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in the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit amen direct oh Lord all our actions by thy holy Inspirations and carry them on by thy gracious assistance so that every prayer and work of ours may begin from thee and by thee be Happ through Christ Our Lord amen virgin most prudent pray for us in the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit amen I want to talk a little bit about obstacles in prayer because a lot of people just simply don't advance in the spiritual life because they're not consistent

in the prayer life over the last three years we noticed and this is something we keep statistics as exorcists in our community we actually keep statistics on the number of people that approach us how many people go through our protocol how many people do what they're supposed to do what we begin to discover is a very distinctive pattern that was emerging and that is that demons were attacking people because of the fact that they lacked Elementary discipline in their spiritual life Elementary spiritual discipline what does that mean even concretely it means this it means that

what we noticed is is that there is not an area in a person's life where they are consistently practicing self-denial every day that's what it means that literally most people even if they're going to daily mass or even if they're saying the rosary Etc there's not a disciplined part of their life where they have to keep telling themselves no so then we put them on the Angeles 600 noon and 6 and then we get that can I do it at 700 look this is exactly why we have you doing it at six because of the

fact that you're you're done disciplined right and then once they become disciplined the demons leave them alone right or they just left them alone by and large but this is a key point because it tells us that most people in their in their prayer life are undisciplined they don't do it consistently and so on an external level before we even get to prayer uh itself one of the biggest obstacles to prayer is that people don't have a consistent time every single day where they're doing the prayer you know they're not getting up at 5: and

then saying their prayers from 5:00 to 5:30 or whatever they're just not doing it and each person will adjust it based upon when they could they find their prayers the most uh beneficial or that they have the best prayer they can adjust it during the course of the day but it has to be consistently every single day there has to be a regimen that's put in place and then obviously on the externals to the prayer too there also has to be of okay I've got to take an inventory of my spiritual life here's the 64

virtues you know you put them up on the wall you tell your guardian angel okay start pointing to the ones that I don't have all right and you have to start sorting that out like I said praying to Our Lady of Sorrows to reveal it will and asking your guardian angel will give you a tremendous amount of information about yourself by the way they're unlikely to tell you the thing that you think you see usually there's some hidden thing that's at the root of a lot of your difficulties and that's what people will find sometimes

people get depressed in it and I'm like yeah it's pretty bad isn't it but actually it's good because of the fact that they actually can now see what they actually have to work on and once they start removing that they'll notice a drastic shift in their own spiritual life so this external discipline and regimented they have to be regimented every single day you can't approach the spiritual life it's arduous it's like working out if you're going to develop virtue just like the guy who's trying to develop his muscles by lifting weights you can't do it

whenever it has to be consistent a certain amount every day it has to be done in a proper manner and Etc to build the muscles and the same way the exact same thing applies to prayer so there has to be that external regimen the second part is they have to start eliminating all these things that are causing the distractions I mentioned the r defects cause the distractions that's one of the principal things so you got to start working on those and getting rid of those the other part is you're going to have to start developing

some place where you can pray on a regular basis once people reach a certain level of proficiency where the habit of prayer is so consistent in life they can sit down and pray anywhere but most people can't do that because they're too distracted the very very nature of our intellectual faculties is to come to knowledge of things through our senses and as a result we have a bit of a focus on our senses but it takes a little while to get to the point where our focus is on God only doesn't mean we don't still

use our senses but it just means that we have to um that we're going to be easily distracted by the things that are around us and so this is one of the key things so like if you're a married woman with eight children and the youngest one is one well your husband's going to have to take care of him for a little while so that you can go pray and vice versa and you're going to have to do it at a time when the kids are still sleeping yes that means you're not going to get

to sleep in every day and if you've got eight kids you're not sleeping in anyway way right cuz there's always one of them that's waking you up at 4:00 in the morning right so but the point being is is that there has to be a consistent time of your prayer life and you have to be you have to be disciplined and the discipline is the self denial what's what are you denying you're denying the comfort of doing things when you feel like doing them you're doing them regardless of how you feel regardless of what the

situation is regardless you're just going to do it right there also has to be uh in addition to this so we're talking again obstacles to prayer as I mentioned prayer is um you know as you start eliminating your defects and then you'll start to ascend the heights of prayer but also as you start doing the daily meditation it's going to start you're going to start just noticing defects will just dissipate you just stop having a problem with anger you just stop having a problem with you know you know wanting to eating Bon bonss at 10:00

at night you're just going to stop having that um inclination because the prayer begins to order the faculties but also the grace that actually comes from it this is an indicator that one of the principal means of Grace in our life is prayer you know people will ask me Father well how do I increase my charity well Supernatural virtues actually kind of work and we we're going to go into it in general with charity and then we'll talk about how that pi to the virtue of religion but when when you're talking about the um charity

it St Thomas says when it comes to the infused virtues the way it works is because we're not the cause nothing we do causes them to increase what we have to do he says is we perform the action of that virtue which then causes a disposition in our in us for an increase in The Virtue and then God infuses it this is why people I'll tell people you know if you want to build charity just start telling God you love him on regular intervals throughout the course of the day but I don't feel it yeah

