In the film adaptation of The Name of the Rose, there is a darkly comedic scene in which a murder victim is found in the monastery with his legs poking out of a large jar of pig's blood. The monks immediately leap to the conclusion that the Antichrist is here and the end of the world is nigh and there is much wailing and fear. And Brother William of Baskerville, the Franciscan hero of the story, remains calm and rational. Yet, one thing is very clear, the Antichrist is present in that monastery: the murder is evidence of his presence. However, the murderer is not the Antichrist as Brother William demonstrates.
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Lots of people get into hysterics about the Antichrist and yet don't quite know who he is. Some say he's the Devil; some say he or she is a human being born in an evil reflection of Our Lord's Holy Incarnation; some even identify him as being the Emperor Nero, Martin Luther or even the Pope. This is not what St John means.
The Antichrist is not like that. What many people understand by the Antichrist is a product of artistic licence brought about by religious hysteria.
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St John is actually very clear on what Antichrist means. The clue is in the name: Antichrist means something that is "against Christ". St John says:
"Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son."
Just as the Holy Ghost inspires men to call Jesus Lord and recognise the truth of His Love through His Incarnation, so the Antichrist is the spirit which inspires us to deny the reality of Jesus. There is an important difference.
For its plan to work, the Antichrist wants you to believe that it is at least God's Equal. You know this not to be true because, as St John tells you, you know the Father. If you know the Son, then you know the Father. You know God. And one thing you know about God is that He creates everything. This includes the very spirit that will rebel against Him of its own free will. The Antichrist is created by God, but it makes itself the Antichrist by going against God. This is true of all creatures who go against God. How can it be God's Equal? There can be only one Creator.
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The only weapon of the Antichrist is lies. Lies cause doubt and confusion. Confusion causes hysteria, disruption and distrust. All of these cause a greater attention to the World with all its lusts and hatreds and distractions and, most importantly, forgetfulness of God.
When we forget God, we fall into sin. This is critical to understand. Most of us do not sin as part of some wilful desire to disobey God. Most of us sin because we have forgotten God. We sin because we have forgotten to put God first, to seek His righteousness and accept His rule. We put ourselves first with our own selfish desires to make us feel good. When we realise that we have sinned, we come scurrying back to Him in repentance. But we need to have that realisation in the first place.
The Antichrist wants us not to realise that we have sinned precisely so that we don't repent.
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Rather than looking for the Antichrist in others, we need to look for the Antichrist in ourselves. When we sin we become antichrist because we fall from Him and oppose His rule. This makes self-examination and confession all the more necessary. We must examine ourselves in the light of Christ. The painful reality is that the better we know Christ, the better we know our sins and our failings and the more agonising this becomes.
The pain of the realisation of our sins is so good for us because this is the pain of death to sin. Dying to sin is a painful business and it calls for God's strength to be with us and the Church standing with us. In the Church, we confess, turn to Christ and find true forgiveness. It hurts.
Of course, pain is not something we want in our lives and we are open to distraction from it. This is why the world is in hysteria with all its conflicting messages on television, in the news, on social media. While we are concentrating on things worldly, we are failing to look at our spiritual lives with God.
The greater the pain of realising that we sin, the greater the distraction we need and hysteria produces precisely the confusion needed to distract us. Perhaps this is why the world is so noisy at the moment.
The best way of dealing with the pain of dying to sin is to focus on the eyes of Christ Who sees all. Christ suffers pain for us upon the Cross so that the pain of our dying is given a greater meaning than we imagine. The more we focus on Him, the more bearable the pain becomes and the closer we draw to Him
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We are in pain because of what the Antichrist has done to us right from the start. Only Christ saves us and is doing so now.
Hear His words cut through the hysteria of the World and trust Him.
1 comment:
"The work of the Antichrist is our desire to see him at work" - quote from Fr William of Baskerville. Thank you for this reflection. Too much harm is done by fanaticism and obscurantism.
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