Analogy of Analogies: The Joyful Mysteries as Image of All Human History
A great tragedy occurred in salvation history in the so-called "Enlightenment." An essential mammoth misfortune for this contrarily darkening age of the world, as well as, for that matter, the general period of thought and ideology between Protestantism and our modern godless age, can be argued to be the radical rejection of the supernatural. Indeed, as I testified in the article exploring the theology of strife,i the mighty and terrible divisions of Christianity and of Western religion in general bred, as it were, a radical rejection of organized religion and, dare we say, even the notion of a God who is supernaturally involved with His creatures. Yes, two great ideologies or religious philosophies that emerged from this (once again) so-called Enlightenment were deism and rationalism, and these were indeed supernaturally dead, as deism denied supernatural intervention from God, such as miracles, and rationalism denied supernatural revelation from God, as in the Bible or Tradition. Consequently, religion was no longer seen as God coming down from above to find man and show him the way but as man striving on his own powers to find God himself, both through solitary pursuit of truth without the Creator, and by mere human efforts apart from grace and salvation.
From this calamity arose a novel and twisted approach to the Bible, one that, predictably, eviscerates revelation, and in doing so, not only discounts the miracles and such, but also vanquishes, largely, a great element of mystery: analogy. For certain, analogy is a great category of wonder, that one set of things can image a deeper reality in another dimension beyond the immediate literal sense of the Scripture. In this vein, by the very same supernaturally dead religionists, the Scriptures start to be regarded as mere raw historical documents that no longer convey awe through the images, persons, events, places, and so forth, of passages, but simply brute data and moral lessons. One surprising effect this had on what would seem to be a religious disposition that would contrarily despise the new "developments"was on Fundamentalists, and, in particular, a heresy that lingers to this day and does great damage to the name of Christianity through a completely asinine approach to a controversial text, namely, the creation stories of Genesis. Here, the text is seen by the poor misguided souls as science, which is then very much a sort of humorous tribute to the supernaturally dead minds that preceded them.
Luckily, we, as St. Augustine has seen in De Genesi ad litteram, know better: "Spiritus Dei noluisse ista docere homines nulli saluti profutura" (“The Spirit of God did not want to teach people things that would be of no help to their salvation”). That is, the sacred author of Genesis in no wise intends the text to be scientific, for, after all, how God made the rivers, and the spiders, and the kangaroos, is irrelevant to human history, God's Plan, and our salvation. In fact, some Early Church Fathers see in the allegory of Genesis rather a foreshadowing of not the creation of man but the recreation of man, or his remaking—his renewal, and hence, of the ages of salvation history themselves, the phases of spiritual activity that progressively raise man up morally and spiritually from the alternating manifestations of the fall. In this way, the days of creation, far from describing the scientific development of the universe from the stars all the way to human beings, rather images, in supreme interpretation, the ages of the world!
The Seven Apocalypse Letters
The Mystical Christ holds the seven stars in His Divine hand just prior to the Seven Letters discourse. Can all this be merely seven literal Christian communities in the first century? Really? Perhaps, yes, in an immediate sense, for the Scriptures usually have a proximate audience. Yet, simply that? Can it really be that the whole mystery of the Church’s historical trajectory is random and aimless and has no theological rigor, especially not here? Indeed, simple common sense, coupled with the Catholic default mystical approach to allegory, leaves us no choice but to hope that, most certainly, some sense of the mystery of the same historical trajectory of the Church ages is found here. It must. Justice to the Catholic aura demands it. Too, a mere idealism, though clearly warranted in one layer as well, in addition to the early church communities, cannot complete sufficiency, for the simple reason that we cannot have persistent schizophrenia in every age of the Church, as in, in one sense, that at any point in history, the ‘false Jews” are slandering the holy ones in the “synagogue of Satan” and leading many to ten days tribulation, and then at the same time at any point in history, the same false Jews are coming to kneel at the holy ones’ feet, bringing escape from tribulation. Hence, we could even say that the best layer of meaning that Christ intends here is the layer of the ages of the Church.
Parallel Theology of the Days of Creation and the Beast of the Apocalypse
An Analysis of the Perpetual Cycle of Darkness and Light in Salvation History
There is no need to inform the reader of the awful tragedy and sorrowful offense that stands before us in this current time of our Church—the terrible and despicable crimes committed against children, adolescents, and young persons as a result of an infusion of enemies into our Church beginning many decades ago. We are in pain, hurt, anguish, anger, and helplessness. To be sure, in part, it seems all that we can do for now is abandon ourselves and the tainted, wounded Church into God’s hands and pray that some sense of justice and healing can come to the poor and scarred victims, their loved ones, and all those who weep with and for them, saying, “Why?!”
