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Welcome to Divine Intimacy Radio, a co-production of EWTN Radio and SpiritualDirection.com, where we provide you with a spiritual haven of rest and explore the riches of the wisdom of the saints and the path to union with God.

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Mark and set the goat.

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This is Dan and Stephanie Burke.

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Welcome to Divine Intimacy Radio, your radio haven of rest.

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Your hermitage of the heart.

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Your monastery of the mind where we lift our hearts and minds to heaven to draw upon the wisdom of the saints.

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How does one determine the difference between temptation and sin or whether a temptation is actually a sin?

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This is one of the many questions we're going to be talking about on the show today.

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So why don't we just jump in?

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Are you ready?

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I'm ready.

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Are you ready?

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I'm not, but since you're ready, we'll go ahead.

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I can look at you and know you're not ready.

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I think I'm still a tad jet-lagged from the pilgrimage to...

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France and boy friends, if you want to rock your little Catholic heart or your big Catholic heart, you got to come with us on pilgrimage.

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Yeah.

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We really have some amazing experiences, but we haven't scheduled the next one yet.

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So keep an eye out on spiritual direction.com next year.

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We're either going to Israel or, or Ireland.

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I don't know which maybe we'll go to Iran.

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Yeah.

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we need to pray for the folks.

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Yes.

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We need to pray for everybody.

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Yeah.

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I need to pray for you today.

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Okay.

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So our first question, and this was put out, I believe to our community on family and marriage spirituality.

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The first question is how does one discern whether something is a temptation versus a sin?

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Yeah, so it's not complicated.

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No.

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The easiest way always to deal with these kinds of questions is sexual, just because the distinctions are pretty clear.

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So if I see a beautiful woman and I'm drawn to her because of beauty, it's a natural thing that happens in our humanity.

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When is that a sin?

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Well, it's not a sin to have a natural draw to beauty.

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To recognize beauty, to be attracted to beauty.

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That's not a sin.

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Yeah.

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Or to handsomeness, you know.

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Right.

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Yeah, it's not a sin.

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When it becomes a sin is when you allow that initial impulse to draw you the next step deeper.

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Or it could be an imperfection at that point.

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So what's the difference?

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The way I deal with it, and this is...

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It's somewhat subjective, but it becomes clearer and clearer the deeper you get in.

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If I see an attractive woman and I notice and then I look away, it's not even a big deal.

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It's not a temptation.

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If I see and I look and I pause, now we've entered into a problem.

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Linger.

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Linger.

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Ruminate.

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Right.

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Well, and that's what I, that's what I mean by this continuum.

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So there's recognize is on, there's no sin.

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Pausing is where you're assenting, you're making a decision.

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to focus on that which is not yours.

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So it's not your wife, you know, in this case.

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Or not your husband.

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Yeah, and we're speaking, you know, in a marital context, right?

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So we're married, I'm a married man.

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It may be slightly different for someone who's single and looking for a spouse, but you still, there's a point at which you go, if you're single, you notice and you go, oh, that's interesting.

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I'd like to pursue that person.

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That's not sin.

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But if you begin to fantasize with someone you're not married to in both cases, now you're entering into sin.

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And I think even before that, I would call it an imperfection as a married man to recognize not immediately looking away or diverting my mind heart.

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or diverting my mind heart to you, which is what I do habitually, that's an imperfection.

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It becomes sin when you enter into fantasy that's unhealthy.

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And then, of course, the rest is easy to discern if you enter into masturbation or any sort of behavior.

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Or even before that,

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if you entered into an emotional entanglement with someone who's not your spouse, that can be even grave sin.

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It just depends on how, how deeply enmeshed you get, even if there's not a sexual component to it.

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So, you know, the bottom line is if you're looking at someone that's not your spouse, you're not single pursuing a relationship, you need to be really careful.

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Yeah, I think it comes down to discernment of spirit.

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So I want to, you know, help out those folks that are saying, well, you know, what do I do when it comes into my head?

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Well, first of all, recognize that all the voices in your head, some of the voices in your head are not yours and you shouldn't listen to them.

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Right.

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Take them captive to Christ.

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Are they Galatians 5?

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Right.

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love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control.

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If they're not, they're to be rejected and resisted.

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But the other thing is, is to know that that thought isn't a sin.

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It's an invitation.

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And I would say to the individual, rather than beat yourself up about it, also recognize that the Lord has allowed it to bring about a greater good.

