Abbey-Roads2

“Where is that promised coming of his?”

“Our forefathers have been laid to rest, but everything stays just as it was when the world was created.” - 2 Peter 3:4  I have friends who say similar things to me all of the time.  I have to admit I have even asked such questions of devotees of certain apparitions and revelations, and many times they say “the warning was mitigated by prayer.”  Other friends of mine will mock such answers, and indeed, it is kind of funny, yet we need to remember the prophet Jonah and his warning to the Ninevites - their punishment was indeed mitigated.  They weren’t laughing.

When Holy Father Benedict XVI entered Sidney, I suggested he appeared to be the Pope of John Bosco’s prophecy.  Other bloggers noted it as well.  A commenter on one of the other blogs mentioned how he couldn’t be since he didn’t fit the details of the original vision.  Just so, many people attempt to literally interpret the vision of the third secret of Fatima, arguing, how could the pope in the vision be JPII when he wasn’t killed at the foot of a cross.  The CDF interpretted the meaning of the vision very well, explaining to people that visions are often full of symbolism that cannot always be taken literally, and Sr. Lucia herself, the seer, left it up to Church authorities to interpret the vision.  There are good reasons for this.

What St. John of the Cross has to say on the subject.

First of all, in dealing with extraordinary supernatural communications such as visions and locutions, St. John explains: “…God’s revelations or locutions do not always turn out according to man’s expectations, nor to the literal sense of the words.  One should neither be sure of them nor believe them blindly, even though he knows they are God’s revelations, responses or words.  Though they in themselves may contain certitude and truth, they do not always have it in their cause and in our  way of understanding them.” - Ascent, Bk II, 18: 9

(An example of this might be God’s command to St. Francis to rebuild his church, and then Francis went about restoring physical churches, when in effect, he was calling Francis to labor in the renewal of the institutional Roman Catholic Church.) 

St. John continues, “We mentioned the two reasons why, although God’s visions and locutions are true and certain in themselves, they are not always so for us.  The first reason is because of our defective manner in understanding them, and the second because their basic causes are sometimes variable.

“Clearly in regard to the first, not all revelations turn out according to the literal meaning.  The cause, God is immense and profound.  He usually embodies in his prophecies, locutions, and revelations other ways, concepts, and ideas remarkably different from the meaning we generally find in them.

“We find this in scripture with a number of the ancients, many of God’s prophecies and locutions did not turn out as expected, because they interpreted them with their own different and extremely literal method.” - Ascent, Bk. II, 19: 1

Though St. John is really discussing the role of locution in the spiritual life, if I’m not mistaken, his counsel may be useful for us who are curious about the nature of contemporary claims of visions and prophecies which seem to abound in our own time.

St. John writes, “The Holy Spirit causes many pronouncements in which he has a meaning different from that understood by men…  Evidently, even though the words and revelations be from God, we cannot find assurance in them, since in our understanding of them we can easily be deluded, and extremely so.  They embody an abyss and depth of spiritual significance, and to want to limit them to our interpretations and sensory apprehensions is like wanting to grasp a handful of air, which will escape the hand entirely and leave only a particle of dust.” - Ascent, Bk. II, 19: 9-10 

Conclusion

Thus we see how necessary it is for the Church to definitively rule on phenomena such as apparitions and their messages.  And so today, we are free to accept (or reject) the message of Fatima, while we need to await the judgement of the Church as regards other events, such as those at Garabandal and Medjugorje.  Likewise, the individual who claims messages from heaven must be obedient to their local bishop as regards publishing their locutions.  (In Minnesota I believe there are one or two such visionaries - I am only referring to these people, no one else.  I do know a very good religious who lives under obedience, has a spiritual director, and is under a bishop’s direction as well - this person is living out a specific call from God.  One could have no better confirmation than that.) 

Finally, St. John says, “It is impossible for someone nonspiritual to judge and understand the things of God correctly, and one is not spiritual if one judges them literally.” - Ascent, Bk. II; 19: 11

I’m not very spiritual…

So anyway - we simple people must always go to our priest, confessor or spiritual director for help in understanding such things.  And we must always listen to the Church - first and foremost.  As for John Bosco’s vision - “It could happen!” - And maybe it did…  ;)