“Then the dragon became angry with the woman and
went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring”

Mary is the Mother of God. One reason we know this is that Satan, hates Mary. He hates Jesus, Mary and all those who follow Jesus and Mary. The Church teaches that Mary is the woman in Revelation 12. This woman gives birth to a son destined to rule all the nations. The son is Jesus. Jesus is God, therefore, Mary is the Mother of God. She is also the Mother of the Church and so all Christians can call Mary, “Mother”. Our Mother has fought the battle with her Son and won. Now she prays for all her children to also fight the good fight and to win. We need her prayers more than ever to win the battle that is at hand, for she knows how hard the battle is; she fought it.

Revelation 12 describes three battles.  Here is the summary.
 
Battle One – Satan and the Demons vs. St. Michael and the Angels – Good Wins
“Then war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels battled against the dragon. The dragon and its angels fought back, but they did not prevail, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven.”
 
Battle Two – Satan and the Demons vs. Jesus Christ, the Son of God – Good Wins
“They conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; love for life did not deter them from death.  Therefore, rejoice, you heavens, and you who dwell in them.”

Battle Three – Satan and the Demons vs. Adam, Eve and all of humanity – Still going on…
“Woe to you, earth and sea, for the Devil has come down to you in great fury, for he knows he has but a short time”  “After the first sin the world was inundated with sin but God did not abandon man to the power of death.  Rather, he foretold in a mysterious way in the ‘Protoevangelium’ (Genesis 3:15) that evil would be conquered and that man would be lifted up from his fall.  This was the first proclamation of the Messiah and Redeemer.  Therefore, the fall would be called in the future a ‘happy fault’ because it ‘gained for us so great a Redeemer’ (Liturgy of the Easter Vigil).” [i]

Many times when a team knows they are going to lose they play dirty.  Satan has lost twice, once in heaven and once on earth against the Son of God.  He is 0-2!  He is playing dirty.  Just like this video there is not good sportsmanship between Satan and us.  This is no game for Satan; he has lost and wants only to hurt us, to destroy our soul.
 
If we are left alone to battle Satan, we are done, it is over, and we will lose every time.  Thank God, we are not alone.  We are connected to Christ and the Church (Mary, the Saints, the Angels and all those in heaven the Church triumphant).  We can only conquer our enemy through our connection to Christ.  Baptism connects us to Christ and the Church, and the Sacraments keep us connected.  God makes a declaration a promise to Satan in  Genesis 3:14-15.  Then the Lord God said to the serpent, - "Because you have done this, you shall be banned from all the animals and from all the wild creatures; On your belly shall you crawl, and dirt shall you eat all the days of your life. “I will put enmity between you (Satan) and the woman (Mary), and between your offspring (those who follow Satan) and hers (Christ and us because Christ gives us Mary as our Mother and we are Christ’s brothers and sisters); He (Christ) will strike at your (Satan) head, while you strike at his heel."  
 
Christ did strike at Satan’s head at Calvary, and this strike was a deathblow.  In fact, Golgotha means “place of the skull”, and the Cross was driven into the skull.  Christ crushed Satan’s head at the crucifixion.  We are connected to His death and resurrection, his victory, through baptism.  In other words, we can obtain the victory, the victory has been won, but we must choose to stay connected, to stay on the winning team.  The game has been won, but we can still choose to be on the winning team or the losing team.
 
Judith, an Old Testament heroine, saved her people, the Hebrews from Holofernes.  “Holofernes was an invading general of Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar dispatched Holofernes to take vengeance on the nations of the west that had withheld their assistance to his reign. The general laid siege to Bethulia and the city almost surrendered. Judith, a beautiful Hebrew widow, who entered Holofernes’s camp and seduced him, saved the city. Judith then beheaded Holofernes while he was drunk.  She returned to Bethulia with the disembodied head, and the Hebrews defeated the enemy.” [ii]  The “woman,” mentioned in  Genesis and Judith are both a “type,” a prefiguring of the “woman” spoken of in  Revelation.  The woman is Mary.  At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus refers to his mother as “woman,” affirmation of her role in cooperating with His mission of conquering sin and death, by crushing the head of Satan.  “And Jesus said to her, ‘O woman, what have you to do with me?  My hour has not yet come.” [iii]  It is Mary that affirms her cooperation with her Son.  In the last words spoken by Mary that were written in the scriptures she shows what she has to do with her son when she tells the servants (and us), to “do whatever He tells you” [iv].  Mary’s role, what she has to do with her son is to do what He tells her to do, to be obedient and to help others share in this obedience.  Mary cooperates with her son in crushing the head of Satan; this is why we see in statues of Mary, the head of the serpent is under Mary’s foot.  It is Mary, the perfection of the human race, who said “Yes” to God and gave birth to the Savior, who entered Satan’s camp (the world) and beheaded him, which allows us the Church, as the Hebrews before us, to defeat the enemy.   
 
We see in  Revelation that Satan tries to kill the child (Christ) of the woman (Mary), but cannot touch Christ.  He then goes after the woman (Mary) but cannot touch Mary.  He then, in frustration, goes after the offspring of woman, which is the Church, us, those who keep the commandments and bear witness to Christ.   Revelation, however, does not say whether Satan wins or not.  The conclusion of the story is up to us.  If we remain alone, we lose. If we connect ourselves to Christ and Mary, we win, because they have won.  We must remember when we are discouraged that yes; Satan will “bruise his heel” [v].  Satan will bruised Christ and those in the body of Christ, but he will bruise the heel.  The heel is a part of the body that can be bruise, but it won’t cause death.   How does Satan bruise us? Satan will bother us, tempt us, and even bruise us as he did Christ. However, he can’t kill us if we are connected to Christ and His Church.  God promised Satan that Christ would “bruise your head”.  To bruise the head is a deathblow!  “It is through Him, and with Him, and in Him” [vi] that we the faithful, along with Mary and all the Angels and Saints, crush the head of Satan.

The Saints are a perpetual witness of the fight against our enemies (the devil, flesh and the world).  Of all the Saints, it seems the hermits and monks have had to especially focus on this fight.  Hermits and Monks withdrew themselves from society into the monastery or desert to battle the devil, the flesh and the world.  St. Anthony of the Desert said our greatest weapon against Satan is the sign of the Cross, which makes Satan flee when prayed sincerely. We need to withdraw, like the woman “in the desert, where, far from the serpent, she was taken care of for a year”.  We too will be taken care of by Christ and His Church.
 

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[i] Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church; section 398 (CCC – 410-412; 420)
[ii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holofernes
[iii] John 2:4
[iv] John 2:5
[v] Genesis 3:15
[vi] Order of the Mass (Ordinary Form of the Latin Rite)