Today, we focus on the transformative journey of purification and the pursuit of holiness. This episode delves into the phases of purification, both active and passive, exploring the acceptance of circumstances and character defaults.
You may have heard the saying, "mind over matter". It's a phrase I always had playing on repeat. It's also, quite true. Our minds guide our actions and it's of significance to be aware of the ways we are called to both active and passive purification. When our intellect is informed, we can better make the choice to choose joy when things feel heavy.
The episode explores the six aspects of soul purification outlined by a 14th-century German Dominican, Johannes Tauler. These aspects include the daily cross, growing desire for holiness, disappointment in our failings, anguish for lost souls, exterior trials, and painful doubts. Kylie emphasizes the necessity of patient perseverance and a spirit of faith in the face of trials.
Next Steps
Today, we focus on the transformative journey of purification and the pursuit of holiness. This episode delves into the phases of purification, both active and passive, exploring the acceptance of circumstances and character defaults.
You may have heard the saying, "mind over matter". It's a phrase I always had playing on repeat. It's also, quite true. Our minds guide our actions and it's of significance to be aware of the ways we are called to both active and passive purification. When our intellect is informed, we can better make the choice to choose joy when things feel heavy.
The episode explores the six aspects of soul purification outlined by a 14th-century German Dominican, Johannes Tauler. These aspects include the daily cross, growing desire for holiness, disappointment in our failings, anguish for lost souls, exterior trials, and painful doubts. Kylie emphasizes the necessity of patient perseverance and a spirit of faith in the face of trials.
Next Steps
When you send them blame your thought not your action for head your intellect. Not run ahead. Your body would not have followed. Now my friends is a quote from Saint mark, the aesthetic. And it's one that has stuck with me ever since I heard it because, you know, as a mindset coach that. I talk all about thoughts and how our thoughts lead to our emotions, our emotions lead to our actions. The power of thought. Changes the way that we show up in our lives, what thoughts we choose to believe and to accept and what thoughts we recognize as lies and choose to reject or to renounce them. Our body follows what our mind tells it to do. I know, growing up in a very athletic realm. That it was always my November matter. We heard that all the time, mind over matter, your body's going to do what your mind tells it. It can do, even when your body feels like it's failing. And I think that this is so true and it. Carries over into our faith and the way that we show up. And serve the Lord. And so today we are going to talk about thoughts. About being aware and about the process of purification. Purification that is painful. And beautiful and something that we can learn to appreciate with joy./ Hello, beautiful souls, and welcome to the Persistence in Prayer podcast hosted by Catholic Mindset coach, wife, mother, educator, and speaker, Kylie Hine. Kylie is passionate about helping you deepen your relationship with God through the power of prayer. This podcast is a space for high achievers who want to do it all, but also want to prioritize their spiritual life and grow in faith. Join us as we explore the beauty of persistence in prayer and the transformative impact it can have on our lives. Get ready to discover practical tips, insights, and inspiration to help you develop a daily prayer practice and cultivate a deeper sense of trust in God's plan for your life. Let's journey together towards a more fulfilled and faithful life as we invite the Holy Spirit in. Let's begin. Hey friends. Welcome back. I am so excited to be here with you this week. As many of you know, I have been spending a lot of my time going through the 19th annotation spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius. And I have spent a lot of weeks on the passion and I'm going to tell you, it has been really, really hard. But this week, and for the next five weeks, I get to focus on the joy of the resurrection, which is going to be a little tricky as that's going to overlap with the start of lent. But I know that God is going to. Work through that time and bring so many graces. And so this week as I begin my preparation, I really just wanted to focus on joy. That is my goal for the week is to just focus on joy and all that I am doing. And I pray that you are going to be able to really focus on joy this week, too. However we all know. Sometimes it's really hard to find joy. In everything else that is going on. So. This week, we're going to talk about purification. Purification. Comes into separate phases. There's active purification and passive purification. Active purification is being faithful to all of the things that you have already said yes to this would be like showing up and living out your wedding vows, showing up for your family, for the responsibilities that you have brought into your life and actively living those out. And then there's the other type of purification, which is called passive purification. Passive purification entails two things submitting to the circumstances of daily life that we don't always appreciate. So your circumstances, those are the things that are out of your control. So in Catholic coaching, we talk about inside of our locus of control, our thoughts, our behaviors. Our actions. Our choices and outside of our locus of control are other people's thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and actions. And then the other facts that. Come up. It is a fact that it is. What an icy outside. That is something that is out of my control. It's something that I cannot change. But passive purification means that even though I don't appreciate that, I'm going to accept that and submit to that circumstance and show up in a loving manner. Anyway. Now that doesn't mean that if you're stuck in a dangerous or evil circumstance, that you don't try to change that, or you don't get yourself out of that situation, but rather just embracing what