Pints With Aquinas - Exorcism, Spiritual Warfare, and S*xuall Abuse (Fr. Dan Reehil) | Ep. 525

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

Father Dan Reehil is a Catholic priest who transitioned from a successful Wall Street career to the priesthood after a life-changing pilgrimage to Medjugorje in 1998. This spiritual conversion led him to leave New York after 9/11 and begin priestly formation in Boston. He was ordained in 2014 and now serves as the exorcist for the Diocese of Nashville and pastor of St. Catherine of Siena Parish in Columbia, Tennessee. 🍺 Want to Support Pints With Aquinas? 🍺 Get episodes a week early, score a free PWA beer stein, and join exclusive live streams with me! Become an annual supporter at 👉 https://mattfradd.locals.com/support 💵 Show Sponsors:  👉 College of St. Joseph the Worker – Earn a degree, learn a trade, and graduate without crippling debt: https://collegeofstjoseph.com/mattfradd 👉  Truthly – The Catholic faith at your fingertips: https://www.truthly.ai/ 👉 Hallow – The #1 Catholic prayer app: https://hallow.com/mattfradd  💻 Follow Me on Social Media: 📌 Facebook: https://facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/mattfradd 𝕏 Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/Pints_W_Aquinas 🎵 TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@pintswithaquinas 👕 PWA Merch – Wear the Faith! Grab your favorite PWA gear here: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com

Pines with Aquinas is brought to you by Truthly, which is a ground-breaking Catholic AI app built to help you know, live and defend the Catholic faith. Start your 7-day free trial today when you download Truthly on the App Store. Coming soon to Android. There obviously is a fascination with the demonic, but what part of the interest in exism is good, and when does it go too far, do you think? People are fascinated with the extraordinary means of the devil, the supernatural ways he afflicts people, the possession, the oppression, obsession, vexations. Those things don't put you in hell necessarily. The 98% of the devil's tactics are ordinary. That is temptation.

And if you give in to temptations, and it's mortal in a grave manner manner and you fully commit to it, then you'll confine yourself in hell. And that's what he really wants. You know, if Lucifer could convince a mass number of angels to leave heaven, it's not going to be so hard for him to convince the people on this planet to join him in hell. Nobody promised it was going to be easy. Certainly, if you look at the first century, they're willing to die. Are you willing to die? How did you go from being a banker on Wall Street to a Catholic priest? I was sexually assaulted by a priest when I was 11. And that is a soul crushing event where you just, you know, my gut reaction was I'm not going to go back to the place where that happened. As it turns out, when I was a baby, my mother took me before a statue of Our Lady and consecrated me to her and said,

if you want him as a priest, he's yours. Now she never told me this until I was ordained. You can't let the outside forces change who you are. You can still be the, in fact, you can become a saint quicker when things are falling apart than when everything's perfect. You know, if you put up your hand and say, I want to be a saint in this life, then this

big funnel of grace gets put over your head and he's going to pour all this grace into you to form you. And the darker it gets, the brighter you can shine or he can shine through you. You know, what we feel in this world isn't always us. And that's what people don't understand. The spirits that are working against God and his kingdom, the demonic forces, they can inflame your passions, they can put thoughts in your head that you normally wouldn't think. And some people think this is just me and I'm feeling like this and I'm feeling horrible and I'm feeling angry and I'm feeling maybe, but maybe not. Just take

authority over it and kick it out. And if suddenly you're back to being normal and at peace, that's what it was. How do people do that? Take authority over it? Well, Thank you so much for watching Pines with Aquinas. Before we get into the interview, I'd like to ask you to please consider subscribing. Over 58% of people who watch this show regularly are still not subscribed. So please do it. It's a quick, free, easy way to support the channel. We really appreciate it. Thank you for being on the show. You're welcome. Happy to be here.

I mean, I saw you on Michael Knowles' show back in the day. Yes. I bet that was a trip, because it's been viewed well over a million times, I think, at this point. Seven. Seven. Not that anyone's counting. I know that because I just did another show that's

pretty big a couple of months ago, Sean Ryan. And the day that came out, I was on a couple of months ago and Sean Ryan and the day that came out I was on a plane going somewhere and Michael was on the plane. Oh and he looked at me says That that video it's not gonna beat ours is it and I said, I don't know but I can always come back He was joking of course, but it's funny how you know my that interview with Michael knows We he thought maybe 10,000 views, because it's going to be too long. You know, two hours is too long. Back then, it seemed nobody would watch something

that long. But people are watching. And Sean Ryan, he seems like a good bloke. How did that go? I think it went great. I think he did too. It's also picking up a lot of traction. I get about 200 emails a day from people wanting to return to the faith, wanting to find God. Yes, and I send him these emails and go, do you know what you're doing? Like at the end of your life, this might be your greatest achievement is all these people, thousands of people wanting to come back to God and His church. So he's kind of blown away by that. And a lot of them, including himself, you know, he was Catholic, he was baptized a Catholic and then stopped going in the midst of being a seal and then working for some of the agencies. And I said to him on the show, I said, you know, you really

should come back. And my church is only about 30 miles from him. So the next Sunday he came back and I'm serious. and he's practicing his faith. Glory to Jesus Christ. Yes. It is wonderful how the new media has the ability to reach so far and so wide, isn't it? This is what... Do you remember John Paul II talking about the new evangelization? I was just looking around going, I don't see it. I don't know what he's talking about, but everything seems the same. Now I'm starting to see like, this is actually has traction with people and it's the under forties, you know,

the old people still have the traditional methods of finding information, but the younger kids, this is where they go. So this is where you have to go. Yeah. No, I'm, I was just in Australia where I'm from and encountering so many people who came back to the faith and they always say like Bishop Robert Barron, Ascension presents, Exodus 90, Trent Horn, Father Mike Schmitz, Bible, and there's so many beautiful things happening in the church. Yes, it's true. So I'm so glad that you said yes to both Sean, Michael and me.

I was surprised. Yeah. All right. So there seems to be, there obviously is a fascination with the-hmm you were or are still an exorcist. I am yeah So Nashville what what part of that fascination and I know fascination Maybe a prejudicial way of framing it because that already sounds negative but what part of the interest in exorcism is good and When does it go too far? Do you think? Cause I'm seeing a lot of it online.

Well, I mean, people are fascinated with the extraordinary means of the devil or the supernatural ways he afflicts people, you know, through all the things you would probably hear about the possession, the oppression, obsession, vexations, all the things that have all the bells and whistles and look a little scary and people are fascinated by this But as I tell people all the time Those things don't put you in hell necessarily Certainly there can be an open door that allowed the demon in and once you confess it and are forgiven it's closed and Your if you die in a state of possession, you're not going to hell because possession means they've

taken control of your body. So you no longer can control your body, what it's doing. So you're not really responsible for whatever it's doing. That's, although painful and torturous for people, it is not a highway to hell. The normal, and that's like one to 2%, the 98% of the devil's tactics are ordinary, or natural, I say, and that is temptation. And if you give into temptations, and it's mortal in a grave manner, and you fully commit to it, then you'll confine yourself in hell.

And that's what he really wants. And so when you tell people that, that's not sexy or exciting, the temptation and sin, they don't want to hear. A lot of people don't want to hear about it because, you know, that would mean you'd have to change maybe some of your lifestyle, but that's the reality. So that's kind of where I move the focus when I give these talks. If it's a 90 minute talk, I'll spend 10 minutes on the crazy stuff and give them that information. This isn't necessarily going to, uh, steal your place in heaven, but this can, and this is the bigger thing.

You know, if Lucifer could convince a mass number of angels to leave heaven, uh, it's not going to be so hard for him to convince the people on this planet to join him in hell. So you gotta be careful the voices you're listening to. Yeah, wow. Okay, so let's talk about this just for a little bit and then we can move on. So in some sense then the confessional is more powerful than an exorcism. Yes, sacraments are first line of defense. Where I live, only 3% of the state's Catholic. Tennessee is largely Baptist, so I don't have those at my disposal for most cases that I deal with.

It is, I think, a sign of hope, though, that in a day and age like ours that denies the supernatural, which itself might be a prejudicial word, that people are, again, being open to the spiritual realm. I see how that can go off the rails, but that has to be in some sense a good thing. Because it does seem for a long time, even in, I mean, in my own life, I guess, still I can speak to, there was just this denial of the demonic, that we were in a world at war. And I remember even as a young child

thinking maybe I'm open to believing in God, but all that stuff about hell and Satan, like I don't believe any of that. But it seems to me that if you are open to believing that we have spiritual enemies, then you're going to be open to believing that we have, that God exists and that maybe Christ was his son and things like this. So I guess it could be a back door into Christianity for some people. That's true. People who suffer from these sorts of the supernatural torments of the devil are very aware of God and His power, because that's what they're clinging to in hopes of being set free.

And those people tend to become the most devout when they get liberated, because they know how bad it can be on the dark side, and they really don't wanna ever go near that. And so they tend to be like daily communicants and going to confession at least once a month, and they wanna stay super clean so as to not have any footholds for the devil to get in. And that's probably a good thing. You have to think about why would God allow this? I have a case right now of a woman who it's been over nine months, and we're doing the rite of exism every two weeks. And she's almost at the end, and she is probably one of the most devout people in my church now, because she knows the reality of what this is, a war. And the war was set up in Genesis 3, if you wanna go to the Scriptures, I will put enmity between you and the woman

between her offspring and yours. So right there, that's the beginning, right? The very beginning. And then if you go to the very end of the Bible in Revelation 12, it says, this battle broke out in heaven and Michael's warring against the angels and then the woman clothed with the sun gets involved. And it says, the devil was furious with the woman and went off to make war against her other offspring, those who keep God's commands and bear witness to Jesus Christ. Okay, so who is that? It's Christians, number one, but not all Christians. They have to be keeping God's

commands. So like, even in the Catholic Church, if 80% of the people don't go to Sunday Mass, they're not really after those people. Satan and his minions are after the ones who are actually true disciples that are following Jesus, living up to his standard and bearing a witness in the world to him. That's a very small number. But that's a badge of honor for those who are doing it, because there's nothing to fear if you're living out of that true discipleship. Yeah, that's what I was gonna ask you. Somebody who has goodwill and is trying to love and serve Jesus Christ, who's receiving the sacraments,

has nothing to fear. No, no. And everything they gain, yeah. That's really good. It is good. Now, did it take you, because okay, you became a priest. Obviously you believed in the demonic and you were open to exorcism.

Was there a period of time when you actually were asked to be an exorcist by the bishop that you maybe surprised at what you saw? Well, it's kind of a weird, this is how God works when I think a lot of people, like he prepares you for the things he's gonna call you to do. So when I first, I was a banker on Wall Street from my professional career up until 9-11. 9-11, I lived about five blocks from the Trade Center and they evacuated everything below

Canal Street. So I had to leave and I wound up going up to Boston and I wound up living with a parish priest in Boston who had a deliverance ministry, among other things. And that was my introduction to this deliverance, you know, and he was very good. He always operated completely out of love for the victim and was in control and never got worked up or angry or frustrated. And he was really a great model. So that was my first glance. And then from there, went off to seminary to get the philosophy done and then eventually went up in a religious order with the charism for the cross. But also one of the things they were

doing was deliverance and exorcism because the superior of the men's community was the local exorcist for Omaha. So here is more experience now with the rite of exorcism. And then when I finally got to Nashville, the bishop that ordained me did not want an exorcist because he thought it was too heavy a role for a priest to carry, along with being a pastor or an associate. So we just did deliverance ministry.

And really, 95%, 99% of all deliverance ministry can be done without the right of exorcism. I mean, it's really for the most severe cases of full possession, and that's not very common. But when the new bishop came in, he kind of looked at it a little different and thought, you know, I want you to have the full power to do what you need to do. I feel like to not be doing the full exorcism could be maybe fighting with your hands tied behind your back. So go to Rome, get trained, come back and I'll install you as an exorcist. And so that's how it happened.

Matthew 14 You said that most kind of demonic influence doesn't need an exorcism, but can be how then do we just renounce Satan? Either the person renounces the evil they've done and goes to confession. Confession breaks demonic forces off the person, the absolution. So it's only in the most deep cases and some of them, for example, satanic ritual abuse of children goes very deep because it happened to a baby when they were just, you know, under a year, they don't even remember it, but they're just afflicted their whole life and don't know

why. So those sorts of things go, they're harder to get out. How does the person who's unaware of it come to realize that's what happened? Well, at a certain age, in the cases I've seen, the person tries to move towards God, and that angers the demon, and then they start manifesting, and then they realize they're not like everybody else. Gosh, that's horrific. It is. So how old were you when you went to seminary? I came back to the church at 33. Okay, nice year to come back to.

I was away for 22 years. Yeah, I remember thinking it's an odd number because at this age he went home, accomplished everything and went back to his father. And I'm starting at a day one. So was it something about September 11 that is that when you went back to your faith or no that's when you decided to quit? In 1998, I wound up in Medjugorje by happenstance and I knew enough that I had to go to confession if I was going to go to church.

