Tuesday of Week 34 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 21:5-11
The Temple at Jerusalem in Jesus’ time was a magnificent building and one of the wonders of the world. As the Gospel tells us, it had been more than 40 years in the building and was not yet completed. People were commenting to Jesus on the beautiful decorations of jewels and votive offerings. His hearers must have been shocked, if not utterly sceptical, when Jesus told them that, in time, the building would be utterly destroyed with “not one stone…left upon another”. In our not too distant past, who would ever have dreamt that the New York City World Trade Center, that temple to capitalism, would be reduced to rubble in a just matter of minutes—and how much more the Temple of God?
They asked Jesus:
Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?
Jesus’ answer is directed more to the end of time than to the actual destruction of the Temple, which occurred about 40 years later in the year 70 AD. In fact, one event blends into the other. To many who were witnesses to its destruction, it must have seemed like the end of their world. What kind of life could they live without their Temple, without the dwelling place of their God? How could Yahweh allow such a thing to happen? It left a huge empty space in their lives which nothing else could fill.
Jesus’ warning is that his followers should not misread the signs or be too alarmed. It seems the early Christians were expecting Jesus to return for his Second Coming within their lifetime. This must have led to many false alarms—people claiming to be the returned Lord, or warning that the end of all things was close at hand. Even the destruction of the Temple (remember many of the Christians were converted Jews) must have looked like the beginning of the end. St Augustine had similar feelings as Rome, the heart of Christendom, fell in ruins to the ‘barbarians’ (the ancestors of many of us!). The end of Rome seemed to him like the end of the world.
Jesus tells his followers not to be too ready to believe what they hear people saying. Nor are they to be too alarmed when they hear of wars and social upheavals. There will be many natural disasters, widespread diseases and celestial phenomena. These do not necessarily spell the end. The message now being given is:
…the end will not follow immediately.
At every pivotal time in the history of our planet, there are people who claim to see the end in sight. The coming of the third millennium was no exception. So far they have all been wrong. The attitude of Christians is not to be one of fear and anxiety. It sees the new era as a time of challenge and opportunity, a time for new beginnings.
On a more personal and much more realistic level, we may be anxious about the signs of our own time of departure from this world. But again, it does not help to become fearful and anxious. Rather, we should work to live each day to the fullest and to make it productive for ourselves and others.
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Monday of Week 34 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 21:1-4
Today we begin the last chapter of Luke’s Gospel, preceding his account of the Passion. Jesus is still in Jerusalem and spending time preaching in the Temple.
One day, as he stood near the treasury where there were 13 trumpet-shaped boxes to receive the offerings, he saw among all the well-off people dropping in their (surplus) money, a poor widow who put in two copper coins of very small value.
Jesus immediately comments on her generosity and faith. The others were putting in offerings which they could easily afford; it would have involved no diminution of their lifestyle, no hardship of any kind. But this woman was a poor widow and therefore belonging to the least advantaged of all people in that society. In fact, poverty and widowhood were, for many, almost synonymous.
And this woman put in everything she had. It has been observed that she had two coins and she put in both. Under the circumstances and by the Law, she need only have put in one and kept the other for her own needs. Jesus sets her up as an example of someone who put her total trust in God’s providence. She gave everything to him.
No one is saying that one should literally follow her example—it could be seen as irresponsible. We are told to love our neighbours—but also ourselves. At the same time, how often when we do dip into our pockets do we really give to others money that we were thinking of spending on something we do not really need? Or are we like the people in today’s story who casually give money they will not miss in the slightest? There is a difference between ‘giving alms’ and sharing our goods and good fortune with those who have less—a lot less than us.
St Paul, writing to the Christians of Corinth (and quoting from Exodus 16:18) and appealing for help for poorer Christian communities, says in part:
For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what one does not have. For I do not mean that there should be relief for others and hardship for you, but it is a question of equality between your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may also supply your need, in order that there may be equality. As it is written, “The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little.” (2 Cor 8:12-15)
This is a nice description of what justice in our society means.
