A Padre's Tale: A Story of a Mystic Monk the Early Years

By Maija Ingrida Meijers

Miraculous healings begin to occur after a young monk receives the stigmata when he is praying. The questions he must face from his superiors and the adjustments he must make in his own heart are all part of this tale. The monk discusses his experiences in a way that is touching and often humorous. His visits from divine messengers and his own visions are all described in a way that lets the reader feel the intensity of the mystical experience from the intimate perspective of the developing mystic. A PADRES TALE is an uplifting account that brings to life characters that can teach us all.

Look for the authors other book, ANGELS DAILY MESSAGES, Letters of Inspiration, to read some loving messages that can help you meditate, or motivate yourself, or inspire your souls growth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 9, 2002
• ISBN: 9781462843435

Maija Ingrida Meijers

Maija Ingrida Meijers has been working as a spiritual counselor and intuitive for nearly twenty years. She has taught classes, given private readings, and produced a web site with daily inspirational messages. After she finished Volume I and II of those “Angels’ Daily Messages” in book form, one of the Angelic Beings she works with asked her to write this story of the life of a mystic monk. This volume covers the early years of that tale. Volume II will cover the later years and anecdotes of specific mystical experiences. Maija lives, writes and works in the hills of Shelburne, Massachusetts.

Book preview

PRELUDE

Padre testimonials

When I commanded a body, it was the relief of sleep that drove me. Saying the final goodnights to my brothers, placing all the objects of my little altar and room in order, I was filled with excitement, knowing I was soon to be in the world of the soul. When I eagerly lay down and straightened my robes about me, and adjusted my small pillow to my satisfaction, I spent but a few moments in reviewing and releasing the events of the day. Then, I could begin the cascade of prayers which I knew would carry me to that place of love and light in which I worship in my sleep. That sleep occurs somewhere in that ritual, I know, but to me it is like a continuous motion, through the prayers of conscious mind and into the stream of prayers that my soul-sleep mind continues. Ahhh, but the Place in which it continues them. My pathetic solitary prayers become a fulsome chorus, as suddenly they are joined by all the energy and force of all the Divine creatures around me. Then I know that I am not alone, and glancing side to side, as I pray, I see those beings of light that surround me, and my entire body is filled with a smile. It is a smile that soothes and completes me, like the ocean waters complete the harbor as they move back in to cover the mud flats of low tide. The surging force of it fills me with a greater feeling of the breath and the beauty of life than ever I feel when awakened to the body, with its thirst and its bowels and the gray flakes of its skin.

Those beings around me, that seem to be made of light, are familiar and unfamiliar ones to me. That rosy-golden hued one over there is Brother Joseph, bobbing and weaving with his wide smile just as he does in our daily life. That slim, still one with the flickering of blue, is one that seems to be always with me now. I can feel his loving and calm attitude around me and beside me just before the ecstasy of my daytime raptures, and He is ever with me, here, too, in the lovely night. Many others are there whose auras I recognize, although I do not know their names, and they are singing with us.

We sway and we beam together, but here our prayers are less like the beseeching monologue or the bewildered searching of the cold daytime, and more like the directing of a great glory display of light and emotion. As I, and the others around me, move and sway, the joy that begins to fill us seems accompanied by a great wash of colors—colors that shift past and exceed the colors left behind in the world. Each wondrous billowing of them is in rhythm with waves of feeling. Those waves leave us feeling utterly, utterly forgiven and unconditionally loved. The loving fills, and completes, and inflates me, so that this thing that I am of light feels finally able to be lofty enough to fly to where I am needed, in the night, or in the day, or in all the realms of the Divine.

O’, to be free to fly always as bidden, and never to have to stop and bend to buckle again a rusty sandal fasten. O’, to be free enough to travel endlessly and instantly on the breath and word of the Divine, to whatever purpose and mission that Mind sends me. O’, to be inside, again, that Heart, and know no fear or hesitation. Rather, to know only endless Compassion and endless Journey, and endless Expansion and endless Love.

CHAPTER ONE

Padre speaks.

