I have taken a wild notion to write about my own experiences of Raptures and Ecstasies in Prayer in case anyone is interested in such goings on. For myself I was always interested in mystical phenomena myself but when I started having them , I suppose around 35 or so years ago now and got to see them fist hand of course it made me even more interested. I would say these are firstly connected (at the onset) to what St Teresa of Avila describes as the Prayer of Union (the 5th of the seven Mansions , or stages of Prayer). https://catholicstrength.com/tag/the-prayer-of-union/ THE FIFTH MANSION. Entering the fifth mansion, the soul is still in the illuminative stage of the journey. There are still “hidden treasures” in the castle. Teresa wonders how she will ever be able to explain the “riches and delights” found in the fifth mansion. She also tells us that many of her nuns make it to the lofty state of prayer found in this mansion. The soul will now go even deeper in prayer – to unite herself to God in what is appropriately called The Prayer of Union. Some scholars call this prayer the prayer of incipient union or the prayer of the sleep of the faculties. Here the soul “falls asleep to the things of the world,” and in this sort of death becomes united to God. Thus the faculties are suspended, and there is virtually an unconsciousness, as the soul appears to have withdrawn from the body. The hallmark experience of this prayer is the certainty that, however short in duration, the soul was united to God. Teresa explains: “God implants Himself in the interior of that soul in such a way that, when it returns to itself, it cannot possibly doubt that God has been in it and it has been in God; so firmly does this truth remain within it that, although for years God may never grant it that favor again, it can never forget it or doubt that it has received it. This certainty of the soul is very material.” Teresa compares the soul’s growth and progress (in a “celebrated analogy”) to the silkworm. This large and ugly worm appears to be almost dead in the winter, but when the warm weather comes it begins to feed on mulberry leaves, and then to spin silk from twigs on the ground, as it makes itself into a very tight cocoon. “Then, finally, the worm…comes right out of the cocoon a beautiful white butterfly.” Likewise, the soul spins its own cocoon through penance, prayer and mortification until it becomes hidden in God. When it becomes quite dead to the things of this world “it comes out a little white butterfly.” Having experienced the prayer of union, the soul now has the most “vehement desire” for penance, solitude “and for all to know God.” It is overwhelmed for having “merited such a blessing.” The soul is now being prepared for the betrothal to the King which will take place in the sixth mansion. Teresa warns the soul to remain humble, for the “power of hell” is still capable of winning the soul back to sin. The soul is still susceptible to the perils of pride and self-delusion. Self-love must be crushed. The soul must keep her “eyes fixed on the King’s greatness,” and grow in love. “Love is never idle.” The soul must keep advancing.
I would say it is in this stage of prayer that folks become most aware of the Somatic (bodily) influence of prayer on themselves. For prayer does of course have major influence on the body in all kinds of positive and beneficial ways as a Legion of Modern Scientific Studies have discovered. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2802370/ Improved outcomes associated with prayer Cha et al.[32] studied 219 consecutive infertile women, aged 26-46 years, who were treated with in vitro fertilization embryo transfer in Seoul, South Korea. These women were randomized into distant prayer and control groups. Prayer was conducted by prayer groups in the USA, Canada and Australia. The patients and their providers were not informed about the intervention. The investigators, and even the statisticians, did not know the group allocations until all the data had been collected. Thus, the study was randomized, triple-blind, controlled and prospective in design. Cha et al.[32] found that the women who had been prayed for had nearly twice as high a pregnancy rate as those who had not been prayed for (50 vs. 26%; P <0.005). Furthermore, the women who had been prayed for showed a higher implantation rate than those who had not been prayed for (16.3 vs. 8%; P <0.001). Finally, the benefits of prayer were independent of clinical or laboratory providers and clinical variables. Thus, this study showed that distant prayer facilitates implantation and pregnancy. Lesniak[33] described a study on the effect of intercessory prayer on wound healing in a nonhuman primate species. The sample comprised 22 bush babies (Otolemur garnettii) with wounds resulting from chronic self-injurious behavior. These animals were randomized into prayer and control groups that were similar at baseline. Prayer was conducted for 4 weeks. Both groups of bush babies additionally received L-tryptophan. Lesniak[33] found that the prayer group animals had a greater reduction in wound size and a greater improvement in hematological parameters than the control animals. This study is important because it was conducted in a nonhuman species; therefore, the likelihood of a placebo effect was removed. Retrospective benefits with prayer Leibovici[39] reported the results of an unusual study that was conducted in Israel. The sample comprised 3,393 in patients diagnosed with a bloodstream infection between 1990 and 1996. Bloodstream infection was defined as a positive blood culture in the presence of sepsis. These patients were randomized into prayer (n = 1,691) and control (n = 1,702) groups in July, 2000. A list of the first