The Lord of Contemporary History

by Msgr. Eugene Kevane

The following is a talk given at the CUF Catechetical Conference on “Parents as Teachers of the Faith” in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, in 1975. It appeared in condensed form in the September/October 2008 issue of Lay Witness.

When I was invited to this catechetical conference on “Parents as Teachers of the Faith”—something so positive, so wholesome, so promising of good for little children—I wondered, as I am sure you are wondering, why I was asked to talk on this particular verse from the Gospel: “When the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Lk. 18:8)

New Light on the Apostolate of the Laity

Then it began to dawn on me. Perhaps we are being asked to throw a new light, from a different direction, upon the theme and the work of this conference, and indeed upon the emphasis on the apostolate of the laity, which has come from the Second Vatican Council.

Let us, then, look at this mysterious verse more closely. The context in chapters 17 and 18 of St. Luke’s Gospel is the coming of the Lord Jesus at the end of the world to judge the living and the dead. The Pharisees had approached, asking Him when this is to be. The Lord declined to answer this question. Then He gave His own disciples the parable of the unscrupulous judge and the importunate widow. “Since she keeps pestering me,” the judge said to himself, “I will let her have her way.”

And the Lord said, “You notice what the unjust judge has to say? Now will not God see justice done to his chosen who cry to him day and night even when he delays to help them? I promise you, he will see justice done to them, and done speedily. But when the Son of man comes, will he find any faith on earth?”

As good exegetes and commentators point out, the original Greek is remarkable in that it has the definite article with the word “faith” (the faith). The careful exegetes, therefore, including the Protestant ones, explain that the Lord is making reference to the true faith, the orthodox faith, the faith which distinguishes His own Church and which He sent this same Church to teach to all nations. This, then, is the Lord’s question: When He comes to judge the living and the dead, will He find His own true faith on this earth, which He committed to His Apostles and sent them to teach?

Obviously, we have before us one of the most enigmatic and mysterious verses in the entire Bible. The answer His question expects seems, on the one hand, to be negative. “No, He will not find His truth Faith still left on earth.” But on the other hand, this same Lord Jesus promised that the gates of hell will not prevail, that the Holy Spirit will abide in the Church, the pillar and ground of truth, and that He Himself will be present with His Apostles, with His indefectibly apostolic Church, assisting the successor of the Apostles in the profession of its Apostolic Faith until the end of the world.

What Does This Mysterious Verse Mean?

What, then, does this verse mean in itself and in the context of this Catechetical Conference?

In seeking the answer, we shall have three personalities in mind: two as negative backdrops, the other as our positive support. The first of these is the influential German philosopher of a century ago, Friedrich Nietzsche, who wrote a significant book on the meaning and direction of modern philosophy entitled The Antichrist.

The second personality is the unfortunate Fr. George Tyrell, whom Pope St. Pius X was forced to excommunicate earlier in our century. In his book Christianity at the Crossroads, he reveals in his characteristic way, one which has followers among us today, his failure to take seriously this verse from the lips of the Lord Jesus. “The difficulty for us,” he writes, “lies in the fact that . . . this apocalyptic imagery has been given a literal fact-value which our minds have slowly become incapable of accepting . . . For Jesus, what we call His apocalyptic ‘imagery’ was no mere imagery but literal fact . . . But for us it can be so no longer. We can no longer believe in the little local heaven above the flat earth, from which Jesus is to appear in the clouds; nor in all the details of the vision governed by this conception.” (94–95). We mention Fr. Tyrrell’s rejection of the Second Coming and his profession of unbelief in the divinity of Jesus Christ simply as a backdrop. Perhaps we will be forgiven for adding that we have no intention of attempting to please his followers among us today, who are attempting to continue his work inside the Church.

The third personality, the one whom we shall follow as our positive guide, is Cardinal John Henry Newman in his sixty lucid pages on this verse in his book Discussion and Arguments on Various Subjects.

