End times

Originally published 23 October 2005

If I were a mean-spir­it­ed per­son, I would say that I hope to be left behind when the Rap­ture comes. When Tim LaHaye and Jer­ry Jenk­ins, the authors of the huge­ly suc­cess­ful (and pro­found­ly mean-spir­it­ed) Left Behind series of nov­els, are whisked bod­i­ly off the Earth into blessed­ness, along with Fal­well, Robert­son, Dob­son, and their fol­low­ers, we might just have a chance to cre­ate a soci­ety marked by peace, uni­ver­sal broth­er­hood, jus­tice and — yes — reason.

I grew up with apoc­a­lypse, in the heart of the East Ten­nessee Bible Belt, dri­ving those two-lane black­tops with their end­less signs tacked to tele­phone poles, fence posts and trees — “THE END IS NEAR,” “JESUS IS COMING SOON.” I always won­dered why so many Amer­i­cans want to believe in immi­nent apocalypse.

I sup­pose we like hav­ing our pants scared off — like our affec­tion for Hal­loween haunt­ed hous­es, except with big­ger stakes. And if you want to sell books, or fill your megachurch with will­ing tithers, you can’t find a more scary top­ic than those gal­lop­ing horse­men, Death, War, Famine, and Disease.

I’ll grant you recent events might sug­gest that the End Times are nigh. The tsuna­mi in South­east Asia, hur­ri­canes on the Gulf coast, famine in Africa, earth­quake in Pak­istan, and — most omi­nous of all — that old Pale Rid­er him­self, avian flu: If these aren’t the Tribu­la­tions, what are?

But, of course, the four horse­men have always been with us, and peo­ple have been antic­i­pat­ing the Sec­ond Com­ing since the begin­ning of Chris­tian­i­ty. Some years ago, I was inter­est­ed enough in this top­ic to do the research and write a nov­el on the sub­ject—In the Fal­con’s Claw: A Nov­el of the Year 1000.

What fol­lows is an episode from the nov­el, part of the inter­ro­ga­tion of Ail­er­an, abbot of Skel­lig, an island monastery off the west coast of Ire­land by agents of the pope, Sylvester II, for­mer­ly Ger­bert, Ail­er­an’s friend. (Of course, like all my nov­els, there is a love sto­ry at the heart of the book, that of Ail­er­an and Melisande. And isn’t this what gives us hope, the love sto­ry at the heart of all tribulations?)

---

2 Octo­ber 999, the year of Our Lord, In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost

Being a record of the inter­ro­ga­tion of Ail­er­an of Skel­lig, by the inquisi­tors of the Holy Office, at the instruc­tion of Sylvester II, suc­ces­sor of Peter and bish­op of Rome.

—Ail­er­an of Skel­lig, by the author­i­ty of the Holy Office we inquire into the mat­ter of your alleged offens­es. Have you any­thing to say before the inter­ro­ga­tion begins?

—Might I have a bit of food? For three days I have had noth­ing but water.

—If you wish food, you would do well to coop­er­ate ful­ly with those who have charge of the sal­va­tion of your soul. By deny­ing Christ, you have for­feit­ed your own body.

—I do not deny Christ.

—Do you deny that Christ’s phys­i­cal flesh and blood are ful­ly present in the Eucharist?

—We have gone through all of this before.

—Answer.

—I believe that the spir­it of Christ is present in the Eucharist, as his spir­it is sacra­men­tal­ly present in the waters of bap­tism, the chrism of Con­fir­ma­tion, or the oil of the Anoint­ing of the Dying. I have not seen Christ’s phys­i­cal flesh in the Eucharist, nor have I tast­ed his flesh, nor have I smelled his flesh. I have seen enough of flesh and blood in my life­time to know it when I see it.

—Care­ful, Ail­er­an. The Church does not say that the acci­dents of Christ’s Body are present in the Eucharist, but only the sub­stance. The bread and wine become ful­ly and sub­stan­tial­ly the Body and Blood of Christ, while retain­ing the appear­ances of the nat­ur­al species.

—Such things sur­pass my under­stand­ing. I have not stud­ied the philoso­phers. I know noth­ing of sub­stances and acci­dents. In my own expe­ri­ence bread and wine and water and oil are only that — bread and wine and water and oil. If they are sacred, it is because all of nature is sacred. If they con­tain the spir­it of Christ, it is because Christ is present in all of nature. Which is not to say that these things can­not take upon them­selves a spe­cial sig­nif­i­cance in the sacra­men­tal prac­tices of the Church, where­in their good­ness and per­fec­tion are exploit­ed for our moral edi­fi­ca­tion. But…

—You con­demn your­self, Ail­er­an. The words you speak are man­i­fest­ly hereti­cal. So bla­tant is your apos­ta­sy that it would seem that Satan him­self speaks through your mouth.

—So it was said on the Skel­lig: that I con­sort­ed with Satan, that his words were on my tongue, his appetites in my bel­ly, his con­cu­pis­cence in the organs of my sex.

—Why?

