Born in 1948, Michael O’Brien had a conversion experience at the age of 21, followed by several years of painting and writing. In 1996, Ignatius Press published Father Elijah: An Apocalypse, which became a best-seller and established O’Brien as a distinctive literary voice. Many more novels followed, including Eclipse of the Sun, Sophia House, The Father’s Tale, Theophilos, and several others, as well as works of non-fiction, and a beautiful collection of his artwork.
Now in his mid-70s, the prolific O’Brien has written yet another unique novel, By the Waters of Babylon, about the mysterious 6th-century BC prophet Ezekiel.
O’Brien recently corresponded with me about his new novel, reflecting on Scripture, a dream that led to the writing of the novel, and what 21st-century Christians can learn from an Old Testament prophet about salvation, faith, worship, sorrow, and hope.
CWR: I confess that, having led a Bible study of the Book of Ezekiel a few years ago, I had some preconceived notions about what I would read in your novel. Did you, before you began writing the novel, have any preconceived notions about the Book of Ezekiel? Of the prophet Ezekiel?
Michael O’Brien: No, none. I prayed very much for light, for the “co-creative” grace, that I might tell a story about the unknown years of Ezekiel’s life before his great visions began. As I began to write, I had only the foundation of the little we know about him. Again and again, vivid images and scenes arose in my imagination that I hadn’t intended, but it soon became apparent they were exactly right for the developing story. As it began to take form, it almost had a life of its own.
At the same time, I was highly conscious that we must never try to rewrite Sacred Scripture. I think there is plenty of room for the “baptized imagination” (as Tolkien called it) to muse on unknown elements in biblical accounts, in the desire to make the past more present to us. But, above all, the writer must be careful about remaining true to the literal, spiritual, and moral truths of the biblical accounts.
CWR: Why a novel about Ezekiel? Why not, say, Jeremiah? Or King David? What led to the writing of this particular novel?
O’Brien: I have always felt a strong natural love for the dramatic lives of King David and the prophets Elijah and Daniel, but I knew next to nothing about Ezekiel. Then came a night some years ago when I had one of the most powerful dreams of my life, in which the prophet Ezekiel appeared and I was singing to him with my whole heart and soul, calling him “my father.” I awoke, still singing, totally astonished, completely perplexed by the dream.
I’ve had ten thousand dreams in my life, all of them near-instantly forgotten when I awoke. But not this one—it’s as crystal clear to me today as it was then.
CWR: What did you think the dream meant?
O’Brien: Its meaning became clearer to me shortly after, when I heard an inner voice as I was praying before the exposed Blessed Sacrament in Adoration. The words were, “Ezekiel 9.” I had no idea what this meant, or what was in that chapter. At first I shrugged it off as probably a distraction. Then, during the weeks that followed, the words came again and again with a gentle insistence, always when I was praying. I finally opened to the chapter and discovered that it refers to the Lord sending a messenger to mark a sign on the foreheads of all those who grieve over the corruption of Israel.
CWR: If this was a grace from God, why now? How did you understand that?
O’Brien: In Ezekiel 9, the passage describes the Lord commanding that the purification of Israel must begin in the sanctuary of the Temple (Ez 9:6), then move outward to the city itself, and then spread throughout all Israel. If one reads the eighth chapter of Ezekiel, which deals with the horrendous corruption within the Temple priesthood (along with the general apostasy of the people), and is the reason for the chastisements of the ninth chapter, one sees many parallels to our own times. It is worth considering that the purification of the world prophesied by Jesus and the apostles and earlier prophets may very well begin in the sanctuary, which is the Church—unless there is widespread repentance.
CWR: You’ve written novels set in a wide range of times and places, but 6th-century BC Israel, Jerusalem, and Babylon must have provided many challenges. What were some difficulties (or opportunities!) in writing such a detailed story about such an ancient time? What sort of research was involved?
O’Brien: There was an entire world to discover. My research was a plunge into a very rich body of materials that I had not known about until I began. There were, of course, the historical, archaeological, and complex religious and cultural dimensions of Judah and Babylonia. For over two years, I also carefully read several biblical commentators, including the Church Fathers, St. Eusebius of Caesarea, Josephus the Jewish historian, St. Gregory the Great on Ezekiel, and numerous others. And, most crucially, the scriptural books of Kings and Chronicles, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Baruch.
