I’m quite partial to Christine Watkins’ book, The Warning: Testimonies and Prophecies of the Illumination of Conscience, because it is the reason that I’m a real Catholic today.
“Real Catholic” as opposed to what?
To the phony Catholic I was for a whole two years after my confirmation into the Catholic Church. I had breezed through RCIA without really absorbing the teachings and was most critical about Mary and the Saints, as well as the Real Presence in the Eucharist.
I never bothered to actually memorize the Order of the Mass. I barely knew when to sit, when to kneel, when to stand, and I couldn’t chant any of the responses. I didn’t know the Nicene Creed or the Gloria, and I was so clueless that waiting for the beginning of Mass, if I heard a fellow parishioner cough, I’d offer them a mint (and most would take it).
Once we did a mini pilgrimage from our parish to St. Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal, Canada (the border was only 45 minutes away), and on the bus there was much singing and praying. When a cradle-Catholic friend asked me to “take over the second decade of the Joyful Mysteries,” I didn’t know what she was talking about.
I also thought I could hang on to my New Age ways in a sort of “lite version”: Tarot readings and divination with runes, astrology, etc., but only for myself, not for others. Reiki sessions, but only for my family and friends, not on a large, commercial scale. A book shelf full of statues of Buddha, the goddess Tara, and the Egyptian dog-headed god Anubis, but the “Sacred Heart Jesus” statue was on the top shelf to kind of monitor and rule over the others.
Well, let me tell you, that didn’t go over so well with God. (Surprise!) Every once in a while, I’d check up with Him to see how I was doing in my new-fangled Catholic costume—and that’s really what it was, a sort of cosplay—and was shocked and horrified when a random stab into the Bible resulted in this message:
There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations, the Lord your God is driving them out before you. (Deuteronomy 18:10–12)
At some point, I almost reverted to the Protestant Church during that fateful year of 2020, which was also the year where I ran for office as Vermont State Representative.
The day after the (lost) election, when God finally had my full attention again, I received a swift and well-deserved kick in the butt that changed my spiritual trajectory completely. (Read about this major wakeup call here and here.)
The Warning—also called the Illumination of Conscience, the Mini-Judgment, or the Final Day of Mercy—is supposed to be a global event, where the sky turns black and it will seem as if two celestial bodies are colliding (I take that to mean a blinding flash and deafening crash and the earth literally shaking). Then a huge cross will appear in the sky, and from the points where the five wounds of Jesus were, rays of light will shine down on the earth.
Time will stand still for a short while, and every living soul on the planet will get a full life review being shown their sins and how they affected others. Some will die of sheer fright, most will repent and turn to the Catholic faith. When the Warning ends, priests will have their hands full hearing confessions and performing baptisms.
For six weeks, the devil will be chained so each person will have a chance to turn to Jesus out of their own free will (I take that to mean that all communications—radio, TV, internet, phones—will be down so we can’t be influenced by mass media). After that, he’ll be back full steam to sow confusion in those who haven’t converted. Only those who convert and cling to Jesus will be able to withstand the forces of darkness (maybe this is what Ephesians 6:13 is about, “Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day.”)
This day is the Final Day of Mercy when God reaches out to us so we may choose sides, for Him or against Him. Whoever doesn’t choose, automatically chooses Satan. No more room for lukewarmness and indecision, no more gray zones.
Several Catholics mystics have talked about this event.
The English martyr St. Edmund Campion (1540-1581) talked about a “great day wherein the terrible Judge should reveal all men’s consciences and try every man of each kind of religion. This is the day of change, this is the Great Day which I threatened, comfortable to the well-being and terrible to all heretics.”
Jesus told St. Faustina Kowalska, “Write this: before I come as the Just Judge, I come as the King of Mercy. Before the day of justice arrives, this sign in the sky will be given to mankind. All light in the heavens will be extinguished, and there will be great darkness over the whole earth. Then the sign of the Cross will be seen in the sky, and from the holes where the hands and the feet of the Savior were nailed will come forth a brilliant light, which will illuminate the Earth for a period of time. This will take place shortly before the last day.”
In 1945, a young German stigmatist named Grete Gansforth received this message from Jesus: “Humanity has not listened to My holy Mother, revealed at Fatima to exhort her to do penance. So I will warn the world myself... I am all ready. The terra will shake and be shaken. It will be terrible: a small judgment! But don't be afraid. I am with you. You will rejoice and thank Me. Those who are waiting for Me have My help, My grace, My love. But for those who are not in a state of grace, it will be frightening... I will make myself known to men. Every soul will recognize Me as its God. I come! I am at the door. The earth will shake and moan.”
During the Marian apparitions in Garabandal, Spain, one of the four seers, Conchita Gonzalez, claimed to have received the following message from Our Lady: “Before the miracle, the Virgin told me on January 1, 1965, there will be a warning that the world make amends. This Warning, like the Punishment, is very dreadful for the good and for the bad: for the good to bring them closer to God, for the bad to warn them that the end of time is coming and that these are the last warnings... It will not cause death by itself, but it is possible that some die of it, so the emotion will be intense. Death would be a thousand times better. We will see that this Warning comes from God... each human being will therefore see the ugliness of his sins and their participation in the Passion of Christ.”