And I wasn't going to stay initially, but I woke up and felt this tremendous peace that I'd never felt ever my whole life and felt like, well, if it's this feels this good to be here, I'm gonna stay. Went over to the church to find a priest that wasn't gonna be too judgy, because this was gonna be a very salty confession, living in Manhattan and all of the things it offers. And there was a priest outside who was one of the Franciscans and his name was Father Brandemere. I didn't know him at the time, but he was a fun, good-looking guy telling jokes to a bunch of women and smoking his cigarette. And I thought, oh, that's him. He will be very merciful. And he heard my whole confession

and he absolved me. And then he said, for the first time I've ever heard, he said, I think you have a vocation to be a priest. I was like, I just told you, I've been away for 22 years. I don't know how you could say that. And he said, all things are possible with God. I'll never forget that. But I still didn't... I thought he was crazy and I had no intention of being a priest. But I'll give you a little fast forward to that story. 19 years later, I went back with a group of parishioners as a priest to Medjugorje. And the tour guide said, let's go to this place about 20 kilometers outside of Medjugorje. There's a little church that has the famous statue of Our Lady with the blue and the pink and tealina.

So we go, she said, wait here, the pastor wants to greet you, and out comes the pastor, and it's that priest. Now, I remember him because that was a changing moment in my life. You remember those pivotal things, right? But I didn't know he would remember me, and he looked at me and he goes, you became a priest. Stop it. And I go, how he would remember me and he looked at me and he goes, you became a priest. Stop it. And I go, how do you remember me?

And he says, I've been praying for you every day. Oh my goodness. I know. I know. So we sat down and caught up. We had some cookies and coffee and he quit smoking. Okay. Praise the Lord.

And it was so wonderful to see him again, because I just never knew. I didn't even know if he was alive, you know? Well, yeah, amazing. Wow. So how old were you? You said 33 when you went to seminary or when you came back? No, the conversion is was 33. Mine was in 2000. So two years after you. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 98. I was I was someone who thought agnosticism was cool and trendy and edgy. And that's what that's the place I was living. I never really went down that road. I just didn't want any part of the church and wanted to make a lot of money. So it was just completely different motivation. Why did you want nothing to do with the church?

I was sexually assaulted by a priest when I was 11. And that is a soul crushing event where you just, you know, my gut reaction was I'm not going to go back to the place where that happened. I'm just not going to go back to the place where that happened. Just not going to do it. Yeah. And I kind of, we live so close to the church, only a couple of blocks that we, I could walk to church and just, I would just tell my parents, I'm going to church on Sunday and go to the park instead or something. Yeah. So, uh, so you grew up in Manhattan? No, I grew up on Long Island. And then after college, I moved into the city. Okay. Um, I don't want to make you dwell on something that sucks

and that's so traumatic and awful, but I know that there are a lot of people watching who've experienced sexual abuse, maybe even sexual abuse from a priest. Yep. It's, it's, uh, yeah, please. I mean, talk more about that. Cause I, if I met someone who said, I want anything to do with the church, cause I sexually abused as a kid by a priest, I think that makes complete sense. It kind of does, but it was wrong. I shouldn't have thrown out the baby with the bath water, so to speak. But when you're trying to process something like that as a kid, you don't know what...

And I didn't tell anybody. I didn't tell my parents until I was in college. And so for me, it was sort of a protection. And I did other things. I spent most every day at the gym, bulking up, joined the football team, became sort of a person that nobody was gonna mess with. That was, you think, a result of the abuse.

Yeah, I was just like, I'm gonna protect myself now. And kind of acted out with the wild bunch at school. But here's the big takeaway that people have to know. You can't get through it. You have to go through it, and to go through it, you have to forgive. It's absolutely necessary. Say that again, you can't go through it. You can't go through the healing without the forgiveness. And to forgive means you have to go back and actually process what happened. You have to take Jesus back into it with you. You have to hear what He felt about it.

And I did all that work. And I forgave. And I was also actually more angry with the bishop because I was one of 17. This guy kept getting moved. Jared Sussman Was he eventually held to account or? Yeah, ironically, yes, ironically, I was under the impression it was taken care of. That's what I was told by the church. And then I went to one of my friends, and it wasn't a funeral because there was no body, but one of the my one of my friends worked at Cantor Fitzgerald, which is the big firm that was at the top of the Trade Center that everybody died. Uh, Tom was a close friend of mine. And so I went to the, I guess it was a memorial service and, uh,

there up on the altar was this priest kind of celebrating. I was like, how is this still happening? You know, it's been a long time, like since, uh, my gosh, at this point, maybe 30 years and he's still a priest. So then after that, he was laicized. Cause I called the diocese, said, this is ridiculous. You would tell me he's not a priest anymore.

There he is. So they took it seriously. Is this after the sex abuse crisis kind of came to the light? No, no. No. Remember 9 11 was in 2001. Yeah. Uh, I left. This is the strangest part of the story. Okay. This priest came down to do a healing mass from Boston and, uh,

I took Tom's wife, the widow, and it was mostly like 500 women and me, a couple of other guys. And I went up, he invited me to Boston cause I said I have no place to go. I've just, now I have no home. and me, a couple other guys. And I went up, he invited me to Boston because I said I have no place to go. I've just, now I have no home. I quit my job. So I'm just kind of doing nothing.

I get up to Boston. It's like September, it's the feast of the archangels, September 29th, 2001. So it's very fresh, 9-11. And then 2002 rolls over. And what's the first thing that happens in the new year? The Shanley abuse breaks in Boston, ground zero for this, right?

And I'm there. And I was just like, how am I here for this? Like I never lived in Boston. I had no heart for Boston per se. I just wound up there. And so it was kind of God's way of letting me know like you really aren't finished with this because, and that's the point where I had to start forgiving

the bishop. I hadn't forgiven the bishop. I was angry at the bishop. People often say forgiveness is a choice, not a feeling, but that's usually all that, that's usually the most helpful thing they say, but then it feels like you're then left to figure that out what exactly that means.

Well, let me tell you how it works. So you, the way you forgive is you say, look, you turn to Jesus and say, I'm super angry about this. I don't like what happened. I'm pissed off. And you know what happened. But because you said to forgive, I'm choosing to forgive this person and I'm asking you to forgive them too so they can become the saint you made them to be and get home to heaven. Bless and heal them, okay? This is what Jesus did on the cross. He uses the victim to heal the perp. And that's just how it works. It doesn't sound fair because it's not fair. Nothing about the cross was fair. He was

the perfect person that never did anything wrong to anybody, and yet he's the one who had to take all the sins to himself. And so as part of the body of Christ, in particular, if you're a baptized person, but for everybody, when you're hurt, you can plug into the graces through the cross by taking your pain, uniting it to his cross and saying, I choose to forgive them, forgive them too. And then the next time you have the memory, if it has any emotion attached to it that's negative or angry, it means it's not done. I see. And he wants, it's like the victim's still waving the flag,

help me. And you just keep praying that prayer until one day you wake up. That's great. And there's nothing left. Okay, so someone shouldn't feel guilty if they continue to feel resentment or anger or frustration. It's God letting you continue until they need more prayers.

It's like getting all the poison out. Yes, perfect, perfect analogy. That's what it is. Well, well, so do you not still experience times of anger and frustration? No, not at those people. Glory to Jesus. I mean, when I hear about somebody else's story,

it makes me mad, but that's because it's still happening. So, I mean, what do you say to someone who says I could never become a Catholic, and then they use that example of the sexual abuse? Because I've always kind of been under the belief that we should be more angry, justly angry, than the non-believer. And when they see in us a desire to quickly say something

like, well, actually, technically, more school teachers, I think that's no good. I think they need to know that we take this seriously and see it as a grave evil that needs remedying. But what's your approach to someone who says, I can't be Catholic because of all the pedophile stuff? Well, I just say, yeah, you can, because I am. And I went through it.

So if anybody can say, you can do it, I can say that, right? It's like Immaculate telling people, you can forgive the people that have hurt you because these people slashed up my family and I chose to forgive them. There's certain people who've gone through things that they have an authority to say, yes, you can do it. I remember when I was a hermit, one of the things is we did retreats and a priest came and I wasn't a priest yet, I was a brother. And in the Ignatian retreats, you always kind of go into sin and the worst part of your life in the first week of the retreat, right? And so I start off with talking to this priest and I said, he was from Rwanda, by the way,

I said, Father, what's the worst thing that ever happened to you? And he goes, Oh, that's easy. When I was a child, I watched my whole family be machete to death, and I hid in the brush. I hid for three days, and I just was crying out to God, Please, please let them find me so I don't have to live without my family. And you know what the Lord said to him? You're going to survive, and you're going to become a priest, and your mission will be preaching about my forgiveness. And he did it. He did it. And he has a supreme power. He can walk in a room and give his talk about forgiveness and there's graces that go out to people that

instantly open their hearts to forgive. I mean, it's such a great... It's a gift. Glorified wounds then become like Jesus's wounds and they have the power to heal people who've been suffered in the mean, it's such a great, it's a gift, glorified wounds, then become like Jesus's wounds. And they have the power to heal people who've been suffered in the similar ways you have. So it's just sort of like a tool for your toolbox. Do you find you have a particular grace at talking to these victims? You can just sense that I knew it from pretty early on, you know, like, one year when I

was supposed to go to New York City to help a priest write a book as my summer assignment. The last week, the rector calls and goes, we're going to cancel that you're going to go to a prison, maximum security men's prison. And I go, Oh my gosh, I go, where am I going to stay? And he goes, call the local parish, I'm sure they'll put you up. It was very random. And I was like, what? So I go and we're redressing clerics. So they don't, a lot of them don't know I'm sure they'll put you up. It was very random and I was like, what? So I go and we're dressing clerics so that they don't, a lot of them don't know I'm not a priest, but it's for protection, I guess, because they know these people are here as volunteers do not mess with them. But the funny thing in a prison is, you know, you can't just go around knocking on cells going,

can I talk to you? They have to send you a note saying, I would like permission for this priest to meet with me. Well, as nobody even knows who I am, they're not going to, it's going to be a boring summer. I'm going to be sitting alone in my office waiting for something to happen. Well, that first week there was a big reach outdoor retreat. So they all sign up for it because they get to spend the whole day outside and they never get to do that really. and they never get to do that really. And so like 500 of these murdering and rapists and skinhead people are staring up at the podium thing. And the deacon looks at me and goes, oh, the keynote speaker just canceled.

He had an accident or something. So you're gonna give the talk. And I said, what's the talk? And he said, it's on rehabilitation after prison. I go, but I've never been to prison. He goes, we'll talk about anything you want. So I go out cold and I'm looking at this crowd. It's very intimidating. Like in seminary, we always thought the worst class was homiletics when your peers are judging you

like, no, this is so much worse. They look like they want to kill you. And so I just, I flipped to the prodigal son and I read the prodigal son and then I just said, listen, my life started off great until I was 11 and then this happened to me. And then I basically became a different person and wanted to die the first couple of years after that. But then our lady rescued me and she gave me a future back with her son and everything changed. And I'm telling my story, I see all these big monsters crying. Like not boohoo crying, just tears are just coming down

their faces. And I'm like, what is happening? Well, later that week, I was speaking with another guy who works in this ministry. He said, oh, you don't know about three quarters of the men in prison. It started with sexual abuse, and then went to drugs and then went to crime. I said, oh, you don't know about three quarters of the men in prison. It started with sexual abuse and then went to drugs and then went to crime. I said, no, I didn't know that. Well that next week I had about 70 or 80 requests, please, can I see you? And it's all for this reason, right? And so I spent the whole summer working with these men on forgiving the ones that hurt them, oftentimes their own family, and then moving forward to have a relationship with Jesus.

And it was, I mean, unbelievable. It's probably the most impactful summary I've had. Yeah, yeah. I'm thinking of our Lord's words, "'I am the vine, you are the branches.'" So it's his life that's going out from you. Almost like I didn't even have to try that hard. The Lord just did the work.

Yes. It was him who switched me off of the New York City project to write the book. Of course, when it happened, I was so angry. I'm like, what? That's my old stomping ground. I could go back and hang out with my friend and all the stupid things.

But no, he had a better plan. Well, OK, so you talked about one of the results was getting in shape so you could protect yourself. But then you also referenced a couple of years wanting to die. Can you talk about that? Yeah, so like that immediate time following that event, you just can't process. There's nothing that makes you feel better.

And of course, you're feeling like, why did you let this happen to me? Why was it one of your guys that you chose? Why, why, why, why, why? And there's no answers. So you just go into a despair. And I got very sullen and antisocial, which I think is normal. And this priest was so diabolical, he knew, I mean, he could see the change because he was always around the school. And so he speaks to my parents one day and says, I see your son's very depressed.

Maybe I should come over for dinner and talk to him. So they invite him to my house. Of course I leave and go to my room and they send him to my room to talk to me and he tries to do it again. And I'm thinking, how is this happening now in my own home? So it just kept getting worse and it was all the devil is just having a heyday. I was very angry with my parents because I thought that they were, in some way, working with this guy until I grew up into a man and realized, no,

this was all his crazy doing that he was a mastermind, basically infiltrating families to get at their kids. So shame on him. Why didn't you tell your parents at the time? If someone had have asked you, why not tell them? Honestly, he made it sound like my parents were in on it in some way. Like they had set up this thing where we were gonna go

on this like day retreat with him. And I didn't know what, it's like, even the garden, you start to believe what he's saying, you know, like maybe I, I, uh, maybe this is all what he was telling me is true. And it just, you just kind of withdraw and you just shut down. In your own experience and working with other victims of sexual abuse, uh, how, how many of them think in some way, even a small percentage, it was my fault? And how do you get over that?