God allows, for example, I have to wake up and go to this job, even though I'm a bit miserable. Okay. That's not my current circumstance, but maybe that's your circumstance because that's what puts food on the table for your family. Now I want to reiterate that doesn't mean you need to stay stuck. The whole purpose of my job is to help people get unstuck, but it means embracing the present moment. We are looking for ways to accept the circumstances or as father Mike Schmitz would say lovingly submit to our circumstances. I'm going to talk a bit more on this later. The second part of passive purification is to accept the defaults of your character. So I work a lot with people on understanding their temperaments. And I want to take a quick minute before I forget to invite you all to a temperaments workshop that I'm hosting on. January 29th. That is this coming Monday at 6:00 PM central. It is online via zoom and it is free. And this one is going to be extra fun because. I'm encouraging you to invite your spouse. I did a live temperaments workshop this past. Fall and it was on building better relationships. So we really opened this up to any type of relationship, mother, daughter, sibling. The spousal, but this one we're going to really focus on spouses. If your spouse is not willing to show up, that's okay. You should still come anyway. Or if you just want to grow any kind of relationship, these questions are going to work for that too. So again, if your spouse can't show up, that's okay, but it will be a really fun way for you to connect to better understand each other. One of the things that I hear all the time is how much understanding temperaments has played a role in bettering relationships in marriages. With coworkers, just understanding how other people operate. That is not always the same as ourselves or like in my marriage situation where we both have the same temperament, why we sometimes butt heads and how do we navigate that? Well, we have the same time permit. You would think that would help us to understand one another, but depending on that temperament, that can also lead to other issues when you don't have that balance of opposing temperaments. So, anyway, I just really want to encourage you to sign up for that. There will be a replay if you can't make it live. Bring your hot chocolate, bring your snacks. This is a great way to kick off pre lent. Lent right. As we begin leading up into lent and to better know your spouse. You aren't going to get a full celebratory. Valentine's day with all of the goodies, since it is Ash Wednesday this year. So if you want to make Monday night, Uh, date night in, I would love to see you there. And again, if you can't make it. Sign up for the replay. Block off an hour and a half of time with your spouse and go through this. So you can also follow along on my Instagram stories over at Kylie and Haim. I'm going to talk more about this and I'm hoping I can get my husband to do a live sneak pre. Sneak peak preview of what this is all going to look like. So you guys can see how it will all play out. Okay. So again, the second part of passive purification is accepting the defaults of your character. We can understand the defaults of our character often by looking at. The faults of each temperament. That doesn't mean you will have all of these. But it just opens our eyes a little bit to the things that we are often blind to. And then what we do is we submit those defects. And allow God to purify them. And this is not always easy to accept our weaknesses because we like to do everything ourselves. And surrendering is really, really hard. The patiently waiting. Is really hard. Sometimes we give it to God and then we immediately take it back. But this is a way we surrender it. We give it to him. And we still take some action to work, to rectify it, but we understand that we can fix nothing without him. And we don't accept these faults as a, this is the way it was born. And I will be this way forever. For example, I'm and I'm prone to quick temper and anger. That doesn't mean that that's the way I was born and that's the way I will be forever. But it's an acceptance that this is. The way I was born, and this is something that I can continue to work at. And turn it over to God to purify it. And he has so much, still a long way to go, but so, so much God has purified this and has really helped me. To be more patient with my children. To have a longer pause. Before I react to something. Because here's the beauty, God takes all of the faults and all the defects and he. He uses them for great things. I really love this analogy that I read once. About fertilizer. Right. If we think of let's just take horse manure, for example, or chicken. Poop. It's stinky. It's gross. It's not something that people typically want to have around, but when that fertilizer. Or that poop is used as fertilizer and it's spread out over a field. What does it do? It helps things grow. And that is what happens when we take our faults and our defects, and we surrender them to the Lord. He takes all of that yuck. And he helps. New beautiful, wonderful things grow. And so I think it's so fascinating how God chooses to create in each of you, based on how uniquely you are created as well. For example, Someone who is sanguine. If you're not familiar with the temperaments saying ones really struggle with mortification, they are often impulsive. They can be surface level. And they struggle with doing things that don't align with their emotions. So they want things to be fun. And if it's not fun or if it doesn't feel good, They're going to want to skip over it. Now they have a lot of wonderful characteristics like being very joyful and outgoing and welcoming and friendly. But someone who is saying when is not going to be purified in the same way, as someone who is predominantly melancholic, melancholic is another temperament. If you aren't familiar or you're new to the podcast. Melancholic are great at mortification. They can endure all those sufferings. And there want to do it perfectly. So they are not going to be purified in the same way. Why? Because the purification that they need is different. Again, with lint coming up so often. We ask, I see this all the time on social media, people will ask, what are you giving up for? Lent? What are you doing for