling us because we're afraid of being rejected.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: Let's be honest, that's what it is.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: We want to be loved and we're afraid if we tell, like these, these awful temptations that we're struggling with, to someone else, they're going to reject me, but that.
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: But then when we do it, we finally do it we realize, well, that's, that's not actually true.
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: So many people are like oh yeah, I've faced those things too.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: And you're like oh okay, I'm not a weirdo, yeah, no, and there's a freedom in that.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: Now, on the other hand, father, I know that part of this rule and one of the keys not to forget is that you just can't bring this up to anybody, right?
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: So if you're on a journey and I'm on a journey which St Ignatius calls from good to better right.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: We're trying to walk this journey and get closer to God.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: You can't just talk to anybody about this, dr, just because it can actually work against you.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: Can you speak to that a little bit?
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you have to be careful with who you talk to about it.
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: They need to be a person who understands the spiritual journey at least in some way.
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: Person who understands the spiritual journey at least in some way, because otherwise, if they don't, it could lead to a deeper issue, because there are people that would, so to speak, reject you kind of thing.
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: Right, we've had that experience.
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: That's why we're afraid of it.
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: So you have to find that person that is more spiritually inclined, is walking that journey, understands those things and is not going to reject you Because we've had that experience of being rejected when we share something.
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's painful.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: And not only rejection.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: I think we can get bad advice, right, yeah.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: And the other thing is people that will use it against you.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, how many people use gossip against you?
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: You know how many people that don't understand this would love to just dig a, you know, dig into your back, you know, behind your back and say you won't believe what Jack just told me, right, yeah, so, so, yeah, that's something, huh.
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you have to be discerning in who you share that with you.
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: Don't share it with just anyone, but once you discern, like I can trust this person and I know they're on a similar journey.
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: That's the person that you find, and usually it's a priest in confession or a spiritual director, or could be just a person who, like in your men's group you discern, has been through this and by the things that they've shared, you know they.
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: You can trust them.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: So again, so 13,.
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: We're going to sum up as as bringing this into the light find someone astute, right, that's been on the spiritual journey possibly for a while, someone you can trust, and, and, and certainly I use the confessional for this too.
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let me just end with a little story from St Therese's life, right, because we know she's a great saint, and she was at the point of making her final vows, right, that they had arrived.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: And so the evening before she was going to make her final vows and she had, you know, discerned throughout that whole period and everything just pointed to the fact that she was called to give her life to the Carmel and to become a Carmelite nun.
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: And she was about ready to make those final vows and that evening, before, a storm arose in her soul, as she puts it, like she had never seen before and before she had not had a single doubt concerning her vocation.
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: Right, she knew it from a really young age that she was supposed to be there, but in the evening, as she was making doing her prayers they were doing the prayers together, right, the evening prayer it appeared to her as if her vocation was a dream or a chimera, that, even though she found life in carmel beautiful, the devil had inspired this assurance that it wasn't for her and that she was misleading her superiors by advancing as she was to the next to the final vows, and his darkness was so great that she could only understand one thing that she didn't have a vocation.
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: And so she was like how can I even possibly describe the anguish that was in my soul?
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: And so it appeared to her and this is an absurdity which shows it is a temptation of the devil that it was that if she were to tell her novice mistress about these fears that she would prevent her from pronouncing her final vows, right, and she still wanted to do God's will and return.
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: And if it was God's will to return to the world rather than remain in Carmel, that she wanted that?
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: And so what she did and this is the genus of St Therese she knew enough to know I need to go tell somebody this.
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: And so she made the knot.
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: Just imagine this picture for this.
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: They're all praying together, right?
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: Everybody knows Therese is going to make her final vows the next day.
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: And she asked the novice mistress to come out of the choir.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: And she says I was filled with confusion.
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: I told her the state of my soul.
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: Fortunately, she saw things much clearer than I did and she completely reassured me.
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: The act of humility that was on Therese's part, the act of humility that she had just performed, put the devil to flight, and since he had perhaps thought that I would not dare to admit, my temptation and my doubts left me completely as soon as I finished speaking.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: See, that's the power of bringing it to the right person.
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: Is that?
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: Immediately, sometimes almost immediately, you say this to somebody else and the novice mister is like oh, that's silly.
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: Of course you're called to the car.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: Put that aside, that's a temptation.
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: And immediately, as soon as she said it, it was gone.
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: Well, that story is powerful, that's really powerful, and that tells the other side of the story that not only should you bring it into the light with the proper person, but that when you don't want to go to the confessional, when I don't want to go see the priest, then that's also telling me, isn't it, father, that, hey, this is really a spiritual attack on me.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: Not only does he want me to keep it dark and keep it a secret, but he doesn't want me to go to another person, even right with this.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: Correct.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he wants you to keep that all to yourself because they won't understand you.
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: There's all kinds of little lies that come up in that and the key is to have that trusted person that you can call or text or talk to and to say it out loud, and most of the time it'll take care of itself.
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: But otherwise that other person be like, oh no, that's silly, who's that?
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: Sound like.
