by
Damien F. Mackey
Satan, permitted by
God to test holy Job to the limit, and almost beyond it, for a greater good, has
been allowed by the Almighty again, in the case of the Church, that same terrifying
liberty.
Introduction
Job
was a much older contemporary of the prophet Jeremiah, with whom he shares many
noble characteristics.
The
Book of Jeremiah (and Lamentations) is regarded by scholars as being the scriptural
book most close in style to the Book of Job. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Jeremiah
“Jeremiah's "confessions" are a type of
individual lament.
Such laments are found elsewhere in the psalms and the Book of
Job. Like Job, Jeremiah curses the day of his birth (Jer. 20:14–18 and Job
3:3–10)”.
Jeremiah, in his many sufferings, deprivations
and life-threatening circumstances - and perhaps Job as well - seems to have
unwittingly pantomimed, in his own person,
the variety of horrors that the kingdom of Judah was shortly destined to experience.
In the case of Job, the archetypal man of affliction,
he would foreshadow a modern drama of such cosmic proportions that the ancient holy
man himself could not have anticipated it. On the eve of the C20th AD, Satan,
once chained so that “he could not fool the nations anymore” (Revelation 20:1-3),
but now “free for a while”, was right back in the mix again as in Job 1:6-7: “One
day the angels came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also
came with them.
The Lord said to
Satan, ‘Where have you come from?’ Satan answered the Lord, ‘From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it’.”
We are now in the year 1884, and Pope Leo
XIII is the head of the Catholic Church. And this time it is the Church, the ‘Bride
of Christ’ (Ephesians
5:25–27), and not the righteous Job, that the Lord
will hold up as a model of holy excellence before Satan.
The Prophecy of Pope Leo XIII
Since an article of this same title covers most of
what I want to say about this dramatic incident, I shall reproduce the main
part of it below. Before that, however, I should like briefly to mention a recent
and well-researched book on the subject, written by Kevin J. Symonds, as a
useful supplement to this article. The book is entitled, Pope
Leo XIII and the Prayer to St. Michael (2015), and is here reviewed by Dr. Peter
Kwasniewski, Professor, Wyoming Catholic College
This book is not
another pious exhortation to recite the Leonine prayers, although the author
certainly agrees that they ought to be prayed, as do I. Rather, it is a
detailed look at the history of the composition of the well-known Prayer to St.
Michael and the exorcism connected with it, and especially the legends that
surround these texts. Depending on the period or the author, these legends have
been either too uncritically accepted (and embellished), or too hastily
dismissed as sensational fabrications. With the care of an historian and the
determination of a detective, Symonds shows that the reality is quite a bit
more complex. It's an intriguing book that brings the reader close to Leo XIII
and his age, while equipping us better for "wrestling against
principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness,
against the spirits of wickedness in the high places" (Eph 6:12). The
appendices offer an array of unusual and valuable texts. All in all, a
definitive work on the Prayer to St. Michael.
Now, according to “The Prophecy of Pope Leo XIII”,
which has not missed out on the Job-ian parallel, as we shall read further on
The St. Michael Prayer, which was said after Low Mass until the
liturgical changes in 1965, was
instituted by Pope
Leo XIII after he received a prophetic vision. The most widely known
element of this vision is that the Holy Father overheard a debate between
Our Lord and Satan, during which the Devil was granted more power and
authority for a period of 75 to 100 years. According to the most
widespread accounts, the events behind the prophecy of Pope Leo XIII run
as following:
On October 13, 1884, after Pope Leo XIII had finished celebrating Mass in
the Vatican Chapel, attended by a few Cardinals and members of the Vatican
staff, he suddenly stopped at the foot of the altar. He stood there for about
10 minutes, as if in a trance, his face ashen white. Then, going immediately
from the Chapel to his office, he composed the prayer to St. Michael, with instructions
it be said after all Low Masses everywhere. When asked what had happened, he
explained that, as he was about to leave the foot of the altar, he suddenly
heard voices - two voices, one kind and gentle, the other guttural and harsh.
They seemed to come from near the tabernacle. As he listened, he heard the
following conversation:
The guttural voice, the voice of Satan in his pride, boasting to Our Lord:
"I can destroy your Church"
The gentle voice of Our Lord: "You can? Then go ahead and do so."
Satan: "To do so, I need more time and more power."
Our Lord: "How much time? How much power?
Satan: "75 to 100 years, and a greater power over those who will give
themselves over to my service."
Our Lord: "You have the time, you will have the power. Do with them
what you will."
