Alpha & Omega: Revelation 12, Verse by Verse

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“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “the one who is and who was and who is to come, the almighty.”Revelation 1:8

God has no beginning and no end. Everything that is, he creates through his Word, our Lord Jesus Christ: “All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be” (John 1:3). But his plan for our salvation does have a beginning and an end in time, and Revelation 12 lets us see both at once.

The beginning

The plan begins at the very moment of our fall. To the serpent God says: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers” (Genesis 3:15). The Church has always heard in these words a first announcement of the Redeemer and of his mother (CCC 410–411). Isaiah carries the promise forward: “the young woman, pregnant and about to bear a son, shall name him Emmanuel” (Isaiah 7:14), the child on whose shoulder dominion rests (Isaiah 9:5–6).

In the fullness of time the promise begins to be kept, quietly, in one woman. From the first moment of her conception Mary was preserved from every stain of original sin, by a singular grace and in view of the merits of her Son (CCC 491). The enmity with the serpent that God promised in Eden begins in her. Then, at the Annunciation, heaven waits on her answer. St. Bernard, in a homily the Church reads in Advent, pleads with her on behalf of the whole human race: “Answer quickly, O Virgin” (In Praise of the Virgin Mother, Homily 4, 8–9). Her yes opens the door to the Word made flesh.

The end

The plan ends where Revelation 12 shows it: with the Woman safe in the care of God, the dragon defeated, and her children gathered home. Mary, taken body and soul into heaven, is the Mother of the Church, and she goes on caring for her Son's brothers and sisters until they too come home (CCC 963–972). What God began in her, he finishes in all of us.

That is why I read Revelation 12 before Revelation 13. The beasts and their marks are real, and this site does not look away from them. But they are not the first word of the story, and they are not the last. The first word is a woman clothed with the sun. The last is a Lamb who has conquered.

Verse by verse

Sources

• NABRE, text and notes
• Catechism of the Catholic Church 410–411, 491, 963–972
• St. Bernard of Clairvaux, In Praise of the Virgin Mother, Homily 4, 8–9, Office of Readings, December 20 (text)