Reflections on Marian Apparitions: A Lecture by Fr. Benedict Groeschel

[Music] so many people I know and I see my good friends the Merced Aryans there too want to welcome them and I was brought here today driven by my good friend Monsignor Gregory Smith who was the transfer of the Archdiocese of Vancouver happens to be staying with us he's getting a bite of lunch but if you go back to the ivy hall if I did bring some of the people in the back of saying they're having difficulty hearing if I if we you go back to Ivy Hall I have many copies of this book which is really the substance of my lecture it's a book on the Church's teaching on private revelation and so I'll be happy to go back there I'm on my way up to Northampton where the I'll be giving a retreat to the spirituality program for st. Charles seminary so if I can just ask you to join me in a prayer in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit amen Holy Spirit come and be with us guide and enlighten us open our hearts and minds that we may change that we may grow and help us today that we may meditate on so mysterious a thing as your direct communication with individual Souls that we may use prudence along with faith we may use good judgment along with enthusiasm and that we may be willing to be wisely guided by the church we pray through Christ our Lord we adore you oh Christ and we praise you Our Lady seed of wisdom st. Joseph st. Francis in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit I fell on the ice although I'm getting old I'm not yet using a cane regularly but I had two Falls in the last three days so I'm not in good shape private revelation is dismissed by some people as really quite unimportant and the most prestigious of all those people is st. John of the Cross he was militant against private revelation and he had good reason to be at his time there was a woman by the name a coy stirred nun by the name of Magdalena of the cross and Magdalena was a veritable candy box of supernatural phenomena she could float in the air she had the stigma to she did all kinds of things and she was inconsolable sand prelate sand even by the royal family the hapsburgs and when the Spanish Armada came through the Straits of Gibraltar she was invited out to bless it and it promptly sank which might give people a suspicion that maybe Magdalena was not quite all there and in the face of what appeared to be a terminal illness she confessed that as a young woman before she became a nun she had made a pact with Satan and the Satan was providing her with the supernatural phenomena including the ability to levitate and she was very fortunate because she was a nun that she was not burned at the stake by the Spanish Inquisition but she was absolved and it took a lot of absolution and then when she got better she went back to the old stories sure so she was an inveterate phony visionary and the one person who said that he would have nothing to do with her was John of the Cross jonatha cross reminds us that God has said to us this is my beloved son listen to him in Christ we have all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge and Saint John of the Cross puts into the mouths of Christ the words amounts of God the words I have nothing else to tell you I have told you all things I have given you my son now that's one side of the of the issue the other side of the issue it is obvious that since the end of the New Testament writings which sometimes call the death of the last apostle --zz revelations have been made in the church by saintly souls a number of them substantial and a number of them which contains contributed very benevolently to the life of the church and so many of the older people here grew up almost entirely thinking of Christ as he appears in the revelation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to Saint Margaret Mary or at least an edition of that we actually what we see as the Sacred Heart image is very far from what st. Margaret Mary described and I'll get around to that and many of us perhaps all of us are deeply impressed by the modern Marian apparitions beginning with La Salette and coming to kind of a marvelous crescendo in Lourdes and Fatima so you can't say that private revelations are inappropriate I'd have to argue with Saint John of the Cross but his sobering words need to be borne in mind now the the fact is that the church does in a variety of ways approve private revelations but they are never ever ever approved in the sense that they have any of the infallible Authority of church teaching ever ever and the ways of that approval to be given are not even clearly defined although probably the greatest approval would be the devout visit of a pope to a place of private revelation to Lourdes or to Fatima that's a great deal of approval many private revelations started out being roundly disapproved and they all begin doubtful that's an important fact all reports of private revelation immediately put them into the category of the doubtful and to accept a private revelation as divine as absolutely true without the approval of the church can be a violation of the first commandment this is important it could be false worship so it's important for people to maintain some common sense now I wrote this book called a still small voice we're not getting rich on this book I think it's either ten or twelve dollars and the Friars don't make money on our books we don't any of the money we spell make selling books or tapes we use for the poor because we often sell them on Sunday and we sell them in church and if I gotta go to purgatory for a lot of things I don't want to go for being a money changer in the temple so all father Andrew of other Stanley or I make on tapes we give to the poor and we've now just started a new reform publication endeavor called grassroots renewal project in which we are absolutely positively unequivocally preaching for the reform of the church if this present crisis is wasted if there is not a very serious movement toward reform the church will slip into greater greater irrelevance this is a time for reform write the word over your door the time has come and the kingdom of God is at hand repent and believe the good news but I wrote this book and I wrote this book almost entirely based on a great classic that's a hundred years old called the graces of interior prayer by Augustine pulang or pou l AI and Poulain Poorna in French a French Jesuit who wrote about a hundred years ago when there was kind of a great rash of reports of private revelations I don't know whether you know it but in Lourdes in just a few years after the apparition to Saint Bernadette over 200 apparitions were reported many of them were investigated and none of them were ever approved and some of them are quite interesting I also used some of the things of a book called encountering Mary it is a very very well done book by a Protestant a lady with a memorable name dr. Sandra Zim DARS Schwarz