#492 Take A Deep Breath! Exhale. Peace In The Midst of Chaos: "Restoring The Lords Day", Reviving Our Human Nature, With Daniel Fitzpatrick

It's amazing with all these ideologies , and so it's creating this separation from the heart , as does technology and so many things we're doing today . So we're you know . How do we restore this ? How do we restore the culture ? How do we restore the country ? How to restore family life , married life ?

Well , it all starts at the level of the individual human heart , doesn't it ? And so people will say , well , how do I do that ? What's the best route ? Well , it's your lucky day . That's what my guest and I will be discussing today .

I have a wonderful guest on , daniel Fitzpatrick , from Louisiana , and he wrote a book Restoring the Lord's Day , and it is really beautiful . It's Patrick from Louisiana and he wrote a book Restoring the Lord's Day , and it is really beautiful .

It's really a beautiful book and it's a beautiful way he unpacks this and , speaking of beauty , it's getting back to the transcendentals , of course . What's true , what's good , what's beautiful . You know nature and the beauty around us , but also becoming one with that beauty , stepping into that beauty and becoming one with it .

So I think you're going to really enjoy Daniel . I think you'll enjoy the conversation , so buckle up and get ready for today's episode . I'm excited and grateful to be with Daniel Fitzpatrick today . He lives in New Orleans with his wife and four children . He's the author of the novels Only the Lover Sings and First Make Mad .

His first translation of the Divine Comedy , illustrated by Timothy Schmaltz , was published in 2021 in honor of the 700th anniversary of Dante's death . He's the editor of Joie de Vivre , a journal of art , culture and letters for South Louisiana , and he teaches English at Jesuit High School of New Orleans . Daniel , welcome .

You know , a lot of these young people are really struggling , aren't they ?

I want to get down to the new book that you wrote , restoring the Lord's Day , but before we do that , can you sum up that statement , because you said it changed a lot in 15 years , which is not a lot of time , right , less than a generation , and we feel that too . If you could sum that up , what are you feeling ?

And as someone that's working like we do with the John Paul II Renewal Center , again with a lot of young people , it's always interesting to me to get a perspective on that .

We're not a one-to-one school either , which I think is one of the best things about Desert High School in New Orleans is that we don't have laptops or iPads or any of this for all of the students , so they're off of screens all day while they're here .

I mean , so John Paul II talks about the so many of the challenges of technology , you know , beginning , uh with with his earliest encyclicals , but he talks about that way in which , you know , man stands kind of on the precipice where technology is becoming something that that controls him and something that has the ability to obliterate him .

And I think , for the most part , maybe we're not in danger of our smartphones obliterating us , but , in a spiritual sense , really , they're designed to capture us , they're designed to hold our attention , they're designed , I think , frankly , to be idle , to be something that we devote our gaze and our love and our time to , and I think that's the biggest challenge

that my students are facing .

He spoke more about the technology , but he saw that coming already and it's really something that he could see , that it kind of separates our hearts , which is going to bring us into the book that you wrote , because if we don't restore the Lord's day and we don't get into prayer , it's basically what you're talking about .

We live on the surface of things and I see that with kids all the time . When we're out speaking to kids , they're living on the surface and they get very anxious and they'll ask me you know what's going on with our generation ? You know anxiety , depression . How come so many of our peers are talking about suicide ?

You know , and the best thing we can do for that class at that time , when I get that opening Daniel , is to take them into prayer . I'm a scuba diver , so I'll talk about some diving stories and I'll tell them .

I said , you know , it's up on the surface man , that boat we're on is bobbing around , bobbing around , and I said that sometimes we could barely make it to the edge of the boat to jump in , but once we hit that water and we're down 10 , 20 , 30 feet , ooh , it's a different world . Right , it's a different world .

And I'd like you to make that connection with Joie de Vivre . You know this journal of art . Tell us a little bit about that .

