Ep 89 - Exploring The Wilderness Warrior with Father Dwight Longnecker

Hello, all welcome to another episode of the Manly Catholic. This is James, your host, and with me we have a very special guest. We had father Dwight Longnecker. Welcome to the Manly Catholic father.

Thanks for the invitation. Good to be here.

Absolutely so. A father long necker. I'm sure most of you guys have heard of him At some point in the Catholic world. He's very well-known speaker, author and he has a blog as well that is pretty well known. So we are, we're, very humbled to have him on the show and tonight we're going to speaking about one of his new books. It's called the way of the wilderness warrior and we're going to dive into that and just a couple minutes. But, father long necker, before we get going, do you mind Starting us off with a word of prayer?

Absolutely in the name of the father, son and Holy Spirit. Amen. Heavenly father, you've promised the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth, to guide and protect us, to watch over and direct us. We pray for fulfillment of that promise now, for the Holy Spirit to be with us as we Shared truths together with one another. This we pray through Christ, our Lord, amen.

Amen, thank you, father. Now, father, one of the question I always like to lead off with my guests to shoot our have our audience get to know you a little bit better is the question is, if you could be the patron saint of anything, what would it be and why?

I think, first of all, my becoming a saint at all is a pretty much of a long shot, but I think maybe I would like to be the patron saint of travelers. Oh, and why is that? Only because my life has involved a lot of travel over the years, leaving home, setting out for England, leaving the Catholic, the Anglican church, to become a Catholic, then Launching out from there to become a Catholic priest. So there's been a bit of a bit, there's been a bit of an adventure over the years and it's been a long journey. So I would say it's patron saint of travelers.

Okay, I would say that and that ties in perfectly with your, with your book the way of the wilderness war years. Well, so I love that. Now, before we dive into the book, I did have more of a personal question for you and so, and I mentioned, you were Anglican priest at one point and then obviously now you are a Catholic priest. So how the heck do you handle being a husband, a father and a Catholic priest? I mean just knowing father Dom closely, I mean the duties that he has and then the dues I have as a husband and father as well.

I just I can't imagine how you do all that well, First of all, I had 15 years in the Anglican church where they have them married clergy, so there was kind of a model to follow there. But there's a couple of things. First of all, I'm blessed with a wife who is very smart and very independent and she Started her own business and she gets on and she does that, so we're not living in each other's pockets all the time. My children are grown up now. So that bit of Responsibility is out of the house, although of course you're always, always a father and. But the main thing is I say to my parish staff you need to do, you need to do everything that needs to be done so that I can do what only Dwight father, Dwight Longenacker, can do, and therefore that means Father, the priestly things which are really only Hearing confession, saying mass and anointing the sick. We can delegate those, the other tasks, to lots of other people, lay people and so forth. So I have a wonderful team of lay people who are very skilled, very talented, very well educated and they, along with my parochial vicar, who is himself a married former Lutheran pastor, enable me to sort of delegate things. So I delegate.

Always having that that team of support around you. It's so key and in every aspect of our lives, so I love that delegation.

It's perfect, yeah, now this also fits in, if you know. If you allow me just to Extend a little bit, this also fits in with the vision of the church for Vatican to where the lay people are meant to be engaged and enabled and enthused to be able to do their work and to follow their gifts and their charisms. Here in the US, we're blessed with people who have lay people who have an enormous level of enthusiasm, very often a very good education. Most of my staff have masters in theology. Even the secretaries and the and the Sort of administrative staff are very well trained and understand the mission of the church, and so we've worked together as a team and that's a lot of it. I believe that's the way it should be. I.

Oh, hundred percent. Yeah, I mean one thing that Father Dal and me talk about a lot too on the podcast is, you know, kind of bringing together that brotherhood of, obviously, fathers such as yourself and fathers like me who, because we need each other, because without us, if we isolate each other, I mean that's when you know we're at our weakest but we're meant to be together and stronger together. And you know iron sharpens iron as man sharpens one another. So I love that. You know having that team around you know it can only help us with bring us up and bring up the church as well as a whole. So thank you for sharing that. Really appreciate it. Yeah and so diving now into more of the books. So, the way of the wilderness warrior, I guess just give our audience a brief Kind of synopsis, if you will, without giving away too many details, just so they know kind of where we're going in this, in this conversation tonight yeah, um, I've written about 20 books which are nonfiction books on Catholic faith and culture, and I find more and more I'm drawn to writing fiction.