as M das schwarze is hyphenated name not to be forgotten and is an excellent book she's professor of religious studies at University of Kansas and she undertook to give as many objective facts about reported revelations in modern times Marian revelations as she could and she used approved ones like Lourdes and Fatima those that are in dispute like gareb and Al and major gory and some that had been openly and categorically this disapproved of which doesn't always happen of a revelation called San Damiano in Italy but some Damiano is a place but when the church approves the private revelation it does so in a very unique way this is a writing of Pope Benedict the fourteenth Prospero lambertini is a very outstanding Pope is the Pope who approved the Redemptorist order lived about 1750 and had been able to cope with the anti-clericalism of his time and and even the English Protestants lamented his passing it was a great great mind and he had been on his way to the papacy the devil's advocate for the causes of canonization of saints it is really called the promoter of justice so he was informed on these things and this fact I'm going to come to in one minute which is worth all the effort that you put out to get here this afternoon is worth the price of admission what is to be said of those private revelations which the Apostolic See has approved of like those a blessed Hildegard approved in part by Eugene the third of Saint Brigid I assume it's Bridget of Sweden by Boniface 2/9 and of Saint Catherine of Siena by Gregory the eleventh we have already said that these revelations although approved of ought not to and cannot receive from us the assent of Catholic faith they cannot be the subject of the vert theological virtue of faith but only of human faith following the rules of prudence according to which the aforesaid revelations are probable and may piously be believed now he chose those three Saints because all three of those revelations contain errors all three of them and if you really want something to chew on do recall the Catherine of Siena a great mystic and doctor of the church said that the Blessed Virgin revealed to her that she was not immaculately conceived that's worth the afternoon if you're interested in private revelations Saint Catherine of Siena said that our Lady revealed to her that she was not immaculately conceived so if you got into a private revelation slow down because even doctors of the church can make big mistakes it's interesting Calvin and Luther both held that Mary was conceived without sin probably didn't know that the Calvinists and the Lutheran's don't make a lot of it but but they're their theologians were influenced very much by st. Agustin and San Agustin believed that Mary was conceived without sin so but there was a fight going on right at the time of st. Catherine between the Dominicans and the Franciscans over the Immaculate Conception and st. Thomas along with a lot of other people on not criticizing st. Thomas here said that Mary had to be redeemed that she could not be without original sin and later on the much after the time of st. Thomas st. Blessed John Duns Scotus a Franciscan came up with the theory that we call the Immaculate Conception that Mary was redeemed but that her redemption was simultaneous with her creation and it brings you into the mystery of time and eternity because we think in time now I st. Catherine was a Dominican and I suspect that she was influenced in her perceptions by the thoughts of st. Thomas and the Dominican theologians which would not be surprising because those who receive private revelations don't receive them into a tabula rasa a blank blackboard if the Divine Presence the Holy Spirit the Divine Word of God is going to communicate to a human being it has to be within the psychological framework of the life of that human being remember a private revelation is a person from the infinite and transcendent world domain of being coming into this contingent and passing world it's not a conversation between two people which is a mistake we often make because the visionaries having no other way to speak about it may speak that way there's a marvelous painting in the metropolitan museum of art by Bastian LePage Jean Bastian Lapage of Joan of Arc it used to be downstairs at the entrance in a metropolitano why they moved that Civil Liberties Union probably go after them with something and and it shows Joan very realistically painted in peasant attire and the little farm yard Adam Raimi and mysteriously ambiguously in the trees are the figures they're not very clear of st. Michael st. Catherine of Alexandria and st. Margaret of Antioch now in the Church of Dom Ramey there were the statues of these three Saints and in his excellent study of st. Joan of Arc the maid of Orleans Sven's stope sto PL e one of the very rare Catholic members of the Swedish Academy and but spiritual biographer of Hamish old Spence tope says you know that this little girl receiving these divine commands may have indeed invested them her own mind invested the divine inspirations with those figures st. Michael really doesn't have a body he's a spirit he is the patron however of the House of Valois who worth which is the house at the door fan of France belonged to in the king st. Margaret of Alexandria is a figure very much shrouded in mystery and much to my aggravation and annoyance the cynical historians have all sorts of trouble with the existence of Catherine of Alexandria I do not join them in these but my reasons for refusing to do so or purely sentimental I never made a study a study of Catherine of Alexandria now see it can happen that the divine presence will wrap itself in images and ideas that the individual is familiar with when st. Bernadette who is the benchmark of all private revelations if you know what a private revelation to measure things against little Bernadette is the girl to do it Bernadette was as sharp and slightly snotty peasant kid she was about as much like Jennifer Jones as I am I wanted time she was much more like Mother Angelica than she was like Jennifer Jo Bernadette was a poor little street girl she was born in an abandoned prison and if you many of you get your ideas and private revelations from the song of Bernadette which had some good things that it Franz Werfel was trying to do his best and buddy I remember the scene where the police prefect is yelling at Bernadette shouting at her in the beginning of the film a little Jennifer was there didn't happen the real Bernadette laughed her way through the whole interview and she actually got the giggles and the tears were running down her face because of the absurdity of this individual arresting her for talking to the Blessed Virgin Mary this was not lost on a peasant child and how he worked with the poor all my life I want to tell you I know the Bernadette's of this world when one of the Monsignor is said to her do you expect to me to believe that