Mysticism: Visions, Voices, and God's words:

Mysticism:  Visions, Voices, and God’s words:

I am writing this article regarding events that have entered my life; not because I am Holy or Saintly but to enumerate events that have made me wonder why this has occurred and to let others read about what may occur in their lives as well.

Let’s begin with an unwarranted event that appears out of nowhere yet it has the semblance of reality that cannot be discounted.  

Imagine an infant, probably only days old, being wheeled in a carriage and local women stopping the baby’s mother to admire the child.  Then this baby suddenly is above them and sees three women (including the mother) as they view the child.  Call it an out of body event or a bilocation happening.  This was my first mystical occurrence although it was a number of years afterward when the scene became a real event from my past.  

During the early years, before entering the diaconate, I became a night adorer before the Sacred Heart at 3 AM.  One of these early morning prayer sessions I heard a woman screaming like she was being attacked.  The scream sounded as though someone was being attacked violently.  I went outside on our porch expecting the worst.  The atmosphere was quiet, serene, and you could have heard a mouse walking.  Nothing!  On the way back inside a voice spoke to me saying; 3 AM is when the most evil occurs, the scream was from the depth of hell, and pray for the poor souls in purgatory.  I never forgot any of those words and still can replay the scream in my mind.

One day my wife and I pulled into the parking lot at St. Bernard Church in Mt. Lebanon, PA.  As I got out of the car I noticed a man dressed in all black standing a couple of cars from me.  We nodded at each other and as I walked to the passenger side of our car and opened the door for her to get out I turned to see this man and he was gone.  The elapsed time from seeing him and looking again to where I first spotted him was no more than one minute.  Where he went baffled me.  I told my wife I just saw my guardian angel.  Several days later in the early morning I awoke and there he was, standing beside my bed and looking at me.  I was sure he was my angel.  Then within a short period of time EWTN had a documentary on purgatory.  After watching that I realized the man was not my guardian angel but a visitor from purgatory seeking my prayers.  I discovered that God allows souls to visit praying people in order to have them pray for their souls seeking expiation through our prayers.  One other thing is that on two occasions my wife got out of bed to use the bathroom and saw this man or another man standing by the bed and looking at me; trying to get me to pray; we assumed.   Neither of us are easily led to imaginations and what we viewed were real.

My wife had a niece who was dying from a cancerous brain tumor and we visited her at her home.  While speaking with her I saw two people standing behind her which I assumed were angels.  One was a man about 30 years of age and the second one was a woman.  The man had a beard and the vision lasted only seconds.  Sometime later that month my father died in the hospital from cancer.  Around 5 AM the hospital called me informing me of his passing.  When I arrived at the hospital the nurse let me into his room.  All of a sudden I looked across the bed and there was my father standing by what I assumed was an angel; it was the same male figure I saw when my wife and I visited Lisa who was dying with a cancerous brain tumor.  My father had a smile on his face, and like with Lisa the vision lasted but a second. 

There was a “healing of memories" session that myself and a group of other people were involved in and we broke into small groups of four or five and went into quiet contemplative silent thoughts.  While doing that I saw an older western town with dirt streets and many poor people standing around and one young girl crying loudly because of some horrible incident that was around her and her family.  All of a sudden one young lady at our table began to sob and she said that was her in an earlier time of her life.  She opened up and we saw a healing right there with a ”healing of memories session.”  Again I was able to see into the depth of another person because of mysticism.

Because of our advanced years my wife and I now live with a daughter and her husband.  We have four cats and as it often happens sometimes the cats like to be outside, but they usually come back on their own.  One evening I left one of the female cats out and she did not come back like she usually did.  I told my daughter I would stay up and keep an eye open for her to return.  As I was sitting facing the deck out of our dining room and playing solitaire on a tablet I kept looking at the sliding door hoping she would appear.  All of a sudden there she was sitting and looking at me.  As I got up to let her in, a weird thing happened; her face became white, not just from the porch light, but what Jesus looked like during the Transfiguration:  Brilliant like a lighted image that was greater than an electric light shining on an object.  At first I stopped because I thought it was another animal and couldn’t figure out what the intense light was.  Then the light went away and I opened the sliding glass door to let her in.   It finally dawned on me that wherever she was before I saw her it might have been somewhere not close to the house.  The light was the same as when angels are announcing something holy.  There is no doubt when Gabriel appeared to Mary there would have been a brilliant light.  And when the angels appeared to the shepherds; The angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them.  I believe completely that an angel brought our cat back; why do I think an angel was responsible?  Because there is no other reason that such a light would occur except from the presence of something very holy.  Normally someone else would not have seen the light except that a mystic would.

That is not abnormal when mysticism seems to touch one or more people that God allows for some.  These are several instances that I felt were because of mysticism.  

Ralph B. Hathaway