Comments for Satan, etc. at http://www.thecatholicthing.org , comment 1 to 11 out of 11 comments http://www.thecatholicthing.org Sun, 26 May 2013 04:04:49 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/satan-etc.html#comment-8662 Bravo to Father Bramwell! To build on what Graham suggested, please ask your pastors to restore the use of The Roman Canon as the primary Eucharistics Prayer of The Holy Mass...a Church that claims to love tradition and revere its witnesses must give voice to those claims by teaching its children to remember the Church persecuted for Christ...those martyrs of the early Church who loved Christ to the end, in the face of violent death. As JP2 wrote in his last book, Memory and Identity, when we forget...we have lost our identity. - Chris in Maryland Mon, 24 Oct 2011 20:22:11 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/satan-etc.html#comment-8656 I have had the great misfortune to directly encounter Satan. Fortunately, it was a meeting arranged and controlled by the Holy Spirit (blessed be His name). There was an area of sin in my life which had caused me a great struggle. During one of these periods, when the sin was ascendant and my will felt paralyzed, I had an experience of great pith and moment. It was a Wednesday morning, very early; at 4:05 am (I looked at the clock when the experience ended as I wished to remember when it occurred). It was my practice to attend a Charismatic Catholic prayer meeting on Wednesday evening. I shared the experience with them that evening. That is how I recall the day of the week on which this momentous event occurred. I woke from a sound slumber confused and uncertain as to what had awakened me. It is my normal practice to sleep quite soundly in a state more resembling coma. I was lying flat on my back as is my normal habit. I came fully awake when an impulse, which I now believe was not random, caused me to look towards the foot of the bed. There was a man standing at the foot of my bed. This was startling enough. I became positively frightened when I realized that, in this coal black form, I could make out no features save his eyes, which were glowing with a soft and dim white light. I could see, against the white walls of my bedroom, the outlines of his form. He seemed to have the normal accoutrements of two arms, two legs and a head. His legs were very straight. Reflecting on the experience later I could recall no evidence of knees. I was suddenly given the capacity to understand this being's feelings toward me. It is difficult to describe this capability but I shall attempt to do so. It was as though my mind was directly connected to his. I could feel, as though they were my own feelings, his reactions to my thoughts. By changing the focus of my thoughts I could, in a sense, probe his attitudes toward me. He had no feelings toward me other than hatred. He desired, in the most intense manner imaginable, my complete and utter destruction. Even in the areas of my life which were not important to me he desired that I fail miserably. This knowledge has caused me to value all that I do now. The master of hell truly hates all of creation. Then the Holy Spirit came to me. I felt his presence on my left side, out of my line of sight. I could not see Him. He gave me the knowledge, without words and directly into my mind as a fully formed concept, that the being I was examining was Satan. A very strange thing then occurred. Well, things were strange enough already but this was odd as well. The Holy Spirit "yelled" at me. It was very loud, much louder than I thought I could ever hear. I wondered for a moment if my hearing would be damaged. He said, "YOU HAVE LEFT OPEN A DOOR THROUGH WHICH HE WILL DESTROY YOU." Clearly the Holy Spirit was referring to the destruction desired by Satan. I understood immediately, though the passing of another concept that this referred to my area of sin and struggle. The message was clear. Fix the problem or my life would be destroyed. I have done my best to do just that. When I shared this encounter with my prayer group that evening it had a visible effect on of the participants, a man who shared my first name. I could sense a change come over him which seems to have lasted to this day. So I believe the message was not just for me. Therefore I share it with you. Repent, pray, and do penance. May God have mercy on your soul. “In a dream, in a vision of the night, (when deep sleep falls upon men) as they slumber in their beds, it is then He opens the ears of men and as a warning to them, terrifies them; by turning man from evil and keeping pride away from him, He withholds his soul from the pit and his life from passing to the grave.” Job 33:15-18 - PajamaMan Mon, 24 Oct 2011 14:15:49 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/satan-etc.html#comment-8650 Exactly - too many do not realize