The Teaching of Jesus on the End of Human History

We Catholic Christians are followers of Jesus Christ. We are His disciples as He had disciples in His public life. We are members of His Church by virtue of professing the apostolic faith which admitted us to Baptism. Let us turn to Jesus, the Lord of history, guided by Cardinal Newman, for light on this enigmatic verse which we are considering. For Jesus lived with us and spoke to His disciples at a particular moment of time. While He was speaking, since He is the Eternal Son of God the Father Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, His divinity and therefore His knowledge embraced the totality of creation and saw every detail of its development in time. Nothing of the panorama of human history was hidden from His view as He spoke. He saw the end. He saw the events that lead up to the end of human history, events which evoke the end from the depths of history. All of this was present to His consciousness. He speaks from what He sees. And this is what Holy Mother Church has preserved from Apostolic times in these precious records of His teaching which have come across the centuries to our hands as the Holy Gospels.

13th Chapter of Mark Throws Decisive Light

It is out of their Catholic faith in Jesus as the Lord of history that His disciples come to Him, as St. Mark tells us in chapter 13 of his Gospel. They come to Him as one who sees and knows more than a mere man of His place and time. They have come to recognize Him as the Creator of this cosmos, who is therefore the Lord of its process of becoming, and who sees this entire process as present—simply because He is true God as well as true man. Let us turn to this 13th Chapter of St. Mark, then, with its seven chief points of teaching, together with Cardinal Newman’s summary of the Fathers of the Church in their commentaries.

First: “As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Look, Teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!” And Jesus said to him, ‘Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another, that will not be thrown down.’ . . . and as he sat on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately, ‘Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign when these things are to be accomplished?’”

Secondly: Jesus distinguishes between the time when the end will be, and the signs of its coming. He urges His followers to be cautious regarding the signs: to sift them, to be circumspect about them, exercising good judgment. “Take heed that no one leads you astray,” He said. “Many will come in my name saying, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray.” Peter’s question came from the Jewish mentality of his day, for which the destruction of the Jewish temple of the old Law was linked with the end of the world. We know that the Lord Jesus also had in mind a new and different Temple which He intended to build on this earth, the New Jerusalem, the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church. It was to grow as a mustard seed until it became the great world-embracing temple of God during the times of the new Law.

Thirdly: Jesus describes the beginning of the troubles for His four questioners. There will be wars, rumors of wars, earthquakes in various places and famines. “This,” He says, “is but the beginning of the birth-pangs.”

Fourthly: The Lord Jesus describes a coming persecution of the faith, amid universal chaos and division and schism. There will be a fierce hatred for those who take their stand with Him. Implicit and between the lines, we can sense a coming temptation to give up Jesus Christ, His Catholic faith and His holy religion, a pressure to give way to apostasy.

Fifthly: The Lord Jesus tells Peter and the others about the climax of the persecution, explaining what He means by drawing upon the Prophet Daniel concerning the abomination of desolation that sits in the Holy Place. “When you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be (let the reader understand) . . . ”

Newman on the Antichrist

“The last persecution,” writes Cardinal Newman, “will be more awful than any of the earlier ones . . . in its being attended . . . by an open and blasphemous establishment of infidelity or some such enormity, in the holiest recesses of the Church.” “The sign of the Second Advent,” Newman continues, “is said to be a certain frightful Apostasy, and the manifestation of the Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition—that is, as he is commonly called, Antichrist.”

“And I grant that as Rome, according to the Prophet Daniel’s vision, succeeded Greece, so Antichrist succeeds Rome, and the Second Coming succeeds the Antichrist.” “The Man of Sin,” Newman continues, “is born of an Apostasy, or at least comes into power through an Apostasy, or is preceded by an Apostasy, or would not be except for an Apostasy.”

The spirit of Antichrist, at work since apostolic times, is not the same as the concrete historical figure who is to come. The spirit animates his forerunners; Antichrist himself fulfills them and brings their work and their influence to historic culmination and climax. “It seems clear,” Cardinal Newman writes, “that St. Paul and St. John speak of the same enemy of the Church . . . And they both describe the enemy as characterized by the same especial sin, open infidelity . . . He will oppose all existing religion, true or false, ‘all that is called God or worshipped. . . . ’ Not in God’s Name, not with any pretense of a mission from Him, but in his own name, by a blasphemous assumption of divine power, thus will Antichrist come.”

