The Lamb's Supper

by Scott Hahn

  Remember that Zion was also the place where Jesus instituted the Eucharist, and where the Holy Spirit descended on Pentecost. Thus, the “holy hill” was even more favored in the second dispensation. The Last Supper and Pentecost were the two events that sealed the New Covenant.

  Notice, too, that the remnant of Israel, the 144,000 in Revelation 14, appear on Mount Zion—though in Revelation 7 they're shown in the heavenly Jerusalem. That's an odd discrepancy. Where were they, really: on Zion or in heaven? Look again to Hebrews 12 for the answer: “you have come to Mount Zion . . . the heavenly Jerusalem.” Mount Zionis the heavenly Jerusalem, because the events that took place are what brought about the definitive union of heaven and earth.

  The church on the site of these events survived the destruction of Jerusalem, but only as a sign. For the Christians of Judea, the site of the upper room was the “little church of God” dedicated to King David and St. James, the first bishop of Jerusalem. It was a “house church,” where believers met to break bread and to pray. Beyond that, however, Zion had become the living symbol of the New Covenant, and that's how it was enshrined forever in the Book of Revelation. Zion is a symbol of our earthly point of contact with heaven.

  Today, even though we are thousands of miles from that little hill in Israel, we are there with Jesus in the upper room, and we are there with Jesus in heaven, whenever we go to Mass.

  FIRST COMES LOVE, THEN COMES MARRIAGE

  This is what was unveiled in the Book of Revelation: the union of heaven and earth, consummated in the Holy Eucharist. The first word of the book suggests as much. The term apokalypsis, usually translated as “revelation,” literally means “unveiling.” In John's time, Jews commonly used apokalypsis to describe part of their week-long wedding festivities. The apokalypsis was the lifting of the veil of a virgin bride, which took place immediately before the marriage was consummated in sexual union.

  And that's what John was getting at. So close is the unity of heaven and earth that it is like the fruitful and ecstatic union of a husband and wife in love. St. Paul describes the Church as the bride of Christ (see Eph 5)—and Revelation unveils that bride. The climax of the Apocalypse, then, is the communion of the Church and Christ: the marriage supper of the Lamb (Rev 19:9). From that moment, man rises up from the earth to worship in heaven. “Then I fell down at [the angel's] feet to worship him,” John writes, “but he said to me, “You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your brethren who hold the testimony of Jesus' ” (Rev 19:10). Remember that Israel's tradition always had men worshiping in imitation of angels. Now, as Revelation shows, both heaven and earth participate together in a single act of loving worship.

  This apocalypse, or unveiling, points back to the cross. Matthew reports that, when Jesus died, “the curtain [or veil] of the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom” (27:51). Thus, the sanctuary of God was “apocalypsed,” unveiled, His dwelling no longer reserved for the high priest alone. Jesus' redemption unveiled the Holy of Holies, opening God's presence to everyone. Heaven and earth could now embrace in intimate love.

  THE OLD SCHOOL

  The ancient liturgies were saturated with the language of heaven on earth. The Liturgy of St. James declares: “we have been counted worthy to enter into the place of the tabernacle of Your glory, and to be within the veil, and to behold the Holy of Holies.” The Liturgy of Saints Addai and Mari adds: “How awesome today is this place! For this is none other than the house of God and the gate of heaven; because You have been seen eye to eye, O Lord.”

  St. Cyril of Jerusalem (fifth century) offers a profound meditation on the line “Lift up your hearts!” “For truly,” he says, “in that most awesome hour, we should have our hearts on high with God, and not below, thinking of earth and earthly things. The Priest bids all in that hour to dismiss all cares of this life, or household worries, and to have their hearts in heaven with the merciful God.”

  Indeed, we must be like St. John on Patmos, when he heard the voice from heaven say, “Come up here” (see Rev 11:12). That's what it means to “Lift up your hearts!” It means to open our hearts to the heaven that's before us, just as St. John did. Lift up your hearts, then, to worship in the Spirit. For, in the liturgy, says the fourth-century Liber Graduum, “the body is a hidden temple, and the heart is a hidden altar for the ministry in Spirit.”

