Brief review of the novel Pusillus Grex

Brief review of Pusillus Grex

Following  Lacunza’s footsteps

Being Chilean and catholic, I am enormously proud that a daughter of his land has written a novel  on the end of the times following the course of one of her predecessors in Chile. I am referring specifically to Father Manuel Lacunza, author of “The Coming of Messiah in Glory and Majesty.” More than two centuries have gone by, but the topic of millenialism or millenarianism is still alive for a reduced number of Chileans.

            Even in the darkness of the world, Our Lord’s Grace illuminates all the souls of good will. Because God is just and merciful, we are all invited to conversion and sacrifice; not everyone follows Him, though. Let’s see how the following parable illustrates this fact:

 “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son.  He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come. “Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’ “But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. ⁷ The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. “Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.  “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless. “Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’  “For many are invited, but few are chosen.” Mt. 22, 2-14

            The parable begins by alluding to the fact that the Kingdom of Heaven is like the wedding of a king’s son. The children of the most illustrious people of the kingdom had been invited to this wedding, that is, the people of Israel, who rejected the invitation. The King’s servants, who in ancient times represented His prophets, after refusing to attend, were replaced by the apostles and His followers. These latter servants did not hesitate to invite whoever they met along the roads. They travelled whole continents looking for new guests. Such was their zeal to obey their Master, that they offered their own blood in order to accomplish their mission.

            After over two thousand years of successive generations of faithful servants, unhesitant in pursuit of their job, some started to prevaricate, causing a decrease in the number of guests. Nobody remembered the wedding of the King’s son, nobody even summoned the guests to attend. In view of such silence, the King of Kings, the Master of Masters, inspired certain men to recall the prophecies and to make them explicit, so that people would regain their hopes on the coming of the Lord. Pusillus Grex was written to bring hope to all those souls who have lost it or about to lose it in the face of tribulation. For that reason, the prophecy has been inserted amid a number of atheist ideological processes in XXI century society, to make it clear that this prophecy does not constitute a theological remnant of ancient times, but rather, that it is as valid as ever.

             The Catholic Church will prevail until the end of time; it is indestructible by divine promise. Thought the world might see it defeated and at the verge of extinction, God shall sustain it. Pusillus Grex conveys this fact consistently; the Divine Providence plays a crucial role in the support of the church, and especially, in the protection of the small prey that remains faithful to God’s truth. Nothing occurs haphazardly in Pusillus Grex; no matter how insignificant, every detail follows God’s plan, since He chooses His flock.  God picks the worst of the world to confuse the world. He fulfills His promises, and He does through the ones He chooses, and through human means not everyone is able to recognize. Not everyone has ears to listen to the prophets, and not everyone has eyes to see the signals of the century, but he who seeks salvation should love the truth to the point of offering his own life should God so command.

            Current Christians have forgotten about the second coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and have done so because their shepherds no longer preach about the Second Advent of the Lord. Our day Catholics do not await for His coming, living as if God did not exist. Pusillus Grex was written for the Greater Glory of God, to tell the world He will come when we least expect it. There is neither pride nor pretense on the part of the author, who wants to contribute her share to the huge eschatological work of the great authors through the centuries.

            Father Miguel Lacunza y Diaz was responsible for reviving in Chile a theological point of view which, for centuries, had been left aside by the Catholic Church; called millenarianism, this belief is based on St John’s Apocalypse, Chapter XX:

“And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, and cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season. And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.” Ap.20, 1-6

            St. Jerome influenced St. Augustine’s thoughts to make of this chapter an allegoric interpretation – out of respect for St Jerome – and not a literal one as many of the forefathers and the young St Augustine had made. Augustine of Hippo’s allegoric version has been adopted by the Church through the centuries. Even though the Church has never condemned the idea of millenarianism – it cannot since this belief was also that of the forefathers, it has chosen to leave the topic unresolved.

            Two of the benchmarks for millenarianism have been the Jesuit fathers Manuel Lacunza and Leonardo Castellani, and therefore Pusillus Grex is just a flea on the shoulders of these two giants.

            Finally, I would like to end by thanking God for the existence of Christians who dare to speak up and express their thoughts in a world where most intellectuals are governed by parasitism and inertia. Pusillus Grex is a small megaphone shouting in the ears of XXI century men.

Fray Agrícola.
(traducción al inglés de María Angélica Kaulen)