By Michael H. Brown
MISSIONARY PRIEST IN CANADA CLAIMS TO HAVE VISIONS AND SUFFER CHRIST’S FULL PASSION
@Spirit Daily
A missionary priest now staying in Canada says he has been experiencing the full suffering of Jesus since a visit to Israel in 1990.
Father Melvin Doucette of Tignish on Prince Edward Island told Spirit Daily what he has is not stigmata but a re-experiencing of Christ’s entire passion “from the Agony in the Garden right through to His death on the cross and the Resurrection.” He says when it first occurred it ensued every time he went into prayer. “I felt in my body as if I was right there with Jesus and experiencing everything he experienced. Now every Holy Week I experience the same thing.”
When asked if Christ’s suffering was different than he expected, Father Doucette, who was ordained 33 years ago (and served as a missionary to Africa for thirty of those years), says one thing that comes to mind are the thirty lashes. He says he didn’t count them but it seemed like more than forty. “I would scream from the pain at times,” he told us. “There was nobody physically beating me, but I could go through the whole thing as if I were going through the whole scourging. It was as if I was united with Him in a very special way. The thorns in the crown of thorns were like two inches long and just driven into the head. It was all very painful, but the most painful was the crucifixion itself — the nails and everything going through the body and the time on the cross and I had all this terrible feeling of not being able to breathe and this pain across the abdomen. It was absolutely terrible, it was horrible. It would last for about three hours. Death came as a great silence. Everything stopped at the moment. But right up to the moment of death there is great suffering.”
Now the priest, who has been back in Canada to look after an ailing mother, says he has been experiencing visions of the Blessed Mother. “The Virgin Mary has appeared to me three times in the last six months,” claims Father Doucette, who says he is in good standing with both his bishop in Africa and the local bishop in Prince Edward (who we asked to contact us if there were any problems). “The first time was in December and the second time was at the end of January and the third time was the 21st of April.”
Father Doucette asserts that the Virgin “comes completely as a human being and all dressed with a long white dress and a blue veil over her head, holding Jesus in her right arm and Jesus is about two years old and has His hand up. She’s standing a piece of ground and it’s in the shape of Prince Edward’s Island and she speaks to me. The thing she says is that she wants a shrine built on prince Edward Island — somewhere in the center of the island — and she has called the people of the island to come to the shrine for many graces she will give them. There will be many miracles, especially conversions. Many will return to the Church.”
The request is strikingly similar to requests made in the United States to a nun named Sister Mildred Mary Ephrem Neuzil for a statue of Our Lady of America to be situated in the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington. It’s as if the Blessed Mother is establishing beach-heads in North America — shrines that would join with the famous one at Guadalupe, Mexico — where she came as patroness of the Americas and was invoked in a special way during the election controversy last autumn (which ended with the victory of Bush on December 12 — the Guadalupe feast day).
The United States, Europe, and Canada are “materially quite well off but spiritually very poor,” notes Father Doucette. “Many have been taken by this materialism and they go for material things and their faith weakens. They abandon God, thinking they’re God and that heaven can be here on earth. They’re building their heaven here on earth while we know that heaven is not here on earth.”
“The number one significance to me is her love,” says Father Doucette of Mary. “She sees faith getting weaker and weaker and people falling into sin and following the evil one instead of God. As a mother she can never forget her children, and especially on this island she has a special love and is calling her children to return to Jesus and God.”
**As always we urge caution and discernment through prayer and fasting before involvement with any mystic and have not had the time to investigate this case in-depth**