The answer to all mysteries of history must lie within the already extant Deposit of Faith. That is, for example, the Fundamentalists are foolish and short-sighted when they think that the “mystery of iniquity” (2 Thess 2) has to do with some sort of secret societies and such. The mystery of iniquity should really be the mystery of all sin itself, and therefore, of all history itself, seeing as sin is present at the outset of the human drama, and throughout, until the end. Hence, the mystery should be nothing short of the full implications, reasons, and meaning of God’s Plan to redeem the world to its fullest potential from the beginning unto the end of the world.
Consequently, the forthcoming predestined conversion of the Jews en-mass that will occur in the times of the end must also have its derivative reasons for happening somehow veiled in the self-same Scripture and Tradition, since there are no other sources of Revelation other than Scripture and Tradition, saving the Magisterium, which simply compiles and interprets them. This would force us to conclude that the mystery of such conversion must be present in one or more analogies from the Deposit. But where?
In pondering the meaning of the ages for many years now, I believe with all my heart that the key to unlocking this question is most especially present in the Resurrection scenes of Scripture. Sound crazy? Come along and see.
Christ’s Body, Old and New
The Resurrection, one asks? How so? Let us look at the first supreme analogy: Christ’s Old Body and events of the Gospel before the Resurrection filled up and fulfilled all that is of the Old Covenant—the Laws, the history, and so forth. At the Cross, His Body, and thereby all things Old, were put to death and abolished. “And he shall confirm the covenant with many, in one week: and in the half of the week the victim and the sacrifice shall fall”[Dan 9:27] But, through the Resurrection, rather than totally and radically different, the Old Law came to life again in the New Resurrected Body of Christ. This Body did not destroy all things old but transformed them into elements of the New, elements that now truly redeem and matter. Therefore, the New Body of Christ is like the Old Body in many ways but also different. And that means it is not, at first glance, completely recognizable!
The New Covenant is Similar but Different from the Old; Jesus’ New Body is Similar but Different from the Old
Now, here, we can once again ask ourselves: is the New Covenant utterly disjoint and unrecognizable from the Old? No! For, in fact, some elements of the Old remain, namely, amongst possibly other things, the base principles of the Law that Christ called out repeatedly to those who petitioned Him—what commandments are most important (Love the Lord your God with your whole being and your neighbor as yourself). Hence, effectively, sparing certain disciplinary issues (e.g., the Sabbath), the Decalogue is still in force.
Also, whereas most of the other elements are no longer binding in and of themselves (disciplinary or ceremonial aspects of the Law), they have all been fulfilled, or elevated, to new forms that bear some resemblance to the old but have been transformed spiritually!
But this is the very thing we see in the Resurrected Body of Christ! The Resurrected Body of Christ is, again, not utterly disconnected from the Old Body of Christ! It is the same Body but simply transfigured and elevated! Consequently, precisely because it has transformed elements and characteristics, it is to some degree different from the old Body and therefore, at least initially, hard to recognize!
The Disciples’ Failure to Recognize the Risen Christ can Image the Jews’ Failure to Recognize the Christ as Messiah
In light of these realities, the failure of the disciples to fully recognize the Christ in the beginning becomes a perfect metaphor for the Jewish People’s failure to recognize the Christ as Messiah, Who, as that very Anointed One, has taken the Old Law and transformed it into the New Law, the new way, which the People of Old do not understand, as they cling to the Old Law.
This wonderfully images the Jewish relationship to Christ in the history of the Church. In the beginning, the Jews see hardly anything in Christ that they can recognize, since they have clung so hard to the Old Law. Progressively, however, as more of the New Law comes into focus, the Jews grow closer to Christ, while yet being unable to fully recognize Him until the final phase of Church history, the great apostasy and Antichrist.
To understand this more clearly, we need to delve deeper into theological reasons for the failure of the Jewish People to see the fullness of light. This will involve the familiar Jewish/Catholic apologetics so saturated amongst St. Paul’s writings. Here, a totally common sense suggestion is in order. Let us proceed.
The Conversion of the Jews: How?
