New Age and the Occult in the Mainstream
- A professional organization to which I belong, the American Holistic Nurses Association, promotes numerous new age modalities.
- The first tier of meditations on my FitBit app are by Deepak Chopra.
- Popular health and wellness resources focus on new age, Eastern and even occult practices.
- YouTube searches for wellness or relaxation or related topics almost always return a host of new age results.
The Good News
About The Image
The image above is "Saint Michael" by Italian master Guido Reni (1575–1642). This image is featured on the St. Michael printable prayer card available in my Etsy shop, Catholic Book And Card. For the card, I tinted the original paint to the vivid blue associated with Saint Michael.
About Saint Michael
Saint Michael, is one of three archangels the Bible mentions by name (the others being the saints Raphael and Gabriel). Saint Michael is mentioned four times - twice in the Hebrew Bible, and twice in the New Testament.
The first reference is in the Book of Daniel. In Chapter 10 St. Michael comes to comfort Daniel after he has had a vision, and promises to be his helper in all things. In Daniel 12, St. Michael is called "the great prince who standeth for the children of Thy people."
In these references St. Michael is shown to support Israel during the seventy years of the Babylonian captivity. In writing about St. Michael Daniel, strove to show his people that God had not forgotten them, and remind them that even in bondage they had a royal champion. In St. Jude 11, we are told that Michael disputed with the devil over the body of Moses - an episode not mentioned elsewhere in the Bible.
In the Revelation (Chapter 12) we find the most dramatic reference to St. Michael. Here St. John recounts the great battle in Heaven, when the wicked angels under Lucifer revolt against God. In this passage, Michael, leading the faithful angels, defeats the hosts of evil and drives them out.
This scene been painted by many artists, and the poet Milton, in book 6 of Paradise Lost, recounts the famous struggle. Because of this victory, St. Michael is revered in Catholic tradition and liturgy as the protector of the Church.
In the Eastern Church, as well as among many theologians in the West, St. Michael is placed over all the angels, as prince of the Seraphim. He is the special patron of the sick, police officers, mariners, and grocers. In Asia Minor many curative springs were dedicated to him. Michael's emblems are a banner, a sword, a dragon, and scales.
St. Michael's name is a variation of Micah, meaning in Hebrew, "Who is like God?"
The St. Michael Prayer
The Saint Michael Prayer is an amazing prayer for spiritual warfare. The abridged version (below) is short and easy to memorize and it can be said anytime you are feeling in need of spiritual protection. The prayer was written in Oct. 1, 1884 by Pope Leo XIII following a disturbing mystical experience at Mass.
The Pope had just finished celebrating Mass when he suddenly stood transfixed in front of the altar as if in a trance, his face drained of color. Once recovered, he went to his office and composed a prayer to St. Michael. He told his staff the prayer should be offered throughout the Church.
Pope Leo told others that he had heard two voices which he believed to voices of Our Lord and of Satan. The Pope heard Satan boast that he could destroy the Church in 75 or 100 years, if given the opportunity. Then he heard Our Lord give Satan permission to make the attempt.
The prayer was recited after Low Mass in the Catholic Church from 1886 until it was discontinued in 1964. Thirty years later, in his Regina Coeli address, Pope John Paul II said, “Although the prayer is no longer recited at the end of Mass, I ask every one not to forget it and to recite it to obtain help in the battle against the forces of darkness and against the spirit of the world.”
Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do Thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host - by the Divine Power of God - cast into hell, Satan and all the evil spirits, who roam throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.
To purchase the St. Michael printable prayer card (75¢ US) please check out my Etsy listing here.
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My Testimony: From New Age To Christian
About St. Ignatius's Rules for Discernment
This is my second post on Fr. Timothy Gallagher's book The Discernment of Spirits: An Ignatian Guide for Everyday Living. The book is an exploration of the first set of rules of St. Ignatius of Loyola.
The second set of rules is covered in Fr. Gallagher's book, Spiritual Consolation: An Ignatian Guide for Greater Discernment of Spirits.
St. Ignatius refers to the two sets as being "proper" for the first and second week respectively. I think he is talking about the first and second weeks of a retreat so I wanted to be sure I began with the first set - which focus on the discernment of spirits.
St. Ignatius's rules are intended to help an individual differentiate between the influence of good and bad spirits. According to Fr. Gallagher, and others, Ignatius understood the good spirit to be the Holy Spirit or created spirits such as angels, while he understood the bad spirit (which he also called the enemy or evil spirit) to be Satan or demons.
Fr. Gallagher goes on to suggest that the bad spirit can also be understood in a broader or more "global" sense. This expanded understanding of bad spirit would include human (or fleshly) nature and appetites or worldly pressures. These influences, per Fr. Gallagher, are exerted in addition to (but not instead of) demonic influences.