And you're making a connection between that and the liturgical life and restoring the Lord's day , and I think that's really beautiful , it's really necessary if we don't get back to the transcendentals , right , what's true , good and beautiful , especially the beauty of love . Right , when we start to talk to young people , they are clamoring for that .

Daniel and John Paul knew it , and I think you do too . So give us a little background on how you put that all together . And how did you decide ? Decide , you know you wrote a couple of novels and now , uh , and now restoring the lord's day .

I feel a need to preface this by saying I had a very , very happy childhood , uh , but one thing I noticed from a pretty early age was that on sundays , I tended to feel very anxious and I was even from that age , I was kind of aware that you , you know , there's something wrong here .

So Sunday is this day of rest , of restoration , this day of joy in celebration of the Eucharist . So if that's the case , then you know why is it that so often I feel anxious on Sunday ?

And of course it comes from , you know , worrying about what's coming up on Monday and the rest of the week and you know thinking about oh , I'm going to get that test , I took Friday back and how did I do on that .

But it all comes ultimately from and this is drawn kind of on St Augustine a fundamental difficulty in resting in God's presence , which is what the Lord's Day is ultimately drawing us to , is this foretaste of heaven , this moment in which , in all the busyness of the world and all that kind of surface turbulence that you mentioned , we're able to come before the

Lord , stand before Him , rest in His presence and allow ourselves to kind of be harmonized with eternity in the midst of all the turbulence . So in Hebrews there's that wonderful image about hope as an anchor above right , that the Lord says kind of that it should be the space in which we're able to anchor ourselves in eternity .

So that's kind of where the book came from . I mean a lot of my I think there's a lot of harmony in sort of all of my writing . So there's , you know , the novels , there's the poetry .

So much of it comes from just an attempt to think carefully on the events of my life and to try to try to raise those things to god , uh , to try to try to present my life to god in some kind of some kind of ordered way . Uh , you mentioned joie de vivre , the journal as well .

One of the things about south louisiana is that , uh , I mean , it's a really wonderful place and it's one that retains a kind of liturgical rhythm to life .

month , every season kind of feels the same . Here we have this wonderful sort of liturgical rhythm that I think helps people to get beneath that surface level anxiety .

So in that journal we're always trying to present people with the goodness , truth and beauty of the world around us , the world that we're seeing on kind of a daily basis here in our part of the world .

And yeah , as you say , that's all connected to the rhythm of life that flows from the liturgy and , ultimately , that learning to rest in God's presence , as we're kind of called to on the Lord's Day .

I don't know who you had in mind , daniel , and you'll have to unpack that a little bit when you were writing this if you had an age in mind , but we have an opportunity here and you know this , being a teacher , an English teacher , that we have an opportunity here because the kids are starting to feel this , you know , and not all of them for sure , but

enough of them are starting to feel it . When you speak to young people , you can , you know , when you start to take them out for a walk and just say , hey , let's just go outside , let's see nature . John Paul , you know , in his theology of the body , one of the things that started to open us up was nature . He trusted see nature .

John Paul , you know , in his theology of the body , one of the things that started to open this up was nature . He trusted in nature . He trusted in creation I should say right , creation , of course , nature coming out of creation . He trusted in the truth of that , you know .

I mean , things are real , some things are real right , when you look out in the world and they're all sacramental signs , they're all these little clues you know of who God is and , of course , the crown of creation being a man and woman , right . But anyways , the point you're making , and I'm trying to make right , is that these great desires are in us .

This is not more information you're talking about . See , if somebody just hears you and doesn't really understand Catholicism or the mass , they'll say , yeah , that sounds nice , whatever . And no , yeah , that sounds nice , whatever . No , no , it's more than it sounds nice . This is in our DNA , isn't it , daniel ? I mean , this is in us .

When we hear it , when we encounter it , we know , ooh , something just happened , right ?

In his letter Dia Domini , On the Lord's Day , John Paul II talks about how , for so many people , the kind of cycle of life has just become this pattern of working for the weekend , through these days of work , so that I can have the weekend as kind of my space to do whatever I want to , you know , kind of form myself according to whatever image I see fit .