And this particular book is where this began, began to sort of blossom, and the way it happened was I felt I wanted to write a book on spirituality. But you know, as I say in the introduction, if you write a book on spirituality, there's really one of two choice what one of three ways to do that. The first is you need to be a saint and to be able to write from your experience, like Saint Trees of Avila or Saint Francis to sales or so forth and I wasn't in that ballpark. So the next one is what a lot of people have done, which is they draw from the writings of these great saints and they sort of put together an anthology and they redraft it and put it together in a fresh way. But Some good writers have done that, but I found their work to be a Little bit difficult to wade through. It's not not immediately accessible and it can also fall into the trap of being a little bit sort of Theoretical. You know, different stages are set up, different theories are discussed of the spiritual progress and so forth, and I've always understood the spiritual journey, progress, to be an actual experiential journey, and the best way to do that with a book is actually through a story. I then discovered that actually others have done this as well, of course. Pilgrims progress is a great example. Pilgrims regress by CS Lewis is a great example. But also St John Cassian Communicated the spiritual truths by having a dialogue with some of the desert fathers and what. We don't know whether those dialogues were real or whether he used that as a kind of device to be able to communicate the message. St Elred of review Revo, which was an English medieval Benedictine monk, also did the same thing with his famous dialogue on friendship, and so this idea of a dialogue Between a master and a novice, a mentor and a learner, seemed to me to be a very apt way to communicate the spiritual truths that I wanted to write about, and so I put that in the form of a young man who's going to find this mentor, whose name is Austin make peace Sorry, austin Fairfax, his name was may make peace in an earlier version, austin Fairfax who goes out to find he's. He's given a sort of spiritual quest by his pastor and he sets out to find this mentor, who then instructs him in the spiritual path.

Wonderful? Yeah, I mean that's kind of going briefly back of what you're saying too is you know the? The art of storytelling is something that I mean humans have done obviously for for generations. I mean Jesus telling the parables and everything too. And yeah, I mean the spiritual life like you mentioned, father, is you know you? Because you have the spiritual masterpiece. It's like you mentioned you know St Teresa of Avila and and folks like that. But then having it in a, in a story format, is something I think a lot of people it kind of brings in another audience, maybe that as intimidated by the spiritual classics because, oh, this is a novel form. But also you don't cut it short either. I mean you dive into the pretty heavy A theological concepts in the book as well. So it's not like you're not getting you know the, the depths of what it means, the theology and spirituality and things like that. But I want to back up a little bit too, because I know you mentioned in the introduction as well about the Benedictine order and how they've had a a profound impact on you as well. So maybe just touch a little bit, because it kind of ties into the book as well, and maybe just touch a little bit on, maybe, what the Benedictine order is and why it has impacted you so much. Yeah, we're actually recording this on the Feast of St Benedict of.

Nortja, yes, I, yes, I know the 11th of July and I first came across. St Benedict through a Catholic laywoman in the US. I talk about this in my conversion story which is just being published. With this fall and when I was a college student, she, I, she, I met her and she was. I was very impressed with her simple of spiritual life. Then, when I went to England to study, she recommended that I visit a Benedictine monastery. So, coming from an evangelical fundamentalist background, that was a bit of a stretch for me, but I went and um uh, was captivated by the Benedictine life and the monastic life. And St Benedict has so much to say to us in the modern world today because he Founded his monasteries in the sixth century when the Roman Empire was crumbling into chaos. There was immorality, heresy, heresy and corruption in the church and Benedict founded these small, localized, communalized, localized communities of faith and Prayer and worship and study. And from there he went on to to renew the entire western church and Became the patron of Europe. And his. Is it just a monumental figure in western history?