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Right.

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So if if he with if our Lord in his providence, goodness, you know, perfect divine will allows a man to be a woman and be attracted to her and then go a step too far.

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He's inviting him to purify his heart, exercise the virtue, to exercise the opposite virtue.

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He's inviting him to the opposite virtue.

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So if you're tempted, as this person was asked, you know, is temptation when that is, you know, what's the difference between temptation and sin?

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I think we've made clear what it is, but I would also say when you're tempted, look at what the opposite virtue is and understand that the Lord's inviting you to practice the opposite.

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He wants you to grow in that opposite virtue.

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So if it's lust, he wants you to grow in purity, right?

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If it's pride, because we can be tempted to pride.

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then he's wanting you to grow in humility.

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If he's tempting you to gluttony, he's inviting you to grow in temperance.

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We can be tempted with a lot of things that all start in the mind.

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So how you think is how you speak is how you act.

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So taking that thought captive, oh, the Lord wants me to grow in the opposite virtue.

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I'm going to stop.

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I'm going to stop.

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I'm going to stop.

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I'm going to resist that using, you know, the rules of discernment of spirits.

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And then I'm going to practice the opposite virtue.

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And every time that I do that and the quicker that I do it, then the Lord kind of like puts concrete around that with, with the Holy Spirit, with his grace.

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And he strengthens us in that virtue because he doesn't just, you know, toss it out willy nilly.

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He actually wants us to participate in the purifying of our mind, heart, soul, body, spirit.

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He wants us to step into that invitation and practice what he's inviting us to practice.

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Yeah, you said something that's really important to dig a little deeper on or reinforce, and that is that speed and reaction is really super important with temptation like this in particular.

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But any temptation, the more you...

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every fraction of a second that you allow yourself to consider what happens is, consider the sin or consider what is drawing you into whatever that's not healthy.

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Or ruminate about the temptation.

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Yeah, what happens is your mind begins to then

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And this is from an ancient Paterikon saying from the Christian East, your mind begins to converse with your passions.

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And like, as an example for food, you know, oh, that looks good.

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And your stomach then says, yeah, that does look good.

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I mean, obviously your stomach doesn't speak, but.

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But there's this spiritual conversation going on that begins to tip the scales toward your lower nature, inappropriately oriented, right?

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And so once your mind and your brain

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Passions begin to talk about that.

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That's what we'll call fantasy in terms of sexual or we'll call, you know, I don't know.

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Rumination, obsession, anything.

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Yeah.

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So the goal is that you move so quickly that it never leaves.

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It never gets past your mind, if you will, to your passions.

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It just goes mental.

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Okay.

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Yeah.

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Not doing that in Jesus name.

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And, you know, as you said, you, you can, you can speak against it in Jesus name for me with respect to you.

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If I ever have an inclination, I always then just think about you because that has a double effect.

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One is you are my only, you are to be my only source of that kind of affection.

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or that only proper end of that kind of affection

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it reminds me, not that I have, I don't think, speed of God, I don't have difficulty in this area, but it reminds me of you are my love.

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You know, you are, and I would never want to do anything that hurt you.

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So there's all kinds of dynamics that to me, a man or a woman bring their minds quickly to their spouse can really wreak havoc on the temptation, whatever's going on.

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Yeah, and not just your spouse, but then also to God, you know, because we're also speaking to single persons or individuals that have children and say, how do I help my kids with this?

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You know, my young adult kids or whatever, or any of them that are listening.

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We bring our heart and mind to God first and then to the proper ordered affection of where that is.

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where that should essentially land properly.

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Amen.

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Yeah.

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Okay.

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The next question is similar with related.

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It has to deal with temptation to sin and diagnosis of ADHD, that sort of thing.

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You want to punch?

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Yeah.

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I'm just going to read this very, very quickly.

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Yeah.

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So my son has ADHD.

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I have seen countless times that the way he looks at situations, very different from ours is,

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And his condition has a great impact on this.

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Well, I would say also being maybe an adolescent or a young adult, that's going to have a bigger temptations, you know, that has more of an impact actually than ADHD.

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Yeah.

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So there's a lot going on and, and we don't, you know, we don't think, you know, we all have different patterns of thought.

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Yeah.

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So sometimes his decisions and choices are not aligned with Christian living and he doesn't understand why.

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Yeah.

