Christmas is a splendid time to clear family spiritual baggage.
It’s not something you’ll hear in a sermon on December 25 (by most odds).
But the veil is thin, families gather together, and the Lord is listening.
It’s also a great opportunity to pray for souls in purgatory.
But as for families:
Every family and ancestry—save for Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—has tendencies that were or are negative and need to be purged. It could be a familial inclination to selfishness, division, pride, or argumentation. It could be occultism. It could be a preoccupation with materialism. It could be lying. These characteristics need to be cast out as “spirits”—blotches of darkness—or they will repeat themselves like a broken record in our lives and then in the lives of those who come after us.
“Loving families lay the foundation for our eternal progress,” writes a person who had a near-death episode. “They help us build strengths, identify and overcome weaknesses, and bring challenges of their own for us to overcome. They significantly influence us in our earthly missions and affect how we influence others in their missions. Every family bond—with spouse, children, parents, grandparents, grandchildren, in-laws, uncles, cousins, etcetera—can play a crucial role in teaching us how to love and be loved.”
When the sin is intense, claimed Father John Hampsch, who wrote a seminal book called Healing the Family Tree, the effects may go beyond the three or four generations so commonly mentioned. The greater the sin, the more darkness we attract. We also may draw demonic spirits of a higher level. As the Bible tells us, there are powers and principalities. They mimic the hierarchy of angels (seraphim,
cherubim, thrones, dominions, virtues, powers, principalities, archangels, and angels). There are also earthbound or departed “familial” spirits—those who have not “gone on.”
These are spirits that have attached themselves to a person, family, things, addictions, or locations can all become points of spiritual vulnerability. If someone commits a murder, this is a strong force that attracts the demonic. If there is a spirit that was addicted to sex, drugs, or alcohol, it may seek to draw from or enter a living person who is indulging in excessive alcohol or illicit sex in order to re-experience it.
An involvement in the occult is a transgression known to greatly enhance spiritual infestation. When a person invokes spirits of the dead—or worse, dabbles with black magic, witchcraft, or Satanism—dark forces congregate. Father Hampsch has advised that all “objects that have been used for occultic or spiritualist activities should be destroyed, for they tend to attract evil spirits,” including charms and astrological symbols.
We are told in Leviticus 19:31 that recourse to spirits of the dead or magicians will “defile” us—and they defile our lineages. “When we are around things of the occult, whether it is books, signs, symbols, or even hard-core rock music, it contaminates the spirit,” adds Father DeGrandis. “This is why oftentimes charismatics can’t listen to hard rock. The Holy Spirit and their spirit are resisting the intrusion of contamination.”
The point: spirits—or darkness, in some form—may gather around a person. Meanwhile, when a person dies, the spirits look for another host—often opting for whoever is nearest or for a weak point in the family tree.
Evil that has accumulated through the generations can concentrate around a “magnet” point, opening a dark conduit. The result can be misfortune not only for the person involved, but also for those around that person—sickness, accidents, bad luck. A person can have a little train of spirits following him. When it comes down through the family tree, it can be defeated only through humility.
A former priest named Francis MacNutt, who ministers in this realm, recommends the following prayer:
“Lord Jesus, gently reveal to me, through the Holy Spirit, those ways in which I may be living out certain patterns of inherited weakness or sin.
[Here wait to see what you receive in prayer.]
“Now, Jesus, if there is any predisposition in me to (alcoholism, lust, etcetera) that has come down to me through my ancestry, I ask you, through your power, to set me free. Send your Holy Spirit, and by the power of your Spirit and by the sword of the Spirit, cut me free from that disposition to [here name it].
“For any sins I or my ancestors have committed in this regard, I ask your forgiveness, Lord. In the Name of Jesus Christ and His Precious Blood, set me free, heavenly Father.
“And now, Lord Jesus, in place of this weakness, fill me with the power of your Spirit; fill me with your spirit of [self-control, courage, sobriety, or whatever gift counteracts the weakness you have].
“And Lord, I ask you also to cut my children free from any harmful disposition they may have inherited from me or my ancestors.”
[adapted from Life Missions, Family Healing]