the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to you she says of course not Monsignor I don't expect you to believe that it's not my job to get you to believe it it's my job to tell you what she said that's our Bernadette oh yeah there's a little book put out by the Sisters of Charity of NAVAIR the humor of Bernadette and I want to tell you she was a hot pistol like Mother Angelica if Bernadette had lived to be an old woman she would have been very much like Angelica not and you know it's interesting to people who God picks now his is a study do a study of the people of authenticated revelations and there is a preponderance of peasant girls first of all God almost never sends a private revelation to a priest because he'd be sent away for therapy you know and can you imagine a priest going into the chest or he say the Blessed Mother appeared to be less and father just said to Alba we'll call the ambulance he'll deal don't be perfectly all right that's working too hard you know the nuns that he said prepared to I mostly had very hard times Bernadette did not have a vacation than the continent of air of you will recall but but it's these peasant people who are humble enough to tell the truth and this is where Bernadette is so marvelous she never added a syllable to what happened to her original testimony neviutz look at encountering Mary bias dr. Schwartz you'll see a great deal was added to the testimony of Fatima and the testimony of Jacinta and Lucie probably in the case of Jacinta much of it was the thinking of the nun who cared for her in her last illness and some of the more doubtful things about Fatima probably come from that nun are we losing you everything is off and nothing happened up here so stop the film that's possibility turn off the camera will sit repeat the last line it's on well let me see if I can get up to the pulpit Jim you got to pull me up and that I can't do I strained a muscle badly okay it's got a little cute on television them gonna be by locating him it's not bad to stand up so it's all right I'm going to explain to our visual aid audience that we had to move because of the technological difficulty I'm not by locating now in when Bernadette was questioned and she was questioned severely one of the priests said to her why would God ever choose a little peasant girl and Bernadette said I suppose he wanted to choose a little peasant girl this was in the middle of the 19th century around 1911 in the 20th century the transcriptions of the trial of Joan of Arc were discovered they've been lost for hundreds of years and there's the sentence why would God ever choose a little peasant girl ask the Inquisitor and the answer was I suppose he wanted to choose a little peasant girl in terms of human history there probably has never been a private revelation that was more effective than the revelation to Joan of Arc probably there is something in the Philadelphia Inquirer which I hope you don't read because it's anti-catholic and it's certainly something on the front page of the New York time which is viciously anti-catholic there's probably a piece of news that some place in today's paper that relates to the effect of Joan of Arc it would be difficult to have a European news report that didn't Joan of Arc ended the Hundred Years War in less than a year as you know the British were trying to seize France on the basis that the Norman knights had gone and seized England and if you know the play henry v that is around episodes in the hundred years more than Battle of Agincourt it was a terrible war it went on and on and on it left Europe devastated other countries got drawn into it it was part of the terrible catastrophe of the 13th and 14th of the 14th and 15th century 14th century it was a devastation and it was ended in one year the Prime Minister of the country the Jone defeated Winston Churchill and his monumental study the history of the english-speaking peoples praises Joan of Arc in a way I have never seen anyone praised in a historical study he calls her the purest figure in European history in a thousand years I think that little girl has to sit down because she's in the middle of the television camera the the purest figure in European history in a thousand years and you know the point he recalls this statement perhaps a bit of a story of the English soldier that stood at the base of the pillory when Joan was burned at the stake and as she died he said our cause is lost we have burned a saint and Churchill says from that moment on the tides of history flowed relentlessly against England on the continent of Europe there were already english-speaking towns and villages in Brittany where the British had established their control for some years decades but there is no english-speaking village in the continent of Europe today despite the fact that England gave its language to whole countries and whole continents do you realize that a Joan of Arc had not come along France would have become English and the Protestant Reformation would have made France a Protestant country and there would be no lords no tourism Lucia no John Vianney no Sacred Heart the Catholic Church would be a much poorer place without France I'm going from here to the chapel at Northampton of the old Vincentian Seminary and it's filled with French saints one of our postulants this year is a French priest and he said to me after I brought him into this chapel he says this chapel is more French than any Church in France now that that's an example of a little peasant girl who was confused who was overwhelmed in the confusion of what was done to her appeared to vacillate you know Joan of Arc is the only Saint whose entire canonization hangs on one minute and she misunderstood a private revelation in several lives of Joan of Arc even one written by a non-believer Vita sackville-west brings out that Joan believed that she would be delivered some of the inquisitors were very sympathetic to Joan the Dominicans Joan was really learned because of the influence and pressure of the British although University in Paris and the Bishop of Beauvais certainly were their henchmen and one of the inquisitors said to her what do your visions tell you and she said st. Catherine told me do not be afraid of your martyrdom you will have a great victory so Joan thought that she would be delivered and the Inquisitor asked her what did she mean by your martyrdom and Joan said I believe that she meant the things that I have already suffered at your hands that's not what the vision meant and in that moment when Joan went down into the marketplace at who all believing she would be delivered perhaps she even believed it when she was tied to the pillory and as the smoke and flames curled around her she realized that she was not to be delivered and someone held a crucifix before her eyes and she spoke to Jesus as she was dying the canonization of Joan of Arc hangs on that minute is extremely interesting if you're interested in