But not everyone views the Warning in a bad light. I found this YouTube Short by Queen of Peace Media, in which a Benedictine nun, Sr. Gertrude Gillette, describes why she is actually looking forward to it.
I want to see the Lord. I want to see Him so badly that I don’t care what He does to me when I see Him… I will throw myself down on the ground and ask for His total forgiveness, and He can burn all the recesses and pockets of sin in me that need to be burnt out.
That’s the spirit!
Honestly, I feel the same way. I know I’m a wretched sinner, so I’ll throw myself at His feet and beg for mercy, but to be able to see His face…!
The main reason I look forward to the Warning is that afterwards, there’s no second-guessing anymore. Millions will convert to the one true faith. We’ll all know the truth, and we’ll all know where we stand. And if we can avoid being confused and deceived by the devil and his human minions in the aftermath of the Warning—which will probably mark the rise of the Antichrist—we’ll stand firm together in the evil day. What a time to be alive.
God bless you!
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> if I heard a fellow parishioner cough, I’d offer them a mint (and most would take it).
Necessary medication is permitted, and I think it's fair *to them* to charitably imagine that this is how they understood your offer, although *you* in hindsight understand your offer as actually a sad ignorance of the fast before communion.
Having said this, though, I went to Mass with someone recently out-of-state at a chapel where there was a *large* supply of individually-wrapped white lifesavers in the hall on the way in and my companion directed my attention to them and recommended that I take one in case I or the person next to me needed it. I was next-door to being scandalized (like, yes, let's literally *institutionalize* skating at the edges of what it means to fast, instead of just putting paper cups in the bathroom and accepting that sometimes other human beings make noises.)
With regard to the Warning: I pay zero attention to "end times" discourse. I think it is beautiful and providential that your attention was directed to this book and that you read in it something that opened your eyes to your own (at the time lukewarm) state. I think that personal accounts and conversion stories can pierce someone's heart sometimes. I do *not* think that the things that visionary people have seen or heard are generally going to literally happen the way that they have tried to put them into words afterwards, and I think that for some people who go on to read about them, there can sometimes be a risk in fixating on how things will allegedly be. The risk is related to the desire *to know the future* (*you* know that this is one of the ways the enemy tempts people!), and to the desire to plan for the future which comes from a fear of the future and a desire for control, etc., when God wants us to trust Him (and, in some individual matters and at some particular times, to trust *blindly*.) So when I hear people talk about three days of darkness, or about buying blessed candles, or about the so-called rapture, or about this illumination of conscience (I don't recall whether I've heard of that one before), I ignore all of it. I do not even check on "did a saint say this? was it paraphrased? what did the saint really say?", which in other matters I might check on and then give credence (those other matters would be "something that I am urged to do *here* and *now*" - by somebody who is telling me "a saint said to do this". Pray the rosary? yes they probably said to do that; anything else, I usually try to look up a primary source.) The risk is also related to the desire to put things off! By expecting something to be in the future, that makes it unreal to us. Maybe we hear "in the future there will be a searing illumination of my conscience" and then we think (maybe not even really aware that this is how we are thinking) "well I'll just wait until then to fully convert" when I could actually ask God *right now* for everything that I imagine He will do to me *then*: "let me know how I have most offended Thee", etc. If we are mostly excited about what He will do *to other people* then we need to stay in our lane and keep our eyes on our own work; if we are excited about what He will do *in me personally* then ask for it *now*. Ephesians 6:13 cannot be *only* about something that was centuries in the future to the people it was written to, and in any case, we are under attack *every day* in many very banal yet serious ways (for example, I am probably tempted to judge the people who institutionalized taking a mint in to Mass) so for my own convenience I would just regard the evil day as "today" every day.
But as you noted there is another reason to be excited. As I heard in a homily recently, we should look forward to and desire the Second Coming (the priest giving the homily said that he hears from people who are afraid of the Second Coming and do not look forward to it, and that is why he talked about it.) Without going into details, we know that Christ *is* going to return. We ought to be like a golden retriever or some other Very Good Dog (and specifically the kind that has given its heart to one owner, like our dog when I was a kid and she was, in her opinion, my father's dog) that hears its master's footsteps in the evening as he is coming home from work, the jingle of his keys as he gets them out to unlock the door. Our tails should be wagging!, because he is almost home; we cannot see him but we want very much to be with him, and if we are with him then nothing else matters (and if we could open the door we would but we just have paws). BUT THIS TOO we can ask for NOW as individuals; we can desire and ask for the unitive state (which is nothing other than a union of my will with God's will: wanting what He wants, in entirety) and this is a mutual possession of God (you are Christ's and Christ is yours), in the darkness of faith. My understanding is that it is a bit of a hard road to get there (St Teresa of Avila says that a determined determination is necessary) consisting in its essence of what your Benedictine nun says: "and He can burn all the recesses and pockets of sin in me that need to be burnt out" - this is precisely the second "night" of St John of the Cross. Who can endure the day of the Lord?, like refining silver; like a consuming fire. And what day is that? Perhaps today (to begin with).
Sorry, I have gotten a bit incoherent.