I never thought it was my fault because honestly I said I didn't do anything. I'm like, he just attacked me out of the blue. But for me the bigger question was, why did God let it happen? He could have stopped it, right? So this is an interesting part to the whole thing. Years later, a religious brother, you know, like in my mid-30s, and the local bishop in Omaha had put in a new edict or something that he was going to do with the diocese. To me, it just sounded stupid. When my superior read it to the brothers, I kind of really let it loose and it was very

derogatory about what he was doing. My superior looked at me and goes, that was very much an overreaction to what he was... So like you have to go down and pray, go down to the chapel and ask Lord, what's going on? And it turns out it was me reacting to what I thought was an abuse of power, which plugged into the original bishop's abuse of power, blah, blah, blah. So I had to go even deeper into offering masses up. Again, this was for the Bishop who is dead now. At this point he's dead, but I'm offering Masses

and rosaries and things for him. And eventually I felt like I woke up one day with no one burden to pray for him and I felt like that was done. So after all these things start unfolding with all these ways that God is using me to help people, even people coming on retreats, you know, we get, we get assigned retreats, you don't pick your retreat.

And all of a sudden, all the retreatants would have an element of some kind of abuse in their life where they needed to hear from somebody that's come out on the other side that they could be okay. And I'm like, wow, how, I'm to the other retreateers. Are you getting all these people that are abused? And like, no. I'm like, well, how are they finding me? So then one day I'm in the chapel and I'm praying and Jesus in my mind says to me, can I ask you a question? He's never asked me that. He just asks the question.

So I said, why are you asking me if you can ask questions? You know you just asked me a question. And he goes, yeah, but I want you to remember this. So this is the way you're gonna remember because it's the only time I've ever asked you. It's like an ask. Okay, what is the question? He said, knowing everything I've done with your life

for healing of people, using you to be the conduit of my grace, if I could take you back to being 11 or 10 before the 11 and remove that from your life so you wouldn't have to go through that, would you choose to do that?" And I honestly said no, because I'm fine, I'm good, and my life turned out great. And look at all these people you've helped, from the prison to all these retreatants to... And it was just an endless stream of people that were coming for help. And so I said, no, I'm okay with it. And he goes good, because this is literally what it means that I can make all things are good for those who love me. I can

bring goodness out of everything. If I could do it from the cross, I could do it with anything. And we hear that scripture a lot, but we sometimes tend to not believe, well, not everything, but actually everything. He can do good out of anything. And we just don't know how he'll do it or what he's gonna do, but when he does it, you know it.

And then you're like, oh wow, he did do that. And everybody's okay, so I guess it's okay. I know it sounds theologically incorrect, inaccurate, and maybe it is to have to forgive God, right? Or to be angry with God. But I would think that it's kind of important to be able to walk through those emotions nonetheless. Listen, whatever emotions you have, he already knows. So by you not inventing them doesn't change anything. He knows you're angry. Jeremiah went down and screamed, you know, you duped me and you let me be duped and

he was angry and he shouted that up in heaven and I don't think that's a problem for God. I think he wants us to get it out. Yeah, and then we can be it back at peace. But you need to invent what you need to invent. Yeah. If I can understand the tantrums of my children, and I see what's happening, right? And I love them because I see the honesty. And I know what it's about and I know what they mean. And it's usually not what they're saying, then the infinite loving God can surely understand what we're doing. Of course, because he knows every facet of what's behind that. How important is it that abuse victims don't minimize what happened to them? Because it is tempting to say, well, I mean, it wasn't that bad. Yeah, sure, this happened,

but therefore, healing may or may not be necessary, or I shouldn't be complaining about it. Or it's just all this modern psychological language of trauma and overcoming our wounds or it's just all this modern psychological language of trauma and overcoming our wounds, that this is not something to be trusted. Well, to be 100% transparent about it, I've met people, there's different personalities, okay? And that factors into everything. Because there's people who have very delicate temperaments that even a slight harsh look and they get very upset, that person will be crushed by being abused

to the point where it's gonna take a lot of work to get them back to feeling like an old person again. Whereas there are some people who've been raised in an environment where they have a really thick skin and they don't take anything that serious and I'm not in any way condoning anything done wrong to them, but it really is more of like water off a duck's back. Like they didn't like it and it was bad, but they can move on pretty quickly. So you really have to know what you're dealing with and who you are and how God has formed you up to this point. And then you can

kind of understand more about how much this is affecting them interiorly. Everybody is a little bit different. Right. So some individual may have experienced something objectively awful and they don't have to go looking for why they're still secretly angry when no, no, like the Lord's done his work and I've forgiven him. But on the other end of the spectrum, I think a lot of it has to do with how we receive what's happened to us. So you just said like the bad look or maybe the bad comment or someone makes fun of you. Well, okay, if it is still actually hurting you, if you have kind of made agreements with

what that person said of you, then you need to, you need to deal with that and not minimize that even if it's objectively smaller. But there are, I mean, we all know that some people are highly sensitive and even the slightest thing could get them upset. Whereas there's some people that are, they seem so obtuse that like you could say the worst thing to them and they're just like, Oh, whatever. It's like, okay.

And I don't know the dynamics of all that. It's funny, I have an undergraduate degree in psychology, which means nothing today. But, but we did study these all these personality types and how the same words to two different people will be received very different, just by what their whole big them knowing that makeup and all that knowing that what's it like being a priest given a homily? I actually feel like I have a gift for homilies,

and what people will tell me is I speak very practically, common sense. I don't do any of these highfalutin, high theology where people are left dumbfounded and don't know what you said. And no offense to the priest that do that. There are academics that probably love those homilies. I'm not that guy. So I always wanna give you something where you can apply it to your life today and make the gospel alive for you and how this is affecting you in 2025. gospel alive for you and how this is affecting you in 2025. So that's what I do. Most people

come away saying, thanks, I really need to hear that. Some people don't like to hear everything you have to say that I feel like if you're not rocking the boat on both sides, you're maybe not preaching the whole truth. How did you go from being a banker on Wall Street to a Catholic priest? What led you to leave it? Because presumably you were doing well. Well, the conversion in Medjugorje... Oh, that's what happened. So you were still working on Wall Street when you were in Medjugorje. Yes. What led you to even go there in the first place? A friend called and said she was going, and she said the war had just ended not too long

ago, and she said she wasn't sure if it was safe and could I the war had just ended not too long ago and she said she wasn't sure if it was safe and could I go. And I was in Italy at the time, right in this fancy villa. And I looked at a map and said, well, it's right across the Adriatic. It has to have the same food, the same wine. It must be just like Italy. And of course, it's nothing like Italy. Like it's like 1900. And you're like, what happened here? This you guys are so far behind like, okay. Back then, I mean, I've been there about four or five times. Yeah, this in 98, it was not even phones in the home. You had to go to the post office to make a phone call.

That sounds lovely. So today, yes. Yeah. Yeah. But it's different now. They seem to have caught up and for the most part, but back then it was been dragged down depending on whose side you're on. But yeah, yeah,'s different now. They seem to have caught up and for the most part, but back then, or have been dragged down depending on whose side you're on. But yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. Fair enough. So you, so was that part of the charm? I mean, you were probably living a rather hectic, busy lifestyle in Manhattan. Well, the piece was the attraction. I never felt like that. And, uh, but of course, you know, when you come home is implementing what you

received on a pilgrimage. Now the hard part, right? Yeah. So I had to get rid of some friends that weren't healthy. But I want to ask you, but okay, so someone told you about it, but what kind of intellectually, what were you thinking? And when did you decide to repent of your past sins? What led you to that? Well, when I went to that confession, but I mean to go to Medjugorje in the first place is presumably an interest in spiritual things or the interest. No, I didn't really know what I was getting into.

I just thought it was going to be a lot like it'll okay. Just a vacation. Yeah. And I would just go and make sure she was safe and whatnot. And it, but it was a pilgrimage, but I didn't really know what that meant. And by the time the week was over, I kind of understood what the whole thing was about. Wow. What moved you in Medjugorje to get a confession then? Well, I just knew I had to.

If I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it. I'm not gonna go to church and then say I'm not going to communion. I mean, I had enough of an education to know what I had to do. Coming back, ironically, the little parish off of Wall Street is called a Lady of Victory. And I felt like that was, it was her who got me back. So I joined that parish and that was an interesting parish because nobody lived downtown at that time, all the way downtown.

So I lived at the South Street Seaport and on Sunday that church maybe had 15 people because it was empty. They didn't even pass a collection basket on Sunday. But Monday through Friday, they had nine daily masses, three before nine o'clock, three on lunch and three after five. And devotions every day was like today, St. Anthony, today, St. Joseph, today, Saint-Guardian Angels, confession all day long. So it was like was like today, St. Anthony, today St. Joseph, today's guardian angels, confession all day long. So it was like a powerhouse, parish.

And it's all these financial people and the masses were pretty quick, you know, 20 to 25 minutes, boom, boom, boom, get back to work. But it's what I needed to get to mass every day, something that I could, you know, get in, get out. And I was praying the rosary, walking to work in the morning and home from work in the afternoon. So I pretty much had integrated all of the five stones, as she calls them, within a month. What are the five stones?

Prayer, particularly the rosary, confession, the Eucharist, fasting, and what's the fifth one? I always forget the fifth one? Um, I always forget the fifth one, whatever it is. Sure. The Bible, maybe reading the Bible. Um, it sounds like a good one. It does. And we should, especially as Catholics, it's always embarrassing to go, especially cause you live in the South, right? Oh yes. You didn't know your scriptures. Yes. Um, how did you develop a love for the rosary and why is it important?

Uh, you know, it's funny, I, as much as I was angry with God, I never, I never placed any of that blame on the blessed mother. I always felt like she was still close. And I feel like that probably was true. She just was waiting for her moment to get in there, do what she had to do. So I've always had it. And then the fact that she got me back to her son, I feel like I'm kind of, although he did all the heavy lifting, I feel indebted to her. And as it turns out, when I was a baby, my mother took me before a statue of our lady and consecrated me to her and said, if you want him as a priest, he's yours. Now she never told me this until I was ordained because I was a crazy lunatic for all those years. And she was thinking, of course you

don't want him. Nobody would want him. And then I don't know if I want him. You know, I did meet a pretty woman in the Hamptons. We got married, big New York wedding. Oh, wow. Big Paris engagement. And she didn't want kids. So after five years of really just continuing the party, we divorced. And then because she didn't want kids, it was pretty easy and element. Okay.

Which... Wow, you've had a wild life. It's been... Yeah, I mean it... But all these things, you know, was that... I don't have any regrets about it. Actually when I prepare people for marriage, I think what I have to say sticks a little better than most because I can say, look, I did it,

I did it and I did it wrong. And it ended with a divorce. So... Matthew 14. It's not worth it. Pete I can tell you the red flags and I can tell you if you don't put Jesus in the center of it, you're not going to make it. And so, they hear that, you know, because they're like, well, this guy actually did it and it didn't work out. Matthew 14. It's so true. We're made for relationship with God, right? Intimate relationship with Him. And so even in my own marriage, when I forget that, I look to her to be God or she looks

to me to fulfill her desires. And that's when things go... get awkward. And you gotta keep redirecting your gaze to the good Jesus. Yeah, the other thing that's tricky with marriage is because, you know, I'm on my own now. So my pace with the Lord is nobody else's care. But when you're married, you really have to be equally yoked because it's very difficult for one person to start getting too far ahead of the other person. And then you start feeling bad for them and then they potentially could even resent.

You're spending too much time praying or going to church or adoration or I see it all the time with couples, one person's moving forward, the other one is kind of staying put. It puts a strain because like, this isn't... When I met you, this wasn't you. Yeah, but I found God, I want you to find Him too. And particularly when one's Catholic and one isn't, and they don't really... It's hard to explain to them what you're going through because they're not seeing the same things you are. They're not experiencing the Eucharist, they're not experiencing confession. So it's like, I always use this analogy of like a family emigrating from Italy gets on this boat and they have a loaf of Italian bread and they're staying in one of the lifeboats

hidden and every day they're eating their crusty bread and it's stale and rotten. And then one day the little boy ventures out of the lifeboat into the main part of the boat with this giant, you know, hundred yard buffet. And he says, who is this food for? And they said, it's for everybody on the boat with this giant, hundred yard buffet. And he says, who is this food for? And they said, it's for everybody on the boat, for you, it's free. It's all part of the trip. And he goes back and tells his dad,

he's like, they have all this food inside, we're eating this bad bread. It's all part of the trip. And he goes, no, it can't be. No, it is, the guy told me it is. And the father is reluctant to believe him because how could this be possible? It's too good to be true.

And that's kind of like what we have as Catholics. When you tell people about it and everything it encompasses in the very best of possibilities, it's like, well, that just seems too good to be true. How could that be true? How could God be fully alive? And living in your church, I can't believe it.

It's like, yeah, but there's more than just what you're doing. And I wish you, I just want you to have what I have. And that's the great thing about Catholics. We want everybody to be Catholic. And it's not like it's, it doesn't diminish what I have by giving you the same thing. It actually makes it better. The more we tell others about it, it kind of builds up the whole body. Yeah, and I love what we get to say to our Protestant brothers and sisters, like bring what you have,

and like join the rest of the party. We want what you have, we need what you have. There's more here. And of course there could be some at the buffet who are starving, because they're an idiot, or some at the buffet who are only eating the bad food at the buffet and are getting sick. So it's not to say that because you're in the buffet who are starving because they're an idiot, or some of the buffet who are only eating the bad food of the buffet and are getting sick. So it's not to say that cause you're in the buffet room, you're going to be, you're going to be banging all cylinders.

