Father Elijah: An Apocalypse

451 Pages·1997·1.8 MB·English

by  Michael D. O’Brien

FATHER ELIJAH
An Apocalypse
MICHAEL D. O’BRIEN
FATHER ELIJAH
An Apocalypse
IGNATIUS PRESS SAN FRANCISCO
Cover art by Michael D. O’Brien
David Schäfer’s Vision
Cover design by Roxanne Mei Lum
© 1996 Ignatius Press, San Francisco
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-0-89870-690-1 (PB)
ISBN 978-0-89870-580-5 (HB)
ISBN 978-1-68149-172-1 (EB)
Library of Congress catalogue number 95-79950
Printed in the United States of America
Awake, and strengthen what remains and is on the point of death. . . .
(Revelation 3:2)
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Carmel
2. Rome
3. The Vatican
4. Assisi
5. Ruth
6. Naples
7. Isola di Capri
8. Rome
9. Rome
10. Warsaw
11. The Confession
12. Another Confession
13. The Conference
14. Rome
15. Rome
16. Foligno
17. Rome
18. Advent
19. In Pectore
20. Capri
21. Panaya Kapulu
22. Apokalypsis
Endnotes
Acknowledgments I am indebted to the Polish Canadian poet Christopher
Zakrzewski for his translations of The Crimean Sonnets by Adam Mickiewicz,
for permission to quote from them in Father Elijah, and for his editorial
assistance. I am also most grateful to Marc Sebanc, translator, essayist, and
novelist, for his wise insights and honesty. Above all, I wish to thank my wife,
Sheila, whose editorial sense is unsurpassed, and whose patience as I stare
glassy-eyed over many a meal will one day be rewarded.
Introduction
An apocalypse is a work of literature dealing with the end of human history. For
millennia apocalypses of various sorts have arisen throughout the world in the
cultural life of many peoples and religions. They are generated by philosophical
speculation, by visions of the future, or by inarticulate longings and
apprehensions, and not infrequently by the abiding human passion for what J. R.
R. Tolkien called “sub-creation”. These poems, epics, fantasies, myths, and
prophetic works bear a common witness to man’s transient state upon the earth.
Man is a stranger and sojourner. His existence is inexpressibly beautiful—and
dangerous. It is fraught with mysteries that beg to be deciphered. The Greek
word apokalypsis means an uncovering, or revealing. Through such revelations
man gazes into the panorama of human history in search of the key to his
identity, in search of permanence and completion.
Perhaps the worst of the “demythologizing” so endemic to our times is the
message that the stories of the Christian Faith are merely our version of
universal “myths”. It is suggested that many cultures have produced tales about a
hero who is killed and then returns to life; many more have imagined a
cataclysm that will occur at the end of history. G. K. Chesterton once wrote that
the demythologizers’ position really adds up to this: since a truth has impressed
itself deeply in the imagination of a vast number of ancient peoples, therefore it
simply cannot be true. He pointed out that the demythologizer has failed to
examine the most important consideration of all: that people of various times and
places may have been informed at an intuitive level of actual events that would
one day take place in history; that in their inner longings there was a glimmer of
light, a presentiment, a yearning forward through the medium of art toward the
fullness of Truth that would one day be made flesh in the Incarnation. Saint
John’s Revelation is an apocalypse of a higher order. It is genuine prophecy in
the sense that it is not merely a work of foretelling, but is a communication from
the Lord of history Himself. It is an exhortation, an encouragement, a teaching
vehicle, and a vision of actual events that will one day occur.
As the drama of our century speeds toward some unknown climax, numerous
speculations arise and new attention is given to John’s Apocalypse, stimulating a
plethora of interpretation. One school of thought has it that the book refers solely
to John’s own time; another asserts that it is exclusively a meditation on the end
of things in some indeterminate future; still another believes that the book is a
map of the Church’s history, unfolded in seven major epochs. A fourth
interpretation, one favored by most of the Church Fathers, holds that it is a
theological vision of a vast spiritual landscape, containing descriptions of the
situation of the Church in John’s own time, and also the events that are to unfold
at the end of time. For John, the “end times” begin with the Incarnation of Christ
into the world, and there remains only a last battle through which the Church
must pass.
This, in my view, is the fullest and best interpretation, and it is the one I have
followed in Father Elijah. The reader will encounter here an apocalypse in the
old literary sense, but one that was written in the light of Christian revelation. It
is a speculation, a work of fiction. It does not attempt to predict certain details of
the final Apocalypse so much as to ask how human personality would respond
under conditions of intolerable tension, in a moral climate that grows steadily
chillier, in a spiritual state of constantly shifting horizons. The near future holds
for us many possible variations on the apocalyptic theme, some more dire than
others. I have presented only one scenario. And yet, the central character is
plunged into a dilemma that would face him in any apocalypse. He finds himself
within the events that are unfolding, and thus he is faced with the problem of
perception: how to see the hidden structure of his chaotic times, how to step
outside it and to view it objectively while remaining within it as a participant, as
an agent for the good.
The reader should be forewarned that this book is a novel of ideas. It does not
proceed at the addictive pace of a television micro-drama, nor does it offer
simplistic resolutions and false piety. It offers the Cross. It bears witness, I hope,
to the ultimate victory of light.