Latest / The Catholic Current / Novel Prophecies Pt. 3 - Benson’s “Lord of the World” (Fr. Robert McTeigue, S.J.) 7/31/26

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Novel Prophecies Pt. 3 - Benson’s “Lord of the World” (Fr. Robert McTeigue, S.J.) 7/31/26 · The Catholic Current

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This is The Catholic Current with Father Robert McTague.
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One of the reasons we read these great stories is because it
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can expand our moral imagination and help us to expect
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more of ourselves and one another, of God. The key thing about literature in
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general, it shows us not merely who we are,
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but who we should be and who we shouldn't be. I can't remember who it
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was who said, I read the newspapers avidly, it's my only source of continual
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fiction. If you want truth instead of
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fiction, don't read the newspapers. Read the great novels.
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Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague of the Society of Jesus,
0:39
your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world and
0:43
the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross Studios,
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your local radio station, and the iCatholic Radio mobile app.
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We proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity and charity.
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As always, let's start with prayer. In the name of the Father, Son, and the
0:57
Holy Spirit. Almighty God, through the intercession of Saint Ignatius Loyola, we ask that you
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pour forth your Holy Spirit upon us, a spirit of discernment
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that might hear your voice and obey your command. In the name of the Father,
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Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Well, here it is, Friday, and on
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the Catholic Current, that means another round of Let's Talk About This, you and me
1:15
walking through a complex issue together. You want to stay with us for the whole
1:18
hour because we end up with Weekend Readiness, reviewing the headlines of the week
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in light of the upcoming Sunday scriptures. So we'll be all prayed up for Sunday
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Mass. You know, we've been in this continuing series called
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Novel Prophecies, where we look at some great
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literature, especially what might be called apocalyptic
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or dystopian literature, and use it not
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as a vehicle for despair but as reasons
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for hope, and also as a way of interpreting our
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here and now. And it's mostly Catholic sources, but not
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entirely. We started And I'm trying
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to do this roughly in chronological order.
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So we started with Napoleon of Notting Hill by G.K.
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Chesterton, published in 1904, and then
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Savolyov's A Short History of the Antichrist, published in
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1900, the year he died, but it wasn't in English until 1915.
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And now we're looking at author Robert Hugh Benson and
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his novel Lord of the World, which was published in 1907.
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And my goodness, the things that it foresaw. But I
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wanna talk about him as a person first. He only lived
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to the age of 42. He worked himself to death, and he
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did that without being a Jesuit. So my hat goes off
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to him. He was a Catholic priest. He was a novelist,
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religious writer, renowned as a preacher. He was
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the son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Benson
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went to Cambridge, studied the classics, was ordained
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in the Anglican Church, caused quite a start by
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converting to Catholicism, studied in Rome, and was
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ordained a Catholic priest. So he started
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writing novels relatively early in his life. The first was Lord
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of the World. And it's a novel depicting
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a future secular world government and the rise
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of the Antichrist. So, you know, I'm, I'm all about
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that. And then there's a sequel which I only discovered recently called The Darn
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of All, which we'll talk about next week. He's best
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known for his book called Come Rack, Come Rope, and that's
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about the persecution of English Catholics under Elizabeth I.
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And then there's a book that I, I have on Kindle I'm
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gonna see if I have time to read it,
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called The Necromancers, and it's exploring
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spiritual warfare and the occult.
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So he was a great man. He was a convert.
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His conversion cost him a great deal,
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so I admire him for that. I wanna talk a little
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bit about why I'm turning to novels. Now,
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I was in school for a very long time. I told my students I was
4:14
in school until 23rd grade, And I took
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a broad and very deep dive in philosophy and
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theology as well, to a lesser degree. Didn't study a
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lot of great literature. I know my senior year I had a course
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called Varieties of the Modern Novel. My first 2 years of undergraduate
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studies were at Seton Hall University, and they had a
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great books program that I had for 4 semesters, and I did read some,
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some great literature there. I've always loved stories.
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I love telling stories. I love hearing stories. One of my treats
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growing up was hearing my father tell stories at the dinner table.
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So I know there's a very great power to story,
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and sometimes stories are the only way to get the
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point across. I mean, somebody asked Flannery O'Connor why
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she wrote short stories and novels, and she said, well, first of all, I'm good
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at them. Secondly, I enjoy it. And third, there are some
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things that I want to say that it can only be told in this medium.