Right , Whereas , as you say , we're made for joyful contemplation of God , right , we're made for worship .

So that very pattern of creation , that seven-day cycle concluding in God's own moment of contemplative rest , is something that , yeah , we're invited into , that God brings us into the picture so that we too can be part of that contemplative joy that he himself feels in looking upon his creation and , ultimately , the joy that is at the heart of the Trinity right and

Father and Son looking upon each other in love .

And it's such a wonder that we're invited into that right that , again , this Sunday rest is not just sort of an absence of labor but is instead right , a moment to enter into that thing that we all desire , which is to love and be loved and to think that God has created this whole universe for the sake of that right , For the sake of each of us to love

and be loved .

When you're describing the Trinity , you know Catechism number 221 , you know that big book about everything Catholic . You know you think it starts out with the moral teaching or the 10 commandments . It doesn't . It starts out with desire , number 27 , desire .

And then it goes to 221 , which is God is an eternal exchange of love , father , son and Holy Spirit , and we're destined to share in that exchange . Well , this is what you're describing , because eternity doesn't mean tomorrow , eternity means forever . So walk us into restoring the Lord's day , because this is exactly what's happening on that altar , isn't it ?

You know the , the son is bringing our humanity , john Paul would say in a sense , you know all of our humanity and , united with the divinity , offering this as an oblation to the father , then he turns to us in the Eucharist and he pours this out to us . It's , it's amazing . I get goosebumps when I think about it .

So tell us a little bit about how the book runs and how you separate the chapters and things .

To be kind of a custodian of time , and in our own time , right , that function has kind of been lost in some way , right ? Not that the church doesn't do this anymore , but culture has abandoned this ordering of time towards eternity , and so we see that very evidently just in the culture around us , where Sunday doesn't really look different from any other day .

Now , that's right , maybe Chick-fil-A and Hobby Lobby are not open on those days , but for the most part , the stores are open . Everybody's doing their shopping .

So a number of thinkers talk about Aethidia as the besetting sin of the modern age , as the besetting sin of the modern age . Now , when we think about sloth and kind of a common view of it , that doesn't seem to make a lot of sense , because we think of sloth as just kind of laziness and our age seems anything but lazy .

We seem to be in the age of the go-getter and the age of the grind and the hustle and all these sorts of things . So it doesn't seem like we live in a lazy age .

But what the church fathers , what Aquinas , reveals to us about the Phaedia or Sloth , is that while it can have an element of kind of physical torpor about it , really when it resides in the heart it comprises a sadness over the divine good right .

So at its heart , aphadia is a rejection of God's loving will for us right , A sadness about doing the things that God desires to bring us closer to Him . And in fact , what Aquinas says is that aphadia is precisely a sin contrary to the commandment to honor the Sabbath right .

Which , again , I was really struck by that when I first read it , because it seems so counterintuitive . And that's partly because our notions of both sloth and Sabbath rest are so impoverished . Right , Because we tend to think well , sloth is laziness , Sabbath just means rest , not doing anything . So how could those two things be opposed to each other ? Right ?

But sadness about the divine good means sadness about being in God's presence , means rest , not doing anything . So how could those two things be opposed to each other ? Right , but sadness about the divine good means sadness about being in God's presence , ultimately .

And so when we think of it in those terms , right , and we think of Sunday as an invitation into God's presence and really fundamentally , through that moment of euphoristic , receptionistic reception of being not just kind of allowed into the presence of God in a sort of outward way , but being invited physically and spiritually into the life of God himself through the

Eucharist , Blas makes us sad about that . Blas tells us I don't want any part of that , I'd rather just sort of be about my own devices .

So there we look into different things , like you know , getting away from nature , technology , sexual revolution , all these sorts of things that kind of tend to turn us away from the joy of the presence of God . And then the latter half of the book is kind of looking into solutions . Right , how do we kind of , how do we turn back to restore culture ?