Distinguishing between the signs and the time, as the Lord Jesus Himself does, Cardinal Newman mentions the heresies which have ravaged the Church in the past, perceived by Christian observers as “the forerunners of Antichrist.” “These instances give us warning,” he concludes. “Is the enemy of Christ and His Church to arise out of a certain special falling away from God? And is there no reason to fear that some such Apostasy is gradually preparing, gathering, hastening on this very day?”

Sixthly: Then the Lord Jesus, in verses 24–27 of this chapter 13 of St. Mark’s Gospel, gives the essence of His teaching to His followers. It is one of confidence, perseverance, and humble good cheer. Be of good heart! The more these signs seem to become visible, the more His true followers will respond to His own admonition: “When you see these things begin to take place, look up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” (Lk. 21:28).

Seventh: In conclusion, the Lord returns to the distinct question of the time when, which is different from the question of the signs. He bids us to watch the signs. “From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near . . . ”

And He forbids us to seek to know the day or the hour. “But of that day or hour,” the Lord Jesus concludes, “no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

Those Who Persevere Will Be Saved

It is quite apparent that the Lord is speaking of a future contingency, of an event contingent upon the way we creatures use our gift of free will. One cannot but think of our own case at the present moment. In some places, here and there, there is an abomination of desolation which has penetrated where it ought not, within the very teaching programs of the Catholic Church, to propagate something alien and unsound to the children. This is the general backdrop of this Catechetical Conference, as we know, although we have not been stressing it these days. Who shall say whether it will take deeper root and spread more and more widely, until it becomes what the Lord was seeing and what His words describe in Mark chapter 13? But perhaps it will not gain the upper hand. Beginning with the Holy Father himself in Rome, assisted valiantly by many, many bishops, pastors, and major superiors of religious teaching communities, there is an intense effort on the part of the Church right now to contain this phenomenon and to take proper pastoral care of the oncoming generation. Who is to say what will be the outcome? What the future will be? In last analysis, it depends on each of us, on our use of our freedom toward the Word of God. “But of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

Then the Lord Jesus gives His conclusion, so logical, so encouraging. “Take heed,” He says. “Watch and pray; for you do not know when the time will come . . . watch therefore . . ., lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. And what I say to you I say to all: Watch.” And thus this tremendously compressed, divinely luminous chapter 13 of St. Mark’s Gospel comes to its end.

Application to the Catechetical Situation of Today

Knowing that we cannot determine the day or the hour, and not wishing to do so, what can we say about the signs? Are we experiencing any of them? In particular, what about the two chief signs of the Lord’s coming, the great apostasy and the advent of His adversary who will arise out of the apostasy on the scene of human history? In answer, let us hear further the words of Cardinal Newman.

“Surely there is at this day a confederacy of evil,” he writes in the same place, “marshalling its hosts from all parts of the world, organizing itself, taking its measures, enclosing the Church of Christ as in a net, and preparing the way for a general apostasy from it. Whether this very apostasy is to give birth to Antichrist, or whether he is still to be delayed, as he has already been delayed so long, we cannot know. But at any rate this apostasy, and all its tokens and instruments, are of the Evil One, and savour of death. Far be it from any of us to be of those simple ones who are taken in that snare which is encircling around us! Far be it from us to be seduced with the fair promises in which Satan is sure to hide his poison!”

Whatever may be the case, certainly we are in a position now to see better what the answer may be to the Lord’s own question: “When the Son of man comes, will He find faith on earth?” As Jesus makes clear, externally an immense world-wide power will possess the structures of society, persecuting the members of His Church. Furthermore, by virtue of some penetration within the holy place itself, within the very Church of God, the times toward the end will become frightfully deceptive: so as to deceive, if it were possible, even the elect. What then of the Lord’s promise that the gates of hell will not prevail? That He will be with the successors of His apostles, the bishops, as they teach the apostolic faith until the end of time? What can it mean, but that the true Faith will continue largely on the humble level of families in their homes? In this largest perspective, perhaps we can discern the deepest significance of the apostolate of the laity, emphasized in a new way by a special document of Vatican II. And in this same perspective, this catechetical conference on parents as teachers of the Faith may well find its most profound reason for being. Are we then asserting that the time is now? The answer is that we are not. We are standing with Cardinal Newman. It may be that we are in the final apostasy and that therefore the mysterious figure of the Antichrist is approaching. On the other hand, it may be that he is still to be delayed, and that what we see and experience at the moment will be included among the phenomena of the forerunners. But in either case, the danger for the children is equally real, and the Catholic people of God should gird themselves, especially within their Catholic homes.