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: That doesn't sound like how God operates.
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: And without going any deeper into this right now because of time, but I know that that happened a number of times to different saints, right when they would bring this out in the open.
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: They'd talk to somebody and right away that desolation would just fall off.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: It would just turn on a dime, wouldn't it?
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah countless times yeah.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: So, father, we're going to go on to the last rule here, which is pretty cool how to strengthen yourself against spiritual attacks.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: So this is really neat in that not only do we learn how the enemy will look for our weaknesses, but also how we ourselves need to know ourselves and to know our own weaknesses, and so this is kind of a dual thing, right?
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: Knowing our weaknesses and knowing that the enemy is also looking for those weaknesses, right?
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he knows them very well, and so Ignatius uses this image of a battle commander right.
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: And if you think of the world, in the medieval times, most cities had built a wall around the city in order to protect it from other armies.
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: You know, and especially in Italy, you go to these like usually up on the top of a hill.
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: Luke is one of these old cities that has still has the wall around it, and I've walked across the top.
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: It's a very giant wall and meant to protect the people and citizens in the city, and so a good commander would walk.
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: If he's going to attack this city, he's not going to just willy-nilly attack it, but he's going to walk around the wall and he's going to look for the weak point and he's going to attack where it's the weakest.
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: So that's how the devil looks at us.
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: He's going to walk around, so to speak, us and our soul, and he's going to find where's the weak point and that's where he's going to attack.
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: And we've all got a weak point.
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: We've all got something that we struggle with, maybe that others don't, and others have something else that they struggle with, and the devil knows that, and he's going to attack at our weak point.
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: So there's a couple things that you do.
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: You want to strengthen that weak point in your life.
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: There's a couple of things that you do.
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: You want to strengthen that weak point in your life and you do that through prayer and through practicing the opposite of virtue, of whatever that vice is that we struggle with, and to really ask the Lord for his help in strengthening that.
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: And one of the ways.
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: If you can't, if you're listening and you can't think of what your weak point is.
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: Just go back to where does the devil tempt you the most?
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: That's your weak point.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: He's actually giving it away.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: You're saying that we all tend to have either one main weak point or maybe multiple weak points that we've probably had for a long time, right yeah?
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and we've all got some, and where we're being tempted is normally just you can take it as like God's allowing the devil to tempt you there, to tell you that this is your weak point and this is the place you need to bring to the Lord and talk to him about it.
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: You need to bring to the Lord and talk to him about it, because sometimes our weak points are connected with hurts of the past, sins of others against us, and we can talk to the Lord about it and allow him to take us through healing, which is going to strengthen us.
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: It could be our own sins that caused the weak point, but in any regard, it's something that we bring to prayer with the Lord and only with him.
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: We don't go in there by ourself.
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: We always invite the Lord into this situation to maybe a past experience, to something that we're struggling with, and ask the Lord to help us to go through this process of healing with him, which will strengthen that place and give the devil less room to tempt there.
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: But in reality, temptation God allows it because it strengthens us.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: Okay, and these are a number of different ways, right.
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, they could be attacks on I know what John and John speaks about the sense of concupiscence with pride and vanity and sensuality and it could be a number of different ways that that the demon's going to look for our weaknesses, right?
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, and it's sometimes they, we, we don't even know.
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: It's the weakness Right.
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: And then, when we began to be tempted there, it's like Whoa, what is this?
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: And then, when we began to be tempted there, it's like whoa, what is this?
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: And then we can realize the Lord is just he's allowing it to help us recognize that this is a place I want you to work on.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: You know, father, I had a close friend that had a problem, struggled with alcohol and and he had not drank for 16 years and but what he did is, from what I understand, is what you know he stopped going to the meetings, the AA meetings.
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: He stopped sharing right, you're usually with AA, you're sharing these things, these weaknesses, with other people, bringing it to prayer again.
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: And I, and I think he got away from his practices and he was in the garage just cleaning out the garage and he happened to run across a bottle of something that had been stashed and 16 years later, because he had kind of stopped these practices right, stopped shoring up that weakness in himself, started to drink again and after a few years of that he succumbed and he actually he died one morning, alcohol poisoning and amazing, right, so he knew his weakness and stuff.
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: He had just got away from shoring that up and working on it with others and bringing it into the light and not saying no, you know, or when he did fall into temptation, right, just to get right back up on the horse again and go back to battle.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: You know, and unfortunately he lost his life over it.
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it is important to recognize like we're going to fall to temptations occasionally, and that's usually when the evil one will then say look how terrible you are.
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: God can't possibly love you, you know.
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: And they will enter into this kind of discouragement and despair.
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: And so that's the important thing of like even if we fall in temptation, we have to immediately entrust ourselves to the Lord's mercy, get back to confession, you know, start praying again and just squash those things, because then that's like it's kind of like rule 12, right, that's a snowball effect.
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: It's just going to get worse and worse, where we kind of fall away from even the practice of our faith because we're just so terrible.
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: Right, that's how we look at it.
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: And that's what the devil wants us to think, but you just got to stop that immediately.
