As for what follows: “For the mystery of iniquity is already
at work, only so that he who now holds [it] back, may hold until he be taken
out of the way. And then that wicked one shall be revealed.” The sense is as
follows: The coming of the Antichrist is in trivial by means of the numerous
evils and sins with which Nero, the most impure of the Caesars, is oppressing
the world. And what he will carry out later is being partially fulfilled in him
[Nero]. It only remains for the Roman Empire, which now has all nations under
its control, to withdraw and be taken out of the way. And then the Antichrist
will come, the source of iniquity, “whom the Lord Jesus will destroy by
the breath of his mouth,” that is to say, by his divine power and by the
command of his majesty, for whom to have given the command is to have done it.
The Antichrist will be killed not by the multitude of an army, not by the
strength of soldiers, not by the assistance of angels; but immediately as soon
as [Christ] arrives. And just as darkness is put to flight by the arrival of
the sun, so “by the brightness of his coming” the Lord will destroy and
annihilate him whose works are the works of Satan. And just as the fullness of
the divinity was in Christ bodily, so in the Antichrist there will be all
forces, signs, and wonders, but all will be lies. For just as the magicians by
their own falsehoods opposed the signs that God worked through Moses, although the
rod of Moses devoured their rods, so the truth of Christ will devour the lie of
the Antichrist. But they will be seduced by his lie, those who are prepared for
destruction. Here a tacit question could be raised: Why indeed has God allowed
the Antichrist to have all this power to perform signs and wonders, to be
capable, if possible, of seducing even the elect of God? He anticipates this
question with a solution, and he resolves what could have been proposed as an
objection, before the objection is made. He will do all these things, he says,
not by his own power, but by the permission of God, on account of the Jews, so
that those who were unwilling to receive the love of the truth, namely, Christ,
since the love of God has been poured out into the hearts of the faithful, and
he himself says, “I am the truth,” of whom it is written in the Psalms: “Truth
has arisen from the earth.” Therefore, those who did not receive love and truth
in order to be saved by receiving the Savior, God will send to them not a
worker, but the very working, that is, the source of error, so that they
believe the lie: “For he is a liar, and the father of a liar.” And if indeed
the Antichrist had been born of a virgin and had come into the world first, the
Jews would have had an excuse. (Jerome, Epistle 121, in St. Jerome:
Exegetical Epistles, 2 vols. [trans. Thomas P. Scheck; The Fathers of the
Church 148; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2024],
2:228-29)