Yes, it was in 1988. I'm sure you were in much better spiritual shape than me. I needed a 2x4 between the eyes, and that's what I got! Later I learned that same young girl gave money to others that day who had brought people at their own expense; different amounts; one guy brought a van load of people and he got 250 dollars. Also, the priest at that parish, Msg. James, had just returned from a month in Medjugorje when this parish prayer group starting to receive locutions. Sweet fruit!
thank you for your affirmations, Carmel and Kathy K. I did come to the same understanding that Kathy K mentions. At first I also thought Naomi was like Mary, Boaz like Jesus and Ruth like the Church, the Bride of Christ, redeemed through the actions of Boaz and led to Boaz through the efforts of Mary. It is not perfect, so eventually I settled on the message Kathy conveys. Also that we should not hesitate to cling to Mary, she will guide you to Jesus more easily than another way, which is the same message in St. Louis de Montforte's "true devotion". Ruth also is courageous in rejecting the world and familiar, easy success for loyalty to her mother-in-law, which seemed at the time like a sure road to suffering and nothing else, but she did it anyway. In the end, though, she is blessed with every possible blessing and becomes a faithful member of God's chosen people not by birth but by choice.
I too, have been asking the Holy Spirit to convict me of unconfessed sins. You said, Andy3, how amazing it is how God can speak to us. It is also amazing to me, esp. through reading your story, how free we actually become after making a good confession. I have been wanting to go to confession for the past month but something always seems to get in the way. We live out in the country and we have access to one priest who (poor fellow) has to pastor 4 churches! I really miss and regret not taking full advantage of all the churches in close proximity to where I lived closer to town with each church having its own priest. So I still like to go to confession once a month but it is an extreme struggle at times. These times are so fraught with danger I am longing for the sacraments and now I have much less access to them than I have ever had. Oh what I have squandered! But Charlie Johnston may be answering one of my prayers( this forum has already answered one prayer that I find some people just like you all here) Charlie has been talking about trying to make available some spiritual direction for those who are experiencing heavenly touches http://charliej373.wordpress.com/2014/08/13/musings-focus-and-direction/
I love hearing about your apparitions. Thank you for sharing. Keep the details coming. They are fascinating.
No apparitions or dreams, but it changed my heart from that moment on. I was in my upper twenties when I got a call from my dad to go with him and my two brothers to a retreat outside of Chicago with Father John Hardon. This was a time of my life were I felt an emptiness inside. I had a beautiful wife and two small little girls, and I knew deep inside why I felt empty. I did not go to confession for years and was afraid to confess my deep sinfulness that was only hidden from others, but not God or myself. I knew I had to go with my dad and brothers and I also knew what I had to do once there! While there I did some reading on death and dying just to pass the time until I had enough courage to enter the confessional. I made a complete and open confession covering all I could remember in a deep sorrow for all sins committed and most sorrowful for the hurt placed on Jesus. I left in total joy and went to my room and kneeled down at my bed in prayer when above a fire came towards me and burst and scattered around me. I cried like a baby tears of overwhelming love. When I got back home after telling my wife of my event I asked her if she would like to make a marriage encounter. She agreed and looked forward to it. While attending the M.E. the priest asked us to pick a subject that was hard for us to discuss and write a letter to our spouse on the subject and then visit with each other on the topic after reading the letters. My wife had a very hard time talking about death and dying with me. That was our topic for the weekend and another deepening weekend a year later when my wife was pregnant with our third daughter. On her due date in the final minutes of contractions she began to bleed no big concerns by the doctor or nurses at this time. At this moment God spoke to me inwardly to prepare for the death of your daughter and I knew what was about to happen in our lives. This continued to become worse and we lost our babies heart beat. After the forced delivery the doctors tried to bring her back to us , but to no avail. God is so good! He brings us the grace and hope needed to go on. I was able to be prepared to be the strength for my wife during these sorrowful times in our lives. Our life has continued together for 38 years and we can see how God has worked and directed our lives to where we are today. This is just a small touch of Gods almighty hand. There were more in the years ahead to this moment that we are together looking back at the many graces He has given to this sinful and thankful man. God truly is LOVE!
