Fr. Chad Ripperger: "The Demon Told Me How He Takes People Down"

追加: 2026-05-13

[00:00:00]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 3 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 began 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.

[00:00:40]Elementary spiritual discipline. What does that mean even concretely? It means this.

[00:00:48]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 anggeles 6 noon and 600 and then we get that can I do it at 7? 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 disciplines, the demons leave 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 undisiplined. 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 5:00 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 prayer is the most uh beneficial or that they have the best prayer. They can adjust it during the course of the day.

[00:01:58]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.

[00:02:20]All right? And you have to start sorting that out. Like I said, praying to our lady of sorrows to reveal it will pro and asking your guardian angel will give you a tremendous amount of information about yourself.

[00:02:30]By the way, they're unlikely to tell you the thing that you think you see.

[00:02:35]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.

[00:03:18]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.

[00:03:26]The second part is they have to start eliminating all these things that are causing the distractions. I mentioned the our defects cause the distractions.

[00:03:35]That's one of the principal things. So you got to start working on those and getting rid of those.

[00:03:40]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.

[00:03:58]The 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.

[00:04:18]And so, this is one of the key things.

[00:04:20]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 she 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, right? Because 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 [clears throat] 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?

[00:05:05]There also has to be um 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 o'clock 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 ask me, father, well, how do I increase my charity? Well, supernatural virtues actually kind of work and we're going to go into it in general with charity and then we'll talk about how that applies to the virtue of religion. But when it 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.

[00:06:16]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.

[00:06:44]It's kind of one of 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.

[00:06:52]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."

[00:07:04]Well, I don't feel that, Father. Yeah, we know that.

[00:07:09]But why does the church have you say something? It's not that you're saying something that's false. What you're doing is you're expressing your hope and your desire. [snorts] In other words, I tell God I love you. You know, and 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.

[00:07:33]This is why people who start building charity as they start working on that then what they notice 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 is 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 that 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 hinge 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 and that 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.

[00:08:26]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.

[00:08:38]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 of the defects from their interior spiritual life, they say, "I don't even know myself anymore." No, you don't. Cuz 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?

[00:09:02]It's key because it emphasizes and it becomes the key time in which the control over the person's spiritual life has to be seated to God alone.

[00:09:14]We are not perfect and you cannot give what you don't have despite the fact that Stephven 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.

[00:09:31]It's a violation of the principle of sufficient reason.

[00:09:35]So basically, what does this mean? You can't give what you don't 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.

[00:09:45]All right.

[00:09:48]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.

[00:10:19]And so, what does that actually look like? It looks like this. It's at by that time because they've eliminated all their defects and they've developed sufficient virtue the interior faculties become much more sensitive.

[00:10:32]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.

[00:10:54]And so what'll happen is is when God gives the person a prompting of grace because they've got this rectitude in their interior life in 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 acts, right? And there will be very often two things that happen. There's an initial delight in the upper faculties about re the reception of the grace, but then very often when a person's not perfect, there's a concommmitant revulsion in the lower faculties. Even without the demons, our lower faculties don't like things are arduous and difficult. That'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 than then we get that kind of the revulsion of the lower faculties. But that's okay. That's just as an indicator. You're not perfect yet.

[00:11:56]But that prompting as you grow in virtue that prompting you become much more sensitive to the prompings of grace.

[00:12:03]It's at that point, fidelity to grace along the gray along the way 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 hour another hour. 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. Ah, I'm too tired today.

[00:12:58]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.

[00:13:07]Oh, father, fasting, you know, and the hand goes up and I can't do it's not that bad.

[00:13:16]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."

[00:13:28]And he was heavy enough he could do it, right? The doctor says, "Oh yeah, you can do it. You just have to maintain your electrolytes." And he said gave him some stuff to do and gave him this thing to measure his electrolytes and said, "Watch the for this stuff." He did. He went 41 and a half days without eating.

[00:13:46]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's still kind of es and flows or some days like um but the point being is is that there's that initial revulsion.

[00:14:03]The same thing is even true of prayer.

[00:14:06]Prayer is arduous. It's hard. It's difficult because we have to exert our will to maintain focus to do things that we're 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.

[00:14:28]This is something that is kind of misunderstood a little bit. Prayer is actually one of four acts of the virtue of religion.

[00:14:38]So prayer is actually part of the virtue of religion. Another one is sacrifice.

[00:14:43]Most people don't sacrifice on a regular basis either. They don't give alms 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.

[00:14:55]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.

[00:15:05]The habits are ancillary 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 through 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.

[00:15:34]And God, we owe God things in justice.

[00:15:37]So there's the virtue of religion which is render another his 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.

[00:15:55]This is one of the reasons why our ladies said, "Say the rosary every day cuz 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.

[00:16:23]And what's shame? It's fear of being perceived as lonely. 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 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.

[00:16:54]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 obligations. 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 prompings.

[00:17:20]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.

[00:17:57]Okay."

[00:17:59]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 think?"

[00:18:08]"No, I just felt it." Well, [laughter] 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.

[00:18:20]They can put stuff in our head, right?