The Crux: the Necessity of the Old Covenant before the Incarnation
From all eternity, God foresaw that fallen man, in infancy, would be so privy to the visible order that they would in no wise be able to handle the fullness of Divine Revelation right from the beginning. Rather, precisely because of this materialistic existence, he will tend to need to learn or discern the spiritual dimensions through visible signs, or types, before the abstractions that transcend the material signs are more palatable, just as a child must first learn through illustration before graduating to the raw abstractions of written word without images.
For this reason, it in fact implies that God must first establish stages of Revelation and Covenant that, in the beginning, use physical things that only later shall be unveiled to point to their respective fulfillments. For example, killing a literal lamb must prefigure the sacrifice of the Eternal Lamb, the Christ; a literal land, or nation, will prefigure the ultimate Promised Land, heaven, the union with God in the eternal Beatific Vision; the miraculous but merely physical bread fulfilled in the spiritual bread of God Himself, the Eucharist. One must abstain from literal unclean meats to be fulfilled in the abstinence from unclean moral actions. This special covenant that uses these material types is what we call the Prefiguring or Foreshadowing Covenant, Judaism.
And yet, we see that these "pictures" in this Prefiguring Covenant are not salvific in their own sense; they only point to what is salvific. For example, once again, the literal Holy Land of Israel is not an end unto itself, in that, it only points to the true land of fulfillment, the spiritual Kingdom of God in the NT, the Church, and, ultimately, heaven. The literal lamb of sacrifice for Passover is not a true, intrinsic atonement. Only God Himself, taking on flesh and suffering in it, the spiritual Lamb of God, is the true atonement. God heals the People from literal serpent bites in the desert, but in the New Covenant, he heals the People of God from the spiritual serpent's bite, sin!
The Inevitable Rejection
And so, we anticipate in any material world, when God Incarnates Himself to the Prefiguring People, and unfolds these new mysteries, it is insulting and wounding to them.
"You mean that you only gave us pictures? We are only a seed People, as prelude to men of all nations? And all this time, you have told us of your Unicity as one God, and now you tell us there is a family of persons in Your one nature to exist? And that one Divine Person has become God? You have told us you are only One, and that no man can become God! Blasphemy, we cannot take it!"
Hence, the Prefiguring People remain attached to the pictures and reject the fulfillment. They fail to see what the pictures pointed to: from physical blessings, to spiritual renewal. In the end, even if you are in a physical land of milk and honey, only the spiritual ecstasy of heaven, the eternal milk and honey that flows from God Himself, can satiate your desire.
In the end, it is not that a particular animal is unclean; it is rather that you must not partake of what is spiritually unclean. Ultimately, no mere animal, which can neither suffer insult nor spiritual pain that you cause Me, can atone for what is infinitely offensive to priceless human dignity and immeasurable love! Hence, only I, your Maker, can make up for your sins.
The Jews Must Recognize Inner Renewal as the True Necessity
And so, again, it is the inner renewal of grace, of inner purity, that makes a man pleasing to God, not external. Consequently, we can argue that the Jews will not convert in full until they have experienced an epic taste of inner renewal and one in which they themselves can relate to.
The Jews’ Extant Experience of Inner Renewal
The solution is standing before us! The People of Prefiguring still walked by grace, though only implicit to them, as God had not yet brought the New Covenant. Yes, this is so!
Which is to say, although the animal sacrifices atoned for nothing in the true sense, were not the Incarnate One's future merits applied to the just of Old? For, was not Jesus' Passion applied to David's sins, or to Moses'’? Did not Abraham nevertheless love God in his soul by grace, even though He did not know that God is Triune, much less that the Son who had not yet come would, when He did, fulfill the true sacrifice that his literal son Isaac only prefigured, as testified by St Paul, who countless times in his letters confesses the faith of Abraham as justifying? For how did Abraham remain faithful to God apart from grace, throughout all of the heroic virtue he exercised?
The Historical Experience!