Life is a miracle - my life is a miracle. Blessed be the God of miracles. 1. The first time I knew God had a personal interest in me and my life: I was in Sunday Mass with my four children all under 8 yrs so with all the foostering around I was paying no particular attention. Then it was as if Mass stopped and as if someone said 'this next line is for you Mary'... and I heard the next line of the psalm in a way I have never heard anything before. The line was: Your love is better than life. Psalm 63. I have interpreted those few words in many, many ways and I will never fully understand them this side of death, but they have set me free. 2. I had started to occasionally drop into Eucharistic Adoration for the dual purpose of impressing my elderly mother and of doing God a favour! As my mother's health declined I visited the Eucharist more often and was receiving tangible consolation. By this time I was saying 15 mysteries of the rosary before I got out of bed most mornings, and some time recently had found out that when someone dies we say the Glorious mysteries because we they are joining in God's glory, not the Sorrowful mysteries which just reflect how we feel. We were in my mothers last days, I was in bed saying the rosary - probably had my eyes closed, and as I prayed the the Sorrowful mysteries I 'saw' a monstrance of light. The Host (also of light) moved forward out of the monstrance and then rose to join a larger area of light above it. This was repeated a number of times until I understood that the monstrance represented my mother's body - which even though it was beautiful was not the thing of most value. What was most precious was her soul- represented by the Host. I understood that her soul would leave her body and rise up to join with the light above - God in heaven. With this understanding I finished the Sorrowful mysteries and knew there was no need to say the Glorious mysteries as I would be saying them later that day when my mother died. She did die, we did say the Glorious mysteries even though my relative told me we should have said the Sorrowful, and I know beyond any shadow of doubt that Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist - and that His love is better than life.
I assume apparition is something seen - I was posting re. "other supernatural event" which covers a multitude of possibilities
Thanks Bart - I find on this topic people use different names to mean the same phenomenon. Yet the difference in words reveals the (impossible to substantiate) meaning that different people place on the experience. Its interesting that you chose the word apparition rather than vision if it is something seen. I suppose "apparition suggests" the seeing of a person or a ghost rather than seeing the future. Even the word "supernatural" is highly ambiguous. I presume you mean "paranormal event" When Church theologians use the word "supernatural' it has a very specific meaning. If something is supernatural then it is not preternatural and it is not natural. "Supernatural" means Divine, coming from God in more than the usual way. I don't think apparitions are supernatural, most of the time they are just part of the natural experience of humans like dreams. Of course apparitions/visions, by definition, are different from dreams because they have such a quality of realness to them and they usually occur while wide-awake. That is why they are not to be confused with dreams. Yet, just because I might have a "dream" experience while wide-awake and in a calm state, I have never thought, myself, to consider these sorts of things of any more import than a vivid dream. If it be about Mary or Jesus or an angel I do not take it to be any more "supernatural" than if it were about my uncle or sister. They could all be from God (hence supernatural) or all from the unusual but natural workings of the mind I suppose. We don't really have any reason to assume they have any intrinsic world-related meaning at all. They could have great personal meaning of course, for they arise from the depths of our own mind at the very least. But then again, if its simply due to random firing of synapses or adjacent folds of the brain suddenly connecting that don't usually connect then it may well be vivid yet relatively meaningless in content. Some would call these experiences just natural and normal minor "psychotic" episodes that a certain percentage of the population is naturally "wired for" under certain conditions but yet falls well below the marker indicating illness. It is interesting to note that those who have studied such phenomena observe that only one sense (usually sight) is involved in these types of minor "psychotic" experiences that are a normal part of life. Also interesting is the distinction that some make above re "private" or "public" apparitions. Presumably private one's are those only experienced alone. Yet the Church doesn't seem to make that distinction as it lumps all visions/apparitions/locutions (whether divine, preternatural or natural) into "private revelation" even if it occurs with groups of Seers at the same time. What I find personally convincing at Garabandal (and Fatima) is that the Seers all react in perfect unison as if there is objectively "someone out there" even though we cannot hear or see. That adds an element of real-world "objectivity" and "realness" that personal apparitions can rarely be credited with (unless specific and accurate predictive prophecy is manifested). Personnaly I have never felt that with the Medugorje children - esp when someone pseudo stabbed one of the girls in the eye and she blinked and jumped back slightly. Her explanation later was that Mary seemed to drop her baby (yet the other children made no attempt to "catch" the baby).
I have had some good and bad experiences aswell. The good ones are often in dreams, where I have seen saints and other people. I once saw Saint John Paul II in my dream, he was dressed in red and was much younger and I dreamt that he held out his hand which had a ring on it and I kissed the ring and felt a remarkable feeling around me. I have had some bad experiences too, usually just after three o'clock in the morning which have been fairly frightening on a number of occasions. Always at quarter past three for some reason is the time I have the bad experiences. They say 3.15 is the time that Christ died and went to heaven and that the Enemy is active at that time.
