Healing From Our Wounds and Forgiving Injustice w/Fr. Chad Ripperger | Chris Stefanick Show

brothers and sisters I love you I'm honored to have you with us tonight the reason I I always say stuff like that is because I mean it because you're actually a huge deal there's a cosmic battle between Heaven and Hell over you wow you're a big deal in the eyes of God you're a big deal in the in the eyes of demons who are trying to tear you away from God you're in the midst of a spiritual battle you can't control the fact that you're in the midst of a spiritual battle any more than a I don't know a person on the Open Sea can control the fact if a storm comes his way but there are things you can do the battle to stop yourself from drowning or falling overboard right and there's a lot of things that we can do in the midst of a spiritual war over our souls that remove footholds from the devil as he tries to to gain traction and move that front line forward I'm mixing all sorts of analogies here with storms and footholds and all that stuff but hey you get it so here to help us navigate some of that a dear friend Father Chad rippeger thanks for being with us father Chad thank you so much for being with me again thank you very much for having me it's really a gift I like putting the devil in this place I know you do that's what you do for a living yeah so before we dive into this I'd like to just ask you a question to help put the evil one in his place you've said off camera that the devil's pretty boring he is tell me more about that well I think it really boils down to the fact that because of their sin they just they do the same thing over and over again and after a while it just gets boring and that's why you know I always tell people the more interesting thing is what they have to reveal about the Saints our Lord or lady that sort of thing that's what really is the interesting aspect of this work if I would put it in that way the demons just aren't that interesting it was it's kind of interesting because most people when they hear you're an exorcist they want to hear all the stories about the demons I'm like no that's the boring stuff this is the stuff that's really interesting is the stuff like he said about our lady or this or that you know sin makes us boring exactly I mean it's the same old stuff and it it and the irony people think that they're going to become individuals by not conforming to the rules of God I mean people take on certain characteristics it looks so similar whereas the Saints just stand out they do exactly it's so so different from one another uh you could text your questions to 720-650-0100-720-650-010 um we went into this a little bit in a previous episode but I want to dive in a little deeper um how do you know is it and I think it's a good segue into the question about footholds for the evil one how do you know if something that is presenting itself to you is an emotional problem mental illness past wound personal sin or demonic influence or possession um one of the ways that we principle sometimes we'll listen to people's story but we tend to kind of put that off a little bit at first because what we've found is is if you put people on a Prayer prescription for 30 days we have this we call it the protocol but it's a structured set of prayers that we have them say and if it's just a natural problem that the problem won't change you just see kind of Flat Line okay if it's diabolic we'll see different patterns I'm not going to mention what those are because I don't want people being prejudiced you know when they're thinking of it but you'll see the same patterns what most people don't realize is that the demons are extraordinarily consistent wow and part of that is because their nature never changes their sin they're fixed on their sin um and they're regulated by Christ and so they're very consistent and so if you do certain things you're just they're gonna get you're just that naturally going to get certain reactions from them and so that's one of the ways that we primarily do it is through prayer um even if the time sometimes if their problem is diabolic putting them on this prescription sometimes will just clear out the problem to begin with because we have found for example people who suffer from like say um diabolic Obsession it's just because of a basic lack of discipline in their life spiritually so there's a natural problem with virtue advice yes very often and that literally becomes a source of diabolic Obsession that's correct because remove the virtue and then his his footing slides yeah if you remove the vice remove the virtue is a little bit different but but no but it's it's um yeah in fact what most people people need to realize this is that um anything that's disordered whether it's natural moral or spiritual is the domain of the diabolic and so um so any like so for example the if somebody has just a moral problem like a particular device in a particular area that's the domain of saying of the demons and so they'll start getting involved they'll start driving those particular things to gain control over you in relationship to it and they are but they also use um dysfunction that's not not just sin but also emotional that's correct mental problems that's right yeah which uh which seems almost unfair because it's like well the person might not have willed those things but I guess that's the midst of the battle that we're in it is but it's also a sign that even those things if to overcome them requires doing some some type of virtuous activity and so you actually in the person