Amazing man. I mean Jesus, obviously to create an order, but then to be the patron saint of Europe as well. I mean that as a man. I was just reading a little bit of his bio today too, and just all the things that he did and what he Accomplished like oh my gosh, like that, that was a man's man right there, just just Truly. Again, what we talked about the saints is just fulfilling what god put them on this earth to do, so that's exactly what we're being trying to do as well.

St Benedict is. I'm sure that when he was establishing small sort of nuclear Christian communities in the hills of Italy in the sixth century and these were basically, I mean, we imagine, the big monasteries of Europe from the middle ages St Benedict was establishing small communities of maybe 12 or 20 men who were survivalists. Okay, they were going out in the midst of a crumbling civilization and they were scraping a living from the land, like all the other hill farmers in Italy in the sixth century. But they were united in prayer and in study and in worship. And from those scenes that he planted in that harsh soil, uh grew all of the great monasteries and all the great monastic traditions and all the great contributions of western monasticism. Hmm, that's incredible, sorry. So the lesson is for us Do what you can with what you have. Where you are, you may not be able to see, um, what god is going to do with that, but given 500 years or a thousand years, the seeds that you plant will bear much rich fruit, much rich fruit, and um, I'm encouraged by that Because I'm reminded that God plays a long game.

Yes, he does. And as our and humans, we always want the short game. We always think about the here and the now. We don't think about the long term. That's the beauty of it.

We're Americans, we want instant success, you know. Instant gratification. Yep, I'm not ready to wait for 500 years.

Well, we won't be around for 500 years either, father, so that's too bad, but so okay. So let's talk about the way of the wilderness warrior, so more of that concept in particular. So the way of the wilderness warrior. Obviously there's a lot of connotations that we can go with that. But especially the wilderness warrior, I think, kind of really kind of stood out to me. So especially for men, since this is a podcast designed for men, maybe kind of dive into that whole concept and how, specifically for men, that the way of the wilderness warrior can relate to them.

Yeah, it's, the book was written wasn't written only for men, but of course I'm a man writing from my experience about a young man going on this quest, and so there is a masculine sort of angle to it, and but I think of course it applies to women who are on the spiritual path as well. And I think in the title I try to capture the sort of basic concept, and that is first of all about the wilderness and the wilderness from the desert fathers who went into the Egyptian desert in the fourth century, right up through all of the monastic movements, both in the Eastern church and the West and the Western church, there has been an emphasis on going out into the wilderness. And of course this concept of going out into the wilderness goes back further than just the desert fathers. Of course it goes back to John the Baptist, it goes back to our Lord, who went out into the wilderness after his baptism, and their experience, john the Baptist and our Lord, of course, is rooted in even more ancient tradition of the wilderness of the Old Testament prophets Elijah going out into the cave, moses going out into the wilderness, joshua going out into the wilderness and so forth, and the wilderness becomes this great symbol in our tradition for the lonely place, the quiet place where we go to meet God and we leave the world, we go out into the wilderness and we encounter the Lord. And the idea of the warrior is, of course, that right again, right back through to the Old Testament, we have the example that God's man is always fighting for what is beautiful, good and true. Father Abraham, when we read the book of Genesis, was actually had elements of being a warrior. Moses was leading his people in battle, joshua was leading his people in battle, david was leading his people in battle. In the Old Testament it's real battle with swords and with shields and breastplates and armies and blood and guts, because that was the Old Testament world, the ancient world. Our battle is a spiritual battle, but it's real nonetheless, and so these two images come together of the warrior and the wilderness, and thus the call to follow the way of the wilderness warrior.

And I think too, father I mean we touch on it a little bit as well we talk about the instant gratification, being Americans, right, and going out into the wilderness. It requires that you know that hostile environment, that uncomfortable feeling of stepping out of your comfort zone and then allowing your soul to come out and allowing yourself to be challenged in a way as well, and even just you know, like you mentioned, we're in such a spiritual battle nowadays. Just the battle for silence is something that you know. The social media is bombarding us. We have ping notifications all the time, texts and phone calls and things like that. And so just I think, obviously the element, the physical challenge of going out in the desert as well, but I think the same thing, having the battle within yourself too because of that silence. I know I've heard Matt Fradd talk about a lot too, where we're scared to death with silence because we're afraid of what we're going to find within ourselves. You know we're afraid of that.

