Sunday’s first reading comes from the Book of Revelation, the last book of the bible. Like the spirituals that arose out of slavery, apocalyptic writing arises among the powerless and persecuted. It conceals its message of hope in code.
Revelation draws on images from Israel’s scriptures to proclaim its message of hope — Jesus will triumph over evil. Jesus is the lamb in Sunday’s first reading. The blood of the lamb smeared on their doorposts saved the firstborn of the enslaved Hebrews from the angel of death in Egypt during the tenth plague.
In Israel’s numerology twelve is the number of fullness. The square of the number of fullness, plus three zeros, expresses an uncountable or infinite number. The 144,000 stands for all who follow the lamb, all the children of God in the communion of saints.
The white robes symbolize the baptized. Their seal is the sign of the cross. The baptized have made the journey through death to resurrection in their own lives. They have died to their old lives in the waters of baptism and wear the white robe that symbolizes Jesus’ risen life.
The great crowd of saints are in communion with God and one another. They cry out to affirm, “Salvation is from our God…and from the Lamb.” They have journeyed through sorrow to comfort, through persecution to joy, through conflict to peace.
How many are 144,000?
I, John, saw another angel come up from the east holding the seal of the living God. The angel cried out loudly to the four angels who were given power to ravage the land and the seas, “Do no harm to the land or the sea or to the trees until we imprint this seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.” I heard the number of those who were to be marked—144,000 from every tribe in Israel.
After this I saw before me a huge crowd which no one could count from every nation, race, people, and tongue. They stood before the throne and the Lamb, dressed in long white robes and holding palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, “Salvation is from our God, who is seated on the throne, and from the Lamb.”
All the angels who were standing around the throne and the elders and the four living creatures fell down before the throne to worship God. They said: “Amen. Praise and glory, wisdom, thanksgiving, and honor, power, and might to our God forever and ever. Amen.”
Then one of the elders asked me, “Who do you think these are, all dressed in white? And where have they come from?” I said to him, “Sir, you know better than I.” He told me, “These are the ones who have survived the great period of trial; they have washed their robe and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”
Revelation 7.2-4,9-14
- How do you imagine communion in God with all the saints and all that is?