Too, in another dimension, for about the same time that this surely diabolical activity has been taking place, the Church has had to face a world that largely regards her as dead, a world of the irrational and godless atheism, nihilism and relativism. It is a dark time indeed.
In light of this dire situation, I write this theological discourse to bring some sort of spark of hope to us in this engulfing darkness that we find ourselves in, for we know that “where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.” (Rom. 5:20) More specifically, from EWTN scholarship,1 which researched a great subset of fully approved private revelation, the most likely conclusion is that we are in no wise at the end of the Church’s sojourn, for, even if now the self-same darkness is deep and horrendous, even to push us to a point of despair, we know that it is in moments of the worst trial that God brings light far greater than the sorrow that existed at the then present time. Let us not despair, therefore, for the church has died and risen many times.
This, in fact, brings us to the noble, Venerable Fulton Sheen. He had seen, in one view of our legacy, four pivotal times in Church history, each separated by a span of five centuries, in which the Church died a great death of some sort, only to emerge once again with life and vitality. His four historical hinges were:2
Venerable Sheen points out that in each of these, sparing our modern age, which has yet to be resolved, the Church suffered great loss and trial but bounced back in a virile come-back. Moreover, the same EWTN scholarship reference above provides the hope we need to realize that, if the best estimates from the plethora of fully approved private revelations are correct, an incomprehensible resurrection of the Church is on our horizon...
The Pyramid of the Catholic Sources of Truth
In antiquity, the pyramid was an ominous sign. It shewed forth the continuation of Babel, that blasphemous materialistic grandeur pursued in the place of God and ascending to God that the Lord had vanquished temporarily by confounding the human tongue. More specifically, Egypt, a beast as it were, simply picked up where Babel had left off, only in the form of a single nation and a single tongue, rather than the whole of humanity under one universal language. The great worldly wonder and spectacle symbolized the tyranny of pagan man—selfish, polytheistic, and self-deifying—then using God’s only Chosen Ones to build their magnificent edifices, and oppressing them in slavery, much like the renewed Babel of Pagan Rome, who persecuted God’s Chosen Ones in the Incarnate One’s Covenant.
Yet, the beauty of God is that He can take the things that pagans distort and use them for His own holy purposes. Toward that end, what we will now probe is that this frightening spectacle of arrogant materialism has a profound analogy for a great holy reality: a theology of the hierarchy of sources of Catholic truth above; ...
Telling the Story of Salvation to Children and Young Persons
To reach toward the close of our discourse, one could understandably ask, what use can we possibly make of these analogies? I have one word: catechetics! What do we mean? We mean that, firstly, knowing Church history in its essentials and the various religious dispositions that exist today and how they relate to the fullness of truth in our Catholic Christian faith is an indispensible necessity for our youth today. More specifically, in order to do battle with the diabolical relativism that assaults our culture, it is all the more imperative for young persons to understand the various basic religious types [or lack thereof] and how to explain their strengths and weaknesses. Without these gravely vital tools, a young person will be lost in navigating through this world of lies and confusion, unable to harness the beautiful spiritual gifts of their confirmation to discern the truth and the right path to follow.
Children, adolescents, and teenagers can seem overwhelmed in studying Church history with all its details and seemingly mundane progression from who knows where to who knows what. Life today is so chaotic and fast, that we, too, like the precious youth, can be tempted to give in to that blasted liberal attitude we saw above: that our lives and our history are aimless. But God is in control in our chaos, guiding a fallen and imperfect world toward its ultimate redemption, and these pictures—of the pyramid, angelic feet, and crucified feet—beautiful yet simple imagery, majestically image a deep theology of our doctrinal heritage and can portray, dare we say, even to children of age 10, a model for the phenomenon of these ages of dogmatic development with excellent appropriateness, giving them visual aid into, again, a very significant component of our faith, even as human persons, especially children, work well with visual forms. These pictures can help them encapsulate important concepts of our legacy. They show that God’s truths are not vague or random, but ordered and purposeful.
Probing the Creed: Pilate and Herod – Images of the Fall
... the harlot is atop the beast with ten horns. For a time, she rides undisturbed. But later, in the same Scripture, the ten horns turn upon her, burn her up and consume her flesh.
Apocalypse 17
And there came one of the seven angels, who had the seven vials, and spoke with me, saying: Come, I will shew thee the condemnation of the great harlot, who sitteth upon many waters, [2] With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication; and they who inhabit the earth, have been made drunk with the wine of her whoredom. [3] And he took me away in spirit into the desert. And I saw a woman sitting upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. [4] And the woman was clothed round about with purple and scarlet, and gilt with gold, and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand, full of the abomination and filthiness of her fornication.
