The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: the First Epistle of S. John
And Didymus says, “ Whosoever despises all things will be above the world. For righteousness endureth for ever, for it is so written.” See also Prov. x. 25. The old Philosophers had some shadowy notion of this. See Seneca, Ep . lix.
My little children, this is the last hour. The time is now at hand for the coming of Antichrist, as ye have often heard. Many antichrists have already come, which is a sign that the world is waxing old, and that your life in it cannot be long. Tear your mind away from the world, its vain and perishing pleasures, fix it entirely on heavenly and eternal things, and on God Himself (see Rom. xiii. 11). And be also on your strict guard against all heretics and impostors. For this, says Œcumenius and Didymus very properly, leads every one to think about his own end as if his own last hour were at hand, and thus sobriety and purity of living prevail among Christians.
By the last hour is meant the last age of the world. See S. Augustine, Ep. lxxx. to Hesychius . It is the last age in regard to the duration of the world and its division into the three parts of the law of Nature, the law of Moses, and the law of grace, after which no other law or state is to be looked for, as the Jews still expect their Messiah.
Œcumenius (after S. Chrysostom) adds it may mean the ‘worst’ age, as we say of a sick man that he is in extremis . And so too Ribera (in Heb. ix. num . cxiii. seq.) says, that it is the time of impostors and heretics. This exposition is most fitting and appropriate. So says the Gloss, Cajetan, Dionysius, and others.
But the word must be taken in a very wide sense. Some wrongly conjecture that as the first, under the law of nature, lasted for 2000 years, and so also the second period under the law, that it will be the same under the Gospel. The early Christians considered that Nero was Antichrist, and S. Cyprian thought that the end of the world was near in his time. See Epist. lib . iv. 6 ; and so too S. Jerome, de Monog.; S. Gregory, Epist iv. 38 ; and Lactantius, lib. vii. cap. 25. See notes on Rev. xx.
The word ‘hour’ is used indefinitely. The phrase was familiar to S. John, who called the period an ‘hour,’ because it was very short. But in classic authors it signifies a period of time of any length, a season, e.g., as well as the hour of the day. See Is. xxxviii. 8.
Morally . Hence learn the shortness of life. For if this age of the world is only an hour, what a very small part of it is the life of any one ! We are all creatures of an hour. The old have but a part of an hour to live ; the young hope for a whole hour, but yet are cut off in its very beginning. As S. Jerome says, “ A youth may die soon, an old man cannot live very long.”
This word then warns us to be very diligent in employing the time which is allotted us. Suppose a physician or a judge were to tell you to prepare to die — “ you will certainly die an hour hence,” how anxiously would you clear your conscience, what acts of contrition and charity would you exercise, how would you expend all your goods in good works. Do the same now, for your life is but an hour. Or again, you are afflicted, are sick, are calumniated. Wait a while. It is but for an hour, and after that you pass to a blessed eternity. See 1 Cor. L 29. Melania, a very wealthy noble lady, persuaded her people, by this text of S. John, to sell all they had, and to go to the Holy Land. For she used frequently to say (as indeed she thought) that the world was about to perish. She went to Jerusalem, and died forty days after, and the Barbarians laid waste the city. This took place under Alaric, A.D. 410.
S. Basil (Moral. Reg. lxxx. cap. 21) says, “It is the duty of a Christian to watch every day and hour, and to be thus ready for that perfection by which he can please God, as knowing that the Lord will come at an hour he expects not.”
Antichrist cometh . See on this the notes on 2 Thess. ii. 7.
Even now are there many antichrists . Those who are against Christ and true forerunners of Antichrist, because they impugn, equally with the faith, the Church, the sacraments of Christ, nay His very nature and person. As Ebion, Cerinthus, &c., and their followers, of whom S. Paul says “ the mystery of iniquity is already working ” (2 Thess. ii. 7). See note on passage. Rabanus (apud S. Augustine) [vol. vi. append .] says, “Antichrist has many ministers of his malignity. For every one, layman or canon or monk, who lives not righteously, and violates the authority of his order, and speaks against that which is good, is an antichrist, a minister of Satan.” Heretics are antichrists, as S. Hilary called Constantius. See note
They went out from us, for they were not of us (either real or pretended ) Catholics ; and a heretic is one who apostatises from the faith of Christ which he once embraced, and lapses into heresy. See S. Cyprian, Epist. i. 8, and de Unit. Eccl. : “ Bitterness cannot co exist with sweetness, darkness with light, rain with clear weather, strife with peace, barrenness with fertility, drought with gushing water, storm with calm. Let no one imagine that good men can forsake the Church; the wind does not sweep away the wheat, nor does the storm throw down a tree which is firmly rooted — the chaff is blown away with the storm, and trees weakly rooted are cast down by the violence of a whirlwind,” &c. And S. Jerome says (Lib. i. in Jerem.) “ They go out in order that they may openly worship that which they used to venerate in secret.” And S. Augustine (in loc.), “Ye will understand, from the Apostle’s own exposition, that none can go away but antichrists, but that they who are not contrary to Christ can in no wise go out. For he who is not contrary to Christ abideth in His Body, and is counted a member of it.” “ They are (he adds afterwards) as evil humours, and just as the body is relieved when they are removed, so is the Church relieved when they go forth, and when the body casts them forth it says, They were not of me, they only weighed on my chest when they were within me.”
Whereby we know that it is the last time . For we see the heretics who are his forerunners, just as when we see a king’s outrider, we know that he is near, or that the dawn shows that the sun is about to rise. “Many antichrists,” as Œcumenius says, “go before the one Antichrist, and prepare for him the way.”
They were not of us , for had they been of us, no doubt they would have continued with us. They were not genuine Christians. They had not Christian virtue and constancy boldly to resist all temptations, so that when persecution came on them, they gave up the faith and became apostates, as grass is dried up by the heat of the sun. As was said of Joseph and Azarias (1 Macc. v. 62), that “they were not of the seed of those by whom deliverance was wrought in Israel.” As the Romans said of traitors that they were not Romans, or as Saul reviled Jonathan (1 Sam. xx. 30). As S. Augustine says here, “ Temptation proves that they are not of us, for when it comes they fly away as not being sound grain.” As he says of Judas (Tract. i. on John), “ He did not at that particular time become wicked when he betrayed the Lord. He was a thief even when he followed the Lord, for he followed Him with the body only, and not in heart.” And again (in loc.), “ Every one is of his own will either an antichrist, or in Christ ; either one of His members, or among the evil humours. He that changeth himself for the better is a member of the Body, but he that abideth in his wickedness is an evil humour, and when he is gone out, they who were oppressed will be relieved.”