deciphers this mysterious prophecy verse by verse.
In Scripture, the spiritual or allegorical sense is secondary
and must always be based on the literal sense, which is primary.
This is what St. Thomas Aquinas taught
and what the Catechism teaches today.
When we speak of the literal sense,
we are not referring only to the crude and obvious meaning of the text
but, rather, to the intention that the author wished to communicate through it,
for which it is necessary to take into account the historical context and,
in the case of the Book of Revelation, the prophetic language used,
loaded with symbols and signs taken from the Old Testament.
It is to be expected that later interpreters will see or know more than the ancient ones,
on whose shoulders they stand;
for a prophecy becomes more and more clear as it approaches its fulfillment.
Thus, it is natural that Father Castellani saw more than the ancients.
And today, standing on his shoulders, we can see...
even more.
"The Book of Revelation"
Episode II "The 7 Seals"
The Revelation of Jesus Christ,
which God gave unto him, to make known to his servants
the things which must shortly come to pass:
and signified, sending by his angel to his servant John.
After writing the letters to the seven Churches,
I looked,
and behold a door was opened in heaven...
and the first voice which I heard, as it were, of a trumpet speaking with me, said:
Come up hither, and I will shew thee the things which must be done hereafter.
And immediately I was in the spirit:
and behold there was a throne set in heaven, and upon the throne one sitting.
And round about the throne were four and twenty seats; and upon the seats, four and twenty ancients sitting,
clothed in white garments,
and on their heads were crowns of gold.
…and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne,
were four living creatures, full of eyes before and behind.
And they rested not day and night, saying:} Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, who was, and who is, and who is to come.
Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, who was, and who is, and who is to come.
John is carried away to heaven in spirit.
From eternity he will see the historical events of the world in the light of the Divine Government.
The song of the four living creatures calls Jesus Christ “the one who was, and who is, and who is to come.”
The one who was because Christ died,
the one who is because Christ rose from the dead and lives,
and the one who is to come, in reference to his Parousia.
The four living creatures, with their animal characteristics
signify God’s total domination of the universe.
Many have also seen in them the four Evangelists
The twenty-four ancients, according to the Church Fathers, are the twelve Apostles and the twelve Patriarchs.
They are the Israel of God, the representatives and Kings of the religious history of the world.
And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne,
a book written within and without, sealed with seven seals.
The seven seals, like the other septenaries of the Book of Revelation
—the Seven Churches,
the seven trumpets
and the seven plagues—
refer to the events of the history of the world viewed from different angles and aspects,
up to the second coming of Christ.
Thus, St. John, every time he approaches or arrives at the Parousia, stops,
goes back, that is, "recapitulates",
and picks up again from another, more detailed perspective of the historical causes of the Parousia.
This procedure is recurrent in John, as the interpreters have noted from the beginning,
starting with Tertullian in the second century.
And no man was able, neither in heaven, nor on earth, nor under the earth, ]to open the book, nor to look on it.
And one of the ancients said to me:
behold the lion of the tribe of Juda, the root of David, hath prevailed to open the book,
and to loose the seven seals thereof.
And I saw: in the midst of the throne, a Lamb standing as it were slain, having seven horns and seven eyes.
And he came and took the book out of the right hand of him that sat on the throne.
And he opened the book.
The slain Lamb is Jesus Christ himself.
The number seven in Scripture signifies the perfect and the complete.
The horns symbolize perfect power and the seven eyes total wisdom.
The sealed book contains the prophecy of the End Times.
The crux and the denouement of history.
The revelations that John is about to receive have this prologue in the splendor of Heaven,
which bears witness to the sacred and divine authority of the book's content.
And I saw that the Lamb had opened one of the seven seals.
And I saw: and behold a white horse, and he that sat on him had a bow,
and there was a crown given him...
and he went forth conquering that he might conquer.
Later in the Book of Revelation will appear another white horse, ridden by Christ.
That is why Tradition has always seen in this first white horse and its rider,
the spread of Christianity:
its expansion and growth at the hand of kings and emperors.
The spread of Christianity had already begun in the time of St. John,
but it was firmly opposed by the strength of the synagogue and of the Roman Empire.
A Christian of the first century,
could never have imagined that the same emperors
who at the time persecuted Christians to death,
two centuries later would be baptized
and lead the conversions of their peoples
and the expansion of the faith with their power and military force.
Hence the crown worn by the Rider.
The Christianization of the Roman Empire officially began with the conversion of Emperor Constantine
and continued with the conversion of the neighboring monarchs.
After a king’s conversion,
the people swiftly embraced the faith, following his example.
A little more than a century later the Frankish monarch, Clovis,
converted to Christianity and brought with him to the faith the entire barbarian people.
The Christian kings knew that their authority came from God,
and, while they were sometimes sinful and weak,
they believed firmly and with total conviction
that their mission was to defend the Church and spread the Gospel.
The Rider carries a bow, which is a long-range weapon.
It means that it would reach far.
