St.Hesychius of Jerusalem: "The hour of death will find us, it will come, and it will be impossible to escape it. Oh, if only the devil and prince of this world and the air, who is then to meet us, might find our sins as nothing and insignificant, and might not be able to accuse us justly."
St.Gregory the Great: "One must reflect deeply on how frightful the hour of death will be for us, what terror the soul will then experience, what remembrance of all the evils, what forgetfulness of past happiness, what fear, and what apprehension of the Judge. Then, the evil spirits will seek out the departing soul and its deeds. Then they will present before its view the sins towards which they had disposed it, so as to draw their accomplice to torment."
People today are given every means to distract them from ultimate reality, which is eternity, the eternity which awaits each one of us at the end of this life.
Young people are being taught that truth is hard if not impossible to find, that everything is relative and a matter of opinion and argument, that truth is whatever you choose it to be, that you can think and believe whatever you like.
People today are thus led into preparing poorly for the most certain thing in life, which is death. They neglect their most important possession, which is the immortal soul.
Their only hope is the miserable one that death will be the end of everything. The atheist is a loser hoping we are all losers.
"What is truth?" scoffed Pontius Pilate, only minutes later to have a Man Whom he knew to be innocent flogged and given up to those unjustly clamouring for His death.
Dear soul, don't be a coward like Pilate. The scripture says, "No coward will enter the kingdom of Heaven."
Seek the truth while you still have time and pay no heed to hard-hearted cynics and scoffers, for they do not want God.
The soul is immortal. Thanks to modern medical science, and so-called after-death experiences, we have confirmation of the existence of the soul and we know the soul can exist outside the body. For example, a blind person separated at death from the body saw with the eyes of the soul and later when revived and blind again astonished doctors and nurses by describing everything that had happened in the operating room after being declared clinically dead.
What is truth? God is truth. He can neither lie nor contradict Himself. He does not deceive us and He has founded and shown us the one and only religion that can save us from our sins. He did not deceive His Church.
Jesus Christ said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except through Me." And "he who hears you hears Me, and he who despises you despises Me," referring to the unity and orderliness of the group of chosen ones who are His delegates and proxies on earth maintaining the only religion that can give you eternal happiness.
God has revealed the truth to us in the beauty of His creation, also in the moral law He has written on the heart of every man, but above all in His revelation of Himself as Jesus, and in the knowledge He has given the Church, which is the custodian of the means of salvation, and, in the words of St Paul, "the pillar and foundation of the Truth." With its sole possession of the revealed truths and what they mean, the Church was saving souls for a long time before it put together the books which came to be called the Bible.
Have you chosen a false religion? All religions are rubbish except one. God does not approve of any religion but the true one nor should we.
Are you following the false gods of this world, the pleasures that fade and the riches that fail?
When you find yourself before the judgment seat of Jesus Christ, and He finds you not wearing the "wedding garment," meaning the faith and sacraments of the Church, what will be your excuse?
St Augustine: "You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee." Both in this life and in the next, only God can make and keep us happy. For He alone is the source of infinite love and joy and beauty.
There is only a glimmer of happiness here, a foretaste. The heavenly bliss of being with God and in God is worth more than all possible earthly pleasures put together. To lose God forever is the worst thing that can happen to you.
As Claire's Story shows, the eternal loss of God is the greatest misery of the damned in Hell. St Augustine believed that the fires of Hell to be a mercy sent from God to distract souls from their worst misery, which is the loss of God.
Jesus said, "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments." Heaven is for those who love, honour and obey God. To attain Heaven, we must prove our love for Jesus by obeying and adoring Him.
Jesus means God Saviour. The religion of the Lord Jesus is the only one that promises to and can save you. "Neither is there salvation in any other," stated St Peter. "For there is no other name under Heaven given to men whereby we must be saved."
"But my sins are too great!" you cry. "I am full of lusts, hatreds, sloth, envies, drunkenness, drugs, dependencies, vices, slaveries to sin, and so on. How can I repent if I cannot stop doing them?"
Jesus worked miracles to show He wants to help you not to be lost--if you want Him to. Jesus wants to save us from our sins. Look at the terrible death He suffered on the Cross to prove how much He loves us. He alone has the power to save us from our sins. Bit by bit, as we pray, He supplies us with the grace to overcome the passions and temptations. He supplies this grace through His most pure Mother Mary.
But how can I believe, you ask? How can I suspend disbelief? To pray is the easiest thing a man can do. Pray that you may believe. Pray and you will believe. This is illustrated by the story of Alphonse Ratisbon. The worldly, wealthy and cynical French Jew was visiting Rome in 1841. To humour a Catholic business associate, he agreed to wear on a string around his neck a medallion known as the Miraculous Medal that had been blessed by a priest and to recite every day for nine days on his knees the prayer known as the Memorare of St Bernard.
Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known in any age that anyone who fled to your protection, implored your help or sought your intercession, was left unaided. Inspired with this confidence, I fly unto you, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother. To you do I come, before you I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word incarnate, despise not my petitions but in your clemency hear and answer me. Amen.
On the 20th of January, while waiting at the Church of St Andrea Delle Frate for his friend who had some business with the Bishop, Alphonse wandered inside. When his friend came looking for him, he found him prostrated and weeping before a statue of our Lady. Our Lady had appeared to him and he had been immediately converted, his hard heart healed. He gave up his wealth and lived such a good life that was declared a saint.
Dear soul, Jesus and His Mother will help you in the same way if you wear a Miraculous Medal and say the Memorare every day. Faith is a gift from God and it comes to those who seek the truth with a sincere heart.
Heaven is worth the struggle. But a battle it will be. A lifetime of bad habits is not easily overcome. The impure spirits and our worldly friends jeer at us and tell us we are wasting our time.
Moreover, these days, when churchmen in most places are sunk in corruption and neglect and unbelief, there are not a few priests and bishops, wolves in sheep's vestments, who will try to tell you not to be so particular. These false shepherds teach the lie that everyone goes to Heaven.
Find a prayer group that prays the Rosary of our Lady and the Passion of the Christ Meditation, sometimes known as the Magnificent Prayers.
He who prays can be saved, but he who does not pray or prays badly cannot be.
Read the New Testament. Read a book called The Poem of the Man-God. See below the Introduction plus an excerpt describing Mary Magdalene's first encounter with Jesus.
See also The Soul After Death for an account of the experience of one who came back from Hell. "I have truly risen from the dead, my dearest one," he told his wife who had been sitting beside the death bed grieving. "But from now on I must live a completely different kind of life."
Find a good priest. They do still exist, you may be astonished to learn. Find a good priest who truly believes that there is only one religion that can save your soul and that is the religion Jesus Christ established, exactly as its durability and long history shows.
Jesus said: "Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you."
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Poem of the Man-God: Introduction
Jesus says: Today write only this. Purity has such a value, that the womb of a creature can contain the uncontainable One, because She possessed the greatest purity that a creature of God could have.
The Most Holy Trinity descended with Its perfections, inhabited with Its Three Persons, enclosed Its infinity in a small space. But it did not debase Itself by doing so, because the love of the Virgin and the will of God widened this space until they rendered it a Heaven.
And the Most Holy Trinity made Itself known by Its characteristics:
The Father, being once again the Creator of the creature as on the sixth day of Creation, had a real worthy daughter fashioned to His perfect image. The mark of God was impressed so completely and exactly on Mary that only in the First-born was it greater. Mary can be called the Second-born of the Father because, owing to the perfection granted to Her and preserved by Her, and to her dignity as Spouse and Mother of God and Queen of Heaven, She comes second after the Son of the Father and second in His eternal thought, which from eternity took delight in Her.
The Son, being also "Her Son," did teach Her by the mystery of Grace His truth and wisdom, when He was but an Embryo growing in Her womb.
The Holy Spirit appeared amongst men for an anticipated prolonged Pentecost: Love for "Her Whom He loved," Consolation to men because of the Fruit of Her Womb, Sanctification on account of the Maternity of the Holy One.
God, to reveal Himself to men in the new and complete form, which starts the Redemption era, did not select for His throne a star in the sky, nor the palace of a powerful man. Neither did He want the wings of angels as the base of His feet. He wanted a spotless womb.
Also Eve had been created spotless. But she wanted to become corrupt of her own free will. Mary Who lived in a corrupt world--Eve was in a pure world--did not wish to violate Her purity, not even with one thought remotely connected with sin. She knew that sin exists. She saw its various and horrible forms and implications. She saw them all, including the most hideous one: deicide, the murder of God. But She knew them solely to expiate them and to be for ever the Woman who has mercy on sinners and prays for their redemption.
This thought will be the introduction to other holy things that I will give you for your benefit and the welfare of many people.
The Most Holy Trinity descended with Its perfections, inhabited with Its Three Persons, enclosed Its infinity in a small space. But it did not debase Itself by doing so, because the love of the Virgin and the will of God widened this space until they rendered it a Heaven.
And the Most Holy Trinity made Itself known by Its characteristics:
The Father, being once again the Creator of the creature as on the sixth day of Creation, had a real worthy daughter fashioned to His perfect image. The mark of God was impressed so completely and exactly on Mary that only in the First-born was it greater. Mary can be called the Second-born of the Father because, owing to the perfection granted to Her and preserved by Her, and to her dignity as Spouse and Mother of God and Queen of Heaven, She comes second after the Son of the Father and second in His eternal thought, which from eternity took delight in Her.
The Son, being also "Her Son," did teach Her by the mystery of Grace His truth and wisdom, when He was but an Embryo growing in Her womb.
The Holy Spirit appeared amongst men for an anticipated prolonged Pentecost: Love for "Her Whom He loved," Consolation to men because of the Fruit of Her Womb, Sanctification on account of the Maternity of the Holy One.
God, to reveal Himself to men in the new and complete form, which starts the Redemption era, did not select for His throne a star in the sky, nor the palace of a powerful man. Neither did He want the wings of angels as the base of His feet. He wanted a spotless womb.
Also Eve had been created spotless. But she wanted to become corrupt of her own free will. Mary Who lived in a corrupt world--Eve was in a pure world--did not wish to violate Her purity, not even with one thought remotely connected with sin. She knew that sin exists. She saw its various and horrible forms and implications. She saw them all, including the most hideous one: deicide, the murder of God. But She knew them solely to expiate them and to be for ever the Woman who has mercy on sinners and prays for their redemption.
This thought will be the introduction to other holy things that I will give you for your benefit and the welfare of many people.
Mary Magdalene's First Encounter with The Master
Jesus is standing on a rock and is speaking to a large crowd. It is a mountainous place. A lonely hill between two valleys. The top of the hill is shaped like a yoke, or rather like a camel's hump, so that a few yards from the top there is a natural amphitheatre where voices resound clearly as in a well-built concert hall.
The hill is all in flower. It must be summer. The crops down in the plain are beginning to ripen and are getting ready to be cut. The glacier of a high mountain in the north is shining in the sun.
Directly below, to the east, the Sea of Galilee looks like a mirror broken into numberless fragments, each of which is a sapphire lit up by the sun. Its blue-gold twinkling is dazzling and it reflects a few fluffy clouds in a very clear sky and the shadow of some swift sails.
Beyond the lake of Gennesaret there is a vast extent of plain ground, which, because of a light mist near the earth, caused perhaps by evaporation of dew--in fact it must be early morning as the grass on the mountain still has a few dewy diamonds glittering on its stems--looks like a continuation of the lake with an opal-like hue veined with green.
Further back there is a chain of mountains, the side of which is so bizarre as to give the impression of clouds sketched on the clear sky.
Some of the people are sitting on the grass, some on large stones, some are standing.
The apostolic college is not complete. There is Peter and Andrew, John and James, and one can hear the other two being called Nathanael and Philip.
The sermon has already started. I understand that it is the Sermon of the Mount. But the Beatitudes have already been proclaimed. I would say that the sermon is drawing towards the close because Jesus says: "Do that and you will receive a great reward. Because the Father Who is in Heaven is merciful to good people and He knows how to give you one hundredfold to one. So I say to you..."
Suddenly there is much excitement among the people who crowd round the path leading to the plateau. The people closest to Jesus turn their heads round. Everybody's attention is distracted.
Jesus stops speaking and turns His eyes in the same direction as the others. He is serious and handsome in His dark blue tunic, His arms folded on His chest, while the first rays of the sun rising above the eastern peak of the hill shine on His head.
"Make room, you plebeians," shouts the angry voice of a man. Make room for the beauty who is passing!"
Four dandies, smartly dressed, come forward, one of whom is certainly Roman, because he is wearing a Roman toga. They are carrying Mary of Magdala triumphantly on their hands crossed to form a seat.
And she smiles with her beautiful mouth, throwing back her head and her golden hair, which is all plaits and curls held by precious hairpins and pale gold-leaf strewn with pearls which encircles the upper part of her forehead like a diadem, and from which small light curls hang down to veil her splendid eyes, made larger and more seductive by a refined make-up. The diadem disappears behind her ears, under the mass of plaits at the back of her snow-white completely bare neck. And her nakedness extends much farther than her neck. Her shoulders are bare down to her shoulder-blades and her breast even more so. Her dress, held on her shoulders by two little gold chains, is completely sleeveless. Her body is covered, so to say, by a veil the only purpose of which seems to be to protect her skin from sunburn. The dress is of a very light fabric, so that when she throws herself back, out of affection against one or the other of her lovers, she seems to be doing so completely nude. I am under the impression that the Roman is the one she prefers because she glances and smiles at him more frequently and rests her head on his shoulder.
"The desire of the goddess has been satisfied," says the Roman. "Rome has acted as a mount for the new Venus. Over there, there is the Apollo you wanted to see. Seduce Him, therefore! But leave some crumbs of your charm also to us."
Mary laughs and with an agile provocative movement, she jumps to the ground, showing her small feet shod in white sandals with golden buckles, as well as a good length of her leg. Her dress now covers her whole body. It is in fact a very wide one of snow-white wool as thin as a veil, held tight at the waist very low, near her sides, by a large belt made of supple gold bosses.
And she stands on the green tableland, where there is a vast amount of lilies of the valley and wild narcissi, like a flower of flesh, an impure flower, which has opened there by witchcraft. She is more beautiful than ever. Her tiny purple lips seem a carnation opening on the whiteness of her perfect set of teeth. Her face and body would satisfy the most exacting painter or sculptor both because of her complexion and her figure. With her broad breast, her perfectly sized sides, her naturally supple slender waist, as compared with her sides and breast, she does look like a goddess, as the Roman said, a goddess sculptured in a light pinkish marble on the sides of which a fabric is draped and then hangs in the front in a mass of folds. Everything has been devised to please.
Jesus stares at her. And she defiantly resists His look while she smiles and twists lightly as the Roman tickles her, running on her bare shoulders and breast a lily picked among the grass. Mary, with affected indignation, lifts her veil, saying: "Have respect for my innocence!" which causes the four to burst into a guffaw.
Jesus continues staring at her. As soon as the noise of the laughter fades away, Jesus resumes speaking, as if the apparition of the woman had kindled the flame of the sermon, which was losing intensity in its conclusion.
He no longer looks at her. He looks instead at His audience who seem embarrassed and scandalised at the event.
Jesus says: "I told you to be faithful to the Law, to be humble and merciful, to love not only your brothers by the flesh, but also those who are brothers because they were born, like you, of man. I told you that forgiveness is better than hostility, that compassion is better than stubbornness.
"But now I tell you that you must not condemn unless you are free from the fault you wish to condemn. Do not behave like the Scribes and Pharisees who are severe with everybody except themselves, who call impure what is exterior, and can only contaminate what is exterior, and then they receive impurity in the very depths of their hearts.
"God does not stay with the impure. Because impurity corrupts what is the property of God, souls, and in particular, the souls of children who are angels spread over the earth. Woe to those who tear off their wings with the cruelty of devilish beasts and throw those flowers of Heaven into the mire, by letting them taste the flavour of material things! Woe... It would be better if they died struck by thunderbolts rather than commit such sin.
"Woe to you, rich and fast living people! Because it is amongst you that the greatest impurity thrives. And idleness and money are its bed and pillow! You are now sated. The food of concupiscence reaches your throats and chokes you. But you will be hungry. And your hunger will be terrible, insatiable and unappeasable for ever and ever.
"You are now rich. How much good you could do with your wealth! Instead you do so much harm both to yourselves and to other people. But you will experience a dreadful poverty on a day that will have no end.
"You now laugh. You think you are triumphing. But your tears will fill the ponds of Gehenna. And they will never cease.
"Where does adultery nestle? Where does the corruption of young girls hide? Who has two or three licentious beds, in addition to his own matrimonial one, on which he squanders his money and wastes the strength of a healthy body given to him by God that he may work for his family and not to wear himself out through filthy unions which place him below unclean beasts?
"You heard that it was said: You shall not commit adultery. But I tell you that he who looks at a woman lustfully that she who wished to go with a man has already committed adultery in his or her heart. Simply by that.
"There is no reason which can justify fornication. None. Neither the abandonment nor the repudiation of a husband. Nor pity for the repudiated woman.
"You have one soul only. When it is joined to another soul by a pact of faithfulness, it must not lie. Otherwise the beautiful body for which you sin will go with you, O impure souls, into the inexhausted fire. Mutilate your body rather than kill it for ever by damning it. Come to your moral senses, O rich men, verminous sinks of vice, so that you may not disgust Heaven."
Mary, who at the beginning listened with a face which was a dream of allurement and irony, sneering now and again, at the end of the sermon becomes livid with rage. She realises that although Jesus does not look at her, He is speaking to her. She becomes more and more livid and rebellious and at last can resist no longer. She spitefully envelops herself in her veil and, followed by the glances of the crowds jeering at her and by Jesus' voice which pursues her, she runs down the slope of the mountain, leaving strips of her dress on the thistles and dog-rose bushes growing on the edges of the path, laughing out of anger and mockery...(contd)
The hill is all in flower. It must be summer. The crops down in the plain are beginning to ripen and are getting ready to be cut. The glacier of a high mountain in the north is shining in the sun.
Directly below, to the east, the Sea of Galilee looks like a mirror broken into numberless fragments, each of which is a sapphire lit up by the sun. Its blue-gold twinkling is dazzling and it reflects a few fluffy clouds in a very clear sky and the shadow of some swift sails.
Beyond the lake of Gennesaret there is a vast extent of plain ground, which, because of a light mist near the earth, caused perhaps by evaporation of dew--in fact it must be early morning as the grass on the mountain still has a few dewy diamonds glittering on its stems--looks like a continuation of the lake with an opal-like hue veined with green.
Further back there is a chain of mountains, the side of which is so bizarre as to give the impression of clouds sketched on the clear sky.
Some of the people are sitting on the grass, some on large stones, some are standing.
The apostolic college is not complete. There is Peter and Andrew, John and James, and one can hear the other two being called Nathanael and Philip.
The sermon has already started. I understand that it is the Sermon of the Mount. But the Beatitudes have already been proclaimed. I would say that the sermon is drawing towards the close because Jesus says: "Do that and you will receive a great reward. Because the Father Who is in Heaven is merciful to good people and He knows how to give you one hundredfold to one. So I say to you..."
Suddenly there is much excitement among the people who crowd round the path leading to the plateau. The people closest to Jesus turn their heads round. Everybody's attention is distracted.