At least you know , because when I'm speaking to kids , at least initially , right when we initially meet each other , they really don't want to go into the depths .

You know , if I speak to college kids on a college campus , let's say they don't want to talk about mortality , they don't want to talk about you know , you mentioned , kind of , we have to aim toward the kingdom , and you know I'm putting words in your mouth , but you alluded to that . Right , we have to have our eye on where we're going .

This is where our hope comes from , right , you know , and we line up our hearts and we go . Ooh , yeah , I feel something , you know , and it's always an encounter , right when you were describing the Eucharist , this is an encounter . People forget this .

Our faith is not about the laws and the Ten Commandments I mean , those things are all part of this but Christianity what makes it different is the encounter , and you described it in the Eucharist . You know Christ is coming into us , you know , but we have to see where we're going . If we lose that , we get into this 666 thing again , you know .

And that seventh day opens up everything . It opens up not only the seventh day . Where I can , you know , I can feel more of an inclusion with God , but I can offer that to my wife and my kids and my neighbor , and everything changes , doesn't it , daniel ? Absolutely .

It's not like I that's a great point it works , my real life and then I kind of turn aside for a moment , I do this thing for god and then I go back to what's actually linked right , it's delinked and people don't .

And so , rather than it just being this kind of aside , this kind of aside , you know where I take a day or even just an hour right , and say , okay , god , here's my attention for a little bit . Let me check off the box , then I'll get back to business . This is Sunday , is the moment when we're being transformed into true Christians . Right .

Sunday is the moment which is supposed to then overflow into all the rest of life , so that everything I'm doing , whether I'm working at my job , whether I'm playing with my children , whether I'm doing my taxes , whatever it is that I'm doing that I'm doing that in the light of the resurrection .

The best piece of advice I've ever gotten from anyone , I mean , other than stuff that's included in scripture .

But one of my teachers at the University of Dallas ended our class this was like the last day of senior year and his advice was never do anything again , because you have to , right , say that again never do anything what Daniel Never do anything again because you have to right .

Do everything you do because it is the thing that God wills for you in the moment . So never let your motivation to stay up with a sick child be . Well , I have to do this . Never do your taxes because I have to do this . Never grade your students' essays , as I have to do this .

Do it because this , through God's providence , is what he has set before you right now and that I think is part of what he has set before you right now and that , I think , is part of what it is to live in in the resurrection .

Right To recognize that , to recognize that all the moments , my relationship to God and the fact that the concrete circumstances of my life , the work I have to do , the people who are around me , the places where I go , all of that is part of his design for me , and all of that is drawing me to understand more and more what it is to live in eternity ,

which , as you say , eternity is not something off in the future , right , eternity is now right , and the Lord's Day is an invitation to enter into eternity now . This is something I'm always so moved by the lives of the saints .

It's so easy to think of again this compartmentalized life where I do my ordinary day-to-day life all through my life and then at the end , if I'm lucky and God likes me , then I could get into heaven . The saints show us that , no , I start to live the life of heaven now . Why wait ? There's no need to delay , right ?

God is inviting me into the joy of his existence now , yeah , and that's such a great point , right ?

Right , we're eternal beings already and we're working out which we forget sometimes . We're working out our eternal destiny now , and it all comes down to love , Daniel , you already said it . Do I become a person of love ? Well , how do I do that ? I have to be filled with that source of love , and we know this from experience .

Anybody that's tried to be a lover , somebody that's tried to be compassionate and kind and go out into the world and do good things , is going to come up against their weaknesses and their inability to do that . And then you go . How do I become kind to my wife , say , if she isn't kind back to me ?

Well , I can do that for a while , because I go to the source , right , I don't deplete myself . How many couples do I speak to , Daniel , that don't get that , that are trying to suck the infinite out of the finite , you know , and they run out , you just say , oh , I've got to go find another wife or another husband because I'm done with this right .

