A Temptation Coincidence
It was a Friday night in February 1992 just before my third admission to hospital. I was standing in a bar with a solicitor acquaintance and a few other friends.
We were heavy into a discussion. There was a mystery surrounding the reasons for my admissions to hospital. Some people felt that I was deliberately making myself ill. They felt that I was somehow responsible.
I had my own reasons for my admissions and at that moment they involved God. Too embarrassed to say that I believed that I was the Chosen One, or the Christ, I tried instead to subtly explain these views to my solicitor friend. I told him that I knew who the Christ was.
I explained that he was a beautiful young boy, of around five years of age, with blue eyes and blond hair. But I couldn’t tell him who he was, I said, because he knew people who would do harm to the boy. The solicitor had republican connections.
I thought that the solicitor would laugh, but he didn’t. He said that he knew someone who would very much like to know what I was talking about. I was almost giggling as I turned to my other friends.
He grabbed me by the arm later that night as we were leaving and told me that that person would very much like to speak to me about this matter. I told him that I was going home. He insisted, saying that it was someone who lived “on my way”. I was about to tell him to “stay out of my psychosis”, or words to that effect, but he was really serious.
I told him that I wouldn’t speak to anyone with a few drinks in me. It was after one o’clock, and I wasn’t going to knock on someone’s door at that time of the morning.
He said that I should, since that person would be the right man to talk to. He grabbed me by the arm as I spoke, holding me occupied there so long that I missed my taxi.
I had to walk, so he walked with me, all the time arguing that I should talk to this person. He was angry and arrogant and fired up.
As we walked past the local parish church, he pulled me in the gates, insisting that I speak to this person, who he eventually revealed as the local parish priest.
‘I’ll talk to him tomorrow when I’m sober,’ I said, thinking that we would look like a right pair of idiots arriving on the priest’s doorstep at that time of night with the smell of drink whiffing off us.
We struggled for a few moments as I tried to hold him back from going to the priest’s door and making a fool out of himself. But he realised that I wasn’t going to go to the door and he thought of something else.
‘Well,’ he roared, pointing to the front of the chapel, ‘if you won’t do that, then climb to that ledge above the door of the chapel.’
‘What would that prove?’ I asked, believing that he had gone completely off his head.
‘Well then,’ he shouted angrily. Thinking that I was mocking the size of his challenge, he pointed to the chapel again, and roared: ‘Climb up to that ledge just below the roof.’ But that wasn’t enough. He shouted again: ‘In fact, climb to the roof.’
As soon as I heard him mention the roof of the church, something clicked in my mind. I stood back a little and I jibed him with a smirk on my face.
‘I suppose,’ I said, tongue-in-cheek, ‘you’ll be wanting me to jump off the roof of the chapel next.’
‘Yes,’ he roared. ‘That’s right! Jump off the roof! You can do it! I know you can do it!’
The roof was about seventy feet above us, and I had no intention of continuing with our ‘conversation’.
I ran off at full speed thinking that the man was out of his mind. Of course, in the subsequent episode I came to believe that this was one of my temptations, just like Jesus’ temptation when the devil had asked him to jump off the roof of the temple in Jerusalem.
“Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. ‘If you are the Son of God,’ he said, ‘ throw yourself down. For it is written:
‘He will command his angels concerning you;
and they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’’
“Jesus answered him, ‘It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’’” (Matt 4:5-7)
There was a pivotal coincidence in this experience in that it replicated the temptation Jesus experienced. I have experienced all three of Jesus’ temptations and I have had a similar experience to when he was spoken to by the dove from heaven where the Holy Spirit said, “This is my son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased.”