["Resurrection," Albert Pinkham Ryder, 1885]
My heart bleeds for those who are fully possessed. The process of liberation is brutal. The demons have a unique access to their bodies and their minds. So, the demons can tempt and torture them. And they do.
Demons fill the possessed's mind with doubts and despair. They will batter them with accusations of worthlessness and sinfulness. They will choke, pummel, bruise, scratch and even sexually torment them. In short, the demons drag them through an experience of hell.*
One of the important tasks of the Exorcist, in addition to shepherding the process of liberation, is to keep the afflicted coming to the sessions. Who could fault them for not wanting to go through this hellish experience? So, the priest is not only an exorcist and guide for the possessed, but also a kind of cheerleader- encouraging them to continue on this painful and tortuous road.
One quality I have noticed in those who do successfully complete the journey to liberation is the virtue of hope. The demons keep knocking them down, emotionally and physically, and the person who is successful keeps getting back up. The demons try everything to get them to quit, i.e., despair. The demons tell them it will never work; the demons tell them that God doesn't care; the demons taunt them with their sinfulness and weakness. Despite such mental and physical tortures, the afflicted person perseveres.
Giving up, that is despair, is perhaps the central theme of hell: "Abandon all hope ye who enter here." But, in the midst of a demonic possession, when the afflicted person is made to suffer an experience of hell, they cling to a divine hope, as should we.
I am edified by such faith. Surely, they will be saved. May we, too, be filled with such a saving hope.
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*One need only read the descriptions of hell in the great mystics, such as St. Faustina, to realize that what the possessed experience is a kind of hell.
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