BROTHERBRYAN’SBOOK

By Paula Haigh Revised Edition

2003

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How Brother Bryan’s Book came to be

Abbot Michael’s Account

Our little Brother Bryan did all kinds of work in the Monastery. He weeded the garden, chopped wood, harvested hay and grain, swept the cloisters, and helped the cook. Because he did all these things so well, he was always wanted in every place. But he was never made the chief or master of any work because of his simplicity which seemed to hint of feeble-mindedness.

He was a very little man, being small of stature and of build, and of small voice, too. He spoke almost in a whisper, that is, when he did speak, for he did not speak often but only when spoken to by another Brother or by me, his spiritual Father. And his answers were always accompanied by a radiant smile, not unlike those of half-wits.

He was born, he said, around the year of Our Lord 530, into a large and noble family close to the Court of King Donegal. At 14 years of age he was hunting the stag one day with his brothers when he was thrown from his horse and carried home half-dead with a broken neck. As he lay between life and death, his Angel Guardian came to him in a blaze of light and said to him: “Bryan, Our Divine Lord desires to have your heart. But He sends you this message and asks you to make a choice: You may pass now to Purgatory and from thence, after three years, to Eternal Bliss with Him in Heaven; or, you may live to enter the Monastery of Clonard and offer to Him a long life of loving service hidden in poverty and obscurity. Which do you prefer?” Bryan’s heart was thrilled by these words of his Angel, for he had loved God ardently from infancy, only with a growing forgetfulness of late. So he told his Angel that he rejoiced to choose a long life of labor in poverty and obscurity for love of his Divine Master, whereupon the Angel touched his neck and he immediately felt himself fully restored to bodily integrity..

The visions of things past and of things to come had been given him during long nights of vigil in the Monastery Church. He had confided to me, his spiritual Father, the fact and content of the showings, saying his Angel had so commanded him, but thinking them nothing extraordinary, rather, common to all, and finding the nights thus passed most refreshing. His words being both edifying and instructive, I determined to write them down, and so I did, in my rough Gaelic, for an hour or so each day, as he spoke to me during our intervals between work and prayer.

This telling of his with my transcription continued for the space of a year, from one Christmas-tide to the next. Then he took sick on the Eve of Candlemas of this present year and passed away most sweetly the next day during Matins of the Feast of Lights. He was 62 years of age but looked to be not above 30 . He said he had not finished the telling of his visions, having only come to the death of Noah. But God was calling him and he would not tarry.

I gave all that I had transcribed to our Master Scribe to be rendered first into Latin and then decently copied on the best parchment and bound with oaken wood, which is most hard, and cramped with gold and ivory for loveliness. In this way I trust that the visions will be preserved for those times that will see their fulfillment and may profit from their warnings, for the Glory of God and the salvation of souls, Who, as He says by His Holy Spirit, “doth nothing without revealing His secret to His servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7).

[ signed ]

Abbot Michael ChullhulannyChristmas Eve, Anno Domini 592 at Clonard Abbey

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Sean O’Flaherty’s Account

The work here being offered to the world for the first time in simultaneous English, Italian, French, and German translations from the original literary Latin of the 6th century, was the final scholarly effort of the late Monsignor Benedetto Pignanelli, renowned linguist and assistant Archivist of the Vatican Library in Rome. It is alleged by some, and I can vouch for the truth of the allegations myself as one closer than any to the Monsignor during his last days, that Father Bene, as he was affectionately called, was so moved by Brother Bryan’s book and so exhausted by the work of preparing it for publication in several languages, that there was definitely a direct connection between the work and the heart failure of which he expired in January of this year.

The original text of Brother Bryan’s book was discovered by myself, Sean O’Flaherty, presently a fourth-year student at the Irish Seminary in Rome. Being expert in ancient Latin manuscripts, so plentiful in the libraries of my native Ireland, I had served as Monsignor Bene’s devoted assistant since coming to Rome in September of this year. It was while examining a particularly musty and long-neglected group of ancient Latin writings that my eye was caught by a small oak-bound volume cramped with exquisitely wrought gold and ivory. Thinking that such a casing could only enclose some portion of the Sacred Scriptures, my hasty glance inside was immediately arrested by the Irish name of the author which fairly jumped out at me from the antique parchment page. Still, thinking the work to be but some old monk’s gloss upon the text of Scripture, I was ready to return the volume to the pile when I noticed the word prophetiae on the title page. Now, being an Irishman who knows and loves his Saint Malachy, and thinking I had perhaps come upon some spiritual kinsman of that holy man, I settled myself to examine the book in earnest.

Monsignor Bene found me hours later, but I was unable to describe to him the awe and astonishment that had overcome me as I read the limpid Latin of so long ago. I could only urge the Monsignor to read the work for himself. The following text is his faithful translation into English of what must assuredly be one of the most unusual literary productions of all time.

[Signed]

Sean O’Flaherty, Seminarian

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Assumption Day, A.D. 1986, in Rome.

Monsignor Benedetto Pignanelli’s Account

The little oak-bound volume of Abbot Michael undoubtedly came from Clonard Abbey to St. Gaul’s or to Reichnau with the disciples of Saint Columbanus in the 7th century. It was from both of these Monasteries that the Vatican acquired loads of precious manuscripts and incunabulae during the Franco-Prussian conflict of the late 19th century.

The visions were told by Brother Bryan to his spiritual Father, Abbot Michael, who wrote them down in the spoken Gaelic of 6th century Ireland. No copy or other record of this original survives to my knowledge. Abbot Michael’s Scribe rendered the visions from Gaelic into the literary Latin of the Irish Monastic Schools, a highly polished and exceptionally lucid form of the language preferred by Churchmen of the west for all literary and official documents.

I have tried to be as faithful as possible to the 6th century Latin text, but by striving to retain each nuance of meaning, I have produced an English style that is cumbersome and redundant where the Latin is elegantly pithy and concise. The same, I fear, must be said for my French, Italian, and German translations. I can only deplore this deficiency and invite the interested reader to consult the original Latin which I hope to reproduce in facsimile in the near future.

While I was working on the French translation of the book, a visiting American priest from the University of Notre Dame in that country, showed some curiosity about my endeavours. However, after reading the book and examining the original in my presence, he never could be persuaded that it was an authentic piece of writing from the 6th century. It had to be, said he, the deliberate hoax or elaborate joke of some pious 20th century prophecy-buff. I assured him that it had been proven genuine by laboratory analysis of the wood covering, the parchment, and the ink, all definitely of extremely ancient date. He, however, departed incredulous, remarking that, in any case, genuine or not, the thing was “an insane piece of medieval superstition, male chauvinism, sexism, anti-semitism, and pre-conciliar naiveté.” But, a colleague of mine, an assistant in the Curia, after reading the Italian version, and wishing, no doubt, to comfort me, remarked, rather cynically, I thought, that “Nowadays, one man’s scenario is as good as another’s!”

I invite the reader to judge the work on its own inherent merits and to form his opinion from that, whatever it may be.

[ signed ]

Rt. Rev. Monsignor Benedetto Pignanelli, S.T.D.

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Christmas Eve, Anno Domini 1985.At Rome.

Caveat lector

Such are the “documents” in the case of Brother Bryan’s Book.

It may be judged inappropriate to use a fiction to promote the truth. Then one is left with no defense except perhaps to point out that the purveyors of error and heresy enshrine their falsehoods and blaspemies in fictional forms as well as in treatises put forth as factual science!

My only real defense is that we Catholics have a long and honorable tradition of didactic fiction and poetry. It is with these honest presentations of Truth in heightened language that I would like to see Brother Bryan’s Book take up its abode.

The sources for Brother Bryan’s Book are from Catholic Tradition. For specific works, consult this writer’s From the Beginning, Volume I, for the Six Days of Creation and Volume II for the history of the world from Adam to Noah.

The illustrations, obviously, are of recent date.

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Brother Bryan Begins to Speak

Oh holy Father, such visions should not be given to mortal man for they shatter his frail composition. But I must endeavour to tell you all I can for the sake of those fai.th-less ones to come. While the visions themselves refresh and renew, it is the recalling and telling that cause grief. But it must he done for holy charity’s sake.

It has also been revealed to me that for the sake of those poor souls destined to live in the Last Days, God and His Most Holy Mother will lavish upon His Church the most awesome and sublime revelations so as to strengthen the frail faith of those who live in the times of great apostasy. For this reason, too, I beseeched our Blessed Lord and His Mother to be allowed to hide my nightly visions as of no account, especially in the telling. But my Master wills that all, the least as well as the greatest, the most lowly human tellings as well as the most sublime supernatural showings, be given in abundance to help the fading faith of those last Days. Some revelations given to lowly souls help certain others that the more sublime visions might not be able to reach, because of their very lowness.

It has been revealed to me also, that numerous counterfeit creations will be put before the eyes and ears of young and old, seducing them to disbelieve the Divine Scriptures and the glosses and homilies of the most holy men of the east. Many will fall from the Faith because of these false accounts of man’s origin and destiny.

So I will begin with the Great War in Heaven which took place on the First Day of the World but in the Aeveternity of the Angelic beings who were first created with the Heavens and the Earth.

The Great War in Heaven

I saw the Great war in Heaven being fought between the myriads of Angels that no human being can number. This awful conflict took place on the First Day of Creation when, as it is written, God created the Heavens and the Earth. Our Lord God, Most Blessed Trinity, had told all the Angels of His plan to create a wondrous Universe of matter wherein each Angel would receive some special mission to perform throughout time. He revealed to them His plan to create rational beings like themselves with mind and will but unlike them in having a bodily form that would he held together most intimately and intricately in all its many minute parts by this blessed rational and immaterial-immortal soul diffused throughout all the corporeal members. He told the Angels that they were to be the messengers between Himself and the material universe, the guardians of its many members, both human and non-human. They were to be also the teachers of human beings, instructing them in many secrets, both natural and supernatural. They were to be, in a word, the devoted servants of men.

Then our Triune God made a special revelation to the Angelic Host. He allowed all of them to see, as in vision, the King and Queen of Heaven and Earth and all Creation. They were allowed to behold the Second Person of the Trinity in His lowly Human Form and His Blessed Mother in all Her supernal beauty. They were given to understand the FACT of the INCARNATION without being fully instructed in the reasons for it. They understood and beheld in a prescient way the Kingship of our Divine Lord Jesus Christ in His Human Nature and the Queenship of His Most Holy Mother Mary over all the Angels and men for all time and into eternity.

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Now this vision of the future was the test of their love and loyalty, for they had not yet been admitted to the fullness of the Beatific Vision, which Vision would confirm them in divine Grace. Therefore, from the intimate depths of each Angel’s splendid freedom, God asked for unconditional obedience to His plan for Creation. He asked for the humble service of each Angel to creatures below them in the great Hierarchy of Being.

The silence of their adoring contemplation and moment of decision was most awesome.

Then I saw one great Angel rise up before God and speak. He shone more brilliantly than any of the others. He was unique in the splendor of his power and majesty. His name was Lucifer, meaning light, from his great and varied brilliance that seemed to radiate more subtle colors and shades of heavenly glory than all the other Angels put together. Surely he was a great favorite with God, a creature of predilection. And yet, I could scarcely believe the words he began to utter, slowly at first, but gradually swelling and resounding with a most terrifying defiance. He demanded (I shudder to relate it!) – he demanded of our most sweet and gracious God, to know why he, the brightest of the heavenly host, should be asked to serve creatures so far below him in nobility and dignity of being. He understood that the God-Man was perfect God and perfect Man. But the woman – she was not divine! How could she be queen over Lucifer? Lucifer, he said, was like unto God Himself! And how could the Son of God so demean Himself as to clothe His Divinity in lowly matter and take His Flesh from a woman, the weakest of human creatures? All of this was ridiculously, ludicrously unworthy of God! So, in this manner, did he thunder forth his blasphemies, and with his final non serviam! his form flashed blackness as he pitted his terrible pride and rebellion against the most sweet humility and meekness of the Queen of Heaven and her Divine Son.

No sooner had Lucifer’s words ceased than a terrific shout went up behind him and a third of that heavenly host rallied around him in his hellish act of total rebellion against the Most Holy Will and Plan of God.

I fainted away many times on the night that God showed me this horrible scene. To behold Lucifer change, at the instant of his evil choice, from the brilliance of noon-day to the darkness of mid-night. And all the bright beings around him also changed instantly into the most hideous and monstrous shadows, flitting and darting at the good Angels who stood aghast, as if paralyzed, in amazement and grief.

Then there appeared (and my heart grew strong again though my eyes grew weak with beholding) a mighty Angel who emerged from behind the great Throne of God. I had thought that Lucifer was the brightest of all the Spirits, but Michael (for it was he) came forth at that moment with a still greater and more varied brilliance of light and strength as if it came to him from the very obscurity of his position so near the Throne of the Most Blessed Trinity. God Himself raised up Michael in that instant, for Michael had cast himself down in the most profound sorrow, grief, and reparative adoration. He had cried out, “Who, Oh, Who is like unto God, our God, and who can question the ineffable wisdom and sweetness of His Will?” And he wept! Then his sorrow seemed of a sudden to be transformed into a mighty and terrible righteous anger, as God Himself raised him up and sent him forth. Then did all the good Angels recover themselves, as it were, and array themselves in order around Michael, their Chief, forming a tremendous Army of God. And the rout began. Oh, who could describe that dreadful conflict! Such a cacophony of sound and such a fearful mixing of light and darkness when good and evil forces clashed was never heard or seen before or since in the Universe

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of Creation! All human battles and weapons of war that have shattered the Earth till now and will erupt with such fearful intensity as time goes on are still but pale reflections of that awful conflict between the good and the evil Angels.

I saw Michael confront Lucifer directly, but Michael, in the power of his purity and holiness, so towered over Lucifer, now dark and loathesome in his sin, that the contest seemed an unequal one, indeed. And so it was, as Michael drove the dark Angel down, and down, and down, through such vast distances of space as bewilder the mind, until finally they approached a boiling, seething ocean of black smoke and flame that gave off a stench so repulsive as to threaten the integrity of the newly created Earth, for it was beneath the Earth, indeed, in her very midst, that this abyss of fire into which Lucifer plunged himself was located. Here, now polluted with the matter he hated so, Lucifer nevertheless exulted as in his own element, for the fire of Hell, created at that moment for the evil Angels, is but the fire of their hatred and rebellion against the all-holy God. God created for them, then, that element which the evil Angels chose for themselves and in which they find the fulfillment of their evil desires.

As Michael and his legions winged swiftly back to Heaven, I saw Lucifer raise himself in triumph over his fellow demons as they took possession of that immense region of Hell, a place which God created specially to accommodate the essential wickedness of the fallen Angels.

But I can tell no more of this vision for sorrow and weeping.

The First Week of the World

The First Day, Called – Day One

Oh holy Father, how can I tell in words what the holy Angels only sing in intellectual harmonies? But I must make the attempt, because for many, many yrears, even centuries before Time’s End, the Faithful will cease to believe what Moses wrote in words that burn with flames of pure Truth.

On the First Day of the World, God created the Angels, the Heavens and the Earth. Where before there had been Nothing, there was the Universe. And Time began with the first movement of the first particle of matter, for Time is the measure of motion as the Holy Fathers and Doctors tell us.

The Nine Choirs of Angels arranged in their hierarchical Orders placed themselves around the Throne of the Most Blessed Trinity and they filled all space with a music never heard on Earth. Their harmonies were not deficient because of the fallen ones who echoed the heavenly harmonies with their shrieks of hatred from the depths of Hell. These discords only fell back upon themselves and failed to disturb the blissful music of the newly created spheres.

The newly created Earth hung suspended in the center of that immensity whose limits God set all around. The reaches of space were vast, indeed, but He Who set their beginnings also set their endings, both in time and in space.

The Earth on that First Day was fully constituted in its whole substance of rocky mineral matter and water, comprising all of what the ancients named the four elements of Earth, Water, Air and Fire. Godless men of the future will attempt to discover the smallest particles and the largest but they will never be able to go beyond those four elements of the Fathers:

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Earth, Water, Air and Fire.

The entire surface of the Earth was covered with a tremendous depth of water, so much so that its total shape on that First Day was much larger than it is now, albeit still spherical. And the Holy Spirit of God hovered over and all around those vast rolling waters. The light of the Angelic Choirs is not the same constituency as our physical light and it did not illumine the Earth on that First Day. Rather, all was in deepest darkness.

Then God said: “Let there be Light;” This light was a natural physical creature that suffused the entire universe with its soft luminescence. It filled all space and brought forth the lovely hues that lay hidden and obscured in the depths of the waters. In this light the rocky crust of the Earth became visible beneath the rainbow transparence of the blue-green waters and revealed itself in all its rich browns mixed with tones of gold and silver. How it all sparkled and shone! Yet it was not a direct brilliance but a soft shimmering.The Earth was thus revealed to the Angels in its deep watery covering beneath a sky of the purest and lightest blue – rather a blue light than a blue sky. The immeasurable expanse of space was bathed in this lovely hue. And so it is that Our Lady holds all that is good and holy beneath her Mantle of this same heavenly blue.After a while this light began to fade and a softer darkness followed, covering all the Earth’s watery surface. This fading of the light and the ensuing twilight was caused by the newly created light waves which in obedience to God’s Word alternately came close together and drew apart, their gatherings causing the Day and their parting bringing on the Evening and the Night of the First Day.

The Good Angels vary in luminosity, this one from that one, according to the particular name and nature of each, for each Angel is a kind of being unto himself. So do also the bad Angels, only their luminosity is a mysterious darkness that only they and Almighty God and some Saints can distinguish.

And so it was that all the Good Angels watched and sang together when, by His Word, and through Him and with Him, the Father spoke forth the Earth and adorned it with creatures in order, with the Holy Ghost bending over and quickening all things with their proper motion and life. The Angels sang then at the Creation of the Universe as they were never heard to sing again until they hovered over the little cave of Bethlehem on the First Christmas Night. For there in Bethlehem there began in time a new Creation, the wondrous order of the Incarnation bringing new Grace and all the glories of our Holy Mother the Church, the Bride of Christ, His Mystical Body, forever without spot or wrinkle in Her ineffable union with the Holy Spirit of God.

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In the Beginning God created Heaven and Earth.And the Earth was void and empty, and Darkness was upon the Face of the Deep; and the spirit of God moved over the waters.

And God said: Let there be Light! And there was Light.And God saw the Light that it was good;And He divided the Light from the Darkness.And He called the Light DAY, and the Darkness He called NIGHT.

And there was EVENING and MORNING, ONE DAY.

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The Second Day

On the Second Day of Creation week, Our Lord God did not create anything new. But Oh! What a stupendous work He performed!

For He so separated the immensity of the waters covering the Earth that a very great part of them were lifted aloft and spread out very thin around the Earth. A very wide canopy or blanket of vapor thus enveloped our world. It was of such a misty transparency as not to impede any light from the Firmament filtering through to the Earth’s surface.

Then another blanket of water was placed above the Firmament and these waters remain there awaiting the great Baptismal cleansing and renewal into Eternity at the End of Time.

But a great deal of the waters below the Firmament descended upon the Earth at the time of the great Deluge of Noah’s day.

At the end of the Second Day, our lovely Earth was still covered with the blue-green waters, swelling and falling beneath the Light of Day, until Evening came again and the soft darkness fell.

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And God said: Let there be a FIRMAMENT made amidst the Waters:And let it divide the Waters from the Waters.

And God made a FIRMAMENT and divided the Waters that were under the Firmament from those that were above the Firmament.And it was so.

And God called the Firmament HEAVEN:

And the Evening and Morning were the SECOND DAY.

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The Third Day

Now the waters still bathed the surface of the Earth, but as the Dawn spread over the face of the deep, Our Lord God spoke to the waters and commanded them to be gathered together into great Seas connected by many mighty Rivers. Thus did the dry land of Earth appear.

God spoke again and the lovely brown Earth became animated instantly with the green life of every grass and flowering plant and fruiting tree. Each kind of grass and herb and bush and tree suddenly appeared in its springtime growth and beauty. But the Earth needed not the months of summer to mature the plants of the Third Day. They basked in the Light of the First Day as in the refreshing mildness of early Spring.

They needed only the nearer and stronger light of the Sun to bring their reproductive powers to fruition. This would caress them on the next Day, the Fourth Day of Creation week.

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God also said: Let the Waters that are under the HeavenBe gathered together in one place: and let the dry land appear.And it was so done.

And God called the dry Land Earth;and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas.And God saw that it was good.

And He said: Let the Earth bring forth the green herb, and such asmay seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind,which may have seed in itself upon the Earth.And it was so done . . .

And God saw that it was good.

And the Evening and Morning were the THIRD DAY.

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The Fourth Day

As the Third Day faded into Evening and the Fourth Day dawned, God spoke again. At His mighty Word, the vast expanses of space were filled with the heavenly bodies we call stars. They were set in such an order as to suggest to the mind of Adam certain symbolical shapes that have significance in the history of the world. So God planned it then, so He communicated it later to Adam, and so this vast book of prophecy in the stars has come to us, though much corrupted and changed by the unbelievers.