[00:18:22]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.

[00:18:31]So, if there's anything contrary to God, like temptations, we will start to get revulsion in relationship to temptations. even when they're things that in the past we might have gotten delighted 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 that 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.

[00:19:09]With a dog trainer, you kind of do the take the little the the the milk bone dog biscuit or the little treat and you kind of like do this and you roll out the dog over and then if he does it, you give him the treat, right? And then you keep doing that and then you 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?

[00:19:35]That's God is in our spiritual life.

[00:19:38]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.

[00:19:58]It doesn't matter how these. 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?

[00:20:30]Why is that key?

[00:20:34]Well, it boils down to this.

[00:20:39]I've said it in a public conference just recently because I only recently kind of got permission to even talk about it.

[00:20:45]But one of the things that actually happened and this is something that you see in every single person's spiritual life.

[00:20:52]But I have a case that has be 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.

[00:21:24]And so I said, "Shut up.

[00:21:27]You are not to talk. You're forbidden to talk. In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you. You are to be silent until I tell you you can talk."

[00:21:35]Now, there's two reasons for that. One, he has to learn who's in the driver's seat because 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.

[00:21:47]He has to learn that. He knows it but he just has to be willing to live by it.

[00:21:52]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 he tried to get it out of him too quickly, he would drag it out and drag it out and drag it out. So, it was 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 could tell he got this and they want to do it. They want to get it done because they just want to get it done because they know it's going to be brutal because God's told them they have to do it and 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.

[00:23:01]And he had an originally signed task 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 ends choose the inversion of what that they actually did what their assigned task was. 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 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 principles 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 that. He says, "I convince people that they cannot be separated from the particular good."

[00:23:54]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 stymied every single individual in their spiritual life. He said, it's at the root of every sin and every defect.

[00:24:12]And I'm like, yes, it is.

[00:24:16]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 something 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.

[00:24:54]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 could 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.

[00:25:28]But in the background, the woman said in the background, what he didn't say was that what part of that psychology 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 imperfecting version 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 cuz 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.

[00:26:09]So there has to be that willingness to be separated from that. And what he does, she said, is she she she could because she could see his thoughts. When demons reach the 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."

[00:26:38]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.

[00:26:48]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.

[00:27:05]you're pursuing pleasure over the rectitude of following God's law which is a greater good but that tell so that's and 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 as an actual sin every time we commit a sin we increase the malice in our will every one of us.

[00:27:29]So unless you're sinless, you're malicious. And unless you reach perfection, then you're not you still have malice and it's something that has to be worked on. You're choosing lesser goods. You're not choosing God in every instance.

[00:27:44]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.

[00:28:21]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 in that process. We're giving something up.

[00:28:38]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 they're the opposites.

[00:29:02]Okay. So what does this mean in relationship? What's this got to do with obstacles in 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 spiritually communic 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'll say yes father you're right so I can get away with it [laughter] you know it's the same thing which I say none of you are saints because then people the saint is going to say you're right father I'm not a saint right so it's certain things you can get away with the point I'm drawing out is is in this that the one of the principal obstacles to prayer is 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're don't have that perfect fidelity to grace.

[00:30:40]But 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, the 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?

[00:30:56]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'll they'll very often tempt you with things that are legitimate.

[00:31:10]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 taking care of.

[00:31:18]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.

[00:31:40]And that is the principle of charity.

[00:31:43]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. [clears throat] 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 and we can actually be concerned about each other's well-being and things like that.

[00:32:28]They don't get to experience any of that. But ultimately what they really envy is the fact that we get to see God. The possibility that we could get to see God.

[00:32:41]I usually don't say this but I think that to drive this point home to give you an idea if you ever watch the movie Nefarious there's the scene where he's take the demon is taking perfect elation in the abortion.

[00:32:53]Historically, the church did not have abortion as an excommunicable offense because it was the murderer of an innocent, which it is. The reason the church considered it such a heinous thing is because the child was permanently deprived based upon the words of Pope Alexander IIIth was permanently deprived of the possibility of the botific vision. That's why it was so heinenous.

[00:33:21]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.

[00:33:30]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 because 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.

[00:33:47]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 still wants her. It's that kind of a nonsense. So, where am I going with all this?

[00:34:05]It means that there has to [clears throat] be this perfect fidelity to grace. And as the person becomes more uh perspeacious 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's 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 graces 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 him 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 virtuous 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.

[00:36:04]When the Red Cross came in, all they found were men and boys. Like, where's the girls?

[00:36:11]Then St. Louis gets wiped out. It's the rate of it's the place that has the highest rate of voodoo in the country. I could go down a whole litany of 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.

[00:36:26]But this idea that we don't that God doesn't do this is just simply not true.

[00:36:30]Oh, it's the God of the New Testament.

[00:36:31]He didn't change. If we're particularly bad, he's going to clean our clock, right? Which makes me wonder about California. No, I'm just kidding.

[00:36:44]The point being is that there are single 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.

[00:36:57]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 an indicator of what graces that God wants to achieve in those particular moments.

