Daily Inspiration

One of the reasons I started this ministry was to give others the platform to share their spiritual encounters with God. I’m excited to share with you a spiritual experience a friend had after surgery. As I read his story, It reminded me, of how often the Lord works through us, and we may not even realize it is happening. Enjoy the following experience written by Terry Garrity.

An Experience of Total Abandonment

“I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are, continued the LORD to Moses.” Exodus 32:9

“Those whom I love, I reprove and chastise.” -Revelation 3:19

In grade school Catholic religious ed we were taught that God literally keeps us in existence, that if God ceased to think of us for even a scintilla of a second, we’d cease to exist. I heartily endorse that teaching. I believe it.

In early 2021 as I was recovering from my third surgery, I did NOT have a near-death experience. I did, however, receive a vision which I’m still processing.

Following my third surgery for a hip replacement gone all wrong, during the first foggy stage of emerging self-awareness after surgery, I found suddenly myself in a room, sitting. The surroundings were of no particular appearance I could even describe. But what I CAN tell you is that I was overcome with a feeling of emptiness which words cannot describe, as though all love in the universe had been withdrawn. As with Ed Jozsa’s experience, words don’t describe the all-consuming sense of despair that I experienced in that place. If it was hell, there was no need for physical punishment. The feeling of abandonment and the fear I felt that I would be in this state forever was horrifying enough to qualify as hell.

I have at times felt loneliness, unloved and unwanted in my life, as have we all. But this was different. Those other times I felt a certain emptiness, though I knew there were loved ones out there who loved me in return. Love was always recovered. This on the other hand was like a vacuum in which love was as air, but in that moment as with a vacuum, all love was removed from my surroundings. The similarity to a vacuum is closer than you can imagine. It was as though everything that actually sustained my soul in its existence, which gave its existence any meaning whatever, had been withdrawn. The feeling was one of complete despair multiplied exponentially and extended by the fear that I might remain in that state for all eternity.

As despairing as I felt, the despair was nothing compared to what came next. The simple voice of the nurse rousing me to wakefulness broke that state of being but it accomplished something more profound than a mere summoning to wakefulness. It cut at a deep emotional level, suddenly and with a greatly edifying effect. It felt like a rush of warm water all around my being (soul?) and I can only describe that moment of reconnection with human contactthe effect of a mere voice–as love itself. Not because of the summons to awaken from anesthesia’s induced slumber per se, but rather it seemed co-joined to all of humanity in a unity which formed a literal ocean my soul had been returned to. I was thrown back into an ocean of God’s love to swim with his beloved. It was palpable. You could sense it and its power because it stood in such extraordinary contrast to the mode of existence I experienced previously.

Now, this didn’t qualify as a near-death experience. Since I was well monitored medically, nothing I’m aware of suggested an NDE. I think of it as a vision, a first for me. Before this, I have at best struggled to hear God’s still small voice and while I know others who have had visions or experienced more outsize communications or even miracles and spontaneous healings, this was a first for me.

And I don’t wonder at the ‘why’ of it. God distributes his graces and miracles and visions and healings as He will and according to His plan. He allows good and bad to enter into all our lives. He does it in an astonishing variety of forms for both the holy and unholy. His reasons are of course His own. I think going forward in time we can look back and understand the whys of it but to strive to do so misses a vital point.

Miracles are all around us. Same for spontaneous healings and visions. We have become a stiff-necked people and miss them for all kinds of reasons but mostly because we are simply conditioned to do so and to not seek them out. I think the failure to seek these things is to force out mysticism and the contemplative life (myself included) from our religious existence which is akin to taking vegetables out of one’s food diet.

I’m no stranger to witnessing miracles. The parish I belonged to previously had an active healing ministry, something I think is sorely missing from most parishes. We tend to treat the Sacrament of the Sick as more a nicety than as a sacrament signifying two spiritual realities. One is the forgiveness of sins and at times preparation for death. The other, and what is largely ignored, is the actual possibility of healing. I’m aware of three such spontaneous healings, including one of my mother following a heart attack in 2003 after which she was completely healed after the Sacrament of the Sick.

But for the event I’m writing of here, I have not ever experienced anything in the way of voices, events, miracles, messages from heaven discernable by the senses, so this was new to me.

And I know not to rely on miraculous experiences as “proof” of anything, nor as an excuse to become the newly minted teetotaler knocking drinks out of tavern patrons’ hands. These experiences are a catalyst to faith and part of the life of faith but not the thing itself. I have spent most of my life with not one scintilla of a message from the Almighty that I could capture with my senses. And even witnessing and experiencing genuine miracles, the fallen part of me eventually sees the memory, and the benefit of them fade as a news story fades from the news cycle and I become again that fallen human, tempted to sin as before.

But there IS a takeaway here. One does not need to be consecrated to live the life of a mystic or contemplative or to otherwise grow in holiness in so many ways. The Holy Spirit distributes His gifts as He will. And the revelation I experienced of the profound contrast between God’s abandonment and restoration of God’s love has become one of an accumulation of experiences which brought me graces, some more powerful than others perhaps, but an accumulation of anything adds up over time, provided the grace is accepted and is used to godly ends. This incident of course was at a particular climax in a lifetime of grace-containing messages. This experience was more powerful than most and elicited in me a desire to share it with you. The only question remaining as regards that moment alone without God or love is my response.

Finally, if I were to dedicate this short piece, I’d do so for those who have never received a sign yet remain faithful. Until now I’d been around others who have received clear, unambiguous signs of various kinds but I never experienced such until this and yet, even signs and wonders can fade in their impact over time. Consider that in His era, amidst endless healings, driving off demons, feeding the multitudes and such; well, it wasn’t enough to keep Jesus off the gibbet. Consider particularly the ending of Luke 16:19-31. A moment’s reflection ought to give all of us pause.

“There was a rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, full of sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table; moreover, the dogs came and licked his sores. The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried; and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes, and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus in his bosom. And he called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy upon me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in anguish in this flame.’ But Abraham said, ‘Son, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. And besides all this, between us and you, a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.’ And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’ But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.’ And he said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.'” (emphasis added)

I am pleased to be able to share this with you but rather than hope to see more signs and wonders as a basis for hope and faith, I desire that you find comfort in seeking and finding God’s still small voice articulated in the form of agape love received and paid forwarda sure sign of God’s graces at work in you, taken with the remembrance that God loves you personally, always has, and always will.

As for my part, I go about the days, going forward seeking God’s will for me, and working to use the gifts given me. In the end, I’m similarly trying to avoid the accusation of Revelation:

“I know your works; I know that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, ‘I am rich and affluent and have no need of anything,’ and yet do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. Be earnest, therefore, and repent.” Revelation 3:15-17, 19

_______

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, be merciful to me, a sinner.

+JMJ+ Terry Garrity

June 29, 2021

Scripture passages are from the New Revised Standard VersionCatholic Edition