The idea of an historical age of triumph of the Church and of Christian civilization dates, prior to St Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort and to Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, to saints like St Bonaventure, and in our century it was made his own by another great Marian apostle like St Maximilian Kolbe.
This prospect of triumph of the Church is absolutely foreign to every form of millenarianism condemned by the Church. In fact it is an historical period that precedes not only the Parousia, but the actual dominion of the Antichrist and does not propose any “visible Kingdom” of Jesus Christ on earth. The visible presence of Jesus Christ would render the mission of the Church useless, while the theory of Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira is that the Reign of Mary is an age in which the Church, the Mystical body of Christ, has an influence and plays a role as has never before happened in history. Even if we apply the enigmatic passage of the Book of the Apocalypse to it, the social Reign of Jesus Christ and of Mary hoped for by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira does not exclude the presence of original sin and the action of the devil.
“As much as the earthly reality of the Kingdom of Christ is concrete, evident and tangible — as for example in the thirteenth century — it is necessary not to forget” writes Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira “that this kingdom is only a preparation and an introduction. In its fullness the kingdom of God will be realized in heaven: ‘My kingdom is not of this world’ (John 18:36).”131
“In fact the Church teaches us that this world is a place of exile, a vale of tears, a field of battle, and not a place of delight. (…) Therefore, to imagine a world without struggles and adversity is like imagining a world without Jesus Christ.”132
While waiting for this blessed age, the Brazilian thinker finds himself in the company of numerous saints and both old and modern theologians. Cardinal Ratzinger made a parallel between the City of God of St Augustine, born during the crisis of the Roman Empire and that “moment of climax in the Christian way of thinking history”133 represented by the Collationes in Hexaèmeron by St Bonaventure.134
In this work, St Bonaventure tries to do something similar to what St Augustine had done in the City of God: “make the present and the future of the Church comprehensible by starting from its past”.135
The glory of the “seventh age”, of which the Seraphic Doctor speaks in the Hexaèmeron, refers to a temporal triumph of the Church in the world and in history.136
“The theology of history of Bonaventure culminates in the hope of an age, within history, of sabbatical calm donated by God. (…) It is not that peace in the eternity of God that will never end and that will follow the ruin of this world; it is a peace that God will establish on this earth, the witness of so much blood and tears, as if he still wanted to show in the last moment how the reality according to his plan could and should have been”.137
The affirmations of Cardinal Ratzinger, regarding the theology of history of St Bonaventure, can also be well understood in the light of the thinking of St Thomas. If in fact as the Angelic Doctor teaches, man is by nature a social being,138 he is obviously called not only to his personal sanctification, but to the sanctification of society, and if human history should not reach this summit of social perfection, that glory of God which is the ultimate goal of creation would be compromised.
This theological and philosophical foundation is implicit in the eschatological perspective of many saints of the twentieth century.
“A great age is approaching!” announces Blessed Luigi Orione: “We will have novos coelos et novam terram. Society restored in Christ will reappear younger, more brilliant, it will reappear reanimated, renewed and guided by the Church. Catholicism, full of divine truth, of love, of youth, of supernatural strength, will stand up in the world, and will put itself at the head of the century being born, to lead it to honesty, faith, happiness and salvation.”139
“We live in an age” writes St Maximilian Kolbe in his turn “that could be called the beginning of the age of the Immaculate.”140 “…Under her standard a great battle will be fought and we will raise her flags on the fortresses of the king of darkness. And the Immaculate will become the Queen of the whole world and of every single soul, as Blessed Catherine Labouré foresaw.”141 “Class struggles will then disappear and mankind will come close, in as much as it is possible on this earth, to happiness, a sort of anticipation of that happiness towards which each one of us already naturally tends, that is to say to the happiness without limits, in God, in paradise.”142 “In fact, when that happens the earth will become a paradise. True peace and happiness will enter the families, the cities, the villages and the nations of all human society, because where she will reign, the graces of conversion and of sanctification and happiness will make their appearance.”143
Pius XII himself, in establishing the feast of Mary the Queen and in ordering that each year the consecration of mankind to the Immaculate Heart of Mary be renewed on that day, placed in this gesture “the hope that a new era may begin, joyous in Christian peace and in the triumph of religion”144 and he stated that “the invocation of the reign of Mary is (…) the voice of Christian faith and hope”,145 while confirming in one of his last speeches the “certainty that the restoration of the Kingdom of Christ through Mary cannot fail to be realized.”146
Notes:
131. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, A cruzada do século XX.
132. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “A utopia e a mensagem”, Folha de S. Paulo, 19 July 1980.
133. J. Ratzinger, La théologie de l’histoire de saint Bonaventure, p. 25.
134. St Bonaventure, Collationes in Hexaèmeron, seu Illuminationes Ecclesiae, in Bonaventurae opera omnia, (Quaracchi, Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1883-1902), vol. V, pp. 372-454, Span. tr. Hexameron, Madrid, BAC, 1972. These conferences were given in Paris in front of a large audience of Brothers, between Easter and Pentecost of 1273. Alois Dempf saw in it “the greatest and last philosophy of the history of the Middle Ages” (A.Dempf, Sacrum Imperium, p. 311). Cardinal Ratzinger sees a strong influence of Joachim of Fiore on St Bonaventure (La théologie de l’histoire de saint Bonaventure, pp. 120-1) in which he sees “the precursor of a new concept of history that today appears to us as being so obviously Christian that it is hard for us to believe that at one time it was different”. ibid, p. 122.
135. J. Ratzinger, La théologie de l’histoire de saint Bonaventure, p. 13.
136. Ibid, 24-34. Cf. also Miguel Beccar Varela, “São Bonaventura, Doutor para o Reino de Maria”, Catolicismo, no. 536, August 1995.
137. J. Ratzinger, La théologie de l’histoire de saint Bonaventure, pp. 63, 182.
138. St Thomas Aquinas, De Regimine Principum, I, 1. The theory of St Thomas is taken up by Leo XIII in the encyclical Libertas and by Pius XI in the Quadragesimo Anno. Cf. Josephus Goenaga, S.J., Philosophia socialis, (Rome, C.I.S.I.C., 1964), pp. 39-40.
139. Blessed Luigi Orione, Letter of 3 July 1936, in Lettere, 3rd enlarged, (Rome, Postulazione, 1969), vol. II, pp. 369-On Blessed Luigi Orione (1872-1940), founder of the “Piccola opera” of Divine Providence, cf. Carlo Sterpi, Lo spirito di don Orione, Venice, Libreria Emiliana Editrice, 1941; Giorgio Papasogli, Vita di don Orione, with a preface by His Eminence Cardinal Giuseppe Siri, Turin, Gribaudi, 1974.
140. St Maximilian Kolbe O.F.M. CONV. (1894-1941), “La difesa della Chiesa sotto il vessillo dell’Immacolata: la fondazione della Milizia dell’Immacolata e i suoi primi sviluppi”, Miles Immaculatae, July-September 1939, now in Gli Scritti di Massimiliano Kolbe, It. tr. (Florence, Edizioni Città di Vita, 1975-78), vol. III, p. 555. On the Polish saint, cf. also Antonio Ricciardi O.F.M. CONV., Padre Massimiliano Kolbe, Rome, Postulatione Generale, 1960; Maria Winowska, Le secret de Maximilien Kolbe, Paris-Fribourg, Ed. Saint Paul, 1971; La mariologia di S. Massimiliano Kolbe, Acts of the International Congress of Rome (8-12 October 1984), edited by F. S. Pancheri, Rome, Miscellanea Francescana, 1985.
141. St Kolbe O.F.M. CONV., Letter to Father Floriano Koziura of 30 May 1931, now in Gli Scritti, vol. I, p. 550.
142. St M. Kolbe O.F.M. CONV., “La Regina della Polonia”, Rycerz, May 1925, now in Gli Scritti, vol. III, p. 209.
143. St Kolbe O.F.M. CONV., Calendar of “Rycerz” for the year 1925, now in Gli Scritti, vol. III, p. 189.
144. Pius XII, Encyclical Ad Caeli Reginam.
145. Pius XII, Speech of 1 November 1954, in DR, vol. XVI, p. 238.
146. Pius XII, Radiomessage of 17 September 1958 to the Marian Congress of Lourdes, in DR, vol. XX, p. 365.