The Veil of Mysticism - Monika Petry (free ebook reader txt) 📗

planned, and when he phoned me from Berlin and told me that he was not happy, my answer was: "Come to Limburg!" The next day he was there and was to share my new home for a considerable period.

In previous years I had taught Johannes the virtues of trusting in God. He was well versed in this thinking as he comes from a very Catholic family which included two priests. Actually, Johannes had also wanted to be a priest, and had he practiced for this as a child in his sandbox busily distributing home baked communion wafers to the delighted neighbourhood women – but when the time came, he preferred the boardwalks of the world to an altar in the church. Well, that time was now over – and I reminded him with my newly found passion for God and the Church of his own past as a Catholic. Now it was his turn to teach me something, and he did.

"So you want to be Catholic?" He laughed, "then we will practice." He took out a prayer book and began teaching:. “Hail Mary, full of grace, Thou art Blessed among women ...” – “What does it mean?” I asked having been brought up in a Protestant background, “I don’t know those words and this is something I do not wish to learn!”

No, that had not inspired me, I felt I wanted something more. Johannes then went with me to worship in the Cathedral. I wanted to sit on the pew, but he folded down the kneeling bench and ordered: "Kneel down!" I did it, oh, and it hurt. "This is too hard, I cannot," I protested. "If you want to be Catholic, you have to kneel," was his comment. And he pressed me down off the bench. So I knelt and murmured to myself, “I had thought it might be different from this”

During the Mass, I now began to feel myself being compensated with the experience. Now Johannes paid attention that I was behaving like a Catholic. Getting up, then sitting down, getting up again, kneeling, singing, praying, kneeling again, a very sensual experience. It was not boring: there was a lot of movement, the fragrant incense, the beautiful impressions derived from the organ music and the choir and the priests also looked well in their colourful and beautiful robes. I learned that one becomes a Catholic with one’s body, mind and soul, but also with much love in the heart!

I soon found that I wanted to be truly Catholic and belong to the Church! And above all I wanted finally go to Communion. I made an appointment in the Priest's Office, had some preliminary meetings, and on 25 June 2009 I had achieved my first milestone. Johannes was to be my religious Godfather. He still raves about how his hair stood on end by the force and energy that the Holy Spirit was pouring out on us by the highly gifted Priest blessing me.

When I was finally confirmed, it all really got started for me. Every church in the town was to become my church. At a rough estimate, I visited during the following year, about seven hundred church services, on average two times a day: the daily Morning Mass, the Mass for women, the Evening Masses during the week, and the Friday evening ecumenical worship service - this I soon gave up because of the missing passion - even the final blessing was not strong enough. On the other hand every two weeks there was the Mass in the Latin Rite, which touched me very much. "The Soul remembers," writes the Pope. Yes, my Soul remembered very well, and first of all, I was so touched by this kind of celebration that it almost tore my insides apart. Maybe it was because of the wonderful officiating Priest, for his morning worship services in the Cathedral had the same effect. As soon as he was there, Jesus was there, and this time I had a very intense period of repentance that I had left Him and the Church so long ago.

On the weekends I attended the Vigil Mass on Saturday and the High Mass as well as the evening Mass on Sunday. It all was adding up! In between the Vespers and the Devotion of the Blessed Sacrament and the Rosary and Stations of the Cross, and once a month, there was also the Marian Mass in a small chapel in the Westerwald, which lasted up to four hours. Here, the Priest blesses everyone with a small Monstrance - that was something very special to me! (For all non-Catholics: A “Monstrance” (monstrare - "to show") is a precious liturgical display device with a window area in which a wafer is exposed to reverence and worship, crafted with gold and precious stones).

I could not get enough. The Catholic life captivated me, and I wondered what was happening to me. I took on a complete internal transformation, with sin, repentance, atonement, penance, forgiveness, and my innermost spiritual soul turned inside out and also inwards. Whereby I did not forget the joy! Likewise, my at that time still present inclinations towards the theatrics and passion I could completely unfold. "Johannes! How nice it was once again! The organ, the music, the choir!" Such were my feelings when I came home on Sunday noontimes after a Mass in the Cathedral. Or sometimes I became totally withdrawn into myself and even unresponsive to others, because I was still thinking over the meaning of the sermon.

