The Divine Dissolving Agent

In one of Michael O’Brien’s apocalyptic Children of the Last Days novels, Eclipse of the Sun, an old missionary priest Fr. Andrei is arrested by Maurice, a government agent (cf. pp. 476ff). To break down Fr. Andrei, he is forced into the cry room at the Cathedral of Victoria, Vancouver Island, BC.There he watches a strange Mass unfold with many liturgical abuses. He has to listen to an antichrist figure, a priest, make a speech. The antichrist-like-figure explains the whole program of the new world order… which required tearing down the walls of the Church and re-building Eden on earth:“We are potent and passionate, my sisters and brothers. We are pregnant with the new age. Let us reclaim our garden! Let us restore Eden! For paradise is within us and all around us, and nowhere else can it be found. All walls [around Eden]are illusion!” … “The light reveals to us the presence of the Cosmic Christ. It comes from the Light-bearer, who offers you wholeness, who offers you freedom.”“The traditional Church has been oblivious to … the divinization of the Cosmos.The church’s obsession with fall and redemption, sin and repentance… has tornat the web of cosmic union! It has built walls. This must cease!” He mentions the evil of dogmatism and the goodness of ecumenism, etc… He spoke passionately on war, ecology and various forms of oppression. The Liturgy used readings from Teilhard Chardin and Gustav Jung, with the a Gospel of the Egyptians. Rainbow flags were everywhere present and people dressed immodestly in tights. That is quite a scene. Maurice wanted to make Fr. Andrei despair. Iknow many are expressing some exasperation at the state of affairs in the Church and the world of our times. Why exasperating? Because the problems seem to be intractable… fixed… institutionalized… deeply embedded… coming even from the sanctuary. Like Maurice, the devil seems to be laughing at us, saying:“give up … there is no fixing these problems… this is my world now… I am its prince and r..