Just How Does This Work?

[kweschnz]

Gloria Polo-Ortiz, a speaker from Columbia SA, shared her near death experience with us a few years ago. She told us of having been struck dead by lightening. Leaving her body, she felt herself rising toward the heavens. Before she reached the eternal light of Heaven, she began to fall backwards into the darkness. Even though she had been baptized and raised Catholic, she never actually embraced or lived her faith. In fact, like many cultural Catholics, she live all the pagan values of today’s society. She never went to confession, and used her faith to promote her professional needs. As she fell closer to Hell, she kept crying out, “I am Catholic, I cannot go to Hell, I went to Church. I performed good deeds.”

As she approached the mouth of Hell, she was suddenly snatched up by an angel and returned to her body. Later, she was shown by Our Lord, that a poor peasant farmer had sacrificed some of his food money to have a mass offered for her soul.

This was posted at another thread. It’s great that this woman realized the error of her previous mindset and ways, but I’m having trouble with the bolded part:

1. How long would it take your soul to start moving in whatever direction it was going to move after your body was dead? I mean, when the lightning struck her dead, was it 6 feet away from some Catholic Church, and was the peasant right there when it happened, and he ran like lightning into the church and offered his food money? Even if that were the case, I have heard Catholics say that once you die, you are outside of time, you are in eternity, so even if the above hypothetical scenario took place (peasant runs like the wind), wouldn’t she already have transcended time’s grip?
2. How much can we trust near-death experiences? How do we know they’re not simply a different level of consciousness, but not yet actually part of death? Why would she first go up to heaven, only to immediately fall back? Doesn’t that smack of something out of a dream, rather than a true condition?

 

[Luke65]

"Meanwhile, all the people were wailing and mourning for her. “Stop wailing,” Jesus said. “She is not dead but asleep.”

They laughed at him, knowing that she was dead. But he took her by the hand and said, “My child, get up!” Her spirit returned, and at once she stood up." (Luke 8:52-55)
Our Lord Jesus, the Judge, is the one who declares when somebody is dead, regardless of appearances. And no, it doesn’t sound like a dream as much as a vision - a symbolic representation of what happens to the soul, like the “vision of Hell” at Fatima, and the visions of other Saints. I don’t know what the reality is in this case, but as you can see, there is plenty of precedent for all of it. God bless.

 

[Blacksword]

This was posted at another thread. It’s great that this woman realized the error of her previous mindset and ways, but I’m having trouble with the bolded part:

1. How long would it take your soul to start moving in whatever direction it was going to move after your body was dead? I mean, when the lightning struck her dead, was it 6 feet away from some Catholic Church, and was the peasant right there when it happened, and he ran like lightning into the church and offered his food money? Even if that were the case, I have heard Catholics say that once you die, you are outside of time, you are in eternity, so even if the above hypothetical scenario took place (peasant runs like the wind), wouldn’t she already have transcended time’s grip?
2. How much can we trust near-death experiences? How do we know they’re not simply a different level of consciousness, but not yet actually part of death? Why would she first go up to heaven, only to immediately fall back? Doesn’t that smack of something out of a dream, rather than a true condition?

Obviously there is no way for any of us on this side of death to answer these questions one way or another. I personally tend to be rather skeptical about such claims, buri think that while plenty of them are invented stories or altered states of consciousness only, I do think there are some accounts that are genuine. I have read and seen documentaries about some of these occurrences that happened during major surgeries where the physicians know that no brain activity was occurring but these experiences occurred anyway. Some where the person later described watching the doctors and recalled specific details of conversations, surgical instruments, and other details that cannot be explained by recourse to science or anything natural. Some such accounts seem very well documented and worthy of serious consideration, believable, and reasonable. Many other accounts are not.

 

[Thoughtfulone]

The Church believes that God knows the past, present and future, I can pray for my Dad who died when I was 16 to die in God’s grace, and even though he has been dead for 18 years, God knew even then that I would say this prayer for him 18 years later and applied those prayers to his soul at the moment of his death. The peasant may have had the mass said years and years later, but to God, who knows everything and exists outside of time, it doesn’t matter when the mass was said, only that it WAS said.

 

[Cominghome89]

This was posted at another thread. It’s great that this woman realized the error of her previous mindset and ways, but I’m having trouble with the bolded part:

1. How long would it take your soul to start moving in whatever direction it was going to move after your body was dead? I mean, when the lightning struck her dead, was it 6 feet away from some Catholic Church, and was the peasant right there when it happened, and he ran like lightning into the church and offered his food money? Even if that were the case, I have heard Catholics say that once you die, you are outside of time, you are in eternity, so even if the above hypothetical scenario took place (peasant runs like the wind), wouldn’t she already have transcended time’s grip?
2. How much can we trust near-death experiences? How do we know they’re not simply a different level of consciousness, but not yet actually part of death? Why would she first go up to heaven, only to immediately fall back? Doesn’t that smack of something out of a dream, rather than a true condition?

1. You must also remember that God can and does answer prayers outside of space and time. The farmer may have had this mass offered for a special intention that he felt the need to pray for, or maybe he knew the woman’s way of life and had decided to have a mass said for her. The two events do not need to be one after the other. God can and does work through prayer and give grace outside of our experience of time. Your prayers may effect something that has already happened or that will not happen for years.
2. You are right to ask about the details, about this woman rising and falling to heaven and hell. Most likely, she was not actually taken to heaven, and then back down to hell. However, God can certainly grant visions, experiences, whatever you want to call them, of heaven and hell to bring a sinner to repentance. Does that mean her soul actually went there? The spiritual world is not physical, so we do not know how these things work. But the experience had the desired effect, right? Keep in mind that the deepest experiences of God, of prayer, are not things that physically “really happen”. God speaks through dreams, imagination, intellectual or mental experiences, as well as physical visions and feelings. The important part of discerning whether the experience is genuine is not HOW God conveys the message, but the fruits of it in the person’s life. If the experience brings true conversion, love for God and neighbor, it is most likely an experience of God.

In Christ and Mary,
Frank