Non 

"Non" to the E.U. Cadaver

There are interesting developments in Europe, namely, France, on the ratification of the E.U. Constitution going on as we speak. For most Americans, this wouldn't be news: but for Catholics, it should be.

A bit of background: The E.U. has grown from six members in the late 1950's to twenty-five at present. Its basic and professed mission is to unify Europe, thereby giving itself the ability to compete militarily and economically with blocs like China and the United States.

The part it seems to be missing, which in my view, is a fundamental and essential part, is the cultural unity. The late Pope John Paul II was pointing this out as he protested the drafting of this constitution, a constitution which in its preamble, makes no mention of Christianity as a root of European society and culture.

What has happened over the last couple of days is that France, who is herself one of the six founding members of the E.U., had a referendum popular vote on whether or not to ratify the constitution (with the preamble that John Paul II had protested) . In an astounding turn, the "Non!" party won the referendum: in effect, showing the insecurity and disunity that a majority of the French feel about being a part of the E.U. . The BBC news coverage pictured lower-income resentful welfare citizens with an axe to grind against President Chirac: but this cannot be the whole picture. It was a democratic moment: the people, or the large part of them, spoke in those large bell-toned syllables, the simplified and spinable speech of the masses. They said, "Non"- and now, the political, cultural and talking head elites will begin the process of wagging this dog. However, there is the essential element to this story which is flying way over the radar of most secularists-which is most of Europe, we are told.

The E.U. is failing. Slowly, in spits and starts, but it is failing. I think that the referendum vote in France showed the incredible crevases and insecurities which are rife and glossed over with spackle, the spackle of economic and military security, a "more powerful Europe on the world stage". I think that Pope John Paul II was uncovering those insecurities when he pointed out that the very institution which bore a large part to creating Europe has been shut out and ignored, as if it didn't matter. This institution had, at one point, unified Europe, in the High Middle Ages. More than military, more than economic, more than language, is the foundation for culture: the cultus. The basis of culture is religion, the cultus: and in Europe, this means the Roman Catholic Faith. One cannot, I repeat, cannot, unify people on the basis of anything else. A look at history will clearly show this to be true. The European Union is one of the first, if not the first, attempt to unify people on the basis of secular elements only. It will fail, because it is not about blood (the blood of sacrifice and religious brotherhood), it is about money.

Here in America, one might argue that the United States is just an antiquated version of the E.U.. But this is false. I am not arguing that the Constitution of the United States is a religious document, more likely that it is largely Masonic with Deistic overtones. But the idea and culture of America has its own religion, called "Americanism": and the traditionally religious people in America are beginning to wake up to the fact that "Americanism" is morphing into something they don't understand- but perhaps it is simply showing its real face-that of a many faced, poly-god. Still, it is a cultus. The esteemed writer and historian John Rao shows this very clearly in his writings. Where the E.U. differs is that it, to John Paul II's chagrin, made every effort to remain purely secular from the very beginning until the present.

Would a band-aid like recognizing Christianity as a root of modern Europe save this constitution of the E.U.? I think not: but the important fact that the religious root of Europe was ignored laid bare the real dis-union of Europe; for Europe is now in the throes of discovering that it has no true self: it is a bunch of individualistic atomites existing on the cultural foundations of the past. Atomites cannot build culture: they can only feed on the remnants and tear it down, a bit like termites. But God did not mean people to be termites, He wants something better for them, and so they cannot unify, they cannot grow, without Him.

An E.U. cannot heal the ghosts in the Balkans, to borrow a phrase ; it cannot deal with the societal ills and despair brought on by rampant active homosexuality; it cannot compete with the cultus of the Islamic immigrants. It is a cadaver with puppet strings attached, made to move and speak by the political elite.

It is interesting to note that Pope Benedict today said to the faithful who came to see him in Bari, "Go to Mass". With the thousands and thousands of beautiful cathedrals and churches in every European city, from the ancient Hagia Sophia(now a mosque) in Istanbul to Notre Dame in Paris and Westminster Abbey(now Protestant) in London, the really unified Europe is speaking to its descendents in the language of glass and stone: "Go back to Mass."

