(LifeSiteNews) — In the opening of The Shawn Ryan Show released Tuesday, Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke sat down with former Navy SEAL and CIA contractor Shawn Ryan for a conversation on Sacred Scripture that quickly turned from introductions and prayer to a sensitive discussion regarding spiritual attacks experienced by the host.
Ryan, visibly strained, told the cardinal the interview itself felt like a target of demonic forces.
“This is extremely surreal for me,” Ryan said after welcoming Burke. He then described a “psychedelic experience about a month ago” that he believes showed him hell.
“There was nothing there. There was no sense of God or Christ or anything good. It was vacant. And all I could feel in my body was extreme fear and extreme anxiety,” he said, describing this traumatic experience as having lasted around an hour and a half.
Two days earlier, he said he had “met demonic entities,” and a few days after returning home from this experience, he conveyed believing he had received “a clear message from God.”
Then the household disturbances began, Ryan explained, sharing he has undergone “four exorcisms with two different priests” and yet the phenomena have not stopped. These reportedly include picture frames flying off walls, “manifestations” inside his body, voices through white noise machines, two severe allergic reactions after his receiving Holy Communion, and, the night before the interview, every smoke alarm in his house went off around 12:45 a.m.
The popular podcast host described repeating nightmares of something “trying to rip my family apart.”
“I think that this is happening because something doesn’t want me to do what we’re about to do today,” he told Burke.
Discouragement the devil’s ‘principal temptation’
Burke did not dismiss Ryan’s account but took it seriously, affirming, “I would think so too. The devil absolutely hates anyone who brings the truth to others, and of course the Bible is all truth finally, fully in our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Quoting Christ in the Gospel of John, Cardinal Burke confirmed the devil “is a murderer from the beginning, a liar and the father of lies.” The more a person seeks truth in Jesus Christ, he added, “he’s going to give you trouble.” Family is a principal target along with electronics and other “little tricks” that are used “to frustrate us, to divert us, to discourage us.”
Cardinal Burke called discouragement the devil’s “principal temptation.” He tries to convince someone the work is impossible or will only bring harm, “then he’s achieved his purpose.” He urged Ryan to keep courage “and not let him work this kind of rightly called ‘devilment,’ in other words, his little tricks and so forth to lead us astray.”
Though ‘terrible,’ a vision of hell ‘can be a real grace’
Ryan said that as horrific as the experiences have been, “I’m also thankful for it because it has immensely strengthened my faith in Christ, and it absolutely lets me know that I’m on the right track here.”
The former prefect of the Vatican’s Apostolic Signatura compared Ryan’s account with the 1917 apparitions at Fatima. Our Lady, he said, showed the three children a vision of hell “in order for them to understand fully what is the alternative.” Either one converts and purifies life of what is not of God, “or we go in that direction.”
Burke confirmed Ryan’s description of hell as being empty of anything lasting, beautiful or true. “It’s a terrible thing to have such a vision, but it can be a real grace too, because we never forget that,” he counseled. When temptation comes, the memory can pull a person back onto “the way of Christ.”
‘Fight the good fight, keep the faith’
Asked how such attacks stop, Burke answered that they do not, short of death. “The only answer there is is to persevere.”
Citing St. Paul, he said Christians must “stay the course, fight the good fight, keep the faith.” Christ told His followers to take up the cross daily. The struggle includes “fighting our own inclination to evil” and the influences that draw people from the life that is in Christ.
“As long as we’re striving with all our heart to love Him and serve Him, then we remain at peace” even among great challenges and difficulties. “We remain serene because we know that we’re with Our Lord and that’s all that ultimately really matters,” Cardinal Burke assured.
“The Eucharist, of course, is the principal source of that serenity. It is Christ Himself who comes to nourish His life in us,” the cardinal conveyed.
Confession, the sacrament of reconciliation and peace, is “a powerful help,” because the encounter is with Christ Himself through His minister. Every day, Cardinal Burke said, is “a new beginning.” Life is a pilgrimage and “our real home is with God in heaven.”
‘The cross is our only hope’
When Ryan asked why God allows such attacks — on him, on a teammate that very morning, and even on Cardinal Burke, who is “from the very top of the Catholic Church,” the cardinal pointed to the Passion of Jesus Christ.
God the Father permitted the unjust condemnation and “cruelest passion and death” of His Divine Son “for the purification of sin and for the offering of life completely to God.” When Christians accept sufferings and unite them to Christ, these spiritual sacrifices purify the soul and expand the heart to become more like Christ. “The cross is our only hope,” he said.
Scripture, Burke noted, describes the Christian life in images of athletic contest and war. Those united with Ryan in the work he is doing to share the truths of Sacred Scripture should expect the same combat and they should encourage one another to remain faithful to Christ and avoid abandoning the work God has put before them.
“Our Lord is with us. He’s promised us that. He doesn’t lie,” Cardinal Burke assured. “He said that He would be with us in the Church until the last day. We stick with Him, and then we are at peace.”
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