I believe in life after death because I am a romantic, ...........Without life after death, life is not a romance it is a sick tragedy, a cosmic joke. If God loves us, then I think he would want to meet us face to face, not just through a glass darkly. Love requires presence, communication and communion.
I am agnostic when it comes to visions and visitations. Too many are the product of psychosis and hallucinations.
Too many promote fear rather than love. Too many do not sound like the Mary or Jesus of the gospels. I would not trade the Magnificat for all of Mary’s so called visitations.
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Link (here) to read the original article entitled Happy Endings by Fr.Thomas J. Reese, S.J.
Marian apparitions of the Twentieth Century (here)
4 comments:
I’ve certainly enjoyed some of Fr. Reese’s writings. But even a Jesuit walks on thin ice when conjecturing about God’s will.
We engage in projection when we postulate that God would want “face to face” contact. Our understanding of God’s love is clearly inadequate – especially if we require that it include “presence, communication and communion.” We are doing serious things here. Love can be expressed in ways that are much more meaningful for our long term progress.
And, while psychosis is real, we show our misunderstanding of God when we require that visitations exclude fear or include historical consistency. Again, the goals here are too serious to expect God to be constrained in such a manner.
God uses judgment. This is our domain, the domain of the material. So praying to meet God in a material context shows our misunderstanding of this divide. Similarly, praying for changes to things in the material world, changes to things that we should be working to change, shows our misunderstanding.
The links below will take you to two videos in which Fr. Hardon SJ discusses, in two part, Visions and Visionaries:
http://youtu.be/S38IouZBels
http://youtu.be/bFfBEIeq0JM
He has a much smarter take on the matter. And faithful, btw.
Father Hardon talks about spiritual warfare part 3 @:
http://youtu.be/sihVmglAvXA
Fr. Reese's unhappiness is plainly evident.
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