In the beginning

In the beginning one of the first things my guardian angel put on paper was a drawing of a heart; from the centre of the heart he drew a rose as though it was growing out from the heart. Then gently and still to my great astonishment he introduced himself as my guardian angel, Daniel. He left me bewildered but with great joy at the same time. I was so happy that I was almost flying around the house, my feet barely touching the ground and I was repeating loudly: “I am the luckiest person on earth, and I am probably the only person on earth who could communicate in such a way with her angel!”

The following day my angel returned to me as before. I spent endless joyful hours communicating with him. Again, the next day he returned, but this time, to my great surprise, he brought with him a multitude of angels of different choirs. I felt that the gates of heaven were suddenly wide open because I could easily sense this great movement of angels from above. They all appeared excited and happy, just like when someone is expecting something wonderful to happen. From the way they rejoiced, I understood that heaven was having a feast and they were celebrating. Then, the angels all together sang in one voice these words: “A happy event is about to come!” I knew that whatever that event would be, it concerned me directly, but, although I tried hard to guess, I could not tell what it was. This chorus was sung all day long, with the same words and only a few minutes of silence in between this chorus. Every time heaven opened, the angels repeated the same chorus.

The first words my angel pronounced about God were the following: “God is near you and loves you.” I must have wounded the Lord very much this minute, because His words had no effect on me whatsoever. When my angel pronounced these words about God, I remember that I thought it was a normal thing for an angel to say, since angels lived near God. I did not reply and my angel did not add anything more.

Only a few days later, my angel suddenly changed attitude with me and I noticed how very grave he became. In a very solemn voice he asked me to read The Word. I pretended I did not know what The Word meant and asked him the meaning of it. With this, my angel became even more grave telling me that I knew very well what he meant, nevertheless, he told me that it was the Holy Bible. I already had my answer on my tongue and told him I did not have one at home. He said that he knew that I did not have one. He asked me to go and fetch one. Arguing still with him, I said that he was asking me the impossible, because in a Moslem country in which I lived then, (Bangladesh), the bookstores did not sell Bibles. He said that I should go immediately to the American School, where my son went, and fetch one from their library. I was debating whether to go or simply stay at home and refuse. The other thing that was embarrassing me was how would my husband and all my friends react to all this. I simply could not see myself standing in front of them with a Bible! Already I was thinking of places in the house where I would hide it, were I to bring one home. But seeing again the grave look on my angel’s face I decided to obey him. So I went to the school and saw several Bibles on the shelves. I chose one and brought it home. I opened it to read, just as my angel had asked me to do. My eyes fell on the psalms: I read, but could not understand a single word. This was a sign from God, showing me how blind I was.

The Purification

My angel came back to me still very grave and reproached me for certain acts I had done in my lifetime that displeased God very much. Then he reproached me of how I had thrown at God’s Face His gifts, gifts that He had given me but that I had not appreciated at all. With this he started to remind me and show me the sins I had never confessed. He showed them to me as on a screen. He reminded me of the event and of how much it offended God. But the most severe reproaches I received were about the rejection of God’s gifts. My angel told me that it was a great offence to God to deny and throw away His gifts. He made me see my sins with the eyes of God, the way God sees them and not the way we see them. They were so monstrous that I despised myself while weeping bitterly. This state I was put in was, I understood later on, a grace from God so that I would repent sincerely. I was shown my sins so crystal clear, exposing the interior of my soul so openly, that it was as if I was turned inside out. I suddenly realized how Adam and Eve must have felt after they had sinned, when God approached them in His Light, facing them. My soul was uncovered and at display; it felt naked, loathsome and ugly. I could only tell my angel between my sobs that I do not deserve a decent death, and that being like I am, so utterly wicked, I should die and be cut into small pieces and thrown away to the hyenas.

This purification must have gone on for almost a week. It felt like fire, a cleansing fire purifying the interior of my soul, and it was a very painful experience indeed.

The Our Father Taught by Our Creator

After this experience that had left me shattered, God our Eternal Father revealed Himself to me. I did not see Him with the eyes of my soul, as I used to see my angel, but I knew it was Him and heard Him. I remember that my reaction was one like, “Ah, it is God and He can help us now!” This is why He asked me, “Do you really believe I can help you?” And I answered Him, “Yes!” then I remember going near the window saying to Him, “Look! Look how the world has become!” I wanted to show Him how the world had become. God did not comment but asked me to pray to Him the Our Father. I prayed to Him the Our Father while He was with me, listening, and when I finished He said that He was not pleased with the way I said it because I prayed it too fast. So I repeated it all over again to Him but slower. Again He told me that He was not pleased because I was moving. He asked me to pray it again. I prayed it again and in the end God said that it was not satisfying Him still. I prayed it several times but every time He said He was not pleased. I started to wonder, I started to wonder whether He was making me pray all the Our Fathers that I had not been praying all these years in one single day! I had started in the morning and now it was night. Suddenly He was satisfied, for every sentence I pronounced, He said, “Good!”, with delight. I will try to give an example to explain what really happened:

If you were visited one day by a relative you had never met before because he lived in another country; in the beginning of your encounter you might tend to feel distant to him and maybe formal. But the more time would go by during that day you would seem to feel closer to him than in the very beginning, and so by the end of that day you would notice that a sympathy developed in you that was not there before.

