BH, why must you hijack every thread and turn it into a big argument?? People were sharing here and now, again, it's become a chore to keep reading as it's become all your long winded arguing and it goes on and on. If you have no experiences to share and don't understand others, why not move on?
That is exactly what I was about to write Carmel. I don't get the objective here blue. People were sharing stories that mean a lot to them. I for one feel when these things have occurred for me that the natural thought was to dismiss some of them because when they happen you really can't believe that they just happened or they happen so fast that you are like, "did that just happen?" There are some you can dismiss and some you just can not. Only the individual knows the ones that can't be dismissed because you feel them at the soul level. Again I don't understand your motives here. This was a thread filled with joyful experiences that you seemed to feel the need to come in an poo poo all over that joy with your skepticism. Why?
At any state of christian spirituality, by the grace of God, you can receive consulations. These are little gifts from God...as you grow in faith. Some are so subtle you might over look, but many can be dreams, visions and/or apparitions. To deny the mystical is to deny God. Andy and Carmel are correct. There is no argument to deny mystical consulations. They happen and your arguments have nothing to do with others spiritual relationship with God. This response is not to continue the argument...start a new thread and i would be happy to debate. i am interested in reading more about everyones consulations...then your personal philosophy on spirituality. May Gods Will be Done
Great! Now the the thread is cleared, I'd like to share a dream, if that's ok: In the dream a few months back, I found myself in my house, alone, when all of the sudden an large earthquake shook so violently that I was throw to the floor, unable to get up. It was accompanied by a large boom. The earthquake lasted for ten seconds, or so I gather, then erie quiet. I got up and frantically searched the house and found no one. Finally finding the door to the outside. I went out. To my amazement, the sky was green and orange, and everything I saw was on fire....buildings, trees, the grass. Then I began to see people running to and fro, beginning to form small groups. I started to run. The dream was the vivid type that you don't forget.
I had a profound experience of the Lord speaking to me interiorly which eventually led to my conversion into the Church. I was raised Methodist but pretty lukewarm in my faith seven years ago though I had brief moments of awakening to what was beyond the veil when my mother died a couple years before that. She was a very devout Christian woman who loved the Lord with all of her heart. Anyway, due to my daughter becoming quite ill from Crohn's Disease I asked the Lord to help me through it and I would do anything He asked. I then became involved in my Methodist church and started reading the Bible. Two years after my conversion I had had a bad morning which found me screaming at my teenaged daughter and husband- stressed out from the demands of a difficult teen and the demands also of my aging father. As a relatively new believer I had felt I had really blown it by becoming so angry, something I thought I gave up with my conversion (and of course no Sacrament of Reconciliation to help). I took a walk in the park and I distinctly heard the Lord ask me "Valerie, do you trust me?" It shook me to the core and of course I said Yes I did not know what to make of it, told my pastor that I wanted to talk to him someday about my walk to Emmaus moment at the park but never did that. I kind of kept it in my heart. A year later I felt a strong pull into the Catholic Church due to lots of factors including a cradle Catholic fallen away husband who did not get the new "Jesus freak" me. It was in researching the Catholic Church so that I understand where he came from that I started to feel pulled- especially by Catholic radio. During Lent of 2011 I read about the Divine Mercy devotion and saw the image with those words- Jesus I Trust in You! Well I could not believe it- it was the answer to the question! I still was not sure if I was going to enter RCIA and leave my Methodist church or not and due to seeing this image and having no idea what I was actually doing I prayed the Divine Mercy novena after Easter that year and made the decision. A couple months later I found another sign- the park where I walk is located right next to the Shrine of Czestochowa in Doylestown- there is a side altar with the Divine Mercy Image and the words Jesus I Trust to You- literally right next to the park where the Lord posed the question! I will always have a strong devotion to the Divine Mercy message and no one will ever convince me that the Lord was not inviting me to enter deeply into His Mercy! Praise Be Jesus Christ now and forever!
I watched a wonderful film on utube a few months back about a Protestant Seminary The Professors were all very well educated and knowledgeable of course but their faith in God had been eclipsed or even died by their very studies. a young black kid came to the college who had a living Faith and questioned the Professors , not so much as to what they believed as by being who he was. I must see if I can find it. Films can be great teachers.
If we read the bible it is simply a tapestry of visions, miracles, voices, apparitions and the supernatural. Who says when we close the Good Book it stops there? How sad to think so. The saints didn't!! They lived the dream. How sad to think the the veil between this world and the next is a steel barrier. A child would never think such a sad thing. Neither should we.. Matthew 18:3 The Greatest in the Kingdom …2And He called a child to Himself and set him before them, 3and said, "Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. 4"Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.… There is learning and then again there is Wisdom, the two should never,ever be confused.
Is there anything sadder in this old life than a soul who lost its dreams. For being Christian; dreams are who we are.
I always had a very difficult relationship with our Blessed Mother.Once when I was very very angry with her (arrogant is the word for the way I was then) I said to her that I was sorry but I did not love her. The answer was so kind and loving that it changed my life - Not to worry, one day you will love me. I never forgot and of course she was correct, thank God.