But no , I go to the well . Right , that's what you have in this book , restoring the Lord's day . We're going to the well , I'm receiving love . Hopefully , in receiving I'm giving back to God , right , and we have this relationship . But then I'm going out and it's really the one great commandment split in two parts love God and love your neighbor . Huh .

Because it's a really curious moment in respect to Asadia , because Asadia is kind of originally known as the Noonday Devil , right , so it was talked about among , like , early desert monks who around the sixth hour , around noon , would start to feel sort of listless and weary and they'd start to not really want to do their work anymore , right , They'd start to look

for distractions , right ? So maybe I'll go to my neighbor's cell and I'll see what's going on with him , for a little bit I'll think about what's going on in some monastery far away where all the brothers are perfect and I could really be holy there . So that moment at the well unfolds right at noon .

So right at this moment when Thaddeus or Sloth tends to strike and Jesus , of course , is tired , right , he's been walking through the day and so he comes to this well and he's waiting for some refreshment , right . So his apostles go off to get them some stuff to eat , and while he's there , this woman comes up to him and she's so burdened she's this .

You know , typically , of course , the women would come out earlier in the day , right , this woman is kind of very much this lost sheep . Right , she's fallen . What's that bell ? I don't know if anybody can hear that .

But instead of getting distracted right , instead of kind of turning away from the fight that it kind of is with this woman to bring her around , he gives himself to her , he opens himself up to her in love and invites that response of love from her as well .

And , of course , by the end , of being left behind by everyone else in her community , who's now going off to tell people about Jesus ? Who's going off to tell people about this man who told her everything she's ever done , to tell people about this man who told her everything she's ever done ?

Right , and we can think about all the things that she's done , all those painful experiences , those moments of sin that Jesus finally addresses with her , and suddenly that's no longer a cause for sorrow or shame , but having that interior landscape revealed to her becomes an occasion for joy , to go tell other people about it , come and see .

What I think people miss , Daniel , is that that woman has her yearning , burning desire to get back to our earlier . Uh , you know way we opened this up for love and she's not finding it here , Right , and the next one , and the next one , and she's either being rejected or she's rejecting , you know , and at the end of the day , she .

But here's what I love about this woman she will not give up . She's so passionate that she's going to keep going . Now she's running out of time . She's probably getting older , Her body's going to give out , Her looks are going to give out . And here's Jesus , and he says to her I thirst , I thirst , right , that's what he says to her first .

And and so now you say , Ooh , here's a God that also thirsts for me . My thirst and his thirst meet it that well . And that's what you receive in the Eucharist . That's what we're receiving . It's so powerful and we know this .

People , Daniel , they go to these sacraments , right , like confession and the Eucharist go to these sacraments , right like confession and the Eucharist . Nobody that goes on a regular basis say to confession or the Eucharist ever asked me why we do this . Why do we do this ? They know , they know , you know .

Now I know there's people that receive the Eucharist , you know , and don't believe in the real presence and stuff . But I think that's getting back to your thesis here with the sloth . I mean , they're living on the surface , even at mass .

So give us , as we're starting to unwind on time here , give us some of the solutions that people can follow and expect to find in your book , Because I want to open up some of those solutions to them so that they say , yes , I need that restoring , I need the restoring the Lord's day in my own heart , or I have friends or relatives that need to .

So I tend to think that , basically , so much of our anxiety and our inability to rest in God's presence has to do with the way that our age has caused us to encounter space and time , and namely , especially through technology , through things like smartphones , we really are being trained not to be in the present .

We really are being trained not to be in the present . So St Augustine talks about how time is this distension of the mind right ? So being drawn apart between the past and the future , never able to rest in the present , and the way we've ordered our lives tends to really prey on that Through the time we're alive .

Right , because they're texting in the present and it seems to me like they're living in the present . But what are they missing there ? What are they missing when you talk about space and time ?

Now , right , so all I have to do is pick up my smartphone and suddenly I'm in Gaza , I'm in Ukraine , I'm in all these places around the world , rather than where God that's a great point .