Even at the age of six years, I was spending time listening to my heart. My father would leave me to watch the animals while he talked to his cronies in the market, and I would sit on the end of the wagon, dangling my short legs, and watch, and listen. My heart would whisper as it watched an old woman walking by:

That one is in mourning and will be joining her dead husband soon. I would watch as she walked by so slowly, a heavy cloth bundle with big, awkward knots, slung over her back, and I would silently wish her Godspeed to the arms of death. As she reached the end of the dusty lane, I seemed to see a face form in the bright sunlight that shone off her white kerchief. It smiled at me, and I understood that guardians of Grace were already with her, ready to help her on her way.

I want to tell you my story now, because those same guardians have taken me away now. Looking back, I can see that for most of my years, my heart was too full for me to speak freely to those around me. I speak to those with me here in Spirit, and they tell me that when they wore their costumes of flesh, their hearts did not speak aloud to them as mine did to me. Yet I know their hearts were speaking, for my heart heard the whispers of their hearts. I want to tell you my story so that you will listen to yours. I can hear your heart whispering even now—just Listen.

My true beginning was not when the egg of me squirmed to its place in my mother’s womb. It was when I sat in the pre-birthing room with the Creator. I held forth my list and my plan. I wanted to be helpful, I proclaimed. I wanted to be kind, and I wanted to be big of body. I wanted to learn to forgive, I wanted to drink in the softness of the air and the sweet comfort of old cloth, I wanted to hold three lifetimes of learning in one. As are most in that room of Creation, I was overconfident about what I could learn and finish and share in one earthly life. But no word of caution was given, no urging of limits was made. I was listened to with kind and accepting love as my grand plan was formed. We chose my costume together. We chose the place and time of my birth. We chose all the choices and roads I could take, and we laid in second and third and more chances for me to learn all that I wanted to learn and to do all that I wanted to do. And so it was begun.

I have a sweet memory of my tiny body lying warm and curled against that of my sister, holding our body heat to one another against the sharp night. But my warmer memories are of the bleating and softness of the beasts as they pressed against me in the back of the wagon or streamed past my legs through the gate to the field. For it was not many baby years that I was coddled against a sister’s warmth or held to a mother’s breast, before I was expected to contribute to the daily chores of my family’s farm. And so you see me in that cart, dangling those legs, and holding back the black noses of the sheep from my arms, watching the lights dance around the heads of the people of the town.

Those legs grew quickly, for the costume I had chosen to live in was one that would stand tall. Before long, my feet were bouncing and kissing the dust of the road, at the back of that cart, as we crossed the sweet hills that surrounded our place. My father’s forays became my job—the meat, the wool, the beasts, all loaded to go to the market. His heart was in his olives and in the grain and fruit that called to his hands. I could see that his soul-mind knew the language of growing things and that it comforted him to be where they could speak to him. The everyday callings of my mother’s heart for the needs of neighbors that she could help, and the yearning of my heart to read the hearts of those around me, confused him, I think. I could see the light of his soul retract and gather, and go back to the storeroom or the field, where it could focus on the rhythm of the vegetables in their season, and be content. He always did good for the other villagers when need was there, but liked to leave each man his honor and privacy, too.

The sheep were left to me. Watching their hearts was easy, for they knew more clearly than did my family or the people of the town, that all of them shared one true heart. That one heart had them all connected as if by string, so that if one moved to the grass by the edge of the boulders, so did they all. If one took it in mind to stray into the brambles, so did they all. It was in a wild, exasperated shout to the sky, as I tried to extricate one of the lambs from yet another bramble patch, that a glimmer of my own grand plan gleamed into my heart. I stood up, stretching out my now-tall body, the hindquarters and legs of the lamb still in my hands, and looked around me. It seemed as though I could hear my own voice, as though I could hear myself saying that I wanted to learn patience, and then describing this very picture with my words. I felt laughter around me, like the fond laughter of adults when they see a child trying to catch a sunbeam with his pudgy fists. For a moment, I felt I was being tricked somehow, but then I felt infected by the laughter and I laughed so loudly that the wiggling lamb startled into stillness and looked solemnly at me with one eye. I slipped its limbs easily out of the tangled branches, then, and let it go.

