Monday of Week 34 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Revelation 14:1-5

In a passage immediately preceding today’s and not included in our liturgical readings (Rev 13:1-18), 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. This was a sign of ownership. The Beast is also identified with the enigmatic number 666, said to be the sum of the numeric value given to the Hebrew letters making up the name Nero Caesar. (Because it is 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 (and 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. 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 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. In time, the term 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”.

Here 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. 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 (a Greek word meaning ‘witnesses’), those who gave the ultimate witness of their faith. They are, as it were, the nucleus of the final Kingdom.

And John hears:

…a voice from heaven like the sound of many waters and like the sound of loud thunder; the voice I heard was like the sound of harpists playing on their harps…

It was the accompaniment to a new song that the four creatures and the 24 elders were singing in the presence of God’s throne. 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.*

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 “first fruits” 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.

The last line reads:

…in their mouth no lie was found; they are blameless.

That is, they never invoked the Beast (the emperor Nero, most likely) as their god. This is unlike the Gentiles mentioned by Paul in his Letter to the Romans who:

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

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.

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*Although it is present in the NRSVue translation, in some Bible editions, the original text of a sentence (verse 4) is omitted at this point in the passage:

It is these who have not defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins; these follow the Lamb wherever he goes.

In this context, it is generally understood that John is speaking metaphorically. In the Old Testament, marital infidelity was often a metaphor for idolatry, and in this case, the worship of the Beast. But even after legitimate intercourse, the release of semen was regarded as rendering the man unclean and similarly for the release of menstrual blood in the woman. The only way to avoid such ‘uncleanness’, then, was total abstinence.

The “virgins” in this context are those who, even at the cost of their lives, have remained totally faithful to God and Christ, who have not been contaminated in the slightest way by a corrupt and immoral world—whether they were actually married or not. One wonders to what extent this verse had an influence on the future asceticism of the Church and the high esteem given to virginity and celibacy in the Christian life. There are far more ‘virgin’ saints, men and women, than married men or women in our liturgical calendar.

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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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