I know don't worry about it it's kind of one one of my guys that I would give spiritual direction from time to time so it's basically fake it until you make it I'm like kind of right but basically you're just performing the action you're not going to feel anything right it doesn't matter it's the same thing when people go to confession right people say but most of all cuz it offends thee my god well I don't feel that father yeah we know that but why does the church have you say something it's not that you're

saying something that's false and what you're doing is you're expressing your hope and your desire in other words I tell God I love you you know I love you Above All Things even though you might not but the reason you tell him that is because your desire is that he will start to infuse that love of things above you'll dispose yourself to it and then he'll start to infuse it this is why people who start building charity as they start working on that then what they know Noti is is that it's after the fact after

they've done these things for a little while they notice hey it's coming that virtue starting to be more operative I'm starting to become more charitable right it's the same thing with Faith and Hope right you have to make absolute Faith and Hope thought God I trust in you on at a regular on regular intervals you know I have perfect confidence in you most people have to there's a a Hing point and this is where hope becomes so key there's a hinge point in the spiritual life I mentioned it you know that you kind of go

from the prayer of Simplicity to um to Mystical contemplation in the between the fourth and the fifth levels of prayer that's a really key time in a person's spiritual life and they really need a spiritual director at that point up until then some do some don't but there's a that's a key hinge because what's happening is you're now stepping into a darkness that that you need direction because you don't you're blind as a bat spiritually which is kind of interesting because we ourselves know ourselves based more on our defects than our Perfections how do we

know that when people get to the point where they've gutted all the defects from their interior spiritual life they say I don't even know myself anymore no you don't because you've always been judging yourself based on these other things but that's a key time frame because why is that a key time frame it's key because it emphasizes and it becomes the key time in which which the control over the person's spiritual life has to be seed to God Alone we are not perfect and you cannot give what you don't have despite the fact that Stephen

Hawkins said you know that there is this nothing and then it just jumped out he's talking about the big bang I'm like what's this it you're talking about it don't exist to jump right it's a violation of the principle of sufficient reason so basically what does this mean you can't give what you don't have have I've always wanted to walk up to guys like that and say Hey can I have a million dollars I don't have a million dollars well maybe it will just jump out of your pocket right if it did I'm not I'm

convinced he wouldn't give it to me but anyway so the point being is is that we're not perfect and we cannot render ourselves perfect that means we can only get ourselves to a certain stage in the spiritual life and at that point if the person does not seed the continuation of the purification and the advancement in the spiritual life at that point entirely to God they will stall out and fall back in their prayer life usually and so what does that actually look like it looks like this it's a by that time because they've eliminated

all their defects and they've developed sufficient virtue the interior faculties become much more sensitive it's called Acuity you know people who notice this if you fast a lot food tastes better right and so it's that same kind of a thing in the soul that as we uh gain virtue then that the soul becomes more sensitive in that particular area of virtue and so what'll happen is when God gives the person a prompting of Grace because they've got this rectitude in their interior life and relationship to things they'll be able to easily first of all recognize

it's from Satan because if it's from him you're going to it's going to prompt you to something you don't that's not good but if when it comes from God there's going to be this immediate recognition that there's a Grace that's being received you need to do act right and there will be very often two things that happen there's an initial Delight in the upper faculties about the reception of the grace but then very often when a person's not perfect there's a concommittant revulsion in the lower faculties even without the demons our lower faculties don't like

things are arduous and difficult it's one of the effects of original sin it's called weakness and they don't like it because it's hard and it's painful and so whenever we have we think of going to pray when we'd rather just sit and vegetate then then we get that kind of the revulsion of the lower faculties but that's okay just as an indicator you're not perfect yet but that prompting as you grow in virtue that prompting you become much more sensitive to the promptings of Grace it's at that point Fidelity to Grace along the along the

way is is absolutely key to advancing in the spiritual life for anybody but it's at that point that if the person doesn't become entire reliant on Grace then what's going to happen is they're not going to advance in their spiritual life or their prayer life and so lack of fidelity to Grace is one of the principal obstacles to advancement in prayer it's one of the principle because people just aren't faithful to it you know you should go make a holy hour I've got an hour my kids aren't home for an another hour I'm I'm just

going to and all I got to do is walk across the street and so instead the person sits and thumbs through stuff on the internet right this is something that we commonly see even in ourselves or at night when we're a little tired right we first get that Grace you know you should say your prayers and then there's that revulsion of the faculties oh I'm too tired today it's the same thing with fasting you know I tell people well maybe you should start fasting I cannot tell you how much wailing and nashing of teeth I

get when I say that oh Father fasting you know and the Hand goes up and I can't do it's not that bad so recently a close friend of mine went to his doctor and said I want to do Christ's fast no food for 40 days and he was Heavy enough he could do it right the says oh yeah you can do it you just have to maintain your electrolytes and he gave him some stuff to do and gave him this thing to measure his electrolytes and said watch for this stuff he did he went 412