Yeah, and there's a rich tradition within the monastic tradition about that going within and that within ourselves we also discover the wilderness, the empty space, the silent space where we're supposed to encounter God. Another one of the images here is the image of the cave. The Elijah goes into a cave. Our Lord is born in a cave. He's resurrected from a cave. The cave is the image of the underground, or the archetypal image of the underground, the dark place, the deep, the deep depths. One of the things that I'm really motivated by is storytelling, and when I left the Anglican church I trained as a screenwriter and I studied the work of Joseph Campbell, the great mythologist, and I wove together his idea of the hero's quest into the way of the wilderness warrior as well. So there's a 12 stage process which comes to us from the hero's quest, and one stage of the hero's quest is called the belly of the whale, and the belly of the whale is the name for that stage in the hero's journey, when he goes down into the dark, he goes down into the depths, he goes down into the underwater, he goes down into the cave and in the darkness there he discovers himself and he discovers truth and he discovers the Lord.

Amen, and when we truly seek the truth, that's always going to go back to God every time. So, okay, so there are, so there's nine, so there's the mentor, so the, the pastor, the preacher, and there's nine young people. And what nine? Correct? I got that correct. Okay, perfect, so there's nine young people too, and I mean, anyone can relate to at least one of these characters which I enjoy to get all walks of life right. But there the key is that they're, they're seeking truth. And you know, especially Austin, who's a skeptic to begin with, but he's seeking something. He knows he's looking for something, but he can't, he hasn't found it yet. And so what I? What I love is that, you know, we have these young people which, it doesn't change throughout history. We're all, they're all seeking for something. It's just. It just depends on where, where they end up. And I think too, just this, this group, these companions, these close friends, come together to find something. That's beautiful. You know, and I love how you wolf together those, those nine characters, and then again, all different stages of life, all come with different backgrounds and things like that, and Austin, obviously, is who's the main character. So maybe, I guess was there any characters for you, father, that maybe you could relate to, or personal examples that, oh, I really kind of pulled from these people in my life, or are they just kind of wolf together and all came up in your mind?

Well, I use the nine characters because I have followed a for a while. I ran a business training program and I used the, the, a personality profiling tool which had nine different character types, and so I use that to actually create my nine different characters. So they're all very different and they're all motivated by different things and I use that personality profiling tool to be able to develop my nine characters. And Austin, the hero of the story, is just one of those nine. Do I identify with any of them? Sure, I identify with Austin, because he's my hero and also he goes to each of the nine. I should, I should say for the readers. Each of the nine characters are given a quest that they're they may go on by their parish priests. Who's got them in a? They're all college students and he's got them in a sort of fellowship group and he gives them all a tailor made quest to go on, to find, to learn about the spiritual path. One of them goes, for instance, to to meet a stockbroker in New York City. Another goes to meet a poor Claire sorry, a missionary of charity, none in New York. Another goes to meet one of the friars of the renewal in New York. Another one goes to a seminary priest in Ireland, another one goes to a Benedictine nun in England. So he sends them all over the world on this quest to find a mentor who's going to teach them the spiritual path. And he's chosen each of the mentors specifically for that particular person and for and for their personality type. And Austin is given the quest to go to a monastery which is called Cripple Creek Monastery, which is a thinly disguised clear Creek monastery that I've been to in Oklahoma, and he goes there and finds a hermit who's a Benedictine monk who is his mentor to teach him on the spiritual path.

