Victim Souls

Jan 24

Jesus Christ: Yesterday, Today, and Forever!

As of your reading of this, I will be closing in on the end of my third week of Exodus 90, the 90 day program designed to help liberate men from bad habits, vice, and sin. So far (and I have 69 days to go so I could still go off the rails) it has been the best thing I have done for myself in 16½ years as a priest. I’ll write a pastor’s column on it and my experience in the future. There are three major aspects to E-90: fraternity, prayer, and penance, but it’s this last one, the penitential part, that scares so many men off: no sweets, no snacks, fast two days week, only water, milk, tea & coffee (without dairy or sugar), daily exercise, and, the biggest of them all for many, only cold showers. Yikes you say.

We don’t like to suffer, yet we have to accept it to achieve any greater cause. Two-year-olds have to suffer potty training to be able to use toilets; children and young adults have to suffer being educated (homework, etc.) in order to do all kinds of good stuff; athletes have to suffer exercise to prepare for competition; inventors suffer countless tedious hours zeroing in on one thing in the hope of achieving an uncertain goal; you and I suffer the sacrifices of practicing the Catholic faith for God’s glory and the salvation of souls; Jesus suffered torture and death in the chance that we would accept the responsibilities of salvation. You get the picture – no suffering, no gain.

Well there is another kind of suffering whose merits are more sublime, and that is suffering that one willingly acquiesces to for love of God – without knowing what good is coming from it. At best we “offer it up”, and at worst resent it. A two-year-old doesn’t realize how grateful they are going to be when they are potty trained; as far as they are concerned, their diapers are working just fine. A child having to do homework may not see the value in it. It is the same in the spiritual life, we frequently don’t see the good our suffering is doing, but we will in the next life; and that suffering may in fact be doing a tremendous amount of good, as long as it is lovingly offered up to God.

Now we turn to the title of this pastor’s column – victim souls. Some rare souls are given extraordinary suffering from God for extraordinary graces for others, graces they will not know about until they enter into eternal glory. Usually this suffering takes physical form, yet it can come in other ways too (defamation, destitution, abandonment, long thankless hours of service to others, etc.), but is always willingly accepted by the penitent without knowledge of what God is using it for.

The following article by Ray Sullivan (below) goes into more detail on this rare form of suffering. I hope it helps you understand better the unseen merit of offering up your suffering to God, and helps you to embrace it with greater peace and faith.

May Almighty God Bless You,

Victim Souls Defeat Satan
by Ray Sullivan
from The Catholic Stand

So who are “victim souls” who defeat Satan? Victim souls are people specifically chosen by the Blessed Virgin Mary to be united with her Son in his intense and holy suffering, in order to help save other souls around the world from hell. Their extreme pain somehow mystically atones for the punishment that is due for my sins and the sins of others around the planet. This spiritual battle results in defeating many of Satan’s demons, and banishing them from earth into hell, where they belong. Victim souls are totally united with the suffering of Jesus on the cross 24/7/365.

According to the book, Mary Crushes the Serpent, the exorcist author says that the Blessed Virgin Mary chooses victim souls from among the weakest people. After gaining their voluntary permission to suffer pain in body AND soul to save countless other souls from hell, she grants them the graces to withstand it all (these graces do not ease the intense agony; rather, they give the victim soul the gift of final perseverance to suffer mightily until death, which sometimes takes decades). Mary then attaches demons to the victim soul, so that they will engage the victim in a spiritual battle of horrifying visions, excruciating pain, and the feeling of total abandonment by God. The demons cannot stand the willing suffering of the victim souls, because these souls undertake this battle out of their love for God. For the demons, it is like a human existing in hell. Once the love of the victim soul overcomes the attacks of the demons for good, the demons are then banished to their home in hell. During this fight to the finish, countless other souls around the world are thus saved from damnation. It is important to remember that a victim soul imitates our Lord and His Mother in their voluntary suffering for sins of mankind; Jesus, by his crucifixion, and Mary, by having her soul pierced with a sword.

Crucified Souls

The book also states that there are countless unknown “crucified souls” as well. These crucified souls join with the victim souls to fight Satan. They undergo the following suffering:

“all spiritual disturbances and darknesses of soul; the feeling of abandonment by God; temptations against faith; and temptations against purity leading to discouragement and despair.”

So if you, like me, have experienced any of the above repeatedly, just know that you are part of Mary’s plan to assist the victim souls and St. Michael in their mission to save others from hell.

Victim Souls in the Bible

St. Paul is the prime example of this in Sacred Scripture. He says the following:

“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” (Galatians 2:20)
“Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s sufferings for the sake of his body, that is, the church.” (Colossians 1:24)

In the first quote from Galatians, St. Paul says that he has been crucified with Christ. Now Paul was a Roman citizen, and Roman citizens, condemned to death, were beheaded, not crucified. So this statement of his has a spiritual meaning. Some think that Paul may have been a stigmatist, having the wounds of Christ on his body. Others think that it refers to his references of suffering in 2 Corinthians 11:23-27:

“Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one – I am talking like a madman – with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I have received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I have been beaten with rods; once I was stoned. Three times I have been shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brethren; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure.”