days without eating there's a distinctive pattern in it in fact it's that initial getting over the hump that's the worst the first two days are the worst and after that it's actually not that bad and this is something that most people uh I mean and it still kind of es and flows or some days like um but the point being is is that there's that initial revulsion the same thing is even true of prayer prayer is arduous it's hard it's difficult because we have to exert our will to maintain Focus to do things that were

not to to focus on something that we may not necessarily want to do and it just and even to just get us get ourselves to the point we're going to do it sometimes is difficult Prayer by the way is not a habit this is something that is kind of misunderstood a little bit prayer is actually one of four acts of the virtue of religion so prayer is actually part of the virtue of religion another one is sacrifice most people don't sacrifice on a regular basis either they don't give alms right which is another one I

mean you can just go down the list there's just certain things that people don't do in relationship to the virtue of religion but this if you're going to get to the point where you have that consistent virtue of religion in relationship to prayer which means that I mean we talk about the habit of prayer but technically speaking it's not a habit the habits are inciler to that in the sense that I've become disciplined where I've got my lower faculties straightened out I've been fasting I've been working on my defects I've been these other virtues but

I've also gotten into the habit of being recollected saying my prayers every day at a certain time etc those are the habits that we can get in place and then it's the virtue of religion where I render God his due because religion is the virtue under the virtue of justice and God we ow God things in justice so there's the virtue of religion which is render another is due and then in relationship to God it's rendering God what is due to him and so in the end this is why where prayer is this is why

St Augustine says if you don't pray you're not going to be saved because you're not fulfilling just the elementary aspects of Justice if you're not praying at least 15 minutes a day this is one of the reasons why our ladies said say the Rosary every day because it's roughly 15 minutes and then as a result you'll have met at least the the what's necessary on the order of justice that doesn't even include charity if you really loved God I mean quite frankly most Catholics should be ashamed of how little they love God they should be

ashamed of it and what's shame it's fear of being perceived as lowly I mean if you're getting sucked into the world all the time because the world is the thing that has you and you're focusing more on your job than you are on God and I'm not suggesting you don't focus on your job but if you're focusing on you know the house and this and that and the money and this and that all and it's everything but God that's a problem because it's a sign that you don't have your priorities right and the and your

priority are things that are lower than God and Christ said seek um heaven and all other things will be given to you before uh will be given to you anyway so if you just seek God he's going to make sure all this gets taken care of it doesn't mean you just you can sit and pray and then have to ignore your family obligation it just means that you're going to keep him in the Forefront of it and most people simply don't do that but that means you have to have that perfect Fidelity to Grace you

have to be willing to follow God's promptings our lady herself said it just not in so many words she said do whatever he tells you now sometimes God doesn't talk to people right but he does with people he does give them these Graces and the intellect and the will and prompts them and inclines them towards doing certain things in fact when people come up to me and you know they say well God doesn't talk to me I'm like actually that's a pretty good sign if you're talking about that kind of talking in fact when people

come up and say I'm seeing Jesus I'm like okay I'm an exorcist God's not the only one who broadcasts on that channel by the way okay and this is one of the reasons why we have people say God said to me and I'm like oh boy here we go so then I ask him did he did you hear his voice no well did you take no I just felt it well okay it might be from God but you know as I said he's not the only one that broadcasts on that channel demons do have access

to our emotions and feelings Etc and to our imagination they can put stuff in our head right but there has to be this absolute Fidelity to Grace and that comes as we begin to gain greater virtue our faculties become more in tune with God so if there's anything contrary to God like Temptations we will start to get revulsion in relationship to Temptations even when there're things that in the past we might have gotten Delight in but then also they become more in tune so that when they get that prompting for God they'll follow it so

there has to be that absolute Fidelity to Grace if you're ever going to master prayer it's just simply it the other thing is too is sometimes in prayer one of the people say distractions so people will say father I'm just really distracted now there comes a certain point in a person's spiritual life usually God is not any different than a dog trainer in this sense with a dog trainer you kind of do the take the little the The Little The Milk Bone dog biscuit with a little treat and you kind of like do this and

you roll the dog over and then if he does it you give him the treat right and then you keep doing that and then keep giving him the treat right what are you trying to do you're trying to reinforce the dog to do what you want so that when you just do this even without a dog biscuit he just rolls over right that's go God is in our spiritual life consolations in the beginning the ease of Prayer in the beginning is a sign that you're at The Milk Bone dog biscuit level in your prayer life

cuz God's got to give you the cookies to get you to do it right whereas when we love God it doesn't matter how we feel it doesn't matter how in fact that's why I said one of the first things that God does to us once we start advancing in the spiritual life is he takes away the spiritual cookies he takes away the consolations precisely because for two reasons one it's a test do you love the consolation or do you love me that's his first question to you in that the second part of it is are

you willing to do these things for me even if you get nothing why is that key well it boils down to this I've said it in a public conference just recently because I only recently kind of got permission to even talk about it but one of the things that actually happened and this is something that you see in every single person's spiritual life but I have a case that has beb as the possessor which is another name for Satan and he told me very early on in the case that part the reason this case is