At this moment, too, the Sun was created and rose for the first time, thus beginning his movement and defining the Eastern horizon of our Earth. What a day that was which first saw the newly created Sun and felt his bright warmth. How the green things of the Earth stretched upwards into this blessed new light and expanded, flourished, and matured. There is a direct connection and influence between the Sun’s rays and the leaves of plants that God had not established with the light of the First Day, for that was a universal light, the entire spectrum of color-source and luminosity as well as of sound. The Sun is our Earthly Lamp.

Also, a great Angel took up his station in the Sun as its Guardian and Overseer, and he shone with a brilliance of light and color greater by far than that of his ward because of his angelic intelligence and sanctified will. Yet he sang and rejoiced to be made the Guardian of such a splendid creature as our Sun. At the same time, every heavenly body likewise received its Guardian-Spirit-Angel. Thus all the various and complex pathways and motions of the constellations are preserved in the accuracy and regularity of their movements around their Center, our stationary Earth.

Closest to us and most lovely is the Moon which rose in the Evening of the Fourth Day as the Sun set. She reflected the golden light with the opaque translucence of a beautifully multi-colored pearl. As she follows the Sun and reflects his glory, she is intended to remind us of Her Who is the glory of Creation, the faithful Mirror of Her Son’s Perfections, the Queen of Heaven and Earth, Our Blessed Mother Mary Ever-Virgin. As the more resplendent Moon of the Fourth Day, She is clothed with the Sun and totally enveloped in His Graces as no other creature has been or could be, for She is the Mother of Divine Grace, Mother of the Church, Mother of God, Mary Most Holy.

From each newly created celestial form came the sound of its Guardian Angel singing and rejoicing in his mission of service to the material Creation. Each voice joined with the others in a heavenly harmony, the true music of the spheres.

At the sound of this Grace-filled symphony, even the screechings and moanings of Hell fell silent in awe at the wondrous works of God in Creation.

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And God said: Let there be Lights in the Firmament of Heaven,to divide the Day and the Night,And let them be for Signs and for Seasons, and for Days and Years;to shine in the Firmament of Heaven, and to give Light upon the Earth.And so it was done.

And God made TWO great Lights, a greater Light to rule the Dayand a lesser Light to rule the Night.And the Stars.

And He set them in the Firmement of Heaven to shine upon the Earth. ...And God saw that it was good.

And the Evening and Morning were the FOURTH DAY.

The Fifth Day

What a lightsome, joyous and singing place our Earth became on the Fifth Day of the World when

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our wonderful God spoke forth the myriads of little fishes and the great whales with all the other diverse kinds of water-dwellers so that the great Seas teemed with silvery life and the Rivers rippled and shimmered with the multi-colored forms of bass and perch.

At the same time the surrounding air was filled with the singing of many birds. What a chorus of chirping and warbling and honking as they grouped themselves by kind and soared aloft, exulting in their element, the sunny air of sea and land!

The sparkling of the waters and the sounds of many birds seemed to echo and reflect, closely yet far, the hymnings and shinings of the Angels all around.

What a beautiful and glorious place it was then!

What a joy to all the Angels and to our Blessed God Who pronounced it all good, and very good.

May He be blessed forever!

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And God said: Let the Waters teem with creeping creatures having life, and the Fowl that may fly over the Earth under the Firmament of Heaven.

And God created the great Whales and every living and moving creturewhich the waters brought forth, according to their kinds,And every winged Fowl according to its kind.And God saw that it was good.

And He blessed them saying: Increase and multiply and fill the watersof the Sea: and let the birds be multiplied upon the Earth.

And the Evening and Morning were the FIFTH DAY.

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The Sixth Day

Oh holy Father, you can see that as each lovely Day dawned and faded into Evening, our Earth became ever more beautiful and more fit for the crown of all creation made in God’s own Image and Likeness. So, on the Sixth Day of the World, Our Lord God spoke forth all the lovely and familiar creatures of the forests and fields. And when our Blessed Lord God formed Adam from the moist Earth and breathed His Own Life into him, I was enclosed in the heavenly song of the Angels as in a most sweet embrace and swooned away for very wondering love at the stooping down of our great God to the little work of clay in His Hands. For the Most Blessed Triune God had ever in mind when He made Adam and also later, Eve, the most wondrous Incarnation of God the Son in His most Holy Mother Mary.

But Oh! Who could describe what a creature was this Adam! What a man he was! He was far above our normal height and wondrously beautiful in face and form, superb in every part! How magnificent he was as he stood upright with the breath of God in him and looked about over all the creation that now was his, for God had given it all to him. The huge lumbering elephants and grand lions and sleek horses came to him and bowed their stately heads for his hands to stroke them. The little rabbits and mice and all manner of small creatures came to nibble the green leaves and grains of corn at his feet. The sheep and cattle formed orderly groups around him, ready to serve him for his refreshment and his pleasure.

Then did our holy father Adam, with infused knowledge from our Blessed Lord, name every animal with the name that most perfectly signified its inmost created nature. And by this infused knowledge also, Adam knew the properties of every plant and herb and how each was to be used for food and drink. He exulted exceedingly in this glorious abundance of wisdom and understanding of all created things, and he was filled with a holy wonder and awe before God’s infinite power and beauty as reflected in His Works, thereby giving great glory to his blessed Creator and Benefactor.

Yet, when Evening came, our father Adam walked apart into a secluded area of the Garden in which he had been placed. He sat down beside a great pool of sparkling water and began to sigh. In the midst of this wondrous new Creation, Adam, the lord of it all, was lonely! Having allowed Adam to feel in himself this human need for the complement of his nature, our Blessed Lord God drew near and laying His Hands upon Adam’s head, caused him to fall into a deep sleep. I then saw rise up out of Adam’s own body, from his left side – even part of his very flesh and bone, though still lacking nothing – a slender form which the Hands of God shaped into our beautiful mother Eve. She was somewhat smaller than Adam, but where he was Kingly, she was like a Queen, a fitting Type of God’s Own Mother Mary and perfect companion for her husband.

When Adam awoke from his sleep and beheld her standing there beside him, he rejoiced with exceeding great joy and thanksgiving for the gift that God had given him. Then God Himself came, with many holy Angels, of both high and low degree, to visit and converse with this exalted pair. They were filled with great wisdom, knowledge and understanding of all things natural and supernatural, as well as with the utmost prudence in the use of their great gifts. They loved the good God, Most

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Blessed Trinity, with the deepest filial devotion as well as deep reverential awe, and they always conversed between themselves and with the holy Angels of His wondrous goodness and beauty. They feared to displease Him and enjoyed a most wonderful strength of mind and will against anything that did not conform with the Divine Mind and Will as revealed to them. Their bodies shone forth and radiated this interior grace of soul, and the natural as well as the divine gifts so harmonized and intermingled in them, the higher ruling the lower, that the sight of them gave great joy to the Angels.

Still they were as yet like beautiful children in their innocence, for the great gifts that they possessed, of nature and of grace, needed time to grow and mature in strength with habitual exercise.

And there was one who desired with all his malevolent being to prevent this – the Dark Angel, Ruler of Hell, Lucifer and Satan, our Arch-Enemy and Adversary. He was filled with a terrible rage when he beheld the first human beings, our parents, in the Garden of Eden where God had placed them to live as in a Paradise of Delights.

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And God said: Let the Earth bring forth the living creature in its kind,cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the Earth, acording to their kind.And it was so done.And God made the beasts of the Earth according to their kinds,and cattle and everything that creepeth on the Earth after its kind.And God saw that it was good.

And He said: Let Us make Man to Our Image and Likeness: and Let him have Dominion over the fishes of the Sea and the fowls of the Air, and thebeasts. and the Whole Earth, and every creeping creture that moveth uponthe Earth.

And God created Man to His Own Image: to the Image of God He creationed him:Male and Female He created them.

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And God blessed them saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the Earth,and subdue it, and rule over the fishes of the Sea, and the fowls of the air,and all living creatures that move upon the Earth.And God said:Behold I have given you every herb bearing need upon the Earth,and all trees that have in themselves seed of their own kind,to be your meat.And to all the beasts of the Earth and to every fowl of the air,and to all that move upon the Earth, and wherein there is life,that they may have to feed upon.And it was so done.

And God saw all the things that He had made, and they were very good.

And the Evening and Morning were the SIXTH DAY.

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So the Heavens and the Earth wre finished,And all the furniture of them.

And on the SEVENTH DAY God ended His Work which He had made.And He rested on the SEVENTH DAY from all the work which He had done.

And He blessed the SEVENTH DAY and sanctified it,because in it He had rested from all His workwhich God created and made.

Genesis 1, 2:1-3

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The Seventh Day

Thus was finished the Creation, the Heavens and the Earth, this great Universe in its wondrous order of herarchy from the fiery Seraphim and Cherubim, golden Thrones, white Dominations, violet Principalities, priestly Powers, gold and azure Virtues, many-hued Archangels, the splendid Guardian Angels of human souls, through the marvelous array of birds and fishes and animals, great and small, wild and domestic, the green kingdom of plants, and on down to the tiniest atom and particle of mineral matter.

And our great God saw it all and pronounced it good, and very good! And on the Seventh Day He ended all His work and rested from all that He had made. He surveyed His finished work and He was pleased. He blessed the Seventh Day and sanctified it as a type of our eternal rest in Him. But also for two very important other reasons. First, even in the beginning before Adam fell, his body still had need of rest. This was because being composed of matter as well as spirit and though being, as it were, an informed corpus, the material element finds it very difficult, even in the state of Innocence, to keep up with the aspirations of the intellective soul and the heavenly desires of the will. To provide the necessary rest from other labors, God instituted the Sabbath for the Jews and the Sunday rest for the elect of His Son.

But even more important than this weekly rest, God instituted the Seventh Day to be set aside for His worship.

Alas, in the Last Days of the world, mankind will so far forget God as to hold these divine institutions of the First Week in contempt as mere mythology. Against all right reason, they will ascribe the works of God to the puny efforts of creatures themselves. What absurdity! Worse than that, at the instigation of Satan, they will attempt to take unto themselves the role and power of the Creator by fabricating an artificial world to replace the beautiful natural one that God created. In this way, they will prepare themselves for the rule of the Anti-Christ.

While we can, then, let us give all honor and glory to our great and good God, His Son, His Holy Spirit and His Most Holy Mother Mary, praising Them with all the Angels and Saints, for their infinite love and kindness, and begging mercy on us all, poor sinners.

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The First Age of the World

The Temptation and Fall of our First Parents

Lucifer, who is now called Satan and the Devil, signifying that he is our greatest and worst Adversary, was filled with hatred against the creatures he had been asked to serve, and he resolved to bend all his efforts towards their undoing.

Now, our good and gracious God did not bind Lucifer in Hell at this time, for I heard Him tell the faithful Angels that Lucifer and his minions were free to roam the universe to do their own evil will and to harm the Creation if they could. However, they would only be able to do what our good God permitted them to do for the trying and testing of his holy ones and for the separation, the winnowing, as it were, of the good and the evil in men.

And so, he allowed Satan to survey the material Creation and even to enter the lovely Garden of Eden. I saw him enter therein as a Shadow that darkens the sun. I beheld him as he studied the movements and listened to the sweet converse of our first parents. I saw the hellish hatred and malice emanate from his dark form like a malodorous mist. I saw him closely observe all the creatures that inhabited the Garden. And finally, I saw him approach the beauteous winged seraph-dragon called the Serpent.

You know, holy Father, for you have often spoken to us about our first parents, that our good and gracious God forbade them to eat the fruit of only one tree in their Garden. Of all the other trees they were to eat freely. And of the Tree of Life, which prefigures the Blessed Cross on which our Loving Master died as well as of His most precious Body and Blood that He gave us in the Holy Eucharist, they were free to partake.

Now the Tree of Life was most beautiful and stately, and its fruit more delicate and savory than any other. The effects of its fruit were so potent, regenerating all the tissues of the body and even penetrating as far as the powers of the soul in its beneficent potency that Adam and Eve had need to eat of it but rarely, and indeed, they had eaten of it but once before they sinned. It stood in the very midst of the Garden so that all pathways seemed to lead to it and from it. Beneath this wondrous tree, our first parents were accustomed to receive visits from the Angels, and I beheld them often speaking with the bright beings from on high. The Angelic Nobles instructed our first parents in all the most wondrous mysteries of our holy Faith, in the marvelous Truths of Religion. But they also revealed to them the deep and hidden secrets of nature, so that all the intricate workings of the natural world and its order stood, as it were, open to their admiring gaze. It was only the knowledge of the Good, the True and the Beautiful, without any admixture of the darkness of error and evil, that the Angels imparted to Adam and Eve. Thus, knowing all the most intimate and hidden workings of the Creation, they would never, in their holy state of innocence, ever have put this knowledge to any evil or harmful use, or employed it for any purpose other than the Glory of God. Such thoughts would not even have occurred to them if left to themselves and their good companions. But they had to be tested!

The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which signifies carnal experience of the difference between the two, also stood in the midst of the Garden, near the Tree of Life. It, too, was tall and stately, but its total appearance, to the enlightened mind, was less appealing, less desirable, less

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lovely, than the Tree of Life which shone with an added splendour. Everything that our good and gracious God made was totally good in itself, but He constituted all things in an order of hierarchy, with some things of an intrinsically higher and nobler good of being than others. Such was the difference between the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It is the same difference between the spirit and the flesh, even in the state of innocence. Also, our Blessed God put the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden for a Test of the Love and Devotion to His Will and pleasure. He wanted His rational creatures to give a certain proof – under difficulty – of their love and free choice of His Will over their own, thus increasing their own nobility as well as God’s good pleasure in them. And so He gave them only this one commandment. And they had such an abundance of infused knowledge, wisdom, understanding – what need had they of more? These were the very thoughts that passed through their minds as they listened to their Divine Master instruct them about the Trees of the Garden and the penalty of Death for disobedience.

Our first parents also spoke, in a certain manner, with all the animals of the Earth. With the Angels, Adam and Eve were as children listening to and being instructed by their elders. But with the animals it was rather the opposite, for the animals came and sat at the feet of Adam and Eve to be stroked, and praised, and to bask in the presence of those whom they recognized as their Master and Mistress.

The Serpent was the most beautiful, that is to say, the most glamorous of all the animals, and he was the most nearly intelligent, for he possessed a subtlety, a cunning, not to be found in any other creature under man. His form was long and sleek, a shimmering gold in color, while his two great wings, which folded close to his body when he was in repose, were most brilliant, like the peacock’s fan, full of intricately colored designs. He had no legs or feet of any kind, but he could raise his body upright and spread his wings like a great eagle, which he somewhat resembled, especially in his magnificent flight. His head was more like that of a bird than not, and his eyes were most keen and piercing, though they could be soft and gentle, too. When the Angels came to converse with Adam and Eve, they sometimes assumed the serpent’s form, although more often they clothed themselves in human form, for they judged the human form to be the most beautiful of all the creations of our good and gracious God, seeing in it the very Form that God Himself, the Second Person of the Adorable Trinity, would one day assume for the greater Glory of the Goodness of God in His Creation of corporeal forms, like ours.

I saw Satan approach one of these great winged serpents while it lay asleep. When I saw the shadow of Satan disappear over the serpent, I knew that he had possessed himself of the serpent’s total form, body and animal spirit, for the animal had no will to resist such possession. It was a thing our Divine Lord saw and permitted for His ultimate honor and glory and that of all His creation as well as for the exaltation of His infinite Love and Mercy that we now know came from the Fall of our first parents.

But, Oh, how am I to describe to you the sad events which followed! Satan watched long and patiently for the right moment to execute his plan. He knew from his observations that our mother Eve was not exactly the same as Adam. He knew that she was so created that she served Adam while she helped him, and, although she was destined to rule beside him, still, she could not rule with him as an equal, nor, even less, could she rule without him at all! He was the Head of the human family and she was its heart, for she had been taken from his side. And so, she was

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inferior to him in strength and nobility both of body and of mind. Satan knew these things, and so he planned to approach the woman, thinking to bring about Adam’s downfall through his wife. He had seen how Adam loved Eve and strove to please her in all things.

Rarely were the two ever separated. But one day, around noon, some eight days after their Creation, I saw Adam tell Eve to stay beneath the Tree of Life to receive any angels that might come to visit while he went to the other side of the Garden to gather some new fruits he had discovered for their evening meal.

Mother Eve was thus seated beneath the Tree of Life, looking up into the sky and hoping to see one or two of the bright blessed forms come winging down to her. But Oh, Alas! Sad day! It was decreed by our most wise and just Lord that this was to be the Day of Testing!

Satan had hidden himself in the leafy boughs of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and seeing mother Eve now quite alone and expecting, moreover, a heavenly visitor, he descended from the Tree and called to her in accents that closely mimicked the voice of a familiar Good Angel. Turning towards the sound, Eve beheld him there in all his splendor, and thinking it might be one of the heavenly host in the serpent form, she eagerly came close to him.

Now, I must say that this rather surprised me, for I, with my poor weak human eyes could easily see the difference between Satan’s serpent form and that of the true Angelic. He shone with a duller lustre by far and lacked the unmistakable supernatural aura that always emanates from the holy Angels. But Satan is a master counterfeiter! And I know now that God gave me special sight in this as in all the visions. May He alone be praised! As for mother Eve, I believe the added glamour, the very flashiness of the colors Satan had put on, excited her curiosity, for she began to speak with the Father of Lies, not knowing who he was and out of a simple desire to discover what the creature would say to her. He put on his sweetest expression and fawned at her feet, thus disarming her by his wicked pretenses. Emboldened by his success thus far, he ventured again to imitate the Angelic voice and thereby gained her attention. Then, as if he had been a child innocently inquiring after knowledge, he said: “Why hath God commanded that you should not eat of every tree in Paradise?”

That she was not appalled by the inherent defiance of the question, I can only explain by her consuming curiosity. She wanted to know where the conversation might lead and she had an interior presumption of self-conceit, that is, she trusted in her own virtue and thus fell into a most subtle form of pride even before touching the fruit of the forbidden tree. She answered the Serpent with words that seemed innocent enough but which, in their exaggeration, were interiorly prompted by her self-confidence. “Of the fruit of the trees that are in Paradise, we do eat. But of this one tree that is here in the midst of Paradise, God hath commanded us that we should not eat, and that we should not even touch it, lest perhaps we die.”

Oh, if she had only left him then. But she stayed to listen to his evil insinuations. She showed a great want of holy discretion, and Satan counted on this very weakness in the woman. So he continued in most seductive tones: “Oh, No, you shall not die the death if you eat!” Why did not this blatant contradiction of God’s Word inspire her with horror? I cannot say, except that being the weaker in reason of the human pair, she had not the strength of judgment to detect the subtleties of the evil one. Furthermore, Satan knew how to mix truth with error in just the right proportions the better to dissemble his evil intent. He knew that God’s words meant first, the

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death of sin, the death of the supernatural life of the soul, the eternal separation from all love and goodness, for he had ample experience of that! And he longed to drag both Adam and Eve into his Hell with him. And so he boldly assured her that she, meaning her bodily life, would not die. Rather, he continued, “God knows that on the day you eat of this tree, your eyes will be opened, and you will be as Gods, knowing both good and evil.” Oh, why did she not flee away upon discovering that the one who spoke to her could be neither one of the Good Angels nor any other innocent creature of the Garden! For now she did, indeed, discover it! Gabriel had told Adam and Eve of the War in Heaven and of the Evil Spirits that now roamed Creation seeking to harm it. She had never seen an evil Angel nor had she any experience of wickedness – until now, in the pride of her own heart which was an unwillingness to admit that somehow she had been duped! This pride crept into her heart so subtly that she was almost unaware of it. Oh, my Father, if Adam and Eve sinned thus, how vigilant must we, poor fallen children of theirs, be over our foolish hearts! Sad to say, our mother Eve seemed to be more fascinated than ever by these words of the Adversary. I believe he hypnotized her, with her consent, in much the same way that people in the Last Days of the World will allow themselves to be hypnotized by man-made but devil-inspired pictures that move and speak!

So listening to his words now, Eve began to ponder their meaning, to consider within herself their significance. “To be as Gods” surely meant, she thought, to be like the highest of the Angels, to have much greater power of all kinds than had been given to her and to Adam as human beings. And for herself, in particular, it must mean that she no longer need be subordinated to Adam but could rule the Creation with him as his equal in every way, even perhaps without him altogether, and as his superior! Sad to say, these thoughts appealed to her and gave her pleasure. It was then that she looked upon the fruit of the Tree for the first time and noticed how lovely it was, how desirable. She did not see how anything so pleasant could be harmful to her. She thought of our blessed God yes, she did! But she had allowed the blasphemous insinuations of Satan to enter into her heart, and she felt a certain resentment against this good and gracious God, as if He had withheld His choicest and best gifts from her! Oh, how the deceptions of Satan blinded her now! And Satan – how he exulted, how he inwardly gloated as she stretched forth her hand, plucked the fruit, and put it to her lips. She found its flavor most unusual, and so she tasted yet more and more.

Suddenly our poor mother Eve found herself alone, for Satan had withdrawn on purpose, knowing she would seek out Adam to relieve the miserable anxiety she now began to experience. How distraught she was in this new state of sin! Never had she known such agitation and distress of soul and body. For the first time she shed tears. She wept for very pain of soul and desolation of spirit. Alas! They were not tears of repentance but rather of shame and of fear. I saw her thoughts and her feelings in the light of God and it was as if I experienced them myself, so intimately did I know them. It was so with Adam, also, and all the others. Oh, my Father, it was not always pleasant, the time of my visions. And how it burdens me until I can tell you all. Then I may depart and be at rest in my Beloved. May He be blessed forever!