And the ten horns which thou sawest, are ten kings, who have not yet received a kingdom, but shall receive power as kings one hour after the beast. [13] These have one design: and their strength and power they shall deliver to the beast. [14] These shall fight with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them, because he is Lord of lords, and King of kings, and they that are with him are called, and elect, and faithful. [15] And he said to me: The waters which thou sawest, where the harlot sitteth, are peoples, and nations, and tongues.
[16] And the ten horns which thou sawest in the beast: these shall hate the harlot, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and shall burn her with fire. [17] For God hath given into their hearts to do that which pleaseth him: that they give their kingdom to the beast, till the words of God be fulfilled
There we saw that, for a while, the joint amicability between the harlot and the beast seems to persist until the ten horns turn on the whore. Here, we learned that the whore is our Anti-Marital lie toward God made Incarnate: materialism: when man does not want a spousal relationship with God forever, or the Creator in the next world, he chooses his fulfillment in an infatuated perverse relationship with the creation and this world; that is, he lives for this world alone, what it alone can give: the brute goods of physical pleasure, possession, accomplishment and mere material wonders, material grandeur.
Such perverse infatuation implies that man has abandoned God, and hence has no regard for the commandments of God, namely, the Ten Commandments. Hence, his moral dimension is the antithesis of the Ten Commandments or, that is, ten anti-principles against God, against the moral law. These ten anti-principles, we saw, were the ten horns of the beast.
So then, again, just as the teenager can enjoy the alcohol and sex for a time, seemingly fulfilling himself, so humanity can for a time flourish in both godlessness and materialism. This can be imaged in the “peaceful” state of the woman riding atop the beast.
But, just as the consequences of sex and alcohol eventually catch up to the hedonistic young person and bring suffering and ruin [alcoholism, failed relationships, multiple divorces, venereal disease, low self-esteem, psychological wounds…], so eventually the same consequences of shirking the Decalogue start rupturing what was merely an illusory peace in the society that had, seemingly, wedded materialistic prosperity and stability to an attitude of either indifference to God or coldness toward Him. For, the end of sexual immorality is divorce and broken childhoods, which ruptures the children’s ability to grow up responsible, diligent, and trusting of authority and relationships. This then leads to children whose interests are less than noble: undisciplined, uncompassionate, superficial, hedonistic, and nonintellectual. Hence, lack of peace in families leads to lack of peace in communities: crime, devaluation of life, and so forth. And if communities have not peace, neither can cities. And if not cities, neither nations. And if not nations, neither the world.
Hence, the materialistic prosperity is destroyed, and the so-called great civilization collapses. The “anti-Ten Commandments” “eat the flesh of the whore and burn her up”! “The flesh is of no avail, but My Words are Spirit and Truth!” The flesh of the whore is the grandeur of this world and what is possible merely materialistically. It has no real power to bring peace and prosperity, rather, only the grace of God, which finds its apex in the very Flesh and Blood of Our Lord, the Eucharist. In fact, without grace, without love of God and neighbor—without the Ten Commandments—the flesh of this world and its power, the flesh of the whore, will be eaten up by the power of corruption and burnt up in a great fall: “Fallen, fallen, is Babylon the Great!”
But it is when the whore and the beast are friends that the Lord is most crucified! How? Well, it is when the whore and the beast are mutually aiding one another that the world is in the worst condition. Why? Because both lies are in vogue! The world is blind to God and His ways, His truth and His moral law [Anti-Baptism], and yet, at the same time, placing their faith in merely this world and its goods instead of in God and the next world [Anti-Marital disposition toward God]. It is then that it is totally mocking the Savior and spitting on Him, relishing its power and enjoyment of the brute things that are merely seen, and, concurrently, scoffing at their need for the things that are unseen. It is when it thinks that it can ignore God and His morals and yet escape the consequences that it crucifies Christ in His Feet and in His hands: crucifying His feet because it cares not to walk in the way of truth, and crucifying His hands because it cares not to use its hands to do the works of good, and rather only evil! And it is when it wants to fornicate with this world in materialism that it mocks the Christ on the cross with His intimate essence unfolded, thereby mocking that they are called to have mystical and marital union with Christ for all eternity in the next world.
Hence, when Pilate and Herod are “friends,” Christ is scourged and crucified! But when they were “enemies”, Christ’s light shone for a time, in His Ministry. Too, in history, in the time of warfare, in the time when 10,000 and 20,000 spar, when the tower is not being built, the anti-Decalogue is keeping the illusory peace of materialistic grandeur at bay, and man, not yet fully comfortable in this world, finds yet, in some sense, his need for the Divine Law and Assistance. We will elaborate on this shortly.