going to drag out which it has but he says the reason it's going to drag out is because he wants he referring to God wants me to be revealed that is Satan and so I'm like yeah whatever so I just keep beating him around well at a certain point he manifested during mass and after Mass I said he told you you had to tell me something didn't he and he just was so angry he could not look at me and so I said shut up you are not to talk you're forbidden to talk in the

name of Jesus Christ I command you or to be silent until I tell you you can talk now there's two reason reasons for that one he has to learn who's in the driver's seat cuz that's really what this is all about he has to learn that he has to obey God's Authority which is given to the bishop which is then given to me he has to learn that he he knows it but he just has to be willing to live by it the second part of it is is that this guy was particularly notorious for

once you realized he knew something that he had to say if you tried to get it out of him too quickly he would drag it out and drag it out and drag it out so it's just counterproductive so I just beat him around for 45 minutes just ruthlessly also demons when it comes to God are absolutely obedient in their first instance they weren't they were disobedient but after that they are absolutely obedient to him when he tells them do X there's never any discussion there's never any uh you know irritation or anger or what they

just do it right so you can tell he got this and they want to do it they want to get it done cuz they just want to get it done cuz they know it's going to be brutal because God's told them they have to do it they just want to comply and they just want to get this thing done right so the fact that he couldn't do it meant it was particularly even painful so we 45 minutes in I said you have something to tell me he said yes I said okay let's hear it he

told me I had to tell you my nature now what does that mean every Angel is actually created with a particular set of tasks and that task determines who and what they are it's their identity it's their nature and he had an originally signed test which I'm not going to go into but I'm going to go into what he said his the inversion so whenever he made this Choice all demons choose the inversion of what that they actually did what their assigned task ones so I said let's hear it and he looks at me in

all seriousness so there's ways that you can tell when demons are dying they're really bad Liars they're like 16-year-old girls who get caught when they were out too late last night you know I wasn't that like that yeah I can just tell by the way you're reacting right okay but they're really bad liars and there there's also other princip that we used to but this this guy looked like he was telling the truth and he looks at me and he said I convince people he was very formal in how he was saying this he says

I convince people that they cannot be separated from the particular good and after he said that he paused for just a minute and he said it's how I took Adam and Eve out it's how I took your government out it's how I'm taking the church out it's how I've styed every single individual in the spiritual life he said it's at the root of every sin and every defect and I'm like yes it is this is key what does this mean it means if you're not a saint there is a psychological compatibility in you with him

because you have not sacrificed everything for him that's what it means but it also means something very key because the woman afterwards after the session she said in the background was something that was really important this conviction that there's this some I can't let loose of you know and it's sometimes it's so simple right you've already had your first course or you've had your first helping and then you know oh man those cheesy mashed potatoes were really good so what do you do you and you're thinking to yourself I got to get there before John

does otherwise I'm going to be out right I don't want to be separated so you go and you eat more when you don't need it right it's something as simple as that it can be something as simple as not being willing to be separated from your spouse or things like that that's how he took Adam out by the way the fathers of the church said that one of the sins of Adam was an unwillingness to be separated from his wife so this is and with Eve and both Adam it was the unwillingness to be to

let go of the particular good of the knowledge of Good and Evil but in the background the woman said in the background what he didn't say was that what part of that psychology was was that in sacrificing we get the feeling that if I sacrifice something for someone else I get nothing in the process because in sacrifice it's the imperfect inversion of Satan because if his thing is to convince us that we can't be separated from this thing and as a result we commit sin or we do things we're not supposed to do because we're

holding on to these things then sacrifice is the exact opposite that because in sacrifice the first step is there has to be a willingness to be separated from the thing I'm sacrificing to give it to the other person whether that's God or someone or my family or what have you so there has to be that willingness to be separated from that and what he does she said is she she she could CU she could see his thoughts when demons reach a level of pain they the psychological barrier between the person who's possessed and the demon

breaks down and the person who's possessed actually sees the thoughts of the demons and she said what I saw was that he convinces people that in the in sacrifice they get nothing they're losing out in the sacrifice that is the perfect Inver that is what drives people to not want to sacrifice that they're just going to lose out from the from the good but it plays a particular role in relationship to malice every single sin is malicious see people have this idea I'm not malicious I'm a good person are you fornicating yes well then you're

malicious why because the definition of malicious is willing the Lesser good over the greater good your pursuing pleasure over the rectitude of following God's law which is a greater good but that tell so that's and so every time we commit a sin we're choosing the Lesser good and this is why they say that in every sin both as a result of original sin which we're all stuck with but now is at an actual exent every time we commit a sin we increase the malice in our will every one of us so unless you're sinless you're

malicious and unless you reach Perfection then you're not you still have m malice and it's something that has to be worked on you're choosing lesser Goods you're not choosing God in every instance but that being said it's the malice is the inversion of sacrifice because in sacrifice it's not that you're losing the good the particular good it's that you're setting that aside and you're achieving a greater good whether it's an increase in virtue whether it's the we we know this intuitively when a man goes off to war and sacrifices his life for the for us