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And for an academic like me, my inclination
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is to explain and
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to show why what is true is in fact true.
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And I've discovered over the years, to the breaking of my
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heart, that most people don't learn that way.
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And you really do have to engage the imagination and
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the emotions. And one of the ways to get people
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interested to go in deeper is to win them over with a powerful and compelling
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story. So I want to do this series
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on novel prophecies, again, not because I figured
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out the date of the end of the world or anything like that. Don't trust
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anyone who knows the day or the hour. Our Lord said only our Heavenly
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Father knows that. But I want to expose us to stories that
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were written very long ago,
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often by Catholics, sometimes not, that give us a way of
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understanding our own particular here and now.
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And one of the things that struck me about this novel written
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in 1907 was that there were passages
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of it that sound like headlines or editorials,
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or in some cases, God save
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us, uh, documents from Roman dicasteries
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and Vatican bureaucrats and synodal study
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groups. Oh my goodness, we're going to have to talk a
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lot about that. This novel isn't very long and just take
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you a couple of hours to read. Someone whose opinion
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I trust very much doesn't like the novel because she says the characters
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aren't very well developed, and that's fair, but this
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is more of a plot-driven novel. It's more a novel
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of ideas rather than thrilling and unforgettable
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characters. This is not quite like reading Charles
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Dickens. So Benson is writing this novel.
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Why? Because he's come out of the 19th century,
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and in the 19th century there's still the ripple effects of the French
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Revolution. There's the rise of Darwin, there's the
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rise of Marxism, there's the rise of Freud.
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It's the rise of revolutions and the
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claim of those who want to follow Science,
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capital S, later known as the science,
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says that religion, God,
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faith, you really don't need that for addressing
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the important questions and the important tasks.
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Although later in the novel, to my horror,
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they discover that, you know, but there's something about
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human nature that kind of needs to worship. So we're gonna
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make up a liturgy from scratch.
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Designed by top men, top men,
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and they're smart and they have credentials and they have a
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committee and they're going to design a
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liturgy that will address the needs of modern
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man. Does any of that sound familiar?
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Unfortunately, this is just audio, so I can't ask
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for a change of hands, and where I'm sitting,
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I can't see Mr. Engineer, but I imagine He's nodding
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his head. So that— now remember, the book is
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written in 1907. It's set in the late 20th century,
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and you've got a unified Europe under an international
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humanistic order. And what could be identified
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as traditional Christianity has pretty much disappeared from
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public life. Uh, national loyalties and identities
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have faded. Euthanasia socially accepted,
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and religion at most has become a
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private sentiment, a vibe, and the dominant
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creed is humanitarian progress,
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or to borrow a phrase from our friends in Rome,
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integral human development. And the question
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becomes, what happens What happens to
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faithful Catholics in that world? And for the
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humanitarians, driven ultimately by a person,
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Julian Felsenberg, who is— we
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discover later is the Antichrist— how do they regard
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faithful Catholics? Well, let me give you a hint. They regard them as
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the problem. They regard them as the scapegoat.
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And ultimately faithful Catholics have to
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be eliminated. They're in the way,
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they're troublemakers, and they keep asking
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awkward questions. And those darn faithful Catholics,
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they won't cooperate, they won't sing along,
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they won't embrace the new religion,
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they won't embrace the new morality.
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And while we're waiting for the utopia to be built here on
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earth, there's going to be frustrations, and you got
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to take out your frustrations on somebody. So the world
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decides to take out their frustration on
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faithful Catholics. Does any of that sound familiar to
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you? Do you want to jump up and call the Station of the Cross and
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say, cut that out, Father, that could never happen, what are you talking about?
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Well, I don't think we're going to get any of those phone calls today.
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I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTeague, your host here every day at The Catholic Current.
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Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague of the Society of Jesus,
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thestationofthecross.com. Well, here we are
12:57
Friday. Let's talk about this. We're in part 3 of our
13:00
ongoing series, Novel Prophecies. We're talking about Robert
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Hume Benson's book Lord of the World. Let's, let's go through the
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book. And written in 1907,
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set far into the 20th century.