lat? And then they read through all these things that other people are doing well, if your. Sin that you're struggling with is gluttony. Great. Give up food, give up snacks. But if that's not the thing that you're struggling with, don't do it just because someone else is doing it. Look at the sin that you're struggling with. And come up with something that is based around that that's going to help purify you have that thing. So because we are different, the trials that we will endure. May present themselves differently, or maybe we just embody them differently. We carry them differently. They weigh on us differently because we are all different. And purification is necessary for a union with God, which of course should be the ultimate life goal. We want union with God. And in order for this to happen. Everything that impedes that union. Has to go away in some form or another. For some of us. Not me in particular, but for some of you, maybe all you need is like a light feather duster, just a quick little cleanup, but for some of us, we might need a chisel. Uh, self-awareness is key. In these situations so that we can better open ourselves up to the work to be done. And so that we can avoid resisting it. Because often purification does not feel good. It can feel painful. It can feel lonely. And we run from it. We resist it. Myself, 100% included. So what does purification of the soul actually involve? There was a German Dominican in the 14th century by the name of your hands taller. And I probably pronounced his name wrong, but I'm fascinated by him. He was known for his preaching and he really strove to help his listeners recognize the grace of God at work in their lives, in spite of whatever hopelessness or confusion they were facing. So he lived in a time where there was a lot of turmoil going on. It was very much needed. This. Uplifting. Hope. And. Just the need for God. And that's what he brought to the people. There were plagues going on at the time. In fact, he actually died. On the second round of plague, but just think of these massive deaths. All of these farms left without people empty homes. People dying left and right. Along with all the political turmoil that was going on at the time. So. Taller was a preacher, but he also was a spiritual director specifically for the Dominican nuns and the lady in his area. His preaching focused very much on the way or the method by which the soul can be made. Ready. For quote unquote, this great consummation is what he called it. And so he really sought to help communities cultivate a life. Of interior, devotion and prayer. And what I want to share with you today is kind of a breakdown that taler gives us. And I'm taking these from a book called give peace to my soul, discovering. St Elizabeth at the Trinity's secret of prayer. Which is a really wonderful book. For all of my book lovers that I know are listening. Tyler says that purification of the soul involves six things. Number one, the daily cross, he says it is not small. Of disciplining all our exterior and interior activities. So the daily cross is not a small thing, but I want to remind you that we don't have to pick up extra crosses. We don't want to ask for extra suffering there's enough. That is already on our plates. As we go and it is discipline in our exterior and our interior life. So it's not only the discipline. To take care of our homes and our children. The discipline of. You know, not eating the extra snack. If we don't really need it just to practice discipline. But it's also the interior activities. Are you getting up and are you praying in the morning? Are you giving your first fruits to God before. Anything else in your day? Are you going to mass? And when you're in mass, are you actively participating really activating that interior life and inviting the Lord into your soul? To set your soul a flame, not just, you know, The, the smokey Coles, but a fire that's going to radiate out and inflame everyone around you. So. Are you passive or are you actively. Being disciplined because. I think sometimes we show up and we just expect it to happen because we're in a sacred and holy place. But we have to be openly ready. We have to be. And a disposition to openly receive. the graces that God pours out for us. Cause he's always pouring out the graces, but if we don't acknowledge those graces, if we don't open ourselves up to receive them, Right then they're just going to roll right off. And those graces, we're not going to have the opportunity to get those same graces to receive those same graces again. So again, number one, the daily cross, which is not small of disciplining all our exterior and our interior activities. Number two. The suffering of an ever-growing and then say chewable desire. For progress and holiness and charity. Which grows, the more respond to grace. Okay. The suffering. Of an ever growing desire. Why is it suffering? To desire more because. I think the more that we grow in holiness. The more, we would desire to grow in holiness because we realize how far we really are from God. When we are actively pursuing God, it's like, oh, everything's fine. Right. It's that? It's fine. I'm fine. Everything's fine. I'm good with God. I go to mass on Sunday. That's it. I'm doing enough. Which. Is a slippery slope because I think we, a lot of us struggle with feeling like we aren't doing enough. But the enough in this case is. Prioritizing. What needs prioritized, which is our spiritual life. That interior life has to come. First and as we respond. Two. The graces that God gives us to his calling for us to be holy. There's going to be a growing desire. And it can become a desire that is unquenched. Because we can never fully quench the desire for holiness in this life because union with God. Most likely is not going to come. In this life because of the purification process that we were talking about. Number three, the disappointment we feel, although trustful due to the mini failings of our poor will. It's disappointing. When you go to confession. And you walk out and you feel so cleansed. And it's like 15 minutes later, you have that judgmental thought of someone that you saw at mass or something creeps in. And it's like, oh, And this is where. We begin again. But it is disappointing sometimes. And so we really have to look for the