it means that he his life which is a lesser good is sacrificed and lost and it's given over for the sake of the greater good which is our lives our well-being our good and that's the greater good that's achieved in every single sacrifice in relationship to God every time we sacrifice something for God every time we do that yes we do separate ourselves from some created good good in that process we're giving something up we're detaching from something but in the process we're gaining greater virtue of religion because sacrifice is part of the virtue of

religion we're increasing our virtue we're increasing our level of Grace We're increasing our place in heaven so that in point in fact we're getting a greater good every single time we sacrifice this is why sacrifice is the perfect inversion of sin they're the the Opposites okay so what does this mean in relationship what's this got to do with obstacles and prayer most people are unwilling to sacrifice the time they're unwilling to sacrifice the things that are necessary outside their their prayer life in order to attain a higher level in their spiritual life most people are

unwilling to put aside the particular Goods in their life in order to achieve these things if you're spiritually mediocre which is you know as a as a priest giving a conference I can legitimately say there's not a single individual in this room that's not spiritually mediocre how can I say that one is true about 95% of you the other 5% who probably aren't spiritual meder who are advancing their spiritual life see that they have not reached the level of Charity and love of God that they really want and they're say yes Father you're right so

I can get away with it you know it's the same thing which I say none of you are Saints CU then people the saint is going to say you're right father I'm not a saint right right so it's certain things you can get away with the point I'm driving out is is in this that the one of the principal obstacles to prayer is the willingness to sacrifice the time to sacrifice the comfort and those things that are necessary sometimes just kneeling you know people just don't even want to kneel you know they don't want to

have to sacrifice even in these little things but then also there is a thing which uh is important in the sense that we stall out because we don't have that perfect Fidelity to Grace when we're talking about distractions so distractions are going to have one of two sources well three the World the Flesh or the devil basically it's same as Temptations it's either going to be the world because there's things going on that we want to attend to Etc or it's going to be the devil who's just going to put stuff in our minds right

and they there's all sorts of those I mean the demons can do all sorts of things like you know you really shouldn't be praying you should really be changing Johnny's diaper right or things like that I mean it can just be some they they'll very often tempt you with things that are legitimate that is your um those things that are proper to your spiritual life that you should or your state in life that you should be taken care of but then a lot of times they're just going to just throw things in your imagination just

going to see if you actually can you know if they if they can get away with it and just distract you because they have a fundamental principle see if you if you boil down everything I've said today it could be boiled down to one thing and that is the principle of Charity love God with your whole heart God has to be everything right everything for God everything whereas the demons are anything but God even if it means getting you sucked into doing all sorts of work at the church getting all doing all sorts of other

things that are on a spiritual level that normally speaking would be good as long as your focus isn't on God they're happy because they Envy us they Envy the fact that you and I one day could see him and that vision would be for all eternity they Envy us they Envy our life the fact that we can have a normal conversation without hating each other and actually we can love each other we can actually be concerned about each other's well-being and things like that they don't get to experience any of that but ultimately what they

really Envy is the fact that that we get to see God the possibility that we could get to see God I usually don't say this but I think to drive this point home to give you an idea if you ever watch the movie in nefarious there's the scene where he's T the demon is taking perfect Elation in the abortion historically the church did not have abortion as an the reason the church considered it such a heinous thing is because the child was permanently deprived based upon the words of Pope Alexander II was permanently deprived of

the possibility of the biotypic vision that's why it was so heinous this is a key thing I know what the international theological commission has come out with but it doesn't line out with what the church has said through its entire tradition but that being said it shows you that they're willing they they want us to commit murder precisely to deprive someone else of seeing God cuz it's God they don't want us to see it's God that they still want but they can't see him they hate him but they want him right it's one of those

kinds of things it's analogous I tell people it's analogous to the guy who can't have the beautiful girl because she want doesn't want anything to do with him but he still so he hates her because he she doesn't like him but she still he's still wants her it's that kind of a nonsense so where am I going with all this if means that there has to be this perfect Fidelity to Grace and as the person becomes more uh perspicacious or becomes more perceptive of how Grace was operating within their interior life and so as a

result they can advance in their in their prayer Life as a result of it the person will also start to notice what's called signal Graces now a lot of people hear about that term signal Graces and there are different kinds of signal Graces the first kind of signal Grace is what we call objective Grace it's something that's external to us which is an indicator that probably it's God's will that this thing happens so one of the objective Grace is so objective Grace again is those things that occur external to sometimes you'll have a guy who's

particularly virtuous in a parish and a number of people will come up to and says you know have you ever thought of how that you know maybe you have a vocation right and that can be God giving those people the grace to prompt them to say that that's not always the case just because someone's virtues doesn't equate to them having a vocation but it can be sometimes those external events can also be an indicator of what the actual story was so I I believe it was the I want to say 1600s but don't quote me

on that there was a village that got wiped out in Europe from a landslide it just got the whole village but one girl got wiped out from it and basically the uh indicator was as a part of the signal Grace is that as it turns out that particular Village was particularly bad except this girl right you know when we hear Bishops say oh God doesn't punish human beings by natural disasters oh really are most people aware of the fact that when when they went into Thailand when they had the tsunami that when they went into