In light of these realities, we can now ask ourselves a more profound question about the already extant Jewish experience of grace and holiness: we have seen that Christ fills up in His Being and Life the Old Covenant. Yet, this would then also need to include the history of Old. What if such history of the Jewish People in the dear Old Testament were the pinnacle of experience in holiness? Could it not possibly be the supreme mechanism through which the Prefiguring People come to faith? Well, the issue now would be, does such history have a greater detailed structure than merely the vague “Old Dispensation”? I believe it has, and it is in fact just common sense, in this: obviously, the process of OT history is a maturation in historical holiness. What, then, is the process of micro holiness, that is, of the individual creature? It is none other than the way of the saint! In this vein, what if it were possible that the Jews, and the Church, each journey a macro version of the way of the saint? Behold, come and see; it works perfectly! In fact, the respective Peoples of God historically journey in holiness, in grace, the spiritual path of the saint, so that, precisely because they must taste the need for inner renewal above all merely external manifestations of purity to convert, the Jewish People possess the very seed of the mystery in their epic experience of inner restoration!
Imagine this: the very essence of inner renewal in magnificent fashion is staring right at them In the face through their entire pre-Christian walk with YWHY, yet they fail to see it—the spitting image of disciples who stand right in front of their Risen Maker and do no realize it! Shortly, as we probe these ideas, we will see such conjectures lead to a wonderfully exhilarating, fascinating, and yet common-sense and straightforward solution to the mystery.
Toward this end, we can now move into greater detail to see this historical experience as the apex of Jewish inner renewal made manifest in the great human drama. Let us review how it is structured. This spiritual path has three phases:
The People of God Journey the Way of the Saint Historically, Old and New
The Purgative Way: The flesh of the dark night of the senses is fulfilled historically in the world and its tendencies. No sooner does God form the Covenant People, than that they shall flourish, the infusion of the Spirit. But the spirit of the world, driven according to pride and selfish ambition, sees the blessings upon God's children as a threat to their material dominion, and so naturally reacts against them, which is to say, to either oppress them or to persecute them. Hence, the Church had pagan Rome, and the Jews had Egypt.
The Illuminative Way: The saint eventually conquers the greater resistance of the flesh, his substantial sinful tendencies being overcome and cast out, so that the oppression and/or persecution of the world on God's People ends and the People of God are freed or delivered from the more severe sting of the world's stubborn thorn. The OT fulfillment of this was the deliverance of the Jews in the Exodus. The NT fulfillment was the conquering of Christianity over pagan Rome, which eventually transformed the continent of Europe into a Catholic civilization.
Hence do the People of God enter the Illuminative Way, which is to say, the development of the contemplation of the Divine Revelation of the Covenant. For the OT, this is the Old Law and the age of the prophets, who grow in intimacy with God and develop the application of the Law unto the Prefigured People. In the NT, it is the doctrinal development of the Church, where she contemplates the Deposit of Faith more deeply and draws forth the fuller implications of what Christ and the Apostles left Her, while at the same time expanding her presence in the world.
The dark night of the soul awaits: the outside world becomes colder to the depths of the saint's intimacy in truth with God, so that darkness in various punctuated manifestations progresses toward the dark night of the soul, when the whole Deposit of Revelation seems a lie, that the Divine consolation is utterly taken away.
In the Old Testament, it is the prophets who are the just, whose intimacy in depth of the Law grows with God, while the Jews on the outside of them grow colder and more deaf to the imploring of the prophets, that is, desolations as response to their preaching. Finally, just before the vindication of their Revelation, there is the dark night, when all the Jews scoff at the righteous preachers of the Old Law, holding in contempt the totality of their witness. “But they mocked God's messengers, despised his words and scoffed at his prophets until the wrath of the LORD was aroused against his people and there was no remedy.” [2 Chr 36:16]
In the New Testament, it is the just of the Church herself, especially the Magisterium, that fulfills the role of the saint. For, as the Church develops the Deposit through the Ecumenical councils and constant teaching of the Ordinary Magisterium, so the outside Gentiles grow harsher in their relationship, progressively rejecting more and more of the Deposit of Faith, becoming ever more in the spirit of apostasy. Effectively, this has especially manifested itself in a three-stage fall from grace, basically the last 500 years: Protestantism (only Scripture and Reason), Enlightenment and Age of solo-Ratio (only Reason), and Secular Apostasy (not even Reason, total darkness).
