Cormac McCarthy, Jesus And The End Of The World - a podcast by Fr. John Arnold

33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
“All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.” 
? Cormac McCarthy, The Road

The Road, Cormac McCarthy's dismal story of post-apocalyptic destruction is just the most recent retelling of the Gospel in Mark 13.  McCarthy imagines that when all human institutions are destroyed, life become unbelievably grim - cannibals, roving armies of brigands, nothing to eat. McCarthy's writing is beautiful:

“Years later he'd stood in the charred ruins of a library where blackened books lay in pools of water. Shelves tipped over. Some rage at the lies arranged in their thousands row on row. He picked up one of the books and thumbed through the heavy bloated pages. He'd not have thought the value of the smallest thing predicated on a world to come. It surprised him. That the space which these things occupied was itself an expectation.” 
? Cormac McCarthy, The Road


In Jesus' story, the institution of the Temple will be destroyed and cosmic destruction will follow. McCarthy's story just fleshes out the prophecy of Jesus. Both Jesus’ prophecy and The Road end on a note of hope. 

“Carry the fire.” 
? Cormac McCarthy, The Road

"And then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in the clouds'
with great power and glory,
and then he will send out the angels
and gather his elect from the four winds,
from the end of the earth to the end of the sky." Mark 13

Help is Coming!

The readings for the 33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time are found here: bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/111421.cfm

Music: O Fortuna by MIT Concert Choir is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

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