Elijah in Jerusalem by Michael D. O'Brien

(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2015), 284

Preface

This "does not attempt to predict the future, but rather, in the sense of Tolkien's concept of 'sub-creation', it offers an imaginative possibility for the purpose of stimulating reflection." (10)
G.K. Chesterton said the Antichrist would more likely come from Manhattan than from Moscow. (11)
"It is my earnest desire that they return to daily life with refreshed eyes and hunger for the living word of God in sacred Scripture." (13)

Chapter 1: Jerusalem the Golden

Characters: Elijah (bishop), Enoch (his companion)
The "Man of Sin": "Hidden within its self-exaltation and its transitory exaltation of man was the relentless objective: to destroy the image and likeness of God in any way possible. Thus, for generations it had vomited a cloud of blinding smoke and a fog of drugging pleasures upon mankind, to seduce the mind, to enthrall the senses, to disguise through flattery and deception its true intention. Most of the world had been deceived." (18)
"To speak plainly is to venture into territory from which one may not return." (26)
"He prayed the Divine Office, using the volume he had brought in his knapsack. Then he continued to pray wordlessly. Mainly his prayer took the form of offering his poverty—his weaknesses and age...He understood that his limitations were fully within the ways of God, for he was best glorified by those who had little or nothing of their own to inhibit the flow of the Holy Spirit. On this truth his confidence was based." (33)

Chapter 2: Gabriel's Sign

"I am coming to believe that if you share your life with a person, if you give and receive openly, you begin to live in a larger universe." (52)
"Elijah prepared for sleep. Both he and Enoch preferred the floor to bed or sofa, and indeed the brother was already asleep by the time Elijah had completed praying Compline. He blessed the room with holy water, invoked the protection of the angels, and stretched out on the cool marble floor." (60)

Chapter 3: The Woman Inviolate

Chapter 4: The Strategist

"The serpent mesmerizes. Whenever it cannot seduce, it attempts to overwhelm. It is like a cobra projecting an image of its power in order to paralyze its victim with fear, disabling its defenses without a struggle, before devouring it." (96)
The Lord of the Rings "You Shall Not Pass" (98)
"Human choices make happiness and unhappiness, and we live with the consequences." (128)
"My believe is that our willingness to undertake the struggle within our damaged natures is the very thing that broadens and deepens our capacity to love. If all conflict is removed, if all suffering is removed, are we not left with sentiment and sensuality?" (129)

Chapter 5: The Pebble War

Ostpolitik: "Elijah reminded himself that the Church had been afflicted from the beginning by those who compromised the truth. There had never been a lack of such strategists, especially during times of crisis for the Church. Whenever she had been attacked from the outside, there had arisen within her proponents of the lesser-evil argument—make peace with our oppressors, try to save what can be saved by cooperating with their unjust demands." (132)
"Elijah was most familiar with this tendency in German and Austrian bishops, though it could be found elsewhere. It was particularly difficult for them to stand firm against a materialist social revolution and against dissent within their own dioceses. He had often wondered if they were still overreacting to the guilt of Nazism, whether or not their parents and grandparents had suffered under it or had endorsed it. For all of them it continued to be, three generations after the war, a factor in their identity and memory. Thus, all authority was suspect, even dangerous, equated with authoritarianism. Religious authority, therefore, should be collegial in an egalitarian sense. The authority of the papacy—the rule of one man, as they saw it—could not be tolerated, for that form of governance was undemocratic, and because it was undemocratic, it must surely tend in the direction of fascism." (134)
"He had greatly loved Benedict XVI, a brilliant and holy man who had been a universal shepherd of souls and a lucid teacher of all who would listen." (134)
"He had lost his peace. He needed very badly to find a quiet place where he could pray." (135)
"He knew that extraordinary graces were given when they were needed, and not a moment before. The Holy Spirit never moved within believers as if they were puppet instruments, but rather in cocreative choices—Person and person working together in faith and freedom." (151)

Chapter 6: Cities of the Plain

Chapter 7: Riders in the Chariot

"The governments aren't the problem, really. I should say, not the source of the problem. The root is the fear in all hearts." (183)
"Hearts are revealed in what we choose." (183)

Chapter 8: The Cloud of Witnesses

"It was simple: a rectangular dormitory with eight beds, four to a side, each with a night table. On the far wall was a crucifix and icons and a hanging red vigil lamp, and beneath them an overloaded bookcase. Art prints were taped to the cement-block walls here and there: Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, Chagall’s Rabbi of Vitebsk, and Giotto’s Flight into Egypt. There was also a photograph of the Holy Father and another of the martyred Saint Teresa Benedicta, who had died in Auschwitz, the image taken when she was a young philosopher named Edith Stein." (219)
"The only artwork in her room was a framed print of a painting by Fra Angelico: guardian angels in paradise, dancing hand in hand in a ring, rejoicing that their human charges had arrived there safely." (219)
"He knew that God very often did his deepest work in the soul without any sensible manifestations. He was always at work—always—and often most powerfully in those times when his children felt abandoned, alone with impossible responsibilities or afflictions." (222)

Chapter 9: The Wall of Tears

"Yet he also knew that the mission was not so much about success but about whether he stood firm in obedience." (232)
"In the end, Elijah thought that their identities belonged to God alone, and in this he would trust." (237)

Chapter 10: Intifada

"Sh'ma Yisrael, Adonai eloheinu, Adonai echad..." (258 cf Dt-06)
"The Palestinians have a good word, Lev. Intifada. The shaking off. The whole world needs an intifada, Lev. We need to shake off the cloud of deception so we can see and move again." (266)

Chapter 11: The Cloak

"He dreamed of a golden city and a Child in white robes coming forth from it to take his hand and guide him home. The Child’s hands and feet were pierced with terrible wounds. The bearded monk was there too, waiting for him at the gates. Also John of the Cross and Teresa Benedicta and others." (272)
"Yet as they prayed for him, the black current subsided and dropped away, and the demons were beaten back for a time. Yet the way of unknowing, the nada, continued." (277)

Topic: Apocalyptic literature

Source

Father Elijah

Created: 2024-12-29-Sun
Updated: 2025-01-28-Tue