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Charles Young

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Charles is Currently Reading

Charles Young is currently reading

The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradiso

by Dante Alighieri

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(page 82 of 798)
— Jan 28, 2026 07:04AM

Jan 28, 2026 06:52AM

Charles Young is currently reading

Practical Meditations

by Anonymous

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(page 63 of 826)
— Jan 28, 2026 07:04AM

Jan 28, 2026 06:47AM

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Father Elijah: An Apocalypse (Children of the Last Days, #4)

by Michael D. O'Brien

bookshelves: currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

read in June 2024

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Charles Young said: " Preliminary review, planning to re-read after I finish Sophia House.

This is probably the best novel I have read since the first time I read the Lord of the Rings. I haven’t read a book this quickly in ages. Left Behind and many other works apocalypti Preliminary review, planning to re-read after I finish Sophia House.

This is probably the best novel I have read since the first time I read the Lord of the Rings. I haven’t read a book this quickly in ages. Left Behind and many other works apocalyptic fiction from my childhood definitely ruined novels based off John’s Revelation, but this book redeemed that genre for me. There is so, so much rich theology in this book, and it’s not the ivory-tower theology of a textbook, it’s the theology of a life lived through, and formed by wrestling with the Scriptures, meditating on the lives of the Saints and Martyrs, and steeped in the symbolism and sacramentality of the faith once for all delivered to the Saints. This book is definitely dialogue heavy, much in the way Lord of the Rings is. There’s scenes of drama and action, but the dialogue between Fr Elijah and supporting characters the dialogue is often the richest part. The prayers were really helpful for me as well, and were very thought provoking, as well as impacting some of my recent prayers as well.

I’ve seen some reviews that weren’t as thrilled with the book because it lacked some of the suspense and action they were expecting. It definitely has those themes, secret messages, hidden meetings in Roman Crypts, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the point of the book. From my initial reading, the main drama is Fr Elijah’s wrestling with the appearance of divine absence in light of evil.

I’ll need to process this more, and I plan to re-read it this summer because it was so, so good. After finishing it, I felt the need to grab an empty notebook and write my thoughts out from every single page and then spend a whole afternoon processing it with my Priest in the confessional. If you read it, ask the questions Father Elijah asks of himself, and I don’t think you will be the same after the fact.

The biggest thing I have been pondering after reading the book is Don Matteo’s discussion with Fr Elijah about suffering. Certainly suffering is meaningful, and we will ultimately understand all of our suffering in the resurrected life to come, but thinking about it through the lens of Don Matteo’s words, as an invitation to participate in a unique part of the sufferings of Christ, seems to make more sense of it for me.

I love this book. I want to read it every year now. May God bless Michael O’Brien.

Two books I am very grateful to have read prior to reading this:
- All Things Made New, by Stratford Caldecott. A wonderful, wonderful work dealing with the symbolism of John’s Revelation, connecting it to the Mysteries of the Rosary and the Stations of the Cross.
- Road to Assisi, by Paul Sabatier, included in the Complete Francis of Assisi, a very approachable biography to St Francis, his life, and the time that he lived. ...more "

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(page 170 of 597)
— Jun 29, 2025 09:41PM

Jul 03, 2024 04:28PM · see review

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Charles’s Quotes

“To the Author of Revelation, Christ was not one more religious leader or prophet, of the kind one finds in every religion; he was the very Logos of God. He was like a comet that strikes the earth, an event of such overwhelming force that the whole history and substance of the world was changed forever. His advent, long prepared for, implanted Eternity within Time, giving history a center and an end. Like a magnet dropped into a field of iron filings, he oriented all things to himself, for he was their maker and master.”
― Stratford Caldecott, All Things Made New: The Mysteries of the World in Christ

tags: theology

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“The Christian story is both mythological and historical. That is because it concerns the historical incarnation of the One whom all myths represent. Thoth, Hermes, Apollo, and a hundred other gods are images of the Logos or Mediator whom Christians believe was born as a human child, died on a Cross, and rose from the dead two thousand years ago. 'By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God' (1 John 4:2-3). Nor does a 'literalist' belief in historical incarnation render imagination and the use of symbolism redundant - if anything it legitimizes them.”
― Stratford Caldecott, All Things Made New: The Mysteries of the World in Christ

tags: incarnation, theology

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