The Unitive Way: From most fully approved Private Revelations [EWTN > Faith > Q and A > FAQ > Endtimes, Millennium, Rapture, Colin Donovan], most likely, the world will soon be restored to faith, even if it involves a very painful and veritably epic tribulation, converting the outer world and restoring them to love of God; Catholic Christendom will be rebuilt. Mankind will walk in love and peace, just like the saint in the unitive way walks every step with God. Too, the Jews had the chastisement of the Babylonian exile, which converted them back to God, where they were restored to their land of refuge and rebuilt the literal House of God, the Temple.
Finally, the Church will have an apocalyptic martyrdom—just as the saint’s final union with God is many times martyrdom, whether literal or of the bed—where Antichrist shall come, along with the ultimate persecution, epic witness unto death. This shall give way to a new age, the Second Coming, just as the saint enters the new age, heaven. Too, the Jews followed suit: they had an Antichrist in the final night of Maccabees, Antiochus, with terrible martyrdom and persecution, followed by the threshold of the First Coming of Christ, a likewise “new age”.
So it is that the People of both Old and New walk the path of the saint.
Three’s: Jesus and the Gospels Fulfill the Historical Path
However, now we must return to where we were. Remember, Jesus must fill up the history of the Jews in His Life, Death and Resurrection, at least at some junctures. How might He do this? Well, the number in question here is three, and its meaning is the way of the saint. So we need to see if Jesus has any “threes” and situations that reflect, if it were possible, the way of the saint. Bingo, there sure are! Where have we seen three? Are not three’s all over the Gospels?! And Jesus fills up these three’s so many times in His Life and Death and Resurrection!
Jesus fulfilled in His Flesh their entire journey: three’s! For three days and three nights, Jesus lingered in the earth before rising. On the third day He arose from the dead, in accordance with the Scriptures. Christ fell three times in the way of the cross. Christ progressively prayed three times in the Garden to accept the Will of His Father for the Passion. Three times Peter denied Christ, and three times He was reconciled (“Peter do you love me?”) Three times, Jesus spoke to Mary Magdalene at the tomb to open her eyes. For three days and three nights, Mother Mary and St. Joseph looked for the Christ before finding Him in the Temple.
Yet, once again, seeing so many of their details and journey fulfilled in Christ’s Flesh, the Jews are not able to see it. So then, what other options are there for the Jews (“No other sign shall be given unto this generation except the sign of Jonas”) to see the mystery of their spiritual journey except the mystical Body of Christ, the Church!
Yes! The People of New, of Incarnate One, the People of Jesus, walk this spiritual path, too! They fill up in their flesh what is lacking in the suffering of Christ! For the sufferings and life of Jesus in His individual Body could not attain the opening of the eyes of the Jews, but the mystical Body of Christ will!
Indeed, all these types in the Gospels filled up the three phases of the Jewish People, yet they have not believed. Hence, what will enable the Jews to convert is to see the same three stage process of inner renewal filled up in the flesh of the Body of Christ, His Church. Hence, as the Church herself journeys the same three-fold path of renewal, fulfilling the same OT history of the Jews in a spiritual sense, the Jews shall progressively recognize this renewal, so that, in the climax of NT Antichrist, fulfilling Antiochus, the OT Antichrist, the Jewish People shall exclaim with St. Mary Magdalene, Rabboni, which means, Teacher!
St Mary Magdalene at the Tomb
And this leads us to that wonderful exposition of this reality in our beloved St. Mary Magdalene at the tomb. We all know the story: Jesus speaks to Mary three times, and progressively she recognizes Him.
More specifically, St. Mary Magdalene’s inability to recognize Jesus at the tomb, her progressive hope in Christ, and thirdly, the final culmination of recognizing Him at the utterance of Jesus, “Mary!”, can be an image of the Jewish relationship to the Messiah in the entire course of the history of the Church.