There have been Christians who closely followed the widow’s example. St Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa) absolutely refused to have any stable income for her work, and she was not alone in this. And it has often been remarked that it is people at the lower end of our society who are most generous in supporting needy causes.
The fact that this story comes just before the Passion has led many to see in this woman a symbol of Jesus himself, who will, in the words of the Letter to the Philippians, “empty himself” completely and surrender his whole life totally into the hands of his Father, holding nothing back.
But even during Jesus’ life, he seems to have had no private means of any kind. At the same time, he was not a beggar. He simply lived a life where he gave totally of himself, and others gave him in return just what he needed at any particular time.
Clearly, most people cannot literally follow the example of Jesus, but there are many examples of people who did. If only we too could have that kind of trust, that kind of generosity, that ability to share and that kind of freedom—freedom from material ‘wants’ and freedom for others.
The richest person is not the one who has accumulated much, but the one who has the least needs. In this sense, this poor widow was rich indeed.
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Saturday of Week 34 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 21:34-36
Our final reading from Luke (and this Church year) continues the messages of warning that he has been giving during the week. The warning is not to become immersed in a life of self-centred indulgence and hedonism, nor to be overcome by many worries and anxieties. It is these two things which can dominate the lives of so many: a combination of escapism from what is difficult, and a running to activities where happiness is confused with pleasure.
“That day” is going to close in “like a trap”—quickly and without previous warning:
For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth.
Of course, for every single one of us, “that day” is the day on which we will be called individually to face our Lord and Creator.
One might ask, what do we do while we are waiting for the rest of the world to join us? Perhaps we should remember that ‘on the other side’ it is an eternal ‘now’, with no past or future. It is like going to the hub of a wheel from any part of the rim. All converge together in the same place.
So we are warned to be permanently on the watch—to pray constantly for the strength to avoid what is bad for us, and to be able to stand secure when we come face to face with the Son of Man. In some ways, the demands are very simple, although we find them difficult at times, i.e. showing our fidelity to God by a loving concern for the well-being of every other person, especially those most in need.
Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me. (Matt 25:40)
Whatever the circumstances of our life, we look forward in confidence to the ultimate victory of God, of Jesus and of the Kingdom. As has been said here more than once, the best preparation for that unpredictable moment of leaving this world is to live as fully as we can in the presence of our always-present God. Let us seek him, find him and respond to him in every single person and in every single experience of our daily lives. We pray:
O Lord, grant that all my thoughts, intentions, actions and responses may directed solely to your love and service this day and every day. Amen
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Friday of Week 34 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 21:29-33
Today Jesus continues his admonitions about readiness for the future. The key is to watch out for the telling signs.
Just as with the fig tree (or any tree), the emerging buds of green indicate that summer is on the way. When the things Jesus has been mentioning are seen to happen, terrible as some of them seem to be, they are in fact the sign of a ‘summer’ where:
…the Kingdom of God is near.
On other occasions, Jesus had said that the Kingdom was already present, but the Kingdom can be seen in different ways. The Kingdom is present wherever the values of the gospel are being lived, but it will not be fully realised until the very end when all are gathered in Him:
Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place.
When Jesus says that “this generation” will not have passed away until all this takes place, it is not to say that Jesus’ final coming will happen in the lifetime of his hearers (as some imagined), but rather that, with his own suffering and death, the new and eternal dispensation which he inaugurates with the Kingdom will be under way. Ironically, the fulfilment of Jesus’ prophecy is set in motion by the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. It initiates a new presence of God in the world, a presence in “spirit and in truth”. However, Jesus’ words could also mean that the Jewish people (here referred to as “this generation”) will continue to exist till the end of time, to the final coming of Jesus.
Lastly, the world in which we live will one day disappear, but the words of Jesus, words of Truth and Life, will be forever valid because they represent a vision of life and those timeless values which we understand as emanating from God, and to which every single human being is innately called.
