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What
do the mystics say about prophecy? What about Biblical predictions of the
“End Times”? I hear so many conflicting things about this that
I don’t know what to think.
 espite a variety of personal
experiences through the various social crises of the centuries, all of the
legitimate Catholic mystics have heard in prayer—or have been told by
apparitions of the Blessed Virgin or of Christ Himself—the same two
things: repent, and pray constantly. That’s it, and that
sums up the nature of a true Christian
lifestyle. No matter what the particular crisis
of the time, only one course of action ever needed to be taken:
repent your sins, and
pray constantly for your own protection and for
the conversion of others.
Therefore, you don’t have
to know anything about prophecies of the “end
times.”
Using Knowledge
to Avoid the Cross
Nevertheless, you can find many
Protestants who are always talking about the
“end times,” even to the point of making the Bible seem like it
holds some sort of mysterious secret about “what’s going to
happen” that has to be unlocked with special
knowledge. But this approach to the
Bible is just a form of Gnosticism (from the Greek
gnosis, having knowledge), an early Christian heresy that thinks
salvation is dependent on what you
know.
And you can find many Catholics
today who chase after apparitions and
visionaries, eagerly awaiting the next weekly or monthly
“message.” All of this running after fairy
lights in the dark is just a psychological avoidance of the hard drudgery
of carrying the cross in suffering service to
others.
Doing, Not
Knowing
Real Christianity depends not
on what you know but on what you do, because real Christianity, as
all the genuine Catholic mystics have verified, is based in one thing, and
one thing alone: love. To love God with all your
heart and mind and soul, to turn away from your sins
and desire nothing but holy service to God,
and to pray constantly that God’s will be done in you, in your neighbor,
and in the whole world: that is the soul’s expression of
love.
Listen to what Christ said about
salvation:
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THERE
was a scholar of the law who stood up to test Him and said, “Teacher,
what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Jesus said to him, “What is written in the law.
How do you read it?”
He said in reply, “You shall love the Lord, your
God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and
with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”
Jesus replied to him, “You have answered correctly;
do this and you will live” |
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—Luke 10:25-28 |
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Notice the words. Christ did
not say, “Know this and you will live.” Instead, He said,
“Do this and you will live.” That is, if you
love the Lord, your God, “with all your
heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind,
and your neighbor as yourself,” then you will live.
Consider these words carefully,
and notice the mistakes into which you can fall if “knowing” is
your unconscious
motivation:
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Complacently
Knowing. To “love the Lord, your God, with all
your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your
mind” is a profound commandment. You cannot fulfill this command merely
by sitting around complacently knowing that God exists. |
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Preoccupation
with the Social World. You cannot love the Lord,
your God, “with all your heart, with all your being, with
all your strength, and with all your mind” if most
of your heart, most of your being, most of your strength, and
most of your mind are preoccupied with knowing the
corrupt social world and its lust for
sin. For example, the Seven Deadly Sins—pride,
wrath, envy, lust, greed, gluttony, and sloth—which are the functional
basis for most cultures today, all serve one
self-indulgent purpose: to push God out of your heart, out of your mind,
and out of your being. Therefore, when the desire to know the social
world leads you into complacency or self-indulgence—or even
spiritual pride—rather than
self-sacrifice, there is a sure violation of
the greatest commandment. |
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Lack
of Concern About Your Salvation. To “love your
neighbor as yourself” also has profound implications. If you
love yourself in the true Christian sense, you
will be concerned primarily about your salvation.
Therefore, to love your neighbor as yourself you will be concerned primarily
about your neighbor’s salvation. If, however, you use your neighbor
for the purpose of knowing your own
narcissistic pleasure, you drag both of you into
sin. And if you use yourself—whether it be your
body or your God-given talents—for the purpose
of knowing your own narcissistic satisfaction, you deny your neighbor
the benefit of your helpful service, and so you drag yourself into sin. Either
way, then—that is, when you mistreat your neighbor directly or
indirectly—you have broken the second greatest commandment, and, because
you’re mired in sin, you have broken the greatest commandment as
well. |
Staying Out of
Sin
Consequently, your greatest task
in life should be to stay out of sin so that you can love the Lord, your
God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and
with all your mind. If you do this, and if you
endure to the end (see Matthew 10:22; Matthew
24:13; Mark 13:13), it will make absolutely no difference when the end finally
comes.
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Goodbye, said the fox.
Behold my secret. It is very simple: one does not see well except with the heart.
The point of life is invisible for the eyes. |
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—from The Little Prince
by Antoine de Saint Exupéry
(My own translation from the original French) |
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