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I thought, “My God! What am I gonna do?

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The Monthly Aspectarian: Your history is interesting, starting out as a Roman Catholic Priest. Tell us about your evolution.

Ron Roth: The reason I became a priest was that I had a strong desire to help people. As I was growing up, it just seemed the perfect niche for me. Entering the Roman Catholic priesthood seemed to offer the opportunity to really help people on many different levels. I went to the seminary, and thank God, I was actually in a Benedictine Abbey, where I got my theological training. One of the highlights of my training was my scripture professor. I had him for three years. His name was Ignatius Hante, and he’s now deceased. But he was one of the foremost translators of the Dead Sea Scrolls. So when he talked scripture, it was with a light that I had never heard before. It really impressed me and gave me a tremendous desire and passion to really study these sacred writings in a way that was meaningful, practical, and yet very deeply mystical. That was the real foundational work of my life. When I was ordained a priest at 1966, I kept that in the forefront of my life. That’s what I liked preaching and teaching about, what I liked living. I wanted to know the real Jesus, not some of the things I was brought up with. This professor did a lot to bring me on that particular path. I wanted the man Jesus. I wanted to know how He treated people and how He lived with people, not the interpretations that have come down about Him. One particular day, Father Ignatius got on top of the desk and started acting out St. Peter preaching at the Pentecost, and then he started to talk about healing. His final statement of that class was, “Gentlemen, we need to understand that it is necessary to bring back into Christianity the healing ministry of Jesus in order to help the people.” And we just sat there. I had never heard anyone talk about that before.

TMA: That was a rather radical statement.

RR: Absolutely — and having the background that this man had. When he would do sacred rituals — I’d never actually experienced a Roman Catholic priest doing rituals, like the mass for example, and smiling all the way through them. That really impressed me. When he made that statement, I got to thinking about something I had experienced as a young person of around eleven years old. I had a bad case of infection, and in those days they were just discovering antibiotics. They wanted to rush me to the hospital, and the doctor had come to the house. I heard this voice within me say, “If you just put your hand on your throat, I will heal you.” I didn’t ask any questions, I didn’t know what that was. I did it, and I was healed. I was then able to speak, and I called out to my mother and the doctor, “I think I’m OK.” They both came running into the room, surprised because I had completely lost my voice. The doctor said, “I don’t understand this, but he doesn’t need to go to the hospital; he doesn’t have a fever anymore.” That story was always in the back of my mind. Could this be a life work? I didn’t know.

TMA: It’s interesting that you listened, and followed the suggestion that you received. A lot of people wouldn’t have.

RR: I grew up in a Polish family and my mother was extremely intuitive in a very spiritual way. She taught me as a young child to be always aware of the other side. When family members would die, we were told, even at six or seven, not to be afraid, they’ll be coming back to visit to say their final goodbyes. I had those kinds of experiences as a youth and never thought anything of them. Then one day in about third grade, the nun had asked all of us, “Have you had any unusual experiences lately?” I told of my uncle coming to visit and she said, “Oh, and where does he live?” And I said, “Heaven.” She said, “What do you mean?” and I told her he had died two weeks ago. Well, that was all it took. She called the priest, the priest called my mother, my mother had to come and get me and she promised to punish me for lying. When we left the school she said, “Look ... I told you never to tell people about these things, especially those priests and nuns.”

So I was open to a lot of this even as a young child. I did listen to the voice. I followed it, and that marvelous healing event, that couldn’t be explained to me at that time, occurred. All of this started coming back while having Father Ignatius as my scriptural teacher. I began thinking that maybe it is important for churches and religious organizations to show the love of God, instead of this all-punishing God that’s out to get everyone.

TMA: You were on your way out of the church, as you were on your way into it.

RR: Oh, you’re not kidding. That’s a good way to put it. After I was ordained, I was a priest for two years and very dissatisfied at what I saw going on inside the church. The politics, and the fact that prayer and spirituality and these things were not in the forefront.

