Genesis 8
Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. 9 But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. 10 He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. 11 When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. 12 He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.
The Christ draws profound parallels between Noah's day and that of the end of the world. Too, St. Peter compares the beginning world destroyed by water with the final world destroyed by fire. Indeed, this is indicative of the Flood and the eschatological fire that consumes the cosmos at the Second Coming. We might expect, then, that at least some elements of these profound allegorical Scriptures in the beginning of the Bible might have analogy to these topics. I truly believe they do. Let us explore it and, in particular, the above story of the dove that flies away and returns at Noah's command.
Firstly, and profoundly, the dove departs from the ark three times in the midst of the waters, and of these three episodes, it returns in the first two, but not the third. How might we see these vivid pictures in allegory? Well, clearly, the Ark is the Church, is it not? The Barque of Peter, per Scripture and Tradition. And is not the Ark that essence that redeems humanity firmly situated within the world but not of it? Yes. And is not the dove, per the wondrous imagery of the Baptism of the Lord a picture the Holy Spirit? And what then of the departure of the same Spirit? Would it not mean that spiritual darkness, or the primary absence of the Spirit, would encompass the world around the Church three pivotal and punctuated times in her history?
It fits, for recall, per our theology developed unto now, the Church, the New People of God, indeed walks a path of three stages, like the way of the saint. Too, they indeed involve three darknesses, as we have seen in earlier considerations:
Hence, each of these darknesses clearly represents the Holy Spirit "departing," since when a great age of sin enters, man dispels the Holy Spirit. In two of these darknesses, the first two to be exact, the dove returns, that is, the Holy Spirit comes back, bringing renewal, and in the last one, does not return. Let us work through it:
I. The Holy Spirit Returns after Pagan Rome
In Pagan Rome, the Holy Spirit went out the first time in Church History, and man blasphemed the Father because they said Caesar was greater than God almighty. And God forgave them, showing that Jesus leads the way: Constantine, Catholic Christendom. But the dove did not return with an olive branch, a symbol of peace, since in this first great age of Christianity, there has been no peace, no place for Christ to rest His head; bloodshed and division have been the lot of Christianity from its outset: Islamics killing Christians and Christians killing Islamics. Catholics killing Orthodox. Catholics burning heretics at the stake. Protestants killing Catholics and Catholics killing Protestants, and Protestants killing other types of Protestants. Protestants dividing into myriads of competing factions that mutually excommunicate all the others to hell.
So again, there was no place for Jesus to rest his head in this first 1700 years of Catholic history. Hence, the dove returns with no peace, no olive branch.
II. The Holy Spirit Will Return after our Modern Minor, Godless Apostasy, with PEACE, an OLIVE BRANCH
In our modern Minor Apostasy, the Holy Spirit went out again, man blaspheming not the Father but the Son, saying, again,
“See, the Son's disciples are all divided and against one another, with competing doctrines and worship and hatred toward one another, with their hypocrisy--crooked TV Evangelists, pedophile priests, and merciless Inquisitors. We need not the Son. All we need is science and material development.”
And God shall forgive this in the coming minor chastisement of the mystics, where humanity will realize its need for the Son, showing them the true fruits of their errors and sins. They will realize their need for natural law (they will realize that abortion, euthanasia, drugs, fornication, cohabitation, artificial birth control, divorce and remarriage, sodomy, and materialism are all grave moral evils that spell doom for the stability of society.). They will realize their need for a supernatural God (the deists and rationalists will realize that they cannot be fully moral without God’s help, even Jesus’). The Protestants will realize their need for central formal, visible authority to interpret doctrine, Bishops and Sacred Tradition, dispelling their countless factions of confusion with sola-scriptura. The Orthodox will realize they need the rock of Peter and forgive him his many sins in order to allow him to serve them with the fullness of truth. And the Islamics will realize their need for the Trinity and Incarnation, to dispel their tendency to violence and Old Testament harshness.
