From the Heart of the Shepherd

From the bulletin for The Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (2025 Aug 03)

The Eschatological Adventure, Part 12: “What You Have Seen, What is Now and What Will Take Place Later”

Jolianna knew from the start that that day’s exhortation would be in the prophetic vein. “Brethren,” the venerable catechist began gravely, “it is the last hour. As you have heard that the antichrist is coming, so many antichrists have come. Whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Father, is the antichrist. Therefore, we know it is the last hour.”

The presider then launched into a theological summary of the “hours” preceding, going back to the very first. Jolianna had heard it before. Having arrived at this isolated refuge at a tender age, the image she had of the world to the north and its evolution through the centuries was largely informed by such lessons as these, fleshed out by her active imagination. Yet today this summary of everything seemed especially pertinent: the garden that God had prepared for man over the eons of the world’s creation; the gift of their first parent’s existence; the blight that the first sin had introduced into that paradise; God’s patient work to till its soil for the Seed of the Gospel sown in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection; that Seed’s flowering and growth into the First Christendom, and the subsequent decline of the Church as its members and life force were choked, to an extent, by the weeds of error that had been sown by the Enemy; the second and greater blossoming during the Third Millenium, followed by an even more spectacular wilting of the terrestrial Vine when the old errors reappeared in more subtle forms precisely when ears were itching for them and the Church was least prepared to respond; the last four centuries in which the world had broken apart again and descended into a “Darker Age” of wars such as the world had never seen before. Then, of course, came the narration of more recent developments, which had witnessed the emergence of one now acclaimed as the savior of humanity: a wunderkind who had devoted his youth to acquiring a trifecta of doctoral degrees in psycho-neurology, ancient programming languages, and comparative religion, but later sacrificed his hidden life in academia to emerge as the “synthesis and incarnation,” some said, of human wisdom traditions and the peacemaker among the warring nations of the earth.

The things that Jolianna had heard about this man, Shalomon Scuritas, seemed either necessarily legendary or downright preternatural: That he had had no human father. That before he was twelve he had already acquired fluency in eight languages and had memorized the scriptures of the world’s major religious traditions. That he had been mortally wounded by a would-be assassin, but had survived (though he still required regular blood transfusions). That he could read others’ thoughts. That he could not die.

Scuritas had won the adulation of the human race in part due to his uncanny personal charm and daring vision for a harmonious human future, but also an inexplicable knack for imposing his will, even on seemingly intractable opponents. His global debut coincided with the publication of his The Kingdom Within You, in which “the World Teacher” gave a persuasive account of all of man’s ills: that they were rooted in a genetic mutation that resulted in the human lust for self-transcendence, which explained both man’s penchant for flights of religious imagination and his falls into bloody war: man always wanted more. World religions and ethical systems had inevitably worked either to castrate or repress that desire, direct it towards the unreal, or justify its violent expressions. Christianity in particular, Scuritas argued, always brought all three: repression, false belief, and the sword. Case in point, the previous three millenia. 

The proposed solution came in his next publication, Ye Shall Be Gods: give that lust for more free rein. Quite persuasively, Scuritas advocated for harnessing the power of “forbidden fruit technologies" that the Catholic Church had denounced centuries before and which had been largely abandoned and left undeveloped. “Our organism craves to be greater,” Scuritas had reasoned, “Let’s stop torturing ourselves and finally be something greater.”  

A host of well-resourced philanthropists embraced his vision. Under Scuritas’ direction, a consortium was formed. In a shockingly brief span, those once-abandoned technologies were revived and perfected. The result, so they claimed, was the power to fully digitize the human person. Immortality, independence from organic matter, carbon-free existence, a painless existence, and (most importantly, according to the Teacher in his third book, Ye Shall Not Die) “liberation from the constraints of time and space and the resulting rivalry with others and frustration of self” had been at last attained. 

At this point in the narrative, Jolianna thought she sensed a dull thud at a distance. But her attention was quickly drawn back to the preacher, who was becoming increasingly animated as he arrived at his main point.

From the Heart of the Shepherd: The Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time