These four symbolic figures you mentioned were first encountered in a vision within the Old Testament prophecy of Ezekiel and then again in the “revelation” St. John experienced on the island of Patmos. Because these four figures so prominently surrounded the Throne of God, the Early Church soon began equating them with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – the four writers of the gospels. Therefore, the man (usually depicted as an angel) came to symbolize Matthew because his gospel begins with the ancestry of Jesus; the lion with Mark because his gospel begins with a “voice crying in the wilderness;” Luke is the ox because it was a sacrificial animal and this gospel begins with the sacrifice offered by Zachariah; and the eagle is John because his gospel soars into the deepest mysteries of the Incarnation of God and contemplates it so profoundly like an eagle that is able to fly looking straight into the sun.
