In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it. She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which she is to be nourished for 1,260 days.At the fullness of time, according to the will of God, Mary, the Mother of God, appeared in midst of the heavens, clothed with the radiance of the sun, bedecked with the royal garments of God, because she, having been overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, was greatly pregnant with none other than the eternally uncreated, only-begotten Son of God come into the flesh. She is borne aloft by the moon, the lesser light, and encircled by the twelve stars, the witnesses of the one Holy Church from ages past and in time to come.