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: Even when we fall to temptation and fall into sin, we immediately get up and entrust ourselves to the Lord's mercy, because that's what.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: He wants.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: And I think that this you have to look at this like a just like Christ said, you know, when he came, you know, into His public ministry, you know he was here to free us.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: He's here to free us from attachments, free us from captivity, free us from enslavement.
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: This is a cool battle, you know.
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, sometimes I think we think of a battle as a drudgery, but the freedom that a person finds when they do these things is amazing.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: Right, when you start to walk, you know.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: Again, people tell me sometimes oh, jack, you know, doesn't it seem difficult to do all this right, and to walk into the light and to walk into the gospel?
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: So I say, you know, sometimes it is, but you want something that's really more difficult, really hard.
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: Don't do it.
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: Don't do it and see what your life is like, right, you know the lack of peace, the lack of joy the lack of good things in your life.
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: And so, yeah, it's a battle.
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: But once we know it's a battle, we're cognizant that the battle is going on.
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: We have the tools.
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: There's something very exciting and invigorating in the midst of the drudgery, sometimes in the midst of the battles.
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: That's good.
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: That's really good, good stuff.
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, absolutely.
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: And just to sum up that last rule there and like how do we strengthen the weak point?
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: One of the great graces of growing in your journey of faith is to know yourself.
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: And so you ask the Lord for that grace to know who you are and to know yourself, to see yourself as he does, which is never a condemnation, but a look at us with great love, even in our weakest points.
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: And so we I mean cause we've all encountered folks that are, you know, become so self-absorbed that they just can't even see themselves in reality.
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: Right, and that can be.
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: It's a sad thing, but we all struggle with that to a certain extent, and so grace is what helps us to know ourself, so that then we know our weaknesses.
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: Obviously, spiritual direction could be a helpful thing.
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: The daily examine, right, just examining our day with the Lord, with his help, we can see those places like oh, you know what I didn't recognize.
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: I was being tempted there and it was piling up, so to speak.
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: That's where that heaviness came from.
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: So next time we can be prepared to in tune with when that happens and what to do in that moment A daily holy hour, some type of prayer, 30 minutes to an hour each day of prayer.
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: Spiritual reading Dig into those 30 minutes to an hour each day of prayer.
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: Spiritual reading Dig into the good books in our tradition that maybe address one of your weaknesses because, guess what, we've all experienced it.
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: There's got to be there's usually a book on it and just helpful conversations with your fellow Catholics who are on this journey as well.
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: That's awesome, father.
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: A reminder that perhaps the best way to use this series on spiritual warfare with Father Browning is a compliment to reading maybe one or both of the books that we listed in the show notes.
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: Both of them are fairly quick reads, worth every minute that you spend on them.
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: I started out with Dan Burke's book because it was a little bit more, a little shorter, but then I found that the Father Timothy Gallagher's book was a wonderful compliment and I ended up reading them both and going back and forth and it was just a joy to read.
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: Remember that God wants good things to come to us and that we're loved by God, and he wants nothing more than for us to grow close to him and to love others and bring them into this union and communion with God.
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: That's really what this battle is all about.
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: Finally, please remember to subscribe and share this podcast with others and, like so many ministries, the events that I present at normally provide a lot of my income, and the income for the John Paul II Renewal Center have been canceled, so please consider, if you can, a one-time donation of becoming a monthly sponsor, and again, the link is in the show notes, and thank you for being here with us, father, and I encourage everybody to once in a while, tune up with this, go through these podcasts again, even if you've read them, you've studied them a little bit, and every once in a while the beauty of podcasts is they stay there you can go back and every once in a while, go through them again and kind of tune up a little bit.
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: Father Browning, we're very grateful to you for being here with us.
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: You're such a blessing.
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: So any final notes, any final thoughts from you?
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: And also, of course, please leave us with a prayer.
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah just maybe a couple little things.
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: So we can be a little bit overwhelmed when we're digging into our prayer journey and to these things and think, oh, I'll never get those.
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: You know, john Henry Newman said that the only way to begin praying is by praying poorly.
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: Oh beautiful.
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: And then Chesterton said if the job is worth doing, it's worth doing poorly.
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: I love it.
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: The key is summed up in St Teresa of Avila.
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: She says having a growing life of prayer comes down to one thing I love it.
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: This to you so that in me you may have peace In the world.
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: You face persecution, but take courage.
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: I have conquered the world, and so when we enter into this battle, we know that Jesus has already conquered.
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: We just have to continue to fight this battle with him, knowing that he's going to win it for us.
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's beautiful.
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: Hey, thank you so much, Father.
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: And again, the podcasts are neat because if you have other people that you know are on a spiritual journey and struggling, like we all are, to live out our lives in this crazy world, the right way that we're going to need some encouragement.
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: So please share these podcasts with others.
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: And, Father, can you leave us with a prayer?
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be world without end.
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: Amen, may Almighty God bless you, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: Amen, amen, amen.
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: Hey, god bless you.
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: Thank you, father.
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: Thanks for everyone for listening.
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: Appreciate it.