Spiritual Warfare – (1)

Spiritual warfare is an invisible, yet very real and active form of war that is continually taking place in our world, involving the battle between good and evil.  I’ll get into that more later on, but for now I want to start this entry by saying that I’m sorry that it’s taken me so long to write it.  And as it is, I won’t be able to complete the whole thing today, so I’ll just called this post Spiritual Warfare – (1), and go on from there.

Spiritual Warfare Situation

As most of you probably know by now, last week an exorcist came to my house and I promised an update afterward.  I hadn’t anticipated it taking me this long, but with Christmas weekend and family and company in town, along with dealing with some adverse *side effects* of the priest’s visit, I had all I could do just to get enough rest and keep up with my daily responsibilities.

Before I begin, I would like to say thank you to all of you who wrote me personal emails and left comments on the blog.  I wasn’t able to get back to everyone, but I really appreciated the consideration and the time and energy you took to reach out.  Also, your prayers have been much appreciated.

Along those lines, I am asking that anyone who has doubts as to whether or not I’m dealing with a spiritual warfare situation to please refrain from leaving comments or sending me personal emails of that nature.  These demonic harassment episodes have been going on for nearly three years now, and with the time, energy and sleep I’ve lost in trying to get this figured out, the last thing I need is for someone to cast doubts via making suggestions as to alternative possibilities of what this entity could be, other than what it is.  Please understand and respect the fact that a psychiatrist has already met with me and given me a clean bill of mental health, and three different priests who have each been to my home have all agreed that what is going on is spiritual in nature and not caused by the wind, my imagination, a stray squirrel or anything in between.

Spiritual Warfare and the Priest’s Visit

Last Thursday, December 22nd, Father from Pennsylvania and a man he often brings along to assist him came to my house.  The assistant is a layperson whom I’ll call Jim, and he told me that he has the gift of discernment which is directly from the Holy Spirit and gives him some sort of ability to sense things and see into situations in a way that most of us can’t.  (I’m not sure the word “psychic” is appropriate here, but at the risk of sounding New Agey, it’s the only word I can think of that fits.)  He spends hours of time in front of the Blessed Sacrament and his faith is rock solid.  He made a good point, too: One of the first things he said to me was that people will often dismiss the idea of Satan as being real and active in the world today, and yet these same people will believe that *spirits* live in trees.  (Sadly, I know a few of those types myself.)

Spiritual Warfare and the Rosary

Father is a kind, soft-spoken man.  We all sat down at my dining room table where Father suggested we start by going over what has been happening through the years, followed by saying a Mass.  Jim took out a yellow pad of paper and wrote down everything I said.  He made fun of himself, telling me that he tends to talk a lot, and pointed toward Father saying something like, “But he is the real authority, as he represents the Church.”  I liked hearing that.

I began by explaining that the very first spiritual warfare *incident* I experienced was way back in the Winter of 2009 when I picked up the Rosary one night in desperation to relieve myself of a terrible heartache and to try to find healing, both for myself, the person who caused the heartache and the two of us together.  (I’ve been saying “January 2009″ all along, but just today I found some old print-outs of the Rosary mysteries which I printed when I first started saying the Rosary; the print-outs all have dates in February 2009, which leads me to believe that it was February that year when everything started, and not January.)  The following passage is taken directly from this post which I wrote on August 30, 2010 and, in so many words, is exactly what I told the Priest and Jim:

The first incident of diabolic infestation in my home which occurred back in the early winter of 2009 involved my cat.  I always put my three cats in the basement at night so that they don’t decide to wake me up for an early morning feeding at 3am, or whatever time suits their fancy.  I close the door behind them at night and let them out in the morning.  One particular morning as I was waking up I heard a meowing in my bedroom that seemed unnatural, given the fact that my three cats were supposedly all in the basement.  I got out of bed to find one of my cats, Roxanne, walking around and making the sounds that she was waiting to be fed.  I remember saying out loud to her, “How did you get up here?”  I then went downstairs to find the basement door completely shut.  As I was preparing their meal, I noticed that the throw on my armchair had fallen from the back of the chair where I always kept it draped to the seat of the chair.  When I opened the basement door to let my other two cats out, one of them, Casper, instead of heading right for his scratch post where he usually goes first thing in the morning, headed over to the throw and started sniffing it.  I decided not to dwell on the bizarre morning disruption, so I put it out of my mind until months later, when things started up again.