I will never forget my first blessing with the Priest’s use of the Monstrance: I was completely dissolved in tears, sobbing, shaking, trembling, I thought my last hour had come. When I eventually succeeded in making the short way home, I was not able to speak about it. It took a double brandy with Johannes to completely to calm down and resolve myself. Now I know that my Soul had seen God and went totally out of control. These conditions were repeated at every sight of the Monstrance, and only abated slowly with time. It was a state of ecstasy, as Saint Teresa of Ávila described in her book, "The Interior Castle." However, we must be aware that ecstasy is not always a happy state, it can also at times be the absolute opposite

Even when the period of euphoria was over and I could think clearly again, my newly re-found passion for the Catholic being remained. I may have at times criticized it a lot and wanted to change much, sometimes wishing to give it all up because things did not move forward fast enough, or even that I'm in the wrong place! At one time I even stayed completely away from the Church for five weeks, in order to check out what would remain in the end. And I realized that everything remained the same. In contrary, I also then became aware that I was led only through Love for the Infinite Love that was growing inside me - the Church as an institution did not influenced it.

Nevertheless, deep down I also always maintained my Love for this great institution – I was full of the humility and gratitude that they had accepted me, an outsider, with such open arms. I now firmly hold that the Church – I am speaking now of the universal church of God, not only of the Catholic Church, although I personally prefer the Catholic Church – was created by God / the Holy Spirit and is always protected by Him, otherwise they would not have survived the past 2,000 years.

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"If there are many Mansions in Heaven,
there are also many ways to get there. "
(Teresa of Ávila)
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Life with Providence - a life of Joy and Devotion

The devotion to God makes me happy. That joy comes from my heart, it is the joy of the faithful. Look at the true believers more precisely: We radiate inwardly. We may have as many wrinkles as everyone else, but that does not matter. We send out a Light, and it is the Divine Light. The greater the spirituality – by that I mean the faith lived – the greater the perceived and lived joy. Sometimes it can be almost unbearable for others to put up with, that I admit. However, I can also hardly bear to see the discontent around me. The shallowness of society that lives only for its fun and entertainment has long since proven a scourge to Mankind. This shallowness of being comes over those who have no connection to God. In the not too distant future it may all collapse and not be sustained.

The Czech writer Milan Kundera wrote about the excesses of those people turned away from God, in a good book: "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", which was also made into a film. In this novel, Tomas falls in love with Teresa, who is serious in her feelings towards him, but Tomas has nothing better to do than to escape into infidelity and other worldly distractions. Then everything disintegrates and somehow they both die. Life in the Love of God can surely be called as 'the Lightness of Being'. Everything becomes simple, everything becomes easier. Even the toughest trials of life and the most difficult parts of it are bearable with God on our side and with Jesus Christ in our hearts.


As long as I say no to God, I am limiting myself. In this limitation I am not giving God the permission to give me what He wishes to give me. And as long as I do not feel good enough within one field it is influencing all others. This feeling of “not being good enough" is based on a lack of self-love: "I am not enough, so I am not worthy of it all."

If I say yes to God, I then find myself in the vastness of an open space in which everything happens. To say yes to God, it is to accept everything He provides. I open myself for all that He wants to give me. This is the fullness we may live in. However, the more I may have in material possessions, the less I need. If I do not live in sense of lack, I am happy with a few things. How glad I am not dependant on material possessions. I may depend on other Human Beings, but I never want to make anyone dependent on me. This means the opposite: the claim of ownership, the need of possession, the greed. No, I feel myself as being enough, I rest content within myself.

I have a relationship with God. It can never be that God will give us what we do not need. God is Love, and so He gives us Love. He gives us Joy, He gives us Peace. We can be sure it is exactly the right moment He is caring for us. Because - as I said above – God saw that it was good. God knows our true path of salvation, He has our “Book of Life”; so He becomes the Stage Director, he knows how it should continue onwards. That is my conviction.

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"God will not grow tired of giving
and His mercies are infinite.
Let us not become tired of receiving.”
(Teresa of Ávila)
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Wish-fulfillment rather than Providence

There is a new science in the great arena of Esoteric: the wish-fulfillment. The intent was certainly meant well, but what people made of it was a new kind of life of consumption: Now they are usually in a position