Posted on 01/27/2006 7:37:26 AM PST by NYer
I have been an exorcist for three years, and I know all too well that it always costs something to enter onto the devils 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 Christs 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 dont they?! They are Gods little angels and mans 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 didnt 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 didnt know I had and yanked myself to a standing position saying to myself, "No! Shake it offI'm not taking this."
Well, bam, it was over. Immediately the nausea dissipatedI 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 Christs 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 devils 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.
Actually, Fr. Amorth is the church's leading authority on exorcism. He knows more about it and is more successful than any living priest. Don't steer clear of him. Pay attention.
Remember, just because Medjugorie was never investigated doesn't mean it didn't happen.
Perhaps Fr. Martin had more experience as an exorcist.
I love Roman Catholic Books! When I get their catalog, I want to buy nearly every book.
Yup God kept Moses totally in the dark. You're the last person that should be defining what a pagan is or isn't.
How do you know that Moses was the author, expect by tradition. Since it records his death, he might be the source of the stories but not the man who actually wrote it down.
Did not. He spoke to Moses face to face, and did nothing that He did not reveal to His prophets, of whom, Moses was the chief one.
Lol. I just have to rattle your chain once in a while to keep you from taking yourself so seriously. You'll thank me later. :-)
I was being sarcastic. Sorry for not doing the /sarcasm thing. :-)
http://www.unitypublishing.com/Apparitions/MedjugorjeIndex.html
Testing the Spirit of Medjugorje
Seriously I actually agree with this. I also believe the same holds true for Gospel authors.
I'm not exactly sure of your own position in this matter. I will just say again that Catholics scold Protestants for their rejection of tradition and their ignorance of how the scriptures came to be. Yet Catholics reject the Jewish traditions (often in scathing crypto-Protestant language) which since the time of Moses had taught that HaShem dictated the Torah to Moses letter-for-letter and that Moses wrote it down at G-d's dictation. What is the point of defending tradition if you're not only going to be a Protestant with regard to your predecessor tradition but a liberal Protestant at that, repeating nineteenth century German Protestant theories with gusto? I realize that you cannot accept all Jewish tradition, but you are still in a quandary when you preach traditionalism to Protestants and then turn around and imply that every Jewish teaching not explicitly written in the Torah is "the invention of priests and pharisees." Do Catholics truly believe that "authentic" Judaism was meant to be a sola scriptura faith and that only with the coming of chr*stianity was an authentic oral interpretive tradition essential?
I will also never understand why Catholics defend every tradition they have which trouble Protestants while those things held in common with Protestants (such as the scriptures) are subject to militant doubt and skepticism. But then, I don't understand why Catholics defend "Catholic miracles" (ie, marian apparitions, bilocations, the new testament miracles) while insisting that every supernatural phenomenon recorded in the "old testament" is mere didactic mythology.
On your personal page you call yourself a "native Southerner and Catholic." I have just finished an e-mail to a friend in which I questioned why we Southerners seem to naturally believe so intensely, while other peoples who theoretically share these beliefs seem so "sophisticated" and lukewarm in their beliefs. You must recall that Fundamentalist Protestants are often scolded by liturgical chr*stians for presenting a stumblingblock to intellectuals who will never accept religion if it requres them to question the infallibility of uniformitarian science. Do Catholics and Orthodox have no compassion whatsoever for people to whom uniformitarianism represents a stumblingblock? Are the simple people of the world now considered undesirable by religion? If so I hope Catholics will criticize their own Haitian and Bolivian peasants as well as Appalachian Protestants.
I doubt you have noticed, but the atheists on FR have been very active recently in attacking religion. Yet liturgical chr*stians choose not to get involved, opting rather to laugh at "Protestant creationism" instead.
Like you, I am a native Southerner. Unlike you, I don't understand the need of "respectable" religion to reinterpret every Biblical event in light of uniformitarian science and skeptical critical theories while defending most supernaturalistic Catholic traditions.
I guess there are just different kinds of Southerners. And my kind will never understand your kind.
Well, I don't see why it is not possible that Moses passed on his revelation in the same way that the Muslims claim that Mohammed passed on his. It may be indeed the case that the Law was inscribed in stone. Having see the law of Hammarabi in the Louve, I don't see why the law given to the Israelis might not originally have taken the same form. But somewhere along the way, those words were tranferred to "paper" and that process need not have been under the eye of Moses, nor every word been his alone. As to the supernatural, it is not something that exists in the past or in a realm unconnected with our own. To the contrary, it is ever with us, as surely as the air we breathe, inseperable from the natural., in fact ,holding it in existence.
Most Catholics are obviously uncomfortble with and afraid of the alleged basis of their own religion. Perhaps they should ask themselves why.
I do not have the impression that Catholics, ordinary Catholics are any more "naturalistic" abouyt the events of the Old Testament than the New. As for the intellectuals, they seem to distance themselves from the miracles of Lourdes. One thing you do not consider is that the ordinary Catholic really doesn't know much about the Old Testament. Barbara Tuchman, the Jewish historian, once reminded us of the close identification that English Protestants felt weith the "Israeltes," who for them replaced the Catholic Anglo-Saxons as their "true" ancestors. The number of Hebrew names among the Puritan fathers exemplifies this. That's because they no longer honored the saints and confined themselves to Biblical names.
trying to instill fear too.
Fear of puppies?
no
fear of demons. fear of God. I was brought up Catholic and that was all that was instilled to me was fear of God. Fear of anything. We were run into confession weekly, whether we needed to or not.
I see. I've never run into that kind of thing.
Pookie!
LOL!
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