Our Lady 

Obedience as a Virtue, "Obedience" as a Vice

Five of us sat down for our monthly 'Mom's Group' - sound pedestrian? It isn't, because we aren't. Over the last year of monthly meetings, I've discovered four other views on the universe: beings struggling for holiness, reaching out to God, in the midst of an ordinary-looking life. Why isn't it pedestrian? It could be: I mean, we could spend our rare evenings out giggling about cute things our cute cherubs said; we could rant and rave about why the washing machine isn't right next to the dryer; we could really get deep about abacuses.

Don't get me wrong, we do all that. But there is an undercurrent that has been there from the beginning: we all want to let God make us saints. As a priest once said , "Don't shoot for purgatory- what happens if you miss? Shoot for heaven." So our discussions always seem to evolve into important ones. The other night one of the more important issues that came up was that of obedience. How does one, in a marriage, cultivate this important virtue? It is what St. Paul talks about when he is saying, " Stay in the state in which you were called." This means, make a virtue out of every and any situation you are in. Obedience has to do with this, because it is part of aquiring a humble spirit. Humility is the foundation of the spiritual life. You cannot grow without it.

For the religious, obedience is a simpler matter, although not less difficult. In a marriage, the question of obedience is more complicated, like a dance. There is a hierarchical relationship, of which the husband is the head. But the husband, in turn, is to love as Christ loved, and that is as a servant, a loving servant. This is why the Popes have called themselves, "Servant of the servants of God." Also, a marriage is an organic, close-knit relationship that does not have the clarity, often, of the rules governing a religious institution. Marriages are more messy in their character, and highly individualized.

Obedience is a virtue, it is like modesty, it is more than the outside acts which may or may not show it. Someone can exhibit "obedient" acts, like not ever arguing, but this does not speak to how the heart of the person is. And the heart is really what counts. Obedience of the heart, is, in my view, a true vision of the purpose of the hierarchical nature- that is, that it mirrors and teaches ourselves and others about the relationship of Christ to the soul, of the Blessed Virgin to the Godhead, the relationship of Christ to the Chruch. A marriage of true hierarchy and an obedient spirit is the best evangelization to the children of the marriage as well as to others in the world. I imagine an obedient wife as I imagine Mary with Joseph- but I always imagine how Joseph must have been to Mary: and this is not to be overlooked. For the husband is to love his wife as he would love his own flesh- she is in fact his own flesh.

Now husbands, like wives, are not usually saints. In the rough grass of the non-saints' marriage, the development of a delicate virtue like obedience is very difficult. St. Rita, who had a very hard marriage, allowed God to help her make her situation an occasion of heroic virtue. But often, neither the wife nor the husband is a St. Rita. So the work of aquiring an obedient spirit has to be coupled with prudence. When does obedience become a vice?

A wife, in my opinion, has to use her brains a lot. There are many times when it would be a lot easier just to not say anything and let the husband make all decisions without any flack whatsover. This is a masquerade of obedience. True obedience is to be a partner and counselor, to advise and help, but to know prayerfully when the final decision must be made. It is much harder to let go of a decision when one has put more than two cents in- but it is better to use one's gifts and talents and then to stuggle a bit than to be a self-imposed doormat.

A wife also has to know that obedience is a virtue when she is playing her role fully, with as much of her person as she can. Also, obedience is a virtue when exercised in a licit situation. Being "obedient" when anyone, even a husband, asks one to be complicit in something illicit is no longer the virtue of obedience, but rather a vice.

When on earth would that happen in our marriages? It isn't likely that one's husband will ask one to get involved in drug dealing. It will happen, most likely in terms of childrearing. Obedience gets tricky here, because most women are more versed in the ins and outs of childrearing in general, and if they are at home with their children, they know the children better. Therefore, the woman becomes the expert on the children. Her advice on issues like discipline and schooling become more than just advice. If a husband is making a bad decision which can potentially harm the children, and the wife aquiecses out of "obedience", she is actually behaving visciously: one, because she is allowing the children to be exposed to potential or actual harm, and two, because she is not helping her husband to grow by keeping silent.