Still chuckling under my breath, I eased myself down to sit on the dry grass. A gentleness came over my limbs, like the smooth feeling in the muscles when one has walked for hours, but this one had no fatigue associated with it. Indeed, I felt a kind of energy move from the base of my spine to the crown of my head. My skin felt as warm and flushed as though I had stood in the full sun for a day, and a feeling of excitement and joy filled my heart. My adolescent heart was accustomed to feeling thus, when I was excited about a journey to town, or a holiday festival, or even my favorite food being readied for the evening meal. On this day, there was no such event that I was anticipating. Instead, I seemed to be filled with joy just from the presence of that laughter that was not my own. For a Presence there was. For the first time, I was seeing those bright lights around my own head and body—those same white lights that I had so often seen around the faces of those whose hearts came into my gaze in the town.

It had been some years since I expected the other folk of my village or my family to see the same visions I routinely saw in the air around other people. Franni-boy, my mother said, you are fanciful, for sure. But her eyes twisted away from mine and she made the sign across her breast. She had deep faith, but liked the demonstrations of miracle to be firmly in their place in the Mass and in her church. I had learned to mention little of what I saw, or to tell it as a joke, so as to soothe with humor what was too sorrowful, or strange, to speak of aloud.

I thought of this as I looked at the lights, now, around me in the field, and I felt that I would burst from the feeling of joy that they brought with them. This was no fancy and none of my friends was there to mock me. I did not need to jest to them about it, so that the light would pass away while my attention turned elsewhere. I was free to feel the sensations the light brought, without worrying about what those around me thought or what impression I was making. The days and seasons of adolescence had certainly done their part to turn my attention to matters of flesh, and of appearance, and of the behavior of trying to seem wise or strong or popular. The lights still showed up around the heads and hearts of those around me, and my mother still bade me attend dusty worship with her some several times a week, but the swinging hips of the village girls distracted me and I spent time envying the strong muscles of the boys who were more hale than I. Although my body had become a tall one and had filled out in many places, my chest was weak and my lungs took easily to bouts of wheezing or of cough. I was impatient with my mother’s attempts to baby me as an invalid, and had spent many a day on the hillside with the sheep, fantasizing about becoming as strong as Leono, the swarthy wrestler in the next village. Sometimes I fantasized about giving my strength to God, and sometimes about impressing the girls of the village with it.

This Joy that was within me now blasted away any small joys I had hoarded from my fantasies or my conversational adventures with the girls. I could see that those were still valid joys of the earth, but their light seemed dim now, like a childhood toy fondly remembered. I thought to myself that I was finally seeing a glimpse of the bigger picture of life, and as I thought this, I found myself spiraling up out of my body and hovering above the shimmering leaves of the scarce trees. The leaves themselves seemed to shimmer with light, and they looked like live things, with the sap that flowed through them showing itself clearly to me. I felt stunned by the sight of that, but then I spiraled even higher until around me were stars. Their high, cold beauty rushed against the Warmth that filled me, and I seemed to float there, with those exquisite sky gems crowding against me to heat their hearts near this Bliss that was visiting me. It could have been hours that I spent swirling there, with all that Life Fire pouring endlessly into me. I seemed to be doling it out, giving it to each shivering star that beat against me, like a happy server of hot broth in a room full of freezing people. Suddenly, and strangely, I could hear the bleating of the sheep. That sound brought me with a thump down into my body, even though my head was still full of a numbness of joy.

I lay half-senseless for some time, while the sheep butted and nosed around me, perplexed by my strange stupor. I could not consider the experience logically. It was as though my belly were making a decision, like when it made my hand reach for the hot vegetable cakes and cram them into my mouth, even though my mind knew that they were still too full of heat and that my mother meant to save them for our dinner. Here, my belly was gorging itself on hot light. But rather than feeling filled, it made me hungry for more, and my belly decided to go tell my Pater that I was for the priesthood.

The sacrifices that my father and my mother made to raise the tuition for my study were great. I can see that now, when it is too late to sufficiently thank them and appreciate them. I was a strong minded and, now, Light-touched boy, who saw only what he felt called to do. The body that had never much pleased me continued to give me its troubles, and some of my studies had to be done from a convalescent bed, but the memory of that intense day on the hillside kept my determination strong. One of the priests who taught me said that he never suffered from illness, that his prayers and his communion kept him strong, but my body did not seem to hear my prayers. Too, it was still a young body, restless and full of hormones, even when its strength was not great. Some days, it seemed as though that Light had been shown to me like a holiday cake, that is displayed, and then locked away for the special occasion. Indeed, as I struggled with my health and as I wished to Heaven that short skirts had never been invented to test me so, I felt to be a very young and very humble penitent, indeed.

