Wednesday in the 34th Week in Ordinary Time, November 23, 2022

Revelation 15, 1-4

I, John, saw in heaven another sign, great and awe-inspiring: seven angels with the seven last plagues, for through them God’s fury is accomplished. Then I saw something like a sea of glass mingled with fire. On the sea of glass were standing those who had won the victory over the beast and its image and the number that signified its name. They were holding God’s harps, and they sang the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb: “Great and wonderful are your works, Lord God almighty. Just and true are your ways, O king of the nations. Who will not fear you, Lord, or glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All the nations will come and worship before you, for your righteous acts have been revealed.”

The Book of Revelation is  collection of seven visions received by St. John the Apostle.  In that way, it resembles the books of the Prophets, which contain their various prophecies and utterances.  Revelation, then, is a sort of anthology and the visions that make it up share the theme of the history of the Church and the end of the world.  The visions overlap and often tell of the same event from a different perspective or in a different way.  This is one of the biggest reasons people have a hard time reading it.  We tend to read a book expecting it to have a straight-forward narrative flow, and that is not how Revelation was written.  

The section of the Book of Revelation used for today’s First Reading appears in its fourth vision, which begins with chapter 12 and runs through the end of chapter 14.  It tells of the beginning of the Church, of the birth of believers in the Church, their struggle against temptation and trial, their persecution, and their overcoming the evils at the end of the world.  It is here that the events in the First Reading take place.

The “seven angels” are to inflict the last seven plagues upon the earth.  That is, in an orderly way, Creation is being dismantled.  It will be replaced by a new heaven and a new earth.  God is seen to work through angels in the dismantling.  This begs the question as to whether the angels assisted in the original ordering of Creation — not in the actual creating, but in setting what God had created into its proper place, according to his direction.  Through the work of the angels we can gain some appreciation for the power and grandeur of Almighty God.  We can understand something of the power of earthquakes and of other natural disasters.  An angel is set over various types of these disasters, giving us some notion of the power of that particular angel.  But then we have to reckon that God created and commands all these angels, and countless myriads more.  

“A sea of glass mingled with fire.”  This image is hard to form for ourselves.  The sea should probably be understood as the surface of the crystalline sphere that was thought to divide heaven from the earthly atmosphere.  Fire mixed in it might show up as a blazing glow that appears just beneath or within it.  “Those who had won the victory over the beast and its image and the number that signified its name.”  That is, the faithful who had been martyred rather than give up their faith.  In all, three particular foes threatened believers in the vision in the Book of .Revelation: the devil, in the form of a dragon; a beast summoned by the dragon; and the image made of the beast that adherents worshipped and which was brought to life.  Each of these possessed terrible powers and killed enormous numbers of believers.  In the end, they were disposed of rather quickly and without drama.  “The song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb.”  The Song of Moses sung after the Red Sea swallowed up the Egyptian chariots.  This song of triumph would befit the Lamb of God, who overcame suffering and death to rise again.  “Your righteous acts have been revealed.”  At the end, all eyes will see how God worked through human history for the salvation of the elect.  We will all see how every event in our lives makes sense and aided in our being saved.