And this is how it was with my first encounter with God. When I was praying the Our Father, to God, in the beginning I was distant, but His visit which lasted the whole day changed me because when I was saying this prayer to Him, I was enjoying His presence and the words I was telling Him took some meaning. He was so fatherly, very tender and very warm. The intonation of His Voice was making me feel so much at ease, that somehow, during that day, instead of responding, “Yes Lord,” I found myself saying, “Yes, Dad.” I had later on apologized to God for saying, “Dad,” but He said that He had taken that word like a jewel. He seemed so very pleased. And that is how finally I realized that God had feelings and that He wanted me to tell Him this prayer with MY HEART.

Satan’s Assaults

Before I come into this paragraph I would like to write what Father Marie-Eugene says in his book, “I am a Daughter of the Church” about demoniac attacks.

“What is at stake in this encounter between the human and the divine, the purity of God and the soul’s impurity, is too important for the devil not to intervene in it with all the power at his disposal. Yet a little while and the soul purified by the dark night will be secure against his attacks and will be to him a terrible thing. Hence the devil makes use of the advantages he still possesses over it because of its imperfections and its attachments to the sensible. Saint John of the Cross notes that ‘the evil one takes his stand, with great cunning, on the road which leads from sense to spirit.”‘ (Living Flame, st.iii; Peers, HI, 83)

“The darkness of these regions, the soul’s disarray, disconcerted as it is by the newness of its experiences and the intensity of its suffering, create conditions particularly favourable to the interventions of the prince of darkness and of lies.”

“By certain exterior signs of calm and of deep silence in the senses, the devil easily guesses that the soul is receiving divine communications. Our mystical doctor says:

‘Of those favours which come through a good angel God habitually allows the enemy to have knowledge: partly so that he may do that which he can against them according to the measure of justice, and that thus he may not be able to allege with truth that no opportunity is given him for conquering the soul, as he said concerning Job (Dark Night, Bk. II, xxiii; Peers, 1,449)

“Such are the facts in the problem of the dark night of the spirit, and the causes that produce it. This night is an encounter, or rather a real combat, organized by loving Wisdom. God establishes His perfect reign in the soul only after taking away its unfitness for the divine and conquering all the forces of evil that have any power over it.”

This was so that the reader would understand better why God allows Satan to intervene.

Just after this delightful day I had spent with our Father in Heaven, all the fury of hell broke out! In a very savage way Satan attacked me. The first thing I heard from him sounded more like the growl of a wild animal than a voice. That growl seemed to say, “GOOOO!” I guessed that “Go” meant that I should stop having communications with my angel and with God. All distressed I turned around in search of my angel, but Satan seemed to have taken all the space and with great hatred began to call me all sorts of names. He produced such anguish and such terror in my soul that I could have died had it not been that God had a plan for me. I never sensed such fury before. I ordered him to go away and this seemed to raise his fury even more. It was like the fury of a madman. Fuming with rage and like someone out of his mind he growled, his voice was very hoarse when he said: “EH? withdraw from here you b…, withdraw, or else, fire in hell does the rest!” I heard myself answering him: “No!” With my “No” I meant that I will NOT LEAVE the presence of God nor my angel. Then he snapped back that I was cursed and called me all sorts of dirty names.

It is difficult to explain this anguish the devil can infuse in the soul. This phenomenon that occurs is something that although your logic tells you you’re not mad, you yourself yet cannot control. This anguish used to come in waves, as if Satan himself were not enough, he sent other demons too to attack me. When they used to attack me it was something frightening growing within me, nothing to do with exterior fear. It was a feeling I was unable to push away.

My poor angel, in these terrible moments, moments that made me believe sometimes I would lose my mind, could only tell me one word, “PRAY!” I prayed and begged my angel to help me come out of this experience, for it seemed to last forever.