The rules of the order that I studied for were also a great confusion for me. The lists and the prohibitions and the complicated rituals seemed to have little to do with the incredible Joy that had swept my soul among the sheep. I often lay in my sleeping space at night, weary at another round of memorizing that was due, and imagined how this had all come about. Did the first humans who touched this sort of Divine Joy feel its preciousness? Did they so love the feeling of it that they felt that they must build a box to keep it safe? Was this box of rules and orders built from fear of losing this joy? Most of my teachers did not want to hear about my experience of Joy. They were suspicious about the small visions and lights I saw around some of their heads and around the folk who came to our Masses. They were evasive when I asked them about their own experiences. Many of them just wanted their assignments done, no questions asked. They were not ready for any variations in their beginning students. I was sworn to obedience and to charity, so I quelled my doubts, and did my best to obey.

Finally, after struggling for weeks with these frustrations, I had a conversation that helped me look at it in a new way. I met with a Fellow who had been in Orders in far-flung places. His tales of his travels helped me to see how full of searching all people are, and his tales of service in places of great war and catastrophe made me see a little of how brief life can be. We took time to talk one day after afternoon prayers, in a sunny alcove of the library.

Well, of course, some of the rules are silly. But some of those rules and rituals are ones that helped some people come to a place of acceptance, or peace, or love, or even ecstasy. Those people that were helped, in their desire to let others feel the same release from fear, or gain the love that they have come to feel, try to make their fellow humans follow the same rituals to try to give them the same experience. Their good intention is to let everyone have that Joy that they have found, but of course none of us finds it in exactly the same way. Your day of calling was very different than mine, but just as valid. And the quality of the Joy that you felt was the same as mine, though we came to it in ways as unlike as water and air. As he spoke these words, I could see, over his head a small vision of the epiphany that had come to him on a boat in the ocean, as he compared two ancient texts. He eased back on his bench and looked at me for a moment.

Even with the ill health that you have had, you are still young enough to feel immortal. You still feel that you have plenty of time to achieve all that you want to in this life. He said it with an indulgent smile. I knew by the color of the light around him that he liked me, so I took no offense.

Many people die, he went on, before sharing what they have learned with those who will survive after them. I have been in a village, for instance, where the man and his children who knew how to make good brick from their poor local clay, were killed in a rockslide. His knowledge and his experience were gone with him, and the village has had to postpone its building projects, while they wait for a new master brickmaker to come, and to train their young. I know that the young ones who have volunteered to learn the brick makers art will complain, just as you do, about the facts and figures that they must learn, and that his way is not the best way. But they want the brick. Maybe they will even invent new ways of making that brick, once they learn some of the basic techniques. And they want the knowledge spread wider this time, so that newlyweds do not need to live with their parents, just because one brick maker is killed. He held up his palm, as I stiffened my neck, and opened my mouth to protest.

I know, I know, the ambitious and the ones who love only their own comfort are a part of the Church, too. And they have made some rules that have nothing to do with that Joy that you felt. But you see, the most joyous part of that Joy is that nothing can stop it. I have seen men and women that were full of that Joy although their lives were full of drudgery. I have walked with those that live by the rules of another creed entirely, and I have seen that their rules, and their name for the Divine, bring them Joy, too. I have talked with men and women that call the Divine by the same names that you do, be filled with Joy although their country forbids their worship. I have seen men filled with that Joy even as Death took their sight and their life. If they can call that Divine Joy to them, to live with them and to die with them in the most extreme of conditions, then surely a student, such as yourself, who has his soup and his bread and a roof over his head almost every day, can find his Joy, even in his textbooks and his practicing of ritual. I lowered my eyes.