TMA: People were not encouraged to be spiritual, just to obey.

RR: Absolutely. What happened next was I was asked to give a talk at an event that was for people of all religions and those that didn’t have a religious path. I was going to give a lecture on the miracle working power of God today. And I thought, OK, I can do that. I have a degree in this, I can handle it. After I finished and everyone applauded, this gentlemen says, “You see a lot of sick people here, Ron, would you mind praying for them?” I didn’t know what he meant by that. I just thought I’d go back to the house and do it in private. When I said “Yes,” he said, “Oh, good,” and went to the microphone and told everyone, “Ron said he would pray for your healing, so if any of you would like that, come on down.” And about 250 people came down. I thought, “My God! What am I gonna do?” The seminary did not have a course in Healing Prayer 101.

TMA: It was kind of an odd thing to have you speak about.

RR: It was normal for that group of people. In his tradition, he was seeing miracles. In most of the other churches and synagogues, that wasn’t happening. At any rate, I just stood up there and prayed my heart out. I didn’t know what to do, so I basically started touching people. The thought I had was that I used to watch Oral Roberts before I’d go over and say mass on Sunday. The guy used to give good sermons back then and, if I stole one or two, I figured no one would notice. They weren’t watching Oral Roberts. I heard this thought in my mind, “Stretch out your hands, go touch her, that’s what Oral Roberts does.” Well I don’t understand this, but I’m going to go do it. I touched the first person and I moved on down the line. I just wanted to get done and out of that building, because I was so nervous about what I was doing.

Four months later, a woman came to my parish and said she wanted to share with me that she had been at that meeting, and that she had never been to anything like that in her life. I said, “Neither have I, lady.” Then she says, “I was the first in line and you asked me what you could do for me. I asked you to give me a blessing.” She told me that when I blessed her, she felt an electrical shock go through her body. That week she had been diagnosed with lung cancer. A week or so after the event, she really felt differently, so she called her doctor and had to argue to get another appointment to check this out. He discovered that she didn’t have a cancer cell in her body. She shared that with me and that was the beginning.

Here I am, 38 years later, doing the same thing, just being a channel for God. I feel I do not heal anybody. My work is about showing people how close we all are to spirit. We are one with the spirit world. My work is helping people to realize that they never have to feel helpless or hopeless again. And that miracles take place.

TMA: Again, at another major crossroad in your life, you received guidance and you listened. That’s the key. The majority of the Old Testament is about when the Jews listened, they prospered, and when they didn’t, they got hammered.

RR: That’s right, it’s the same in the New Testament. The apostles and disciples listened to that voice of the spirit. People ask me how I would describe prayer. To me it’s more listening than it is talking. I studied the Aramaic and Sanskrit to really understand what the ancients meant by the term prayer. I found out there was no word in Aramaic that could be translated exactly into English as pray or prayer. That began to disturb me. What did Jesus mean when he said, “When you pray, pray in this manner.” Then I discovered that the word in Aramaic that Jesus would have used is the original term of slotha which means set a trap. What he was saying was, set your mind as a trap to catch the thoughts of God. That’s prayer. The root from that is sla, and that really is where the derivative of the concept of setting the trap comes from. In Sanskrit, the word was pal-al. That word literally means seeing yourself as wondrously made. Putting those two concepts together, recognizing that loving yourself and seeing yourself as an instrument of the spirit, an extension of God’s spirit, brings you into such a state of calmness and respect that you can quiet down enough to hear the voice of the spirit world. That’s where guidance comes from.

Sometimes when people have to make a decision, they have a gut feeling, like maybe ... no, and then another decision gives them a feeling of calmness. That is the voice of the divine that’s literally wired into our energy field.

TMA: One of my favorite lines out of A Course in Miracles is, “The voice of God is as loud as our willingness to listen.”

RR: That’s wonderful.