As we come to the end of the Church year, it is a time for us to make our decision whether we want to belong to the Kingdom that Jesus is inaugurating, and not only to belong, but also to make its spread our life’s work. Then, no matter when he comes to call us, we will be ready.
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Wednesday of Week 34 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 21:12-19
Jesus continues his warnings, but now mainly to his own disciples. He foretells experiences and happenings which will be soon realised in the Acts of the Apostles, not to mention in the subsequent history of the Church through the centuries, including our own. Jesus speaks of abuse and persecution:
…they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons…
The term ‘hand over’ is a refrain occurring again and again in the New Testament. John the Baptist was handed over to Herod who put him in prison and then executed him. Jesus himself is handed over first to the leaders of his own people and then into the hands of the Romans who would execute him. And now Jesus tells his disciples that they, too, can expect to be handed over and to be dragged before civil and religious courts “because of my name”.
Many of the early Christians came into conflict with Jewish communities and were handed over to synagogues. Synagogues were not only prayer halls and places to learn the Scriptures, but also were used for civil administration and as places of confinement while awaiting trial.
The charges may be civil or criminal, but the real reason will be that the accused are followers of Christ. For example, countries that practice religious persecution always insist people are arrested (or worse) because of their violation of civil and criminal laws, and not because of their religious affiliation. As such, Christians become objects of fear and hatred, their ideas seen as threatening and even subversive.
But says Jesus, his followers are not themselves to fear or be anxious. When the time comes, they will know what to do and what to say. He will tell them what to say and how to answer.
This promise has been vindicated again and again across time. The really sad thing is that those betraying them to the authorities will often be members of their own household—”parents and siblings…relatives and friends”. Again, this prophecy sadly has been realised all too often.
Jesus continues:
You will be hated by all because of my name.
This is strange and, in a way, makes no sense. Jesus—who preached truth, love, freedom, peace, justice and non-violence—becomes, in his followers, the object of lies, hatred, imprisonment and torture, division, injustice and the most terrible violence.
But not a hair of your head will perish.
This is not a phrase to be taken literally, because many suffer terribly in their bodies, but there is an inner integrity and wholeness that nothing can destroy.
By your endurance you will gain your souls.
That is, by going through all that our enemies can throw at us, we come out at the end people who are whole and complete and who can lift our heads up high. There are many examples even in our own recent past: Bishop Oscar Romero, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, St Maximilian Kolbe, Edith Stein (St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross), to name a few. Their memories are treasured and become an inspiration to all of us.
Let us pray that we may have the courage to be true to our Christian values whatever the cost. Let us not be surprised that our faith and our religion can create such anger and such hostility.
At the same time, we reach out continually in truth and love to dissipate the unjustified fears that our beliefs can engender in others. We are a threat to false values, but we must try hard to help people see where real truth and goodness lie. And we do that by seeking for that in our own lives.
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Saturday of Week 34 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Revelation 22:1-7 (more…)
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Thursday of Week 34 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Revelation 18:1-2,21-23;19:1-3,9
Our reading is in two parts today. In the first part, an angel announces the fall of Babylon, and this is followed by songs of victory in heaven. The reading consists of relatively short extracts from chapter 18 and half of chapter 19. John has a vision of an angelic messenger, who had great authority and whose brightness lit up the whole earth. He is, of course, an emissary from God and speaks with God’s voice. He announces the coming fall of ‘Babylon’, i.e. Rome, the centre of the empire and the source of so much persecution for the Christians.
The image of the coming destruction of the city must echo in many ways the state of Jerusalem after it was destroyed by the Romans within the living memory of the author and his readers:
…a dwelling place of demons,
a haunt of every foul spirit,
a haunt of every foul bird,
a haunt of every foul and hateful beast.
The remains of the devastated city were scavenged by all of these.