CWR: I don’t want to give too much away for readers, but as I began reading the novel, I realized you had written a prequel to the Book of Ezekiel. Was that the plan from the start? And, in doing so, how were you providing flesh and bone, soul and spirit, to a mysterious prophet whose Book is so breathtaking, harrowing, and other-worldly?
O’Brien: Yes, it was surely my intended approach from the beginning. I wanted to avoid playing free with the Book of Ezekiel itself, and instead to ask, in fictional form, what makes a true prophet, why was this man chosen, how might God have prepared him for the great revelations that were to come?
CWR: One of the highest compliments I can give is that By the Rivers of Babylon really drew me into the mystery of Christ, the New Covenant, and the drama of salvation in so many powerful, unexpected ways. What can—or should—we Catholics learn from the Old Testament and prophets? From Ezekiel in particular?
O’Brien: The Babylonian Captivity was a catastrophic chastisement of apostate Israel. Yet, even during that 70-year desolation, the Lord sent words of consolation and hope through his prophets. Moreover, the Book of Ezekiel is rich in Christological signs of the coming of Christ and the New Covenant, which means that the Lord intended it for us as well.
For example, the Book of Revelation in the New Testament is both warning and consolation regarding coming chastisements. It builds upon several elements of the books of Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and Daniel, which are also about warning and consolation. Ezekiel, as is the case with the other prophets, calls us to stand firm, to keep faith when all hope appears to be lost. So, too, is the call in St. John’s Revelation, which promises the coming victory of Christ over all evil, yet never prevaricates about the severity of the trials we must undergo before the universal triumph.
CWR: There are certainly many themes or currents throughout, but two stand out to me: worship and idolatry. Is it correct to say your novel speaks to our age—to any age—because these are timeless realities: will we worship God or will we run after idols? How did this truth impress itself on you while writing?
O’Brien: I surely did not want the novel to be merely a trip down memory lane. I wanted it to speak to the very real problems facing us in our own times. My constant companion, so to speak, was a painful awareness that we are not immune to assimilation by paganism. Considering the neo-pagan social milieu in which we now live, a Christian is constantly dealing with the tension between fidelity to the Truth and the seductions of the spiritus mundi (as well as the spreading spiritus diabolus).
As I researched more into Babylon’s religious practices and pantheon of gods, I began to see just how depraved was its civilization. The Babylonian captivity was the direct result of Israel’s own apostasy and depraved indulgence in cultic practises such as divination and human sacrifice.
But what about our apostasy and depravity? Ancient pagan man lived in the darkness of diabolic idolatry before the coming of Christ. But we have known the light of Christ and have turned away from him to worship other gods—primarily the god of the Self—and that is a fundamentally different condition.
CWR: A worse condition, you mean?
O’Brien: Yes, vastly worse. Contemporary man does not worship Baals and Molechs and Ishtars by name or image, for the people of the once-Christian nations are educated and sophisticated, with a developed sense of style and aesthetics. We are not so primitive as the pagans and believers of old. We are even religious in a vague way, though accountable to no one but ourselves. When children are sacrificed on our altars, it is done with scientific efficiency, hygienically, with no ritual frenzy. We are not slaves, we think; we are the free!
But we must ask ourselves what we adore, what we implicitly believe is the source of our life, our security, our hope. What pleasures and idle luxuries are we dedicated to, habituated to, feeling that we cannot live without them? What truths will we sacrifice if a lie ensures our continued comfort? What ratiocinations will our minds perform in order to justify the betrayal? What evils have we subtly, subtly, come to call good, and what good do we now call evil?
CWR: By the Rivers of Babylon is filled with both much sorrow and much hope. How might readers better understand, or experience, the truth about both sorrow and hope in reading the novel?
O’Brien: All human beings suffer, but the crucial question for each of us is how we bear the sufferings that come to us. It’s my hope that this story will enflesh, so to speak, the real struggles of biblical characters, and show how they resisted the dark undertow of despair, prevailing in hope at a time when there seemed to be no hope.
CWR: Any final thoughts?
O’Brien: Though we are not now living in chains in exile, we live increasingly as strangers in our own land, a new Babylonian captivity that is not geographical but is a spreading psychological and spiritual enslavement. As we see the massing assaults against the Church from exterior enemies and betrayal from within, in the midst of an apostasy far greater than any throughout the past two millennia, the words of Jesus come to mind, “When the Son of Man returns will he find faith on earth?”
Our response should be, “Yes, Lord, you will.” And then we must live it, regardless of the cost.
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