By Father John Bayer, O. Cist.
Special to The Texas Catholic
I recently enjoyed a wonderful apocalyptic novel, “Lord of the World,” by the British author and priest, Robert Hugh Benson. I was excited to read this book because I learned that recent popes (such as Benedict XVI, Francis, and Leo XIV) have spoken about it as a prophetic reflection of our times.
Pope Francis, for example, mentioned it in a speech to the computer science and bionics faculty of Pázmány Péter University in Hungary on April 30, 2023. He pointed to the novel as an illustration of the contemporary temptation to achieve happiness by relying on technology to satisfy individualist desires.
The novel portrays a secular humanitarianism that eventually declares itself as a new religion, as a cult of “the Idea of man” defined by those who have seized political and cultural power. Benson realized that secularism — the effort to deny religion — is intrinsically unstable. A religious vacuum will always be filled, even if only subconsciously, since we inevitably orient ourselves by what we understand to be absolute. The human spirit moves only in relation to some magnetic north. We need to acknowledge something as most high, just to be able to reason, prioritize, and choose coherently in life. For this reason, the great sin in Scripture is not atheism but idolatry. As the psalmist says, only “the fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Ps 14:1). In other words, the greatest tragedy is not really to deny God but to misidentify him.
In “Lord of the World,” human beings worship their own “Idea” about themselves, and thus they attribute to themselves divine rights and responsibilities, including the task of eliminating all suffering and conflict. To establish through their own power the kingdom of heaven, they homogenize culture (with Esperanto as a unified language) and enact global totalitarianism. Crucially, they reject whatever would limit their authority, and thus they persecute anyone who would acknowledge the transcendent God and our responsibility to obey and wait for him.
In the novel, the secular world becomes increasingly anxious over its inability to deliver on its promise of peace. Instead of questioning its presuppositions, it only tightens its grip and tries even greater technological totalitarianism. It nervously scapegoats those who challenge its right to total control — and especially those Catholics who hold most stubbornly to the supernatural worldview that relativizes human authority. In the end, the secular world resorts to lies and genocide to eradicate faith in the name of peace.
In this respect, the novel offers a tremendous image of the Church suffering well as she waits for the true Lord of the world to return. Those who suffer well persevere calmly in prayer and prophetic insistence on the final victory of charity. Even amid the most horrific oppression, they are ready to suffer for justice’s sake rather than perpetrate injustice or succumb to anxiety. They know the arrival of the kingdom of God is in God’s hands and not their own. Our task here, therefore, is to persevere in faith and hope, so that our longing for God’s kingdom might be purified and deepened to its maximum — so that it might be made ready to delight forever in its satisfaction.
But the deceptions of violence tempt believers too. Benson describes a group of Catholics who plot a terrorist act to protest the crimes of the government. In a brilliant line, the main character — whom Benson seems to offer as a model for our own times — refers to these Catholics as “a desperate set. They have enough faith to act, but not enough to be patient.” Again, I think that is a brilliant line: A mark of true faith is patience, which is not indifference but courageous perseverance in justice no matter what happens. We should realize how easy it can be to commit injustice through impatience, simply because we find it hard to wait for God.
I highly recommend this book. It is admittedly “sensational” (as Benson himself acknowledges in his preface); but it is tremendously enlightening and inspiring for the challenges we face today. I am not surprised at all that so many popes have read it. Whether or not you pick it up for yourself, let us all constantly recall the goodness of God and remind ourselves that we are not abandoned, no matter what we face in the future.
Father John Bayer, O. Cist., is a monk at the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Dallas in Irving.
Cutline for featured image: Rare books from the collection of the Marian Library of the University of Dayton Dayton in Ohio are seen in this undated image. (OSV News/Marian Library, University of Dayton)
