Prophecy and the ‘God of Surprises’

In September 2017, I arrived on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in the city of Rome. I went for pranzo and then walked to the Quo Vadis Church, and up the Via Appia to Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, where I venerated the relics of the Crucifixion. To my surprise, I discovered a dear friend there whom I had not seen for almost four years. We reunited with her husband and family for Solemn Vespers and a lovely dinner thereafter. Although I was not there for the Summorum Pontificum Conference, they were, and we arranged to spend free time together seeing some of the sights around the city, since I had already been there.

Among the traditionalist crowd, there was a lot of tension in the air, especially with the imminent 100th anniversary of the miracle of the sun at Fatima, which had happened in October 1917. Then, in October 2017, some believed that we were due for a serious chastisement of some kind, which would be so horrible that it must be part of the reason the third secret was hidden for some time. I remember looking in the eyes of my friend, full of tears, as she asked, “Father, do you think we are all going to be annihilated because of our sins?” At first I didn’t know what to say, because I take most private revelation with a grain of salt, but a reply came to me out of the blue that I haven’t forgotten: “When I think of the Triumph of our Blessed Mother’s Immaculate Heart, I do not see ruined cities and billions of dead bodies everywhere. Even if God must chastise us, I think he has, and will, appeal to us first with his mercy, as he is doing, but will also let us suffer in the million little ways we already are because of our selfishness and sinfulness. These are the chastisements meant to correct us and to reform us. God does not want the death of the sinner, but our conversion. The devil wants us all to be destroyed, body and soul.”

That answer seemed to assuage her fears and give her peace, and I am grateful for the grace to have said that. However, in the years since, I have become more and more acutely aware of how many people are deeply affected by the proliferation of Private Revelation in the Church. I am particularly worried now in the age of the internet, where so much misinformation can be spread and magnified.

Private Revelation occupies a tricky space in our theology. Obviously, Public Revelation, as found in the Scripture and Apostolic Tradition, is binding because it is the inerrant word which God wished to communicate to humanity in order to save us. I often think of Private Revelation just like a think of private devotions; they are supplementary. If we are regularly doing the ‘Public’ things well, like with a devout attendance/celebration of the Mass, the Divine Office, and the other Rites, as well as seriously reading the Sacred Scriptures, I think most Catholics are well disposed to receive grace and to be sustained in their journey on earth. In an environment where those things are done correctly, private devotions form an important and helpful strengthening and sweetening influence, because they express the faith of the people and the Church together, and make religion truly ‘popular’. If we were to abandon private devotion altogether, we would lose a lot of the warmth and joy that piety brings; but it is essential to note that it is most certainly possible to get that same warmth and joy from all the public devotions of the Church. But to do that, we must celebrate the rites of the Church well, and not in a banal and feckless manner.

Continuing the analogy, Public Revelation gives us sufficient light to know how to live our faith. But Private Revelation admittedly can help us discern God’s will at a particular personal or historical moment. As much as Saint Paul tells us not to “despise prophecy”, he equally admonishes us to “test the spirits”. I believe there are a few tools we need to employ, and I do not think many people, let alone many clerics, have the training in Mystical Theology to discuss these issues.

Let’s start with the subject of Imaginative Visions and Locutions. According to the manualists, who are the most systematized of the Mystical Theologians, there is no question that the visionary or hearer is prone to error on many fronts. The French Mystical Theologian Augustin Poulain in his Graces of Interior Prayer makes clear five causes of error in regard to private revelation:

• A faulty interpretation of the revelations of visions.
• “Ignorance of the fact that historic events are often given with approximate truth only”
• The mingling of human activity with supernatural action during the revelation
• Involuntary changes made by the person receiving the revelation
• Embellishment by secretaries and/or compilers of the revelations or the life of the seer.

There is a maxim which says that no prophecy is fully understood before it is fully fulfilled. One may take at face value an apparent meaning without taking into account the primary objective of God when bestowing them, which is often hard to discern. As a prime example, Poulain recalls the example of the trial and martyrdom of Saint Joan of Arc, who was told by Saint Catharine of Alexandria that she would be aided, and that she would triumph over her trials. These predictions were accurate, but not according to what Saint Joan believed, who then proceeded to think that she would be delivered from prison and continue her normal life. Instead, her victory was the crown of martyrdom.

