INTER SANCTOS SORS ILLORUM

Post hæc vidi turbam magnam, quam dinumerare nemo poterat,

ex omnibus gentibus, et tribubus, et populis, et linguis.

After this, I saw a great multitude that no one could count,

from every nation, tribe, people, and language.

Rev 7:9

Gaudete autem quod nomina vestra scripta sunt in cælis.

Rejoice, rather, that your names are written in heaven.

Lk 10:20

Caesar’s Census and the Book of the Lamb

On the night the Word became flesh, the world was busy counting: Exiit edictum a Cæsare Augusto, ut describeretur universus orbis – a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that a census of the whole world should be taken (Luke 2:1). He who is the Name above every other name was, on the very first day of His life, inscribed among the figures of the Empire. The Empire did not know what it was recording; but God knew that, from that day forward, another register had been opened.

It is of this register that the Holy Church speaks to us today. In his visions on Patmos, Saint John first hears a number: centum quadraginta quatuor millia signati – one hundred and forty-four thousand sealed (Rev 7:4). Then, turning, he beholds turbam magnam, quam dinumerare nemo poterat – a great multitude that no one could count (Rev 7:9). God counts, yet He does not merely sum up; He counts by calling each by name: Qui numerat multitudinem stellarum, et omnibus eis nomina vocat – He counts the multitude of the stars and gives to them all their names (Psalm 146:4). This is why our Lord, in pointing out to His disciples the reason for their joy, did not say, «Rejoice because you are many in number», but rather: Gaudete autem quod nomina vestra scripta sunt in cælis – «Rejoice, rather, because your names are written in heaven» (Lk 10:20).

I would therefore like to focus on a single antithesis, which encapsulates the entire story: the contrast between the Name and the Number. The Name belongs to God, the Number to His adversary; and holiness, which we celebrate today, is nothing other than faithfulness to the former, in opposition to the claim of the latter.

The Number of the Beast

The Number has its own logic, and the Apocalypse describes it with precision: the Beast imposes a mark upon everyone: small and great, rich and poor, free and slave – et ne quis possit emere aut vendere, nisi qui habet characterem, aut nomen bestiæ, aut numerum nominis eius – so that no one may buy or sell unless he bears the mark, that is, the name of the Beast or the number of its name (Rev 13:17). I do not claim to interpret these numbers, yet we cannot fail to recognize a logic within them: man reduced to a number, registered and identified, with access to his daily bread made contingent upon possessing a mark. It is the logic of a world defined by cards and codes, digital identities and social credit, a world in which a person is considered to be only that which can be calculated, and therefore, controlled. The Apostle John does not say, «Be scandalized» by all this; rather, he says: Qui habet intellectum, computet numerum bestiæ – let him who has understanding calculate the number of the Beast (Rev 13:18). In other words, let him discern, and let him not allow himself to be counted or marked by the sign of the Beast.

Number, in fact, is the characteristic art of those who know neither how to create nor how to love. Everything that comes from God is unrepeatable and gratuitous: no two leaves are alike, no two faces are the same, not even the stars, for stella enim a stella differt in claritate – one star differs from another in splendor (1 Cor 15:41). The Creator knows neither molds nor imitation. The devil, having nothing of his own to offer, can only imitate and multiply grotesque counterfeits. The mark of the Beast is identical for everyone – in dextera manu sua, aut in frontibus suis – on their right hand or on their foreheads (Rev 13:16). How can one fail to recognize in this our own world of simulacra: manufactured identities, disembodied communities and disfigured bodies, artificial voices devoid of a soul? Those who live by simulacra become simulacra themselves: they lose their names and remain merely one number among many, clinging to the wretched illusion that their anonymity secures their place within the social order, protecting them from exclusion. It will not escape your notice, dear faithful, that both in civil society and within the religious sphere, we find ourselves today experiencing the very same dynamics of segregation, ostracism, and “excommunication.”

And there is yet a third register. The inhabitants of the earth worship the Beast, quorum non sunt scripta nomina in libro vitæ Agni, qui occisus est ab origine mundi, those whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb, who was slain from the foundation of the world (Rev 13:8). One is either registered by the Beast, or one is inscribed in the book of life of the Lamb.

The Name of the Saint

But the Apocalypse also speaks of another seal. On Mount Zion appears the Lamb, together with those who have His name and the name of His Father written on their foreheads (habentes nomen eius, et nomen Patris eius scriptum in frontibus suis – Rev 14:1). Two types of foreheads: one marked with a number, the other signed with a Name. And we know when our own foreheads were signed: at the baptismal font, when the priest, after asking for our name, traced the cross upon them: Accipe signum crucis tam in fronte, quam in corde – «Receive the sign of the cross, both upon your forehead and upon your heart».

