The spirit of Antichrist and hatred for the Holy Name of Jesus

The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains the significance of Jesus' holy name: "Jesus means in Hebrew: 'God saves.' At the annunciation, the angel Gabriel gave him the name Jesus as his proper name, which expresses both his identity and his mission. Since God alone can forgive sins, it is God who, in Jesus his eternal Son made man, 'will save his people from their sins'. In Jesus, God recapitulates all of his history of salvation on behalf of men." (CCC, 430).  And again: "The name 'Jesus' signifies that the very name of God is present in the person of his Son, made man for the universal and definitive redemption from sins. It is the divine name that alone brings salvation, and henceforth all can invoke his name, for Jesus united himself to all men through his Incarnation, so that 'there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.'" (CCC, 432).

The Catechism continues: "Jesus' Resurrection glorifies the name of the Savior God, for from that time on it is the name of Jesus that fully manifests the supreme power of the 'name which is above every name'. The evil spirits fear his name; in his name his disciples perform miracles, for the Father grants all they ask in this name." (CCC, 434).

So important is the holy name of Jesus that Father Paul O'Sullivan writes, "God in His immense goodness gives to each of us an all-powerful word with which we can do wonders for Him, for ourselves and for the world.  That word is 'Jesus.'..."'Jesus' signifies 'God-made-man,' the Incarnation.  When the Son of God became man, He was called 'Jesus,' so that when we say, 'Jesus,' we offer Him His own Divine Son Himself; we offer Him the great Mystery of the Incarnation.  Jesus IS the ncarnation!" (The Wonders of the Holy Name, p. 32).

Saint Paul exhorts us, "All whatsoever you do in word or in work, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.." (Col. 3:17).  This is the sacred rule for Christians.  But we know, because Jesus has already warned us, that the Man of Sin, the Antichrist, will come in his own name (John 5:43), believing instead in his own greatness and spiritual power.  He will come to despise the Holy Name.  Vladimir Soloviev, in his work The Antichrist, understood that the spirit of Antichrist would become more manifest in the 21st century and describes the Man of iniquity thusly, "...he loved only himself.  He believed in God, but at the bottom of his heart unconsciously and instinctively preferred himself to Him.  He believed in the Good, but the all-seeing Eye of Eternity knew that he would bow down before the powers of evil, as soon as it had corrupted him, not by appealing to his senses, base passions or to the supreme temptation of power, but by caressing his boundless pride...At the beginning he had no hostility against Jesus.  He admitted his messianic dignity and significance, but he sincerely saw in him merely the greatest of his own predecessors; his mind, clouded by pride, could not understand Christ's moral achievement and his absolute uniqueness.  He reasoned thus: 'Christ came before me; I come second; but that which in the order of time comes later is essentially prior. I come last, at the end of history, just because I am the perfect and final savior.  The first Christ was my forerunner.  His mission was to anticipate and prepare my coming.'  With this idea in his mind the great man of the twenty-first century applied to himself all that is said in the Gospels about the second coming, understanding by it, not the return of the same Christ, but the replacement of the preliminary Christ by the final, that is, by himself."

The spirit of Antichrist, with its hatred of the Holy Name of Jesus, is growing ever stronger at the beginning of the 21st century.  Remember what happened when President Obama visited Georgetown a couple of years ago?  As this spirit continues to intensify, the project to construct a world which eliminates the God-Man while deifying and absolutizing itself will continue to expand.  The new Moloch State, with its humanitarian leader, will seek to banish the Cross of Christ and His Holy Name.

"...God is sending them a deceiving power so that they may believe the lie..."

"And now you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. But the one who restrains is to do so only for the present, until he is removed from the scene. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord (Jesus) will kill with the breath of his mouth and render powerless by the manifestation of his coming, the one whose coming springs from the power of Satan in every mighty deed and in signs and wonders that lie, and in every wicked deceit for those who are perishing because they have not accepted the love of truth so that they may be saved. Therefore, God is sending them a deceiving power so that they may believe the lie, that all who have not believed the truth but have approved wrongdoing may be condemned." (2 Thessalonians 2: 6-12).

This scriptural passage is most important. For here Paul emphasizes that the power of the Antichrist is one of seduction. Antichrist is a seducer who seeks to draw people away from the truth. He will work from within religion to seduce people to abandon traditional Christianity and to worship him. How effective will he be? Father Livio Fanzaga, commenting on The Antichrist by Vladimir Soloviev, writes, "So great is the Antichrist's power of seduction over believers - and they never realize it - that he will openly pose as the savior and restorer of religion and universal peace. He will deceive many."

But a tiny remnant will remain faithful. As Pope Paul VI said, "It is enough if only a tiny flock, no matter how small, survives." These words are sobering and should speak loudly to us. Father Fanzaga continues, "In Soloviev, the remnant is defined by recognition of Jesus Christ, 'Himself and all that comes from Him. This is their total horizon and the inexhaustible meaning of life. The tiny flock is not made up of the avant guard intelligentsia - the intellectuals and the theologians have joined the emperor. Neither are they defined in terms of a moral code. Rather they are those who refuse to serve two masters.' I tend to regard them as ordinary people, the humble and those who remain faithful." (The Wrath of God, p. 33).

Pope Benedict XVI, as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, in an essay entitled, "A Final Reflection: Soloviev's vision of eschatological unity," reminds us that: "..the Antichrist has his followers, and always even among those occupying the highest spiritual offices.....Therefore, we should already, and always, be motivated by concern lest, with big Christian words and wrapped in a cloak of Christianity, we become servants of the Antichrist, who wants to set up his kingdom in this world and to render the future kingdom of Christ redundant."