In a symbolic act:
…a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea.
This was a very large millstone, sometimes called a “donkey millstone” because it was so heavy it required a donkey to turn it. This is what was going to happen to Rome. It is going to be destroyed because of its idolatry and for the sufferings it brought on the Christians. In the Gospel, Jesus had said that the only deserving treatment for someone who blocked a disciple coming to Christ was to have a millstone put around his neck and that he be thrown into the sea:
Woe to the world because of things that cause sin! Such things are bound to come, but woe to the one through whom they come! (Matt 18:7)
As he throws the millstone, the angel recites a hymn. The violence shown in the throwing of the boulder is a symbol of the violence by which the power of Rome will be overthrown and the city obliterated. The hymn which follows describes a city which has become a ghost town: no music, no craftsmen’s skills or the grinding of corn (ironically described as “the sound of the millstone”), no more any light or the happy voices of those newly wed. This is big change from the days when its citizens were:
…magnates of the earth,
and all nations were deceived by [their] sorcery.
Rome, of course, did not quite experience the utter destruction that was the fate of Jerusalem. However, the empire did collapse when ‘barbarians’ from the north came in and took over. It seemed like the end of the world at the time, but life went on—and the Christians, far from being wiped out—converted the invaders.
The vision of John moves into the second part (chap 19) to a huge heavenly assembly singing in joy and triumph:
Hallelujah!
Salvation and glory and power to our God…
This is the song of those who have come successfully through persecution and oppression.
The acclamation, ‘Alleluia’, which means “Praise the Lord!”, is used four times in this passage, but is found in no other part of the New Testament. It is a hymn of thanksgiving that:
…he has judged the great whore
who corrupted the earth with her prostitution,
and he has avenged on her the blood of his servants.
This is another reference to Rome’s idolatrous and corrupt regime. God’s servants, who suffered so much, have been avenged. It is, of course, not a description of what is actually happening, but is a prayer of hope for the future, a prayer that was indeed answered, and a boost for the morale of suffering Christians.
The passage ends with the fourth of the seven beatitudes scattered through the book:
Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.*
We too believe that evil will never have the last word. Truth and goodness and justice will eventually prevail. Let us pray that we may so live our lives that we, too, will receive that invitation to join the wedding feast of the Lamb. All our lives are geared to making sure we do get that invitation. Nothing else matters!
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*A list of these ‘beatitudes’ was given in the commentary for Monday of Week 33.
Thursday of Week 34 of Ordinary Time – Gospel
Commentary on Luke 21:20-28
Jesus continues his warnings of what is to come. It is a blending of what is going to happen to Jerusalem and of the end of all things. The images are mainly biblical and apocalyptic, taken from Old Testament prophecies and not to be seen as an accurate description of what is actually going to happen some 40 years later. The sign that the end was near would be Jerusalem’s being surrounded by armies accompanied by the “desolating sacrilege” (see Matt 24:15). Nevertheless, it is true that Jerusalem was encircled by the armies of Rome. The safest place to be was in the surrounding hills, not in the city, which was reduced to rubble.
Jesus is emphasising not so much the actual events, but rather their cause—the faithlessness and corruption of so many for which destruction was the inescapable outcome. So he calls them the “days of vengeance”, a time of punishment not indicating God’s revenge, but the natural result of evil and corruption, warnings of which the Scripture, especially the prophets, are full. See, for example, Isaiah 63:4; Jeremiah 5:29; Hosea 9:7; and especially, Daniel 9:26-27:
Desolations are decreed. He [King Antiochus] shall make a strong covenant with many [faithless Jews] for one week, and for half of the week [three and a half years] he shall make sacrifice and offering cease, and in their place shall be a desolating sacrilege until the decreed end is poured out upon the desolator.
The Temple was desecrated by Antiochus from 167 to 165 BC. The “desolating sacrilege” perhaps refers to an inscription placed on the portal of the Temple dedicating it to the Olympian Zeus. All of this, of course, was to be repeated. And in many ways, has been repeated again and again—recall, for example, the statue of a nude woman set up as a deity in the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris during the French Revolution.
