GRM 5.3-4
The Gospel as revealed to me
Quotation
5.3 They [Anne, Joachim, and others characters] make haste because clouds driven by a strong wind, rush across and gather in the sky, while the plain darkens and shudders at the warning of a storm. When they reach the threshold of the dwelling, a first livid flash of lightning crosses the sky and the rumble of the first peal of thunder sounds like the roll of a huge drum that mingles with the arpeggio of the first drops on the parched leaves.
They all go in and Anne withdraws, while Joachim, standing at the door, talks with the workers, who have in the meantime joined him: the conversation is about the longed-for water which is a blessing for the parched land. But their joy turns into fear because a very violent storm is approaching with lightning and clouds threatening hail. «If the cloud bursts, it will crush the grapes and the olives like a millstone. Poor me!» (...)
It is growing dark and the evening is preceded by a furious and very violent storm: it brings torrential rain, wind, lightning, everything, except hail, which has fallen elsewhere.
One of the workers notices the ferocity of the gale: «It looks as if Satan has come out of Gehenna with his demons. Look at those black clouds! You can smell sulphur in the air and you can hear whistling and hisses, and wailing and cursing voices. If it is him, he is furious this evening!»
The other worker laughs and scoffs: «A great prey must have escaped him, or Michael has struck him with a new thunderbolt from God, and he has had his horns and tail clipped and burnt.»
A woman passes by and shouts: «Joachim! It is coming. And it is happening quickly and well!» and she disappears with a small amphora in her hands.
The storm drops suddenly, after one last thunderbolt that is so violent that it throws the three men against the side wall; and in front of the house, in the garden, a black smoky cavity remains as its memory! Meanwhile a cry, one resembling the tiny plea of a little turtle-dove that for the very first time no longer peeps but cooes, is heard from beyond Anne’s door. And at the same time a huge rainbow stretches its semicircle across the sky. It rises, or seems to rise, from the top of Hermon, which kissed by the sun, looks like a most delicate pinkish alabaster: it rises up in the clear September sky and through an atmosphere cleaned of all impurities, it crosses over the hills of Galilee and the plain to the south, and then over another mountain, and seems to rest the other end on the distant horizon, where it drops from view behind a chain of high mountains.
«We have never seen anything like this!»
«Look, look!»
«It seems to enclose in a circle the whole of the land of Israel. And look! there is already a star in the sky while the sun has not yet set. What a star! It is shining like a huge diamond!…»
«And the moon, over there, is a full moon, three days early. But look how she is shining!»
Detail
A drought has hit the region hard. Now a storm is bearing down on Nazareth.
Annotation
One of the servants noticed the violence. He is Joseph, Mary's future husband. Cf. EMV 577.7.
Satan seems to have come out of Gehenna with his demons. Gehenna, from the Hebrew Gehinnon or Valley of Hinnom, located south of Jerusalem, near the Potters' Gate. A place of stench and decay. For the Jews, the Valley of Gehinnon was the emblem of hell.
"A great prey will have escaped him, or Michael will have struck him with a new thunderbolt from God, and his horns and tail will be cut off and burned. This allusion to the Archangel Michael striking down Lucifer is taken from an immemorial rabbinic tradition. Example: "As for Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and Phanuel, they will be confirmed on that day; and they will be charged with throwing all the rebellious angels into the furnace" (Book of Enoch, chapter 53, no. 6). This tradition is evoked in Jude 1:9 in connection with the Ascension of Moses (an apocrypha) and especially in Revelation 12:7-13.