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And what you have is a world that is apparently
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enlightened, peaceful,
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technologically advanced, and it's
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governed by an aggressive secularism and
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a culture that seems determined to replace
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God with humanity itself.
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Almost as if— because some readers who've read this
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novel said, well, it seems that the emphasis is on magnificent
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humanity as divine rather than the transcendent
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God, the Trinitarian God, as the true transcendent
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God. Well, that's a bit of
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a problem because humanitarianism becomes a substitute
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religion. It doesn't matter what your prior
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religious commitments have been. We're taking everyone's
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attention away from all of that and
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focusing it on ourselves. I, I believe— I'm going
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to ask Mr. Engineer to look this up for me— it was the poet Alexander
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Pope who said the proper object of study for
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man is man. Well, the powers that be
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in this novel would agree with that, and this is where Benson is
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trying to sound the alarm. He's trying to distinguish
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genuine Christian charity from secular
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humanitarianism that kind of retains the Christian ethical
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language but rejecting God. Let me
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give you an example. Early in the novel,
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there is a woman, Mabel Brand,
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who is the husband— I assume is the wife of Oliver Brand, who's an up-and-coming
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member of Parliament. And she's out for a walk outside,
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and a plane falls out of the sky,
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and there's wreckage, and there's broken bodies, uh,
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and so on. Let me read this to you.
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Mabel scarcely knew what happened next, but she found herself a
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moment later forced forward by some violent pressure from behind.
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Till she stood shaking from head to foot with some kind of
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smashed body of a man moaning and stretching
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at her feet. There was sort of an articulate language
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coming from it. She caught distinctly the names
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of Jesus and Mary. Then a voice hissed
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suddenly in her ears, let me through, I am a
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priest. She stood there a moment longer
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dazed by the suddenness of the whole affair, and watched
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almost unintelligently the gray-haired young priest
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on his knees with his coat torn open
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and a crucifix out. She saw him bend close,
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wave his hand in a swift sign, and heard a murmur of a
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language she did not know. Then he was up
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again, holding the crucifix before him, and she saw him begin to
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move forward into the midst of the red-flooded pavement.
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Looking this way and that as if for a signal.
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Down the steps of the great hospital on her right came figures
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running now, hatless, each carrying what looked like an
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old-fashioned camera. She knew what those men
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were, and her heart leaped in relief.
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They were the ministers of euthanasia.
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Think about that. The ministers
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of euthanasia. By the way, I want to thank Mr. Engineer.
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It was from Alexander Pope in his essay on man, the proper
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study of mankind is man. So it was taken
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for granted that euthanasia was exclusively
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a form of mercy, and that whenever there's
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a crisis or disaster, the people who are to be welcomed first
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are the ministers of euthanasia.
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By the way, I believe it's in Canada, which is kind of leading the charge
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in the cult of euthanasia, that if you're going to be euthanized for whatever
17:37
reason, rather than just being injected with poison, why not be euthanized
17:41
by letting us take your organs?
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That's already under discussion in Canada.
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So what we see in this novel is a primacy
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of humanitarianism a complete denial of
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the transcendent. The Church is a faithful remnant.
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The faithful remnant really is centered around
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the Eucharist, not self-esteem and not
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listening, but the Eucharist. And Felsenberg,
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who's the Antichrist figure, his promises are—
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tell me if you've heard these emphasized before— promises
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of unity, dialogue and tolerance
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and peace, but not a peace that's
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rooted in the revelation of Christ,
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but a peace that comes from humans through
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human effort, focusing and absolutizing
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exclusively their humanity.
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So you can see why,
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um, as I was reading this, I said, gosh,
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a lot of this sounds familiar. Now, uh, there are some
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people who've told me that this reminds them of some of the more facile accounts
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of synodality. Now, in fairness, the word synodality never appears in
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the novel. It's not what ordinary Catholics talked about in, in 1907.
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But the, uh, the movement of the Antichrist in
19:17
this novel uses language of
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universal consensus, unity,
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inclusion, and overcoming divisions.
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And that— doesn't that bear at least a family resemblance
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to, you know, the journeying together, the building communion,
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and so on? So Benson says, look, unity is
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a fine thing, but unity without
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Christ is really quite
19:48
dangerous. And I, I would say yes,
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and that's why I think we need to
19:57
read this novel again,
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because I think that there are Catholic cadres of the
20:04
People Who Should Really Know Better Club who apparently haven't
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read this novel and are moving us in directions that ended badly.
