Saturday of Week 34 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Revelation 22:1-7

In passages preceding today’s and not included in our liturgical readings, the followers of the Beast, an agent of Satan, were said to be branded on the right hand or the forehead with his name and number, just as slaves were branded with their owner’s sign or the way we brand cattle and sheep today (see Rev 20). This was a sign of ownership. The Beast is also identified with the enigmatic number 666 (Rev 13:18), said to be the sum of the numeric value given to the Hebrew letters making up the name ‘Nero Caesar’. As a document written during time of persecution, many references in Revelation are expressed in a code which would only be understood by those within the persecuted community.

In today’s reading, the followers of the Beast, who are branded with his name and number, are now contrasted with the followers of the Lamb marked with his name and the name of the Father:

…his servants will worship him; they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.

And just as there was a ‘remnant’ of Israel that returned to Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile, here we have the ‘remnant’ of the new Israel, the faithful Christians who have survived persecution and who will begin the restoration of God’s kingdom once its enemies have been destroyed.

John has had a vision of Mount Zion. Originally, Mount Zion referred to the fortress of the pre-Israelite city of Jerusalem before it was taken over by David and made his capital. The term in time became synonymous with Jerusalem itself and, in Revelation, it refers to the “heavenly Jerusalem”, the place where God lives for ever with his people. At the end of Revelation, it comes down to the “new earth”.

In his vision, John sees the Lamb with 144,000 faithful followers, all of whom have the name of the Lamb and of the Father on their foreheads, again as a sign of ownership (see Rev 14:1). The number 144,000 is a multiple of the perfect and complete number 12. These are the ones who have not compromised their faith and have persevered through times of persecution by being ready to give their lives for their faith in Christ. They are the martyrs (Greek, meaning ‘witness’), those who gave the ultimate witness of their faith. They are, as it were, the nucleus of the final Kingdom.

And John hears a mighty sound:

 …like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty thunderpeals… (Rev 19:6)

It was the sound of harps being played. It was the accompaniment to a new song they were singing in the presence of God’s throne, the four creatures and the 24 elders. Just as Moses celebrated the deliverance of God’s people from Egypt with a new song, so the 144,000 also celebrate the deliverance of God’s people and the new order which the Lamb has inaugurated with a song. It was a song only they who had been saved from the ‘world’, the pagan world of sin, by the Lamb were competent to sing (see Rev 19:1-8).

And so they are said to follow the Lamb wherever he goes, just as the Israelites followed Yahweh after the Exodus into the desert where the marriage rite of the covenant was sealed and signed and as the first disciples left everything and walked after Jesus.

They are called the ‘firstfruits’ of God and of the Lamb. Just as in Jewish tradition the first fruits of the crops were always offered to the Lord, so these martyrs are the choice offering of the community made to God and the Lamb. Elsewhere in the New Testament, the phrase applies to the first converts in a particular place, and to the first to rise from the dead.

These martyrs, the ‘firstfruits’, never invoked the Beast (the emperor) as their god. Unlike the Gentiles mentioned by Paul in Romans, who:

...exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator… (Rom 1:25).

Finally, he is told by the angel in his vision:

These words are trustworthy and true, for the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel to show his servants what must soon take place.

Naturally, we all hope and pray that we too may be numbered among that host of martyr-witnesses with the Lamb, our Lord and Saviour. We, too, have been marked in baptism with God’s sign of ownership on us. But that still requires our total commitment and response to his call.

May we strive to follow the Lamb closely in our faithfulness to the gospel at all times. Let our lives be lived in total integrity so that we always in fact are what we would like to be seen to be.