Jesus stops speaking and turns His eyes in the same direction as the others. He is serious and handsome in His dark blue tunic, His arms folded on His chest, while the first rays of the sun rising above the eastern peak of the hill shine on His head.
"Make room, you plebeians," shouts the angry voice of a man. Make room for the beauty who is passing!"
Four dandies, smartly dressed, come forward, one of whom is certainly Roman, because he is wearing a Roman toga. They are carrying Mary of Magdala triumphantly on their hands crossed to form a seat.
And she smiles with her beautiful mouth, throwing back her head and her golden hair, which is all plaits and curls held by precious hairpins and pale gold-leaf strewn with pearls which encircles the upper part of her forehead like a diadem, and from which small light curls hang down to veil her splendid eyes, made larger and more seductive by a refined make-up. The diadem disappears behind her ears, under the mass of plaits at the back of her snow-white completely bare neck. And her nakedness extends much farther than her neck. Her shoulders are bare down to her shoulder-blades and her breast even more so. Her dress, held on her shoulders by two little gold chains, is completely sleeveless. Her body is covered, so to say, by a veil the only purpose of which seems to be to protect her skin from sunburn. The dress is of a very light fabric, so that when she throws herself back, out of affection against one or the other of her lovers, she seems to be doing so completely nude. I am under the impression that the Roman is the one she prefers because she glances and smiles at him more frequently and rests her head on his shoulder.
"The desire of the goddess has been satisfied," says the Roman. "Rome has acted as a mount for the new Venus. Over there, there is the Apollo you wanted to see. Seduce Him, therefore! But leave some crumbs of your charm also to us."
Mary laughs and with an agile provocative movement, she jumps to the ground, showing her small feet shod in white sandals with golden buckles, as well as a good length of her leg. Her dress now covers her whole body. It is in fact a very wide one of snow-white wool as thin as a veil, held tight at the waist very low, near her sides, by a large belt made of supple gold bosses.
And she stands on the green tableland, where there is a vast amount of lilies of the valley and wild narcissi, like a flower of flesh, an impure flower, which has opened there by witchcraft. She is more beautiful than ever. Her tiny purple lips seem a carnation opening on the whiteness of her perfect set of teeth. Her face and body would satisfy the most exacting painter or sculptor both because of her complexion and her figure. With her broad breast, her perfectly sized sides, her naturally supple slender waist, as compared with her sides and breast, she does look like a goddess, as the Roman said, a goddess sculptured in a light pinkish marble on the sides of which a fabric is draped and then hangs in the front in a mass of folds. Everything has been devised to please.
Jesus stares at her. And she defiantly resists His look while she smiles and twists lightly as the Roman tickles her, running on her bare shoulders and breast a lily picked among the grass. Mary, with affected indignation, lifts her veil, saying: "Have respect for my innocence!" which causes the four to burst into a guffaw.
Jesus continues staring at her. As soon as the noise of the laughter fades away, Jesus resumes speaking, as if the apparition of the woman had kindled the flame of the sermon, which was losing intensity in its conclusion.
He no longer looks at her. He looks instead at His audience who seem embarrassed and scandalised at the event.
Jesus says: "I told you to be faithful to the Law, to be humble and merciful, to love not only your brothers by the flesh, but also those who are brothers because they were born, like you, of man. I told you that forgiveness is better than hostility, that compassion is better than stubbornness.
"But now I tell you that you must not condemn unless you are free from the fault you wish to condemn. Do not behave like the Scribes and Pharisees who are severe with everybody except themselves, who call impure what is exterior, and can only contaminate what is exterior, and then they receive impurity in the very depths of their hearts.
"God does not stay with the impure. Because impurity corrupts what is the property of God, souls, and in particular, the souls of children who are angels spread over the earth. Woe to those who tear off their wings with the cruelty of devilish beasts and throw those flowers of Heaven into the mire, by letting them taste the flavour of material things! Woe... It would be better if they died struck by thunderbolts rather than commit such sin.
"Woe to you, rich and fast living people! Because it is amongst you that the greatest impurity thrives. And idleness and money are its bed and pillow! You are now sated. The food of concupiscence reaches your throats and chokes you. But you will be hungry. And your hunger will be terrible, insatiable and unappeasable for ever and ever.
"You are now rich. How much good you could do with your wealth! Instead you do so much harm both to yourselves and to other people. But you will experience a dreadful poverty on a day that will have no end.
"You now laugh. You think you are triumphing. But your tears will fill the ponds of Gehenna. And they will never cease.
"Where does adultery nestle? Where does the corruption of young girls hide? Who has two or three licentious beds, in addition to his own matrimonial one, on which he squanders his money and wastes the strength of a healthy body given to him by God that he may work for his family and not to wear himself out through filthy unions which place him below unclean beasts?
"You heard that it was said: You shall not commit adultery. But I tell you that he who looks at a woman lustfully that she who wished to go with a man has already committed adultery in his or her heart. Simply by that.
"There is no reason which can justify fornication. None. Neither the abandonment nor the repudiation of a husband. Nor pity for the repudiated woman.
"You have one soul only. When it is joined to another soul by a pact of faithfulness, it must not lie. Otherwise the beautiful body for which you sin will go with you, O impure souls, into the inexhausted fire. Mutilate your body rather than kill it for ever by damning it. Come to your moral senses, O rich men, verminous sinks of vice, so that you may not disgust Heaven."
Mary, who at the beginning listened with a face which was a dream of allurement and irony, sneering now and again, at the end of the sermon becomes livid with rage. She realises that although Jesus does not look at her, He is speaking to her. She becomes more and more livid and rebellious and at last can resist no longer. She spitefully envelops herself in her veil and, followed by the glances of the crowds jeering at her and by Jesus' voice which pursues her, she runs down the slope of the mountain, leaving strips of her dress on the thistles and dog-rose bushes growing on the edges of the path, laughing out of anger and mockery...(contd)
The Soul After Death
St.Alphonsus Liguori related the awful and awesome case of a monk renowned for his sanctity and devotion to the Mother of God:
At the point of death, having received the last sacraments, he summoned his religious brethren and begged that they not abandon him in his last passage.
Scarcely had he uttered those words, when in the presence of all, he began to tremble, roll his eyes, and, bathed in a cold sweat, with a faltering voice, said, "Ah, do you not see the devils who are endeavouring to drag me to hell?" He then cried out, "Brothers, implore the aid of Mary for me; in her I confide; she will give me the victory."
On hearing this, his brethren recited the Litany of our Blessed Lady and as they said, "Holy mary, pray for him," the dying man exclaimed, "Repeat, repeat the name of Mary, for I am already before God's tribunal." He was silent for a moment and then added, "It is true that I did that but I have done penance for it!"
And turning to our Blessed Lady, he said, "O Mary, I shall be delivered if thou helpest me."
Again the devils attacked him but he defended himself with his crucifix and the name of Mary.
Thus was the night spent but no sooner did morning come than the monk exclaimed with great calmness and full of holy joy, "Mary, my sovereign Lady, my refuge, has obtained for me pardon and salvation." Then casting his eyes on that Blessed Virgin who was inviting him to follow her, he said, "I come, O Lady, I come," and making an effort to do so even with his body, his soul fled after her to the realms of eternal bliss, as we trust, for he sweetly expired.
St.Alphonsus says that "when a man is on the point of leaving the world, hell is opened and sends forth its most terrible demons, both to tempt the soul before it leaves the body, and to accuse it when presented before the tribunal of Jesus Christ for judgment." And he quotes Isaiah 14: "Hell below was in uproar to meet thee at thy coming: it stirred up the giants for thee."
Satan, the Hebrew name for the devil, means accuser and adversary.
The Psalms particularly address their prayer to that time when our invisible enemies will stand before God accusing us.
Psalm 7: "Save me from them that persecute me and do thou deliver me lest at any time like a lion he seize my soul."
Psalm 30 (or 31 in the Jewish Bible): "I am become as a vessel that is destroyed. For I have heard the blame of many that dwell round about. While they assembled together against me, they consulted to take away my life. Let the wicked be ashamed and be brought down to hell. Let deceitful lips be made dumb which speak iniquity against the just with pride and abuse."
Psalm 70 (71): "For my enemies have spoken against me and they that watched my soul have consulted together, saying: God hath forsaken him; pursue him and take him, for there is none to deliver him."
As now, even more so then, at the moment of death, for according to St.Paul: "our wrestling is not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places...the prince of the power of this air."
What happens at the moment of death, the moment of truth? Most if not all those outside the true faith are dragged immediately to hell.
The soul of the righteous as soon as it begins leaving the body and rises from the Earth enters into what is called the particular judgment. It begins to strive through the aerial spaces towards its homeland in heaven but is impeded by legions of fallen spirits standing guard. Each devil is in charge of a particular kind of sin with which to accuse the poor soul. In the church fathers, they are called the toll-houses.
St.Hesychius of Jerusalem: "The hour of death will find us, it will come, and it will be impossible to escape it. Oh, if only the devil and prince of this world and the air who is then to meet us might find our sins as nothing and insignificant, and might not be able to accuse us justly."
St.Gregory the Great: "One must reflect deeply on how frightful the hour of death will be for us, what terror the soul will then experience, what remembrance of all the evils, what forgetfulness of past happiness, what fear, and what apprehension of the Judge. Then, the evil spirits will seek out the departing soul and its deeds. Then they will present before its view the sins towards which they had disposed it, so as to draw their accomplice to torment."
St.Cyril of Alexandria: "What fear and trembling await you, O soul, in the day of death. You will see frightful, wild, cruel, unmerciful and shameful demons standing before you. The very sight of them is worse than any torment. The soul seeing them becomes agitated, disturbed, troubled, seeks to hide, hastens to the angels of God. The holy angels hold the soul. Passing with them through the air and rising, it encounters the toll-houses which guard the path from earth to heaven, detaining the soul and hindering it from ascending further. Each toll-house tests the sins corresponding to it. each sin, each passion, has its collectors and testers.
St.Basil the Great: "The noble athletes of God, who have wrestled considerably with the invisible enemies during the whole of their lives, after they have escaped all of their persecutions and reached the end of their life, are examined by the 'prince of this world' in order that if they are found to have any wounds from wrestling or any stains or effects of sin, they may be detained [that is to say, in that part of the inferno called Purgatory meaning Purification]. But if they are found unwounded and sinless, they may be brought by Christ into their rest as being unconquered and free."
The righteous obtain help from heaven, from their guardian angel and other angels and saints, even our Lady herself. Not so, not so, the ordinary sinner. He has to face the demons alone.
St.John Chrysostom describes their ordeal. "The dying may then be heard relating horrors and fearful visions, the spectacle of which they are unable to endure, but often shake their bed with great power, gaze fearfully on the bystanders, the soul urging itself inwards, unwilling to be torn away from the body, and unable to bear the sight of the approaching spirits. If human beings that are frightful strike terror into us beholding them, when we see angels threatening and stern powers among our visitors, what shall we not suffer, the soul being forced from the body and dragged away, bewailing much, all in vain?"
Chrysostom adds, "Then we will need many prayers, many helpers, many good deeds, a great intercession from angels in the journey through the spaces of the air. If, when travelling in a foreign land of a strange city, we are in need of a guide, how much more to guide us past the invisible powers and rulers of this air who are called persecutors and publicans and tax-collectors!"
St.Adamnan in his Life of St.Columba (available in Penguin books) tells of how the founder of Iona and the Scottish Catholic church was able to see with spiritual eyes several of these battles. "The saint called his monks one day telling them, 'Now let us help by prayer the monks of Abbot Comgall drowning at this hour in the Lough of the Calf. For behold at this moment they are warring in the air against hostile powers who try to snatch away the soul of a stranger who is drowning along with them.' Then, after prayer, St.Columba said, 'Give thanks to Christ, for now the holy angels have met these holy souls and have delivered the stranger.'"
St.Bede, the Abbot of Jarrow Abbey, in his work The History of the English Church, related of a near-death or rather actual after-death experience that changed a lucky man's life. He returned to life after appearing to have been dead for a whole night. Laid out before his mourning wife, he sat up and said to her,
"Do not be afraid, my dearest one, for I have truly risen from the grasp of death and am allowed to live among men again. But henceforth I must not live as I used to and must adopt a very different way of life."
With her permission, they separated and he became a monk in accordance with Christ's words recorded in the Gospel of St.Luke: "Unless you do penance you shall likewise perish."
Fully conscious when out of his body, the man's soul had found itself in the midst of dense darkness. Here are his words as recorded by the venerable Bede.
"Frequent masses of dusky flame suddenly appeared before us, rising as though from a great pit and falling back into it again. As the tongues of flame arose, they were filled with the souls of men, who, like sparks, were sometimes flung high into the air and at other times dropped back into the depths as the vapors of the fire died down. Furthermore, an indescribable stench welled up with these vapors and filled the whole of this gloomy place. I suddenly heard behind me the sound of a most hideous and desperate lamentation accompanied by harsh laughter. I saw a throung of wicked spirits dragging with them five human souls howleing and lamenting, one of them a priest, one could tell by his tonsure..."
St.Boniface, the English Saxon founder of the German Catholic church, related the tale of a monk who died and came back to life after some hourse. "Angels of such pure splendour bore him up as he came forth from the body that he could not bear to gaze upon them. In the space of time that he was out of the body, a greater multitude of souls left their bodies and gathered in the place where he was than he had thought to form the whole race of mankind on Earth. He said also there was a crowd of evil spirits and a glorious choir of the higher angels. And he said that the wretched spirits and the holy angels had a violent dispute concerning the souls that had come forth from their bodies, the demons bringing charges against them and aggravating the burden of their sins, the angels lightening the burden and making excuses for them. He heard all his sins which he had committed from his youth on and had failed to confess or had forgotten or had not recognized as sin, crying out against him, each in its own voice, and accusing him grievously, naming the very times and places...And so his sins piled up and reckoned out, those ancient enemies declared him guilty and unquestioningly subject to their jurisdiction. On the other hand, the poor little virtues which he had displayed unworthily and imperfectly spoke out in his defence. And those angelic spirits in their boundless love defended and supported him, while the virtues greatly magnified, as they were, seemed to him far greater and more excellent than could ever have been practised by his own strength."
These reports are a far cry from the benign and reassuring but trite and banal reports of the "heaven" given to us as so-called "after-death" experiences of people who have apparently died and come back to life. More often than not, these are diabolical deceptions. For the dissembling spirits or "ghosts" that appear to those that are a state of sinfulness and the fallen condition are demons and not in the least holy angels and men. The impression is designed to reinforce modern society's false sense of peace and security. This is the new religion of the age, universal salvation or universalism.
St.Paul: "And no wonder for Satan himself transforms himserlf in an angel of light."
One good effect of some near-death experiences for the benefit of the modern skeptic is that they teach that the faculties of a person reside in the person that is the soul not the body. The most edifying case was that of a totally blind woman whose soul separated from her body in the hospital operating room. The real "she" floated above the whole scene, in which doctors and nurses were resigning themselves to the apparent fact that the woman had died. She then came back to life and to her former blindness and to the astonishment of all involved told them that she had seen everything going on in the room when she had separated from her body. it is the soul that sees and thinks, the innermost person, and the soul uses the body as the means of its activities only in the material world.
The new one world religion with its naive anodyne message of love and peace is preached even by Catholic or supposedly Catholic popes, cardinals, bishops and priests. The previous pope stated falsely that "by the fact that our Lord died on the Cross and by the action of the Holy Ghost every man is a child of God" and "by his Incarnation the Son of God has united himself to every man."
Contradicting St.Paul that only those that are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God, and St.John that those who are not children of God are children of the devil.
"But as many as received him [that is in Holy Communion] he gave them power to be made the sons of God." Or in Jesus' words, "many are called but few chosen."
How such arrant and fatuous nonsense as is taught by modern bishops and priests could be received by the faithful as doctrinally correct shows that the last of the deceived modern Catholics have got used to checking their brains at the door. So that seeing that do not see and hearing they do not hear, lest they be converted and flee!
St.Paul distinguished between two kinds of people: "For what man knows the things of a man but the spirit of a man that is in him? So the things that are of God no man knows but the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of this world but the Spirit that is of God that we may know the things that are given us from God, which things also we speak, not in the learned words of human wisdom, but in the doctrine of the Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the sensual man perceives not these things that are of the Spirit of God. For it is foolishness to him and he cannot understand, because it is spiritually examined. But the spiritual man judges all things, and he himself is judged of no man. For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. And I, brethren, could not speak to you as unto spiritual but as unto carnal. As unto little ones in Christ. I gave you milk to drink not meat, for you were not able as yet. But neither indeed are you yet able, for you are yet carnal. For whereas there is among you envying and contention, are you not carnal and walk according to man?"
The effect of the new religion is that today's Catholics and other so-called Christians treat the Cross with a casual air bordering on derision. They call themselves charismatic and pentecostalist but there is no charism and there is no new Pentecost only confusion and deception.
As for "speaking in tongues", it is, in the words of Solange Hertz, "a rite of initiation whereby a demonic influx may be received by a candidate who freely opens his will to spiritual influences coming from outside the Church...usually by the imposition of hands...provides nothing less than a threshold for diabolical possession."
They have no sense of the reality of God's awe, majesty and holiness and of the infinite offense they give by their corrupted, disfigured, unruly worship, not to mention matching lifestyles. For a reality check, it pays to read the Bible. "Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." And, "Who is like unto God!"
One book that should be on every thinking man's reading list is Marie Carre's AA1025--The Memoirs of an Anti-Apostle, the story of one among thousands of communist szecret agents who entered the seminary and became priests and in this case a bishop for the purpose of destroying the Church from within.
In the book the communist agent stated, "If you suppress fear, you suppress religions. A God whom no one fears quickly becomes a God about whom no one thinks."
When the children shall ask what was the true Mass? you shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord's passover, for He passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt when He slew the Egyptians but spared our houses.
At the point of death, having received the last sacraments, he summoned his religious brethren and begged that they not abandon him in his last passage.
Scarcely had he uttered those words, when in the presence of all, he began to tremble, roll his eyes, and, bathed in a cold sweat, with a faltering voice, said, "Ah, do you not see the devils who are endeavouring to drag me to hell?" He then cried out, "Brothers, implore the aid of Mary for me; in her I confide; she will give me the victory."
On hearing this, his brethren recited the Litany of our Blessed Lady and as they said, "Holy mary, pray for him," the dying man exclaimed, "Repeat, repeat the name of Mary, for I am already before God's tribunal." He was silent for a moment and then added, "It is true that I did that but I have done penance for it!"
And turning to our Blessed Lady, he said, "O Mary, I shall be delivered if thou helpest me."
Again the devils attacked him but he defended himself with his crucifix and the name of Mary.
Thus was the night spent but no sooner did morning come than the monk exclaimed with great calmness and full of holy joy, "Mary, my sovereign Lady, my refuge, has obtained for me pardon and salvation." Then casting his eyes on that Blessed Virgin who was inviting him to follow her, he said, "I come, O Lady, I come," and making an effort to do so even with his body, his soul fled after her to the realms of eternal bliss, as we trust, for he sweetly expired.
St.Alphonsus says that "when a man is on the point of leaving the world, hell is opened and sends forth its most terrible demons, both to tempt the soul before it leaves the body, and to accuse it when presented before the tribunal of Jesus Christ for judgment." And he quotes Isaiah 14: "Hell below was in uproar to meet thee at thy coming: it stirred up the giants for thee."