He smiled again, and finished his monologue, I grow old now, and cannot travel as I once did. I thought there would be plenty of time to write it all down, or to teach some students the wisdom I had gained, but time is running out for me on this pathway, and I content myself with small lectures to ones like you. You are eager and vehement, even when you are frail, and I wish I could teach you some things that would save you some time in your journey of learning. But, of course, you will make your own mistakes and you will make your own journey, and that is not up to me. We wise old fools try hard to set up systems that will save some knowledge, and save some effort, for the next generation to find their Joy, but it does little good. And in the end, the Divine will do as It wills. It is arrogance to think that the Divine cannot get past a few rules or a few old, ambitious men, if the need is there. Seek not sorrow, and Joy will find you. Let your complaining go, and maybe the Divine will find a way to get a word or two into your head, eh? He chuckled loudly as he leaned back. I was silent, and knew him as one truly touched by an understanding of the Divine that my weak visions and efforts had not yet reached. The Divine Touch was so visible upon him, his head fairly glowed.

We spoke only briefly a few more times, before he went on with his tour of Italian retreats, but his words stayed with me and helped to damp my anger and my frustration down. We were approaching a time of completion of one phase, I and my fellow students, but this land of ours was approaching a time of war. It was a great teacher to me, but only because Another Teacher shone the light of his soul into mine.

CHAPTER 2

When first I fully heard the words of the Christ on the Mount, I was filled with a sense of shame and of glory, in equal combinations. It was the impetus for me to spend long hours in front of the Cross, hoping that I would receive some greater understanding of what it was to feel the flow of the Divine constantly into one’s thoughts and one’s heart.

One day, after Mass, I was filled with the usual sense of the coldness of the stone floor, numbing my toes and my limbs and my torso, as I lay prostrate in front of the altar. My inner visions were filled with an image of Christ in his torment, frightening and horrible. As I struggled to think of his glory and mercy instead, the cold became so fierce that it was like an icy torture, freezing that vision of his blood into my mind. At least an hour had passed in this way, my sorrow as heavy as the cold air on the floor of the chapel, when a tingling feeling came into the crown of my head and into my sternum, followed by a wide and heavy warmth that spread out to every extremity in my body. As I wondered at this, I also felt the incredible relief of no longer feeling the intense chill of the stone floor.

A piercing quality came into the tingling, until it felt as though a quick, sharp pain came into my side. My body became a thing of heaviness, and my thoughts were dull and slow. But a light came into my closed eyes, and the back of my neck felt filled with a sense of lightness. It spread throughout my flesh within moments, and I felt held in the lap of an incredible Love. I felt saturated with Brightness, and I did not feel the passing of time.

When I arose, blood came from my hands, darkening the brown robe I wore. My side was sticky, too, and my eyes felt gritty, as though I had slept away the day. Brother Joseph came to the door of the chapel and held a hand to his heart as he saw me. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but no words came from him.

I’m afraid I need some cleaning up. I seem to have scraped open my hands upon the stones as I prayed. I brushed at my robe and my face as I turned to him. The hands that came away from my face seemed to have even more blood upon them than before, and I began to feel bewildered. My consciousness was still filled with that unearthly sense of being filled with a Living Light, and my mind seemed unable to make sense of the state of my body.

Here now, let me help. Seeing my confused state, Brother Joseph finally found his voice. As ever, when seeing someone in need, his natural energy and grace as a healer came to the fore. He came beside me, supporting my greater height with his strong, wide arm, and led me down the short hallway to my little cell and to my cot. The basin of water on the dresser next to the bed held little, so he bade me lay back and rest, while he grasped the basin in his fists and scurried down the hall to fill it. I could hear him calling to someone as his steps faded away, but I was in a dreamy state of joy, into which discomfort was just beginning to intrude.

I must have slipped into a daze or into a sleep, for when I was conscious again, several people were in my little room. Their bodies filled the space, but, even more, their emotions crowded it. My spiritual advisor, Father Amos, was there, and he pushed past

Brother Joseph, who seemed to be trying to wash my feet. The anger on the face of Father Amos was enough to make me wish I had not awoken.

What have you done, you foolish boy? He shouted into my face, bending over me so closely that I could smell the garlic and thyme of the lunch stew on his breath. I opened my mouth to reply, all the while rolling my eyes around the room to try to make sense of his anger and of the presence of the other two brothers who stood, white-faced, with towels in their arms.

He doesn’t understand what has happened. Brother Joseph said softly. He reached across my body with a broad hand as if to calm Father Amos, or to pull him back from my face. At that, Father Amos stood straight, stilling his voice, but also narrowing his