Now our mother Eve thought of Adam and how he would despise her for what she had done. She feared his displeasure more than anything. She could not bear the thought of it. He must be made, somehow, to approve of what she had done, and to follow her in her choice. Then the thought came to her – like a last appeal of the Divine Mercy – that perhaps she could confess her sin to Adam and he, somehow, would know what to do and how to make amends! But Alas!

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Alas! She rejected the thought in her newly felt pride. Rather she conceived a disdain for Adam and finally resolved to bring him to share, willingly, in her sin. She would need to pretend, to dissemble. She seemed to have new powers of seduction and deceit – the very same evil influence that the Serpent had exercised over her. She had learned them from him! And now she began to exult in these feelings of self-confidence, and she knew an inner assurance of success.

So it was that when Adam returned, he found a different Eve, but he could not quite fathom what it was about her that made him feel a strange and hitherto unknown discomfort. He listened to her words and marveled at the intensity of her conviction that she now possessed new and wonderful abilities which she acquired by eating of the forbidden tree. Pretending to ignore and not even to see Adam’s initial shock of horror at this news, she scornfully pointed out to him that she had not died. She flaunted before him the fact that she lived – was more alive than ever! Oh, how she cajoled him and accused him of not loving her if he refused to share these marvelous new powers with her! Now, Satan watched all this closely to see if he would need to intervene. But he did not. So bewildered was Adam, so confused was he by this transformation in his wife! In his mind he strove to see clearly and to cling to the one thing required of him – obedience to God’s command, faithfulness to his loving Lord and Master. But the seduction of greater powers, of which Eve boasted, the promise of being more like the great and noble Angels, of being a very God – these thoughts found entrance into his heart and he began to entertain them willingly, for they pleased him. He thought how he might exercise more power over all the creation, how he, too, like the Angels, might fly to the distant stars and oversee their motions! He would re-arrange the plan of Paradise – of the whole earth – more in accordance with his own convenience. He would cause the beasts and birds to be more useful to him. Ah, yes, he thought, how good it would be to have more power and a vaster, more intimate and first-hand knowledge of this wonderful universe which God had given to him, to control it even as God Himself controlled it! And so, giving way to Eve’s urgings, he took the fruit from her and ate it.

The Expulsion from Paradise

Oh, if you had seen the blessed pair before they sinned! How magnificent they were in the beauty of grace and every virtue! How regal! Their perfect bodies shone with a fullness of both natural and supernatural gifts. Such splendor of form is only to be seen in later times in the holy Martyrs and Saints, and in these, it is principally of soul and much less of body, for there is no one in the world today nor will ever be again with a body as wonderful in natural gifts as those of Adam and Eve in their holy innocence. Only our Divine Lord Himself, the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity made Man, Who clothed Himself with our human nature to redeem his beloved Adam and all of us his children – only our sweet Lord and Savior Jesus Christ could be compared in comeliness and beauty of form with Adam before his Fall. And only our most Blessed Mother Mary, ever Virgin, though far more exalted than Eve by reason of Her Immaculate Conception, could be compared with Eve before she fell. And it must be said that our Divine Lord took on the diminished form of fallen man the better to lower and hide Himself therein, though His Divine Person was never touched or tainted with the slightest movement of sin nor was His Human Nature ever weakened by sickness or disease. The same must be said of our Immaculate Mother Mary. Thus did our marvelous Second Adam supply for all that the first Adam lost. And Blessed Mary, the Second Eve, Immaculate from her very conception, by her perfect humility and sweet lowliness as God’s little Handmaiden, supplied for all that Eve

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became in her monstrous pride and lost by her fall. May They be blessed forever!

After Adam and Eve had sinned, the change was astounding. They seemed to wilt and droop like lovely flowers stricken by frost. They lost all of that wonderful supernatural loveliness, and this was so noticeable because the splendor of soul in them had caused their bodies to shine with a radiance such as one may see in the faces of those in ecstasy. But with their souls blackened by sin, their bodies, too, lost that wonderful beauty and became heavy and dull.

When Adam consented to share in Eve’s sin, such a shiver and shock was sent through all of Creation that the furthest star trembled and shook. Wobblings and tremors occurred throughout the universe. Cataclysms took place in the farthest reaches of space and some heavenly bodies lost their light completely and careened out of their accustomed places, striking and marring many of the other celestial forms. You may see the effects of such violence in the Moon today, for her face was deeply scarred by falling stars at the moment of Adam’s Sin. When Adam first looked upon the face of the Moon, there were no shadows upon it. Rather it shone with a most pure and perfect luminosity, like a lovely great pearl.

The Guardian Angels of Creation were forced to remain helpless as all natural things underwent this sympathetic paroxysm of grief. It was as if every creature in the universe was compelled to endure a fit of weeping and sobbing upon seeing the ingratitude of our first parents. The Angels prostrated themselves in adoring abasement, as Michael had done at Lucifer’s shameful uprising.

At this moment, too, all the anxiety and distress that Eve had felt upon first eating the fruit of the forbidden tree returned to her tenfold, and the same agitation fell upon Adam, also. They looked upon one another with shame and disgust. Adam quickly fashioned a covering for them both by stitching fig leaves together with vines. Then they heard God’s Voice and the sound of His footsteps in the late afternoon. A mist had gone up from the earth and obscured the sun’s warm rays. Adam and Eve felt chilled for the first time. They retreated more deeply into the Garden’s cover of large plants and trees. The sound of God’s approach filled them with a servile fear. It was a sound that He made the earth itself give forth, as of the solemn chanting of many voices. They had heard it before, many times, when it had filled them with a holy, reverential awe. Now they were terrified. They hid from Him, guilty children that they were. Oh, how like them then are we ourselves in our sins! And the Lord God, Who knows the secrets of all hearts, treated them like children. He called out to Adam, “Where are you?” And Adam, constrained to come forth, admitted to his fear and owned he had tried to hide himself because of his shameful nakedness. He felt himself stripped now, by his own deed, of all the most precious gifts he had been given, but most of all, of that Divine Intimacy of Friendship and Love and holy ease he had before enjoyed in the most august presence of God. He wallowed now in a mire of wicked passions – anger, frustration, self-pity, and a contempt for all things, especially for himself and for his wife, Eve. Still our sweet and gracious God, so loving a Father, sought him out! How He would have comforted him had he been humble then and repented straight away! Oh, why did Adam not throw himself at the Feet of his good God and beg for forgiveness! How like the Prodigal Son amongst the pigs was Adam at this moment! But he would not repent! So, when God asked him if he had disobeyed, he would not acknowledge his sin like a man, but rather, like a willful child, he sought to cast the blame upon another! “The woman,” he said, “The woman whom Thou gavest me to be my companion, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.” He blames God Himself for giving Eve to him, and then he blames Eve for giving him the fruit! Oh, blessed

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repentance that would have prevented this compounding of sin! But Adam had not found it yet.

When our All-Holy Lord God turned then to the woman – for Adam was correct and she was to blame – He said: “Why hast thou done this?” It was a direct and open invitation to tell the real, the whole truth of her sin. But she could not, she would not bring herself to tell Him why. She could not admit to the interior malice of her sin – not yet. And so she said: “The Serpent deceived me, and I did eat.”

Then our good God spoke to the Serpent within whom the Father of Lies still lurked, but deeply hidden. And God knew it. Of course He knew it! He looked upon Satan as he lay within the darkness beneath the Serpent’s gaudy form. “Because thou hast done this thing, thou art cursed among all cattle and beasts of the earth; upon thy breast shalt thou go, and earth shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.”

Then I saw the Serpent, who had raised himself up with outspread wings to take flight, suddenly drop, while his wings blackened, curled, and fell away from him in dust and ash, as if they had been burned with an invisible flame. Such was the glance and Word of God upon him! But still Satan lurked there for he was compelled to stay and hear his final doom. And God said to him:

“I will put enmities between thee and the Woman, and thy seed and Her Seed. She shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for Her Heel!”

Then I saw Redemption shine forth from the Mind and Heart of God, the bright Promise and living Hope of all Creation. I saw the Blessed Holy Ever-Virgin Mary, Second and Better Eve, clothed in a Mantle of blue more dazzling and deep than the skies of Creation’s loveliest day. Her dress shone like the sun at noon-time. A Crown of gold set with Twelve Stars, signifying the Twelve Tribes of Israel and the Twelve holy Apostles, wreathed her lovely head. In her arms she carried the Child, the Promised One, the Annointed King of the Ages, the Messiah, Redeemer of the World, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This Divine Infant looked down upon the Serpent; then His Mother, by His power and Will, placed her foot upon the Serpent’s head and ground it into the earth with her heel.

I saw Satan flee in the terror of his ultimate defeat. The vision of Mary most Holy and Jesus the God-Man, Her Son, faded but remained imprinted upon the mind and soul of Adam and Eve so that they never could forget it. It was their lively Hope through the centuries ahead – and beyond.

Now the Serpent’s form lay on the ground at their feet, his head crushed, his body shrunken to a sliver of cold black flesh. Never again would they or any of their descendants behold an animal such as he had been. The reptiles we see today are but faint reflections of that Serpent’s brilliant form. Even the great fire-breathing dragons are more ugly than beautiful as he was. But the reptiles of the Latter Days will even then retain some small resemblance to the ancient Serpent and for this reason, all possess a natural, instinctive aversion and dislike for these slithering, earth-bound animals. As a reminder of the malice of Satan, the Lord God has permitted some of these creatures to exhibit an unusual animosity towards men and to possess a venemous bite more harmful than that of any other animal. The cobra of the Far East even raises itself up from the ground as the Edenic Serpent used to do, and his bite is lethal, as is that of the Western snake that coils and rattles his tail in defiance of mankind. But in the Last Days of the world, men will so lose this natural horror that they will keep serpents as pets and curl them around their necks

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with affection. Thus they will become like them in “eating dirt,” that is, in taking pleasure only in that which is base, vile and occult, in being hidden from the gaze of the Good Angels. It will be a sign of Satan’s brief but terrible triumph before our Lord comes again in Glory.

When Satan had fled, our good and gracious God turned again to Eve and said: “I will multiply thy sorrows and thy conceptions: in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children, and thou shalt be under thy husband’s power, and he shall have dominion over thee.”

Thus did our holy God reveal to Eve that He knew the innermost secrets of her heart, the exact nature of her sin in wishing to be equal and even superior to her husband, Adam, thus violating the Order of the Creation. And so, in punishment and even more, as a way to atone for her crime, she was made more subservient to Adam than she was originally created to be. Also, it was not originally intended by God that she should experience any discomfort in the bearing and birthing of children but only joy and delight. Had she not sinned, her conceptions would have been infrequent, perhaps at five-year intervals. The coming together of man and wife would have taken place only when the time for conception was indicated and the birth of a child therefore desired. That would have been the only time and purpose of carnal intercourse. They would have come together with no clouding of the mind by passion or distraction of the understanding by lustful pleasure. But after the Fall, our mother Eve’s body underwent certain changes, such as the monthly discharge of blood, which contributed to her natural weakness, making her vulnerable, also, to the often violent assaults of the lower physical nature against the higher mental and spiritual powers. In the Last Days of the World, Oh, my Father, when the influences of Divine Grace are rejected by men and removed from the world because of their unbelief and ingratitude, women will become monsters of iniquity not only on account of their terrible pride in perversely seeking to lord it over men but also on account of the assaults of passion that come upon them at certain times in their cycle. Men themselves, will not know how to cope with these latter-day women and will seem to lose all of their former manliness and authority. And because of the multiplying of conceptions, due to the great increase of lust and licentiousness, women will murder the children they conceive while these babes are still in the womb. And what is worse, men will help them.

But mother Eve and father Adam were never to be guilty of such crimes. With the severity of the divine sentence ringing in her ears, Eve began to feel the first stirrings of contrition. For she saw that she was not to be hurled headlong into Hell, as Satan had been at his Fall. She was to be given a time to live. It was her perception of this merciful reprieve that gave rise to a faintness of gratitude and prepared the way for the entrance of repentance later on. Furthermore, her mind was entranced and preoccupied by the vision of Mary who remained always vivid in her memory. She would look to the Virgin in her sorrows, and Hope would burn more brightly in her heart because of this remembrance. What a mercy of our wonderful God it was for both of them!

Then God said to Adam: “Because thou hast hearkened to the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, whence I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat, cursed is the earth in thy work; with labor and toil shalt thou eat thereof all the days of thy life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat the herbs of the earth. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return to the earth, out of which thou wast taken; for dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return.”

Adam, too, was relieved not to be cast immediately into Hell, and the sense of gratitude he felt

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for this leniency, this mercy of God, opened the way for a fuller acknowledgement of his guilt later on.

His visions and vain schemes of inordinate power gave way now to the immediate anticipation of hard labor and scanty returns. Finally, there was the sentence of eventual death, of bodily dissolution. So, he reflected, this body, too, must undergo the same kind of un-doing that I am experiencing in my soul and mind as the result of sin. He bowed his head in his humiliation.

But Adam was still very far from true contrition. He turned now to Eve and called her by a new name – mother, mother of all the living. He could no longer look upon her with the respect and esteem of former times, nor could he see her any longer as his faithful helper and companion, for she had betrayed him. She became now for him primarily the bearer of his children. What had before been secondary, now became uppermost in his heart. Lust had become easier than love.

Many of the Saints of our times and later, too, pondering God’s words to Adam at the time of his Fall, have freely abstained not only from flesh meat, as increasing concupiscence, but also from fruits on account of the delicacy and sweetness of their flavor. Adam and Eve ate only bread and herbs and some vegetables for the rest of their long lives, for it was a penance imposed upon them by God Himself. And only those of their descendants who left the family hearth later on, began to eat meat and learned to cultivate fruit trees taken from the wild places of the earth.

I have not yet told you, Oh, my good Father, how it was that our most holy and gracious God deigned to show Himself in visible Form to our first parents. Sometimes He appeared to them as the most Blessed Trinity, that is, He seemed to be three great Men Whose Lightsome bodies so intermingled that They could be perceived clearly as one and the same Spirit and Nature. One emanated a distinctively Fatherly demeanor, while Another, Who seemed somewhat younger in appearance, was crowned with a most wonderful diadem. The Third walked between these Two and seemed to be a Consuming Fire in Human Form. His glance so kindled me with Divine Love that I fainted away in adoration of Him, wishing but to remain forever in contemplation and loving abasement before our most wonderful God in Three Divine Persons At other times, though, this most sweet Creator would appear to Adam and Eve in the awesome and majestic form of the Son in the Glory He had with the Father and the Holy Ghost before the world came to be. Adam and Eve thus knew by direct and loving experience almost as much of this marvelous Reality of the Being of our God as the Cherubim and Seraphim whose very nature it is to live in adoration before His Throne. They enjoyed this familiar communion with their Creator before the Fall, but they had not been confirmed in Grace. Thus it came about that they were still capable of infidelity and fell from this marvelous state of divine Grace and friendship with God. How such thoughts must humble us, Oh my Father, and make us full of a holy fear if God should grant us any such favors in this life. It is far better to remain always poor and hidden and unknown to the world than to experience any kind of favor that could cause us to entertain the least thought of pride in our own excellence, for anything that is good and holy can come only from God alone. Our most Blessed Mother’s Humility and Purity will ever be our hope and our help as it became for mother Eve, after the Fall.

After pronouncing the sentences upon the guilty pair, I saw our most holy God bring three great gentle-seeming lions before Adam and say to him: “In the wild places of the world you will find many animals now of a ferocious temper, for all of nature that We created for you and made subordinate to you, now shares in the consequences of your sin. You will slay these animals as

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you have need to make yourselves warm clothing and shelters with their skins as I will show you.” Then He touched the lions and they lay dead at His feet. The Second Person, the Great Lion of Juda, then Himself stripped the skin from each beast. Immediately great eagles descended from the skies and fed on the flesh of the lions while God stretched out and smoothed the skins with His Hands until they were dry and soft. Then He shaped two of them with His Hands as if the hides had been clay, and He made sleeves for the arms and openings for the head. He Himself then fitted these garments upon His guilty children. The third piece He gave to Adam to carry. It was big enough for a blanket to cover both of them at night. My heart was so touched by this sweet compassion of our God that I wept to see it.

God saw that Adam’s heart was still cold towards Him, in spite of this great tenderness. So, He mocked him, trying to soften his heart by humiliation – or was it a kind of teasing, such as parents often do with their little ones?

“Behold, Adam is become one of Us, knowing good and evil!” And Adam wept for very shame and anger at his own disgrace. But he was not contrite. And so God continued: “Now, therefore, lest perhaps he put forth his hand and take also of the Tree of Life, and eat, and live forever...” Then God Himself took each one by the hand, for they pulled back and resisted in horrified expectation of His intent, and forcibly led them out of Paradise to a place they had never seen before. They looked back to see a great Angel of the Order of the Cherubim standing before the Tree of Life. He held in his hands a flaming sword that turned unceasingly around the Tree to guard every access to it. Then I saw the second Person approach the Tree of Life. As He did so, the Angel fell prostrate to the earth in adoration. Our Divine Lord then stretched out His Arms and fitted His Sacred Body to the trunk and His arms to the lateral branches in such a way that He imaged forth in the immense Glory that now clothed Him, His Crucified Form of the appointed time. From each of His Hands, from His Feet and from His Heart flowed five great Rivers of rosy light bathing the entire world. Adam and Eve beheld this vision with great awe and wonder, but they did not yet understand it. Later, when they had found repentance, the meaning of this New Tree of Life was made clear to them and they lived thenceforth in the certain knowledge and loving contemplation of His Coming.

It was only after they had been put out of Eden that I saw the Guardian Angels of Adam and Eve. I don’t think they had Guardian Angels in Paradise, for I never saw them. Many other Angels came from Heaven to talk with them and teach them, before the Fall, but none of them remained as Guardians of the human pair. I suppose they did not need Guardian Angels because of the great gifts, natural and supernatural, with which God had blessed them. But now, being destitute, indeed, and having lost all of the wonderful gifts, they were in great need.

Guardian Angels are as close to us as our shadows, but they are made all of light. The souls of Adam and Eve were dark and desolate at this time, and their Guardian Angels wept continuously in their place, as it were, praying for them and imploring the grace of repentance for them.

Our first parents were very bewildered, like children lost in a forest, upon finding themselves in a world quite unfamiliar and different from Paradise. And yet it was not inhospitable. God had left them alone in the late afternoon of the day, and now, the sun emerged near the horizon and their hearts warmed somewhat to behold the golden sky of sunset. They found themselves on the long gentle slope of a hill, and looking back, they could see that the Garden was situated on a great plateau. Before and beneath them stretched a large green valley surrounded by low hills which

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defined the immediate horizon and beyond which they could not see. This valley, then, would be their home, and they went forward, hand in hand, to find a place to rest for the night. They could see no animals, but Adam, recalling God’s words about the fierce temper of other creatures now, looked at the nearby woods and hills with some apprehension. But his Angel touched him on the shoulder and told him to have no fear. He led them to a small grove of trees wherein the vines grew thick overhead and the ground was covered with a carpet of mossy growth. The sun had set and the air was cool. They heard a night bird begin to sing. They lay down and covered themselves with the great skin blanket. In their weariness and sorrow, they found no words to speak to one another.

Repentance

Oh, my good Father, you must know that our first parents had enjoyed such a high holy friendship and loving intimacy with our Thrice-Holy God that they could not remain long in a state of separation from Him without suffering most keenly the pain of that loss. They had loved Him and served Him in the Garden and then they had sinned, only once, albeit mortally. So it was with our first Pope, Saint Peter! Oh, how Adam suffered at this time. He knew in himself now, by his own personal experience, the good and the evil; the conflict between the two in his spirit, mind and body was an exquisite torment. Moreover, he was conscious of a moral weakness in himself, a downward pull of the flesh and the loins that he had never before known. It shamed and humiliated him. He still possessed the great fund of knowledge, both infused and acquired – the knowledge of God, of Angels, secrets of the universe and of earth – that the Holy Angels had imparted to him. But he was no longer able to give himself to these wonderful contemplations as deeply and as totally as he had previously. He seemed now to be fractured in his whole being, divided in mind and body. He felt wholly un-done.

He sought some relief in reflections and remembrances of life in Paradise. His mind filled with memories as he lay in the darkness of the night. He remembered the brightly colored fruits and vegetables and the great variety of tasty herbs he had found so plentifully growing. Most poignantly of all, though, he recalled the great spring of delicious water that gushed from under a huge overhanging rock. It formed a wonderfully clear pool, and the earth around it was soft and yielding. When he had first opened his eyes to the light of day, he had seen the goodness of God, his beloved Creator, and had found himself standing by this lovely pool of water that came forth so joyfully and continuously from the heart of the earth. The environs of this place were his first home. He could never forget the look and the feel of it. The water was so much more than merely physical water and the place itself held more than a natural loveliness. The water mirrored to his mind the supernatural beauty and purity of his own soul so resplendent then with the Grace of God shining forth His own Image and Likeness. Here, too, he had first beheld Eve, and God had told him that she was taken and made from his very bones and flesh. How he had loved, esteemed and honored her in her gracious queenly beauty, so fitting a complement and companion for his own glorious manhood.

