The Christian life is essentially supernatural; sanctifying grace is a participation in the intimate (Trinitarian) life of God, and everything that flows from it bears its mark: faith, hope, charity, supernatural moral virtues, gifts of the Holy Spirit, merits and, after death, eternal glory and beatitude. This Trinitarian life is communicated to us by Our Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God and our Redeemer, and everything that leads to it is likewise essentially supernatural: the Church, His Mystical Body, and the sacraments.
This shared divine life is infused into human nature, which is both spiritual (soul, intellect, will) and sensible (passions, imagination, bodily senses). There is, therefore, necessarily a sensible aspect to the Christian life, to which the Good Lord "bends" Himself (consolation or desolation, sensible fervor or dryness, sensible graces or trials, private visions or revelations, attractions, miracles, gratis datæ graces…).
In all areas of the spiritual life, the light of faith and docility to the Church are indispensable for being guided by the Spirit of truth and fleeing the illusions of self-love. However, the more the sensibility is involved, the more circumspection and discernment are necessary. Indeed, these sensible manifestations can be the effect of divine virtue, but they can also stem from our imagination, and they also fall within the devil's field of action.
This spiritual sagacity is therefore more indispensable than ever.
In troubled times, when virtue is no longer favored or held in honor, when truthfulness and loyalty are nothing more than a deceptive decoration, when feeling substitutes for faith, and self-interest for prudence…
…then abound the appetite for the marvelous, "imaginarist" literature, a credulity that reaches an improbable degree, the need to feel like one is part of "those who know," and an esotericism that dare not speak its name—all things that ravage both theological faith and natural reason.
Immense, then, is the urgency for a solid knowledge of Catholic doctrine and the necessity for proper discernment.
We live in a world of advertising, the ultimate (or near-ultimate) stage of human degradation and the dishonor of creation. We no longer strive to be, but to appear; we no longer work to act, but to communicate; it is no longer a matter of staying in one's place and fulfilling one's daily duty, but of staging oneself on social media and collecting likes; the goal is no longer to succeed in doing good, but to succeed in polls and elections. The world exalts empty shells with a smooth tongue, agile legs, and shameless cynicism; it loses interest in hidden virtues, the patient understanding of things, and works that bear fruit in time (and in eternity).
If the Christian life does not escape this advertising contagion, it is because this decrepitude is the effect of original sin, and it finds a strong resonance in the traces of fallenness that remain in us after Baptism.
In every age, a preference for the ephemeral, the superficial, the flashy, and the sentimental has diverted people from the battle to be waged against the enemy of the glory of God, the kingship of Jesus Christ, and the salvation of souls. This enemy is an army composed of three regiments: self-love, the demon, and the world.
The Good God sanctifies us essentially and permanently through sanctifying grace: this is the work of prayer, the sacraments, and Catholic doctrine. All of this belongs to the essential supernatural order (quoad substantiam), out of reach of the demon and incomprehensible to the world.
God occasionally uses accidental means, such as miracles, visions, prophecies, and revelations. These means, belonging to a more sensible order—to which He resorts because of our weakness—are, by nature, more easily imitated by the demon, more pleasing to self-love, and more easily falsified by the world.
We are therefore dealing with the visions, revelations, and prophecies that have emerged throughout the life of the Church: how are we to discern their authenticity, what credit should we grant them, and what authority should we recognize in them?
In itself, the subject is not primordial: public Revelation ended with the death of the last Apostle; this Revelation alone is the object of faith and necessary for eternal salvation; this Revelation alone is transmitted, guaranteed, explained, and applied by the Magisterium of the Church, without any need for extraordinary confirmation. It is superabundantly sufficient to live, remain faithful, sanctify oneself, and go to Heaven.
The subject is not primordial, but in practice, it can assume great importance:
- On one hand, God wants our assent to supernatural truth—a truth that infinitely surpasses our reason—to be reasonable, that is to say, in harmony with the nature of our intellect. He therefore accompanies these divine truths with reasons to believe; He wants these truths to be credible, in the absence of direct evidence which our intellect cannot attain.
- On the other hand, the wound of human nature means that self-love finds nourishment everywhere, and the imagination seizes every opportunity to try to supplant the intellect.
Consequently, when faced with phenomena of this order, one easily navigates between credulity and contempt, between a greed for the extraordinary and the rejection of what might come from God because it disturbs our tranquility.
In times of crisis and confusion, when the Magisterium of the Church is no longer exercised to guide us, and when ignorance of doctrine fosters spiritual disorder, a proper discernment is more than ever indispensable; supernatural prudence finds an increased necessity.