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Uh, in, in the novel. Uh, the other main character
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is Father Percy Franklin, and his
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claim is that Catholicism gives the only adequate
20:23
explanation of the universe, and that the
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difficulties that we have— and we do have difficulties— those are resolved
20:32
in eternity rather than in time. They're reserved— they're resolved in
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heaven rather than utopia.
20:40
And Father Franklin wants to warn us against
20:44
a false peace. And the false peace
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is not because we've got this, you know, why can't we all just
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get along singing rousing choruses of Imagine by
20:57
John Lennon. But the peace is brought about primarily
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by extinguishing, quite literally,
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the people who, um, who are
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the faithful Catholic remnant. Get this, um,
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the, the faithful Catholic remnant is
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asked to basically give a loyalty
21:21
oath in which they renounce the traditional
21:25
faith and then are expected, under penalty
21:29
of imprisonment and fines, to attend the new man-centered
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worship. And again, I talk to people who say, Father,
21:39
this just sounds really very
21:43
familiar, and the
21:47
mandatory humanism of the state and the culture
21:52
wants to include everybody except
21:55
those who are unwilling to surrender revealed doctrine.
22:00
Everyone is included except the faithful
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Catholic remnant. And so ultimately Catholics
22:09
are hunted down for extermination because
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the claim is society can be made inclusive
22:18
only by precisely excluding the
22:22
Church. I don't know.
22:25
Some of this is starting to sound familiar. Some of it
22:30
is sounding unsettling.
22:33
Certainly, we see hysteria when, you know, a courthouse wants
22:37
to put up the Ten Commandments, for example, or if,
22:41
you know, a kid making a high school valedictory speech at
22:45
graduation wants to mention God. You know,
22:49
that becomes a really big problem.
22:52
And, you know, for the sake of inclusion. So what's
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the, the moral of the story here? Uh, Father Benson wants
23:02
us to criticize any claims
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or attempts or movements towards unity when the price
23:10
of that unity is the sacrifice of revealed
23:14
truth. And the work of the Antichrist
23:17
in this novel is an absolutized
23:21
ideal of humanity,
23:24
but with no reference to Christ at all.
23:28
And you see, and that's what I find so frightening and
23:32
so disturbing about this novel,
23:35
is that the bad guys seem
23:39
very reasonable, very sober,
23:44
very polite, very calm, and then you
23:48
hear the backroom conversations about,
23:52
yeah, we really are gonna have to exterminate people.
23:56
And the powers that be really
24:00
don't have much to say when their actions
24:04
and the court jesters of the popular culture whip
24:09
the mob into a frenzy. And the
24:13
mob starts burning churches. I'm looking
24:18
at you, Canada, and start acting violently
24:22
against Catholics in particular.
24:25
So I think there are some lessons here for us.
24:29
There are people who are members of the people who should know better club who
24:33
are willing to backpedal Revelation for the sake
24:37
of humanistic purposes And there are powerful entities
24:42
that see Catholics at best,
24:46
at best, as expendable.
24:51
And we can't be naive.
24:54
I believe this is the world we're living in today. I'm Jesuit Father Robert
24:59
McTeague, your host every day of The Catholic Current. After the broadcast today, go to
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our Catholic faith. Here we are Friday. Let's talk about this. We're in
26:58
part 3 of our ongoing series called Novel
27:02
Prophecies. We're looking at Lord of the World by Robert
27:06
Hugh Benson. Well, where do we go from here? Well, there's a couple of texts
27:10
I want to cite for you and then offer some comments, uh, on them.
27:13
And again, this just— in my edition, this novel is only 120
27:16
pages. You could read this relatively quickly,
27:20
and I also think that you can bring it to prayer.
27:24
A couple of lines. The main character, Father Franklin,
27:28
is reflecting on the promise of the Antichrist
27:32
figure, Felsenberg. He said, and he writes that it
27:37
was in fact the Catholic idea with the supernatural left
27:41
out, a union of earthly fortunes,
27:45
an abandonment of individualism on the one side, and of
27:49
supernaturalism on the other. It was treason to
27:53
appeal from God immanent to God transcendent. There was no
27:57
God transcendent. God, as far as
28:01
he could be known, was man.
