• Reading I: Revelations 4:1-11
• Resp. Psalm:  Psalm 150:1-2,3-4,5-6
• Gospel Reading: Luke 19:11-28

Apoc. 4:1-11 opens up the series of visions that are intended for the seven churches which have been admonished and exhorted to repentance. The purpose of this section is to describe the setting for the event that immediately follows in chapter 5, the consignment of the scroll of human history to the Lamb. The vision is literally "out of this world". John is caught up in (can also be the Hebrew "by") spirit and was brought to heaven, the dwelling place of God. There, John sees the place from which all the succeeding series of events will be directed: the throne and the one who occupies it, the twenty-four elders around the throne, the seven spirit of God (which he sees as lighted torches), the four unearthly creatures that carried God around in the visions of Ezekiel, the sea of crystal in front of the throne.

The center of the place John describes is the throne and around it all the others are arranged in ever widening concentric circles. On the throne was one who shone with brilliant light, surrounded by a halo that the evangelist can only describe in terms of the sparkle of gems. The activities described from verse 8 to the end of the chapter will be directed towards the occupant of the throne. He is the three-fold Holy One (v. whom the four beasts and the twenty-four elders worship and adore.

The twenty-four elders that surround the throne have crowns that they throw in front of the throne’s occupant as a sign of subjection. They themselves sit on thrones symbol of their status as co-rulers. The number 24 — for the original audience of John — would have evoked 12+12: 12 Tribes of Israel and 12 Apostles. The Spirit of God is seen as seven standing flames. I wouldn’t be surprised if one sees in this the Spirit in its seven gifts. The seven flames actually reminds one of the Jewish menorah lighted in honor of the Temple that the Maccabbees rededicated. The menorah also reminds one of the oil lamp that was never consumed during the event of the rededication. But the symbolism goes back even further than the first Hannukah, to Moses and the Burning Bush. In the description of the seven spirits then, something "Jewish" is evoked: Temple, oil, light, holiness, revelation and Divine Presence. Put into a Christian key, we have the one who makes Christians the Temple of God, making them Holy, anointing them (oil) and making them receive the Light, the one who guides them "to all Truth". The flames also remind one of the descent of the Spirit on the apostles during Pentecost. The "seven spirits" is the one Spirit seen seven-fold.

The mention of "lightning, rumblings and peals of thunder" coming from the throne reminds one of the revelation at Sinai. Here, there is a conscious literary emphasis on the continuation with the Sinai event. As Sinai was for the writer(s) of Exodus a symbol of the freedom to which the sons of Israel have been lead into, so here, the opening scene of the Apocalypse announces the process of liberation that will be fulfilled stage by stage throughout the visions of John: the old cosmos will be dismantled until the new heavens and the new earth appear, freed from anything that is "old".

This is the setting; what happens next is a heavenly liturgy that gives the meaning to all the subsequent episodes in John’s consoling book of Revelation.

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