Take heed that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, `I am the Christ,' and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places: all this is but the beginning of the birth-pangs. Matthew 24:4-8 (RSV)
The name of this blog was inspired by the words of John the Baptist as recorded by the Evangelist St. Matthew. In this passage from Matthew 3 where he warns those who came to him for the baptism of repentance that he offered that a judgement was coming, and so their repentance needed to be sincere. Jesus was the embodiment of that judgment that John spoke of, but rather than with fire and wrath, Our Lord came with a gentler approach. John the prophet wants to spur people to follow the right path, Jesus wants to assure them that they will find a loving, merciful God when they get there and, yes, he will wait patiently for the return of the sinner.
Nonetheless a time of definitive judgement will come; it's simply a matter of when. As we move more into the autumn, closer to the end of the liturgical year the readings will reflect this reality. The Church has a funny way of teaching us along with the seasons; so as nature seems to be experiencing a death of sorts by way of the trees losing their leaves and the hours of daylight running short we are reminded that death, judgement and the End Times are realities that cannot be avoided.
Trying to discern the when and how this will take place is as old as the Church herself. But this is foolishness. It's enough to know that it will happen to keep us awake and ready, or at least it should.
People ask me now, considering all the tumult in the world, if these are the end times. Bear in mind I've been asked this question for the last twenty-five years, which tells me that people are always shocked that world and national events are, by nature, unpredictable and unstable. I will admit that the upheaval we are passing through now does seem to be more intense than we have experienced in recent history. All the same, since no one knows the day of the hour I feel foolish trying to answer the question at all. But my gut answer is no. We are not witnessing the end of the world, or even the beginning of the end.
But this doesn't mean that I don't think that we are at crossroads, and that something is ending, with something new, that we probably can't even imagine, beginning.
The Venerable Fulton Sheen promoted a theory of historical development that cut world history into roughly five hundred year epochs. At the dawn of the Christian Era was the birth of Christ. Five hundred years later the Roman Empire fell and a new Western Civilization began to take shape. In 1054 we have the schism between Rome and Constantinople, that split the Church in two. In 1519 the Protestant Reformation begins, causing divisions in the Church as well as political divides in Europe. This coincided with the age of exploration, and revolutions in science and industry. When he spoke in the 1970's he saw that another five-hundred year period was coming to an end. A unified Christian culture in the West was on its last legs, the Arab-Muslim world was on the rise after centuries of European domination, and the culture in general was splintering. He saw the century ahead, the beginning of the Third Millennium as marking the end of one epoch and the beginning of another.
In light of this theory I think we need to look soberly at what's going on right now in the world. Al Qaeda has morphed into ISIS (or ISIL or IS, depending on the acronym you prefer) and is engaging in terrorism of the most barbaric fashion imaginable. And yes, I do believe that their organization is present in some form here in the U.S. waiting for an opportunity to strike.
Russia is resuming their expansionist goals that were suspended at the end of the Cold War. I personally think Vladamir Putin's objectives are more Czarist than Soviet, but either way it's foolish to dismiss him as a 19th century throwback who's on the wrong side of history. Hitler had Napoleonic ambitions out of step with the Brave New World people were envisioning after the disaster of World War I, and look at the havoc he caused along the way to personal and national destruction.
As a side bar, in general I don't see Hitler and Putin as having all that much in common, but there is an interesting similarity in the situations that one was and the other is trying to take advantage of. It's been said that Germany was forced to sign a surrender treaty at the end of the Great War, but was never really defeated definitively on the battle field. By 1918 the war was essentially a stalemate, with the late entry of the US on the side of the Allies making victory for the Central Powers an impossible goal, even if tactical defeat wasn't eminent. The soldiers went home, Germany was forced to suffer severe "peace" conditions, but never really felt like that they had lost. What they did feel was let down by their leaders, both military and political. This made the rise of a nationalistic party like the Nazis possible. In the same way the USSR was never really defeated by the US in a military encounter. We had our Vietnam and they had Afghanistan, but we never went head to head (thank God), and so the dissolution of the Soviet Union didn't really feel like a defeat to the Russian people but was seen as a political failure. Russia has always seen itself as the protector of the Slavs, and had imperial ambitions in the region going back to the Czars, so what Putin is up to is very much in line with Russian aspirations through the ages. Like Hitler wanted to revive German national pride, so Putin is taping into Russia's recent and distant past to unify his country's resolve and sense of purpose.
We have not heard much about Venezuela's trouble's lately, but that country is still in civil unrest, and Latin American countries like Brazil and Argentina are experiencing political, economic and social convulsions.
Again, not much in the news about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the last couple of weeks, or about the Iranian or North Korean nuclear programs, but we know those situations can heat up on a moment's notice.
I haven't even talked about the social, political and economic crises at home, and I don't plan to. I think you get the point: there's a lot going on. Wars, rumors of war, as well as epidemics and natural disasters all seeming to be happening at once. It's easy to believe that Biblical prophesies are coming to pass and the world is coming to an end. I believe that the words of our Lord are coming to pass, but that the world is not ending. A world, if you will, is in it's final hours though. I'll leave the judgement as to whether Fulton Sheen was prophetic or lucky about his timing to others. But we are in a period of epochal change, and what this means for the faithful I'll leave for the next installment to explore.
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