28:07
Oof. And then another line here talking
28:12
about the promises of peace, peace, and peace, and peace.
28:15
And remember, the scriptures talk about the peace that surpasses
28:20
all understanding. He says, but this peace arose
28:24
from, not past, understanding.
28:27
The peace that sprang from a knowledge that man was
28:31
all and able to develop himself only by
28:35
sympathy with his fault— with his fellow.
28:39
So, you know, fellowship, fellowship, fellowship,
28:43
unity, unity, unity. Dialogue,
28:45
dialogue, dialogue. And not only
28:49
is there no need for Christ, there's no
28:53
room for Christ. He gets in the
28:57
way. I want to talk about the role of worship in this book because
29:01
boy oh boy is it disturbing. It's really clear that a
29:04
lot of the shenanigans taking place on the world stage according
29:08
to this novel are by the Masons.
29:11
Or as the stonecutters, as they would say in,
29:15
in The Simpsons. Make of that what you will,
29:19
but there's a scandal when very many priests are
29:24
walking away from priestly ministry for
29:28
a variety of reasons, and they are interested
29:32
in helping out with the new secular humanist world order.
29:36
And Felsenberg, the Antichrist figure,
29:39
decides that, look, there's something about human nature that wants
29:43
worship and that wants ritual. So all these
29:47
ex-priests, or priests who walked away, or apostate priests go
29:52
to the government, said, we can help with that. We know something about ritual
29:56
and vestments and ceremonies, so we're going to be— we're going
30:00
to be the masters of ceremony for this secular
30:04
religion. And so there's an unveiling of a statue of
30:09
man and there's an unveiling of a statue of woman and
30:14
things about the elements and et cetera, et cetera. And I've had readers,
30:18
excuse me, listeners who've read this novel said, Father, when I read
30:22
this novel, I thought of a certain party who was, you know,
30:26
putting his hand in prayer on a block of ice.
30:30
And I said, well, let's, Let's be careful about those
30:34
associations. Let's not deny them,
30:38
but let's be careful about them. So the claim— and
30:42
remember, this is a book written in 1907 where he's trying
30:45
to identify trends— is that this new
30:49
thing, this new species of humanity called modern
30:53
man, is someone who
30:57
wants to and needs to and must take
31:01
his eyes off of Christ and
31:06
need to step away from the Eucharist. Now,
31:10
when I was growing up in, in the '70s and the '80s, I was told
31:15
that the trouble with our worship, you know, at Mass was
31:18
that it was worship and that
31:23
it was too Christ-centered and certainly
31:26
too Eucharist-centered. And I remember
31:30
talking to a laywoman who was director of liturgy at
31:35
campus ministry at a self-identified Catholic school,
31:39
and she wanted to wean the students away from
31:43
this predominant focus on the Eucharist. You know,
31:47
suffice to say, the tabernacle had already been relocated into
31:52
what students called the penalty box, and the church
31:56
had been rearranged against the architecture into
32:00
a theater in the round. And she wanted to talk to the students
32:04
about what she called the many presences of
32:09
Christ. And so rather than focusing on
32:13
genuflecting before the Blessed Sacrament, et cetera,
32:16
to put their hands together and bow to one another.
32:21
As, you know, members of the body of Christ.
32:26
They didn't do the yoga namaste, but they,
32:29
they could have. So I said, all right, let's, let's have a little fun with
32:32
this. Let's be— I don't know what's the word I'm looking for— in Jesuitical.
32:36
So I said, yeah, many presences of Christ.
32:38
So Christ is present in the word.
32:43
So, you know, a bow to To
32:47
the lectionary? Well, okay. And Christ is symbolized and
32:51
present in the altar. All right,
32:55
so bowing to the altar. And I said,
32:59
and Christ is present in a particular way in
33:02
persona Christi, alter Christus,
33:07
in persona Christi capiti, in the person of
33:10
Christ as the head of the body. So you're all going
33:14
to make a bow of reverence to me, right?
33:18
Well, she didn't want that.