TMA: It doesn’t get much better than that. The voice is always there, but the human mind and emotional state is so loud that most of the time it gets drowned out.

RR: That’s correct. That’s the way I feel about it, too. I went through the Course many years ago. When I was still a priest, we used to even teach it on Wednesday night in the parish. We had about 100 people, which was unusual for a Catholic parish at that time with something like that. I enjoyed it. I went through it three years in a row. I did it one year and felt it wasn’t enough. Did it a second year and still felt like I hadn’t got it, and did it again the third year. Every once in awhile, I still pick up the book and open the workbook randomly, asking, whatever quote comes, let it be my theme for today’s something I need to learn.

TMA: One of the things that has really struck me about the voice over the years is that it’s not always speaking to big momentous things. It’s not always, “Step to the right.” What? OK. And a car goes by. It can be the most mundane, relatively unimportant things, but still it’s always there.

RR: We get so into looking for the spectacular. But when the voice is trying to lead us to the perfect niche for our life or career or whatever, it starts in a very light whisper. There’s a beautiful depiction of Isaiah in the Hebrew testament where the prophet Elijah goes out to the mountain and waits to hear God. He says, the voice of God was not in the thunder. The voice of God was not in the earthquake. The voice of God was not even in the wind. But then came the stillness and in the stillness was the voice of God. That whisper, that still small voice that we have to quiet ourselves and listen to, is the teacher speaking to us. And you’re right; it’s in the little things, too.

TMA: When you get to this level, there’s not a lot to left to fight about anymore, but you can wonder exactly how to identify the voice. Some people would call it Jesus. Some people call it the still small voice. I tend to think of it as my own Higher Self. I think it all boils down to the same thing, but what’s your take on it?

RR: As you just said. We can fight over semantics. This is what I see most, unfortunately, in religious organizations. It’s a matter of semantics. You have to use this word or you have to use that phrase and you must say it this way. But I believe the very same thing. To me there is that divinity within it. The Hebrew ancient wisdom literature that Jesus quoted said, “Do you not know your own scripture says you are God.” You are literally an extension of the Divine. No matter what you call it, you have a connection with spirit. You are an emanation of the Divine Energy.

TMA: I can’t give you the chapter and verse, but somewhere He said, “I and my Father are one.”

RR: That’s correct.

TMA: What’s He trying to tell us here, folks?

RR: One of the passages that used to bother me was, Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. I used to think, that’s either really out of line, or somebody goofed in translation. That’s always been my hobby. I love looking those things up to see what the words meant in those days. I discovered that in Greek the actual translation of that passage was Be complete as your heavenly Father is complete, which means be all inclusive. God is a compassionate God, including everyone in his/her love. That made sense to me. That to me is on the road of spiritual perfection.

TMA: You can work your way through translation problems. What troubles me is where they monkeyed with the teachings.

RR: I understand. One of the things that Father Ignatius taught us was that we first have to look at all sacred writings from a mystical viewpoint — with a mystical heart, mystical eyes — just be neutral. The second thing you have to learn is what the situation in life was when that passage was written? Did it mean the same thing then as it does today? Third, if it resonates with you, bring it into your consciousness and meditate upon it, because it’s for you. Fourth, you must discern what came out of the mouth of Jesus and what was put into the mouth of Jesus.

TMA: And unfortunately, too much was put in. You read some things and go, come on, He didn’t say that. In many of those cases, you can go back and look at the political motivations.

RR: Especially after Constantine became emperor. That’s when much of it happened. Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire. That’s when the politics really came in, and when a number of things were changed. Around 400 A.D. is when reincarnation was thrown out of the church and replaced with other concepts. But for 400 years it was part of the Christian church. Most Christians don’t know that.

TMA: It’s a lot easier to control people if they’re worried that they’re going to hell.

RR: One chance.

TMA: How did anyone think that made sense? That was cruel!

