Passion of the Church

Jesus Wept. John 11:35

Jesus is still weeping.

For the wages of sin is death. Roman’s 6:23

How long until Jesus says to us, “Lazarus (which means, My God has Helped), COME OUT” John 11:43

Some of our own leaders are walking the Church on her Passion.

On Saturday August 11, 2018, on the feast of my namesakes, Saint Susanna and Saint Clare, I went to Mass. I had been saddened by the news of a Cardinal of the Church who was involved in the abuse of children, and who had not lived out his Priestly celibacy. As Mass began, they turned on the lights in the church. I noticed immediately a light flickering on and off. It sat over top of the Second Station of the Cross.

As I looked at the flickering light over the Second Station, God whispered to me “The Church’s Passion. This is where you are.”

Just then I noticed another light flickering in the back. I looked back, and there it was flickering over the Statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe. And God whispered, “she will guide the way, follow her example.”

I pondered what God told me, and I noticed that the lights stopped flickering at the consecration. I don’t find that coincidental.

By the Feast of the Assumption, the news of the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report had come out. I felt sick. As Facebook exploded with people asking why, and how anyone could possibly stay in this Church, I wept. We are crucifying him again, just as the leaders did back then. It is a different sin, but sin none the less. By the time I got to Mass that evening, my sadness had given way to anger, actually I will call it rage.  I was so enraged I thought perhaps I shouldn’t receive communion. I felt sick. I felt betrayed. And then the cantor sang….

Gentle Woman....

And instantly my rage disappeared. And I knew, she is the example that will guide the way on this Passion of the Church.

By the next day my anger was back, and I had a meeting with our Deliverance Ministry Leader. He always seems so peaceful. I asked how, in the midst of all of this, how, how is he so peaceful?

He answered quite quickly and easily. He said because this is ministry. The Church is sick, she has always dealt with the sick and been sick. I knew from previous conversations with him that Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8), yet here we are and the devil is running rampant. He runs rampant in colleges, government, in Hollywood, in our families, and even and especially in the Church. He said if I don’t want to know the icky…I shouldn’t be in ministry. He said the Church is filled with icky. Always has been. That’s why we’re here to help heal the sickness and Christ will come again when we all have the devil under our foot.

“then comes the end,
when he hands over the Kingdom to his God and Father,
when he has destroyed every sovereignty
and every authority and power.
For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.
The last enemy to be destroyed is death,
for “he subjected everything under his feet.”

1 Corinthians 15 – from the reading on the Feast of the Assumption

He then started asking me a series of questions about who I could hug. When he got to “could you hug a pedophile?” I said no. He asked me if Jesus would hug a pedophile. I said yes. He told me to stop flopping like a fish out of water and get back in the water of God’s grace.

I started reflecting on how I can sit in the deliverance sessions and I can clearly see the demons speaking to the people. And they can spew horrid sins and I don’t flinch because I can see what has happened to them. Our sessions walk with them as they forgive others, forgive themselves, and they renounce the devil of their own free will. There is no yelling or screaming. Just a recognition of how the devil has lied to them, how they believe the lies, and how forgiveness brings the light of truth. Forgiveness sets them free. You can actually see their countenance change. And even though I hear horrid sins, I have empathy and compassion. And mercy. This is because I can see what the devil has done, and it enables me to look at them through the eyes of God. My holy hatred is aimed at the devil, and I see what God sees in them.

But this situation with the Church and her shepherds, this seemed different. Bigger. Something I could not fathom, even though I feel like I saw it coming ages ago. I just didn’t want it to be true.

So I had it out with God. I told him, some of these people are so attacked by demons from the time they were born, they don’t stand a chance and they cannot even hear him. How are they supposed to make it when they don’t stand a chance? I also spewed at him about the pedophiles/ephebophiles too and lamented their victims. How do we stop this Lord?