Am I present to that person really , or am I just , you know , trying to look good on the next video or the next you know what thing I'm saying or the next party I'm going to , you know right .

So when I enter into a beautiful church , right , and I'm exposed to beautiful stained glass and painting , when I hear beautiful music , all these things , right , teach me how to look and how to listen in order to be truly present to what matters . I mean , there's so many other things . I mean we've talked about being exposed to nature , right .

Going out into the natural world and hearing and feeling God's rhythms at work in the natural world is so critical . At work in the natural world is so critical .

Listening to good music , to hearing good things that tend to harmonize our souls and to allow us to be invited into an encounter with the beautiful Family , is so important as well , right , I think it's primarily in the family that we're earliest taught to encounter those transcendentals , to learn goodness , truth and beauty .

Silence is so important also , we're in such a noisy age that returning to silence is so critical for overcoming sloth , for overcoming the stadia and learning to be present to God again .

And so St John would be talking about wisdom , to your point , and he said three things you have to be a person of love in order to tap into wisdom , and he's talking about divine wisdom . Now , right , that's going to actually bring depth of our soul . How should I live ? What's the meaning and purpose of my life ?

He says you have to be a person of love , right ? So we already unpacked that . You have to go into silence . He said , to your point , I have to sit in , that I'm not going to tap into divine wisdom until I sit in , that People think they're just being quiet , which is true .

Silence is true , but allowing two people to meet in the depths of the heart , right , you and God , you know , no matter who knows me , even my wife Daniel , they really don't know me . At the very depths , there's always something that's deeper , right , that even the closest people to you don't really understand , right , but God understands .

And so you get into that silence , and the last thing St John would say is mortifications .

And so I think about , you know , like fasting and getting away , like you said , from these phones and different things , detaching from whatever would keep you anxious and nervous and suicidal or whatever you know right , so detach suicidal or whatever you know right , so detach . And then , oh , I can sink down and and find wisdom , right and a way to live .

How should I live ? You know , absolutely any any . Um , when you talked about the solutions now in the , in the last part of the book there , uh , do you address things like the technology , modern technology , and how , how we can get away from that .

Now you mentioned in the school there and I think we were off here when you mentioned it that you don't have cell phones , you don't use Chromebooks in the school where you're teaching , and that has to be a big plus .

I would think that has to be a big plus for young people , but when they get home , they're going to be on those phones and different things . You know what's your . You know I always think about young people because I think it's such an injustice , daniel , what's going , what we're doing to young people now , right , and so they need to hear this truth .

You know , they need to hear the truth . They can reject it if they want to . You this truth . They need to hear the truth . They can reject it if they want to . People have rejected Jesus Christ . They wouldn't be the first ones . But the injustice , I think , comes when they just have bad choices and people are afraid to proclaim the truth to them .

And I think what you're hitting on is the way to do it , not with . This is the way you got to live . These are the rules you got to follow . No , no , no , no , no . Come into silence with me . Take a walk with me . See , beauty , right , let's walk into a church , you guys and you know , for adoration , and just for five minutes .

You know , nobody's going to spend an hour there as a kid if you haven't done it before , right , and you don't want them to even Just take five minutes , let's look around at all the beauty and let's just sit in peace . They'll find something there . Daniel , I think you know .

So you know this pretty rigorous system of fasting and prayer , and one of the things we always get into is , of course , addressing that time outside school and how they're going to be using their phone , because it's I mean , it's pretty stringent about you know how much you can use technology during that exodus time , and one of the things I always tell the boys

is so , as you're reading through this list of things that you're supposed to put aside during Lent , whatever it is , if there's anything you read on that list where you say I couldn't do that , that's too hard , that's exactly the thing that you most need to do , and I think for so many of us , the thought of putting aside technology , it's one of the things

that sounds like I couldn't do that . How could I manage without it ? And those are precisely the places where we've built up idols in our lives . I mean , I think the way we spend our time is so telling , right , so you could really tell what someone values by how much time they spend on something .