Yes, father Elrid, or Looney Tunes as he's called in the book, and he was a personal favorite of mine. Father, can you dive into his character a little bit more on how you came up with with our the concept of Looney Tunes, or Father Elrid, or if I'm saying that correctly?

sorry, His name is Father Elrid Looney and he is an old monk in Cripple Creek Monastery who has become a hermit. Now I should say in the rule of St Benedict, benedict allows for hermits but he says before you can become a hermit you need to spend many years in community living together with other men the spiritual life before you're given permission by the abbot to go and be a hermit. So Father Elrid is at the end of his spiritual life, at the end of his physical life, and he has been given permission to go and live in the woods and be a hermit. And his name is Father Elrid Looney. I'm not sure where I got the name, except that Elrid is a typical Benedictine saint and therefore when you become a Benedictine monk you will usually be given the name of a Benedictine saint. And Father Elrid was an abbot in medieval England, elrid of Rivo, who wrote a very famous classic on the art of friendship. And Looney I don't know. I knew a priest in England who had the last name, looney, so I wanted him to be somewhat eccentric and so Father Elrid Looney seemed to be a good name and the name Looney-Tunes. It just popped up out of my imagination, I guess.

Well, classic Looney-Tunes. You know for all those listening out there, we all, I think, have heard or watched Looney-Tunes at some point in our life, so I can definitely understand that. But so I guess let's dive in a little bit more to Austin's journey a little bit, because we mentioned he's. He kind of go in. He was a huge skeptic and then he meets this kind of eclectic hermit. He has no idea why he's there, no idea what he's supposed to learn from this guy, and I think too correct me if I'm wrong, obviously, but I think the his pastor, his priest, sent him on that because we all have something to learn from someone in all walks of life, no matter how different they may seem from us, no matter how weird they might seem to us. We always can learn something. I think that was I mean, that was at least one of my big takeaways is that what might perceive your own perception of what this person is, what they're all about, is usually wrong. First impressions usually don't make the best impression. So maybe talk to us about how the importance of being open to our current situation, especially young people out there as well who are searching for truth, searching for answers, and how they can go about finding the truth in those right answers.

Well, one of the things that I find at this stage in my life and I'm approaching 70, before too long and is that you know, I've had a fair bit of experience, I've actually lived life and I'm delighted to share what I know and what I've learned with others, especially with young people. And young people, I think, should realize that there are a lot of older people out there, whether they're and this used to be uncles and aunts and grandparents. But there are a lot of older people out there who have the resources and the wisdom to actually help you, and they want to help you. They want you to avoid. They want to help you to avoid the mistakes in your life, but very often they want to help you in other ways as well. Maybe you need money to go to college. They want to help you with money or with a gift. They want to help you with friendship. They want to help you with wisdom. But there's a lot of distrust in our society today because of, I don't know, creepy priests or creepy people or bad relationships that have gone wrong, and so the young people are quite rightly suspicious of older people and suspicious of what they might want or what they might be after. But there needs to be some trust there and realize that there are these people out there who want to help and want to help to guide you and be mentors in your life.

You know, amen. Yeah, I'm a physical therapist. I work a lot with geriatrics as well, and so I you know 100%. I think the you know, our elderly population is sadly a forgotten generation, and we, like you, mentioned the wisdom that they can bestow upon all of us, young people as well. It's something that I think is a great disservice to what I mean. They've lived experiences. They have made the same mistakes that we have, you know, and learning from them and growing. That, I think, is something that a lot of young people can take advantage of in a good way. And so have you found a father as well? The challenges, I guess, for young people then, this day and age would you say they're different, or exactly the same, just maybe wrapped in a different bow, so to speak, in this day and age versus made 20, 30 years ago.

I think I mean my children in their 20s now, and when I look especially at the whole area of sexuality and dating and getting married and so forth, it's an absolute sort of Swamp of quicksand will use that analogy it's, it's, it's it's like a minefield that you have to tip through, tiptoe through. There's so many competing voices, so much confusion, so much aggression, so much, so many, so many possibilities for really, really big mistakes to take place. And you know the old, when I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, when it came to sexuality, basically the Christian teaching was you know, don't do that, because you know you'll get the girl into trouble, you'll get a nasty disease. And even then, in the 70s, that wasn't good enough. We needed to have some reasons why we should actually pursue chastity, why we should actually Pursue a spiritual path, why should we pursue actually pursue something greater? But now those temptations and those Warnings fall on even deffer ears than they did then. Because you know, it's just not good enough to be able to say to young people be good and behave yourself. They need to know why. They need to have a clear instruction. Happily, there's an awful lot of good instruction out there and a lot of good mentors and a lot of fellowship groups to be able to For our young people, but it's also very, very difficult.