Mistake Leaving Expectation of the Second Coming to the Sects

It is a mistake to leave the expectation of our Lord’s coming to the sects. It is something simply Catholic, professed by our Creed and renewed strikingly by the Second Vatican Council, as anyone can verify by listening to the acclamations of the liturgy.

This is the conclusion which Cardinal Newman himself draws. “Such meditations as these,” he writes, “may be turned to good account. It will act as a curb upon our self-willed, selfish hearts, to believe that a persecution is in store for the Church, whether or not it comes in our days . . . Surely, with this prospect before us, we cannot but feel what we Christians really are . . . pilgrims, watchers waiting for the morning, waiting for the light, eagerly straining our eyes for the first dawn of day—looking out for our Lord’s coming, His glorious advent, when He will end the reign of sin and wickedness, accomplish the number of His elect, and perfect those who at present struggle with infirmity, yet in their hearts love and obey Him.”

And we can join with this contemporary intellectual giant of the Catholic Church the voice of St. Cyril of Alexandria coming from the early Church. Consider the following from his 15th Catechetical Instruction: “Prepare yourself, therefore, O man! You hear the signs of Antichrist; nor remind only yourself of them, but communicate them liberally to all around you. If you have a child according to the flesh, delay not to instruct him. It you are a teacher, prepare also your spiritual children, lest they take the false for the true…God forbid that it should be fulfilled in our day. However, let us be prepared.”

What is To Be Done?

How shall we be prepared?

Associations of the laity, newly encouraged by the Second Vatican Council as they are, can play a providential role in this preparation. Under national leadership, transmitted to local leaders, we can see parents taking spiritual care of Catholic children by catechetical teaching in the homes. We can see local units of the laity adjusting to new conditions in the Church, conditions never before experienced by the Catholic people, but to which the Lord Jesus has quite clearly drawn our attention in advance. And based upon His teaching and His example, we can become ever more conscious followers of Jesus Christ, more attentive than ever to the following of Him within our homes. We can develop a new post-conciliar type of spirituality that is better adapted to the condition which the Catholic Church is beginning to face, in some places more, in some places less, and in some entire countries and even continents, as yet hardly at all.

Between the Last Supper in the Upper Room and the arrival of Judas, who was showing the hostile authorities where to find Him, our Savior experienced the Agony in the Garden. His natural human reaction was to shrink from the chalice and to resist the situation, but in a supreme example left for us, He prayed: “Father, if thou art willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” (Lk. 22:42). So, too, it happens sometimes in the apostolate of the laity, and it may become more frequent. The role of the laity is not directly the government of God’s Church, and at times quiet suffering is asked of them by the Lord Himself, in imitation of He who is the Lord of contemporary history.

Not directly the government of the Church, we said. Indirectly, the laity does indeed govern the Church, precisely by its essential role in the formation of the Catholics of the future. Most of us priests and religious are what we are, think the way we think, do what we do, and permit what we permit, because of the homes that formed us.

The Laity: In Charge of Catholic Homes

The primary apostolate of the laity is, therefore, the good government of their Catholic homes. Teaching the faith is part of this good government of the home. This conference is really saying: Govern your homes!

What do we mean by this? In most places, the program of the Church for pastoral care by means of the sacraments and holy teaching goes forward substantially intact. If you live in such a place, thank God, and cooperate as you always have done with those who work for the welfare of your children. At the same time, conditions might change for you, almost overnight. Therefore, govern your homes! Be teachers of the faith, in order to save the souls of the children God has created through you, and whom He has placed in your hands. And if, by chance, you live in a place where you are experiencing a lack of authentic pastoral care of your children, then of course you must become, in this new way which this conference has discussed, teachers of the faith for your own children.

Can this be done? It can indeed. When parents come home at night and walk up to the door of their house, they are about to become the pope, the president, the governor, the pastor, the school principal. When parents cross their threshold, they become all of these authorities. With that good person whom providence gave you to be your spouse, you are in charge when you walk up to the front door of your house, enter it, and lock it behind you.

