When the demons strike back: experience of an exorcist after an exorcism

SpiritDaily ^ | January 27, 2006 | Fr. Tom Euteneuer

[NYer]

I have been an exorcist for three years, and I know all too well that it always costs something to enter onto the devil’s territory and wrench a soul out of his grip, but I have never experienced a demonic retaliation like the one I am about to recount. The only reason I write this true story is to encourage those who read this to remain vigilant, faithful and confident that Christ and His angels have all-surpassing power over demons. The demons may make us suffer temporarily, but they are no match for the power of Christ’s Love and the vigilance of these holy spirits who never cease to come to our aid in time of need.  

Several days after performing a solemn exorcism which lasted nine full hours and was a tough piece of spiritual warfare, I was attacked unawares. I guess I had let my guard down after the exorcism was over, and I was directing my attention to other matters at hand. On this particular morning I was to have a meeting with my bishop. When the alarm clock woke me at 7 immediately, without warning, collapsing at the foot of my bed, I felt a wave of nausea flow over me. I just sat there on the floor sweating and thinking I felt so bad that I was going to throw up and be sick the rest of the day and therefore miss my long-awaited meeting with the bishop. Hoping that the nausea would go away, I sat still as a lamb, but I just got more nauseous as the minutes passed. I then staggered up into the bed again knocking hard against the dresser thinking that if I actually lay back down the nausea would go away.  

The two young dogs in the house where I was staying heard the noise and barked, and the younger of the two immediately rushed into the room and got half on the bed licking my face as if he knew something was really wrong. Animals have a good sense of when people are hurting don’t they?! They are God’s little angels and man’s best friend in every way. 

As I lay there getting sicker and sicker I thought I was going through another violent bout of food poisoning like I had experienced earlier in the year, but this nausea seemed of another character. I could not identify just what was happening to me, but I kept feeling worse. No more than five minutes had gone by since I woke up, and I was in dire straits and still sweating profusely. 

The nausea just got worse, and by this time I knew I was going to throw up so I rushed into the bathroom like a drunken man, sat on the bathroom floor and lurched over the toilet thinking that this was it. I wanted whatever was in there out of my system, but nothing at all came out. In the meantime I was getting sicker, and I didn’t think it could get worse! The nausea was causing me serious blurry vision and malaise, and I was on the point of actually blacking out. My greatest sadness was that this hateful thing in my system was going to make me miss my meeting with the bishop. I am sad to say that I was not even thinking of God at the moment because I think I feared my bishop more! 

But just then, as I was at my lowest point and literally on the point of fainting, something took hold of me and lifted me up and said, "We're not taking this!" or words to that effect. Then somehow, from a sitting position on the floor, I reached up and grabbed the sink with a power I didn’t know I had and yanked myself to a standing position saying to myself, "No! Shake it off—I'm not taking this."  

Well, bam, it was over. Immediately the nausea dissipated—I mean completely. It did not linger or take its time getting out of my system. It disappeared as quickly as it had come. My color came back in a few minutes, the sweats stopped instantly and I felt not the slightest bit of sickness at any time after that the whole day, night or week. What a miraculous resurrection! I was dumbfounded. At one moment I felt like I was sinking into the pit of hell and the next moment I was placed on the pinnacle of the Temple! 

Simply put, I was attacked for daring to go against the demon to liberate a soul from his grip. It was not food poisoning that hurt me because nothing came up; the last time I was in that state the poisoned substances took a good two days to clear out of my system. But here, nothing. The illness was instantly gone. Not the slightest bit of sickness remained after I stood up. It was as if a spirit of nausea had been sent into me as retaliation for my pastoral love of that soul and was as easily cast out of me by my guardian angel who just said, “Enough is enough!” Tell me, how can we live without our faithful protectors? My, how I learned the truth of what St. Paul said to Timothy when he witnessed, “The Spirit God has given us is no cowardly spirit” (2 Tm 1:7). Intrepid is a better word.  

Let all faithful Christians take comfort. Our guardian angels never let us down if we strive to help others out of their spiritual bondage. When we engage in spiritual warfare we may have to bear some scars from the fray, but we will never be abandoned by Christ’s angels and saints. I had seven or eight minutes of persecution which I in turn offered for the sake of the soul I am still trying to liberate. If the devil’s intent was to drive me away, he picked the wrong guy with the wrong guardian angel. In fact, he just caused a potent bout of suffering to be offered for the liberation of the soul he oppresses much harder than he persecutes me. He lost in every way. St. Augustine says that God prefers to extract good from evil rather than suppress evil entirely. Now I understand why. God gets so much more out of it when we suffer with faith.  

And there is a reason for all this warfare. St. Peter says that we “may for a time have to suffer the distress of many trials; but this is so that your faith, which is more precious than the passing splendor of fire-tried gold, may by its genuineness lead to praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ appears” (1 Pt 1:6-7). Amen to that.

[Aquinasfan]

BTW, with such an attitude towards the Bible, why do you object to the documentary hypothesis in the first place?

Because it may not be true. I really don't know that much about the theory.

I thought "truth cannot contradict truth?" Maybe the stupid Church Fathers were as ignorant about the Bible as they were about natural science and must step aside to What We Now Know?

What is it that "we now know?"

I hope the Catholic Church will be equally willing to place all its teachings in the dock of science and modernity, however, and not just the Bible.

Modernism is different from empiricism, or "science." Modernism is rife with philosophical errors. And Church doctrines aren't quantifiable and measurable empirically.

[Aquinasfan]

explain to me why when an "apparent contradiction" occurs it is the uniformitarian scientific explanations that must always be accepted as "what actually happened" while the Biblical account must always be relegated to didactic parable.

When some passage of scripture seems to contradict what is known with scientific certainty, the contradictory biblical passages must be seen as figurative. For example, there are passages in the Bible indicating that at times the sun has stood still. Many Catholics, and Luther and the other so-called Reformers, believed this to be literally true. But other Catholics, like Cardinal Bellarmine, stated that should we learn that the earth orbits the sun, this passage would have to be seen as idiomatic, as it indeed is.

We don't have certain scientific knowledge regarding human origins or the generation of life generally, so it remains an open question, to some degree anyway.

Is it not ever possible that the uniformitarian scientific assumption must yield?

Of course. The accounts of miracles and possession contradict uniformitarianism.

You mean the "universal consent of the Fathers" isn't definitive?

With regard to faith and morals, yes.

How many liberal theories must Catholics sift through in order to arrive at a "conclusion?"

Some questions are unsettled.

I note your refusal to deal with the issue of hypocrisy in defending Catholic traditions while subjecting the Jewish traditions that delivered the Bible to you to scientific criticism. Isn't this precisely the attitude of Protestants who accept the "Catholic" Bible while rejecting Catholic traditions about it?

You're projecting beliefs onto me and the Church.

BTW, at which point in Genesis do its characters suddenly cease to be mythical and become historical? I assume after Chapter 11?

The Church holds all of the people in Genesis to be historical figures. Whether they lived for centuries is another question.

[txhurl]

ping - howdy!

[Romish_Papist]

You're probably right. I have two ocicats in my home and I truly believe they know I have been miserable since my break-up with the heartless-woman-who-shall-not-be-named. They are constantly near me, purring and trying to keep my attention. It's strange but when I start to get really down they come running and rub up against me until I focus my attention on them. Good little lads, Ignatius and Benedict.

[ArrogantBustard]

For example, there are passages in the Bible indicating that at times the sun has stood still. Many Catholics, and Luther and the other so-called Reformers, believed this to be literally true.

It is literally true ... the Sun DOES move around the Earth.

If you fix your frame of reference on the Earth, that is. All motion is relative to your fixed frame of reference.

A heliocentric solar system is 'merely' a convenience ... the equations are an AWFUL lot simpler if you set your frame of reference at the center of mass of the solar system. Which happens to be really close to the center of the sun. But for everyday living, a geocentric model is easy enough to work with. I bet you use it, too. And it's not wrong. It's jut grossly inconvenient for many purposes.

[Campion]

I wish one of you "unity of truth" people (who always wind up making a radical division between "scientific truth" and "literal truth") would explain to me why when an "apparent contradiction" occurs it is the uniformitarian scientific explanations that must always be accepted as "what actually happened" while the Biblical account must always be relegated to didactic parable. Is it not ever possible that the uniformitarian scientific assumption must yield?