This would imply, since there are three exchanges, like the three days of Jesus in the Tomb, three chapters of Jewish history during the Church: early Church, intermediate Church, and final Church history, or that is, our ways, which we shall see as the three darknesses of the Church: the purgative way [pagan Rome], the dark night of the soul [our modern minor apostasy], and martyrdom [the great apostasy].
At each juncture, the Savior, the Messiah, is appealing to the weeping woman, His bride:
Messiah: “Woman, why do you weep?”
Mary:“They have taken my Lord and I do not know where they have laid Him!”
People of Old: “The Messiah was supposed to be here. The Messiah was supposed to have come. We had the prophecies, the times, but He is not here. He did not come. We do not where He is!”
This can be the first phase of Church history, the purgative way. In this first phase, pagan Rome, the Jews knew through prophecy, especially Daniel, that the Messiah was supposed to have come, and He did not. Too, they are expecting an Old Messiah, a political redeemer, just as Mary is expecting and Old Christ in the tomb. Their situation is hopeless, and their relationship to Jesus and the Christians is one of hostility and enmity. Christ is not on the radar map at this time.
Messiah: ”Woman, why do you weep?”
Mary: “Sir, if you know where they have taken Him, then please tell me in order that I may go and anoint Him.”
People of Old: “Sir, we still do not recognize you as Our Savior. But perhaps you are a person [the gardener] who can help us find the Messiah, find where they have laid Him!”
Once again as per above, most fully approved private revelation suggests that we are at an intermediate crossroads of Church history, a certain dark night of the soul. The modern godless crisis will give way to a great renewal, even if it requires a chastisement of epic proportions. This renewal will bring the fullness of the Gentiles, a near worldwide Catholic civilization of love, the Triumph of Our Lady of Fatima’s Immaculate Heart.
Too, the Jewish history has taken a positive turn: a great portion of the Hebrew people now have repossession of the Holy Land that they had lost so many centuries ago by the Divine chastisement of Temple destruction and diaspora, which was an allowed consequence of the Jewish inability to recognize the coming of their Savior.
Too, Jewish/Christian relations are renewed. Jews still do not recognize Christ as their Messiah; they do not fully acknowledge the Risen Savior who still stands before them apocalyptically; they continue to weep that they do not know where the Savior is. But, I think it is fair to say that many now regard Christ as a good man who can help them find the Savior, as it were (the gardener?). In fact, in the wake of the incomprehensible horrors of the Holocaust, the Church has reached out to Her elder brethren in friendship, filial affection, and respect. (Popes visiting synagogues and such, is unheard of for centuries).
Technically, Her call to the Jewish People for conversion has not been abrogated as some well-meaning individuals with a very understandable but misguided compassion may insinuate, but neither does the Church look upon her beloved seed of God’s Covenant with condemnation, knowing that the Jewish People are not yet fully culpable historically for conversion to the Gospel, and that, leaving the case of any individual Jewish person to that person and the mercy of God, we realize that, first of all, the mystery of a person’s conscience carries with it its limited, complex experiences both in positive and negative dimensions, secondly, that in the end, one can be saved by the implicit desire for Baptism—which, at the end of the day is simply, “Lord, show me the way; Lord, help me follow the way”—and finally, remembering that the Father in the great parable does not condemn the older son in his understandable jealousy at the return of the converted, reprobate younger son (the Jewish jealously toward the Gentiles, who once spit in God’s face but now enjoy mercy from the Gospel) but only pleads with the older to come into the house and celebrate the redemption of his younger brother!
Hence, the second, middle scene between Jesus and Mary Magdalene can be our second, intermediate phase of Church history, the dark night of the soul.
Messiah: “Mary!”
People of Old and Mary: “Rabboni!”
Finally, at the end of the world, the ultimate déjà vu enters in: the New Testament Antichrist (the final history of the Church before the Second Coming of Christ) fulfills Old Testament Antichrist, Antiochus IV Epiphanies (the final history of the Jews before the First Coming of Christ), bringing the ultimate spiritual victory: the opening of the eyes of the Jews.