Such reflections as these pierced his soul, and in the bitter realization of what he had lost by his own fault, his pride dissolved. He wept copiously and in his tears, he longed with an indescribable longing, to speak again with his Lord and Master. Half fearful of her response, he turned to Eve. But Eve was not unmindful of his agony, for she had not been able to forget the vision of our Holy Mother Mary. How beautiful she was! She was All Beautiful. There was in

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her no least stain or blemish. And Eve knew that this Woman, by her obedience, by her humility and submission, her absolute purity and love, would heal the evil wound of human sin in a way that she and Adam could not do. She knew, too, that this Woman’s Son would save them from the everlasting death of Hell wherein the evil Serpent reigned. Oh, how her heart swelled with love and gratitude, and she mingled her tears with those of her husband when he turned to her. Together they planned to return at dawn to the Gate of Paradise to worship at the Tree of Life, though from afar, and beg God to come to them again.

The eastern sky was just beginning to lighten when Adam and Eve rose up and retraced their steps to the Gate of Paradise. The Angels of heaven and of earth rejoiced and their Guardian Angels sang hymns of thanksgiving. As they neared the place, they could see our Blessed Thrice-Holy God. He was waiting for them! They fell prostrate at His Feet and dared not lift up their eyes to His Face. But I saw their blessed souls rapt in an embrace of Divine forgiving Love.

Then God spoke and told Adam to come every seventh day to this place which was within sight of the Tree of Life. He told him to build an altar here and to offer sacrifices of animals and of fruits in atonement for his sin, for in the offering of his flocks and fruits he was giving something that closely touched his own substance, and this is the essence of sacrificial love. Adam understood and so did Eve. Of animals, God said, Adam was to offer only the pure kind, which is to say, those animals which do not prey upon other animals but consume only plants. These were the sheep and the various Species of cattle, including deer, and all the antlered kind. Of these he was always to pick out the best, the fattest, strongest and most beautiful of the new-born. Animals such as wolves, lions, and the like, are considered unclean because they feed upon the blood and flesh of other animals. Adam understood this command to say nothing of the nature of the various animals because he knew that all the animals are good in themselves. The distinction was made by God to implant in the mind of Adam and all his descendants, the special love of God for gentleness and meekness, and His abhorrence of violence.

Of the fruits of the earth Adam was to consume with fire on the altar a small portion of each harvest in thanksgiving for its abundance. Thus did God instruct Adam in the principal kinds of Sacrifice: Victims of Holocaust for atoning love against sin, and offerings of Thanksgiving, of Praise, and of Petition. Thus was prefigured, pre-announced and prophesied during the long Advent of the four millennia before the coming of the Redeemer, the Divine Victim of Holocaust under the appearances of Bread and Wine in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and His bloody Sacrifice on the Cross. May He be blessed for ever!

Now our Divine Lord told Adam and Eve to look upon the Tree of Life once more. The Flaming Cherubim again abased himself and the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity was revealed in the Image of a Man Crucified upon the Tree. His Body was glorious but from His Hands and Feet and opened Heart there poured forth most brilliant rays of white light that intermingled with immense streams of bright red gleaming and shimmering as if It were living. God inwardly illumined their minds to understand the significance of both white and red streams, the Water and the Blood flowing from the Divine Victim, the Waters of holy Baptism and the Blood of Redemption mingling for our salvation. They understood that the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity would become Man in order to suffer and die in satisfaction for their sins and those of all

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their descendants until the End of Time. They understood that the Gates of Heaven would remain closed until He came. But they could only rejoice and give thanks to God for this blessed Faith and Hope which fed their love for Him all their long lives. For never did they forget this Vision of the Divine Redeemer, and they passed on its meaning, as best they could, to all their children. I saw them remain in contemplation of these Mysteries for a long time while God Himself communed with them and comforted them. He revealed many secrets to them, some to be communicated to the coming generations, some for themselves alone.

At this time, too, God gave them a written record of the Creation. He used the skins of animals and an indelible fluid from berries to record for them the events of the First week of the World, for only He could do this. Much later, after the Great Flood, the descendants of Adam transcribed the Records onto clay tablets which were more durable than parchment and easier to preserve.

Life outside of Eden

When they returned to the grove, Adam began to think of the tasks he must undertake to provide the needed food, clothing and shelter. He recalled the beautiful pool in the Garden. From this lake of fresh water there flowed forth a mighty river which divided itself into four lesser streams. These watered all of Paradise and the loveliest trees and plants flourished along the banks of each. Adam had given each river a name that connoted the kinds of plants and animals that were most abundant in the region of each.

The Phison flowed East and irrigated all the eastern parts and slopes of Eden. In this part of Eden, too, the stones of the earth gleamed and sparkled like bits of sun, which we call gold. The gold does indeed grow there in the same manner that we observe salty crystals to grow, by accretion. Other stones gave forth a variety of shades of blue and red and green, most lovely to behold. Still another kind of mineral in the earth thereabouts gave off a sweet odor and would spread its aromatic essence through the air as if it had been a great blossoming tree. The Divine Scriptures tell us the names of these gems. They are gold, onyx, and bdellium.

The second river was the Gehon, flowing West from the Spring. The Tigris flowed to the South and West, and the Euphrates to the South and East.

Adam wondered if he might not find these same great rivers in the world outside of Eden, and he determined to make their discovery one of his first tasks. I saw him extend his explorations of the valley farther each day until, at length, he had ascended the surrounding hills and attained a thorough knowledge of the part of the world in which he lived. He found that the four rivers flowed directly down from Eden and watered the four parts of the earth. The Orient today is as rich in those precious stones and aromatic gems as it was then. The Great Flood of Noah’s time washed many of them to other parts of the world, especially the gold which was deposited in many places of the earth and which has always inspired men with avarice and covetousness.

Adam found that his valley was very fertile despite the noxious and inedible plants which he recognized. It lay between the two great rivers he had named the Tigris and the Euphrates. Over the years that followed and when he had many sons and daughters to work for him and to help Eve with her domestic chores, Adam succeeded in mapping the lands of each of the four rivers on the excellent parchment he made with the cured and tanned skin of sheep and goats. He used

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ink from the holly and poke berries he found, just as God had done before him with the Record of Creation.

The Tigris and Euphrates joined at the mouth of a great sea. The Phison and the Gehon also emptied into great seas but at opposite ends of the earth. These last rivers of Eden are no longer to be found in the world nor any trace of them. The Great Flood completely washed out their beds and filled their places with sediment, for it was along the Phison that Cain’s children built their cities which became centers and concentrations of great wickedness and violence.

The Tigris and Euphrates will remain to the End of Time as reminders of Adam’s lands outside the Garden. But the Euphrates will dry up in the Last Days, causing great famine, and the deserts in various parts of the earth will spread as if they were living creeping things.

The earth was very different before the Great Flood of Noah’s time. On the Second Day of Creation Week, it was a most wondrous sight to see our great Lord God separate the immensity of waters that covered the earth in the beginning. Our world was at first a huge watery mass, though exceedingly beautiful as it reflected the deep purples, greens and blues of the first created Light. God separated these waters by a great firmament or expanse of space in which He placed the sun, moon and stars on the Fourth Day, but on this Day, also, He made a layer of vapor to shield the earth from harmful particles emitted by the sun. The great amount of waters He placed above the firmament, beyond the stars, there awaiting the new birth of the skies and the earth into eternity.

The layer of vapor that God placed around the earth in the firmament did give to the skies of that time a greater variety of colored sunlight, somewhat like a rainbow mist spread out over the entire sky. I saw such skies prevail until the Great Flood. After that, the heavens took on the deep and uniform blueness that we see today when the weather is fine and which reminds us of Our Blessed Lady’s Mantle spread out over us in her maternal solicitude and protection.

Nor did Adam and Eve ever see clouds in the sky or experience storms as we do today, for it never rained upon the earth until the time of the great Flood. The earth was watered and irrigated by many rivers and by great land-locked seas which God caused to form on the Third Day of Creation Week. Some of these seas are still in the world today, though they are much smaller.

And now I will tell you something else I saw, and you may hardly believe it. I saw the sun’s rays strike against the waters above the firmament in the manner of many tiny pieces of golden light. Most of these particles shone with an intense brilliance -- but not all of them. Many were dull and had hardly any sparkle or glint at all. They seemed rather dead than lively. These, when they fell upon the watery mist, were cast back into the void of space and did not come through to the earth as the lively ones did. But when the Great Flood came, as I shall describe in time, the vapor canopy shed its waters upon the earth for forty days and nights, and at the end of that time, it was no more, but there remained only a layer of gaseous matter in its place. Then I beheld many of these lusterless particles come to earth, and only a very few of them failed to penetrate the layer of gas. My Angel told me the meaning of these things. He said that the dull pieces of sunlight are harmful to the bodies of men and animals, causing them to grow old and die very much sooner than they would if their bodies had not been penetrated by these particles. For this reason, amongst others, men today grow old and die at a much younger age than they did before the Flood when the great canopy was there as a shield to protect man’s bodies from the rays of the

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sun that could harm them.*

Despite the inevitability of growing old and dying, it is incredible to see but it is true that in the Last Days of the World men, with the help of Lucifer and his demons, will have discovered so many of the secrets of nature known to Adam and to the Cainites, that they will think themselves powerful enough to overcome the curse of disease and even death itself. They will have ceased to believe the Holy Scriptures and become monsters of self-confidence and pride, worshippers of the creature MAN rather than of the Creator of all things.

God will allow them to work seeming miracles, especially in the time of the Anti-Christ, for they will revive dead persons by breathing-machines and – you will hardly believe this – they will repair sick bodies by inserting the organs of other living beings, even other humans, into the bodies of these sick and dying people. By delving deeply into the secrets of the body’s living tissues, they will begin to re-arrange and re-build those places where the very codes of life reside and so believe they can overcome death itself!**

But God will prevent them in ways I can hardly describe. Just as God put an end to the evil of the Cainites and purified the earth of their wickedness by a terrible cataclysm of cleansing waters, so, in the final punishments, He will purify His world by Fire. It will come from more than one source: the sun, fiery bodies from the outer reaches of space, and from men’s own weapons of mass destruction. But all this happens in God’s own time and just as He wills and permits for the greater good of those left on earth who will still love and serve Him alone.

Adam’s knowledge

We know that Adam lived for 930 years, and many of his descendants lived as long and some longer. But it was not so for the descendants of Noah, though they lived longer than we do today. Gradually, as the centuries passed, the harmful effects of the light-less particles greatly lessened the general health, size, and longevity of both animals and men.

If you could have seen the beauty and vigor of our first parents in the Garden of Eden! Nor must you think that they lost all of that physical excellence immediately after eating the fruit of the forbidden tree. Far from it! Hundreds and hundreds of years passed before the evil consequences of that Sin began to tell on their bodies. Even today, these evils have not reached their fullness, nor will they until the End of Time. But in the Last Days, men will be physically as well as morally weak, exceedingly so, succumbing to many ailments and diseases that we do not even know of in our time. Furthermore, the physical consequences of the Sin of Adam and Eve will finally reach into all of nature itself, as the earth becomes sick, the air becomes foul, and the seas and rivers and streams poison the fishes and all life therein. But such is the great Mercy and Patience of our God, that He allows these evil effects to work gradually, giving men time and time and yet more time, till unbelievers will scoff and ridicule those who warn of the coming chastisements. Those who believe will be warned and use the time left them for growth in prayer, penance and virtue, building up by divine Grace what sin un-did. Such is the Plan of our

* Brother Bryan must be referring here to the effects of cosmic rays on aging. Most remarkable! B.P.** Surely Brother Bryan speaks here like a madman! B.P.

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wonderful and merciful God, as you can see exemplified in the lives of all the holy people and saints of all time. May He be blessed forever!

And so, our father Adam had a most marvelous world given to him by our Heavenly Father. And though it was wounded and degraded by man’s sin, as was our very nature, still it retained far more of God’s beauty and goodness than it did of the disfigurement due to the malice of Satan. For it will ever reflect in some way the Wisdom and Goodness of the Creator, bearing, as it does, His very Fingerprints.

And the world before the Flood was far more lovely, if you can believe it, than it is now, for the consequences of the primeval sin have accumulated to our time that much longer and will continue to accumulate until they reach their uttermost fullness in the very Last Days of the World. For then you will weep when I tell you how Satan will aid the wicked men of those final fatal times to hurt and be-smirch and well-nigh destroy the lovely and most beautiful works of God’s Hands. Mankind’s own false, brittle and artificial works will so over-lay the works of the natural creation as to bury and smother it in the smoke and stench of sin-producing artifacts.

I cannot tell you everything I saw during this First Age of the World for the time is short. But I must tell you something of how Adam and Eve lived and of their children.

Our father Adam had knowledge of natural things far superior to that we have today. In the Last Days of the world, men, who have thrown off all obedience to God, to His Laws and to His Church, will be instructed by Satan in the secrets of nature known to the bad Angels. But Adam was instructed in these same secrets by God Himself as well as by the good Angels. For God revealed to Him just how the Universe came to be, in Six Days, as God performed the works of His Creative Power. God showed Adam the innermost secret structure and workings of matter itself and of all the different kinds of minerals in the earth as well as the properties of all the different sorts of plants and herbs. He knew the healing properties and the harmful properties of each. Our father Adam did not lose this knowledge of created things when he fell from Grace. In him, the darkening of the intellect was felt as a consequence of the downward pull of the flesh that had not hampered or weakened his contemplations before the Fall as it did afterwards. Now, after the Fall, he could recover his former serenity only by great penance.

I will give you some examples of Adam’s superior knowledge. He knew more about fire than any man since because he had enjoyed most intimate communion and conversation with that Consuming Fire of Love that is the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, of which all earthly fire is but a pale reflection. He had contemplated the fiery nature of the Seraphim and Cherubim. By infused knowledge in these contemplations – for the lower is contained in the higher – he knew all the many different methods of enkindling fire and causing flame to spring forth. More, he knew which elements in nature would best sustain a flame. You have observed, my Father, how little children are taught to speak by hearing and imitating their elders, or how our novices are taught the Chant by the Choir Master. Well, it was something like that with our father Adam, though on a much higher level. For he had been taught by God Himself both to speak and to understand. To us of today, it would seem that he knew these things by nature, whereas he had been taught by infused knowledge in the love of God.

Fire gives both heat and light, and so it did for Adam. But Adam knew of secret sources of heat and light that produced no flames. I have no words to use as names for these things, but I can tell

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you that men in the Last Days of the World will have these same sources of power though not in as convenient and easy a form as Adam did.* In the Last Days men will so harness and multiply these hidden sources of power as to produce an artificial world replacing the natural one that God created and they will so disrupt the God-created rhythms of human and animal life that seizures of madness and despondency will become frequent amongst both man and beasts. Oh, how they will distort the beautiful things of God, giving rise to an entire civilization, world-wide, of ugliness, noise and violence, terrible impurity, fantastic luxury, but also, death-desiring madness.

But Adam used his tremendous knowledge in a spirit of penitential love and gratitude. He thereby consecrated his days and works to the worship of God, Whom he greatly loved and fervently served.

Adam and Eve lived in the greatest simplicity and frugality. Adam gathered great herds of sheep and, as time went on, of other animals such as cattle and horses and many domestic fowl. He used the sheep for their wool and the cattle for their hides to make clothing, foot-wear, many kinds of cloth, and parchment for writing. Eve made cheese from the milk of the cattle, for cheese was excellent traveling food, even as it is today. Bread, roots and herbs were the staples of their diet. They drank only the crystal clear water that abounded in pools and streams. They also had trees of the olive which they cultivated for the wondrous oil, with its healing and healthful properties.

The more Adam discovered of the powers hidden in nature, the more he came to realize that his children, infected as they were with the same weaknesses and inordinate desires that he felt within himself but lacking a similar strong penitential spirit, would be more likely to use these powers for vain or evil purposes than for the common good and the Glory of God. And so it turned out.

Cain and Abel

It was a year or more before Eve conceived her first child. Throughout her time of bearing, her constant thought was of the Virgin, the Maiden-Mother, the most beautiful Woman Who was Immaculate where she, Eve, was so deeply stained. As her day of delivery drew nearer, she contemplated the Child in the Mother’s arms. The great Redeemer, too, would be born of a Woman, this other, most pure, all-holy Maiden. In Eve’s mind, every child she carried and brought into the world was a living, burning hope centered in this Vision of the Saviour and His Immaculate Mother. Thus arose the great line of Promise, the Patriarchal heads of those families of renown from whence, in the fullness of time, would come our Divine Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Second Adam, Son of David, Incarnate Word of the Father. May He be blessed forever!

Adam’s mind, too, frequently dwelt upon that Vision of the Maiden-Mother and gradually, over many years, he began to see in Eve some faint reflection of the Virginal Maiden and Mother of God. For Eve grew to resemble, however distantly and faintly, the One she contemplated with such love and reverence. And so, finally, at the end of their long lives and after much suffering, there was a restoration, a regaining of their original love and mutual esteem. For Adam, the first of the great Patriarchs, was also the holiest and most noble of them all, especially in his

* Could Brother Bryan be describing a form of electricity more convenient than that we enjoy today? B.P.

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advanced age. Perhaps more frequently, Adam dwelt in mind upon the Vision of the Tree of Life and the Man Who fitted His Body to its cruciform. For Adam saw that what he had lost by his sin for all his children as well as for himself, the Incarnate Word of God would restore by His Precious Blood flowing over all ages to the end of time. Every seven days Adam returned to the Altar he had built, as God had commanded him to do, facing the entrance to Paradise and the flaming Cherubim guarding the Tree of Life. Each time he killed a young animal from his flocks. As the blood of the lamb flowed out over the stones of the altar, and as he watched the agony of death, his soul was transported and transfigured by some mystical passion, and he knew that, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, having become Man, would so suffer and die in his place, to repair, to satisfy, and to restore what had been lost. A5 the flames he kindled consumed the body of the sacrificial victim, Adam was taken up in spirit by a Consuming Fire of Love into the Bosom of the Father and the Son. Thus, with an indescribable longing did he yearn for the coming of the Redeemer. And thus did he anticipate in type and in mysterious foreshadowing, the great Sacrifice of Calvary perpetuated for all time in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Thus, too, did he participate in that Divine Priesthood of our Lord by his all-consuming adoration in Faith and in Hope.

When Cain was born, Eve’s joy was great for she now resembled the Maiden-Mother in her maternity. But Cain soon began to manifest an unholy spirit, and Eve’s joy turned to sadness and sorrow. No sooner had the second son, Abel, been born, some three years later, than the elder Cain began to show signs of jealousy and hatred towards the younger boy. Attempting to remedy this, Adam showed special favor to Cain. He took him with him everywhere he went and taught him all he could of the created universe. He taught him to cultivate the earth and help it to bring forth a great variety of grains and vegetables so that by the time Cain was sixteen, he was as fine a husbandman as his father. Then Adam took him with him to the great Altar of Sacrifice at the Gate of Paradise and showed him how to offer the best of his harvests to God.

When Abel was old enough, Adam gave him charge of the great flocks of sheep from whose woolen coats Eve spun out thread and yarn to weave into cloth and fine garments for them all. The men still wore skins for their rougher work, but the women preferred clothing of linen and wool and so did the men for the times of leisure and especially, of prayer.

Abel saw to it that the sheep always had good pasturage so that their coats would be both soft and strong. He led them from place to place, and they followed him because he was sweet and gentle. When he sheared them, he spoke to them and they had no fear but stood still and docile while he ran the sharp blade over their skins with one hand and smoothed the shorn places with the other.

When both boys had attained a certain age of full manhood, Adam laid his hands upon each of them and instructed them in the worship of God. It was a type of the priesthood, for in those days before the coming of our Lord and even before the great Lawgiver Moses, every man was like a priest in his house and the head of each family performed the priestly offices of sacrifice and praise.

By the time Cain was fifty years old, Eve had brought forth many more sons and daughters, but Cain, as the first-born, held a pre-eminence among them all. Abel, because of his exceptional piety and gentleness, also seemed destined by God for some special kind of service. The goodness of Abel rankled the heart of Cain and the jealousy festered and spread in his soul like a

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cancer. It was a sickness of long standing with him.

God gave special signs of His divine pleasure in Abel’s offerings. One of these signs was to provide for Abel’s sacrifice the fire that would consume the victim. I saw flames descend from on high as from the very Heart of God Himself. Abel understood this most intimate and necessary relation between love and sacrifice, but Cain never did. God also granted to Abel visions of the Incarnate Word as the Lamb that would be slain. These encounters with God in prayer filled Abel with an ever-increasing love for the All-Holy God, and his growth in Grace was manifested in the great purity and innocence of his life.

Cain enjoyed none of these raptures of Divine Love nor had he any visions of the Redeemer to come. Instead of humbling himself on this account and begging God to give him a new and better heart, he fed upon his jealousy and hatred for Abel as a vulture feeds upon putrefaction. In an effort to save him, God Himself came and spoke with him. He told him to control his anger, to put this sin of hatred beneath him, and to strive to please Him, looking to his own soul’s service of the Almighty Creator. For, as first-born, Cain was chosen to rule in Adam’s place some day and to continue the Patriarchal line of Promise leading to the Redeemer. Cain’s knowledge of this pre-eminence seemed only to increase his rage more against the great purity and innocence of Abel. For Cain was a very passionate man and had already taken one of his younger sisters as a wife. But he was not docile before God. He heard words, but he heard them deep in the darkness of his own anger and resentment rather than in the light of humility and truth.