It may sound nit-picky to think of when obedience is licit, but I believe that if one is going to get going in the growth of the virtues, it is better to know the road. Part of knowing something is knowing what it is not. And true obedience requires great courage, and great love. These we ask for from God, through the ever-humble, ever-obedient hands of Our Lady.

A good patron saint for gaining the virtue of obedience in marriage and avoiding the vice, is St. Rita.

A Little Crucifixion 

Little Crucifixions

“The Kingdom of heaven suffereth violence”, said Our Lord. He often spoke in double or triple meanings: first, one must do violence to oneself- not necessarily beating up oneself, but determining to forcefully restrain one’s errant desires and bad habits in order to prepare oneself for contemplation; second, that the Kingdom will provoke violence from the world because the world does not want anything which will demand fealty to God; third, the Kingdom is brought to fruition in the midst of a war, the war of the principalities of God against those of darkness.

There are many other examples of these sayings of Our Lord; sayings not necessarily meant to confuse, but to educate. It is as if He thought in multiple meanings, and expressed Himself based on how He thought. Perhaps, since He is the Author of Life, reality is that way. All concepts have many layers of meanings, the most simple and individualistic meanings laying on the surface, and the deepest meanings laying close to the heart of God. Like parallel lines, never quite meeting until eternity, we cannot know the ultimate meanings of things until we reach the heart of God.

I often wondered why Our Lord taught in parables, with their hidden meanings, double and triple meanings, perhaps infinite meanings, to hide the truth from those who did not have ears; and then later told the disciples what He meant for them to hear. Because He is love and mercy, He cannot do anything contrary to those- and so I suppose the surface meanings of the parables were things that would help the simple in some small way- and confuse the malicious or the selfish so that they would realize that they did not understand. This put them on the first step to humility and real understanding. Most people have the experience of telling another person “too much”- more than they can or are ready to hear. Doing this only provokes unreasoned anger and frustration, or fear of the unknown. Then a door closes and real conversation becomes less possible. Our Lord knew each person’s heart of those who were listening to Him, and how much they could hear. He spoke the very most surface message, and then began to teach the deeper levels to those whose ears were more ready- perhaps those who, after His teaching a large crowd, followed Him as He made to leave to the next place. “And He had mercy on them, like sheep without a shepherd, and healed them and taught them.”

In this day, we are re-approaching the Tower of Babel. It is being rebuilt, and the higher it rises, the less we understand eachother. Our new tower is scientific and comfortable, comfortable at all costs. It is built with the bricks of the poor nations, and the mortar made with the blood and bones of those we have killed because they had no voice- and we deemed them a burden. There is a low-level, Satanic language of selfish desire and individualism, but it is a language that few can really hear (only the very bad and the very good), like the rumbling at the beginning of an earthquake. But it is the dominating language. The languages above it, used to cover it, use very high-sounding terms like “freedom” and “democracy” and “choice”- but no one understands what anyone else really means by those terms anymore. They are no more than babble now in the world that speaks via the TV and the internet. Just listen to a talk show where a Catholic is trying to discuss something like abortion with a homosexual activist. We, as a species, are losing the ability to communicate with eachother, even as our language becomes more and more complex, and our physical ability to communicate via scientific means becomes easier. As our tower gets higher, our speech gets more confused. This is a punishment from God for our evils in this age.

The only structure left standing to counter the Tower of Babel is the Catholic Church. Nothing else will stand in the foul wind that comes from that tower. She is the guard and purveyor of Truth itself, and as modern people lose the ability to understand, She must begin, slowly, to re-educate in simple terms, as Our Lord did with the crowds. She must also appear mysterious, so that some people can understand that they do not understand as much as they thought. She cannot, however, lose Her very identity in trying to reach the lost. She must be able to both speak in parables and retain Her lofty and mysterious identity, with all its layered meanings, because She is the Spouse and Body of Truth and Love, and so must be there as a place of sanity and refuge. She was always thus, even at the hands of sinful men, Her liturgy and dogmas intact.