private revelations or God's doing with the history of human beings now are there some rules for private revelations yes and I put them in my book it's too long to go into them but there's a couple of distinctions that have to be made any reported private revelation is immediately in the case of the doubtful anyone who goes around proclaiming that this has happened other than the visionary themselves is sticking their neck out and maybe violating the first commandment and that's worthwhile knowing because I know people at all you'd have to do is announce that the Blessed Mother appeared here today and to be a thousand people outside of here by five o'clock this afternoon you know the I call them the miracle mary's st. Louis King of France has a message for that st. Louis was working with his counselors and the palace and someone came bursting in in majesty the crucifix in the all is moving and he said thank you and he went back to work two more people came bursting in crucifix is moving he said - thank you and finally the counselor said well Archer go down and see it he said I went to Mass this morning and I had received the body and blood of Christ I don't have to see moving crucifixes sobering fault sobering thought now the once they're registered and doubtful you have to see if they're going to be investigated and that relates to the diocesan bishop I'm sorry to tell you that since I wrote this book I have received well over a hundred private revelations they have not come to me personally they have come to me by priority man they come Priority Mail now they're all done with computers index and often have photographs of various people or even strange photographs of lights and people tell me they see different faces and the lights I have a form letter and they go back because to investigate a private revelation would be a full-time job of at least 10 years the priest who investigated the private revelations to st. Faustina was a theologian and it took him 10 years I don't have 10 years for all I know I have may have sent a real one back but it's not my job Tulane said at at his time of every hundred private revelations reported probably one was investigated and if every hundred investigated one would have been approved the chances of universal Church approval are rather slim and I want to give you his another fact worth the afternoon I don't want to rain in your parade but this is worth the afternoon no private revelation to an adult has been approved in the last 300 years by the universal authority of the church if the identity of that adult was known at the time of their death can I repeat that no private revelation to an adult has been approved by the universal Church in the last 300 years if the identity of the visionary was known at the time of their death children are now the children of Fatima Bernadette the children of the doubtful or questionable revelations of Garib and all and major gory these children are teenagers were known because they were naive in most cases none of them had any was seeing the Blessed Virgin neither Bernadette of the children of Fatima had any idea that it was the Blessed Virgin the children of Fatima knew that they were seeing something unusual because the figure was translucent you could see the trees through the figure of the Blessed Mother they could see the background so they knew they were up against something different Bernadette for a long time would not say she had seen the Blessed Virgin she said I saw a lady it's a French patois pronoun I saw a young woman she'd say but she told you she was the Immaculate Conception yes that means you saw the Blessed Mother I saw a young lady who told me she was the Immaculate Conception Bernadette was a toughy she's the benchmark never added anything unfortunately it has been come the custom or the observable phenomena that private revelations get added to for instance I grew up well there's the Sacred Heart revelation to st. Margaret Mary Alacoque now it didn't look anything like that I want to show you that's an artist rendition and the if you were there they would tell you something a little different often st. Margaret Mary or the Sacred Heart is carrying a scroll the twelve promises of the Sacred Heart these were extracted from popular books and testimonies of the vision by a salesman in Kansas City in the 1860s can I repeat that the Sacred Heart didn't see his promise number-one promise number two promise number three no they are extracted from the testimony and I wouldn't say that they're wrong but the Sacred Heart didn't handle a menu and say here you go get him to make the nine for his Fridays and this is what you get see isn't robot didn't happen and around private revelations are spun all kinds of stories some of you years ago read the life of Padre Pio by fathers Rumble and car Faye was one of the earliest biographies of Padre Pio I think he was still alive the father General of the Commission's are very venerable for the Clement of Milwaukee and the Capetian as we go by the town were from I have the ignominy of being Benedict of Jersey City which in Latin isn't bad it says a real Jersey City this says a real but what actually was there if you had been in the chapel and no one was there as Margaret Mary Alacoque was an extraordinary person a mystic among mystics I pray to this woman every single day she was a novice mistress of the visitation when she had had a very deprived childhood and when she but things got better after her Guardians died and she arrived at Perry Lamoni all in the to the visitation convent there and she was so well dressed that the neighbors said she'd never stay okay that was the opening shot but she was very developed but Margaret Mary Alacoque would kneel down at night as a vigil of a great feast of the altar rail and she would not move an inch for seven hours sisters who saw this testified in process of the out of vacation she didn't move shift anything and on three occasions in the morning she had to be assisted back to her room practically faint because these were the days of the apparitions of the Sacred Heart what she did described was a burning bright bronze object of incredible brightness around which you could very dimly see the shape of a human heart clearly you could see the crown of thorns and the flames at the top and the cross but you could hardly see the heart and it was not red it was fiery bronze well you know an artist can't do anything with that if you go to parry Lamoni all which I suggest that you do sometime anybody here been to power a only what to three people got to do better well you know when you go in you're first shocked because the scene in the dome doesn't look like what we're expecting is the burning furnace in the heart of Christ and rings of light going out but what's an artist gonna do so we have sort of the emblematic or almost decal picture of the Sacred Heart she said that the heart was in its proper biological location