Yeah, 100%. I think too. One thing I liked in the book about Austin and his struggle and it kind of relates to our culture in general is that you know our culture Is always telling you, you know you can do it on your own, you know you don't need anyone else, you can be your, be whoever you want to be like you mentioned to the human sexuality, you can be whoever you want to be and no one can tell you any different. But the importance of surrender, you know, and it truly giving it to God and I know it's something that Austin really struggled with too, you know, and like I grew up Protestant and the Sacrament of reconciliation as well, for me, with something I really struggled with as well as, is that total surrender to God and giving everything to God. You know, maybe speak on that father the importance of, of letting go of, I guess, what we're grasping out, that maybe power or money or fame or prestige, and Actually, when you totally surrender that over which you know Austin is Struggling to do in the book and why that actually gives us true freedom versus when we try to do everything on our own.

Yeah, the world, especially in America, freedom is kind of a catchphrase, but you know, and that freedom we tell ourselves that our free, that freedom is pursued by Through hedonism and greed and all of the vices that are there. You're free to do all these things. Yes, you are free to do all those things, but you're also Got to face the penalty for doing those things when you, when you make mistakes. And the Christian path, the way, the wilderness warrior, if you like, is a way of actually learning that true freedom Actually comes in meek submission to God's will. And this is for a very important reason, and that is that God has given us a Will. The will is our power to make choices, and when we use our will for our own selfish ends, it leads to a dead end. Okay, because we're limited, because we're mortal, because we're limited in our vision, we're limited on in our knowledge, limited in our understanding, limited by our lust, limited by our greed, limited by all these things. So when we follow that particular path, we are not following a path, the freedom. It's kind of like driving a car that has one of those limiters on it where it says, where it's already built in, that you can't go faster than 50 miles an hour? Okay, because we have these limitations. However, when we join our will with God's will, god is unlimited and therefore we join our Limited power with his unlimited power, which opens the gate to total freedom. This is why the Blessed Virgin Mary says with God, all things are possible, because when we actually to learn submission and this is the work of a lifetime, by the way it doesn't happen in an instant. But when we learn that submission to God's will, it's amazing the things that actually open up in my. In my life. I've, over the years, made some acts of submission in becoming a priest, in becoming an Anglican priest and then becoming a Catholic and becoming a Catholic priest, and these actions of submission to something greater, a greater calling, a greater purpose and a greater will. God's will has opened up huge blessings for me and huge freedom for me, and anyone who's done this, even just a little bit, would agree with me. And so that's where true freedom lies.

Yeah, I mean it's, you know it's the hardest thing, but it's also the easiest thing to once you already do it Is totally giving up to God and allowing him to work. You know, just give him a little bit and see, see what he can take and run with. You know, and I think another thing too with with Austin, one thing that he has to overcome, or his own Hurts, or his own past, and also his own weaknesses as well, and I think to the, the biggest lie that the devil tells us is, you know, he shames us for our weaknesses or our struggles that maybe we're constantly dealing with. So maybe, touch on father, why is it that our weaknesses and our or our past mistakes can actually lead to the greatest growth that we can actually have in the spiritual life?

Yeah, that's a good point. When I was doing that screen Training to be a screenwriter that I told you about, my screenwriter was actually a Catholic and was versed in. He had actually been a seminary and then he went into writing and directing films. But he was a good man who was a, had a deep insight into life and believed that through screen Storytelling there great things could be accomplished. And anyway, one of the things that he said was that your hero, he said, must grow from his wound. Okay, your hero must grow from your wound. I don't know whether I put that in the book or not, but, um, I should have if I didn't.

But um, Second edition coming your way.

The hero must grow, you must grow from your wound, and what he meant by that was, when you're creating a hero in a story, you Identify his weakness, his wound, because that's where he's gonna, his, that's where his character arc is, that's where he's going to grow, that's where he's going to mature, that's the very thing which is actually going to be the, the the god will use for his redemption, and I tried to weave that in with Austin as well that it's his weakness, which is actually his growth point, and and we, we again, we successful, bright and shiny Americans don't like that, you know, we don't like to face that. We want to go with with success, we want to go with the, the big glory, you know. But it's actually by facing those weaknesses, the, that we will make our, we will find our growth, and God uses that. You mentioned the sacrament of confession. The power of confession is not just God wiping away the naughty things that we've done. Okay, that's that's. That's a kind of superficial level of confession, which is fine, I'm not down on that. But I'm saying that something else happens in confession and that is that when we really make a good confession and open up that wound, that is the very point where God can pour in his healing oil to heal the wound. There's that beautiful detail in the parable of the Good Samaritan, isn't it isn't there where the Good Samaritan takes up the wounded man and he pours wine and oil into his wounds? Okay, and the fathers of the church saw this in this, in the term, in in terms of the sacraments of the church Wine representing the Eucharist, oil representing the oil of anointing. And it's within the wounds of sin that we actually receive the healing. And we can't receive that healing in his, in his deep and his powerful way, unless the wound is actually open. Okay, so this is Something which I've tried to weave into the story, perhaps not in exactly this way, but certainly Austin, in a couple of the chapters, in his conversations with Father Elred, certainly faces some of those, those wounds in his life. I was, maybe you remember those chapters.

I do. Yeah, those were, those were quite powerful because you could see the struggle, you know, and you could easily relate to what he was going through, because we've all, when we've actually faced our, our demons or our dragons, so to speak, you know it's, it's hard, it's difficult, it's painful, you know. I mean go go in relation to, I mean back to the, the desert. You know you're in that, that hostile environment. It's hard, you're doing hard work for survival or whatever the case might be, but it's, it's good for you too, you know, and you, sometimes you have to break yourself down. It's just like you know pruning a vine as well. Sometimes you have to prune off all most of the, the branch before you know something beautiful can come out of it. So but I think too, like you mentioned, father, that kind of that Western, especially in America, that mindset where it's no, don't deal with your weaknesses, just, you know, kind of bury those deep down and just focus on your strengths. I think it's just the culture is just shining a light on something that's so, so inaccurate, you know, versus what can allow, like you mentioned, that true freedom which is identifying your weakness and giving it to God and allowing God to heal you from within and so then you can grow into that, the man or the woman that God has created you to be. And I love that. The imagery of the oil as well, pouring the wound or pouring over our wounds and allowing that to heal that I was thinking about that as you're talking. That was a beautiful image. So they just gosh the, the sacraments, especially Reconciliation, so healing. So for all of you out there, I highly encourage you to get to confession as soon as possible, because it's providing so much, so many gifts and and Graces that you can only imagine. But, father, I want to kind of go back a little bit here. So we mentioned the 12, the, the 12 part plan of the 12 stages of the way of the wilderness warrior and it kind of Parallels a little bit correct me if I'm wrong a little bit of the. You kind of the classic, the, the purgative, the illuminate, illuminative and the unit of stages of the spiritual life. Do you mind touching on those a little bit For our audience?