Satan, the Hebrew name for the devil, means accuser and adversary.
The Psalms particularly address their prayer to that time when our invisible enemies will stand before God accusing us.
Psalm 7: "Save me from them that persecute me and do thou deliver me lest at any time like a lion he seize my soul."
Psalm 30 (or 31 in the Jewish Bible): "I am become as a vessel that is destroyed. For I have heard the blame of many that dwell round about. While they assembled together against me, they consulted to take away my life. Let the wicked be ashamed and be brought down to hell. Let deceitful lips be made dumb which speak iniquity against the just with pride and abuse."
Psalm 70 (71): "For my enemies have spoken against me and they that watched my soul have consulted together, saying: God hath forsaken him; pursue him and take him, for there is none to deliver him."
As now, even more so then, at the moment of death, for according to St.Paul: "our wrestling is not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places...the prince of the power of this air."
What happens at the moment of death, the moment of truth? Most if not all those outside the true faith are dragged immediately to hell.
The soul of the righteous as soon as it begins leaving the body and rises from the Earth enters into what is called the particular judgment. It begins to strive through the aerial spaces towards its homeland in heaven but is impeded by legions of fallen spirits standing guard. Each devil is in charge of a particular kind of sin with which to accuse the poor soul. In the church fathers, they are called the toll-houses.
St.Hesychius of Jerusalem: "The hour of death will find us, it will come, and it will be impossible to escape it. Oh, if only the devil and prince of this world and the air who is then to meet us might find our sins as nothing and insignificant, and might not be able to accuse us justly."
St.Gregory the Great: "One must reflect deeply on how frightful the hour of death will be for us, what terror the soul will then experience, what remembrance of all the evils, what forgetfulness of past happiness, what fear, and what apprehension of the Judge. Then, the evil spirits will seek out the departing soul and its deeds. Then they will present before its view the sins towards which they had disposed it, so as to draw their accomplice to torment."
St.Cyril of Alexandria: "What fear and trembling await you, O soul, in the day of death. You will see frightful, wild, cruel, unmerciful and shameful demons standing before you. The very sight of them is worse than any torment. The soul seeing them becomes agitated, disturbed, troubled, seeks to hide, hastens to the angels of God. The holy angels hold the soul. Passing with them through the air and rising, it encounters the toll-houses which guard the path from earth to heaven, detaining the soul and hindering it from ascending further. Each toll-house tests the sins corresponding to it. each sin, each passion, has its collectors and testers.
St.Basil the Great: "The noble athletes of God, who have wrestled considerably with the invisible enemies during the whole of their lives, after they have escaped all of their persecutions and reached the end of their life, are examined by the 'prince of this world' in order that if they are found to have any wounds from wrestling or any stains or effects of sin, they may be detained [that is to say, in that part of the inferno called Purgatory meaning Purification]. But if they are found unwounded and sinless, they may be brought by Christ into their rest as being unconquered and free."
The righteous obtain help from heaven, from their guardian angel and other angels and saints, even our Lady herself. Not so, not so, the ordinary sinner. He has to face the demons alone.
St.John Chrysostom describes their ordeal. "The dying may then be heard relating horrors and fearful visions, the spectacle of which they are unable to endure, but often shake their bed with great power, gaze fearfully on the bystanders, the soul urging itself inwards, unwilling to be torn away from the body, and unable to bear the sight of the approaching spirits. If human beings that are frightful strike terror into us beholding them, when we see angels threatening and stern powers among our visitors, what shall we not suffer, the soul being forced from the body and dragged away, bewailing much, all in vain?"
Chrysostom adds, "Then we will need many prayers, many helpers, many good deeds, a great intercession from angels in the journey through the spaces of the air. If, when travelling in a foreign land of a strange city, we are in need of a guide, how much more to guide us past the invisible powers and rulers of this air who are called persecutors and publicans and tax-collectors!"
St.Adamnan in his Life of St.Columba (available in Penguin books) tells of how the founder of Iona and the Scottish Catholic church was able to see with spiritual eyes several of these battles. "The saint called his monks one day telling them, 'Now let us help by prayer the monks of Abbot Comgall drowning at this hour in the Lough of the Calf. For behold at this moment they are warring in the air against hostile powers who try to snatch away the soul of a stranger who is drowning along with them.' Then, after prayer, St.Columba said, 'Give thanks to Christ, for now the holy angels have met these holy souls and have delivered the stranger.'"
St.Bede, the Abbot of Jarrow Abbey, in his work The History of the English Church, related of a near-death or rather actual after-death experience that changed a lucky man's life. He returned to life after appearing to have been dead for a whole night. Laid out before his mourning wife, he sat up and said to her,
"Do not be afraid, my dearest one, for I have truly risen from the grasp of death and am allowed to live among men again. But henceforth I must not live as I used to and must adopt a very different way of life."
With her permission, they separated and he became a monk in accordance with Christ's words recorded in the Gospel of St.Luke: "Unless you do penance you shall likewise perish."
Fully conscious when out of his body, the man's soul had found itself in the midst of dense darkness. Here are his words as recorded by the venerable Bede.
"Frequent masses of dusky flame suddenly appeared before us, rising as though from a great pit and falling back into it again. As the tongues of flame arose, they were filled with the souls of men, who, like sparks, were sometimes flung high into the air and at other times dropped back into the depths as the vapors of the fire died down. Furthermore, an indescribable stench welled up with these vapors and filled the whole of this gloomy place. I suddenly heard behind me the sound of a most hideous and desperate lamentation accompanied by harsh laughter. I saw a throung of wicked spirits dragging with them five human souls howleing and lamenting, one of them a priest, one could tell by his tonsure..."
St.Boniface, the English Saxon founder of the German Catholic church, related the tale of a monk who died and came back to life after some hourse. "Angels of such pure splendour bore him up as he came forth from the body that he could not bear to gaze upon them. In the space of time that he was out of the body, a greater multitude of souls left their bodies and gathered in the place where he was than he had thought to form the whole race of mankind on Earth. He said also there was a crowd of evil spirits and a glorious choir of the higher angels. And he said that the wretched spirits and the holy angels had a violent dispute concerning the souls that had come forth from their bodies, the demons bringing charges against them and aggravating the burden of their sins, the angels lightening the burden and making excuses for them. He heard all his sins which he had committed from his youth on and had failed to confess or had forgotten or had not recognized as sin, crying out against him, each in its own voice, and accusing him grievously, naming the very times and places...And so his sins piled up and reckoned out, those ancient enemies declared him guilty and unquestioningly subject to their jurisdiction. On the other hand, the poor little virtues which he had displayed unworthily and imperfectly spoke out in his defence. And those angelic spirits in their boundless love defended and supported him, while the virtues greatly magnified, as they were, seemed to him far greater and more excellent than could ever have been practised by his own strength."
These reports are a far cry from the benign and reassuring but trite and banal reports of the "heaven" given to us as so-called "after-death" experiences of people who have apparently died and come back to life. More often than not, these are diabolical deceptions. For the dissembling spirits or "ghosts" that appear to those that are a state of sinfulness and the fallen condition are demons and not in the least holy angels and men. The impression is designed to reinforce modern society's false sense of peace and security. This is the new religion of the age, universal salvation or universalism.
St.Paul: "And no wonder for Satan himself transforms himserlf in an angel of light."
One good effect of some near-death experiences for the benefit of the modern skeptic is that they teach that the faculties of a person reside in the person that is the soul not the body. The most edifying case was that of a totally blind woman whose soul separated from her body in the hospital operating room. The real "she" floated above the whole scene, in which doctors and nurses were resigning themselves to the apparent fact that the woman had died. She then came back to life and to her former blindness and to the astonishment of all involved told them that she had seen everything going on in the room when she had separated from her body. it is the soul that sees and thinks, the innermost person, and the soul uses the body as the means of its activities only in the material world.
The new one world religion with its naive anodyne message of love and peace is preached even by Catholic or supposedly Catholic popes, cardinals, bishops and priests. The previous pope stated falsely that "by the fact that our Lord died on the Cross and by the action of the Holy Ghost every man is a child of God" and "by his Incarnation the Son of God has united himself to every man."
Contradicting St.Paul that only those that are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God, and St.John that those who are not children of God are children of the devil.
"But as many as received him [that is in Holy Communion] he gave them power to be made the sons of God." Or in Jesus' words, "many are called but few chosen."
How such arrant and fatuous nonsense as is taught by modern bishops and priests could be received by the faithful as doctrinally correct shows that the last of the deceived modern Catholics have got used to checking their brains at the door. So that seeing that do not see and hearing they do not hear, lest they be converted and flee!
St.Paul distinguished between two kinds of people: "For what man knows the things of a man but the spirit of a man that is in him? So the things that are of God no man knows but the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of this world but the Spirit that is of God that we may know the things that are given us from God, which things also we speak, not in the learned words of human wisdom, but in the doctrine of the Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the sensual man perceives not these things that are of the Spirit of God. For it is foolishness to him and he cannot understand, because it is spiritually examined. But the spiritual man judges all things, and he himself is judged of no man. For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. And I, brethren, could not speak to you as unto spiritual but as unto carnal. As unto little ones in Christ. I gave you milk to drink not meat, for you were not able as yet. But neither indeed are you yet able, for you are yet carnal. For whereas there is among you envying and contention, are you not carnal and walk according to man?"
The effect of the new religion is that today's Catholics and other so-called Christians treat the Cross with a casual air bordering on derision. They call themselves charismatic and pentecostalist but there is no charism and there is no new Pentecost only confusion and deception.
As for "speaking in tongues", it is, in the words of Solange Hertz, "a rite of initiation whereby a demonic influx may be received by a candidate who freely opens his will to spiritual influences coming from outside the Church...usually by the imposition of hands...provides nothing less than a threshold for diabolical possession."
They have no sense of the reality of God's awe, majesty and holiness and of the infinite offense they give by their corrupted, disfigured, unruly worship, not to mention matching lifestyles. For a reality check, it pays to read the Bible. "Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." And, "Who is like unto God!"
One book that should be on every thinking man's reading list is Marie Carre's AA1025--The Memoirs of an Anti-Apostle, the story of one among thousands of communist szecret agents who entered the seminary and became priests and in this case a bishop for the purpose of destroying the Church from within.
In the book the communist agent stated, "If you suppress fear, you suppress religions. A God whom no one fears quickly becomes a God about whom no one thinks."
When the children shall ask what was the true Mass? you shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord's passover, for He passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt when He slew the Egyptians but spared our houses.
Message from Beyond the Grave: Claire's Story
Claire and Annette, both single women in their early twenties, worked next to one another as employees of a commercial firm in Germany.
Although they were never very close friends, they shared a courteous mutual regard, which led to an exchange of ideas, and eventually of confidences.
Claire professed herself openly religious and felt it her duty to instruct and admonish Annette when the latter appeared excessively casual or superficial in religious matters.
In due course Annette got married and left the firm. A year later, in the autumn of 1937, Claire was on holiday at Lake Garda in northern Italy. Towards the middle of September, she received a letter from her mother: "Annette is dead. She was the victim of a motor car accident and was buried yesterday at Wald-Friedhof" or Forest Cemetery.
Claire was frightened since she knew her friend had not been very religious. Had she been prepared to appear before God? Dying suddenly, what was the state of her soul at the moment of death? What had happened to her?
The following morning Claire attended Holy Mass, received Holy Communion, and prayed fervently for her friend.
That same night Claire dreamed that she heard the thud of something dropped outside the front door, that she had got up and found an envelope addressed to her in the unmistakeable handwriting of Annette.
Upon waking Claire was able to remember and write down word-for-word the entire content of the letter.
The experience was so moving and life-changing that, after seeing to publication of the letter as of benefit to others, Claire became a nun.
Here then, as related by Claire, is Annette's message from beyond the grave.
Clara, do not pray for me! I am in hell. If I tell you this and speak at length about it, do not think it is because of our friendship. We here do not love anyone anymore.
I do this as under constraint. In truth I would like to see you too cast into this place where I must remain forever.
Perhaps that angers you. But here we all think that way. Our will is hardened in evil, what you call evil. Even when we do something good, as I do now in opening your eyes about hell, it is never because of a good intention.
Do you remember when we first met four years ago? You were then 23 and had already been with the firm for six months. Because I was a beginner, you gave me some helpful advice and put me in touch with some good people, whatever good means. Back then I praised your love of neighbor. How ridiculous! Your help was mere coquetry. We here don't acknowledge any good in anybody.
Do you remember what I told you about my youth? Now I am painfully compelled to fill in some of the gaps.
According to the plan of my parents, I should never have even existed. A misfortune brought about my conception. My two sisters were already 14 and 15 when I was born.
Would that I had never existed! Would that I could now annihilate myself! Escape these tortures! No pleasure would equal that with which I would abandon my existence, as a garment of ashes blown away by the wind lost in nothingness. But I must continue to exist. As I chose to make myself, as a ruined person.
When father and mother, still young, left the country for the city, they lost touch with the Church and were keeping company with other irreligious people.
They had met at a dance and after six months of companionship, they had to get married. As a result of the nuptial ceremony, so much holy water stuck to them that my mother attended Sunday Mass a couple of times a year.
But, she never taught me to pray. Instead, she was completely taken up with the daily cares of life, even though our situation was not that bad.
Those words--prayer, Mass, religious instruction, holy water, Church--fill me with such strong repugnance that I find it unspeakably revolting to utter them. I hate all that, as I hate all those who go to church, and in general every human being, and every thing.
From a great many things do we receive torment. Every knowledge received at the hour of death, every remembrance of things lived or known, is for us a piercing flame. In each remembrance, good and bad, we see the way in which grace was present, the graces we spurned, ignored, neglected.
What a torture is this! We do not eat, we do not sleep, we do not stand, we do not walk. Chained up, with weeping and gnashing of teeth, we look with horror at the ruins of our life.
All that is left is hating and suffering. Do you hear? We here drink hatred like water, even among ourselves. Above all we hate God.
With reluctance do I force myself to make you understand. The elect in heaven cannot help loving God because they see Him without veil in all His dazzling beauty. That gives them indescribable bliss. We know this and the knowledge makes us furious.
Men on earth, who know God from creation and from revelation, can love Him, but they are not compelled to do so.
The believer--I say this with gnashing of teeth--who contemplates Christ with his arms outstretched on the cross will end up by loving Him.
But he whom God approaches only in the final storm, as punisher, as just avenger, such a person, whom God has rejected, cannot but hate Him eternally with all the audacity of his wicked will.
Yes, hate Him, with all the strength of a freely willed decision against Him. We died with willful resolve to be separated from God. Even now we would not wish to change it, nor shall we ever wish to.
Do you understand now why hell lasts forever? It is because our wills were fixed for all eternity at the moment of death. Our obstinacy will never leave us.
Under compulsion, I must add that God is merciful even towards us. I affirm many things against my will and must choke the torrent of lies and abuse I should like to vomit out.
God was merciful by not allowing our wicked wills to exhaust themselves on earth, as we would have been prepared to do. This would have added to our faults and therefore our pains. He caused us to die before our time, as in my case, or He brought in some other kind of mitigating circumstance.
Even now He shows Himself merciful towards us by not forcing us any closer to Him than we are here in this remote inferno. That lessens our torment. Every step bringing us closer to God would cause us a greater pain than a step closer to a burning furnace would cause you.
You were shocked once when we were out walking and I told you that a few days before my First Communion, my father had said to me: "My little Annette, the main thing is your beautiful white dress, all the rest is just make-believe." Because of your concern, I was almost ashamed. Now I sneer at it.
The only sensible thing is we were not allowed to receive Communion until the age of 12. By then I was already absorbed in worldly amusements and found it easy to set aside without scruple the things of religion. Thus I attached no great importance to my First Communion.
We are furious that many children go to Communion at the age of seven. We do all we can to make people believe that children have insufficient knowledge at that age.
First they must have time to commit a few mortal sins. Then the little white disc will not do so much damage to our cause as it would when faith, hope, and charity (aagh, these things!) received in Baptism are still alive in their hearts. If you remember I was already thinking along these lines when I was on earth.
I have already mentioned my father. He often used to fight with my mother. I did not say much to you about it because I was ashamed. How ridiculous, to be ashamed of something evil. It is all the same to us here.
My parents no longer slept in the same room. I was in with my mother, and my father had the room next door, so that he could come in as late as he liked. He used to drink heavily, and was squandering all of our money on alcohol. My sisters both went out to work because they said they needed the money, and my mother took a job to bring something in as well. During the last year of his life my father often used to beat my mother when she would not let him have any money.
On the other hand, he was always kind to me. One day--I told you about this and you were shocked at my capriciousness (come to that, was there anything about me that did not shock you?)--anyhow one day my father bought me a pair of shoes, and I made him take them back at least twice because the style and the heels were not up-to-date enough for me.
The night my father had the stroke something happened to me that I did not dare tell you about for fear you would take it the wrong way. But now you have to know about it. It is important because it was then that I was first attacked by the spirit that now torments me.
I was asleep in the bedroom with my mother. I could tell from her deep breathing that she was sound asleep. Suddenly I heard someone calling my name. A voice I did not know was saying, "What will happen if your father dies?"
Since he had been treating my mother so badly, I had stopped loving my father--in fact, from that time, I did not love anyone anymore. I was just fond of a few people who cared about me. Outright love, a love that does not expect any reward--that only exists in souls that are in the state of grace, and mine certainly wasn't.
I did not know who was asking me this strange question, so I just said, "But he isn't going to die." There was silence for a while, then I heard the same question again. Again I snapped back, "He is not going to die!" Again silence. Then a third time the voice asked me, "What will happen if your father dies?"
I began to think of how my father had come home drunk, shouting at my mother and beating her. I remembered how he had humiliated us in front of our friends and neighbours. I got angry and blurted out, "Well, it will serve him right!" After that there was silence.
In the morning when my mother wanted to go in and tidy up my father's room she found the door locked. Around midday they forced the door open and found my father's body lying half-dressed on the bed. He had been in bad health for a long time. He must have had some sort of accident while he was going to fetch another beer from the cellar.
Martha and you induced me to enter The Association of Young Ladies. I never hid the fact that I considered the talks given by the organisers pretty parochial sort of stuff, but the games were amusing. As you know I immediately took a leading role. I also liked the picnics.
I even let myself be induced to go to Confession and Communion occasionally, although I did not have anything to confess. I did not consider thoughts and words were of any importance, and at the time I was not sufficiently corrupted to go in for any really immoral actions.
Once you warned me, "Anne, if you do not pray more, you go to perdition." Well, you were right when you said that I did not pray much, and when I did, it was in a casual sort of way. I used to pray very little indeed, and even that unwillingly.
You were only too right. All of those who are now burning in hell were people who did not pray or did not pray enough.
Prayer is the first step towards God. And it is always the decisive step. Especially prayer to her who is the Mother of Christ, and whose name we never pronounce. Devotion to her rescues from the devil's clutches countless souls who would otherwise infallibly fall into his hands as a result of sin.
To tell you all this is burning me up with rage and I am only going on because I am forced to.