in the chest it was not exterior to the chest the housing artists gonna paint this so whenever you're dealing with the true revelation you've got a finite mind of yours trying to deal with the adaptations of the finite mind of the visionary and you got a lot of finite things there now the devotion to the Sacred Heart had begun long before Saint Margaret Mary it's very clearly in Saint Bonaventure some people see it in st. Augusta forty years before Saint Margaret Mary st. John dude that was st. John you'd had preached and written about the Sacred Heart in France and if you really want a shock is another one that's worth the price of coming the chaplain of Oliver Cromwell no friend of the Irish but unknown to Catholics something of a friend to Catholics in England he was terrible to the Irish but he restored the lands of the English Catholic nobility that's why the Duke of Norfolk now the premier Duke of England is a Catholic one of the Howard's because Cromwell restored the lands of the Catholics the people who crop welcome stared with the Episcopalians the Anglicans they drove them crazy they were his editors he felt sorry for the Catholics in a letter to Cardinal Mazarin he admitted that Catholics were subject to persecution in England and he assented Ella gates to the Vatican but his court chaplain Thomas Goodwin preached a three-hour sermon which I happen to have on the Holy Heart of Jesus and his love for sinners in this world before Saint Margaret Mary forty years before Saint Margaret Mary as as when you weren't expecting okay I'm just finishing a great big book on the history of devotion to Jesus Christ Catholic Orthodox and Protestant and it's filled with glorious little things like that the foundation of Okuma nism is not all this blah blah the foundation of the humanism is devotion to Jesus Christ and you know where I discovered this and the little old black lady's that I worked with all my life I go here well you're not too old but but I love those little old black grandmother's that we have in Harlem because they know Jesus oh they know Jesus let me tell you he's inaudible hood you don't speak about Jesus Christ or our Lord you speak about to sleep Lord Jesus and he's there well the and by the way the city of Philadelphia deserves recognition here because it is the place of the establishment of the first well-established black churches the African Methodist Episcopal Church was founded in Philadelphia now the st. Margaret Mary is in profound ecstasy she wasn't probably even looking up and most apparitions as far as you can tell are not external phenomena at least according to st. Thomas Aquinas like when Bernadette had the apparition at Lourdes the last time there were 10,000 people there nobody saw anything so st. Thomas says the assumption is that the apparition took place within their mind and soul miraculously otherwise you've got to have 10,000 miracles to explain why nobody else or the Blessed Virgin when you have an apparition in the external world is called a theophany and the only theophany I know of that's absolutely historically established in the 20th century was the theophany at Fatima there was an absolute theophany at Fatima this newspaper is the anti-clerical newspapers and Lisbon Portugal the following Sunday gave ample descriptions of the so-called whirling Sun now the Observatory at Greenwich is not far from Fatima it's just across the English channel nothing was observed at Greenwich but over an area of 40 square miles people saw the phenomena of a whirling Sun and the different colours and everybody saw it not just the believers the unbelievers I know a lady whose uncle was a freemason unbeliever and he heard something was going to happen at Fatima and he went to make sure it wasn't a phony and he was in the hospital three days of the catatonic trance they took him away from Fatima in an ambulance he was so shocked at what happened he joined the other side okay that's a theophany this is a picture of a theophany it's in the external world probably if you were there you would have seen what the nuns saw Margaret Mary in profound ecstasy I once in my life saw someone an ecstasy and that's enough that's enough I I didn't see any more than the ecstasy but it was with the venerable servant of God Father salamis Casey and it's fifty years ago and I get goose pimples when I think about it you know it says in the and the apocalypse that people heard words that they wish they never heard well I was so shocked when I saw so lamas in the middle of the night not moving in ecstasy before the tabernacle but I'm glad I didn't see anything else because I might not have made it back to my room I don't need to have theophanies does the theophany in the 19th century is not in Ireland everybody thought everybody was around people in the distance or the lights there were nineteen people who saw it they were unrelated to each other they were war by one of them on a very distant shirttail relation to one of those people Mary Byrne Mary was if you go to knock and you get two books from Locke it's a picture of a tough-looking old Irish grandma mrs. McConnell Mary McConnell Mary Byrne McConnell and she says I know that soon I will stand before the judgment seat of God and I swear that what I said happened that day happened the way I said it happens don't mess with Mary Beth okay number of these people have characteristics rather similar to Mother Angelica you know and if Mother Angelica hasn't proven anything else she's proven that it's not a good idea to mess with all those now how can they be phony revelations well let's say false revelations phony is a different word a false revelation and there are humongous numbers of them is a revelation to a person who really and honestly and truly believes it happened and it may be a very powerful religious experience we all have religious experiences and if you get carried away with your religious experience well you know you can get somebody to build you a shrine and religious experience is part of devotion I hope you have felt the presence of God in your life I assume you felt the presence of our Blessed Mother if you have prayed you may not have recognized it because we live in this skeptical time and we got all these people skeptically analyzing the scriptures and I am skeptical about their skeptical analyses profoundly but the fact is that many people jump to the conclusion is a revelation and then it keeps going and but usually these are in the form of what are called sequential words allocations and what happens in a location is that a person either hears a voice or knows that the words are there and they start to write them out and they're usually very devout they're not very original but they're very devout and st. John of the Cross says I am terrified by what goes on right now among us those who have scarcely begun to do penance have these experiences and go around claiming that God has revealed this to me or God