MY TIME WITH DEMONS AND ANGELS AT MOUNT MELLERAY

 For nearly two centuries, Mount Melleray, County Waterford, Ireland was a Cistercian monastery, before closing its porta in January 2025. It is a cause of joy to me and many that Tom Monaghan, founder of Dominos Pizza, has decided to establish a campus of Ave Maria University there. 

The news brought back a flood of memories. Two came to the fore, one scary and one inspiring. 

I had just finished my university degree, and I took a trip with my border collie, Polly to Mount Melleray. Polly was hyper energetic with such long legs she could have competed in the English Greyhound Derby. 

Well, I wished to pray at the grotto, which is just outside the Abbey, and so I tied Polly outside by a ditch where she could lie down in the lush, water speckled grass. She was noticeably disappointed she couldn't come with me. 

I was kneeling in the grotto when abruptly I saw Polly sprint towards me - she had wriggled free of her collar - she had a way of opening it. She had her defiant attitude of you-won't-leave-me-behind. I attempted to catch her, but she had already bounced onto the spring, a small stream of water that flows beneath the statue of Our Lady. 

Before I could shout at her to get away from the spring, in a nano second, she was thrown backwards onto the ground by an invisible force. She started quaking, and her black nose and mouth looked like it had been pulled back into her, like something had tried to claw at her. With her tail between her legs, she staggered back to the car, and crawled right under it. I coaxed her out, she was trembling like a piece of tattered silk in the wind. 

I hold it was a demonic entity that attacked her and threw her to the earthen floor. On a separate but related issue, expert on demonology, Adam Blai cannot have a dog because the demons he is trying to oust from possessed individuals may take revenge on the dumb animal. 

The memory of Polly being so panicked (this dog had nerves of steel) makes me think that the devil had and has a bullseye on the Abbey. Much prayers of deliverance and much fasting is needed by those who wish to make Mount Melleray a campus. 

A few years later I accompanied a friend who was struggling with depression issues to visit a very elderly priest there who was renowned for his healing charisms. He was almost deaf, so he relied on his intuition when people spoke to him. While she confided in him, I walked the grounds, the pine trees smelling so crisp and fragrant. I met one of the priests, who seemed on the threshold of eternity but was trimming the branches. 

He took my hand and called me by my name even though I'd never introduced myself. He told me a funny story about how he had been gardening one day, when a woman came up to him all flustered and said she was looking for the priest who had the gift of reading souls and angrily she demanded of him where he might be. She was talking to him. In his muddy overalls, he had a hard time convincing her. 

I was giggling when I became aware that he was reading my thoughts and I was reading his. During this telepathic exchange, like texts appearing on the cinema of my mind, whenever I doubted, he would interrupt to answer something I was thinking. 

I wanted to tell him of my devotion to Archangel Raphael, and he said vocally, "Yes, you are very devoted to Archangel Raphael. You want to write a lot about him. You will." Then he told me of personal prayers answered through the intercession of Raphael that he could not possibly have known. I got the feeling that he knew the Archangel well. 

He could see my Guardian Angel and acknowledged him with utmost reverence. He knew on rare occasion I'd seen him and instantly he described his wings which have blue stripes of sapphire. It was like we were discussing the characteristics of a mutual old friend.

This priest was ecstatically holy and had spent seventy years in the confines of Mount Melleray in his white cowl where his charisms were nurtured. It bodes well for the students of Ave Maria University that if they follow the calling to be like the Cistercians of old, they, too, may become like him, and see angels. 

ps - I might add that the priest's words seem to have come true. There is some interest in a book I am planning on Archangel Raphael. Don't hold your breath though, ye know how slow and dim-witted I am and I'd say it will take 5 years, but that's a grain of sand in the context of eternity.