Unveiling the Incomprehensible: The Vision of God's glory
August 12, 2024 - Monday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Ezekiel 1:2-5, 24-28c
Today, we begin our journey with the prophet Ezekiel, whose prophetic call and ministry took place in Babylon, in the land of exile. Ezekiel was among the Judeans exiled to Babylon in 597 BC. At that moment, Jerusalem was still standing, the temple was still functioning, and Jeremiah was still preaching. The fact that two prophets, Jeremiah in Jerusalem and Ezekiel in Babylon, were preaching simultaneously in different locations reveals the truth about God's omnipresence and omniscience. This was particularly important for the Jews living in exile: if God raised a prophet among them—Ezekiel—then He had not abandoned them.
Young Ezekiel shares with us a vision of the glory of God, but, in all honesty, the vision is incomprehensible. The prophet struggles for words to express what he saw and uses symbols associated with Near Eastern mythology and art. What is particularly striking to me is the comparison of the four living beings and the one seated upon a throne to human beings. The Fathers of the Church saw in this a prophecy about God's Word taking on our humanity and His glorification at the right hand of the Father.
Saint Gregory the Great associated the four living creatures with the four evangelists, Jesus' most significant stages of life, and us, the followers of Christ. The living creatures had faces resembling a human, a lion, an ox, and an eagle. Matthew begins his gospel with Jesus' genealogy, so Saint Gregory associated him with the face of man. Mark begins his gospel with the voice crying in the desert, so he is associated with the lion. Luke begins his gospel with the story of Zachariah in Jerusalem's temple offering a sacrifice to the Lord, so he is associated with the ox. Finally, the Gospel of John leads to theological heights, so its author is associated with the eagle.
Saint Gregory also sees in these four creatures a prophecy about the Word of God. In the Incarnation, the Word of God became man. Jesus' sacrifice on the cross is represented by the ox, and the lion represents Christ's victory over sin and death. Finally, the eagle represents his ascension to heaven. Saint Gregory continues his meditation on the four creatures resembling human beings by associating them with four virtues that every Christian should possess: reason represented by the face of man; self-sacrifice represented by the ox; fortitude represented by the lion; and prayer or contemplation, through which we soar towards heavenly things, represented by the eagle.
Ezekiel's vision of God's glory makes it clear that the Lord is beyond our comprehension. Quoting Saint Thomas Aquinas, our Catechism teaches that "concerning God, we cannot grasp what he is, but only what he is not, and how other beings stand in relation to him" (CCC, 43). And then, as if referring to the incomprehensible vision of Ezekiel, it writes: "God transcends all creatures. We must therefore continually purify our language of everything in it that is limited, image-bound, or imperfect, if we are not to confuse our image of God—the 'inexpressible, the incomprehensible, the invisible, the ungraspable'—with our human representations. Our human words always fall short of the mystery of God" (CCC, 42).