Now, we are in a situation where the Church herself, at least, the hierarchical part, appears to want to be an addition to that Tower of Babel. Her outposts are disappearing now, frightenly quickly in clouds of priest scandals and bishops capitulating to the culture, and even calling it good; in the quicksands of Babel speech spoken in the pulpit and the confessional, helping to cover the Satanic instruction instead of exposing it in ways the simple can understand. There may well be a time when the members of the Catholic Church will only be able to fill a space the size of St. Peter’s Square, and the Pope will bear the Monstrance in the midst of bullets.

And those other Christians, Protestants and others? Other people who believe in anything beyond themselves? Their institutions will be systematically corrupted or destroyed, and in the destruction, I pray that the people who are truly seeking the Kingdom will find it. I say again, even if it only be as large as St. Peter’s Square, the Catholic Church will be the only structure of knowledge of God standing; the Church will be the only refuge left for those who see the blood and bones mortar of the great and terrible Tower, who see that, under its bright paint of “freedom” and “choice”, lies a crematorium of souls.

Catholic Action now is to begin to educate in the name of Christ, to speak parables which lose none of their real meanings, like the movies of The Passion and Fatima which God is allowing, and Mel Gibson is producing. Since only God can do this, we must ask for His help. And since He is now angry and judging us, we must ask His Mother for help. This is her age, because we have gone too far even to approach Our Lord. We must again depend on the help and intercession of His Mother, to bring Him back into the world.

As Terri Schiavo lay dying, I prayed in sadness and some discouragement at the Tabernacle. I sensed that the Lord of Hosts was giving me a peace that passes understanding, a peace that all is in His hands, even this death of an innocent at the hands of the government of ‘freedom’. I asked for the proper words to the prayer always in my heart, that of asking somehow for Him to rescue us. The words were given me, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to Myself.” I understood then, that it is in these Little Crucifixions, like every aborted baby and every Terri Schiavo, every child starved by the greed of another, and especially every Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, it is in these that the Lord is again being lifted up from the earth for all to see. In these instances, every person who witnesses it is being drawn to The Lord. And as they are drawn, they make a choice to see Him as their God and love Him, or to hate and reject Him.

He is speaking now in more and more simple parables, more and more clear messages, to instruct the confused and simple, and to show the proud and selfish that they do not understand. Perhaps some of these confused and proud will turn. But many, like wolves who smell blood, will begin to turn rabid and attack. Yet He draws them in large and small ways. It is for the Catholics of this world, the lovers of Christ, to begin to educate everyone they can about these Little Crucifixions, so that when they are drawn to the Lord, they will love Him and be saved. It is also to us to educate ourselves and our children in the science of prayer, love and sacrifice, in the science of Mary, so that we can become Little Crucifixions, hung as signs around the Church, and as refuges for those fleeing the New Tower of Babel.

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St. Pius X: Icon for "A Good Shepherd" 

A Good Shepherd

Giuseppe Sarto was born on June 2, 1835, in Riese, Italy. He was one of eight children born to a postmaster and his wife. The strong, square face of his mother and sisters, and of Giuseppe himself, evokes words such as, “they are the backbone of the country” and “tough folks, used to tough times.” Giuseppe, or “Beppo,” did come of tough stock; his forefathers worked hard to keep a home and provide for their children. Giuseppe knew from family lore and from his own life what it meant to be poor, and he surely knew what Our Lord meant when he said, “Happy are you poor.” His intimate knowledge of being a nobody with near to nothing carved him a large heart for the poor, and it was a great happiness for him to care for others in the Lord’s name. “I was born poor; I lived poor; I want to die poor” was the extent of Pope St. Pius X’s will. This was a heart near to Our Lord, as we remember Jesus saying in one of His rare, recorded compliments of a Pharisee: “You are near to the Kingdom of God.” Giuseppe Sarto lived in the Kingdom, for he lived the two commandments Our Lord declared all encompassing: love of God and love of neighbor.

