Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson died a painful death in his early forties, in the year 1914, two months after Pope St. Pius X- for whom Msgr. Benson had great love and admiration. He was born into an accomplished Anglican family from England, and was the first son of the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury. He made a splash by converting to the Catholic Faith and becoming a priest. Upon becoming Catholic, he seemed to endure a martyrdom of prolific writing, hearing confessions and speaking, for it seems he was a very sensitive and reserved man- but a man who loved Our Lord with all that he was. Anyone who has read Come Rack! Come Rope! or The Lord of the World will feel the torrent of deep Catholic piety and absolute surrender to God; yet, in his books, he clearly outlines the essence of faith as being a thing of the will; and that our faith is a work, in the Jamesian sense, a work of love- but not primarily of emotion or intellect.
It is said that his eleven short years as a Catholic priest, until his death, were “each years of eleven years”, so great was his output of novels, poems, lectures, sermons, and non-fiction works. In my estimation he was a literary giant, whose powerful and profound descriptions; depth of themes and human experiences; and even his prophetic moments, rank him with the greatest of the world’s ‘bards’. I’ve always said there is something in the water in England, which produces such writers! However, my thought is that the water of Msgr. Benson’s soul was the Blood of Christ.
This brings me to arguably his most influential novel, The Lord of the World, which outlines the Last Times, the Anti-Christ and the Coming of Our Lord. Benson sets the novel one hundred years ahead- and as he was writing in 1907, we are living on the threshold of the time he imagined. Benson denied that his book was ‘prophetic’ in the literal sense- and it is very interesting to see what he could imagine in terms of technology, and what was beyond him. For instance, he could not imagine either the television, the computer, and certainly not the internet, so he thinks of the characters using a private and very fast telegraph; yet his ‘airplanes’ are really quite sophisticated.
The one area that strikes me as interesting in terms of prophecy, is that he characterizes the Church in the last times as a fortress- a very Pre-Vatican II characterization. Little could Msgr. Benson imagine that the smoke of Satan would literally enter into the very enclaves, through the little cracks of ambiguity left in the proscriptions of the Council, and primarily through the bad will or weakness of those who are meant to protect Her! Little could he understand how the Church could remain and yet be shrouded so that it would be hard even to find Her; or that some of her very shepherds would be leading so many astray. No, he could not imagine it. All of us who love the Church have a hard time grasping the snaking confusion, even though we are witnessing it daily. It is as if The Lord of the World is prophecy drawn in thick marker, a too-clearly unfolding of the decisive battle Sr. Lucy talks about, or a condensed version of real events. It seems that reality is really stranger than fiction, and that the development of the Last Times has taken centuries rather than a hundred years.
Where Msgr. Benson becomes prophetic is at the existential and faith level of the Last Times. How the Anti-Christ gains his power is not so important in the book - rather it is the experience at the levels of reason, emotion and will of the Catholic in the novel that becomes important for us, and those who come in later years. The protagonist, Fr. Percy Franklin, begins the book by a three-man discussion of the last hundred years’ history, in the subterranean apartment of an old, dying Catholic, along with with a young, doubting fellow priest, who later apostasizes. From the rather abstract understanding of the historical processes toward a ‘unified world’, Father Percy goes out into the reality of a world cowering under the prospect of a Great War. There is an unbearable juxtaposition between fear and ultra-modern convenience ( as we are living in today): and yet he spends his most important time in contemplative prayer- he has practiced for years this silencing of thought and emotion, to stand simple in the Presence of the Lord, in the inner recesses of the will. This practice, this understanding, this place of simple will, will be all he has left when the tide of the Anti-Christ comes.
Fr. Franklin’s faith survives the incredible temptation and power present in the ‘peace’-bearing Anti-Christ, because he simply hangs on to Our Lord, the Suffering Lord, with his will. He later hangs on, through the destruction of Rome and the last days of the world, as he leads the remnant of the Church from Nazareth as the last Vicar of Christ. Msgr. Benson’s message to us here is a prophetic message: If your faith in Christ and His Bride is based primarily on reason, or on emotion, it will not withstand the Last Times. It must be a faith forged within the Cloud of Unknowing, within the terrible and silent darkness of simple will. It must be a practiced faith, a faith bolstered by prayer-neither the whining prayer of the emotional nor the abstract faith of the academic- it must be the prayer of the will: the will to love God and to receive His grace. It must be a receptive prayer, for none of us will survive another minute without God’s grace; and we need to be aware of our total dependence upon Him even when we don’t feel Him or see Him in the normal channels or places.
Our faith must be a faith imbued with courage from God, for we will have to hang on in a terrible, sick-peace storm: and hang on to the death, if need be. There was nothing more terrible in Msgr. Benson’s book than the spectacle of former priests leading a liturgy for the Anti-Christ; a close second is the attractiveness of euthanasia for the characters without faith; and third, the superhuman pull of the forces of false peace with the Devil.
It was very interesting to me that Msgr. Benson included the destruction of Rome and the Pope leading the remnant of the hierarchical Church with the Monstrance toward the forces of the Anti-Christ- eerily similar to the visions of Fatima- although in Msgr. Benson’s book, the destruction and the procession take place apart in location and time-one in Rome, one at the edge of the plain of Mageddo (Armaggedon).
Are we living in the Last Times? My reason says, “yes”. The fruit seems to be ripening on the tree; but again, none but the Father knows the hour. However, it is still important to be watchful, to be prepared; for at no time is it easy to be a Christian in the world; and The Lord of the World is a powerful teacher about what it means to be in the world but not of it.