Abel was not unaware of Cain’s jealousy. Many times he talked with his brother and praised his skills and great strength, seeking thereby to win his heart and dissolve the rancor in his soul. But it was of no avail.

Oh, my Father, it would be told that our first parents were so pure and strong in the Grace of their original innocence and justice that extraordinary efforts of deceitful strategy were necessary on the part of Satan to make them fall. As you have so often told us, we have three sources of danger to beware of: the world, our own fallen nature, and the Devil. Our first parents were in no danger from the world or from the flesh, for their world was perfect and their flesh was in complete submission to their wonderful intellects. So Satan’s direct action was necessary to make the Test of their love a real one. But it was not so with Cain, nor is it so with us. Our closest and worst enemies are the fires of our own passions which Satan, by means of worldly influences and his own malignant suggestions, fans to a great height. And so it was with Cain. The jealousy he had felt against Abel from his youth should have been extirpated early in his life. Some men have a greater share than others of the great passions such as pride, anger, lust, and envy. But it is so arranged by God for their greater merit and God’s greater service and glory in them, if they will but receive His grace and humble themselves before Him. Alas, Cain’s heart was by now so hardened toward his brother and worse, toward God Himself, that he was beyond recall. And so, he coldly planned to murder his brother and thus rid himself forever of the sight of the great purity that so enkindled his resentment.

He watched Abel tending his flocks, and one day, when the sheep were especially quiet, he approached his brother and feigning friendship, asked him to come and view a field of new grain he was cultivating. Abel came willingly, and once there, Cain turned boldly upon him and threw him to the ground. Then he dealt him such a blow on the side of the head and neck with the blunt end of his tree-axe, that the blood sprang forth over Cain’s face and flowed most copiously onto

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the ground. Abel had time to realize his brother’s murderous intent, and he offered no resistance to his fury. His heart was filled with a pitying love. Just before the fatal blow fell upon him, he saw the White Lamb of Sacrifice on his altar and he willingly mingled his blood with that of the Divine Victim.

Cain raised his hands to his face to wipe the hot blood from his eyes. It seared and burned his eyes and skin. It could have purified him but he would not let it. When he saw Abel’s lifeless and bloody body on the ground before him, he was stricken with a great and fearful horror at what he had done, but he quelled the feeling and called up instead a passion of exaltation in the death of his hated brother. He did not try to hide, as his father had done when he sinned. So advanced in wickedness was Cain that he knew no shame. He planned to tell his mother and father that he had surprised a great lion attacking Abel and knocking him down against a rock, wounding his head fatally before he could be rescued. This in itself was not believable because Abel’s power over all the wild animals was well known. But God forestalled him in his lies.

On his way home, God’s voice arrested him. “Where is thy brother Abel?” Our good and gracious God ever seeks to gain from us sinners the admission of our guilt and a heartfelt repentance. It is the condition of all subsequent Grace. So did Cain receive here the sweet invitation to confession. But his heart was utterly poisoned with evil passion and a terrible arrogance. He answered God first with a lie and again with a defiance that bespoke his still rankled jealousy against the just and gentle Abel. “I know not. Am I my brother’s keeper?” How patient is our good and gracious God! Once more He asks: “What hast thou done?” inviting him to admission of his sin and its confession. But Cain’s soul was black. And so God pronounced sentence upon him.

Oh, my Father, what an abomination in God’s sight is hatred of heart. It is a blow struck at our Divine Lord’s Own Heart of Love. The blood that is thus spilled brings forth a cry from God Himself. Thus did innocent Abel’s blood cry to God and receive from Him a like cry of wounded love.

In punishment, God took away Cain’s skills in husbandry. Never again would the earth yield wheat for bread or the fruits of the vine for him. He retained the knowledge of these skills but lost the power to practice them, because God would not allow the stain of original malice to blight these earthly nutrients that make the matter and great type of the Sacrament of His Love. The Patrimony was taken away from Cain and none of his sons was worthy.

Having sinned so deeply and so violently against the Heart of Love, Cain was condemned to the life of a fugitive, one who must always flee the loving society of brothers. His bold insolence dissolved into a craven fear of constant persecution for having murdered the gentlest and best of men. But the good and gracious God, always desiring not the death of the sinner but his repentance, declared a severe punishment upon anyone who killed Cain. And to ensure that all would recognize Cain as one not to be slain, God touched him with His Finger on the left side of his head so that he was stricken with a palsy. Ever afterwards he dragged his right leg when he walked, his hands trembled uncontrollably, and his speech was slurred. Moreover, his face and hands where Abel’s blood had spilled upon him, appeared as the flesh of one burned. As he grew older, these scars became deeper and more painful. This was a sign of God’s constant call to him for repentance. Alas, it became the sign, too, of his final damnation, for the Blood of the Lamb of God is the Glory of those who are saved by It but remains forever as a reproach upon those who

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have been offered His Grace and rejected it.

God Himself with His Own Hand had to inflict this punishment upon Cain because the physical effects of sin producing sickness and death took hundreds of years to accumulate in the bodies of those who lived before the Flood. There were no such deformed creatures as dwarfs, hunchbacks, and other crippled people that we see today. Thus, Cain was the only man anywhere with the afflictions that were so visible in him, and his appearance struck such pity and aversion into the hearts of all who saw him that he was ever and always avoided and shunned, except by his wife, who always remained faithful to him and bore him many children.

Abel was missed around the family hearth in the evening, and Adam went forth in search of him. He found the sheep wandering about and bleating pitifully for their good shepherd. Apprehension filled Adam’s soul and following a sickening foreknowledge, he walked to the neighboring field and found his son lying amidst the ripening grain with his blood reddening the plump, fertile ears of wheat beneath him. Adam gathered him up in his arms and carried him home. He knew of no way to prepare his wife for such a sorrow. Her heart, too, had filled with foreboding when Abel had not returned home at the usual time. She saw Adam coming from afar, bearing his precious burden, and she waited in stricken silence. Adam laid her dead son in her arms and she pressed his cold body to her bosom as if to warm it with her own. Her sorrow and desolation were too deep for outcry or for tears. She remembered, then, the Woman of her Vision and the Man Who hung dead upon the Tree, His Blood impregnating the whole world with new saving life. Adam, looking upon her there, began to love her in a new and deeper way. In his mind, as it were, there came a mingling and a fusion of images and meanings. Our Holy Mother of Sorrows, her soul pierced with a sword of sorrow, so that her heart became, like His, a Fountain of Life, was imaged forth here in Eve as shadow and type, cradling the body of her innocent son.

Here was the death that their sin had brought into the world. Oh, how painful was the knowledge now of its evil. They tasted its bitterness to its fullest degree and experienced its sting in the deepest parts of their being. Only the Memory of the Woman and Her-Son could assuage their grief and revive their Hope.

After Eve had washed Abel’s body and wrapped it in her finest white linen with aromatic herbs, Adam buried his son deep in the ground. Now the words of God pierced his flesh as before they had cut deep into his mind: “Dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return.” This sting of death was hard for him, and perhaps even more so for Eve, for she was of a more tender nature.

Oh, my Father, I feel my own dissolution approaching so near, but how the sting of death is removed for us by the Blessed Passion and Death of our most loving Redeemer and Saviour. It is transformed for us into a most deep desire and sweet longing to be dissolved and to be with Him in the eternal Nuptials, the everlasting consummation of our Love. Our first parents could not look forward to this until His Coming. Therefore, did they long the more for this Blessed Hope to be fulfilled.The children of Cain

You might wonder, holy Father, with what tools Adam accomplished so much work and how he came by them. Such tasks as he had to perform were not as difficult for him as they would be for us. He knew all about fire, as I have said before. He also knew how to forge metals, and he had

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metals much stronger and more pure than those we have today, for they did not rust. Of these metals and the wood of stout trees, he fashioned tools with which to till the earth and perform every task proper to husbandry and carpentry.

In the Last Days of the World, men who will call themselves Christians but who have really lost divine Catholic Faith, will think it impossible that the first men (for they will deny Adam’s existence -- yes, they will!) did the things I saw Adam accomplish with the greatest ease and a kind of natural knowledge and instinct, just as we see the birds build their nests, for God Himself as well as the Holy Angels had instructed him, sometimes by infused wisdom and sometimes by more natural means.

Adam and Eve never saw Cain again, but they heard news of him. Cain’s wife, Sitha (her name means pity, for she pitied Cain’s inability to rise above his passions) bore him many, many children, but first among them was Henoch, because Henoch continued the work of building a city, which work Cain had conceived, planned, and begun but was unable to finish due to his restlessness of soul and body. In this he is the father of all lost souls who find no peace in the beautiful things of earth and refuse to seek it where it is to be found – in Him Who loves us despite, nay, because of our littleness and weakness.

Cain handed on to his sons all the knowledge of husbandry and other skills in making things that Adam had taught him. His plan to build a city was born of an evil desire to live independently of God and His Laws, to be entirely self-sufficient and self-governing, all in defiance of God’s sentence of vagabondage upon him. He determined to set up a permanent community that would be supported with food and other materials from the lands outside the city. He himself was unable to remain settled in any one place, but his son Henoch took up the work, completed it, and managed its growth and development. He ruled that the city should not spread beyond certain limits that could be conveniently supported by the land around it. When the number of inhabitants became too great, he sent them off to another place to build a new city. This form of living spread from the East, until, by the time of the Flood, cities were everywhere along the rivers and seas of the entire earth. But God did not bless their labors, for they willingly forgot Him. They did not think they needed Him! They did not worship idols, as later pagans did, after the Flood, mistaking them for gods. Rather they more perversely forgot God, deemed Him unnecessary for their happiness and prosperity, ended by denying His very existence, and set themselves in His place, making their own power and pleasure the sole purpose of their lives. In this they are equaled only by the reprobate of the Last Days.

In the latter days, also, men will invent a form of government closely modeled on that of the Cainite. It will be a form of government that purposely does away with all Divine Law. They will worship a great iron goddess named Liberty and will be willing to die a thousand times to preserve the individual human freedom to do as they please, preferring to set up myriads of human laws and regulations with no reference at all to God’s Will and His Laws, but only with the purpose of attempting to retain some kind of order in what becomes, very quickly, the sole rule of anarchy. They will, indeed, be so possessed by the very spirit of Lucifer in his first rebellion that in their public buildings one will be able to find no trace of the Ten Commandments, the basis of all human law until then, and it will even be forbidden to mention God’s Name or His Laws for fear they should lose the freedom to do their own will rather than His, even though His Law be written in their very nature, so perverse will men be in those sad

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Last Days of the World.

There will be a resurgence of the old Cainite civilization and this time, God will permit it to spread over the entire earth, to infect all peoples and nations, even eventually to do away with nations themselves so that the entire world may be prepared to receive its Lawless ruler, the Son of Perdition, the Anti-Christ.

All the sons of Henoch were skillful in the building and management of cities, And all of these men may be seen in the great procession of time before the Flood as shadows that grow in number until they cover the entire earth with a dark mist. Only the sons of Adam’s Seth, the Line of Promise, will remain to keep alive the true worship of God. But in the Last Days of the World, it is most difficult to discern any such line of true Faith, for it will survive only in very little pockets, little remnants of Faith.

Lamech, the fifth from Cain, defied God’s institution of Marriage by taking two wives instead of one. In this he is the unholy father of all those in times yet to come who will not remain faithful to one spouse. They, too, are possessed by that spirit of lawlessness so prevalent in the Last Days of the World. They will despise the most holy Sacrament of Matrimony and think only of satisfying their own lust and living in luxury, free from the burden of raising children. Those unhappy children who do survive the lust, luxury and murder of those reprobate parents, will seem themselves possessed by demons of impurity and lawlessness. The evil of those Last Days is really too melancholy a sight to look at for long. It was from Lamech that there came also those men who are most notable for bringing upon the world the Great Chastisement of the Flood.

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Jabal, one of Cain’s descendantsthrough Lamech, became a herdsman

The first of these was Jabal. This man was the first to taste the flesh of animals. He had heard

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tales from his father Lamech of Adam and his sons who offered lambs in sacrifice to God and then consumed these offerings in fire. Lamech derided such a custom which he called a foolish waste, for none of the sons of Cain worshipped God. I think they lost all belief in Him, for in none of their cities could I see a temple, an altar, or any other sign of religion. And in this they are unlike all other times and peoples, except for those who live in the very last days of time. In the days of the Cainites, those who believed in God were forced to convert and go over to live with the Sethites, so that there was a real separation of the good believers from the evil unbelievers. But in the Last Days and in the time of the Anti-Christ, those who believe in God will be able to reconcile their belief with the abstract Deity that is permitted to anyone who so wishes. What will be anathema in those Last Days will be the true belief in Jesus Christ, Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, Redeemer of the World, only Savior of mankind and Founder of the one and only true Church by which all men are to be saved. In those Last Days there will be removed the one true Sacrifice of the Mass giving way to the abomination of desolation, for all the gods of the unbelievers are devils!

Jabal heard his father speak of the smell of animal flesh being consumed by flames, saying that it caused his mouth to water in a pleasant way. Jabal’s curiosity was excited. He took one of his lambs (for he was a herdsman), slaughtered it, and began to roast it over an open fire, being careful not to burn it. The aroma was indeed, inviting, and the taste of the flesh thus cooked was the most delicious he had ever known. He advertised his discovery, and before long, he was raising many sheep, and cattle mainly for the purpose of selling cuts of their flesh in the cities for food. In order to serve many cities in this way and to obtain the best grazing lands for his herds and flocks, he devised large dwellings of skins called tents and established a completely nomadic way of life. He is the father of all who so live, moving frequently from place to place, a manner of living that will also characterize the Last Days, for they have inherited and willingly imbibed the spirit of the wandering and restless and unhappy Cain.

Now, my holy Father, we know very well that a diet heavy with meat and wine greatly increases the strength of the passions in men, and especially enkindles lust. For this reason and because they did not worship God or remember Him at all, these Cainite peoples were abandoned by God and given over entirely to the works of the flesh. Moreover, because of their strong fare, for they also used much fermentation in their drinks, they grew into the lustiest of men and of a stature and frame much larger than normal for those times. Even the men of Seth’s line, who were not small by any means, spoke of these Cainites as giants and mighty men.

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Jubal, another of Lamech’ssons, was a musician.

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Another son of Lamech was Jubal. This man was greatly gifted with song and music. He was of a sanguine nature, most happy and industrious. He devised the first musical instruments, those of the stringed and wind kind, or, as we call them, the harp and the trumpet. Would that the lovely melodies and harmonies he composed had been dedicated to the service of God or to the soothing of human passions and the uplifting of the soul to her Creator. But, Alas! Such was far from Jubal’s intention. At first the sounds that he produced and spread abroad were pleasing enough and the entertainments that grew up around this art were apparently harmless. But as time went on and more of the youth began to give themselves to such pastimes, the songs became more and more frivolous and at last, totally degenerate. You would hardly believe, Oh, my Father, what I heard and saw in these Cainite cities in the years just before the Great Flood came and washed them all away.

The musicians came together as groups and produced a volume of sound that filled huge arenas. The people gathered around the musicians, some to sing, many more to dance. The beat of the songs, struck by a heavy bass and the percussion of many drums, was savage in the extreme. These occasions often ended in orgies of lust and murder, for the music was calculated to arouse both men and women to a frenzy of the basest passions. That monstrous Roman Emperor Nero, in the lowest days of mighty Rome, never devised such perversions of a great art. Only in the Last Days of the World will the equal of these evils be seen again.

Jabal, the merchant in flesh meat, and Jubal, the maker of loud music, were brothers, both sons of Lamech by the same wife, Ada. But Lamech’s other wife, Sella, was the mother of Tubalcain, which is to say, the sound of Cain. For Tubalcain worked in metals and such work is both noisome and dangerous. But he loved the force and the pounding of iron upon iron.

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Tubal-cain was a smith and worked with metals

The Eastern lands of the earth where the Cainite cities first flourished, were rich in every metal ore and precious stone. It was Tubalcain who first devised the making of ornaments with gold and silver and sparkling gems. This greatly pleased the women-folk, and they bedecked themselves with his necklaces, bracelets, ear-rings, and every kind of vain ornament for the hair and body, thereby greatly increasing their own vanity and attracting the lascivious glances of men.

But Tubalcain’s greatest achievement was not in this. He devised female adornments only as a diversion, eventually abandoning it altogether, leaving it for his sons and associates to carry on. His main interest lay in the invention of the most ingenious machines and weapons of war.

Tubalcain was a lame man. Lamech, his father, was very proud and loved to recite stories and poems of his exploits. One day, when Tubalcain was still a baby, but old enough to crawl about on the floor, Lamech was boasting to his wife of some great deed he had performed, when she began to laugh at his unbecoming vanity. This so enraged him that he strode forward to strike

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her, and in doing so, he trampled upon the baby’s foot, mashing the bones therein beyond repair. As Tubalcain advanced to manhood, all of the leg grew except the foot which remained a pitiful little appendage of flesh and bones. He made for himself a brace of metal with a box-like base that enabled him to use his leg in a not too clumsy manner. His fascination with fire and metal and his working therein, gave him a feeling of power and prowess that his lameness had seemed to take from him. Never able to take part in the sporting events and competitions of strength that filled the days of other boys, he spent his life at the forge, turning out every kind of fantastic device.

He observed that quarrels and hostilities grew up amongst men and that these feuds were settled by a tournament in which the leaders of warring sides battled to a finish. As time wore on, these contests became fiercer and the weapons of Tubalcain more ingenious. Soon he was providing whole armies with weapons of destruction, and wars between entire cities became commonplace. The toll in life and property was so great that men sought to limit and restrain these violent encounters. Then Tubalcain turned his evil genius to the invention of other kinds of machines. You will hardly believe me, my Father, but I saw people speeding over the land and even through the air in these diabolical contraptions that Tubalcain invented and constructed. Some were round and some were long and sleek, but they all went with incredible speed wherever the people in them had a mind to go. Tubalcain’s talent in this way was never exhausted, and only the Great Flood put a stop to his activities.

In times of war, his machines were used to wreak the most frightful destruction, annihilating whole cities and even groups of cities at one stroke! In times of peace, he constructed all manner of engines and machines for every kind of pleasure and diversion, too many to be enumerated and only to be duplicated in the Time of the End. Tubalcain did not lack followers and imitators, but no one after ever matched his genius. He laid the foundation for every kind of technical advance imaginable. So great was his renown, that his memory was not lost but continued after the Flood into succeeding generations, carried particularly by the wives of Noah’s sons, one or two of whom were descended from the Cainites. The Romans made a god of him. They called him Vulcan. They did similarly with others of the Cainites, as did the Greeks before them and the Egyptians and Babylonians before them.

Adam knew all these uses of metal and the powers hidden in the intricate workings of matter, but he so revered the Creator of all, that he never used any creature of the earth, mineral or plant, for an unworthy purpose. Tubalcain had no such scruples. He and his sons produced the means by which the wickedness of men grew and increased and spread over the entire earth. Only in the Last Days of the World will such wickedness be equaled, and then, alas, even surpassed, so much so, that from glorying in their own works and denying their Creator, they will grow marvelously complacent and accustomed to the most astounding achievements of their own art. They will end by losing all sense of wonder at what they are able to do. The least of the common folk will scarcely have any work to occupy them, except to tend the omnipresent machines. Everything will be so easy for them that they will become monsters of Sloth and Luxury, losing all zest for life and all comprehension of its meaning and purpose by giving themselves entirely to the unending pursuit of sensual pleasure. They will lose all knowledge of God in their vainglorious attempts to re-make His Creation. God in His Mercy, for the sake of the Incarnation of His Son, put a stop to the advances of the Cainites, but He will not have such mercy for those in the Last Days. He will leave them to themselves. What could be worse? But when the time is

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late, very late, Our wonderful Blessed Mother, Ever-Virgin and Keeper of the Promise, will obtain from Her Son some reprieve in the advance of evil, and the believers of that time will experience some restoration of their inheritance of Faith and Worship. But it will not last very long, for the world will grow old in sin again, and God will come in Judgment! Oh, how we should long for that wonderful Day, though it is terrible, the little ones, the ones of great Faith and Love, will have nothing to fear!

Adam’s sons

Seth was the joy of Eve, fulfilling the Promise of a good son, to take the place of the innocent Abel.

When Seth was born, Eve rejoiced exceedingly, for her Angel Guardian spoke to her just before the birth of the boy and told her the name and character of this child. She knew that here was one who would combine in himself the goodness and piety of Abel and the strength and skill of Cain – one worthy of the Patrimony forfeited by Cain, one who would bring back to her the joy she had known and lost in the just and gentle Abel.