St. Paul shows us the right way to become united with Christ. He offers up his own suffering to the Lord while doing His work on earth. He becomes another christ (lower case), not only in his priesthood, but also in his agony. In so doing, he helps to defeat the plan of Satan, not only in his life, but also in the life of the world.

In the second quote above, from Colossians 1:24, St. Paul seems to indicate that the sufferings of Christ were not sufficient for our salvation. But St. John Paul II once said that what St. Paul really means is not that; rather, it means that what is missing from Christ’s suffering is our own suffering united with his. In other words, the committed followers of Christ must suffer with him, if we are to truly be his followers. St. Peter agrees with him in 1 Peter 4:13:

“But rejoice in so far as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.”

So while not all of us are chosen for the great suffering of St. Paul and other victim souls, we can and should EVERY DAY offer up our pain and misery to God so as to unite ourselves with Him on the cross. Bishop Sheen lamented the fact that so much suffering was wasted, and not offered up to God. And for sure, not a day should go by without our meditating on His holy passion. Why? Because meditation on the Passion means that the devil does not have access to our imagination for that time, and it also is healing for our souls.

Other biblical victim souls would include the Blessed Virgin Mary (her soul was pierced with a sword), and the 12 apostles, who all suffered mightily for preaching the word of God. All were martyred, except for St. John, possibly because he was the only apostle brave enough to be with Jesus during His crucifixion.

Other Victim Souls

So who are some other victim souls?

One of my favorites is St. Gemma Galgani, a saint who died in 1903 at the age of 25. She received the stigmata (the wounds of Christ) in her own body on June 8, 1899. She had a great devotion to the passion of Jesus, and in one of her visions with Jesus, He told her that it is through suffering that one learns to love. She had many visions of Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Mary to help her through her agony with the stigmata. But that wasn’t her only suffering. She was also physically attacked by the devil. Satan dislocated her bones, pulled some of her hair out, stole a book that she wrote on her life, and even threw her down the stairs. He tempted her with sensual thoughts so much that she dunked herself into ice cold water in a well outside in the garden! He told her not to pray for the conversion of sinners; this seemed to make him the angriest. It was only through prayer and her total abandonment to Jesus that she survived his unholy attacks.

St. Gemma once said:

“It is not enough to look at the Cross or wear it, we must carry it in the depths of our hearts.”

In other words, we shouldn’t just be admirers of Jesus on the cross; instead, we should join him in his suffering, so as to help Him to atone for the sins of the world. And this she did, for four years, until her death. To learn more about this great saint, a free book about her is available here.

Another victim soul, relatively unknown, is St. Serafina of San Gimignano, Italy. She lived during the 13th century, the time of St. Dominic, St. Anthony, and St. Francis. She had a great devotion to St. Gregory the Great, and to the Blessed Virgin Mary as well. When she was ten, her body underwent paralysis, and she chose to lie on a wooden pallet, instead of on a bed. For five years she endured this pain, with worms from the pallet infecting her back. However, many townspeople began to undergo miraculous recoveries as a result of her intercession. St. Gregory appeared to her in a vision and told her that she would die on his feast day of March 12. When she died on that date, the church bells in town somehow rang by themselves. Violets mysteriously grew from the wooden pallet once her body was removed. The town of San Gimignano still celebrates her feast day on March 12. And in a testimony to her holiness, violets grow from the walls of San Gimignano to this day.

The most famous modern day victim soul is St. Padre Pio, who died in 1968. He was the first priest to experience the stigmata, or the wounds of Christ in his body. He endured them for fifty years. He was regularly beaten up by the devil. Satan sometimes took the form of a naked woman to entice him to sin. He performed exorcisms, healed the blind, heard hundreds of confessions daily, had the gift of bilocation, and he knew if you were hiding sins in the confessional from him. He undertook the task of building a free hospital for the care of the sick. This great Franciscan priest and imitator of Christ continues to save many souls from hell today, if we ask him to adopt us, and our families, as his spiritual children.

In the movie, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, the true story of modern day victim soul Anneliese Michel was told. She was a young German woman who was possessed by Satan, and who was also visited by the Blessed Virgin Mary. Mary gave her the choice to either continue suffering for the salvation of others, or to quit. She chose to continue the suffering, and she eventually died. The priest who exorcised her was accused of denying her medicine for depression, and he was tried in court for murder. The exorcisms were recorded on tape, and are indeed horrifying.

What It All Means for Us

The bottom line is that suffering is how we all learn to love, IF we unite our misery with that of Christ’s Passion. After all, when things are easygoing and wonderful in our lives, for most of us, the tendency is to forget about God and to enjoy the pleasures of earthly life. But that isn’t for what we are here. Our purpose now is to know God, to love God, and to serve God on earth, so as to be happy with Him in heaven forever. Suffering with Christ is the catalyst for those things to happen. Most of us will never be asked to be victim souls. However, if we are true to our Catholic faith, we can become a crucified soul. As such, we join in the spiritual battle with the victim souls, as well as St. Michael and his legion of saints and angels to defeat Satan, and thus save souls who otherwise would have been lost in hell forever.

Bible Quotes on Suffering

Acts 9:15-16: But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel; or I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.”

Romans 5:3: More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance.

Philippians 1:29: For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake.

2 Timothy 2:3: Take your share of suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.