Guiseppe Sarto’s life, a path of poverty leading through a small Italian home, a seminary, a poor parish, a second larger parish, a larger seminary, a bishopric, a Patriarch’s palazzo in Venice, and finally the labyrinthine Vatican, is a model of Christlike poverty. His compassion for those who were suffering physically or spiritually was the fruit of his own daily life of material deprivation, and his forgetfulness-of-self was constant, immune to changing circumstances. From the moment that Giuseppe Sarto became Father Sarto, he spent his life, his intelligence, his energy, his earnings, and even the meat right out of his pot for the flock the Lord had given him. Our Lord said that if one can be trusted in little things, then he can be trusted in big things.” The Lord was surely watching Father Sarto’s humble love for his flock, along with his outer and inner poverty, and so he was given larger and larger flocks until, as Pope, the whole world became this poor man’s flock.

Yet what may seem to us a glorious, stellar rise in the ecclesiastical ranks was to Father Sarto a steady martyrdom. He did seem happy in Venice, judging from his writings at this time and the photographs of his robust, smiling face and the lively sweep of his cape. But for the simple man of Christ, the worldly pomp was an almost unbearable burden to his spirit. The best and most revealing photograph of Father Sarto is a close up of his face as he carries Our Lord exposed in the Blessed Sacrament during a Eucharistic procession in Venice. He is enraptured, a mirror reflecting the sun, intense and serious. It is this love that was the water-current moving his life, even through the martyrdom of his Papacy.

It is difficult to imagine the immense burden of becoming Pope at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Pope was nicknamed, “The Prisoner of the Vatican”. He could not leave the walls of the small city-state: ever. Politics in Europe, and in this case, Italy, was very complicated; simply put, the government of Italy wanted to annex what was left of the Papal States. If the Pope left, it would be as if a king left his country while the enemy aimed the battering ram against the gates of his city. The Pope could not leave for the sake of the temporal needs and rights of Holy Mother Church. Also, the Papacy was a mass of protocols and ceremonial duties, which terribly distressed the Poor Man from Reise. There are many amusing stories of the Pope trying to avoid any show of ostentation, but if one looks at his photographs and letters from this time, they appear laden with the sadness of loss, the loss of the freedom he once had to be with simple people. He used to stare at the hills beyond the walls of the Vatican gardens in longing. He must have found it very hard to be a good shepherd being so far removed from the parishes, schools and hospitals full of the people he loved. Rafael Cardinal Merry Del Val, his Secretary of State, remembers the new Pope praying in a small chapel before accepting his election as full of sadness and angst. The Cardinal exhorted him to have courage. He would need it.

As in his other assignments, Pope Pius X showed that even poor people from small villages in Italy could be endowed with great intelligence and foresight. He attacked not only the issues of his day with great acumen, but also helped lay the foundation from which later Catholics could defend themselves against the “great synthesis of all heresies”— modernism. He saw far into the future, saw the auto-demolition of the Church and the disintegration and de-sacralization of the society around Her which modernism would effect if allowed a foothold in the Body of Christ. He wrote encyclicals to inoculate the Church. He girded up the rubrics of the Mass and liturgy (most especially the use of sacred and traditional chant). He lowered the age for reception of the Eucharist and encouraged frequent Communion, even daily, to destroy the last vestiges of Jansenism. He saw the storms coming, even as he sheltered the sheep. He walked slowly, carefully, but steadily forward with Our Lord, never stopping in his trust, walking with a broken heart for the world that was plunging backwards into the abyss of catastrophic war and spiritual suicide.

He died, as Cardinal Merry Del Val surmises, of a broken heart, because of the war, the pain and grief that he saw coming for the Lord’s sheep in the world but could not prevent. He was not a faint-hearted man, but sometimes the very purity and great love of those who attain holiness make them more acutely aware of pain, grief, and loss. A heart of stone does not feel like a heart of flesh; this was his martyrdom, and he bore it with great fortitude. He returned love to those who hated him, a heroic quality impossible to possess without a deep spiritual congress with the Godhead. He was warrior for Christ, a man of peace, and a peaceful man. He reduced many people to silent awe by his mere presence. He was an example of the true witness whom St. Francis of Assisi describes: “Witness, witness by all means—but use words only if necessary.”

