Visible and Invisible: Angels, Demons, and Ghosts

The first line of the Nicene Creed has always struck me, even since I was a little kid.

“I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.”

Specifically, it’s the phrase “all things visible and invisible”. Invisible, in this case, refers not only to things that can’t be seen, by the naked eye, but can be seen in other ways, like bacteria, or quarks, or the Crab Nebula, or wind. Invisible refers to the spiritual realities that Catholics (and many denominations of Christians, but I am going to speaking for Catholics in this post, because that’s what I know) acknowledge to be true.

I believe that besides God, other things exist that cannot be detected by any of our methods of detection. And October seems like a good time to talk about that. (Not to mention that it's Friday the 13th... XD) (I'm not superstitious, so I don't care, but I do think it's rather amusing that that's how it worked out.) 

When people talk about things that are invisible, they often ask about ghosts. “Do Catholics believe in ghosts? Can Catholics believe in ghosts?”

That is a fascinating question, but it’s really only skimming the surface of the invisible things that Catholics believe exist. (I won’t quibble overly much with the question, but I will say that Catholics ‘believe in’ God, and we ‘acknowledge the existence of’ everything else. 😉) I'll come back to ghosts at the end of the post, but I'm going to start with some other invisible things. 

I believe that angels exist. I have never had an experience personally that proves for me without a doubt that there is an angel watching out for me, but I do believe I have a guardian angel. (And probably the fact that I’ve never noticed its presence means that it’s doing its job.) And there are many people who have had experiences where they’ve seen their guardian angels, or somehow experienced their presence. 

I have had experiences that suggest to me that my guardian angel is real (like the time I was woken up just in time to go to daily Mass in the tiny town that my dairy judging team was passing through on the way to Nationals, despite my not setting my alarm, and what a good Mass that was), but never something that has conclusively proved it to me.

I did have an experience recently where, on advice from one of our priests, I asked my guardian angel to talk to the guardian angel of someone who I was going to have a difficult discussion with, and the conversation went 300% better than I expected. Not proof, but a wonderful experience. 

There are also many stories of saints who spoke with their guardian angels, or saw them, or had them do things for them, or other crazy things. A few of them can be found HERE. 

Angelology is a fascinating topic, and I could talk about it for a whole post, for sure (did you know there’s an angel in charge of gravity?) but that’s not the point of this post. The point of this post is a survey of things invisible.

Because I believe that angels exist, I believe that demons (fallen angels) exist. “Sam,” you ask, “isn’t that scary?” Well, it can be, but it shouldn’t be, because I believe that God is stronger than the powers of hell, and that He always brings greater good out of evil. (It’s no mistake that the Nicene Creed starts with God, and then talks about “all things visible and invisible”.)

I actually had an experience with this in some capacity this semester. Our Newman Center does a Living Stations of the Cross for some of our retreats, and as of last semester, I took over the job of coordinating that. The person who I took over from, Fia, warned me that the devil hates Stations (because they’re one of the most spiritually powerful parts of the retreat, calling the retreatants to repentance), and something always happens to try to derail the whole thing, but added the caveat that God is stronger than the devil, and He will always make sure that His will is done, and Stations will not be derailed.

And something always does happen…but God is always good.

Yesterday was the first retreat/Stations of the year, and I was prepared. Being Stations Coordinator is a beautiful and intense but very strange spiritual experience, because it really is entirely God working through me. It feels like Jesus is carrying the whole thing, and I just have one of my tiny little hands on it. But I digress. We rehearsed on Thursday night, and after that rehearsal at about midnight, I realized that we didn’t have enough cars. It took me until about 10 am to get all the cars we needed to take actors and singers to the town where the retreat was being held. I figured that was the attack for the retreat, and said as much to my roommate, and then mentioned one of the actors being PHENOMENAL in rehearsal the night before.

Guess who texted me not five minutes later that he wouldn’t be able to act that night.

I was kind of scared in that moment. It’s never fun to have the devil attacking something that you’re doing, and from the time I was quite small, I’ve always been scared of the idea of demons, the devil, and so on. And being on the “front lines” (I was probably quite far in the back, behind my patron saints and guardian angel and so on, but it felt “front lines”) was kind of terrifying. But knowing that if I surrendered to God, he would take care of it actually felt so powerful. There was a distinct moment when I was walking down the stairs to the chapel when I was like “literally whatever is thrown at us, Jesus will handle it. I don’t need to be afraid at all.” I could go to the chapel and say “Jesus, get this guy out of my face”, and He did. (I’m paraphrasing. That’s not what I actually said.)

The actor who couldn’t come had taken over the role (Pilate) that the guy who was supposed to play Jesus had always played before this. So, my Jesus knew Pilate’s lines. And one of my very close friends who graduated last spring had played Jesus for all the Living Stations last year, but because he’d graduated, I made him a guard (a part with no lines, and very minimal actions). So, my Guard knew how to be Jesus. At that point, I just needed to find a guard, and the second I walked out of the chapel after going to go freak out pray about it, I saw a guy I know well who was free that night and able to be the guard. Of anyone who could have been unable to act, Pilate was the easiest to replace. And the whole thing was beautiful.

(Of course, cue all the jokes from my friend-who-ended-up-playing-Jesus that God had spoken and I had to let him be Jesus for all the retreats this year, too, even though he’s graduated.)