those areas they were the areas of the of the international pedophilia rings when the red cross came in all they found were men and boys like where's the girls then St Louis gets wiped out it's that rate of it's the place that has the highest rate of voodoo in the country I could go down a whole litany that's just not true now it doesn't mean that every time there's a natural disaster that somehow or another that's an indicator of the people that are there but this idea that we don't that God doesn't do this is

just simply not true oh it's the god of the New Testament he didn't change if we're particularly bad he's going to going to clean our clock right which makes me wonder about California no I'm just kidding the point being is is that there are signal Graces that God actually gives external to us so sometimes like when you pull up to the red light and you're like it just turned red this is the one that lasts like five minutes well okay what that's an indicator is that God wants you to work on the virtue of patience

so you can look at each of your circumstances in life to get the indicator of what Graces that God wants to achieve in those particular moments so those are external Graces but then there are also signal Graces that give an indicator of other things like a vocation so a signal Grace of a vocation is the fact that a person wants to like for example if he's a pre he wants to be a priest that he desires to say mass that he desires to hear confessions to anoint people right those are an indicator that he has

these Graces but there's also signal Graces that God is giving you that he's drawing him to you more closely and this can be the fact just that he he just gives some people lots of actual Graces to where they just and he even gives them what's called previant Grace which is the grace that prepares them so that when he gives them this Grace they respond properly he even gives them those it's an indicator that there's some people that they're receiving signal Graces that he wants to draw them closer another signal Grace this is going to

sound very strange but another signal Grace that can be an indicator that God is trying to draw you closer to him is diabolic attack St Paul said engage the ancient Serpent and win the crown of Glory what does that mean it means that the person that God calls to a high level of spiritual warfare you see this with certain possessed people that when they come up to speed you can see The Graces that God is giving to these people that these become some of the holiest people you'll ever meet and the solidity with which they

remain steadfast despite the brutal attacks internally and psychologically the fact that they remain steadfast that's a signal Grace that God is calling them closer to him diabolic oppression is actually the fact that your externals get attacked as an indicator and I'm not suggesting you ask God for diabolic oppression what I'm suggesting is that when you see these things it's just an indicator that he's trying to draw you closer to him there are also signal Graces of predestination what does that mean well predestination is is that God is the one who ultimately chooses who gets to

go to heaven now it doesn't mean that we don't have to cooperate and if we cooperate we're going to get to go to heaven that's not what I'm talking about but what I'm saying is is this what I'm saying is is that God chooses certain people that he wants to go to heaven in fact St Thomas aquinus ask a question he says well what if the guy doesn't want to go to heaven and he just keeps doing things and and St Thomas says God just keeps hounding him keeps giving him the grace keeps pestering him

and then eventually he says the guy just says okay and then he gives in right but what this is an indicator of this again is why our lady said the rosary is so key because in saying the rosary every single day for 15 minutes they used to say that's a sign of predestination to Heaven why is that the case it's it's an indicator that God has given you the grace to fulfill this requirement of justice and relationship to him but it's also just an indicator that he's using our lady to draw you closer to him

another signal Grace that you see from people from time to time it's very rare but I have seen it more frequently in recent years ironically even in a time in which the amount of evil just seems so extraordinary when we look at the the stuff on the news and that is benevolence there are certain people whose will is so fixed on the truly good so con consisteny and so consistently and so constantly every time you see them they're just it doesn't matter what's happening they just want the good in each and every single case these

are the types of people that even when it comes to little things they'll say I just want to do it right right and so there's that fixedness it's a Grace why is it a Grace because when we commit sin we got this malice issue as I mentioned before and so to see someone who's consistently willing to good rather as opposed to the truly good as opposed to the Lesser good that is something that's beautiful to behold it's a sign of predestination why because everybody in heaven has that so if you look at what heaven actually

is what people have in heaven ascending the lights Heights of prayer is a is a signal Grace right the fact that God has given you Graces to to achieve higher and higher levels of prayer is an indicator that he's trying to dra bring you to higher levels in heaven and he's trying to drag you closer to him the fact that he gives you Graces to overcome you know consistently you know every year you seem to over be able to overcome a particular defect in your spiritual life and you just keep advancing as St Paul says

going from Grace to Grace that itself is a signal Grace that he is wants you with him for all eternity this gives us great hope the fact that you he would give you the grace to love him on a consistent basis this is also a signal Grace now signal Graces do you pay that much attention to them well it depends on the nature of the signal Grace I mean obviously if you're going across a train track and you you weren't paying attention and all of a sudden you just get across a train track and the

train goes ripping by that's probably a signal Grace that you need to get your act together and focus a little more and work on the virtue of circumspection which is paying attention to your surroundings right that's a signal Grace all right but then on the other hand if you come up and the train goes by and now you're stuck for 15 minutes while this thing goes by well that's a signal Grace that he wants you to work on on patience right so on those particular things you should be paying attention to the signal Graces but