And maybe the first, the boy in the boat is actually more, he's doing better than some of the buffet because he's taking advantage of the crusty bread he has. Sorry, I might be stretching your analogy far too far at this point, but you get the, I think you see what I mean. Yes. But if the buffet is the sacraments, the saints, the tradition of the church, the authority leading and guiding the boat, it's all good. It's all good. Amen. You just have to eat bad food. Oh, fair enough. Fair enough. All right. Good. We'll add that critique to what I just did there. How many Protestants are coming into the church right now? I mean, because you live in Nashville. Yeah. I don't know dust and why what the numbers would be, but I know it's growing. COVID had a big impact because the coasts, the people who already sort

of had a slant towards Catholicism or we're Catholics, but really being beaten up during COVID. I mean, some of them, the churches were closed for over a year, you know? And they were like, but everything else is open. What are we doing? A lot of those people moved to Tennessee. And at first, people like, you're from California, you're from New York. It's an invasion. But you are gonna, you're gonna play nice now. We're not gonna, you don't want what you had there, correct?

No, it's important that you tell me with your own lips. So yes, the church, my church has grown substantially, probably 30% in the last. How many daily wire employees? It must be a very interesting thing when you have this. I don't know how many people they have a daily. I've been there a few times. I know there's hundreds of them.

Are there? Yeah, just a drop in Nashville. Many of them are Christian, looking at the Catholic church. Yeah, that's funny. You see these shirts here that say, don't New York my Florida? Oh, well, yes. Florida be another one, I guess. Yeah.

Yeah, but I am seeing this really interesting phenomena taking place right now, it seems to me, where you're having people flee from the woke left as they see it in ruins. You're seeing, for better or worse, a more broad tent conservatism with many things we disagree with, perhaps. Within that broad tent conservatism

is a new looking toward Christianity. And then within Christian circles, it seems to me a new interest in apostolic forms of Christianity. And so at least from where I'm sitting, I'm seeing a lot of interest in Catholicism and orthodoxy or Coptic Christianity. So it's an interesting time where Christianity,

I mean, when I was a teenager, Christianity was looked at as just stupid and regressive and for weak people, which I am. So it was really great. But whereas today, it's almost like this new appeal to it, which I think is both good and maybe something we should be cautious about. In other words, the more it kind of gets embedded with this conservative movement that might be really

excited about where we are politically as a country, I just want to be really sure that I am less interested in the sins of my political enemies and more interested in my own sins, and walking that walk, as opposed to sort of like conservative Republican becoming this therefore Christian thing that isn't terribly concerned with the daily walk. All right, there's something, do something with that. I think for a couple of decades, if not longer, we did not in any way, shape or form, try to form the children with critical thinking.

In fact, the academia was sort of spoon feeding what they wanted you to believe and you were not supposed to think critically. And that was a great detriment to the whole society, right? And I feel like now those doors are opening up again to start thinking and rationally coming to your own conclusions about what is truth, and truth is that which is in accordance with reality. And the more we have people who are putting out podcasts

and YouTube videos and things like that who are thinking critically, I think the kids are watching going, that makes sense. I should be allowed to come to my own conclusion. If I've, if I'm an intelligent person who's given the right information, I should be able to analytically come to some kind of intelligent conclusion about it. Right. Even with COVID and it went to like rile up the troops. No, it's been done. It's been said, everybody knows it wasn't what they said it was. And we made horrible mistakes in that process. God forbid that should ever happen again. But people are now thinking, yeah, we

were a little too much like sheep and not questioning. Think about it. My Deacon very smart man. He was a mechanical engineer. He's retired now. He says he's recovering an engineer because he's always trying to fix things in a good way. He came up to me and he says, you know, I'm a little bit older than you, meaning me. He's only like maybe three or four years older. He said, but when I was growing up and even as a young adult, I trusted everything. I trusted the government, I trusted the church, I trusted everything. The FAA, food and drug, all this, the FDA, all of it, everything I believed. And now I'm starting to realize we were being spoon-fed not exactly what was the truth,

but what they wanted us to believe in. a lot of situations, right? Not everything, not gonna paint everything wrong, but as it turns out, especially now with this new administration, and people are starting to draw attention more to what are the foods we're eating, and why are we eating them, and is it really good for us? And so many of the things we've been told are wrong.

Yes. And we're waking up, like who knew? But we can do better. And that is the result of people challenging the authority, which is the way it's supposed to work. There should be, the news should always be challenging the politicians and the authority in charge, making sure they're actually doing

what they're supposed to be doing, protecting us in every way, shape, and form. So I feel like we're on a better path now that there's more and you know, social media is what it is, but it's got a lot of evils. But one of the good things that can come out of it is that there's, it gives a voice to people who want to tell you this is what, this is what I know and this is what happened to me. And it's not exactly meshing with what the government told you. So good for that. I think what's difficult about this day and age we're in,

though, is there is so much conflicting information from seemingly reliable sources or credentialed people. That's one problem. The other problem, seems to me, is when you take the idea that, OK, we've been lied to, and you're right, and then you then become skeptical of everything. You know, like, well, I mean, was the Holocaust as bad as we're hearing or, uh, should I even trust what Pope Francis or, or is he even the Pope anyway? And so that's, that's sort of like, I think, um, a way

to fall off the boat today that maybe it wasn't as easy to do 50 years ago. True. And of course there's always going to be the enemy is always at work. He doesn't sleep. So he's going to take situations like this and try to paint them as, oh no, it's all conspiracy. And you're just all taking the wrong pill and thinking you're, you're, you know, more than everybody else. But you know, you have to test the pulse, test everything, retain what is good, you know more than everybody else. But you know, you have to test... Paul says, test everything, retain what is good, you know, with regards to spirits. I think it works like that in life too. We can do our own little research. We can figure out, should we be eating, you know, organic beef that's fed on actual grass instead of it eating slime and body parts of other animals that are crushed up and God knows what. Or the eggs right now.

So, I live in a parish that's pretty rural, so on Sunday I could wind up taking home four dozen eggs that people want to bring me from their chickens. They're completely different than what you buy in the supermarket. Totally. We have chickens at home. I mean, we all know this. Yeah. Now. Yeah, when you break them into the pan, it doesn't just spread out as a

Totally different color. Yep. I mean spectacular taste. Yeah, everything. So there's something to be said for going back to the basics. Yeah. Yeah. If we were doing it 100 years ago, 200 years ago, maybe it's still worth doing today. Yeah, that's one thing I've been finding lately. I'm certainly not. I always have to qualify this. I'm not promoting the carnivore diet, but I've been doing it for about nine months. How do you feel? Terrific. Well, there you go. I've lost 20 pounds. I feel good. I have less brain fog. My point is, is in the, in the spiritual walk, I find it easier because it's funny. I know that like Thomas Aquinas and others talk about how fasting from meat, especially there was this big emphasis on meat. And I'm trying to reconcile myself with this because I guess I'm trying to find a loophole and here's how I try to do it. I don't doubt that that's beneficial, but in a day and age where we have so much poison

that's told to be food. Yeah. Okay. Maybe just fast from the poison, fast from the soda, fast from the monster energy drinks and all that junk. And I actually do find that in eating meat, I think it's like my body has less to process. And so I'm able, my mind is able to rise more easily to God. I wake up, I don't feel as exhausted. I don't need a nap in the day, even when I wake up at five or something. So I think our diet and how it affects our spiritual life is something I'd like to explore more and talk more about.

I've even found that my lower appetites, let's say for sexual sin and things like this have dissipated in a way that surprises me. And I think it's because I'm just less agitated. I'm not following the dopamine peaks and troughs like I used to. It could be. And let's not forget, a thousand years ago, living in Europe, eating basically all,

everything was organic. There was no other thing. When they made bread, they made it that day and they were grinding up the wheat, which was pure and not modified. Everything was healthy. So of course you can go to this without some meat and you're gonna be feeling good.

Yeah. My supermarket doesn't have that option. The organic section's small, pretty pricey and the food often looks worse than the organic. Like it's been beaten up or something. I'm like think what happened to you. Well, you look so horrible So you have to go to the farmers market and that's only on Saturday morning and it's like, yeah, but I Think if he was living today looking around and go he might he might say something different like you know

What the meat if you're buying good healthy meat, this might be your best option but try to get as much dark leafy greens as you can find that aren't contaminated with poison and do what you can. Because you have to do what you can. A thousand years ago was nothing like today. Yeah. Well, you brought up the food thing.

So is this something that you've noticed in your own life? Changing the diet? Because when I came from Australia to here, I was horrified. Oh horrified by what people ate. Oh my gosh, not just the portions. I mean, to be fair, I moved directly to Texas. But also just the amount of bad stuff. I mean, it was surprising to me.

And how fat people were. And I don't mean that to offend individuals, even though it's an offensive thing to say. I think for many people, it's just not their fault. They've just been told that this stuff's good. This is the sort of stuff you should eat as an expiration date of like three years from now. And we just, we weren't educated. Americans, perhaps especially weren't educated on that. And the big capitalist companies pushing this stuff and it just looks a lot more appealing than broccoli or chicken.

Yeah. Well, I too have, uh, come into the realization that most of the supermarket is not good for you to stay, you know, stay on the sides. And, uh, when I can go to a better soup, you know, like a, when that's more, uh, sprouts has more vegetables section, the biggest vegetable section. Uh, I try to, um, I do press my own ginger. has more vegetables section, the biggest vegetable section. I try to. I do press my own ginger. I get like two cups of raw ginger, organic,

and put a lemon and fill it with coconut water, blend that up. That sounds great. With some turmeric. And that makes like two or three cups that I do drink in a week, either as I'll add some club soda to make it a drink or I take a shot in the morning. That sounds great. No, that's good for you. Cause I have

inflammation all the time. This knee has to be replaced and it's always swollen and it's the genuflection knee. I tell the doctor that's why. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, but this helps, you know, and it actually boosts your spirit. The clarity of thought is all the little things you can do with the diet that can help you do that. I get up at 430 every day. Why? Because I go to the church at 530.

Wow. I have a little puppy, so he has to go out. I have to feed him. What kind of puppy? I have a niece. Okay. I shouldn't have asked, because unless you had like three different dogs, I wouldn't know what it looks like.

I'm not good with what the... Is it going to be big or? No, no, no. 12 pounds. OK. Tops. Yeah, yeah. He's a little guy.

He doesn't bark, which is what I... And he doesn't shed. I need a dog that's exhausted all the time. We had a black Russian Terrier. They grew up to be like 120 pounds. They were bred in the Soviet Union to be work dogs in Siberia. Wow. Pretty cool. But the first one I got was great because it just laid around all day. Second one was hyper. Can't do another hyper dog. I need one that's just exhausted. Maybe I'll feed it the American diet. Don't do that. I want

one of those British Bulldogs. I just think they're gorgeous. Yeah, but they they're constantly having trouble breathing. Yeah. And you hear that noise. My brother, my brother has three Bulldogs and it's you always hear that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I get a friend who's got one. He's like, it's always wiping its ass on the wall. It's just disgusting. Oh, well, they have an East that they're pretty chill. You know, he we called the zoomies. So once a day he has to get it out. So he'll run like a crazy lunatic all over and 20 minutes later he's done. He comes back in. He sits down very respectfully.

He'll look at you. Can I come up on your lap? No. Fine. I'll go over here. I like it. Yeah, we need to get a dog. It's just a lot of, uh, I guess if you're not traveling, if you don't have a lot of plans to travel, although I'm sure you do travel a dogs. Yeah, we need to get a dog. It's just a lot of, I guess if you're not traveling, if you don't have a lot of plans to travel, although I'm sure you do travel a lot. Yeah, but he's so cute. Everybody wants to take care of him. Oh, that's good. Yeah, you're the parish priest too.

Anyone want to take a dog for a few days? Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Diet, dogs, not sure how we did that. It was impressive. Well, I think dogs- Oh, 4.30 in the morning. That's what... Okay, yes. I'm in the church at 5.30. And then we have adoration until eight, benediction before

mass at eight, and then confession at 7.15. So I get my holy hour before the public holy hour. That's beautiful. But people have caught on, so they come early. They don't grab me for questions and things. That reminds me of my morning routine. I'm trying to tell my son Peter not to get up before 6 a.m. How old is Peter? He's Peter's 10. 10. And Peter's incredible and beautiful, and I love him.

But I like to sit and do my mental prayer in the morning. When he's there, I just feel him looking at me. So I can see this as an analogy. You're trying to get there early to say your prayers and gosh, they've caught on. They show up early. No, I actually don't mind it at all. I think it's good, but occasionally sometimes I get there and there's somebody already sitting in the dark and that's a little intimidating. Like, you know, who is this person in the dark? Why don't they turn the lights on? Is

this person here to harm me in some way? So I prefer if I got there ahead of people so I know who's here, what we're doing. I think it's really important that we Christians have a prayer rule or a plan of life as Jose Maria Escriva put it. Oh, discipline is everything. Please talk about that. In every aspect of your life, you have to have discipline. So people go, I don't have

time. Well, you really do because we all get have discipline. So people go, I don't have time. Well, you really do because we all get 24 hours. So like that's such a stupid answer. I'm sorry if you've used it out there, but don't write me. I'm not gonna write you back about this. But you're choosing what you wanna do with your 24 hours, whether you'd like it or not.

You're choosing what to do, okay? So if you tell me you can't pray, it means you can pray pray, it means, it means you can pray, you just don't want to, you want to do this, this, this, and this. Oh, but I have 10 kids. Okay, that's important. You have to have time for the children. But if you have that many kids, some of them must be old enough to watch the younger ones at that point. So tell them mommy's going to, into this room to pray for 30 minutes. Do not bother me unless the house is burning down. You can do it.

