Follow the Lamb: a Guide to Reading, Understanding, and Applying the Book of Revelation

Co-ordinate to Joseph Ratzinger, the last book of the Bible, Revelation or the Apocalypse of St. John, is showing forth a kind of "archetypal liturgy" to which all our earthly liturgies must bear resemblance:

With its vision of the cosmic liturgy, in the midst of which stands the Lamb who was sacrificed, the Apocalypse has presented the essential contents of the eucharistic sacrament in an impressive form that sets a standard for every local liturgy. From the point of view of the Apocalypse, the essential matter of all eucharistic liturgy is its participation in the heavenly liturgy; it is from thence that information technology necessarily derives its unity, its catholicity, and its universality. (Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith, 110-eleven)

In a General Audition on Nov 3, 2004, Pope John Paul II spoke about the Canticle in chapter v of Revelation:

The canticle just proposed to usa . . . is part of the solemn opening vision of Revelation, which presents a sort of heavenly liturgy to which nosotros besides, nevertheless pilgrims on earth, acquaintance ourselves during our ecclesial celebrations. The hymn of the Book of Revelation that we meditate today concludes with a final acclamation cried out by "myriads of myriads" of angels (see Rev 5:eleven). It refers to the "the Lamb slain," to whom is attributed the same glory as to God the Begetter, as "Worthy is the Lamb … to receive power and riches, wisdom and strength" (v:12). Information technology is the moment of pure contemplation, of joyful praise, of the song of honey to Christ in his paschal mystery. This luminous paradigm of the heavenly glory is anticipated in the Liturgy of the Church. In fact, as the Canon of the Catholic Church building reminds us, the Liturgy is an "action" of the whole Christ (Christus totus). Those who celebrate it here, live already in some mode, across the signs, in the heavenly liturgy, where the commemoration is totally communion and feast. It is in this eternal liturgy that the Spirit and the Church make united states of america participate, when we celebrate the mystery of salvation in the sacraments (see Nos. 1136 and 1139).

In The Lamb'due south Supper, Scott Hahn writes: "I suspect that God revealed heavenly worship in earthly terms so that humans—who, for the kickoff time, were invited to participate in heavenly worship—would know how to practise it" (122). Hahn goes on to suggest that the book of Revelation offered help to the nascent church building in discerning what elements of Quondam Covenant worship to retain within the new worship of the New Covenant, inasmuch as the new both concludes and includes the old. In short: the Church can, and should, have buildings, ministers, candlesticks, chalices, incense, vestments, because her worship, being ordered to and derived from Jesus Christ, is the perfection of all that the quondam worship pointed to with these typological symbols, as nonetheless to exist fulfilled. They exercise not cease to be the symbols we demand in order to perceive and enter into communion with Christ; they larn a new purpose as symbols that point to a reality accomplished, a conservancy won on the Cantankerous, a glory shared with the true-blue who may at present enter heaven.

Who is the primal figure of Revelation? The slain and risen Lamb, the Paschal or Passover Lamb that is given to u.s. in the holy Eucharist, instituted past Jesus at the last meal he celebrated with the disciples before His atoning death. What is the primal activity depicted in the book? Worship—either truthful (directed to God and the Lamb) or idolatrous (directed to Babylon, the brute, the whore, etc.). And what is the central metaphor? Union. You lot are either united every bit "i flesh" with the Lamb, washed clean in His blood and feasting at His table, or you are fornicating with the devil; the two cities are assorted every bit a whore (the erstwhile, unfaithful Jerusalem) and a virgin bride (the new Jerusalem, the Church). The very term apokalypsis means "unveiling." At the time Revelation was written, this term was used to describe, amid other things, the unveiling of the virgin bride equally part of the wedding festivities.

Barna da Siena, Mystical Marriage of St Catherine

In a nutshell, the volume of Revelation is near true worship of the true God, a mystical marriage with Him; and this is brought about through the Church building's worship, that is, the sacramental life, peculiarly Baptism and the Eucharist. Apart from this life, in that location is error, folly, despair, horror, and destruction—the history of fallen mankind, which wages war confronting the Lamb. (It is interesting to note that this book has received a championship of honour that was subsequently extended to, or rather, recognized in, the unabridged body of Scripture, namely, "revelation"; and it is not incidental that not just this book, called "Revelation," is about true worship of the true God, just all of Scripture is about true worship of the true God. Christianity is a religion principally and fundamentally concerned with adoring, loving, and serving the one true God, in which human being'due south conservancy and the very content of love of neighbour consists. Put differently, there is no such thing as an "ethical reduction" or a "philosophical distillation" of Christianity; it is inherently bound upwards with sacrifice and sacrament, by which we profess our religion in God and yield ourselves to Him in love.)

