Revelation Ch 13 (Friday of the Second Week of Advent)

…and I saw a beast coming up out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads. Each of its horns was decorated with a royal crown, and on its heads were blasphemous names. The beast I saw was like a leopard. Its feet were like a bear’s, and its mouth was like a lion’s mouth. The dragon gave it his power, throne, and great authority. One of its heads appeared to have been slain and killed, but its deadly wound was healed. So the whole earth was amazed and followed the beast. They worshipped the dragon because it had given the beast its authority. They worshipped the beast and said, “Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?”

The beast was given a mouth that spoke boastful and blasphemous things, and it was given authority to act for forty-two months. It opened its mouth to speak blasphemies against God. It blasphemed God’s name and his dwelling place (that is, those who dwell in heaven).

It was also allowed to make war on the saints and to gain victory over them. It was given authority over every tribe, people, language, and nation. All who live on earth worshipped it, all whose names hadn’t been written—from the time the earth was made—in the scroll of life of the Lamb who was slain. Whoever has ears must listen: If any are to be taken captive, then into captivity they will go. If any are to be killed by the sword, then by the sword they will be killed. This calls for endurance and faithfulness on the part of the saints.

Then I saw another beast coming up from the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it was speaking like a dragon. It exercises all the authority of the first beast in its presence. It also makes the earth and those who live in it worship the first beast, whose fatal wound was healed. It does great signs so that it even makes fire come down from heaven to earth in the presence of the people. It deceives those who live on earth by the signs that it was allowed to do in the presence of the beast. It told those who live on earth to make an image for the beast who had been wounded by the sword and yet came to life again. It was allowed to give breath to the beast’s image so that the beast’s image would even speak and cause anyone who didn’t worship the beast’s image to be put to death. It forces everyone—the small and great, the rich and poor, the free and slaves—to have a mark put on their right hand or on their forehead. It will not allow anyone to make a purchase or sell anything unless the person has the mark with the beast’s name or the number of its name. This calls for wisdom. Let the one who understands calculate the beast’s number, for it’s a human being’s number. Its number is six hundred sixty-six.

Commentary

The revolt of the kings and people of the earth against their Lord and Christ began long ago. In essence, this revolt dates from the very beginning of the Church; it did not immediately flare up into an open revolution, however, but by clever and sinuous wiles it tried to diminish, limit, usurp, and make impotent the coming of God in the flesh.…And this varied army of enemies that serves the Antichrist has succeeded in confounding and frightening humanity, in convincing it that Christ has abandoned the world and that His Kingdom, which is not of this world, will never be realized in this world. Compelled to adapt ourselves to this fact, our only recourse appears to be to diminish our goals, to accept signs as accomplishments, to resign ourselves to half-measures and incongruities, or simply to flee - in fact or in spirit, ascetically or theologically - from this world into the desert of nihilism, of indifference, and of contempt; for the world exists only to be rejected ascetically, to be relegated to fire. A question slithers like a serpent over the earth: Whose world is it, the God-Man's or the mangod's, Christ's or the Antichrist's? Is it really true that Christ came to save the world and that the prince of this world has been expelled, that we are now witnessing the "last times" and the final convulsions of Satan, who is in an agony of frenzy, for he knows that the last times have arrived for him? This blasphemous question of semifaith receives the theomachic answer of rebellion against holiness: the war of the beast and the false prophet, Gog and Magog, surrounding the camp of the saints and stamping their mark on people by seduction and terror, the mark without which "no man might buy or sell" (Rev. 13:17), without which no man can find a place for himself on earth. And the entire power of evil, heresy, and unbelief is concentrated now around this lie, which serves as the stronghold of the rebels: the world is not Christ's, but our own! (The Lamb of God)