actually begins to grow and virtue by overcoming those whether it's just basic discipline of okay I'm not gonna I'm not gonna keep you know I'm not going to keep obsessing about this thing or I'm not going to keep looking at this I'm just going to just it's virtue building in the side of the will so there's always some degree of virtue building so God will allow even the natural things in our lives that are disordered in order for us to actually grow in virtue or to grow in Holiness for the process so how often I mean when you when someone presents themselves as maybe having a spiritual problem and you say try this 30-day protocol yeah uh get rid of the junk in your life which would include stuff like like too much media Obsession that's right yeah um how often do these spiritual problems just disappear and they don't need to come back to you um once if they do the prayer protocol and do what we tell them to do and get rid of that stuff ninety percent of the time it clears out 90 90 of the time that's in the first one we call it the first phase of the protocol 90 that's kind of Staggering it is staggering or I should show you how powerful just the ordinary spiritual life is well I take it seriously that's exactly right and that which is what people aren't doing right and then phase two what happens is this is when we start removing obstacles Grace because this is when we start finding out okay that their marriage isn't valid or these they've got their sacraments need straightened out or you find out that there was um that you know they're related to some freemasonic grandfather or what have you so then what will happen is then certain things are done we call it removing the obstacles to Grace you just remove those obstacles to Grace so we get from let's just say there's a thousand we went from a thousand to a hundred people because we get about between six and eight thousand increase for help a year so six and eight thousand that's how many inquiries we get and that's why we stay on top of all that well that's I that's why we actually have this protocol we put people on and so you know six thousand people that means means that you're down to 400 people basically are you personally responding with to people with these protocols or just uh well I have a lay assistant that does that person yeah he's he he responds to about 800 emails a week so yeah I hate to increase your work a little brother but what's the uh I'm not dear saintly person yeah what if people are feeling like I need that protocol uh how do they get it um they can just go to uh Libra Christo yeah Christo uh dot or which means free Man in Christ free Man in Christ yeah what a beautiful URL that is yeah I often think of your work with the uh the Green Beret motto to liberate the oppressed yes yeah um and then so okay so once they go through that second phase which was basically removing the things from their life that is not Catholic getting their catechesis straightened out making sure that they believe what the church believes once they get through that then you a 90 of that so if it would go to a thousand go to a hundred ninety percent we're down to 10 people and then out of that 10 the third stages then we connect them with a local priest it helps to pray over them and that clears out so out of that thousand only one ends up on my doorstep that needs actual help because of possession wow so that's the providing process but if you notice the process it's all about leading a Catholic life getting their life in Conformity with cat with the Catholic faith it's simple but not easy right right but we have to do it I mean and remembering that this is part of a spiritual war what a great call to you know get your stuff together right it just kicked the junk out of here like go to confession right I mean exactly there's a there's a spiritual Powerhouse there's going to confession you're dealing with your sin and stop making excuses for it exactly man uh what what are some of the most common footholds if you can identify them I mean you throw this General protocol out to people but yeah is it usually theological error is it usually a a regularity within their sacramental life or uh uh a particular Vice yeah we've noticed with the theological error is that usually people by the time they get to the third stage of the protocol that's when you're going to start seeing people that have that more of a problem and that's literally demonic foothold is it is yeah believing the wrong stuff we're leaving the wrong stuff so for example one the one of the footholds a demon actually had on a particular case I was working on was he he kept blocking the woman's inability blocking her ability to see that God's justice is eternal and so that once the person's damned it's Eternal there's never you're not going you're never it's never going to change wow and he kept blocking that but after she was liberated she could see no now I can see how that would be the case but um um just in dealing with the diabolic so there's a lot so a lot of times it's some we find that the area that's the most of the problematic in that area is moral heresy so to speak where people don't think they think it's okay to be living with their girlfriend or they think that they that they can receive communion in the state of mortal sin or things of this sort so you'll see those kinds of things uh the but before that probably the most common thing is there's some area usually in the area of the sixth commandment but not always there's some area in their spiritual life that's there's grave sin involved you