So how can we help but be frustrated/sad to find that we have such a passionate desire to help people but not the resources. I don’t want belief so I can have belief or feel happy; I want belief so I can spark hope and faith in others. If I get out the defibrillator to treat an accident victim and find that the paddles were not charged by the last person to use them . . .
Maybe someone has already said this, but being invisible is their natural state, just as being visible is our natural state. How often does God allow us to be invisible to achieve some noble purpose. Not often, from my experience.
So why would it be odd that God does not let them become visible very often?
I don’t understand what angelic apparitions have to do with whether or not people can “have belief or feel happy”. Our faith and happiness should be based on God and His promise of eternal salvation if we follow His will. If you/they do this, they’ll have their “passionate desire” to see their guardian angel fulfilled when they enter heaven.Some of us are Doubting Thomas. If you have the gift of faith that is strong and fire-breathing without needing to put your hands in the wounds, then you are blessed. Such faith is a gift and I cannot earn it through my own actions, all I can do is offer up my constant prayer for such crutches as a slow learner like me might need.
I understand doubt (and for me, subsequent loss of faith). If that is what you are experiencing, I achingly empathize.
Yes.
Can someone remind me how to chop a passage into multiple smaller quotes like Nita just did?
When you click on “Quote” at the bottom of a post, you’ll notice that when the passage you’re responding to comes up, it is enclosed in a bracketed QUOTE at the start and a bracketed /QUOTE (slash QUOTE) at the end.Can someone remind me how to chop a passage into multiple smaller quotes like Nita just did?
Thomas went on to live a faith-filled life, and died a martyr’s death.
Not sure if I quite understand. There have been numerous saints down through history who saw angels. Can you clarify a little?
I think there’s a difference between being able to see an angel at some specific time, say, Mary when she saw the angel. Gabriel, or the children of Fatima when they saw the angel, and generally having the ability to see angels all the time. If there were saints who could see angels all the time, they were probably few. I was at the March for Life when the lady told me about this fellow who had the gift of seeing angels. We remarked that he would have seen that there were more angels there than people, each civilian having an angel, each priest having two angels, the angel of the city of Wash, DC, perhaps, and possibly a host of angels accompanying Mary, who surely was there for the march against abortion. There haven’t been many saints who have seen angels as a matter of course, and this gift is certainly not one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit as described by St. Paul in his epistles. I had always thought that seeing an angel was a special favor of God especially when the need was present, as in the Annunciation or to the early visitors to the tomb on Easter Sunday. I had never thought of it as a general gift that once may have been as natural to man as the gift of speech. When she mentioned the “restoring of gifts” that;s what came to mind, similar to the restoring of the gift of tongues or the gift of miracles in the Pentecostal/Charasmatic Renewal movements. Many saints have had such gifts, but generally they have not been restored to the Church. .
Seeing angels has never been “a general gift” that was “natural” to man after Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden.
Agree. I was suggesting that just possibly, Adam and Eve had that gift. I don’t know. I do expect that after the general resurrection, we, in our glorified bodies, will have this ability. The man I was told about seemed to be suggesting that many will have this gift before then.
I rather doubt it. I think here on earth it will always be just a special gift for special purposes.
I’m familiar with Michael Brown. (I bolded the words that are his and not Fr. Bozada’s.) What bothers me in his writings is what I consider a tendency to sensationalize, so to speak, or dramatize. He seems to be overly absorbed in conspiracy theories, chastisements and end times. (Not exactly sure how to express it.) I don’t question his fidelity to the Church, just what seems to me to be an extremism in the above areas.
Nita;11626285:
“include three great privileges to which human beings have no title – infused knowledge, absence of concupiscence, and bodily immortality. Adam and Eve possessed these gifts before the Fall.” (from Fr. Hardon’s “Modern Catholic Dictionary”. As you can see, what Fr. Bozada is speaking about has nothing to do with visions of angels and demons. And the partial restoration of these gifts is conditional on obedience…
QUOTE]
Wait, if they already possessed bodily immortality, how would they have changed by eating from the tree of life (that God had to kick them out in order to prevent)?Hi Neo,
Somehow you deleted the /
in front of that last QUOTE]
and that’s why my post didn’t appear in a quote box separated from your reply.
As to your question.
It’s late here in the Midwest, and I am too tired to track down sources tonight so I’m just going to talk off the top of my head – ideas I recall reading. (There’s no official teaching about the Tree of Life.)
In my recollection there are a couple of theories:
Tomorrow I’ll see if I can locate where I might have come across those possible understandings.
- If they had been eating from the Tree of Life prior to the test, then the fruit would have served to nourish or enhance the immortal life they had been given. (In some way similar to our continuing to receive the Eucharist. When we receive Our Lord, we have “Life” itself within us. Yet we continue to return and receive Him again to nourish us.)
- Another opinion is that they had not yet consumed fruit from the Tree of Life. That they first had to pass the test. After obedience, eating of the fruit of the Tree of Life would have been connected to their being brought into the glorified state in heaven. (They were in paradise in the Garden, but they were not in heaven in glorified bodies.)
(Finally finished editing, so now I’m off to bed.)
Thanks for the additional information. I’m not so sure Father Bozada means to exclude the ability to see angels by his mention of prerternatural gifts, but I don’t discount that possibility either. I hope to read more about his gift and what he believes it means. It’s an interesting story.