has revealed that when in fact all that they have done is write down the words they have addressed to themselves now I had a rather fascinating and said experience with a low Q ssin I know we're over time anybody want me to quit this is an interesting subject isn't it yeah this is an interesting subject when I was an intern at Psychiatric Institute some 30 years ago the only time in my life I was ever called doctor and there I was and my lesson is so complicated that the patient's called me dr. Benedict and I suppose people knew I was a priest but I wore my black suit at my great eye and with a beard everybody thought I was a rabbi that forgot what does yarmulke and I was walking down the hall and one of my professors a very elegant old Jewish lady one of those commanding president's presents sort of a Golda Meir type she walked past me and she said oh you know dr. Benedict I'm I'm writing a book about the Son of God she was Jewish so I fell down on the floor and after I got above the floor I brushed my coat off and I said well now doctor the doctor did you study theology oh no I said well how are you writing a book about the Son of God and she said it just comes to me and she says I'm an agnostic [Music] now here we must move the scene from Philadelphia to New York because in New York things happen that don't happen anyplace else thank God we hear confessions in Saint Patrick's Cathedral it's the only place in the world with Jewish people come in to go to confession father right now I can't get absolution I'm Jewish but I need a Baruch Holly give my blessing so dr. Schucman was Jewish but we sat down to get the story well first of all she showed me the books they were voluminous they've been published in three volumes and they're called the Course in Miracles the New Age Bible and I discuss it in this book because it's a false revelation he's not a fraud dr. Schurman I know her very well I got to know her very well it was not a fraud it happened to her and it happened in a very understandable way dr. Shipman told me she had been baptized as a little girl and that she said the rosary every day of her life now where else in the world but New York would you find a baptized Jewish woman who was an agnostic who says the rosary every day as we say in Hall a maintain your cool under all circumstances so she had gone with her parents who were wealthy non-believing non-practicing jews to con on the riviera and she and her brother were sent home with their servant their nanny Maggie and Maggie was a fine Irish girl and she wasn't going through Marseille without a little side trip to Lourdes so she swore the two Jewish kids to silence bribed the two of them and off they went to Lourdes and it was the eve of st. Laurence and Helen had hardly ever seen sick people she lived in a very wealthy apartment hotel the Ansonia she had been shelled shielded from these things and in those days 75 years ago 80 years ago sick people look sick and they had various contraptions and she saw the sick at Lourdes and she said they can't be a god he'd never allow this but that night she went up on the roof of the pantheon it's a religious environment and she says I'll close my eyes in a vise see a shooting star I'll believe in God and on the eve of st. Lawrence the Earth passes through a celestial radiant is detail of an old communist one of those nights when the shooting stars all over the place as you open their eyes it they're all over the place she kept downstairs got back you to get her a rosary learned how to say to rosary got back to New York tried to get a priest to Baptizer he said I can't do it without your parent's permission she was 11 years old she got a fundamentalist minister to baptize her and she said the rosary and the rest of her life and after this book started to happen she gave up her agnosticism and started to go to Mass and to receive Communion and I said no Helen dear you know you've really got to get into the church before you receive Communion the answer is pure New York oh you Christians made all these rules you know but it was all religion first you know I don't know what you call that but the grandmother Clause well Helen Helen did not want to publish the book but people inveigled and intrigued or into publishing the book they were well-meaning the Course in Miracles has many beautiful pages many very confusing pages and many pages that are completely wrong it's a hodgepodge and it contradicts itself over and over again but it comes out in iambic pentameter it's blank verse it scans well they published a book against my better judgment and poor Helen poor Helen came to hate the book and I was with her as she was dying and she cursed the book she cursed that book and as I was there on the floor praying I said she should have listened to me and not published a book I said it would become a cult and it became a cult and I'd never private revelation to tell me that and when Helen died her husband Louie who was the most religious atheist I ever met in my life strong supporter of organized religion didn't think baby but he was an atheist he introduced me to st. Catherine of Genoa was a rare book salesman called me up one day Saint thought of Benedict I just got a book in here read every ancient book do you ever hear of Catherine of Genoa I said yes I did I got her book on point you Tory yeah this isn't this is I only got one question is what sighs how could I go to purgatory I lived in New York all my life one of our former mayor said I don't know where the world is going but New York is there already so Helen died her husband had an Orthodox Jewish funeral for a woman it was never a practicing Jew he wasn't a practicing Jew the poor Orthodox rabbi did too what was going on and each had to be what's going on I said we got three hours of they all time but before I went down to the funeral I often Mass as they do every day and I looked in the Ordo to offer the mass the helman and it was the face of all Lady of Lourdes so the Blessed Mother did her job the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes now that's a false revelation there's all kinds of interesting things about how did it happen how did this Jewish woman who's an agnostic end up writing three volumes on somebody she calls the Son of God what she knew nothing aha the plot thickens Helen had a smattering of knowledge of Catholicism she would read books on Catholicism in her old age she went to Mass Jared the Sermon Street you know she she thought of herself as a Jewish Catholic didn't understand much and I think she avoided learning the truths of Catholicism because you afraid she was going to disagree with them but she was also something else when she was 14 her mother became a Christian Scientist and her mother would read to her an hour from the writings of Mary Baker Eddy every afternoon after school and if you ever wondered what a mixture of Christian Science and Catholicism looks like it looks like the Course