“I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels” (Rev 3:5).
Jesus is the way to our Heavenly Father. And whatever love we show Jesus, He in turn passes it on to the One who sits on the throne and loves us inexpressibly. The works we do in the Name of the Lord, no matter how small, bear witness to our love for Him and become a great treasure in heaven, “where neither moth nor rust consumes” (Mt 6:20).
Today’s phrase comes from the letter to the church of Sardis in the Book of Revelation. The Lord exhorts them to keep the doctrine that has been handed down to them and to repent.
Jesus also expects us to confess Him by word of mouth as the Son of God. With this confession we honour the Father, because the Lord Himself tells us the opposite: “He who does not honour the Son does not honour the Father”. This is especially true in times of persecution, and even more so in today’s increasingly anti-Christian times.
By confessing Jesus, we bear witness before the whole Church: the Church triumphant, the Church militant and also the Church purgative. For the demons, it is a blow because it reminds them of their defeat on the Cross. It is, therefore, a spiritual counter-attack to all their evil plans to obscure and, if possible, to extinguish the witness of Jesus.
Our sincere witness, our confession of the Son of God and our fidelity to the traditional faith of the Church, together with an intimate and trusting surrender to the Will of our Father, can demolish the demonic strongholds and thus check the power of darkness.
If we follow this path, Jesus will declare Himself in our favour before His Heavenly Father. Then he will be able to say of us: “I have manifested thy name to the men whom thou gavest me out of the world […] and they have kept thy word” (Jn 17:6).
Who would not like to hear these words when he appears before the throne of God?