One reason that I became a priest in an Independent Catholic Church was undoubtedly because of my abuse as an altar boy. But ordination was a decidedly mixed blessing. It empowered me to stand up to the Catholic hierarchy, but it sure did not “cure” me. Nothing really did – not years of therapy and support groups, not outspoken activism, not historical research, not writing novels, and nor even an attempt at marriage. In fact, if anything, being a priest posed a potentially dangerous opportunity to act out in the same way.
Nor was getting free of the Roman Catholic Church through a voluntary excommunication as liberating as I thought it would be. I remained terrified that if I ever let the mask slip, others could see my inner brokenness and the ugliness dwelling there. So throughout it all, I remained isolated and afraid.
And in pain. Not just emotional, but physical. In particular, I was tormented by a chronic soreness in the back of my neck. The nape was armored, hard as a rock. Massage was useless against it, heating pads, even muscle relaxants didn’t help. It was somehow connected with my mental state, too, as it became even more rigid when I was in the throes of some memory during recovery, and even after. For there was a constant feeling of oppression that surrounded me day and night.
As time wore on, the isolation grew worse, and so did the torment, interior and exterior. Finally, on September 26, 2016, while taking a shower, I’d reached my limit. And so there, with hot water running uselessly down my back, I prayed. “God,” I admitted, “I can’t stand it any more. Remove this curse, even if you must take my life. I give it all to you.”
And then it happened. Like Jesus waving away a fly, the Spirit effortlessly moved without a sound. Suddenly the pain was gone. It felt as if something had been removed from my back.
I turned around. There on the shower floor between me and the drain, stood a huge black spider. I had never seen such an ugly monster. It seemed the size of a silver dollar, as black as the darkest night, with thick legs unlike a Black Widow. And it was headed right towards me.
So of course, I reacted as anyone would – I totally freaked out. Turning the taps on full, I flushed it down the drain, and covered it with a towel, and leapt out of the stall. It was gone. Thank God, it has never been back.
And vanished also was the blackness in my mind, replaced by the most sublime gratitude a human being could feel. I know that Christ freed me with the gentlest touch. There was no elaborate rite of exorcism needed, no ordeal, no ministers or priests, none of the battle royale against the Devil like in the movies. Just the total surrender of a soul past desperation. Which is not as easy as it sounds!
Now, I know that the damned creature was probably not a supernatural entity in itself. Just an unlucky arachnid, likely washed out of the overflow drain at precisely the wrong moment. But synchronicity is everything.
Whether the demon on my back was purely psychological or a supernatural entity, I do not know. Nor does it matter. For the oppression was undeniably real, and so has been the relief. Whatever that spider was, I have no doubt I finally got my miracle. Sure, I’m still crazy and always will be but I finally have an access to the divine that I lost with my innocence and thought I’d never see again.
What have I done with my new vision?
Several months later, on January 1, 2017, I started to read the Bible from the Book of Genesis, one chapter per day. It took over three years to read it all, including the Apocrypha. And every chapter was a delight, even the endless genealogies and wars. At the same time, I devoted myself to studying what the Fathers of the Church thought about the Bible. From them, I learned of the secrets of the parables and how to properly interpret sacred scriptures in a spiritual manner.
Many books later, I compiled the references I’d collected into a spiritual dictionary of Scriptural symbolism: The Word Unveiled. The plan is to use this information to decipher the parables, and once it is shown how that can be done, to try and extend it to the rest of the Holy Scriptures. For as the Bible says:
This is Yahweh’s doing. It is marvelous in our eyes. [Ps. 118:23]