  First, however, we must actively seek recollection. St. Cyril goes on: “But let no one come here who could say with his mouth, “We lift up our hearts unto the Lord,' but have his mind concerned with the cares of this life. At all times, God should be in our memory. But if this is impossible by reason of human frailty, we should at least make the effort in that hour.”

  Put simply, we should heed the compact phrase of the Byzantine liturgy: “Wisdom! Be attentive!”

  KNOCK, KNOCK

  Yes, be attentive! Because Revelation is unveiling more than “information.” It's a personal invitation, intended for you and me from all eternity. The Revelation of Jesus Christ has an immediate and overwhelming impact on our lives.We are the bride of Christ unveiled; we are His Church. And Jesus wants each and every one of us to enter into the most intimate relationship imaginable with Him. He uses wedding imagery to demonstrate how much He loves us, how close He wants us to stay—and how permanent he intends our union to be.

  Behold, God makes all things new. The Book of Revelation is not as strange as it seems, and the Mass is richer than we'd ever dreamed. Revelation is as familiar as the life we live; and even the dullest Mass is suddenly paved with gold and glittering jewels.

  You and I need to open our eyes and rediscover this long-lost secret of the Church, the early Christians' key to understanding the mysteries of the Mass, the only true key to the mysteries of the Apocalypse. “It is in this eternal liturgy that the Spirit and the Church enable us to participate whenever we celebrate the mystery of salvation in the sacraments” (Catechism, no. 1139).

  We go to heaven—not only when we die, or when we go to Rome, or when we make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. We go to heaven when we go to Mass. This is not merely a symbol, not a metaphor, not a parable, not a figure of speech. It is real. In the fourth century, St. Athanasius wrote, “My beloved brethren, it is no temporal feast that we come to, but an eternal, heavenly feast. We do not display it in shadows; we approach it in reality.”

  Heaven on earth—that's reality! That's where you stood and where you dined last Sunday! What were you thinking then?

  Consider what the Lord wanted you to think. Consider His invitations from the Book of Revelation: “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna” (2:17). What is the hidden manna? Remember the promise Jesus made when He spoke of “manna” in John's Gospel: “Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven” (6:49–51). Manna was the daily bread of God's people during their pilgrimage in the desert. Now, Jesus is offering something greater, and He's quite specific about His invitation: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with Me” (3:20).

  So Jesus really does have a meal on His mind; He wants to share the hidden manna with us, and He is the hidden manna. In Revelation 4:1, we see, too, that this is more than an intimate dinner for two. Jesus had stood at the door and knocked, and now the door is open. John enters “the Spirit” to see priests, martyrs, and angels gathered around heaven's throne. With John, we discover that heaven's banquet is a family meal.

  Now, with eyes of faith—and “in the Spirit”—let us begin to see that Revelation invites us to a heavenly banquet, to a love embrace, to Zion, to judgment, to battle. To Mass.

  TWO

  Worship Is Warfare

  WHICH WILL YO
U CHOOSE: FIGHT OR FLIGHT?

  HUMAN KIND,” said the poet T. S. Eliot, “cannot bear very much reality.” We need not look far for proof of this assertion. Real life, today, is what people flee, one by one, each retreating into his private distraction. The escape routes range from drugs and alcohol to romance novels and virtual-reality games.

  What is it about reality that humankind finds so unbearable? It is the enormity of evil, its seeming omnipresence and power, and our own apparent inability to escape it—indeed, our inability to avoid perpetrating evil. Hell, it seems, is everywhere—in sham imitation of God's omnipresence—threatening to consume us, to suffocate us.

  This is the reality we cannot bear. Yet this is the stark and terrible reality that John portrayed, without flinching, in Revelation. John's beasts loom monstrous, beyond Hollywood's darkest imaginings, snapping their jaws at the most innocent and vulnerable prey: a pregnant woman, a baby boy. They despise both nature and grace, Church and state. They can sweep a third of the stars from the sky. They're the power behind the throne in nations and empires. They grow strong from the immorality of the people they seduce; they get drunk on the “wine” of their victims' fornication, greed, and abusive power.