when it comes to the signal Graces when it comes to our imperfections we have to understand that most people even though they're given Graces so as they start ascending the heights of prayer God gives people more and more Graces and as they start become more perfect they get more and more Graces one of the things that happens in that process is is that the person becomes Blinder and Blinder to themselves and that this their salvation they recognize on their part if if it's left to them they will be damned whereas they know that if it's

up to God then they can be saved and so one of the things that they will begin to do is they stop looking to that type of thing and they start focusing on what God is calling them to do by these other Graces work on this defect work on that particular uh aspect of the of your spiritual life one of the things that most people don't realize is that the moral virtues it's it's not you know once you've achieved them you're done right it's not the type of thing that once I reach Temperance then I

never have to worry about Temperance again that's not how it works the the time that I would see it the most when I was a par uh uh a priest in the parish when I was the pastor one of the things that you guys would come into confession said father you know I mastered Chastity when I was in my 20s I did a really good job I mastered chassity been Liv in Chase I'm now 45 I've never fallen since then and and you know I've been living chased in relationship to my wife and now all

of a sudden I'm having all these impure thoughts and I'm getting tempted in these other directions now there's two reasons for that I tell them the first and this is a part of that signal Graces this is an indicator that God's working with this person it's just that a lot of times people don't when people receive Graces most people because they don't know God and because they don't know the structure of the spiritual life and because they don't know how Grace works and because they don't know how um virtue Works they think something's wrong and

I tell them no no no nothing's wrong here so I tell them did you fall no I didn't fall but I've been tempted okay that's a sign of one of two things it's either a sign that in the moral life as St Thomas says when it comes to the moral virtues you have to continue practicing the moral virtues CU if you don't they begin to decline so you have to that's why you have to you know fasting is not okay I fasted now am I done no we get this all the time with people you

know they want to do the on their spiritual life they want to check the boxes you know and especially if they want to have purse said by me because I'm an exorcist okay father I did that that's not how this works the reason we're having you pray on a consistent basis is to build the virtue necessary because when you go through PSM session and because you're possessed you go through Psalm session the sessions are so brutal on people that if you don't have a certain level of virtue and fortitude and stick toess and have built

the virtue of constancy you're just going to bail which is about 20 about 60% of them this is why we haven't built it beforehand but it's an indicator that God is I tell them no it just means that God wants you it doesn't mean there's anything wrong doesn't mean you've lost your virtue it just means you've got to maintain it and keep working on it and I tell them don't worry about it just keep working on it it'll start to wne as time goes on it usually does within a little bit a time but there's

another reason and that has to do with this virtue is one of those things that can always be increased in the soul you can always have more virtue of any of the virtues there's not a limit of how much virtue you have that's not the type of thing well well I reached my limit my the virtue of Utopia right it's just not how that works you can keep improving it keep increasing it in every virtue not just faith hope and charity which is true true too but in all of the virtues and so a lot

of times what happens is a person will Master a particular virtue and then God sends in the demons and the reason he sends them in is not because the person's done something wrong and not to afflict the person unnecessarily but because in fighting the demons they reach a level of virtue that they otherwise would not reach so sometimes the Temptations are themselves a signal Grace if if you receive re the temptation but then you also receive the grace to remain steadfast these signal graces are important Discerning God's grace is really important but you know a

lot of times people they they're not living good moral lives which means their emotions are all over the place as a result of that a lot of times they say well I think God is telling me this you know that's a really dangerous state to be in because a lot of times we can convince ourselves of something when it's just from ourselves especially when we feel good about it right usually when God tells us we have to do something it's pretty ugly you know I I I've never really talked too much about this publicly but

I'll give you an example the relationship I have with our lady is a very interesting relationship because part of the thing part of the thing that I've been always trying to do as a priest something that my dad kind of taught me was to try and encourage men to be men and stop this effeminacy that you see and 99% of men just stop it and start being men right so our lady then her relationship with me is she does not cut me any slack in being soft she has said not said because she didn't talk

to me but she has given me graces at times that were brutal right so when I was going into Tulsa to actually start the Society of priest that we're doing right now I flippantly said to our lady I said you know you could have picked someone better for this job and I was kind of serious right and the reason I think it was the gra it was a Grace from our lady is because it was instantaneous boom came right back and that's not normally how it works when we think things through on our own and

it was a complex thing there were three things that were contained in it and the first one was you're right I could have so I'm like okay then uh at another time she gave me another kind of a Grace very similar thing there was a number of different things kind of and I asked her where are you you know because because I was praying for this second just wasn't happening and immediately I got this grace and basically it was her communicating to me you're not as ESP special to me as you like to think you

are I just looked at I'm like w yeah all right and it was so funny because at that moment I realized well if you're going to tell telling men to be men you better take your beating like a man right even when it's from our lady okay but in this thing so that you're you're right I could have but then it was through your imperfections defects and inabilities that my son's Glory will be made manifest that was key because what she was telling me is you're not you think you are spiritually and don't expect that