The Road to Emmaus: Image of the Jewish Failure to Recognize Christ as Messiah?
For another incredible support of this theology in addition to St Mary Magdalene, the disciples on the road to Emmaus are perfect. They do not recognize Jesus at first. But as Jesus unfolds to them how He fulfilled all the law and the prophets, their hearts progressively burned. Of course, in the ultimate Eucharist, their eyes are opened, the separation of the Body and Blood of Christ. In light of this, can we not see the Church journeying alongside the Jews, revealing to them how She is fulfilling their history as well. Firstly, the Risen Christ can image the Church, the New Mystical Body of Christ, which embodies the elements of Old transformed and renewed into the New Testament fulfillments; secondly, the disciples on the road to Emmaus can image the Jews, who, as of yet, do not recognize their New Savior. This, then, would profoundly show how She is gradually fulfilling the law and prophets in her history, even as Jesus is opening up to the disciples how He fulfilled all of the Old Testament in His self! Progressively, then, the Jews' hearts burn with fervor as they recognize more and more the history of their covenant in a spiritual form being filled up in the Gentiles and the Catholic Church. Finally, at the apex, when the Body and Blood of the Church is poured out and separated upon the diabolic altar of Antichrist, fulfilling the Eucharistic Passion of Our Lord, and fulfilling the outpouring of the Jewish blood in the Maccabean persecution, the eyes of the Jews are opened: "Were not our hearts burning within us!"
Further Analogies
We can explore a few other instances of the Gospel “threes”.
The Fifth Joyful Mystery: the Finding in the Temple
Joseph and Mary look for Jesus for three days and three nights. They finally find Him on the third in the Old Temple. “Did you not know that I would be in My Father’s House and about His business?”
Too, for three ages, the Jews look for the Messiah. Only in the third age, martyrdom, do they find Him, in the New Temple, the Catholic Church. Meanwhile, the Christ had been about His Father’s business, redeeming the Gentiles.
Too, Joseph and Mary spend the first day out in the caravan. Only in the second do they return to Jerusalem. Similarly, the Jews spent the first great age of Church history in the epic caravan, the diaspora. Now, in the second age, starting with the dark night of the soul, the Jews have returned to the Holy Land.
Doubting Thomas Must Experience it All
St Thomas will not believe until he has effectively “experienced” all the new wounds. There are five wounds, however, whereas there are three ways of the saint, it works out to five sub-parts, as follows: each way has two parts, first light, then darkness, which would make six, except that the purgative way only has darkness, so there are five parts:
Darkness: Dark night of senses
Light: Illuminative way of light
Darkness: Dark night of soul
Light: Unitive Way of Light
Darkness: Martyrdom
This perfectly matches our theory: only when the Jews have seen their wounds of Old filled up in New Testament context by the history of the Church (the Risen Body) will they accept the Christ. Bingo:
“Only when I place my hand into his side and my fingers in the nail marks will I believe!”
Lesser Analogies:
Gethsemane
The three pleas of Jesus with His Father “progress in strength and knowledge,” which, as we see from dogma of early Church times, does not reflect an opposition of Christ’s human will with His Divine will or the Will of His Father, but that he is progressively strengthened in His Human Nature for the Passion, from a certain human shrinking from the horror.. Again, this correlates so profoundly with the three ways of the saint, through which the saint progresses in holiness toward God.
Hence:
“Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass Me.”; here, the connotation, although shrouded in mystery, reflects an “unknowing.”
“Father, to whom all things are possible...”; now the “knowledge is greater.”
“Yet, not My Will, but Thine be done.”; finally, perfection, fully prepared to do the will of God, as in the unitive way.
Too, we can see the progression of historical holiness in the Church as she passes through the “ways.”
Peter’s Denial and Reconciliation
Our final analogy comes from Cephas. Peter denies Jesus three times, and like the Christ’s agony in the Garden, they have a certain progression, or rather digression, in sin, namely, at least in two Gospels. More specifically in Mark and Matthew [Mk 14:66-72; Matt 26:69-74] there are two initial denials, but then, in the third, Peter solidifies and emphasizes brutally his disowning of his dear Savior by cursing and swearing. Indeed, per the historical analysis above regarding the ages of the ways, we can veritably see how the culpability of the world’s disowning of Christ rises, culminating with the great apostasy.
