Caritas For A Friend

September 14, 2022

QUESTION? / COMMENT!

I was just at the Steubenville Defending the Faith Catholic conference and somebody asked me to contact you about a dear friend of mine. My friend has extreme schizophrenia - to the extent that hears voices.  

Sometimes I ask him about these voices and what they say to him. I'm not a psychologist - but I know they often put him down or tell him some terrible things to do. He says sometimes they say: " You are a failure because you do not have a job - a wife & kids." and they tell him to kill himself. One time he said they told him to pick up a knife and plunge it into his chest. He picked up the knife and was going to do it -- but then dropped the knife. He said to me: "Hans - when I dropped the knife, they said to him quite loudly: "Oh - we almost had him." -- like they really want him to kill himself. I really wonder after speaking with him for so many months - how much of this is psychological and how much of this is actually due to evil spirits. I'm often begging Jesus and the Saints to heal him - to free him from these terrible voices. I don't know what I would do if I heard such vile voices in my own head. Anyway - I know Gabriel often quotes scripture to these voices that seem to bother him on a weekly basis. 

He says they are speaking less frequently lately, so maybe St. Michael and Pio are winning the victory... I just don't know. I'm a brown belt in judo and a brown belt in Meibukan Goju ryu and I realize in life we must fight  - even in the spiritual realm. Kindly let me know if you have any advice for my friend.

ANSWER! / COMMENT!

Some people are more sensitive to the spiritual realm of existence, especially after you have had an interior conversion experience back to God. Fr Gabriel Amorth (Exorcist from Rome) calls these Catholics "sensitives." St Paul talks about the extraordinary gift called: 'discernment of spirits' (1 Cor 12:10). If God is allowing you to see the spiritual realm it is to make you grow in holiness and to become a saint. Do not pay attention to these spirits – St Paul the apostle & St John of the Cross warns us, they can even try to appear as good angels. Fr Ripperger says that an important step to being liberated from the diabolical is rejection of ALL mystical phenomenon. Be prayerful, continue living in a state of grace and be holy, don't become curious about these demons, that’s exactly what they want and that was what took down Eve and caused her fall from grace. Keep your eyes on Jesus the author and finisher of our faith (cf. Hebrew 12:2) and learn to ignore these diabolical visions, take custody of your intellect by immediately going into prayer and this way you snap your lower faculties back, our fallen nature is drawn to curiosity.

What Fr Ripperger says that all these experiences of the diabolical (including possession) ultimately have a salvific end if we enter into the battle and cooperate with God's grace. In other words, God wants to save us but he allows these temptations and trials in our life in order to purify us.

Kyle Clement (case manager for Fr Ripperger) Demons also traffic in the senses. “We must watch over our mind, our hearts, and our senses, for these are the gates by which the devil enters in” (St John Vianney). Fr Ripperger says: the demon has a constant running commentary inside the head of the energumen (the possessed). 

Fr Chad Ripperger: “But I think that demoralization is precisely what you see when demons are attacking people…One of the things that we have to do with people who are possessed is to constantly get their focus back on God. Don’t let the demons drag your focus into…the stuff that you are suffering and the things that you are dealing with. Keep your focus, because that’s when things start going downhill…The shift in the focus is always what the demons are trying to get us to do, and to be demoralized” - Leading Catholic Exorcist Sees Signs of Demonic Oppression and Possession in Unhinged American Left (VIDEO) (thegatewaypundit.com).

St Joan of Arc: "All battles are first won or lost in the mind." 

My advice, I ignore mystical phenomena, voices in my head, phantasms, profane thoughts that are projected at me by the enemy. Demons are narcissists, they want to consume your thoughts and imagination, the strategy is to get you to become focused on the running commentary in your head and take your eyes off of Our Lord & Savior Jesus Christ.