Friday in the 33rd Week of Ordinary Time, November 18, 2022

Revelation 10, 8-11

I, John, heard a voice from heaven speak to me. Then the voice spoke to me and said: “Go, take the scroll that lies open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land.” So I went up to the angel and told him to give me the small scroll. He said to me, “Take and swallow it. It will turn your stomach sour, but in your mouth it will taste as sweet as honey.” I took the small scroll from the angel’s hand and swallowed it. In my mouth it was like sweet honey, but when I had eaten it, my stomach turned sour. Then someone said to me, “You must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, tongues, and kings.”

The Book of Revelation contains many signs that occur earlier, often in the Books of Ezekiel and Daniel.  These signs of which the Prophets spoke find their fulfillment in the Book of Revelation as God brings human history to its close.  For instance, the sign of the scroll that must be eaten is first found in Ezekiel 3, 1-4: the Prophet is being commissioned  by God to speak God’s word to the Jews. In both instances, the eating of the scroll that comes from God signifies the incorporation of his word in the one who is to speak.  That is, the Prophet and the Evangelist are not simply carrying out a task or performing a job.  They must first know and understand the words that are given them, they must be transformed by them, and they must make them part of their very being.  This is done by deep meditation inspired out of love for God and for his words and through performing the works the words inspire.  This is not accomplished in a day or a week.  It is done over the course of a lifetime, as we continuously receive his words.  For us, it means to read the Holy Scriptures regularly and to see what God speaks to us through them, for they are not dead words: “For the word of God is living and effectual and more piercing than any two-edged sword; and reaching unto the division of the soul and the spirit, of the joints also and the marrow: and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Hebrews 4, 12).  His word, once inside of us, goes into depths within us that we did not know we possessed.  The Holy Spirit fills these words so that they live and speak to and within us.

St. John relates that the Angel told him as he took the scroll, “It will turn your stomach sour, but in your mouth it will taste as sweet as honey.”  The word of God is delightful to meditate upon but requires work to put it into practice.  John, knowing this, eats the scroll.

When, in the Gospel reading for today’s Mass, we see the Lord Jesus casting out the money changers from the Temple precincts (Luke 19, 45-48), we should remember what St. John said of the thoughts of the Apostles on the first occasion he did this: “His disciples remembered, that it was written: The zeal of your house has eaten me up” (John 2, 17).  The Lord Jesus was literally consumed by his zeal for the place where’s God’s presence had existed on this earth, the building containing the Holy of Holies in its innermost recesses, where the Ark of the Covenant containing the manna, Aaron’s rod, and the tablets of the Ten Commandments had once lain.  This Holy of Holies is now set deep within each baptized person and it is not empty: the presence of God is truly there in his grace.  St, Paul tells us: “Know you not that your members are the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have from God?” (1 Corinthians 6, 19).  The Son of God has this zeal for us, he is consumed by his zeal for us and for our salvation.  May we likewise be filled with this zeal for him, consumed by it, and so serve him in all things, living out the word of God within us.