joy of, okay, Lord, this is another opportunity for me to grow. Which can be exhausting. We just want to say. Lord make me humble. We don't want all of the opportunities to be humble. Because we often fail. But that's all part of it. That's part of that long. Slow arduous. Purification process. Number four, an anguish for lost souls. Similar to the one our Lord had in the garden of get 70. An anguish for lost souls. I know many of you already feel this one, especially with family members. I hear it. Come up again and again. So, again, this is part of the purification of the soul. So if you are feeling that anguish, if you are feeling. Really despairing about a loved one who is not going to mass her, who wasn't part of the church or who is just making poor decisions. You can be joyful. And that this is part of the purification of your soul. The fact that you care enough to be sorrowful. Is a good thing. Number five. This one hit me hard. Exterior trials, illnesses, infirmities loss of possessions, lack of success. Opposition from fine people, et cetera, that must help us to attain complete detachment from all created goods. This one hurts. At least it hurts for me, a detachment from all created goods. So illness, I've shared my personal struggles with illness on this podcast. If you haven't listened to the episode with merit patrol. I encourage you to go back to listen to that one, because it's really, really great. And she talks about the surrender of something like that. Uh, loss of possessions. I think this would also could include things like the loss of job. The loss of the dream house, whatever it happens to be. Lack of success. Opposition from people. I think sometimes the sin come in. Opposition from our own families. And that can be really painful, but it detaches us from created goods. It's detaching us from everything that is not. Of God. And that again is a good thing. Lastly number six. Painful doubts. Painful doubts. Sometimes about the quality of our state of soul. Temptations against faith may occur. Along with lustful obsessions of the imagination. But some holy souls are spared. These temptations. Okay. So this is one that maybe not everyone goes through, but painful doubts about the quality of our state of soul. Temptations against faith. I think we see that. Very prevalent in our world. And many who are not overcoming that temptation. Less full obsessions of the imagination. Also, I think we see that very prevalent in our world today. Uh, but there are some holy souls who are spread these temptations. In this book, it also says we should also add patient perseverance and a spirit of faith, as well as the trials and vexations of daily life. The best cross for us to bear is always the one that God sends for our purification. So again, We should clean the cross. Love our crosses. But let's not pick up extra crosses. That we are not called to carry. We have enough. And I also want to remind you as we close today, that the Lord does not spare his beloved. From. The circumstances of daily life from the struggles from the trials, from the illnesses. From the losses. From the sorrows at our weakness, the frustrations about how we feel like we are not enough. That we are not doing enough. He does not spare us of those things. Rather because you are his beloved, he will not spare you. St Elizabeth of the Trinity says that purification must reach the depths of the soul. And the only way for the depths of the soul to be reached. Our through these trials. When the Lord sees our desires, he makes us pass through the crucible of trials. As gold is purified in a crucible, a fire. And you can see that. In Peter chapter one, verse seven. So remember that when we encounter trials, that they are allowed for a good. And that we have a choice. To choose to see the joy. And all of those. Circumstances and uncomfortable things that we encounter. I'm going to leave you with this. Psalms 51 10 create in me. A clean heart. Oh God. And put right. A new and right spirit within me. I'm going to say that again, create in me a clean heart. Oh God. And put a new and right spirit within me. The interior work is painful. It is arduous. But it takes away everything that keeps us from him. And in that. We shall remain joyful. You guys, thank you so much for being here. I really want to encourage you to sign up for the workshop. Even if you can't make it live again, that's going to be January 29th. That is a Monday at 6:00 PM central. Bring your spouse or someone who you just want to better your connection with it can be. Your sister, it could be a coworker, your best friends. The temperaments workshop is really great and it is getting better. All the time. If you saw my Instagram stories yesterday, you saw, I just bought. Several more books on the temperaments because I really just want to become even more of an expert so that I can share all of that with my clients, but also with all of you. And please, if you. Are not following the podcast, but you are enjoying it. Follow along and leave a review. It is so helpful to get the voices. Not just my voice, but the voices of all of those guests that are coming on, periodically out into the world because their messages are so valuable and next Tuesday, I'm going to have a really great guest. My friend Elizabeth is coming on. She's going to talk about the David project that she is working on. And. If you have a husband. Who does not do the things that you want him to do? Which leads to frustration. You have to come listen, because I think you're going to find some humor. But also some really great tips on how to get your husband to do the things that you want him to do without nagging him or pushing him. And we're going to take it all from the perspective of the temperaments. It's going to be really great. I pray to see while then. In the meantime, God bless. I am praying for you. And I ask that you will pray for me as well. beautiful souls, thank you again for journeying with me. If you have been blessed by this episode, it would mean the world to me if you would leave a review. Be sure to screenshot it, share it on your social media stories, and don't forget to tag me on Instagram or Facebook at Kylie M. Hine. Stay persistent in prayer, protect your peace, and as always, share the light of Christ with everyone around you.