The Lamb's Supper

by Scott Hahn

  PLAGUED BY DOUBT

  Jerusalem, it seems, is on trial. God appears as judge (20:11), assisted by angels who sit on twenty thrones (20:4). Throughout the Apocalypse, angels execute the sentence, too, precipitating the destruction of Jerusalem, along with its inhabitants and its Temple. John portrays this event in terms of a terrible Passover. Seven angels pour out the chalices of God's wrath, which issue in seven plagues. The emptying of the chalices (sometimes rendered “cups” or “bowls”) is a liturgical action, a libation poured out upon the earth, as wine was poured upon ancient Israel's altar.

  In light of the Passover's fulfillment in the Eucharist, this imagery becomes all the more striking. The plagues take place in chapters 15–17 within a liturgical setting: the angels appear with harps, vested as priests in the heavenly Temple, singing the song of Moses and the song of the Lamb (ch. 15). This liturgy means death to God's enemies, yet salvation to His Church. Thus, the angels cry: “For men have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and You have given them blood to drink. It is their due!” (Rev 16:6).

  Passover, the Eucharist, and the heavenly liturgy, then, are two-edged swords. While the chalices of the covenant bring life to the faithful, they mean certain death to those who reject the covenant. In the new covenant, as in the old, God gives man the choice between life and death, blessing and curse (see Dt 30:19). To choose the covenant is to choose eternal life in God's family. To reject the new covenant in Christ's blood is to choose one's own death. Jerusalem made that choice, on Passover in A.D. 30. At the time of that Passover, Jesus predicted the end of the world in frightful terms and said, “Truly, this generation shall not pass away till all these things take place” (Mt 24:34). A generation to the ancients (in Greek, genea) was forty years. And forty years later, inA.D. 70, a world ended as Jerusalem fell.

  FORBIDDEN FRUITS: GRAPES OF WRATH

  Why would a merciful God punish in this way? How could we attribute such wrath to the divine Lamb, the very image of mildness? Because God's wrath is a mercy. But to understand this paradox, we first need to explore the psychology of sin, with some help from St. Paul.

  Paul's use of the word “wrath” in his Letter to the Romans is illuminating: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. . . . So they are without excuse; for although they knew God they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened” (Rom 1:18–21).

  This could well summarize the “case” against Jerusalem presented in heaven's court: God gave Israel His revelation, indeed the fullness of His revelation in Jesus Christ; yet the people did not honor Him or give thanks to Him; indeed, they suppressed the truth by killing Jesus and persecuting His Church. Thus, “the wrath of God is revealed” (“apocalypsed”) against Jerusalem.

  What happened then? We read on in Romans: “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves” (Rom 1:24). Wait a minute: God gives them up to their vices? He lets them continue sinning?

  HOOKED ON A FAILING

  Well, yes, and that is a dreadful manifestation of the wrath of God. We might think that the pleasures of sin are preferable to suffering and calamity, but they're not.

  We have to recognize sin as the action that destroys our family bond with God and keeps us from life and freedom. How does that happen?

  We have an obligation, first, to resist temptation. If we fail then and we sin, we have an obligation to repent immediately. If we do not repent, then God lets us have our way: He allows us to experience the natural consequences of our sins, the illicit pleasures. If we still fail to repent—through self-denial and acts of penance—God allows us to continue in sin, thereby forming a habit, a vice, which darkens our intellect and weakens our will.

  Once we're hooked on a sin, our values are turned upside down. Evil becomes our most urgent “good,” our deepest longing; good stands as an “evil” because it threatens to keep us from satisfying our illicit desires. At that point, repentance becomes almost impossible, because repentance is, by definition, a turning away from evil and toward the good; but, by now, the sinner has thoroughly redefined both good and evil. Isaiah said of such sinners: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil” (Is 5:20).

  Once we have embraced sin in this way and rejected our covenant with God, only a calamity can save us. Sometimes, the most merciful thing that God can do to a drunk, for example, may be to allow him to wreck his car or be abandoned by his wife—whatever will force him to accept responsibility for his actions.

  What happens, though, when an entire nation has fallen into serious and habitual sin? The same principle is at work. God intervenes by allowing economic depression, foreign conquest, or natural catastrophe. Often enough, a nation brings on these disasters by its sins. But, in any case, they are the most merciful of wake-up calls. Sometimes, disaster means that the world the sinners knew must fade away. But, as Jesus said, “What does it profit a man, to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?” (Mk 8:36). It's better to bid farewell to a world of sin than to be lost without hope of repentance.

  When people read the Apocalypse, they get frightened by the earthquakes and locusts and famines and scorpions. But the only reason God would allow these things is because He loves us. The world is good—make no mistake about that—but the world is not God. If we've allowed the world and its pleasures to rule us as a god, the best thing the real God can do is to start taking away the stones that make up the foundation of our world.