33:21
So that whole celebrating of the many presences of Christ went
33:25
away. And so Ratzinger,
33:29
Benedict, had warned about this years ago. He talked about the Catholic circle
33:33
being a contradiction of terms. And the way that I would summarize it, it's,
33:37
you know, getting together to celebrate us in all of our
33:40
us-ness. And I think that one
33:44
of the maladies we suffer from is we don't have,
33:48
I don't know, a proper focus, a proper orientation
33:55
in our worship. I know there are people who tell us— true
33:59
story— a friend of mine worked at a self-identified Catholic college,
34:04
and the laypeople running campus ministry wanted to
34:09
have an emergency meeting. Why? Because there
34:13
were students who were requesting holy hours and
34:17
benediction, and the laypeople were against it
34:21
because of what it might lead to. So Father
34:26
asked, well, what might it lead to? They said, well, it might
34:29
lead to silence, and it might encourage
34:34
people to come into the chapel even
34:38
when no one else is there,
34:41
even when nothing is happening.
34:45
And Father asked, well, why is that bad? Why is that
34:49
a problem? Well, that would undercut our community,
34:54
our emphasis on community in worship. We, we want
34:57
to have a community-centered experience. We want to foster a
35:02
lively sense of community.
35:05
And someone sitting in the pew by himself,
35:08
just with God, would undercut that.
35:12
Well, that's when he realized he was dealing with crazy people, or at least people
35:16
who were ill-formed theologically, but they also had the keys to the
35:20
church and to where the, you know, the back
35:23
storage closet where the monstrance would have been kept.
35:26
So he said he would take care of it himself to make sure that people
35:29
didn't get carried away. So you see how that goes?
35:36
We end up prioritizing something other than Christ
35:40
in our unity, community, fellowship,
35:45
inclusion, and Christ is
35:49
allowed on board to the degree that
35:53
he can validate our prior
35:57
commitments. I mean, this is something that C.S. Lewis was writing about in the
36:01
Screwtape Letters in the '40s. He called it Christianity
36:05
and. Christianity and
36:09
the new whatever. Christianity and the present crisis. He's even said
36:14
Christianity and spelling reform.
36:17
The important thing he said was that the and began to predominate.
36:21
So it wasn't Christianity and the new humanism,
36:25
Christianity and the present crisis, but it was Christianity
36:29
in the service of, in subordination
36:34
to the prior political or social
36:38
cause. And in the novel, the trouble with
36:41
the faithful Catholics was they didn't want Christ
36:45
subordinated to anybody. And that's what the powers
36:49
that be saw as a problem.
36:53
Oliver Brand, who's a main character in the novel, he's in Parliament
36:57
and he's all in. And he just
37:01
didn't understand why Catholics remained Catholics. And here
37:05
in the novel it's written, he too had wondered once or twice in his
37:08
life how human beings could believe such rubbish,
37:12
but psychology had helped him, and he knew
37:16
now well enough that suggestion will do almost anything.
37:20
And it was this hateful thing that had so
37:24
long restrained the euthanasia movement with
37:28
all its splendid mercy.
37:31
You see, the humanists wanted to be sovereign over
37:36
life and death and sovereign over good
37:40
and evil, and Christ and
37:44
faithful disciples of Christ would get in the
37:48
way of that. Even if they were just a faithful
37:52
remnant and ignored, It would show that the excessive
37:56
secular humanism was not inevitable.
38:01
There was an alternative for which people were willing to sacrifice,
38:06
and that becomes embarrassing.
38:09
Now, what's also interesting too is that Mabel Brand, the wife of parliamentarian
38:13
Oliver Brand, she is absolutely for gung-ho for
38:18
Felsenberg. The Antichrist, because he's going to bring real
38:21
peace, real peace, real peace. And then
38:25
she realizes that the secular humanists
38:29
are going to have a very violent— not just a purge or a pogrom,
38:33
but an absolute extermination of
38:37
the Catholics. They either have to surrender their faith,
38:41
surrender worship, and cooperate with the state's
38:46
secular worship, or they would be killed. And she
38:50
despairs because the promises of peace
38:54
and brotherhood weren't fulfilled. And if it couldn't
38:58
be fulfilled by humans like Felsenberg,
39:03
then there was no hope at all that,
39:07
uh, humanity would never have real
39:11
peace. And it didn't occur to her to
39:15
ever turn to Christ. That had been ruled out of bounds a
39:19
priori. And so she turned to the human solution,
39:23
which didn't work. And I don't want to give anything away.
