More About the Heavenly Jerusalem

I wrote last week about the Heavenly Jerusalem described in several of the Sundays of the Easter Season’s Second Reading from the Book of Revelation. In this upcoming Sunday’s Second Reading, John sees a new heaven and a new earth and the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven: "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The former heaven and the former earth had passed away...I also saw the holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. (Revelation 21a:1-2a)
 

This reference to new heavens and a new earth is also mentioned in 2 Peter 3:13: "But according to his promise we await new heavens and a new earth in which justice dwells."

 

"Justice" in its Biblical sense means "right relationship." The original Greek word for this gets translated as either "justice" or "righteousness" (cf. "rightness") There may be a legal aspect to this, but the Biblical meaning of justice goes beyond legal issues to relational ones. It is an interesting exercise to ask if we are living in right relationship with God and others? Another related Scripture passage is Hosea 6:8: "God has shown you what is good and what the Lord expects of you: to do justice [right relationships], to love with mercy, and to walk humbly with your God."

 

What is it about "right relationships" that Jesus reveals to us? He, also mentions relationship with God and with others and he says that the greatest commandment is to love God with everything and to love others as oneself. (See Matthew 22:35–40, Mark 12:28–34.e) But he goes even further, and we hear this in this Sunday’s upcoming Gospel: He says "A New Commandment I give you: love one another as I have loved you." (John 13:34)

 

The way Jesus loves us is sacrificially (as revealed on the Cross where he is like the Lamb slain, another favorite image of the Book of Revelation) and Jesus loves us without end (revealed to us in the Resurrection where he has conquered all that opposes love and justice).

 

I really wish I had the talent and time to write a comprehensive book about the Love of God. Everything in our life of Christ is related to this love, which is not mere sentimentalism, but an almost fierce and certainly all-giving love on God’s part in relationship to us.

 

Since the Gospel of John this Sunday is about the New Commandment of Christ and it is proclaimed in the Easter Season, we can rightly conclude that this sacrificial and unending love of God, shown to us by Christ Jesus, is the animating spirit of the Resurrection. To begin living even now the Risen life of Christ means to live in his love and have his love live in us.

 

I can also detect this new Risen way of love in the Second Reading for this Sunday in the Book of Revelation 21:2: "I also saw the holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband."

The New Jerusalem, which is all the redeemed who are loved and saved by Christ, is the Bride--the Church for whom Christ, the Bridegroom, gave his life and she in turn gives her all to him. The Catechism has this magnificent passage:

 

"The entire Christian life bears the mark of the spousal love of Christ and the Church. Already Baptism, the entry into the People of God, is a nuptial mystery; it is so to speak the nuptial bath which precedes the wedding feast, the Eucharist. Christian marriage in its turn becomes an efficacious sign, the sacrament of the covenant of Christ and the Church." (#1617)

 

It is appropriate that the Eucharist is mentioned as a wedding feast between the New Jerusalem and Christ; every earthly Mass participates in the eternal Liturgy of Heaven, the New Jerusalem

 

I have more to say about the Heavenly Jerusalem next week.

 

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More on the Heavenly Liturgy

For several Sundays in the Easter Season, in our Second Readings from the Book of Revelation, we are hearing about the worship that centers around the Risen Christ in heaven. This week, from Rev 7:9, 14b-17 we hear:

 

"I, John, had a vision of a great multitude,

which no one could count,

from every nation, race, people, and tongue.

They stood before the throne and before the Lamb,

wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands.

 

"Then one of the elders said to me,

‘These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress;

they have washed their robes

and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

 

"‘For this reason they stand before God’s throne

and worship him day and night in his temple.

The one who sits on the throne will shelter them.

 

"‘They will not hunger or thirst anymore,

nor will the sun or any heat strike them.

For the Lamb who is in the center of the throne

will shepherd them and lead them to springs of life-giving water,

and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’"

 

The White Robed Multitude in Heaven

I was raised in the Methodist Church. At that time, in the late ‘60's and early ‘70's, the Methodist Church still had a classical "Protestant style" of worship, which is to say everything centered upon the preaching of the Word of God with a great deal of singing. Once a month or less often we celebrated the Lord’s Supper with Communion consisting of a small wafer and grape juice in individual little cups. I am grateful for my Methodist youth for in that Church I met Jesus, fellowshiped with other youth seeking to know Jesus more, and was given a great love for Scripture and singing.

 

In my Senior year in High School, a friend invited me to attend a Eucharist on Wednesday evening at her Episcopal Church. I had to ask her what "Eucharist" meant; but I accepted her invitation and when I attended I was captivated by a different style of worship that I had never before experienced. While the Episcopal Church is solidly Protestant, it worships now in a very Catholic style when it celebrates its Eucharist.

