Citizen Columns
Question
What does your faith group teach about exceptional intuition or psychic abilities?
Answer
First of all, we don’t deny such exceptional gifts. The Bible and the lives of saints in every age, including our own, testify to their reality. Even from the perspective of physics we are only just beginning to understand the variety of unseen forces at play in the universe, so why should we be surprised? We also believe that the more anyone is in communion with God, the more the Holy Spirit dwells within them, the more sensitive they will be to such intuitions. Although we now view such things as exceptional, we were created as spiritual beings for whom revelation ought to be normal. And yet we haven’t lost this capacity entirely.
Inspiration in any realm of human creativity carries within it some spark of revelation, though it may not always be a divine revelation. And this is why we are also cautious about such claims. There is huge potential for delusion, magical thinking, fantasy, dysfunctional religion and evil. It is possible to be led astray by supposed special messages from God that make us feel “chosen”. The true test of such abilities is to ask, therefore, what fruit they bring. If it is not love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, goodness, gentleness or self-control, then we are right to be suspicious (see Galatians 5:22-23).
Elder Porphyrios of Greece (1906-1991) was a remarkable person who possessed this gift of insight. One of his spiritual children recounted how, as a 17-year old, he had gone to see Fr Porphyrios for the first time and the elder received him with great love, reciting words of poetry the boy had written in secret and never shown anyone! And yet, far from emphasizing this extraordinary intuition, the elder was simple and humble, focusing on the Gospels, keeping the commandments and following Christ. “If we abandon ourselves to the love of Christ, then all will be overturned, all will be transfigured, all will be transformed, all will be transubstantiated. Anger, resentment, jealousy, indignation, censure, ingratitude, melancholy and depression will all become love, joy, longing, divine eros. Paradise!”
With love in Christ,
Fr John
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