  FIGHT OR FLIGHT?

  Facing such opposition, we must choose: either fight or flight. This is a basic human instinct. Moreover, after a superficial evaluation of our own apparent resources, and the enemy's apparent resources, “flight” might seem the reasonable choice. According to the spiritual masters, however, flight is not a real option. In his classic work, The Spiritual Combat, Dom Lorenzo Scupoli wrote: “This war is unavoidable, and you must either fight or die. The obstinacy of your enemies is so fierce that peace and arbitration with them is utterly impossible.” In short: we can run from evil, but we can't hide.

  Moreover, we cannot ascend to heaven if we flee the battle. God has destined us, the Church, to be the Bride of the Lamb. Yet we cannot rule if we do not first conquer the forces that oppose us, the powers who are pretenders to our throne.

  What are we to do? We should take a look around us, after lifting the veil of mere human sight. John reveals the most encouraging news for Christians in battle. Two thirds of the angels are on our side, fighting constantly, even while we sleep. St. Michael the Archangel, heaven's fiercest warrior, is our untiring and unbeatable ally. All the saints in heaven constantly call to almighty God for our vindication. And—most encouraging of all—in the end we win! John sees the battle from the perspective of eternity, so he can reveal the ending as vividly as he describes the casualties. The battles rage so fiercely that rivers run red with blood and corpses lie rotting in heaps in the streets. Yet the victors enter a city whose streams flow with living water and whose sun never sets.

  Hear Father Scupoli again: “if the fury of your enemies is great, and their numbers overwhelming, the love which God holds for you is infinitely greater. The angel who protects you and the saints who intercede for you are more numerous.”

  SOCIETY PAGES

  We can count on heavenly help. Who can ask for greater assurance? Yet we often do. Many Christians remain troubled because they perceive that Jesus has somehow “delayed” in coming to help them. This seems especially true when they look at society's degeneracy. The world, sometimes, seems firmly in the hands of evil forces, and despite the prayers of Christians, the evil remains and even prospers.

  Still, Revelation shows that it is the saints and angels who direct history by their prayers. More than Washington, D.C., more than the United Nations, more than Wall Street, more than any place you can name, power belongs to the saints of the Most High gathered around the throne of the Lamb. The blood of the martyrs calls to God for vengeance (Rev 6:9–10), and He vindicates them, now as at the dawn of history, when Abel's blood cried out from the earth. It is the saints' prayers that immediately call forth the wrath of the Lamb against “the great men . . . the rich and the strong” (6:15–16).

  Yet the power of the saints is of a different order than the world's idea of power, and the wrath of the Lamb differs significantly from human vengeance. That may seem self-evident, but it's worth our deepest contemplation. For many Christians profess to believe in a heavenly sort of power, which, on closer analysis, turns out to be worldly power writ large.

  Consider, for a moment, Jesus' Jewish contemporaries and their worldly expectation of the Messiah: He would establish the kingdom of God by military and political means—conquer Rome, subjugate the gentiles, and so on. We know that such hopes were dashed away. Rather than marching on Jerusalem with His armies, Jesus waged a campaign of mercy and love, manifested by the meals shared with tax collectors and other sinners.

  And we all learned our lesson, right? It doesn't seem that way. Because, today, many Christians still hope for the same messianic vengeance as the first-century Jews. Though Christ came peacefully the first time, they say, He'll come back with a holy vengeance in the end, crushing His foes with almighty force.

  YOU CALL THIS WRATH?

  But what if Jesus' Second Coming turned out to be much like His first? Would many Christians be disappointed? Perhaps, but I don't think we should be. For, even though Revelation narrates a fair share of famines and plagues and pestilences, still chapter 6 portrays God's judgment of the mighty and powerful as the “wrath of the Lamb.” Why does John use the lamb image here? What kind of terror can a lamb really inspire? Why didn't he speak of the wrath of the Lion of Judah?