The Battle Between My Angel and Satan

As though it was not enough to be tormented in the daytime, Satan came too at nighttime. He would not let me sleep. Every time I was about to fall asleep, he would try to suffocate me. I sometimes would feel him like an eagle who would put his claws inside my stomach, and squeeze all the breath out of me. I felt the battle around me, I felt how I was in the middle of this battle, between my angel and the devil. Then one day, as if nothing had happened, everything ceased. Satan abandoned his attacks and I had a few days peace. All this experience left me rather weak, but more attached than ever before to my angel.

In my eyes my guardian angel began to be everything, and he filled my life. I clung to him for dear life so to say. I realized how much our guardian angels protected us, loved us, cared for us, guarded us, cried for us, prayed for us, suffered with us and shared everything with us. Sorrows and joys were shared.

To the horror of the devil, since he guessed what God had in store for me, he came back into the scene. Cunning as he is, this time he changed strategy. He used the classical way to deceive me and appeared to me like my angel. He attached a great importance on how to portray God to me. His aim, since he guessed that God would approach me for a mission, was to make me fear God in the wrong way, so that when God’s time came to communicate with me, I would run away from Him.

I admit that in the beginning he managed to deceive me and I believed what he said about God, because he used my ignorance to feed my brain with a false image of God. He portrayed God to me as a fearful judge, with little tolerance for His creatures, and that with the slightest error on our part, He would punish us in a terrible way. This went on for a few days.

I came to the stage where I could not discern who was who. I could not tell if I was with my angel or if it was the evil one aping my angel. I had nobody to turn to for consulting or take advice from either. I was quite alone. I also did not want to share this with my husband, for fear of upsetting him. Satan believing he had now the upper hand, started to tighten the knot, by showing signs of evil, wickedness, confusing me. To make things worse, every day that went by, he brought more and more demons with him, to invade me, making it very difficult for my guardian angel to protect me. God allowed me to overhear the devil once, while he was giving orders to his angels to go and attack and paralyse me. These fallen angels surrounded me, mocked me, lied to me and called me all sorts of dirty names. They also nick-named me “Pia” but with mockery. God allowed all this to happen, for this too was another way that He made use of, to purify my soul.

My Purification Continues

A few days passed and suddenly my angel asked me to go to the seminary to find a priest and show him the messages. I did exactly as he told me. But I was very disappointed. I had great expectations and what I got was a blow. The priest thought I was going through a psychological crisis and believed I was on the verge of schizophrenia. He wanted to examine both my hands. He took both my hands and analyzed them. I knew what he had in mind, he was trying to find traces of any sort of abnormality in my hands as in certain mental cases. He believed that now God had given him this heavy cross, that was me, to carry. He pitied me and asked me to come anytime to see him. I went every second or third day to visit him. I did not like going to him because he treated me as a mental case in the beginning. This went on for about three or four months. The only reason why I persevered in visiting him was so that I should prove to him I was not mental. Finally after some time he realized that I was sane. One day he even said that what I had might be a charisma from God.

My guardian angel in the meantime was leading me towards God, and one of the first lessons that he gave me was on discernment. These teachings on discernment infuriated the devil even more because it meant that even though he would appear like the angel of light, I would know the difference.

My angel told me that Jesus will approach me and that his mission (my angel’s) was coming towards its end. When I heard this news I was sad. I did not want my angel to leave me. He tried to reason with me explaining that he was only God’s servant and that now I should turn towards God. He tried to explain that his mission with me was to take me to God and hand me safely over to Him. But this was all the more painful for me. I could not bear the idea that from one day to the other I would not communicate with my angel.

As my angel Daniel foretold to me, one day Jesus came in his place. When He revealed Himself to me, He asked me, “Which house is more important, your house or My House?” I answered Him, “Your House.” I felt Him happy with my reply, He blessed me and left.

Again, instead of my angel, the Lord came to me, and said, “It is I,” and when He saw I was hesitating, He said clearly, “It is I, God.” But instead of rejoicing I was unhappy. I was missing terribly my angel. I loved my angel deeply and the mere thought that he would not come again because his place would be taken by God was disturbing me. I would like to mention here, what the Lord told me regarding the love I had for my angel. He said that no one ever loved his angel as much as I have, and He hoped to say one day to me these words: “No man ever loved Me in your era as much as you have.”

Now my angel kept in the background. God asked me, “Do you love Me?” I said I did. He did not blame me for not loving Him enough, but instead He said very gently, “Love Me more.”

The other time the Lord revealed Himself to me He told me, “Revive My House,” and again, “Renew My House.” I could not remember replying, but I knew that what He was asking me was impossible.

The following days were visits either by my angel or Jesus, sometimes both at the same time. My angel was preaching to me, he was asking me to make peace with God. When he asked me that, I was very