Current research suggests that the earliest version of this story to appear in
print was in 1933, in a German Sunday newspaper. The way in which this
prophecy first surfaced suggests that it originally circulated in oral
form amongst the Vatican staff and hierarchy who were with the pope during this
encounter. As such, it is impossible to trace back to an original documented
source. After its initial publication in 1933, a German writer, Fr. Bers,
attempted to find the origins of this prophecy for a 1934 article
titled "Die Gebete nach der hl. Messe" (Theol-Prakt.
Quartalschrift 87, 162-163). During his investigation, Fr.
Bers failed to find any concrete source, leaving him to conclude
that the prophecy was a later invention that was "spreading like
a virus". However, 13 years after Fr. Bers had
initially failed to find the original source of this prophecy, an
eyewitness to the events behind the institution of the St. Michael Prayer eventually
came forward. Writing in 1947, Fr. Domenico Pechenino, a priest who worked at
the Vatican during the time of Leo XIII, provides a first-hand account of these
events:
I do not remember the exact year. One morning the great Pope Leo XIII
had celebrated a Mass and, as usual, was attending a Mass of thanksgiving.
Suddenly, we saw him raise his head and stare at something above the
celebrant’s head. He was staring motionlessly, without batting an eye. His
expression was one of horror and awe; the colour and look on his face changing
rapidly. Something unusual and grave was happening in him.
“Finally, as though coming to his senses, he lightly but firmly tapped his
hand and rose to his feet. He headed for his private office. His retinue
followed anxiously and solicitously, whispering: ‘Holy Father, are you not
feeling well? Do you need anything?’ He answered: ‘Nothing, nothing.’ About
half an hour later, he called for the Secretary of the Congregation of Rites
and, handing him a sheet of paper, requested that it be printed and sent to all
the ordinaries around the world. What was that paper? It was the prayer that we
recite with the people at the end of every Mass. It is the plea to Mary and the
passionate request to the Prince of the heavenly host, (St. Michael: Saint
Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle) beseeching God to send Satan back
to hell."
(Fr. Domenico Pechenino, quoted in the 1955 Roman journal Ephemerides
Liturgicae V. LXIX, pp 54–60)
Although he leaves out any mention of Pope Leo hearing a conversation between
God and the Devil, and the prophecy of the 100 years of Satan's greater power,
the fact that it was written 14 years after the original version of this
prophecy first appeared in print would suggest that Fr Pechenino presumes that
readers are already aware of the contents of the prophecy, and is
merely writing to confirm what he saw that day. Fr. Bers had noted in
1934 that this prophecy was already in wide circulation, and was
"spreading like a virus", so it was certainly well-known by the
time Fr. Pechenino was providing his eyewitness testimony, and we can
be sure that he was aware of it. It seems that the
real reason Fr. Pechenino leaves out any mention of
the 100 years element of this vision is due to the simple fact that he did
not actually hear or see the vision himself, but was rather relating
how he witnessed Pope Leo experiencing this event. Given that Fr.
Pechenino is recalling these events solely as an observer,
he could not have possibly known the content of the vision at this
time, since by his own admission, the Holy Father did not reveal
to him exactly what he saw or heard. He only knew that the Pope
had composed the St. Michael Prayer immediately after this episode ….
Mackey’s comment: I insert the following here:
The fact that Fr. Pechenino's account confirms the later 1933
version, can be used to establish that the prophecy of the 100 years
of Satan's greater power is in fact genuine. If we compare both texts
above, we can see that Fr Pechenino's testimony concurs almost exactly with the
original version of the story behind the prophecy. The only difference is
that Fr. Pechenino was not told exactly what Pope Leo experienced during this
vision, which suggests that the Holy Father confided what he saw to someone
else - the retinue who Fr. Pechenino saw following the pope afterwards and was
questioning him. Being a member of his personal entourage, the retinue
would have been a close confidant of the pope, and the details of the
vision were probably given to him. This would make the retinue the most likely
source of this prophecy, and how it was circulated in the Vatican.
But when should this 100 year period be calculated from? Most interpreters
think that the hundred years referred to the 20th century, and some later
versions of this prophecy explicitly state this view. While the original
version doesn't mention a specific starting point, there are only two real
options - either the year the vision was first received, which according to the
first account was 1884, or the turn of the century. It seems the latter
position is the most likely, since in what he himself described as the
"greatest act of my pontificate", Pope Leo XIII consecrated
the world to the Sacred Heart of Jesus on June 11th 1899, as requested by
Blessed Mary of the Divine Heart (see here). Since this was obviously a date of
utmost importance to the pontiff, and it commenced at a symbolically significant
turning point (the end of the century), it would be logical to assume that the
dawn of the 20th century was the beginning of the 100 years allotted to
Satan.
