On Tuesday of the Third Week of Easter our Church invites us to first read and reflect on a passage from the book of Revelation (8:1-13) entitled "The seven angels punish the earth". Our treasure, which follows, is from a sermon by Saint Augustine, bishop.
Saint Augustine was born at Tagaste in Africa in 354. He was unsettled and restlessly searched for the truth until he was converted to the faith in Milan and baptized by Ambrose. Returning to his homeland, he embraced an ascetic life and subsequently was elected bishop of Hippo. For thirty-four years he guided his flock, instructing it with sermons and many writings. He fought bravely against the errors of his time and explained the Faith carefully and cogently through his writings. He is also a preeminent Catholic Doctor of the Church. His writings influenced the development of western philosophy and western Christianity, and he is viewed as one of the most important Church Fathers of the Latin Church in the Patristic Period. He died in 430.
The Apocalypse, or Revelation to John, the last book of the Bible, is one of the most difficult to understand because it abounds in unfamiliar and extravagant symbolism, which at best appears unusual to the modern reader. Symbolic language, however, is one of the chief characteristics of apocalyptic literature, of which this book is an outstanding example. Such literature enjoyed wide popularity in both Jewish and Christian circles from ca. 200 B.C. to A.D. 200.
This book contains an account of visions in symbolic and allegorical language borrowed extensively from the Old Testament, especially Ezekiel, Zechariah, and Daniel. Whether or not these visions were real experiences of the author or simply literary conventions employed by him is an open question.