in Miracles if you have any familiarity with it and the writings of mrs. Eddy you'll see it's a Christian Science rendition of Catholicism or a Catholic rendition of Christian Science but it's a mess but it's old it's the new-age Bible at least I'll say this the Helen short she was not formally a Catholic she was not informed in Catholicism some of the people messing around of the New Age right now are informed Catholics and even religious and to them I say you better read the first commandment over again I get this invitation or a program of a retreat house not too far from me every year and it's autumn leave retreats ceramic retreats whatever this means is beyond my powers of imagination a massage retreat the name of Jesus was in the whole thing twice but once it was hyphenated was so fire Carl Gustav Jung made it six times and there was a i'll call the bishop john jones and it says an afternoon with our wisdom figure john jones so i met the bishop a nice addition but i didn't know he was so wise he says up wiser than you think what i saw and i didn't show up then there is the fraudulent revelation now the frauds of the ones you wanna watch out for there was a guy in ireland that whenever he went and prayed before the crucifix the feet of the crucifix blamed rather interesting and the irish an old dear god they're all love something like that you see and he'd always be carrying this great big heavy metal rosary all they came out by the thousands and sure enough at the end of the rosary there would be blood on the crucifix he had taught himself the art of accurate spitting and you have a little vein right here and he would bite that little vein and he dropped the rosary crack on the floor and everybody'd look and well everybody was looking to drop the rosary he'd spit blood on the foot as PT Barnum used to say there's a shock of the one every minute you know Americans love to be humbugged now that's a fraud I think very very few private revelations of frauds but I think many of false revelations and I flee by the nearest exit from any private revelation of a person who seeks publicity who goes around giving talks who has a public relations media working for them I flee because the church has only given its solemn approval to private revelations likes the Sacred Heart like Saint Saint Margaret Mary like Saint Faustina like st. Catherine Laboure when their identity was basically unknown at the hour of death I have nothing but discomfort with people who go around telling me what's going to happen and very very frequently they're all wet there's all sorts of people were telling us that there's gonna be some great Cataclysm january 1st 2000 all sorts of people and the year 1000 they had gathered in front of st. peter's and the Pope told him to go home and they accused the Pope of being an atheist and being Jewish and that he had an abacus so they thought that he had a statue of a man that could count it was bizarre so then he came back on January 1st and nothing happened no look I'd have been perfectly delighted if the world ended on too fast perfectly delighted people come a dummy is all going to end I say promises always promises and they say this some apocalyptic thing is gonna happen to New York we have apocalyptic things you don't have to be January 1st we did have an apocalyptic thing are we in scary times we sure are scary times why people fly to private revelations and perhaps have them is because if you're a believer life should make some sense and when it doesn't appear to make sense then you must blame it on the diabolical or on some kind of conspiracy of people in cahoots with the diabolic that's how you account for a wicked world now I'm the last one in the world to deny the effect of the diabolical it usually is very subtle the devil comes in a gray flannel suit I suspect 90% of the people in this room and this Chapel right now have voted for politicians who was sad and sick Korea's we'll hooked up with a diabolical phenomena of abortion there you got it and all sorts of nice Catholics sell their souls out saying the Pope made Saint Thomas More patron of politicians I was going to write him a letter and say wrong patron judas iscariot they had been appalled when I was a kid the mayor of Jersey City said the patron of the city is Judas Iscariot but because we get betrayed I'll look for the diabolical you got it in your house MTV there's got to be the most diabolical thing that's happened in a long time MTV is television absolutely calculated to corrupt millions of children and teenagers and it pours into American homes all over the place is the most lucrative enterprise in the media sure about the diabolic turn it on it's right there shake hands with the devil what should a person who really wants to be in contact with God do in the back of my little book I speak about religious experience and religious experience is a very very important part of of all lives and I give a religious experience of a poem this poem I learned when I was in the eighth grade and it determined my life I knew I would be a priest when I was seven and a friar that took care of the pool when I was eleven to thirteen it's all the originators experience I need my life was laid out for me there's never changed but you got to listen you got to listen and I get people to write down their religious experiences one lady said to me oh I never had a religious experience listen you got kids she said yes I said what about the birth of your first child oh you're right you see God it says any imitation of Christ if your heart is pure then every creature would be to you a mirror of God and a book of holy teaching I had a wonderful religious experience recently as we were giving out food to the poor which you have loads of them that of course as a little old black lady comes her name is Ruby Davis and Ruby's got social security she worked all her life but she doesn't have a pension she was a servant and Ruby is wreathed in smiles she lives in Fort Apache comes dressed in the best of the Thanksgiving clothing collection and she's always smiling and there I am trying to give out the turkeys and people yelling at maybe you know 1,200 turkeys and $50,000 of food and Ruby is smiley I said Ruby why are you always smiling and she says big you don't mind if I use the accent I gotta do it with the accent I said she says well I'm just so grateful to God for everything I got I said well what's that she says I can see I can hear I can walk and I can talk and when I'm all finished here I'm going right up to heaven like a shooting star that's religious experience and I'll be quite honest with you simple peasant people are open to religious experience this is why it is difficult for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven in America one of the most touching histories is the history of how the slaves started their own Christian churches which really are not Protestant churches they're called Protestants