More specifically, we recall three primary darknesses in which the world scourges the Christ:
Pagan Rome
The Modern Minor Apostasy
The Great Apostasy
What we can say is that each phase of “denial” above, or darkness of Church of history, becomes worse, or more culpable than the ones before it. This can also be a mirror of the other “three” we have not dealt with: the three falls of Christ in carrying the cross. Three times humanity denies that it knows the Christ; three times it falls into a great phase of sin under the weight of the same original sin moving through the New Testament Divine plan. Let us work it out.
Firstly, in the beginning darkness, pagan Rome, the world has minimal culpability. The denial is young, seeing as they do not fully understand Christians. They feel that such persons are opposed to the state and are traitors and insurrectionists. Yet, they do not realize that the Christians are not against the Empire. They do not want to overthrow it. They rather desire to transform it by Jesus’ power. As the pagans begin to see the Christians’ courage and love in martyrdom and good works, they eventually convert.
Moving on to the second darkness, the minor apostasy, the modern rejection of Christianity in most of the European civilizations is more culpable, seeing as the Gospel has penetrated a substantial portion of the world, beginning with Constantine, on through the Middle Ages, and even, still during the Protestant Rebellion. Yet, this brings up the reality that this modern rejection of Our Lord, though more culpable than pagan Rome by a long shot, does not itself represent the supreme insult to God. Why? Well, it is clearly so since the period between Constantine and the so-called Enlightenment, more or less when the apostasy from Christendom began, was stained with epic division, hatred, bloodshed, and the like. Indeed, we can hear them say:
These Christians cannot get their message across about what Jesus ultimately meant, so we do not need Jesus. We don’t need Jesus, we don’t need Popes, we don’t need Bishops, and we don’t need Scripture. All we need is Reason.
Therefore, it is appropriate to argue that God is not finished with humanity. Indeed, Vatican II’s goal was not to abandon ship in light of the Euro-darkness but to renew our efforts to bring the world back. In a certain sense, the modern Church is trying to apologize for its members’ sins of past and present and invite the world to reconsider the Gospel that has so fallen by the wayside. It is offering to humanity the prospect of the best of both worlds, both science and faith reconciled, to at least bring peace for a time before humanity inevitably rejects God permanently (at the great apostasy). Indeed, too, God has a soft heart and can surely sympathize with a world that is scandalized by the dirty laundry of organized religion.
Consequently, the world is not at its end, as we have seen if most fully approved apparitions are correct. Rather, the age of peace is presumably inevitable according to the EWTN research above. Therefore, God will vindicate His Church; Christians will be reunited, all under Rome, and the world will be restored. Yes, science and faith will be reconciled, and there will be rest. Subsequently, with God giving to humanity all that He can short only of the eternal eschaton beyond us, a subsequent apostasy will be the supreme denial of the Christ, the last nail in the coffin, as with Peter’s cursing and swearing.
One final note, the objection may be made that the rise and fall of kingdoms and civilizations has occurred many times in history, so that, it is retorted, why should this great apostasy be unforgivable? The answer is that in all other risings and falls, the lessons learned were limited. In this near final chapter of history of our time, what is being learned is the fullness of Divine Revelation itself and the apocalyptic consequences of the rejection of all faith and morals therein. For this reason, when the world mocks the wondrous beauty of peace, fullness of Catholic teaching lived in the context of a fully developed world in material advancement, there is, as it were, a certain blasphemy towards God that will be historically unforgivable, after all the world will go through.
But to conclude, it is in those days that, as the Gentile world, as a near whole, departs from the Christ, and the Father and the Spirit forever, never again to open their eyes, those who have until now only seen in part, shall see in full, so that the Gospel may be all in all. Yes, this will be the reality that a People who were first to receive any revelation from God, shall be the last to receive it in full, while another People who were the last to receive any revelation from God, were the first to receive it in full.