And then God spoke to me. He told me that what I consider to be blessings and curses are not always what He considers blessings and curses because His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts. He talked to me about free will and how He would not take it away because He wants true love to be chosen. And then he showed me something beautiful. It was how He looks at each soul. He knows exactly where they are and what they are culpable for. He said he always gives them a chance. Right up until the end. He shows them their own soul at judgement. Then He presents Himself to each soul with His arms outstretched and it is up to them. They choose to reject or accept. He exacts what they choose. When they accept…what he showed me was himself covering them over, molding Himself to them, purgatory is this molding. For some souls the molding is extremely painful because when perfection touches sin it is excruciating. It’s as if he places one hand on His own heart, and one hand on the heart of the person who accepts His mercy. And like a doctor removing septic infection from a patient, the process of perfection begins. The worse the infection, the longer and harder the road to recovery. But no matter how bad they were, they have the chance. Many of them reject Him because they can’t stand the sight of their own soul. These people are different than those who handed themselves over to Satan’s kingdom and have actively worked for Satan. Those working for Satan know, and they willingly consent to the evil. They have chosen hell purposefully. But these other souls, they didn’t know and didn’t actively choose Satan’s Kingdom. That’s why Jesus said “Father forgive them, they know not what they do.” It’s their total consent that is lacking because they had been conditioned from long ago to believe the lies. The way he showed me this molding, was a thing of beauty, placing his perfect body, his beautiful heart, over top of the ugliness and imperfection of people. It transformed their ugliness into beauty and you could see Him in them. You could see their hearts beating with His. It was so overwhelming to me, of course you know, I cried. Oceans of mercy. I cannot fathom loving someone as much as He loves us. So if a person was conditioned as a child, had ancestral demons, had demons attacking him all his life because of trauma, and was conditioned to believe lies and really didn’t fully know what he was consenting to, even he can receive the mercy of God. Many of them go to hell though because when they see what they have done, and fully understand it, they reject the mercy because they believe they don’t deserve it. The light shown on their darkness is too overwhelming for them.

When Christ is molded to us like this, it is an action of the Holy Spirit. God showing us we are made in His image and likeness, and our acceptance of it. That is why when we reject this mercy it is blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. The unforgivable sin.

This is what Satan did. He rejected mercy. He didn’t want to extend it to us. His existence was a mercy and he rejected the purpose God made him for. Satan tries his utmost to get us to do this too, whispering all the way to our judgment in the hopes we reject mercy. And it is why we pray for so much intercession at our death, because the communion of Saints together can drown out the voice of blasphemy. God, because He is outside of time can apply these prayers, and this intercession to our judgement, and together we can overcome blasphemy. This is why it is astronomically sad to have no one praying for you. We were not meant to be alone. Isolation begets blasphemy.

But this is also why death is a mercy for some. The chastisement…it is actually a blessing. They cannot fight or do not know how to fight the demons here on this earth and this actually gives them a chance. Still souls pour into hell because they reject the mercy.

This type of forgiveness is hard. It is also not to be confused with consequence. I think this has been a failure of our leaders, not understanding that forgiveness does not entail no consequence. For each sin, there is a consequence, both temporal and corporal. We cannot allow people to harm children. They must be stopped. Prison is a consequence. It is reparation for the crimes. God will deal with the souls, and I imagine if they did turn towards Him, the lowest level of purgatory would be appropriate, though I am not God.

We have two choices when it comes to this. We can choose to be perfected here or we can choose to wait until the afterlife where we know God always extends mercy. On this earth suffering is painful, but not as painful as purgatory after death. For the pain of being perfected there is awful, though it is our greatest mercy. Purgatory is mercy. That is why they are the Church Suffering, and we are the Church Militant. We must fight the demons here and ask God to walk us to union with Him. The great Saints knew this. This is also why we must pray for those in purgatory daily.

I say to the shepherds who have been involved with unchaste behavior, breaking your vow of celibacy (or any of your vows for that matter), and also to those with abusive behavior, or with covering up abuse, REPENT NOW. The suffering you will endure in reparation on earth will be nothing compared to being shown the state of your soul before God, and even if you choose to accept His mercy, the pain of perfection in the afterlife is harder than here.

If you do not repent, you are walking the whole church on her Passion. The catechism tells us the church will undergo a Passion, and the Passion looks scandalous.  You are inviting the world to persecute us. And it is a consequence that would be deserved. If you think you are in control and can cover things up, God will soon show you who is in charge. He does this to all of us.

For the rest of us on this walk of Passion in the Church, welcome the transparency shedding light on the darkness. A friend of mine used to say, “these things must come.” They surely must if we want Resurrection.

“For there is nothing hidden that will not become visible, and nothing secret that will not be known and come to light. Take care, then, how you hear. To anyone who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he seems to have will be taken away.” Luke 8:17-18

Remember, don’t leave Jesus because of Judas. You can walk the Passion like Mary and John. You may even hide a little bit like Peter and the rest of the Apostles, as I imagine this was a time of healing for them. But never stop praying. Pray for the good shepherds who will be persecuted, and for those who need to repent. Never leave the Eucharistic Lord. God can heal these wounds and bring us to Resurrection. Mary didn’t stand at the foot of the Cross with a baseball bat swinging at people. She stood trusting the Lord, and forgiving those who hid. She, in her perfection, even forgave the leaders who crucified Him, because that’s what her Son did on the cross.

When Christ comes again, it will be when we all have had triumph over the devil, and the earth will be under Christ’s feet because it will be under all of ours. This will create a new heaven and a new earth, the old passing away, and the restoration of how things were supposed to be in the beginning. All things moving to restoration and union with God’s will. This crisis is God purifying all of us. LORD HAVE MERCY ON US AND ON THE WHOLE WORLD.