To explain the unbelievable situation in which the holy Church of God lives, to escape the demands of the faith, and to avoid the hardships of a fidelity that requires much self-denial, the temptation can be great to take refuge in pious imaginations without any serious foundation, to believe without discernment in entirely unproven fables; worse still, and in a very unhealthy manner, the temptation can be great to feast on accounts of exorcisms, forgetting that the devil has been a liar from the beginning.
The demon is a pure spirit, man easily blinds himself to believe what pleases him, and divine work surpasses our intellect: all these are factors that make it easy to fall into error and illusion. To guard ourselves against this, we must holily exercise the virtue of prudence, cultivate that of humility, and study Catholic doctrine.
This is why the present dossier, combining the example of the saints, the lessons of history, and the teaching of the doctors, can serve to enlighten and strengthen souls.
And even then, one will not be safe for certain.
For, except in the case of the Holy Scriptures, which are divinely guaranteed in every single verse, prophets can mix their own production with divine inspiration, visionaries can see truly at first and then mistakenly invent or embellish, saints can falter or be deceived, and souls privileged by God can abuse their mission or prolong it improperly.
Did not the prophet Nathan, a true prophet of God, on a day when he imagined himself inspired as usual, unduly urge David to build a temple for the glory of God? God Himself then appeared to him to reprove him, telling him that He had asked for nothing, and that it was to David's son (Solomon) that He would entrust this task [II Reg. vii, 1-17].
Here, then, is a dossier which, to be of service in these matters that are difficult to untangle, brings together various documents—disparate, certainly, but ultimately complementary.
The first is the book A Word on Visions, Revelations, and Prophecies by Father Pouplard, S.J. It is a fundamental, didactic, and balanced work, packed with historical examples drawn from the lives of the saints.
The second is a highly instructive article by the Reverend Father Calmel, O.P.: Mists of Revelationism and Light of Faith.
Next comes the astonishing story (a true thriller) of a nun, Sister Marie of the Visitation of Lisbon, under the title Divine Favor, Fool's Trap, or Diabolical Glamour? Great personages and cruel events appear in it.
Sister Marie of the Visitation
The commentary on the Rules for the Discernment of Spirits (Discretio spirituum) given by the Reverend Father Barrielle, C.P.C.R., follows next.
To avoid being led astray, one must keep a few clarifications in mind:
- The life of grace is by nature insensible; the state of grace, the effect of the sacraments, and the light of faith are beyond the senses and even beyond all natural knowledge. When God gives some sensible sign of His presence or action, these (extra-ordinary) manifestations are far inferior to grace itself, even if it is a special goodness of God to come to the aid of our weakness. We must therefore beware of valuing these sensible manifestations more than the grace that makes us children of God and causes us to perform good out of love for Him;
- A priestly vocation does not consist in an attraction to the clerical state, nor in the desire to consecrate oneself to God, nor in perseverance in the seminary. A priestly vocation is the call of the Church (through the voice of the bishop appointed by the Pope) to Holy Orders. One cannot, therefore, "lose" a vocation, but one can be unfaithful to a pre-vocation—to the cluster of graces that led to responding to that call (the grace of a holy desire to work in the direct service of the Church, the grace of acquiring the necessary intellectual aptitudes and moral virtues, and the grace of persevering on this path);
- The mystical life is the spiritual life in which the gifts of the Holy Spirit predominate. These gifts, by making one docile to the inspirations of the Holy Spirit, cause one to practice the Christian virtues in imitation of Jesus Christ: not only because one habitually and generously performs supernatural good, but also because the manner of performing this good is divinely ennobled. This mystical life is independent of any extraordinary phenomenon; it is the normal development of baptismal grace. It is, however, rare, for it supposes a purification of the sensibility that very few Christians have the generosity to accept whole-heartedly, and it grows through a purification of the spirit that is more demanding still.
The statement of three general laws of the Church regarding extraordinary facts and their publication demonstrates the very great prudence that the Church deploys in these matters.
An (embryonic) collection of particular decrees and decisions of the Church completes the statement of general laws. This is because docility to the Church, which is guided by the assistance of the Holy Spirit and by her two-thousand-year experience, is necessary for us: we are so easily deceived either regarding the facts, the origin of the facts, the scope of the facts, or the importance to be given to them.
Finally, to close this series, you will find two texts on the famous prophecy of the Popes attributed to Saint Malachy: a study by Canon Cristiani published in L’Ami du clergé, and its summary.
_(page_10_crop).jpg)