Christ made provisions for His Church by giving us the “Apocalypse”, narrating series of events that “must soon take place (c.1)” showing the future of the Church up to the end times. It is really a big help to know what would befall the Church in the future (which is now) so we are forewarned and forearmed for all eventualities. Of course, many christians are so interested about the signs of the end times. It is a popular topic that catches attention and used often by preachers to gain attention. Novels, making atrocious claims, have become instant best sellers. But I have not seen much serious attempts to explain present events as fulfillments of the Apocalypse. Even the Fathers of the Church, apart from Victorinus, hardly commented on the Apocalypse.
Bloggers had shown the state of the physical Church, the buildings. In Europe, grandiose Churches are turned from art shops to garages; in the United States, some are demolished to give way to supermalls and new ones look like glorified shoe boxes. Seminaries and convents are closing down by the hundreds. Stores sell beautiful altar appointments for profit, instead of those same things being used for the worship of God. What’s going on?
Allow me to try and explain what is going on, and show how this is one of the fulfillments of the prophecies of the Apocaplypse.
In the early Church, there was the hierarchical Church; these were the bishops and priests in their dioceses and parishes. It was part of the hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church and I would add, the external structure of the Church. It was tangible, it could be experienced. But there was, also, an inner structure of the Church that seems not to be part of the external structure of the Church; and this was the monastic communities. These communities were extra-judicial. They were in some sense outside the direct jurisdiction of the bishop. It is difficult to see them as part of the diocese or parish. They live in caves or individual huts, called hermitages or cells. While the grandeur of the Church was in the pageant of the Popes, Cardinals, Bishops, priest and altar boys, the monastic communities were in the margin, estranged from the rest. Alone. The bishops were to interfer in the monasteries, only, if some problems arose in the monasteries. Otherwise, the Bishops are hands off on the monasteries. That is how the monasteries progressed. With their great degree of independence from hierarchical domination. But it was the monks who lived the Gospels; the rest simply expressed the Gospel message in their rituals or liturgies. We can say that the monks lived the spirit of the Gospel while those in the cities performed the external liturgies.
Since the monks had the spirit, it was just right that they would be fit to celebrate the liturgies best. So The monks who lived in caves and cells began to build great monasteries with great Churches where the liturgies were developed in their splendor. The Spirit of the Desert, the monastic life which essentially is worshipping God in spirit and truth, without the externals of ceremonials was suddenly married to these external sacramentals of the Church. But these are two separate entities, glorious when they are together but each can exist independently from one another as in the early times of monasticism. It shouldn’t be separated but, once upon a time, they were.
Today, we see a crumbling of the exterior of this structure. The internal structure exist and Pope Benedict, though attempting to reform the external Liturgy is, in more sense, interested in developing the original internal structure, the spirit of monasticism (particularly the monasticism of St. Benedict.).
What’s going on? Right now there seems to be a collapse of the apocalyptic outer Church, i.e. the external structure of the Church, of which the Church building is a symbol. There is a melt down in the handing down of the true faith from the Church, down to the Bishops, through the priests and down to the faithful. Nothing is being handed down! But definitely, there are souls who are getting the message; though clearly, not through the ordinary means which is the external structure of the Church. I am amazed at the knowledge of a Gilbert Chesterton or a John Newman seeing that they were not instructed by the external structure of the Church (namely, by catechist, priests, nuns or bishops). This, in fact, is common among converts. They seem to possess a knowledge that surpass even those of born Catholic priest-theologians. That’s the way monks acquired their Divine knowledge. By living the interior life of the Church and not by a mere life within the structure of the Church.Today, sadly, I do not know, monastic orders are canonically within the structure of the Church. Would this be the reason why it has weakened the internal life of the Church? Pope Benedict is looking seriously at small lay religious communities with the hope that these groups are initiating what the first monks initiated during their time…true worshippers who worshipped in spirit and truth.
Now, let’s go back to the Apocalypse and see if these events we are witnessing had been prophesied in the Apocalypse. Like all prophesies, it is impossible to interpret prophecies unless it is actually being fulfilled.
Chapter 11 states:”Then I was given a measuring rod like a staff, and I was told ‘rise and measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship there, but do not measure the court outside the temple; leave that out, for it is given over to the nations, and they will trample over the holy City for forty-two months.'”
Note those who are pleasing to God: those who are worshipping in the temple and the altar. These are those who are worshipping in spirit and in truth minus the external structures of dioceses, parishes and Liturgy in the Churches. And those who are in the court outside the temple are those in the external structure of the Church which we see collapsing today; the bishops and priests who have failed to do their jobs of teaching and sanctifying their flocks, the Liturgies, the Diocesan and parish structures and the church buildings. And this outer court of the temple will be given to the gentiles, those Catholics in words but not in deed, who will trample over the holy Religion for forty-two months (three and a half years, the time alloted to the anti-christ to rule the earth).
It is, therefore, with great wisdom, that Pope Benedict is looking back at the time when monasteries were the places where worshippers worshipped in spirit and in truth independently from the external Structure of the Church, and as in times past, to build a sound external structure and Liturgy on that inner structure. The possibility in succeeding in the first is great but the prophecy of the Apocalypse shows that the second will be difficult, “for it was given to the gentiles to trample upon the holy temple.” (Picture above is Mt. Quarantel, the site of the temptation of Christ. A monastery stands at the cave where Jesus stayed.)