It seems to me that people are sharing here the experience of the veil lifting, of a divine touch. The world will always say there is a scientific explanation. These are intimate, life changing experiences. Every time this happens, there is a temptation to say, "It was just my imagination." Where did the imagination come from? It is a gift from God, and a way He uses to touch us. (ex. St. Ignatius Loyola's way of entering the scriptures through imagination, as well as his spiritual exercises). "Believers" who scoff at the idea of such encounters expose a sad lack of faith in a real God who really loves His children and wants to interact with them. What I've noticed about these experiences is the way they are branded in the memory. In every one of these experiences I've had, I can remember exact words, even decades later. The way to know it was real is the presence of fruit. It's all about the fruit.
One other thing - I think it helps to pray for sharper spiritual vision and hearing. I'm fascinated by the stories of protestant prophets who have encounters with angels and the Lord all the time. I heard a good bit of coaching from one of them, Neville Johnson, recently. He said he catches these things out of the corner of the eye. He said when you turn to look, there's no one there, and you say, "It was just my imagination." He says to just watch from the corner of your eye and "lean into" the experience. Since I've been paying attention, it seems to happen almost daily. Instead of turning my head to search it out visually, I simply ask, "Who's there?" You'd be amazed at who is showing up! There's been no message, just the companionable presence of dear Saints. I expect the veil to get thinner and thinner as the world gets darker and darker
I have had several dreams that could be glimpses into the the times that are approaching, but I would like to share a dream that my father had, shortly after my mother passed away at age 64. They were married 44 years, but my mother became melancholy in her mid forties. She wouldn't leave the house very often, and didn't go to mass often. She also had very little affection for my father, who adored her, and never have up loving her, but it was obviously very painful living with that unreturned affection. About ten years prior to her passing, our entire family was spiritually reawakened, in large part due to my brother catching fire with the Holy Spirit, and falling back in love with the Catholic Church. My mother started to watch EWTN and Mother Angelica religiously, and said the Rosary with Mother A., as well as the Divine Mercy Chaplet, daily. The night she died, I was a little worried, since she rarely went to mass, so for three hours I prayed a special prayer, out loud, as she was breathing her last breaths. The prayer was one that was prayed by a priest over a dying Pope that he new was a sinner. The Pope died, but returned in a vision to tell the priest that he was destined for hell, but because of the priest's prayers, he was saved. A few months after my mother's death, my father had this dream: they were driving in their van through the city streets, she was driving, which was strange because my father always drove. My father watched her driving, and noted that she said nothing, but only smiled lovingly at him. She pulled the van down a side street between large city buildings, and parked. They both got out and my father saw that they were next to a rushing river, that was very swift, and rolling with much turbulence. It was also blood red. The pavement of the street went right down into the river. Without saying a word, my mother opened the doors on the back of the van, and picked up a large box. On the outside of the box, and inside the box, were dozens and dozens of pictures of my mother'a life. She carried the box down to the river and waded in as my father watched. When she got almost waist deep, she crouched down into the red river, submerging the box. Then she stood back up, and waded out, with the box of her life's pictures, and stood in front of my dad, smiling at him. The box was now transparent, as well were all the photos of her life. My father new at once that Our Lord had washed her sins away with his blood. Upon hearing my dad tell me this dream, I bursted with tears of joy, knowing that's mother was saved. I cry the same years every time I tell somebody about that vision my father received.
I think I believe in the divine presence more than you if you really hold to this primitive world view of how earth and heaven interact. I believe the divine so permeates our everyday life that we don't actually need any extraordinary "lifting of the veil " experiences, as you phrase it, to access the divine touch which is with us e very second of every day regardless. God is already within us. The real problem is, as Augustine put it, we are not in us. Ultimately personal apparitions, like any other "I'll never forget this moment" experiences are of no great consequence (divine or otherwise) in themselves and to say they are in some way "divine" or "supernatural" is not really what Christianity mean by those words. I would go so far as to say most of these unusual experiences are considerably less "divine" (and indeed largely illusory in this respect) than a boring single act of charity to another person in need. That we can cooperate with grace in a true act of charity means we have been touched by the divine even if we never knew it. Now that for me is an everyday "lifting of the veil" to meet the divine and encounter/interact with God - but that is clearly not what you mean by the phrase. I don't believe God is best or most surely found in the extraordinary but the ordinary. My faith is not of the type that requires extraordinary events to confirm or prove it. To be on the receiving or giving end of a single act of pure charity confirms me everyday in the existence and love of the Divine for Man.