At present, why does Sacred Scripture end with the Book of Revelation? The reason is as simple as information technology is profound: Revelation is not merely or fifty-fifty primarily the closure of a written volume simply the beginning of, or aperture to, something else that is greater than Scripture: the living worship of the living Torso of Christ. This is the subtle but poignant response, far ahead of time, to Luther's invention of sola scriptura: Revelation ends the Bible because information technology depicts and invites us to the Eucharistic banquet of the Lamb, which is where the things spoken about in Scripture are really present, in their fullest intensity. The written signs lead united states to the reality signified; the bread of the word leads to the staff of life of life, the book to the altar. As Hahn writes:

For almost of the early Christians information technology was a given: the Book of Revelation was incomprehensible autonomously from the liturgy. … It was only when I began attending Mass that the many parts of this puzzling book suddenly began to fall into place. Earlier long, I could run into the sense in Revelation'south chantry (eight:iii), its robed clergymen (four:4), candles (1:12), incense (5:8), manna (two:17), chalices (ch. 16), Sunday worship (ane:x), the prominence it gives to the Blessed Virgin Mary (12:one-half-dozen), the "Holy, Holy, Holy" (4:8), the Gloria (15:3-4), the Sign of the Cantankerous (14:one), the Alleluia (19:1, iii, 6), the readings from Scripture (chs. 2-iii), and the "Lamb of God" (many, many times). These are not interruptions in the narrative or incidental details; they are the very stuff of the Apocalypse. (The Lamb'due south Supper, 66-67)

In these final pages, when we behold the new Jerusalem descending from heaven, where does information technology descend to? Mountain Zion, that is, the place where Jesus had eaten His last Passover and instituted the Eucharist, where the Holy Spirit descended at Pentecost, where the Christians in Advertizing lxx were spared Roman destruction. "In other words, the new Jerusalem came to world, then as at present, in the place where Christians historic the supper of the Lamb" (Hahn, 102). Liturgy is anticipated Parousia, the 'already' entering our 'not yet.'

If Joseph Ratzinger, John Paul II, and Scott Hahn are all correct in what they are saying—and ane may wish to note that the connection betwixt the earthly liturgy and the heavenly is a prominent element in the theology of liturgy offered in Vatican 2'southward Sacrosanctum Concilium—this becomes a powerful and truly unanswerable argument for the restoration of the sacred, the recovery of signs and symbols in every aspect of the liturgy from compages to sacred music, the preservation or reestablishment of continuity with traditional Cosmic worship, and the overwhelming need to enrich and "celestialize" the oft sterile and impoverished vocabulary of contemporary liturgical life. The music we hear, for instance, should be awe-inspiring, or at very to the lowest degree, effective in elevating the mind to divine things, and so that we may catch a faint echo of angelic music; the church building should be an evocation of the heavenly city, the sanctuary a magnificent image of the Holy of Holies. The ceremonies, in their solemn and ordered splendor, should describe the mind upwards into the majesty and mystery of God.

If we do not strive to have and practise these things to the extent that information technology lies inside our power, nosotros are not just failing to implement Vatican Ii (a failure that happens so regularly information technology has ceased to concenter notice or comment); nosotros are not just running away from a tradition stretching back 2,000 years (and even longer, if nosotros taken into account the Jewish background), bad enough as that would exist. We are showing that we have not understood, assimilated, and embraced the very teaching of Divine Revelation. We are, in a sense, rejecting the root of our religion as such.

There is proficient reason, then, to render to a careful written report of the Book of Revelation and to ask what this book is really didactics us about our life equally Christians here and now and most the essential vocation of the Church, which is the glorification of God and the sanctification of souls in time of tribulation.

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Source: https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2014/12/the-book-of-revelation-guide-to.html

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