The Woman & the Dragon

Hope

Help from the Angels, the Apostles and the Martyrs

In the struggle of Revelation 12 no one fights alone. God sends his angels, he built his Church on the apostles, and the martyrs have gone before us and won.

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“Are they not all ministering spirits sent to serve, for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?”Hebrews 1:14

When people read Revelation 12, they often feel small. A great red dragon, a war in heaven, a woman fleeing into the desert. Who are we, in all that? But look again at the chapter. The dragon is not fought by the woman alone. “Michael and his angels battled against the dragon” (Revelation 12:7). Heaven is on our side, and heaven is crowded.

On this page I want to introduce you to some of that company: the angels God sends to serve us, the apostles on whom he built his Church, and the martyrs who have already passed through the trial. They are not distant. They are friends we can call on.

The archangels

On September 29 the Church keeps the feast of the three archangels Scripture names: Michael, Gabriel and Raphael. Pope St. Gregory the Great, in a homily the Church still reads on that day, explains their names: “Michael signifieth: Who-is-like-unto-God? Gabriel, the Strength-of-God, and Raphael, the Medicine-of-God” (Homily 34 on the Gospels).

Michael is the captain of heaven's army in Revelation 12. I have written about him at length on the page for Revelation 12:7–9, together with the prayer Pope Leo XIII gave the Church to ask his help. I will only say here that his name is his whole message: no one is like God, and so no one, not even the dragon, can stand against him.

Gabriel is the messenger. He explains Daniel's visions (Daniel 8:16; 9:21). He tells Zechariah, “I am Gabriel, who stand before God” (Luke 1:19). And he is sent to a young woman in Nazareth (Luke 1:26). The strength of God, in Gabriel's hands, comes as good news. That is worth remembering when we are afraid. God's strength is not first of all a threat. It is an announcement that he is coming to save.

Raphael is the healer. In the Book of Tobit he walks beside young Tobiah on a long and dangerous journey, protects him, and brings healing to his father's blind eyes. Only at the end does he reveal himself: “I am Raphael, one of the seven angels who stand and serve before the Glory of the Lord” (Tobit 12:15). He travels with us without our knowing it. That is how the angels often work.

In my old page I also connected Raphael with the angel who stirred the water at the pool of Bethesda (John 5). I should be more careful. In the NABRE, verse 4 of that chapter, which tells of the angel, is left out of the text. The note explains that the verse is missing from all the early Greek manuscripts and the earliest versions, and that it was a popular explanation of why the water moved. The story of the healing is Scripture. The angel at the pool is an early addition, and I will not build on it.

Your guardian angel

The archangels are great. But God does not leave the rest of us to manage with whatever help is left over. Each of us has an angel of our own. The Catechism says it with St. Basil: “Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him to life” (CCC 336). The psalm says it too: “For he commands his angels with regard to you, to guard you wherever you go” (Psalm 91:11). And Jesus himself, speaking of children: “their angels in heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly Father” (Matthew 18:10).

On October 2, the memorial of the Guardian Angels, the Church reads from St. Bernard's sermons on that same Psalm 91. Bernard asks three things of us toward our angel: “Respect for their presence, thankfulness for their kindness, trust in their safe keeping.” He is practical about it: “Dare not to do in his presence what thou wouldst not dare to do in mine.” And he tells us what to do when things are hardest: “As often then as the gloom of temptation threateneth thee, or the sharpness of tribulation hangeth over thee,” call on the one who keeps you, and say, “Lord, save us, we perish.”

That is good advice for the trials Revelation describes. When temptation is heavy or sorrow is sharp, do not wait until you feel brave. Call for help. Your angel is already there. The simple prayer many of us learned as children, “Angel of God, my guardian dear,” is on the page of prayers and consecration. It is not only for children.

The apostles

St. John saw the new Jerusalem coming down from heaven, and he noticed its foundations: “The wall of the city had twelve courses of stones as its foundation, on which were inscribed the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb” (Revelation 21:14). The Church that the dragon pursues is built on these men. It will not fall, because its foundation is laid by God.

The apostles were not heroes by nature. St. John Chrysostom, in a homily the Church reads on the feast of St. Bartholomew (August 24), is almost blunt about it. They were “timid and unmanly,” fishermen and tax collectors without learning. “But the Cross wrought persuasion by means of unlearned men; yea it persuaded even the whole world” (Homily 4 on 1 Corinthians). That should give us courage. If God could win the world with them, he can keep us faithful.

St. Bartholomew is usually identified with the Nathanael of John's Gospel. When Jesus first saw him he said, “Here is a true Israelite. There is no duplicity in him” (John 1:47). That is a good prayer for days of deception: Lord, take away my duplicity. Make me simple and true. The dragon “deceived the whole world” (Revelation 12:9). An honest heart is a hard place for him to work.

From the early Church we also have a letter that bears the name of Barnabas. It was not written by the apostle, but the Church has long valued it and reads it in the Office of Readings. It begins with words that fit any hard time: “Since, therefore, the days are evil, and Satan possesses the power of this world,” we should watch ourselves and seek the Lord's ways. Then it names our allies: “Fear and patience, then, are helpers of our faith; and long-suffering and continence are things which fight on our side” (Letter of Barnabas 2). Holy fear of the Lord and patient endurance are not small virtues. In evil days they are what hold us up.

The apostles' successors still lead us. When Pope John Paul I gave his first message to the city and the world, he spoke of a dawn of hope over a troubled earth, and he said where it comes from: “Only Christ could cause this dawn of a light which will never set, because he is the ‘sun of justice’” (Urbi et Orbi, 1978). He was quoting the prophet Malachi: “for you who fear my name, the sun of justice will arise with healing in its wings” (Malachi 3:20; 4:2 in some Bibles). The Woman of Revelation 12 is clothed with the sun. The sun is Christ.

The martyrs

St. Cyprian, the bishop of Carthage, lived in a time of persecution and died a martyr in 258. In his exhortation to martyrdom, written at the request of a man named Fortunatus, he set the two sides of the trial side by side: “In persecutions, earth is shut up, but heaven is opened; Antichrist is threatening, but Christ is protecting” (Exhortation to Martyrdom 13). Writing to the Christians of Thibaris, he put it another way: “Antichrist is coming, but above him comes Christ also” (Letter 55, 7). That is the whole of Revelation 12 in one line. The dragon rages. Christ is above him.

In the same exhortation Cyprian leans on St. Paul: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us” (Romans 8:18). The martyrs believed this, and it carried them. St. John saw them afterward: “the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, and who had not worshiped the beast or its image nor had accepted its mark.” And he saw their reward: “they reigned with Christ” (Revelation 20:4).

I have written about the martyrs, from the three young men in Babylon to the saints of our own age, on the page The Courage of the Martyrs. Here I only want to say that they are not just examples. They are intercessors. They have been where we may have to go, and they know the way through.

Not alone

The dragon wants us to feel isolated: one person, alone, against something enormous. It is a lie. Around each of us stand the angels God sends. Under us lie the foundations of the apostles. Ahead of us go the martyrs, already crowned. Above all of them is Christ, who has conquered the world (John 16:33).

So ask for their help. Thank your guardian angel tonight. Ask St. Michael to defend you, St. Gabriel to bring you good news, St. Raphael to heal what is wounded in you. Ask the apostles for a faith that does not bend, and the martyrs for courage. They will not refuse you.

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