you're going to be able to accomplish this on your own this has to be something that is done by her ultimately and then in the background very subtly which I noticed later as I was meditating on this Grace was our L very in a motherly fashion correcting me don't be Curt with me right you should have the proper respect that you should have in relationship to me the reason I'm pointing that out is because a lot of times The Graces that we receive it's only after we' reached a certain level of virtue and that we've

worked on humility that we've worked on gaining all the virtues that are necessary faith hope and charity and all those things that when the grace comes even though sometimes it feels like it Cuts Like a Knife we know it's from God it's the surgeon's knife that's that's cutting something out of us not something that's TR to hurt us whereas a lot of times I think that we tend to think that God is the type of person that always going to make us comfortable that's not true if you remember in the Baltimore catechism the first question

who is gone you know and then Etc and then why did God make you and then that in that question um the answer is to know and to love and to serve him in this life and to be happy with him in the next next notice that the happy is not in this life now it doesn't mean that you can't obtain a certain level of happiness in this life by serving him but it just means what our lady said to um bernardet I can't promise to make you happy in this life only in the next

and I think the biggest mistake we make the reason most people do not are not capable of discerning Graces properly is because we presume when we get a Grace it's going to feel good and it doesn't some of the most profound Graces that people receive are the ones that just cut them down to the depths of their soul because it's like anything else if you're going to remove a boil you can't massage it you got to poke it right and it's the same kind of a thing here in the relationship to our spiritual life you

know Teresa vava she's riding on a donkey and Christ boots her off the Donkey and she gets up and she says well if this is the way you treat your friends no wonder you have so few of them right but it's necessary for us we need to be purified we need to have the surgeon's knife and there's times that it's going to cut and it's going to be painful and we have to be willing to that but when the person has sufficient virtue they know it's the surgeon's knife because they realize this is something bad

that's finally getting removed and even though it's painful at first after it's removed then it stops then we don't feel so bad about it but this is a key thing that the that Grace is one of those things that it takes a bit of doing in order to properly discern now there are certain principles St Ignatius has a set of principles and even talks about um consolations and desolations but all the authors say that the consolation desolation discernment is really more in the beginning stages once you've reached a certain level all of that falls away

and now it becomes two primary things the the first is the structure of the spiritual life am I actually objectively speaking advancing in the spiritual life as I mentioned once people reach the fourth stage of prayer the fourth level of prayer they become spiritually blind they can't see themselves God has to Blind them because if he doesn't what's going to happen is they're going to look at the good that he's doing in them and it's going to inflame Pride so he does it for the sake of their humility they literally don't know where they're at

in their spiritual life and then and this means they also have to become more reliant on him which goes back to that cooperation they have to assume a position of cooperation this is the point about prayer so which I'll return to here in just a minute but it means that God is going God has to drag people through this this process in order to get them to where they actually need and so the first things we have to look at does it align out with the objective structure of how the spiritual life works you know

sometimes people think that all of a sudden they've jumped up to this level and they haven't because they haven't gone through the intermediate stages of developing the proper virtues but then the other is Discerning other things like the fact that John of the Cross talks about that when God gives us a Grace there's a spurring on to achieve the grace or to achieve the virtue that the grace is driving us towards or to improve our spiritual life whereas if when it's from Satan you might get that initial consolation because they can do that they can

cause consolations and lower faculties but then afterwards this this dryness and aridity as a result of it so there's a certain sense in which that can be the case it doesn't mean that the person's getting all sorts of spiritual consolation it just means now there's this drive to want to be holy to have that Union with God to see him to be with the Saints in heaven so there's that interior that subjective Grace so there's objective Graces which we see but there's this in sub what they call subjective Graces these Graces interiorly that God gives

us to Spur us on it also means it's going to be in congruity with our state in life which I'm going to talk about in the next conference but basically what that means is because I've had people come to me one time this one woman she came to me and she said I think I'm called to be a nun she was in her mid-40s I think I'm called to be a nun because I want to live a contemplative life I'm like aren't you married with seven children yes but I think that's what God's calling me

to and I'm just like no he's calling you to go back to your house and start working on your prayer life just because you have a desire to pray doesn't mean you're supposed to be a nun right okay although nuns should have a desire to pray okay that being said it should be congre with your state in life so what why is this important it's important because the criteria for advance in the spiritual life overcoming the obstacles in prayer overcoming these things the structure and the mechanics of the whole spiritual life is an objective structure

it's not what we feel it's not what we you know what we think it's rather where are we in the process of that and usually as a person starts to become more and more perspicacious in their spiritual life because they advance in in virtue as I mentioned to themselves they become Blinder to where they're at but when it comes to what needs to be done to continue the advance and very often what this what the saint what the life of a saint looks like it becomes clear in their mind okay so and this is something

that's really key so what what basically what I'm basically saying is one of the things that you can do you become a saint is you need to study the spiritual life more but you also need to start doing all these things and the development of it's the development of the virtues that's going to give you that sensitivity to God's Grace and it's also going to be then that will be your means to be faithful to it without that you simply will stall out and never achieve Perfection okay we'll take another 15-minute break