—Why not? A belief grew up in those parts that the year 1000 would be the time of Christ’s com­ing. Peo­ple began to embrace the most extreme mor­ti­fi­ca­tions of the body. Oth­ers aban­doned their world­ly goods or con­signed their prop­er­ties to the Church. Cer­tain peo­ple, includ­ing my lord bish­op, Oenu of Ard­fert, encour­aged these fanat­i­cal prac­tices and grew rich. I preached against these excess­es, even as I held the monks of Skel­lig to a severe dis­ci­pline. I demon­strat­ed that the so-called signs — comets, storms, dis­eases — were nat­ur­al, that they sig­ni­fied noth­ing. An ancient tra­di­tion in those parts held that no rain­bow would appear in the sky for forty years before the end of the world, and so peo­ple began to say that there had been no rain­bow since the year 960. This was patent­ly and obvi­ous­ly false; rain­bows where then no less com­mon than at any oth­er time, and I said so. But peo­ple heard only what they want­ed to hear, saw only what they want­ed to see, believed only what they want­ed to believe. To dis­cred­it me, rumors were spread con­cern­ing my alle­giance to Satan. It was said that Satan spoke through me, so that souls would not be pre­pared for the com­ing of Christ. And if a rain­bow appeared, it was said to be a false bow, arti­fi­cial­ly con­trived by me through Satan’s power.

—The Scrip­ture says: “I shall set my bow in the clouds and it shall be a sign of the Covenant between me and the Earth.” A bow is set by God as a sign and with­held as a sign. If God choos­es to with­hold the bow, then sure­ly that is with­in his pow­er. To deny this is to deny Scripture.

—I only say this: when a bow appears in the sky it is always in the same pos­ture with respect to the sun, always when the sun is low, and always when there is water in the part of the sky oppo­site to the sun. When­ev­er these con­di­tions con­cur, there is a bow. Often I have suc­cess­ful­ly pre­dict­ed when a bow would appear. This was tak­en as a sign of my abil­i­ty to con­jure the bow. But I did noth­ing of the kind. I only rec­og­nized the con­di­tions in the sky that are con­comi­tant with bows. These con­di­tions occur inevitably in the nat­ur­al course of events.

—Do you deny God’s abil­i­ty to act with­in nature, or to sus­pend the ordi­nary work­ings of nature?

—In a per­fect­ly con­trived cre­ation, there is no need for the inter­ven­tion of the Cre­ator. Nat­ur­al events have nat­ur­al caus­es. And it is pre­cise­ly that — the pow­er to dis­cov­er the nat­ur­al caus­es of things — that makes us men, dif­fer­ent from the beasts and cre­at­ed in the image of God.

—Exces­sive curios­i­ty is an invi­ta­tion to heresy. After Christ we have no need to be curi­ous. The Church sat­is­fies our intel­lec­tu­al needs, by inter­pret­ing for us the word of Christ as revealed in Scrip­ture and Tradition.

—You are cap­tured by the pre­ten­sions of author­i­ty; you are led as by a bri­dle. Brute ani­mals are led by a bri­dle, not know­ing where or why they are tak­en, and plod­ding along behind the rope that binds them. To be bri­dled by author­i­ty is to be con­strained like a beast. Sure­ly God did not endow us with the abil­i­ty to rea­son and to know, and intend that we should be led in blink­ers, brute and dumb.

—Do not imag­ine, Ail­er­an of Skel­lig, as do the heretics, that things con­trary to the accus­tomed course of nature can­not occur, from cer­tain mys­te­ri­ous caus­es that are hid­den from men by God. Many such things hap­pen to show men God’s grace. Our Holy Father has him­self expressed the opin­ion that the recent mar­velous signs in the earth and sky are God giv­en, not to pre­fig­ure the end of the world but to her­ald the com­ing of a new Mil­len­ni­um of peace and jus­tice, the begin­ning of which we may assume to have coin­cid­ed with the enthrone­ment side by side of a new pope and a new emper­or, Sylvester and Otto, who shall resus­ci­tate the Chris­t­ian empire and bring togeth­er the two halves of God’s domin­ion, spir­i­tu­al and tem­po­ral. Such a spec­ta­cle has not been wit­nessed since the depar­ture of Con­stan­tine for Byzantium.

—Ger­bert knows bet­ter than any­one that the so-called signs are in no way excep­tion­al. Ger­bert knows bet­ter than any­one else their nat­ur­al caus­es. If a new era of peace and jus­tice is to begin, then I wel­come it. But I doubt that peace and jus­tice will ever reign as long as men pre­tend to inter­pret the mind of the Cre­ator. There is in nature a won­der­ful har­mo­ny. The supreme arti­san cre­at­ed the world like a great harp upon which he placed the strings to yield a vari­ety of sounds, all in per­fect con­so­nance one with the oth­er. All parts of nature blend har­mo­nious­ly as they observe with due mea­sure the laws implant­ed with­in them, and so, as it were, emits their nat­ur­al sound. A har­mo­nious chord is sound­ed by mat­ter and spir­it, fire and water, earth and air, sweet and bit­ter, hard and soft, as each acts accord­ing to its nature. Only man, it seems, has the abil­i­ty to strike the dis­cor­dant note, to untune the strings, by ignor­ing nature’s fit mea­sure. If God’s plan for the world is to be known at all, it will be dis­cov­ered with­in the fab­ric of nature, which is and endures as a per­fect thing. If Ger­bert, or Otto, or any oth­er man, pre­tends to know God’s plan, and at the same time denies nature, then he is a fool. Such men, no mat­ter how well inten­tioned, cause mischief.