names of the patients in the prayer group was given to a person (details not specified) who said a short prayer (details again not specified) for the wellbeing and full recovery of the group as a whole. This prayer was said about 4-10 years or longer after the index admission. There was no sham intervention. Thus, this study sought to determine whether prayer has a retrospective healing effect. The patients in the prayer and control groups were similar on important sociodemographic and clinical variables. Whereas the mortality rate did not differ significantly between the prayer and the control groups (28.1 vs. 30.2%, respectively), the length of stay in the hospital and the duration of fever were both significantly shorter in the prayer group than in the control group (P = 0.01 and 0.04, respectively). Some points about this study are worth noting. The differences between groups, although significantly favoring patients for whom prayer was offered, were very small; the medians of the two groups differed by a small margin. Thus, the significance of the findings depended heavily upon the outliers who skewed the sample. Next, no attempt was made to compare for unusual biases, such as day of admission and discharge. It is conceivable, for example, that patients admitted toward the end of the week may have been investigated and treated more slowly and those due for discharge toward the end of the week may have been retained until the start of the next week. Importantly, considering the number of patients in each group, there must surely have been much overlap in first names. Did Leibovici consider the possibility that the prayers, then, could benefit patients in both groups to the extent of overlap? Finally, in a lighter vein, would the findings have changed had the author, in the best spirits of ethical research, offered the experimental intervention (prayer) for the control group at the conclusion of the study? More seriously, because the data were retrospective, it should have been possible for the study to have been repeated several times, with fresh randomization each time. Would the results, then, have remained unchanged? These and other issues were raised in the journal correspondence published on the Leibovici[39] article.
But the catholic church has always states there is no rapture That the rapture is Protestant notion ?
He means by rapture something similar to the idea of being enraptured. Where you have an all consuming experience of God. Totally different from what your thinking Padrepiofan.
Whenever I was converted one of the first thing I noticed was its effects on my body..and on my mind. On a human level this was perfectly understandable. I was no longer smoking of heavy drinking. I was living a very regular life style with enough sleep. I was no longer taking part in the war ,so people were not actively trying to kill me (or me them) . There is a lot to be aid for keeping the Ten Commandments for bodily and mental health. Did you ever think what would happen if people , as a basic minimun simply kept the Ten Commandments? Well no more need for prisons. No need for police forces. No need for armies. No more drug trades. No more sex industry and transmissible diseases. The list goes on and on. So for us as individuals too, turning to God should move us at least somewhat towards the Garden of Eden and we might, ordinarily expect to live much longer and healthier lives.That is unless God asks us to bear specific Crosses. Take this a step forward and if we are living a good committed prayer life and we should expect all kinds of physical and mental benefits. I am often surprised that Catholic writers do not mention these more. A good example of these Heath benefits can be observed in Faithful Religious Communities whose membertend to live very long , joy filled lives, which the rest of the world could very much envy.
One day when I was around about 27 years old I decided to take my usual Sunday walk around the city with my dog. Back then the Rosary Beads were pretty well never out of my hand and said it constantly as I walked. My walk took me from the North said of the city to the South and back and I suppose would normally have taken three or four hours. I had just passed Queen University, a beautiful red brick building and was walking up a hill when something remarkable happened for the very first time. It was as though God had reached down from heaven , picked me up in His arms and given me a great big hug and put me down again. It is difficult to describe this, it would take a poet or a song writer or an artist to describe it. But it did literally feel like I had grown lighter and was rising up of the ground, then all at once I was in a place of fire and light and love, it felt as though my heart was about to explode with love ( in fact this may be what St Teresa of Avila describes as a , 'Dart of Love'. Then I was set back down again. CHAPTER XI. TREATS OF HOW GOD INSPIRES THE SOUL WITH SUCH VEHEMENT AND IMPETUOUS DESIRES OF SEEING HIM AS TO ENDANGER LIFE. THE BENEFITS RESULTING FROM THIS DIVINE GRACE. ... violent and impetuous desires and strong feelings, which seem to proceed from our vehement love, are yet as nothing compared with what I am about to describe and seem but a smouldering fire, the heat of which, though painful, is yet tolerable. 2. While the soul is thus inflamed with love, i t often happens that, from a passing thought or spoken word of how death delays its coming, the heart receives, it knows not how or whence, a blow as from a fiery dart. 1 I do not say that this actually is a 'dart,' but, whatever it may be, decidedly it does not come from any part of our being. 