Wednesday in the 34th Week Of Ordinary Time, November 25, 2020

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 fifth of the seven visions that comprise the Book of Revelation begins with the words of this reading in Chapter 15 and continues through Chapter 18.  In this vision we see the judgment of the wicked in the seven angels with the vials of the seven last plagues, and also the New Jerusalem, prepared for the just.  

“I, John, saw in heaven another sign, great and awe-inspiring: seven angels with the seven last plagues.”  The Venerable Bede and others saw these “angels” as preachers or the Church, and the “plagues” as judgments or punishments threatened upon the wicked.  The number seven, indicating universality, meant all preachers, or the whole Church.  These plagues are called “the last” either because they are the final plagues, or that they will be poured out on the last of the wicked, or that these will be the worst of the plagues.  “For through them God’s fury is accomplished.”  God does not feel anger, but that which comes from him can be experienced as anger if a person suffers from it.  Thus, a bitter man may be further embittered when someone tells him he loves him, and the embittered man experiences this as an increase in his suffering.  God’s fury is “accomplished” when the wicked are punished forever.

“Then I saw something like a sea of glass mingled with fire.”  Since John sees this vision in heaven, this would be the same sea of glass he saw in the second vision in Chapter 4: it is the crystal sphere which divides the earthly sky from the heaven of the angels and saints.  The Fathers understand this “sea” as a sign of baptism, and its “fiery” aspect is a sign of martyrdom, signified by the red color of 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.”  These are the martyrs who overcame their persecution for the sake of the Lamb of God.  In Chapter 6 they appeared under the altar which was set amongst the Persons of the Holy Trinity, and they cried out for justice.  “The beast and its image”.  John describes this “beast” in 13, 1-3: “coming up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns: and upon his horns, ten diadems: and upon his heads, names of blasphemy . . . One of its heads seemed to have a mortal wound, but its mortal wound was healed”  This beast is a travesty of the Lamb of God, which John describes as “standing, as it were slain, having seven horns and seven eyes” (Revelation 5, 6).  A second beast acted as the prophet of the first, and this beast made an image of the first which he caused to be worshipped.  Thus, a travesty of the Holy Trinity.  The first beast is the Antichrist.  It calls itself the Son of God and performs great marvels so that most of the world runs after it.  Many of the faithful will be put to death in the persecution against those who resist the beast and do not receive “the number that signified its name”, as a sign of its ownership of them.  This number is 666, which is another travesty since the number 6 is a perfect number (1+2+3=6: it is the sum of its parts).  And so this horrific, blaspheming beast takes on the disguise of something good in order to more readily attract followers and lure them to their destruction.

“They were holding God’s harps.”  The triumphant martyrs who cried to God for his grace in their sufferings and who pleaded for justice up to the time of judgment, now are prepared to sing “the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb”.  That is, the song which Moses sang after God saved Israel by destroying the Egyptian forces in the Red Sea (cf. Exodus 15, 1-19).  The Song of the Lamb may be the hymn sung in praise of the Lamb in Revelation 5, 9, or it might also be the Song of Moses, which is understood spiritually as the Lord’s song in his victory over death.  The martyrs, by sharing in Christ’s Death, as signified by their standing upon the fiery sea of glass, likewise share in his song of triumph.  “Great and wonderful are your works, Lord God almighty.”  This verse brings to mind Psalm 8, 1.  In this psalm, the psalmist is beside himself in wonder at the wonders God has wrought.  “Who will not fear you or glorify your name?”  The wicked offer no respect or glory to God and are cast into the outer darkness.  These are not mentioned in the hymn because they are not even a distant memory now.  “For you alone are holy.”  Even pretending to be God, the beast — the Antichrist — only pretended to have power, not holiness.  “All the nations will come and worship before you, for your righteous acts have been revealed.”  That is, the righteous of all the nations will do this: “And the nations shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth shall bring their glory and honor into it” (Revelation 21, 24).

St. Paul reminds us: “Life is Christ and death is gain” (Philippians 1, 21).  If we engrave these words in our hearts through faith and good works, we need not fear the empty, twisted, faked glory of the Antichrist and his minions, but rather look forward to the true glory that will be revealed when the Lord comes again.