Teaching in the home requires teaching aids, symbols that create atmosphere and prompt questions. Talk the matter over with your spouse, and carry the message to your local chapters. What does your home offer the children as an occasion to ask questions? You know how children love to ask questions. Give them the symbols that are the occasions. Then you will have your opportunity to explain the basic truths of our holy faith when you answer them.

Symbols of the Faith

We should begin with the crucifix. It is the compendium of our Trinitarian faith, with its good news of our redemption wrought by our divine Savior, the Second divine Person, incarnate and dwelling with us.

Then, fundamental to the teaching apostolate is the matter of canonical marriage. Teaching in the home can only succeed if it is sustained by the grace of the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony. What a great apostolate opens before your lay association today, to represent and promote the canonical character of homes, assisting in various ways so that every Catholic home is actually one of the seven sacraments of this same Lord Jesus whom we Christians follow. And the symbol? It is that certificate of Holy Matrimony, properly worded and properly filled out, framed and hanging on the wall of the home. There the children will see it every day of their young lives, and at certain times they will ask their questions about it, enabling you to explain fundamentals to them.

Catholic homes should have pictures and statues of Our Lord Himself, of His Blessed Mother, and of the saints who have a special significance in the particular home. All these things become occasions for catechetical explanation as the children are growing up.

In the early Church, there was a beautiful custom of using the crux gemmata—the cross without the corpus, studded with precious stones—as the sign and symbol of the Risen Lord. . . . In the mind’s eye, one can see in homes this sign of the home united with other Catholic homes, for mutual support in the faith. What a great thing this could come to be when you visit each other’s homes, and especially when children, going to homes as they do, compare notes and ask their questions.

Family Prayer Is Essential

It is self-evident that parents cannot be successful teachers in their homes unless they have established the practice of family prayer. We have had for some time in twentieth-century America two great Catholic priests ministering to the coming needs of the Catholic family. One is Fr. Patrick Peyton with his Family Rosary Crusade; the other is Fr. Francis Larkin, with his program for the Enthronement of the Sacred Heart in the home. Under your leadership, their apostolates can bear new widespread fruit, in an entirely new national manner.

In the profession of faith given to us by the Holy See in these darkening times since the Second Vatican Council, called the Credo of the People of God, there is an article which reads as follows: “The unique and indivisible existence of the Lord glorious in heaven is not multiplied, but is rendered present by the sacrament in the many places on earth where Mass is celebrated. And this existence remains present, after the sacrifice, in the Blessed Sacrament which is, in the tabernacle, the living heart of each of our Churches” (no. 26). What a great thing, and how catechetically powerful with growing children, if parents would plan a visit to the Blessed Sacrament some time or times each week, when all are going somewhere in the family auto! There is a crying need to national and local leadership in this matter.

Along these lines, then, with a conscious following of the Lord Jesus in the homes, when parents program catechetical teaching in their homes—in ways still to be modeled, elaborated, and perfected—one can be assured that the teaching will not be mere lifeless instruction. It will be living and vital, strong with the power of God, able to save the children, whom parents love so much, for time and for eternity. It will be a teaching that saves them by making them followers of Jesus Christ, secure against the deceptions which will lead so many to follow the forerunners of him who is to come in his own name. For this is the question and the issue. With regard to it, let us see to it that neither we nor the children are deceived.

A Catholic is a follower of Jesus Christ, and of no one else. A Catholic stands secure in the fact that Jesus is the Lord of history, and the Lord of this contemporary history that lies immediately before us. He did indeed ask that enigmatic question, “When the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?” Thanks to homes that persevere in the faith and teach it and hand it on, the answer will be “Yes,” He will find faith on earth. For He who also said, “Suffer the little children to come to me,” is the same who said, “Behold, I am with you all days, even to the end of the world.”

Msgr. Eugene Kevane (1913–96) was the founding director of the Notre Dame (Pontifical) Institute for Advanced Studies in Religious Education in Middleburg, Virginia, and was dean of the School of Education of the Catholic University of America. He is known by many to be the foremost catechist of our time.

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