39:27
I will simply say that she is moved in the direction
39:31
of despair. So,
39:35
you know, we're warned in the scriptures, beware of those who say peace,
39:39
peace, when there is no peace. There is
39:43
peace available, but it is rooted
39:46
in accepting Christ as King,
39:50
Christ worthy as worship,
39:54
Christ as ruler of heaven and earth.
39:59
I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTaggart, your host here every day of The Catholic Current.
40:02
You want to stay with us for the rest of the hour. Coming up next
40:08
weekend readiness. Review the headlines of the week in light of the upcoming Sunday scriptures,
40:10
so we'll be all prayed up for Sunday Mass. Be part of the conversation.
40:14
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40:29
Comments, questions, suggestions, recommendations. We want
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40:37
Please do stay with us.
40:58
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41:03
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41:08
Go to thestationofthecross.com/askfather and
41:13
help influence the conversation.
41:21
Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague of the Society of Jesus,
41:25
your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world and
41:28
the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross Studios,
41:31
your local radio station, the iCatholic Radio mobile app, and we proclaim the fullness
41:36
of truth with clarity and charity. Hey friends, it's the last segment
41:39
of Friday here at The Catholic Current. You know what that means— you and me,
41:42
week in readiness, reviewing the headlines of the week in light of the upcoming Sunday
41:46
scripture so we'll be all prayed up for Sunday Mass. I have lost
41:50
track of the number of times that The war with Iran
41:53
has started and stopped and started and stopped. I think
41:57
we're on stop mode again. Can't be 100% certain.
42:01
Uh, Dr. Anthony Fauci, America's doctor, is testifying
42:06
before the Senate regarding the origins of COVID
42:10
and the response to COVID. And apparently some of his personal
42:15
diaries have been subpoenaed and It seems that it
42:20
doesn't show him in a very flattering light. I know Senator Rand Paul
42:24
has, has gone after him in an aggressive way, and Dr. Fauci has invoked
42:28
his Fifth Amendment rights. I think the count I heard was 111
42:33
times. That just seems like an awful lot to me. So,
42:37
uh, I'm not sure about that. Senator Fetterman is dropping hints that
42:41
he might leave the Democratic Party. That could be
42:45
interesting. Gosh, where else?
42:49
Uh, Cardinal Roach of the Dicastery for Divine Worship
42:53
has said that Pope Leo is not going to
42:57
change Traditionis Custodes and he's not going to go back to Summorum Pontificum.
43:01
So no Latin Mass for you unless...
43:06
So there, there is that. I did promise
43:09
some good news. I'll get to that in a moment, but usual, you know,
43:13
the usual shenanigans. Teen takeovers
43:17
are causing violence and mayhem.
43:20
Non-traditional shoppers are looting stores
43:25
and causing the stores to close because they can't
43:28
afford to give stuff away for free, and the closing of
43:32
those stores is considered to be nefarious or racist or
43:37
some such. Yeah, so it's more of the same.
43:40
Archbishop Wester claims that Muslims have a God-given right
43:45
to build a mosque in America.
43:48
That's, that's interesting.
43:51
I'll leave it there. So with that
43:55
in mind, let's, let's take a look at the scriptures today. If you're
44:00
following the Novus Ordo calendar of the Pauline Rite, it's the 18th Sunday
44:04
in Ordinary Time, Lectionary 112. I'm gonna make a plea
44:08
right now If you have anything to do with music
44:13
ministry, if you're a liturgical musician,
44:18
if you're going to be playing music at Mass this
44:22
Sunday, please,
44:25
please, please, I'm begging you, I am on both
44:28
knees rending my garments, don't do the
44:32
following. Oh look, the first reading in the Gospel talks about things
44:36
that can be eaten and things that can be Uh, drunk.
44:40
So that means whenever we hear food in the scriptures,
44:44
we have to sing rousing choruses of Table
44:48
of Plenty. It's, it's the law. I don't make the rules.
44:52
Everyone knows if there's something that can be consumed by mouth
44:56
in the scriptures on a Sunday, we've got to sing rousing choruses
45:00
of Table of Plenty because relevance or something. Don't Do
45:04
that. For the love of God, don't do that.
45:08
Now, as an Italian, I can't help but note that there is,
45:11
there is a significant reference to food in Isaiah.