  Similarly, why is “overcoming” accomplished after Christ's first coming by those who “loved not their lives even unto death”? Or why are the opposing sides set forth so unevenly: two dragons and a land-beast attack the pregnant woman as she gives birth to the baby Messiah? Sure, there's St. Michael the Archangel; but the best he can do is kick the dragon out of heaven—so now the devil's free to pursue the woman into the wilderness and then make war on the rest of her offspring. In short, the deck is clearly stacked—the wrong way!

  Then, what about the closing scene (ch. 19), when Christ comes to “avenge the blood of His servants” (v. 2)? There, we see someone named “Faithful and True” riding on a white horse, accompanied by heavenly hosts in white linen (is this their best armor?), fighting with nothing but a sword—“coming out of his mouth”! Why is it not in His right hand? Why isn't He swinging it? Clearly, it's the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, which He's preaching—and not a military weapon of mass destruction. Then, He takes the Beast and False Prophet, and throws them alive into the fire and brimstone. Note that He doesn't kill them first, doesn't cut them up or gloat over their corpses. Next, the fate of the wicked is described in the following two chapters simply in terms of their being excluded from the New Jerusalem. What kind of comeuppance is this? Why is Jesus still a Lamb—till the very end? And why a marriage supper, rather than a victory party?

  I would suggest that the expectations of many Christians about Christ's Second Coming may stand in need of adjustment. Otherwise, we can find ourselves fighting disappointment—as did Jesus' Jewish contemporaries in the first century. Perhaps we need to rethink the common image of God suppressing his wrath—“Just you wait, you'll see how angry and vengeful I can really be”—by viewing it more carefully in light of His perfect fatherhood. This does not do away with divine wrath; it simply fits it into the consistent picture of God that Jesus provides. As I said earlier, viewing God's judgment in terms of divine fatherhood does not lower the standard of justice, or lessen the severity of judgment; fathers generally require more from their sons and daughters than judges from defendants.

  What, then, should be our image of Jesus' Second Coming? For me, it is Eucharistic, and it is brought about as the Mass brings heaven to earth. Just as the earthly priest stands over the bread and wine and says “This is My body,” thus transforming the elements, so Christ the high priest stands over the cosmos, pronouncing the same words. We stand on the earth as the elements stand on the altar. We are here to be
transformed: to die to self, live for others, and love like God. That is what's happening on the altar of the earth, just as it happens on the altars of our churches. As the fire descended from heaven to consume the sacrifices on Solomon's altar, so the fire descended to consume the disciples at the first Pentecost. The fire is one and the same; it is the Holy Spirit, Who enables us to be offered up as living sacrifices upon the altar of the earth. That is what makes sense out of the second half of the Apocalypse.

  HISTORY'S BRIDAL PATH

  It makes sense, too, out of the events of our everyday lives. In the light of divine fire, we see the daily news not as meaningless and unconnected sound bites, but as a story, whose ending we already know. All things in history—in world history and in our personal history—work together for the good of those who love God (see Rom 8:28). For Christ is Lord of history, its beginning (see Jn 1:1) and its end (see 1 Cor 4:5).

  Christ is firmly in charge, and He wants us to reign with Him as His bride. Thus, we must fight to gain our throne, but our warfare is hardly grim. We can even look upon it in romantic terms. History is the story of Christ wooing His Church, gradually drawing us all to our marriage supper, the banquet of the Lamb. He looks upon us as Adam looked upon Eve and says, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen 2:23). The Church is at once His bride and His body, for in marriage the two become one flesh (see Mt 19:5). Thus, Christ looks at us and says, “This is My body.”

  God intends all of history—whether the particular events seem good or ill for “our side”—to lead us to the eternal communion of our marriage supper. We must not underestimate Christ's desire for us to arrive at the feast. Remember He is a bridegroom awaiting His bride. So the passionate words He spoke to His Apostles are true for us as well: “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you” (Lk 22:15).