know and it can be everything from violations of the sixth commandment all the way up to having hatred or or another one is lack of forgiveness in relationship to people in their that have hurt them or what have you those can also be um the things that the demons are actually holding on to um sometimes it can just be a lie about themselves that we see that kind of getting itself cleared out in the uh the first two phases usually and the LIE can just be something as simple as I'm not lovable or I'm worthy of Love or something that something as simple as that wow this is one of the reasons why you know I always tell priests and I tell psychologists have they have that they have actually the same danger and that is people will go to a priest and go to confession and then he tells them something in confession that unlocks the lie and the person realizes well this just isn't true right and so then they can actually start loving themselves or doing what they need to do in their spiritual life and then they move forward and then the priests subsequent to that under undergoes some type of an attack that is significantly higher than he's ever dealt with and it's just retaliation the same thing can actually happen to psychologists because you can read any statistic and there's a lot of psychologists that go off the rails so to speak yeah and a lot of that's because they'll help somebody they'll unlock the lie and then the demon retaliates against the psychologist because they're not where they where they need to be spiritually wow and so and that bit that just unlocking that lie broke the the demons hold over them wow I got into I wrote this book called I am it's about encountering lies you tell ourselves yeah and made a program about it I was amazed at how much almost tangible spiritual warfare I found myself in when I started going there yeah and I literally I was stupid enough to think well this is almost a little more like on the psychological end a solely psychological end of uh the application of Christian principles right I started seeing really quickly like oh no no I'm stepping away and the evil one's toes here that's right that's right and so many things um that counseling boils down to if someone's been sexually abused the journey is about overcoming negative cognition that's exactly right yeah I believe that I am what because this happened to me right exactly but those things literally are demonic footholds they are yeah strongholds in a person's life yeah they are when it gets to the point of of full-blown possession which is extraordinarily rare but reveals things about the spiritual battle right right for all of us even in the common life um what what are what are the biggest open doors you've seen to that is is it things like uh these negative cognitions or abuse or is it more things like someone using a Ouija board or overt um curses or ties in with a masonic temple or something like that yeah usually what we see is um there's the first is about 50 of the people that come to us have been psychologically spiritually or sexually abused in a grave fashion fifty percent so it's the it's the abuse that actually opened because what's happened is the person that abused them misused the person and that misuse is the domain of the say of the diabolic so God will allow it now some people say well that doesn't seem very fair it precisely these people that when they start combating the diabolic and overcome The Possession even though they're not at fault for it that reach levels of Holiness that you just don't see among other people it's all for our good it's all for their good so in a certain sense it's kind of a it's kind of a it's it's not a gift in the proper sense but it's it's God allowing this to happen so that he wants them to have something on a level that other people just aren't going to have right so a lot of times I think because we can sometimes we can interpret bad things happening to us as well obviously God doesn't love me that much or there's or that you know or that I'm not lovable what have you when it's actually the opposite the God has a parade election for the person and he's trying to draw them closer so that's about 50 of the other fifty percent about 90 to 95 percent of those are people who are at some type of mortal sin or habitual mortal sin this which is the open door it's not even an overt like I was in a seance it was more like I just kept sleeping with my girlfriend yeah I mean there are certain kinds of mortal sins that are more like like involvement India calls is more likely to get you possessed than you know you know committing fornication or something like that but one of the areas that we're seeing in a drastic ramp up is both an increase in possessions but especially obsessions and even oppressions for people watching pornography because the ouch yeah the satanists well first of all it's just it's Gravely disordered but the second part of it is is that the demons have taught the people making the pro not the demons the satanists have taught the people making the pornography to curse the master copy from which the other copies are done so that people who watch the copies can become subject to the curse so we're seeing we're actually seeing people show up on our doorstep that the possession is rooted in this curse and so you break the curse and then boom wow um and so this is this is one of the reasons why I tell people you know um any moral sin whatsoever is an open door there's just some that tend to be more than others people forget how evil this stuff is just because it's