I've had ministers give me the squinted glare, also (one told me to leave and take my child with me), but as long as some Protestants or anyone could consider me "psychic", that helped ease their angst. Yet others, of course, were convinced I was new age or like the seers of the OT who connived and communed with the dead in dangerous ways. Catholics seem to be expecting some type of person of which fantastical dreams are made--hagiographical- embellished "saints".
It does help if there is some utilitarian mystical gift comes with the person, such as the gift of healing, clairvoyance, or the visible stigmata--once the person has been put through the wringer to have the phenomenon proven legitimate and not of their own doing. (I do understand that for the sake of others who can take things out of context, those with especially visible phenomenon need to be discerned as well as to discern, themselves, if a mystical phenomenon is a chronic condition in the mystic's life.)
I have come to accept that this lack. of acceptance is part of the suffering God has allowed me, andI ought to bear it with kindness, gratitude, and grace. I so loved Mass; Mass was a joy and privilege that lifted me up from bed of pain each morning despite the difficulty then of sitting. But after the ecstasies began in later 2008, troubles ensued with people not understanding and those who did, were envious or resentful. Those who did not understand would become angry at my rudeness for seeming to sleep through Mass.
Others would injure me by trying to waken me, or call 911 and the fire truck, police, and EMS would show up and be coming into Mass with the gurney about the time Mass had ended. The final time this occurred, I tried to imitate Jesus His last time in Nazareth when the people were readying to throw him off a cliff. "He walked through their midst."
My spiritual da later reminded me that Jesus never went back to Nazareth after that. I never returned to Mass at the Cathedral; for one thing, my neck was so severely injured I was unable to drive for several weeks and took 8 weeks to function per usual. But the monsignor did not want me to return; he'd been letting me know for months and months prior. I simply did not want to give up the beauty and glory of the Mass!
The deeper the ecstasy the more bliss, but I had to finally consider charity to others and that of not being an occasion of sin to them. I began to consider that perhaps God allowed the situation because He preferred me to Himself in the hermitage. I considered the ancient hermits as well as the desert dwellers who often stayed hidden and in silence of solitude and did not participate in Mass nor receive the tangible consecrated Host for the rest of their lives.
I sacrificed the sacrifice of the Mass; I knew this was at least until shown and allowed otherwise, the charitable thing to do for others. Charitable? Yes. Part of suffering is to forsake what we love in order to protect others from doing, thinking, and speaking (gossip, criticism) wrongly. It had become too much of a problem for priests to navigate personally and with their flock, as well. I had to grapple with why would God have this happen--that I'd not be able to participate in Mass?
But then I factored that two weeks prior to the ecstasies commencing, my angel appeared in a dream. He placed his hand on my righti arm and said as he led me, that he was taking me to the Stairway to Heaven. He took me to the foot of an immense stairway; we stood at the foot and gazed up to where I could see no farther. In considering this event, I finally understood that the Mass is the stairway in a spiritual way, and the ecstasies have a powerful message in that reality.
Stairs lead us onward, upward, and that designates a transition from one level or place of being to another. We must let go of where we had been and what we had known and even loved, and begin the ascent to that which we know not yet must trust that God is taking us to where He wills and of that which we need for the glory of His will and desire for our souls and for His Body, the Church.
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