Yeah, these are the classic three stages of the spiritual life which writers like Teresa of Avalon, all the great writers, will talk about. And purgative is, yes, to do with word purgation or cleansing, which is the stage of the spiritual life in which we are. God is actually cleansing the sin in our life. The illuminative, or enlightenment, is when we move on from that and we actually Receive God's light and God's grace To be able to understand the spiritual life and to understand the life of grace and begin to live within that life of grace. The final stage is called unitive, where the soul achieves a sense of unity with God, where they're living in a state of Stability and a state of conversion of life, a state in which they are one with God. That's you. That's unitive, and Jesus talks about this says I am in you and you are in me, and as the and, even more exciting, as the father is in me, I am in you. In other words, through Christ, we have a, we have a unit. We can achieve a unit of state with God. Now, the classic understanding of this is that it's progressive, that we move from the Purgative to the illuminative and then finally to the unitive. My understanding of this, or my experience of this, is that perhaps it's too simplistic to imagine that we move from one to the other as if now I'm in the illuminative and I will never go back to the Purgative. Okay, instead, I think these three can actually kind of exist together so that we might experience moments of the illuminative and even the unitive while God is still doing his Purgative work in our life. Now there should be a sense of progression in that the unitive, the illuminative and the unitive will eventually Dominate more of our life. But the idea that we move from one to the other and we never go back to the other one is, I think, a false understanding. I think, instead, most of the Saints would actually agree with me that they've written on the spiritual life that that one can be in the illuminative state or even in the unit of state and still realize that God is working on Cleansing the sins out in the Purgative state. Now, hopefully that once what you're in there moving more into the illuminative and unitive, the sins which God is purifying you of are more venial sins than mortal sins, but he's still doing that purgate, purgative work, and indeed the purgation continues in purgatory after this life.

And father correct me if I'm wrong it's been a while since I kind of dive deep into those, those three stages. So the a Generalization, of course too. But the purgative is, you know, the person may be be struggling with I may not mortal sins all the time, but they're, they're. They're struggling with mortal sins. They have to maybe confess that more often and as they progress more to the illuminative, mortal sins might be more Because they're, they might be past that in the spiritual realm and maybe dealing with more venial sins. Is that is that sort of accurate, is it's? I guess what I'm trying to ask? Is it, is it have to do primarily with the? The, the type of sin that the person is dealing with, allows them to progress to each stage because obviously the unitive You're, you know you, as you mentioned, you're as close to God as you possibly could be on this earth and obviously the closer you get to God, the less sin you're able to have, because you know God is perfect and holy. Is that an an accurate assessment or am I over simplifying it?

No, I think if I can use an analogy, purgative is pulling the weeds, illuminative is planting the flowers, okay, and unitive is living in the garden.

Hmm, I like that.

Okay, I'm gonna steal that, if you don't mind, and so the the illuminative is something what we're doing, that we're doing positive things in our spiritual life and growing in our spiritual life, but there's still probably some weeds that needed. That need to be pulled, yeah.

Excellent, perfect. Well, father, this, this book, like I said, I I love to know, is telling you before, before we hop down and started recording that it was. I know you mentioned the intro. You You're you're grappling with the idea of the spiritual life and how to weave that into a novel, and I thought you did an excellent job. So anyone listening out there, I'll put a link in the show notes for you guys to buy it. It is an excellent book and I'm always looking for Catholic to Catholic fiction as well, which and you know it's it's something that I think that genre is starting to pop up a little bit more, which I love because I love, you know, fiction and storytelling, like you mentioned, father. So, any kind of last last words of wisdom as we depart here and maybe, if you don't mind, giving us the final blessing as well, Right, happy for people to come over to my blog and visit my website, which is Dwight logon at hercom.

I'm not blogging is. I used to blog every day, but I've been doing it for over 20 years now, so I'm getting a bit worn out. So I don't blog any every day anymore, but I do. I do publish a fair bit of my archives material. But people can come, come over there, read the blog, stay in touch. I'm hoping to start a podcast in the fall but they can also visit my, my, my, my website and see my bookstore and so forth and be in touch if they want.

That's. Dwightcom and I'll put a link in the show notes for all you guys as well, to make it easy to click on. Well, father, thank you so much for your time and, if you don't mind, you just giving us a final blessing, right?

Thanks for the invitations great to talk with you this evening. Let us pray. The Lord be with you and with your spirit. May Almighty God bless you, father, son and holy spirit, this night and always. May the holy guardian angels watch over you and your loved ones. May you always be protected and guided and directed by the Holy Spirit. In the name of the father, son and Holy Spirit, amen. Amen.

Amen. Thank you so much, father. God bless you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you everyone. Thank you all for listening to another episode of manly Catholic. So go out there and be a saint.