What follows from verse 23 is more relevant to the destruction of Jerusalem:
Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing infants in those days!
It will be a time of great distress. Many will be cut down and others will be led away into captivity to pagan territories (the Romans liked to parade their prisoners in a victory march in Rome). The holy city itself, its Temple in ruins, will be trampled on by Gentiles—a fate it still experiences.
This will happen:
…until the times of the nations are fulfilled.
For, as Paul indicates in his letter to the Romans (11:25-29), it is the Gentiles who have taken the place of the Jews as the bearers of the Good News and the builders of the Kingdom. But Paul believed that the age of the Gentiles would only end with the return of Israel and the reconciliation of all in Christ Jesus as Lord. It is an indefinite period, and it is still in process. Our God is an all-inclusive God, and a patient God.
Finally, Jesus speaks of various cataclysmic and apocalyptic signs to signal the end of time. They are typical biblical phenomena and not meant to be taken as exact foretelling of events. They conclude with Daniel’s vision:
Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory.
It is not intended to fill people with fear and trembling, except perhaps those who have lived wicked lives.
But for the disciples, the loyal followers of Jesus, it is a time to:
…stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.
As we saw in yesterday’s Gospel, sufferings and tribulations are part and parcel of living the Christian life to the full. Our message and our vision is a ‘sign of contradiction’, a beacon of light to many and to others a threat to be radically uprooted.
But for those who have tried to live by the vision and values of the Gospel, for those who have tried to seek and find Jesus in all the people and events of their lives, who have spent hours with him in intimate dialogue, it is the time of their final liberation, a time when there will be no more sorrows, no more tears, no more hardships, no more disappointments. Rather, they will be entering an unbroken time of love and intimacy, of freedom and peace, of joy and consolation. So, as we approach the end of another liturgical year, we do so on an upbeat note.
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Friday of Week 34 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Revelation 20:1-4,11—21:2
Today we have a reading about judgement and the New Jerusalem. It is a powerful vision of the end time described in highly symbolic language, which is not to be taken literally. Here we need to be very careful to go to the central meaning of what is being said and not get carried away (either positively or negatively) by the vivid images.
We can divide the passage into five sections. In the first section, John sees an angel come down from heaven, that is, God’s dwelling place (which, of course, is not a place, as God is everywhere). In his hand, the angel carries the key of the Abyss and a huge chain. The Abyss was conceived as an underground place where the armies of demons lived. The Greek word abussos means “very deep” or “bottomless” and is used in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) to translate the Hebrew word for the primeval deep (mentioned in Genesis at the beginning of the Creation story).
The dragon, the “ancient serpent”, the one who tempted our first parents, Satan himself, is overpowered by the angel and chained in the Abyss for a thousand years. Normally in the Old Testament, dragons symbolise the enemies of God and his people. They feature regularly in the mythology of many ancient peoples (yet not always in the negative; in the case of Asian culture, they tend to have a positive image of power).
Satan is “bound up” by the angel in the Abyss for a millennium, one thousand years. The 1,000 years is not to be taken literally; it simply means a long and indefinite period of time.* At the end of that time, Satan will be released again for a short while. Such is the tenacity of Satan that he can become active again. It is a message of warning that no one can feel complacent about being ever totally free from his wiles.
In the second section, the scene now shifts to the elect. There are thrones on which sit those who have the power to judge. Are they the 24 elders mentioned earlier or the 12 Apostles, whom Jesus foretold would be judges? In the teaching following the failure of the rich man to become a disciple, Jesus had said to his disciples:
Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. (Matt 19:28)
Also present are:
…those who had been beheaded for their testimony to Jesus…
These are those who had died the death of a martyr for their witness to the faith and for proclaiming the Gospel message. It is said that those of a higher social status were executed by beheading while more brutal forms of execution (e.g. crucifixion) were reserved for those lower in the social hierarchy.