I have parishioners who have five kids under five. She comes every day for mass and she drags the five kids. Bless her. And she makes it work. She made a promise to God, I will come every day and I will adore you and please take care of my family. That's their arrangement. The gym for me is not something I enjoy,

but you have to do it at a certain point in life if you're not doing it, everything starts breaking. You have to. Yeah, I'm old enough now, 40, 41. It's all relative. Wait till you hit 50. Well, I started about five months ago, a good mate of mine, Mike Pansile, kind of encouraged me.

And I was losing weight, but I was also losing muscle. I'm like, I really, I remember I was in the car with my 17 year old son. I looked at his legs and I looked at my legs and I'm like, something's gotta change. So yeah, three times a week, at least for one hour a time, I just do just strength training and I feel terrific. I'm really clear.

Yeah, it's important because... As we get older, as you say. Your muscle is burning the calories you need to burn. I have this Navy SEAL moved from North Carolina over to pretty close to where I live and he comes through spiritual direction and then... Ha, he gives you physical direction. That's right. And he's tough. And what does he get you to do? If I can, everything I don't want to do. When I go to the gym on my own, I'll be like,

it's a leg day, but I'm, my knees bother me. I'm going to do something else. When I'm with him, it's like, Oh no, we're doing this. So it's always better to have a partner who can motivate you. You know, if I know this guy's showing up, I can't just blow it off. I have to show up. And then the diet is the other thing, right? So Lent is the perfect time when we can sort of pull all these strings in tight and get everything fine-tuned, get back into a routine that we...

I would say I have another seal I was talking to recently who is very well respected in the community. He's a super good Catholic. His name is Dom Razo. Oh, I've heard of Dom. I've had a few people tell me about him. He's fantastic.

He's amazing. Wow. Okay. And he took like a three-year break from social media. He said, this is stupid. I'm not going to do it. And then the Lord started calling him back and saying, but these are men that want to learn from you.

And he's back putting stuff out there. Anyway, he said to me about Lent, he said, I feel like Lent should be non-sustainable. I go, what do you mean by that? He goes, it should be so hard that when Easter comes, you're done. I don't wanna tell him my penances then, but that's great, good for him, really proud of him.

Yeah, there are men that can do that. But there's others like myself who, I already kind of do a lot. My routine is good and I'm pretty happy with it. So I can add a few more things in for Lent. But like what he said, I don't want to do these for the rest of my life. You know, what's he doing? I mean, I don't want you to speak for him.

He's examples of just the training level is just all I see. So his workouts are much more intense, more severe fasting, more severe penances, more, everything's more. Yeah. But that's kind of their mentality. That's why they became seals. They have a gene that's like, yeah, good for them. I'm kind of tired of listening to seals. If I hear about another seal podcast, I don't know what I'm going to do. Exactly. I'm very happy for him. And he does have a huge following of guys that are stepping up and want to be better dads, better husbands, better parishioners. He's the kind of man I want my sons listening to, right? We need men like that.

Exactly. Yeah. Like who was it? Again, my mate, Mike Pantile says a surplus of theological knowledge doesn't make up for a flabby body. Like you need to be banging on all cylinders and you can't just neglect one part of your life because you're doing well over here. Yeah. You know, in seminary we have the, uh, four pillars, right? So there's the, I'm going to always get them wrong, but there's academic, spiritual, human and what's the, again, it's the fourth one.

Yeah, the human formation there, right? But the human, really if the human isn't right, none of the others will be. Yeah. And that's what John Paul was telling the rectors to focus on, make sure the human is in order. Don't be weird. Yes, don't be weird.

Yeah, well, cause it's like, when you know somebody who fixates on something to the detriment of other areas of his life, it's always a bit weird. Comic books, that's fine. But if you're like so into them that no normal person can have a conversation with you, there's a problem. Or if you're into weight training, but to a degree where no one else can have a conversation with you. Same thing with the spiritual life.

Like, you meet people who are in the church every day, but they're weird. And that's not Jesus' fault. Right. So everything can be, it can be too much. Even the prayer life can be... And by too much, we don't mean that we shouldn't pray at all times, but just that if we're in a... There's more than one way to pray though, you know, like offering your day. If you're a mom of five kids, clearly your day is... your prayer is with your kids and informing them it's part of your prayer. If you're gonna sit in the church for five hours and ignore your family, like that's not gonna work and the husband is not gonna be happy either.

But I remember in one... I went to several some of these, so nobody really know I'm talking about, I hope, but there was a priest who had a fixation on Judy Garland and the Wizard of Oz. Okay. And different, but never really. Could be worse. He's talked frequently in the homilies about these things, I'm like, whatever.

But then one day I went to his room to get something and they all have a room in the seminary. He opened the door and the whole apartment was Judy Garland, everything. And I went, oh, now that's, like you said, that's weird. I don't know how to put it, but I go, that's weird. Yeah. To me anyway.

No, no, no, not just to you, objectively. In line with reality, weird. It's just so over the top. Like, even if that was your mother, it's too much. It's too much. Yeah, you know, if you were to replace Judy Garland with a blessed mother and even that would be too much, then okay, let's dial back to Judy Garland.

Back to a prayer roll. I just think it's so helpful. This is why I love Jose Maria Escriva and Opus Dei because they're like, here, do this. That's what I feel like we need. Kind of like when you go to somebody who's a personal trainer, you're like, listen, I don't know what the hell I'm doing. Just tell me what to do and I'll do it. I think we need that in the spiritual life. I understand we have different temperaments. I understand we have people who have different levels of responsibility and so it won't apply to everybody. But what would be some suggestions

if someone's watching right now? Like, okay, just tell me, please tell me what to do. Yeah, I've been doing this now for a while. With this exact, the exact question. When I tell people this, though, they kind of, many people get surprised. They go, just the five precepts of the church, you know, which is confession once a year, going to church on Sundays and Holy days of obligation, financially supporting your church, receiving the Eucharist during the Easter season and fasting on the two days, the two days, okay? Those are the things you have to be doing

to be calling yourself a Catholic. So if you're doing those things, and a lot of people go, well, I don't do all those things, then you're really not a practicing Catholic, okay? And so if you are doing those things, good for you, but I'm not going to pat you on the back too much because you're on the first rung of crossing into being a Catholic. Like you're doing the bare minimum. This is the minimum. You're doing the minimum. So now you can add to that to be going up the ladder. The first thing would be go deeper with your relationship with the Trinity, and that requires not just rote prayers, which I'm all for the rosary every day, but adding the contemplative

prayer, and is so powerful when you can actually start talking to God and He can talk back to you. And that takes discipline, silence and solitude, three things that are in short order in 2025. Because people just, we've been so conditioned by the MTV generation that like everything is like all guns firing all the time. And you put somebody alone in a room with nothing. And after like 90 seconds, like, I don't know if I can do this. Like, you can do it.

I'm promising you can do it. But you're not. Besides, I'm here talking to you, so you're not even alone. I get you. Yeah, it was Blaise Pascal and the Ponce's who said something like, all of man's ills can be traced back to the fact

that he cannot sit alone in a dark room silently. I'm true, elaborating a little bit on what he says. Sorry. My gosh, yeah. We used to do eight-day Ignatian retreats, which were silent. So you got to speak at mass during the mass parts, and you got to speak for an hour with your director at once a day. That was it. And the first day people would come and they would be like, going out of my mind, I can't do this. And this is back in 2005, so it's really before a lot of the social media, but still, like the phone, the phone, the phone.

By the eighth day, they were so happy they stayed with it, and they really did experience God in a new way, and they were even hearing from God in their prayer time. And it's like they just leave on a mountaintop experience. And I'm like, well, this is great, but now you're going back to the world, and now you have to somehow incorporate this into the world, the world that you live in. And that's the hard part for people is the day in, the day out, right? Particularly for people who travel. So a lot of these guys, they're on jobs where they're away every week, flying to a new city, selling something, doing something. Putting discipline in that kind of life is so hard.

You know, it really is much more work when you can't just do it where you are and have a home base. And, but again, it goes back to the, you have the 24 hours, what are you gonna do with them? Yeah, Scott Hahn likened having order in the spiritual life, sort of set things that I'll at least do this.

He said it's sort of like playing tennis. You could play tennis technically on any hard surface if you have a ball and two bats. But having a court and a net actually makes it a lot easier. You can like now function within this. And I think something similar to wake up, to spend time in mental prayer, pray the Holy Rosary in the day, maybe go to Holy Mass.

Yeah, to set yourself these things and realize that you're being soft and can probably do more. Maybe not, but I mean, my beautiful bride, sometimes she'll talk to women who are frustrated that they can't go to the church as often as they used to, and she'll say, 3 a.m. when you're breastfeeding, that's your holy hour. That's okay. So I think people need to hear that as well. Yes. For many of us actually heard it in Medjugorje. Somebody said, do not say I do not have the time to

pray, say I do not have the love, because man always finds time for that which he loves. Oh yes, very true. Who said that? I don't know. I don't know if it was a visionary or if it was, but I just, it never, it always struck me. Cause I'm like, yeah, I have time.

Do you know Father Leon? Did he say that? It sounds like something he would say. He's a very smart Dominican. Maybe it was. Speaks seven languages. He's a medical doctor. Please, he's like one of those Navy SEALs.

We're very happy for you and your perfect intellectual life. But he does throw those pearls at you. You're like, wow, I wish I would have thought of that. But I think why it's easy to love the things that we love is that we get a kick from them. Like I had three coffees this morning. Really? Every morning I have at least six or eight espresso shots over the course of three hours, usually a cigar for fantastic in the morning. Oh gosh, terrific. Yeah. I haven't eaten. I'll eat like three or four tonight. It works for me.

I'm not suggesting it as a diet. But here's the point. I get something from it. I think the reason, I think this is true. I think men flee those places where they feel inadequate. So if I don't really know what to do with my car, then I'm terrified when my car breaks or the battery dies or something. I don't want to be exposed.

I don't want to be exposed. I don't want anyone to know, I don't want me to know that I'm really as impotent as I am. So when we go to pray, we go to read the scriptures, we don't get anything from it. We just find our thoughts wandering. We believe ourselves to be failing at this and therefore we do the same thing, we flee it. So maybe speak some wisdom to that.

Well, that's true. Do you agree? 100%. However, you know, and this is a man problem for the most part, because we don't really tend to read the owner's manuals that we get. I have never read an owner's manual. Let's throw that straight in the trash.

Exactly, and then you put together the cabinet and go, it's funny they gave us so many extra parts. I don't understand this. Yeah. Because it's really not put together well. Same with the cars. You know, I have a 2024 car and it's so different than my last car was probably 15 years older.

So like this car, it has these buzzes and gadgets for if I'm crossing the line and I'm not putting my blinker on it shakes the steering wheel Like what is happening? We're having an earthquake on 65. I don't understand this You've got to go so I had to go to the owner's manual and start reading what what is this doing? And well, how do I turn it off? I don't need this just give me the regular car We don't do that. The Bible is the owner's manual for people. This is the owner's manual. Learn it. And the more you learn it, the more you'll be comfortable with it. And not just those scriptures, but actually God himself. This will reveal to you who he is, and then it will reveal

to you who you are. That's what it does, the owner's manual. So that's why this man told me this story once. If you're driving down the highway and you see a guy pulled over on the side of the road and he looks confused and the hood's open and you pull over to help him and you actually know about cars. And he said, can I help you?

And he goes, no, I'm good, I'm fine. And you look at him and go, well, you have a can of oil in one hand and a can of maple syrup in the other. It seems like you don't know what you're doing. Are you sure? Have you looked at the owner's manual? No, no, no, I'm fine." And then he pours the maple syrup into the oil compartment and goes to start the car. And of course it dies. And this man has just made himself a permanent

pedestrian because he refused the help, he refused to look at the owner's manual. So I basically will tell that, especially for guys, you gotta get comfortable with reading the scriptures. There's so much in there that is for you and your family and the path to heaven. It's all right there. It's like, you can't get an easier. And now we have Bibles that have a lot of teaching in the footnotes. Scott, how... Yeah, the new Ignatius A Bible. Isn't that wild? That is a big Bible. You get your workout and your spiritual workout at once.

Enormous. But there's so much there. So I'm not saying spend two hours a day, you don't have to become an academic, but 15 minutes, 10 minutes, 10 minutes, 10 minutes, and then find one line that resonates with you and take that line into your day. And I challenge you to not see that line come alive at some point in your day. God will do it. And you'll be like, wait a minute, that was just what I read this morning. How is this happening? You know, when I first got called to be a priest, this spiritual director I had in New York City said to me, first thing he says is, you need to start asking God if He wants you to do something,

if you do something different with your life. I don't think this is what He wants you to do with your life, but ask Him. So, you know, being a good, obedient child, I prayed that for a week, very easy prayer. Do you want me to do something different in my life? I don't hear you. Cool. So I go back in a week, I go, he didn't say anything different. I think he's fine with it.

And this priest looks at me, he goes, sit down. And it was that very like, you're being an idiot, sit down. And he goes, let's recap, shall we? You left God and His church for 22 years. You came back to Him and you prayed for seven days and He didn't answer you. and so you think He's done." And I said, well, now you're making me sound stupid. And He goes, no, no, no, you are stupid. So you need to keep praying. So I went up praying that little tiny prayer for 18 months. And then on November 5th of 2000, I heard a voice say,

come follow me right after communion at an early morning mass. And I turned around, it was audible. Wow. There was nobody there. I said, oh, you're answering me. Finally, you're answering. Okay. So that would have been enough because it was strange enough that I was not going to forget this.