common yeah they forget my mom prays in an abortion clinic Satan saintly lady says she feels like she's a Calvary you know it's not right all the media will portray them as being those hateful judgmental people no they're loving these people and uh feeling compassionate right but she said the uh last week there was a satanic Church scheduled to go there and and satanic blessings or curses over the place and over everybody it's like this this stuff reveals like you know let's stop think of as they're just political issues or right or just my little Vice I'm just into porn like no this is serious this is serious business exactly and obviously the satanists believe it that it's serious business otherwise you wouldn't be doing it right uh someone texted in how good of a spiritual weapon is the rosary do you often recommend that to people I do yes Padre Pio used to refer to it as the weapon and um it's it's actually I think if I remember right we put that in our second stage of our protocol we started telling them okay start saying the daily Rosary before we have a specific prayer life because we're we're looking for very specific patterns but um but it's actually one of the most powerful weapons in relationship to um spiritual warfare or even just overcoming Vice they used to say if a person devoutly recites the Rosary every day for a year they'll either give up their mortal sin or the rosary oh that's awesome yeah something simple just gotta do it that's right right if we take it seriously enough we'll actually do it uh there's two footholds to to evil that are that have been in my mind a lot lately because we just created two programs one's coming out in uh Advent another in Lent uh by the way go to real lifecatholic.com sign up for the newsletter and you'll get these programs and father Chad you were generous enough to be in the one on on fear right uh I want to talk about these these two footholds of unforgiveness right which again a lot of people just presume is purely natural and interpersonal right and the other one fear um let's talk about unforgiveness first how how does the devil leverage that as a not just an interpersonal thing but a foothold for for his dominion over people that's correct uh it's it's kind of how do we combat it yeah it's kind of connected to what we had discussed in one of the prior episodes but it's um first of all forgiveness is detaching or letting loose of the debt of justice that should have been given to me right so letting go of the debt of Justice it should have been given to me someone should have treated me a certain way they treated me in a way that that I should not have been treated and so I'm holding on to the way I'm holding on to that Injustice so holding on to the Injustice is itself a disorder because you're holding on to something negative right so there's that the second part of it is is that um for but forgiveness is is just letting loose of that and so I tell people it's not reconciling even it's not telling the person oh it's okay it's just saying I'm Letting Go yes exactly exactly that's hard those other things will those other things will come based upon what is prudentially best for the other person because some people you can't you can't just say you know I forget give you I forgive you and everything's fine between us when they might still be causing you harm right so you might have to wait before as Saint Thomas says you always have to forgive but the effects of the Forgiveness may have to wait based on Prudence so but the but the the thing about is that when people commit an injustice it's very similar to being stabbed with a knife right so they've stuck you with this knife now most people commit what we call contraction which I've talked about before which is you grab onto the knife and the reason you grab onto it is because you're trying to stop it from causing more damage than it's already caused the problem is you're holding on to the thing causing the damage you're keeping it in there yeah and it's the same thing with the Injustice so when we hold on to that and no I don't want to forgive the person we're holding on to this thing and as a result you're holding on to the thing that's negative and it's going to slowly take your spiritual life down and it's going to take you down because just as if you don't if you don't you know if you don't remove the knife it's going to sit and fester well it's the same thing with the with the lack of forgiveness over the course of time you're going to become angry or it's going to cause other issues in your spiritual life and that disorder is what the demons actually hold on to they drive they drive it um they drive the lack of forgiveness precisely because it's the holding on something negative and it's holding and it's and part of it is also if you really if you really truly loved somebody so there's there's two parts to it Christ said forgive seven times seventies times the reason you have to forgive every single time is because you need to do that for yourself let alone for the other individual you need to do that for yourself I think a b transforms the renewal of your mind or conform your mind to Christ that's right we're literally conforming our minds to Demons when we hold on to non-forgiveness that's exactly right and then the other the other component is so you're you have to do it for yourself but the other part is if you're really going to love people for charity you have to be willing to let loose of what they've done to you in the past to seek out what's truly good one of the things that I've learned