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So it seems like he does things and he doesn't, you know, it's like St. Paul.

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I do the things that I don't want to do.

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What is the scripture verse?

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Yeah, but I don't know that that's where he is.

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He just doesn't, you know, why is this a problem?

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It's different than Paul.

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Maybe, or he doesn't understand why he makes choices not aligned with his Christian living.

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Because you could read that sentence both ways.

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Anyway, okay, so that's there.

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So maybe he wants to do the right thing and he makes the wrong decision.

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Or he just doesn't get why there's an importance behind the decision.

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Could be one or the other.

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Is he completely free in his choices when it comes to mortal sin?

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Full stop right there.

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I think let's just talk about that.

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Actually, why don't we talk about that when we get back from the break?

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Is that okay?

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Yeah, that's too big of a question.

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Yeah, that's too huge of a question.

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So when we get back, we're going to talk about does ADHD or youth...

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or anything else, make us completely free in our choices when it comes to more of sex.

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All right.

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We'll be right back.

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So what is the mystical life and how do we make progress in it?

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How do we become spiritually mature?

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How do we come to union with God?

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Big questions, tough questions.

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And they're all answered in a course, the Avalon Institute, called Introduction to Spiritual Theology, which begins September 4th.

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We know you have to apply by September 4th, but it begins after that.

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But it'll be Fridays at 7.30 p.m. Eastern, Dr. David Arias.

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It's a graduate studies course.

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You can learn more at avala-institute.org.

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That's avala-institute.org.

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This is Dan Stephanie Burke.

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Welcome back to Divine Intimacy Radio.

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We're talking about temptation and sin and all that good stuff.

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Yeah.

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So back to the question.

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This mother has a son who has ADHD.

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How do you know if it's a mother?

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It's got to be a mother.

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Yeah.

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It's always a mother.

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Dad wouldn't be.

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He'd be like, whatever.

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Give him a baseball bat.

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Yeah, probably.

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So moms are really concerned about the salvation of their kids, often to a fault sometimes.

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And as are dads, but moms, huge moms, especially if they're...

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converted, you know, if they're praying a lot, if they're coming to conversion, sometimes their children's struggles are what brings them to conversion.

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Sure.

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Both parents actually.

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You know, their knees bleed for their kids.

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I think all of us have probably had a child.

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If we're parents, we've had a child that's made our knees bleed with

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uh, the intercessory prayer, um, which is an important point that we'll get back to in a second.

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So she says, you know, ADHD, he makes poor choices, um, doesn't understand why this is a problem or doesn't understand why he makes choices that are contrary to his, um, condition of ADHD.

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Okay.

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Yeah.

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And can I hit this one pretty hard and direct without being uncharitable?

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I think we weigh over diagnosed in our society and I could stack a list of good Catholic counselors who would agree with that.

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The symptoms that she's describing are adolescent symptoms.

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They're not, they're not

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They're not unique to ADHD children.

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And I mean, you're a Catholic school principal.

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So you, I mean, you were for a long time.

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You worked in Catholic.

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So you, you've worked through all these diagnoses.

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You see them play out in classroom.

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It takes a long time, especially for males to grow.

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I mean,

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from their i don't know all the terms but they have to mature into making proper decisions and a lot of them don't mature until they're 26 28 30 where the fullness of their ability to make uh

232
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to think about the consequences of their decisions and make conscious good decisions sometimes doesn't happen until we're in our, in our twenties and thirties.

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Well, and you're, what you're speaking about is just development of the brain, right?

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We don't have to go any further than that.

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And, and adolescence, now we have a delayed adolescence problem.

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Yes.

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You know, social media, gaming, pornography.

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Yeah.

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You know, all these things, all of our social media is actually delaying the maturity, spiritual maturity, emotional maturity, just, you know, maturity of our young people.

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And I think the problem with a lot of these diagnoses is that it causes us to focus on the wrong things.

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And so I'm not at all picking on this mom who obviously loves her son and is concerned.

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So all mercy and compassion I have for that.

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But that draws me to say, if I were you, I'd set aside the diagnosis, deal with him as a human being made by God, for God, who's on his way to God, right?

244
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And not as a diagnosis.

245
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And also another mistake we can make as parents is to just overly, is to sear the sin of our children and identify them as their sin.

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I'm not saying this person's doing that.

247
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Yeah.

248
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Yeah.

249
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Well, I'm going to I'm going to take it even a step further.