  ORDER IN THE COURT

  Yet a better world awaits the righteous and the sincerely repentant. To live a good life is not to live free of troubles, but to live free of needless worry. Catastrophes happen to Christians, just as good things seem to happen to wicked people. Yet, for a practicing Christian, even the disasters are good; because they serve to purify us of our attachments to this world. Only when we go bankrupt, perhaps, will we cease to worry about money. Only when we're abandoned by our friends, will we stop trying to impress them. When the money's gone, we can fall back on the one thing that nobody can take away: our God. When our friends don't return our calls, we can, at last, turn to the changeless Friend—Whom we cannot impress, because He knows us thoroughly.

  For, as Revelation reveals, the Judge has the goods on us. Judgment isn't just for Jerusalem. “Also another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, by what they had done” (20:12). One day, you and I will be numbered among “the dead,” and we will be judged by what we have done. Elsewhere in Revelation, we see that the saints enter heaven and “their deeds follow them” (14:13). Our works are integral to our salvation; indeed, they'll be the stuff of our judgment.

  What's more, we don't have to wait till we're dead to be judged. We stand before the judgment seat whenever we approach heaven, as we do at every Mass. Then, too, do we beg perfect mercy, which is perfect justice, from our heavenly Father. Then, too, do we bind ourselves by covenant with God. Then, too, do we receive the chalice—for our salvation, or for our judgment.

  We should recall the judgment of the Apocalypse whenever we hear the words of institution, which are the words of Jesus: “This is the chalice of My blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant.”

  PART THREE

  ONE

  Lifting the Veil

  HOW TO SEE THE INVISIBLE

  UKRAINIAN CHRISTIANS love to tell the story of how their ancestors “discovered” the liturgy. In 988, Prince Vladimir of Kiev, upon converting to the Gospel, sent emissaries to Constantinople, the capital city of Eastern Christendom. There they witnessed the Byzantine liturgy in the cathedral of Holy Wisdom, the grandest church of the East. After experiencing the chant
, the incense, the icons—but, above all, the Presence—the emissaries sent word to the prince: “We did not know whether we were in heaven or on earth. Never have we seen such beauty. . . . We cannot describe it, but this much we can say: there God dwells among mankind.”

  The Presence. In Greek, the word is Parousia, and it conveys one of the key themes in the Book of Revelation. In recent centuries, interpreters have used the word almost exclusively to denote Jesus' Second Coming at the end of time. That's the only definition you'll find in most English dictionaries. Yet it is not the primary meaning. Parousia's primary meaning is a real, personal, living, lasting, and active presence. In the last line of Matthew's Gospel, Jesus promises, “I will be with you always.”

  In spite of our redefinitions, the Book of Revelation captures that powerful sense of Jesus' imminent Parousia—His coming that takes place right now. The Apocalypse shows us that He is here in fullness—in kingship, in judgment, in warfare, in priestly sacrifice, in Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity—whenever Christians celebrate the Eucharist.

  “Liturgy is anticipated Parousia, the “already' entering our “not yet,' ” wrote Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. When Jesus comes again at the end of time, He will not have a single drop more glory than He has right now upon the altars and in the tabernacles of our churches. God dwells among mankind, right now, because the Mass is heaven on earth.

  FOR THE RECORD

  I want to make clear that this idea—the idea behind this book—is nothing new, and it's certainly not mine. It's as old as the Church, and the Church has never let go of it, though the idea has been lost in the shuffle of doctrinal controversies over the last several centuries.

  Nor can we dismiss such talk as the pious wishes of a handful of saints and scholars. For the idea of the Mass as “heaven on earth” is now the explicit teaching of the Catholic faith. You'll find it in several places, for example, in the most fundamental statement of Catholic belief, the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

  Christ, indeed, always associates the Church with Himself in this great work [the liturgy] in which God is perfectly glorified and men are sanctified. The Church is His beloved Bride who calls to her Lord and through Him offers worship to the eternal Father . . . [worship] which participates in the liturgy of heaven (no. 1089).

  Our liturgy participates in the liturgy of heaven! That's in the Catechism! And there's more:

  Liturgy is an “action” of the whole Christ . . . Those who even now celebrate it without signs are already in the heavenly liturgy . . . (no. 1136).

  At Mass, we're already in heaven! That's not just me saying so, or a handful of dead theologians. The Catechism says so. TheCatechism also quotes the very passage from Vatican II that affected me so powerfully in the months before my conversion to the Catholic faith:

  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 . . . (no. 1090).

  Warriors, hymns, and holy cities. Now, that's beginning to sound like the Book of Revelation, isn't it? Well, let theCatechism bring it on home:

  The Revelation of “what must soon take place,” the Apocalypse, is borne along by the songs of the heavenly liturgy . . . [T]he Church on earth also sings these songs with faith in the midst of trial . . . (no. 2642).

  All of this the Catechism states matter-of-factly, as if it should be self-evident. Yet, for me, the realization has been life-changing. To my friends and colleagues, too—and anyone else I can corner for long enough to deliver a monologue—this idea, that the Mass is “heaven on earth,” arrives as news, very good news.

  LORD JESUS, COME IN GLORY

  If we want to see the liturgy as Prince Vladimir's emissaries saw it, we must learn to see the Apocalypse as the Church sees it. If we want to make sense of the Apocalypse, we have to learn to read it with a sacramental imagination. When we look into these matters once again, now with new eyes of faith, we will see the sense amid the strangeness in the Book of Revelation, we will see the glory hidden in the mundane in next Sunday's Mass.