in being an actual assistant is hey you don't want to see people in hell even your worst enemies but part of it is is the beauty of people's transformation when they end up in heaven before they get there there's a transformation and you would actually want this person to go through a transformation so that you can be friends in heaven right so there's there's that particular aspect to it um but but it really boils down to the foothold is that disorder of holding on to an injustice um because it's and it's I mean some people say well if I if I don't you know if I don't keep holding on to this thing and I let the hip loose then he's going to get away with it nobody gets away with anything you know and this is the one thing you learned with with uh true man but I mean because if if the person repents well then things be to God right the good has actually been achieved if they don't well then they still have to stand before God and account for it and it's I've mentioned this to people you know watching the punishment that God meets out on demons um and it's like I mentioned the demons said there's no punishment that you could beat out on me that disproportionate to what I deserve there is nothing that we can do as human beings that is proportionate to what God can meet out in his justice so we need to just be relinquish it to him pray for his Mercy ultimately to be given to this individual for our bad so that we can keep the focus on the good because that's what we're doing when we ask for his Mercy but also just to realize that I mean you look at it holding on to these things is a trajectory and how nobody forgives anybody of anything everything's personal they can't let loose of the injustices that occurred to them Etc but in heaven everybody's let loose of any Injustice that's ever occurred to them wow it really helps when I think when condom learning forgiveness to think about the ends the ends yeah right to think I don't want someone in hell yeah and I and I to contemplate that person who hurt me maybe being transformed again beautiful in heaven I think there's another facet to this which I think a lot of people don't seem to understand and this is just unpacking the nature of Injustice against us when people commit an injustice against us if we hold on to it that Injustice continues to exist and continues to hurt us it continues to hurt us it the best way to stop the Injustice this person gave did to us is let loose of it because it stops the continuation of the Injustice and then we can begin to heal in a process of it wow this is about taking our mind away from the Dominion of Darkness all right conforming it to Christ instead that's right how does how does Fear transform our minds uh to to make them more like to follow demonic patterns of thought um and one level fear is a good thing right I mean it can be yeah I mean I used to have a you should have a respectable fear you only can if you're you know holding onto a stick of dynamite I suppose yeah you should be afraid throw it away exactly it's lit I think it's a good idea to get rid of it um but no but I so there can be fear that is rightly ordered the main thing with fears is though is um which I mentioned in one of the other interviews is that it's a perception of a future evil which cannot be overcome and the the fact that Christ said fear nobody except that he who has the ability to cast her into hell which is ultimately gone but in this particular case not even the demons should be feared but the demons are um and this is something that I learned in dealing with um Beelzebub is that he's a demon of fear at root even more so than a demon of impurity and so um they drive the fear because Saint Thomas says fear causes contraction when I think of something that's fearful I focus in on the thing and he says and I start ruminating about it because I'm trying to figure out how do I get around this thing and what that does is it keeps your focus on the evil wow and that's why he drives the fear because then over the course of time as you keep focusing on the evil then sorrow Rises because that the definition of sorrow is the presence of an evil to a competitive faculty so that means that I start to become sorrowful and then that's when that's the definition of anxiety actually you keep the presence of that that harmful thing ever before your mind and therefore you've experience sorrow that's right you're in the presence of that thing all the time and the irony of it is is that the way you ultimately overcome this thing that you can't overcome is by having no fear and trusting in Christ realizing he's the guy that's going to take care of it even if I have to suffer some aspect in relationship to it it's ultimately going to be towards my good because otherwise he wouldn't allow it I know you've talked a lot about this and I and I think it this one word sums up a lot of these spiritual battles whether it's fear unforgiveness advice it's uh the the spiritual solution is Detachment that's correct and some people hear the word to to be spiritually detached and they think that they think of Buddhist spirituality right or they think which would be a spirituality that's not driven by love that's by self-annihilation right that's right right um tell us a little about the the Catholic spirituality of uh of Detachment as a as a getting rid of demonic footholds in your life whatever they are and how did how did and how to go there without getting all Buddhist yeah that's true so I mean ultimately the attachments tend to have a certain right order in fact you need a