2 Neither is it really a 'blow' though I call it one, but it wounds us severely--not, I think, in that part of our nature subject to physical pain but in the very depths and centre of the soul, where this, thunderbolt, in its rapid course, reduces all the earthly part of our nature to powder. At the time we cannot even remember our own existence, for in an instant, the faculties of the soul are so fettered as to be incapable of any action except the power they retain of increasing our torture. Do not think I am exaggerating; indeed I fall short of explaining what happens which cannot be described. 3. This is a trance of the senses and faculties except as regards what helps to make the agony more intense. The understanding realizes acutely what cause there is for grief in separation from God and His Majesty now augments this sorrow by a vivid manifestation of Himself. This increases the anguish to such a degree that the sufferer gives vent p. 254 to loud cries which she cannot stifle, however patient and accustomed to pain she may be, because this torture is not corporal but attacks the innermost recesses of the soul. The person I speak of learnt from this how much more acutely the spirit is capable of suffering than the body; she understood that this resembled the pains of purgatory, where the absence of the flesh does not prevent the torture's being far worse than any we can feel in this world. 4. I saw some one in this condition who I really thought would have died, nor would it have been surprising, for there is great danger of death in this state. Short as is the time it lasts, it leaves the limbs all disjointed and the pulse as feeble as if the soul were on the point of departure, which is indeed the case, for the natural heat fails, while that which is supernatural so burns the frame that were it increased ever so little God would satisfy the soul's desire for death. Not that any pain is felt by the body at the moment, although, as I said, all the joints are dislocated so that for two or three days afterwards the suffering is too severe for the person to have even the strength to hold a pen; 3 indeed I believe that the health becomes permanently enfeebled in consequence. At the time this is not felt, probably because the spiritual torments are so much more keen that the bodily ones remain unnoticed; just as when there is very p. 255 severe pain in one part, slighter aches elsewhere are hardly perceived, as I know by experience. During this favour there is no physical suffering either great or small, nor do I think the person would feel it were she torn to pieces.
I can relate to what your saying Padraig I have sensed something similar but not as intense as you describe.. My experiences are mild at times during mass my mind and body are totally focused and ignore the surroundings after mass I would feel exhausted to the point of feeling ill sore muscles and joints.. I have also experienced this at adoration.. When I had the wonderful chance of being alone at night time in a closed Chapel I found myself wanting to lie on the marble floor at which I lost all senses of the world around me. Not asleep but still..
I experienced this only once. Unforgettable. Free gift! I felt as if springs of living water were cascading through me ready to burst out into a flood of praise. Such love and such intensity of joy. I really have no words to describe it but I remember repeating (kind of like Peter at the Transfiguration who didn't know what he was saying) "how can I thank You? How can I thank You?" And out came this phrase aloud waking my husband up..."Introibo ad altare Dei" And of course I then remembered the whole prayer from the old Mass. What return can I make to the Lord for all He has done for me? I will go to the altar of God. To God the joy of my youth...." Much later i was reading St Teresa's autobiography and she relates that she asked Our Lord how she could thank Him. He told her "attend one Mass." A confirmation for me. It was a very powerful and sweet experience to warm me over these long years of slogging on one foot in front of the other.
AED, I am so happy for you and Padraig! The Lord has not allowed me to experience such, though several times He has spontaneously healed deep-seated wounds in my heart. My eyes want to water up thinking of those gifts of love. How else can I describe them, foolish man that I am! This evening I was angry at Geralyn (she generously forgave me), so saint I am not. But as God invites: onward and upward! Philippians 3:12 Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13 Brethren, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Sorry, I am doing five night shifts on a row at the moment so cannot reply too well at the moment. But I am off next week for a few days and so will have more time to post. It can take time to post on this thread as some of it can be a little bit technical and takes a little time and thought.
I also have experienced this Gift from God a few times. Once just after having come into the Church, I was at a Marian conference in Florida and was prayed over by a Priest (I believe his name was Fr. Fink), and as he put his hands on my head, my feet felt as though they left the ground. I felt I had literally left the room, but remembered Father telling me that he felt a great anointing over me. After he spoke to me, I still felt I was off the ground and thought to myself that I hoped no one else saw this. Another time I had just received Holy Communion, and had no idea how I got back to my pew because I was in such contemplation that I lost track of even where I was. God has given me this gift several times over the years and I only offer this here because I remember about the man who was given a talent and he buried it; I do not want to bury what Our Lord has given me, so I offer it to you for your discernment. Fiat!