45:15
Our Lord says, those who are thirsty, come to the water,
45:19
drink wine and milk. I would do it in
45:23
reverse order, but that's— but here's the thing from Isaiah
45:27
that has haunted me since I was a young man.
45:31
Why spend your money for what is not bread,
45:35
your wages for what fails to satisfy?
45:39
God in his providence did me a solid
45:42
in my 20s. I spent most of my 20s
45:47
around people my age and a bit older who were miserable
45:53
and were really vivid examples of
45:56
what I did not want to do with my life or how I wanted my
45:59
life to end up. And I was haunted by that line from Isaiah,
46:03
why spend your money for what is not bread, what your wages for what
46:06
fails to satisfy? Because it seems to me that people
46:10
were working so very hard to
46:14
get stuff, to get stuff that didn't last,
46:18
stuff that went out of fashion in half a year.
46:23
And you got stuck with a job you hate, and you do a little retail
46:27
therapy, to take the edge off the pain
46:31
of being in a job you hate. And then you buy a more
46:35
expensive something and then you need to get
46:39
further invested in the job that you hate, et cetera, et cetera. And it was
46:42
a downward spiral. And, but I didn't
46:47
find a good off-ramp. I didn't find a good alternative
46:51
until while I was in doctoral studies while working full-time, which I don't
46:55
recommend. My classmate was a young Jesuit priest,
46:58
Father Robert Spitzer, and I used to call him
47:02
from my office in desperation from my white-collar job and say,
47:05
Father, there's got to be more.
47:08
There's got to be more to life than this.
47:13
And now we jump ahead to the Gospels,
47:17
and we have the story of the loaves and the fishes.
47:22
And there is the great multiplication of food. Now,
47:26
if the sermon you hear this Sunday is about
47:30
that the miracle didn't really happen, and that
47:34
used to be a thing in the '70s and the '80s, or more recently,
47:38
the real miracle is that everybody shared
47:42
what they had. If— could you write me
47:46
please to stationofthecross.com/askfather and let me
47:50
know, uh, about that. So our Lord is provident,
47:56
and our Lord is abundant,
48:00
and he wants us to help have full bellies,
48:04
but ultimately he wants us to have full hearts.
48:09
And the fullness of the heart comes
48:13
from feeding on himself.
48:17
He and he alone is the bread of life.
48:22
He and he alone is the way,
48:26
the truth, and the life. And our lives have
48:30
meaning and purpose and real prospects
48:35
for fulfillment if and only if,
48:39
and to the degree that, we accept him as
48:43
our King, as our Lord and
48:47
our Savior. And when we have received
48:50
his mercy, his healing, his love, his fullness,
48:55
when we shake off the shackles and dirt of sin and
48:59
begin to live as free, the proof
49:03
of our gratitude is we want other people
49:08
to know and love Christ the King, to follow
49:12
the one who is the way,
49:15
the truth, and the life, and there is no other.
49:20
So the way that we become sharers
49:23
of the bread of life is by inviting people
49:27
to know and love Christ.
49:31
And sure, let's have conversations, by golly,
49:34
let's dialogue. Remember, the motto of Jesuit missionaries I
49:38
was told growing up was Enter through their door,
49:43
lead them through yours. We've got to meet people where they're at.
49:47
Where the heck else would you find them? My question is,
49:50
what do you do with them after you meet them where
49:54
they're at? Where do you lead them? I say we must,
49:58
must, must lead them all to Christ.
50:02
May God's holy name be praised now and forever. I'm Jesuit
50:06
Father Robert McTeague, your host here every day of The Catholic Current. Join us
50:10
on Monday for another episode of The Catholic Current. Great topic, great guest,
50:13
great conversation, because that's how we roll here at the Catholic Current
50:17
and the Station of the Cross, where we strive mightily to be so
50:21
very much more than merely relevant.
50:25
After the broadcast today, go to thestationofthecross.com, get our resources
50:29
list, download our audio as podcasts. Wherever you can find audio, you can find
50:33
us. Follow us on your favorite platform, write a 5-star review. Let's take the this
50:37
to the whole world. Through the intercession of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, may Almighty
50:41
God bless you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Go in peace, and please
50:44
do pray for me, for I am a sinner.