 

I was struck that evening by seeing an altar, a priest in vestments, bread and wine, ritual responses like "The Lord be with you," and the familiar singing, but in such reverence and beauty. When I started attending Sunday Eucharist at that Church, there was even more ceremony, with big processions with banners, and everything seemed so exalted. Wasn’t this how God was intended to be worshiped? I didn’t know this until much later, but my soul was very much disposed to the Catholic style of worship. Eventually (obviously) I entered the Catholic Church, returning to the source.

 

The Priest in this Episcopal Church was named Fr. John (a good name for a priest) and I was very impressed with his teaching. I remember him once saying: "I am comfortable with a Church that worships in the style described in the Book of Revelation." Something clicked inside of me that recognized the truth of this statement. Having read the Book of Revelation I remembered how the worship in heaven was described as angels and the blessed singing and rejoicing. They rarely sat but rather stood and knelt and "fell down in worship" a lot. Revelation describes in heaven a sanctuary, an altar, incense, praises of the Lamb of God (the Agnus Dei), the angelic song of "Holy, Holy, Holy" (the Sanctus) lampstands, vestments, priests and more. These were the things I didn’t experience in the classical Protestant style, but which I was experiencing in what is called the more Catholic, liturgical style of that Episcopal Church I was attending.

 

John's Vision in Revelation

Some Scripture scholars are beginning to consider that the Book of Revelation was indeed also describing some of the early Church’s style of Liturgy (the public worship of the Church that is patterned in certain ways of ritual and elements used for the worship of God). There is no doubt that the Heavenly Liturgy (again the worship done in heaven) described in the Book of Revelation reflects many elements of the worship conducted in the Jewish Temple detailed in the Old Testament. Jesus himself and the early Christians in Jerusalem worshiped in the Temple.

 

Constantine

Certainly when the early Church (up until the 4^th century) was worshiping in small groups in largehouses, the Eucharist was more simple just as when a Mass may be celebrated in a small group setting today. Many elements like incense and vestments and very developed rituals and prayers weren’t incorporated into the Church’s worship until after the early persecutions ended and the legalizing of Christianity by the Emperor Constantine (in 313 AD). Then large churches were built and the respect and signs given to the Emperor were transferred to the worship of God who is greater than any Emperor and more deserving of such honor.

 

 

However, as the Mass was becoming a more exalted style of Liturgy, the Church did not forget the worship described in the Book of Revelation. And there was a very definite belief that the Earthly Liturgy of the Church was a participation in the Heavenly Church’s Liturgy; the Mass is a foretaste of the glories of heaven and it is a true communion in the Heavenly Liturgy.

 

This is described in the Catechism in several places. For example, in #1090:

 

"In the earthly liturgy we share in a foretaste of that heavenly liturgy which is celebrated in the Holy City of Jerusalem toward which we journey as pilgrims, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God, Minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle. With all the warriors of the heavenly army we sing a hymn of glory to the Lord; venerating the memory of the saints, we hope for some part and fellowship with them; we eagerly await the Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, until he, our life, shall appear and we too will appear with him in glory."

 

I said last week, the worship of heaven is an unending of ecstasy of love, the highest and supreme expression of love for God and one another and it is full of all delights; but here on earth we don’t always experience our worship as heavenly or even that exalted. This is  because we don’t usually appreciate fully the act of worship due to our earthly limitations and distractions, not to mention the deadening of our souls by sin. What we need is our imaginations stretched, as by the Book of Revelation, to see in our inner heart the glories of the Lord. As a contemporary Christian song prays:

 

"Open the eyes of my heart, Lord

Open the eyes of my heart

I want to see You

I want to see You

 

"To see You high and lifted up                                                       

Shinin' in the light of Your glory

Pour out Your power and love

As we sing holy, holy, holy

 

"Open the eyes of my heart, Lord

Open the eyes of my heart

I want to see You

I want to see You

　

 

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Book of Revelation: The Heavenly Liturgy

This Sunday we hear about John’s vision of the Heavenly Liturgy recorded in the Book of Revelation:

                                  "I, John, looked and heard the voices of many angels
                                   who surrounded the throne
                                   and the living creatures and the elders.
                                   They were countless in number, and they cried out in a loud voice:
                                  ‘Worthy is the Lamb that was slain
                                   to receive power and riches, wisdom and strength,
                                   honor and glory and blessing.’

                                   Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth
                                   and under the earth and in the sea,
                                   everything in the universe, cry out:
                                  ‘To the one who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
                                   be blessing and honor, glory and might,
                                   forever and ever.’
                                   The four living creatures answered, ‘Amen,’
                                   and the elders fell down and worshiped." (Rev 5:11-14)

Mural from St Benet's Chaplaincy, Queen Mary's, University of London

I love and am inspired by the thought of this Heavenly Liturgy. It is the worship which is an ecstasy of love offered eternally in heaven to God the Father through God the Son in the Holy Spirit by the angels and saints, Mary the Mother of God and all the blessed of heaven.