Pope Pius X lived in a dark time. We live in the darkest of times. Our time is different from Father Sarto’s because for us, the Perennial Church seems completely shrouded in smoke, and the shepherds are scattered and confused. We need St. Pope Pius X now because we need a shepherd. Priests need his example like never before. We need his love of Christ, Christ in the Mystical Body, Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, Christ in the confessional. We need his devotion to Our Lady. We need his clarity and simplicity of thought and expression, and his absolute seriousness about the highest activity a man can perform on earth, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Pope Pius X loved the Church more than himself. He, like Our Lord, gave himself up for Her. He would carry the monstrance, carry Our Lord to lead His sheep, even though a rabid wolf attack him—even wolves who were his fellow shepherds.

Lady 

Modesty

Modesty Mores

First off, modesty is more than wearing shapeless clothes. In fact it isn’t wearing shapeless clothes, but clothes that reflect it. It is actually a virtue- a sort of detachment from worldliness, a self-togetherness, an integrated self turned towards God. Therefore there is a kind of poverty of spirit and humility which makes themselves felt in the way the person looks, talks, prays, eats and relates to others.

A person who has understood and is living modestly will sort of intuit which kind of clothes or hairdo or makeup would be appropriate. Even further, a modest person, a person who is poor in spirit will not think too much about clothes or hair or makeup- a modest person will simply wear decent and appropriate clothing. She will wear her clothes, her clothes will not wear her: I mean, you know the kind of person you meet who is modest such that you cannot remember what they were wearing, you can only remember the soul? The look of the eyes, the talk, the love- that is what the impression was- not the clothes.

At any rate, here are some mores for modest dressing, to help in discerning what is modest and what is not:

You need to wear really tight clothing only if you are planning to be shot through a narrow tube or something of the kind.

On the other hand, if you look like Prairie Woman, no one will take you seriously and just think, “Waco”-oh, I mean “Wacko”.

Length of skirt or dress? Hmm, let’s see. No one should be able to see most of your legs if you are sitting down-or standing, for that matter.

If you want to wear something that accentuates some part of your body, ask yourself, “Why?”

Why would ANYONE want to stand with their whole body weight on a stick with a base of 1 cm diameter?

When you’ve seen someone dressed in clothes that make them look like a prostitute, especially a heavy person, you wonder, “Do they know?”

There is a reason it is called a collarbone.

Hope 

Icon for the Mission of Padre Pio 

The Mission of Padre Pio

The Mission of Padre Pio

Icon and essay by T. Renee Kozinski

On New Year’s Day, 1903, St. Pio was thinking about his vocation to the Capuchin cloistered life and was feeling apprehensive about leaving the world, his family, and his beloved countryside. Suddenly, he was favored with a vision, not of the imagination, but of the intellect.

We can see things in different ways, and it is said that we can know the angels like we know ideas, although they are persons; they are like living ideas. This is a part of our seeing that we do not exercise enough; we rely too heavily on the physical sense of sight, “Seeing is believing.” But this vision was presented to St. Pio through his intellect: he knew what he saw. And it gave him the answer to his apprehension about his vocation. It was a mandate, a warning, and a promise of aid. This vision was the mean and mode of St. Pio’s life as a priest and monk of God—and his immense suffering. He was permitted a part in protecting and helping weaker souls to attain salvation in Christ.

This vision, which the icon depicts in visual form, was the meaning and the goal that Our Lord planned for Padre Pio, and St. Pio accepted it. It is his acceptance, and the mode and depth of his acceptance, which is one of the great hallmarks in the life of this beloved saint. The Padre’s life was suffused with obedience, for he knew that all obedience, in its proper form, was directed ultimately towards Christ. “If my superior asked me to, I would jump out that window,” he was heard to say. Does this sound like folly? Yes, the Padre was a fool for Christ, and his way of showing that folly was love, to be obedient, obedient when no other would be, to show his love of Our Lord.

