Now in English: ‘The Drama of the End of Times’ by Fr. Emmanuel André, OSB (1886)

A description of biblical end-time prophecies…

Now in English:
The Drama of the End of Times
by Fr. Emmanuel André, O.S.B.

The Benedictine Abbot Emmanuel André (1826-1903) is famous in France for his spiritual and devotional writings. In a series of articles published in 1885-86, he laid out an interpretation of what is commonly believed will happen in the last stages of human history, before the Second Coming of Christ and the General Judgement.

Translated into English for the first time by Juliana Staab from the original French edition, these articles have now been published as one book by Shield of Faith Press and can be purchased directly from their web site:

• The Drama of the End of Times by Fr. Emmanuel André, O.S.B.

The English version is available both in paperback (88 pages) and as an e-book (.epub format) at the above link.

From the description at the publisher’s web site:

The Church, having to be in everything similar to Our Lord, will undergo before the end of the world a supreme test that will be a true Passion. It is the particulars of this Passion, in which the Church will show all the immensity of Her love for Her Divine Spouse, which one finds in the inspired writings of the Old Testament and of the New. We will lay these before the eyes of our readers.

An introductory note included by the editors makes clear:

The End of Times and the interpretation of the Book of Apocalypse [=Revelation] are among the most mysterious and difficult topics of Catholic doctrine. The present book is not an exposition of official Church teaching, but rather an interpretation, shared by several Catholic authors, of what the Apocalypse and other parts of the Bible say about the End of Times.

There are several different systems of interpretation of the Apocalypse received in the Church; not all consider the main object of the book to be the last days of human history.

(The Drama of the End of Times, p. 5)

It is most interesting that again and again we find in approved Catholic interpretations of the Apocalypse and the last days, the theme of the Church being persecuted (almost) to death — not, mind you, by her own Pope and hierarchy but by those who are bitterly opposed to the Church and the Pope because they hate Christ as much in His Mystical Body as they hate Him in His glorified physical Body, and no one on earth represents our Blessed Lord more than His Vicar.

We find that the Church is driven underground, that she is humiliated and greatly disfigured, that she is weakened, that her external greatness is diminished or withdrawn, that she seems at the point of extinction, etc. We even read about impostors and deceivers; but never, to the knowledge of the present writer, do we find prophesied that the Church should lose her mission, should spread heresy, should persecute her Lord, should poison her children, should become the tool of the devil, etc., or that the faithful will be required to rise up against her in order not to be led to hell by her. Rather, the Church is always found to be the victim of the anti-Christian persecution, never is she the perpetrator.

We find this corroborated also in The Drama of the End of Times. One of the many highlights of the book includes what Abbot André quotes from St. Gregory the Great’s teaching about the Church’s ultimate trial:

The Church, says the Great Pope many times, towards the end of Her pilgrimage, will be deprived of all temporal power; there will be attempts to remove every foothold upon the earth from Her.

But he goes even further, declaring that She will be stripped of the very brilliance that comes from supernatural gifts. “The power of miracles,” he says, “will be withdrawn, the grace of healing removed, prophecy will disappear, the gift of long abstinence will be diminished, the teachings of doctrine will fall silent, and miraculous wonders will cease. This is not to say that there will be nothing of all this; but all these signs will not burst forth openly and in a thousand forms as in the first ages. This will be the occasion for a wonderful discernment. In this humiliated state of the Church, the reward of the good will grow, who will attach themselves to Her purely for the sake of heavenly goods; as for the wicked, no longer seeing any temporal attraction in Her, they will have nothing to disguise, they will show themselves as they are” (Moralia V. 3, Bk. XXXIV, 7).

What a formidable statement: the teachings of doctrine will be silenced! Saint Gregory proclaims elsewhere that the Church would rather die than be silent. She will therefore speak, but Her teaching will be hindered, Her voice muffled; and many who should cry out from the rooftops will no longer dare to do so for fear of men.

And this will be the occasion of a fearsome discernment.

(The Drama of the End of Times, pp. 41-42)

For more information on Shield of Faith Press and other projects they have in preparation, please see the following interview with publisher and translator Tristan Berthelot, conducted in late 2025:

In case the above video won’t display, you can access it on YouTube here

Other very timely works that are now available in English for the first time, also published by Shield of Faith, include these:

• The Anti-Christian Conspiracy by Mgr. Henri Delassus (1910)
• Catechism of Timely Truths Opposed to Contemporary Errors by Bp. Antonio de Castro Mayer (1953)

English-speaking Catholics have reason to be grateful to Shield of Faith Press for making this little book available in our time. May it bring insight, consolation, and hope to a lot of souls trying to find their way in these difficult times.

Image source: shieldoffaith.press
License: fair use