On Sunday, January 27, 2019, St. Mary’s held a Young Adult Group. During the talk, several quotes were given about the universal expectation of the Messiah. Reference was also made to a video which presented a talk given by a seminary professor regarding how ancient cultures maintained Primitive Revelation. A link to the video and the quotes are here presented for the wider St. Mary’s Community.
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“The expression of the same universal expectation and desire is found also among the Gentiles. The Sibyls kept up the hope in the heart of the people; and in Rome itself we find the Poet Virgil repeating in one of his poems the oracles they had pronounced. ‘The last age,’ says he, ‘foretold by the Cumean Sibyl, is at hand; a new and glorious era is coming: a new race is being sent down to earth from heaven. At the birth of this Child, the iron age will cease, and one of gold will rise upon whole world…No remnants of our crimes will be left, and their removal will free the earth from its never-ending fear’ (Eclog. Iv).
“If we are unwilling to accept, as did St. Augustin and so many other holy Fathers, these Sibylline oracles as the expression of the ancient traditions–we have pagan philosophers and histories, such as Cicero, Tacitus, and Suetonius, testifying that in their times the world was in expectation of a Deliverer; that this Deliverer would come, not only from the East, but from Judea; and that a Kingdom was on the point of being established which would include the entire world” – Dom Proper Guéranger, O.S.B, The Liturgical Year Volume III – Christmas Book Two
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“Turn to pagan testimony. Tacitus, speaking for the ancient Romans, says, ‘People were generally persuaded in the faith of the ancient prophecies, that the East was to prevail, and that from Judea was to come the Master and Ruler of the world.’ Suetonius, in his account of the life of Vespasian, recounts the Roman tradition thus, ‘It was an old and constant belief throughout the East, that by indubitably certain prophecies, the Jews were to attain the highest power.’
“China had the same expectation; but because it was on the other side of the world, it believed that the great Wise Man would be born in the West. The Annals of the Celestial Empire contain the statement: ‘In the 24th year of Tchao-Wang of the dynasty of the Tcheou, on the 8th day of the 4th moon, a light appeared in the Southwest which illuminated the king’s palace. The monarch, struck by its splendor, interrogated the sages. They showed him books in which this prodigy signified the appearance of the great Saint of the West whose religion was to be introduced into their country.’
“The Greeks expected Him, for Aeschylus in his Prometheus six centuries before His coming, wrote, ‘Look not for any end, moreover, to this curse until God appears, to accept upon His Head the pangs of they own sins vicarious.’” – Fulton Sheen, Life of Christ
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“Assertion: It is historically certain that before the birth of Christ there flourished an expectation of some Mediator by whom the human race would be reconciled to God.
“A. Among many Gentile Nations
“Virgil sings a hymn to an infant who, being the son of Jove, will furnish a golden age for the entire world. ‘The final age of Sibyl’s song has come: / The great order from the wholeness of the world is born. / Already a new offspring is sent down from high heaven. / Thou, O pure Lucina [goddess of childbirth] favor the only born boy/ at whose birth a golden race will abandon arms / and a golden age will arise for all the world.’
“Tacitus and Suetonius testify to the same expectation in almost the same words:
“‘There was in many people the conviction, contained in the ancient writings of the priests, that at that very time the east would grow strong and those who departed Judea would take possession of affairs’ (Racitus. Historis V. 13)
“‘The ancient and persistent opinion in the prophecies was spread abroad the whole east that those who departed Judea would take charge of affairs’ (Suetonius, Vita Vespesiani, ch 4)
“Cicero himself (De. Divinat 1.2, c.55) records that the Sibyl had predicted that a king would be born at this time, to be acknowledge by all who desired to be saved.
“Plato hopes that the good gods soon will give us the promised and desired Lord.
“In Gaul there was found in 1822 an altar set up by the Druids on which there is the title: ‘To the Virgin who will give birth.’
“The Chinese almost at the same time, by the order of the Emperor Ming Ti, sent legates to bring back the Holy One, whom ancient traditions had announced would come from the west. Among the Americans and the Mexicans, according to the testimony of Voltaire, Volney and others, by no means obscure traces of the same expectation are found.” – J. M. Herve, Apologestics