250
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Sure.

251
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So she says, I'm not acting that I'm not asking this as an excuse for him.

252
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Good.

253
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Sure.

254
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But because I'm generally trying to understand the church's view on this, I feel fear and anguish.

255
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OK, that's really important.

256
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I feel fear and anguish.

257
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That fear and anguish is not of the Lord.

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Right.

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The Lord knows what he's about.

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The Lord knows what he's about.

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And it says, I feel fear and anguish about his condition, possibly opening the door to the presence of evil in his life.

262
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And I also fear for his afterlife.

263
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He isn't really aware of the moral implications of the Christian life.

264
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Well, you know, for a lot of us, we weren't for a long time.

265
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I look back on my life and I'm like, I'm shocked.

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I'm here and I'm okay.

267
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And I'm, you know, walking in the path of the Lord by his grace alone, which brings me to the most important part right here.

268
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The fear and anguish is a distraction.

269
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Right.

270
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And it turns into speculation.

271
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What's going to happen?

272
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He doesn't understand.

273
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What do I do?

274
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How do I fix this?

275
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Which turns into self-sufficiency that I have to fix my son.

276
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And also desolation.

277
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Well, it is desolation.

278
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I have to fix my son.

279
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I have to fix this situation.

280
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Jesus is asleep in the boat.

281
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What do I do?

282
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Right.

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How do I fix this?

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And the true answer is turning that anguish, that fear, that speculation, that deep love that you have for your son into intercessory prayer.

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prayer and sacrifice that taking that anguish and that longing to the Lord in your fasting, your prayer, every mouse, every rosary, going before the blessed sacrament and saying, Lord, you gave him to me.

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You entrusted him to me.

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I'm giving all of this back to you because you're the only one who can save him.

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And I just want to testify to you as a mother, right?

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that I just really recently had a huge miracle in my life with one of our children.

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I'm not going to go into it because it's still rolling out, but I can tell you it's been eight years of my knees bleeding for this particular child.

291
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And I had a miracle.

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I don't know where that miracle's headed, but I know that the Lord is answering my prayers now.

293
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sometimes one crumb at a time.

294
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But you know what?

295
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That crumb allows me to survive, to go on to the next prayer, the next rosary.

296
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And understand this too.

297
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God entrusted you with that child, not to save him.

298
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There's only one savior.

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He's been given to you for you to pray, to pray and sacrifice, to unite yourself to the prayers of Mary, to unite yourselves to the prayers of Monica and to let the Lord do what he's going to do.

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We need to love.

301
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We need to be present.

302
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We need to guide.

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We need to educate.

304
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but we need to vanquish all fear and just know that your son is on a journey just as our children.

305
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Every one of us is on a journey.

306
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So I think we can all look back and go, wow, God's a God of miracles.

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Let's take that's beautifully said from one mother's heart to another.

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And hopefully that's comforting to this mom.

309
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Let's take another angle to fear and anguish about his condition.

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What is fear?

311
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It is the God-given energy to do the right thing.

312
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The right thing isn't you figuring out whether he's morally culpable for his sin.

313
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The God-given fear or the energy to do the right thing is to seek to form him, to give him as many different possible exposures to the truth

314
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so that he can better understand and choose the truth.

315
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And to speak in love, to be present, right?

316
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Not to be afraid to say the truth, but check your emotions, right?

317
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Check your own spiritual life.

318
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Because so often, like, you know, I've worked with a family.

319
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The daughter was struggling.

320
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And I knew by talking to the family, it really wasn't as much about the daughter as it was about the dad.

321
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So understand that there are many things that are happening within families when one of our children is going off the rails.

322
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It's often the ways through which God's going to bring about our sanctification, our purity, because he wants us to trust in him.

323
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Yeah.

324
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He wants us to love and serve and be another Christ.

325
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to, you know, to offer ourselves to him for the sake of this soul and then go do the right thing, as you said, to use the rightly ordered fear to go do the right thing.

326
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Which is one to pray.

327
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sacrifice to get get get him involved in as much catholic formation as you can that's healthy you can do there's uh sophia institute press in particular has a huge array of uh formation you know homeschool materials even if he's in a catholic school or whatever you you can't you you've got a supplement you've got a you know i i probably

328
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If there's one regret that I have as a dad, I have a few, is just not spending enough time with our children outside of the context of their education or even formation in the church to draw their hearts more deeply to what it means to follow Jesus, to know Jesus.