But then I went to visit my grandmother who was in this nursing home run by Polish Benedictine nuns with the full habit, just a little face showing, very frugal. And I walked in, it was the first one there that morning, and there was prayer cards. You could take a prayer card. And I took the prayer card, put it in my pocket and signed in and then visited, told her the whole story. She's excited. She was praying for me. And then as I was leaving, I signed out and the prayer cards are gone. And I'm like, what did they do? Like again, they're so frugal. Maybe that was enough.

One was given out, today we're done. So I said to the sister, what happened to the prayer cards? She goes, there were no prayer cards. I go, yes, there were, they were right here. I took one. She goes, let me see it. So I take it out and show it to her and she flips it over and it just says on the back, just three words,

come follow me. And you didn't see that prior? No, I didn't look at it. And then I go, oh, and she goes, what's the matter? I go, well, I just had this happen this morning. Jesus said, come follow me after. And she goes, well, clearly it was for you. But again, we didn't put those out. And I said, oh, and that happened two more times that day where a stranger came up to me and would just say those words. And by the third time, I just said, okay, I get it. You've confirmed it three times.

I get it. Yes, yes, yes, I'm gonna follow you. But when those things happen, you really get blindsided. What are you doing? And I think people don't think God does that anymore. He doesn't speak, he doesn't act, he doesn't do anything. He's doing it all the time,

but you're not tuned in on the right frequency. That's right. That's so crucial. I was just telling people, I was on a retreat down in Florida in clear water. I tend to try to choose the warmer places for the winter retreats. And this is a few years ago.

And they had a part, I think it was, is that the Gulf? I don't know, wherever it was, but they had part of the water and there were always these birds every morning and they were all playing nice together, big little, all sizes. And on the last day I was walking down just to see the water, because I'm in Landlock, Tennessee, and I was kind of saying goodbye to the water and my final little prayers. And as I'm walking back to my hermitage, I have this thought where I grew up, you know, we were Cardinals and Blue Jays are pretty common. We would see those all the time. And I didn't see one of those the whole week. And I thought, maybe they don't live down

here. Maybe it's too hot. And as I'm having this thought, literally as it's going through my mind, something comes up from behind me and smacks me in the head, literally hits me in the head. Yeah. And then it's, it's a cardinal, and it comes right in front of me, and then lands on a branch, like four feet in front of me. And next to that is a blue jay. And they're this close. And those birds are very territorial, they do not hang out together. And never have I been hit in the head by a bird. And so I'm looking at it and I go, what are you doing? And God spoke...

The whole retreat, like this is the one thing I took away from him, he said, don't ever forget that I am so close to you and know your thoughts so much more than you do, that I can fulfill what you're thinking before you even finish the thought. And I was like, yes, I get it. Like, that was amazing. How can you do that? He's like, birds? Like, how could I not do it? They're birds. Like, but we think that's too much for God to do. We have a practical atheism. Yes. So we kind of accept logically that God exists. We've got a few arguments against atheism, but we treat Christianity like a pragmatic morality that if you just kind of get your life in order, things will flourish.

If enough people do this, society will flourish. But as Pope Benedict said, Christianity is first a person, an encounter. Yeah, we have to encounter the living Jesus Christ who loves us and individually, which is why I think people would tend to lean into is this isn't important. Why would he do something like that? It's not life threatening. It's not, yeah. Sustaining anybody or actually it sustained me quite a bit. Here I am. You know, 10 years later, I'm still talking about it. Winning a cana, nobody was dying for wine. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's right. So like he occasionally does things just out of his magnanimous overflowing love. Yeah.

So you were, you were, you were a hermit for a while. I was. Was that before you were ordained? Yeah. Yeah. And with which order? Intercessors of the Lamb. Oh, I've heard terrific things about them. It was a great community. Yeah. I just had a fellow called Father Seraphim from the CFR zone, and I believe he spent

some time with them. We had a ton of them come through for healing retreats. Most men do need some kind of healing. But also Mother Teresa's order was using us for sending tons of their sisters as well. Because they were, as I mentioned, it was Ignatian-style silent retreats. And although it's silent, it's when you hear the most from God. And that's what, even in religious life, you can get very busy. These are busy orders. Mother Teresa's orders, the nuns are very busy.

The CFRs are very busy. And busy isn't bad until it becomes an obsession, like everything else, right? And then busy is being under Satan's yoke. And sometimes the most important thing is the prayer. And like I said, the contemplative prayer, and that can be pushed out if we're too busy, right? We have to pick and choose, but even in religious life, it can happen. So as I tell people discerning, particularly young men, diastasis and priesthood, although they, if you talk to a seminarian, they'll say their life is very hard. It really isn't. I mean, you have to go to class and you have to go to all the liturgies.

Would that be morning prayer, evening prayer, mass? That's required. The rest of the day, you can pretty much do what you want. You can go for a run, you can go for a lift, you can go to Starbucks, you can go to the movies, whatever you want to do, you can go do it. There's a lot of freedom there. Okay, but that's where I started. And then from there, I went into religious life. Religious life is completely different, right? So, dusts and priests take promises to their bishop in the presence of God. And we promise obedience to them and their successors, and we promise celibacy, and we're gonna pray the Liturgy of the Hours every day. That's our promises. Religious take vows to God directly in the presence of the bishop, so it's kind

of the reverse. And those vows are important, and they should be more difficult because it's a whole different way of life and obedience is everything in that life, as it should be for Diocesan. But of course, when you're not under 24-7 obedience, you have more flexibility to pick and choose what you want to do. But when you enter this life, you're basically saying goodbye to everything you know. You don't bring a car, you don't bring money, you don't bring really two pairs of jeans, weeks worth of underwear and socks, Birkenstocks and Bible and a rosary. That's your whole, that's it. And then, you know, you're like, okay, we're gonna do this now. And, you know, if I have the day is completely scheduled. And then

at a certain point, you have maybe an hour free time at the end of the day, where you can sit around and put a movie in or talk to the brothers. Or if you want to go for a jog, you go to your superior and say, can I go for a jog? And usually yes. Every now and then they say no. So the first time I get told no, I said, why? And he said, because I said so. And I go, am I five? That's not an adult answer, why? And he's like, this is religious life, that's why. And I go, oh my gosh, this is crazy.

Or your parents send you a gift package for Christmas and you never saw it. You go, what happened to the gift package? Oh, that went to the sister's house. I go, oh, is that how this works? Okay. It was an embroidered, had my name on it. So, you know, there's a whole different level of self sacrifice of denying yourself, everything really, and just

putting your focus completely on God and your formation into this charism. That's basically what it was for five years. We saw a lot of miracles because we had 80 hermits. We had five priests, about 20 brothers, and the rest were sisters. And when you have that many hermits, and half your day is in prayer. So you have a four-hour workday, and you really shouldn't be talking on your workday unless it's relevant to your job. So I was the cook and I had three hermits with me to we had to put dinner on the table for 100 people in four hours, which is doable. The

last hour though, before dinner was mass. And so you walk away from the kitchen and you hope everything's going to come out right, because you don't know. And some days it did some days it didn't. But again, that's part of the surrender. Like the meal isn't great, but it's still food. We're gonna eat it. Very interesting life. Because the charism was the cross. So if you remember, Paul said, death is at work in me, so life can be in you. That was basically our charism. And so you were constantly embracing your cross, asking Jesus to convert your cross to grace to save souls.

And even in a life where, and we lived completely on divine providence. So we had maybe a dozen homes. Some of them were huge mansions that held 20 sisters. Others were smaller. Then there was a bunch of little hermitages just for one. So all these things require money. We had 200 acres of land, we built a chapel in a refectory that was about $10 million. All this money just

comes in, you know, and we didn't charge for retreats if you wanted to give us something great. This is in Nebraska. It was in Nebraska, which is super cold in the winter. One year my job was to feed the turkeys twice a day. Why? They're wild turkeys. They're fine. I'm going to go on a joke. You're fired. Yeah. But so 80 pound bag of corn, twice a day, two feet of snow, you're trudging through snow, pouring this stupid corn. And you're thinking, why is this? Why am I doing this? And then in Thanksgiving, we can't even kill them. We would go buy turkeys frozen and let the wild turkeys live. But anyway, you have moments where you're like, am I just taking a rock and moving it over to the side

of the hill? Like, what am I doing? But in the end, you see that when then the retreatants come in, and some of these people have been really beaten up pretty hard, and they have these amazing moments of experiencing God's love through this community, and they leave changed people. And then you start to realize, like, this is all part of the same equation. This stupid feeding of the turkeys at 6 AM in the bitter cold, those graces are going for these retreatants. And like it's happening, I'm seeing it. It really changes our perspective on this life because we tend to think if I can't qualify what I'm doing as relevant to what I'm trying to achieve, it can't be possibly helping me. But in fact, it could be. Because our intention

has a lot to do with it. What happened to the intercessors of the lamb? It was kind of sad. The founderess who owned the property was in her name. Rome came and did a visitation as they do with new communities. And we were probably 25 years old. They came and they spent time evaluating everything. And they said, look, everything here is going great. This is a well-formed community. The charism is beautiful. The hermits are healthy and in line with the church. Everything's good. One thing, when the brothers started being ordained priests, you can no longer have a lay person over the community and nuns are considered lay people. So you can still be over the sisters,

but now a priest has to be over the whole community and then everything's perfect. And she was starting to have a little bit of dementia and she started to think that this was some kind of plot to steal the community away from her and she would not step down. And I don't think she really believed they were gonna suppress the community, but they did. And one day they just said, it's done. You didn't comply. So this community is ended. And most of the hermits wanted to be in obedience to the church. So maybe 65 of them or so. The bishop, who was very generous, said, I'm going to take a pick you up, get your belongings, and we'll take buses and take you to a Catholic college that closed about two years prior. And you can live here and we'll sustain you for a year. that closed about two years prior, and you can live here,

and we'll sustain you for a year. And you discern if you want to redo this, but now do it in the right, canonically the right way. And so they spent a year praying and ultimately the men went back to their diocese and became priests in Diocesan life. And most of the women went back to their communities, which are all over the world. The Philippines had a huge amount of people from there. And they went into whatever way of life where they could find a vocation back in their home countries. And so that was the end of that. But when this happened, it kind of brought the charism to all these parts of the world that they could now teach their local communities in a more substantial way that they're present

to them. So I often look at it like it wasn't ideal, but just like the apostles going out and being scattered through the persecution, it's kind of... Although it wasn't a persecution, it was a mess up, but... Yeah, you had to accept it as providence. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's sad. Well, I guess the gates of hell won't prevail against the church, but not necessarily anything else like this podcast or that community or the promise wasn't made for those things. Well, I mean, if you think about it, the church is composed of three parts and triumphant suffering and militant. So you could even do a number on the militant and the church still survives. That's a good point.

You know, it could get pretty beaten up. I remember I was in Europe recently and my wife and I got to go and evangelize in about 12 different countries over the course of 12 weeks. It was just joyous. Wow. But I was in a couple of countries, I won of 12 weeks. It was just joyous. But I was in a couple of countries, I won't say which, where I thought, oh, the church might not be here in like five minutes. It just seemed absolutely desperate. There were

places that seemed, okay, there's revival here, there are good priests, beautiful things are happening. But there were places where I... And that was kind of the first time I realized, I don't know why, I just never thought about it before, that things can get so bad. Like we're not guaranteed the church actually. No. Yeah. No, in fact, there's been periods already in history where... In Croatia, when they were overtaken by the communists, there were many places that had... They had no sacraments for years and years and years.

I know that's been true also, I think, in part of Asia. So, with the Catholic community continued, but there were just no sacraments. They were just praying on their own until finally, in decades in, a priest shows up one day and goes, here I am. They're like, oh, we've been waiting. And I'm like, oh, we've been waiting. But yeah, the culture with all of our higher education and intelligence, is the church better off? I don't think so. I feel like we'd be better going back to simpler times in general. Yeah, yeah.

I don't know who it was who talked about how we're going back to the time of the patristics where the church has to spread through friendship. Something to that effect. I mean, I used to live in Ireland. It was three years. My two eldest children were born there and I was just there recently, got to evangelize there, invitation with the bishop and with the Dominicans in Dublin. And you kind of feel a little gaslit because every corner has a beautiful church. So you get the sense it's a Catholic country. And certainly there are very good pockets of Catholic souls there. But it's an atheistic country for the most part.

And so if the country were to look, to give you the impression of what it actually was, it would look very different. Yeah, I was there just before COVID. I did my retreat at Silverstream, Priory. But at the end, I went into Dublin for two days before I took the flight home. And it was like Christmas time. So I wanted to see, you know, it was beautiful, you know,

secular, but pretty. But when you started talking to people, like one-on-one, and of course I'm dressed like this, so they're like, oh, you're a priest. There was a lot of disdain for the church. Yes, yeah. Very pro-abortion, pro-women's rights, like right to be a priest, all that sort of thing.

And I was like, oh, okay. Yeah, so I've seen that too. And then I've been to France many, many, probably two dozen times. And one time I went and was there for three months. You had to work to find a church for mass. Like if you weren't in Paris, if you're in the countryside, it would be like,

well, it's Monday, so the mass is 20 miles that way. Tuesday, it's 50 kilometers down here. And I'm like, I thought this was a Catholic country. Like, oh, it used to be. I was just at, is it Toulouse, where Thomas Aquinas is buried? I think. I don't know. I know the famous artist is there.

