I was born and raised in a Catholic family. I received the sacraments, attended Holy Mass regularly, and prayed every day. This was the case until 1993, when, at the age of sixteen, I happened to meet someone I became very fond of.
J. was several years older than I. Well read and seemingly wise, he made a huge impression on me. He was also a fan of Satanist music—death and black metal—and he practiced astrology. In the course of our talks it wasn’t long before I began to doubt all the spiritual practices I had known until then. It began with my admission that the Holy Mass was boring and that I was not getting much out of it. I did not listen to the Word of God, and even when I did, I soon forgot about it. I started to think there was no Spirit in the Church. The first step in my estrangement from God was when I decided the Church was an institution run by people who presumed to preach about sin even while sinning themselves. In time, I stopped going to Mass and receiving the sacraments.
My boyfriend introduced me to practices supposed to deepen my spiritual life (I thought then that by leaving the Church I would discover new levels of spirituality.) I discovered Satanist music, which induced a certain state of mind or “atmosphere,” and astrology, which my friend practiced. Satan then achieved his second, more important goal: I confused spirituality with magic. In turning away from God, I began to draw closer to the Evil One. Instead of going to Christ with my problems, I turned to J. who sought to enlighten me with the help of astrology. I began to believe strongly that the stars and planets influenced my life; as a result, I stopped struggling with my various failures and flaws of character, since “that’s the way it was.” Along with this, there came a sense of enjoying some “mysterious knowledge” and a feeling of superiority over those who did not possess it.
The music I listened to helped to intensify this seeking after “spirituality,” which turned out to be nothing more than magic. Black Metal and Dark Ambient—these are satanic forms of music. Their content is aimed at paying homage to Satan, Lucifer, or—what may seem to be less dangerous but is actually at the very heart of Satanism—one’s own ego. It is especially dangerous to those who, like myself, are very sensitive to the mood or atmosphere of the moment. For a long time I tried to deceive myself. (I suspect my deeply ingrained fear of divine punishment was at work here.) I persuaded myself that even if there was such content and symbolism in this music, it was of no interest to me; all that really fascinated me were the sounds and the atmosphere these sounds evoked. After a while, I stopped believing even in Satan. I told myself he did not exist, and that it was people themselves who made hell on earth. I also began to take an interest in demonology, magic, and paganism, rationalizing all this as a pursuit of “intellectual knowledge.” I told myself that my interest was purely theoretical; after all, there was nothing occult in my practices apart from my using astrological services and a runic amulet, which I wore around my neck.
Gradually, I began to notice that all these states of mind induced by the music I immersed myself in were affecting me negatively. I consider as especially dangerous so-called Dark Ambient music, which in many cases makes no reference to Satan or Lucifer at all. Rather, what it does is create, by means of sounds, an ambience of fear, darkness, destruction, and uncertainty. Dominating most of these musical creations is an obsession with pain, death, elements of depression, imagined scenes of hell, journeys deep into the soul of an individual who has lost all hope, etc. Only after several years did I realize this was music that glorified the fall of man by harping on all his evil tendencies and perversions. Thus, with all the conviction of a convert, I now call it a tool of Satan, by which the Evil One acts on the subconscious of sensitive individuals.
My years spent outside of the Church, without prayer and the sacraments, worsened my relations with other people, especially my parents and friends. I still remember friends telling me that at times they feared to approach me, so unpredictable I had become. Now I can see that I had divested myself of all positive emotions. Certainly, I lost the capacity to love, confusing love with sexual desire. But the worst of it was the moral relativism I embraced—the inability to call evil by name. I was ruled then by one idea in life: “Do whatever you feel like, and keep your nose clean.”
My situation began to change when I met my future husband. I had just got over my last traumatic relationship with a man I had lived with outside of marriage. To this day I say that God brought our paths together so that we might free each other from our sinful lives. Thanks to him (my husband), I gave up all music and literature having to do with magic; and thanks to me, he stopped practicing what is called “leaving the body” as well as the martial arts to which he had devoted ten years of his life.
The first step toward our conversion was the sacrament of marriage, which we entered into in 2006. To this day, I do not know why we decided to wed in a church, which neither of us attended anyway. We told ourselves it was partly “for the family” and partly because we felt this was the way it had to be. My prenuptial confession was a powerful experience; it was my first confession in over ten years. But, in hindsight, I can see it was a catastrophic event, a haphazard admission of sins made only so as to gain the necessary absolution. The wedding itself was also a powerful experience, but not enough for the grace of conversion to come pouring unblocked into our hearts. True, we dropped our occult practices, but we had not yet fully returned to the Lord.
In 2008, our son was born. We had him baptized—this also without much conviction. (The christening seemed hypocritical to me, since we were still far from the Church.) But from then on, I began to experience feelings I had long since thought dead within me: feelings of great love toward another human being and a sense that I could give up my life for this being. I know it was then that God called me to Himself. He broke open my heart, which had been closed for so long. Suddenly, my eyes were opened to all the evils existing in the world. I could see everything in the political, economic, and cultural realms that came from Satan. I realized that what I had until then seen as tolerance, freedom, and called civil liberties, were really an attempt to force an anti-life world-view on God’s earthly order.
After a while, I lost the ability to cope with it all. I was tormented by the thought that since I could now see the evil, why couldn’t others see it? Finally, after fretting over another such situation, I heard an inner voice: “Come to Me, and I will help you.” It may seem strange, but I knew at once Who was calling me, and to Whom I was to go. For the first time in many years, I went to Holy Mass of my own accord. (Of course I had gone many times before, on various occasions and feast days, but mainly so as not to disappoint members of my family.) I have to confess I recall nothing of that Mass, not because I was not listening to God’s word, but because I wept the whole time. I could not hold back my tears. I felt as if I had come out of a cage in which I had been imprisoned for fifteen years, all the while deceiving myself that I was free. I regained all my positive emotions and feelings. I felt an enormous love embracing me and assuring me that this was where I belonged. Even today, the consecration of the Body and Blood of Christ moves me so much that I cannot hold back my tears.
The sacrament of penance was also a great experience for me—the first after the moment of my total conversion, when for the first time I felt God had forgiven me for all the evil I had committed in my life. I truly felt that Christ in the Blessed Sacrament loved me and had offered up His life for mine. Since that moment I have regularly enjoyed the sacraments.
Another watershed event was my going to a Christian meditation retreat at Krzeszów Abbey. There I discovered the Jesus Prayer and learned that prayer can take all kinds of forms. God shows everyone his own path of prayer. This short prayer, synchronized with one’s breathing, teaches spiritual vigilance and a child’s trust in God. Whenever I have a free moment, I also repeat the words, “Jesus Christ, I trust in You.” Just that! I feel this is exactly the prayer for the moment. When I meditate on it, the process of centering myself and ridding myself of unholy thoughts proceeds more easily. It is precisely trust in God’s mercy that I need most. The prayer helps me to persevere on the road to conversion. After many, many years I have also rediscovered the rosary. I always carry one on me, so I can say it wherever I go.
Every day I thank God for having poured out His grace upon me and rescued my soul from the darkness I languished in for so many years. Thanks to these experiences, I am now decidedly stronger and better able to witness to Christ. God bless!
Margaret