Off-The-Wall—A Street Survival Journal, continued….

There’s no place of greater peril for me than near a priest. At least that’s what my Post-Traumatic Stressed and disordered mind and psyche tell me, viscerally.

I can counter it all I want rationally and say, well the man in the black robes can’t destroy you now, but the fact remains etched in my psyche that the Devil comes dressed as a priest and I need to run as fast as I can. Yet another part of me cannot stand that and wants to heal from holding against all priests what one did to me.

So I try to give myself exposure therapy and try to get over my issues. This is what drove me to tune into a deliverance session with noted exorcist Monsignor Stephen Rossetti on winter solstice. I really want to get better. I know I have a problem in my distrust of people because of what was done to me and it needs to be resolved.

During the session I did have a sense that a chain that held me in bondage was broken. It wasn’t a vision and I don’t get visual hallucinations when in psychosis.

Then at the end, he gave the blessing which I have learned from Messianic Jewish evangelist Warren Marcus is the only prayer that the G-d of Israel Himself wrote (Numbers 6:24-26). I have been listening to it chanted in Hebrew by a devotional singer.

I could actually feel that Monsignor Rossetti had the authority of the mantle of priest to pronounce that blessing. In Judaism the high priest prays it over the people. I cannot explain exactly how I knew he had the authority but it was interesting to me as he held up his hands in doing so, as is done in Judaism.

I did have issues during the deliverance session with the notion of Freemasonry as being a dark force. I have no personal connection to it but I know for a fact that most of the Founding Fathers were Masons. I held in my own hands an original copy of George Washington’s Masonic eulogy which was held in Special Collection at Stanford University. I wrote a research paper for a college history class about Freemasons and the American Revolution.

So it’s evidently a Catholic belief that Freemasonry is malevolent. I just see George Washington and the Founding Fathers as a force for great good.

The session ended and I was hopeful that I could then be well enough to attend Midnight Mass but I soon became extremely depressed to the extent I could hardly function, but not until after I my Subaru started playing on its own from my iPhone “Chains are broken.” My phone does that kind of thing periodically. It started spontaneously playing the Messiah after a heavy 12 step recovery meeting.

Christmas Day I continued to be under dark clouds of depressiveness and spent the day trying to pray through it. Finally at the stable that night when visiting my equine partner, after I prayed a rosary with him and then listened to a recording of a delivery of a message printed in Walking With the Master, then the darkness lifted.

In fact, then I felt and saw in my mind’s eye the pronounced Presence of the Manchild in a manger filled with oat hay in my heart. That lifted the heavy weight and I felt profound peace.

It was such a relief. I’d felt so bowed down for so long under a weight I couldn’t bear. The saying “True love was born in a stable” is indeed true. I spoke to no person nor did anyone speak to me on Christmas but I found the ultimate Present in the gift of His Presence in the stable shared with the animals. I felt peace profound—delivered, actually.