Love this story.
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If you think you’re going to convert many protestants with stories of a clergyman delving into spiritualism and necromancy, I think you’re going to be disappointed.
Purgatory, isn’t that a town in the Wild West? Other than that, it does not exist in the Bible.
Much goes to interpretation. The Sonora desert was the stomping ground for all kinds of paranormal activity going back perhaps several thousand years.
The use of words like sorcery, witchcraft, and things like that are incorrect, but are the only words Europeans, Asians and Africans have to describe them. It could best be said that there was a complex, but non-technological civilization, in which “practitioners” of the paranormal were specialized professionals, much as are lawyers, doctors, plumbers, soldiers, etc., are today.
When people from primitive cultures are introduced to technology for the first time, to them it is obviously “magical”. Things like a toilet or light bulb are, to them, witchcraft.
So the proper way for us, technological people, to approach such a non-technological society is to assume they understood “the logic of the toilet”, so to them it was not particularly magical. But we don’t, so to us it is witchcraft.
I use this as background to make two points. The first being that these people were just as belligerent as people are today, so wandering around where they used to live is much like a primitive person wandering around an abandoned US army post, with all of its equipment and weapons still there, but not having a clue what any of it is or does.
Yes, it may look like an interesting rock, but it could be as dangerous as a piece of plastic explosive. In either case you have no idea of its real nature.
The other point is that what eventually destroyed this non-technological society were other Indians, just as ignorant as we are today of such things. Utter blindness to such things conferred something of an immunity to them, unlike technology.
But if you mess around with such things, you are asking for trouble. You might try to define them by the rules you know, but they are under no obligation to follow those rules, any more than giving an incantation prior to firing a gun makes it fire its bullets differently.
Only vestiges of that knowledge still exist today, and are considerably corrupted from their ancient form, but the artifacts themselves still represent a risk.
Yes, praying to Jesus to send angels to take souls home to him. and NOT automatically thinking of them as evil and driving them to satan.
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Does the Vatican know about this?
Oddly I had a friend last night request that I protect myself, pray for Jesus to come, and tell the 'spirit' to go to the light of Jesus. There are no mistakes in this world. She told me they are lower vibrations attracted to my higher and it is my role to guide them to Jesus. This was the first time someone had told me this and then I come across this article today. Looks like God is talking with me. :)
Thanks for the post.
I sense that those whom we love and have gone ahead of us, that is, on the journey home to God still are with us, even in the next life.
There are more things in heaven and earth....
Welcome home brother priest! Thank-you for posting the article.
All,
It is interesting that in many Christian oriented religious chains the concentration is on “denominational” differences on who is or is not a “good Christian.” Lost in these is the fact that we should be focus on what unites us, that our salvation is a gift from Jesus for his self-sacrifice and our belief in him and what he taught us.
thus the hymn: The Church’s one foundation, Jesus Christ our Lord.
And here is a link to the personal testimony of a close friend of mine on his experience that is much like Fr. Lorig’s
http://bswett.com/1995-11GoodCatholicGhosts.html
Very interesting story. THanks.
http://proclaimingthegospel.org/equip/articles/52-purgatory-purifying-fire-or-fatal-fable
Purgatory: Purifying Fire or Fatal Fable
From the story:
**”The night before the archeologists came, I had a dream. In it I saw a desert hill and an old man, bent over and carrying a young girl — eight or nine, maybe younger; her hair was falling down and he was grieving.
“I woke up and wondered, ‘what was that?’ It turned out that they found a pot with the remains of a cremated old man and smaller one with the remains of a young girl — bone fragments in the pots that were a thousand years old. They were Las Trincheras Indians. I got the feeling the girl had died tragically and the old man was her grandfather.”
Once he prayed for them, the disturbances and feelings stopped.**