Posted on 10/25/2014 9:19:13 AM PDT by millegan
I’ll call him Fr. John. He was a charismatic Anglo Catholic priest.
A friend of my brother Daryl’s we’ll call Henry died suddenly in a plane crash and he was upset because although Henry was a believer he was away from God when he died.
So Fr. John said, “We have to have a requiem Mass for Henry.”
They went into church and locked the door for privacy’s sake. Another priest we’ll call Fr. George celebrated the Mass.
Henry was about twenty years old. He was just over five foot tall with a shock of blonde hair and a wide face with freckles.
(Excerpt) Read more at churchpop.com ...
Thank you for your post # 87. It is powerful testimony from your personal experiences.
First, the Bible forbids all occult practices, which involve various ways of attempting to communicate with the dead but actually involve trafficking with evil spirits.
Does this include praying and asking God to tell my daddy who died that I love him? No, IMHO.
I have heard many stories of people who had visions of their loved ones, etc. These individuals are not "involved in the occult" and were not using occult means to contact the dead. Their brief glimpses of their loved ones, totally unexpected, was a source of comfort to them in a time of grief. I would not "build a theology" on such occurrences, nor would I "go on the lecture circuit" proclaiming my experience - and I certainly would not advocate that anyone seek further contact with their dead loved one.
I am open to the possibility that such unsought experiences MAY be an example of God's mysterious ways: "As high as the heavens are above the earth, so are God's ways above our ways."
The priest's subsequent abandoning the Church and his wife for the homosexual lifestyle raises a huge red flag regarding his alleged experiences. If the priest had a good and holy reputation, I would be more inclined to consider him a reputable witness.
I note a Protestant/Catholic divide on this issue, with the Protestants tending to be more hard-line that any such experience is "demonic." I come very much from that tradition, and understand it, but also appreciate the Catholic point of view (I in fact earned my Ph.D. in Theology from a university with Jesuit affiliations).
“...I have always viewed the Ouija as something evil...”
Ditto that.
Great question.
I will e-mail our priest and ask him. I THINK that they still do.
You’d better rethink that statement.
When Christ showed his divinity to Peter, James and John, on Mt. Tabor, he was seen to converse with Moses and Elijah (the Law and the Prophets).
Both had died centuries before.
And all this took place before His death and resurrection.
thank you for this post.
God does give gifts to people. We never know WHY one person gets more/less gifts and it doesn't matter to me why.
Your mother's "gift" about cars, obviously, was to make SURE that you ended up here on FR.
Gettysburg is known for that kind of thing.
Satan is very old and uses his tools to lure, tempt and bring into his "fold" as many silly, sad and unprotected souls as he can.
I suppose that the boards can be fun if they make people laugh.
I also wonder if when they exploit or even discuss them too freely, the apparitions lose the desire to be seen by them.
“That’s interesting. I had a friend who said she saw auras. “
Auras are to the human body what moonlight is to the moon. The moon does not create light, it is merely reflecting the sunlight. The human body does not create the light of the aura. It is merely the soul or life force energy that creates the physical body reflecting off it that is seen as the aura.
You can drop an atomic bomb on a person’s head and it will not harm the soul. Sin does more damage than physical injury as it blocks Love from holding the soul together.
In order to be like a child we must find and remove the obstacles to Love that exist within our soul. Love is the glue that holds the soul together. When a healing takes place the obstacle to Love is merely removed, often through forgiveness.
I saw Santa Claus.
No, not the dead. Only a living soul intercedes.
Mormons aren't Christian. Mary is the mother of God.
If YOU can't see ANY difference then you actually MIGHT have the brains of a rhino. Just saying that you MIGHT...no nasty intentions on my part. Rhinos are FABULOUS creatures, albeit NOT of the highest I.Q.
Besides, you don't see ME criticizing the Mormons. I had an aunt who became a Mormon. The town's Episcopalian Church was in total disarray. She WOULD NEVER, EVER dream of being Catholic like the "Messicans." [Read that as Mexicans.] All that was left were the Mormons.
Her husband, my uncle, went along with it to keep the peace, but still visited his friends across the line and drank a cerveza every once in a while. Her son, brought up Episcopalian converted to Mormonism then converted to Catholicism when he married a Catholic.
He's now in Las Vegas with NO religious affiliation. THAT is sad.
Undoubtedly that’s why I was born. As we got older, she seemed to stop being psychic although she did have a dream that a cross beam had fallen on me. The next day I was working in a Manhattan office building and a crane fell on it, destroying the infrastructure. We had to evacuate but I was fine.
Official Catholic accounts state that on the morning of December 9, 1531, Juan Diego saw an apparition of a young girl at the Hill of Tepeyac, near Mexico City.
Speaking to him in Nahuatl, the girl asked that a church be built at that site in her honor; from her words, Juan Diego recognized the girl as the Virgin Mary. Diego told his story to the Spanish Archbishop of Mexico City, Fray Juan de Zumárraga, who instructed him to return to Tepeyac Hill, and ask the "lady" for a miraculous sign to prove her identity.
The first sign was the Virgin healing Juan's uncle.
The Virgin told Juan Diego to gather flowers from the top of Tepeyac Hill. Although December was very late in the growing season for flowers to bloom, Juan Diego found Castillian roses, not native to Mexico, on the normally barren hilltop.
The Virgin arranged these in his peasant cloak or tilma. When Juan Diego opened his cloak before Bishop Zumárraga on December 12, the flowers fell to the floor, and on the fabric was the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
============================================
The miracle continues in that the "cloak" is still around, the exact same cloth. It's been verified by all the gainsayers in the world who want to prove ANY and ALL miracle(s) fraudulent.
I saw the cloak myself a couple of times when I lived in Mexico City for two years, when I was in my twenties. It's still a vibrant blue. That's all I can remember of it.
Of course, in literature and film (think Poltergeist and The Exorcist), the evil forces enter through the child because the child is open and not particularly logical. I have no idea if this is true in real life because I’m not even sure I believe in demonic possession. Knocking wood as I speak.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.