Among the elect are also those who:
…had not worshiped the beast [the emperor] or its image and had not received its brand on their foreheads or their hands.
In other words, they were no slaves of Satan (i.e. the emperor); they did not belong to him. It is possible that Christians who had agreed to pay obeisance to the emperor’s image were marked with a brand to free them from further persecution. If so, such a brand would have been a mark of shame in the eyes of faithful Christians.
Instead, because of their martyr’s death:
They came to [new] life and reigned with Christ a thousand years.
In the subsequent verse (not part of our reading) the rest of the dead did not rise until the 1,000 years were ended.
The Jerusalem Bible makes the following comment here:
“One interpretation makes this ‘resurrection’ of the martyrs symbolise the recovery of the Church after the Roman persecution; the ‘reign of a thousand years’ is then the period of the kingdom of Christ on earth from the end of persecution (the fall of Rome) to the Last Judgement. According to Augustine and others who follow him, the ‘reign of a thousand years’ is to be reckoned from Christ’s resurrection and the ‘first resurrection’ is baptism. A literal interpretation of this verse was widespread in the early Church: after the first resurrection of the martyrs, Christ was to return to reign on earth with his faithful for a thousand years. This literal millenarianism was censured.”
(For further comment on the ‘millennium’ see the footnote* at the end of this reflection.)
In the third section, we now move to the judgement of all the dead. God is seen sitting on his great white throne, the seat of judgement. Earth and sky have vanished—in the presence of God’s awesome majesty they become as nothing. The dead from every stratum of society are gathered there in front of the throne. The records of their lives, by which they are judged, are opened. There is more than one book, suggesting one for the righteous and another for the wicked.
As well, there is the book of life. Such a record is first mentioned in Exodus. It was a list of all citizens in the kingdom community. To have one’s name removed from the book indicated loss of citizenship. So the book of life here lists the elect, those who really belong to the Kingdom. And they will be judged on how they have responded to the call of the Gospel (see Rom 2:2-9; 1 Pet 1:17).
In the fourth section, all of the dead are present. They come from the two traditional abodes of the dead: one is the sea and the other is “Death and Hades”, which were understood to be under the earth (remember, at the time, the earth is conceived as flat, not round as we know it). Hades is the Greek name for the place of the dead and more or less corresponds to the Hebrew sheol.
These places of the dead are now emptied and as they appear before their God:
…all were judged according to what they had done.
In other words, they were judged according to the way they lived. We need to qualify this statement to avoid misunderstandings. It does not mean that our activities have a value all their own so that we, so to speak, earn our salvation or our entry into God’s Kingdom and that God is obliged to ‘reward’ us.
Scripture makes it very clear that all the good we do does not originate from us, but is God working in and through us. If our lives are full of good works, it is because we have opened our hearts to God and taken him into our hearts so that we become transformed through his love working in and through us. In the Eucharistic liturgy, Weekday Preface IV reads:
You have no need of our praise, yet our desire to thank you is itself your gift. Our prayer of thanksgiving adds nothing to your greatness, but makes us grow in your grace through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Paul emphasises this very strongly, especially in his letter to the Romans.
It would also be wrong to imagine God keeping a credit and debit ledger of our lives and that, provided we end up with a plus rather than a minus, we will ‘go to heaven’. God is not an accountant; there is not a ledger with some entries in black and others in red. It is clear from the Gospel that God does not work like that. A life lived for many years away from God can be turned round at any time, even at the very end. God sees us as we are at the moment he calls us to him. A bad life can end very well; similarly, a good life can end very badly (see the parable of the Lost Son—Luke 15:11-32, or the “good thief” on the cross beside Jesus—Luke 23:39-43).
Then:
…Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.