To pray is the easiest thing a man can do on earth. And it is precisely to this easy thing that God has tied everyone's salvation. That is the way God has arranged things. Little by little he gives to those who pray with perseverance so much light and so much strength, that even the most debased sinner will can pick himself up even if he were sunk in the slime up to his neck!
During the last years of my life I no longer prayed as I should have, so I deprived myself of those graces without which nobody can be saved.
Where we are now, we no longer receive any grace, and even if it were offered we should scorn it. All the fluctuations of earthly existence stop when you get here. You on earth can pass from a state of sin to a state of grace and then fall back into sin again, often through weakness, sometimes through malice.
But once you die all that comes to an end because it is only the instability of earthly life that makes it possible. From the moment of death our state is final and unchangeable.
Already on earth, with the passing of the years, these changes in the state of one's soul become rarer and rarer. It is true that up to the moment of death one can always return to God or turn away from Him.
But it does happen that the habits a man has followed during his lifetime all too often affect his behaviour at the point of death. Habit becomes second nature to him and he goes to his grave still following it.
That is what happened to me. For years I was living far away from God, and because of that, when I heard the final call of grace, I turned away from Him.
What was fatal for me was not that I sinned a lot, but that when I had sinned I had not the will to pick myself up again.
Several times you told me to go and listen to sermons or to read spiritual books, and I usually said that I hadn't the time. And yet what you said increased the uncertainty I felt inside like nothing else.
I must admit that by the time I left the young people's association I had already learned so much that I could very well have changed my ways. I was ill at ease and unhappy with my way of life. But always something stood between me and conversion.
I never suspected what was going on. You thought it would be so easy for me to come back to God. One day you told me, "Just make a good confession, Anne, and then everything will be alright." I felt you were right, but the world, the flesh and the devil already had too firm a hold on me.
At that time I had never believed that the devil was at work. But now I assure you that he has an enormous influence on people who are in the state I was in then.
Only many prayers, from myself and from others, together with sacrifices and sufferings, would have been able to tear me from his clutches, and even then it would have been a slow process.
If there are only few externally possessed, there are very many inwardly. The devil cannot steal the free will from those who give themselves under his influence. But in punishment of their, so to speak, methodical desertion, God allows the devil to settle in them.
I even hate the devil, and yet at the same time I am pleased about him, because he tries to destroy all of you people. Yes I hate him, him and his satellites, those formerly angelic spirits that fell with him at the beginning of time. There are millions of them prowling about the earth alike swarms of flies, and you do not even notice them. It is not reserved to us, the damned souls, to tempt you. That job is only for the fallen angels.
In truth every time they drag down here to hell a human soul their own torture is increased. But what will hatred not do?
I was wandering far from God, yet He followed me. I opened the way for grace by natural acts of charity which I performed quite often, simply because I was naturally inclined to do so.
There were times when God drew me towards a church, and then I felt a kind of homesickness. When my mother was ill and I was looking after her at the same time as doing my job at the office I was really making a kind of self-sacrifice. Those were the times when God's calls were especially strong.
Once, when you took me into a hospital chapel during the lunch break, something happened which led me to the brink of conversion. I wept!
But immediately the pleasures of the world flooded back into my mind and overshadowed God's grace. The good seed was choked by the thorns.
They often said at the office that religion was just a matter of emotion, so I took that excuse to reject that particular call of grace as I had all the others.
You told me off one day because instead of making a proper genuflection in church I just did a half-hearted sort of bob. You thought I was just being lazy. You did not even seem to suspect that I had already stopped believing in God's presence in the Sacrament. I believe in it now, but only in a natural way, as you believe in a storm when you see the damage it leaves behind.
Already I was just making up my own religion to suit myself. I agreed with the others at the office that when you died your soul went into someone else so that it went on a kind of everlasting pilgrimage. That solved the agonizing question of the Beyond and you did not have to worry about it anymore.
Why did you not remind me of the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, where Christ sends the one to Paradise straight after his death, and the other to Hell. Oh sure, you wouldn't have got anywhere with it, any more with any of your other pious old maids' stories.
Bit by bit I made up my own god--a god properly dressed up to be called "God" but sufficiently remote for me not to have any dealings with him. He was a vague sort of god, to be made use of when I needed him. A kind of pantheistic god if you like, the sort of abstract god who might come in useful for poetry but who wouldn't have anything to do with my real world. This god had no Heaven to reward me with and no Hell to punish me. My way of worshipping him was to leave him alone. It is easy to believe what suits you. For years I got on very well with my religion and so I was happy.
Only one thing could have shattered my stubbornness--one lasting and deep sorrow, but that sorrow never came. Now do you understand the meaning of the saying, "God chastises those he loves"?
One Sunday in July the young people's group arranged an outing somewhere. I would have quite liked to go but those old-hat talks, those old maids' ways of carrying on all put me off.
Besides, for some time I had been keeping a very different picture from that of the Madonna on the altar of my heart!
It was that good-looking Max in the shop next door. We had already cracked a joke together a few times. Well, as it happens, that very Sunday he had invited me to go out with him.
The girl he had been going out with was ill in the hospital. He had realised I had my eyes on him, though I hadn't then thought of marrying him. He was obviously well off, but he was too nice to all the girls, and up till then I had only wanted a man who did not think of anyone but me. I did not just want to be his wife, I wanted to be the only woman in his life.
I was always attracted by well-mannered men, and when we were out together Max went out of his way to be nice. Though you can imagine we did not talk about the pious stuff you and your friends go in for.
The next day at the office you were telling me off because I had not gone with the rest of you on the outing, and I told you what I had been doing that Sunday. The first thing you asked was, "Did you go to Mass?" You idiot! How could I have gone to Mass, seeing we had arranged to leave at six in the morning?
And no doubt you remember how I lost my patience and said, "God doesn't make such a fuss about these little things like you and your priests do!"
But now I have to admit that despite His infinite goodness, God weighs things up much more exactly than all your priests put together.
After that first outing with Max I only went back to the young people's association once more. That was for the Christmas celebrations. There was still something that attracted me to ceremonies of that kind, but at heart I was not one of you anymore.
Movies, dances, outings--it was one thing after another all the time. Max and I sometimes had rows, but I could always get him to make up.
I had a lot of trouble with his other girlfriend, who went after him like a mad thing as soon as she got out of hospital. That was a bit of luck for me because my noble calm which was quite the opposite of her behaviour made a big impression on Max and he ended up opting for me.
I had learned how to use words to turn him against her. On the surface I would seem to be saying nice things but inwardly I would be spitting venom. Feelings like that and that kind of behvaiour are an excellent preparation for hell. They are diabolical in the strictest sense of the word.
Why am I telling you this? It is to explain how I cut myself off once and for all from God.
Oh, it was not that at that stage Max and I had become very intimate in our relationship. I knew I would have gone down in his estimation if I had let myself go all the way too soon, and that knowledge held me back, but deep down I was ready to do anything if I thought it would further my aims, because I was out to get Max at any cost. I would have given absolutely anything to have him.
In the meantime we were slowly learning to love one another. We both had valuable personal qualities, which we were learning to appreciate in each other. I was clever, capable, good company, and at least in the last months before we married I was his only girlfriend.
My desertion of God consisted in this: that I made an idol of a human creature. That kind of thing can only happen when you love someone of the opposite sex with a love which remains bound by earthly considerations. It is this kind of unbalanced love that transfixes you, obsesses you and finally poisons you. My worship of Max was really becoming a kind of religion for me.
That was the time when, at the office, I started saying everything bad I could think of about churches and priests and Rosary-jabbering and all that kind of tomfoolery. You tried to defend it all, more or less subtly. You obviously did not realise that deep down I was not so bothered with insulting those things as with finding something to bolster up my conscience and find some justification for my desertion of God.
Deep down I had been rebelling against God. You did not understand it. You thought I was still a Catholic. I wanted people to think I was. I even used to pay my ecclesiastical dues. I told myself that a bit of insurance couldn't do me any harm.
Maybe your reactions were right sometimes. On me they made no lasting impression, since I made up my mind you must not be right. Because of this strained relationship between the two of us, neither of us was sorry to say Good-bye on the occasion of my marriage.
Before the wedding I went to Confession and Communion once more. It was a precept. My husband and I thought alike on this point. Why should we be made to comply with these formalities? We complied with this, like everyone else, as with the other formalities.
You people would call a Communion like that unworthy. Well, after that unworthy Communion, my conscience was a lot clearer. In any case, I never went to Communion again.
By and large our married life was spent in great harmony. We agreed about everything, including the fact that we did not want the burden of children. At a stretch my husband would have liked to have one, no more, of course. In the end I succeeded in dissuading him even from this desire.
I was far more concerned with dresses, luxurious furniture, going out, meeting friends, places of entertainment, picnics and trips by car, and other pleasures.
It was a year of pleasure on earth, the one that passed from my marriage to my sudden death. Every Sunday we went out in the car, or else we went to visit my husband's parents, who lived just as superficially as we did.
At heart, of course, I was not happy, even though I put on a smiling face for the world. There was always something indeterminate gnawing away inside me. I should have liked to believe that death, which I naturally thought was many years away, would be the end of everything.
Once when I was a child I heard a priest say in a sermon that God rewards us for every good work we perform and that when He cannot reward us in the life to come, he does it on Earth. That is very true.
Unexpectedly I had an inheritance from my Aunt Lotte. At the same time my husband started earning a very good salary. So I was able to furnish our new home in an attractive way.
By this time religion did not show its light but from afar off, pale, dim and flickering. The cafes in the towns and the inns we stayed at on our travels certainly did not point us towards God. All the people who went to those places lived like us, getting their pleasures from external things first and foremost instead of living a primarily interior life.
If we did sometimes visit churches when we were travelling around on holidays we only did so for their artistic interest. There was a religious atmosphere emanating from those buildings, especially the medieval ones, but I could neutralize it by making some criticism which seemed to the point at the time.
For instance I would have a go at some lay-brother for making a bit of a mess of showing us around, or for being sloppily dressed. Or I would think how scandalous it was that monks who pretend to be so holy should sell liqueurs, or perhaps I would think about the endless bell-ringing calling the people to services when it was only a matter of making money. That is how I turned God's grace away each time it knocked at the door of my soul.
I used to give free vent to my ill humor, especially at certain medieval representations of Hell in cemeteries or elsewhere, showing the devil roasting souls over glowing red coals, while his companions dragged new victims down with their long tails. Oh Claire! People can be mistaken in the way they depict Hell, but they can never exaggerate!
I always had my own ideas about the fires of hell. You remember we were discussing the question once and I struck a match under your nose and said sarcastically, "Does it smell like that?" You put the flame out quickly. Well, nobody puts it out here!
I assure you that the fire the Bible talks about is not just the torment of conscience. Fire is fire! What He said, "Away from Me, you accursed, into eternal fire," is to be understood literally. Literally!
You will say to me, how can spirits be affected by material fire? Doesn't your soul suffer on earth when you put your finger in the fire? The soul doesn't actually burn, but what agony your whole being goes through!
Likewise we here in this place are spiritually bound to the fire in our nature and our faculties. The soul is deprived of its natural freedom of action. We cannot think what we should like, nor as we should like. Do not be shocked at what I am telling you. This state means nothing to you, but I am being burned here--without being consumed.
Our greatest torture consists in the certain knowledge that we shall never see God. How can this torture us so much when we were so indifferent about it on earth? As long as the knife lies on the table, it leaves you cold. You see how sharp it is, but you are not afraid of it. Plunge the knife into the flesh and you will be writhing in pain. It is now that we actually feel the loss of God, whereas before we only thought about it.
Not all souls suffer to the same degree. The more maliciously and systematically a man has sinned, so much the more heavily will the loss of God weigh down upon him.
Catholics who are damned suffer more than members of other religions, because usually they have been offered and have refused more graces and more enlightenment. The one who had more knowledge in his lifetime suffers more severely than the one who knew less. If one has sinned out of malice, one suffers more intensely than if it had been out of weakness. But nobody suffers more than he has deserved. Oh, if only that were not true! Then I should reason to hate.
You said to me one day that it had been revealed to some saint that nobody goes to Hell without knowing. I laughed but afterwards I reassured myself by saying secretly, "In that case, if the need arises, I can always do an about-turn." That is true. Before my sudden end I did not know Hell for what it is. No human being knows it. But I was fully aware that it existed. I said to myself, "If you die you will go into the life beyond straight as an arrow aimed at God, and you will have to suffer the consequence."
But as I have already told you, despite such a thought, I did not change my ways. Force of habit pushed me on and I let it take control of me. For the older one gets, the stronger the power of habit becomes.
My death happened this way. One week ago--I am speaking according to your reckoning of time, for from the point of view of the pain I have been suffering, I could well say I have been burning in Hell already ten years--however a week ago, my husband and I on a Sunday went on a picnic. It was the last one for me.
The day was glorious. I was feeling on top of the world. An almost sinister foreboding sense of pleasure invaded me all the day long.
On the way back, my husband was dazzled by the lights of a car coming in the other direction and lost control of our car.
Automatically I uttered the name "Jesus!" Not as a prayer but as a shout. I felt a searing pain in every fibre of my being, though in comparison with what I am feeling now only a trifle. Then I lost consciousness.
How strange it was on that very morning that a persistent thought had been nagging me for no apparent reason: "You could go to Mass once more." It seemed like someone were begging me. It seemed like the last call of Love. Clear and resolute, my "No!" stifled it. I said to myself, "You have got to have done with that nonsense once and for all." Now I have to suffer the consequence of my resolution.
You will already know what happened after my death, what became of my husband and my mother, what happened to my corpse, and the details of my funeral. These are known to me through some natural knowledge we are allowed here. In fact we know what happens on earth but only in a dim and confused way but we know what touches us closely. I see the place where you are staying now.
At the moment of my death I found myself in a misty world, but then suddenly I awoke from the darkness, in the instant of my passing, and saw myself flooded by an overwhelming blinding light.
I was still at the place where my dead body was lying. It was like being in a theatre. All of a sudden, the lights go out, the curtain goes up with a terrific noise, and you find yourself faced with an unexpected scene, horrible illuminated.
What I was seeing was the scene of my whole life. My soul was shown to me as in a mirror, with all the graces I had rejected from my youth up until my final "No!" to God's call.
I felt myself like a murderer on trial in court and confronted with the dead body of his victim. Would I repent? Never! Was I ashamed? No, not that either!
However I could no longer bear to stand before the eyes of the God I had finally rejected. There was only one thing left for me. To flee from His presence!
As Cain fled from the dead body of Abel, so my soul rushed from that vision of horror. And that was the Particular Judgment. The invisible Judge pronounced sentence: "Away from Me!"
Then my soul, clothed in sulphur, hurled itself like a shadow headlong into the place of everlasting torment.
Don't Despair Say This Prayer
Put on a Miraculous Medal and say this prayer every day. Remember O most gracious Virgin Mary that never was it known in any age that anyone who fled to your protection, implored your help, or sought your intercession, was left unaided. Inspired with this confidence, I fly unto you, O Virgin of Virgins, my Mother, to you do I come, before you I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions but in your clemency, hear and answer me. Amen.
Although they were never very close friends, they shared a courteous mutual regard, which led to an exchange of ideas, and eventually of confidences.
Claire professed herself openly religious and felt it her duty to instruct and admonish Annette when the latter appeared excessively casual or superficial in religious matters.
In due course Annette got married and left the firm. A year later, in the autumn of 1937, Claire was on holiday at Lake Garda in northern Italy. Towards the middle of September, she received a letter from her mother: "Annette is dead. She was the victim of a motor car accident and was buried yesterday at Wald-Friedhof" or Forest Cemetery.
Claire was frightened since she knew her friend had not been very religious. Had she been prepared to appear before God? Dying suddenly, what was the state of her soul at the moment of death? What had happened to her?
The following morning Claire attended Holy Mass, received Holy Communion, and prayed fervently for her friend.
That same night Claire dreamed that she heard the thud of something dropped outside the front door, that she had got up and found an envelope addressed to her in the unmistakeable handwriting of Annette.
Upon waking Claire was able to remember and write down word-for-word the entire content of the letter.
The experience was so moving and life-changing that, after seeing to publication of the letter as of benefit to others, Claire became a nun.
Here then, as related by Claire, is Annette's message from beyond the grave.
Clara, do not pray for me! I am in hell. If I tell you this and speak at length about it, do not think it is because of our friendship. We here do not love anyone anymore.
I do this as under constraint. In truth I would like to see you too cast into this place where I must remain forever.
Perhaps that angers you. But here we all think that way. Our will is hardened in evil, what you call evil. Even when we do something good, as I do now in opening your eyes about hell, it is never because of a good intention.
Do you remember when we first met four years ago? You were then 23 and had already been with the firm for six months. Because I was a beginner, you gave me some helpful advice and put me in touch with some good people, whatever good means. Back then I praised your love of neighbor. How ridiculous! Your help was mere coquetry. We here don't acknowledge any good in anybody.
Do you remember what I told you about my youth? Now I am painfully compelled to fill in some of the gaps.
According to the plan of my parents, I should never have even existed. A misfortune brought about my conception. My two sisters were already 14 and 15 when I was born.
Would that I had never existed! Would that I could now annihilate myself! Escape these tortures! No pleasure would equal that with which I would abandon my existence, as a garment of ashes blown away by the wind lost in nothingness. But I must continue to exist. As I chose to make myself, as a ruined person.
When father and mother, still young, left the country for the city, they lost touch with the Church and were keeping company with other irreligious people.
They had met at a dance and after six months of companionship, they had to get married. As a result of the nuptial ceremony, so much holy water stuck to them that my mother attended Sunday Mass a couple of times a year.
But, she never taught me to pray. Instead, she was completely taken up with the daily cares of life, even though our situation was not that bad.
Those words--prayer, Mass, religious instruction, holy water, Church--fill me with such strong repugnance that I find it unspeakably revolting to utter them. I hate all that, as I hate all those who go to church, and in general every human being, and every thing.
From a great many things do we receive torment. Every knowledge received at the hour of death, every remembrance of things lived or known, is for us a piercing flame. In each remembrance, good and bad, we see the way in which grace was present, the graces we spurned, ignored, neglected.
What a torture is this! We do not eat, we do not sleep, we do not stand, we do not walk. Chained up, with weeping and gnashing of teeth, we look with horror at the ruins of our life.
All that is left is hating and suffering. Do you hear? We here drink hatred like water, even among ourselves. Above all we hate God.
With reluctance do I force myself to make you understand. The elect in heaven cannot help loving God because they see Him without veil in all His dazzling beauty. That gives them indescribable bliss. We know this and the knowledge makes us furious.
Men on earth, who know God from creation and from revelation, can love Him, but they are not compelled to do so.
The believer--I say this with gnashing of teeth--who contemplates Christ with his arms outstretched on the cross will end up by loving Him.
But he whom God approaches only in the final storm, as punisher, as just avenger, such a person, whom God has rejected, cannot but hate Him eternally with all the audacity of his wicked will.
Yes, hate Him, with all the strength of a freely willed decision against Him. We died with willful resolve to be separated from God. Even now we would not wish to change it, nor shall we ever wish to.
Do you understand now why hell lasts forever? It is because our wills were fixed for all eternity at the moment of death. Our obstinacy will never leave us.
Under compulsion, I must add that God is merciful even towards us. I affirm many things against my will and must choke the torrent of lies and abuse I should like to vomit out.
