Saturday, July 23, 2022

E. Sylvester Berry's Eucharistic Interpretation of the "Tabernacle" in Revelation 11:19

  

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)