Another good example, which Poulain also notes, is one I read also, from Saint Gertrude’s beautiful and lengthy private revelations. In one instance, Our Lord is said to have explained to her that the word ‘patience’ comes from the word ‘pax’, for ‘peace’. All etymologists know that that is literally false, because the origin of the word is from ‘patior’, meaning ‘to suffer’. Yet Our Lord was not trying to create an etymological analysis, but a spiritual connection, by saying that patience comes from inner peace and knowledge. And so Poulain concludes, “Our Lord did not wish to give her a lesson in philology, but to remind her of a useful counsel.”

Even no less a figure as Saint Peter misinterpreted his own personal revelation, when he was told by the angel, “Arise Peter; kill and eat.” Peter thought he was being asked to eat ‘unclean’ foods. But upon further reflection, and by the aid of grace, he came to understand that that revelation two days later when the Centurion Cornelius and is household approached him to accept Christianity, whereupon he more fully realized that the Gentiles, the ‘unclean nations, were not to be declared unclean, if God cleans them (i.e., through baptism).

For me, the most dramatic example of a famous prophet being spectacularly wrong was Saint Vincent Ferrer, who declared himself the “Angel of the Apocalypse”, and prophesied the imminent end of the world, even raising a woman from the dead who verified his words, in the presence of thousands of witnesses. Yet that did not happen. Just like Jonah prophesying the destruction of Nineveh in 40 Days, St. Vincent was wrong: the people of both Jonah and Vincent’s time did in fact repent, and the Great Schism was mended. In fact, Jonah was so embittered by the repentance of the Ninevites that he prayed for death; his prophecy may have failed, but his mission, and the purpose of the prophecy, was a resounding success.

Especially when it comes to the mysteries of the next world, we only are able to conceptualize them by what C.S. Lewis famously called “transposition”. The “octave” of spiritual realities is of such a pitch, so to speak, that the hearing of human understanding cannot perceive it, any more than a human can hear a dog whistle. This is one reason why God uses symbols to “transpose” heavenly realities to earthly ones. This is most evident in our everyday experience when we celebrate the Sacred Liturgy, whose signs and symbols are inherently apocalyptic, because we are worshipping “behind the veil”, and “through a glass darkly”. For this reason even Saint Paul says in his First Letter to the Corinthians that we “prophecy imperfectly.”

Misunderstandings of this type principally come from our own desires, and from our own preconceived ideas of doctrine or of history. For instance, this can be seen in the multitude of irredentist or restorationalist national prophecies. At the fall of Constantinople, many holy Greeks produced the prophecy of the ‘occultation’ of Constantine XI Palaeologus; that he did not in fact die on May 29, 1453, but was hidden for a day when he would mystically return, recapture Constantinople, and restore the Byzantine Empire. Similar prophecies exist in the wake of the French Revolution, describing a “Great Catholic Monarch” who would eliminate Protestantism, Islam and other things from Europe, and establish a new Holy Roman Empire. When all these prophecies are analyzed according to a sort of historical-critical analysis, we can more easily see how the prophet can be misled in his or her proclamation.

St. Hildegard of Bingen, a Doctor of the Church and a brilliant woman in her own right, a true intellectual prodigy, has fantastically wrong prophetic insights regarding all sorts of natural phenomena. With great detail and without hesitation in her Book of the Subtilties of Nature, she describes the qualities of gemstones, the mandrake plant, the basilisk, the dragon, the unicorn and the griffin in equal measure. Poulain thus sagaciously concludes: “God, it seems, may supernaturally convey into a person’s mind a portion of the knowledge of the day, such as it is found in existing books or in the minds of contemporaneous scientists; whilst giving in some way a general warning that He does not guarantee the contents of this whole, and that is is therefore to be accepted only at the receiver’s risk.”

Of special note is a comment regarding revelation which is dictated and written down, which is especially apropos in the time of the internet, as Poulain relates: “The danger is also great when the written revelation is very long and yet has been received almost instantaneously. It is not rash to believe that not all the words used were supplied by the revelation, and that the thoughts were not given in detail. They were developed later by the person that used them. In this vein, I note that we ought to exercise special caution with regard to the pipeline of revelations which are promoted among the faithful on websites like Countdown to the Kingdom and other such websites, along with ‘prophets’ with blogs, mailing lists, and YouTube accounts.

What we ought to draw I think from all these insights, in layman’s terms, is that one of the most clear elements of true prophecy is the element of surprise in its fulfillment. Let’s think for instance of when Sarah was told that she would bear a son in her own age. She laughed hysterically at the idea. Yet the joke was on her, and so she named her son Issac, which of course means “he laughed.” The same is true of so many other prophecies even found in Public Revelation. For instance, Isaiah’s challenge to King Ahaz regarding the birth of a child. The apparent meaning of course was that King Ahaz himself would have a son as a sign of divine favor. Christians however for centuries have interpreted it with its spiritual ‘surprise’ meaning, that it in fact prophesied the birth of Jesus the Christ.