God was merciful by not allowing our wicked wills to exhaust themselves on earth, as we would have been prepared to do. This would have added to our faults and therefore our pains. He caused us to die before our time, as in my case, or He brought in some other kind of mitigating circumstance.
Even now He shows Himself merciful towards us by not forcing us any closer to Him than we are here in this remote inferno. That lessens our torment. Every step bringing us closer to God would cause us a greater pain than a step closer to a burning furnace would cause you.
You were shocked once when we were out walking and I told you that a few days before my First Communion, my father had said to me: "My little Annette, the main thing is your beautiful white dress, all the rest is just make-believe." Because of your concern, I was almost ashamed. Now I sneer at it.
The only sensible thing is we were not allowed to receive Communion until the age of 12. By then I was already absorbed in worldly amusements and found it easy to set aside without scruple the things of religion. Thus I attached no great importance to my First Communion.
We are furious that many children go to Communion at the age of seven. We do all we can to make people believe that children have insufficient knowledge at that age.
First they must have time to commit a few mortal sins. Then the little white disc will not do so much damage to our cause as it would when faith, hope, and charity (aagh, these things!) received in Baptism are still alive in their hearts. If you remember I was already thinking along these lines when I was on earth.
I have already mentioned my father. He often used to fight with my mother. I did not say much to you about it because I was ashamed. How ridiculous, to be ashamed of something evil. It is all the same to us here.
My parents no longer slept in the same room. I was in with my mother, and my father had the room next door, so that he could come in as late as he liked. He used to drink heavily, and was squandering all of our money on alcohol. My sisters both went out to work because they said they needed the money, and my mother took a job to bring something in as well. During the last year of his life my father often used to beat my mother when she would not let him have any money.
On the other hand, he was always kind to me. One day--I told you about this and you were shocked at my capriciousness (come to that, was there anything about me that did not shock you?)--anyhow one day my father bought me a pair of shoes, and I made him take them back at least twice because the style and the heels were not up-to-date enough for me.
The night my father had the stroke something happened to me that I did not dare tell you about for fear you would take it the wrong way. But now you have to know about it. It is important because it was then that I was first attacked by the spirit that now torments me.
I was asleep in the bedroom with my mother. I could tell from her deep breathing that she was sound asleep. Suddenly I heard someone calling my name. A voice I did not know was saying, "What will happen if your father dies?"
Since he had been treating my mother so badly, I had stopped loving my father--in fact, from that time, I did not love anyone anymore. I was just fond of a few people who cared about me. Outright love, a love that does not expect any reward--that only exists in souls that are in the state of grace, and mine certainly wasn't.
I did not know who was asking me this strange question, so I just said, "But he isn't going to die." There was silence for a while, then I heard the same question again. Again I snapped back, "He is not going to die!" Again silence. Then a third time the voice asked me, "What will happen if your father dies?"
I began to think of how my father had come home drunk, shouting at my mother and beating her. I remembered how he had humiliated us in front of our friends and neighbours. I got angry and blurted out, "Well, it will serve him right!" After that there was silence.
In the morning when my mother wanted to go in and tidy up my father's room she found the door locked. Around midday they forced the door open and found my father's body lying half-dressed on the bed. He had been in bad health for a long time. He must have had some sort of accident while he was going to fetch another beer from the cellar.
Martha and you induced me to enter The Association of Young Ladies. I never hid the fact that I considered the talks given by the organisers pretty parochial sort of stuff, but the games were amusing. As you know I immediately took a leading role. I also liked the picnics.
I even let myself be induced to go to Confession and Communion occasionally, although I did not have anything to confess. I did not consider thoughts and words were of any importance, and at the time I was not sufficiently corrupted to go in for any really immoral actions.
Once you warned me, "Anne, if you do not pray more, you go to perdition." Well, you were right when you said that I did not pray much, and when I did, it was in a casual sort of way. I used to pray very little indeed, and even that unwillingly.
You were only too right. All of those who are now burning in hell were people who did not pray or did not pray enough.
Prayer is the first step towards God. And it is always the decisive step. Especially prayer to her who is the Mother of Christ, and whose name we never pronounce. Devotion to her rescues from the devil's clutches countless souls who would otherwise infallibly fall into his hands as a result of sin.
To tell you all this is burning me up with rage and I am only going on because I am forced to.
To pray is the easiest thing a man can do on earth. And it is precisely to this easy thing that God has tied everyone's salvation. That is the way God has arranged things. Little by little he gives to those who pray with perseverance so much light and so much strength, that even the most debased sinner will can pick himself up even if he were sunk in the slime up to his neck!
During the last years of my life I no longer prayed as I should have, so I deprived myself of those graces without which nobody can be saved.
Where we are now, we no longer receive any grace, and even if it were offered we should scorn it. All the fluctuations of earthly existence stop when you get here. You on earth can pass from a state of sin to a state of grace and then fall back into sin again, often through weakness, sometimes through malice.
But once you die all that comes to an end because it is only the instability of earthly life that makes it possible. From the moment of death our state is final and unchangeable.
Already on earth, with the passing of the years, these changes in the state of one's soul become rarer and rarer. It is true that up to the moment of death one can always return to God or turn away from Him.
But it does happen that the habits a man has followed during his lifetime all too often affect his behaviour at the point of death. Habit becomes second nature to him and he goes to his grave still following it.
That is what happened to me. For years I was living far away from God, and because of that, when I heard the final call of grace, I turned away from Him.
What was fatal for me was not that I sinned a lot, but that when I had sinned I had not the will to pick myself up again.
Several times you told me to go and listen to sermons or to read spiritual books, and I usually said that I hadn't the time. And yet what you said increased the uncertainty I felt inside like nothing else.
I must admit that by the time I left the young people's association I had already learned so much that I could very well have changed my ways. I was ill at ease and unhappy with my way of life. But always something stood between me and conversion.
I never suspected what was going on. You thought it would be so easy for me to come back to God. One day you told me, "Just make a good confession, Anne, and then everything will be alright." I felt you were right, but the world, the flesh and the devil already had too firm a hold on me.
At that time I had never believed that the devil was at work. But now I assure you that he has an enormous influence on people who are in the state I was in then.
Only many prayers, from myself and from others, together with sacrifices and sufferings, would have been able to tear me from his clutches, and even then it would have been a slow process.
If there are only few externally possessed, there are very many inwardly. The devil cannot steal the free will from those who give themselves under his influence. But in punishment of their, so to speak, methodical desertion, God allows the devil to settle in them.
I even hate the devil, and yet at the same time I am pleased about him, because he tries to destroy all of you people. Yes I hate him, him and his satellites, those formerly angelic spirits that fell with him at the beginning of time. There are millions of them prowling about the earth alike swarms of flies, and you do not even notice them. It is not reserved to us, the damned souls, to tempt you. That job is only for the fallen angels.
In truth every time they drag down here to hell a human soul their own torture is increased. But what will hatred not do?
I was wandering far from God, yet He followed me. I opened the way for grace by natural acts of charity which I performed quite often, simply because I was naturally inclined to do so.
There were times when God drew me towards a church, and then I felt a kind of homesickness. When my mother was ill and I was looking after her at the same time as doing my job at the office I was really making a kind of self-sacrifice. Those were the times when God's calls were especially strong.
Once, when you took me into a hospital chapel during the lunch break, something happened which led me to the brink of conversion. I wept!
But immediately the pleasures of the world flooded back into my mind and overshadowed God's grace. The good seed was choked by the thorns.
They often said at the office that religion was just a matter of emotion, so I took that excuse to reject that particular call of grace as I had all the others.
You told me off one day because instead of making a proper genuflection in church I just did a half-hearted sort of bob. You thought I was just being lazy. You did not even seem to suspect that I had already stopped believing in God's presence in the Sacrament. I believe in it now, but only in a natural way, as you believe in a storm when you see the damage it leaves behind.
Already I was just making up my own religion to suit myself. I agreed with the others at the office that when you died your soul went into someone else so that it went on a kind of everlasting pilgrimage. That solved the agonizing question of the Beyond and you did not have to worry about it anymore.
Why did you not remind me of the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, where Christ sends the one to Paradise straight after his death, and the other to Hell. Oh sure, you wouldn't have got anywhere with it, any more with any of your other pious old maids' stories.
Bit by bit I made up my own god--a god properly dressed up to be called "God" but sufficiently remote for me not to have any dealings with him. He was a vague sort of god, to be made use of when I needed him. A kind of pantheistic god if you like, the sort of abstract god who might come in useful for poetry but who wouldn't have anything to do with my real world. This god had no Heaven to reward me with and no Hell to punish me. My way of worshipping him was to leave him alone. It is easy to believe what suits you. For years I got on very well with my religion and so I was happy.
Only one thing could have shattered my stubbornness--one lasting and deep sorrow, but that sorrow never came. Now do you understand the meaning of the saying, "God chastises those he loves"?
One Sunday in July the young people's group arranged an outing somewhere. I would have quite liked to go but those old-hat talks, those old maids' ways of carrying on all put me off.
Besides, for some time I had been keeping a very different picture from that of the Madonna on the altar of my heart!
It was that good-looking Max in the shop next door. We had already cracked a joke together a few times. Well, as it happens, that very Sunday he had invited me to go out with him.
The girl he had been going out with was ill in the hospital. He had realised I had my eyes on him, though I hadn't then thought of marrying him. He was obviously well off, but he was too nice to all the girls, and up till then I had only wanted a man who did not think of anyone but me. I did not just want to be his wife, I wanted to be the only woman in his life.
I was always attracted by well-mannered men, and when we were out together Max went out of his way to be nice. Though you can imagine we did not talk about the pious stuff you and your friends go in for.
The next day at the office you were telling me off because I had not gone with the rest of you on the outing, and I told you what I had been doing that Sunday. The first thing you asked was, "Did you go to Mass?" You idiot! How could I have gone to Mass, seeing we had arranged to leave at six in the morning?
And no doubt you remember how I lost my patience and said, "God doesn't make such a fuss about these little things like you and your priests do!"
But now I have to admit that despite His infinite goodness, God weighs things up much more exactly than all your priests put together.
After that first outing with Max I only went back to the young people's association once more. That was for the Christmas celebrations. There was still something that attracted me to ceremonies of that kind, but at heart I was not one of you anymore.
Movies, dances, outings--it was one thing after another all the time. Max and I sometimes had rows, but I could always get him to make up.
I had a lot of trouble with his other girlfriend, who went after him like a mad thing as soon as she got out of hospital. That was a bit of luck for me because my noble calm which was quite the opposite of her behaviour made a big impression on Max and he ended up opting for me.
I had learned how to use words to turn him against her. On the surface I would seem to be saying nice things but inwardly I would be spitting venom. Feelings like that and that kind of behvaiour are an excellent preparation for hell. They are diabolical in the strictest sense of the word.
Why am I telling you this? It is to explain how I cut myself off once and for all from God.
Oh, it was not that at that stage Max and I had become very intimate in our relationship. I knew I would have gone down in his estimation if I had let myself go all the way too soon, and that knowledge held me back, but deep down I was ready to do anything if I thought it would further my aims, because I was out to get Max at any cost. I would have given absolutely anything to have him.
In the meantime we were slowly learning to love one another. We both had valuable personal qualities, which we were learning to appreciate in each other. I was clever, capable, good company, and at least in the last months before we married I was his only girlfriend.
My desertion of God consisted in this: that I made an idol of a human creature. That kind of thing can only happen when you love someone of the opposite sex with a love which remains bound by earthly considerations. It is this kind of unbalanced love that transfixes you, obsesses you and finally poisons you. My worship of Max was really becoming a kind of religion for me.
That was the time when, at the office, I started saying everything bad I could think of about churches and priests and Rosary-jabbering and all that kind of tomfoolery. You tried to defend it all, more or less subtly. You obviously did not realise that deep down I was not so bothered with insulting those things as with finding something to bolster up my conscience and find some justification for my desertion of God.
Deep down I had been rebelling against God. You did not understand it. You thought I was still a Catholic. I wanted people to think I was. I even used to pay my ecclesiastical dues. I told myself that a bit of insurance couldn't do me any harm.
Maybe your reactions were right sometimes. On me they made no lasting impression, since I made up my mind you must not be right. Because of this strained relationship between the two of us, neither of us was sorry to say Good-bye on the occasion of my marriage.
Before the wedding I went to Confession and Communion once more. It was a precept. My husband and I thought alike on this point. Why should we be made to comply with these formalities? We complied with this, like everyone else, as with the other formalities.
You people would call a Communion like that unworthy. Well, after that unworthy Communion, my conscience was a lot clearer. In any case, I never went to Communion again.
By and large our married life was spent in great harmony. We agreed about everything, including the fact that we did not want the burden of children. At a stretch my husband would have liked to have one, no more, of course. In the end I succeeded in dissuading him even from this desire.
I was far more concerned with dresses, luxurious furniture, going out, meeting friends, places of entertainment, picnics and trips by car, and other pleasures.
It was a year of pleasure on earth, the one that passed from my marriage to my sudden death. Every Sunday we went out in the car, or else we went to visit my husband's parents, who lived just as superficially as we did.
At heart, of course, I was not happy, even though I put on a smiling face for the world. There was always something indeterminate gnawing away inside me. I should have liked to believe that death, which I naturally thought was many years away, would be the end of everything.
Once when I was a child I heard a priest say in a sermon that God rewards us for every good work we perform and that when He cannot reward us in the life to come, he does it on Earth. That is very true.
Unexpectedly I had an inheritance from my Aunt Lotte. At the same time my husband started earning a very good salary. So I was able to furnish our new home in an attractive way.
By this time religion did not show its light but from afar off, pale, dim and flickering. The cafes in the towns and the inns we stayed at on our travels certainly did not point us towards God. All the people who went to those places lived like us, getting their pleasures from external things first and foremost instead of living a primarily interior life.
If we did sometimes visit churches when we were travelling around on holidays we only did so for their artistic interest. There was a religious atmosphere emanating from those buildings, especially the medieval ones, but I could neutralize it by making some criticism which seemed to the point at the time.
For instance I would have a go at some lay-brother for making a bit of a mess of showing us around, or for being sloppily dressed. Or I would think how scandalous it was that monks who pretend to be so holy should sell liqueurs, or perhaps I would think about the endless bell-ringing calling the people to services when it was only a matter of making money. That is how I turned God's grace away each time it knocked at the door of my soul.
I used to give free vent to my ill humor, especially at certain medieval representations of Hell in cemeteries or elsewhere, showing the devil roasting souls over glowing red coals, while his companions dragged new victims down with their long tails. Oh Claire! People can be mistaken in the way they depict Hell, but they can never exaggerate!
I always had my own ideas about the fires of hell. You remember we were discussing the question once and I struck a match under your nose and said sarcastically, "Does it smell like that?" You put the flame out quickly. Well, nobody puts it out here!
I assure you that the fire the Bible talks about is not just the torment of conscience. Fire is fire! What He said, "Away from Me, you accursed, into eternal fire," is to be understood literally. Literally!
You will say to me, how can spirits be affected by material fire? Doesn't your soul suffer on earth when you put your finger in the fire? The soul doesn't actually burn, but what agony your whole being goes through!
Likewise we here in this place are spiritually bound to the fire in our nature and our faculties. The soul is deprived of its natural freedom of action. We cannot think what we should like, nor as we should like. Do not be shocked at what I am telling you. This state means nothing to you, but I am being burned here--without being consumed.
Our greatest torture consists in the certain knowledge that we shall never see God. How can this torture us so much when we were so indifferent about it on earth? As long as the knife lies on the table, it leaves you cold. You see how sharp it is, but you are not afraid of it. Plunge the knife into the flesh and you will be writhing in pain. It is now that we actually feel the loss of God, whereas before we only thought about it.
Not all souls suffer to the same degree. The more maliciously and systematically a man has sinned, so much the more heavily will the loss of God weigh down upon him.
Catholics who are damned suffer more than members of other religions, because usually they have been offered and have refused more graces and more enlightenment. The one who had more knowledge in his lifetime suffers more severely than the one who knew less. If one has sinned out of malice, one suffers more intensely than if it had been out of weakness. But nobody suffers more than he has deserved. Oh, if only that were not true! Then I should reason to hate.
You said to me one day that it had been revealed to some saint that nobody goes to Hell without knowing. I laughed but afterwards I reassured myself by saying secretly, "In that case, if the need arises, I can always do an about-turn." That is true. Before my sudden end I did not know Hell for what it is. No human being knows it. But I was fully aware that it existed. I said to myself, "If you die you will go into the life beyond straight as an arrow aimed at God, and you will have to suffer the consequence."
But as I have already told you, despite such a thought, I did not change my ways. Force of habit pushed me on and I let it take control of me. For the older one gets, the stronger the power of habit becomes.
My death happened this way. One week ago--I am speaking according to your reckoning of time, for from the point of view of the pain I have been suffering, I could well say I have been burning in Hell already ten years--however a week ago, my husband and I on a Sunday went on a picnic. It was the last one for me.
The day was glorious. I was feeling on top of the world. An almost sinister foreboding sense of pleasure invaded me all the day long.
On the way back, my husband was dazzled by the lights of a car coming in the other direction and lost control of our car.
Automatically I uttered the name "Jesus!" Not as a prayer but as a shout. I felt a searing pain in every fibre of my being, though in comparison with what I am feeling now only a trifle. Then I lost consciousness.
How strange it was on that very morning that a persistent thought had been nagging me for no apparent reason: "You could go to Mass once more." It seemed like someone were begging me. It seemed like the last call of Love. Clear and resolute, my "No!" stifled it. I said to myself, "You have got to have done with that nonsense once and for all." Now I have to suffer the consequence of my resolution.
You will already know what happened after my death, what became of my husband and my mother, what happened to my corpse, and the details of my funeral. These are known to me through some natural knowledge we are allowed here. In fact we know what happens on earth but only in a dim and confused way but we know what touches us closely. I see the place where you are staying now.
At the moment of my death I found myself in a misty world, but then suddenly I awoke from the darkness, in the instant of my passing, and saw myself flooded by an overwhelming blinding light.
I was still at the place where my dead body was lying. It was like being in a theatre. All of a sudden, the lights go out, the curtain goes up with a terrific noise, and you find yourself faced with an unexpected scene, horrible illuminated.
What I was seeing was the scene of my whole life. My soul was shown to me as in a mirror, with all the graces I had rejected from my youth up until my final "No!" to God's call.
I felt myself like a murderer on trial in court and confronted with the dead body of his victim. Would I repent? Never! Was I ashamed? No, not that either!
However I could no longer bear to stand before the eyes of the God I had finally rejected. There was only one thing left for me. To flee from His presence!
As Cain fled from the dead body of Abel, so my soul rushed from that vision of horror. And that was the Particular Judgment. The invisible Judge pronounced sentence: "Away from Me!"
Then my soul, clothed in sulphur, hurled itself like a shadow headlong into the place of everlasting torment.
Don't Despair Say This Prayer
Put on a Miraculous Medal and say this prayer every day. Remember O most gracious Virgin Mary that never was it known in any age that anyone who fled to your protection, implored your help, or sought your intercession, was left unaided. Inspired with this confidence, I fly unto you, O Virgin of Virgins, my Mother, to you do I come, before you I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions but in your clemency, hear and answer me. Amen.
