Reflection
The Book of Revelation is a complex text filled with imagery of chaos and struggle. Remarkably, it does not contain the Greek word for “hope” once in all its verses.
I had struggled to understand this absence until I saw Theater Mitu’s performance of Juárez: A Documentary Mythology. One character there spoke to how, in times of significant crisis, hope felt problematically empty. Instead, there remained determination. Rather than emphasize generic hope, much of the Book of Revelation calls its readers to persistence. In Revelation 12, the woman cries out to us from the book’s very center, giving birth to a child who heralds something better to come, suggesting that even in times of chaos, the signs of a better world may be found if we are determined to look.
This woman at the center of Revelation has often been identified with Mary, and, for centuries, many have seen echoes of the woman from Revelation 12 in depictions of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a woman clothed with the sun and a moon at her feet. The woman evades the forces of chaos, the dragon who chases her, and we are promised that her children will survive. As David A. Sánchez powerfully described in his book From Patmos to the Barrio, whether confronting oppression in the ancient Roman Empire or protecting space for vulnerable communities on the walls of Southern California, this woman’s appearance represents both defiance in the face of injustice and imminent transformation. May she provide strength and courage to those in need as we struggle for concrete hope and justice.
Jacqueline M. Hidalgo, Ph.D.
Professor, Theology and Religious Studies