Something profound and beautiful is taking place within the collapse of Western civilization. Old systems of corruption in the culture and the Church are passing away. They need to die, even though it will be long and drawn out. In that death, will come re-birth, which is why more and more Christians are realizing that life in Christ is more than moralizing and rationalizing in order to be more palatable to our materialist culture.
There is an awakening to the Numinous—God—that is drawing us from our comfortable slumber. Christians and non-Christians alike are starting to see the lies of materialism and the truth that this world is teeming with preternatural and supernatural realities that cannot be explained by science.
Seeing the world through the eyes of faith in the supernatural is what Christians have done through the ages, but too many—especially in the Western Church—jettisoned the supernatural and preternatural in favor of seeming more reasonable to a culture devoted to science. We are uncomfortable with anything that cannot be controlled or rationalized away. We have placed God in a box of our own making.
Thankfully, this is not authentic Christianity. Being Christian is extremely weird, which is wonderful because it means that we are immersed in a cosmic story that is taking place around us within the material universe and the immaterial realm. Even more amazing, this spiritual reality spills over into our own lives in astonishing ways.
I reached a point about 7 years ago when I could no longer hold onto my super rational version of the Catholic Faith. I was a Thomist without a heart. There are many Thomists whose faith is heart and mind, but I wasn’t one of them. Strange things started happening to me that I could not explain. I experienced many dreams—some so extraordinarily vivid that it was as if I was there—that came true. I was given warnings and missions.
At the time, I didn’t know how to talk about these dreams. I felt crazy and I knew most people around me—including clergy—wouldn’t believe me. After all, we have been told our entire lives that extraordinary spiritual gifts are only reserved for the saints. It turns out this is a falsehood perpetuated by those who overly rationalize our faith. I am not a saint. I am not even close to extraordinarily holy, and yet, the Lord has done incredible things in my life that I don’t deserve and in the lives of those around me.
I dreamt about the COVID-19 pandemic 9 months before it hit. I saw the Mass blown away in a demonic storm one month before parish Mass closings. I startled awake at the end of that dream gasping for air as demons screamed in my ears. The Lord was giving me a mission during that time: Prayer.
I didn’t understand what was happening at the time. I still don’t fully, but off and on, I experience dreams that warn me of things that are happening or will happen. Some of the dreams are for other people and some are for my own personal prayer. After a while, I realized the gifts of the Spirit are not meant for a select few. The Lord wants all of us to share in His power in some way. He gives the gifts. We are called to receive them and give them away. He does not only give gifts to canonized saints. He gives them out in abundance to all His beloved children.
After my reasoned and controlled—and rather lifeless—faith collapsed, I started to see that this is not what we are called to in the Church. We live in a time of utter cultural disintegration. The Church has failed in her evangelical mission in the West because we want to go along to get along rather than live the fullness we are called to in Christ. I started to look for others who see the world from a supernatural perspective and who are reading the signs of the times because they seem hard to find in the Western Church outside of the charismatic movement.
I was unexpectedly led to multiple Orthodox Christian writers, including Jonathan Pageau, who is reclaiming a symbolic understanding of the world, Rod Dreher, whose writings on re-enchantment and experiences are somewhat similar to my own, Martin Shaw, with his mythological and literary understanding, and Paul Kingsnorth, who writes on wild saints and the Machine. While I would not leave Catholicism for Orthodoxy for theological reasons, I firmly believe that both Eastern Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy have preserved a way of seeing the world that the Western Church desperately needs today.
Rod Dreher wrote in his most recent book, Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age, “…we have entered an era in which the Western church desperately needs to taste the medicine preserved in the Eastern church.” St. John Paul II wrote in Ut Unim Sint, “the Church must breathe with both her lungs,” referring to the Western and Eastern halves of the Church. The West is suffering from a collapsed lung and needs the Eastern lung to help breathe new oxygen into it.
The Western Church has jettisoned too much of her heritage in order to belong to the world. The Eastern Church has maintained its ancient liturgies, mystical prayer, supernatural vision, and asceticism. In fact, the Eastern Church can help the Western Church reclaim asceticism from our half-hearted forms of fasting and penance on top of helping us see with supernatural vision once more. We are meant to see God in our every day lives in a supernatural way, rather than reducing everything to science. We are called to full union with God through theosis in the Eastern tradition or divine intimacy and mystical union in the Western tradition. He gives us gifts that help us to see more clearly, but they are uncomfortable and weird.
There is no scientific or rational explanation for the dreams I have experienced or the other extraordinary experiences I have been given. The same can be said for my husband and daughter, priests and seminarians, friends, and others I have encountered over the last few years who have had experiences of God, but who are afraid to talk about it because they will be seen as crazy. It isn’t crazy. This is the life in Christ we are called to.
The Lord acts in the world. He is closer to us than the air we breathe. He wants to give us good things, and He consoles us in moments of need. We are not called to be dependent on extraordinary experiences, that might lead to loving God for what He gives us rather than for His own sake, but we should not hide these experiences under a bushel basket either.
We live in an apostolic age. Christendom is dead. We need to stop pretending like we can cling to our power and comfort. Instead, the Lord is equipping us for evangelizing in this moment in history. Many young people are broken and wounded. They are not looking for philosophical or theological answers to their pain and confusion. As Dreher also notes in his recent book, “They want to know and love God.” These supernatural experiences of the Spirit are where Christ wants to break into these people’s lives. Acts of the Apostles is not only for that era of the Church. It is for the Church today.
Turning to our Eastern brothers and sisters will help reorient us to the needs of people today. We must become more open to the supernatural and preternatural because our secular culture is open—but in a deeply destructive and dangerous way. COVID-19 lockdowns led many young people to sites dedicated to witchcraft, Wicca, New Age, and Satanism. This generation is open to the preternatural, but they do not understand the dark powers they are playing with and inviting in. Even many Catholics do not seem to understand why they should not utilize anything related to witchcraft and New Age practices.
When we have supernatural vision, we understand the cosmic spiritual battle going on around us. We no longer ignore those who are struggling with demonic forces or who experience extraordinary graces from God. I have known multiple people who have dreamt about Our Blessed Mother. I have known others who see demons. I have seen people healed through prayer. This is a clearer picture of reality than the hyper-rationalist approach in the Western Church today.
Prudence is always essential, but we have gone from prudence to rationalist control within the Western Church. We don’t want to deal with anything weird. This is a great sin against charity, and it harms our evangelical mission. It means we are not reading the signs of the times. To put God in a box is to seek to limit His power and make ourselves gods. God is unleashing great graces because we live in a time of tremendous evil and darkness. He wants to save souls, and He uses the gifts He gives to us to accomplish His mission.
We must move past what is comfortable. We need to look to leaders with supernatural vision from both the East and the West in order to reclaim our own story and heritage. A purely intellectual faith is a lifeless faith. A controlling bureaucratic faith is dead. Christ must penetrate our entire being, especially the heart. He does so by wooing us with His gifts and consolations in order to strengthen us for battle, and He gives us gifts in order to evangelize our lost and broken culture. The ordinary means of grace are meant to be coupled with the extraordinary graces He bestows as He wills. Being Christian is weird. Thanks be to God.
Photo by Ivan Zhuldybin on Unsplash