The world subordinates the individuality of the person to the anonymity of the faceless masses; for this reason, it cannot tolerate the Holy Name of Jesus, knowing full well that there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12). In his account of the martyr Saint Sanctus – a deacon from Vienne who suffered during the persecution of 177 – Eusebius of Caesarea relates that when Sanctus was tormented and questioned about his name, his city, and his social status, he gave the same answer to every inquiry, in the language of Rome: Christianus sum – “I am a Christian.” (Hist. Eccl., V, 1). Here, then, is the saint: a man who, when asked by the world for his personal particulars, responds by identifying himself with the One whose Cross he bears upon his forehead.

A saint, therefore, is not a philanthropist, a pacifist, or a spokesperson for causes promoted by the world, contrary to what a notion stripped of true holiness might suggest. The Council of Trent teaches that the saints, reigning together with Christ, offer their prayers to God on behalf of mankind (Session XXV). They have preceded us into eternity, and from there – within the Communion of Saints – they continue to intercede for us, who are still pilgrims on earth. Today’s Gospel provides a portrait of them: none of the blessed are counted among the world’s “winners,” and Our Lord promises beatitude to those who are persecuted for His sake (Mt 5:11). Not for a cause, not for an ideology, but for His sake.

The temptation to be counted

The greatest danger today is not that the world may count us, but that we desire to be counted – that is, that we accept being identified not by our belonging to Our Lord, by Whom we have been redeemed, but by our inclusion in a database; not by bearing the seal of Baptism, but by having a microchip implanted under our skin; not by being recognized for our conduct as good Christians, but by being identified by surveillance cameras. In a world that erases the image of God in man, the danger is that the Christian might agree to turn into a machine, to mechanize his own actions, and so become a hybrid, losing his memory, his intellect, and his will: his memory, through the erasure of culture (“cancel culture”); his intellect, through the virtualization of reality and artificial intelligence; and his will, through the imposition, by the globalist Leviathan, of norms that are as unreasonable as they are tyrannical.

Against this threefold mutilation of man – distorting his memory, his intellect, and his will – Sacred Scripture does not leave us without an image or a model. While the Beast marks and counts, Heaven also marks and counts, and does so first: Nolite nocere terræ, et mari, neque arboribus, quoadusque signemus servos Dei nostri in frontibus eorum – do not harm the earth, nor the sea, nor the trees, until we have marked the servants of our God upon their foreheads (Rev 7:3). Before the tribulation is unleashed, it is God who imprints His own seal; and only then does John hear the number of those who are marked: one hundred and forty-four thousand. This figure, however, must not be confused with the number of the Beast. That is numerus hominis, a human number (Rev 13:18): six, six, six – an imperfection that repeats itself without ever attaining the fullness of the seventh day, the fullness of divine perfection. One hundred and forty-four thousand, by contrast – according to traditional exegesis – is the figure of fullness: twelve times twelve times one thousand, representing the totality of the chosen people gathered under the seal of their Lord. The number 6-6-6 is imposed from below upon those who suffer it at the hands of the Beast; the figure of one hundred and forty-four thousand comes from above to those who receive the seal of the Lamb. The former erases one’s name into anonymity, while the latter preserves it: indeed, those one hundred and forty-four thousand bear, written upon their foreheads, not a code, but the Name of the Lamb and the Name of His Father.

And who are these people? One of the Elders asks this of the Seer John, who humbly leaves the answer to him: Hi sunt, qui venerunt de tribulatione magna, et laverunt stolas suas, et dealbaverunt eas in sanguine Agni – these are the ones who have come out of the great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb (Rev 7:14). They do not come, therefore, from a compromise with the world, but from tribulation; they have not avoided persecution – they have passed through it. And their white robe is not the fruit of some ostentatious virtue, but rather of the Blood of Christ, drawn from the Sacraments: in the washing of Baptism, in the tribunal of Penance, and in the Chalice of the Sacrifice. For this reason, the vision of heaven reveals eos qui vicerunt bestiam, et imaginem eius, et numerum nominis eius – those who have conquered the Beast, its image, and the number of its name (Rev 15:2). They did not conquer it by force or by cunning, but in the way the Book reveals to us: ipsi vicerunt illum propter sanguinem Agni, et propter verbum testimonii sui, et non dilexerunt animas suas usque ad mortem – they conquered it by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their own lives even unto death (Rev 12:11).

Here, dearly beloved, is the model for our holiness in these eschatological times in which we live: the seal received in Baptism, kept intact; garments washed in the Blood of the Lamb and never again stained; a witness borne even unto martyrdom by those in whose mouths no lie was found (non est inventum mendacium — Rev 14:5), even as everything around us turns into a mere semblance and a deception. We are not asked to be many, nor to be powerful; we are asked to be marked, to be pure, and to be faithful. The world will demand a number from us; God calls us by name, and those who answer to their own name cannot be reduced to a number. The Beast may impose its number upon those who grant it permission; but the Beast can imprint nothing upon those who already bear the Name of the Lamb upon their foreheads. The victor shall be clothed in white garments; I will never blot his name out of the book of life, but I will acknowledge his name before my Father and before His angels (Rev 3:5). And so may it be.