[00:37:07]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 prevenient grace which is the grace that prepares them so that when he gives them this grace they respond properly. He even gives them those that's an indicator that there are 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.

[00:37:59]But another signal grace that can be an indicator that God is trying to draw you closer to him is diabolic attack.

[00:38:08]St. Paul said, "Engage the ancient serpent and win the crown of glory."

[00:38:15]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.

[00:38:46]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.

[00:39:04]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.

[00:39:17]What I'm saying is is that God chooses certain people that he wants to go to heaven. In fact, St. Thomas Aquinas has 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?

[00:39:39]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.

[00:39:52]Why is that the case? It's it's an indicator that God has given you the grace to fulfill this requirement of justice in relationship to him. But it's also just an indicator that he's using our lady to draw you closer to him.

[00:40:06]Another signal grace that you see from people from time to time. It's very rare, but I have seen it uh 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.

[00:40:26]There are certain people whose will is so fixed on the truly good so consistency 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.

[00:40:47]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.

[00:40:53]And so there's that fixness. 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 the good rather as opposed to the truly good as opposed to the lesser good, that is something that's beautiful to behold.

[00:41:10]It's a sign of predestination. Why?

[00:41:12]Because everybody in heaven has that.

[00:41:16]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 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 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.

[00:41:54]the fact that you he would give you the grace to love him on a consistent basis.

[00:41:57]This is also a signal grace.

[00:42:00]Now signal graces do you pay that much attention to him? Well, it depends on the nature of the signal grace.

[00:42:07]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 of 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 they as they start to become more perfect they get more and more graces. One of the things that happens in that process 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.

[00:43:20]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.

[00:43:54]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 chastity, been living 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 because 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 purr 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 solemn session and because you're possessed and you go through solemn session, the sessions are so brutal on people that if you don't have a certain level of virtue and fortitude and stick tuitiveness and have built the virtue of constancy, you're just going to bail, which is about 20 about 60% of them.

[00:45:47]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.

[00:46:01]It'll start to wayne as time goes on."

[00:46:03]It usually does within a little bit of time. But there's another reason, and it 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.

[00:46:17]There's not a limit of how much virtue you have. It's not the type of thing, well, well, I've reached my limit by the virtue of utropelia, 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, 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.

[00:46:45]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.

[00:46:58]So sometimes the temptations are themselves a signal grace. If if you receive the temptation, but then you also receive the grace to remain steadfast.

[00:47:08]These signal graces are important.

[00:47:10]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.

[00:47:38]You know, I I have 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 in 99% of men. Just stop it and start being men, right?

[00:48:08]So our lady then her relationship with me is she does not cut me any slack in being soft.

[00:48:20]She has said she's not said cuz she didn't talk to me but she has given me graces at times that were brutal.

[00:48:28]Right? So when I was going into Tulsa to actually start the Society of Priests 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."

[00:48:40]And I was kind of serious, right? And I the reason I think it was the grace, 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.

[00:48:54]And it was a complex thing. There were three things that were contained in it.

[00:49:00]And the first one was, "You're right. I could have."

[00:49:05]So I'm like, "Okay."

[00:49:09]Then uh at another time she gave me another kind of a grace, very similar thing.

[00:49:14]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 thing and it it just wasn't happening. And immediately I got this grace and basically it was her communicating to me, you're not as special to me as you like to think you are.

[00:49:33][laughter] I just looked at I'm like yeah all right and it was so funny because at that moment I realized well if you're going to telling men to be men you better take your beating like a man right even when it's from our lady.

[00:49:48]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.

[00:49:59]That was key because what she was telling me is you're not where you think you are spiritually.

[00:50:06]And don't expect that you're going to be able to accomplish this on your own.

[00:50:12]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 ladies 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 [sighs] the reason I'm pointing that out is because a lot of times the graces that we receive it's only after we've 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.

[00:50:58]It's the surgeon's knife that's that's cutting something out of us, not something that's trying to hurt us.

[00:51:05]Whereas, a lot of times, I think that we tend to think that God is the type of person that, oh, he's going to make us comfortable. That's not true. If you remember in the Baltimore Catechism, the first question, who is God? 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.

[00:51:34]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.

[00:51:42]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.

[00:51:54]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 that 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 re 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, Theresa Vavala, 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?

[00:52:42]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 the 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.

[00:53:33]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.

[00:54:04]And then the and this means they also have to become more reliant on him, which goes back to that cooperation.

[00:54:10]They have to assume a position of cooperation.

[00:54:14]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 thing is 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.

[00:54:45]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 in lower faculties but then afterwards it's 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 in what they call subjective graces. These graces interiorly that God gives us to spur us on.

[00:55:39]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?

[00:56:03]Yes, but I think that's what God's calling me to. And I'm 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 in congruary 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.

[00:56:41]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 puscious in their spiritual life because of the advance in in virtue as I mentioned to themselves they become blinder to where they're at.

[00:57:02]But when it comes to what needs to be done to continue the advance and very often what this what this 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 I basically what I'm basically saying is that one of the things that you can do to become a saint is you need to study the spiritual life more.

[00:57:25][clears throat] But you also need to start doing all these things and 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.