I don’t want to use Poulain too much more or exclusively, but his words on particularly modern prophecies are too good to not reproduce in full:

“A suspicious character in modern [sic] political prophecies is the fact that they never lead us to withstand wicked men, and never suggest any serious manner of resisting them. Some even predict that the world is to change suddenly, by a miracle [sic]. A ‘new era’ is on the point of appearing; everyone will become holy in an instant. The conclusion drawn from such predictions is that we should fold our arms and wait. Since God is to do everything, and makes a point of proclaiming it in advance, it would be an indiscretion and foolishness on our part to wish to help Him and to anticipate His appointed hour. Let us, then, go on doing nothing! This is a convenient doctrine. I was objecting to one of these false prophetesses, one day, that the world seems, on the contrary, to become more and more wicked, and that we were proceeding in the opposite direction to the great renovation that she was announcing. She replied: ‘Is it a good sign. God will not intervene until the evil is at its height.’ This answer teaches us nothing. When can anyone say that evil is at its height? And further, you declare that this maximum will be reached soon, and not in two thousand years. How do you know this?”

This paragraph alone I think cuts to the heart of the current preoccupation with a certain subset of Christians, whether Pre-Tribulation Rapturists, or the “Three Days Darkness” crowd, or those who believe in a future “Great Warning”, where in an instant, God will reveal to every soul his or her own spiritual condition, sparking a great repentance and purification of the world. Of course, many of these prophecies do encourage prayer and penance, but as Poulain says, almost all of them do nothing to encourage the faithful to take practical steps to hasten the day of God, as Saint Paul encouraged. That is, to work toward the transformation of our culture, to lobby our leaders and to work tirelessly within our own families and communities. It is easy, and almost de rigour, for a modern prophet to talk about repentance. And such talk is not wrong; but one not need be a prophet in the charismatic sense to say such things. For the need for prayer and penance belongs to the Public Revelation and is universally enjoined on all. It may be particularly necessary among certain populations and at certain times, but such a need can be discerned by any Christian who possesses the supernatural gifts of faith and charity, and the piety which the Holy Spirit bestows. A supernatural private revelation at that point is only ‘icing on the cake.’

During the pandemic, I remember a particularly good and pious woman who is partial to private revelations, who came by one day to my residence unannounced with oil in hand. I caught her anointing my doorposts and lintels, much like the Israelites before the Exodus, with the “Oil of the Good Samaritan”, a concoction promoted by Luz de Maria de Bonilla, an Argentine prophetess who regularly puts out ‘messages’ from various celestial personages. She did this because the prophetess said that the application of such an oil would prevent those who lived in the house from getting sick. Two weeks later, this same woman attended a prayer meeting with about a hundred people. It was a ‘superspreader’ event, and several members of the prayer group died from COVID-19. She herself became severely ill with the virus, and it took her several weeks to recover.

I understand that people nowadays, who have suffered so much disruption, natural disaster and political turmoil, are anxious, scared, and eager for divine guidance. I share at least some of these anxieties. Now with the decision of Dobbs, there is the added fear of direct acts of violence and vandalism upon our Churches and other institutions. Yet I also find that for many people, an overrealiance on private revelation is increasing their anxiety, not decreasing it. Yet I know without a doubt that Our Lord does not want to inspire any fear other than that of sin, or any anxiety than that which is necessary to be reconciled to him and his love. I anticipate that in the coming months and years, prophecies will continue to multiply, in order to attempt to give meaning to our troubled times. But it is important to note that we do not need these revelations to interpret our times: Public Revelation suffices. God will continue to surprise us in ways that bless us, both in his chastisements, and in his healings. We know well what we need to do, and it is not just prayer and penance, although those things are paramount. We must study, evangelize, and persevere in good works. Instead of focusing on storing canned goods and blessed candles for Three Days of Darkness, we should focus on getting our souls filled with the light of the three supernatural virtues. In that case, even if those days do really come, even if we should die, we will be blessed, and our end will be good.

I believe it is precisely this same attitude which suffuses the final words of John’s Apocalypse: “…he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still” (Revelation 22:11, KJV). If that is done, and done effectively and in action, rather than in anxiety, we may all say, as the Church with the Spirit, Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!