 

I say it is an ecstasy of love because we don’t usually appreciate the act of worship as it could be if we were free of all earthly limitations and distractions, not to mention the deadliness of sin. If you were to tell most Catholics that their future in heaven is eternal worship, they might not be very enthused. For them this is better than eternal damnation, but barely!

 

But worship is love, the delight of all love, unending love. With God, it is our highest expression of love and by "ecstasy" I mean that it takes us beyond our self, of which bodily ecstasy is but a hint of what heaven will be like.

 

We pursue many pleasures, physical and spiritual, because they give us delight. But in this world they always must come to an end, because we cannot sustain delight at all times (for example we must sleep and have our responsibilities, etc.) But not so in heaven. The great St. Thomas Aquinas writes about this:

 

"Whatever is delightful is there [in heaven] in superabundance. If delights are sought, there [in heaven] is supreme and most perfect delight. It is said of God, the supreme good: ‘Boundless delights are in your right hand.’"

 

Again, eternal life consists of the joyous community of all the blessed, a community of supreme delight, since everyone will share all that is good with all the blessed. Everyone will love everyone else as himself, and therefore will rejoice in another’s good as in his own. So it follows that the happiness and joy of each grows in proportion to the joy of all." [For full passage HERE] 

 

 

 

When I began reading classical Catholic works in College on the road to becoming Catholic, I read another Thomas, Thomas  Kempis in The Imitation of Christ. There he also writes about transcendent love:

 

"Nothing is sweeter than love, nothing stronger, nothing higher, nothing wider,

nothing more pleasant, nothing fuller or better in heaven or earth;

for love is born of God, and can rest only in God above all created things.

 

"Love flies, runs, leaps for joy; it is free and unrestrained.

Love gives all for all,

resting in One who is highest above all things,

from whom every good flows and proceeds.

Love does not regard the gifts, but turns to the Giver of all good gifts.

 

"Love knows no limits, but ardently transcends all bounds.

Love feels no burden, takes no account of toil,

attempts things beyond its strength;

love sees nothing as impossible,

for it feels able to achieve all things.

Love therefore does great things;

it is strange and effective;

while he who lacks love faints and fails."

 

Now here is something interesting about our bodies becoming risen bodies like Christ’s in "the life of the world to come." Greek philosophy before the time of Christ taught that the immaterial soul was "trapped" in "the prison" of the material body which weighs the soul down. In some ways this is true because we usually feel more of life’s limitations in our bodies than in our souls: we grow tired, we age, bodily addictions can harm us. The Greek ideal, then, was to transcend the material and bodily realities.

 

However, the Hebrew mind set of the Old Testament and of Jesus as a Jew is that the human person is a unity of body and soul. And the teaching about the resurrection of our bodies is that our bodies will have a place in our heavenly life. I like to think about how Aquinas says "If delights are sought, there [in heaven] is supreme and most perfect delight," and I believe that we need a risen body to be able to enjoy the fullness of all bodily delight. In other words, it will be our soul and body that will enjoy the delights of heaven. Our earthly bodies, as I mentioned are limited, but not our risen bodies.

 

So, returning to John’s vision in the Book of Revelation, the heavenly liturgy (worship) and delight of love in heaven by the blessed community of heaven centers upon Christ, the Lamb that was slain yet is risen and lives. John sees God sitting on a throne in heaven and with him the Lamb of God, who is Christ. In our earthly liturgy we say a number of times "Lamb of God you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us." The lamb imagery refers to the Jewish Temple sacrifices. Christ’s being slain, that is, dying on the Cross is the prefect sacrifice of love offered for us and our salvation. Without his sacrifice and his love we would be damned, for it is love that saves us. So this what John means when he sees this Lamb who was slain.

 

Detail Lamb of God by van Eyck

 

 

And we hear this Sunday in the Second Reading from the Book of Revelation one of the many references to the thanksgiving, love and worship given to Christ in heaven. But I shall share more about this next week.

 

Listen to Handel’s "Worthy is the Lamb" from The Messiah HERE

 

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Wounds of the Risen Christ

This Sunday, continuing the celebration of the Easter Season, is Divine Mercy Sunday. This Sunday we hear the Gospel account of how the Risen Jesus appeared to his Apostles, and also to Thomas, and showed them his wounds from the Cross. Thomas had insisted that he would only believe that Jesus was risen from the dead if he could actually touch Jesus’ wounds and hence earned the name "Doubting Thomas."

