This understanding of Parousia as Christ being already present, and yet not fully as He is to be, "has been thoroughly debased, so much so that the history of eschatology is nothing less than the history of an apostasy." That apostasy occurred around the year 1000. Without going into the cause of it, the result has been that we are dealing with a Christianity "for which grace and salvation are past, and the future holds only threat and judgment." What then of this middle time? A Christian life that is boring, Christ does not live now. He lived 2000 years ago, and He will come at the end. Until then, we live in the externals and go through the motions. Ratzinger asked: "However did we arrive at that tedious and tedium-laden Christianity which we moderns observe and, indeed, know from our own experience?" How did we pass from the Maranatha (Come, Lord Jesus) to the Dies Irae (O Day of Wrath)?
 J. Ratzinger, "Eschatology," CUA (1988) 5.
 Inaugural message at the Symposium "Holiness and the World" on the founder of Opus Dei, organized by the Faculty of Theology of the Roman Atheneum of the Holy Cross, from 12 to 14 October at the Palazzo Apollinare di Roma.
 J. Ratzinger, "Dogma and Preaching," Franciscan Herald Press (1985) 72-81.
 Jn 12, 32. Consider the experience of the locution to Escriva during the Mass of August 7, 1931 in which he hears the exegesis of this verse and its bearing on the meaning of Opus Dei. Cf. J. Coverdale, "Uncommon Faith" Scepter (2002) 89-90.