{"id":2798,"date":"2007-02-28T07:26:46","date_gmt":"2007-02-28T07:26:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/fr-samonies-vision.html"},"modified":"2007-02-28T07:26:46","modified_gmt":"2007-02-28T07:26:46","slug":"fr-samonies-vision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/fr-samonies-vision.html","title":{"rendered":"Fr. Samonie’s vision"},"content":{"rendered":"

An…unusual priest in Detroit:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Samonie says he saw Christ. It was on an early November evening in 1970 at St. Bernadette in Dearborn. Samonie was walking up a side aisle when he saw him \u2014 a bright light blocking the altar. He tells of the sighting in Light<\/em>: "I fell to my knees and I could not stop the tears. The only way I can explain it is … I felt unworthy. Unworthy to be in the presence of my master."<\/p>\n

\n

\"Abs\"<\/a> He’d begun seriously meditating through yoga six years earlier. But that next morning at 4 a.m., he had the awakening he had sought. He says a spirit guide held his hand and said, "Do not be afraid, I’m going to take you on a little trip." Samonie says he shot out of his body and into outer space.<\/p>\n

\n

For 40 nights in a row, Samonie says he visited ancient places. On the last night, he saw a stone slab, sort of like an Aztec calendar, which played a movie of an artist who time traveled, living as an Egyptian, Greek and Roman. The "movie" played through the late centuries, when Samonie sees the man lying on his deathbed. The artist asked for a painting of a crucified Christ to be brought to him, and said aloud: "Next time, I will give you everything." Samonie says his spirit guide motioned that the artist was talking to him. The guide said to Samonie, "That’s when you decided to become a priest."<\/p>\n

\n

Father Jay never preached about his personal experiences in church services, but Eastern philosophies, including reincarnation, came up in workshops he taught. During the late ’70s and early ’80s, while working at Holy Trinity, Samonie taught classes in the Silva Method of Mind Development and Stress Control, which focuses on meditation, healing, positive thinking and memory techniques to sharpen the mind. One local priest accused Samonie of "teaching the work of the devil" and claimed heresy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An…unusual priest in Detroit: Samonie says he saw Christ. It was on an early November evening in 1970 at St. Bernadette in Dearborn. Samonie was walking up a side aisle when he saw him \u2014 a bright light blocking the altar. He tells of the sighting in Light: "I fell to my knees and I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nFr. Samonie's vision - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/fr-samonies-vision.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Fr. Samonie's vision - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"An…unusual priest in Detroit: Samonie says he saw Christ. It was on an early November evening in 1970 at St. Bernadette in Dearborn. Samonie was walking up a side aisle when he saw him \u2014 a bright light blocking the altar. He tells of the sighting in Light: "I fell to my knees and I…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/fr-samonies-vision.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-02-28T07:26:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/amywelborn.typepad.com\/openbook\/images\/abs.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Fr. Samonie's vision - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/fr-samonies-vision.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Fr. Samonie's vision - Via Media","og_description":"An…unusual priest in Detroit: Samonie says he saw Christ. It was on an early November evening in 1970 at St. Bernadette in Dearborn. Samonie was walking up a side aisle when he saw him \u2014 a bright light blocking the altar. He tells of the sighting in Light: "I fell to my knees and I…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/fr-samonies-vision.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2007-02-28T07:26:46+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/amywelborn.typepad.com\/openbook\/images\/abs.jpg"}],"author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/fr-samonies-vision.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/fr-samonies-vision.html","name":"Fr. Samonie's vision - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/fr-samonies-vision.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/fr-samonies-vision.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/amywelborn.typepad.com\/openbook\/images\/abs.jpg","datePublished":"2007-02-28T07:26:46+00:00","dateModified":"2007-02-28T07:26:46+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/fr-samonies-vision.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/fr-samonies-vision.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/fr-samonies-vision.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/amywelborn.typepad.com\/openbook\/images\/abs.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/amywelborn.typepad.com\/openbook\/images\/abs.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/02\/fr-samonies-vision.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Fr. Samonie’s vision"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2798\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}