Adam shows Seth the lands that are now his patrimony

Seth is a type of the Gentiles; for Cain, a type of the Jews, killed Abel, a type of Christ. Cain was

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thus deprived of his inheritance – the peoples of the world who would build up the Mystical Body of Christ – the Church.Seth is the head, after Adam, of the Line of Promise leading to Christ.When Seth was born to Eve, almost one hundred years had passed since Abel’s death and Cain’s departure. By the time he had reached one hundred and thirty years, at the time of Seth’s birth, Adam appeared to be, and indeed felt himself to be but a very young man in the bloom and freshness of his strengh and hardihood. His Hair was black and his beard no less so. His skin was smooth and ruddy. His back was straight and strong and he stood very tall, only bowing his head as he walked or worked or stayed to pray. By this time, too, the lands under cultivation and pasturage extended far beyond the valley at the foot of the Mount of the Garden of Eden, for his sons and daughters were many and their separate dwellings were seen surrounding the home of their parents in ever widening circles. Some of his sons were of a more adventurous spirit than others, and these settled lands far to the west and south of Eden. But the men of the Promise, the Patriarchs, stayed close to the home of Adam and cultivated “Adam’s Lands”.

Seth was remarkably like his father Adam in the holiness and penitential spirit of his life. He was not of a perfect human nature as Adam had been when he first came from the creative Hand of God. He inherited all the weaknesses stemming from the Fall. But he was a humble man and strong to imitate his father and mother rather than his more wayward brothers. He was deeply devoted to his parents in a way the other sons were not. He showed no inclination to wander from home, to see other places, but was always content to remain close to the family hearth and lands. This was the mark of all the holy Patriarchal Sons, the sign, as it were, of their election.

Seth’s son Enos was possessed of a remarkable talent for poetic utterance which he used solely for the service of God. In this, Enos is a type of holy King David. And such was his charm, such the lovableness of his nature that he drew others to praise God in song with him. Under Adam’s direction he was the first to give a certain form and structure to the public worship of God. But it was exceedingly simple and even austere in its beauty, much like our chant. Whenever the sons of Adam and Seth departed from the family lands and went to settle in other places of the earth, they took these songs and chants with them for use in their worship, and it was this sacred music as well as the nobility of their lives that always distinguished the Sethites from the Cainites. For the Cainite cities were notorious for their raucous, debased arts, their music especially, as well as for their lack of any public worship of God. Any Cainite who responded to the appeals of Divine Grace was obliged to leave the society of his fellow Cainites, so corrupting was their influence on mind and heart.

Enos’ son Cainan was so named by Enos in a spirit of reparation for Cain’s evil life. Cainan himself was a man of very sober, even stern temper, and he strictly forbade his children to associate in any way with the Cainites, for, by this time, some five hundred years from Creation, the Cainites had spread from the East far into the North and South.

The lands of Adam, being those places immediately extending down from the high plateau of Eden, while containing the most pleasant valleys and hills around, were all of a high elevation, whereas the lands that Cain and his sons settled along the Phison River were of a lower elevation, descending steadily until they reached the shores of the great Seas.

Cainan even made his sons swear by the Blood of Abel never to leave the high, hilly regions

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around Eden for fear of encountering the Cainites and being corrupted by them. And so Holy Mother Church will ever respond to evil in these two ways: to convert the evil-doer and reform him by her Divine Sacramental Life, if he is willing and docile; or shun him and his influence. For she is the Salt of the Earth and the Light of the World, and Truth cannot be yoked with error, nor can Light be combined with Darkness; for one must overcome and displace the other. And here is the Mystery of Iniquity that works, now freely, now under greater restraint, according to God’s Plan and Permission. For in the End, the good will be overwhelmed by wickedness and endure every kind of death; the Truth will be obscured by the Darkness of Error; the beauty of God’s Creation and of man’s true art will be cast out and Ugliness will be enthroned in her place. The coherence of each in the unity of the whole will be fractured and split, torn apart and shredded, as God permits Satan to winnow and flail Christ’s Mystical Body and His Spouse, the Church. All this will take place in the Church herself, for she will be killed, even as her Spouse, the Lamb without spot that was slain, and she will disappear from the world for a little while, until He comes to deliver her and raise her up glorified with Himself.

It was Cainan, too, who instituted the custom of the Jubilee or Holy Year to be celebrated with special prayers and praises of God every seventh or sabbatical year in honor of the Seventh Day of Creation Week, the Seventh Day having been kept sacred from the very beginning. Enos composed hymns to God praising Him in a special way for each of His beautiful creatures, such as the Light of the First Day with its hidden colors that only the Angels behold – though in the Last Days of the World, men will see and use these hidden colors by Satan’s power and give glory to Lucifer thereby. Enos composed hymns in praise of the mighty waters of the earth and of those above the firmament; of the sun, giving both heat and light; the sweeter, gentler light of the moon by night, and of the stars; thanking Him for the pure air, the gentle breezes; for the great trees and the tender lowly grasses; for the rivers and seas; for the beautiful birds, reflections of angelic flight; and all the fishes; for the cattle, the sheep, and every fierce and gentle four-footed beast. These hymns were carefully written down by Adam on the best of his parchments, to be preserved and handed down from generation to generation in the Sethite Line of Promise. I believe they might also have come down even to holy King David, for many of our Psalms remind me of the hymns of Enos.

Adam wrote many books on all the different subjects of Grace and of Nature in which the Angels had so abundantly instructed him. Noah received all of them and took them with him into the Ark, along with the other more precious records of the Creation, of the Fall, and of the Promised Redeemer.

Nor were the sons of Adam lacking in the arts of memory. For not everyone in those days knew writing, as neither does everyone now. But writing was a carefully cultivated art by those whom God chose for this purpose.

Cainan’s son Malaleel was another great lover and composer of song and poetry, These good and holy men, sending sweet sounds to Heaven in their ardent worship of God prevented the world from being overwhelmed by the noisy tumult and wickedness of the Cainites. As long as the sacrifices and pure worship of the sons of Seth ascended to Heaven, the world was spared the consequences of God’s displeasure with the other sons of Adam.

Malaleel’s son Jared, a pious but somewhat timid man, did not remonstrate strongly with his children, did not warn them as sternly as had Cainan, and it was during his time that the sons of

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Seth began to look with desire upon the daughters of the Cainites and to take them in marriage. They ended by accepting many of the Cainite customs, especially of food and drink. While they succeeded in converting some of the Cainites to the pure worship of God and to holy living worthy of God’s creatures, their own worship, which they preserved, became tainted by the impurity of their lives. This made them careless and insensitive, and they allowed all sorts of impious liberties in the sight of God until they utterly corrupted and finally lost the true and perfect worship handed down from Adam. The same thing will happen in the Last Days of the World. The purity of the Divine Sacrifice of the Mass, the public worship of Holy Church, will become so intermingled with merely human and worldly elements as to become unrecognizable. Losing its purity in this way, it also loses its efficacy and men cease to receive the plenitude of Divine Grace which they need. Thus gradually the worship itself is neglected and the Abomination of Desolation enters into the Holy Places. And so, too, these wayward sons of Seth in Jared’s time became impossible to distinguish in behavior and appearance, in custom and in thinking, from the Cainites themselves, while their worship degenerated into a form of public entertainment, sacrilege and blasphemy! God, furthermore, became an abstraction to them, a name without personal meaning, and so they deified themselves, calling this new god – Humanity! God alone is able to reveal Himself as He is -- Three Divine Persons in One Divine Nature. These Persons of God are especially close to us because He took on our human nature -- the Incarnate Word, Who suffered and died on the Cross for our sins. We must never forget Him!

The Sethites were so unused to a diet heavy with strong meat and drink that their bodies responded with strange excesses and many of their offspring grew to extremely large sizes. They became monstrous giants such as the world has never seen again in such numbers, nor ever will, for in the Last Days of the World, while men will become monsters of iniquity, chiefly by means of their indifference and ignorance of God, they will become all alike as to size and general appearance due to a mingling of nations and peoples which before were different both in color and frame.

The giants of the mingled Sethite-Cainite lines took great pride in their increased size and pursued works of prowess and daring to develop their bodies to still greater proportions. They invented games that required skill and tremendous endurance. People came by the tens of thousands into great arenas to watch these contests and to cheer them on. The Cainites showed far more ingenuity in the variety of their sporting events than did the Romans of early Christian times, for the Romans excelled in the violence and cruelty of their games, but the Cainites combined cruelty and violence with a great deal of skill and variety in play. They even descended to games of war which were merely contests of strategy and military ingenuity, not in any way related to quarrels or differences over any cause. They thus killed one another with great skill merely for the sake of killing and winning. This is the most perverse activity to which human beings can descend, for even animals only kill one another for the necessity of food.

Only in the Sixth and Last Age of the World, and then very near the End, will the Angels again witness the people of the entire earth devote so much time and energy to the mere watching and playing of games of sport. Sport will, in fact, become a kind of Religion and the heroes of the sports will be worshipped as idols, especially by the youth of those disastrous times. It is as if they had been able to free themselves entirely from the Divine Command to Adam that he must labor in the sweat of his brow! And this for six days of the seven! But the men of the Last Days can hardly compare with the Cainite giants in strength and stamina. They resemble them only in

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the pitiable frenzy with which they seek to distract their minds from the meaning and purpose of life, for those games do not refresh or elevate the spirit of man but rather exhaust him to the point of boredom and emptiness. In the Last Days, as amongst the Cainites, men will have so little real physical work to do, on account of the inventions of Tubalcain, that they will expend their bodily energies in activities carried out in a spirit of self-worship and pride of life. Today we labor for the necessities of food, clothing, and shelter, and when evening comes, we lie down to rest in peace with God and man. But it was not so with the Cainites, nor will it be so in the Last Days, Oh, my Father, they are much to be pitied!

Then God raised up Henoch, Jared’s son of the Line of Promise, as a counter- balance of sanctity against Cain’s son of the same name, Enoch, builder of cities. Sethite Enoch received from God a special mission to preach to the Cainites and to warn them of a coming Chastisement. He was a remarkable man, a great contemplative. The Angels talked with this man more than with any other person except for Adam himself. He seemed like a man on fire with love for God and zeal for God’s holiness and rights over His creatures. He spent most of his days and nights on the Mount of Eden worshipping within sight of the Tree of Life and the Fiery Cherubim. But three times during his life he journeyed through the main cities of the Cainites. His appearance was so strikingly different from theirs, as was his whole manner of life, that many heard him out of amazement. He preached to them of the Creator they had forgotten. He recalled to them their duties of worship and sacrifice. Most of those who heard him reacted violently to his message, for he threatened them with destruction if they did not heed his words. But they drove him out and almost killed him as later happened to Saint Paul. A few heeded him for awhile, but you cannot imagine the frenetic pace of their lives. They were in a constant motion of excitement with one form of diversion or another, and even when they were at rest, bodily, they had to be entertained by their delirious music or erotic moving pictures. They seemed to have lost all power of interior reflection. They were totally filled with the pleasures of the senses which could never be satisfied. For these reasons, they never had time to think about the things Enoch told them. They used up so much time coming and going and in every kind of sensual pleasure that they became quite incapable of quiet and peace of soul. And therefore, God’s Grace could not reach them, for Grace can work in souls only when there is some quietude of mind. So it will be again in the Last Days when Enoch will return with Elias to preach once more to the poor deluded souls of this world.

Enoch fasted, suffered, and prayed so intensely for the Cainites that after his third journey he could do no more. He retired to his place on Mount Eden.

Early in his life he had married – as all men did in those days, for they were under God’s command – and he had begotten a son, Mathusala, whose name means “Death by Water”. A man of deep and constant prayer from his youth, Enoch was early in life enlightened by God concerning the nature of the Chastisement God was preparing for the world. When his son was born, Enoch gave him this name as a warning to all, for he knew that Mathusala would live until the Deluge came.

Enoch’s wife realized that her husband’s vocation was unusual, and so, after the birth of their son, she went to live with her sisters while Enoch returned to his place alone on the Mount of Eden. The boy Mathusala grew up in the reverence and awe of his father’s exalted calling. He became his father’s constant attendant and wished to accompany Enoch on his journeys to the

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Cainite cities. But he was not permitted to do so. Instead, he was told to remain on Mount Eden and keep the Sacrificial Fires burning at all times.

Mathusala was in his 300th year when Enoch, after his third journey to the Cainites, returned home completely exhausted. He took up his regular life of prayer again and seemed to revive greatly, so that Mathusala rejoiced. But one day, in his 365 th year, as he was rapt in contemplation before the Sacrifice of a new lamb being consumed by flames, Mathusala saw God in His indescribably beautiful and awesome Three-fold Form, descend to the altar and gather Enoch to His Bosom. Mathusala expected to see his father again when the Vision and the rapture were over. But he never did, for God took him.

When Enoch was translated, Adam and Eve had been dead for 52 years. Our first parents were notable amongst all their descendants for the simplicity and frugality of their lives. As time wore on and Adam saw his lands cared for by his sons, he and Eve gave themselves more and more to prayer and contemplation of the great Truths of Faith which they were to transmit to all their children.

After many, many years of reflection upon God’s Revelations to him of the Creation and the promised Redemption, Adam made a Book of the Heavens wherein he described all the figures of the starry constellations with their prophetic meanings in such wise that the main events and Persons of the Incarnation and Redemption were kept before the eyes of men through the centuries.

Men have always loved to study and contemplate the starry heavens, and long before our Lord’s blessed Advent, Satan and his demons insinuated their lies into these heavenly stories of our salvation handed down from Adam, and so corrupted them as to cause themselves to be worshipped as gods in place of our Divine Redeemer and His Holy Mother. In this way, much of the original Revelation given to Adam has been lost to us.

Adam also made many maps and charts for his sons as well as committing to writing the history of the Creation, of his Fall from Grace, of the Promise, of the Two Seeds forever at enmity, and the story of all his sons down to Lamech who was about fifty years old when Adam died. Noah, of course, was not yet born, but he was the only one of the Patriarchs before the Flood not yet born when Adam died.

The deaths of Adam and Eve

Even though Adam wrote down all he could of the original Revelation, the main means of transmitting the truths of Faith to future generations was by means of the human voice and the memory. These are really the most powerful means of conveying truths because they require that the listener reflect upon what he hears and choose whether to accept it or not. For this reason, too, Satan is so ingenious in finding ways to prevent men and women and children from listening quietly to the truths of Faith and reflecting upon them in their souls.

Adam talked with Enoch after Enoch’s second journey to the Cainites and encouraged him in this last attempt to draw them back to God. It was during this third journey of Enoch’s that Adam died, his heart full of sorrow and grief because of the wickedness of the children of Cain. Eve died the day after Adam, and these are the sons who attended them in their last days and hours:

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Seth, Enos, Cainan, Malaleel, Jared, Mathusala, and Lamech, Enoch only being absent on his third and last journey to the Cainites,

Both Adam and Eve died peaceful, holy deaths with aspirations of love and praise of God’s Justice and Mercy on their lips. Some few days before, with a loud voice, Adam cried out these words of God to him: “Dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return” so that all of his sons might hear and be reminded of their own dissolution, a payment required of all of us because of sin. Then Adam reminded them of the Promised Redeemer and His Blessed Mother, of the two Seeds, and the eternal enmity between them. He reminded them ever more forcibly of the extreme malice of Satan, their enemy and Adversary above and behind all others. Adam knew that the Christ, the Annointed One of God, the Promised One, would have no human father but would trace His lineage as Second Adam by way of the Line of Promise in the only way possible from the human head of the human race to the Divine Head of His Mystical Body through the sons of Adam to the Virginal Foster-Father of the Messiah and husband of Mary. Though Mary, too, was of the House of David, it is through the lineage of St. Joseph that the Line of Promise and the Tradition are handed down. The truths of Faith were preserved first of all in the hearts and memories of the sons and daughters of Adam for then, as now, very few could read or write. Faith comes by hearing, and so it has always been and will always be. Even in the Last Days of the World, when books and letters of all kinds will proliferate beyond belief, there will always be greater emphasis upon the human voice and the hearts and minds that listen.

Adam and Eve were buried next to Abel on the Mount of Eden. This was just 930 years from Creation, and the corruption of mingling with the Cainites was beginning to spread with the children of Jared. The sight of this gradual apostasy on the part of their children struck great fear into the hearts of the Patriarchs, for all of them had received warnings from God of a great Chastisement to come upon the whole earth.

Despite the sorrow and fear that Adam and Eve felt for their children, they died in great peace because God gave them the consolation of Hope and revealed to them, furthermore, something of the great Glory that would come to God in the Incarnation and Redemption to be accomplished by the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity – a Glory for God and beatitude for men that would not have come about except through the Fall. Thus does God ever bring good even out of evil for those who love Him and Satan/Lucifer is always doomed to the ultimate defeat.

Adam and Eve returned to Paradise, not the earthly one, but that blessed Paradise of the Patriarchs where they waited, deprived of the full light of Glory and the vision of God, but immensely happy in the blissful assurance of their own redemption and that of all the Faithful.

You might wonder, Oh, my Father, that Adam and Eve were not accorded a like privilege by God with that given to Enoch and later to Elias, for their love was as deep and true. But it was a difference in mission. Besides, Adam and Eve did not desire such favors, for their spirit of penitence was so deep, and so conscious did they always remain of their Sin, that they would have shrunk from such a privilege, holding themselves wholly unworthy. They are the first of the great penitent Saints, as Enoch is the first of the great fiery Prophets.

Lamech was so named by Mathusala in atonement for the life of the Cainite who had been murdered by one of his own sons just the year before the Sethite birth. Sethite Lamech was a just and pious man, preserving the memory of Adam and Eve for his son, Noah.

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Now there were five of the holy Patriarchs who saw and spoke with both Adam and Noah. These were Cainan, Malaleel, Jared, Mathusala, and Lamech, These men passed on to Noah all the precious records that Adam had made, for they knew, due to Enoch’s preaching as well as revelations made to each in prayer, that God planned to cleanse the world by water. It was mainly because of the corruption of the favored Sethites that God would punish the world, and so it has ever been and will be. God wishes His lovers to remain pure and unspotted from this world. Few are strong enough in divine love to cling to Him alone. For He only gives this Grace to those who humble themselves before Him, desiring and seeking His Will and His glory, not their own. The song in the heart of His elect is this: Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed Nomine tuo da gloriam.

Noah and the Flood

Noah was well-acquainted with these Patriarchs and their children, for he lived close to them: Cainan, Malaleel, Jared, Mathusala, and, of course, his own father, Lamech. None of these men died before Noah was l50 years old.

Noah’s special talent, which showed itself very early in his life as all true talents do, was a love for the land, for animals, and for all that had to do with farming and husbandry in general. He discovered and cultivated many new varieties of vegetables, nuts, and berries. Especially did he become renowned for the cultivation of the grape from which he made a sweet and delicate wine using wooden presses and his own secret cleansing and fermenting process. He knew that wooden presses give the wine a special goodness and he avoided as much as he could in all his work, the use of metals. Having meditated upon Adam’s visions of the tree of Life, he understood something of the Promised Redeemer’s partiality for wood. Well, Noah’s wine was very different, I can tell you, both in its taste and in its effects, from that fiery liquor made from fermented grains that the Cainites invented and loved so much.

Noah also improved the breeding of animals and methods of gardening. He was the first to construct convenient hives for bees and to build a great colony of from 100 to 300 hives, so that honey was abundant all year round. Adam was the first to devise a candle from the wax of the wild bees that he found in trees. He had had to search for some time before he found just the right fabric for the wick of his candles, for you know, my Father, that the purity of the beeswax is such that it will easily take on the impurities of an inferior wick and become spoiled. Adam made his wicks, after many trials, of the cotton plant’s blossom, a most hardy and constant material when spun into a thick thread. From Adam to our time, due to Noah’s preservation of this knowledge, the wax of bees is praised for its use in making candles for Divine Worship, not so much for the light it gives – though this is precious and often necessary – but more for what the candle teaches us about our most good and gracious God Who is the Light of our minds, the Light of the World, and a most ardent but gentle flame of consuming love in our hearts. He desires the little candles of our own lives to be like His in constancy and purity and fervent devotion. In the Last Days of the World, alas, you will see this precious Light grow very dim and finally disappear entirely. Even His most faithful lovers will come nigh to forgetting the Light of the Resurrection that will inevitably follow the darkness of Calvary. But we must not allow them to forget!

Noah invented little conveniences that made plowing easier for both man and beast. He

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constructed better coops and nests for domestic fowl. He improved the stables and stalls of horses and cattle, for he always had a concern for the comfort and cleanliness of animals. His fields were bordered with fences of aromatic shrubs and vines. He cultivated many kinds of flowers just for their beauty and for the bees to feed upon. He was the world’s first and finest horticulturist! Because of all this, and most of all because of the beneficial properties of his wine which comforted and cheered the heart, he was a joy to everyone who worked on the land. The other Patriarchs were notable for religious observance, and they toiled on the land willingly but from necessity and in a spirit of penance. Only Noah was different in this, for while he was faithful to the religious duties of public worship and devout in his private prayer, it was the contemplation of God’s handiwork in nature, in all the creatures of earth, and sea, and sky, that gave him a delight and sweet satisfaction that he found nowhere else. You can see, Oh my Father, how this talent of Noah’s perfectly suited him to weather the Great Flood with an Ark full of animals!