From his earliest days, Padre Pio was a docile servant to Our Lord. He did not place his will in any place where it would ever conflict with the Lord’s; therefore, he was freer than the rest of us. It is interesting to note, that he was often charged with disobedience, especially as a young friar, when he was too ill to be at the friary and could only survive, it seemed, in his home area. This was a suffering the Lord allowed him, perhaps to test and strengthen his obedience to the Lord’s will, even at the cost of his superiors accusing him of disobedience. He simply continued to follow orders where it was in his power to do so. And later, when the Holy Office censured him, and even took his spiritual director from him, he expressed sadness but not complaint. This did not mean that he did not see injustice and mistakes; he simply accepted them as from the hand of the Lord, as part of his mission as expressed in the vision.

Obedience is an integral part of the meaning of the vision, because Padre Pio had developed it and been given the virtue in such high degree that his will was malleable for great things by the Lord. For most, the devil we fight is primarily our own wayward will, the desire to put ourselves above what others want for us, primarily the Lord. We will not accept the mysterious will of God because we cannot understand it for ourselves. Padre Pio seemed to forego the need to understand for himself, and he just obeyed. Therefore, the Lord was able to use him to fight Satan himself in order to save other souls.

Obedience was Padre Pio’s crown, which he wears now: obedience and docility to the Lord’s hand, and great love of poor, little souls. Here is the description of his intellectual vision in his own words:

At his side he beheld a majestic man of rare beauty, resplendent as the sun. This man took his hand and said, “Come with me for you must fight a doughty warrior.” He then led him to a vast field where there was a vast multitude. The multitude was divided into two groups. On the one side he saw men of the most beautiful countenance, clad in snow-white garments. On the other. . . he saw men of hideous aspect, dressed in black raiment like so many dark shadows.

Between these two groups of people was a great space in which that soul was placed by his guide. As he gazed intently and with wonder . . . in the midst of the space that divided the two groups, a man appeared, advancing so tall that his very forehead seemed to touch the heavens, while his face seemed to be that of an Ethiopian, so black and horrible it was.

At this point the poor soul was so completely disconcerted that he felt that his life was suspended. This strange personage approached nearer and nearer, and the guide who was beside the soul informed him that he would have to fight with that creature. At these words the poor little soul turned pale, trembled all over and was about to fall to the ground in a faint, so great was his terror.

The guide supported him with one arm until he recovered somewhat from his fright. The soul then turned to his guide and begged him to spare him from the fury of that eerie personage, because he said that the man was so strong that the strength of all men combined would not be sufficient to fell him.

“Your every resistance in vain. You must fight with this man. Take heart. Enter the combat with confidence. Go forth courageously. I shall be with you. In reward for your victory over him I will give you a shining crown to adorn your brow.”

The poor little soul took heart. He entered into combat with the formidable and mysterious being. The attack was ferocious, but with the help of his guide, who never left his side, the soul finally overcame his adversary, threw him to the ground, and forced him to flee.

Then his guide, faithful to his promise, took from beneath his robes a crown of rarest beauty, a beauty that words cannot describe, and placed it on his head. But then he withdrew it again, saying, “I will reserve for you crown even more beautiful if you fight that good fight with the being whom you have just fought. He will continually renew the assault to regain his lost honor. Fight valiantly and do not doubt my aid. Keep your eyes wide open, for that mysterious personage will try to take you by surprise. Do not dear his formidable might, but remember what I have promised you: that I will always be close at hand. And I will always help you so that you will always succeed in conquering him”.

When that mysterious man had been vanquished, all the multitude of men of horrible countenance took to flight with shrieks, curses and deafening cries, while from the other multitude of men came the sound of applause and praise for the splendid man, more radiant than the sun, who had assisted the poor soul so splendidly in the first battle. And so the vision ended.