Christian Monarchy brought the Gospel to Asia, Africa and especially America.
In their mission to propagate and defend the faith,
kings went forth conquering victorious again and again.
After the white horse has passed,
that is, after Christendom is removed,
three other horses follow:
War,
famine
and persecution.
These three subsequent horses are symbols of the End Times.
When Christian Monarchy decays and falls,
begins that which both the prophet Daniel and St. John repeat about the Antichrist:
"it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them."
From the fall of Christendom to the present day,
the Catholic cause is always or almost always defeated.
During the French Revolution,
the resistance of the Vendée, which fought for the Catholic cause
and carried on its banners the Heart of Jesus,
was defeated by perfidy and finally annihilated by the revolutionary forces.
In Mexico, the Cristero cause, despite its heroic and holy effort,
is finally betrayed by an agreement between the Masonic Government and the ecclesial hierarchy.
Finally, in our day,
the Catholic cause is always defeated.
Efforts to combat and curb divorce laws have failed almost everywhere in the world,
as have ongoing struggles against abortion,
gender ideology, and other anti-Christian laws.
This does not mean that the Christian should stop fighting,
for God will not hold him accountable for his victories
but for his battles and his scars.
And while he may fail to win the battles,
he must fight them in order to cooperate with the definitive victory
to be obtained by Christ solely with the splendor of His Second Coming.
And when he had opened the second seal..,
...there went out another horse that was red...
...and to him that sat thereon, it was given that he should take peace from the earth..,
...and that they should kill one another..,
...and a great sword was given to him.
Unanimously, all exegetes see in this horse and its rider, War.
Jesus Christ himself says in his eschatological sermon that
“wars and rumours of wars… are the beginnings of sorrows.”
It is true that wars have always existed,
but since the end of Christendom,
wars have acquired a much greater extension, ferocity, and frequency.
In 1916, during the First World War,
Pope Benedict XV said that war had become a “permanent institution of humanity”.
History has proved him right.
In the 20th century alone,
there were more than 130 military conflicts,
including two world wars.
And according to The New Humanitarian, a portal founded by the United Nations,
there have been more than 40 major armed conflicts so far in the 21st century.
To these armed conflicts,
we must add the cruel killing of unborn children through abortion.
It is estimated that the two world wars together caused around 60 million deaths,
while according to official data from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute,
73 million abortions occur annually today.
This is genocide of truly biblical proportions.
And when he had opened the third seal,
behold a black horse..,
...and he that sat on him had a pair of scales in his hand.
And I heard as it were a voice in the midst of the four living creatures, saying:
Two pounds of wheat for a penny, and thrice two pounds of barley for a penny,
and see thou hurt not the wine and the oil.
According to all interpreters this horse and its rider represent the hunger that comes after war.
In 1945, after the two world wars, Europe plunged into the worst of famines.
A “penny” was the daily wage of a worker,
therefore the text means that people will earn just enough to support themselves.
“Oil and wine” were the commodities of the rich,
meaning that the general scarcity will not affect them.
This is a glaring feature of today’s capitalism.
The economic systems around the world today create a widening gap between rich and poor,
and making a daily living becomes increasingly difficult.
Never before in history had that gap between those who have more and those who have less
been so wide and in such inordinate proportions as it is today.
Despite impressive technological advances,
since the end of the Second World War,
hunger has been on the rise around the world.
Today, according to the UN,
more than 820 million people suffer hunger,
and some two billion are threatened with it.
This represents no less than a third of humanity.
And when he had opened the fourth seal..,
...behold a pale horse..,
...and he that sat upon him, his name was Death..,
...and hell followed him.
And power was given to him over the four parts of the earth,
to kill with sword, with famine, and with death (pestilence), and with the beasts of the earth.
The fourth seal...
...represents the Last Persecution.
The great tribulation at the hands of the Antichrist.
This horse encapsulates the previous evils, war and famine,
along with two new ones: the plague and the beasts of the earth.
The rider called Death is followed by Hell.
He is, therefore, death caused by diabolical motivation:
the death of the body while seeking principally the death of the soul.
Already in our pernicious, apostate and faithless age,
death truly comes with hell behind it.
How many die today without repentance and without the sacraments?
As regards the war and hunger that this horse will bring,
we have already seen their anticipation in our time.
As to the plague,
we are living in our days a very obvious foretaste with very particular characteristics.
Is it truly a serious plague or is it being taken out of proportion?
We cannot know for certain.
But it is clear that this so-called "pandemic" has a diabolical and apocalyptic tinge.
Under its banner,
public worship was banned worldwide for the first time in the history of the Church.
"Masses are suspended"
"Churches remain closed"
"The health authority had to intervene...,
to close a church where at all costs they wanted to celebrate a mass.
In the year 2020 the Eucharist and other sacraments were relegated to the underground,
into the catacombs, and their celebration has become a crime in many countries.
What is even more serious is the complicity of a great part of the ecclesial hierarchy.