The holy Patriarchs and their children who remained faithful to the Revelation of God never ate the flesh – meat of animals. They grew a few fruit trees such as the fig and the date, but mostly they cultivated grains for bread, vegetables, and herbs supplementing these with nuts and berries. Noah was the first to cultivate the grape and to build vineyards of them. He made a drink of the juice that was sweet and refreshing but not at all intoxicating as was that of the Cainites who also fermented grains in addition to the grape. In these matters of food and drink as well as in Worship of God and in morals, the Patriarchs were distinguished from the Cainites who preferred to live in cities whereas the Patriarchs always remained close to the land and never moved far from the hilly regions around Mount Eden.

Well before Noah was 500 years old, he had begotten many sons and daughters who, to his great sorrow and his growing fear for their safety, did not share his love for God’s creation but hankered after the urban pleasures and excitements of the Cainites. The Sons and daughters of the other Patriarchs had also mingled with the Cainites, so that when Jared died, about 250 years before the Flood, there were only Mathusala, Lamech, and a few women-folk left on the family lands with Noah and his wife. As these latter Patriarchs witnessed the apostasy of their children, they devoted the remaining years of their lives to much prayer and penance and ceased to beget children.

Like Enoch before him, Noah was commanded by God to leave his beloved lands and to go into the Cainite cities to warn the people that the world would be destroyed in 120 more years. You will hardly believe it, Oh, my Father, but it is true that the entire world was peopled at this time, and I will give you a sketch of a map that Adam made of all the lands his children had settled. Noah traveled the world over by rivers and seas, visiting all the main ports and capital cities of each place. Some of the people became angry when he reminded them of their duties to God, the Creator. They told him he had no right to impose his views on them, for they were free men. They threatened him with death if he stayed or returned. Others tolerated his preaching but thought him insane and told him so. Still others smiled at what he said and treated him kindly, giving him food and lodging, but they did not believe him. No one did. Enoch was treated much worse because he was of a fiery nature and this aggravated people. But Noah was tolerated more kindly by many because of his sweet and gentle disposition. Thus did God appeal to the Cainites by every possible means, attempting to recall them to Himself. It will be the same in the Last Days of the World. Warnings and pleas will be no more heeded in the Last Age of the World

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than they were in the First.

Noah returned home and was content to do just as Mathusala and Lamech were doing, that is, to live a life of quiet retirement in prayer and penance. But God commanded him otherwise. At God’s word, he knew his wife again and she bore him three sons about two years apart. God made Noah understand that these three sons were chosen and specially endowed to be the fathers of all the men who would people the earth after the Great Flood. For this reason, God had concentrated in each of them certain talents that before had been more diffused throughout all men more or less equally, though Adam had possessed them all in the most eminent and excellent way. These were the spiritual gifts, the intellectual gifts, and physical gifts.

And so, about 100 years before the Flood, Sem, Ham and Japheth were born. Ham was the youngest but they are always named in this order.

These three brothers were very different in appearance and in character. Ham was dark-skinned like his mother who had been converted from the Cainites many years before. He grew to be a great husky man with a strong inclination to the same kinds of practical-artistic activities that characterized his Cainite ancestor Tubalcain. Japheth was a tall, fair-skinned, blue-eyed man, most handsome and like his father Noah, both in his external features and in his love for all creatures. His nature was studious and he loved to reflect upon the works of God. Sem most resembled Abel in his spiritual nature. He was dark, somewhat smaller and more slender than Japheth, and more fit to watch the flocks than to labor in the fields. He was the chosen Patriarch of the Great Line of Promise leading to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

About 120 years before He sent the Flood, God spoke to Noah in prayer and instructed him in the building of the Ark. It was our Divine Lord Himself, the Person of the Word, Image and Brightness of the Father, Who instructed Noah in this work, for the Ark is a Type of His Church for the salvation of all men who would be saved.

The wood of the Ark was the cedar-cypress, abundant in the forests around the Mount of Eden. It is a ruddy, aromatic and exceedingly durable wood as befits an image of Christ’ s Church. The form of the Ark was not at all like that of any ship we use today, for it was not made with a sharp prow forward to cut the waves. Rather, it was in the shape of a long box or chest with a flat bottom and a slightly slanted roof with cisterns all around to catch the rain. Shaped as it was, it was impossible for it to be capsized.

Oh, my Father, you can see how much it tells us of Holy Church and the lives of great stability and contemplation we should live within it, for, however the waves of the world rage and beat against it, the Ark remains upright and undisturbed in its position upon the waters.

Noah and his sons worked some three or four years cutting timber and hewing it into sturdy planks. His Sons did most of the labor, for Noah had to continue to grow and store food for them all. In their journeys abroad to cut and haul the cedar-cypresses, the sons of Noah sometimes encountered the Cainites, and word spread that Noah, the Prophet, and his sons were building a great boat far inland with no thought of launching it on any sea or river! As the bulk of the huge vessel took shape, some came out of curiosity to view it. They laughed at Noah and tried to dissuade him from such madness. Some of the women who attended Mathusala and Lamech left during these years to live with the Cainites, for they became persuaded of Noah’s insanity. But

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Noah induced three of them to stay and marry his sons.

Finally, he was forced to imprison them in a house where they would be isolated from the influence of the visitors, so strongly were they tempted by their Cainite sisters. Only when the Deluge struck, did they become docile. Then they wept and shrieked in terror and submitted to their husbands as good wives should.

God told Noah exactly how big to make the Ark, and I can tell you, Oh, my Father, though you may hardly believe it, that it was larger than the walled space of our Abbey, and you know that our Abbey is the largest one in the land. The Ark was six times as long as it was wide. It had three decks, each furnished with little rooms or nests according to the kind of creature that would live in it during the year of the Flood’s devastation. The rooms were all caulked with the same resinous substance that was used to cover the outside. This gum sealed the wood and protected it from water-warping and rot.

Noah planned to put all the larger animals in the lower deck, with the smaller and domestic animals on the second deck. These lowest and middle decks would also hold most of the provisions of grain, wine, oil, honey, nuts, and dried berries. Then Noah and his family lived in several rooms on the top deck with the remainder of the space for the birds. All the creeping things, such as insects, were dispersed throughout. Believe me, there was ample room for every creature!

Like God’s Universe, the Ark had three levels: heaven, earth, and under! (see Solange Hertz, Beyond Politics, p. 39 – from origins@ev1.net ).

Stairways and ramps connected the three decks at several intervals in the length of the Ark, but these were needed mainly for the one great coming-in and going-out of the Ark. Noah would make frequent visits to the members of his precious cargo, but he would always find them deep in sleep or drowsily at rest in the darkness.

You might think that the air would become intolerably foul in the Ark, but there was sufficient ventilation provided by a window that extended all around the Ark just under the roof. You might wonder if the rain would come in through this extended opening, but it did not because the rain from the opened floodgates of heaven came straight down in torrents and a parapet over the window shielded the opening. There was no wind during the forty days and forty nights of downpour.

There was not much manure in the rooms of the animals because the animals slept most of the time, but what there was composted itself with the abundance of straw, hay and wood shavings that Noah put down for bedding. This also provided a pleasant warmth. When the Flood was over and Noah began again to cultivate the earth, this bedding of the animals was most useful to him both as mulch and as fertilizer.

Now you may wonder, my Father, that it was very dark in the Ark, and so it was. This year of the Flood – for it lasted 371 days – was a night of the senses and an even darker night of the spirit for all in the Ark. And so it was intended by God to be even for the earth itself, as He purified it of the Cainite pollution and prepared it for a new beginning. But in the rooms where Noah lived, there was always a soft light when he needed it. And when he descended into the other parts of the Ark to visit the animals, that light attended and guided him. It might have been the same kind

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of light I often saw Adam use early in his life but which he abandoned later as unnecessary, or it might have been an Angel. I cannot tell you which. I can only tell you for a certainty that it was there, because I saw it. Nor is it surprising that God would provide for his own in any way they needed.

Noah’s father Lamech died mid-way through the Ark’s construction. Up to the last week of his life, he labored tirelessly side by side with his grandsons. He gave thanks to God for his son, Noah, and died in great peace. Mathusala, too, worked with the younger men and lived to see the Ark complete in every detail, prepared for the animals, and stored with an abundance of provisions. When he died, Noah knew that the time was very near.

The Patriarchs and those of their children who remained faithful to God’s Divine Revelation and the Tradition of Faith were all buried on the Mount of Eden near Abel, Adam and Eve. It was during his prayer there at the burial of Mathusala that God spoke to Noah and told him to go into the Ark. He was told exactly how many of each kind of creature to take into the Ark, more of the clean, grazing kind than the other, for the clean kind would be needed for sacrificial worship after the Flood.

When Noah descended from the Mount of Eden to the place where the Ark stood in readiness, he beheld animals and birds of every sort coming to him from all directions. Never had he seen such a concourse of creatures! Even the huge reptiles and elephants, the great bears, the gentle deer, fierce wolves, lions, and tigers, all came to him and crouched or stood docile in his presence! He selected the youngest and strongest males and females of every kind, then led them two by two up the ramp built from the one great door into the Ark, into the places prepared for each.

You may wonder, holy Father, how these irrational beasts knew to come to Noah! It is certain that they were led to him by the Angels, for I saw these bright beings hovering everywhere as the creatures streamed in from the woodlands and meadows, We do not understand, Oh, my Father, the wonderful ministry of the Angels! We are so blind to their blessed presence, so lacking in awareness of their constant service! May God forgive us our gross carnality and our ingratitude!

It took seven whole days for Noah to get each pair of animals and birds into the Ark and settled in their proper places, for he had to begin with the largest animals on the bottom deck and work up. Such a milling and lowing and grunting and bleating you can’t imagine! But they were all so obedient! None tried to escape. It seemed they knew for a certainty that their lives depended upon entering the Ark in order! And Noah was the only one who could lead them in.

This week of seven days was needed, too, to accustom the animals to their places and settle them down before the frightening sounds of the rains and the earthquakes could alarm them into a stampede. Such never happened. Even as the fountains of the great deep began to rumble and break up, the animals sensed they were in a place of safety and security and each one settled down to rest and to sleep. It was their first hibernation.

Some of the Cainites viewed this miraculous scene with laughter and taunts, accusing Noah of exercising magical powers of sorcery over the animals. And when Noah and his family finally entered the Ark on the evening of the seventh day, they jeered him on and waved him goodbye in utter derision! Noah turned and gave them all a pitying look. If any had wished to enter the Ark with him at that moment, he would gladly have taken them. But no sooner had Noah turned his

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back and gone in than the great door was closed from the outside by an Angel. Then Noah bolted it on the inside and all was secure!

The Cainites had lingered out of curiosity during the seven days, and some had camped around the Ark to see what Noah might do next by way of magic! Others had gone away and then returned. The darkness of evening alarmed none of them, and they settled themselves for the night, hoping to greet Noah in the morning with more ridicule. But a sudden roaring and cracking of indescribable magnitude over all the earth pierced their souls with terror!

My Father, you know that creation is like a vast ladder reaching from the depths of the smallest particle of matter to the heights of heaven, even to the Throne of God. What happens in one part of this hierarchical network of Being affects all the other parts. When the pollution of sin became so great, the earth itself endured such intolerable stress and strain that a great convulsion was inevitable. As the fountains of the great underground reservoirs broke through their rocky boundaries, the Angels of earth, and sea, and sky stood still and withheld their beneficent guardianship. The violence on the surface of the earth caused unusual turbulence deep in the upper air around the earth and finally began to disturb the canopy of water vapor. Clouds formed, dust from the eruptions of innumerable volcanoes was spewed skyward, and this, mingling with the mist of the canopy, caused immense torrents of rain to fall. Nor did it cease for forty days and forty nights to fall upon the earth.

Those of the Cainites who did not die of terror at the sound of the fountains of the great deep breaking open, were soon swept away by the sudden concourse of waters from below and above. In a matter of minutes, every river had risen out of its banks, and every sea had rushed up over the boundaries of its shores, completely inundating all the low-lying cities of the Cainites in a matter of hours.

Oh, yes, my Father, they tried to escape. Many died of the extreme exertion of fleeing to higher ground. Some of those who had encamped around the Ark beat with their fists on the great door. They tried to climb to its roof, but it was too high. Some fled homeward and were met by the rising waters. Others retreated towards the Mount of Eden which was the highest mountain in the world at that time. The sight of the Flaming Cherubim turning round and round the Tree of Life and guarding the Entrance to the Garden only filled them with more fear, and they never paused to wonder or reflect or call upon God. They had allowed their souls to die within them for lack of any nourishment. Now, when the sun failed to rise at dawn, and the rain beat incessantly upon their bodies in the gray light of day, they experienced such a consternation of fear and confusion that they lost all reason and darted around insanely until they dropped from exhaustion. I did not see anyone on the Mount of Eden as the waters lifted the Ark to great heights with each passing day. Thus did sudden, swift and sure destruction come upon a wicked and adulterous generation.

The Second Age of the World

What the Flood accomplished

The Mount of Eden was the highest mountain on earth before the Flood. The waters continued to rise for 150 days – five months – until the Mount of Eden was covered by over 20 feet of water. The Ark floated securely in the same vicinity.

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The Garden of Paradise is hidden until the Resurrection of the Universe, and so also is the Mount of Eden, for the entire face of the earth was changed beneath those mighty waters of the Flood. Now men must look to the Ark for salvation, the Ark of the Covenant until the Coming of the Redeemer and His Church, for Paradise, the Ark and the Temple are all but types and foreshadowings of our Holy Mother the Church. Like the most Blessed and Ever-Virgin Mary, our Mother, She alone carries and transmits the Divine Life of the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth.

With the Flood, the earth had been returned to a state similar to that of the First Day of Creation. It was completely covered with water in the dim light of a dark day. I saw the Ark riding the waves, majestic, serene, and secure, the remnant of the world safe within. But not without fear, for the great upheavals in the foundations of the earth caused walls of water to rise and recede with terrifying force, lifting the Ark high in the air and lowering it with sickening speed. By this repeated washing and rinsing of the earth, vast amounts of sediment were transported and deposited all over the world changing the earth’s appearance quite completely from what it had been before. Such a transformation was brought about to remind us of many things, but mainly of the Fall of Adam and the gracious remedies supplied by God. The Waters of Holy Baptism wash and rinse our souls of the guilt of the Original Stain we inherit from our first parents and impart to us a new life of Grace. But there is left in our nature an “old earth” full of corruption, an “old Adam” that must be purified and purged by the manifold sufferings of life, until we are brought back again to the Paradise of Perfection, even as were Adam and Eve. So the world after the Flood is no longer pristine in its purity, nor are we, even after Baptism, for the seeds of sin remain in us, as the corrupt bodies and bones of the drowned creatures remain in the earth. But you will see, Oh, my Father, what our gracious and loving Lord has provided by these means. And then as now, the Hope is greater and purer, the Faith burns more brightly, for the Grace is stronger after this Dark Night of the Flood, and the world approaches the fulfillment of the Promise. Oh, hasten on, ye ages of Time! Hurry to the Blessed Wedding Night when Divine and human nature are revealed united in the One All-Holy Person of the Word, the Saviour of the World, in the arms of His Immaculate Mother. For this time of the world is but the holy season of Advent writ large in history. From Creation to the Flood is the first part, and now, with the ending of the Flood and the first appearance of the Rainbow, we arrive at Gaudete – mid-way to His Coming in the Flesh!

But first I must tell you many more things about the accomplishments of the Flood in the world.

You must not think that those five months upon the waters of the Flood were tranquil for Noah, his family, and the animals. Far from it! Safe and secure they were, but rocked and battered and buffeted, too, by the great waves thrown up by the sinkings and risings of the earthen floor beneath them. As long as the torrents of rain continued, they could scarcely tell day from night. The dark gray of the day faded into the blackness of night almost imperceptibly. Even so, they longed each night for the dawning of that lighter sky.

Noah spent almost all of his time during the first forty days and nights attending to the animals. The rooms of the Ark had been made purposely small so that a sudden pitching of the boat on the waters would allow the least space for an animal to be thrown from side to side. So long was the Ark in proportion to its width, that the animals suffered very little on that account. But Noah’s presence comforted them greatly. What a sight it was to see him soothe with his hands and voice

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the great beasts of the wild places!

So accustomed did Noah and his family become to the constant beating of the rain on the roof of the Ark that when it stopped, after the appointed forty days and nights, it seemed to them as if a great mantle of iron had been lifted and a soft blanket of sweet silence enveloped them. How they rejoiced! How relieved they felt, freed from a great stress and strain! They ran to the little windows around to look out upon the face of the world. But the skies remained gray and overcast, and it rained intermittently for many more days. For 110 days after the torrents of rain had ceased, the Ark rode the waters and the waters continued to rise. But how blessedly quiet it was!

Oh, my Father, how like it all is to the deep and hidden purifyings and purgations and cleansings that our dear King and Love works in the stillness of those souls who love Him in and above all things! And so it was, too, before the Flood that the earth was watered and nurtured more interiorly and from within itself, by springs and mists rising from its heart. And the spiritual lives of Adam and Eve and the holy Sethites were more interior, too, depending less upon external helps. But you will see that now, after the Flood, the earth is watered no more by springs and mists from deep within but from the rains that come down from the clouds above, rising and falling in a new and different kind of rhythm. For only after the Flood began the beautiful but often painful cycle of the seasons in most of the earth’s climes. These changes of weather provide us with external helps for the disciplining of our passions and give us many occasions for the doing of that penance which is so necessary for the well-being of our souls. The King and his nobles in their great castles feel the numbing cold of winter no less than do we in the choir at Matins here in our Monastery. And so it is with all of this often so inhospitable nature that our good and gracious Lord Himself and His Most Blessed Mother endured in Their sinless bodies.

The lives of men and of nations will need now a more disciplined and strictly external pattern of liturgical regulation. At very few and brief times in the panorama of history have the interior and external parts of our human nature been in perfect harmony. Only our holy Mother the Church contains within her discipline such a harmonious way of living, and this she has offered to her children from the beginning of her liturgical life in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, her Divine Offices, and in all of her celebrations of the Divine Mysteries of our Redemption whose fastings and feastings proceed in such perfect order of remembrance and celebration, causing us to re-live them in union with our Blessed Spouse and Head. But for the perfection of this Divine Life on earth, the world had to wait for His Blessed Coming in the Flesh. How fortunate and blessed are we to live in the time of His Holy Presence in His Church and her Sacraments. Oh, what longings and forward-lookings filled the Holy Prophets and Kings of this ancient Advent time! For four long millennia they gazed ahead and begged from Heaven the Blessing of His Coming. Oh, my Father, not an Advent has passed for me here in the Monastery that I have not been filled with both a holy envy and a deep-felt pity for those ancient saints!

But even more heart-wrenching will be the times of the End. For then souls will be deprived of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. A base imitation will be allowed to take its place, and the wonderful rhythm of liturgical life and nourishment will be totally disrupted. Souls will fall into Hell like snowflakes as a result of such deprivation, so dependent are we upon these sensible helps of holy discipline. God, however, and His Mother, never abandon their true lovers.

But I have yet to tell you more of Noah and his coming out of the Ark into the world again and

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of what a different world it was.

In the early days of the Flood, I saw innumerable bodies floating on the waters. These decayed and dissolved back into their original elements. But you would be amazed to see what happened to most of the bodies of plants and animals and the great metal works of the Cainites.

Before the Flood, there were forests and gardens of unimaginable luxuriance and growth. The Flood waters uprooted, all matted together, tremendous clusters of this vegetation. All over the earth these vast masses of dislodged plant material were buried in the sediments carried by the waters. Each return of the waters with more sediment buried the vegetation deeper and left more layers of sand and mud on top. And so the remains of the plant life on earth were pressed together beneath the terrible weight of water and mud. Long seams and veins were thus formed in the earth as the plants decayed in their own inner heat. What was once soft and green became black and hard. I can see these veins all over the earth, my Father. They have been dug out by men in some parts of the world and used for fuel as we use wood. These black remains of trees make a much hotter and slower fire than does wood and manure, as we use it. But men in our part of the world have never discovered this fuel in its hiding places. In the latter days of the world, though, men will discover and highly esteem this material.

The Flood waters accomplished still more astounding transformations. Today the earth is extremely impoverished as to both plant and animal life compared to what it was before the Flood. Most of the bodies of plants and animals were matted together in the Flood waters, buried in the sediments, and compressed into veins that line the earth today in most abundant layers beneath its surface soil. Much of it is hard but much of it, too, is of a liquid consistency, lying in great pools and rivers between the rocky structures of earth’s crust, very deep beneath the surface. The bodies of myriads of animals were pressed beneath the sediments carried by the waters, and in the heat of their decay formed the dark deposits of viscous matter that men in the last days will dig out and use up with great waste and with greed for the money they can gain from them.

But what a beautiful sight it is, these black veins and the multi-colored pools and streams lining and layering the inward parts of the good earth. What an excellent and generous exchange the good God has prepared for His children!

And yet they will fail utterly to praise or thank Him for it, nor will they give Him any glory. For in those Last Days, Oh, my Father, men will not believe the words of the Holy Scriptures that tell of these things! The living Light of Divine Faith will be gone from their minds and only a dim, hard and artificial light will remain. Men will exploit and reap the material benefits that God provided in the earth as a consequence of the Flood, but all the while they will disbelieve and laugh at the Truths of the Divine Scriptures, turning them into fables.

