We all know that the End of the World is inevitable — but is it tomorrow? Some might be tempted to say yes. Or, if not tomorrow, definitely next week, maybe next year. Ten years at most. Twenty years at the absolute latest. Since Our Lord told us to learn a lesson from the fig tree, that when we see the signs He and His saints have assured us will precede the end of the world, we are to know that it is nigh, even at the door (cf. Mt. 24:32-33), should we not be on the lookout?
Many are.
Signs of Those Times
Most of us Catholics have at least a cursory familiarity with the signs indicative of Our Lord’s return, and for many there is no tremendous leap of logic needed to connect those signs with the rapidly deteriorating state of things in civil and ecclesiastical society today. We know the Gospel is supposed to be preached over the whole world, and conclude that, with Coca-Cola claiming to be in “over 200 countries” of the 195 independent countries on earth, with 80% of Europe, 70% of the Americas, and even 25% of Africa having access to Google, of course people know about the Gospel. Another sign is that there are supposed to be weird things happening in nature. Probably the entire Pacific Northwest submerged under a monstrous tidal wave caused by a 9 M earthquake in the Cascadia Subduction Zone would fit that bill. Then, too, Antichrist is supposed to arrive; well, with world leaders everywhere calling for a Great Reset and the ushering in of a One World Order, how can we-know-who not be behind it all? Finally, there is the Great Apostasy. Traditionalists are all too familiar with the post-Vatican II statistics, heartbreaking indicators of a widespread loss of faith among Catholics.
True enough, these signs are alarming, but the question is: do they actually point to what many think they are pointing to? Bearing in mind, “We are dealing here with eschatology, which,” says Fr. Joseph Sagues, “is thought to be among the most difficult matters contained in the New Testament,” what do we find when we probe a bit deeper?
For one thing, we find an impressive number of saints, with many Fathers and Doctors of the Church among them, clearly identifying the six signs which will herald in the return of Christ the King and the ending of this present world. Msgr. Prohle enumerates them as follows: (1) the General Preaching of the Christian Religion all over the Earth, (2) the Conversion of the Jews, (3) the Return of Enoch and Elias, (4) a Great Apostasy and the Reign of Antichrist, (5) Extraordinary Disturbances in Nature, and (6) a Universal Conflagration. The first and fourth of these particularly draw our attention in light of current events.
The Worldwide Preaching of the Gospel and the Great Apostasy
Note that number one is indeed the General Preaching of the Gospel, which, while it does not mean that every individual will accept the Catholic Faith, it does refer, at least according to Fr. Sagues, who cites Saint Augustine, “to [people] professing and living the faith more or less in all nations.” The implications of this are quite radical. It will be the conversion of nations, including surmounting that massive wall separating the Christian East from the Christian West, and making much of the world’s population unreachable to the Gospel: I speak here, of course, of Islam. (Remember — the greatest and most public of all private revelations took place in a Portuguese city named after a Muslim princess who herself was named after Muhammad’s daughter.) The Muslims will convert en masse.
Not only the Muslims, but the Jews also, as St. Cyril of Alexandria assures us: “Towards the end of time, Our Lord Jesus Christ will effect the reconciliation of His former persecutor Israel with Himself. Everybody who knows Holy Scripture is aware that, in the course of time, this people will return to the love of Christ by the submission of faith…. Yes, one day, after the conversion of the Gentiles, Israel will be converted, and the Jews will be astonished at the treasure they will find in Christ” (Commentary on Genesis, Bk. 5).
And if this prophecy were not fantastic enough, we have Our Lady of Fatima’s declaration that Russia will convert. It stands to reason that none of the sublime conquests of Catholicism will happen after the Great Apostasy, since Our Lord at His Coming will defeat Antichrist (cf. II Thess. 2:8), and the End of the World will have officially arrived then. They must then happen before the Great Apostasy. In fact, are they not the reason the Great Apostasy will be so great: the more souls in the Church, the greater the number possessing the awful potential to defect?
Just as the Coke-Google argument gets harder and harder to swallow in terms of thinking the General Preaching of the Gospel has already been accomplished, so do the otherwise compelling numbers of people leaving the Church in the wake of the Second Vatican Council fail to prove a Great Apostasy. The Catholic Faith is actually growing in the world’s most populous continents — Asia and Africa — where the general population is also growing, and where there are both poverty and persecution of the Church. Clearly our ways are not God’s ways. The saying is true now as it was in the days of Tertullian: Sanguis martyrum semen Christianorum (the blood of the martyrs is the seed Christians). Given this fact and given the definition of the Great Apostasy, it no longer seems quite so conclusive that we are there now. Actually, we are not there — yet.
Much hinges on these two key signs: the Conversion of Nations and the Great Apostasy. Enoch and Elias do not return until Antichrist has come to power (cf. Apoc. 11:3-12), but Antichrist coming to power happens in tandem with the Great Apostasy, which he will fuel both by way of deceiving the world with signs and wonders and persecuting those who remain faithful (cf. Mk. 13:22).
The Coming Chastisement and the Consecration of Russia
Where does that leave us, immersed as we are in a worldwide state of diabolical confusion? Surely so much evil must be indicative of a great punishment to come? Yes. It is. We were warned in 1917 that God was about to punish the world for its crimes “by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church.” Two world wars later, the frightful fact is that we haven’t gotten the message. The crimes of the world have only increased. We are headed, then, straight for a Chastisement, long predicted, long delayed, such as the world has not known since the Flood, nor will it experience again until the Reign of Anti-Christ; a Chastisement of such horrific magnitude that it will bring the whole world to its knees in desperation, crying out to Heaven for the One Remedy — long promised, long ignored — that alone can save it: the real Consecration of Russia by the Holy Father and the bishops in union with him.
That he will do it, we know from Our Lady’s own lips, “The Pope will consecrate Russia to My Immaculate Heart.” It will be late, but he will do it. The question is when. Answer: not yet.
Why not yet? “The more God wishes to give us,” says Saint John of the Cross, “the more He makes us desire it.” If God’s plan in allowing the present hell we see around us is, ultimately, that mankind should turn to His Mother and devotion to Her Immaculate Heart be established in the world, then it stands to reason that the Pope cannot make this Consecration properly until humanity as a whole has seen, has understood, and has confessed that Heaven’s solution held out to us by Our Lady of Fatima is the only one. Were the Consecration to happen tomorrow, were Russia to be converted and all the wicked legislation suffocating civil society to be reversed, who would appreciate it? A handful of loyal Catholics?
That’s not good enough.
Worth Waiting For
We are talking about God wishing to give us a thing most rare since the Fall, a period of peace, a time when those — all those — left on earth dwell in the tranquility of right order, subject to God and His Blessed Mother, in love with Christ and His Church, at peace within themselves. Whoever heard of such a thing? Yet according to Our Lady of La Salette, this is the immense good that le bon Dieu has in store for us: “[T]here will be peace, the reconciliation of God with men; Jesus Christ will be served, adored, and glorified; charity will flourish everywhere. The new kings [who] will be the right arm of Holy Church, will be strong, humble, pious, poor, zealous, and imitative of the virtues of Jesus Christ. The Gospel will be preached everywhere, and men will make great strides in the faith, because there will be unity among Jesus Christ’s workers, and men will live in the fear of God.”
We are looking forward to a time so wonderful that it will have been worth the hellish period of preparation preceding it. Let us keep our focus. Big-picture-wise, while it is going to get worse before it gets better, it is then going to get better before it gets…worst. Till then, let’s keep those seatbelts fastened, because, for as glorious as the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart most assuredly will be — we are not there yet.