History of the Monastery System
In the early Church there were Ascetes, that is, men and women who sought the secret of the more perfect life.
They lived in perpetual poverty and chastity, prayed and fasted much, and practised other austerities. They considered it their duty to visit and assist the sick, the poor and the prisoners.
From the earliest times young women consecrated their virginity to God. In the third century this was done solemnly in the presence of the bishop, from whom they received the veil which they wore whenever they appeared in public.
They enjoyed universal esteem and at the religious services places of honour were reserved for them. St.Cyprian calls the consecrated virgins the "elite of the faithful, who have found the pearl of great price and though still living on the earth belong to the family of the Angels."
During the Emperor Decian's persecution, Paul, a rich young man of Thebes in Egypt, retired to a cave at the foot of a mountain and for 90 years led the life of a hermit. He spent his days in prayer and contemplation; a palm-tree furnished him with food and clothing.
Shortly before his death in 340 St Paul the Hermit was visited by St.Antony of the Desert, "Father of monasticism," an institution that was to play such an important part in the subsequent history of the Church.
In these men and women the spirit triumphed over the flesh, grace over nature, the divine power of Christianity over a world steeped in vice and luxury. So wrote John Laux in his Church History.
The famous St.Athenasius visited St.Antony and took the monastic concept with him to Rome and thence to Gaul where he gave it to St.Martin of Tours in northern Gaul who founded there the Marmoutiers monastery.
St.Patrick, convinced that he was called by God to go as a missionary to Ireland, set to work to prepare himself for his lifework. After spending some time in the monastery of St.Honoratus at Lerins in northern Gaul, he settled at nearby Auxerre. Here he remained nearly 15 years, devoting himself to prayer and study and the exercise of the function of deaconship under the holy bishops Amator and Germanus.
St Germanus no doubt with the consent of Pope Celestine consecrated Patrick as bishop and sent him to Ireland with a few chosen companions. Patrick landed at Wicklow in 432. He was soon joined by a number of zealous Irishmen who he sent to Auxerre to be trained for the sacred ministry.
Thoroughly acquainted as he was with the monastic system of the Continent, it was natural that Patrick should establish monasteries in Ireland.
He himself writes that "innumerable sons of Scots [meaning the Irish] and daughters of kings...became monks and virgins of Christ."
The monastery system was spread by St.Patrick's Irish successors like St.Columba to Scotland. St.Aidan spread it to England, St.Columban to northern Europe at the same time as St.Benedict in Italy was establishing his successful version based on the timeless Rule of St.Benedict.
They lived in perpetual poverty and chastity, prayed and fasted much, and practised other austerities. They considered it their duty to visit and assist the sick, the poor and the prisoners.
From the earliest times young women consecrated their virginity to God. In the third century this was done solemnly in the presence of the bishop, from whom they received the veil which they wore whenever they appeared in public.
They enjoyed universal esteem and at the religious services places of honour were reserved for them. St.Cyprian calls the consecrated virgins the "elite of the faithful, who have found the pearl of great price and though still living on the earth belong to the family of the Angels."
During the Emperor Decian's persecution, Paul, a rich young man of Thebes in Egypt, retired to a cave at the foot of a mountain and for 90 years led the life of a hermit. He spent his days in prayer and contemplation; a palm-tree furnished him with food and clothing.
Shortly before his death in 340 St Paul the Hermit was visited by St.Antony of the Desert, "Father of monasticism," an institution that was to play such an important part in the subsequent history of the Church.
In these men and women the spirit triumphed over the flesh, grace over nature, the divine power of Christianity over a world steeped in vice and luxury. So wrote John Laux in his Church History.
The famous St.Athenasius visited St.Antony and took the monastic concept with him to Rome and thence to Gaul where he gave it to St.Martin of Tours in northern Gaul who founded there the Marmoutiers monastery.
St.Patrick, convinced that he was called by God to go as a missionary to Ireland, set to work to prepare himself for his lifework. After spending some time in the monastery of St.Honoratus at Lerins in northern Gaul, he settled at nearby Auxerre. Here he remained nearly 15 years, devoting himself to prayer and study and the exercise of the function of deaconship under the holy bishops Amator and Germanus.
St Germanus no doubt with the consent of Pope Celestine consecrated Patrick as bishop and sent him to Ireland with a few chosen companions. Patrick landed at Wicklow in 432. He was soon joined by a number of zealous Irishmen who he sent to Auxerre to be trained for the sacred ministry.
Thoroughly acquainted as he was with the monastic system of the Continent, it was natural that Patrick should establish monasteries in Ireland.
He himself writes that "innumerable sons of Scots [meaning the Irish] and daughters of kings...became monks and virgins of Christ."
The monastery system was spread by St.Patrick's Irish successors like St.Columba to Scotland. St.Aidan spread it to England, St.Columban to northern Europe at the same time as St.Benedict in Italy was establishing his successful version based on the timeless Rule of St.Benedict.
Come to our Monastery
Suppose you won the lottery and you're singing a line from the Bob Dylan song, "Well I don't want to work on Maggie's farm no more!"
What are you going to do? What are retired people doing with the little time they have left on Earth before they face the music?
Some are playing bingo or bowls or bridge or golf or the stockmarket. Others are making yet another tropical island paradise sunset tour.
Some are gardening or bushwalking or doing the picturesque pilgrim preamble from Lourdes to Compostella.
Others, to borrow Hugh McKay's words in his book Advance Australia Where? "have joined the swelling ranks of the so-called Grey Nomads on the highways of Australia, keeping their distance from the problems, irritations and uncertainties of a society in transition."
Others still, the angels among us, are volunteering, such as helping those reduced by infirmity to gaping at a flickering futureless image box until DNR/DNI the black hole flatlines, from incarceration to incineration, telly for jelly and your pills for free.
Hugh McKay wrote: "We might be coming out of the dreamy period simply because it's time. If that's what's happening, whatever the cause, the 'big picture' will once again come into focus and we will be prepared to listen more attentively to the voices of activists, artists, provocateurs...We might also find that home renovations have not in the end satisfied our quest for the meaning of life...What are we here for? In the world today 1% owns 50% of the assets. The income of the 300 top salary earners surpasses the combined income of half the world's population."
The unprepared soul is like the rich investor who enjoys fat and steady profits from his "uncovered short spreads" until one day a great tremor rocks the market.
Here are two questions for the world's richest man, Warren Buffett, personal net worth $100 billion.
Is it clever to forfeit the riches of Heaven for something less, the mere temporary wealth and pleasures of this world?
And if you're not sure Heaven exists, why not do the simple Miraculous Medal Test and find out to your own satisfaction?
This simple test (see below) brings the gift of faith.
Any sincere seeker of the truth will discover that Heaven does exist, and Jesus, and his Queen Mother, the Virgin Mary, and the angels and saints--that it's true, the whole thing, all true as was divinely revealed and taught by the late great Church.
The man who has everything but does not have a reasonably based hope of Heaven really has nothing.
Faith is a gift. What better place to nourish that gift than in a monastery? What better retirement village than the Abbey?
Surprisingly, there is not a single Gregorian chant style monastery or convent abbey in the whole of Australia.
Calling young and old, calling all retirees, calling all benefactors!
Register your interest in building Heaven's anteroom herebelow Downunder.
What are you going to do? What are retired people doing with the little time they have left on Earth before they face the music?
Some are playing bingo or bowls or bridge or golf or the stockmarket. Others are making yet another tropical island paradise sunset tour.
Some are gardening or bushwalking or doing the picturesque pilgrim preamble from Lourdes to Compostella.
Others, to borrow Hugh McKay's words in his book Advance Australia Where? "have joined the swelling ranks of the so-called Grey Nomads on the highways of Australia, keeping their distance from the problems, irritations and uncertainties of a society in transition."
Others still, the angels among us, are volunteering, such as helping those reduced by infirmity to gaping at a flickering futureless image box until DNR/DNI the black hole flatlines, from incarceration to incineration, telly for jelly and your pills for free.
Hugh McKay wrote: "We might be coming out of the dreamy period simply because it's time. If that's what's happening, whatever the cause, the 'big picture' will once again come into focus and we will be prepared to listen more attentively to the voices of activists, artists, provocateurs...We might also find that home renovations have not in the end satisfied our quest for the meaning of life...What are we here for? In the world today 1% owns 50% of the assets. The income of the 300 top salary earners surpasses the combined income of half the world's population."
The unprepared soul is like the rich investor who enjoys fat and steady profits from his "uncovered short spreads" until one day a great tremor rocks the market.
Here are two questions for the world's richest man, Warren Buffett, personal net worth $100 billion.
Is it clever to forfeit the riches of Heaven for something less, the mere temporary wealth and pleasures of this world?
And if you're not sure Heaven exists, why not do the simple Miraculous Medal Test and find out to your own satisfaction?
This simple test (see below) brings the gift of faith.
Any sincere seeker of the truth will discover that Heaven does exist, and Jesus, and his Queen Mother, the Virgin Mary, and the angels and saints--that it's true, the whole thing, all true as was divinely revealed and taught by the late great Church.
The man who has everything but does not have a reasonably based hope of Heaven really has nothing.
Faith is a gift. What better place to nourish that gift than in a monastery? What better retirement village than the Abbey?
Surprisingly, there is not a single Gregorian chant style monastery or convent abbey in the whole of Australia.
Calling young and old, calling all retirees, calling all benefactors!
Register your interest in building Heaven's anteroom herebelow Downunder.
Zac's Last Stand
Judging by the emptiness of the churches these days, sad to say, prayer is no longer something on people's agenda.
The churches are unwanted by the locals whose forebears built them.
Who needs a church now that we're "ecumenical" and we all know everybody goes to Heaven, right?
Emptied by scandals, or by a false sense of security, or the other side of the coin, despair, the churches today are their own tomb, for lack of a priest, or rather for the priest's distracted absence doing ... whatever ... fiddling while Rome burns.
Where in the world is God? Where is God in today's God-forsaken churches? Has the good Lord abandoned mankind to his own devices?
Not for old Zac. Zac reminds me of the Essene woman of the Gospel: "Anna, a prophetess...84 years a widow, who departing not from the Temple, served by fastings and prayers, night and day." For more about the Essenes see below.
Zac is short for Zachary or Zachariah and it means memory and also alludes to the last times for the world because the Old Testament prophet Zachariah wrote about the last days. Read the Book of Zachariah and you'll see.
"And they shall say to Him: What are these wounds in the midst of Your hands? And He shall say to them: With these I was wounded in the house of them that loved Me. Awake, O sword, against My shepherd and against the man that cleaves to Me, says the Lord of hosts. Strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered, and I will turn My hand to the little ones."
Who will deny that the shepherds have been struck with madness now and the little ones are all at God's mercy?
The memory word-stem Zac is found in the Hebrew word Azakarah or Azkara, meaning the Memorial Sacrifice, inadequately translated in English Bibles as commemoration or memorial or remembrance.
From that word for memory also came the name, the Ezkarenes, from which evolved the shorter word Essene.
Religion is for us, the people, but not about us, as misguided modern priests allege, and then wonder why they have lost their congregations.
True religion is about our remembrancing God in the strikingly evocative ritual way that he himself specified to his Apostles in the 40 days between the Resurrection and the Ascension.
How he did this is well depicted in the book that inspired Mel Gibson to film The Passion of the Christ: Anne Catherine Emmerich's The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. See below.
Jesus, friend and relative of the Essenes, confounded the rich, proud and nationalistic Judean Pharisees, and the unbelieving deists or agnostics, called the Sadducees, and the Levites of the Temple, with one question. Whose son is the Messiah? And they all answered the Son of David. Then why does David call him Lord? As in the Psalm, The Lord said to my Lord. The reason the Son of David is greater than David and he calls him Lord is because he is God. How does God come to us as a man and a son of David? Through the most pure Mary ever-Virgin.
The extended family of Mary and John the Baptist were mostly Essenes. The key to understanding the Essenes is that they were the most purist, devout and faithful of the Hebrews, building their lives around waiting in expectation of the Messiah.
This Messiah would not be a conquering soldier who would take over the Roman Empire and become world leader from Jerusalem as capital. Rather "my kingdom is not of this world."
God in human form would say, "Learn from me for I am meek and humble of heart," and he would suffer to give us this lesson in humility and obedience, for his trouble being killed by us. This sin of all sins he used to redeem us.
This God-man was predicted by the prophet Isaiah in chapter 9 and immortalized in the Messiah oratorio of Handel.
"For unto us a child is born, and unto to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace."
Zac also reminds me of Mary Magdalen on that Resurrection morn: "Woman, why are you weeping?" "Because they have taken away my Lord and I know not where they have laid him." See below for an imaginative account of the first time Magdalene laid eyes on Jesus.
If Zac won the lottery, he'd give the money to the same Timor village he sends part of his fortnightly pension.
Call him eccentric, call him quixotic, there he is, day in day out, keeping the doors of the local church open, inviting victims of the daily crisis to replenish the soul and mend the heart with heavenly help.
"Come to me all you that labour and are burdened and I will refresh you; take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you shall find rest for your souls; for my yoke is sweet and my burden light."
The churches are unwanted by the locals whose forebears built them.
Who needs a church now that we're "ecumenical" and we all know everybody goes to Heaven, right?
Emptied by scandals, or by a false sense of security, or the other side of the coin, despair, the churches today are their own tomb, for lack of a priest, or rather for the priest's distracted absence doing ... whatever ... fiddling while Rome burns.
Where in the world is God? Where is God in today's God-forsaken churches? Has the good Lord abandoned mankind to his own devices?
Not for old Zac. Zac reminds me of the Essene woman of the Gospel: "Anna, a prophetess...84 years a widow, who departing not from the Temple, served by fastings and prayers, night and day." For more about the Essenes see below.
Zac is short for Zachary or Zachariah and it means memory and also alludes to the last times for the world because the Old Testament prophet Zachariah wrote about the last days. Read the Book of Zachariah and you'll see.
"And they shall say to Him: What are these wounds in the midst of Your hands? And He shall say to them: With these I was wounded in the house of them that loved Me. Awake, O sword, against My shepherd and against the man that cleaves to Me, says the Lord of hosts. Strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered, and I will turn My hand to the little ones."
Who will deny that the shepherds have been struck with madness now and the little ones are all at God's mercy?
The memory word-stem Zac is found in the Hebrew word Azakarah or Azkara, meaning the Memorial Sacrifice, inadequately translated in English Bibles as commemoration or memorial or remembrance.
From that word for memory also came the name, the Ezkarenes, from which evolved the shorter word Essene.
Religion is for us, the people, but not about us, as misguided modern priests allege, and then wonder why they have lost their congregations.
True religion is about our remembrancing God in the strikingly evocative ritual way that he himself specified to his Apostles in the 40 days between the Resurrection and the Ascension.
How he did this is well depicted in the book that inspired Mel Gibson to film The Passion of the Christ: Anne Catherine Emmerich's The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. See below.
Jesus, friend and relative of the Essenes, confounded the rich, proud and nationalistic Judean Pharisees, and the unbelieving deists or agnostics, called the Sadducees, and the Levites of the Temple, with one question. Whose son is the Messiah? And they all answered the Son of David. Then why does David call him Lord? As in the Psalm, The Lord said to my Lord. The reason the Son of David is greater than David and he calls him Lord is because he is God. How does God come to us as a man and a son of David? Through the most pure Mary ever-Virgin.
The extended family of Mary and John the Baptist were mostly Essenes. The key to understanding the Essenes is that they were the most purist, devout and faithful of the Hebrews, building their lives around waiting in expectation of the Messiah.
This Messiah would not be a conquering soldier who would take over the Roman Empire and become world leader from Jerusalem as capital. Rather "my kingdom is not of this world."
God in human form would say, "Learn from me for I am meek and humble of heart," and he would suffer to give us this lesson in humility and obedience, for his trouble being killed by us. This sin of all sins he used to redeem us.
This God-man was predicted by the prophet Isaiah in chapter 9 and immortalized in the Messiah oratorio of Handel.
"For unto us a child is born, and unto to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace."
Zac also reminds me of Mary Magdalen on that Resurrection morn: "Woman, why are you weeping?" "Because they have taken away my Lord and I know not where they have laid him." See below for an imaginative account of the first time Magdalene laid eyes on Jesus.
If Zac won the lottery, he'd give the money to the same Timor village he sends part of his fortnightly pension.
Call him eccentric, call him quixotic, there he is, day in day out, keeping the doors of the local church open, inviting victims of the daily crisis to replenish the soul and mend the heart with heavenly help.
"Come to me all you that labour and are burdened and I will refresh you; take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you shall find rest for your souls; for my yoke is sweet and my burden light."
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
The Essenes: Who Were There?
The forebears of St.Anne, the mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary, lived at Mara in the region of Mount Horeb and were connected with devout Israelites called Essenes or Essaees. They have however changed their name three times, for they were first called Eskarenes, then Chasidaees, and finally Essenes.
Their first name, Eskarenes, came from the word Eskara or Azkara, which is the name for part of the unbloody sacrifice which is offered to God by being burnt and also for the sweet-smelling frankincense at the flour offering.
The second name Chasidaees means merciful, hasid meaning the mercy of God but came to mean devout. They formed a part of the army of Jacob Maccabean that sought to eject the Greeks from the Temple (in Greek Asidaioi). They were called by Philo and Josephus Essenaioi and by Pliny Esseni, who attributed to them a lineage of thousands of years.
The way of life of these devout people is an inheritance from the time of Moses and Aaron and in particular from the priests who carried the Ark of the Covenant. But it was not until the period between Isaiah and Jeremiah that their way of life was regularly established.
At the beginning there were not many of them. Later on, however, their settlements in the Promised Land occupied a space 24 hours' journey long and 36 hours' journey broad. They did not come to the region of the Jordan until later. They lived mostly on the slopes of Mount Horeb and Mount Carmel, the home of Elijah.
In the lifetime of St Anne's grandparents, the Essenes had a spiritual head who lived on Mount Horeb. He was an aged prophet called Archos or Arkas.
Their organization was like that of a religious order. All who wished to enter had to undergo a year of tests, and the length of time for which they were accepted was decided by prophetic inspirations from above.
The real members of the Order who lived in a community did not marry but lived in chastity. But there were others who had formerly been in the Order or were attached to it who married and carried out in their families and with their children and household something similar in many ways to the traditional discipline of the real Essenes. Their relationship with these was like that between the lay members of a Catholic Third Order or Tertiaries and the professed priests of the Order.
In all important matters, especially as to the marriages of their relations, these married Essenes always sought instruction and counsel from the aged prophet on Mount Horeb. St Anne's grandparents belonged to this kind of married Essenes.
The real Essenes were specially concerned with prophetic matters. Their head on Mount Horeb was often vouchsafed divine revelations in the cave of Elijah in respect of the coming of the Messiah. He had knowledge of the family from which the mother of the Messiah was to come.
At the time that he gave prophetic advice to the grandparents of St Anne in matters of marriage, he saw that the day of the Lord was approaching. He did not however know how long the birth of the Saviour's mother might still be delayed by sin, and so he was always preaching penance, mortification, prayer and inner sacrifice for this intention--pious exercise of which all Essenes had ever given the example. [In mirror image the second coming of the Messiah in justice not mercy is advanced by sin and deferred by penance]
Until Isaiah assembled these people together and gave them a more regular organization, they were scattered about the land of Israel, leading lives of piety and intent on mortification. They fought particularly against sexual immorality, and often by mutual consent lived in continence for long periods, living in huts far removed from their wives.