I know that that story sounds very anecdotal in terms of demonic activity, which, fair. But I don’t think it’s a coincidence that something happens every time we do Stations. But God is always stronger, which is a very empowering thing.

If you wanted something a little stronger, it was actually a post from Bonnie Engstrom that sparked the idea for me to write this post. She’s talking about Halloween and a variety of things, and she says:

“A few years ago, one of our children would awaken to someone calling their first name, telling us the voice sounded like a little girl’s. That same child would also run down the hall in the middle of the night, screaming, crying, heart pounding, terrified of something, something they couldn’t explain but it knew our child’s name.”

Every time I read that paragraph I get shivers. It’s scary, y’all! But in the rest of the post, she talks about how she and her husband, through calling on the Name of Jesus, St. Michael the Archangel, and the Blessed Virgin Mary, as well as judicious use of holy water, had the attacks on their child stop. God is stronger.

But it’s something that she said in a later part of the post that really made me want to write this post, even if it’s not evident from how eclectic it is:

“[Catholics] look death and evil squarely in the eyes and say, “Oh, it’s you” and roll over on our beds to go back to sleep. We do this because we know that Christ has conquered death. Mary’s heel is squashing the serpent’s head. St. Michael has satan in chains, ready to cast him into Hell.”

It’s so true. That’s how I felt during the attack on Stations. “Oh, it’s you again, trying not to let me get cars, and stopping my actors from being able to come. Mhmm. Nice try. *looks offscreen* Hey, Jesus? Can you come take care of this for me?” And that's important for us to know and believe, so that we're not frightened, but trust in the power of God.

Anyway. I’ve definitely given demons enough screen time (and more than angels, which is a bit embarrassing). Time to talk about ghosts!

My family was hanging out with one of our priests before I left for the Fall Semester when Eomer asked Father something along the lines of “what about ghosts? Do you believe in ghosts?”

Father, in a typically Father move, explained things, and then told a story.

The short version: Catholics believe in ghosts, but not as a scary thing.

The longer version: So, Catholicism has this belief called ‘purgatory’. We believe, based on a certain amount of scriptural evidence, but also our Sacred Tradition, that if, when someone dies, they still have sin/stains of sin on their soul, they can’t enter heaven. (This makes sense—one wouldn’t want to come before the face of God with sins still on their soul!) But those same souls have loved God in their lives, and so won’t be going to hell. Instead, they go through a period of purification called ‘purgatory’ where they undergo purification from their ‘leftover’ sins. We can assist them to get out of purgatory faster with our prayers, and by offering Masses and sacrifices for them. (That was the quickest and dirtiest summary of purgatory EVER…if you want to know more, please check out THIS Catholic Answers article.)

Sometimes, the souls in purgatory (who we call the “Church Suffering”) will come and make contact with the “Church Militant” (us here on earth) to ask for our prayers for their speedy release from Purgatory.

There’s actually a tiny museum in the Vatican dedicated to this, and it is WILD. Take a look at some of the things in it HERE. A lot of the artifacts involve the souls in purgatory leaving burning fingerprints/handprints on things, symbolizing the purifying fire that they’re passing through in purgatory. (And apparently, the purgatory museum in the Vatican was started after there was a fire that left the mark of a sad face in a church, which the priest of the church took to be a sign from a soul in purgatory asking for prayers. He thought that was fascinating and started searching for other signs from the Church Suffering.)

A lot of the time, souls in purgatory will appear with a “ghostly” appearance, but Father says that there are two key differences between that and what we think of as ghostly activity.
1. They are not interested in talking to you. They are going to do the minimum possible that they can in order to get you to pray for their release from purgatory.
2. They are not accompanied by feelings of fear.

(If ‘ghostly’ apparition doesn’t fit either of those criteria, I think the assumption is usually that it’s demonic in some sense, but don’t quote me on that.)

The story that Father told was this.

One of the things that is part of a priest’s duty is often saying Masses for the dead (and the living, but most often, the dead). These are often requested by the deceased’s family, and they will give the priest a ‘stipend’ or donation in exchange. (This is often on an as-you-can basis, and it’s not ‘paying for’ the Mass. Originally, I think, it was a way to make sure the priest was able to eat that night and take care of his basic needs.) If a priest was to not say a Mass that he had promised to say, that is a grave sin, and according to Father, typically he can’t get out of purgatory until those promised Masses have been said. A fair number of apparitions from purgatory have been of priests asking for Masses to be said.

When Father DD was a student brother with the Dominicans, one of our other good now-priest friends (Father J) was a deacon, and every morning at 5 am, then-Deacon J would expose the Blessed Sacrament for Adoration in the chapel, and then-Brother DD and a few other brothers in his year would come and do early morning Adoration.

They would generally come in to a pitch-black church initially, because at the end of the day before, the lights would all be turned off. But one morning, the light over the Mass book, the place where they kept the records of Masses requested and Masses said, was on when they came in for Adoration. And the morning after that. And the morning after that, even though all the lights were off in the evening.

The brothers went to one of the priests and told him what was happened, and he was like “Ah. Gotcha”, and started just saying Masses in the chapel, for whatever intention was needed, and after a few Masses, the light stopped being on in the mornings. 

So, so, so. I believe that ghosts exist—but not scary ones, merely sad ones.

There you have it--all things visible and invisible. I hope you've enjoyed my ramblings. XD

And on that note…happy October, remember that God is stronger than the devil, and make sure to pray for the souls in purgatory in the month of November!