Fifth  Sunday of Easter, C - May 9, 2004

            If you have been carefully following the readings for the last few Sundays, you will have noticed that the second reading has been coming from the book of Revelation.  This is a fascinating book, written just about a half a century after Christ, a book full of strange and exciting symbolism:  a woman clothed with the sun, angelic hosts praising God and carrying out His wrath against evil, golden trumpets signaling the divine voice speaking to all people, crowns, white robes, lots of incense, and so on. 

            This mysterious book, scholars tell us, was written to encourage suffering Christians, whom the Roman authorities were at times severely persecuting.  In fact, on one level the book is about this most stunning confrontation between the Roman Empire and the new and struggling Christian Church.  One 19th century atheist historian went so far as to try to argue that the fall of Rome was due to the Church and the softening of the Roman character by the teaching of Christ.  Of course in reality, history shows that the Roman Empire fell under an accumulating weight of injustice, immorality, bread and circus politics (much like our own), and growing obsession with luxury.  It all fell to pieces and the western world was plunged into what has been described as the Dark Ages, though I have a hard time trying to think of something more dark than huge Roman mobs frothing at the mouth watching people being torn to pieces by lions. 

            Anyway, out of this great fall, this collapse of Rome, rose a single power and authority capable of preserving the remnants of classical civilization and having within herself the ability to bring the world to its senses.  This entity, in her institutional aspect, is now by far the oldest existing institution in the history of the world.  I speak, of course, of the Catholic Church.  And here, hinted at in the very first century of the Christian era, is an illustration of what the book of Revelation is all about on a much deeper level -- the end of all history, the world as we know it, and the unveiling of, as described in today’s reading, the “new Jerusalem, the holy city, coming down out of heaven from God, beautiful as a bride prepared to meet her husband” -- a city acclaimed as God’s dwelling among His people, a place of no tears, no crying, no pain.  For, as the John the author notes, “the former world has passed away.”

            Something like the utter collapse of what seemed like an everlasting empire -- Rome -- and God’s glorious Church, His bride, rising up out of that seemingly final chaos, something like that is the end of the world and the manifestation of God’s eternal Kingdom.  “I, John,” says the Apostle, “saw new heavens and a new earth.  The former heavens and the former earth had passed away, and the sea was no longer.” 

            The book of Revelation is an exciting book because it speaks of the end of the world and the birth of something that will never die.  This mysterious written work that is full of visions of indescribable glory and unspeakable horror captures our imagination because it lets us in on the most important secret of all -- that it all one day will come to an end.  And that the end, then, is only the beginning of that which will never pass away.

            When will this all happen?  There have many cults and sects that have gathered a crowd together in a certain place at a certain time to await the end.  And the appointed time comes and goes without incident.  Time and again this happens; you’d think people would see through it.  You’d think that it would dawn upon people that no one knows the end of history.  That’s not the important question anyway.  Our Lord didn’t leave us with the assignment of figuring out the time of the last things, but with the task -- as given in today’s gospel -- obeying His commandment to love. 

            After having recognized the fact that one day the world as we know it will come to end, we have to ask ourselves, not when this will happen, but upon what have I set my hope and my love?  Which do I love, the world that is passing away or God’s Kingdom that lasts forever?  For is not this the judgment we are so frequently warned about all through the Church’s tradition and the Holy Scripture:  that if I set my heart upon this passing world, what woe is mine when I see it all collapsing and disappearing before me -- whether at the end of time or the end of my own life -- and I have nothing left? 

            John the Apostle describes the very thing happening in this grim book of Revelation.   He describes the shock and sorrow of the merchants as they stand at a distance from the city of the world:  “They poured dust on their heads and cried out, weeping and mourning:  ‘Alas, alas, the great city, in which all ship owners grew rich from their profitable trade with her!  In a single hour her destruction has come about!’” 

            Where have we set our hearts?  Without neglecting our duties, while thanking God for the joys we have now in this world, have we come to see that it will not last forever?  But something else does:  God’s kingdom, the holy and eternal Jerusalem, heaven.  And the door to that kingdom is love.  In an age when the very possibility of a man or a woman’s falling deeply in love with God is hardly considered, in age when love has come to mean a temporary, convenient, and self-serving “relationship,” -- still in such an age we Christians must insist that, yes, love, true love is the key to the Kingdom:  learning to love God above all else and one another with a self-giving, and therefore joyful love, by God’s grace transforms us into citizens of that new and everlasting city, where God’s dwelling with His people is without end. 

            Love.  Love as Christ commanded us.  Love God and one another.  And then, “see,” the Lord says, “I make all things new!”