When they lived together as husband and wife, it was only with the intention of producing a holy offspring which might bring nearer the coming of the Saviour. I saw them eating apart from their wives, the wife came to take her meal after the husband had left the table.
There were ancestors of St Anne and of other holy people among these early Essenes. Jeremiah too was connected with them, and the men called "Sons of the Prophet" came from them. They often lived in the desert and round Mount Horeb and Carmel and later I saw many of them in Egypt.
I also saw that for a time they were driven away from Mount Horeb by war and were reassembled by new leaders. The Maccabees also belonged to them.
They had a great devotion to Moses and possessed a sacred piece of his clothing given by him to Aaron, from whom it has come down to them. This was their most precious relic, and I had a vision of some 15 of them being killed in defending it. Their prophet leaders had knowledge of the secret mysteries of the Ark of the Covenant.
The real Essenes who lived in chastity were indescribably pure and devout. They adopted children and brought them up to lead a very holy life. To be accepted as a member of the regular Order, a boy had to have reached the age of 14. Those who had been already tested had to undergo a year's novitiate, others two years.
The Essenes did not carry on any form of trade but exchanged the produce of their agriculture for whatever else they needed. If one of them had committed a grave sin, he was expelled from among them and excommunicated by their head. This excommunication had the force of that pronounced by Peter against Ananias who was struck dead by it. Their head knew by prophetic inspiration who had committed sin. I also saw some Essenes undergoing penitential punishment: they were obliged to stand in a stiff robe with their arms extended immovably in sleeves lined with thorns.
Mount Horeb was full of little caves, which formed the cells where they lived. An assembly hall of light wattlework had been built on to the mouth of one of the large caves. Here they came together at 11 o'clock in the morning and ate. Each had a small loaf of bread in front of him with a goblet. The head went from place to place and blessed each one's bread. After the meal they returned to their separate cells.
In this assembly hall there was an altar on which stood little blessed loaves covered up. They were in some way sacred and were I think distributed among the poor.
The Essenes had a great number of doves which were tame and ate out of their hands. They ate doves but also used them in the ritual ceremonies. They said something over them and let them fly away. I saw too that they released lambs in the desert after saying something over them, as if they were to take their sins on them. I saw them go three times a year to the Temple in Jerusalem. They also had priests among them whose special duty was the care of the sacred vestments; they cleaned them, contributed money for them, and also made new ones.
I saw them engaged in cattle-breeding and agriculture, but specially in gardening. Mount Horeb was full of gardens and fruit trees in the spaces between their huts. I saw many of them weaving and plaiting and also embroidering priests' vestments. I did not see them producing silk; that came in bundles to be sold to them, and they exchanged other produce for it.
In Jerusalem they had a quarter of their own to live in and a separate place in the Temple as well. The other Jews rather disliked them because of their austerity. I saw too that they sent presents to the Temple; for example great bunchs of grapes carried by two people on as pole.
I did not see the real Essenes offering bloody sacrifices in these later times.
I saw that before they journeyed to the Temple, they made a very rigorous preparation by prayer, fasting, and penance including even scourgings. If one laden with sins went to the Temple and to the Holy of Holies without having made atonement by penance, he usually died on the spot.
If on their journey or in Jerusalem itself, they found anyone who was ill or in any way helpless, they did not go to the Temple until they had given him all the aid in their power.
I saw that in general they employed themselves in healing. They gathered herbs and prepared potions. I saw also that those holy people whom I had seen some time before laying sick folk down on a bed of healing plants were Essenes. I saw too that the Essenes healed the sick by the laying-on of hands or by stretching themselves on them with arms extended to form a cross. I saw them also healing at a distance in a wonderful way, for the sick who could not come themeslves sent a representative to whom everything was done as it would have been to the sick person. The time was noted and the distant sick person was cured at that very hour.
I saw that the Essenes on Horeb had in their caves recesses in the walls where bones carefully wrapped in cotton and silk were kept as sacred relics behind gratings. They were bones of prophets who had lived here, and also of the children of Israel who had died near here. There were little pots of green plants standing beside them. The Essenes used to light lamps and pray before the bones in veneration of them.
All the unmarried Essenes who lived together in communities on Mount Horeb and elsewhere observed the greatest cleanliness.
They wore long white robes. The head of the Essenes on Horeb wore wonderfully priestly vestments during solemn religious services, after the manner of the high priest in Jerusalem, only shorter and not so magnificent. When he prayed and prophesied in the cave of Elijah on Mount Horeb, he always wore these sacred vestments, which consisted of about eight pieces. Amongst them was a very sacred relic, a sort of dalmatic or scapular, covering the breast and shoulders which Moses had worn next to his body and had given to Aaron, from whom it had later descended to the Essenes. The prophet Archos, their head on Mount Horeb, always wore this dalmatic next to his body when he was clothed in all his vestments and was praying for prophetic enlightenment...[goes into much detail about the priest's vestments ending with]A little plate of gold set with precious stones was fastened over the forehead.
The Essenes were very austere and frugal in their way of living. They generally ate only fruit, which was often cultivated in their gardens. I saw that Archos usually ate a bitter yellow fruit. He ruled over the Essenes for 90 years. I saw how St Anne's grandmother questioned him about her own marriage.
It is remarkable that it was always about female children that these prophets made predictions, and that Anna's ancestors and Anna herself had mostly daughters.
It was as if the object of all their devotions and prayers was to obatin from God a blessing on pious mothers from whose descendants the Blessed Virgin, the mother of the Saviour, should spring, as well as the family of his precursor John the Baptizer, and his servants and disciples.
ED: Many Essenes became followers of John the Baptist and from the two groups came the main influx of the first Jewish Christians.
Source: The Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary as told by the visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich.
Their first name, Eskarenes, came from the word Eskara or Azkara, which is the name for part of the unbloody sacrifice which is offered to God by being burnt and also for the sweet-smelling frankincense at the flour offering.
The second name Chasidaees means merciful, hasid meaning the mercy of God but came to mean devout. They formed a part of the army of Jacob Maccabean that sought to eject the Greeks from the Temple (in Greek Asidaioi). They were called by Philo and Josephus Essenaioi and by Pliny Esseni, who attributed to them a lineage of thousands of years.
The way of life of these devout people is an inheritance from the time of Moses and Aaron and in particular from the priests who carried the Ark of the Covenant. But it was not until the period between Isaiah and Jeremiah that their way of life was regularly established.
At the beginning there were not many of them. Later on, however, their settlements in the Promised Land occupied a space 24 hours' journey long and 36 hours' journey broad. They did not come to the region of the Jordan until later. They lived mostly on the slopes of Mount Horeb and Mount Carmel, the home of Elijah.
In the lifetime of St Anne's grandparents, the Essenes had a spiritual head who lived on Mount Horeb. He was an aged prophet called Archos or Arkas.
Their organization was like that of a religious order. All who wished to enter had to undergo a year of tests, and the length of time for which they were accepted was decided by prophetic inspirations from above.
The real members of the Order who lived in a community did not marry but lived in chastity. But there were others who had formerly been in the Order or were attached to it who married and carried out in their families and with their children and household something similar in many ways to the traditional discipline of the real Essenes. Their relationship with these was like that between the lay members of a Catholic Third Order or Tertiaries and the professed priests of the Order.
In all important matters, especially as to the marriages of their relations, these married Essenes always sought instruction and counsel from the aged prophet on Mount Horeb. St Anne's grandparents belonged to this kind of married Essenes.
The real Essenes were specially concerned with prophetic matters. Their head on Mount Horeb was often vouchsafed divine revelations in the cave of Elijah in respect of the coming of the Messiah. He had knowledge of the family from which the mother of the Messiah was to come.
At the time that he gave prophetic advice to the grandparents of St Anne in matters of marriage, he saw that the day of the Lord was approaching. He did not however know how long the birth of the Saviour's mother might still be delayed by sin, and so he was always preaching penance, mortification, prayer and inner sacrifice for this intention--pious exercise of which all Essenes had ever given the example. [In mirror image the second coming of the Messiah in justice not mercy is advanced by sin and deferred by penance]
Until Isaiah assembled these people together and gave them a more regular organization, they were scattered about the land of Israel, leading lives of piety and intent on mortification. They fought particularly against sexual immorality, and often by mutual consent lived in continence for long periods, living in huts far removed from their wives.
When they lived together as husband and wife, it was only with the intention of producing a holy offspring which might bring nearer the coming of the Saviour. I saw them eating apart from their wives, the wife came to take her meal after the husband had left the table.
There were ancestors of St Anne and of other holy people among these early Essenes. Jeremiah too was connected with them, and the men called "Sons of the Prophet" came from them. They often lived in the desert and round Mount Horeb and Carmel and later I saw many of them in Egypt.
I also saw that for a time they were driven away from Mount Horeb by war and were reassembled by new leaders. The Maccabees also belonged to them.
They had a great devotion to Moses and possessed a sacred piece of his clothing given by him to Aaron, from whom it has come down to them. This was their most precious relic, and I had a vision of some 15 of them being killed in defending it. Their prophet leaders had knowledge of the secret mysteries of the Ark of the Covenant.
The real Essenes who lived in chastity were indescribably pure and devout. They adopted children and brought them up to lead a very holy life. To be accepted as a member of the regular Order, a boy had to have reached the age of 14. Those who had been already tested had to undergo a year's novitiate, others two years.
The Essenes did not carry on any form of trade but exchanged the produce of their agriculture for whatever else they needed. If one of them had committed a grave sin, he was expelled from among them and excommunicated by their head. This excommunication had the force of that pronounced by Peter against Ananias who was struck dead by it. Their head knew by prophetic inspiration who had committed sin. I also saw some Essenes undergoing penitential punishment: they were obliged to stand in a stiff robe with their arms extended immovably in sleeves lined with thorns.
Mount Horeb was full of little caves, which formed the cells where they lived. An assembly hall of light wattlework had been built on to the mouth of one of the large caves. Here they came together at 11 o'clock in the morning and ate. Each had a small loaf of bread in front of him with a goblet. The head went from place to place and blessed each one's bread. After the meal they returned to their separate cells.
In this assembly hall there was an altar on which stood little blessed loaves covered up. They were in some way sacred and were I think distributed among the poor.
The Essenes had a great number of doves which were tame and ate out of their hands. They ate doves but also used them in the ritual ceremonies. They said something over them and let them fly away. I saw too that they released lambs in the desert after saying something over them, as if they were to take their sins on them. I saw them go three times a year to the Temple in Jerusalem. They also had priests among them whose special duty was the care of the sacred vestments; they cleaned them, contributed money for them, and also made new ones.
I saw them engaged in cattle-breeding and agriculture, but specially in gardening. Mount Horeb was full of gardens and fruit trees in the spaces between their huts. I saw many of them weaving and plaiting and also embroidering priests' vestments. I did not see them producing silk; that came in bundles to be sold to them, and they exchanged other produce for it.
In Jerusalem they had a quarter of their own to live in and a separate place in the Temple as well. The other Jews rather disliked them because of their austerity. I saw too that they sent presents to the Temple; for example great bunchs of grapes carried by two people on as pole.
I did not see the real Essenes offering bloody sacrifices in these later times.
I saw that before they journeyed to the Temple, they made a very rigorous preparation by prayer, fasting, and penance including even scourgings. If one laden with sins went to the Temple and to the Holy of Holies without having made atonement by penance, he usually died on the spot.
If on their journey or in Jerusalem itself, they found anyone who was ill or in any way helpless, they did not go to the Temple until they had given him all the aid in their power.
I saw that in general they employed themselves in healing. They gathered herbs and prepared potions. I saw also that those holy people whom I had seen some time before laying sick folk down on a bed of healing plants were Essenes. I saw too that the Essenes healed the sick by the laying-on of hands or by stretching themselves on them with arms extended to form a cross. I saw them also healing at a distance in a wonderful way, for the sick who could not come themeslves sent a representative to whom everything was done as it would have been to the sick person. The time was noted and the distant sick person was cured at that very hour.
I saw that the Essenes on Horeb had in their caves recesses in the walls where bones carefully wrapped in cotton and silk were kept as sacred relics behind gratings. They were bones of prophets who had lived here, and also of the children of Israel who had died near here. There were little pots of green plants standing beside them. The Essenes used to light lamps and pray before the bones in veneration of them.
All the unmarried Essenes who lived together in communities on Mount Horeb and elsewhere observed the greatest cleanliness.
They wore long white robes. The head of the Essenes on Horeb wore wonderfully priestly vestments during solemn religious services, after the manner of the high priest in Jerusalem, only shorter and not so magnificent. When he prayed and prophesied in the cave of Elijah on Mount Horeb, he always wore these sacred vestments, which consisted of about eight pieces. Amongst them was a very sacred relic, a sort of dalmatic or scapular, covering the breast and shoulders which Moses had worn next to his body and had given to Aaron, from whom it had later descended to the Essenes. The prophet Archos, their head on Mount Horeb, always wore this dalmatic next to his body when he was clothed in all his vestments and was praying for prophetic enlightenment...[goes into much detail about the priest's vestments ending with]A little plate of gold set with precious stones was fastened over the forehead.
The Essenes were very austere and frugal in their way of living. They generally ate only fruit, which was often cultivated in their gardens. I saw that Archos usually ate a bitter yellow fruit. He ruled over the Essenes for 90 years. I saw how St Anne's grandmother questioned him about her own marriage.
It is remarkable that it was always about female children that these prophets made predictions, and that Anna's ancestors and Anna herself had mostly daughters.
It was as if the object of all their devotions and prayers was to obatin from God a blessing on pious mothers from whose descendants the Blessed Virgin, the mother of the Saviour, should spring, as well as the family of his precursor John the Baptizer, and his servants and disciples.
ED: Many Essenes became followers of John the Baptist and from the two groups came the main influx of the first Jewish Christians.
Source: The Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary as told by the visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Strange Sand
A retired friend of mine invited me to join him one afternoon in his lonely stand at the local church.
He keeps open a church that would otherwise be left abandoned and locked by its "priest."
There he prays every day for God's mercy and pardon--on himself, on his friends and family, for all the people, for the priests, and the leaders of the nation--that all might turn back to God and stop offending the Holy God Who is already so much offended by humanity's crimes and ingratitude.
I would have liked to accompany him. But instead I had to tell him I could not so much as set foot inside the place. Not for prayers, or Sunday worship, or anyone's wedding, or somebody's funeral, not for anything.
Why? What's stopping me from going inside a church? Because there you will find strange sand, visible evidence of a terrible crime, like blood on the floor.
What crime? What do I mean "strange sand"? I am referring to the practice of giving Communion in the hand.
A scientific trial (see details below in the article Man Seeks Forgiveness) has proved beyond any doubt that crumbs--Christ whole and entire in every Particle: Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity!--do in fact fall to the floor in practically every instance of Communion in the hand, 19 out of 20 times, averaging three to four visible particles per recipient, some being carried on clothing and shoes out into the street.
Some people have begun to realise and lament, among them the late Mother Teresa (see story below).
Think about it! The Saviour of mankind, trodden underfoot, trampled, his Holy Face crushed, profaned and desecrated in nearly every one of these modernized Catholic churches.
In the words of St.Paul: "How much more do you think he deserves worse punishments who has trodden underfoot the Son of God?"
"It is not good to take the bread of the children and cast it to the dogs," Jesus told the woman of Tyre, and she replied: "But the dogs also eat of the crumbs that fall from the table of their master."
Another hidden prophecy of Jesus concerning those who would betray Him: "He that dips his hand with me in the dish, he it is that shall betray me…It were better for him if that man had not been born."
Again, "When the Son of God returns, do you think he will faith on Earth?" Alas, yes, faith on the earth and blood in the dirt.
From the Old Testament prophet Zachariah: "And they shall say to him: What are these wounds in the midst of thy hands? And he shall say: With these I was wounded in the House of them that loved me."
And from the traditional Good Friday prayers: "I fed you with manna in the desert. And you have beaten me with blows and scourges. O, my people! What have I done to you? Or in what have I offended you? Answer me."
Let us make atonement to God for these crimes of the human race. Here is the prayer of the Angel of Fatima, an act of Spiritual Eucharist and an act of Reparation to God:
O Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore Thee profoundly. I offer Thee the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifferences by which He Himself is offended. By the infinite merits of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary I beg the return of poor sinners. Amen.
And here is the Golden Arrow prayer of the holy Carmelite nun of Tours, Sister Mary of St Peter, to repair the blasphemies and profanation against the Holy Name of God and the Lord's Day:
May the most holy, most sacred, most adorable, most mysterious and unutterable Name of God be always praised, blessed, loved, adored and glorified, in heaven, on earth and under the earth, by all the creatures of God, and by the Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the most holy Sacrament of the altar.
(continued in Strange Sand--Part Two)
He keeps open a church that would otherwise be left abandoned and locked by its "priest."
There he prays every day for God's mercy and pardon--on himself, on his friends and family, for all the people, for the priests, and the leaders of the nation--that all might turn back to God and stop offending the Holy God Who is already so much offended by humanity's crimes and ingratitude.
I would have liked to accompany him. But instead I had to tell him I could not so much as set foot inside the place. Not for prayers, or Sunday worship, or anyone's wedding, or somebody's funeral, not for anything.
Why? What's stopping me from going inside a church? Because there you will find strange sand, visible evidence of a terrible crime, like blood on the floor.
What crime? What do I mean "strange sand"? I am referring to the practice of giving Communion in the hand.
A scientific trial (see details below in the article Man Seeks Forgiveness) has proved beyond any doubt that crumbs--Christ whole and entire in every Particle: Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity!--do in fact fall to the floor in practically every instance of Communion in the hand, 19 out of 20 times, averaging three to four visible particles per recipient, some being carried on clothing and shoes out into the street.
Some people have begun to realise and lament, among them the late Mother Teresa (see story below).
Think about it! The Saviour of mankind, trodden underfoot, trampled, his Holy Face crushed, profaned and desecrated in nearly every one of these modernized Catholic churches.
In the words of St.Paul: "How much more do you think he deserves worse punishments who has trodden underfoot the Son of God?"
"It is not good to take the bread of the children and cast it to the dogs," Jesus told the woman of Tyre, and she replied: "But the dogs also eat of the crumbs that fall from the table of their master."
Another hidden prophecy of Jesus concerning those who would betray Him: "He that dips his hand with me in the dish, he it is that shall betray me…It were better for him if that man had not been born."
Again, "When the Son of God returns, do you think he will faith on Earth?" Alas, yes, faith on the earth and blood in the dirt.
From the Old Testament prophet Zachariah: "And they shall say to him: What are these wounds in the midst of thy hands? And he shall say: With these I was wounded in the House of them that loved me."
And from the traditional Good Friday prayers: "I fed you with manna in the desert. And you have beaten me with blows and scourges. O, my people! What have I done to you? Or in what have I offended you? Answer me."
Let us make atonement to God for these crimes of the human race. Here is the prayer of the Angel of Fatima, an act of Spiritual Eucharist and an act of Reparation to God:
O Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore Thee profoundly. I offer Thee the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifferences by which He Himself is offended. By the infinite merits of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary I beg the return of poor sinners. Amen.