RR: It was. That’s why healing, on all levels, is so very important today. It isn’t just the body. It’s attitudes. It’s behavior. It’s relationships and everything that makes us the individuals, the people that we are. And then the opportunity through healing to recognize that we are still all one. We’re in this together.

TMA: Talk a little bit about you leaving the church. What was that process like for you?

RR: To tell you the truth, it wasn’t as difficult as people thought. I had known for a couple years before I left that I was being let out of that consciousness. It was like living inside a bubble that I had outgrown, and I had to find a new bubble of consciousness. I fought it. I thought it would be easier and more comfortable to stay in the bubble, but it wasn’t. I recognized that more and more people of all nationalities and religious traditions were coming to me, and that was creating havoc in the upper realm.

TMA: At some point they would have had to silence you.

RR: Before that could happen, I just really felt I had to go, and trust God to see what was going to happen. For the next few years, I gave talks and some prayer sessions. I wasn’t giving myself wholeheartedly. There was a part of me that didn’t want to be attached to that anymore. Then what started happening was that people, coming to me from different religious traditions, telling me that whether they were Jewish or Christian or Muslim, that I had helped them go back to their roots and find God. I wasn’t sure how I was doing that, but I accepted it with gratitude. Then I found myself gradually coming back to this work, to my own roots again, but doing the work with the concept of the church without walls. It was open to everyone and it wasn’t a building somewhere, but really a gathering of the people. The people were the church, the temple, the synagogue.

Then it just started evolving. People started asking me if I had classes like the ordained people. Well, no, I hadn’t planned on that. I definitely didn’t want to start my own church and become a pope. So it began to develop over the next twelve years to the point where it is now. People are in our ordination program. But we have a community of people coming from the traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity and others. The beauty is when we all get together and share our traditional beliefs, and see them merging as pieces of the puzzle. It really gives people a lot more hope. I’ve repeatedly heard people say that we’re saying the same thing in different words. Then the love of God within everybody begins to really grow and sprout.

That’s where I am at this particular point. I recently went back to Brazil to see my friend, the miracle healer, John of God, they call him. He has a Casa there. When I went before the entity this time, I was told that I needed to start a Casa in the U.S. for the sick people who can’t afford to come to Brazil. But again it’s without walls. So that’s my new mission at the age I am now, when I thought I’d be retired.

TMA: No retirement for you.

RR: No, and that’s not a bad thing I don’t have to do that.

TMA: When your career is simply being who you are, where is there retirement?

RR: That’s the whole thing. When I’m getting the satisfaction or the peace or the joy that I get out of doing this work, I don’t want to stop it for any reason.

TMA: Talk a little about Celebrating Life Institutes.

RR: We are in the process of changing the name to represent a more total ministry so we’re changing it to Celebrating Life Ministries. The main work of the ministry will now be what we call the House for the Relief of Suffering. That includes suffering on all levels and so it will be more and more open. I will be providing more opportunities for people to come to events of all kinds. People can come with whatever difficulties they have. The members of my staff that I’m training now in Prayer and Prayer Therapy, that’s what I call it, will be working with me.

TMA: So what you’re doing, then, is a North American version of what John of God is doing in Brazil?

RR: That is correct. When we made our first connection, it was evident that we were very close.

TMA: You’re doing this with his cooperation and you’re associated with him to that degree?

RR: Yes, we are.

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Ron Roth, best selling author and modern day mystic, served in the Roman Catholic priesthood for more than 25 years. He is the founder of Celebrating Life Institute, and for the past eight years has been teaching life enhancing principles to people of all faiths. His most recent book is Holy Spirit for Healing: Merging Ancient Wisdom with Modern Medicine. On April 24, Ron will be honored as the recipient of the Infinity Foundation Spirit Award for 2004, and will conduct an all day Spiritual Empowerment Workshop at Infinity Foundation on Sunday, April 25. For more information, visit www.ronroth.com, and www.infinityfoundation.org, or call 847-831-8828.

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