because in our Catholics but they really have their own churches and they believed in religious experience and you know oftentimes if non Catholic afro-american people come to a Catholic parish they think we're crazy the Lord be with you and with your spirit you know if you go to the Church of God in Christ to the Apostolic Faith or the the death held Pentecostal Tabernacle Sunday service starts at nine o'clock with the choir practice the service doesn't get going till 11 and it's not over till 1:00 in the afternoon but everybody's had a wonderful time and they are lifted up and Jesus says where two or three are gathered in my name we Catholics we canvass do we make a mess of the true faith we really do we have the Blessed Sacrament I'm so angry at the Protestant reformers that they deprived their people of the Blessed Sacrament John Wesley founder of the Methodist Church wrote 160 hems for the holy sacrifice of the Eucharist was one of them you couldn't sing at mass a real presence Christ sheds his blood in the Eucharist going to mass going to the Eucharist prepares you for eternal life isn't one of them you couldn't sing at mass but to some Catholic churches you couldn't sing in it they're too Catholic gather us together there's a special room in purgatory for people a special room in purgatory special room they serve Twinkies and bubble gum flavored soda look into your own life and God comes to us in humble ways and they're not mystical but they're his mysterious operations oh it's so late when I was in the eighth grade mother daughter Rita another one of the great nuns she taught us a poem by Longfellow as in my book was about a monk kneeling in his cell and Christ appeared to him and while he was praying the Bell started to ring because it was his job to feed the poor should he go or should he stay should he slight a visitor celestial for a crowd of ragged bestial beggars at the convent gate would the vision there remain was the vision come again but a voice within him sin do thy duty that is best leave unto the Lord the rest and solely to his feet he started sold slowly on his errand went at the gate the poor were waiting looking through the iron grating with that terror in the eye of those who amid their wants and woes know the sound of doors that close and of steps that passed and by grown familiar with disfavour grown familiar with the savour of the bread by which men died but today seemed the convent gate to rise like the gate of paradise like a sacrament divine seemed to them the bread and wine and the monk takes care of all the poor and he looks back at the convent and he saw the convent bright with a supernatural light like a luminous cloud extending over wall and door and ceiling and he hurries back to his room and he paused with awestruck feeling at the threshold of his door but the vision still was standing as he left it there before through the long hour intervening it had waited his return and he felt his bosom burn comprehending all the meaning when the blessed vision said Hat's thou stayed I must have fled I know a person whose life is that bone I knew her very well I knew her half my life she had no religious experience only darkness and emptiness and thirst in her writings she says I send my prayers up to God and they fall back down upon me like sharp knives to wound my soul and I smile and others think I am at peace with God but inside there is only emptiness and darkness forty-five years these are direct quotations from the letters to who our spiritual director of Mother Teresa of Calcutta forty-five years of the dark night of the soul what did it make mother Teresa spoke in the United Nations the secretary-general said from this podium have spoken the most powerful women men in the world and today we hear the most powerful woman in the world why because she suffered she believed in the darkness she thirsted for God and you know it came to an end I was greatly privileged to offer Mass for Mother Teresa the day before she went back to India she would be dead in eight weeks and father Andrew and I arrived she couldn't stand to the mass she was on a little comp but she was a different person you know around all that mother Teresa was always rather somber Jed a sense of humor but she was somber I was thought she was thinking about you know some people got killed in an earthquake or something but it was this darkness and that day she was an ice cold bubbly bottle of champagne just opened she was literally effervescent I couldn't believe it and I said to Andrew as we were leaving we'll never see her again she's already going through the doors she's already started through the doors of eternity so all the visionaries around wish him a lot of luck the great visionaries all suffered intensely Catherine Laboure Margaret Alacoque Bernadette Soubirous and if you want to continue on Padre Pio a prisoner in the same monastery for 50 years came within an inch of being suspended from the priesthood accused of being a witch and st. John of the Cross says we don't need it because God says to us this is my beloved son how wonderful it would be and Catholicism if we really had a devotion to Christ in the Eucharist if we really acted like we thought that we are in the presence of the body and blood soul and divinity of Jesus Christ I saw that night when I saw for the Solano's this old man wrapped in ecstasy his eyes riveted on the tabernacle and I tiptoed away I was embarrassed I said why did I ever see this and many years later I would be a witness in his cause and you know religious experience is not always so serious I remember we looked in the chapel when solana so we were working in the fields and he was on this top step of the altar with his fiddle facing the tabernacle playing oh sweet mystery of life at last I found thee which he claimed Victor Herbert wrote it a request of his Catholic wife Eileen in honor of the Blessed Sacrament we Catholics we don't need anything else we got it all right here we adore you oh Christ and we praise you Oh sacrament most holy hail holy Queen Mother pray for us a Holy Mother of God st. Joseph patron of the universal Church st. Francis st. Charles Borromeo the father and of the son Holy Spirit amen it's too late for questions I'm gonna go back and be available at Ivy Hall and you let me get there I got my cane and if anybody wants a book or me to get to sign it I'll do it there thank you all I'm sorry we took so long I'm running a crusade against applause in church a crusade and I have a marvelous answer which I got from the Buddhists god bless them they're doing their best to try to find their way along the Buddhists and the Buddhists have a saying if you want to be able to meditate think about one hand clapping so I'm getting everybody to clap you

Channel: International Institute for Culture

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Length: 84min 12sec (5052 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 30 2018