 

 

Certainly we can say that the Divine Mercy of Jesus is focused in his wounds which open to his Sacred Heart. In my spiritual journey these wounds of Jesus attract me very much with the sacrificial love they represent. These wounds, especially his Five Wounds (in his hands, feet and side), are marks of the Passion and Cross which he still carries in his glorified, risen body after his Resurrection.

 

The Resurrection means a new and glorified body, called a new creation, not a resuscitated mortal body brought back to mortal existence which can die again. In such a glorified body we would not expect to find wounds; we would expect to find perfection, which presumably excludes any defect which we associate with wounds, scars or other physical disfigurements.

 

 

 

Yet it is in that glorified, risen body that Jesus keeps showing his disciples his wounds taken from the Cross. One preacher said that the reasons for this are first that the wounds show the disciples that the one appearing to them as one who could pass through locked doors (they thought he was a ghost at first! See Luke 24:36-40), is the same Jesus who they knew had been crucified. Second, they are the proofs of his love for us which he demonstrated in his Sacrifice on the Cross. And, third, they tell us that we too will have wounds if we love as Christ loves, but also share his new life as a result. (C. H. Spurgeon Sermons Vol.5:254)

 

I think how some societies celebrated the scars of warriors as marks of valor and battle. Christ’s wounds are signs of his suffering for us and this out of love. The Catechism teaches: "By embracing in his human heart the Father's love for men [all], Jesus ‘loved them to the end’, for ‘greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’(John 13:1; 15:13.) In suffering and death his humanity became the free and perfect instrument of his divine love which desires the salvation of men." (#609)

The Jerusalem Cross
depicts the Five Wounds of Christ

 

The Cross and the Wounds Christ received on the Cross are connected, then, with the love of God for us. They tell us that this love is sacrificial (giving) and also that this love is compassionate. Compassion literally means "to suffer with" another, to share another’s suffering, at least in heart and moral support, if not physically also.

 

I think about the wounds in my own life when I have suffered. I have come to know that whatever suffering I may have suffered in my life has helped make me a more compassionate priest, though I have a lot of room to grow in this compassion. For example, I went through a terrible time of depression and panic attacks during one period of my life, even as a priest. Before this, I remember when I was in the Seminary that one of my former College roommates who was in Medical School at the time told me that he had to take off a semester because he was experiencing panic attacks. I didn’t know what he was talking about and I couldn’t appreciate then what serious suffering he was going through. After I had my own experience of this suffering, I can sympathize with others who suffer this kind of affliction and be of help, especially to reassure that this affliction can be cured since I experienced healing of this woundedness.

 

Thank God we don’t have to experience every suffering imaginable to be compassionate! However, Christ Jesus did suffer every wound there is except sin, and I cannot imagine the enormity of such suffering. The result, however, is described by the author of the Letter to the Hebrews 4:14-16:

 

"Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tested in all things as we are, yet without sin. Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."

 

And St. Bernard of Clairvaux says:

 

"He was thinking thoughts of peace, and I did not know it, for who knows the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? But the piercing nail has become a key to unlock the door, that I may see the good will of the Lord. And what can I see as I look through the hole? Both the nail and the wound cry out that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. The lance pierced His soul and came close to His heart, so that he might be able to feel compassion for me in my weaknesses.

 

"Through these sacred wounds we can see the secret of His heart, the great mystery of love, the sincerity of His mercy with which he visited us from on high. Where have Your love, Your mercy, Your compassion shone out more luminously than in Your wounds, sweet, gentle Lord of mercy? More mercy than this no one has than that he lay down his life for those who are doomed to death." (Homily on the Song of Songs)

 

 

The Wounds of Christ also remind us of the essential union of Christ’s Cross and Resurrection. There is not one without the other, so as I often say: "There is no Cross without the Resurrection but also there is no Resurrection without the Cross." This is the Paschal Mystery of Christ: his Dying and Rising, and it is the pattern of our lives.

 

I see in the wounds of Christ, as others have, the reminder also that the path of Christ’s love will inevitably involve a certain amount of wounding, of suffering for others. A story is told about people who didn’t get involved in helping others in life: "We will go before God to be judged, and God will ask us: 'Where are your wounds?' and we will say, 'We have no wounds.' And God will ask, 'Was nothing worth fighting for?'" It might also be asked: "Was there nothing worth suffering for, giving and loving enough to be vulnerable and wounded?"

 

Here is a favorite prayer which mentions the wounds of Christ:

 

Anima Christi (Soul of Christ)

　

Soul of Christ, sanctify me;

Body of Christ, save me;

Blood of Christ, inebriate me;

Water from the side of Christ, wash me;

Passion of Christ, strengthen me;

 

O good Jesus, hear me;

within Your wounds, hide me;

let me never be separated from You;

 

from the evil one, protect me;

at the hour of my death, call me;

and bid me come to You;

that with Your saints,

I may praise You forever and ever.

 

 

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