  Look again and discover that the golden thread of liturgy is what holds together the apocalyptic pearls of John's vision:

  Taken together, these elements comprise much of the Apocalypse—and most of the Mass. Other liturgical elements in Revelation are easier for modern readers to miss. For example, few people today know that trumpets and harps were the standard instruments for liturgical music in John's day, as organs are today in the West. And throughout John's vision, the angels and Jesus pronounce blessings using standard liturgical formulas: “Blessed is he who . . .” If you go back and read Revelation end to end, you'll also notice that all of God's great historical interventions—plagues, wars, and so on—follow closely upon liturgical actions: hymns, doxologies, libations, incensing.

  Yet, the Mass is not just in selected small details. It's in the grand scheme, too. We can see, for instance, that the Apocalypse, like the Mass, divides rather neatly in half. The first eleven chapters concern themselves with the proclamation of the letters to the seven churches and the opening of the scroll. This emphasis on “readings” makes Part One a close match for the Liturgy of the Word. Significantly, the first three chapters of Revelation mark a sort of Penitential Rite; in the seven letters to the churches, Jesus uses the word “repent” eight times. For me, this recalls the words of the ancient Didache, the liturgical manual of the first century: “first confess your transgressions, that your sacrifice may be pure.” Even John's opening assumes that the book will be read aloud by a lector within the liturgical assembly: “Blessed is he who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear” (Rev 1:3).

  Revelation's second half begins in chapter 11 with the opening of God's temple in heaven, and culminates in the pouring of the seven chalices and the marriage supper of the Lamb. With the opening of heaven, the chalices, and the banquet, Part Two offers a striking image of the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

  EXTRASENSORY CENSERS?

  In the Apocalypse, John depicts celestial scenes in graphic, earthly terms, and we have every right to ask why. Why depict spiritual worship—which certainly doesn't involve harps or censers—with such vivid sensory impressions? Why not use mathematical figures, as other ancient mystics did, so that readers would understand the truly esoteric, transcendent, and immaterial nature of heavenly worship?

  I suspect that God revealed heavenly worship in earthly terms so that humans—who, for the first time, were invited to participate in heavenly worship—would know how to do it. I'm not saying that the Church sat around waiting for the Apocalypse to drop from heaven, so that Christians would know how to worship. No, the Apostles and their successors had been celebrating the liturgy since Pentecost, at least. Yet neither is Revelation merely an echo of a liturgy already established, a projection into heaven of what's happening on earth.

  Revelation is an unveiling; that's the literal meaning of the Greek word apokalypsis. The book is a visionary reflection that reveals a norm. With the destruction of Jerusalem, the Church was definitively leaving behind a beautiful temple, a holy city, and a venerable priesthood. Yes, Christians were embracing a New Covenant, which somehow concluded the old, but somehow also included the old. What should they bring with them, from the old worship to the new? What should they leave behind? Revelation gave them guidance.

  Some things had been clearly replaced in the new dispensation. Israel marked its covenant by circumcising male children on the eighth day; the Church sealed the New Covenant by baptism. Israel celebrated the sabbath as a day of rest and worship; the Church celebrated the Lord's day, Sunday, the day of resurrection. Israel recalled the old Passover once a year; the Church reenacted the definitive Passover of Jesus Christ in its celebra
tion of the Eucharist.

  Yet Jesus did not intend to do away with all that was in the Old Covenant; that's why He established a Church. He came to intensify, internationalize, and internalize the worship of Israel. Thus, the incarnation invested many of the trappings of the Old Covenant with greater capacities. For example, there would no longer be a central sanctuary on earth. Revelation shows that Christ the King is enthroned in heaven, where He acts as high priest in the Holy of Holies. But does that mean the Church can't have buildings, or officers, or candlesticks, or chalices, or vestments? No. Revelation's clear answer is that we can have all of these—all these, and heaven, too.

  ZION AURA

  But everyone knew where to find Jerusalem. Where would they find heaven? Apparently, not very far away from old Jerusalem. The Letter to the Hebrews says: “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to a judge Who is God of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks more graciously than the blood of Abel” (Heb 12:21–24).

  That little paragraph neatly summarizes the entire Apocalypse: the communion of saints and angels, the feast, the judgment, and the blood of Christ. But where does it leave us? Just where the Apocalypse did: “Then I looked, and lo, on Mount Zion stood the Lamb, and with Him a hundred and forty-four thousand who had His name and His Father's name written on their foreheads” (Rev 14:1).

  All our Scriptural roads seem to lead to the city of King David, Mount Zion. God blessed Zion abundantly in the Old Covenant. “For the Lord has chosen Zion; He has desired it for His habitation: “This is my resting place forever; here I will dwell' ” (Ps 132:13–14). “I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill” (Ps 2:6). In Zion, God would establish the royal house of David, whose kingdom would last for all ages. There, God Himself would dwell forever among His people.