Well, I went there just to pray by his tomb, and it was Pride Month, quote unquote, and they had a string of lights across the top of the church in the rainbow colors. Wow. I just wanted to flip over some tables somewhere. There was none to be had. Yeah, that's unfortunate. Yeah. Yeah. What do we do? I mean, surely, you know, you're a priest. I'm sure you have people who come to you and they express their frustration or disappointments with the church or the church hierarchy or the Holy

Father. And what's your advice? You listen, nobody promised it was going to be easy. Certainly, if you look at the first century, they're willing to die. You know, are you willing to die? Or just criticize, right? No, you have to be willing to die for your faith. The Maccabees, I pity the Protestants didn't have that book, or books, because I love the Maccabees. Those people, it was for God and country, boom, God first. And the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. So if you stand your ground long enough, they will come for you. Right. But that's okay. You shouldn't be afraid of them persecuting you because this is part and parcel of being

Catholic. It's always been always. And I don't think you're really living until you're willing to die for something. And then you're actually living when you have no fear of death. You can actually live fully because you're willing to die for something. And then you're actually living. When you have no fear of death, you can actually live fully because you're not being intimidated by death. And that's the component where I'm seeing a lot of the young people starting to get that fire. Like, this is worthy of dying. This is how great this is, this church Jesus founded, because it's all about His promises for us that if we are obedient to him, if we love him, if we work out of love for him, and then this promise of the next life is

available. And if you notice, we just had, um, the transfiguration, wasn't that this Sunday? It could have been. Cause sure. It's, it's, it's come out later, so no one will be able to call us out. Whatever. So I was talking about the Old Covenant, because that was part of one of the... Yes, it was. Old Covenant, right? What was critical to the Old Covenant was the land. It was all about the land, giving you this land. We're gonna establish you a people on this land. When Jesus comes in and brings this new covenant and establishes

basically the mass and the new priesthood, there is no land to see. I don't hear anything about a land. What he's talking about is a new kingdom. The kingdom of heaven is now part of the equation. That's the promise of the new covenant, which is sort of a place, but because no one's really been there and come back for the most part, we're like a little intimidated by it. And I always say to people, what's your goal in life? It's heaven, isn't it? Well, yeah, ultimately, heaven is the goal. If you don't get there, you're a loser. I don't care what you've done in this life. If you don't make it to heaven, you're a loser. So that's the goal. How do you get to heaven? You're a loser. So that's the goal.

Uh, how do you get to heaven? You got to die. It's the only way in. Bummer. Yes. What was I the first to tell you? Just, I got to change my beliefs. No, it's true.

Yeah. The chariot that takes you to your goal is death. So it should not be feared. Right. But a lot of what you just said there seem to have to do with outside forces coming for us. But what I'm talking about is the disappointment people feel in their own church. What kind of advice do you give to people in that regard? I tell people go where you're fed. Yeah. And for some people, it's easier than others. If you don't live in a big city, it's going to be harder. The next church closest to me is probably a 30 minute drive.

So it's not like you're just rolling out of bed and hitting the... In New York City, you can throw a cat in any direction you'll hit a church. But in these rural parts, it's harder. But if you're really not being fed, find a church where you are and they're out there. There's pockets of them all over.

Whenever I travel, I find them, and it's like they're in the most crazy places, even in California, where they're having a heyday with the liberal policies in every way. These people, I go to visit a prayer group once a year of about 250 women, Catholic women, that get together weekly to pray, and pray for the church, pray for their families, and they're beautiful. And you can't let the outside forces change

who you are. You can still be the... In fact, you can become a saint quicker when things are falling apart than when everything's perfect, because God is looking for people, who is going to represent me in this world, not necessarily as a ministerial priest. If you put up your hand and say, I wanna be a saint in this life, then this big funnel of grace gets put over your head and he's gonna pour all this grace into you to form you. And the darker it gets, the brighter you can shine or he can shine through you. And that's very attractive to people who are suffering and feeling oppression and all sorts of... What we feel in this world isn't always us, and that's what people don't understand.

The spirits that are working against God and His kingdom, the demonic forces, you can feel that if they want you, they can, they can inflame your passions. They can put thoughts in your head that you normally wouldn't think. And some people think this is just me and I'm feeling like this and I'm feeling horrible and I'm feeling angry and I'm feeling maybe, but maybe not. Did you wake up angry? No. Did something happen to make you angry? No. Then why are you angry? I don't know. Well, then maybe it's not your anger. What? What do you mean? It could be a spirit

of anger that's poking at you and trying to get you to engage the anger. Just take authority over it and kick it out. And if suddenly you're back to being normal and at peace, that's what it was. How do people do that, take authority over it? Well, first of all, be in a state of grace. You never want to be messing with demons and not be, and then you should have a connection to Jesus at all. You can't just be random. I am an atheist, but I'm going to try this formula. That doesn't work like that. It's all tied to relationship with Christ. But if you are, and then you will be attacked,

remember Revelation 12, if you're the one who's keeping God's commands and being a witness to Jesus, then you got the bull's eye on your back. Congratulations. If you're experiencing an emotion that doesn't seem to be in line with your particular moment in life, like sadness, depression, despair, anger, lust for no reason, just say, whoa, what is this? And then just say, in the name of Jesus Christ, I bind all spirits of lust, anger, depression, whatever it is, and I cast you the feet of Jesus for him to dispose of you, go immediately and directly in Jesus' name and never return. If you suddenly just feel a peace come over you, that's what it was. And you have the power to do that over your own person and your kids, if the kids are still under 18 and your spouse for that matter. And then the word of God is so important. I can't emphasize half a dozen scriptures

you can go to at any moment that you know. For me, right in the beginning, let there be light. You go into a room of chaos and people fighting and we've all been to even diocesan meetings, this can happen Yeah, or kitchen tables with the family. Yes. And then you just go let there be light. And suddenly it's a whoosh. And like people just look at like what happened. It's like, haha, there was more operating here than meets the eye. What are some misconceptions people have about spiritual warfare and the demons? Maybe they believe too much,

maybe they don't believe enough. The devil's under every rock. The devil is causing every evil in the world, is always the devil. And you know, it really isn't, because you have free will and you have an intellect and you can use them. Can he influence? Absolutely.

The devil is the original influencer before all the TikTokers, original influencer, Satan, and he will do his best to influence you and your family and your parish and your community. But you don't have to go along with it. You can say, I'm gonna go back to the scriptures. What did Jesus say about that? He wants me to do this. He's asked me to live the life of the Beatitudes. Very hard to live Beatitudes, I mean, far harder than the commandments. This is a way of life. It's not just a don't do this and do that. But if you can start... Pick one Beatitude and say, I'm gonna tackle this week. I'm gonna make an effort every morning to look at that Beatitude and say, how can I become this in my life this week?

And at the end of a month, maybe you've had three or four and you can be like, this is starting to change, not just me, but how I look at the world differently, because I'm putting on literally the eyes of Christ and now I'm seeing through his perspective. That's what the beatitudes are. It's looking at the world through the lens of Jesus. That changes people,

and that brings hope, and that brings purpose, and that brings determination. And those are needed. This isn't an easy life, even though we have all these creature comforts and the air that you flip a switch and the hot water that you flip a switch. But it's a hard life if you're trying to actually live it the right way. Yeah. Yeah. I've been thinking a lot more these days about Christ as our refuge and what that means. Anthony of Padua, one of the four reasons, I think it's four, that he gives that Christ showed his wounds to his disciples was to show them a refuge where they could hide from the devil. Like he'sour, and it's a pleasing thing for him to save, because that's what he does. It's his name, it's his job description.

The Sacred Heart, one of the Twelve Promises, is this idea of hiding in the heart. Anyway, the whole point of saying this is just to say that he's for us, he's not against us, he's the paraclete, not the accuser. We can trust in him. And I see it in my own life, how often I look for a different refuge, even in comical ways. I remember one night rustling through the cupboards. My wife's on the couch. She says, what are you looking for? I said, happiness. Oh my gosh. And I just meant something, chocolate, something, just anything. And of course, I was being

hyperbolic. But often we do do that. We turn to our phone or to pornography or to video games or just to dissociate, just to, I just don't want to exist for a little bit. I'm looking for something to make everything okay. But we can only find that in him. Isn't it Aquinas who said, man needs joy. Yes.

And when he's deprived of spiritual joy, he tends to conel joy. The knockoff, which is pleasure, which comes from the outside through the senses, not from heaven into the soul. Amen. That's, in a lot of ways, that's in short supply, right? And that's why everybody's turning to pleasure. Pleasure is probably the number one thing people are seeking in this day and age, I would think.

Yeah. When you look at all the things out there and all the little gimmicks and gizmos and remedies and, you know, suffering is a bad word. And the more you get, the less effective it is. It's like a drug. Does that make sense? Yeah. It's like with alcohol, you need more and more or whatever the drug might be, pornography, there's like a tolerance buildup. And I think it is Aquinas who says this too, that Christ offers the cross, which leads to joy, and the world offers, quote unquote, joy, which just leads to miserable

suffering. That's something you learn, isn't it, over the course of the spiritual life, where you realize that all those things that seemed ghastly and horrid and objectionable, that is to say, fasting and so on, actually leads to joy and peace. And all the other stuff that had promised you a sense of calm and stability just leads to aggravation and anxiety. It doesn't work. Yeah. The morning prayer is so important because it's going to set the tone for the day, first of all. And like, when I go into that holy hour, I'm not just thinking about myself and my own day. I'm thinking like, you've already pre designated all the people I'm going to have contact with today, whether it be face to face in meetings, or through email, or through texts, or through walking through the grocery store and just smiling at somebody,

like all these people already, it's all chosen done. So I need all the graces today for me. And then you got to fill me up with all the graces you want me to give them through me to them. Okay. And you know those people. And then when you make your morning offering, it's kind of done. Like this has been done. The deal is sealed. And now I go into the day and no matter what the day brings, I'm like, well, Jesus knew this was happening and he already said, I'm going to give you the graces for this day. So it means for this too, regardless of how crazy it might seem. So press into it. It's all part of the day,

whether it look good or bad, right? And this is the thing, people think I'm having a good day means I wake up refreshed and well rested and I bounce into the kitchen and the perfect cup of coffee is made. Of course, the perfect cup and it's just perfect. And, uh, I read the newspaper glance at, Oh, look, all my stocks are up.

Everything's booming. And I get to work in all green lights and I sit down and my boss wants to give me a raise and I come home and my wife's made me the perfect dinner and the kids are all smiling and happy and say, daddy, we love you. This is just the best day ever. And this actually does really sound great. I'd love that day. So it's amazing. Okay, those are days God gives you and it doesn't happen often, but those are days He gives you the

grace to enjoy the day. Okay? And that's a good day for you. But then there's days when you wake up tired and you stub your toe in the corner of the bed and there's no hot water left and you have to take a cold shower and then your toast is burnt and the coffee is bitter and horrible and your boss is screaming at you and you come home and the family is in an uproar and everybody's fighting in this chaos and you're like, what is happening? And he's like, these are the days I'm giving the grace to endure the day. But if you give me all those little sufferings and trials and ask me to convert them to grace to save souls, this day actually is a better day than the good day. And so there's no more good days or bad days. There's only days of grace.

I love it. That's real. That is real. And if you put on those lenses every day and you realize I'm not having a bad day, I'm having a day where I can have these graces to endure and recycle them through the cross back to God so he can go save more souls. It's a good day. One of my favorite spiritual books is I Believe in Love.

And in it I read the other day, if we had to follow Jesus along a path of roses our entire life, how would we know it was Jesus and not the roses we were following? Is that too sentimental for you? What do you think? Well, I was thinking you probably I love that. Throw tired of roses. Like, it's a rose, big deal.

Yeah, that's a good point too. Yeah. Give me a four leaf clover. Anything, anything. That is funny. Who was it that said if things were perfect, they wouldn't be? Yeah, well, it's true. Who was it that said if things were perfect, they wouldn't be?

Yeah, well, it's true. It's like too much of a good thing and it's no longer a good thing. It's like if you eat cake every day. I feel like there's many people in the church, okay, things clearly aren't perfect. But there is so much beautiful things happening in the church. There are so many good souls, so many good husbands doing their best, wives doing their best, great apostolates like Bishop Robert Barron and Ascension Presents and Father Mike Schmitz and Hallow, the number one prayer app in the world. People are converting to the faith and we're all just pissed off. Well, we're not all pissed off.

No, we're not pissed off. But it depends on what, if you spend any time on social media, it would appear that we're all just very dissatisfied and angry. Well, that's a good point. So maybe you shouldn't be. Yeah. I don't.

I don't want social media, but I have a guy that does that. Oh, sure, sure, sure. On social media, you know, I hear you. You can see me there, but I don't go there and I don't read comments. We'll never do that. Did you do it once and then learn your lesson? No, my family will call or text

and go, Oh, do you see what they're saying about that? And I'm like, no, that's why I don't really tell me. Yeah. Yeah. No, it is. Look, I realize to have a voice means, you know, sometimes you like John the Baptist, you're going to get your head cut off, you know, in the worst case, but sometimes unlike John the Baptist, you deserve it to get your head cut off, you know, in the worst case. And sometimes, unlike John the Baptist, you deserve it. That's what's hard to figure out whether I should have been smacked or not. Do you know that John Vianney had a little chapel dedicated to John the Baptist? You know how he was very against the dances? Oh, yes.