While I tend to be, probably unusually, aware of the spirit in spiritual warfare, I like that this updated or more inclusive approach makes the rules accessible to people who may not be comfortable thinking about the influence of personified evil.
I think Fr. Gallagher's book is especially important because it opens up the rules to general (as opposed to scholarly or specialized) readers. It would be easy for most of us (general readers) to skim over the rules of St. Ignatius without realizing their deeper meaning. Thanks to Fr. Gallagher's insightful word by word analysis, however, the rules really do come alive.
The Process for Working with the Rules
Rules for becoming aware and understanding to some extent the different movements which are caused in the soul, the good, to receive them, and the bad to reject them. And these rules are more proper for the first week. - Title to the Rules of St. Ignatius (Fr. Gallagher's own translation)
- Be fully aware of our inner state.
- Understand or identify where the influences we observe are coming from.
- Take action (by accepting the good spirit or rejecting the bad).
The First Rule
The first rule: in persons who are going from mortal sin to moral sin, the enemy is ordinarily accustomed to propose apparent pleasures to them, leading them to imagine sensual delights and pleasures in order to hold them more and make them grow in their vices and sings. In these persons the good spirit uses a contrary method, stinging and biting their consciences through the rational power of moral judgment. - First Rule of St. Ignatius (Fr. Gallagher's own translation)
The Second Rule
The second: in persons who are going on intensely purifying their sins and rising from good to better in the service of God our Lord, the method is contrary to that in the first rule. For then it is proper to the evil spirit to bite, sadden and place obstacles, disquieting with false reasons, so that the person may not go forward. And it is proper to the good spirit to give courage and strength, consolations, tears, inspirations and quiet, easing and taking away all obstacles, so that the person may go forward in doing good. - Second Rule of St. Ignatius (Fr. Gallagher's own translation)
In the following examples, I want to share how the first and second rules helped me when I was waffling over the new project of changing my blog to a blog that would focus exclusively on the teachings of the saints.
How the Bad Spirit Confused Me
For God is a God not of disorder but of peace. - 1 Corinthians 14:33 (NRSVCE)
The day I made the video about renaming the blog and focusing on the teaching of the saints, I felt optimistic and happy. I felt so good, in fact, that I'd purchased the Chasing the Saints dot com earlier that morning. When I talked to a trusted and sincere friend about the idea she was very encouraging. I felt glad to have decided on a topic for the blog that would help keep me focused on my studies and possibly encourage others.
A day later, however, I started to feel unhappy with the idea.
I began to think about how unqualified I was to write on the topic of the saints when so many more educated people were already doing it. When I reminded myself that my plan was to talk about what I am learning and how I am applying it to my own life (not a scholarly analysis), I found myself worrying about my readership.
I remembered that my most popular recent posts have been about writing. I began to worry that no one would read the new posts and that, if they did, they wouldn't like them. I thought about how the popularity of the blog had just begun to pick up and wondered why I had ever thought it was a good idea to jeopardize that.
I started to feel that I should just do something else entirely. I began to think about the various book ideas I'd been kicking around and how it was my original idea to use the rules of St. Ignatius to decide which book I should write. I wondered why I wasting my time by blogging and felt I should be focusing on writing the ebook instead.
At this point I felt unhappy and confused about the whole idea of blogging on the saints. The next day I canceled the new domain.
The Influence of the Good
But even after I canceled the domain, I kept thinking about the idea. I decided to pray about it and had what may, or may not, have been a spiritual experience the next day. Because I don't base decisions on spiritual experiences, perceived or otherwise, I set it aside. Then I remembered what my trustworthy friend had said about the idea and how right her encouragement and enthusiasm had felt at the time.
I thought about how much my recent study of the saints had meant to me and how attracted I had been to the rules of St. Ignatius when I first hear about them on EWTN.
I remembered how (after I wrote my Creativity and Discernment post) I had realized that using the rules to decide which new ebook I should write was not starting from neutral as Fr. Gallagher had recommended in his EWTN talk. I remembered having the specific insight that I should not rule out blogging favor of the ebook idea.
I thought about the negative thoughts I had been having about the new blog idea. And then I thought about the nature of God. I remembered that God is always true to his divine nature and the he doesn't move us by making us feel insecure or unworthy or by offering us popularity or other worldly gains.
I decided to reject the negative thoughts and accept the influence of the good spirit as he worked through my friend and Fr. Gallagher's book and St. Ignatius.
I felt at peace with the idea. I had to wait a day for my new domain to become available again and when it did, I bought it a second time.
Upcoming
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Read my previous post on St. Ignatius here: Spiritual Discernment and Writing with St. Ignatius
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