And the process whereby this will be attained will be apocalyptic, terrible. One prophet of the Church said that those people who are not familiar with the fully approved Apparitions of the Church, which tell us that today is not the end and will be healed, will THINK the world is ending. It will be that bad. Perhaps, God forbid, nuclear war or other weapons of mass destruction, and war everywhere, as in “entire nations shall be annihilated” [Fatima, Our Lady, or Our Lady of Kibeho, who implied that the horror of Rwanda would happen in each nation in the world without repentance].
But again, when it is through, through this terrible cross on humanity, all the non-Catholics in the world, saving most Jews [the en-masse conversion of the Jews is reserved for the very end of the world, per Public Revelation], will come home to Rome, and there will be peace, an olive branch. The dove will have found the olive branch of peace, the age of peace, when the Immaculate Virgin will reign, and bring it back to Noah. Then shall all men live with the best of both worlds: spiritual and material.
III. The Holy Spirit will NOT return at the Great Apostasy, Blasphemy against the Spirit
But we saw in that article on Apocalyptic Blasphemy against the Spirit, that eventually humanity will be get tired of their puny, little, pathetic crosses. They shall want complete heaven on earth. So they will forget that their world almost ended with materialistic power and science divorced from God, His truth, and His grace. They shall return to their vomit like the dog.
The dove, then, shall go out a final time from the ark, the bark of the Church: the Great Apostasy. Parents, say some mystics, will stop confirming their children. They will return to their former ways of our days--just like Pagan Rome, just like the wicked Jews before the Babylonian exile, just like the blasphemous grandeur of Egypt in her pyramids, or Babel with its tower. And they shall have the wickedness of Noah’s day, before the Flood. They will be like today: disrespectful of parents and authority, indifferent toward God and religion, complacent, superficial, drunken, using drugs, gossiping, bullying, slandering, vulgar, allowing abortion and euthanasia, sexually immoral in all ways—cohabitation, promiscuous, artificial birth control, divorce, sodomy---theft, greed, dishonesty, fraud. But they will have no excuse. For God will have shown them, in what is immediately to come in our time, the full fruits of such godlessness, of turning away from God, a DRESS REHEARSAL for the END OF THE WORLD! And that, with the POWERS of this world, they will have seen that science and materialistic grandeur, when divorced from knowledge and love of God, leads to an apocalyptic precipice!
Hence, when, as this great apostasy starts to bring back what was a thing of the past: war and tribulation, one man, the most wicked man of all existence, will rise up and say, ‘I can solve your problems, I can give you heaven on earth. You just need to hand yourselves over to me and check your faith and morals at the door.”
And at that time, the Catholic Church shall rise up and challenge this ultimate Antichrist and say, “Sir, if we can solve, as you say, all world problems with just science, technology, and materialistic grandeur and wonder and, at the same time, without God and religion, and, if you say, in fact, that religion actually has to be utterly removed from public life to secure peace and prosperity, how do you explain that an age ago the world almost ended with the great worldly power but without God, but that with great worldly power and religion, the world flourished in peace?
And the Antichrist shall commit the ultimate blaspheme ever uttered by man and humanity, an unforgivable, APOCALYPTIC sin: He shall say, “That the world almost ended without religion is purely circumstance. Humanity got into a rut. But it didn’t have anything to with lack of your Church, to whatever degree. The reason there was peace in your so-called age of Our Lady’s Triumph was ONLY because of the worldly power, science, and prosperity. It had nothing to do with your religion!”
BLASPHEMY of BLASPHEMIES! The Lord will forgive our current blasphemy of the Son because the Son is admittedly messed up. There are 102 versions of Jesus, currently: one form of Jesus with a supreme apostolic successor, general apostolic succession, and the bible; one form of Jesus with all that but a supreme successor; and a hundred primary forms of Jesus with just the bible. Not to mention moral scandals galore, hatred, bloodshed. So God says, I can forgive this: the image of My Son has been tainted by My wayward children. I will fix it. Then shall the world know that I am the searcher of hearts, and the vindicator of My People.