I basically gave them a condensed version of the incidents that have occurred over the last almost three years.  I can’t possibly write them all down here, as that would easily involve pages and pages of stuff.  So please visit the Demonic Affliction/Evil category on the sidebar of this blog to read about all that has taken place in terms of the spiritual warfare and harassment up until last week’s visit.

The Rosary: A Weapon of Spiritual Warfare

Before I was even finished going over everything, Father and Jim must’ve stopped me at least three or four times, bringing me back to the very first unexplainable incident in February (but what I mistakenly told them was January) 2009, which happened immediately after I picked up the Rosary.  They had already asked me about the months I lived in my house prior to the Winter of 2009 and if there were any signs of demonic activity during those months.  I told them that I moved in on November 1, 2007 and that there had been nothing strange or unusual – no paranormal activity – until the Winter of 2009.  In fact, I didn’t even know what spiritual warfare was back then.

Jim asked me if I was aware that Padre Pio used to refer to the Rosary as his “weapon”, and of course I knew that to be true and told him so.  Father and Jim both reminded me that according to what I told them, all the paranormal activity started with my praying the Rosary, a form of spiritual warfare, and more specifically – it was all about praying for the person I was heartbroken over to come around and find some sort of healing in his life.  Well, truthfully (and I told them this) it was more about our relationship to get back on track and his personal healing was maybe second, but they insisted that the intercessory prayer intention involved via the spiritual warfare weapon of the Rosary was the direct link to the demonic harassment which followed.  They asked me what made me turn to the Rosary for help, but I told them that I couldn’t remember and perhaps it just sort of occurred to me out of the blue.

Spiritual Warfare and Our Lady’s Intercession

Father and Jim asked what made me so devoted to Our Lady, as I had explained to them that I turned to her for assistance back in the Winter of 2009 and decided to start a blog in her honor a year later.  Again, I didn’t know what to tell them.  I talked a little bit about “a lady” I used to refer to when I was between the ages of two and three years old, and that the time period of “the lady” was synonymous with the time period I was dealing with some sort of disturbing presence that affected my life in a very profound way.  And thanks to my parents, I grew up very aware of who the Virgin Mary is and how important she is to us as the Mother of God.  But there is more..

Back in February of 2010 I saved a person from committing suicide.  I walked in on him as he was trying to kill himself in his garage with two cars running.  That is a long story, and one in which I briefly talked about in this entry titled Saint Michael Prayer.  In fact, he is the same person I mentioned earlier who had been the cause of my turning to the Rosary in the Winter of 2009 when I was overcome with heartache over our broken relationship.  It was obvious to me that February morning in 2010 that it really wasn’t I, but rather Our Lady who interceded for me as I desperately prayed for her help on my way to the crisis scene, going on a hunch that something was terribly wrong, but having no proof other than raw intuition.

Father and Jim were especially interested in that part of my history, as it demonstrated the amazing power of faith and prayer, and the wondrous way in which Our Lady interceded for me in saving a life.

The Call to Spiritual Warfare

I’ll continue with Spiritual Warfare – (2) in the next post.  I’ve already written over 1800 words and there is much more to say.  Spiritual warfare is more than just envisioning the battle between good and evil.  It is actually something that we, as Christians, are all called to take part in on our journey toward salvation.  It doesn’t have to involve dramatic visual images or bizarre and unexplainable paranormal phenomena.  But it does have so much to do with answering the call to be prayer warriors and do our part as we promote the message of Christ and fight to bring Him conversion of sinners and salvation of souls.  And invoking the aid of Our Lady to intercede for us in all of our needs is one of the strongest and surest ways of knowing that our prayers are reaching her Divine Son.

I hope your New Year’s is a happy, healthy and blessed one.

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