173. Jesus Christ seen/heard over centuries. Part five

 

Here are some other visions/locutions:

 

‘I was once asked by someone to beg God to tell him if he would be serving Him by accepting the rank of bishop. And after Communion the Lord said to me “When he has quite really and truly recognized that true dominion consists in possessing nothing, then he may take it”’

 

She had the following vision; “While I was at prayer, I saw myself in a great field, all alone, and around me there was such a multitude of people that I was completely surrounded by them. They all seemed to have weapons in their hands to attack me……..I had great distress of spirit, and had no idea what I should do, when I raised my eyes to the heaven, and saw Christ, not in heaven, but in the air high above me, holding out His hands to me and encouraging me in such a way that I no longer feared all the other people, who, try as they might, could do me no harm.”

 ‘For its meaning was explained to me, and soon afterwards I found myself attacked, in almost exactly the same way, whereupon I realized that the vision was a picture of the world, the whole of which seems to take up arms in an offensive against the poor soul.’

 

Once her soul was greatly enkindled in prayer. There came a spiritual transport of a kind which she could not describe. “ My spirit seemed to be plunged into that Majesty of which I had been conscious on other occasions, and to be filled with it. In this Majesty I was given to understand a truth which is the fulfillment of all truths, yet I cannot tell how, because I saw nothing. Someone said to me ^___ I could not see who, but I was quite clear that it was the Truth itself: “This that I am doing for thee is no small thing, but one of the things for which thou are greatly indebted to Me; for all the harm which comes to the world is due to the failure to know the truth of the Scripture in the clarity of their truth, of which not a title shall fall”. Then He said to me: “Ah daughter, how few are they who love Me in truth! If people loved Me, I should not hide my secrets from them. Knowst thou what it is to love Me in truth? It is to realize that everything that is not pleasing to Me is a lie………..”

I( mkadk), want to humbly add, that this mote has loved God, without any desire for worldly reward, but has not received any spiritual experience.

She continues: ‘ Once I was wondering if I was too much attached to the world because I was happy when I was with the people to whom I spoke about my soul, and had an affection for them…….And the Lord told me that if a sick person was at the death door, and attributed his recovery to a physician, it would be no virtue in him to fail to thank him and not to love him. What would have become of me, He continued, but for these people? The conversation of good people never did any harm, and provided my conversation was always carefully considered and virtuous, I should not cease mixing with them…..’

 

And, the last of St Teresa’s experiences which I am now going to narrate, is different from all others, because she heard with bodily ears:

 

A person, to whom St Teresa was indebted, was bent upon doing something bad. She was in the deepest affliction. She retreated to a corner, where there was a representation of Christ bound to a column, and started begging God to give her some means to dissuade that man. “Then I heard a very soft voice, speaking to me, as it were, in a whisper. My whole body quivered with fear and I tried to catch what the voice was saying, but I could not, and very soon it was gone. My fear quickly left me. I experienced a calm, a joy, and an inward delight, and it amazed me that the mere hearing of the voice by bodily ears, unaccompanied by any understanding of what it said, should have such an effect on the soul.”

 

The great visions of St Teresa; of devil, hell, and the Godhead have already, briefly, been described in blog 77.

 

6. I have briefly recounted the vision of Jesus by Therese Neumann in blogs 79-80 (1). Let me repeat the introduction to Therese for the sake of continuity, although, I don’t like to repeat:

Therese, born in 1898, was from Germany. She was famous because she had not eaten or taken any liquids for twelve years, except a consecrated wafer, paper-thin, and the size of a small coin, each day. She was also famous for the fact, that every Friday, Stigmata, sacred wounds of Jesus, would appear on her corresponding body parts, and she would be experiencing the Passion of Christ.

Therese became blind and paralyzed, when she was twenty, because of an accident. She miraculously regained her sight through prayers to St Therese of Lisieux ( see blog 13-14) in 1923. She stopped eating and drinking in 1923, and the stigmata started appearing in 1926.

She also told that she was a helpless onlooker as she watches the ‘Passion of Christ’ from Thursday midnight to Friday afternoon. Her wounds bleed at that time, her wounds would open and bleed; She would lose 10 pounds of her ordinary 121 pounds weight.

They were given permission to watch the saint during the trance. Just before entering the room, Yogananda put himself in communion with her brain, so that he could see what she was seeing.

 

To be continued

 

(1) Autobiography of a yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda