Something Wicked

By the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes.

- Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 1

 * Long post alert

Is there a part of you that aches when you feel a storm coming? An old injury, a creaking joint, maybe your sinuses? For me, it was always my left arm. Could be a bright, sunny, cloudless day, but if it started throbbing in just that certain way, I knew: before too long, the dark clouds would be rolling in.

I don’t know if it’s possible for our souls to feel something similar, but I’ve talked to a number of people who have serious spiritual aches.

There’s just this feeling that something bad is coming. Nobody can put their finger on it. It could be spiritual, or temporal, or possibly even both. All I can say is that it’s as if we’re watching the world stage, and the house lights have gone down, and we can just barely make out that the scenery is being rearranged by people dressed all in black. We can’t see them with any clarity. There’s just the sense of deliberate and hasty movement, as pieces are being put into place for a big scene.

I’ve never been given to apocalyptic fantasies, but it’s hard not to wonder if when the curtain comes up, we will be witnessing the beginning of the final act.

In this essay, I hope to try to stitch together some of the disparate factors I see coalescing, and others I merely suspect. I have no special gift for divining the course of the future; I receive no private revelations. But I have a sense that something is very much not right in the world, and I am trying to address that for myself. I have chosen to also share my attempt to make these connections with you.

I apologize in advance for the length, but I didn’t see any way to break this up and keep all of the moving pieces in context.

So get comfortable. Maybe grab a stiff drink. If you’re feeling like it, it might be a good time for some music to set the mood.

Inauspicious Portents: Fears, Dreams, and Apparitions

The feeling I mentioned has been building for a while, but it’s grown stronger in the past year.

A friend of mine who has always been blessed (if you can call it that) with a strong, almost tangible, spiritual awareness called me some time last fall. He was driving back from an evening appointment, and it was dark out. He told me, “I don’t know what’s going on, but something is up. They’re very…active tonight. I just want to get home.” (Whenever he says “they” in that way, I know what he means. It’s always a reference to demonic activity, something with which he was very familiar before his conversion.)

I’ve been having more conversations with people lately who are having terrifying dreams. Not typical nightmares. Dreams of soldiers, attacks, persecution of the faithful, ominous warnings about evil. I had one just the other night. I woke up, heart pounding, and I had to pray for the better part of an hour before I could calm down enough to get back to sleep. One woman I know has been having them every night, for weeks on end. She is not easily intimidated, but she confessed to me that she is terrified for her children. “They’re so vivid.” She says. “They feel so real.” Of course, it’s dangerous to read too much into dreams, but we know that they can sometimes serve a spiritual purpose. In other instances, they can be a subconscious manifestation of what our minds are picking up on in our waking hours.

The world is obviously in turmoil. Among the many geopolitical and economic dangers we face, the situation with Russia right now is particularly foreboding. I have never taken a side on the question of the Blessed Mother’s urgent request for the consecration of Russia, but it grows more apparent by the day that the fruits of that consecration are not in evidence. In the apparition of Our Lady of Fatima on July 13, 1917, Marywarned of what might come:

Then Our Lady opened Her hands, as during the previous apparitions, and the light that was God streamed forth. In this light they were given, on this occasion, a vision of Hell so horrible and gruesome that the children shrieked aloud with fear. After showing them Hell Our Lady said to the children: “You have seen Hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end; if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will beak out during the pontificate of Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that He is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father. “To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays. If My requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated. In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.

 Can anyone seriously suggest that Russia converted? That there has been peace? That the errors of Marxism have not been spreading?

And of course Our Lady has appeared in various ways to various people to warn us of things to come. Apparitions approved by the Church filled with grave prophecy of future terrors — not just in the world, but within the Church:

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