19.
If this verse be connected with the foregoing, it describes the intervention of
Christ to protect His Church against her enemies in the last conflict at the
end of the world. It seems better, however, to take it as a prelude to the
following chapter. It then refers to the assistance which God gives His Church
in her conflict with Satan mentioned above (vv. 2, 3), and described at length
in the following chapters.
The
ark of the testament is the Eucharistic Tabernacle in which Christ dwells with
His Church. The lightnings, voices, and earthquake (thunders, in Greek)
symbolize the preaching and warnings of the Church; her anathemas and judgments
against all heresy and schism, and the divine punishment which these sins bring
down upon those guilty of them. (E. Sylvester Berry, The Apocalypse of St.
John [Columbus, Ohio: The Catholic Church Supply House, 1921], 118)