It is a “dark” time of year, which means that those of Light shine all the brighter.
It is like a seed.
In the earth, before it bursts forth, a seed is in the darkness of surrounding ground and must reach forth and grow and endure against the darkness of soil before erupting into the light of the surface, where it rapidly develops.
Such is life: a struggle with darkness — but, when handled properly, a glorious struggle.
Noted a viewer named Ruth this week, “After seeing some really gruesome decorations on lawns for Halloween this year (especially a home on the corner of a busy street with three twenty-foot devils in front of the house overlooking an altar), a thought came to me that if enough Catholics could get some type of decorations on their lawns of Saint Michael the Archangel piercing the devil (the bigger the better ), that it would be one way of spreading where the real power is. Just an idea, but I for one am going to try to do this.”
Sounds like a good idea here also.
Last week, when I was kayaking, I prayed the Archangel Michael prayer at a time of some concerns and immediately on concluding the prayer spotted a beautiful eagle circling overhead.
It’s not rare to see eagles near where we live, but neither is it a common occurrence.
I had seen them kayaking before, but this was the longest I’d viewed one, as it cut concentric pathways closer and closer to what must have seemed a speck of a boat below.
Coming at this time of year when we think of spiritual combat, and with all that is transpiring in our society, it made me think, almost as immediately, about an account I’d once heard from the late Ukrainian mystic Josyp Terelya, who spent many years in Soviet confinement for his Catholic activism.
He described a vision of Michael in a letter to his wife Olena from his jail cell on July 17, 1983.
Crouched and freezing in solitary confinement, Josyp had fallen asleep or into some sort of altered state in which he “saw” himself at the Marian site of Zarvanystya (also a favorite of Pope John Paul II’s). During that lapse he saw an intense light illuminate a meadow. He smelled apple blossoms. A large white eagle came and settled on the field and told him not to fear.
An eagle.
In the distance, in this vision, Josyp saw “an old man dressed in white.” He recalled only his face. The man said, “Why are you so troubled? Suffer and do not give in because you are under the protection of the Mother of God and after your release from prison there is a bright road spreading before you. The Church will rise.” When Josyp asked who he was, the man said, “I know you and you know me.”
The voice went on: “The Lord is now gathering the good men against the evil” and told Josyp that rebellion against God extended across the world. Worse times were approaching, he was told, than the times of Luther — “worse” times and yet for prayer-warriors, glorious calls to action.
In the end, he was told, God would punish the “apostates,” and yes, there would be persecution: the world was “divided into the messengers of God and the messengers of anti-christ.” After the great revelations of the Virgin, a renewal of love of Christ would begin, this “man” told Josyp, and there would be a rapid rise of devotion to the Immaculate Heart.
“I asked him whether I would still be in prison, and this ancient, celestial man answered, ‘Yes, but not for long because God has other plans for you.’ I asked again, ‘Who are you? What is your name?’ His answer: ‘I am a servant of God, the Archangel Michael.'”
Tears streamed down Josyp’s face. When he came to — in that cold, dank cell, in solitary confinement — he didn’t know if he had dreamt it or really seen it.
Wrote Josyp, “Meanwhile, the guards smelled the aroma of apples and began searching the cells.
“But of course, there were no apples to be found.”