BUT, if God shows the world the incomprehensible horror of what happens with materialistic wonder and complexity when it leaves all religion in the dust, AND, if that were not enough, brings them all back to His Sacred Heart and His Mother’s Immaculate Heart, bringing PEACE and love and UNITY, AND with the materialistic wonder and complexity restored, ONE FAITH, ONE LORD, ONE BAPTISM, and FAITH and SCIENCE RECONCILED, then IF, AFTER ALL THAT, the world spits in God’s face, and says they DON”T NEED RELIGION, and WORSE, that the peace and prosperity of this great age that is coming from Our Lady’s Bosom had NOTHING to do with our Lady, with HER Heart, and the SPIRIT, the DOVE, that animates it, CAN GOD FORGIVE THAT?
APOCALYPTICALLY NO! For the world will be BLASPHEMING the Spirit.
Saying that all along, the only reason there was peace was because of the POWERS of THIS WORLD, that is, that the DRAGON OF STRIFE, was RESTRAINED, or cast OUT of history, by the powers of this world will be saying, that the PRINCE OF THIS WORLD was bound and CAST OUT by the POWERS OF THE PRINCE OF THIS WORLD [science, technology, affluence].
And WHERE have we seen a passage in Scripture where some evil man or men said that the DEVIL was cast out by the POWER OF THE DEVIL? The PHARISEES! And what was their SIN? BLASPHEMY AGAINST THE HOLY SPIRIT!
And what did Jesus say regarding this? He said, “Amen, amen, I say to you, all blasphemy and sin shall be forgiven men. And if men blaspheme the Son, it shall be forgiven them. But WHOSOEVER BLASPHEMES the HOLY SPIRIT, shall NEVER BE FORGIVEN, neither in THIS age, or the age to COME!”
This can then give us a meaning to this mysterious “neither in THIS age”. The Catholic Church condemns any belief that someone can commit a sin before death that is unforgivable. The sacraments of Confession and Anointing of the Sick disprove pre-death unforgivable sin. SJPII discussed this: he attributes this sin to final impenitence, hence, making Christ’s words hyperbolic. But the mystery persists: why WOULD Jesus say, “in THIS age [will not be forgiven]..”?
The Apocalyptic theology above enables the solution: no INDIVIDUAL human being will ever be unforgivable (Jesus will ALWAYS take you back, right till the millionth of a second before your demise), but CORPORATELY, HUMANITY will be UNFORGIVABLE at the end of the world, an unforgivable APOCALYPTIC sin; for what can we say? With all that God will have done for humanity: give them an apocalyptic learning lesson, and then give them peace, the ultimate true fruits of His kingdom--love, unity, peace, joy, solidarity in suffering, meaning of life and history—if they deny the supreme lesson they learned, the ultimate historical horror until its times—and then deny the source of peace, what more can be done? If they will not love God after all that, WHAT will enable them to love God? The sin will have reached the ultimate stab wound to the Creator’s Divine Heart: even AFTER Jesus will have put to death sin and wickedness in human history, of mind and will, his four wounds, perishing and resting toward the earth on the cross, even as His grace will rest on the earth in men’s hearts, still humanity will rise up and pierce His Divine Side, the final jab!
For the world BLASPHEMED the Father in Pagan Rome, and they were forgiven.
The modern world is BLASPHEMING the Son, and they will be forgiven.
But if humanity BLASPHEMES the Holy Spirit, there is no forgiveness. The Spirit will NOT return, and humanity must then begin the process that their fallen nature has brought themselves to: annihilation, so much so, that if Jesus did not interrupt the process, “no flesh should be saved.” But Jesus, out of love for His Church, in order that His apocalyptic promise be fulfilled to the end, that the gates of hell should not prevail against it, shall come EARLY, like a THIEF “for the sake of the elect.”
Hence, in this final time that the dove went out from Noah, he did not return, even as the Holy Spirit will not be able to return humanity to the ark of the Church in the final darkness. Only the Second Coming can usher in the light, the light that shall never end, the fire of judgement that shall form the New Creation, even as God drew the New World out of the water of Judgement, the Flood!
“As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the Son of Man!”