With Thanksgiving just a few weeks away as I write this, I thought it may be time to switch for a few weeks to some positive accounts that are SUPERNATURAL and suspenseful. Believe me, these stories will astound you as most do not know how many miracles happen every day. We are not always, as the news would have us believe, in the midst of violence, upheaval and turmoil.
If you are like me, I love horror stories and suspenseful true accounts from people I meet. Once in a while, I like to depart from that, and the next entry and the next entry after that are unusual, eye-opening and indeed very extraordinary.
They are supernatural.
However, their supernatural-ness is from the opposite pole: The positive one.
For the coming month of December in recognition of the holiness of Catholicism and Judaism, I will set a tone that’s more positive and inspiring and hopefully place you in a more hopeful and upbeat mood if you happen to be down.
What brought this about, you may ask?
So here’s what happened in the past few weeks since I wrote the last entry when I returned from France:
With the holiday season almost here, I began volunteering to help prepare for Christmas. I was born and raised Catholic and believe that to keep the evil from entering my writings, staying healthy and abundant, it was a need for me and my family to remain close to forces of a higher energy.
I went to Sunday mass as usual and observed that there were the usual sign-ups recruiting volunteers to help decorate, put up the manger, the lights and the trees inside and outside the church. However, in addition to this, I also saw about a hundred easels with placards connected to them all around the entire periphery of the church.
Each placard had photos and stories! What was more astounding was that they were all collected and placed online by a teenage boy, Carlo Acutis, who only lived to seventeen years of age then passed from cancer. As I read on from the biography that was available at the church’s narthex (Unusual for me as I usually rushed out to join family for breakfast brunch.) I was astounded and impressed by this child’s uniqueness and spiritual growth.
Acutis was born to an affluent family, but refused the trappings of wealth. He gave generously, but more importantly, he discouraged his peers from mistreating others, resisted common teen behaviors and risked his own reputation by including those he felt were excluded. In an era and an age where reputation was always valued, Acutis risked his reputation among his peers by including those who were deemed “unpopular” or somehow “odd”. While Carlo attempted to create a true community of kindness, Acutis created a website that was a huge collection of international accounts of miracles involving the Roman Catholic host – the sacrament of communion which supernaturally changed the communion wafer to the body of Christ.
He didn’t stop there. He then proceeded to document accounts that left the reader in awe (I for one) and the jaw-dropping effect led to his rise as a child of spiritual distinction.
If you are not Catholic, you may not be aware of the sacrament of communion. It is one of seven that is a rite in this particular religion. I do not profess to be an expert as I am not, but please do feel free to email me if you find any articles of interest to you about the rite of communion and of miracles in general. You may consider these stories a departure from my genre of horror, macabre and terrifying, but I am not, trust me, departing from the genre of the supernatural.
I just believe that we sometimes need a break from the negative and swim to shore in order to balance ourselves especially during the holiday of LIGHT.
Welcome to the light. Where there is darkness, run to the light. The next two entries are about that, brought to you by a very unexpected source: A teenage boy.