The dance, evil things happened at the dances, right? You can imagine. So he had this little chapel to John the Baptist, and he had a sign over that said, he lost his head over one dance. To kind of drive the point home, but dances are not good. But I've always remembered that because he was... In his culture, that was the worst thing they were doing, is they were hooking up with these dances and then we would go do things they shouldn't be doing. In our culture, you don't even need a dance now. We have apps for this. You can just find an app to hook up with somebody. Even in Catholic

colleges. I remember when a few years ago I was reading that Fordham in New York City had an intranet within the university for hookups. Isn't this a Catholic school? Like, what is that about? But like, it's part of the culture. Do you ever have people who come to you for an exorcism or an infestation or something who you have to invite to repent of their sin as well? Always. It's always, 100%. Because there's always some aspect,

the door that was opened was sinful in some way, shape, or form. Now, unless it's the child that was richly abused and didn't know it, and then that's another whole issue we can deal with. But usually there's some scenario that's invited this thing in, right? Whether it be witchcraft or occultism, playing with Ouija boards, the psychics, whatever, or

deviant sexual sin or even sexual sin, you know, if you're sexually active when you shouldn't be because you're not married or you're not married to a woman who is your wife, all just one mortal sin can open the door to a full possession. It doesn't happen hardly ever, but that's all it takes. So there's always a component of that. And the other component on the, it's like a coin. The other side of the deliverance is healing because there's usually a heal a wound that needs to be healed and closed that prevents the thing from coming back in. Yeah. And that's always painful because they have to,

like we said in the beginning of this podcast, you have to go into that and then hear the truth spoken to you about what actually God's take on this whole thing was. And usually he's right there with you and he's suffering with you. And was not at all pleased that this happened, but by staying with him and uniting to him, he can bring goodness from it. And that's the whole

point is it's being allowed. All suffering is allowed for personal holiness to be gained, for purification to happen for you and even maybe for other people too. So if he's allowing it, there's a purpose and there's a good that can be gained from it. But when you're in it, you don't want to hear that. I don't. Yeah, it's so true. It's so true. So it's important to look backwards when you have come through these things. I tell people, write it down, keep a journal because the day is gonna come when you're back on the ropes and you need to go back and say,

no, but I've been here before and he's always pulled me through and it's always worked out and I'm gonna be okay. And then that helps. A question I should have asked earlier is how did your friends react when you went from being a banker in where? What did you say? New York, Wall Street to being a banker in where? What did you say?

New York, Main Street, to being a seminarian. Did you have friends who thought you were nuts or? Yeah, of course. My college friends who I'm still friends with, and we're actually getting together in August, we try to get together once a year, it's about eight of us or so, they always say like of our group, the last person to

become a priest would be me. Because I was kind of like... For example, so in my fraternity, I had these three guys I was best friends with, the president was Kevin, the vice president's Todd, and I was the social chairman. I thought the social chairman had more power because he's the one who plans the parties. Much more power than, what does the president do? He didn't do anything.

This guy is actually planning the keggers, so this is the job you want. And it was the great job because you're the party guy that you can get all the people to come to the house and have a great time. So that life, and that life lived long past college into through my twenties into my thirties, early thirties until my conversion. You know, that's why when they would let they go, Dan is becoming a priest.

Like, well, but they saw the transition too. And it wasn't like on Thursday, I was a heathen and on Friday, I was a saint. No, didn't happen like that. But but they do laugh about it. All right. Final question. Thank you for being here. By the way, this has been really enjoyable. Thank you. I agree. Yeah, good. What are some positive signs you see in the church, either in the United States or in the world today? I can say this about not not only my own little parish, but also about all these places I go all over the country, all over the world. There is a movement of the Holy Spirit happening right now,

for sure. I mean, without a doubt, where men in particular are rising up and want to go deeper with their faith, and that's becoming very exciting for their wives and even their kids. And of course, God's gonna bless that. I mean, how could he not? And for example, on April 1st to the 3rd, I hate to destroy your day and talk about the seals one more time, but there's gonna be 35 Navy SEALs coming to a three day retreat. Why come on as they approached me and said, you

know, we are the number one soldiers of the world. We can we can go into any situation and root out the enemy. But we don't know how to fight the devil. Come on. And so we want to learn spiritual warfare. And so that we're going to be doing that. It's a couple of weeks. You're leading never really happened 10 years ago, I don't think. And your friends from Nashville are gonna be part of this? I mean, they're not sales anymore,

but they're not in active duty, but they'll be coming? Come on, that's really terrific. But they're coming from all over the country. So then they go back to their parishes and they're gonna bring this to their men's groups. And then the men's groups can incorporate into their families. Like this is a great thing.

And the leadership is rightly placed where the men are stepping up to take care of their families and their parishes. Like, that's a beautiful thing, right? And it's a real movement of God because it's happening in many places. It's not just like, oh, well, here we have this in Nashville, no, it's like seeing it all over and, uh, and the big families, you know, I have probably a hundred kids under seven that run around my church. What's that like as a priest while you're trying to bomb me? Oh, I don't mind. Uh, if, if your church isn't crying, it's dying. As they say,

the kids are beautiful. They all want to come up to you and tell you what they're learning about Jesus or what Jesus is doing in their family or just the most adorable little people. There's always pregnant women, the families are growing. There's far more many baptisms than funerals, and that's a great thing. When I first got there almost five years ago, the outgoing priest said to me, we have no children in this parish. It's the one odd thing about it. And I went, yeah, because you're the only church in the county

that's Catholic. So how does that work? There's no children in this county? And I think what happened over that time is, I can't discount how powerful adoration is, particularly when the priest is praying with the people. I sit in the church praying every day because I want them to see me praying. I think it's important that they see their priest praying. I know priests who say, no, they bother me, I have to pray in my chapel, my private chapel. And I go, yeah, but I mean, it's your kids, they should see you praying because the kids

will do what the parent does. And they know that first hour is protected. Unless somebody's dying, they don't interrupt me, it's fine. But you know what? More and more of them come. This is what I think happens. It's completely my opinion, it's not the church speaking here. I think that during all those holy hours during the week, so it's like, whatever, 12, and then Friday it's all day, so maybe 20 hours

of holy hours a week when the people are in there adoring the Lord and loving Jesus, all this grace is filling that church and like literally seeping into the walls. And then on Sunday when it's packed and all these people come who can't make it to adoration, say, they've got busy lives that don't have that moment at this time, all those graces come back out of the church into those people, and it really lifts them up and it's transforming them. And I celebrate a very traditional mass, and my back is to the people, but when I can see the people, it's not uncommon to look at and there's, again, the tears, because they're being overwhelmed by grace. And it's like they don't even... They can't process it, so it just comes out through their emotions. And at the end of mass, so many people come up to me and they go,

my gosh, I just... God is so present here. It's just so wonderful." I go, this is how it's supposed to be. This is it. And it's not all the... Yes, we have good music and yes, I do try to do a decent homily, but it's not that. It's the worship. When you really worship God, He is just drawn there, you know? And then if you have a great love for our lady like we do, she's like the beacon. It's always guiding that spirit to come here. This is where my children are, come here and be with us. And so you... I challenge people all the time, come back to the church. Just come one Sunday and tell me if you can't experience God. And when people do come, and it's been years and years, they go, something happened. I do feel different when I come to Mass. And I haven't been to Mass in 15 years, but I don't remember it being like this, but I feel, they feel something. And it shouldn't be about feelings. I don't want to get people down that road because that can go off

the cliff too quick too. But it's part of the equation. When God is loved, oftentimes, when He's loving us back, we can experience that. And that's kind of the best part of being a priest, is seeing, you know, I'm there to make the connection, you over to God and God to you. And when that's working and happening, and you see people lighting up, it's like, there's kind of nothing better. That's really beautiful. Thanks for sharing that. At Orient, I'm celebrating with you back to the people, as you said.

I would love to see that more. I mean, there may have been a glimmer of hope in Pope Francis' modu proprio that suppressed the Latin Mass and that he acknowledged the silliness that kind of resulted from a lack of oversight in the Novus Ordo. So presumably your bishop, because I know priests who would love to do that, but you know, they just like what I don't know if I don't know if I want to die on this hill, I don't want to do it and then it's sat down. It's part of the nobis ordo. Yes.

Three times in the missile that's from Vatican II in English, it says, now turn and face the people. Yeah. So I'm merely doing the actual rubrics that come in it. But aren't you, I mean, have you been afraid? I mean, I don't want to ask you to talk about your bishop. Let's talk about it generically, right? So, but I can see why a priest would fear that. They're like, okay, if I do this, I could get censured

or at least corrected because I'm kind of standing out or maybe I'm given the impression that I think I'm holier than thou or I'm... It's quite the opposite. Yeah, well, I agree with you. Because what I was experiencing with celebrating the mass the way most people are is at some point I'm like, why am I the only person in here with my back to God?

I am the ministry representative. I've got my back to him through the whole Mass. Why is that? And so I had six friends who were doing Ad Orientum and I said, well, six is not the ideal number, but if there were seven, it would be better. And I said, I'm going is not the ideal number, but if there were seven, it would be better. And I said, I'm going to... You know what had happened? There's a mass in honor of our lady

that you pray during Advent. What is it called? I forget what it's called, but that has a strict... It's all by candlelight. It's before sunrise and it's at Oriental. So I said, well, we're gonna do this. Somebody asked for it. I said, we're gonna do it.

It's not mandatory. So it I said, well, we're gonna do this. Somebody asked for it. I said, we're gonna do it. It's not mandatory. So it's a Saturday and it's at whatever, 5.45 in the morning. So I wasn't expecting a lot of people to come, but for the people who wanted, we'll do it. Well, the church was mobbed. They loved it. They all came.

Not bad, no. And I wasn't there to see what was going on. So it was terrible. Yeah, yeah, people showed up. Not bad, no. And I wasn't there to see what was going on, so it was terrible. Yeah, yeah, people showed up. And they loved it. Yeah. And so they said, well, we just didn't understand the whole with your back to us thing. And so I said, no, I can explain it.

So I put out a bulletin in the bulletin, I explained why it's done and what it means. And it's the, you know, you know what it means. It's the prayers are going through the priest, the priest to Jesus, Jesus to the father. We're all going... Yes, we're going in the same direction. We're all going in the same direction. The other great thing about it is any risk of being performative is gone because I'm just staring at the crucifix. Isn't that nice? Yes. It's nice for you. It's nice for me. I don't need you to be funny. Please don't. Just do your job. 100%. And my focus is more on where it should be. So I

have a, my Bishop is a Canon lawyer and he, he, he lives and dies by the cannons. If it's canonically okay, he, he won't give you a problem. That's lovely. And it, and you know what? That's the way it should be. Yeah, really? We're not doing anything devilish or irreverent or bad. No, it's, it's just, I would suspect that certain people just feel threatened by that. It's the same reason certain priests I think feel threatened by other priests who wear the cassock like what they just want to wear the cassock. And it's a beautiful thing. I think it looks very masculine and good and it's a beautiful sign of the priest

to let them do it. But I think there's this, who do you think you are in the. No, I actually don't mind the cassock from my life. Castic is I get hooked on doorknobs with those two things in the back. I have ripped it, my arm on things, the dog pulling at the bottom of it. It's like, I'll wear it on a feast day. But then it's like, the point is, I know what you're saying. Okay, well, okay, I'm going to go out on a limb here and ask, what would your advice be to the priest watching who's like, I would love to celebrate at Orientum.

Well, the first step is educating the parish because you can't just do that without them knowing what's happening because they'll be like, what are you doing? You understand what's happening. So the first thing would be you can introduce the history of the church and how things have come from where they came, what they were about, why things were done the way they were, and what is legally allowed today, because that is another part of the question. It's perfectly legitimate. In fact, it's written that way in the rubrics. That's an education, right? But the next step is you may want to ask your bishop, may I have your blessing to do this? Because I feel like that that's where the Lord

is leading me. And I feel like it would make the mass more reverent. And since we're just coming off this three years of devotion to the Eucharist, I feel like this could be a way to go deeper with the reverence and the meaning that happens at the mass. And that's kind of up to you. Yeah. Certainly in your private masses, you can do it with no permission allowed. You don't need permission to do that. I had mass this morning in the hotel room, because that's all I can do. Yeah. That's how it was celebrated. And you know, it's funny because I was in a CC a few years ago for

my retreat. I was vesting one of my friends who was being ordained at St. Peter's. And so I'm like, okay, I'm going to be over there already. Let's tack on a retreat. There's a million places you can go that would be better than Tennessee. So Assisi is like the ideal place. It's beautiful. I just went there last year.

Oh my gosh, it's spectacular. And well, but what do you know? My bishop decided he would go there that week too, and I'm like, what are the odds? And of course, the invite came, hey, do you wanna celebrate Mass together? We can go to this church. Of course, I'll be there. But it's Italy, so a lot of the churches don't have freestanding altars, they're all back altars. So I, with my bishop, celebrated Mass at Orientum, and it was perfectly normal and nobody thought twice about it. Like it's not as big a freak out for as people make it. Yes. Right.

Yeah, I agree completely. I also think there's a lot of priests who may not have a great relationship with their bishop and they're just trying to navigate things without upsetting everything, upsetting the cart and then getting sent, you know. Anyway. Love your people. If your people feel loved, they'll love you back and you can lead them easier to the heart of Jesus and then everybody will be happy. Father, thanks for making the trip out. I hate traveling. Me too. Just, it's the worst. So I, but I think this is going to be a very lovely conversation

that will bless souls. So thanks for putting in the effort. So happy to be here and I'm happier I'm here than in Ohio. No offense to the Ohio people. No offense to them. God bless them. It's nice to be in Florida. Yeah, thanks. You're welcome.