One time , so many years ago, when I was just 29 on the most beautiful summers evening I stood at the back door of the monastery Church over looking the river and the green fields far below waiting for the Divine Office to start and praying, praying, praying, When a figure in shinning bright appeared from the sky above. ..and from His wounds came five rays of light that struck towards me, wounding me , most especially in the heart. I fell over in the ground in a faint of great pain, but joy. The pains have never left me and the wounds are still there 28 years later felt, but unseen to the eye, coming and going, felt particularly when I regard the Passion of the Lord. "by his wounds you have been healed" (1 Pet 2:24, cf. Is 53:5). “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's sufferings for the sake of his body, that is, the church."(Colossians 1:24).
I think you get the exact idea I was trying to convey in my previous post about how futile it is to attempt to separate and dissect the supernatural (or "mystical", however you want to define it...) from the temporal realities of our faith (either in the beginning, or now). The attempt may seem "scholarly" and intellectually "heady", but it serves to dampen faith and build upon limited intellect alone.
I have a view and observations to make on this topic like everybody else Carmel. This isn't an elitist clique "apparition members only" thread from what I can see and if it was that un-catholic that might be a cause for concern. I don't expect people to agree with my observations or views but they are sane and in accord with standard Mystical Theology teaching as far as I am aware. I didn't dream them up yesterday. I respect other people's right to have different Catholic views on the matter. Unfortunately people of different views from myself, for reasons I do not understand, sometimes feel the need to argue with my view or even just my uncommitted observations (there is something lacking in my faith if I hold to certain positions) - rather than the other way around as your comment above seems to assume. I think if you have a re-read of this thread you will come to the same conclusion unless I have over-looked something.
There has always Jon been a kind of tension between the mind and the heart. For it to be truly fruitful each much show respect for the other. I have to say , generally the Catholic Church has been very good at this. Islam ,currently ..a F minus. The so called 'Caliphate' being mystical is well...diabolical..but from the heart
Ahh Blue, I am going to say a prayer tonight that your angel guardian gives you a good heavy whack with a base ball bat tonight. It would do some good.
And seriously, who the heck are any of us to doubt that Padraig?? How dare anyone judge you or me. This is why people hold back. This is why we doubt ourselves and God. We will be judged harshly on how we judge. I'm sure of that just as I am sure of the sun coming up.
Jon I am sorry if you cannot accept the sincerity of my post - so there is prob nothing to be gained by "dialoguing" further with you on this point. This may be your "world-view" of how faith, reason and apparitions work Jon but it isn't mine. To universalise one's own world-view to the extent that other believing Catholics are not even allowed to express a differing world-view (cos its "futile" or, as others put it, to do so is to have little or no real faith) appears to me as defensive, insecure and ultimately un-catholic. If you believe I am "dissecting the supernatural/mystical" then you really don't understand my observations above at all. I am but observing that "the supernatural" or "the mystical" may not actually be before us on the operating table at all in this discussion on personal and private "apparitions" - let alone want to dissect it. It appears, to me, poor mental hygiene to blithely assume that is the case until proven otherwise. And I learnt that principle of mental hygiene from our Catholic Tradition. Yes I personally regard the testing of our allegedly "supernatural phenomena" (like personal apparitions) a matter of basic mental hygiene - just like bodily hygiene practises such as washing hands before meals and showering after hard work or brushing teeth. The Bible says as much, calling us to test the spirits. Sure, one can pooh pooh such hygiene habits but eventually the result will be an unnecessary tummy bug or some other completely avoidable pain to oneself or others. I take it as an obvious habit of mental hygiene that one seeks explanations of the unexplained ("mystical") by recourse to the natural before the miraculous, the preternatural, the angelic/demonic or God. The Church teaches this principle in many ways herself, especially before conducting exorcisms. I accept that many Catholics believe in a "God of the gaps" where even the smallest unexplained natural phenomenon is immediately attributed to the divine or supernatural. That is no doubt why many people in ancient times believed lightnings were the javelins of an angry god (Zeus) or whatever. Myself, if I had lived back then, would probably be more comfortable with Benjamen Franklin's approach - not needing to attribute God or devils to every mystery of temporal living. It is strange to me that I can accept many believers have a somewhat, to my mind, uncritical "God of the gaps" approach to life ...yet such people cannot accept my Benjamin Franklin approach to faith. One can sometimes pick a world-view that is a little limited and not entirely adequate to reality - because it sometimes causes people to come to the wrong conclusions on related matters. For example, scientist though he was, Benjamin Franklin was also a devout Christian and a man of great faith. As was Galileo and many others condemned for "dissecting" the sacred-cows of their day. So far as spirituality goes it is an interesting question why we allow our hearts to too readily believe in the "supernatural" (when it is to our own favour and vanity) when the wiser course of action would be to suspend judgement or at least entertain different and even conflicting understandings of the matter). Francis de Sales, Doctor of the Church, speaks somewhere of the vice of spiritual gluttony in this regard, bemoaning the fact that a certain type of "spiritual" person naturally shuns vices of the world and the senses yet runs headlong into those of the spirit. That's a bit strong but there seems to be some truth in it. So no, testing of spirits rather than dissecting the life out of the allegedly "supernatural" is what I believe I am on about. Its an interesting topic. But I won't be discussing this further with you as you mistrust my sincerity. And also because, I just now see after posting, that Padraig has put a warning shot across my bows .