Punishment by fire is common in ancient Jewish writings. Although the designation gehenna is not used here, it seems it is that to which John is referring (see Matt 5:22). ‘Gehenna’ originally was the site of a cultic shrine where human sacrifices were offered. It was a deep ravine south of Jerusalem (the ‘Valley of [the Sons of] Hinnom’). During the reign of the wicked kings Ahaz and Manasseh, human sacrifices to the Ammonite god Molech were offered there. Josiah desecrated the valley because of the pagan worship. It subsequently became a sort of perpetually burning city dump and later became to be equated with the “hell” of final judgement in apocalyptic literature.
The meaning of the phrase then is that, after the judgement, death loses all its power. Also into this lake of fire go all those whose names are not found in the book of life. By their own choice, they do not belong to the Kingdom.
Finally, in the fifth section (21:1-2), John sees “a new heaven and a new earth”. This is a way of describing the new way of life we will experience face to face with God and Jesus Christ. It is an existence, as Paul tells us, where we are totally free from decay and corruption and are renewed and transformed in the presence of God’s glory. The whole of creation will one day be freed from the dominance of corruption, renewed and transformed by the glory of God (Rom 8:19-25). It is also an existence which is totally beyond our powers to conceive. The less we say about it the better!
And “the sea was no more”, because the sea is the home of the dragon, Satan. As in the time of the Exodus, the sea will now draw back, not for a while, but forever before the triumphant advance of the New Israel.
What now exists is the:
…the holy city, the new Jerusalem…
This is the title for the gathering of all those who have faithfully followed Christ and are now united to him. Jerusalem is described as beautifully:
…prepared as a bride adorned for her husband [God].
This is an image found among the prophets Isaiah and Hosea. It speaks of the marvellously intimate relationship between God and his people, those who really belong to him. See, too, Jesus’ parable of the wedding banquet (Matt 22:2-14).
The reading is speaking of what is in store for those who have been faithful, in spite of suffering and even losing their lives, to Christ and his Gospel. On the other hand, the powers of evil are overcome forever and those who, by their own choice, became their servants are lost for ever.
It is not for us to speculate just how all this takes place, still less to think that the images in Revelation correspond in any literal way to the reality. It is for us to concentrate on the lives we are living now, and to seek, find and respond to Jesus as we come in contact with him at every moment of our day. Then we can leave the future safely in his hands. He will take care of us. “Do not be afraid,” is the message always on his lips:
…remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.
(Matt 28:20)
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*The millennium (from the Latin mille, “thousand”, and annus, “year”) is taken literally by some as 1,000 actual years, while others interpret it metaphorically as a long, but undetermined period of time.
From the NIV Study Bible, there are three basic approaches to the subject of the millennium, mainly from non-Catholic positions:
- “Amillennialism: millennium describes the present reign of the souls of deceased believers with Christ in heaven. The present form of God’s kingdom will be followed by Christ’s return, the general resurrection, the final judgement and Christ’s continuing reign over the perfect kingdom on the new earth in the eternal state.
- Premillennialism: the present form of God’s kingdom is moving towards a grand climax when Christ will return, the “first resurrection” (see Rev 20:5-6) will occur and his kingdom will find expression in a literal, visible reign of peace and righteousness on the earth in space-time history. After the final resurrection, the last judgement and the renewal of the heavens and the earth, this future, temporal kingdom will merge into the eternal kingdom, and the Lord will reign forever on the new earth.
- Postmillennialism: the world will eventually be Christianised, resulting in a long period of peace and prosperity called the millennium. This future period will close with Christ’s second coming, the resurrection of the dead, the final judgement and the eternal state.”
Many, however, will take the “millennium” as something purely symbolical. When people die, they go straight to God to be with him forever or, if they have so chosen, to be separated from him. In a situation where there is no time and only a ‘Now’, all will ‘arrive’ simultaneously no matter when in temporal time they leave this earth, so the Final Judgement is not a matter of past, present or future. Again, these are matters which are best left outside the field of speculation.
