“Saint of the Day” – January 1, 1965
by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
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“A Roman and Apostolic Catholic, the author of this text submits himself with filial devotion to the traditional teaching of Holy Church. However, if by an oversight anything is found in it at variance with that teaching, he immediately and categorically rejects it.”
The words “Revolution” and “Counter-Revolution” are employed here in the sense given to them by Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira in his book Revolution and Counter-Revolution, the first edition of which was published in the monthly Catolicismo, Nº 100, April 1959.
Stained glass window in the church of Saint Martin, Montmorency, France
Today is the feast of the Holy Name of Jesus [N.C.: today is celebrated on January 3], about which the Introit of the Mass says: “At the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven, on earth, and under the earth.”
What is the reason for celebrating the Holy Name of Jesus? Naturally, everything that refers to Our Lord Jesus Christ deserves our homage, our veneration, and therefore a feast day.
But why this special insistence on the Name of Jesus? Why did the great saints of the Church drive away demons with the Name of Jesus? What does the name mean here? Do we not also say “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”? When we do something very important, for example, at the beginning of Mass, the priest makes the sign of the cross; when reading a will, we say: “In the name of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I, So-and-so, make my will.”
According to the profound order of things, truncated by original sin, human language could adequately express things, giving them an appropriate name. And this name was a word that defined the innermost, most substantial, most characteristic, most intimate part of the being to which the name was applied.
Thus, as Genesis tells us, when the animals passed before Adam, he gave each one a name. And this giving of a name meant giving a definition so that, through a word, it would adequately express—through a natural relationship between the word and the thing, and not just a conventional relationship—the being to which the name was given.
So, for example, if we take the eagle… We call the eagle an eagle, but there is no necessary relationship between the word eagle and the content of the eagle, what is proper to the eagle. It is something conventional. But not in the language used by Adam. Between the word eagle, the sounds, the music of the word eagle, the structure of the word, and the reality of the eagle, there was a true and profound relationship.
Thus, the Most Holy Name of Jesus is, in a mysterious way, the very definition of what is most definitive in the adorable Person of Our Lord Jesus Christ, of what is most capable of mentioning what He is.
In this sense, the name is an image of the person, it is a symbol of the person, and the name of Jesus—of which, incidentally, the Gospel speaks at great length—is a symbol of Jesus, and a most sacred symbol which, as a symbol, has the power to draw down upon us all graces and to strike terror into the demons. And the Name of Jesus is summed up in those three initials—IHS, Jesus of the men Savior—which are placed on documents, on certain papers, and under the Cross. The Cross and the Name of Jesus are the two perfect symbols.
* The Counter-Revolution is the victory of the Name of Jesus.
Does this have anything special to do with us? Of course it does. The Name of Jesus, being the word that indicates his glory, is the manifestation of his glory. And we want the glorification of the Name of Jesus, we want the glorification of the Name of Mary. One of the banners that will be raised at the dawn of the Kingdom of Mary will certainly be a banner gloriously painted with the Name of Jesus, and another gloriously painted with the Name of Mary.
Speaking of the name, what does the Church want when it glorifies the Name of Jesus? It wants Jesus to be honored, it wants the Name of Jesus to be above all things and everything to be subject to it; it wants a sacred order, it wants an order based on Faith, on the one true Faith, which is the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Faith; it wants an order that has nothing secular, that has nothing revolutionary or egalitarian, and the feast of the Name of Jesus is one of the many feasts of sacredness, hierarchy, and Christian civilization.
These are the thoughts that should encourage us tomorrow, and what we must ask for is that the Name of Jesus be surrounded by all glory. That is to say: that Jesus be known, that He be adored, that He be venerated by all men, and that the things that conform to Him be venerated. May the Gnostic and egalitarian Revolution be crushed and may the Counter-Revolution triumph, because the Counter-Revolution is the very victory of the Name of Jesus.