What someone values by how much time they spend on something and , at a minimum , most people in America spend three and a half hours on their smartphones a day , which is right about 24 hours in a week how much of that time ?

So if we're , if most of my time is going to social media or , you know , tiktok or whatever it might be , that tells me what I value . You know , just as like you know if I'm , if I'm an athlete , right , and I dedicate lots of time to my sport , right , that you know that in some sense that's a waste , right , it's not .

It's not perhaps leading to some sort of productive , utilitarian end , right , but it's showing me what I value .

If I cook a big meal for my family on a Sunday , in some sense that's , there's something over the top about it , right , it goes beyond just what we need to do in order to survive , right , but it shows this is what is important to me , right Creating this space where my family can rejoice in the good things of the world .

The Lord's Day ought to be that right . Yeah , the Lord's Day ought to be that Right . It ought to be this . It ought to be this moment of , just like Mary takes that jar of aromatic nard and lavishes it on the body of Jesus . That's kind of what the Lord's Day ought to be like for us , right ?

This costly thing that we are pouring out on the world right , just as a way to lavish our time and our energy and our resources on Him .

Now the challenge , of course , is that , because we tend not to be very formed for it and because we're weak , fallen creatures , what's best for us doesn't always feel like .

There's not that immediate gratification that we can get in so many other things right , but nonetheless , right through kind of a long process of growing accustomed to God's goodness and God's love , right , I think people will see , especially if they make a really conscious effort to say this day is going to be special , right , and make this a day of attention to

the Lord , a day of extra prayer , a day when I have fun with my family , a day when I just play with my children , a day when I get outside and walk around and enjoy the beauty of nature , a day when I pray the rosary , a day when I just look to what is good and look to the Lord in those good things .

I know for me it's made a big difference as far as that anxiety that you talked about and .

We did a lot , so much together . Anyways , uh , last year his wife died of cancer and so , um , he hadn't been to mass or confession for 40 years , and so he's very anxious . After she died , he quit his job to take care of her , bathe her , bring her to the bathroom , I mean everything Right . And so he was .

He was a full-time kind of a caregiver for her , you know , for a long time and , but still not going to mass and stuff , a very , you know , kind of a spiritual guy , they would say , but not the actual solid stuff , right .

And uh , so he comes to me one time and he looks so bad after she had passed and he's , he's , he hadn't slept in three over three days , not at all . And so I taught him how to pray the rosary , and so he started to pray the rosary and he would go to .

He fell asleep for the first time with it in his hand and he kept finding himself waking up with his hand on the bead , jet , and then he would just pray the next decade , right , and so I recorded in up with his hand on the bead . Yet , and then he would just pray the next decade , right , and so I recorded in my podcast .

Some , you know how to pray the rosary , you know . So he was listening to me and then understanding how to pray the rosary , anyway . So then , a couple of weeks later , daniel , I said , okay . Now I said , now you got to go to confession . And then you got to go . You know , you really need to experience the Mass again .

Anyways , I'll cut to the chaser , he would not miss a mass . Now , after confession , it , like it , blew his socks away . So what we're talking about here is tangible , real . He's calm .

He , you know , he thinks about his wife a lot yet , but it's a different process , and so everything you're describing here , daniel , I can just tell you and I know you know this too , but anybody listening this is just real .

You got to walk into the story , right , you got to walk into the story , and I think this is a great time because I think our culture has finally gotten to a spot where people are starting to wake up to the evil the sin and evil in the world and thinking something's wrong . So this is a good time , daniel . So give us any website information .

Where do they reach you ? How do they buy in the book ? Give us the specifics right now , sure .

I would love to hear it and see about including it in a future issue or on our website issue or on our website and uh , you know otherwise . Uh , on Instagram , people can find me at bitdwriter . Um , yeah , but I would love to love to hear from anybody .