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Wednesday of Week 34 of Ordinary Time – First Reading
Commentary on Revelation 15:1-4
In our reading today, John describes another of his visions:
Then I saw another portent in heaven, great and amazing: seven angels with seven plagues, which are the last, for with them the wrath of God is ended.
Later in the chapter, John will describe how:
…one of the four living creatures gave the seven angels seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God…
These bowls are filled with God’s anger against the unrepentant wicked. Today’s reading consists of the introduction to the chapter, which precedes the vision of the seven bowls, and it contains a triumphant hymn of the good and righteous. In this way it sets up the context in which God’s anger and God’s punishment against the wicked are seen as entirely just and justified. These punishments are the last because “they exhaust the anger of God”—with them God’s anger is satisfied.
God’s anger is a theme that goes right through the New Testament. Paul, for instance, in the letter to the Romans says:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and injustice of those who by their injustice suppress the truth. (Rom 1:18)
And it is spoken about even more frequently in the Old Testament. We remember the many occasions when God was deeply disappointed with the thankless behaviour of his people whom he had delivered from the slavery of Egypt. Even earlier there is the punishment of the Flood, and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. In later times, one invasion followed another, kings were deposed or died terrible deaths, the people were taken away into exile, Jerusalem and the Temple were sacked and destroyed more than once—all the result of Israel’s sin.
However, we have to be careful when speaking of God’s anger not to equate it with the kind of anger we ourselves are prone to from time to time. Our anger is often a spontaneous and uncontrolled emotional reaction to a situation and is often quite out of proportion to what actually happened. God’s anger is measured and balanced. It is not really anger in our sense. Rather, it is the response he gives to those who totally reject his call to a life of truth and love and union with him. In fact, it is not God who rejects and punishes his people. Rather, it is they who reject him and find themselves in terrible isolation from the One for whom their whole being craves.
Our God is much more a God of love, who did not spare his only Son that we might be saved rather than condemned. God did with his Son what Abraham was ready to do, but did not have to. But still there are those who turn their backs on that love. What can God do except let them go and have their will?
In his vision John sees a “sea of glass mixed with fire”. It is thought that this is a heavenly counterpart to a basin in the Jerusalem Temple which was known as the “Sea”. Other symbols of the Temple which appear in Revelation are: the lamps, the altar, the altar of incense, and the Ark of the Covenant. The “sea of glass” represents the new heavenly Temple, where the elect gather and sing their praises to God.
The elect are those who have struggled victoriously against the Beast, his statue “and the number of its name”. This seems to refer to those especially who chose to die as martyrs, rather than worship the image of the emperor as a god. (One wonders whether the Romans really believed the divine attributes of their emperors, most of whom had glaring human weaknesses, and enforced bowing to the emperor’s image mainly as a test of loyalty to the regime. In any case, committed Christians were not prepared to compromise the absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ. They would not give to Caesar what belonged to God.)
The gathered assembly of the elect, each with a harp given to them by God, now sings the hymn of Moses and of the Lamb. The Hymn of Moses, found in Exodus, celebrated the triumph of the Israelites over Pharaoh. It begins with the words:
I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously;
horse and rider he has thrown into the sea… (Ex 15:1)
We sing part of this hymn during the Easter Vigil liturgy. It is also a victory song and was sung on Sabbath evenings in the synagogue.
Here the elect also sing “the song of the Lamb”, who has triumphed over the forces of evil in bringing deliverance to all his followers. It is a hymn to “the Lord God the Almighty…the King of the nations”, who alone is holy and to whom all peoples eventually will come in adoration because his “judgments have been revealed”.
Let us pray that we too may one day come to sing this hymn of praise, adoration and thanksgiving in a face to face presence with our Lord. Let us not, through our own stupid choices, face the “anger” of our God and find ourselves hearing those terrible words:
Truly I tell you, I do not know you. (Matt 25:12)
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