Hello, all! Yesterday, my husband and I visited some friends we had not seen since university days, and they had another Catholic couple with their children visiting, as well. As we chatted with the couple, we learned that the husband had been a seminarian for several years (in a very traditional seminary) before he discerned that he was being called to married life instead. One of the topics we discussed was our individual experiences with COVID: how ill we had been, how many times we had contracted it, etc. He shared that he had been on his deathbed (devastating for his young family at the time), and that it was only through Divine Providence that he survived the ordeal. There is something he explained, though, that stayed on my mind for the rest of the day. While deathly ill, he had a near-death experience where he described not being able to advocate for himself AT ALL. He said he was in such a state of delirium, he could not pray, could not think of God in that moment, could not defend himself from anything in the least. I likened it to the souls in Purgatory not being able to pray for themselves, but instead relying solely on our prayers to help bring them some relief and expedite their exit. He affirmed that comparison, but continued to stress that he was made aware of the fact that his entire faith life up to that point was completely moot because of the state he was in, this state of not being able to give his fiat if his soul depended on it. Until now, I had always heard that saints we are close to may actually assist us at the hour of our death (and Mary, of course, especially through the Brown Scapular promises), and perhaps even a family member who made it to Heaven. Since we are attacked at that crucial and vulnerable moment, it always made sense that we could receive some extra help in giving our final, definitive yes to Jesus then. But this person made it seem that unless your faith life is rock-solid, not a one of us stands a chance at death. This would contradict so much of what I have read and heard about, for instance, people going through life completely against Christ, only to have a genuine conversion experience at the end, or even dying while in a state of mortal sin but being saved through other people's constant prayers for them. I am curious about your thoughts on this. He made it seem so hopeless, and it surprised me, given how seriously faithful his family seems.
Well, there is that parable about the workers at the end of the day being given the same wages as those who had toiled all day. I always equated that with salvation being granted late in one’s life. I also know that Padre Pio said that each soul gets a final chance to decide for salvation. Padraig always quotes that. So those are my thoughts. Your friend did not die so his experience with death is incomplete. Perhaps his experience was a personal message from God about his own life. ???
This is a great point! I was discussing the issue earlier this morning with my husband, and I commented that, indeed, this person may have been spiritually dry around the time of his illness, or there could be other circumstances he did not divulge that would have led him to that hopeless place. It just seemed so odd to me, the finality of that hopelessness.
I had an NDE before. It's time-less but "at first" you're just desperate and in denial of "being dead" and you want to return to the body. I wasn't clinically dead at all, but it was an NDE. Maybe this person went trough that? the main point was refusal and denial at having-died, and the soul insisted on crawling back into the material body.
He very well may have gone through that. I wish we would have had more time to flesh that out, but my husband and I were getting our shoes on to leave, so we could not. If we ever see this couple again, though, I would definitely want to finish that conversation.
More information from a secular point of view including 20 % dark NDEs "The primary effect of any NDE is usually a powerful and enduring awareness that there is more to reality than the physical world. 6. At least three types of distressing NDE have been identified: 1) one in which features common in pleasant NDEs are interpreted negatively; 2) the Void; 3) features or landscape interpreted as hell. In a suggested fourth type, an otherwise pleasant NDE is considered distressing because of guilt felt during a life review (a type I generally include with #1). ... Distressing NDEs have less focused messages but follow the ancient shamanic pattern of suffering/death/ resurrection, read as an invitation to profound self-examination, disarrangement of core beliefs, and rebuilding into a new way of understanding, which commonly moves toward some aspect of the elements described by positive NDEs: love, compassion, learning, service.... Because NDEs do not conform to the precise doctrines of any specific cultural, philosophical, or religious subset, they present a difficulty for individuals tightly tied to particular teachings. This is true whether the uncompromising teachings are religious or secular. For example, unwavering materialists who dismiss NDEs as impossible may conclude they are psychotic episodes, whereas strongly doctrinal fundamentalists (of any religion) may conclude that non-conforming NDEs must be satanic. Again, description of the experience is dependent upon individual interpretation." https://dancingpastthedark.com/about-ndes/
