This year I celebrated 25 years of service in the priesthood. Fr. Vincent and I were ordained only 4 months apart.
In this talk I wish to address one of the most important themes in the True Life on God prophetic revelations: divine nuptials.
I begin with my experience as an exorcist since 1995, begun under Fr. Gabriel Amorth – the late exorcist of the Diocese of Rome.
One of Satan’s predominant attacks upon the Church today is the disruption of the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony. During many
exorcisms, it became quite evident that Satan hates the female gender.
Since Satan is bent on aping God’s plan of salvation, one of the many weapons he employs in its destruction is the woman.
Statistics show that there are far more cases of diabolical possession with woman than with men. The reason? Satan seeks
to counter the Protoevangelium. The Proto-evangelium is the first announcement of salvation, the first foretelling of victory over evil.
In Gn. 3:15 we read, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will strike at your head
while you strike at his heel.” Pope John Paul II states, “She [the woman] is assigned the first place in the Proto-evangelium as the
progenitrix of him who will be the Redeemer of man.”1 In view of Mary and her future triumph, Satan becomes enraged and
seeks to avenge himself upon all women.
Father Gabriel Amorth, the exorcist of the Archdiocese of Rome—whom I had the privilege of assisting as associate exorcist —made the following statement:
It is above all women who are stricken by the demonic because they are more easily exposed than men to the danger of the demonic… I have encountered numerous cases of woman who, because of demonic possession, were forced to prostitute themselves. For this reason, they have no moral blame… The woman preyed upon by Satan are especially those who are young and of pleasing appearance… During some exorcisms, the demon, with a terrifying voice, has roared that he seeks to enter woman rather than men in order to take revenge on Mary because he has been humiliated by her.2
If Satan targets women, it is because Mary, the Ark that bore the Redeemer, possesses an efficacious power that far exceeds that of other creatures. Her total abandonment to God’s will released, as it were, the reservoirs of his grace, whereby Scripture extols her as the woman “full of grace.” And Mary, being the new Eve and Mother of the Church in the new order of grace, communicates to her children the graces God imparts to her.
If Satan has marked women, God has done so even more for his universal plan of salvation. If the majority of prophets in the Old Testament were men, from the twelfth century onwards proclaiming the prophetic word of God became more and more a female privilege. God raised up many women to whom he communicated direct prophetic revelations with innumerable messages for the Church. Among these prophets who occupied a very active role in the society of their time, worthy of mention is Vassula, whose writings by their very nature encounter opposition precisely because they come from God to confront evil, expose it and eradicate it.
Ss. Bridget of Sweden, Catherine of Sienna, Luisa Piccarreta, Maria Valtorta and Marthe Robin, are prophets who share in the spirituality of the early Christian martyrs, for they considered their sufferings as a participation in the salvific mission of Christ. God chose these spiritual female giants to help the greatest of all Woman, the Virgin Mary, and her offspring crush the head of the serpent. If your human soul is of a spiritual female gender (l’âme), it is because you are called to espouse the Trinity who equips with the virtues of piety, fortitude, wisdom. etc. in order to do battle against the infernal Serpent. Just as on account of Mary’s “Fait” to God the Holy Spirit overshadowed and espoused her, giving her the seed to give birth to the Son of God, likewise with the all the baptized souls who also give their fist, their will to God. By abandoning you will every day to the will of God, you become espouse of God, who wishes to espouse you.
The Bridegroom
The Virgin Birth of Christ becomes the virgin birth of the Church.
Remember that Jesus changed his attitude toward his mother at the marriage feast of Cana, where she was known as the “mother of Jesus.” However, at Cana he called her “Woman,” alluding to the passage of Genesis that foretells the Woman who would crush the serpent’s head. Then a year and a half later when God becomes incarnate in Christ, he said, “Who is my mother?” He took all relationships out of the order of blood. For Christ they no longer exist:
“And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and sister, and mother’” (Mt. 12:48-50).
And at the foot of Cross we no longer have Jesus and Mary; rather we have the new Adam and the new Eve. And the bond between the man and the woman upon which is predicated all nuptials, is why woman cannot become ordained priests. Just as in biology there are only two genders (females have 2 X chromosomes; males have 1 X and 1 Y chromosome), and just as only the man gives the seed the woman receives ad nourishes the seed to beget new life, so in the spiritual world: since sin came into the world through the man and not through the woman (Gen. 2.16), sin must be cast out of the world through the man and not through the woman. Hence the male Incarnation, Passion death and Resurrection of Christ the high priest. Ordination is not a question of superiority or inferiority, but a question of different roles that we play. Mary, who was never ordained nor did she ever asked to be, surpassed all priests, angels and saints combined. The man is the symbol of Christ and the woman is the symbol of the Church.
What is the idea that runs all through Scriptures? It is Nuptials. God’s Covenant i=with mankind is based on nuptials.
There are the nuptials of man and woman in the Garden of Eden; there were nuptials of divinity and humanity in the Blessed Mother; there were nuptials Israel and god in the Old Testament: in the prophet Hosea God says, “I your Creator am your husband.” God is the husband Israel – of the members of the Old Testament Church. And God has Hosea marry the prostitute Gomer who betrays him. And when the heart of Hosea is broken, God tells Hosea, “Take her back, take her back, for she is the symbol of Israel; Israel has been my unworthy spouse, but I love Israel and will never let her go.” And Hosea taking back the prostitute is the symbol of God’s love for the ecclesia of the Old Testament. And this is why the Church is referred to as the “body of Christ.” We should never call the Church a mere institution or an establishment – if we do so, the character of the nuptial bond is disrupted.
In the New Testament Jesus refers to himself as the “Bridegroom. ”When Jesus was asked why the disciples of John fasted, but His own did not, He answered: “Can you expect the men of the bridegroom’s company to go fasting, while the bridegroom is still with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot be expected to fast” (Mark 2:19).
In the Book of Revelation 21:1-4, 9-10 St. John relates, “I also saw the holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, God’s dwelling is with the human race. He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will always be with them (as their God)’… One of the seven angels… said to me, ‘Come here. I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb. He took me in spirit to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God.’”
In the True Life on God messages, we encounter an exponentially increasing emphasis on the importance of nuptials. Why? Because God wishes to espouse us, the members of his body in a manner that St. Paul describes as “without spot or wrinkle” so that we as a whole may appear “as a bride adorned for her husband” or as the “spouse of the Lamb” (Eph. 5:27; Rev. 21:2, 9; 22:17). But this divine wedding feast cannot take unless it has begun on earth. And so three divine Persons express loving “Odes” to us in order to espouse us. And hat do spouses do? They possess each other; they become one flesh.