….
In Matt 12:29, Christ tells us that in order for Him to plunder the worldly
realm of Satan and open the eyes of unbelievers to the Gospel, He would first
have to "bind the strong man". Although evil still exists during this
period, and Satan can still interfere with human affairs, his power would be
limited in order to facilitate the growth of the Gospel. As the Catechism
teaches, even though Satan was definitively defeated by Jesus' sacrifice on the
Cross, the reign of Christ's kingdom on earth in the Church will always be
subject to the attacks of evil powers until the creation of the
new heaven and the new earth after the Last Judgement:
Though already present in his Church, Christ's reign is nevertheless yet to
be fulfilled "with power and great glory" by the King's return to
earth. This reign is still under attack by the evil powers, even though they
have been defeated definitively by Christ's Passover. Until everything is
subject to him, "until there be realized new heavens and a new earth in
which justice dwells, the pilgrim Church, in her sacraments and institutions,
which belong to this present age, carries the mark of this world which will
pass, and she herself takes her place among the creatures which groan and travail
yet and await the revelation of the sons of God."
(CCC 671)
The Book of Revelation tells us that this "millennium" or age of the
Church will come to a close towards the end of the world, when Satan would
once again be set loose for "a little while" to deceive the
inhabitants of the earth, and gather the nations together for war. During this
age of apostasy, Satan would once again have the power to blind the minds
of unbelievers from the light of the Gospel, and would be able to inhibit its
growth. And given that this is exactly the situation we are faced with today in
the fulfilment of the prophecies of the Great Apostasy, we can only be left to
conclude that the "millennium", or age of the Church has already came
to end, and that the forces of Satan have already
been unbound. The Apocalypse tells us that once the forces of
hell have been unleashed at the end of the "thousand years", they
will gather the nations together for war, and surround the Heavenly Jerusalem,
which represents the Church:
And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his
prison and will come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of
the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle; their number is like the
sand of the sea. And they marched up over the broad plain of the earth and
surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city...
(Rev 20:7-9)
As St. Augustine elaborates:
The words, And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and encompassed the
camp of the saints and the beloved city, do not mean that they have come, or
shall come, to one place, as if the camp of the saints and the beloved city
should be in some one place; for this camp is nothing else than the Church of
Christ extending over the whole world. And consequently wherever the Church
shall be—and it shall be in all nations, as is signified by the breadth of the
earth,— there also shall be the camp of the saints and the beloved city, and
there it shall be encompassed by the savage persecution of all its enemies...
(City of God, XX:11)
Mackey’s comment: At this point, the article introduces the Book of
Job connection:
During this "little while" at the end of the "thousand
years", Satan would be granted a period of greater power, much like in the
Book of Job. Indeed the prophetic vision of Pope Leo XIII directly
bases itself on the story of Job in the Old Testament. Here, Satan is granted
greater power over Job, God's faithful servant, in order to test his level of
faith. While Satan believes that he will be able to make Job turn his back on
God by heaping atrocities upon him, the Heavenly Father is certain that Job
will remain faithful in patient suffering. Job then has to endure a series
of trials inflicted upon him at the hand of Satan, in order to prove his
faithfulness to God. But in the vision of Leo XIII, the Church itself takes the
place of Job.
During this new "trial of Job", Satan uses the increase in
lawlessness (in the horrors of war and genocide) in an attempt to destroy
peoples' faith in God, making the love of many grow cold. And in the light
of the general apostasy which followed the horrors of the
two World Wars and the genocides of the 20th century, it seems that
this tactic has paid off spectacularly. Which isn't at
all surprising, given the fact that the exposition of
the philosophical problem of evil is one of the primary weapons
of modern atheism. Once the "thousand years" were over, the forces of
evil really did surround the City of God, and the Church is still
being besieged by the modern secular values espoused in the
principles of Freemasonry.
So if the "millennium" or age of the Church really did end at the
turn of the 20th century, as is suggested by the prophecy of Pope Leo XIII, and
indeed the actual unfolding of world events, we are left with the
inescapable conclusion that the unbinding of Satan described in the
Apocalypse is directly related to the two world wars. Turning back to the Book
of Revelation, we find an earlier parallel reference to Satan being unbound
from his prison in Rev 20, which is to be directly equated with the
opening of the abyss in Rev 9. These two passages undoubtedly refer to the exact
same event ….
….