The vast metal works of the Cainites also fell beneath the waters of the Flood and were buried in sand and mud. They dissolved back into the original elements that God created on the First Day, and there they lie in long seams and veins of rich minerals, waiting for the Time of the End when they will be mined and made again into vessels of mass destruction.*

* In these paragraphs Brother Bryan is undoubtedly seeing, by preternatural means, the worldwide deposits of coal, oil and metal ore that have not been discovered and used to any great extent until modern times. B.P.

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It is reserved for those Last Days of waning light and Faith in the horrible darkness encroaching upon them for men to use up those vast deposits of the Flood in a vain attempt to bring light and warmth into their bloody cities and frozen souls that reject and despise the Creator and Redeemer soon to be their Judge. Oh, wretched men of that last century of time. Who can enlighten your darkness and turn your perverse wills to the Truth?

Oh, my Father, forgive these outbursts! When the vision of things to come upon the world in the time of the End intrudes upon my sight, my heart is torn with anguish to behold the plight of those most miserable creatures who in their lust for pleasures of the flesh, have turned away from our most loving and gracious God.

When the Ark first grounded itself on a high rocky shelf, Noah and his family still had seven long months to live in that great boat! The waters had receded but there were vast areas of mud and swamp over a landscape stripped naked of every familiar tree and hill. Noah gazed from the Ark in stupefaction. Was this really the same earth he had tended and tilled for so long and that had borne him such abundant harvests? Was this the same land whose green beauty had so stirred his soul? He knew it would be a long time before he could begin again to farm this barren land.

I saw him catch a raven and set it loose into the skies. A week went by and the bird did not return. Noah knew it had found carrion enough to sustain itself. He could not think of disembarking into such a world!

From the heights of the mountain where the Ark rested, Noah could see for miles around. The journey down the mountain to some level plains below would be a task of great hazard, for the rocks were jagged and there was no path. From its first grounding, the Ark gave him immediate contact with the earth – something he had not felt for five months. But now they all felt the shaking and shuddering of the ground beneath them as distant earthquakes and volcanic explosions rent the earth and the air all around. These convulsions would continue to rack the earth for centuries but with lessening frequency and intensity until the time of the very End, when the earth will again be stricken as with a terrible palsy.

Oh, my Father, Noah almost despaired when he first beheld the barren earth and felt it trembling beneath him. The women shrieked and could scarcely be calmed, whilst his sons were filled with apprehension and alarm. The birds and animals began to awaken and become restless as the Ark was no longer rocked on the waves of the Flood waters but rather subjected to violent shakings from the ground beneath. Oh, what a time of superhuman patience and trust were those last seven months for Noah and his family. All complained except Noah, that noble and gentle Patriarch! He alone provided the rod and staff of confidence and serenity that they needed. He prayed constantly. Alone in his cell, he showed his troubled heart to God and begged for guidance. Very often he was aware of Angelic Presences around him. Strength and peace poured into his soul from the Heart of God and he was able to comfort and quiet the animals and provide hope for his family. The Flood was over, the transformation of the earth was almost completed, and a great labor for them would soon begin. The remaining time in the Ark must be spent in gathering inner

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strength from communion with God and in storing up patience for the tasks ahead.

Sem was his father’s constant companion during this time, wishing to attend him especially when he prayed, for he too felt the Angelic Presences.

Japheth showed studious tendencies and a great concern for the preservation of knowledge, especially the knowledge of higher things. Noah had given him charge of all the precious documents handed down from Adam and the Patriarchs. Japheth poured over the books, absorbing the information, ordering and editing what was fragmented and scattered, just as Moses would do a millennium later with these same and subsequent writings. In the Ark were all of Adam’s books, for he wrote many. He recorded for his sons and their sons all the knowledge that God and the Angels had imparted to him. The greatest part of what Adam knew of the secrets of nature – the knowledge that Tubalcain and the Cainites had excelled in using and applying for evil ends – Adam and his sons of the Sethite line never made use of at all, preferring to live in a frugal and penitential manner. But all was contained in the books of Adam.

Cham (or Ham) was an active, restless boy, very clever with his hands. He was always hammering or tinkering somewhere in the Ark, making furniture, devising objects of use or amusement. He invented many games. I saw him make little cubes of hard wood and paint dots on each of their sides, so that each side had a different number of dots. Then he would roll two of these cubes onto the floor and count the number of dots that showed on the upper sides. This game of chance I often saw him playing with Japheth, but Sem would have none of it. Cham’s talents in this way were of great value in the difficult times to come.

The women all kept together and were constantly busied in the kitchen of the Ark with grinding grain and baking bread in little stone ovens. They made the dried fruits into pies and cheese, and butter from the milk of a cow and a goat. Thus they were well able to provide a good sustaining diet for the entire family. They tended a fire at all times to keep it from going out, taking turns at this important chore. For fuel they used wood that had been stored in the Ark for this purpose, but they were also able to dry some manure for burning, too.

It was a day of great rejoicing when the sun broke through the heavy clouds and began to warm and dry the earth with its rays.

I saw Noah take a white dove and send her out into the blue skies. She returned within a few hours, for she could find no clean place to perch nor any green leaves to eat. Noah waited yet another week and sent forth this same white dove again. In the evening of that same day, she returned with a small, new leaf of the olive tree in her beak. What rejoicing there was at the sight of that little green leaf! After another seven days, Noah sent the dove forth yet once more and this time she did not return. They never saw her again. And so, Noah knew that the earth was reviving. He spent many hours scanning the horizon, studying the landscape that fell within his vision, and praying for guidance. He was reluctant to disembark, and he waited for two more long months, cautioning patience to his sons who were eager to venture forth.

Sacrifice and Covenant

Noah’s patience and docility were rewarded, for God spoke to him on the day he was to leave the Ark just as He had told him when to enter it. God spoke to him in the silence of his prayer, but

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the words were clearer and more sure than human speech.

The first thing God told all of them to do – men and animals alike – was to be fruitful and multiply. You may think that somewhat strange, my Father, but remember, all of the animals were sleeping or quiescent during the entire year of the Flood. Likewise, Noah and his sons remained apart from their wives for that entire time, for it was a time of great stress and affliction, of purifying penance.

It was no easy task to disembark the animals. It took several days and all was done in order according to a prearranged sequence. The largest animals were taken out first and, with the great elephants and lions, Noah was the first to descend the mountain and trace a path that all the rest could follow. Noah returned each day to the Ark from the plain at the foot of the mountain until all the animals were out.

It was the first spring-time season of the world. Green grass was growing everywhere in great abundance, and amongst the grasses were young bushes and the seedlings of trees. It was very important that the animals disperse as quickly as possible so they would not eat up all the young trees and plants. But they were not over-hungry after their long rest because Noah had fed them well during the final months of confinement in the Ark, foreseeing just such a situation as now obtained on the earth. What a sight it was to see the animals running and gamboling about. Soon, however, they took direction and went forth in lines as spokes from the center of a wheel. Noah watched with great satisfaction and pleasure. The animals were all in good health and spirits. A great assignment was completed.

Noah’s next task was to build a large altar here at the foot of the mountain in sight of the Ark. Even before building shelters for themselves, this must be done. The Ark was used as home until good lands were found for farming and homes built for each of the four families. So Noah began to gather stones for the construction of the altar while his sons built corals and herded sheep, goats, cattle, horses, and many kinds of fowl for their use into these yards.

From the sheep and the doves, Noah selected the best and prepared them for sacrifice. Then with his family around him, he re-instituted the Divine Worship that had been taught by God Himself to Adam and had been faithfully practiced by the Sethites. The animals were offered as victims of holocaust – totally consumed – which is the sign of the highest adoration man is capable of giving to God.

I did not see the hearts of his sons at this time, but I saw the heart of Noah, that noble, gentle Patriarch, on fire with love for God. Noah beheld in vision the long line of Promise and its blessed fulfillment in our Emmanuel, Jesus, our God and Redeemer. He saw that Sem was the one from whose descendants would come Mary, the Immaculate Mother of the Son of God, and her guardian, Saint Joseph.

The sacrifice of holocaust and the sentiments of Noah’s heart were so pleasing to God that He promised Noah the Farmer that the brown earth, the soil he loved, would never again be cursed or harmed by the direct action of God on account of men’s sins. All the harm that will be done to the earth in the latter days will be directly caused by man’s own actions, using the devices of Tubalcain. In the Last Days men will bring untold ugliness and evil into the beautiful Creation of God. They will act then from motives of hatred and greed under the direction of Lucifer, for they

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will have rejected God’s gracious guidance.

Then God warned Noah that the climate of the world was different now. No longer would there be a perpetual growing season with one species of plant resting while others bloomed and fruited, providing fruit, grain and vegetables in a constant unfailing supply. Noah had noticed a difference in the air and now God explained to him the reasons for the sharpness of the wind and the smart of the icy rain on his cheek. Now there will be seasons for planting and other seasons for growing and harvest, alternating heat and cold, winter when nothing grows. These rhythms of the earth and its atmosphere shall not be interrupted by disasters like the Great Flood but shall continue until the End. Earthquakes, floods and storms would yet afflict small localities of the earth, but never again would God destroy the entire earth with a Flood. The final holocaust was reserved for Fire.

God reminded Noah of the consequences of Adam’s sin – consequences that afflict our very bodies and drag the thoughts of our hearts away from Heaven.

Then God spoke to Noah about the animals. They had come to him without fear into the Ark and had been docile and submissive to him all during the time of the Flood. But the Flood was a time of special grace. Now it was over and the wild animals returned to their wild state. The fear that animals have for men is a sign of their subordination to human kind in the great hierarchy of creation. But now, because of the shorter seasons for growing food, God told Noah that every moving thing was to be food for him. He was to eat the flesh of the animals and birds, but he was to cook it, roast it, but not ever to eat it raw and not ever to drink the blood.

You might think that a strange prohibition, Oh, my Father, but there have been men in the world and will be again who, under the influence of Satan, will eat the raw flesh of animals and drink the blood of both animals and men in the belief that by so doing they will imbibe the spirit and power of the life that is in the blood. In this way Satan perverts the right order of things into a worship of himself and of creatures – worship that belongs to God alone.

Because man is made in the image of God, it was required of Noah by the Creator Himself that he and his descendants kill any man-eating animal. Not only that, but God commanded them to require that any man convicted of murder pay for that crime with his own life. There is only one reason for this esteem of the life of a man and that is because God made man in His own image. A crime against man is a crime against God Whose image and dear possession every man is. To allow a murderer to go unpunished by forfeiting his own life in justice, is to degrade the image of God in man. The murderer has abolished that image in his own soul. And even if he repent and regain that Image and God’s Friendship, he must pay the ultimate price in union with the Divine Victim for sin.

Three times God told Noah and his sons to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth with people.

Finally, the All-Holy Three-in-One God made a most solemn and wonderful Promise to Noah and to all of his descendants. And He enclosed this Promise in a Vision that remains to this day and even unto the End for the Elect.

Noah and his family had not seen an entirely clear or cloudless day since they entered the Ark. The winds and clouds were new and strange to them. As they knelt around the Altar in prayer, each of Noah’s sons heard God speak to him with the same words spoken to Noah. While they

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were thus in communion with God, the elements threatened rain and a storm. The sky grew dark, the wind gusted, and some drops fell. But suddenly it grew very calm and the sun shone through the clouds low in the sky near the horizon, for it was late afternoon. They all looked up and heard God say, “Behold! I set My bow in the clouds, and it shall ever be a sign between Me and every living creature that the waters shall never again become a Flood to destroy all flesh.” It was as if our good and gracious God felt pity in His heart for all His creatures that He had allowed to perish in the Flood.

But what they saw in the sky is beyond description! I have seen many rainbows in my life, Oh, my Father, but this one – the first ever – was the largest and most magnificent! It was surely caused by the natural brilliance of the sun reflected and refracted by the many raindrops in the clouds. But its arc was so great – stretching from north to south, from horizon to horizon and reaching to the zenith – and its colors were so vibrant, that I am certain the Nine Choirs of Angels aided in its formation.

The Blood of Abe1 and of all the martyrs until the end of time glowed in the red of that rainbow’s first band. The fire of Divine Love of the Seraphim could be seen in the golden yellow and deep orange of the second band that faded into the most pure white brilliance of the Thrones and Dominations shining forth the purity of all the Saints and Angels in God’s Presence. All Angels have a sheen of emerald in their robes, for green is the color of Hope here on earth and of possession of God in eternity. If comparisons could be made, one would have to say that the blue of the Mantle of Mary and of the Virtues, Models of contemplative souls, with the Violet of the Principalities and Powers, Guardians of all Priestly souls, climaxed this spectrum of heavenly beauty and reconciliation.

Throughout the whole arc, in every band of color, there were the Angels and Archangels of every human soul called to shine forth some special aspect of God’s infinite perfections as He gives it Grace to reflect Him. And above all the Angels and Saints, the Presence of Immaculate Mary shone forth eternal Redemption for Her children, for Satan’s darkness had no part in this beatific spectacle.

Noah and his family remained in contemplation of this most wondrous sign of God’s goodness and pleasure for some hours, until it faded from their sight with the setting of the sun.

Noah’s Three Sons

The earth’s first season of spring raised the spirits of Noah and he began to explore the region for a good place to farm. He and his sons went south until they found a large fertile valley between two rivers. It reminded him of Adam’s lands and so he determined to settle here. They remained some weeks in a camp to see how stable the earth was. Noah scanned the horizon for dangerous mountain peaks, for from the Ark he had seen such peaks afar off emitting fire and molten rock. But all seemed quiet around. The earth trembled now and then but nothing appeared to threaten.

So they returned to the mountain where the Ark sat grounded and began to remove everything from the great boat. The animals had made enough of a way down the mountain for a cart to be able to pass, so Noah and his sons constructed four large wagons. To each of these they

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harnessed a team of horses, and thus began the laborious work of hauling household furniture, hay, grains, seed corn and manure down into the valley.

The Flood had hollowed out many caves in the sides of the mountains and hills all around. Noah selected one of these larger caves which was situated in a direct line about one thousand yards eastward and back up the mountain from the spot where the Altar stood. Here he deposited all the books of Adam and the other Patriarchal documents. With wood and mortar and stones he made a large room for them that was dry and comfortable enough for human habitation. His intention was to return frequently to this place which God had made holy by the appearance of the Rainbow and His words of Covenant. Noah wrote all these things down in his own book, and when he died, Sem continued the history. This is the way the Book of Genesis, which is the Book of Beginnings, of Foundations, came to be composed and written. Each Patriarch wrote of those times and events in which he lived and of which he was an eye-witness, except for the first chapter of Genesis, which was written by the Finger of God Himself, just as He later wrote the Ten Commandments for Moses, on Tablets of Stone, for emphasis of their universality and eternal worth.

That first spring and summer Noah and his family were very busy planting and building. Noah set apart a large area on a hillside where the soil was too rocky for farming, and here he set out the cuttings of grapevine for a vineyard. He mulched and manured them well with the bedding of the animals from the Ark, and they thrived all that summer.

Winter came quickly. It took them all by surprise. Many of the fruits and vegetables that Noah had cultivated before the Flood could not survive the short growing season and severe winter. But in obedience to God’s command, he and his Sons began to supplement their food supply with the flesh of sheep, cattle, fowl and fish. The women learned to make a full meal for their husbands with just a small portion of meat cooked in much broth and dough like a pie. Nor did they waste any part of the animals they thus prepared. The liver of geese was found to be particularly nourishing as were the egg sacs found inside of certain fish.

But Noah’s vineyard thrived. And that second autumn after the Flood, he had enough grapes to dry for winter use, but he did not make wine. By the second spring, Ham’s wife was nursing a child. The third harvest season was especially good because Noah was discovering which kinds of grain and vegetables were best suited for the climate and the soil. He was a master husbandman! And this harvest time he made wine. He had his seasoned presses and barrels from before the Flood. That autumn he stored away four barrels of wine, one for each family.

It was in the early summer of that next year that Noah and his sons were working to clear a new field for grain. Noah stopped to rest and refresh himself. He retired to the tent that he had put up for this purpose, for the sun was hot and the season was dry. At mid-day, his wife brought him some food, whereas his sons continued working and waited until evening to eat, only pausing to drink water from a stone jug they kept nearby in the shade.

Noah’s wife had converted from the Cainite apostasy when she heard Noah preaching. She had begged to come with him to escape the iniquities of her own family. She had been a good wife until the hardships of preparing the Ark and living in it for a year overwhelmed her and her Cainite ancestry began to assert itself. She yielded to many temptations and finally lost the Faith of the Chosen Line. She became a veritable shrew. She succeeded in bringing Noah to his death,

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for he was forced to repudiate her for her licentious dancing and evident unbelief.

On this day, knowing that her husband was working strenuously and was beginning to feel the weight of his years, she went to the cellar and opened the hole in the bottom of the wine cask. She filled a jar with the sweet, purple liquid, took a good supply of meat and a little bread, and set out for the tent where Noah was resting. She found him very weary indeed, but to please her he ate and drank more than was his custom to do. He then lay down to rest. His wife returned home knowing he had eaten too heavily for his own good!

Oh, my Father, do not think that Noah committed any sin! He did not know the strength of that new wine! He had no way of knowing the difference that would be caused in the fermentation of the grape juice due to the very great changes in the composition of the soil after the Flood. But especially he did not know that his body now had an excess of the fiery humor due to the meat in his diet since the Flood. When the new and stronger wine mingled with the effects of the meat in his body, an excess of heat was produced and Noah’s sleep soon turned into a drunken stupor! In this drugged sleep, he threw off all of his clothes and lay in his tent entirely naked.

After some hours, his sons wondered that he did not return. Ham ran to the tent to see about his father. Now Ham was dark like his mother, but Noah was very fair. When Ham entered the tent and beheld his father’s body fully exposed in its whiteness, he was amazed. He stared in wonder, for he had thought all men were dark like himself. He went back to his brothers in the field and laughingly told them what he had seen. Sem and Japheth did not know what caused their father to sleep thus exposed, but they knew it was very unlike him so to offend against modesty. Sem took his cloak and he and Japheth held it out full length. Then walking backwards, so as not to see their father’s nakedness, they went into the tent and covered him.

When Noah awoke and found himself naked with Sem’s cloak spread over him, he remembered that upon first drinking it, the wine had coursed through his body like a fiery stream. The relaxation it produced was so deep that on awaking, he felt head-heavy and irritable. It was not at all the refreshment he had sought and was accustomed to experience after a rest! He knew at once it was the wine and he suspected, too, from all he knew of the Cainites, that the meat in his diet had combined with the wine to produce an excess of heat and the drunken sleep. So he reasoned rightly and so he understood the necessity for great temperance in the use of wine and meat. He called his three sons to him and explained these things to them. Then he asked them how he came to be covered with Sem’s cloak. Ham said to him: “Father, I came into the tent and found you naked, and I wondered at the whiteness of your body. I told my brothers and they came and covered you.” *

Then, in a great vision, Noah was shown the role and destiny of each of his three sons, even unto the End of Time!

* Some scholars of the modern school, very learned in the ancient languages, say that the Hebrew word for nakedness means “sexual intercourse” and thus interpret this incident in Noah's life to mean that his son Ham had intercourse with his mother, Noah's wife, who was in the tent with Noah. She was thereby impregnated with her son Canaan. Brother Bryan had no knowledge of this interpretation, though he knew that Noah's wife was not a virtuous woman, being addicted to licentious behavior, such as immodest dancing, and given, also, it would seem, to some forms of idolatry. B.P.

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Ham, in his prurient curiosity, had looked derisively upon his father’s nakedness. This revealed a lack of reverence and respect in his character, a kind of brash impetuosity. It also revealed a preoccupation with physical, external things, for he had seen only his father’s body – it had not occurred to him, as it had to Sem and Japheth, to cover his father’s unwitting shame. Noah saw these traits in Ham and saw that he would transmit them to all of his descendants. And he saw that this emphasis upon the physical was of a lower order of mind than the more spiritual and intellectual aspirations of Sem and Japheth. Because of this immodesty and irreverence, Ham brought upon himself the malediction of his father. But Noah could not curse his own son without cursing also his own flesh. Thus, the curse must fall on Canaan, Ham’s little first-born son. This child and all his descendants, were destined to be servants to their brothers, workers above all workers, slaves better than all other slaves by the excellence of their artistry in devising things to work and build with. Ham, in his progeny, was to provide for the physical welfare of his brothers, since his preference was for the external and physical things of life. The physical is the lowest in the great hierarchy of being. Therefore, Ham is the lowest, a slave and a servant. Likewise, Sem was to provide for the spiritual welfare of mankind, and Japheth for the intellectual welfare of men until the end of time.

Noah lived for 350 years after the Flood. He lived to see the terrible apostasy at Babel, in which his wife was involved, to his very great sorrow, for he had hoped to convert her permanently from her wicked tendencies.

But he was comforted that Sem remained apart from that evil design.

He saw Ham and Japheth depart to distant lands after God destroyed the unity of their one speech, because they had desired to build a city and indeed, an entire world-empire without Him, in defiance of His everlasting covenant with Noah and his family.

Noah died on the lands near Ararat, faithfully preserving and handing on to Sem the divine Revelation from Adam – the Covenants, the disciplines, and the entire Tradition of Faith.

He was a most worthy forebearer of Abraham, our Father in Faith. Abraham was born only two years after Noah died.

HERE ENDS Brother Bryan’s Book

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