certain kind of right order attachments like when kids are growing up they need to have a right order attachment to the mothers because then that's how they build empathy and um you know and then they don't end up with what we call disaffective disorder where they have they can shoot people and have no emotional response so there's a healthy attachment right it's so it it's on a natural level but at a certain point what God wants us to do is to be able to give up even those Natural Things so that he becomes as Saint Paul says all in all so he in other words any attachment we have even if it's a good a good thing is a part of Saint John of the Cross says it's part of our heart which God isn't fully consuming or taking up the place and and so the what we have to do is we have to basically become perfectly detached from every single good there is so that charity that is love of God and love of our neighbor for the sake of God can become perfected so that there's no particular created good that is detracting from my love of God I love him entirely and so then when I love my wife I love her for his sake and not just for my sake and what it does is it transforms the love that you have for your wife so romantic love is a good thing and it has a proper place in the beginning but over the course of people's growth and Holiness what's going to happen is is the charity is going to take over and then the charity is charity is patient charity is kind it doesn't it becomes which the effect the life of affection actually becomes more rightly ordered and more consistent and much deeper and authentic through the charity rather than just from the natural attachments that we have and it's at the end the quote love is all about me if I have the attachment that's correct yeah that's right it's it's a tall order yeah you're talking about this it's like wow that's uh well it almost sounds impossible I suppose without Grace it is that's impossible it is without Graces but with Grace it is possible in fact you see people that can reach a very high level of Detachment as an exorcist you don't have much of a choice because even your rightly ordered attachments that you might have they will start attacking those areas of your life if you don't just surrender them to God give them to Target him that's what a mob boss does you know find out what the guy loves let's attack that exactly and if the person if if the Christian thinks I can't do without that well then the devil's going to use that to bring you right down that's right even if it's a naturally good thing and I can see that you can see that playing out in just about every evil in the world today right that's correct yeah uh you know it sounds to the post-modern world like the the highest cruelty to have this Christian standard for people who are same-sex attracted well that's right yeah well how could they possibly do without uh expressing that attraction physically how could they do without well you I guess it comes down to Faith if you actually believe this guy can deliver that's correct then you could do without anything that's correct that's hard it is very hard yeah yeah I think that that and it's harder to be attached to things and become miserable and can be brought down by ultimately the only thing worse in life with crisis yeah life without Christ that's exactly well that in the end your attachments are as Saint General the cross is and the tax your attachments make you miserable in the end and that's why he's just you know you're oh and here's the irony of it is is that all the attachment that we have will eventually be broken eventually either by us giving them up or them being purified in purgatory because in the end the only thing we can ultimately have an attachment to is God alone ultimately or in hell all the things you have attachment to you're not going to get wow so it's one of the other so the ultimate battle uh to win the spiritual life is to keep clinging to Jesus yeah and keep letting go of obviously the sins yeah and it yeah there's the attachments to the world that's right and ultimately God is a jealous God he wants the totality of your love so that even when you are loving your wife or loving your father or what have you it's for his sake and then it becomes demonized it becomes transformed into something Supernatural and becomes greater than just a natural law and then the devil's got no footholds then he's got no footholds praise God that was a rapid fire half hour it was very with a whole lot of things to think about would you would you bless us yes benediction supervisor amen oh man Jesus help us follow you and to get all your stuff what book do you recommend after that conversation um I actually do talk about healing forgiveness and Detachment in the book on dominion and how it relates to the diabolic and why you need to do it Google it you'll find it love you guys thanks for being with us man wasn't that great 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Channel: Augustine Institute | The Catholic Faith Explained

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Keywords: eucharist, Catholic eucharist, transubstantiation, catholic sacrament, 7 sacraments, augustine institute, formed catholic, ignatius press, lighthouse catholic media, lighthouse talks, Dr. Tim Gray, Dr. Brant Pitre, Chris Stefanick, holy communion, catholic church, Catholic Faith, the augustine institute, catholic theology, catholic graduate school, christian theology

Id: GSzvnN0wiRg

Length: 30min 52sec (1852 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 14 2023