AngelicArtistry's GoToHeaven Jophiel's Game Question 45
"________________________________"
the technical term used for the visit or visitation by an angel.
The name implies the intensely mystical and religious significance of any appearance by angelic beings.
__________________________ have been reported throughout human history, ranging from the famous interventions of the Old Testament to the involvement of angels in the affairs of later mortals, to the sudden arrival of the heavenly messenger into the lives of seemingly ordinary men, women, and children.
Among the host of historical examples are St. Joan of Arc (d.1431) and Pope St. Gregory the Great (r.590-604).
Joan was supposedly guided by the archangel Michael in her brilliant campaigns against the English during the Hundred Years' War (1337-1455), and her hearing the voice of the angelic played a major role in securing her condemnation by the English in 1431 and her being burned at the stake for heresy and witchcraft.
Pope Gregory the Great also had dealings with St. Michael, beholding the angel descending upon the mausoleum of Emperor Hadrian during a plague in Rome.
He took the vision to mean that the plague would stop ... which it did ... and so renamed the mausoleum the Castel Sant'Angelo in St. Michael's honor, the Castle of the Holy Angel.
As is clear from the two events, the ________________ rarely leaves the recipient unchanged or unaffected.
These examples are also among the better known.
Many ___________________ occur to individuals or saints who never report them to anyone or who are not believed.
There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of such angelic visitations throughout the world, with only a few recognized as a celestial foray or actually noted, recorded, and made public.
Such are the claimed numbers of __________________that entire books have been written on the subject and organizations devoted to their study.
In Christian custom, it has been declared that there are ways of telling whether a possible angelic visit is truly by a heavenly being or by an infernal one.
One supposedly surefire method is the sensation one has during and after the incident.
Should one be at great ease during the visit and then sick at heart or ill afterward, it is said that the visitor was a denizen of the territory of the fiend; if one is stricken with a mixture of awe, terror, and dread during the event and great peace or even joy afterward, the guest was probably angelic.
There is, of course, to be remembered the lesson learned by Abraham in the Book of Genesis, when he was visited by three travelers (angels or perhaps God himself).
Often one may be asked for help by a stranger; the supplicant may be a human in distress or it may be an angel in disguise, the ____________________ hidden from mortal eyes, but not from the angel or its Master.
What is this experience of an angelic visitation called?