that the goal of the Faith is a changed life and not just changed opinions. - Ben Horvath Mon, 24 Oct 2011 08:20:39 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/satan-etc.html#comment-8649 Mankind must recall that we are players in a grander game, latecomers to a war that began before Adam. The greater powers on the battlefield are unnumbered angels, one-third of which are demons. St. Padre Pio revealed to us that if we could see the demons, they "would blot out the sun". Their invisibility is both a kindness from God, lest we be stupefied by fear, unable to live our lives, and a trick of their sickening master, to let us forget their existence, which, do not fool yourself, is as close as your hand right now. Blessed Newman would remind us that we coquettishly and sunnily refer to our guardian angels, but how about the similar proximity of their counterpoints, oppressing and plaguing us in real ways? I hope that anyone who can will read Father Amorth's recent memoirs. Wake up, slumbering Christians. Ave, Maria. - BradW Mon, 24 Oct 2011 07:48:53 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/satan-etc.html#comment-8648 @Larry Coty: I'll answer for Fr. Bramwell. The quote is from Newman's PAROCHIAL AND PLAIN SERMONS, #24, "The Religion of the Day." -ABM - Brad Miner Mon, 24 Oct 2011 05:52:27 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/satan-etc.html#comment-8647 Is there a source for the Newman quotation? - Larry Coty Mon, 24 Oct 2011 05:35:57 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/satan-etc.html#comment-8644 Graham, are you saying that the attorney perhaps thought YOU had a "disposition to disbelieve in what [you] saw sitting next to [him] in court" and so he dismissed you? - Arthur Treacher Sun, 23 Oct 2011 21:26:38 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/satan-etc.html#comment-8642 Recently I was excused from the jury box during voir dire. Was it because I admitted to be a "practicing Catholic" (with, as the joke goes, the emphasis on practicing)? I don't know. The case involved what the law calls "criminal sexual conduct" or CSC to use courhouse shorthand. I was peremptorially dismissed by the defense. It is getting more difficult to particupate fully in American civic culture because of the Faith. I have come to believe in the personification of Evil. Not to mention "human nature." My criminal law and first amendment professor felt it necessary to regularly remind us that there was no such thing. I suspect that many if not most defense counsel struggle to reconcile the nature they confront in their clients with their sophisticated disposition to disbelieve in what they see sitting next to them in court. American's lack of humility (as with my English ancestors) comes more from being in a country freer than so many others. Freedom and affluence being, in a sense, our cross to bear. I'm not being flippant. And I remain a great admirer of the Founders. In this season of liturgical renewal perhaps we might consider bringing back the custom of kneeling for the Body and Blood of Christ. It was the practice when I was an Anglican altar boy in the sixties when Catholics were already abandoning it (as I observed when a student at a Catholic high school). At mass Monsignor has us occasionally renew our Baptismal oath of "renouncing Satan and all his works." Thank you again Fr. Bramwell for a subject too often relegated to bad movies about Catholic exorcists or exceptional episodes from the The Twilight Zone. - Graham Combs Sun, 23 Oct 2011 17:42:25 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/satan-etc.html#comment-8641 So true, and so clearly exposed in the annulment/divorce mindset and the obstinate refusal to preach indisolubilty and uphold marriage. - Hortensia Sun, 23 Oct 2011 17:10:42 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/satan-etc.html#comment-8640 Father Bramwell, excellent meditation for Sunday morning! Some might want to substitute this essay for Vatican II as the cause of all the evil in the world. Thank you so much, all your essays are edifying. - Achilles Sun, 23 Oct 2011 13:48:40 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/satan-etc.html#comment-8638 Excellent analysis. We downplay the darker side of the gospel and then send our children forth into a world in which murder is mundane. Secular society not only worships the creature, it denies that there is a Creator. Oh, hell, there might be something out there like energy or the mother of all good intentions, but any relations with it must kept private, hidden from public view so as not to spoil the party. Secular life is an evaporating tide pool, confined and shallow, hot and temporarily cut off from the source of its life. The tide will come back, but will it be soon enough to save the poor trapped creatures? - Other Joe Sun, 23 Oct 2011 03:15:01 +0100