329
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Because it isn't...

330
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You know, one of the errors in this sort of situation is to pound into a child.

331
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Well, one, to make an excuse.

332
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She's not doing that or desiring that, but that can be a bad end.

333
00:23:47.801 --> 00:23:49.563
He has HDA, he's not quite culpable.

334
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And then that can cause you to relax, which is a very bad thing.

335
00:23:53.308 --> 00:24:05.111
The other one is to pound into a child moral imperatives that necessitate a love, a knowledge of God and love of God to even embrace.

336
00:24:06.191 --> 00:24:06.431
Right.

337
00:24:06.491 --> 00:24:12.932
So we have to, as best we can, help our children come to know Jesus and to love him.

338
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I strongly recommend that.

339
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And I don't know if you agree with this, but strongly recommend sitting with them and watching the chosen together and just having a dialogue about who Jesus is and what he's about.

340
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Not a lecture.

341
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Not a lecture.

342
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And not even looking to bring about moral precision in the way they respond.

343
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Just get them to deal with the question of who is this guy?

344
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What is he doing?

345
00:24:38.417 --> 00:24:41.339
Why is, why does he have the, why does he have this following?

346
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How is this all working out?

347
00:24:43.399 --> 00:24:49.982
You know, so that they begin to develop an interior conviction of, you know, I should go this way.

348
00:24:50.562 --> 00:24:55.744
And when they get that, then they begin to say, Oh, this is the right way.

349
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And this is the wrong way.

350
00:24:57.204 --> 00:24:57.504
Yeah.

351
00:24:57.844 --> 00:25:03.586
I think too, until you know, you are loved, it is very hard to follow.

352
00:25:04.167 --> 00:25:05.127
Very hard to follow.

353
00:25:06.055 --> 00:25:10.920
you have to have an experience with the loving God, right?

354
00:25:11.301 --> 00:25:17.887
You either have to come to your end in your sin, which that's a very tough road.

355
00:25:18.067 --> 00:25:20.510
I've been that, I've gone that road.

356
00:25:20.590 --> 00:25:27.277
That was what the Lord did to me or allowed in my life that I had to come to my end and

357
00:25:28.057 --> 00:25:32.881
Um, others, you know, they get to know him a different way, right?

358
00:25:32.901 --> 00:25:37.005
I, if you're struggling with pride, you'll probably have to come to your end.

359
00:25:37.645 --> 00:25:42.669
You know, if it's something else, maybe having different encounters.

360
00:25:43.610 --> 00:25:48.074
Like we used to work with, um, the Franciscan Friars of the Poor of Jesus Christ and,

361
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in going and serving the poor.

362
00:25:50.135 --> 00:25:50.375
Yeah.

363
00:25:50.595 --> 00:25:55.699
That was a huge eye opener for us and for them, for our kids.

364
00:25:55.779 --> 00:26:03.183
You know, we would go and feed the homeless under the bridges, all of these things, different encounters of how do you get involved?

365
00:26:03.243 --> 00:26:06.085
How are you personally pursuing the Lord?

366
00:26:06.165 --> 00:26:08.306
And then how are you living that out as a family?

367
00:26:09.347 --> 00:26:14.350
And last word, fathers, the importance of fathers, um,

368
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I don't know where dad is in this, in this scenario, but young men starting at about eight, really younger than that.

369
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But that's, that's as late as in my mind, as late as it gets.

370
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I mean, much earlier possible.

371
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All the way through.

372
00:26:32.438 --> 00:26:34.819
Moms need to take more of a backseat.

373
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Moms need to nurture and, you know, put band-aids on wounds.

374
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And dads need to say, get up.

375
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And educate.

376
00:26:40.741 --> 00:26:41.221
Let's go.

377
00:26:41.381 --> 00:26:41.581
Yeah.

378
00:26:41.761 --> 00:26:42.581
But all that stuff.

379
00:26:42.621 --> 00:26:45.002
But fathers need to be front and center.

380
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Yeah.

381
00:26:45.482 --> 00:26:51.023
So last word, if dad's not in the picture, pray and fast for dad that he will be.

382
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So until next time, may the God of peace make you perfect in holiness.

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May he preserve you whole and entire, spirit, soul, and body, irreproachable at the coming of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

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Amen.

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Learn more about the interior life.

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Visit spiritualdirection.com.

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