Friday in the 33rd Week of Ordinary Time, November 20, 2020

The bishop’s office has cleared Father Kelly and me to return to our normal duties, so quarantine is over for us.  Thank you for all your prayers!

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 third vision in the Book of Revelation, running from chapter 8, verse 2 through chapter 11, is concerned with the preaching of the Church.  

“Go, take the scroll that lies open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land.”  St. John, as a person and as signifying the Church, is told to take the scroll — the duty and the content of preaching — that lies open, and no longer sealed, from the hand of “the angel who is standing on the land and on the sea.”  As the Venerable Bede explains, this “angel” is the Lord, “clothed with a cloud. And a rainbow was on his head: and his face, as the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire” (Revelation 10, 1).   He stands on both land on sea, signifying that the Gospel is to be preached in both places, the lands and the islands.  “So I went up to the angel and told him to give me the small scroll.” John’s immediate action reminds us of how he gave up his net and his father when the Lord first called him.

“Take and swallow it. It will turn your stomach sour, but in your mouth it will taste as sweet as honey.”  The Latin word used to translate the Greek is the same used by the Fathers and the later Church writers to describe the eating of the Body of Christ at Mass.  Literally, it means “to take up”.  The action ordered here is prophetic as was the eating of a scroll by Ezekiel (cf. Ezekiel 2, 1-2).  In both cases this is a graphic sign of receiving the word of God into one’s inmost parts.  Particularly in the case of John, this was a sign to be imitated by all others who would preach the Gospel, through the most intense study of God’s word.  “I took the small scroll from the angel’s hand and swallowed it.”  The Greek word translated here as “swallowed” has the much more vivid meaning of “to eat until it is finished”, something like “to consume”.  The picture presented to us is of a man who is tearing into a papyrus scroll with his teeth, chewing on it, and swallowing it.  John was not popping a pill into his mouth: this was messy work and it took time.  

“In my mouth it was like sweet honey, but when I had eaten it, my stomach turned sour.”  As the Lord had foretold, it was sweet to the taste but bitter in the digestive tract.  The Greek here actually means “it was embittered in my stomach”, as though it was a sweet thing he had eaten, but his body reacted against it.  The sweetness of the scroll — the Gospel — brings to mind the words of Psalm 33, 9: “Taste and see that the Lord is sweet.”  The stomach finds it bitter, however.  For St. Albert the Great, the eating meant committing the Gospel to memory and fulfilling it with deeds.  Speaking in the person of John, Albert says of the bitterness, “My mind grieved out of compassion for the affliction of the saints.”  That is, the persecuted Saints in the last days.  We can also understand this bitterness as the hardship of the work, in which we persevere for the glory of God.

“Then someone said to me.”  It is hard to understand how the translator arrived at this.  The text very simply says, “Then he said to me.”  This is not an uncertain “someone” but the very present angel, that is, the Lord.  “You must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, tongues, and kings.”  This is first of all meant for the Church, as signified by John, and these words remind us of Mark 13, 9-10, in which the Lord Jesus says to the Apostles: “You shall stand before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony unto them, and unto all nations the Gospel must first be preached.”  But these words are also meant for John, personally, to inform him that he will be released from exile and return to Asia Minor, where he will continue to preach.  At the time of the visions, this was not a sure outcome of the exile.

The duty of preaching the Gospel is incumbent upon all the baptized members of the Church, according to the circumstances of our vocations, our abilities, and our opportunities.  We may have the knowledge, training, and holiness requisite for formal preaching and for apologetically work.  Or we may do the work of preaching simply, as Mother Teresa taught her sisters, who are not trained in this way, doing so with kind acts and smiles.  But we must think to ourselves how we are to do this, for the Lord told us to be as “wise as serpents” even while having the innocence of lambs (cf. Matthew 10, 16).