On Rev 6:1-4, Oecumenius wrote the following in his commentary on the book of Revelation:
7. That the scroll was shut and
sealed indicates that the people who were written in it were unable to speak,
and that their mouths were stopped from all pleading in their defense before
God, according to what was said earlier. The successive removal of the seals,
then, symbolizes the resumption little by little of the openness and intimacy
towards God that the Only-begotten by his incarnation made possible for us,
making amends for our faults by his own acts of reparation. We must understand
that the undoing of each seal denotes one of the works of the Lord effected for
our salvation, and of his acts against our spiritual enemies. For the Lord’s
providence for us entails the destruction of their sovereignty. (2) No one
should be surprised that before the Only-begotten became incarnate—for his
works and deeds before his visit to us are shown in the vision to the blessed
evangelist—yet the lamb is seen in the Revelation as slain. For the visions of
the prophets were regularly a prediction of what was to take place in future.
Thus a man was wrestling with Jacob, who was the type of Christ. Thus Isaiah
saw the prophetess who conceived and bore a son, whose name, too, was called
“plunder quickly, despoil sharply.” Thus Daniel saw as “a son of man” the
pre-incarnate God, the Word, coming to the “Ancient of days.” (Oecumenius, Commentary
on the Apocalypse [trans. John N. Suggit; The Fathers of the Church 112;
Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2006], 66–67)