Even today worship remains banned and regulated by the State in much of the world.
The prophet Daniel, in the Old Testament,
had prophesied the cessation of the perpetual sacrifice near the End Times.
By “perpetual sacrifice”,
St. Jerome and other Holy Fathers understood the cult of the Eucharist and all the solemn worship of the Church.
According to them, Daniel's prophecy announces that in the time of the Antichrist,
access to the sacraments will be hindered.
The plague has proved to be the ideal occasion to achieve this diabolical end,
disguised as sanctimony and solidarity.
Jesus Christ said that the beginning of sorrows is war, but the end is persecution.
Saint John knew of the Roman circus and the lions,
and sees in them an image of the final persecution of the Antichrist.
A prophet describes what he sees by using images from his own reality.
This occurs many times throughout the Book of Revelation
and is typical of the prophetic style.
The “beasts" would represent the persecution at the hands of bestialized men,
without any morals or scruples,
It is anti-Christian fanaticism unleashed and politically triumphant everywhere,
under the omnipotent drive of a wicked tyrant:
the Antichrist.
Still,
nothing prevents this tyrant from reinaugurating the old custom of the Roman circus.
This persecution, announced with the image of the fourth horseman,
will be the last and greatest in history
and will last three and a half years,
as indicated later in the Book of Revelation.
And when he had opened the fifth seal..,
I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God,
and for the testimony which they held.
And they cried with a loud voice, saying:
“How long, O Lord, holy and true,
dost thou not judge and revenge our blood
on them that dwell on the earth?”
and it was said to them, that they should rest for a little time,
till their fellow servants, and their brethren,
who are to be slain, even as they, should be filled up.
The fifth and sixth seals clearly point to the Parousia.
The martyrs of history demand revenge for the shedding of their blood.
The vengeance they ask for is nothing other than the consummation of the Second Coming
with the Universal Judgment and the renewal of all things by the work of Christ.
Under the altar
is where the blood of the victims of the Old Testament holocausts was gathered.
The Church has always regarded the martyr as the victim of a holocaust to God.
It is for this reason
that all Catholic altars contain under them the relics of the martyrs.
The slain must wait for the justice they are seeking still for a time
until they are joined by the future martyrs of the persecution to come,
which was just announced in the fourth seal.
This clearly indicates that this will be the last persecution,
since it will complete the total number of the martyrs until the end of history.
When he had opened the sixth seal..,
...and behold...
there was a great earthquake,
and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair:
and the whole moon became as blood.
And the stars from heaven fell upon the earth,
as the fig tree casteth its green figs when it is shaken by a great wind.
And every mountain, and the islands were moved out of their places.
And the kings of the earth, and every bondman, and every freeman,
hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of mountains.
And they say to the mountains and the rocks:
"Fall upon us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth upon the throne
and from the wrath of the Lamb.
For the great day of their wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?"
The sixth seal is undoubtedly the Parousia.
All the prophets, including Jesus Christ himself,
use the same meteorological symbology to designate it.
As well as with the terms:
"The Great Day" and "Wrath of God."
Each of these meteorological elements
can symbolically signify, as many see it, heresies and apostasy.
But they can also be taken literally
as phenomena that accompany or prelude the Second Coming of Christ.
In those days, men of all conditions, rich and poor,
will be plunged into the deepest terror and despair
when they see that the One whom they despised and thought would never return...,
...does return.
After these things, I saw four angels
standing on the four corners of the earth,
holding the four winds of the earth.
And I saw another angel saying to the four angels:
“Hurt not the earth, nor the sea, nor the trees,
till we sign the servants of our God in their foreheads”.
Before reaching the seventh and final seal, St. John stops and turns back.
In other words, he recapitulates.
In biblical language, the sea symbolizes the mundane, and the earth, religion.
This is therefore a pause in the worldly and religious storms that we are experiencing today
and that seemingly will get worse.
This vision speaks of a respite before the universal persecution.
It is a time of rest and preparation
so that those faithful to the Lord may resist the final onslaught of the Antichrist.
And when he had opened the seventh seal..,
there was silence in heaven, as it were for half an hour.
And I saw seven angels standing in the presence of God;
and there were given to them seven trumpets.
This half hour of silence is a continuation of the previous vision.
It is the silence that occurs when the winds are held back by the four angels.
Half an hour is the fiftieth part of a day
and "with the Lord a thousand years are as one day" as David and St. Peter say.
Could this be a respite of some twenty years?
A short respite is a frequent note in the private revelations about the End Times.
After the half hour respite,
the seventh seal opens the vision of the seven trumpets
where St. John recapitulates again,
taking the history of the Christian world from a new angle:
heresies.
Thus, the seven trumpets are a revelation contained in the seventh seal.
They represent the most important and terrible heresies
that will plague Christianity from the Ascension of Christ
to his Second Coming.
Blessed is he, that readeth and heareth the words of this prophecy;
for the time is at hand.
"The Book of Revelation"
Episode II "The Seven Seals"
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