You're starting from a fundamentally incompatible assumption, which is that God could, would, and did create a universe which lies to us about how it was actually created, in order to test our faith.

I'm not sure why I should believe that God lied in creation and told the truth in Torah any more than I should believe that God lied in Torah and told the truth in creation. It seems to me like you're just the opposite extreme from a hyper-Darwinist who thinks there is no God and everything happened by random chance.

And I don't find your extreme position any more attractive than his. Find me a third way, where God told the truth in both places, please, because the God I know doesn't lie. (And no Christian, not even your Bible Belt literalist buddies, can believe in a God who lies, because the Epistle to the Hebrews flatly rules that possibility out.)

[trisham]

bttt

[Tax-chick]

My cat's name was Agnes. She died last year, almost 20 years old. She didn't like the children much after they were born, but she was very friendly when I was pregnant!

[Dajjal]

Several days after performing a solemn exorcism which lasted nine full hours and was a tough piece of spiritual warfare, ....

I do not mean any disrespect to Fr. Euteneuer -- I mean only to raise a question to see if anyone here can help me understand.

Just last night I was listening to a recording of Art Bell's first interview with Malachi Martin. One of the first questions Bell asked him was how long the typical exorcism lasts. Fr. Martin told him, "We measure them in terms of weeks. Sometimes it's only a week; sometimes only hours. It depends on the tenacity of the demon in possession. It depends on the antecedents of the person. It depends on so many factors, you just can't perdict." He said that the longest one he was involved with was 17 weeks.

So it confuses me to hear that a "tough" exorcism lasted a "full" nine hours, and also that a priest who began an exorcism with a person hoped that he would not "miss" any of his "long-awaited" scheduled appointments.

Can anyone here help me out in comprehending this?

[NYer]

Another fan of late night talk radio! I recall several of these interviews between Malachi Martin and Art Bell, and I wouldn't put that much credence in them. George Noory, Bell's successor, retains a 'married catholic priest' as a 'catholic authority'. If anything, you should put more credence in Fr. Gabrielle Amorth's testimonies. He is Rome's chief exorcist.

Interview With: Fr Gabriele Amorth

[NYer]

I have been miserable since my break-up with the heartless-woman-who-shall-not-be-named

Like you, I relish the company of my two bassets who more than amply compensate for the heartless-man-who-shall-not-be-named. Even the household felines have more compassion than he ever did :-)

[Tax-chick]

Sometimes pets are the right kind of friends!

[Dajjal]

When I read through Fr. Amorth's first book, there was something about it that made me feel "This is alright, but somehow I'm not impressed." I had no idea he was a Medjugorje supporter! I will definitely steer clear of him from now on.

I think I'll stick with Fr. Martin. Regardless of some of his opinions on other matters, he is undoubtedly correct that exorcisms are better measured "in terms of weeks." The examples given in his Hostage to the Devil, Oesterreich's Possession : Demoniacal and Other, and similar books are usually not 9-hour endeavors. Or at least the "tough" cases are not.

[Romish_Papist]

It's very simple really, Satan deceives in any way possible. There is nothing more to say.

[Frank Sheed]

http://www.booksforcatholics.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=B&Product_Code=1929291639&Category_Code=

Only $22 and so much wisdom. And, you are right! He is the father of lies.

[TradicalRC]

I'm not saying animals aren't swell, and all. I don't even mind patting the gerbil. But that was so ... gooey - not to mention theologically unsound.

Theologically unsound?! Well, I'm pretty sure patting the gerbil is still considered a sin.

[RobbyS]

The context is that the author of, say Genesis did not know exactly the meaning of the stories he was recording. He just wrote. Rationalists are prone to the notion that the Scriptures are "fictions." But a good pagan might have conceded that what was recorded were visions, something like those that Mohammed claimed to have had. Theologians have the habit of dismissing this notion of revelation, but "dreams" and "visions" continue to this day.

[Tax-chick]

I'm pretty sure patting the gerbil is still considered a sin.

That's what my mother thought - especially when the gerbil was on the dinner table. (My daughter has a weird sense of humor.)

[bboop]

Oh, it IS gooey. Perfect word.

[Tax-chick]

Thanks :-).