And here is the Golden Arrow prayer of the holy Carmelite nun of Tours, Sister Mary of St Peter, to repair the blasphemies and profanation against the Holy Name of God and the Lord's Day:
May the most holy, most sacred, most adorable, most mysterious and unutterable Name of God be always praised, blessed, loved, adored and glorified, in heaven, on earth and under the earth, by all the creatures of God, and by the Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the most holy Sacrament of the altar.
(continued in Strange Sand--Part Two)
Strange Sand--Part Two
"When you see the abomination of desolation which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet standing in the holy place, he that reads let him understand."
Book of Daniel: "It [meaning evil spirit] was magnified even unto the strength of Heaven and it threw down of the strength and of the stars and trod upon them. And it was magnified even to the prince of the strength [Christ the King uncrowned] and it took away from him the continual sacrifice [the holy sacrifice] and cast down the place of the sanctuary. And strength was given him against the continual sacrifice, because of sins, and truth shall be cast down on the ground...and the strength shall be trodden underfoot."
A 3000-year-old prophecy of King David in Psalm 73 (or 74 in the Jewish Bible): "See what things the enemy has done wickedly in the sanctuary. And they that hate you have made their boasts in the midst of your solemnity...They have defiled the dwelling place of your name on the earth. They have said in their heart, the whole kindred of them together, Let us abolish all the festival days of God from the land."
Book of Ezekiel: "Priests have despised my law and have defiled my sanctuaries; they have put no difference between holy and profane, nor have they distinguished between polluted and clean."
St.Paul: "Take heed to yourselves and the whole flock, wherein the Holy Spirit has placed you bishops to rule the Church of God, which he has purchased with his own blood. I know that after my departure ravening wolves will enter in among you and from yourselves shall arise men speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after them."
The prophet Samuel: "Wherefore the sin of the young men was exceedingly great before the Lord because they withdrew men from the sacrifice of the Lord." Young men here means the sons of the high priest Eli. God replaced Eli's sons as priests and instead chose Samuel, just as he rejected the first-born Cain for Abel, Esau for Jacob, and later the Jews and their once perpetual covenant for the Gentiles. Now he is rejecting the Gentiles who have desecrated and destroyed his Church and violated the new and everlasting covenant. "All the day long I have stretched out my hands to an unbelieving people."
From the Psalms. "The wicked draw near against me to eat My flesh. My enemies that trouble me have themselves been weakened and have fallen." Eat my flesh in the Middle East is a metaphor for revile and persecute. "He eats our flesh," Christians might have said about Saul before his conversion.
In Switzerland an audio recording was made of the exorcism of a diabolically possessed woman. The "invisible energies" compelled to speak against their will by the exorcist's use of the holy name and sacramentals, admitted that Communion in the hand was conceived by hell as an effective obstacle to the salvation of souls. See details below.
To realise the extreme sorrow, pain and anguish caused Jesus in this his most vulnerable, trusting, generous, and humble gift of himself, the bread of the holy Sacrament, read the vision of Anne Catherine Emmerich in The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the book that inspired Mel Gibson to film The Passion of the Christ.
Many avoided the Gibson movie. They said it was because of the bloodshed but many movies show violence. Irish Australian convict history is full of the most inhumane floggings by which many died. Many people could not view the scourging of Jesus because they were crippled by guilt at how they have treated him, especially in the new and degraded form of Christian worship.
For what is the Christian worship, after all? It is in St.Paul's words the Showing Forth of the Death of the Lord. It is the Lord's Requiem, the Memorial Oblation of Calvary, the Death of the Lord.
St.Paul: "For as often as you shall eat this bread and drink this chalice, you shall present the Death of the Lord...Whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this chalice of the Lord unworthily shall be guilty of the death of the Lord...He that eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks judgment to himself--not discerning the Body of the Lord. Therefore there are many inform and weak among you, and many sleep."
By "many sleep," Paul is saying that they have died, because of unworthy Communions, because they did not recognize the Body of the Lord."
If I had the choice," wrote a friend of mine, "I would only go to the Traditional Mass. But I need to go to Mass. So I plod along with what is offered."
Plod is the operative word. No standing on ceremony there. Good people are crushing the holy face underfoot without a thought, thoughtlessly. Why? Just because Father and His Lordship tell them it's alright. But do they have a leg to stand on? Who can justify sacrilege? Not even a pope can command you to do something sinful. Though they can try.
Priests and bishops get away with it, while popes turn a blind eye. Because the last of the Catholics are dumb sheep and have no understanding of how to apply the Lord's specific warning, which was to beware of wolves in sheep's vestments, meaning bishops, priests and popes. They have no understanding of the devil's most ingenious strategy of filling the ranks of the priesthood with dedicated enemies of Christ from top to bottom, communists, homosexuals, secret agents of subversion from within.
Jesus: "When the blind lead the blind, they both fall into the pit together." If you receive Communion from any of these priests who are just play-actors, do you think you will go to Heaven? For after all Communion means an endorsement, a statement of unity.
A lady waking up ceased going to church, saying, "Now anybody gives you Communion."
In another parish, a lady was expressing her grievance concerning the irreverence shown to God. "Don't worry," sniffed the priest. "The church will be coming to an end soon anyway." Right from the horse's mouth.She relocated to another parish. But guess what? The Pope made him Bishop. What's a cross between a For Sale sign and the last nail being hammered into a coffin?
St.Padre Pio's last words: "Beware of the bishops." Jesus said the same thing. Beware of false prophets who will come to you dressed in the vestments of sheep but are inwardly ravenous wolves. Did anybody listen? Sleepy and Sheepy and seven billion dwarfs.
Grave, dark and prophetic were the words of Jesus: "Many will desire to enter but will not be able to."
Believers have been scandalized away, effectively barred out, denied the means of salvation by networking perverts and impostors in sheep's clothing who make communists look like petty criminals by comparison.
Millions of potential converts have abandoned the quest for the one that is true and authentic among the hundreds of counterfeit religions and fake churches--the only one able to absolve us from our sins.
The details of the Old Testament worship were not given in scripture. They were too holy to be written down. Instead they were passed down faithfully from generation to generation of priests. Likewise the Christian worship.
For neither were the Jews a "People of the Book" nor were the Christians, but a people and a priesthood of the holy oral tradition, the rites of sanctification of the new Temple.
And what's another word for disgrace? The Church in the modern world, characterised by the spirit of the world inside the Church.Everything is broken. Thanks to "dignity," a weasel word by which offences against the purity of the Creation pretend to justify themselves. Human dignity? Bishops and popes slavishly capitulating before the united nations?
The new theology of the world inside the church is an anti-Gospel for a church turned on its head, an antichurch that makes straight the way of the Anti-Christ. Wordsearch Pope In Flames for a sobering and arresting sight!
The consequences of the worldly spirit are ramified throughout society. Morality without religion leads to liberty without morality, leads to anarchy, leads to tyrannical laws. Don't be surprised at mounting violence and vandalism and contemptuous youth. You get what you pray for. Where there's no fear of God, there's fear of man.
Spiritually, politicians begin to resemble demons or the shaman witchdoctors of Ameru in America and the whore-priestesses of Baal. They send babies to their deaths in what should be the safest place on earth, their mother's womb, but now, in actuarial terms, the least safe, with more than one hundred million defenceless children massacred annually with government approval, turning hospitals into abattoirs. Photographs show a baby's tiny hands reaching and holding the finger of the surgeon or nurse that hands the scalpel that cuts the little one's throat. But it's legal, so what's the problem? Not in Heaven do these victims await their mothers. "Wheresoever the body shall be, there shall the eagles also be gathered together."
View actor Eduardo Verastegui's amazing five-minute movie at obamamustsee.com or oneminutehollywood.com/2008/10/eduardo-verastegui-startles-fans-with.html.
Everybody subconsciously senses and fears that the true Church has been liquidated. The Church is not in crisis, it is not dying, it is dead, the corpse propped up only to maintain appearances and salaries, while "dogs in the manger"occupy the real estate to prevent any restoration of the true and proper worship of God.
Along the Via Dolorosa way of sorrows, Jesus told the women of Jerusalem, and all spiritual mothers and fathers to come: "Do not weep for me! Weep for yourselves and for your children!"
St.Alphonsus wrote: "Remember, dear Christian, you have but one soul to save, one God to love and serve, one eternity to expect, death will come soon, judgment will follow, then heaven or hell forever. Therefore, O child of Jesus and Mary, avoid sin and all dangerous company and places, pray without ceasing, go frequently to confession and Holy Communion."
Confession and Communion? If you can find them! To all intents and purposes, there is no longer a true Memorial Oblation of the Death of the Lord, a true Mass, at least not within driving distance.
In the Book of Acts we read of Philip running alongside the chariot asked the Ethiopian bureaucrat, "Think you understand what you're reading?" "How can I unless some man show me." That man was not so proud that he needed the help of those appointed by God. Modern people are proud. Each his own interpretation of the Bible. And the Bible they use is not even the Bible Jesus used but the expurgated version created by a Jewish not Church council at Javneh in Gaza in year 90.
This true worship, Mass, was it recognizable from the Bible? Of course. See below.
St.Alphonsus said he who prays might be saved but he who does not pray or prays badly can't be. In the absence of a Church, learn the acts of Contrition, Spiritual Eucharist and Spiritual Communion below. Practise abandonment to the Divine Will. That means accepting and bearing trials with submission. The monastic life you have when you don't have a monastery.
Anyone interested in life in a monastery or convent register your interest.
Look down us, O Lord, with mercy, lest the soul weighed down by its crimes be exiled from the gift of life and while it think of nothing eternal bind itself to its sins. O Jesus, hide us in your wounds, spread wide your hands and draw all men to yourself. Mother Mary, be our salvation, keep us under the mantle of your protection. Eia ergo advocata nostra!
"To him that overcomes I will give to eat of the tree of life...he that shall overcome shall not be hurt by the second death...to him that overcomes I will give the hidden manna."
Book of Daniel: "It [meaning evil spirit] was magnified even unto the strength of Heaven and it threw down of the strength and of the stars and trod upon them. And it was magnified even to the prince of the strength [Christ the King uncrowned] and it took away from him the continual sacrifice [the holy sacrifice] and cast down the place of the sanctuary. And strength was given him against the continual sacrifice, because of sins, and truth shall be cast down on the ground...and the strength shall be trodden underfoot."
A 3000-year-old prophecy of King David in Psalm 73 (or 74 in the Jewish Bible): "See what things the enemy has done wickedly in the sanctuary. And they that hate you have made their boasts in the midst of your solemnity...They have defiled the dwelling place of your name on the earth. They have said in their heart, the whole kindred of them together, Let us abolish all the festival days of God from the land."
Book of Ezekiel: "Priests have despised my law and have defiled my sanctuaries; they have put no difference between holy and profane, nor have they distinguished between polluted and clean."
St.Paul: "Take heed to yourselves and the whole flock, wherein the Holy Spirit has placed you bishops to rule the Church of God, which he has purchased with his own blood. I know that after my departure ravening wolves will enter in among you and from yourselves shall arise men speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after them."
The prophet Samuel: "Wherefore the sin of the young men was exceedingly great before the Lord because they withdrew men from the sacrifice of the Lord." Young men here means the sons of the high priest Eli. God replaced Eli's sons as priests and instead chose Samuel, just as he rejected the first-born Cain for Abel, Esau for Jacob, and later the Jews and their once perpetual covenant for the Gentiles. Now he is rejecting the Gentiles who have desecrated and destroyed his Church and violated the new and everlasting covenant. "All the day long I have stretched out my hands to an unbelieving people."
From the Psalms. "The wicked draw near against me to eat My flesh. My enemies that trouble me have themselves been weakened and have fallen." Eat my flesh in the Middle East is a metaphor for revile and persecute. "He eats our flesh," Christians might have said about Saul before his conversion.
In Switzerland an audio recording was made of the exorcism of a diabolically possessed woman. The "invisible energies" compelled to speak against their will by the exorcist's use of the holy name and sacramentals, admitted that Communion in the hand was conceived by hell as an effective obstacle to the salvation of souls. See details below.
To realise the extreme sorrow, pain and anguish caused Jesus in this his most vulnerable, trusting, generous, and humble gift of himself, the bread of the holy Sacrament, read the vision of Anne Catherine Emmerich in The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the book that inspired Mel Gibson to film The Passion of the Christ.
Many avoided the Gibson movie. They said it was because of the bloodshed but many movies show violence. Irish Australian convict history is full of the most inhumane floggings by which many died. Many people could not view the scourging of Jesus because they were crippled by guilt at how they have treated him, especially in the new and degraded form of Christian worship.
For what is the Christian worship, after all? It is in St.Paul's words the Showing Forth of the Death of the Lord. It is the Lord's Requiem, the Memorial Oblation of Calvary, the Death of the Lord.
St.Paul: "For as often as you shall eat this bread and drink this chalice, you shall present the Death of the Lord...Whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this chalice of the Lord unworthily shall be guilty of the death of the Lord...He that eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks judgment to himself--not discerning the Body of the Lord. Therefore there are many inform and weak among you, and many sleep."
By "many sleep," Paul is saying that they have died, because of unworthy Communions, because they did not recognize the Body of the Lord."
If I had the choice," wrote a friend of mine, "I would only go to the Traditional Mass. But I need to go to Mass. So I plod along with what is offered."
Plod is the operative word. No standing on ceremony there. Good people are crushing the holy face underfoot without a thought, thoughtlessly. Why? Just because Father and His Lordship tell them it's alright. But do they have a leg to stand on? Who can justify sacrilege? Not even a pope can command you to do something sinful. Though they can try.
Priests and bishops get away with it, while popes turn a blind eye. Because the last of the Catholics are dumb sheep and have no understanding of how to apply the Lord's specific warning, which was to beware of wolves in sheep's vestments, meaning bishops, priests and popes. They have no understanding of the devil's most ingenious strategy of filling the ranks of the priesthood with dedicated enemies of Christ from top to bottom, communists, homosexuals, secret agents of subversion from within.
Jesus: "When the blind lead the blind, they both fall into the pit together." If you receive Communion from any of these priests who are just play-actors, do you think you will go to Heaven? For after all Communion means an endorsement, a statement of unity.
A lady waking up ceased going to church, saying, "Now anybody gives you Communion."
In another parish, a lady was expressing her grievance concerning the irreverence shown to God. "Don't worry," sniffed the priest. "The church will be coming to an end soon anyway." Right from the horse's mouth.She relocated to another parish. But guess what? The Pope made him Bishop. What's a cross between a For Sale sign and the last nail being hammered into a coffin?
St.Padre Pio's last words: "Beware of the bishops." Jesus said the same thing. Beware of false prophets who will come to you dressed in the vestments of sheep but are inwardly ravenous wolves. Did anybody listen? Sleepy and Sheepy and seven billion dwarfs.
Grave, dark and prophetic were the words of Jesus: "Many will desire to enter but will not be able to."
Believers have been scandalized away, effectively barred out, denied the means of salvation by networking perverts and impostors in sheep's clothing who make communists look like petty criminals by comparison.
Millions of potential converts have abandoned the quest for the one that is true and authentic among the hundreds of counterfeit religions and fake churches--the only one able to absolve us from our sins.
The details of the Old Testament worship were not given in scripture. They were too holy to be written down. Instead they were passed down faithfully from generation to generation of priests. Likewise the Christian worship.
For neither were the Jews a "People of the Book" nor were the Christians, but a people and a priesthood of the holy oral tradition, the rites of sanctification of the new Temple.
And what's another word for disgrace? The Church in the modern world, characterised by the spirit of the world inside the Church.Everything is broken. Thanks to "dignity," a weasel word by which offences against the purity of the Creation pretend to justify themselves. Human dignity? Bishops and popes slavishly capitulating before the united nations?
The new theology of the world inside the church is an anti-Gospel for a church turned on its head, an antichurch that makes straight the way of the Anti-Christ. Wordsearch Pope In Flames for a sobering and arresting sight!
The consequences of the worldly spirit are ramified throughout society. Morality without religion leads to liberty without morality, leads to anarchy, leads to tyrannical laws. Don't be surprised at mounting violence and vandalism and contemptuous youth. You get what you pray for. Where there's no fear of God, there's fear of man.
Spiritually, politicians begin to resemble demons or the shaman witchdoctors of Ameru in America and the whore-priestesses of Baal. They send babies to their deaths in what should be the safest place on earth, their mother's womb, but now, in actuarial terms, the least safe, with more than one hundred million defenceless children massacred annually with government approval, turning hospitals into abattoirs. Photographs show a baby's tiny hands reaching and holding the finger of the surgeon or nurse that hands the scalpel that cuts the little one's throat. But it's legal, so what's the problem? Not in Heaven do these victims await their mothers. "Wheresoever the body shall be, there shall the eagles also be gathered together."
View actor Eduardo Verastegui's amazing five-minute movie at obamamustsee.com or oneminutehollywood.com/2008/10/eduardo-verastegui-startles-fans-with.html.
Everybody subconsciously senses and fears that the true Church has been liquidated. The Church is not in crisis, it is not dying, it is dead, the corpse propped up only to maintain appearances and salaries, while "dogs in the manger"occupy the real estate to prevent any restoration of the true and proper worship of God.
Along the Via Dolorosa way of sorrows, Jesus told the women of Jerusalem, and all spiritual mothers and fathers to come: "Do not weep for me! Weep for yourselves and for your children!"
St.Alphonsus wrote: "Remember, dear Christian, you have but one soul to save, one God to love and serve, one eternity to expect, death will come soon, judgment will follow, then heaven or hell forever. Therefore, O child of Jesus and Mary, avoid sin and all dangerous company and places, pray without ceasing, go frequently to confession and Holy Communion."
Confession and Communion? If you can find them! To all intents and purposes, there is no longer a true Memorial Oblation of the Death of the Lord, a true Mass, at least not within driving distance.
In the Book of Acts we read of Philip running alongside the chariot asked the Ethiopian bureaucrat, "Think you understand what you're reading?" "How can I unless some man show me." That man was not so proud that he needed the help of those appointed by God. Modern people are proud. Each his own interpretation of the Bible. And the Bible they use is not even the Bible Jesus used but the expurgated version created by a Jewish not Church council at Javneh in Gaza in year 90.
This true worship, Mass, was it recognizable from the Bible? Of course. See below.
St.Alphonsus said he who prays might be saved but he who does not pray or prays badly can't be. In the absence of a Church, learn the acts of Contrition, Spiritual Eucharist and Spiritual Communion below. Practise abandonment to the Divine Will. That means accepting and bearing trials with submission. The monastic life you have when you don't have a monastery.
Anyone interested in life in a monastery or convent register your interest.
Look down us, O Lord, with mercy, lest the soul weighed down by its crimes be exiled from the gift of life and while it think of nothing eternal bind itself to its sins. O Jesus, hide us in your wounds, spread wide your hands and draw all men to yourself. Mother Mary, be our salvation, keep us under the mantle of your protection. Eia ergo advocata nostra!
"To him that overcomes I will give to eat of the tree of life...he that shall overcome shall not be hurt by the second death...to him that overcomes I will give the hidden manna."
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