Jesus is the supreme, public Revelation of God. Private revelations, prophecies, and “apparitionism”īut before we can examine what private revelations did, we must look at what they are and how they interact with their audience. Tracing and interpreting the change is the purpose of this essay. Private revelations had rewritten the future for millions of Catholics who scarcely recognized the novelty of their new expectations. Yet by century‘s end, the old sequence of Ruler-Pope-Antichrist-Doomsday had been given a new prologue encompassing the Warning (a mini-Judgment within each soul), the Miracle (a permanently visible supernatural Sign), the Chastisement (culminating in the Three Days of Darkness), and the Era of Peace. The medieval End Times synthesis dominated Catholic thought into the middle of the twentieth century, as old prophecy collections demonstrate. Taking their cues from Patristic teaching, speculation, holy prophecies, and political propaganda, Catholics of the Middle Ages played vigorous rounds of “pin the tail on the Antichrist” and endured periodic spasms of millenarianism. Bernard’s century, the twelfth, already awaited a Last World Emperor, an Angelic Pope, the Antichrist, and Doomsday. But the Catholic scenario from Bad Times to End Times has evolved and changed through successive eras. For nearly 2000 years, the hour has always been late and the Judge has always been imminent. Hora novissima, tempora pessima sunt, vigilemus.Įcce minaciter imminet arbiter ille supremus īernard of Cluny speaks perennial truth.
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